Good morning, good afternoon and good evening everybody.
It's your girl Sonya McQueen with your mind, your body, your choice.
I have a doozy for you today.
So I love it when people reach out to me.
I absolutely love it.
And I had a question posed of me to surmise it.
The person was saying,
I've spoke often about family members distancing themselves from me or vice versa,
me distancing myself from them.
And how do I manage to keep going because they're going through the same thing right now.
Family members don't talk to them.
They, unlike me, was on drugs and made a lot of mistakes while on drugs.
And she said that the last couple of years, she's got her life together,
but nobody will give her a chance to show her,
to show them that she's changed her life and how would I handle that?
I'm going to be very honest, you guys.
That's a very hard question for me because I don't really know anybody who's ever been on drugs
that I had to deal with on a daily basis.
I've known a lot of potheads, weed smokers.
My best friend was a major weed smoker every day, every single day she smoked.
But other than that, I've never known anybody to be on crack cocaine, meth, any opioids, none of that.
As a matter of fact, myself, my daughter, and a friend of mine, we were all prescribed
after having major pain or something, a major surgery, an opioid to take.
And we all refused to take it because we see the effects from TV shows, not even from real life.
But what it shows that these pills can do to you and how addicted you can become to them.
So if anybody wants to chime in on this, I don't mind this being a two-part series.
You can hit me up at Sonya.
Oh, no, you can't.
You can hit me up at Lead by Motivation.
That's LED by Motivation07 at gmail.com or go on my website, www.leadbymotivation.com.
And my phone number and my email is up there.
You can send me a note directly from the website.
But anyhow, I do want to say this.
You know, sometimes the friendships we make outside of our family ships are going to be
the most important relationships we have.
And that's unfortunate, but it's true.
God gives us all a family.
Born to a mom and dad.
Maybe you have siblings.
Maybe your parents have siblings.
So maybe you have aunts and uncles and they have kids.
You've got cousins, their parents, so your grandparents, and so on and so forth, right?
Sometimes they're not the best people.
Sometimes you are born into chaos or disdain, unhappiness, abuse.
Everybody isn't born into the Cleaver family.
And if you've never seen Leavitt to Beaver, I'm just showing my age.
Everybody's not born into the Walton family.
The Cosby family, the happy-go-lucky moms at home or dads at home.
Everybody sits down and eats dinner together.
They care about your grades and they care about what's going on in your life and you
sit down and have these conversations.
That doesn't happen in everybody's life.
I've never been shy to say, my mother, we joke about it now, but my mother never cooked
me a meal.
Ever.
My mother never told me she loved me when I was young, not once.
I had an older brother who I was more afraid of and went out of my way to not do things
wrong because of him.
And he didn't even live at home once I got like 12, 13.
He didn't live at home, but he would come there often.
And he's the reason, probably, that I never drank, that I never had sex, that I eat well
in school once I graduated game on.
But never did drugs because I always feared what his reaction would be and I didn't want
to disappoint him.
But I often think, what if he wasn't there?
What if it was just me and my mom?
And I had all this freedom as a little girl and I had grown men trying to talk to me,
you know, because I was a shapely young lady.
Actually, I was small, very small, but anyway, guys are guys, I guess, that perverts back
then that I didn't see it.
But he did.
And he shut that down a couple of times.
As an adult now, I made it clear several podcasts, a lot of my family does not talk
to me.
You know, rumors about me, which I'm not going to get into, but they have eliminated probably
80% of my father's family for my life.
And for once, 100% of my mother's family is in my life, but it's backwards, you guys.
But anyhow, it's the rumors and the cutting off of relationships.
But I'm going to tell you guys something, God has a way of still fulfilling your need
for humanly love.
He has a way.
It might not be your auntie.
It might be the person that you met that is now your counselor that keeps you off those
drugs.
It might not be your mom and dad.
It might be your neighbors who have taken a liking to you and think you're the sweetest
thing in the world because since you've cleaned up, there's been nothing but a wonderful person
looking out for other people.
It might not be your siblings.
It might be those friends you met in church or at the grocery store.
He has a way of giving you an entirely new family, but not a blood.
When I moved to Florida, I still didn't have my crack together.
I made it clear.
I was very immature.
I was mature, but I still was trying to get things together.
I met my husband, my now husband, when I moved to Florida.
I was already making a major change in my life already.
He just helped it along.
It was like God dropped him in my lap and said, here you go.
This man is going to help you in this new path you're on.
Being with him gave me an entirely new family.
His aunt is my aunt.
His cousins are my cousins.
His siblings are my brothers and sisters.
On top of that, I had these awesome friends I've met who I genuinely love and they love
me.
Now let's go back to when I said 80% of my dad's side of the family doesn't speak to
me.
Does it hurt?
Something it used to.
It used to.
But sometimes you get used to disappointment and it doesn't hurt anymore.
But this family I have now, I would be devastated if they turned their backs on me.
You know why?
Because God gave them to me.
That family, it was just through birth.
It was an assignment.
These people are divine connections.
Divine connections.
So I'm going to say to you.
Write a letter.
Try to speak to them.
Let them know, hey, baby steps.
Give me an inch.
I won't try to take a mile.
Just let me show you that I'm not the same person I was three, four, five years ago.
I'm a totally different person.
Give me a chance to show you.
If they are not willing, pray.
And then wait because I guarantee you if you don't already have other references in your
past that you could be utilizing as family and friends and sharing love with because
you're concentrating so hard on your birth family.
Pray and God will bring you.
Sometimes family is not.
You share.
The ones who.
Hurt you hold and they hold yours.
Because even when you're sharing with your family, they won't love you sometimes like
your friends and other people got bring to you.
I want you to really quickly just take a moment and think about the abused kids.
You know, parents lock them in rooms and put them in cages and.
Don't allow them to eat and beat them.
And.
They don't love them, they don't love them.
That kid by the grace of God gets out of that situation.
Maybe they're rescued.
You know, maybe they're rescued and then they're given a new family and they're going to be
so terrified.
They're going to be so scared that now this person is going to beat them and they might
even do things like.
Replicate in their bed in their clothes, you know, steal food in the middle of the night,
you know, the family wake up and they've already went through a whole bag of apples or a whole
pack of lunch meeting, the whole thing of bread, but that family has patients.
They know where they came from.
They know what that child's been through.
They already knew before they got it was going to be up mountain battle.
But eventually that child.
And they see while this person hasn't been me called me out of my name, locked me in
a cage, put me in a room, made fun of me.
And eventually most kids will start to come around.
And they'll start to honor that love and revel in it and maybe even become a stronger, better
person and build other relationships and have that foundation of love.
And they know they can depend on.
They never forget their parents, but they forget their parents.
Because this is life and they have now the family through the body.
God didn't give them their blood, think of it the same way.
We're born into that family.
Maybe they treated you great and you did some wrong things and they turn their backs and
they are now not wanting to deal with you at all.
At all.
There's nothing you can say or do.
They just don't want to be bothered with you.
But then you open your heart and new people take you in.
To their hearts.
Not literally into their homes, but into their hearts.
And you see that love and only you see that it's real.
And letting your guard down towards other people.
And you know it's genuine, you know your laughing and you're smiling and you're visiting your
calling family.
About your blood family.
And it's okay.
It's okay.
You guys, like I said, if somebody else has another response, I'm more than willing to
have a second part of this podcast.
But in the meantime, it's me, your girl, Sonia McQueen.
I hope everybody has a beautiful day and you know you could always find me and where to
find me.
Take care.