S2 Ep46. Side Quests and Pepper Soup: Finding Joy in the Unexpected with Patrenia Werts Onuoha

In this energizing episode of ABWilson’s Heart of the Matter, host Aderonke Bademosi Wilson sits down with Patrenia Werts Onuoha, a self-described idea hamster, resilient bridge builder and passionate creator. Patrenia shares the unique story of her journey from North Carolina to Nigeria and back, weaving in tales of creativity, music as a tool for connection and the powerful influence of reframing adversity.

Listeners are welcomed into Patrenia’s world of musical metaphors, where clarinets and classic soul blend with lessons on growth and resilience. She recalls the formative experience of being born following her mother’s recovery from a severe accident, her bold move across continents to raise her children with a sense of home and the spiritual guidance that has shaped her life’s direction.

Patrenia opens up about navigating significant challenges, including supporting her family through health crises and relocation, and how these experiences inspired her venture, Resilience Resources for Life. Her stories reveal the importance of serving from an overflowing cup, the healing found in journaling and the value of fostering genuine community.

This episode also touches on Patrenia’s initiatives in empowering women, her Pepper Soup Stories podcast and the excitement of returning to Nigeria to expand her impact through charity and public service. With warmth and wisdom, she invites listeners to seek joy even in life’s peppery moments and to model resilience, creativity and adaptability for future generations.

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Transcript

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (00:02.344)

Welcome to another edition of ABWilson’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, my name is Aderonke Bademosi Wilson. My guest on today’s show is Patrenia Werts-Onuoha.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (00:02.319)

You.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (00:14.159)

This is the ice cream.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (00:33.386)

She is resilient, creative, curiously adaptive and musical. Patrenia, welcome to the show.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (00:44.825)

Thank you so much, Aderonke. Thank you, thank you.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (00:49.454)

Let’s get started with your descriptors. And I’m going to go with your bonus descriptor first, which is musical. Tell me about that. Tell me about being musical and what that means for you.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (01:05.593)

Thank you so much for that one. I would say for me, one of my mottos is life is a musical. And I’ve found that I just have this natural ability, regardless of what the situation is, I can think of a song that goes with that situation. And I find myself humming or singing it to myself, you know, to kind of match the mood. But even beyond that, what I’ve learned through music, number one, is that it’s a good coping mechanism for me when I’m a little nervous or when I just need to calm and ground. Music helps to create that mood for me. And as a musician for nine years in grade school through high school, music taught me about having something that was very challenging at first. When you get a piece for the first time, you know, I played clarinet, you squeak and honk when you’re trying it. And by the time you practice and prepare, it shows me that the growth mindset and music go hand in hand, that if you work at something, you can get better at it. So that’s why life for me is a musical.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (02:18.632)

And I know before we started, before we came on air, you played some music just to center you. So I saw it in action. How does music ground you? How does it work within you?Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (02:36.237)

Music helps me to know that I can choose my mood. Like if something is rocky happening, I can choose, is it an upbeat song that’s gonna get me going? You know, sometimes I listen to Mary J. Blige: “I like what I see when I’m looking at me when I’m passing by the mirror, just fine.” And that’s a pump up song for me that reminds me of how awesome I am, because sometimes our circumstances don’t always remind us. We could be in gloom and doom, but as I tune into the radio station, the lyrics or the rhythms, you know, that 4/4 beat, they get you going or something that can take you into a reflexive space. I just know that I have a power to choose and music is kind of a vehicle for me to do that.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (03:28.386)

Is there a certain type of genre of music you like?Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (03:33.935)

I kind of like a little bit of everything. So when I talked about my high school experience, we played classical music. So I can hit some Dvořák, dun-dun, dun-dun, you know, and I’m hearing everybody’s part and I like to just piece it apart. I love, you know, what are the clarinets doing? What are the saxes doing? What are the… I’m just, I love bringing all of that together. And I think I bring that into my life as well because I’m kind of an integrator. I can see how different pieces come together and how things need to play together. So I go from classic to hip hop and 80s and 90s old school really is the best school in terms of timing. I found that some of the new things, I say with our 19-year-old, we were listening to some music together and I was playing the old school version of it. And my son said, “Wait a minute…” He had only heard the new version of it and it became a bridge for us to have a discussion about, oh, which one is better and how did that feel to you? So music is a bridge. It’s like the first time I went to the village when I visited Nigeria for the first time in 1995, I was spending time with a lady who I learned later did not speak but like three or four English words. But through dance and movement and singing together and humming and making sounds, we had such a connection. So I find that music is very powerful in that way. And I just like to leverage it. It feels good. It defuses things.

I was in a situation when I was at Harley-Davidson. I was the first Black female engineer, and I found that I was replacing two white gentlemen who had been fired.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (05:27.223)

I come into the role and I learn these things. And then I’m working one-on-one with, guess what? The guy who got them fired. And so I learned that John Crane, though an hourly employee, he was a set-up man, had so much power on the floor and authority; everybody really bought in. If John has blessed it, then it is to be blessed. And so once I realized he was like my barrier to making it or not making it, at first it was fearful. But then I realized that I just needed to be me because I didn’t have my guard up all the time.

