Relationships Matter

By Chanel N. Scott

In Relationships Matter, Chanel Scott gets real about relationships and shares anecdotes from her life to help readers achieve true partnership within their romantic relationship.

Healthy relationships are no accident. They are the result of intense self-work and elevated consi

• Language: English
• Publisher: 13th & Joan
• Release date: Feb 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781961863040

Chanel N. Scott

CHANEL N. SCOTT is a prominent figure in the romantic relationalsphere who in 2015 created CheMinistry, a relationship platform.Today, CheMinistry is a television series on Fox Soul that consistsof conversations about romance and relationships moderated byChanel. Each panel discussion features celebrities and influencers who share experiential knowledge and expertise pertainingto thematic conversations about romantic relationships. Notably,the "Queen of Relationship Talk," Chanel evokes transparent andcandid dialogue on relational topics specifically geared toward sustaining intimate relationships between a man and a woman.Chanel jump-starts the conversation by exploring the varyingnuances of 21st-century romantic relationships. By first peeling backthe layers of some of the more critical issues plaguing romantic rela-tionships in today's culture, the conversation creates a safety zone forpanelists to acknowledge their fears, insecurities, and pain to helpcreate a keener sense of awareness and a more objective perspective.Chanel strongly believes that acknowledging our fears, insecurities,and pain will help create a new sense of awareness and a more objective perspective as the conversation ensues.In order to appreciate CheMinistry, you must understand thewoman behind it, how she views the world, the struggles she'sfaced, and the enormous giants she fought through to get herselfand the brand (one and the same) to where it is today. In her reign150 Relationships Matter as the Queen of Relationship Talk, Chanel makes the stage a safe space and sounding board for panelists to communicate vulnerabilities while discussing intimate, complex relationship issues.You see, CheMinistry is not just another artistic and innovativeidea. It's a philosophy, state of mind, and collage of experiencesthat emerged from Chanel's life. It rivets the mind and the sens-es. CheMinistry is the embodiment of an interwoven process thattells Chanel's story and flows to its next relationship platform.

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Relationships Matter. Copyright 2023 by Chanel N. Scott. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, 205 N. Michigan Avenue, Suite #810, Chicago, IL 60601. 13th & Joan books may be purchased for educational, business or sales promotional use. For information, please email the Sales Department at [e-mail].

Printed in the U. S. A.

First Printing, July 2023.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN: 978-1-953156-95-2

E-ISBN: 978-1-961863-04-0

DEDICATION

Thank you, God, for loving me through every trial, misstep, heartbreak, and loss, and for teaching me that my most important relationship is the one I have with you.

Love,

Chanel

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword

It’s a Matter of Relationship

Making It All Make Sense

Imminent Death

You Need This, Not That!

Is It Love or Lust?

I’m a Work in Progress

Doing the Work

Extracting Your Emotions

Give the Gift of Forgiveness

Establishing Healthy Boundaries

Remove Yourself from Love Rooted in Rejection

What It Means to Me

Do You Hear Yourself?

You’re Not Crazy, You’re Traumatized!

Breaking the Bonds of Trauma

The Commitment to Love

Epilogue

The Feelings Wheel

Relationships Matter (Reflections on the Book)

Doing the Work

You Need This, Not That!

Extracting Your Emotions

Give the Gift of Forgiveness

Establishing Healthy Boundaries

What It Means to Me

Do You Hear Yourself?

You’re Not Crazy, You’re Traumatized!

The Commitment to Love

Bibliography

Chanel N. Scott

What is CHEMINISTRY?

FOREWORD

RELATIONSHIPS MATTER COULD very well change the landscape in ways similar to the Venus and Mars epitaph by helping men and women take a more honest look at the way we interact with one another.

Scott’s willingness to reveal intimate scars and wounded hopes is laudable. Every lesson you learn from love allows you to move closer to your destiny and personal fulfillment in that area.

Scott’s commitment to transformation and self-reflection makes her own love story even more of a divine possibility and she has graciously invited us along on the journey.

The fact that Scott has not yet found her own happily ever after makes her story even more powerful. So many struggle with patience in the process. Scott gives us a real time glimpse into the soul of singlehood and how to handle your own NOT YET.

When audacity and courage engage, while truth and transparency embrace—you get a book like Relationships Matter.

This book speaks to the core of one of the most coveted desires of the heart… to be partnered in a loving and healthy romantic relationship. These pages unearth true intimacy in a raw and relatable way.

In her own quest for healing and growth, Scott has created a narrative that brings priority and purpose to the relationship conversation again. It reconnects us to days gone by when two people came together for a reason greater than themselves. And it was common place for a man to be asked, What are your intentions in dating my daughter?

Relationship intentions are being reimagined through these pages and redefined with the live platform of CheMinistry.

Scott has successfully created a space where relationships are not just a hot topic…but a place where RELATIONSHIPS actually MATTER.

Nevaina Rhodes

Drama Therapy Specialist and

Intimacy Coordinator for

BET’s Kingdom Business

Games People Play and

The Ms. Pat Show

IT’S A MATTER OF RELATIONSHIP

THERE IS NO such thing as a perfect relationship. Every relationship has both healthy and unhealthy characteristics. However, what makes the connection strong is when both people in the relationship have a willingness to put in the challenging work necessary through candid conversations to recognize unhealthy behaviors that could be detrimental to the relationship as a whole. Oftentimes, people talk more about avoiding toxic people and less about overcoming the toxic behaviors that contribute to the tension in the relationship. More so than not, we know what our toxic behaviors are, but we don’t necessarily know how to disengage their triggers.

In this book, we lay out the blueprint to communicating our feelings in a more productive way that not only nurtures but deepens the romantic connection shared by those who are intentional about growing their romantic relationship.

MAKING IT ALL MAKE SENSE

AND NOW, IT all makes perfect sense. My life as a single woman has been negatively impacted by an unusual amount of rejection. I have suffered through and overcome depression as my life ended up in a stalemate some years ago. Rejection and subsequent depression became a norm for me. In every relationship, another woman was chosen over me or so I thought. In past relationships, I was angry, aggressive, and in some of the more extreme situations that involved cheating and blatant disrespect, I was volatile. The social rejection I endured in those failed relationships led to anger, anxiety, depression, sadness, and even jealousy. I used to think that romantic relationships were a competition where only the most attractive or those with more to offer were partnered up first while the rest of us were resigned to a life of loneliness.

I was born in Henderson, North Carolina. I am an only child to my parents. My mother told my father that the only way she would have sex with him was if he married her. My parents married when my mother was 18 years old, and my father was 23. My mother described my father as a cheater when they were together. He was a semi-pro baseball player, and she said women had a natural affinity toward him. My mother tells the story of how she was miserable during her pregnancy because he cheated the whole time. His cheating forced her to make a tough decision, so 11 days after I was born, my mother left my father and moved us to her hometown of Newark, New Jersey. After being separated for nearly a year, my mother moved back to North Carolina to try to rekindle the flame with my father, but by that time he was expecting another child by my mother’s best friend which gave me a younger sister in the process. My mother wanted to make the relationship work and went back to my dad three or four times, but resented him for what he’d done. She couldn’t bear the sight of him and didn’t even allow him to touch her. I remember one time she told me that my sister’s mother was in her house and when she got there, my father wouldn’t open the door. She busted out the windows of the house and my father had her arrested. My grandmother who lived in New Jersey at the time came to pick me up. She took me back with her while my mom stayed in North Carolina until her court date and to resolve the charges.

Once my grandmother and I returned to New Jersey, I was surrounded by family who absolutely loved me. My grandparents took me to church every Sunday and I loved to sing in the choir. My mother eventually came back to New Jersey and life seemed to be normal until she began dating a man who was physically abusive toward us. He would fight my mother in front of me and give her a black eye. I was 4 years old at the time and remember him making me get on my knees, with my hands behind my back, then beating me. I used to suck my thumb a lot and would get a blister on it from time to time, but in the midst of him hitting me with a belt, it would burst which was equally painful. When my mother saw all of this she jumped on him which then became a fight between the two of them. These events were part of a cycle where they would break up and get back together. Eventually, my mother became pregnant and gave birth to my younger sister.

The only decent memory that I have of this man is being taught how to do multiplication. I hated when my mother left me with him, and I am sure that my frustration was expressed in some manner; most likely vocally. I had a very smart mouth (still do today), and must have said something, even as a 4-year-old child, that triggered him because he smacked me very hard across my face. I would see cocaine around his nose while he