Amena:
Hey, y'all welcome back to this week's episode of HER With Amena Brown. And if you follow me on social media, I hope you do because you need to follow me, especially on Instagram, because I'm there more often than the rest of them at Amenabee if you don't. But if you do, you probably saw in my stories that I have been hinting to you all that I am going to be doing a bit of a series of episodes, even though they will not be in order so they'll just pop up here sometimes. But I'm doing a series of episodes on friendship, and this is one of those episodes. So I'm so excited to welcome spoken word poet, podcaster, IT geek and cyclist and my friend Celita Williams.
Celita:
So glad to be here.
Amena:
If you've been listening to the podcast, you probably recently heard my episode with my sister Makeda, which is the first time on this set of, what the podcast is now, that I've talked with a family member. And so Celita is my first guest. I've had other times where friends were on here, but never a time where it was a friend on to actually talk about our friendship. So if you enjoy episodes where you get a chance to get in my business, this is your time.
Amena:
So, we did not talk about this because I wanted to do something that felt more like conversations on the podcast this time, versus an interview. And we've had a very interesting journey in our friendship with each other. And we've talked a lot about how there's a lot about friendship as a grown adult.
Celita:
Yes.
Amena:
And how you handle those transitions or not. And we thought maybe us letting you all into some of that. Not all of it because some of that is for us.
Celita:
Not all of it.
Amena:
Yeah. So just so y'all know, some things are, in the film world they say some things are on the cutting floor, but some of that ain't your business. So some of that ain't going to be in here, but the parts that we can share publicly, I thought it would be interesting to share that. So I don't know, this feels like... I feel vulnerable a little bit.
Celita:
No, it's going to be... We're definitely going to maintain the integrity and privacy of our friendship, but I think we did both agree that what we are going to choose to share today will be vulnerable, it will be juicy. In some ways it'll be like, "what?" There's some good stuff in there. So, I'm feeling it.
Amena:
Okay.
Celita:
Really excited.
Amena:
Let's start with how we met. I'm honestly trying to think Celita if I remember the moment that we met, but I don't know that I can remember that as much as the time [crosstalk 00:03:00].
Celita:
Yeah. I don't remember our actual very first encounter. And I also wasn't like your initial primary friend at Spelman.
Amena:
That's true.
Celita:
You had a set of roommates that y'all were like peas in a pod first before you and I started connecting.
Amena:
That's true, actually. So we did go to college together. We went to Spelman College, shout out to all the Spelmanites.
Celita:
Spelmanites, 1998.
Amena:
Okay. And our dorms were right next to each other.
Celita:
Yeah.
Amena:
And I think we originally met because we both got involved with redacted campus ministry.
Celita:
Who shall not be named at this time.
Amena:
Will not be named on this here podcast. But for those of you that are familiar with how college ministries works, a lot of them worked on a chapter basis. So it was a ministry that was national at the time but then had these like local chapters sometimes at one school, sometimes a couple of schools will come together and have a chapter. And so we were a part of a chapter at Spelman and we both were in the same year. We got into this ministry our first year.
Celita:
Yes.
Amena:
We both came from church backgrounds.
Celita:
Yes.
Amena:
Very involved in church.
Celita:
Very serious.
Amena:
Backgrounds. So can you tell me when you were leaving, you were from Baltimore.
Celita:
Right. I'm from Baltimore.
Amena:
When you were leaving Baltimore, were you being instructed like, "Hey, you need to get there to Atlanta. You need to find like a church home, some other Christians to be in community with." What were the vibes?
Celita:
So it was, "yes. Go and I hope you find some people and get connected," but the main vibe was you coming back here, like this is your church home. Whoever you meet and get connected with down there it's not the real thing. You need to come back. We need you serving here. We expect that you're going to grow up here. You're simply going there to go to school.
Amena:
Wow.
Celita:
There was a lot about us meeting and the ministry and the church that was attached to all of that, that really caught me off guard because I had no intention of trying to make a serious ministry life here in Atlanta.
Amena:
Yo, it is kind of interesting to hear you say that now, because going to Spelman, we were all coming from environments where we were in leadership there.
Celita:
Right. Yes.
Amena:
We were looked at as leaders where we came from. So Atlanta was fine for a lot of us, but a lot of us, it was that story of like, "yeah, but I'm going back home to be amazing. Those people are expecting me."
Celita:
Right. I'm a youth leader, youth ministry leader there.
Amena:
"I have to go back. I don't know what y'all are doing." My story was I left San Antonio, that was my hometown. So I left San Antonio with a list from my youth pastor-
Celita:
Oh, that's dope.
Amena:
Of churches that the pastors knew the pastors of my home church.
Celita:
Yeah.
Amena:
So I had a list of three, the church I ended up going to, subsequently where Celita and I both ended up going to, was not on the list. Not because it was bad at the time, but it wasn't on the list because nobody knew about it. These churches that my pastors were recommending to me were very like established Black churches in Atlanta at that time. These would have been big name, Black preachers in the late nineties, they were encouraging me to go there. And they were like, "as soon as you get there, you need to get in some Christian community or you won't stay safe." Because everybody was like, "you going to Atlanta from San Antonio, you get ready to be turned out. If you don't try-"
Celita:
Oh, my goodness.
Amena:
"... stay holy and figure out this." So I don't even remember. Oh, okay. I won't name all their public names, but we have mutual friends that were Spelmannites that were older than us.
Celita:
Yes.
Amena:
And it was through a couple of them.
Celita:
Yes.
Amena:
And because they were so beautiful and their hair was so gorgeous and we were on campus struggling trying to figure out what we were going to do with our hair. I mean your salon choices in walking distance...
Celita:
Limited.
Amena:
Yeah. Very limited. And you don't know who to trust or anything. So meeting them, I think actually I complimented them on their hair and was like, "where do you get your hair done?" They were like, "in Marietta," those of you that live in Atlanta are like, "what!" Spelman's like in the middle of the city. So they were like, "we get our hair done in Marietta." And they were like, "we're a part of this ministry. We have prayer." Was it every day or was it once a week we were having prayer?
Celita:
Was morning prayer every morning?
Amena:
That sounds like-
Celita:
Wow. How come we don't remember?
Amena:
Like, what was that about?
Celita:
Was it every morning?
Amena:
Man.
Celita:
I feel like it was every morning at-
Amena:
At 7:00 AM.
Celita:
... 7:00 AM on the Steps of Sisters Chapel.
Amena:
How did you meet those people to know to go to morning prayer? Because, my mind feels like that's the first time I ever saw you.
Celita:
Okay. This is my first interaction with that particular ministry, was I saw signs around campus that they were doing a showing of No More Sheets by Juanita Bynum. Oh my goodness, the prophetess.
Amena:
No More Sheets okay.
Celita:
Yes. And growing up in Baltimore we had had a ladies night at the house where we watch No More Sheets and No More Sheets was everything. Everyone was talking about No More Sheets like, "Oh my gosh, she was amazing. No More Sheets that's how its supposed to be." So I was all about it. I was super religious. And so when I saw the signs for that, I was like, "oh, this has to be legit. I definitely need to partner with these people that are doing this movie showing" or whatever. And what's so crazy is I had met this little Morehouse man my very first week at school when it was just the freshmen Spelman and the freshmen Morehouse dudes there, and may have a little boyfriend and just before No More Sheets, I was hanging out with him doing all kinds of foolishness. Then I went to the No More Sheets night and that's when I met all of our other friends. Were you there?
Amena:
Yes.
Celita:
Were you there?
Amena:
So that must be where we met then.
Celita:
But I don't remember interacting with you.
Amena:
No.
Celita:
I definitely remember interacting with the older, like big sistery, eventually type Spelmanites that were there that were in the ministry that we wound up looking up to. And I remember one of them told her whole story about how she was with a boy and how she decided I'm not going to do this anymore. And I felt all convicted. And so at 2:00 AM in the morning after that event was over, I went back to that little boy for Morehouse, broke up with him.
Amena:
What?
Celita:
I kissed dating goodbye. It was completely committed to this ministry from here on out.
Amena:
Yo!
Celita:
I never dated again. I never dated until like years after graduating from college.
Amena:
Yo! Okay. So let me give context for those of you that are like, what is No More Sheets?
Celita:
Oh my gosh, please.
Amena:
There was a preacher, she's still a preacher today, but this was like her heyday in especially Black church [crosstalk 00:10:31] cultural circles Dr. Juanita Bynum, probably Reverend Dr. Reverend Dr. [crosstalk 00:10:36] evangelist other titles went over there. She was a big preacher if you've grown up in Black church.
Amena:
So I knew her name too from having grown up in Black church. I think she had come to our church before or part of conferences we did at our church or something. So I knew her name from that, but I had never seen No More Sheets. And No More Sheets for people that grew up in a Black church, No More Sheets had the same cultural push for us and black church that other people would say I Kissed Dating Goodbye had in white churches. I Kissed Dating Goodbye went even beyond white churches because my mama definitely sent me a copy of it twice. But No More Sheets was giving you this message like if you're a woman who's had a sexual past, this was a big part of how the term soul ties got introduced in Black church and wanting to bind them in this video.
Amena:
It's like you're watching a video of a sermon, but in a way, the way she preaches the sermon appears to me almost like a one-woman show because she has the sheets that she's using as props. It's very dramatic and she's telling her own story of her own sexual past and all these things that she experienced, that she needed God to help her. What we would have said in Black church term, to be delivered from. And that every time you have sex with these men that your soul-
Celita:
You're soul tying.
Amena:
... is inexplicably being tied to them until you learn the saving grace of Jesus. So imagine that it's a group of us all between 18 and 22 watching, but the larger number of us are first year students there. And some of our first encounter with this message. Some of our first encounter with this idea that we should have been waiting until we got married to have sex or that if we'd already had sex, there was this way that, and lots of air quotes here that y'all can't see, but there was this way that something could happen that would wipe the slate clean for you.
Amena:
So imagine you're hearing that message at 18 or 19 years old, especially if you've already grown up in a church environment and you're knowing these girls that are older than us, there are sophomores, juniors, seniors that have invited us to this screening. I'm thinking to myself, this is the Christian community they told me to find. These girls are like-
Celita:
This is right in line.
Amena:
Yeah. Right. So that night is when they tell us like, here are the other activities we do. Like we have morning prayer in the morning on the Steps of Sisters Chapel, which was our big chapel at Spelman. And they were like, "we do like movie nights and game nights. And we just kind of do life together vibes."
Celita:
Yeah.
Amena:
So that's what led me to morning prayer.
Celita:
And they were trying to push it and trying to not push the church that they were connected to because this ministry was a para-church ministry attached to a church that was in the area in Atlanta. And so eventually you would get out of them. Oh, and a lot of us go to this Wednesday night service at this church, if you want to carpool and go with us and so the story unravels.
Amena:
So it's important for you to have these dynamics of what... Celita and I are here, but there's a larger group. There's probably eight to 10 women really that were in both of our lives, in our orbit in some way, because we all met connected to this ministry that did to your point eventually lead to us going to this church. So I really wished that I could remember this initial moment that I got to have some conversation with you. But at some point we learned that we both were in choir in church growing up.
Celita:
Yes. Oh, my God.
Amena:
And that was like a huge commonality because we both grew up in traditional Black church, singing those choir songs from nineties. I think Pages of Life was just coming out that first year that we were in college. Am I right about that? Like '98, '99?