So anyway, Saturday we come in, we’re trying to solve a problem that nobody else has been able to solve. And it’s how do you pick up the frames? So we had to design an end effector. Bottom line, I brought in a coat hanger and we just started hanging around with it and just kind of… We call it now design thinking would be the formal way that we were going about it. But we noticed that we were both humming. We noticed that we were like, “You like music too?” And we started singing together. It was just he and I on the floor. And from that moment on, he basically got everybody to give me a chance. So my last name is pronounced Onuoha, right? He made it, “I know, huh? No, huh?” Right? So he made a joke of it and all of a sudden everyone was willing to give me a chance because now through musical connection, John Crane and I had gone beyond Black woman/white man. We’d gone beyond engineer versus guy on the floor. We had found something that bonded us and really, really was a great foundation. I worked there for 10 years and he was always my buddy.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (07:20.334)

Great, thank you. Thank you for sharing how music connects us and makes us see each other differently, I think.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (07:31.885)

Yes, yes, I love that.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (07:36.792)

So, Patrenia, tell me about being resilient.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (07:40.847)

My goodness, about being resilient. I think sometimes the best way I can describe it is that resilience is almost like, imagine a basketball. And the best basketball is the one that bounces. You can throw it up, it may not hit the basket, but it comes back and you get another chance. Now, why is it able to do that? And what are the situations where it doesn’t do that? Well, it’s able to do that because it has air inside of it, okay? Full of air. If you ever go and remove all the air out of it, when you bounce it, it will not be coming back to you. You will not be able to pass it easily. You will not be able to shoot it. So resilience for me means to keep myself full, you know?

Serving from—and I’ll go to another metaphor of a cup—you know, in order to serve others I need to make sure my cup is overflowing so that I’m serving from the saucer, not exhausting my cup. So keeping myself full of air like a ball so that when I hit adversity, which is like the ground, I’m able to come back from it, often even higher than where I was before because I learned something on the journey down. So resilience to me is the ability to hit hard things but keep coming back, keep coming back and keep growing from it. I’ll tell you a little more about it as we go on, but the ability to reframe comes from a mindset of resilience, because you’re always looking for not whether I can overcome, but how I will overcome and how I will move through this particular situation.

And resilience for me, I would say, at a time in my career when I was working in Nigeria at Shell, we were having a couple of things happening. Organizationally, we were getting ready to go through a downsizing.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (09:53.103)

And then organizationally, we started this program called BeWell, which was all about building individual resilience, building emotional resilience. And here I go, I volunteer to be trained as a BeWell facilitator and the whole thing was resilience. But guess what was happening parallel in my life? My husband had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. So at the same time that I was learning and building my capabilities to help others to be more resilient because they may lose their jobs, they may need to reinvent themselves, they may need to move into gratitude, they may need to do all these things.

By equipping myself to facilitate it, I had to practice it. And in that practice, I was able to not focus on the potential that I could be a widow and need to raise five kids by myself. What did I focus on instead? I focused on the possibilities. I focused on solution orientation. I focused on, in this moment, let me be where my feet are. Let me be present and not wondering all the… You know, often, smart people—sometimes, in quotes, smart people—we handicap ourselves because we can think of so many negative scenarios and that overthinking oftentimes will take us into a negative emotional downward spiral. Whereas resilience, if you practice it, it takes you up. It takes you up. And for me, I pride myself in being the most optimistic person in the room, not toxically optimistic and not naively optimistic, but being open to better possibilities.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (11:57.773)

So I hope I’ve answered resilience.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (12:01.014)

You have. Thank you. Let’s move on to creative. Tell me about being creative.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (12:12.699)

My latest creation was a children’s book on the theme of our Pepper Soup Stories podcast. It’s all about “spices of life” are required to have a really good life and that everything can’t be sweet. And growth doesn’t always come from comfort; it also comes from discomfort.

Creatively, and I use AI support because I’m getting smarter now. I love being able to go—so let me step back. I’ve been described as an idea hamster. I have no lack of ideas: okay, we can look at it like this; or we can look at it like this; or perspective of, you know, an introvert; the perspective of an extrovert; the perspective of an African; or the perspective of an American. So all of that creativity. But often my creativity was stalled because of my inability to execute it all. And so AI has really helped me to go from idea to execution.

So creating this children’s book that tells a story of how a little boy was afraid to go on stage. He had a part to play at school and he had practiced it and practiced it. But, you know, when he would get on stage, he was like, “Am I going to be good enough?” So he messed up, and how did he move through the failure and how did he grow through it? So creating that story to share with children and even to hopefully resonate with adults that the way I start isn’t, doesn’t have to be the way I finish. So creating ways to help people to see more of themselves in themselves and being able to imagine that I can transform, I do have a choice. And each part of the ingredient in my life, though it may be sour as I’m experiencing it, it may have a purpose.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (14:26.670)

There’s this thing called side quests. And so this may be a creative thing. This is the way I look at the world I’m seeing now. So side quests is commonly applied in video games. Let’s say if you have a main initiative: get to the top of the mountain, right? Might be the main initiative. Now, while you’re playing the game, side quests will come along and say, “Ah, go over to the side.” Some people never take a side quest. They just keep focused on the mountain. But ironically, what happens in these side quests often is you get equipped or tested or come out with some armor that’s going to be helpful when you get back onto the main trail.

So my life has been a sequence of side quests. What engineer do you know co-founds a Black repertory theater at a predominantly white school, as well as becomes, you know, Delta? You know, all the things don’t necessarily add up to being one thing. And I love being multifaceted. So that creativity, side quests that equip you for other parts of your journey.

