Amena Brown:
Hey, everybody. Welcome to this week's episode of HER with Amena Brown. You know what I haven't talked enough about in these first few episodes of the year is our HER living room. I just want to bring you back to that visual. I don't know where you are, where you may be listening. I get messages from a few of you, so I know some of you are working from home and you're listening from there, some of you may be commuting, you're listening in your car, some of you are on public transportation, headed to work or headed to play, wherever you're headed, some of you are listening late at night.
Amena Brown:
I don't know the vibes, but just know, when you're listening to this podcast, my goal is still for you to feel that you are gathered in our girlfriend's living room, gathered in the living room space that is where you bring your little bits of snacks, it's where there's no judgment for the combination of snacks that you bring to together. Welcome back to our worn couch situation in the living room, because isn't that the best couch, where it's just worn enough. That's the best couch, just like a pair of jeans, just worn enough. Okay?
Amena Brown:
Speaking of being with girlfriends in the living room, this episode, we are talking about the friends that we need in our lives. I think I've discussed on here that I spent the latter end part of the year, into the beginning of the new year, watching through Real Housewives of New York. Whenever I go through periods of time where I'm experiencing high anxiety, for some reason, there's something about the Real Housewives franchise that is soothing to me. I don't know what that says about me, I'm not going to get into trying to psychoanalyze that about myself, but it's just true.
Amena Brown:
There was this scene where one of the Housewives was ... It was actually a reunion scene and they were talking about Bethenny Frankel. They were talking about how she always orders really well for the table. Whenever they would go to a restaurant, she would typically research the restaurant in advance, she would call the restaurant ahead and say, "When we sit down, here's the food we want to come out while everyone is still figuring out what they want to order." I was like, "Oh my gosh, what a wonderful friend to have." It's so good to have a friend like that, which sent my mind going to who are the friends that we really need in our lives? In this episode, let's talk about that.
Amena Brown:
The first friend that you need is a cussing friend. I need to start right here. I need to start right here, because I didn't realize the importance of having a cussing friend until maybe several years ago, the last several years of my life. I happen to have a couple of friends in my life that are just truly the best at cussing, and cussing in a moment where you don't have the other words to articulate your situation. I also want to submit to you all that I know that I am the cussing friend for some of my friends. I'm not going to do all that cussing on this podcast, but there are a few of my friends that would be like, "It's her, she's the one that's doing the cussing." If you're listening to this and when I said cussing friend you got uncomfortable, then the cussing friend isn't you, you probably have some cussing friends. If you have some friends that listen to this podcast and they also reach out to you when they get to this part, then it's you, you are the friend that cusses.
Amena Brown:
I'll tell you a moment that I realized having a cussing friend is really important. Oh my gosh, y'all, woo. I was just thinking about this moment. I want to give a shout out to my friend, Nish, Nish Weiseth, she is just a fabulous person. I may just need to reach out to her and just call her real quick and talk crazy to her for five minutes, because this story is about her, a real life story.
Amena Brown:
I was at a women's conference, Nish and I and several of our mutual friends were at this conference. I'm just going to keep it real with y'all. My husband and I were going through some struggles trying to get pregnant. I can't remember if this happened before or after I had to go on stage, I think it happened before, that someone that I knew came up to me at that event and announced to me her pregnancy. If you're listening to this and you have ever experienced loss or miscarriage, experienced infertility in any way, you know exactly what I'm talking about, that you can have this moment inside where when you are struggling, you're trying to get pregnant and it's not going well for you, and someone else announces their pregnancy to you, you are exceedingly happy for them and you are also feeling such heartbreak for yourself. That can really be a hard thing to describe to someone if they've never been through it.
Amena Brown:
Nish in the green room of this conference with me, watching this moment happen. She knew some of the behind-the-scenes of my life. After this friend told me her announcement, I did a really great job not showing to her how much I was breaking inside. Then she left and I went to sit down next to Nish, and Nish turned and looked at me and she said the F-bomb so loud and so pointedly. I just never thought I would appreciate it hearing the F-bomb in that context, in that moment, but there wasn't anything else to say. There was no advice to give, there was nothing she could say to fix it or make it feel any better, but just her saying the F-bomb to me in that moment just had me like, "Yes," just have me like, "Thank you, girl, for feeling me in this moment."