Celita:
Pages of Life came out, I was still in high school because that had Jesus all on it, right?
Amena:
Yes.
Celita:
But it laid good groundwork for our communication because we both knew. And we both followed Fred Hammond with all his subsequent albums that came out while we were in school, like Purpose by Design.
Amena:
Okay. I even went back because I didn't know anything really about Fred Hammond until Pages of Life. So I went back and bought the albums-
Celita:
The Inner Court.
Amena:
Yes, I went back and bought those albums because before Fred Hammond, I was very like Hezekiah Walker, John P. Kee. That was my gateway. And then you're singing in the youth choir, so that kept you up on Kirk Franklin and Tye Tribbett at the time, Donald Lawrence. So like I remember that being a very big part of the language of our early friendship.
Celita:
Yes, absolutely.
Amena:
I also remember there would be times that you would get sick after we all got involved in the organization together in the ministry. This part of it it's like, those of you that have been in non-profit spaces or in church spaces, it's like as you hear us telling this story, there are aspects of it later that you're like, "oh no, that wasn't a good thing at all." But the way that we were able to be community to each other, like I remember like the word getting passed around and we didn't even have cell phones then.
Amena:
I just remember some of the other girls that were sort of what would have been considered big sisters to us letting us know that first year that you would have these times that you would get sick and we would go to your room, and if we needed to bring food to you from the cafeteria. Like that part of something that we were learning, I think was a really beautiful thing. I think might've been how I figured out you knew choir music. Because I was in your dorm room trying to-
Celita:
Yes.
Amena:
We were taking rotations when you would get sick like that.
Celita:
Pretty bad asthmatic basically is the core of that was, and I would say that as a ministry we ran hard. So you're talking about classes all day studying and then being fully committed to this ministry experience and staying up super late, making flyers or planning an event or something like that. My body was like uh uh.
Amena:
And being in the dorm the first time, being around all those new people. I feel like a lot of us were getting sick and your immune system even more so because your body was like, "I'm sorry, this is not the thing for me." So I feel like we just had a really good connection that I always loved during that time.
Celita:
I don't know when we started really like spending a lot of time communicating and talking, but I knew that we had a deep and genuine connection. I just remember challenges financially freshman year. And sometimes not being able to go to the cafeteria and get food yet and being able to make you a sandwich from the caf and bring it and not having the words, but being able to just sit with you while we had no idea when the financial aid was going to drop and how that next semester was going to look like. early, early moments of us showing up for each other. You definitely being a nurturer. You've definitely showed up in a nurturing way in my life from the very beginning and me just trying to be present.
Amena:
I think also the ministry that we were in was very leadership focused, I'm using the air quotes here, and in the sense of, they were wanting to build Black Christian leaders out of us.
Celita:
Yeah.
Amena:
And so the more we got involved in the ministry then of course, every year some of the leadership were graduating. So then it meant like, oh, well we just had these seniors that have been holding this down all this time. Well, they've graduated, we'll now we're sophomores. So I feel like as we took on more responsibility in the ministry, then I also learned that we worked together really well. And our way that we could come together, like this is still true of you and I, that we could come together in a room and figure out how to get something done and it'll get finished, and it'll be dope, and it'll be creative, and it feel good, be organized boom. Then you get in a room and our two brains could get together and figure that out. And so I think after our first year, then by the time we got into sophomore year, I learned that you and I could do that. So by the time we got to our junior year, we were-
Celita:
We were peas in a pod.
Amena:
Yeah.
Celita:
And I think we knew that the ministry was grooming you to be president and junior year, you could only be president in your junior year.
Amena:
Oh, that's right.
Celita:
Do you remember that? Because your senior year, you were to mentor the new president while they served in their junior year. So sophomore year was like prime year for us. And you having to decide whether you were going to take on this mantle of being president of the ministry. And then ultimately I became vice-president and supported you. But Amena, I recently, I don't know how, why I still had these papers, but I've found printouts of some of our AOL chat conversations, because we would go home in the summer-
Amena:
No.
Celita:
... and our whole thing the whole summer was we have to plan the next year. We had carried that weight on our shoulders like it was the only thing that we needed to be doing. And we would spend hours on these AOL chat messages, planning, like the Bible studies, what lessons, what topics? The outings, what events were you going to do? How are we going to recruit? How are we going to get on campus early and get to these freshmen? Like, it was a whole thing.
Amena:
Oh my gosh, I forgot about that. I forgot that we were on AOL like that.
Celita:
Oh my goodness. And I still have my very first Yahoo inbox. I go back and I see messages that we sent to each other.
Amena:
I'm like, let me go back and figure out I think I-
Celita:
What were you using back then?
Amena:
I think I had a Yahoo too. I obviously had the AOL because I had started using AOL IM before we left for college.
Celita:
Okay.
Amena:
I had like gotten one of the CDs. Yeah, I'm sorry for y'all that didn't grow up like this. But you will get that CD ROM in the mail for free.
Celita:
For free.
Amena:
AOL would be like, "you get a 100 hours of internet." And I'd be like, "yes." I'd go on there and chat folks and find out what was going on at Spelman and Morehouse before we went to school.
Celita:
Yes.
Amena:
So I had AOL and then I think Yahoo became, what is Gmail now to everybody.
Celita:
Right.
Amena:
So I think a lot of us at that time switched over to having Yahoo emails. But girl, now that you're talking about it, I'm like, it's probably an archive of a bunch of stuff in that Yahoo email that I would be cringing and entertained to read. So I need to go back and do that.
Celita:
Yeah.
Amena:
Of course, as I'm talking to you about it now, Celita, and thinking how involved our lives were in the ministry. There are parts of that, that as I got older, I wished that I had spent time doing other things like being involved in other organizations around campus.
Celita:
Yeah.
Amena:
Whenever we go back for homecoming now, or especially early on when I first started going back after we graduated, I'd be looking around like, it appears that everyone else was kicking it together at other things and we weren't at that because I think the nature of the Christian organization we were in was very like, "you're at school to evangelize these people."
Celita:
When 10% of your campus for Christ. When a tithe of your campus.
Amena:
Come on outside. In a way to me I'll look back on that time of life and I'm like, I mean, we had fun together because we all we're friends, we enjoyed each other, but there was a lot of college life that we just didn't do because everything was about that.
Celita:
Everything was [crosstalk 00:23:04].
Amena:
Who can you to get to come to morning prayer? Who's in your class that you see struggling, or they're going through something? How can you be talking to them about Jesus, be talking to them about prayer or whatever. Like I remember seeing girls around campus and knowing they were going to the club and praying for them while I was walking around campus and being like, "I'm going to get them to come to our screening of Love & Basketball."
Amena:
Let me tell you, it was not a good movie to screen for y'all conservative Christian ministry is Love & Basketball because as soon as that Maxwell song comes on with the sex scene, you don't want it. You don't want it. Why do we do that? So I think that was a very all consuming, I guess what I'm trying to say, it was very all consuming I felt for our lives. But it's what built our friendships. So among us, I think there were only three people that had a car, right?
Celita:
Yeah. Well, as a freshmen you couldn't have one. So when we first came, we were very dependent on the older and of the older only three of them.
Amena:
[crosstalk 00:24:12] I feel like our whole time in college, among our circle of friends, there was a max of three cars at all times.
Celita:
The person that had one of the cars graduated, so we lost a car and then somebody-
Amena:
And then somebody would come back and be like, "I got a car now." So we did everything together. When we were having to go make copies of the flyers at Kinko's y'all.
Celita:
At Kinko's. 24 hours, middle of the night going to make copies of flyers and stuff. Oh my gosh.
Amena:
I mean...
Celita:
What were we doing?
Amena:
If somebody was going to Walmart, then it was five people are packed in a car. One person had to go to Walmart, but five of us have packed in the car. So I feel like you and I working together in the ministry, especially that junior year to me, really solidified our friendship because we had to spend so much time together working on that because we worked together so well. Like if either of us had decided to start a business, if I started a business where I would have needed your expertise I would have hired you right away.
Celita:
Right.
Amena:
Like we could have killed a business together me and you.
Celita:
We worked so well together.
Amena:
And then by the time we got to our senior year, I was actually just telling my sister, Jamie, about this. I remembered our senior year that our mutual friend Maya, because we ended up being sort of like a little tripod.
Celita:
Little trio.
Amena:
Okay. We'll tripod, triad, whatever other tri words, go there. So Maya and I were roommates, but you had a single right next door.
Celita:
Right next door.
Amena:
That was our senior year. And the air conditioning, Lord.
Celita:
Yes, the air conditioned dorm.
Amena:
And we left our doors open for each other. It was basically like other than the fact that we both went to sleep in our own beds at night, it was basically like we felt that we all had like an apartment together.
Celita:
Yeah, we were all together. I think that is important to note because even though you and I spent a lot of time together, we worked very well together. We did a lot of planning and execution together. I don't think we were each other's primary friends in those years.
Amena:
That's true.
Celita:
And this leads into how we transition after college. But I just remember from freshmen onto all of us becoming seniors ourselves, my closest friend was always older than me and always graduating. So every year I lost my closest friend, which in turn pushed me closer to you guys because you guys were actually moving with me right through the years. And so by the time senior year came, all the other older people had graduated, had moved out of state already and I was resting in my friendship with you and Maya. And for the listeners that don't know, my first name is Monica. So sometimes people will call us the three M's and it was Maya, Mena, Monica just hanging out together writing poems. We didn't even talk about that. Like [crosstalk 00:27:10].
Amena:
Man, that's right. I never though about that. When y'all hear me on the podcast talking you through my initial entry into poetry community in Atlanta it was Celita and Maya that were going to that first open mic with me. And we went to open mics over the years really. A lot of those open mics where we both were learning how to write and how to perform these were the three friends that were brave enough to go to those open mics with me, where we discover we weren't as great as we thought. And then we got better because we were there. So that was another part of what we got to do, which was one thing that we did outside of the purview of the ministry world, even though we totally thought we was going to those open mics as people say.
Celita:
We thought we were evangelizing. We were witnessing to the people.
Amena:
But I'm glad we went to that outside of our ministry world because that totally informed the work that all three of us are doing now. So we get to our senior year, the three of us living there, which gets us even closer to where, now we're like we're three peas in a pod.
Celita:
Yes.
Amena:
Okay.
Celita:
For sure.
Amena:
So then we graduate, this is 2002. I want y'all to know that Celita it's not that... I was about to say she got a real degree, but any degree from Spelman is a real degree, but I'm just saying Celita got the type of degree where like she could just get out of school and get a real job. Maya was a music major.
Celita:
I was computer science. Maya was music and economics.
Amena:
Oh, that's right and economics. That's right. And I was English.
Celita:
You were English eventually, but you started out trying to do a double thing because you didn't want to rest on being an English major.
Amena:
Yeah. I started off psych because I thought I was going to go to seminary and be a pastor. And then I was like, that doesn't seem like the thing. So then I was like, "okay, I'm going to do English with a minor in creative writing." But I had intention to be a writer, but Celita was one of the only ones of us that graduated. Celita and we had one other friend. Well, we had a couple of friends that majored in education.
Celita:
Yes.
Amena:
So basically Celita and them that had jobs.
Celita:
Actually Amena, so we graduated in May, 2002, but just prior to that in September, 2001 was 9/11.
Amena:
Was 9/11. That's right.
Celita:
And I had done IT internships all throughout the years. Shout out to INROADS if anybody knows about Inroads and-
Amena:
INROADS.
Celita:
... getting young, Black or leaders in corporate and community leadership. But I had a IT job all throughout school, every summer and through my senior year. While I was at school, I was working. 9/11 happened, every company went on a hiring freeze.
Amena:
Yeah, that's right.
Celita:
So I could not land... We were all having difficulty making that next step. I really wanted to work in IT and you and Maya were really trying to continue your education. And all three of us were like...
Amena:
Floundering, lots of flounders.
Celita:
My first job was Smoothie King.
Amena:
Okay. And also mine. Celita's the a reason why I got hired over there because I applied to grad school, three of those and didn't get in. And so Celita was like, "look, man, I got this job over here. I think they need some people. It won't be like 40 hours a week, but it would be some money."
Celita:
$9 an hour let's do it.
Amena:
And the church we we're going to... First of all, I should follow up and tell y'all redacted ministry that we were a part of the campus ministry part actually ended after our junior year.
Celita:
Oh, that's right.
Amena:
So our senior year was really the first time that any of us had a life that was free of having to do ministry on campus. But we all had joined the church where the pastor at the church that we went to at the time, he was the leader of that redacted ministry before like it no longer existed. So we all went from being a campus ministry together to being like, oh, well the campus ministry part's over, but we can still go to church together. And we really took the free time that we had from no longer doing campus ministry and just converted that over to church and just got-
Celita:
And all the things that they wanted us to do there.
Amena:
Very busy.
Celita:
Yes.
Amena:
It was a very busy time.
Celita:
Yeah.
Amena:
So because of the way our church was structured, there was this unspoken expectation that if you were a married couple in the church, that you should buy a house that had way more rooms than you and your spouse needed or your kids to need it so that other people from the church could live with you.
Celita:
Yes.
Amena:
And we reaped the benefits of this possibly unhealthy thing-
Celita:
Oh, my gosh.
Amena:
... that was pressure on two couples in our church at the time. But we reap the benefits of it because all of us were living with married couples in their starter houses in their basements and their guests rooms or whatever, while we were trying to get our lives together and get on our feet. So that's why we were able to work at a place like Smoothie King, where we weren't going to get as many hours as we would have needed if we all would have been in apartments. At that point we couldn't really afford that. But these couples were allowing us to live with them for no cost or very little costs. So when you were like, "yo, I'm over here working at Smoothie King." So I went over there and worked with you. I was mad as hell, but I went over there and slapped them bananas into them rich kids smoothies after school.
Celita:
Oh, my gosh. It was the richest part of the city working at Smoothie King. So, there was a lot of dynamics happening there.
Amena:
So how long was it after we graduated before you got hired on someplace as a full-time thing?
Celita:
I think I was only at Smoothie King for like four months or something like that. It didn't last long. And somebody from the church was a controller or the accounts payable, whatever at Atlanta Medical Center-
Amena:
That's right.
Celita:
... and got me hired there. I started out as their front desk administrative person. And as we discussed, we're both very good natural leaders. So very quickly I was promoted to being the accounts payable supervisor-
Amena:
Wow.
Celita:
... of three other seasoned adult women that had been there for years.
Amena:
What?
Celita:
Yeah. But that was like my first post-college corporate job accounts payable supervisor. I worked there for two years and I got Maya a job there.
Amena:
Wow.
Celita:
Yes.
Amena:
You better give people jobs, Celita. First of all, we all be owing you money a little bit right now.
Celita:
It took a while before I landed my actual first IT job post-college was working for that church. And that came years.
Amena:
Years later.
Celita:
Years after, because I did the accounts payable thing, but you and I were like, we want to be artists. We want to be artists full time. I had gotten this degree, but there was a part of me that all this other artistic stuff had been unearthed during our time at Spelman. So I realized that I was a pretty decent spoken word artist. I realized I was a pretty decent dancer. I realized I was an amazing step team member. Like all of this artistic stuff, I was traveling the country doing this stuff. So I'm thinking I want to be a professional dancer. So I transitioned from there to working at a gymnastics academy.
Amena:
Wow.
Celita:
Because I was at this accounts payable place and I was getting tired of it. So I was calling a gymnastic place to see if they could teach me as an adult how to do back flips so I can incorporate that into my hip hop dance. So I called them asking, could I pay them to teach me how to do a back flip? And they said, instead, well, we don't have formal classes for adults, but if you work here, we can teach you whatever you want. So they offered me a job.
Amena:
Wow.
Celita:
Well, I'm trying to call them to see what could I pay them and they were like, "we'll pay you to work here. And then we'll teach you how to do a back flip."
Amena:
Stop.
Celita:
Because they were excited about the corporate experience and like, well, let's bring you in to do our administrative work Then I became their webmaster. And then I became a gymnastics coach and a hip hop dance coach.
Amena:
Wow.
Celita:
For that gym. And that was like my first four years out of college was that.
Amena:
Wow.
Celita:
Really trying because I had started hip hop dancing for local artists, like doing background dance for her, been in a couple of music videos. And I was like trying to do that.
Amena:
Yeah.
Celita:
Forget this computer science degree, that cost umpteenth amount of money, but then eventually an IT position opened up at that church because I was still in this mindset of full-time ministry committed to this church, committed to ministry, committed to this people that we got connected to after transitioning to Atlanta but I think that's where things start changing.
Amena:
Wow. Oh, it was kind of like, as you were saying that I was like, that's right. That's right. That's right, now I remember those things.
Celita:
It literally just came back to me too, like, wow. That's exactly what happened. So what was going on with you the first four years after college, what did that look like for you?