So when I give you an example of that resilience volunteering that I did at Shell, my job as corporate real estate had nothing to do with resilience. But guess what? Once I left Shell, it became the inspiration for my business name. My business is Resilience Resources for Life. All of it is linked. If I would not have volunteered and been a part of that side quest that one, equipped me to be able to manage what I was going through in my life, but also equipped me to serve others and help others to grow and transform. That’s just kind of like why I’m on earth. You know, Shirley Chisholm says that service is the rent that we pay for our space here on earth. And I actively engage side quests because of the creativity and it allows me to grow and serve.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (16:42.026)

So I want to go back to two things. First of all, idea hamster. I love that. I love that visual. You churning out ideas time and time and time again. That sounds wonderful. And then you mentioned your podcast. Tell me about your podcast.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (16:42.476)

You want to go back?Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (16:57.486)

You.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (17:07.978)

Okay, that’s one of the accomplishments that I’m quite happy about.

My neighbor and I—so I have lived in Nigeria for over 20 years. And in 2015, I moved into this development and at the Christmas party, my husband and I were dancing and we won a dance contest. And right beside me was this wonderful lady that I met, Ajomah Okoji, and we’ve been friends ever since. So we would spend time together, just, you know, we wanted to write a book. And we kept telling ourselves we were going to write a book. But we noticed whenever we got together, we just “chappa, chappa, chappa, chappa, chappa.” It was just wonderful conversation. We realized maybe we should do a podcast and share these conversations and eventually get to the book. But some of the profound experiences and things that we were bringing out, we realized that the world needed to know.

So the grounding of our podcast is that we want to help others to reframe adversity into advantage. So where you’re sitting today doesn’t have to be where you stay. It’s all about your perspectives and your perspective-taking. And that’s a tool that I want to share with your listeners as well. That’s kind of my freebie I’d like to share. But it’s a structure around how do you begin to look at things from a different way.

And we anchored it in a West African metaphor because our target is women in the diaspora, women on the continent, and basically all women because we tend to have this overproducing. We have a lot of things that women deal with in terms of all the roles that we play and all the things that we do. So the way that we put it together is most of us have spent time in a kitchen, right? And we know about, I talked about, the pepper soup. So we basically created a podcast called Pepper Soup Stories and we show that we’re writing, we get to write our own stories and pepper is the difficulty or challenge in your life and the pepper soup is the solution that you then make out of that difficulty.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (19:14.058)

And for those not familiar with the Caribbean or West African concept of pepper soup, think of it as comfort soup, like the chicken noodle soup that we have in America that’s on that cold rainy day, curl up with a blanket and chicken noodle soup. So that’s what we do in West Africa and the Caribbean. Pepper soup is a comfort food, it’s a conversation starter. When a woman gives birth, we actually eat pepper soup to help to heal our bodies. The pepper purifies us and makes us stronger. When we have malaria or a cold, we take pepper soup.

So we want this podcast to be soothing because we bring stories of—we have a lady who was a victim of workplace trauma, a victim, and she turned it into… She went from victim “me” to victory by creating documentaries about other women who experience workplace discrimination, what it looks like, how they, you know, there was a high rate a couple years ago of Black women executives committing suicide. So she was able to make a dent—I’m trying to remember the university in Pennsylvania—but she was able to make a dent in how people perceive the impact of workplace discrimination and created Firebird Arise. Now yes, there’s always a dip before the rise. And what I mean by that is she went through like six months of depression to go through, you know, she really lost ground. That was a big pepper. But as she came out of it, she saw a way to serve as she healed. And those are the stories that we want to share with folks because often you don’t always meet people on the upside of the adversity.

They may still be in it. And they just need to hear a story, learn a framework, feel seen, heard, and have some empathy around where they are and build some possibility, belief, and faith on where they can be. So that’s what Pepper Soup Stories is all about.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (21:46.232)

Thank you for sharing and I’ll put the link on the podcast page with the information on your interview. So, Patrenia, we haven’t even gotten to the questions yet, but we have one more descriptor: curiously adaptive.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (21:56.418)

We’re grateful.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (22:06.849)

Okay.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (22:11.726)

Every performance appraisal I’ve ever had described me as being inquisitive. And my father encouraged me every day. Number one, “Make your presence felt,” was the thing that I heard every day before I walked out of the door going to school. And he also said, make sure that the teacher in front of you is truly qualified to teach you, that they have something. So delve, go deeper, go beneath the surface because that’s where the gold is. On the surface is where everyone else is sitting, but go deeper so that you can have depth and understanding and belief and really understand things, get it clear.

Adaptive, I would say, is my curiosity has helped me to be able to go from living in the Southeast—I was raised in North Carolina. My first job was in Pennsylvania, so going to the Amish area, I had to understand in order to adapt some of the subtleties, some of the expressions. “Out in the light.” What does that mean, right? “Yous.” We’re down in the South, we said “y’all.” So that was my preparation before I now moved our whole family to Nigeria, living in West Africa. With pidgin, I’m in the market: “What are you talking about?” So I had to be curious in order to adapt and find my place and build comfort and confidence where I was.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (23:46.956)

Wow, thank you so much. Thank you. And so let’s go to our first question. Patrenia, please tell me three interesting things about yourself that our listeners may not know and your friends will be surprised to learn.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (24:04.384)

And my friends would be surprised to learn… Whoa, okay, let’s see. I think of moments in stories. So I love storytelling because it kind of grounds things. And I have three stories. I have a Robert Frost story, which is “roads less traveled.” I have a Sam Cooke story, “A Change Is Gonna Come.” And my third one is Harriet Tubman, how she was compelled to save others, right? Come back and save others.

So my Robert Frost actually happened before I was born—roads less traveled—and that’s truly coming out of every birth is a miracle, Aderonke. I’m sure you will agree. But my birth actually came a year after my mother had been in a coma and they were planning her funeral. My mother and father had been in a head-on car collision and Mom broke her neck. She had memory issues. She had all the things. But somehow I was born the next year. So my mother just really, you know, drilled in me I was a joy baby. I came through so much adversity. So for me, that was a road less traveled because…

Hmm. I said, you know, every child is a miracle, but to come out of a woman that they were planning her funeral, she had been in a coma for weeks. And here she comes out of it and next year, a nine-pound, seven-ounce baby. Here I am. So that’s my Robert Frost, roads less traveled. I don’t know if many people know that that happened before I was born and framed my conception and birth. Sam Cooke, “A Change Is Gonna Come.” My change for me was…Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (25:54.447)

I call it my Jabez. If you know, Jabez is mentioned one time in the Bible. I think in the 90s, late 90s, we had a lot of Jabez, and the theme is “expand your territory.” I had a spiritual experience. I had just come back from Nigeria—I’m married to a Nigerian, so we had gone to visit—and it was ‘99 turning to 2000. And I came back to my church in Pennsylvania, and it was a woman ministering. And she was preaching Jabez and we were being called up. And she’s like, “There’s one more person. There’s one person that hasn’t come.” And I realized that was—I was that one person. And I, you know, so you go for the altar call and you’re standing there and you’re standing there. And while I was standing, my arm was on fire. My arm was absolutely on fire. And I looked down and it was my Harley-Davidson watch that I had been awarded for something at work.

I took off my Harley watch and I immediately had relief. It was no burning, no sensation anymore. And that change for me sparked me and my husband’s plans for us to migrate our family of five from suburbia Pennsylvania to the “wild,” I’m calling, the wild West Africa, Lagos, Nigeria. So that was the change that we felt like we needed to make to ensure that our kids were not strangers in their father’s land. That was a spiritual impetus for the change that we made in our geography in 2003.

And last but not least, compelled to help others, my Harriet Tubman. I got to freedom. And for me, probably even as early as my undergraduate days, I was doing programs about bridging the gap between Africans and African Americans. So once I now relocate to the motherland, I’ve had wonderful, wonderful experiences. All the peppers that I experienced in my career, my volunteers, my side quests, all of those now became things that I could claim value for once I got into West Africa. We just had amazing experiences meeting people, going to lands. And I’ve been to 10 different countries on the continent, in Europe, and a little bit of Asia and Turkey. All of those probably would not have happened if I wouldn’t have positioned myself to be available for international and global growth.

So my Harriet Tubman is being a bridge now, being a part of “Blaxit.” How can people relocate? And so one of the ways that I did that was through the American Women’s Club. I’m a past president, now an ambassador. American Women’s Club is an organization, it’s global, and it was actually the body that allowed Americans to be able to vote outside of America. It’s 60, 70 years old. But in Lagos, I was a part of helping, when women relocated to Nigeria, have a soft landing: how to adapt, how to make the migration successful.

So my Harriet Tubman story is now that I’m in a chapter of Delta that covers 15 countries and people are asking me all the time about what’s it like to live outside of America? How did you do it? And I’m coming back, I’m coming back to tear down walls and make them bridges. So those are three things about me. I guess my intimates would know some of this, but I don’t know if it’s broadly known that my road less traveled was how I got here through birth, my change was my Jabez relocating to Nigeria, and my Harriet Tubman is to help others broaden their horizons geographically.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (30:01.518)

Thank you. Can you tell us about a recent accomplishment or success that you’re particularly proud of?Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (30:10.478)

Well, Pepper Soup Stories was one of them, but I’m going to go deeper and just tell you about a time I made a difference in someone’s life and just kind of link those together. Through Pepper Soup Stories, we recently did a Reframe Challenge. And it was about: we’ve been telling you stories for a year and a half now, we want to drill it down and do a 10-day challenge. And I was so happy, Aderonke, that you got to anchor one of the days, Appreciative Inquiry. They’re still talking about it. They’re still talking about it.

So we had a participant in that Reframe. As a prelude, we did a webinar where we exposed people to the concepts, then they were to sign up for the 10-day challenge. And we had one woman who signed up. And what she told us was from the point that she attended the webinar, she began changing her life. She had migrated into America thinking it was gonna be the best thing since sliced bread. Now she’s in her 50s and just was having hell after hell after hell: challenge finding jobs, family relationships were deteriorating, used to having her own place, now, you know, all of these shifts where she was really in a dip.

The Reframe Challenge helped her to believe in the rise and to begin to craft it for herself. She and I had a past relationship, but it was like it became new because now I was equipping her. So: here’s another tool, here’s another tool, here’s another tool. And she began to share stories of how people who were like on her and she was irritated by them. There was conflict in how they related. I call it friction or flow. I teach mojo, right? I want you to get some flow in your life, get your mojo on. The opposite of flow is friction.

