Life, I Swear: Recent Episodes
Chloe Dulce Louvouezo
Hosted by Chloe Dulce Louvouezo, Life, I Swear shares reflections from Black women about trials in their lives that have helped them heal, connect and process. A continuation of her published book, Chloe shares conversations and personal prose centered on personal stories that offer insights told through the lens of Black women.
Jas Moon is an Aquarian Entrepreneur and champions others to be too—to embed practices that support the holistic wellbeing of themselves & their customers into their mission driven businesses.
Links:
- Connect with Jas Moon on Instagram @jasofmoon
- Follow The Aquarian Entrepreneur on Instagram @theaquarianentrepreneur
- Purchase the book (Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust)
- Learn more about host, Chloe Dulce Louvouezo, and her work
- Visit the Life, I Swear Podcast website
- Connect on Instagram @lifeiswear
This week I welcome Carmen Harris into conversation, a visionary, healer, and co-founder of Two Inches Beyond Black. This episode is an offering, a meditation, a call to come back into yourself an invitation to breathe.
Links:
- Connect with Carmen Harris on Instagram @carmendharris
- Purchase the book (Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust)
- Learn more about host, Chloe Dulce Louvouezo, and her work
- Visit the Life, I Swear Podcast website
- Connect on Instagram @lifeiswear
In this episode, we have DaTiana Guerrero, a doula and care consultant. We talk postpartum and the recurring familiarity that arises in life in different seasons between birthing and grieving.
Links:
- Connect with DaTiana Guerrero on Instagram @datianaguerrero
- Purchase the book (Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust)
- Learn more about host, Chloe Dulce Louvouezo, and her work
- Visit the Life, I Swear Podcast website
- Connect on Instagram @lifeiswear
Imani is the founder of HURU, which creates sacred spaces for vast experiences that foster emotional well-being and wholeness. LaTonia is the founder of Adjourn Teahouse, which is the product that brings the practice of rest into our daily rituals.
Imani Samuels and LaTonya Cokeley, both visionaries who truly understand and I believe embody the power and the gift of sisterhood, rest, grace, and authenticity, share the mic to be in conversation, as the friends who they are to talk about rest, Afro-futurism and liberation.
Links:
- Connect with Imani Sanders on Instagram @imanijoye
- Connect with Adjourn Teahouse on Instagram @adjournteahouse
- Visit Adjourn Teahouse’s website
- Visit HURU’s website
- Purchase the book (Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust)
- Learn more about host, Chloe Dulce Louvouezo, and her work
- Visit the Life, I Swear Podcast website
- Connect on Instagram @lifeiswear
In this episode, we have Marisa Renee Lee, author of Grief is Love. We unpack grief, moving away from the limited definition society has of it to the expansive journey it can be.
Links:
- Connect with Marisa Renee Lee on Instagram @marisareneelee
- Visit the Maria Renee Lee’s website
- Purchase the book: Grief is Love
- Purchase the book (Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust)
- Learn more about host, Chloe Dulce Louvouezo, and her work
- Visit the Life, I Swear Podcast website
- Connect on Instagram @lifeiswear
We are back! After a summer and fall hiatus, we are back with season SIX. Chloe starts this season with lessons on discernment, a gift of community, and an invitation to join the conversations.
Chloe closes season five with three questions for listeners.
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Fitbeads is a self-love platform centered around waist beads and their ability to uplift, enrich, and encourage self-care. They cultivate conversations around culture, history, and meaning, while also creating spaces for personal connection and self-discovery.
- Follow Fitbeads on Instagram @fitbeads.co
- Visit Fitbead’s website (use code LIFEISWEAR20 to get 20% off your first purchas)
- Explore ways to give to The Loveland Foundation
- Purchase the book (Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust)
- Learn more about host, Chloe Dulce Louvouezo, and her work
- Visit the Life, I Swear Podcast website
- Connect on Instagram @lifeiswear
In this episode, Chloe speaks to Kenda Fields, content strategist, about the power of second changes, her history in sisterhood, and the mysteries, divisions, and unity that decorate our family experiences. She speaks about the vulnerability required to move past her fear and through her own healing.
Links:
- Connect with Kenda Fields on Instagram @kendaelisefields
- Visit Kenda’s website
- Explore ways to give to The Loveland Foundation
- Purchase the book (Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust)
- Learn more about host, Chloe Dulce Louvouezo, and her work
- Visit the Life, I Swear Podcast website
- Connect on Instagram @lifeiswear
I chat with Hannah Tall, Director of Programs at The Loveland Foundation. Hannah begins by sharing the excess of love and the access to love that she learned was possible through her mother. We also go on to talk about what and who got her here as a village child. Follow The Loveland Foundation's work on social channels because the community care they offer, like mothering, is the nurturing we all need.
Links:
- Follow The Loveland Foundation on Instagram @thelovelandfoundation
- Explore ways to give to The Loveland Foundation
- Purchase the book (Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust)
- Learn more about host, Chloe Dulce Louvouezo, and her work
- Visit the Life, I Swear Podcast website
- Connect on Instagram @lifeiswear
I chat with Lyn Patterson, poet and artist, about her life story. We chat about overcoming trauma through poetry, shifting dynamics of family, accepting your wild, and awareness of "how we consume life, or how it consumes us if we aren't careful."
Links:
- Connect with LynPatterson on Instagram @poetryntings
- Explore ways to give to The Loveland Foundation
- Purchase the book (Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust)
- Learn more about host, Chloe Dulce Louvouezo, and her work
- Visit the Life, I Swear Podcast website
- Connect on Instagram @lifeiswear
In this episode, Chloe speaks with Omó Pastor, writer, photographer and filmmaker who uses these artistic mediums to heal, to empower and to express the reality of African people across the globe. In this conversation, Omó Pastor shares her recent work around Black male masculinity.
Links:
- Connect with Omó Pastor on Instagram @omopastorr
- Visit Omó Pastor’s website
- Explore ways to give to The Loveland Foundation
- Purchase the book (Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust)
- Learn more about host, Chloe Dulce Louvouezo, and her work
- Visit the Life, I Swear Podcast website
- Connect on Instagram @lifeiswear
Chloe speaks with her best friend Adriana Parrish about the experience of telling her story for the first time. Adriana was a contributor to the Life, I Swear book, where she chronicled her experience of losing her mother and navigating life without her.
Links:
- Connect with Adriana Parrish on Instagram @adrianamparrish
- Explore ways to give to The Loveland Foundation
- Purchase the book (Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust)
- Learn more about host, Chloe Dulce Louvouezo, and her work
- Visit the Life, I Swear Podcast website
- Connect on Instagram @lifeiswear
In this episode, I chat with Renae Bluitt, filmmaker and advocate for Black women entrepreneur’s narratives, and Creator and Executive Producer of the Netflix documentary “She Did That.” We talk about what calls us to be passionate about telling other Black womens' stories, negotiating balance in our lives, and the invitation of new seasons and locations as she talks of loving and leaving New York.
Links:
- Connect with Renae Bluitt on Instagram @iamrenaebluitt
- Visit Renae’s website
- Listen to Renae’s podcast: She Did That
- Explore ways to give to The Loveland Foundation
- Purchase the book (Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust)
- Learn more about host, Chloe Dulce Louvouezo, and her work
- Visit the Life, I Swear Podcast website
- Connect on Instagram @lifeiswear
Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah, Ghanaian feminist activist, award-winning blogger, and author sits down with Salem Afangideh, lawyer, consultant and sexuality anthropologist. They talk about Nana’s book “The Sex Lives of African Women”, self-agency, the ideologies that influence our assumptions or judgements around sex, and the perspectives of anthropology and feminism respectively. (Note: FGM mentioned in this episode is an acronym for female genital mutilation)
Links:
- Purchase The Sex Lives of African Women by Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah
- Learn about the work of Salem Afangideh
- Connect with Nana on Instagram @dfordarkoa
- Connect with Salem on Instagram @salem_afangideh
- Explore ways to give to The Loveland Foundation
- Purchase the book (Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust)
- Learn more about host, Chloe Dulce Louvouezo, and her work
- Visit the Life, I Swear Podcast website
- Connect on Instagram @lifeiswear
In this second episode, I have with me Brandie Freely, founder of LUMIN Magazine and The Escapism Retreat. We talk about light—how we follow it, how truth helps us keep it going, and how the path to it looks different for each of us. Plus, the power of breaking rules.
Links:
- Connect with Brandie Freely on Instagram @brandiefreely
- Follow Lumin Magazine on Instagram @luminmagazine
- Visit the LUMIN Magazine website
- Explore ways to give to The Loveland Foundation
- Purchase the book (Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust)
- Learn more about host, Chloe Dulce Louvouezo, and her work
- Visit the Life, I Swear Podcast website
- Connect on Instagram @lifeiswear
Welcome to season five of the Life, I Swear podcast! In this episode, Chloe starts the season with a few words of her own on this journey, this season, and the reflections she's been having lately, answering the question: what do we do with that freedom from our pasts? How do we leverage our new perspectives? How can we share these new versions of ourselves? How can we expand, evolve, and seize our newest revelations of self to carry us into new levels?
Links:
- Purchase the book (Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust)
- Learn more about host, Chloe Dulce Louvouezo, and her work
- Visit the Life, I Swear Podcast website
- Connect on Instagram @lifeiswear
Teri Ellen Cross Davis is a phenomenal poet and author of A More Perfect Union (Ohio State University Press, 2021) and Haint (Gival Press, 2016). She is also the Poetry Coordinator for the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. In this season four finale, Teri talks about the desire she has for the country to create a more perfect union for Black women.
Since 1968, the Folger's poetry reading series has brought hundreds of distinguished poets to read from their work on stage. A new Virtual Poetry Writing Workshop, titled Shakespeare's Sisters: Say Her Name, will be led by poet and Folger Poetry Coordinator Teri Cross Davis and poet and author Kim Roberts. This workshop explores the poetry of Black women in America, encouraging workshop participants to write responses to esteemed poets of the contemporary moment. The workshop will be offered in two 4-week sessions and course will run virtually on Wednesdays from 5-7pm ET, now through December 1, 2021.
{Pre-order a copy of Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust. Visit www.chloelouvouezo.com}
Natalie Obando, president of the Women’s National Book Association, talks about the organization’s Authentic Voices program, which introduces women writers to publishing through four weeks of writing, editing, marketing, and publication. She also covers the resources writers need to do share their stories as published works, and the affirmation women of color need to believe that their stories matter and deserve to be shared more broadly. Visit www.wnba-book.org.
{Pre-order a copy of Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust. Visit www.chloelouvouezo.com}
Courtney Phillips, co-founder of Gumbo Media and Gumbo Fit chats about her journey to creative entrepreneurship, how she’s encouraging Black people to define success differently, and what she needs to stay creatively inspired and focused. {Pre-order a copy of Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust. Visit www.chloelouvouezo.com}
Brianne Patrice breaks down for us how she sees sexuality, sensuality, and spirituality mastering their own lane but also overlapping--and when they do, this is the wholeness we speak of.
{Pre-order a copy of Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust. Visit www.chloelouvouezo.com}
In this episode, Cassandra Lane shares the journey of her book and the truths she’s discovered in the process, including how her intentional parenting has focused with the ancestral blueprint she’s unearthed.
{Pre-order a copy of Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust. Visit www.chloelouvouezo.com}
In this episode, Aqueene Wilson shares her journey of migrating from the Caribbean to the Netherlands, the transition from Black to white spaces, how the lack of representation impacted her as an artist, and what freedom of the Black body means to her.
Credits:
Interlude poem from Where are the black bodies dancing?
Title: An ode to black bodies in bloom.
Episode: Resistance in bloom
Written and performed by Aqueene Wilson
{Pre-order a copy of Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust. Visit www.chloelouvouezo.com}
Yasmine Cheyenne talks about racism in some predominately white healing spaces, her previous work in the military, and how all of that has led her to create her own community focused on self-healing, plus how the practice is both distinctive and necessary, particularly for Black people.
{Pre-order a copy of Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust. Visit www.chloelouvouezo.com}
In this episode, Dr. Leslie Nwoke talks about the gap between understanding how to live more intentionally in theory vs in practice and how to close it, the gap in traditional medicine vs. holistic approaches to healing, and bringing restorative healing back to the continent of Africa.
{Pre-order a copy of Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust. Visit www.chloelouvouezo.com}
An intro to the fourth season, on abundance mindset and learning from our shared wisdom while managing our worry.
{Pre-order a copy of Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust. Visit www.chloelouvouezo.com}
Season three finale with finals words from Life, I Swear host, Chloe Dulce Louvouezo {Pre-order a copy of Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/life-i-swear-chloe-dulce-louvouezo}
In this episode, Morgan Harper Nichols shares how for years she used art and writing to cope with her journey of unknowingly living with Autism for much of her life. Her new book, Har Far You Have Come, releases April 27, 2021. {Pre-order a copy of Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/life-i-swear-chloe-dulce-louvouezo}
Salem Afangideh, a lawyer and sexual anthropologist, shares her experience navigating sexuality as a Nigerian-American and the intersection of spirituality and sexuality. {Pre-order a copy of Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/life-i-swear-chloe-dulce-louvouezo}
We talk about the connections we have with our mothers, despite the nature of our relationships with them; the decision to love from afar; and what forgiveness can look like, as we get older and are able to humanize our mothers more.
In this episode, we talk about our right to tell our stories of love endings, the importance of understanding our intentions and expectations for marriage without romanticizing the idea of it, and the possibility of healthy decoupling.
After a near-fatal car accident, Dr. Kristan Edwards shares how her relationship with self has deepened and how she now thinks about motherhood, sacrifice, accountability, and love.
Imani Joye Sanders is founder of HURU, a restorative, sacred space in DC that offers a thoughtful experience curated to harvest clarity, discovery and affirmation through rest. In light of International Day of Happiness, I chat with Imani about the relationship between rest and joy, rest and freedom, rest and international peace-building, and how to cultivate more of it in our lives.
Doriana Diaz, writer and creator of The Diaz Collection, shares a reading from her book, Mami Calls Me Gabriella, and talks about her trip to Puerto Rico to meet her birth mother for the first time helped her better understand herself, her family, and her identity. Eniafe Isis, writer and created of All Her Words, also shares why she was drawn to Doriana’s story and how writing has been her own tool for healing.
Luvvie introduces her new book, The Professional Troublemaker. We also talk about fearlessness, the work it takes to get back to ourselves, what it means to betray ourselves, how to recognize when fear shows up, and knowing what you do when it does.
Simi Muhumuza (of Simi Moonlight) talks about the desirability training we receive as a young girls, what intimacy and discovery can look like in relationships, and how love, above all else, is a tool for survival.
Felicia and I talk about how partnership supported her grief, how she herself has grown since her daughter’s double transition, and what radical gentleness means to her.
Happy Valentine’s Day! Season 3 kick-off with a compilation of women who share how they define love and show up for it.
A 2020 wrap up with takeaways by Danasia Fantastic, creator of The Urban Realist, plus some special news about what’s ahead for Life, I Swear in 2021.
Orixa, founder of Bad Girl, Good Human joins me to talk about giving women permission to embrace their dualities, as well as grief, heartbreak and the time sensitivity of life and love.
In this episode Meryanne Loum-Martin, owner of the Marrakech luxury hotel Jnane Tamsna, shares her journey of taking a chance in a land and a dream unknown, what is required of her to assert her voice in a male dominated world, and her connectedness to America’s history of race through her ancestors stories of aspiration.
Morgan Ashley, co-founder of The Bohemian Brands, is a creative, a curator of other creatives, an Atlanta loving Oakland native and a self-proclaimed extrovert—one with a voice of her own that took years to regain after it had been taken from her.
Dydine is an author of her memoire “Embracing Survival” which tells the story of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide through the eyes of her as a four- year-old-child. In this episode we talk about healing after trauma, the generational differences in the country, and moving forward with grace.
This week, Lili Lopez, an artist and the creative behind the Undone Project, sits down with me to share her story of how her American dream turned into a nightmare.
In this episode Toni McCord and Sharday Dufresne share their incredible stories of growing up Black while being raised by their adopted white parents in predominantly white communities. Each of them share their unique experiences of what it was like to receive love at home but enter the world in confusion about their race and belonging. Their stories personify what is it like to live in a world that doesn't feel your own as an outlier trying to identify your roots and your sense of self.
Latham Thomas, founder of mama glow, a global maternity education organization that leads game-changing doula training, joins us to talk about the prevalence of black maternal health disparities and how we can reclaim the narrative and our joy around the birth experience.
In this episode, Abena Boamah-Acheampong, founder of Hanahana Beauty, shares her journey, why it’s important to examine how systems meant for our wellness and well-being miss the mark, and how we can redefine them in our own ways.
In this conversation with Eniafe Isis, we talk about language, race, labels and how together, they heavily influence the eloquence or the challenge in how we speak love into ourselves and how we believe in ourselves.
In this episode, Lindsey Farrar, founder of CRWN Mag, shares her journey to starting the Black women’s publication, how she covered her vision with faith, and what legacy means to her. We talk about ownership versus representation and how to stay on your game in creative entrepreneurship.
Lauren is a wellness visionary, yoga and meditation guide and founder of Black Girl in Om. She has incredible clarity in her purpose: to expand the consciousness of women of color. Since this pandemic, Lauren’s been called to return to her hometown of Minneapolis to explore her own own healing through ancestral connection. In this episode, we talk about what it’s like returning home when our sense of home shifts, taking time to nurture our own healing in this era of Black Lives Matter, and how cultivating relationships with our ancestors can help us both understand ourselves and stop cycles of generational trauma.
Closing remarks from podcast host on the intention of the show, why these conversations matter, and a special something to leave you with.
In this episode, we’re talking about love, decoupling and maintaining our sense of self through both. The conversation features Kalkidan Gebreyohannes, an Oakland based boutique owner of Alyce on Grand, a designer, and a mother of three.
In our quest for love, what are the best ways to put love for self first? What are the patterns that keep us from surrendering? And are emotional intimacy and vulnerability interchangeable?
Shay Jiles is an influential mommy blogger and entrepreneur. Her lifestyle and kids fashion blog, The Prince and the P, documents the experiences of her beautiful family of very dope human beings. Through her journey, Shay has been transparent about her challenges coping with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and anxiety and how it has interfered with her self-confidence and focus, all while she’s managed a growing family brand. Today’s table topic: How can we thrive day-to-day when our mental health jeopardizes and distracts from our sense of self?
Josefina Sanders is a writer and an art therapist. Josefina specializes in the beauty of self-care and art. Her life's work, she says, is to create fearlessly, cultivate community, and celebrate the journey of life.
She has openly shared her journey through grief after the loss of a pregnancy, an experience that is hard to understand, whether it is your own womb or whether you are supporting as a friend or partner. In this episode, Josefina and I chat about the loss of pregnancy, mental illness, and the impact both had on her marriage and self-acceptance.
Julee Wilson is the Beauty Director at Cosmopolitan Magazine. Julee has worked in media her entire career and has made a true dent in the industry. But as with so many of us, her success has come at a cost in terms of balancing her ambitions with motherhood, being present for her family, and prioritizing her own well-being. One way she fights through each day is by setting intentions.
How do you weave intentionality into your holistic self-confidence? And in spite of worry, how do you reconcile living through the fragility of life while also trying to live in faith?
Yrsa is of mixed West Indian and West African heritage. Born to a Jamaican mother and a Nigerian father, Yrsa was raised by her devout Seventh Day Adventist grandparents in the small town of Chorley in the North of England. She is a writer and poet, whose words drip off of your lips.
In this episode we talk about what it means to let go of old narratives and the importance of interpreting the terrible events in our lives as beautiful texture of our stories.
Nneka is an ambassador of the world. Her and I share a few special loves--of culture, of photography, and of the neverending exploration of stories. Nneka is also a writer and a photographer--tools she’s used to create what she calls an archive of understanding. Half Cambodian, half Nigerian, Nneka was raised by two parents who were survivors of genocide.
In our chat, we talk about what it’s like being Third Culture Kids, how that translates into our experiences in the United States and abroad, and how the black experience takes shape in different global contexts.
Wayetu Moore is a Liberian-American author and social entrepreneur. Her writing can be found in The New York Times and The Atlantic, among others. On June 2, she releases her second book and memoir, The Dragons, The Giant, The Women.
In this episode, Wayetu talks about her initial resistance to writing a story about the war in Liberia and how that changed, as she understood her own role in rewriting history. We also discuss how cultural exposure and a binary existence influence our world views.
Alex Elle is an author, poet and wellness consultant who specializes in self-care. She teaches workshops and retreats that help others in finding their voices through storytelling, poetry, and narrative writing rooted in truth without shame.
In this episode, I chat with Alex about putting self and self-trust first, so that we can stay close to our truth as we author our lives.
Elaine Welteroth is a New York Times bestselling author, award-winning journalist and judge on Project Runway. Many of you may know her for her groundbreaking work at the helm of Teen Vogue where in 2017 she was appointed the youngest Editor-in-Chief at a Conde Nast publication. Her debut book More Than Enough, released last summer, explores what it means to come into your own--on your own terms.
Today we’re talking about the spectrum of betweenness, navigating both black and white worlds, and how that journey has laid the foundation for her identity, community and life’s work.
Today we’re joined by Bronx-native Qimmah Saafir. Qimmah is the creator of self-published HANNAH, an independent journal that celebrates and provides safe spaces for Black women. She’s on a mission to carve out inclusive spaces across media and to create platforms that showcase the diversity and influence of Black women.
In this episode, Qimmah and I chat about the 4th trimester after birth and its impact on mothers’ identities, needs, and ongoing self-discovery.
Deun Ivory has no shortage of creativity; she is a traveling wellness creative, inspirational speaker, influencer and multidisciplinary artist whose works centers and celebrates black women through visual storytelling.
In this first episode, I spoke to Deun specifically around the work of her nonprofit called the body: a home for love, a wellness and healing space for black women who are survivors of sexual assault. Deun gives others permission to heal from trauma through joy and reclaiming our bodies as homes for love.
This episode contains explicit content and is not suitable for children.
Welcome to Life, I Swear, the podcast. We share stories and reflections from black women about trials in their lives that have helped them heal, connect and process. Every week, we hold space for storytelling that both challenges and inspires us to be good to ourselves.