Reading My Own Chapter | Djemilah Birnie: Discovering Potential During Darkness | The Great Conquest

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Hello divine souls, Jamila Bernie here with becoming the big me. I'm so excited for this special segment of the becoming the big me podcast. This section of the podcast is dedicated towards sharing the stories of conquest for some incredible individuals. They are also featured in my latest book, becoming the big the great conquest. In this section of the podcast, we will dive deep in into each of their stories and their journeys and their hardships from addiction, PTSD, loss of loved ones and children. This segment of the podcast is dedicated towards sharing their stories and in sharing their journeys not only of the hardships but sharing how they overcame. To learn more about the authors behind the stories that you are going to hear, go to the Great conquest.com. And if you would like to purchase a copy of the great conquest book, you can go to bit.li/greatconquestandwithoutfurtherado. Let's dive into the amazing journeys. Hello, hello, welcome back to the becoming the big me Podcast. I'm so happy to have you here. You guys, today is a another episode of The Great conquests section project that I have been working on. And today, I'm actually going to be reading you guys, my chapter. And I have been putting off reading this chapter a little bit, just because I have not yet read my chapter out loud. So this is an experience and I'm happy to have you guys here, I'm happy to have you along for the ride. So first section, something missing. My life has been a series of just putting one foot in front of the other. I never expected to be where I am today. Heck, I never expected to be writing this book. Yet life has a funny way of conspiring for us if we allow it to my entrepreneurial journey was not typical. Yet, it really isn't that different from many families working hard to provide for their children, all across the world. I always tell people that for me, entrepreneurship was a do or die type of situation. I was in a situation where I truly wasn't going anywhere. And I wasn't going anywhere fast. I grew up in a situation that I feel many people can relate to. I grew up in a split household. The only memories I have of my parents together are pictures. I mean, you know, together together, my parents were divorced, and I was stuck in the middle. Now I didn't have the emotional capacity to understand things that I from my perspective now. But as a child, I felt extremely trapped, isolated and to blame. I dealt with the thing so common in Split households, you know, unintentionally being used as a pawn between my parents never feeling like I was in the right place. Because someone was always upset. I felt responsibility for all of my parents stuff. And I had no clue how to give them both what they needed. Due to this, I ended up bouncing back and forth between households a lot. In addition to my parents being divorced, they both moved quite a bit. So I never really built strong emotional attachments to others, the way I saw my peers do. I was the girl who was friends with everyone. Yet friends with no one at the same time.

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I always felt like something was missing. A sense of connection, attachment, and belonging. That is what I so desired. In addition to missing the connection from my peers from moving around a lot, I missed the connection of my family. I didn't feel like I belonged in either of my parents households because no matter whose house I was in, I was making someone upset. Or at least that is the responsibility that I placed upon myself as a child. At the end of the day, I ended up making many choices not because of my wants or desires, but because of the adults around me. So when I was 13 years old, and I got introduced to drugs and alcohol, I was hooked. Looking back at it now. That is how I found connection with other people. That's how I made friends. No matter what city or town I was in. If I waited for the class bell to ring lurked in the shadows, and found others hidden in the darkness, I could always find the kids that I could connect with instantly. Now, what I understand now is trauma bonding and group self medicating as a teen girl who never felt she had a place. That's how I found that connection. So that is when the drug use started slipping deeper. It began with your average high school party drugs, you know, drinking, that sort of thing. But after my skiing accident after I broke my femur, and lost the one thing that truly brought me happiness, joy and connection in a positive way. Well, I slipped off the deep end. Now I was an incredible skier like I could have very well gone pro. I had multiple titles and competed in some of the most difficult skiing disciplines, big mountain, extreme skiing, and ski Aircross. When I broke my femur, coming off of a season where I had just won a Junior World Tour, at the age of 14, I allowed it to break me. They give you some pretty powerful drugs when you break a bone, especially when it's your femur. But those drugs didn't last for my appetite. I slipped deeper, I allowed the darkness to utterly consumed me, I lost all hope. I lost all desire for life. I lost all of my self worth. And I allowed that injury to beat me. You know, they're athletes that come off of injuries all of the time, and they get back up, and then keep going. Looking back at it now, I have to face the reality of the situation. I allowed myself to become a victim of my circumstances. Now, it wasn't my fault. I didn't know better or have the emotional capacity to understand this at the time. But it is true. I allowed my injury to end that ski dream. In fact, one of the kids that I used to skew it and Blunck has experienced way more intense injuries over the course of his career. And he's still skinned and still competing. He represented the US at the Olympics and competes at the X Games, and has been in multiple ski films. I mean, just google him to find out. He had full body injuries that he pushed past. However, I did not bounce back. I slipped deeper and deeper and deeper. Until I found myself to the point where I was using heroin intravenously and sleeping in a tent on a property with many older humans. I was a young 17 year old girl living with this adult men drug addicts. I was going nowhere fast. Then I found out I was pregnant. I need for a change. I found out that I was pregnant when I was 17 years old. I had no clue what to do. I had been using for so long that I didn't have a regular period. So I didn't find out that I was pregnant right away. My first instinct was to get rid of the child. How could I handle this? When I couldn't handle my own life I found myself asking.

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It wasn't until I was on the phone with the place to schedule the abortion that I heard this voice. Now. You can call it whatever you want to. But I'm going to call it divine intervention. This voice told me I've given you this gift and you want to throw it away. If you choose

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to throw away this gift, you're choosing to throw away your life. I hung up the phone immediately. I wasn't sure what I was going to do. But I knew that I needed to do something. To be honest, I was pissed. I didn't want to change. I was like damn it okay.

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I guess I have to get sober. I guess I have to do what I need to to figure this out. So begrudgingly if we're being honest, I sought out help. I went to the state I was able to enroll in a school for troubled teens or kids with unique situations such as mine. It was very important to me that I finished my degree and do that, before my baby was born. I wanted to be able to tell her that she needed to go to school, and actually have a leg to stand on when she became older. This school truly became the greatest blessing for me, really, the start of something new, I was pretty behind. So I was not sure I was going to be able to catch up my school and time to graduate before I had my baby. I had to somehow do almost two years of school in less than six months. Thankfully, due to this being an alternative school, they've provided many opportunities to make up the credits, and you know, the required coursework. And the greatest blessing that this school brought to me, however, was the ability to make my final project, something that could actually benefit me in the future going forward. I was a bit terrified, I'm not going to lie, I had no clue how I was going to make this whole mother thing. Motherhood thing work, I had no clue how I was going to support us as a single mother. However, there was something inside of me that just cannot describe something inside of me that continue to push me forward and told me that there was greater things for us in this world. One thing that I was terrified of was becoming caught in the system. I saw it all around me. It's just historically speaking as a teen single, recently sober mother, the odds were not in my favor. And this terrified me. I didn't want that. I wasn't sure what I wanted. But I did know that I didn't want that. The other thing that I knew, that I wanted was to be able to spend that first year at home with my daughter, so that we could build that initial bond and foster the breastfeeding relationship. These are all of the things that were rattling through my head, when I made the decision to keep my baby. I have always been an all in or an all out type of human. This wasn't any different. I chose to call it go all in on my baby. And I chose to go all in on myself. It didn't take me long to come to the conclusion that starting a business that I could do from home, while raising my child was my best bet. Thank you to my independent mother, who has always showed me this path, by the way. So what this school did is they allowed me to start something new in a safe environment. I asked them if I could start a business for my senior project. And you know what they said? He said yes, that yes, changed my life, that school and those teachers having faith in me, man, that was huge for me. So for my senior project, I built a crochet business, I did all the research, made a business plan, you know, walk through the steps. And then I created a bunch of inventory at this moment in my life. I didn't have money for well, anything. So I had to be creative. I got a lot of yarn for free or the cheap stuff at Walmart and I put my you know, put in my blood, sweat and tears got to work. My grandmother had taught me how to crochet as a young girl so I was able to use that skill and turn it into something valuable. I built an inventory and how to bake sale I sold to everyone I met I sold to my teachers and the girls in my class to the moms in my in my mom's groups. I knew that the crochet thing wasn't going to be the final business but I saw how I can use it as a stepping stone

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to get there. Slowly selling my items building profit, reinvesting into slightly better materials, and so on. opening my eyes to opportunity I began to look for opportunities everywhere I went, I had to act quickly. This baby was well on her way I needed to build now, I was also very newly sober and on a quest for knowledge about motherhood. I went to every class I could anything that would help me to prepare for what was to come. As I did this, my mind settled on a final product, cloth diapers, I was going to make custom cloth diapers with high end materials. And I knew it would be successful. Just based on the chatter in the moms groups that I was in. There was only one problem. I did not know how to sew. Yet something that I have learned in this life is that often the greatest obstacles are those of our minds. Many times, if we just take the next logical step forward, we can get past it. So that's what I did. And I taught myself how to sew mostly via YouTube on an old sewing machine, like kind of worked. I drafted patterns and gave them to moms in the community and to test until I had it just right. One thing led to another and I built snuggly buds, cloth diapers to high end diaper business selling all over the US, Australia, Canada, etc. I mean, I was making these $5,250 works of art for people's children to poop in, had I not allowed myself to open my eyes. I never could have done that. I had a desire, so big and alive, so big for this tiny human, I was so grateful to have a part of my life that I was and am willing to get up time and time again. The thing is, no one would have blamed me if I failed. Life has thrown me around, and no one would have blamed me for giving in or staying stuck. And not just in this story. I have 1000 More of these stories I could tell you from my journey, where I could have allowed life to stop me a reason behind it all? Is there a reason behind it all? All of the messes, all of the obstacles, all of the struggles? To be quite honest with you. I'm not sure I cannot answer that question for you. However, I can tell you this in my life, there has been an extreme power that I have been able to pull from my adversities, a power beyond one that I can comprehend. Because of my beginning to business being so challenging, I had to learn skills. The many had the luxury to not learn. I had no money, like zero. Nada, I had to pull it out of thin air at every step of the way. I learned to analyze systems and businesses and how to optimize everything. As I couldn't afford to lose money. I was the marketer creative shipping and handling customer support and everything for that business. So I had to learn many skills, skills that have taken me to where I am today, skills that have enabled me to help other people and other businesses in a way that many people cannot. During my addiction I experience things and saw things no one should ever have to see. And I pull from that darkness constantly. I allow it to fuel me. I allow myself to get angry, so that I can remember who I am here to serve. This personal experience also allows me to relate to the people that I truly want to help in such a deeper way. Personally, in my life, once I removed myself from the mess, I realized that maybe just maybe this mess was there for a reason. Maybe it is what led me here

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final thoughts we all go through through things everyone experiences darkness in their own ways. I think it is important to remember this as it allows us to have compassion for our fellow humans. Number two, we are more powerful than we know the power of our minds the power of a decision and the power of our beliefs. Whilst we can do amazing things, I think many of us have just cut ourselves off from the possibilities. We allow the voices those that say we can't become the rulers of our lives. Number three, you already know what you need to do. You just need to tune in and listen. You need to find your own voice of guidance you need to find your own big me the voice of love and understanding the voice that truly resonates with your soul. Phil, that's chapter five. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The becoming the big me podcast

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thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of The becoming the big money podcast. I know that you found value in hearing this story today. And I would love if you could show your support by going and grabbing a copy of our book and you can do so by going to bit.li/greatconquestyoucanalsogotowww.thegreatconquest.comformoreinformationabouteachoftheindividualsinvolvedinthisprocessthanksagainfortuningin