S2 Ep27. The Adventure Within: Laurie Shiell on Listening, Legacy and Leaps of Faith

In this heartwarming episode, host Aderonke Bademosi Wilson welcomes Laurie Shiell, an adventurer, listener and advocate for growth whose vibrant spirit and candid reflections leave a lasting impression. 

Laurie opens up about how her adventurous nature was born in Bermuda, where she and her sister explored the island by bus from a young age. That sense of bold curiosity still lives on. She shares a recent escapade paragliding in Turkey, a thrill that left her exhilarated and her husband concerned. For Laurie, adventure isn’t just a pastime; it’s part of who she is.

As the conversation deepens, Laurie shifts gears to speak about the art of listening, an essential skill she cultivated throughout her career in human resources. While her family may teasingly say otherwise, Laurie knows the power of truly hearing others. She attributes her deep listening abilities not just to her profession, but to a family culture rich with humor and resilience, where lightheartedness helps her navigate life with grace.

Listeners are then treated to a few delightful surprises about Laurie. She never graduated from high school, yet went on to earn a master’s degree. She’s the youngest of her mother’s children, with a sister 17 years her junior. And perhaps most striking of all, she fears very little in life.

Laurie’s educational journey is nothing short of inspiring. She candidly shares her unconventional path, leaving high school early, enrolling at Bermuda College, earning her GED, and eventually finding her academic home at Spelman College. Along the way, she changed majors from computer science to a field that better aligned with her strengths and interests, highlighting her adaptability and self-awareness.

Much of Laurie’s strength, she says, is rooted in the influence of her mother, a young, single parent who raised Laurie and her sister with a mix of love, laughter and tenacity. The trio formed a close-knit unit, and the joy they found in each other’s company shaped Laurie’s perspective on life and relationships.

One of Laurie’s proudest moments came recently when her daughter graduated with a bachelor’s degree. This milestone filled her with immense pride and underscored the importance of family legacy and perseverance through generations.

In her professional life, Laurie reflects on a defining moment in her HR career, when she helped two colleagues move beyond a cycle of conflict through anger management support. This experience reinforced her belief in the transformative power of listening with empathy, withholding judgment and believing in people’s capacity for growth.

Laurie’s story is one of resilience and evolution. From overcoming early setbacks to embracing continuous learning and change, she reminds us that our past doesn’t dictate our future. Her approach to listening, with curiosity and compassion, emerges as a quiet form of leadership. And through it all, the humor and love within her family remain central, a steady force that has carried her through life’s many adventures.

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Transcript

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (00:01.196)
Welcome to another edition of AB Wilson's Heart of the Matter, a podcast that uses overwhelmingly positive questions to learn about our guests, where every episode uncovers extraordinary stories of triumph, growth, and empowerment. Hi, I'm Aderonke Bademosi-Wilson. My guest on today's show is Laurie Shiell. She is funny, a listener, adventurous. Laurie, welcome to the show.

Laurie Shiell (00:34.607)
Thank you for having me, Aderonke.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (00:37.364)
And Laurie, I want to start with your descriptors. Tell me about being adventurous.

Laurie Shiell (00:44.919)
I think, let's start where I think it stems from. So I'm going to blame my mother. And I blame her because as children, I tell people, being in the car for me and my sister was like a reward. We couldn't be in the car, so we did a lot of things on our own. I would say by the age of five, my sister and I knew how to get anywhere on the island by bus because we were on that bus going to our cousin's house, our grandparents' house, going to school, coming back home from school. And so I think that's where the adventure began. And I want to say it's probably taken a turn where it stresses my husband out now.

The last big adventure I did, I decided last minute—we were in Turkey and the tour operator was like, "You can do this, what's it called? Parasailing type thing, right?" So my sister turns around and says, "Yeah, let's do that." I said, "Okay." And I'm looking at my sister saying it—yes, greater heights. So I don't know how this is going to go for you. We get to the location to do it. My sister is like, "Yeah, no, I thought about that. I was crazy. I'm not doing it anymore." So off I went by myself with two strangers. It was me and two other girls from, I think they were from Sudan. And off the three of us go.

We get in this car—I think the car ride was scarier than anything because the guy drove like two million trying to get us to the location. We got to the location and we're at the top of this hill. Am I frozen?

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (02:52.398)
Keep going.

Laurie Shiell (02:53.361)
Okay, and we're at the top of the hill and I'm watching other people jump—and it's a tandem jump, right? And you can see down to everything. I was just sitting there thinking, "Okay, I think you've taken it too far. You've taken it too far." But I decided to do it anyway. I go ahead and I jump off—you run and you jump off this mountain and then you glide and paraglide. We're gliding and initially I'm scared, and then I just kind of settled into it. So we get down to the end and when I see my husband, I can look at his face. He just cut his eyes, like, "No, what are you doing?" He was stressed for me. He didn't speak to me for about 30 minutes because he was so stressed. The next thing he said to me was, "You got life insurance, right?"

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (04:02.35)
So do you have life insurance? I mean, you know, okay.