She shared stories of even before she began the challenge, because she began to use the tools, that her life was becoming more flow and less friction. Even her family members began to say, “Something’s different about you. You’re bringing a calm to the situation. You know, if I’d have said X, Y, Z the other day, you would have snapped on me. Now, okay, is that how you choose to look at it?” So reframing and how it has touched someone. I love this woman dearly. So I didn’t even know that she was in this space and place of challenge. And it was like she read a post on LinkedIn where we were advertising it and she was like, “This is what I need. This is the right time.” She anchored in. And that’s my Harriet Tubman. That’s the reason that I do the work that I do. If I can help one person begin to see possibilities, then my living isn’t in vain.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (33:22.040)

Thank you.

Patrenia, please tell us about a time when you made a difference in another’s life. What were the circumstances? Paint a picture for me. And you may have already shared that, but is there another story?Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (33:37.452)

I just answered that one, yes.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (33:47.151)

I can probably combine a couple of these right now. And I would say when I think about a time, the last three years of being in America while my husband was in Nigeria, me and my husband coded it “making the sacrifice matter.” So for the last three years, I’ve been here on a project and my youngest child—taking him through the 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade, and getting him into university. We made some decisions after COVID that said this was a better move for him. But living apart from my husband was never something that I expected to be on the radar. So the sacrifice in a way was to make sure that our son had what he needed. We realized that if we just stayed in comfort and closeness and all those things, that he may not get what he needed to be able to stand up.

So standing him up, that was a difference that we believe we made in his life. And the sacrifice was living apart. Some of my strengths and qualities that kind of emerged in this experience was I’ve been able to create a business while I was here. I didn’t expect that. Private money lending for real estate was not on my strategic plan anywhere, but it was like time and chance overlapped. I was learning, being inquisitive, being curious and adaptive, going to real estate investment associations and God placing me with the right people. And my mentor spotting that a strength and ability I have with relating with people and connecting was a good thing for me to be able to use for private money lending, as well as acquiring properties and just building a business, and my coaching and being able to find corporates that are buying from me instead of, you know, chasing individual clients.

Just all of that was like a wonderful—I don’t know if it’s a side quest—but it was just a wonderful byproduct. When I was focusing on standing up my son and positioning him to get what he needed, all of these other beautiful benefits came. And I believe they were attracted to me because of obedience. So that key quality or strength there—most people who’ve known me forever kind of know I’m not a rule follower, and I kind of pride myself on, you know, rules don’t apply to me. And I remember, you know, my younger self.

I knew I got it from my Aunt Ida. Rules didn’t apply to her. She had less than a third-grade education and she died a millionaire, right? Because the rules didn’t apply to her. And so I embraced that so deeply until it no longer worked for me.

I went through another kind of spiritual experience where it was like I was just noticing submission stories and being obedient. And that was 2022. So for me, I had to overcome the challenge of living separately from my husband, doing the things that were needed for my son. I actually went and learned and studied how to raise an introvert. I took the NAMI classes. I began coaching introvert entrepreneurial women and it built my empathy for understanding the strength of introverts. But it was all because of the big O, and the big O was obedience. God was guiding me and I was allowing myself to follow his rules and not mine because I was at the limit of my intellect that I had to lean into intuition.

And that intuition was hearing him and being obedient. So that spiritual journey for me has really made the sacrifice matter because many things have grown and bloomed out of this three-year period.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (38:21.006)

Thank you. Thank you for sharing. Can you recall a situation where you overcame a challenge that led to personal growth? What did you learn from that experience?Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (38:36.331)

Well, my 2025 word is “navigate.” So recalling a situation where we had to overcome a challenge: making the sacrifice matter, being separated from my husband for three years. I recently had a fall down 20 concrete steps. And it was in front of my grandchildren, my three-year-old and six-year-old grandkids. They were at the base of the steps. And here comes Grandma tumbling down kind of head first.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (39:22.313)

I believe that…Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (39:26.443)

What covered me. Because, you know, people fall down wooden steps, they fall down carpet steps and break their neck or break something or die. I fall down concrete. And I sprained my foot, hurt my wrist. But a couple things come up for me. One is, at the top of those steps, I was sharing gratitude. I was so grateful for my grandkids and being able—and I was telling them how grateful I was for them. “I’m so happy I’m getting to spend time with you.” We had hung out the day before and that morning we’d been together. “I’m just so grateful. Y’all are marvelous. Look how you’re doing this and that.” And just telling them all the things, speaking from the bottom of my heart, very open-heartedly. And then I reveled in the fact my mother died at 41; she never got to see her grandkids.

And so one of my goals in life is to live full-chested and fully enjoy this experience. So I’m declaring all of this. Next thing I know, I’m tumbling down the steps. So on one level, I believe that when we show gratitude for what we have, what we have expands.

I don’t know why I didn’t get injured more, you know, deeply, but that’s one belief is that I had that grace of gratitude. I was already up there praising God. And then once I landed, I remember laying there just laughing in disbelief. One was, I don’t believe that just happened. But number two, I couldn’t stand there, lay there and cry and be sad in front of, you know, I didn’t want to traumatize my grandkids. So what I learned from that experience is that I have to have patience in the healing process. I got up and, you know, thought I could just walk to the car and then noticed I couldn’t put weight on my foot and I couldn’t get back up the steps. So it was inconvenient going and staying at my daughter’s house and not being in my space. And I was grateful for all the love and everything, but that experience taught me that I had to have patience.

Number two, when I went for all the scans, they found something else that wasn’t even related to my fall. So I believe that God puts us in certain circumstances for the pepper so that we can get to the pepper soup. So I’m grateful for the benefit that came out of the fall. And I know that when God does things, it’s not just at the surface. You’ve got to look deeper and you’ve got to see the bigger picture. And those are the things that I learned from it. And I’ve got a little pain still left in my foot, but it reminds me that I’m getting older and that I’ve had the benefit of getting older.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (42:37.954)

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (42:40.469)

And I am blessed by that.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (42:41.454)

And, excuse me, you’ve said that you have a little pain, but how are you emotionally? I can only imagine what it was like to feel yourself falling and to know that you fell. And I know you said that you laughed afterwards, but in those quiet moments, when we think what might have, what could have… How have you processed that?Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (43:19.145)

One of the things I noticed, a neighbor came out of nowhere. So imagine I’m at the curb, three-year-old, six-year-old Jeremiah and Grandma laying down. Two neighbors came out of nowhere, and one was picking up all my stuff that had fallen as I fell, and the other one picked me up. You know, he looked me in the eye. He said, “You need a hug?”

Never seen this man before nor since. And I said, “Yeah, I need a hug.” So being able to recognize that this was not just a physical experience, it was an emotional experience, and having someone that was available for me immediately, that was so powerful.

And I believe in therapy. I have a therapist and I shared with her and I was crying. She’s like, “Just let it go,” because, you know, I think about “Never Would Have Made It, Never Could Have Made It Without You.” What if nobody was there and nobody had come? What if I really broke something? So I just have this ability to reframe things because I realize I have the choice. I can sit condemned. I can sit “woe is me.” And there are moments that I do, don’t get me wrong. But that’s where music works for me. And that’s where I say, “Patrenia, what is your choice in this situation? And what’s the contrast?” Contrast is such a powerful way to begin to see it. It’s not as bad as it could be.

And so using that for me has helped me. People ask me, though I talk about my road less traveled being my birth, losing my mother at 13, two days after Mother’s Day, and surprise, that has marked my life. You know, I very much identify that way. And it’s really not always been positive. But I always say that reframing is a great hindsight activity. And it’s not experience that’s the best teacher, it’s reflected experience. So in the rear view, when I look back at losing Mom, what are some of the upsides of that, right?

And I get to choose them. One of the big upsides was Mom had told me that I was amazing. I was a joy. That’s why she named me Joy Lynn. I was the joy of her life. I was a miracle. There was a reason I was supposed to be here. There’s a difference I was supposed to make on the earth. I was able to draw from that. Many people who’ve had their mothers their whole lives don’t have that type of grounding in them to pull from.

So the things that my mother told me, I believe them. And at those toughest moments where you’re feeling less than because your mama’s not coming to pick you up, you’re standing out front of school and people are like, “Here’s your mom coming,” and you don’t want to say, “I don’t have a mom.” So those moments, you just need to be able to have something to draw from.

So in my rear view mirror, I can see that those deposits have helped me to be the unique person that I am. You know, people are like, “You take so many pictures, we come to your house, it’s like a museum.” Well, when my mother died, we had no family picture of all five of us. So yes, I’m gonna take pictures. And yes, I’m gonna hold on to memories because I’ve lived a life where there have been times where all I had was the memory.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (47:21.614)

You.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (47:23.479)

So, I’m not quite sure what the question was anymore.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (47:29.614)

You.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (47:32.459)

But those are things that are just true for me. I choose to look for—and I know that those choices are available for me. And yes, I may feel sad sometimes, but I figure out a way. If I can look up, I can get up.

And it’s up to me to do it because help ain’t coming. Motivation, there’s no motivation fairy. You’ve got to be able to look inside yourself to find the best of yourself. And that is the person that you need to keep bringing up and reinventing.

Being curious about new experiences that may teach you something that you need. I go back to these side quests. Side quests have been like, that’s how you learned how to do recruitment and da-da-da-da. It was on a volunteer. And so when I got a job in Nigeria, I had HR in my portfolio after I’d been an engineer. Really? So look for those things that can help to equip you to do the next thing and be available and be open and have some clue about the next thing. I’ll stop there.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (49:01.006)

Thank you. It’s a great time to take a pause.

You are listening to ABWilson’s Heart of the Matter podcast. Welcome back to ABWilson’s Heart of the Matter. My guest today is Patrenia Werts-Onuoha.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (49:24.333)

We’re gonna get it. Patrenia Werts-Onuoha. No problem. Pat your knee, I’m as tall as a tree: Patrenia. Werts like “certs” and Onuoha like “I know her.” We good, we good. I love you, sis. We are good.

Another thing in life: being able to laugh at yourself and not take it too freaking seriously, right?Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (49:42.520)

Okay.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (49:48.494)

Okay, let’s try it again.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (49:57.794)

Welcome back to ABWilson’s Heart of the Matter. My guest today is Patrenia Werts-Onuoha.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (50:05.525)

You nailed it, my dear. Yes!Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (50:06.370)

Patrenia, we have talked about, you’ve dropped so many gems during our conversation. You’ve talked about how you’ve been able to create a practice of reframing, how you talked about losing your mother, first of all, how you were born, which is indeed a miracle, and losing your mother at 13 years old, and most recently a fall that you’ve had that quite frankly could have turned out quite differently, but you’re left with some pain in your foot, but the ability to reframe the fall and how you choose to see the world. What self-care practices or strategies help you to sustain your energy and motivation while navigating your journey?Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (51:06.573)

Okay, for me: journaling; setting intentions for gratitude in the morning and at night; boundaries, practicing saying no. My sister always told me, “No is a complete sentence,” and I’ve really only begun to practice that very recently. And the way that I practice it is I look at: what will the yes cost me? And I’ve done a yes in the past week that cost me a lot, so I’m like, just say no.

Having buddies and community. I have people that I co-work with and that I shadow and we do peer coaching and it’s just very helpful to be able to work with people on—you know, I’m in this group called Women Consulting Corporate, and we get together for Monday Mindfulness, we get together for Fierce Fitness time, we get together for coworking, we’re just kind of working side by side. There’s another term for it too. But at the beginning, we set an intention of what we’re going to do in the next hour and then we work. And then that whole accountability and knowing someone’s looking out for you, that has always really worked well for me.

Establishing community. I’ve created a book club: Read, Rise, Connect Queens. It’s over five years old and that’s community. I’m establishing something with Delta Circles, Delta Sip and Chat. That’s community. A morning praise worship ritual for me—anybody spending time with me knows Fred Hammond is my favorite gospel singer and he has this “Thank You” song that I listen to in the morning as well as “I’ll Praise.” Yeah, so those are some of the self-care practices and strategies that really help me to sustain.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (53:24.970)

Tell me a little bit more about journaling. I always like to think I journal, but I’m not sure I’m doing what I think I want to do while journaling. So tell me—so what are you showing me? It’s a book. OK.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (53:41.152)

My journal. My journal, yeah. So my husband claims I have too many different journals, but my journal for my personal just thoughts and feelings.

Journaling can take on many, many different forms. One can be, let’s say if you’re trying to build a new habit, you should be journaling about what’s the experience. So: today I decided I was going to do 10 minutes of meditation. How did it feel? What did I do to set myself up for success? What were the obstacles? How did I overcome the obstacles? Because it’s not experience that’s the best teacher, it’s what? Reflected experience. So in that reflection process, that’s what you’re writing and journaling about.

And studies have shown that your brain works nicely when your hand is also moving and you’re just writing about the thing and you go beyond the surface, you get deeper. So you’ve got this level: what happened? You know, what was unspoken and that was happening. When you were like, for example, I’m trying to set boundaries and I’m having an interaction with someone and maybe I’m not—somehow that boundary I set didn’t work so well. So I’m analyzing what did I do? What did they do? What could I have done? What was happening that I didn’t pick up on?

So the journaling allows you to begin to get better at emotional intelligence, reading and thinking and processing. What was a message that was being sent that was, it was a signal, but it was blocked in the noise for me, I didn’t pick up on it. And I have a mate.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (55:42.574)

He and I are yin and yang. My daughter described it one time about her parents. She was just basically saying, something’s in the sky. My husband would be, “The sky is falling.” And Mom would say, “Oh, but how beautiful is the sky?” So it’s just all about the perspectives. So I’ll stop there.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (56:05.646)

Thank you. How might sharing your experiences of success and growth create a positive ripple effect in your family, community, the world?Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (56:20.525)

I believe that using the Pepper Soup Stories platform and just a number of opportunities—I’m a speaker and a coach—how does it create positive ripples? I’ll tell you. One of my missions this year was to establish Sunday dinners. So the first Sunday of every month, my…

We have five children and the youngest is 19 now. And four of them live here in the States. And we would gather on the first Sunday, their spouses and kids, and we would have fellowship together. And one of my missions, one of the things I wanted was them to build stronger relationships because my youngest is so much distance between him and the older kids. How can they build relationships? So I know bringing them together is a way that Mom is helping them to be able to build. That’s one.

Number two, talking about acquiring businesses and legacies and acquiring properties and growing our family legacy through real estate. Modeling it. I know my son called me about a month or so ago. He was like, “I didn’t know we had a Dave Ramsey of real estate right underneath our nose,” because I was just, you know, he’s like, “So what should I be looking at in this kind of deal? And what should I be looking at in this kind of deal?” And they had seen me modeling real estate investor. And then they became curious and they have been making their own moves in their own ways.

I think that’s the ripple. It’s like, you can’t tell, tell, tell. You’ve got to model the way. And that’s how you truly show up as a leader.

Show more show, less tell.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (58:36.878)

And what exciting opportunities do you see on the horizon? And how do these opportunities align with your passions and aspirations?Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (58:47.445)

Okay, well you know people talk about the next chapter of my book or whatever. I feel like I’m getting ready to write a whole new book because in less than 40 days I’m relocating back to Nigeria after being away all this time. Yes, I have always still lived there, but I’m not the same person I was when I left three years ago. So I am returning very much with intention.

One of the things that I’m looking forward to is I actually want to learn Igbo. That’s my husband’s language. And I never had any time, never invested anything into trying to learn it. Now, language is not my thing at all, but it’s also a story I’ve told myself. So I’m trying to see: can I tell myself a different story and actually invest? I have some sisters-in-law who are super, super smart and I believe that they will help me.

I didn’t mention my husband, did I? But anyway, my sisters-in-law, I believe they can help stand me up in this area. And now there are apps and different things, but I really want to unlock that language and culture. So that’s an intention for me. I want to expand my business. Some of the things that I’ve been able to accomplish here with real estate, private money, as well as the coaching and training, I want to expand my business and do even more in Nigeria.

I’m looking forward to the public service side. There’s a lot of charity opportunities, things I do through American Women’s Club, but also with Delta Sigma Theta, we have a borehole project. It’s not our project. We’re partnering with Montclair Alumnae Chapter out of New Jersey, where we’ll be actually putting a water system, water treatment system in a community near my home. And what I’d like to be able to—what my contribution hopefully will be if we get everything approved for my chapter—would be some of the education and awareness and how to maintain it and make it sustainable and scalable. And if we can get some good metrics around it, it might be a model that can be employed and implemented by other chapters in our sorority because water is a UNDP… it’s living water, it’s life. And unfortunately, a lot of girls, going to the common place to pick up water and coming back to the village, that’s often where they’re attacked. All kinds of things happen because there’s not readily available drinking water. So I want to be a part of trying to impact that and improve that from a health perspective and also from a safety perspective of girls.

And then we have an opportunity where we’re working on a project. Can you imagine that if you have a high-risk pregnancy and you’re living in an African village—we’re doing this project in Liberia—but you’re living in an African village and the hospitals where you give birth are actually in the city. There are so many sad stories of women dying on the way to give childbirth. Now, this gap or this problem has been recognized. So there are facilities that are built that are called maternal waiting homes, maternal waiting. So when you’re close to delivery, you can move into these homes, but the facility is there, but the services and provisions are not.

So you can’t go there if there’s no food. You can’t go there if there’s no water. So what our chapter is proposing—and we found out that it’s just 3 dollars a day, 3 dollars a day to feed a pregnant woman. Three dollars a day. And typically women stay in there 10 days, I think is the average. And just imagine 30 dollars could keep a mother and child alive so that they can get to the hospital, baby get brought in a healthy way. And they can have a story like I have about, you know, being born beyond adversity. So that’s the kind of work that I’m looking forward to do, to get back on the continent and put my fingers in it and make an impact. Mama told me I was supposed to make one. So let me get on that in this new book of my life.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:03:22.030)

Patrenia, I’m looking forward to hearing your successes. I really am. I’m very curious about some of the projects that you will be working on. So I’ll be keeping a close eye on you as you move forward and listening out for the successes that I know you’ll have. What brings you joy?Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (01:03:48.911)

Seeing transformation in others really brings me a lot of joy. My coaching program, signature coaching program, is called More Joy 360. I laugh because Joy and, yeah… The shortened version of it is Mojo, but it’s about: how can I experience more joy in all dimensions of my life? And so much of what I’ve told you already is my, this is my philosophy in life. Joy may be hidden underneath the rock, but I’m gonna find it somewhere. You know, we’re gonna figure out a way to make the best out of this situation. And I believe that’s the resilience message. That’s the identity, what stories I tell myself.

So all of those things—seeing people, to be a… I have a client, she’s a dear friend. I’m a mentor now where I’m seeing where she just applied for like a 30,000 dollar grant for her business. You know, so being able to help her have transformation and bring transformation on a personal and a business level, that brings me a whole lot of joy.

So those are some things that bring me joy. And I love reading, and when I think of some of the books that I would recommend that kind of have helped me along the way. One is Women Who Work Too Much by Tamu Thomas.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (01:05:26.798)

And it’s about toxic productivity and how us as women of color often get into this toxicity of, you know, “I am what I do.” So this book talks about the impact that it has on our nervous system and what are some of the things that we can do differently to break some of those habits and some of those ways of thinking. So that’s one book I recommend, as well as High Tech/High Touch. I read that in my master’s program in the 90s. And what it taught me was no matter the level of technology that we bring, people still need high touch, high care. They still need to be heard, seen, felt. So that candle, that cuddle, still needed, even though we’re all in these devices, humans still need touch.

And you ask if there is anything else? Do I have any final thoughts? Well, I’m just really thankful for you, Aderonke. We came across each other maybe two years ago, and you have really opened my horizon, just opened my eyes to new ways of getting things done and touching people’s lives and blending all the different creatives. You’re multifaceted and I can so relate to that. And I’m just thankful for you and the work that you do in the world. So thank you for continuing to create a space for people to express, to learn, to grow and have connection.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (01:07:12.482)

That’s it?Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (01:07:39.114)

Yes.

And what I did, I answered all the questions, because I’ve got to go now. I just got to go with what’s said. So the books that I would recommend are…Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:08:01.600)

…of having all of the questions in advance. Okay, so let me just do the appreciation nuggets and then I’ll say thank you. All right, so thank you, Patrenia. Thank you, I appreciate your time. And I just want to go over some of the appreciation nuggets of the many, many nuggets that you have shared today. First of all, you said at the beginning of our conversation, you want to be serving from the saucer, from your overflowing cup. You also indicated that you’re an idea hamster. I still love that visual. You are not a rule follower. Rules don’t apply to you, but you’ve learned new rules along the way and being able to focus on obedience. And you also said, “Look inside of yourself to find the best of yourself.” Patrenia, thank you so much for your time today. I truly appreciate you being a part of ABWilson’s Heart of the Matter podcast, a podcast dedicated to asking overwhelmingly positive questions as we uncover incredible stories of people you may know. Patrenia, thank you so much.Patrenia-Werts-Onuoha-transcript-11-25.docx​

Patrenia Werts Onuoha (01:09:43.341)

Thank you so much for the space and grace that you bring and create, Aderonke. Keep rising, my dear.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:09:51.028)

Take care.