Amena:
Okay. So I worked at Smoothie King with you.
Celita:
Yeah.
Amena:
And then you were like, "got a better job." So when you left, I think I stayed there for a couple more months and then someone who went to our church knew a woman that did event production and needed an assistant. And so I was so excited to go to do this interview with her. And it was actually right up the street from the Smoothie King where we work, that's where she lived at the time. And so it was so random, but I was like, I'm going to go to this. I don't even know what an event producer does, but it sounds good. I'm going to go meet with her. And she was paying so well that I worked for her part-time but it was almost like I doubled what I was making working for Smoothie King then.
Amena:
So I started working for her the fall after we graduated college and she had all these amazing contracts. We did events with like Jane Fonda, and Chris Tucker and Indie.Arie still to this day, next to what I'm doing now for a living in my own business that was my second favorite job right there out of college. I had so much fun working for her and I'm 22. There's a lot about how to interact with people in this professional, but lighthearted way that you have to do when you do event work that I just didn't know. And she totally taught me everything about how to interact with artists, and their management and rich people.
Amena:
She sent me to some rich people's houses that I just had to walk around there and act like I've been in these marble floors, but I never these marble floors in my whole life. So I worked for her almost a year and then all her contracts and stuff dried up. So I think after that... I feel like after that, maybe I went through like a little ego time where I was like, "I have an English degree from Spelman college. There is no need for me to have to make myself suffer with these penny, any jobs. I should have a job that's in my field."
Amena:
And a woman that went to church with us who worked in radio. She was like a mentor to me. And so everybody in church was like, "you would probably be good in radio. You ought to ask her for some advice." And I went to her and told her I shouldn't have to suffer these penny, any jobs with all this talent. And she was like, "you absolutely will suffer these penny any jobs if you want to see your dreams come true." [crosstalk 00:39:28] get your life together. She was like, "you better apply for every job that's out here and take whatever you get."
Celita:
Yeah.
Amena:
So when I took her advice, I ended up getting on with a temp agency. And so I worked temp jobs for a while. And like you, I was... I guess I should back up for a second and also tell y'all that redacted ministry that we were a part of also did work with a very large white Christian college organization. And so our ministry had a step team and we were the ministry that introduced to them spoken word and step.
Celita:
Yeah.
Amena:
So the step team was traveling with them. And then because our church also was doing a college spoken word thing, we were also traveling with them as poets and doing events with them.
Celita:
All the time.
Amena:
Because we had had that exposure than other places were also inviting us to do different things. And so I was taking those invitations because I could, while I was working for two weeks while the receptionist was on vacation over here, but then I might have a month where I didn't have any temp jobs. And so I would just travel the road, whatever. And then I got a temp job at this commercial realty place in Newnan, which is south of Atlanta. And I worked there and then they were like, can we hire you on permanently? So that was the best job to have to me as I was also trying to do music journalism at that time I think.
Celita:
Yeah.
Amena:
I think actually I was just getting that temp job right as things were about to start crumbling in a few ways. So I think that was my first four years after school. It was basically a lot of temporary jobs and stuff. And I think right around 24, 25 that started to tip over. I do remember when we had all graduated and I think the summer after we graduated, we all did summer camp at our church together. So even though we just graduated all of us dumped ourselves into that and did that.
Celita:
Yeah.
Amena:
But once the fall came, I remember like driving around Atlanta by myself, going to work, picking up lunch or whatever, and I remember really missing y'all and feeling so disoriented.
Celita:
Yeah. I was just thinking the listeners are probably like, wait a minute why are you asking each other what were you doing right after college? How come you didn't know? Were you not hanging out with each other? And it was very different and hard. We each landed in one of those houses. We were each living with some couple and some completely different part of Atlanta. And everything's like 20, 30 minutes apart by car, on highway. So it wasn't like we weren't seeing each other every day like we used to, there was this whole thing that you and I were like talking about like, how do you maintain friendships post-college? Because people are different.
Celita:
I was not a phone person, so I wasn't going to be talking to y'all on the phone every day.It just not how I communicate. I needed to be in person and in proximity with you and we just did not have that. It was hard. And in some ways it became easier for me to connect with one of our other friends than it did for me to maintain my connection with you.
Amena:
Right.
Celita:
And I think part of that led into why, when I did actually see you, it was a lot. That probably really feeding into when we did connect because it was always around ministry stuff. It was always around work. It was always around execution and planning and putting on the next show or writing a new poem, memorizing it, or staking out a show. And our friendship did not have an opportunity to breathe, to build, to grow apart from all of that. It was only attached to the work.
Amena:
Yeah. I never thought about it like that, as you say it now but that was true. We had a very busy life. We never really stopped being busy because our college life was very busy with ministry stuff. And then we got out of college and jumped into church stuff. And so I feel like in a way there are certain parts of having been in church, like volunteering together, that kept some of what you get when you're in college that you're there in the dorm. There's nothing like how those friendships get built because the boundaries are nowhere.
Celita:
There's no boundaries.
Amena:
It's not like at five o'clock you're going to leave and be like, "oh, well, never see you." It's like, you live together, you work together, you go to class together, you work on a homework, you eat and food, whatever. So many of our activities. You're running errands together. We didn't really have a lot of time that we did anything alone. And so there were certain parts of coming out of that into like volunteering in the church and just giving that all of our time, that kept you feeling like you were really close to each other because you were together all the time, but there were a lot of other things happening in your life and inside of you as a person, it's also a very developmental time, I felt like, and we weren't getting as much opportunity to talk about that and what was happening there and what did all that mean?
Amena:
So I feel like one of the things we did that for me is what brought me to us breaking up as friends. We started instituting a Friday night where me, you and Maya would always hang out every Friday. We started doing that when we were like 23, 24 around that. Probably around 24 at that time, because with all the church stuff that we had going, mostly there was nothing to do on Friday nights. And so we would all just hang out and whatever we decided to do.
Celita:
Yeah.
Amena:
But after we had done that for like a year, by the time we were getting close to turning 25, I was... First of all, by this time we're 20, 24, 25 years old. So we've known each other now six years of life.
Celita:
Yes.
Amena:
Almost seven years.
Celita:
Yes.
Amena:
So for me, because we were going to a school that was historically Black and all women, it was like, I spent all my time with women. And I think that for me partly was a realization like, I don't think I want to spend my Fridays with y'all. I think I wish I had a boyfriend.
Celita:
Yes.
Amena:
But I don't know how to say that in the church that we're going to, that's encouraging us not to date until we somehow meet someone we're going to marry. And I haven't figured out how I meet them.
Celita:
Right.
Amena:
To know I'm going to married them if we don't date.
Celita:
Yeah.
Amena:
And I looked at all these dudes sitting here in the church and don't none of this seemed like it's lining up for me. It did for some of our friends, it lined up for some of them.
Celita:
For some of them.
Amena:
They looked in the church and saw their husbands or otherwise met somebody that was like, "I just need to marry you."
Celita:
Or were pursued by someone because that was part of the message of sitting back and waiting. And you do not go after him, he comes after you. And you just need to make sure your stuff is together. Like present well and be ready, but just sit and be ready. You have no initiation responsibilities in this at all.
Amena:
No.
Celita:
It worked out for some people and the thing is you would see it work out for someone else and think, "okay, this is possible. I think this might be possible. Let me do that." No.
Amena:
No. And really of our largest friend group I can think of as far as what would have been the women that were seniors, when we came in as freshmen to college, up to when we were seniors and the young women that were freshmen when we were leaving college, like if I were to look at that large age group is probably 15% of those people that either met their spouse in college or happened to meet their spouse at the church.
Celita:
Yeah.
Amena:
The large percentage of us that was not the story.
Celita:
It was not the story. No.
Amena:
That happened. So I think for me, it was like for a time I enjoyed that reconnection that the three of us had, and I enjoyed that we had a standing time to do it.
Celita:
Yeah, to hang out.
Amena:
But then over time there were nights that I started to be like... Oh, because this was the other thing. A lot of those Hangouts would turn into like, well, whoever's house we're going to go hang out at, we should just spend the night there.
Celita:
We would just stay.
Amena:
And I also discovered, I don't really want to spend the night.
Celita:
And I don't want to spend a night at your place. And I don't want you spending the night at my place.
Amena:
I know. Because in my mind, I'm like, if I'm like 30, 40 minutes from where I live, I would like to drive there and get in my bed by myself. And if you live 30 or 45 minutes from here, I would like you to go home and do that. But we can hang out till like two or three in the morning. But when it gets to be two or three, when I say good night, I mean, like go to your house.
Celita:
I think it was something about trying to maintain, or that was all we knew was that rhythm of being in each other's space all the time and not having boundaries for where we lived and not having boundaries on our time and inviting other people into our orbit.
Amena:
Yeah.
Celita:
Like we understood our orbit to be what it was. And I think, well, I'll just say, I am a consummate introvert. I'm not like the most social person, huge social anxiety. We'll talk about how I've grown since then. But what I knew was, okay, I have these friends here, we did it. I'm good. I don't need to go out and open myself-
Amena:
Got it.
Celita:
... up to more people and make new friends. Why would I do that to myself? I don't want to do that. That's emotional toil. I want to rest here with you. And you're like, "but I'm meeting other people. I am getting to know people that don't know anything about you or this ministry or this word. I'm interested in other things." And they're in became some of the tension where it's like, "but I'm used to us."
Amena:
Right.
Celita:
And the idea of us could not hold up anymore. It didn't hold water. Life was outweighing how we have formatted our friendship to be executed. Like it wasn't realistic anymore.
Amena:
Yeah, when I got to the point that I was like, I don't know that I want to keep doing this every Friday. I also remember a couple of Valentine's days that our larger group of friends would get together and eat out at a restaurant. And I remember looking at everybody else around us being booed up. And I remember then being like, "I want to, man, I'm sick of this. I love y'all, but I want a man." And I think I started to wonder, because we were in a church that really wasn't helping us navigate the dating life of our twenties. They weren't helping us navigate a lot of things. But in particular, in this conversation, they weren't helping us navigate that part. And I wondered like, are we kicking it together like this because we really wish we did have some other connections that we don't have and we're sort of substituting that with each other.
Amena:
So I will say y'all, as we are having very honest moment on this episode that I instituted the friend breakup with both Celita and Maya. I went to them separately and I basically told them like... I think at first, before I got to, this friendship has to break up, I said out loud to one or both of you that I didn't want to keep doing the spend the night thing. And that I liked us hanging out on Fridays, but I didn't want to hang out every Friday. And when I said that y'all were like, "okay."
Amena:
But then I remember some Fridays happened after that and it was almost like I got what I was asking for. And I realized when I got around some of our other friends that y'all had gotten together with them and y'all did a whole thing on the Friday and you didn't invite me or didn't tell me about it. And it made sense why you didn't invite me or tell me about it because I literally just said out loud that, "I don't know if this is a thing I want to do all the time," but then the Fridays that I did get invited to became less and less and less. And there were other friends that got included in that and that became its own thing.
Amena:
So then I went through this process there of I asked for this and I got it, but why do I feel like crying because I'm not with them on Fridays. And I think for me that started what became a healthy thing in the long run that then I had to be like, I don't even know what I like to do on Fridays, because it was always about what we all tried to decide we all might like, so I did go on like an exploration of learning how to go places by myself. And figuring out things that I might like, trying out social functions and whatever. So I think I was sort of in the early process of that when... And I'm trying to think now as I'm talking to you, Celita what made me go from, I can't do this on Fridays to the friendship needs to break up?
Celita:
Yeah. I don't particularly remember Fridays, in any notable moments around Fridays in particular. I just remember that the communication became more distant and phone calls, because I was not a phone call initiator, but you might initiate a phone call to me and those became less and less. And I also remember talking to our other mutual friend Maya and realizing that the two of you had been connecting or talking or chatting way more than you and I had. And I was like, what is going on? Because I had maintained my connection with Maya. That was fine. It was consistent. But my connection with you was growing more and more and more like distant.
Celita:
And for me, this is devastating because again, my friend circle is very small and very intense. So to lose one is like you're losing a part of yourself. And I just remember pursuing you a little bit and coming to your place. And I'm like, "what is going on? What is it?" Because, I could feel. It's like the breakup happened without any real clear communication. It was just, I was meant to experience it while you distanced yourself.
Celita:
And there was just one moment where I came to the house where you were staying because I think I had to drop off a table or pick up something. I was dropping off something, some excuse to be there. And I was like, "what is it?" And I don't exactly remember your exact words, but it was just something like, "I need space. I can't do this anymore." And I was just like, "we're not going to hang out? We're not going to talk? We're not going to..." And you were like, "no." And I was like, "okay." And walked away, moved away, really put all my eggs in a basket with Maya, our other friend, and just hung onto that to dear life because now like what I had known to be the friendship circle that we had was gone.
Celita:
I think another aspect of that was what was happening with the church, our relationship with the church that we were attached to was changing for each of us in a different way. And that played a part. I'll let you communicate how large of a part it played.
Amena:
Yeah.
Celita:
I know it did play a part in our ability to connect because one of the things that was the medium that we use to connect our attachment to it was changing.
Amena:
Right.
Celita:
And when that shifted, it absolutely shifted us as well.
Amena:
Yeah. Yo, I feel a little teary talking to you about this.
Celita:
It was a rough time.
Amena:
I didn't expect to feel teary talking about it, but I think I feel teary in part because I just feel like it was such a shakeup for all of us in different ways at the time. And probably looking back on, it was a time that it would have been nice for us to have had each other, but because of the way all of the shakeup went down and all I can think to chalk it up to is just my own emotional immaturity at the moment. Not knowing how to say, "I want to kick it with you, but I'm trying to find myself. And I've had you in my life since I was 18. And I feel like I'm about to figure out maybe the kind of woman I am or who I want to be and I want to have the space to figure that out while we still kick it. And can we do that? And what would that look like?"
Amena:
If we were having that moment today, I feel like that's how I would have had that conversation. But like 24 year old me was just like, "I got to get out and I don't know, I just know [crosstalk 00:57:13] I can't be here." It was like, I didn't have a gray. I just had, it's all, it's nothing. And so I was like, I can't be the all that I think you would want from me or you would expect of me. So instead of trying to figure out what the middle could be, that would be workable for both of us, it's going to be nothing.
Celita:
Yeah.
Amena:
And I think I came to that while I was having the rumblings that I was going to have to leave our church, but I don't think I knew that then when you and I had that conversation. And I think I was honestly still trying to figure out what to do about our friendship. And if I could think back to myself now, it's almost like, I think I felt like I need to say something. I can only imagine it I just was like, "what is the language of how you say this?" And I could not figure that out. And so I just got distant.
Amena:
And one thing about our friendship is you've always been very upfront. You've always been a very direct and clear communicator. And so when you called me on it like, "what you doing dawg? Like you don't be around not just physically, but emotionally you don't be around. So what's up with you." And when you call me out like that, then it sort of pushed me to have say, and because I didn't have any gray elements in that, all I could think was like, "I need some space, but I don't know how long."
Celita:
Yeah.
Amena:
And I don't know what space looks like so I'm just thinking, it must look like we don't talk, and it must look like we don't kick it.
Celita:
Yeah.
Amena:
But I do remember saying some things like, "but I still love you though. And I'm always going to..." And I could see on your face, you were, Ooh,.
Celita:
I was done.
Amena:
"What the hell is she talking about?"
Celita:
And I also knew that I was still heavily involved, heavily connected, heavily committed to that ministry in that church. And I knew that you had distanced yourself from that as well so one of the natural things I used for us to hang out was just being in proximity in that space I knew that was gone. So if there's no natural easy way of being in the same space and there's not going to be any intentional way of being in the same space, then you know, it was over.
Amena:
Yeah.
Celita:
It was over. And that was 24.
Amena:
Yeah.
Celita:
That was 2004.
Amena:
Y'all, this is probably one of the most emotional episodes I've ever recorded. So thankful for my friend Celita agreeing to come on and discuss with me how we navigated friendship post-college and what led to our friendship breakup in our twenties. In next week's episode, Celita and I discuss what happened in our lives during the time of our friendship breakup and what caused us to reconnect after so many years. You can follow Celita at 11locks on Instagram. That's at one, one locks on Instagram, and you can follow her podcast and poetry at I'm Simply Artistic on Instagram. To learn more about her work visit Imsimplyartistic.com.
Amena:
Normally, at the end of these episodes, I do a segment called Give Her A Crown but because of the subject of this episode, I want to do a different closing segment called Ask Yourself This, in your closest friendships is there something that isn't working for you that you need to be honest about? Have you felt distanced from a friend? And if so, what is causing you to feel distant? Does one of your friendships require a breakup? And if so, how can you handle the breakup with care, honesty, and gentleness towards the other person and yourself?
Amena:
Tune in next week to hear how Celita and I reconnect, heal and find a way forward to healthier friendship. Thanks for listening. HER With Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeart Radio. Thanks for listening. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast.