Being Seen by Your Child - My Daughter Interviews Me

In this special episode of Restless Excellence, the roles are reversed.

Krystal Maison, daughter, writer, and the voice behind the foreword of my forthcoming memoir, takes the host seat, interviewing her mother, Tonya Richards, founder of Restless Excellence and author of the forthcoming Carrying the Island: Migration, Identity, and the Making of a Leader, in a conversation that is both intimate and unfiltered.

Together, they explore the story behind the story:

• What it means to be seen by your child in ways you never named yourself
• The difference between strength and weight
• Migration, identity, and the cost of becoming
• The mother Krystal knows vs. the woman she's writing into the foreword
• Generational legacy, sacrifice, and what daughters are never meant to carry

This episode is not a typical interview; it is a reckoning and reflective conversation across generations, held in real time. At the center is a powerful shift: From what is shown to what is felt and “working” to “carrying”. This is Restless Line in its most personal form; where voice, memory, and legacy meet.

© 2025 Tonya Richards. All rights reserved.

Restless Excellence™ is a trademark pending.

All original content produced are the intellectual property of Tonya Richards and may not be reproduced or presented as original work without prior written permission.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is a Reflex Excellence a podcast for people who care deeply, work hard, and are quietly asking themselves, is this sustainable? I'm Tanya Richards. I created this space because I've lived the tension between achievement and exhaustion. The tension between being capable and being depleted. The tension between success on the paper and something feeling off in my body. Restricts excellence isn't about doing more. It's actually about telling the truth. The truth about work, the truth about vision, the truth about ambition, and ultimately the cost of carrying too much for too long. These conversations that we'll explore in this podcast, they aren't going to be polished. They'll be reflective and they'll be honest. And they're for people who don't want to lose themselves while building something that matters. Let's get into it. Hi, I'm Tanya Richards, and this is Restless Excellence. Today's episode is a bit unusual. I am going to be flipping the script and not hosting today. Today's host will be my daughter, Crystal. Crystal wrote the forward to my memoir, Carrying the Island. And after I read what she wrote about me in the forward, I realized that I owed her the chance to ask me whatever she wanted on the record. So that's what we're doing today.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Oftentimes, if someone isn't talking about how I am a spinning image of her, my mother, they talk about our similar overachieving spirit. Principal's list, extracurriculars after and outside of school, college applications, and etc. I find it hard to imagine my life different from what it is now if my mom wasn't the person that she is. Well, from there, that little excerpt of the forward, I wrote that in mind thinking that I wanted to just give a piece of how I feel like my mother is and the impact that she's had on me personally. I feel like writing the forward, it was a lot of rewriting and then going back and then rewriting and then going back and then rewriting personally because I wanted to get it just right to where it felt like I was doing her justice, but at the same time, I was staying true to my version of her. And I think within that, the hardest sentence to write, if I can remember, was probably the last one. I kept thinking personally, what can I leave the reader with as a phrase that my mom would say to me that can carry on the same tone throughout the entire memoir. The one that came to me was where there's a will, there's a way. And I feel like that embodies the spirit that I carry with me, and also the one that my mom has presented to me.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

Well, thank you, Crystal, for sharing that. Yes, where there's a will, there's a way. I've said that maybe a million times as you were growing up. But one of the things that I wanted to say about what you wrote, and then I'm actually gonna give you back the mic because you're the host. Hello. The line that I think in your foreword that really did it for me was the one where you said, My mom wasn't just working, she was carrying. You actually changed the word on me from working to carrying. And the second I read it, I knew you'd seen something I had never said out loud to anyone. Not to you, not to your father, not even to myself. I thought I'd been protecting you from the weight of all of that, but you'd been carrying it the whole time, is what I'm realizing, or at some point realized while writing this book and also reading your forward. And that's what I think a good forward really does in a book and a memoir like this one. It really tells the reader something the author was afraid to say. You did that, honey. You did that honestly. Great job on your first forward. I'm very proud of you for that. So the mic is yours now again.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Thank you. Okay, so now we can transition into me actually interviewing you about what I wrote and about the memoir as it is. So, my first question would be: when you read what I wrote, what surprised you the most?

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Hmm. I would say the thing that surprised me was the word weight. In the foreword you wrote, at the time I didn't have the language for it. I just knew my mom was strong, capable, and a go-getter. As I've grown, I've come to understand that what I was witnessing was more than strength, it was weight. Now, I have spent 20 plus years in HR rooms, diversity, equity, and inclusion rooms, and executive rooms talking about strength a lot. I talk about resilience, I talk about leadership, and I really have to say, no one, not one person in any of those rooms have ever named what you named in a single sentence. That is, what looks like strength from the outside is often weight on the inside. You, of course, my daughter, far wise beyond your years, noticed it's not from a textbook, but you actually observed it every day just from living with me. So I would say that surprised me and it also humbled me a bit. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

What do I get right about you in the forward? And what do you think I missed?

SPEAKER_00 7:19

You actually got right that I moved through spaces that weren't built for me in mind. That sentence is one of the most accurate things anyone has ever written about me and about my career. You also got right that the discipline for me in my life actually came before the ambition. A lot of people in my generation, which is I guess millennial, they usually get that order reversed. My mother, she put the discipline in me before I knew what I was going to do with it. So when ambition does arrive, and it did at many points in my career, I had already had a place to put it. And I say this with love, is really the cost, the cost of all of it. You wrote that the pushes towards excellence that sometimes felt draining, and you also said very beautifully, my mom was right, and I want to receive that actually, but the fact is I'm not always right. Believe it or not, I'm not always right. Sometimes I pushed because I knew what I was doing, sometimes I pushed because I was afraid. So when you call them right, I just want you to know that they were also sometimes just fear that was addressed up in the love that I had for you.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

My next question would be after hearing that, is there a version of you in this book, forward aside, that I've never met, knowing that I've known you my whole life, but of course, before me, there was a life that you had.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

Yeah, writing this book was very therapeutic for me, and you haven't had a chance yet to read the full manuscript, but the version of me I would say that you haven't met yet, that I'm sure you'll meet at some point once you finish reading the book, is that girl in Leyu. Of course, that was before your time. Now, you've met your grandmother, my mother, you've met your aunts, my sisters, and you've heard the stories that we often tell when we're reminiscing about things, but you've never met the child that I was before I knew that I was leaving St. Vincent, leaving Leyu where I grew up. That child didn't know America existed in any real sense at all. She, me, the Leu, Tanya, she thought that her whole world was this island, this beautiful island in the Caribbean, which is St. Vincent and the Grenadines. And then the world all of a sudden just got bigger overnight. She, me, had to grow up much faster than I should have had to grow up. So I would say that that's the version of me that you have not yet met. For those of you who are listening and may not be aware, I actually came to this country at the age of 12. It was about a week before my 13th birthday. That version of me that I'm talking about is actually in part one of my book, The Memoir, Carrying the Island. But because you've never met her, I think you really enjoy reading the book and getting those particular insights. So get ready to introduce yourself to young Tanya.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

So that part aside, what other parts of your story did you want me to read the most?

SPEAKER_00 12:12

Huh. I would say the part where I almost didn't make it, and I wanted you to read it because you have always known me as somebody who actually made it. I wanted you to know that there were rooms and there were years where that wasn't a guarantee, not even close. You wrote in the foreword that you don't have to be perfect to be powerful, that you just have to keep showing up. And I want you to read the part of my story where I had to unfortunately learn all of that the hard way because excellence is not a straight line. I know mine wasn't, and I'd rather you know that from your mother who cares deeply for you and have unconditional love for you, than you learning that the hard way somewhere else. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 13:19

Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I kind of want to shift into asking questions of a different phrasing, more so talking about the past, that Leu girl that you mentioned. Um so tell me about February 1995 and what you remember from the day that you left Leu.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

Who well, when I left Leu, I actually left with my older sister. She's only a year older than me, of course. Your aunt. And there was three of us. We had to leave my younger sister behind. She's about two years younger than me. We left the country with my father who came for us. He was the person that was bringing us to America and to this new life. I remember thinking that I would see Leyu again before the year was out, because nobody had told me how this whole immigration, coming to America, being 12 or 13, how all of that worked. And I thought I was just going to be visiting America. Yeah, I guess living there for a majority of my time, but still being connected to the island. I also remember the suitcase that I was carrying. It was one that was used before by my mom when she traveled four years earlier. And I remember, and I guess this is a part that I almost left out of the book, that I didn't even cry. So you would think when you're leaving a country and you have so many family members there sending you off, that it would be something that's very emotional. I for some reason was not crying. I was very excited. For me, it wasn't about leaving the island and leaving all of these people behind, especially my younger sister, being at an airport, having people see you off in the way that they do at the Caribbean, the whole family is there waving to you, trying to put stuff in your bag and in your suitcase to take over the waters. But I think I knew even at almost 13 that if I started crying, that I wouldn't stop. So I actually didn't start crying. I think ultimately, though, the crying came later. It came when I was in Brooklyn in a bedroom that didn't seem like it was mine because I was new to the space. It came when I was in a country that didn't even know my name yet because it was such a big country. So that's something that I wanted to share here.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

So, with that being said, when you eventually did get to America, rather before, what did you think that the US would be like versus what was it actually like? What was that reality check for you?

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Ooh, we always heard stories about coming to America when we were younger and it being gold-paved streets and everything just got handed to you. So, based on that, I thought America would be loud and bright and full of all these opportunities, the way that the movies often said that it was. You had to say, good morning, Miss So-and-so, good evening, Miss So-and-so, hi, Mr. So-and-so. That was not the case here when I came to America. In Layu, you couldn't walk down the road without greeting anybody at all. In Brooklyn, you could ride the train for an hour, you could ride the bus for an hour and a half, and never even make eye contact with anyone. That was the part for me that I had to learn. Being seen, it was something that I had to earn back over time. Being seen by others as I navigated through life growing up in Brooklyn and other rooms that I was a part of as I became an adult. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

So when you had came over here, you had stated that you were 12, going on 13. And I just wanted to ask, at that time, what would you say that you were afraid of, and what were you certain about?

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Hmm. What was I afraid of? I think at that age, I would say that I was afraid of being laughed at. Even now it seeps in. I've been in this country since 1995, so that's a pretty long time. More than half of my life. Being laughed at because of my clothing. My mom would shop at the discount stores because that's what we could afford. And the clothing that I wore wasn't what you all wear now, as far as children and being in the hippies clothing. We didn't know what that was, and we couldn't afford what it was. So those were things that I would say that I was afraid of. I was also afraid of being forgotten by the people back home in St. Vincent when that time came for me to reunite and travel back there. That fear for me took the longest to go away. Part of it though never really went away when I think about it now. Because it took me a long time to get back to St. Vincent for the first time. And when I went back for the first time, I went back with you. You were one. So I don't know if you even remember that. I would say though, that what I was certain about, and this might actually surprise you, was that I was going to be somebody. Because I didn't just come to this country for no reason. My mother didn't leave us for four years by herself with family, sacrificed her time here for us to just come and be slackers and to lally gag around. I don't know where that certainty that I was gonna be somebody actually came from. And I'm not saying it in a way that it sounds like arrogance, so don't take it like that. It was something that my mother put in me before I even realized it. I just knew that I had a job to do here, to be in America. And you wrote it in your foreword where you said, where there's a will, there's a way, which is one of the things that we talked about at the top of this episode, because for me that's always been a mantra growing up, and it's something that I'm hoping for our family that it goes through the generations as well. Hopefully, you make me a promise that it continues through your generation. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

What did you lose coming to America and leaving Layu that nobody really talks about? And what would you say that you gained that nobody's named?

SPEAKER_00 21:18

What I think I lost is maybe the right to be a child. That's really the thing that nobody talks about. The minute that I landed, it seems like I just became useful because I was a babysitter. Eventually, maybe even sort of like a second mom to your aunts, my younger sisters, because there was that 10 year gap. I didn't always get to be the age that I was. So, like, for instance, a teenager at 13, I feel like I went straight from being a child in layers. Trying to navigate that to being something more in Brooklyn, and there was really no in-between when it comes to those particular dynamics and lives. What I would say that I gained that nobody really knows about was a kind of clarity. Most American teenagers that I went to school with were figuring out who they wanted to be. And for me, I already knew what I had to be. And again, that sounds like a loss in some sense, and maybe even in some ways, but it also gave me a focus that has never really left me as an individual. And as I continue to grow into adulthood through my career. And for me, I don't waste time the way that I think that some people do. I came out of what those years were with something like almost like a stop clock that I think I still have. That's one of the things that keeps me going even now. Some of the things that I also want you to know as we continue is about your grandmother and the five daughters. My mother raised five daughters with not enough money and more faith than I think is reasonable. She still has that faith. Softness for us was a luxury that she really couldn't afford. And that she was watching all of us, even when we thought that she wasn't. That's the thing that I want you to know about your grandmother Sharon. She saw us and she just didn't always say what she saw. For me, I'm still learning at my age with my three children. I'm learning how to say what I see. I'm learning how to be braver, and that's her work that's actually in me that I'm trying to continue through her legacy. The other things that I would I want you to know is about your aunts. They were born in this country, as you may have heard. They were not born in the Caribbean. So we have this sort of strange family geometry where the older sisters are the immigrants, the older three, and the younger sisters are the American-born ones. I actually became something between a sister and a mother caring for them. When I think about why I went into human resources, my profession, for those of you who may not know, I actually did that because of the care work that I did when I came to this country as a teenager, and not even realizing that was the case. I think it actually started in that household, me having that interest in HR and really caring about people. I felt like during those times I was running a small developmental program caring for my younger sisters, even cousins that would come over and things of that sort. But your younger aunts are part of the the why I am who I am. They have no idea how much of my professional self they actually helped to shape. And I should probably tell them that, but they'll listen to the episode and they'll read the book. The other thing that I want to share is about faith. My faith, as you may have already started observing, was given to me. I didn't ultimately choose it as a child, it chose me. The way a language sometimes chooses you before you can even speak it. It was the same way with my faith. I had to choose it eventually, though, when I became an adult, which I did, and you've seen. Or whether I was just performing it. And for me, having held that faith through family, through marriage, through motherhood, through career, when it happened, I realized that it was actually mine and not something that I just inherited. It was something that I was choosing to carry on. So that's something that I would obviously like to be carried on through generations for our family as well. The other item that I would like to share is when it comes to marriage. Your father and I actually got married in 2007, the same year that you were born. We've been married long enough that the marriage for me has had several lifetimes. The version of us when you were small is not the version of us that you probably see now. And I'm not saying that as the failure. What I want you to know about your father, and this is another part that I haven't really said clearly enough, is that he saw me when I was still trying to figure out who I was and who I was going to be. We met at the age of 18, very tender age for the both of us, and he didn't really fall in love with the executive that you know me to be or that I am now. He fell in love with the girl who was still becoming her. The girl who was still becoming me. And I think that's a rarer thing than most people realize. I hope that as you're continuing to grow, that you actually find that as well. The other part for me that I want to share is about work. You've watched me work your whole life, you've watched me leave the house very early and come home very late. You've watched me on phone calls, whether it's at home, in the kitchen, in airports, in cars, on vacations. You've watched me actually set boundaries bad, then ultimately got better at setting those boundaries, and maybe even bad again, and then better again, and just trying to navigate that and learn from my own experiences. What you haven't watched, because it doesn't often happen at home, is the rooms that I was in, the closed-dooms where I had to advocate for people who didn't know I was advocating for them in the moment. The rooms where I was the only black woman, sometimes the only immigrant, those rooms are where most of the work actually happened. And those are the rooms where most of the world never actually gets to see. This book is partly an attempt to take the crystal, those of you listening, into those particular rooms. Not to teach you, but to show you. Now, the other thing that I was thinking about not touching on, but I'll touch on it briefly, is about you and Howard. For those of you who may not know, I actually went to a PWI, primarily white institution, Cornell University, and then NYU. And Crystal, my firstborn and daughter, went to an HBCU, the Howard University. And I don't think that I've ever said this to you out loud, but when you got into Howard, I sat in my car for a long time before I came back into the house because I knew in that moment that something had completed itself, if that makes sense. There were three generations of women, your grandmother, my mother, me, and you, that were working towards a door that opened. That door that had your name on it. It didn't say Cornell, but it's okay. It said Howard University. And you wrote in your foreword that you stand in that space because of the foundation that I built. That's true, but I also want you to know that you are not standing on my foundation alone. You, Crystal, are standing on your grandmothers and on your mothers, your fathers, even maybe even my grandmother, your great-grandmother, and on women whose names we probably don't even know and can't mention here right now. And please know that you belong there. Don't ever question whether or not you belong there. Not because you earned it, you did. We all know that. Because every woman in our line, our legacy, they've earned a piece of it before you even got there. That's what I want you to know about Howard. So that was a lot of pieces, and I hope it all made sense. Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

Okay. That was definitely a lie, and it was very heartfelt, I could tell. I really appreciate all that you said, especially about Howard and how that groundwork was laid generations before I was even a thought. I want to go into another segment before we had been talking, and I had asked you some questions previously or when we were note-taking and planning out this episode. I just want to be able to answer those questions on record so that we can fully give the listeners a grasp of both sides.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

Oh, yeah. Let me see if I can remember. I think one of them had to do with what's something that I do that I may not realize that I do.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

To answer that completely and honestly, I think it's a multitude of things, not anything necessarily bad, but I would say certain things like moving to fix a situation that someone tells you before they finish telling you, or even sounds like a mom thing to me, but okay. Even asking how school is going before asking how I am personally. And I thought as I've gotten older, I've come to realize those behaviors and habits really come from a place of initially survival, but deeply caring and wanting to do what moms do and make stuff better and understand and get a full grasp of what I'm going through. And of course, it's framed differently and it seems differently from my viewpoint rather than yours. But I do think those are a few things that you may do without realizing that you do, and I think I don't take it as something negative anymore. I just think that it's just one of your key traits that you have that I've grown to understand and appreciate.

SPEAKER_00 34:32

No. Thank you for sharing that. So honestly, my dear, the other question I think that we had talked about is what's something that I've taught you without really meaning to teach you that thing, whether it's good or bad?

SPEAKER_01 34:52

I think some things that you've taught me, good or bad, or anything besides that, would be maybe that stillness almost feels suspicious or even I'm trying to find the word for it. I'll stick with suspicious for now. And I don't think that's a good or a bad thing specifically, but I do think that it is one of the things that I've been taught. Me personally, I find it very hard to just sit down and not do anything. And I see that also that's been a trait that's been passed on consciously or unconsciously. And though it's not necessarily a bad thing, I will say that it do contributes to ideas of like pressure. You always have to keep moving, you always have to keep doing something, something should be on the back burner, you should always be thinking about what's your next move and what's your next step. And I think that also goes to the idea of that rest could be earned. And I think that's something that I personally have tried to unlearn and continue to try to unlearn as do you per this whole podcast and the reasoning behind it. I do think that's something that I have been taught, and in unlearning it, I've learned like my answers before, it's come from the place of like survival. You can only do as good as you know how to, and you can only teach as good as what you know. And I think that that's something that's been taught unconsciously, but I can see that there's conscious steps being taken to unlearn those behaviors.

SPEAKER_00 36:29

Yeah, no, thank you for sharing those things. And that's also validating that I was passing on those unhealthy habits, albeit well-intentioned, while you were growing, that you were also absorbing. Those are things like you just indicated that we've been talking about and I've been sharing and changing in my approach going forward with regards to my own life and also those that I've come in contact with, including people that are close to me, like yourself. Thank you for sharing that. You had also asked me whether or not there was anything that I wanted to say to you on the record, and in thinking about it, I think I came up with about three things. So as we are coming to almost the end of this particular episode, and I think that you've been very generous tonight, and not really giving me a lot of tough questions or even any questionable answers to anything that I've asked thus far. The three things for me that I want to say on the record, not because the audience needs to hear them per se, but because I want them again to be on tape and just be available for the next few years from now that you can circle back to. And for me, it's that you are a writer, and I don't think that you've decided that yet. So I'm telling you on tape that you are. Thank you for writing my forward. Your foreword wasn't an introduction to a book, it was actually a piece of writing, a real one, with its own voice and its own argument and its own tenderness in the writing. You changed the word strength to the word weight in a single sentence, and you made every reader that will be reading this memoir who loves their mother actually sit up straighter when they're reading your forward, and that's what writers actually do. Writers they change the words that they're writing, but they also change the world and they impact others, so you don't have to do anything with that, and you don't have to major in writing because I'm saying that. You are a writer, that's a fact about you now. You can do with it what you will, but I'm just letting that be known on record. The other thing, number two, is about what you don't have to carry, and you just talked about your particular experiences and things that you've observed and absorbed from me as you were growing. So I want you to take something off you. I'm saying this on tape, so that I can't take it back because it's on tape. There may have been moments in your life, in your achievements, in your standing on Howard's campus, when you may have felt that you were carrying the answer to whether the migration from my grandmother, my mother, your mother was worth it, whether our sacrifices may have paid off, whether your father's sacrifice, he migrated as well from Guyana, paid off. As if the proof of all of that was supposed to live inside all of your accomplishments. And it has never been your job. I want to say it out loud so that you hear it from me in my voice and in your own head, playing back, of course, at some point through your ears for the rest of your life. You are not the proof, you are actually the person. The migration that we did was worth it the day that you were born, at least it was for me. Not the day you make the principal's list or the day you graduate from Howard, not the day that you became whatever you decide to become. And I know you're currently on the path to being a nurse practitioner, but it was worth it the day that you were born into our family. Everything since then, every accomplishment that you've had, which have been a lot, was just a gift to us. It's not a payment, it's a gift. So you owe nobody anything, not me, not your grandmother, not your father, not the tiny island of St. Vincent or the country of Guyana. There's no return on that particular investment. You are not an investment, you are our daughter, and I want you to know that. Carry what you choose to carry because you chose to carry it, and put down anything that you've been carrying because you taught that you had to, just based on our migration story. You have my permission, it's now on tape, forever and ever, that you can put it down. And I guess I'll stick at three. So the third thing that I would say is about what I see. And I want to say, Crystal, that I see you. Not the version of you that I raised or your father raised, not the version of you that's a spit in image of me, of course. And everyone keeps pointing that out every time we enter a room together. The version of you that is becoming someone that I didn't make and don't fully understand, and don't even need to understand. You are going to grow into a woman that I haven't met yet. And that person is going to surprise me. That person is going to at some point disagree with me about certain things. I am certain about that, as you continue to grow into your own, that person, she is going to make choices that I would not make. Again, maybe because it's a different generation, and she is going to live a life that I cannot even script for her at this time. And for me, I have to say that I'm ready for all of that. I'm ready for her. I'm ready to meet that woman. I have been ready for her since the day that you were born, January 29th, 2007. The job of a mother is not to raise a daughter who agrees with her. That's something that I've learned. The job of a mother is to raise a daughter who can stand on her own ground without asking permission to do that. You are already standing there. I see you standing there. The only thing that I want you to know is that there is no version of you that I would not love. There's no version of you that I will not be proud of. So I'll stop there before the word of works. Come on. Heavy duty. Now hand you back over the mic to close out your segment, Miss Host.

SPEAKER_01 45:49

Okay. To close out, I hope one thing that the conversation provided for the audience was a new perspective and a different layer, seeing a different side of you as the usual host. I hope they got to embrace that sense of vulnerability that you gave to them through this episode. The conversation gave me a new clarity and a new understanding. It's one thing to see you navigate through the world the way that I see it, but it's another thing to hear your actual perspective and the reasoning behind why you do the things that you do and the way that you are. I think that's all that I have to say. So thank you for having me on this episode of Restless Excellence, and I'll hand it back to you.

SPEAKER_00 46:39

Well, thank you. Hope you come back and share at some point in the coming months. And I will say that that's a wrap. This is Restless Excellence.