Laurie Shiell (04:04.059)
I have life insurance.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (04:09.87)
Well, that is definitely an adventure. And what about being a listener?

Laurie Shiell (04:15.311)
A listener—I think that, you know, just with the job that I do, and the job that I've had before this in human resources, trained me to be a listener. I had to listen in order to assist, I had to listen in order to grow. My family would tell you I'm probably not a good listener. They always think I'm not a good—"You're not listening." I've listened. I've heard what you say. You just want to repeat yourself. But yeah, that's where everything comes from. And being funny—I was raised with funny people. What can I say? My mother is funny. My grandparents were hilarious. I come from cousins that are the same way, uncles.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (04:58.517)
And being funny.

Laurie Shiell (05:14.375)
And so I was raised to laugh at yourself, not to take life too seriously. And that no matter what the situation, you might not laugh at it today, but tomorrow you're going to tell the story and it's going to be funny.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (05:33.902)
Thank you. And so let's get to the questions. Laurie, please share three interesting things about yourself that our listeners may not know and your friends will be surprised to learn.

Laurie Shiell (05:50.096)
My friends probably wouldn't be surprised to learn any of this, but listeners,
I didn't graduate from high school.
But I have a master's degree.

Laurie Shiell (06:14.919)
I am my mother's youngest child, but my sister next to me—I have a younger sister that's 17 years younger than me.

And three things... I would say the third thing is that I'm really not scared of anything.

Laurie Shiell (06:40.165)
Very few things—I can't come up with anything that I'm scared of.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (06:48.27)
Let's go back to high school. What happened that you didn't graduate?

Laurie Shiell (06:51.556)
Okay.
Yeah, so you get your report and you're like, you had to pass six subjects or you had to get six GCEs at a certain level. Well, I got five in both, right? So I ended up not graduating. I got a high school leaving certificate, but I didn't graduate. I ended up leaving. I went to Bermuda College for a year.

I learned how to play cards really well there. I couldn't tell you what the heck I did. But I did play cards. And then I decided—I don't know how I decided, or my mama decided—that I would go to adult education school and get my GED. And it was while I was there, one of my friends was like, "I'm applying for colleges. Let's apply for colleges." I'm like, "Okay, cool, let's apply for colleges."

So I ended up applying for three colleges. I applied to Kean College, I applied to Spelman, and I applied to—there's a third one that I can't remember.

In any case, I ended up getting into all three. But the last one was Spelman. I was waiting for Spelman. I had gotten into Kean, I had a roommate, I had my I-20 form and everything to go to Kean College. And last minute, here comes Spelman saying, "You're accepted." I dropped Kean like a hotcake and off I went to Spelman.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (08:29.1)
You—

Laurie Shiell (08:36.599)
I don't even think I have a tale for where I come from, I just did show off.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (08:44.477)
Wow, okay. And I don't know if you know, that's where I went. I went to Kean.

Laurie Shiell (08:47.399)
Yes, I know that's where you went. And ironically enough, I think I only knew one person that went afterwards and then I kept hearing about Kean College really afterwards, with people going there. But yeah, I dropped it. I couldn't finish with the Kean College sister, but now I'm—

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (09:15.79)
Well, thank you for sharing your story because I'm sure there are listeners out there who may not have graduated from high school. And I think the fact that you didn't let that stop you and that you went on to higher education is a real credit to your tenacity and that you had a disappointment, but you didn't let that stop you.

Laurie Shiell (09:25.479)
Yeah.

Laurie Shiell (09:42.449)
But I think I also didn't know it could stop me.

Laurie Shiell (09:48.047)
Right? When I think about that time in my life, it was, "Okay, I didn't graduate, but okay, fine." I didn't think I was dumb. I never thought I was stupid. So I never had the thinking that that would stop me in life. Also, when my friend said, "Let's go to college," that's when I thought, "Okay, I've got a couple of choices here."

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (09:48.558)
That's interesting.

Laurie Shiell (10:16.967)
Based on who my mama is—because she's not going to let me lay around the house, so that means I'm going to have to work. Do I want to work or do I want to go to college? Okay, let's do this college thing. And that's how I ended up in college... with a degree. And since I went to college on a whim, right, really not—I went because I didn't want to work. And so when they said, "Okay, well, what's going to be your degree? What are you going to major in?" I said, "Okay, computers is interesting. That's, you know, up and coming." So I went to college as a computer science major.

I was the only computer science major who, within the first term, withdrew from the computer science classes. It wasn't for me. They were speaking Mandarin, OK? I don't know what they were saying. And I remember the first test. I knew the name. I knew my name and the date. That was it. That was the only questions I had.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (11:16.62)
You—

Laurie Shiell (11:32.839)
I came to my dorm room, I called my mama and I was like, "Yeah, this computer science is not working out for me because I'm going to have to withdraw from this class." She was like, "But that's your major. How are you withdrawing from your major?" I'm telling you what I'm going to do. I'm withdrawing from this class. I withdrew from the class. So needless to say, I didn't finish college with—

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (11:57.006)
You—

Laurie Shiell (12:02.523)
That degree.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (12:05.326)
You've mentioned your mother a few times. Tell me about your mom.

Laurie Shiell (12:09.783)
So my mother was a teenage mom, right? And I feel like we grew with her. We grew up with her. It was me and my sister. My mom was divorced by the time I was seven from my dad. And so it was just the three of us. And unlike today, there were no other distractions. My mom didn't have social media to distract her.

So me and my sister went. And so, you know, we entertained ourselves and I remember taking my sister and I spent a lot of time together growing up, you know, because we were on that bus together.

I would say now, it's like my sister and me and my mom—it's like, my mom's the older sister. Although we know she's the mama. Yeah. She didn't raise us like she was our friend. We were not one of her little friends. Let me just say that. Let me make that very clear. I used to tell my people, the only time I didn't get licks was when my mom was away.

Laurie Shiell (13:34.727)
If she came here, it was going to be licks about something. Like I said, we've learned to laugh at ourselves, we don't take anything seriously. But she will tell you a whole different story—that she was this wonderful mother, this, that, the other. My story is that social services shouldn't have known about you. I might have had a different mama.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (13:37.151)
You—

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (14:05.646)
Oh, thank you. Thank you. And I'll just say that I know your mother very well. And she's a wonderful person and a special person to me, as you know.

Laurie Shiell (14:11.537)
Yes.

Laurie Shiell (14:15.983)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (14:19.246)
So can you tell us about a recent accomplishment or success that you're particularly proud of?

Laurie Shiell (14:28.367)
You know, this probably was the hardest question for me. And I guess that goes into not taking myself so seriously. But my biggest accomplishment and success thus far is my daughter got her bachelor's degree the other day and I was over the moon, over the moon, excited, proud.

And that for me was a big accomplishment. Only because I knew she had it in her. I just needed her to see that she had it in her, which she did. Right. And so for me, that was my biggest accomplishment was that she has her first degree under her belt.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (15:24.536)
Congratulations to both of you.

Laurie Shiell (15:26.097)
Thank you.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (15:28.974)
Please tell us about a time when you made a difference in another's life. What were the circumstances? Paint a picture for me.

Laurie Shiell (15:42.287)
A lot of stories go through my head just based on what I do every day and what I've been doing for the majority of my work life. But I can remember the first time where I learned to listen that made a difference. I was working in HR and I received a call from someone to say that another person was—

Laurie Shiell (16:17.703)
making trouble for them at work. These two individuals worked at the same location and I said, "Okay, well let me investigate this matter." I remember calling the other party in and we were sitting there and I was saying to her, "You cannot hit this other individual who is also an employee here," and she said, "Well, what about if I hit her over the weekend? Will it be okay?" I was like, "You can't hit her over the weekend." And so, but it led me to ask her a question. And the question was,

Why do you think it's okay to fight someone when you don't like them?

Laurie Shiell (17:11.865)
And her response was, "This is how I've always been. This is how me and my sister have always been." And I remember saying to her, "Why do you think that you're—"

And she said—

Laurie Shiell (17:30.087)
"This is how my parents were. My parents fought if something wasn't right. This is how my sister does things. Like, if we don't like you, we're going to fight you."

And she had—her sister had a child who she loved very much. And I said, "Do you want your sister's child to be raised like this? Or to live like this?" She thought about it and she said, "No." I said, "Do you know there's another way?" She was the most shocked person. She said, "There is?" I said, "Yeah. You have to understand how to manage your anger. There's an anger management program that can assist you with providing you alternatives to fighting."

And she was the most shocked person in the world. And I said to her, "Would you be open to attending anger management sessions?" She said, "Yes." I said, "Do you think your sister would be open to attending the sessions?" She said, "Yes." And

I made a referral for her and her sister to attend these anger management sessions. And for me, that was the first time I had come across someone who, right in that instance, was open to reflecting upon themselves, recognizing—being told there was a new way—and saying to herself, "Hey, I want to try this new way." And actually,

Laurie Shiell (19:10.919)
doing it. And that for me was a turning point for me in how I interacted with people, in wanting to not just understand what they were there in front of me for, but actually listening and understanding their story.

Because it changed everything. Because initially I'm going in, "Okay, I'm meeting with a fighter." That's, you know, kind of who I'm meeting with. But when I left, the person I met with was somebody whose life was going to change for the better. And that for me changed how I interacted with people from then on.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (19:53.43)
And potentially change your life as well.

Laurie Shiell (19:54.855)
And change her life, her sister's life, and the life of her sister's child.

And definitely change.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (20:07.854)
What were the key strengths and qualities you relied on to make a difference in this instance?

Laurie Shiell (20:16.667)
Being open to listen.
Being able to be non-judgmental.

Laurie Shiell (20:25.217)
And being open to—

Laurie Shiell (20:30.695)
present something new.

Laurie Shiell (20:36.057)
In the face of—

Laurie Shiell (20:42.203)
me until, "I don't want to do that," you know, but still being able to present it and being open to present it and being open to the possibility that this person could possibly say yes. And that was part of the not judging what you saw, what I saw, and not putting this person in a box.

Laurie Shiell (21:08.487)
That this is how they will always be.