From Fake to Phenomenal: 8 Secrets to Abandon Inauthenticity and Embrace Self-Discovery

By Renai Ellison

How would you like to discover the most authentic, captivating, phenomenal you?

In From Fake to Phenomenal, trailblazing model and TV personality turned life and leadership development coach Renai Ellison, EdD, shares her inspiring stories and transformational tips to help you discover the keys to unlocking your best life. Renai's 8 secre

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bright Communications LLC
• Release date: Aug 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781958711095

Renai Ellison

Renai Ellison, EdD, MA, is the Founder and CEO of EMBRACE LIFE Enterprises. Renai began her journey as a Life and Leadership Development Coach, Consultant, Trainer, and Speaker after earning a Christian life coach certification and then a life and leadership coach certification. She holds a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) credential from the International Coaching Federation (ICF). After accomplishing her lifelong dream of obtaining an Educational Doctorate in Organizational Leadership, Renai gravitated toward hours of training in the areas of anti-racism and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). She is passionate about social justice and expanding the consciousness of humanity-one individual at a time. Renai launched her career as a model when she was a junior in college, and she soon became a television host and actress, appearing on local and national television networks. As a first-place speech contest winner, club member, and leader with Toastmasters International, Renai speaks to people globally, nationally, regionally, and locally about the value of relationship, community, and connection. She also believes strongly in the power of authenticity and self-discovery. A devoted daughter to her mother, Maryan, and a loyal friend, Renai values and prioritizes quality time with the people she loves most.

Book preview

Introduction

Writing this memoir and personal development book has been the greatest joy of my life. Sharing my story with you and using my narrative to reveal my heart and my struggles has given me a sense of peace and contentment that has helped me to understand that every battle was worth it. My hope and prayer is that you will allow my experiences to remind you that life is so fragile and precious, and that living it means we have to pay attention. There will be challenges that will tempt us to forget the beauty and majesty of our life’s journey, but if we can just trust the process, allow ourselves to be a bit more vulnerable, there is promise of victory just around the corner.

From Fake to Phenomenal: 8 Secrets to Abandon Inauthenticity and Embrace Self-Discovery takes you through some details of my life in the first part of each of the eight chapters. Once I share a piece of my story, I then reveal one secret. In the second part of the chapter, you will discover four takeaways from what you have just read about my journey. I called this section, RENAIssance Reflections because of the obvious play on words with my name but, most importantly, due to the desire that many of us have to experience our own personal Renaissance—or rebirth. Once you have read my reflections, you will be able to draw your own conclusions and share your personal takeaways. You will find lined, writing space where you can journal your thoughts.

The final part of the chapter is where the magic happens. Phenomenal Thoughts to Ponder is the interactive portion of the book where I ask you open-ended, thought-provoking questions that relate to everything you’ve just read. Think of this section as journal prompts. The goal of this section is to apply everything you’ve just absorbed to YOU. How will you use my story: What I did well, what I could have done differently, to positively impact your life? There, again, you will find lined, writing space where you can journal your thoughts.

I invite you to take as much time as you need to absorb the enlightenment you receive as you respond to each chapter. Also, get the support you need: Therapist, counselor, minister, coach, friend, mentor, family member—any or all of the above. As you dive into this deep, soul work, emotions will come to the surface. It’s important to have a plan for how you will manage those emotions.

May this journey toward abandoning inauthenticity and embracing self-discovery inspire you, motivate you, and challenge you, but even more than that, may the desires of your heart and the calling on your life be recognized, realized, and released.

To God be the Glory!

Chapter 1: The Beginning

Being the only daughter of a single mother embodies a responsibility and a calling that have made my life’s journey exciting and enthralling and chaotic and challenging. My mother is my hero. She is the most beautiful, youthful, strong, supportive human being on the planet. She is my biggest fan, and she is also my best critic. I love her with every fiber of my soul and being. I often think about what I need to do in my life to both honor her and set the boundaries necessary to be my own woman.

My mother never married. She devoted her life to her work and to me. Consequently, work has been the element that we can relate to together—as well as the acceptance, rejection, expectations, disappointments, and racism that strangle Black women. Both of us have prioritized work in our lives. I made work such a priority that I missed the opportunity to have children. This is probably my biggest regret in life, but, as Frank Sinatra famously reminded me, I may have some regrets, but they are too few to mention. I admired my mother’s work ethic so much that it became core to my being as well.

Because my work has been my world, the extreme highs and lows of my career have felt exhilarating and devastating. They have not often been tempered by balance in my personal life. My life has been unpredictable—like riding a rollercoaster in the dark. I could feel the twists and turns, the rising and the falling, but I often could not see where I was going or comprehend how I got there.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve lived multiple lives in my more than five decades on this earth. I’ve worked more than 70 jobs in my lifetime—so far. Looking back, I know that every experience has been a steppingstone toward growth and opportunity. I’ve been driven by my desire to change and face obstacles head-on. Through that, I’ve developed clarity, competence, and confidence.

This desire for personal development has transformed me into a lifelong learner. I expose myself to deep, meaningful, fulfilling life education that impacts my mindset and the way I see the world.

In this book, I hope to relay adventures that have gifted me with an eye-opening realization of my fortune and my failures. I want to shed light on the struggles of one woman’s experience with living an inauthentic life. Also, I seek to share the hills and valleys on my road trip to self-discovery.

A significant part of this account is my experience with institutional betrayal, and how I both contributed to it and suffered from it. Institutional betrayal happens when the companies and organizations we serve let us down tremendously. Sharing my story will hopefully enlighten and elevate your understanding of what it means to be a Black woman in the workplace—and how this Black woman navigated life, love, and learning.

I grew up in Vineland, New Jersey, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I’d like to set the stage with a bit about my childhood and then fast-forward to the beginning of my exposure to what it truly meant to me to be a professional.

Success was my North Star. There was nothing I craved or desired more. I wanted position, power, and privilege. I never accepted that being Black was a limitation. The behaviors and attitudes of my grandparents and some of the Black kids I went to school with modeled for me that Black people should take a backseat to White people. My mother’s influence taught me to be culturalized in more inclusive ways, so my approach to life was entirely different. I genuinely believed that having the right mindset and a good work ethic could overcome anything.

On the other hand, my grandparents shared a belief that was a little peculiar for the average Black family in the northern part of the United States. I was exposed to a philosophy that I later learned was prevalent in some areas of the South where my grandparents were raised, but that philosophy felt ridiculous to me, even as a child. My grandparents believed that the legendary civil rights leader Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a troublemaker. Their perspective was not rooted in a positive view of MLK getting into Good Trouble as the late Senator John Lewis coined. My grandparents’ impression of Dr. King was that he stirred up unnecessary trouble and the South was better off without him. My grandparents felt that Black people (called Colored people when I was a child) were negatively impacted by King’s protests for freedom. And, by the way, I had better not refer to Black people as Black. That was considered an insult in my home of origin.

I was confused, and I ran to my mother for an explanation of why Mama and Papa would so harshly criticize an icon for social justice and liberty. Even as a little girl, I knew that this felt wrong. My mother, bravely yet privately, resisted this mentality. She encouraged me to believe in the work of Dr. King and know that I was just as good as anyone, regardless of the color of my skin. This ideology felt right to me, and I embraced it with vigor and enthusiasm.

Having that private conversation with my mother that contradicted my grandparents’ views was relatively controversial in the Ellison household. My mother rarely showed any disloyalty to or dissention from my grandparents—especially my grandmother, who was her adopted mother. She was and still is loyal to a fault to my grandparents. I am cognizant that my view of my mother is distorted and biased due to the impenetrable devotion and love I have for her. Regardless, I am awed and bewildered by her self-sacrificing dedication to both of my grandparents—despite the emotional scars their treatment left behind for both my mother and me.

The degree of psychological cruelty that my grandmother in particular inflicted on my mother and later on me was terrorizing and damaging. My grandmother wielded a unique brand of evil that was designed to break your soul. She was a talented woman who could cook, sew, crochet, garden, sing, play the piano—incredibly gifted in so many areas. Yet, she possessed a darkness, not just the hue of her skin tone, but to her very core. The way she treated my mother was positively inhumane. For this, I have struggled to forgive her.

I have carried the weight of my grandmother’s legacy on my shoulders for years. I had to unlearn the mean-spirited way that she spoke to my mother and the unkind words that came out of her mouth. No mother should ever treat her child with such contempt. No child should ever have to endure that type of maltreatment. But also, no one should ever have to witness and be exposed to that level of trauma. For these reasons, I love my mother with a fierce protectiveness equivalent to 10 sons. She is my heartbeat.

Growing up in this environment produced many challenges, chief among them living with my grandmother’s reminder of the burden and shame of being my mother’s bastard child. Food became my comfort and my escape. I experienced triangulation as my grandmother forced me to choose between her and my mother. I felt abandoned as my mother tried to navigate being my mother yet relinquishing her rights as a mother to my grandmother.

As I heal, I have been able to overcome the anger, bitterness, and resentment I felt toward my grandmother. I imagine that her own pain and anguish were the root cause of her venomous behavior toward my mother. After all, hurt people hurt people. The grace I extend to my grandmother is a result of the work I’ve done on myself and is also a reflection of my mother’s ability to honor my grandmother despite the horrific pain my grandmother perpetuated.

Toward the end of my grandmother’s life, she spent a considerable amount of time suffering in sickness from high blood pressure, gout, and various other diseases. She took medication after medication, and she must have been allergic to one of them. My last memory of my grandmother— prior to seeing her lifeless body adorned in her favorite color, wearing a baby blue gown and lying in a baby blue casket, both selected by my mother—is the mental image of her swollen lips and body covered by sores.

My mother begged her to go the hospital. She eventually agreed. The doctors blamed my mother for allowing her condition to get to this stage without medical intervention. For the first time in my memory, my grandmother defended my mother. She told the doctors that my mother was not at fault—that she was a good daughter.

As my mother traveled back and forth to the hospital every single day while working shift work, I remember how tired and weary she was. Although my grandfather also visited my grandmother, it was my mother who loved and cared for my grandmother until her dying day. I was eight years old and refused to visit her. My grandmother asked for me several times, and deep down in my youthful heart, my resistance to leave the house to sit by her bedside was punishment for her. She died in that hospital. Alone. I often wonder if she asked God for forgiveness before she took her last breath.

Learning more throughout the years about how having dark skin in the Black community has impacted some people of color has helped me to contextualize the intense struggle that my grandmother endured. In my younger years, I had no framework for this dynamic. As a brown-skinned girl, I was considered neither light nor dark.