Amena Brown:
You need a friend like that, because sometimes, here I go being the cussing friend, but sometimes hard shit is going to happen in your life. The truth is, sometimes there'll be such hard things that can happen to you that even when people who are praying people go to pray, they may not even have the exact words to pray. I'm a person who also thinks that cussing can be prayer too, because I think God understands that, understands our humanity and how we feel when life just hits us in these really, really hard ways. When you have a cussing friend, it's really nice because sometimes they can use their cuss words to articulate a thing that you are struggling to put words to. Sometimes just them saying a word that in some circles of people would be considered a really inappropriate word to say feels really great in certain situations.
Amena Brown:
You should have a cussing friend. Even if you don't cuss yourself, you should have a cussing friend. If you do cuss yourself, sometimes you need a cussing friend that's very cuss articulate, that just can really draw a nice phrase that you need. Shout out to the cussing friend, it's important, and shout out to my girl, Nish, because that was a real moment between she and I.
Amena Brown:
Okay, the next type of friend that need is a curator friend. This is a person that they know certain things really well. It could be a person who knows music very well, it could be a person who knows good books, it could be a person who knows film, knows television shows, knows house decor or house organization things. It could be many things that that person can be really interested in, but they go beyond being just an enthusiast about those things. This is a person that not only is excited or interested in that particular subject matter, but if you went to them and said, "Hey, I'm looking to dabble in this blah, blah, blah, genre of stuff. Where do you think I should start?" that person would then be able to go through the things they know and curate to you, "Hmm, I think you would like this book because of these reasons," or they might even know enough about the subject matter to say to you, "Tell me what you're looking for when you're looking for this type of thing."
Amena Brown:
I'll give you an example. My friend Leigh is a fantastic curator of, I would say of books general, but very specifically, I ask her sometimes to give me romance recommendations because I know this is a genre that she reads. During the pandemic, I've talked to you in previous episodes about how I picked up on reading more romance because I just needed to read some books that were about the newness of love and always have a happy ending. I just needed that everything's going to turn out good for these characters.
Amena Brown:
When I went to her and said, "Hey, I'm thinking about reading more romance, who should I read?" she had this immediate list of questions, asking me different things. Was I looking for authors of color? Was I looking for Black women authors? Was I looking for a certain level of heat in the book itself? I answered those questions, and then she is a wonderful friend, she sent me an email with like, "Here are the things I would suggest for you based upon what you described to me are your interests." It was sort of like she used these answers to her questions that I gave her, she used her knowledge of me, and she used her knowledge of the things that she knows well.
Amena Brown:
It is wonderful to have a curator friend in your life. It could be someone who, like my friend Leigh, knows books. It could be someone who knows good TV shows. I feel like I watch a good bit of TV, maybe a lot of TV is probably more than a good bit, but anyways, I watch a lot of TV and so I do have people sometimes ask me, "Hey, what did you think about this show? Do you think I would like it?" and I can say, "Here's what I liked about this show. I don't think you would like it. I don't recommend you watch it, but here's what's good about it," or if people come to me and say, "I want to watch something else on TV." I'm totally that person.
Amena Brown:
I can also be that person about music too. It depends on the type of music, because I'm not going to lie to y'all that there's a certain type of music I like and a certain type of music I don't. I'm not as much of a wide span, listens to just all the music person, but if the person comes to me and their tastes are similar to mine, then I might be like, "Oh, here's a starting place. Here's where I would start. Here's what I think about blah, blah, blah."
Amena Brown:
You should get you a good curator friend. Get you some friends that know about some things that you don't know that much about and would be willing to give you tips on how you can start dipping your toe in the water of knowing more about that.
Amena Brown:
Next, this is what Bethenny Frankel inspired me, in seeing this particular season of Real Housewives of New York. You need a foodie friend, okay? A foodie friend can present themselves in a couple of different ways. Number one, a foodie friend is someone who knows how to order food well. I'm going to tell you, the person and in my life who is the best orderer of food is my husband. I have to say, he's like this about food and he's also like this about cocktails too.
Amena Brown:
When we were dating, our first several dates, I feel like I ordered badly. I don't know if I was ordering safe, I don't know if I was nervous because we were on our first several dates, but I feel like pretty consistently our first several dates, his order came to the table and I immediately regretted what I ordered. After doing that a few times, then I would look at the menu and I would tell him, "These are the three things I'm looking at. Which of these do you think that I would like, or do you think I should try?" He would say, "I would try this one, this one. I wouldn't try that one because of the type of restaurant this is."
Amena Brown:
I think I was making some mistakes, like if you go to a steakhouse place, it depends on the place if getting something else other than steak is actually going to work out, or if you go to a place that pasta is the central of the menu, you might order a sandwich there and be sorely disappointed, right? I feel like I was making those kinds of mistakes, which may have been just because I was so happy to just hang out with him that I wasn't paying much attention to the menu.
Amena Brown:
Then sometimes, now that we've gotten married, sometimes what he'll do is if I'm looking on the menu and I see two or three things that I'm like, "Oh, I can't really decide," he'll be like, "Why don't you order this and I'll order that, and then you could try both things," which is really sweet. It's really sweet when you are dating or in a relationship with someone that is willing to take that risk, they're willing to throw that dice out there. But I just started to trust his palette there.
Amena Brown:
As it relates to cocktails, I am a person who I think as I've gotten older, my palate has become a bit more adventurous, but as previously stated in some other episodes, I was very new to drinking. I didn't start drinking until I was in my late twenties, so it has taken me some time I'm to figure out, am I a person who likes wine, or am I a person who likes wine with this kind of meal? Am I a person who likes a cocktail? What type of cocktail do I like? What kind of bitters do I prefer? What are the things in a cocktail that excite me? There are times that I would ask Matt, "When you look at the menu, what are the top two or three things you would order?" and I would order out of his list of things, and I would do the same with the cocktails. That is the plus of having a foodie friend, that they know how to order food well, okay?
Amena Brown:
The other type of foodie friend you need is someone who knows how to suss out a good restaurant. I feel like I pride myself on being this friend, but I didn't start being a person that susses out a good restaurant because I wanted to be a foodie friend, I think this happened to me because I was traveling all the time. Well, it was a combination of the fact that I was traveling all the time for work and that, in my thirties, I discovered that I was going to have to for a while go dairy-free. I mean, now I can have some dairy, but I had to have a period of time where I was going to go dairy-free. I had to limit the hormone-induced foods that I was eating. It meant that that limited the amount of chain restaurants that I could eat at.
Amena Brown:
Then over time, Matt and I traveled together mostly for many years, and so when we would travel together, it became this thing like I just really honestly feel like life is too short to eat bad food. That's just how I feel about it. Just because you're traveling and you're away from home and you may be in a place that has restaurants that you're not familiar with, whether they're chains or mom-and-pop shops, I really became a lot less interested in eating at the restaurants I knew and more interested in wanting to know, well, where are we and what is the best cuisine that you can have here? What's the stuff that people always want to make sure they eat when they're in blah, blah, blah city? Matt and I started making a rule for ourselves that we would not, for the most part, unless we were in a pinch, we wouldn't go looking for some national chain that we knew. If we had the time, we were going to find some place there that's really good food.
Amena Brown:
A lot of times, some of the places that are really good food, of course they're local places. A lot of times they're also locally sourced, which was really helpful for a lot of my dietary restrictions. Sometimes it was not healthy food at all, it was just going to be delicious. I remember one time, Matt and I, we had performed at this college in East Texas, and it was one of those places where ... This would happen to us all the time because we did a lot of Christian youth and Christian college events. You'd fly into like the major airport, but then you'd have to drive like an hour and a half or two hours to get to whatever the school was in the middle of no place. The school was in East Texas, but we had to fly into Houston.
Amena Brown:
It's one of those hustles where we had to perform, speak, whatever we were doing at the college in the morning, and then we had to hustle the one-and-a-half to two hours back to get back to the airport in time for our flight. We were so hungry. We were electing not to eat in the college cafeteria because I have spoken at many colleges across the country, I have yet to meet one that I was like, "Wow, I'm really glad I ate here instead of this restaurant."
Amena Brown:
Here is how I suss out if it's a good restaurant. If I've had the time prior to traveling to said city, I will look up the list of top 10 places you should eat in Houston, top five best restaurants in Houston. I'll look up those things so that I can know what we are close to or not. The other thing I do is I cross reference the list with Yelp, because sometimes a thing could end up on a list and maybe the list was three years ago and maybe the chef or whoever that was doing the cooking at that time is not there anymore, so sometimes the lists are not always as current as what's on Yelp. If I see a restaurant on a list and I go to Yelp, it always has to be four stars and above. I don't play games about it, okay?
Amena Brown:
When I'm in Atlanta, I'm not going to lie, I know my restaurants here. There are some restaurants I frequent that have three-and-a-half star reviews on Yelp, but I have eaten there. It's pretty consistent food. I'm not looking for this amazingly gourmet meal. I'm going there because there's a particular taco I love over there or there's a particular sandwich I want to eat it over there. But when I'm out of town, no games. You can't afford to risk your self on three stars in a city you're unfamiliar with. You can't afford to do it. It has to be four stars and above.
Amena Brown:
Now, Matt and I are in a situation where there wasn't really a way to search the restaurants in advance because we technically weren't in Houston. By the time we got to Houston, we were going to have to get on the plane. We had to find, between this college in the middle of nowhere and Houston, Texas, where can we eat? Okay, I go on Yelp. I find a four-star po'boy restaurant. This is the stuff of dreams, okay? This is the stuff of dreams, a four-star po'boy restaurant that just happens to be between this old place and Houston? Sure. Matt and I are like, "You know what? We're going to take the risk, throw the dice on it."
Amena Brown:
We drive up to the place and it literally looks like you have pulled up to your aunt's house. It's a small, little, one-story house. It had all these different colors. The way it was painted, the shutters were different colors, from the wall were different colors, from the one wall over here was a different color from this wall. It was just all sorts of different colors.
Amena Brown:
We go inside, it's a Black-owned restaurant and they are pictures of the family up on the walls. We look at each other and we're pretty sure this is about to be some of the best food This little house, little hole in the wall type spot, four stars in the middle of not quite being in a metropolitan area, yes, please. We had two of the best po'boys I've ever had in my entire life that day. I want to say we had to eat half of our sandwiches in the restaurant, and then because we were in a time crunch, we had to wrap everything up and hurry up and leave. The sandwich was so good that we were like, "If we don't wrap this up and hurry up and leave, we going to be late and we going to miss our flight."
Amena Brown:
I love to be this person that susses out a good restaurant, because typically if I'm meeting with my friends and the other friend that I'm meeting up with, like say if I go visit a friend out of town and if the friend that I'm about to go visit is not a foodie, then I always take it upon myself to pick the restaurant because I feel like that saves me from being annoyed, it's going to give great food to all of us, and we get a chance to try some things, even in the city where they live. You need a foodie friend who can suss out a good restaurant. It's a bonus if your friend also knows food cities and travels.
Amena Brown:
I'm going to tell y'all that one of my ... I used to say it was a post-pandemic dream and sometimes I'm like, "Amena, will we ever be post-pandemic?" It's really hard for me to imagine that life right now. Maybe it's more like when things are less risky, when it's less risky to travel and really vacation in the way that I would like to do it. I spent a lot of time traveling to places for work. Every now and then, I feel like Matt and I, towards the end of our stint traveling, we were getting better at making sure that if we were traveling to an area that we really loved, that we would stay a couple of extra days. My hometown is San Antonio, and so whenever I get a gig in Austin or anywhere near there, my best friend and her husband are there and so I almost always am going to stay over an extra couple of days just to hang out with them and just do whatever.
Amena Brown:
Chicago is another one of our favorite food cities, so we would always at least try to give ourselves an extra day to make sure we hit our spots, hit Portillo's and make sure we got some Lou Malnati's pizza while we were in town, and Stan's Donuts. There's just some places that we were like, "Oh, I got to do it."
Amena Brown:
My dream now that I have been home for almost two years, I haven't taken a flight y'all in almost exactly two years, next month will make exactly two years since I have been on a plane, which is the longest I have not been on plane since I was a child. I have thought about the previous life that I had, that Matt and I were doing together when we were on the road traveling a lot. Of course I missed the stage, and I do believe in time I'll be able to safely get back to that, but I realized I missed traveling and I missed traveling more than I missed traveling for work. It is a dream of mine in this next decade or two of life to go back to some of those cities that we went to for work and really fell in love with the food and just have time that we're just back to that city to eat and probably go see some of the art that's there, if there's a show to see.
Amena Brown:
I feel like Chicago is a city that's like that, LA is like that to me, New York is like that. Miami is a city that I've been to, but I haven't really gotten a chance to experience the food, so it's one of my food cities that I would want to visit. New Orleans, we went to New Orleans for an anniversary and I was like, "Oh my gosh, we just came here and we just got to sleep and eat food and listen to jazz. Yes." I want to get back to actually traveling to enjoy the cities there and enjoy the food. Yes, honey, I'm here. I am here to be the foodie friend as needed.
Amena Brown:
Next friend you need is a fashion friend. I'm going to tell y'all right now, I am nobody's fashion friend. Not a one of my friends would tell you that Amena helps me with my fashions, okay? It has never been a gift for me, which is why I need a fashion friend. My top fashion friend is my sister, who is also one of my best friends. It's like my sister could be in a pair of sweatpants and it just looks amazing. I will be places with my sister and people, they cannot stop looking at her because she's just gorgeous in general, but then added to that, she just dresses in this way that it looks so effortless. But if I were to try to wear those same exact outfits, it would look so terrible. She's my top fashion friend.
Amena Brown:
If I'm buying clothes for myself, I like for her to be in the mall with me, because I'm very much like a creature of habit and a creature of comfort. I'm not as bad now as I used to be, but I used to be very like, "Oh," I walked into Express and I tried on this one shirt, it looked nice, so I would just buy that shirt in four colors. She was like, "I know you like shirts like that and that's why you bought that shirt and that many colors, but I don't think you should buy that kind of shirt anymore because I don't think it looks flattering on you." She would be that honest, that is part of what a fashion friend does.
Amena Brown:
I want to give a shout out to one of my best friends, Kimberly. She is also a person who knows how to dress. She pays attention to what's trending and what's in fashion and stuff like that. She was the person in my twenties that was the first person to tell me, "This shoe that you bought is a winter shoe." She was like, "You're not supposed to wear this shoe year round like this." She was the first person that told me that.
Amena Brown:
I want to give a shout out to my friend and collaborator, Michelle Norris, who has styled me for quite a few of the shoots that you have seen me do over the past few years, some of that is the work of Michelle Norris. You can have a lot of different ways that you can work with a stylist. You can work with a stylist where they have your measurements, your sizes, what you're looking for, and they go around to different places and pull outfits for you. Then they either bring them to you or you go to their space and look through what they pull. But that wasn't as helpful for me in trying to figure out how to be fashionable.
Amena Brown:
I would ask Michelle if instead of doing that, if I could go with her to the stores that she would go to, if she were to pull outfits or something for me. Michelle doesn't even do styling like that really as a part of her work anymore, but she would do this with me on the side, as she still had a little side hustle with me. We would just go out there and have a certain number of hours that I'd be like, "I will pay you, come out here and help me do this."
Amena Brown:
We would go and look through the different stores and she would pick things for me to try on that I would never pick off the rack for myself. Michelle Norris is the reason that I wear jumpsuits to this day, because I couldn't get past the fact that when I would see other women in jumpsuits, I would think they looked gorgeous, but I really had a question that I couldn't ask because most of the women I saw wearing them were strangers, which is how do you go to the bathroom with all that stuff on? For those of you who know I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, I thank you for understanding the reference. I was just like, "I want to know how you go to the bathroom, because I can't figure that out. I'm never going to wear this," and she was like, "Please go in and try this on." She was like, "I think your body would be perfect in jumpsuits," and turns out it was.
Amena Brown:
Shout out to the fashion friend. They can help you out of a fashion rut, they can be honest with you when you are wearing things that do not look good on you, but it's not just that they're over critical, they can also help you find the things that do look good on you, that do make you feel good, that do express your sense of style.
Amena Brown:
We're going to have a part two of this because I have a few more other friend stories and friend suggestions that I want to give you, but yes, everybody needs that friend. Join me in the living room next time when we talk about what are the other friends we need.
Amena Brown:
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 iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast.