Expect The Unexpected: 1 Year Of The Podcast

I Hope This Helps, The Podcast, Podcast Shownotes

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Every week, I share stories, lessons, encouragement, and practical healing and growth practices from my life and work with others.

Hey Beloved, I'm Nakeia

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“One year from now can look completely different.”

Today marks one year of I Hope This Helps The Podcast.

Can you believe it?

This podcast is named after the book I Hope This Helps, which was published during one of the worst years of my life. That was a radical act of healing for me. Writing the book, self-publishing it, and putting it out into the world.

I didn’t set out to be an author, just like I didn’t set out to be a podcaster, but I have been following my path. I’ve been obedient to my calling and my purpose, and here we are… All of this happened unexpectedly.

The book I started years ago in response to everyone saying that I should be an author. That book was on my hard drive for years. I started it. It sat there, untouched, for about seven years before I went to publish it. I had the name. I even had my beloved Syreena, who designed my first website, design the cover. And I had an intro that didn’t make the final cut. But during that time, when I could not sleep due to grief, anger, anxiety, and fear, I would pull out my laptop and write some of my thoughts, some of the lessons I had learned that year and in previous years, some of the interactions I’ve had with clients and people that I have guided along the way, and some prayers. And other things started happening during that year. I started seeing more clients virtually. People from all over the world started signing up to chat with me for an hour every week. They enrolled in my 12-week programs. It was an amazing time for us. I closed the door to my copywriting business and started writing for myself more. I started posting my words on social media. My Instagram page was actually private, and I opened it up and made it public. I started hosting daily live chats.

I began sharing some of the things I was writing, and they started going viral. We’re talking millions of shares and a couple of hundred followers. I started becoming more forward-facing and creating a public brand for myself. By October of 2020, I had enough pages on that laptop to complete a book. But I set out to publish it just for my siblings and cousins. We had lost so many people we loved and were experiencing some difficulty among the family. And so I was determined. 2020 was not going to be the worst year of my life. I intended to publish a book to send to my family. I thought, “At least I will have accomplished this thing.” This thing that everyone had asked me for for years.

It still wasn’t about being an author. It was about sharing what I thought others would resonate with. And I started getting emails and DMs from people who were impacted by my words. I always knew that sharing what was on my heart was part of my purpose. But I was okay doing that as a speaker, emcee, and guiding my one-on-one clients. I didn’t foresee the level of impact my words would have.

Two encounters in particular really set things in motion. One person said that they were so depressed that they even attempted suicide several times, and my words inspired them to start writing their own words in a journal. Writing became a way they healed. They were healing because of my words. So I started to share more.

Another person said they were embarrassed and ashamed of their life story, where they came from, who they were, and who their family was until they saw me talking about where I was from. My story of being a Black girl from the projects with teenage parents, growing up in a house that was essentially a crack house, struggling with anxiety and depression, having all of the things that I’ve experienced in my life be things that could have statistically stopped me from showing up the way that I have… It helped them see their own story differently. They wrote, “I want to own my own narrative. I want to tell a different story.” Witnessing me tell my story and own my narrative changed the course of their life. I said, Okay, this is another example. This is another piece of confirmation that it is bigger than me. It is bigger than what I have already done. And I need to take this to the next level. So I decided to make the book available to everyone.

*Listen to the full episode to hear a fun fact about my self-publishing experience.

I published I Hope This Helps in November of 2020, and that book changed my life. It changed my life.

I published my book, and 10,000 copies were sold. To give this some context, the average self-published book sells fewer than 250 copies over its entire lifetime, and roughly 90% of self-published titles sell fewer than 100 copies. I looked all of this up before I published because I wanted to see what I was working with. One to ten copies are sold for a typical debut—but I Hope This Helps, my very first self-published book, became a success.

That led to me gaining hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. That led to my membership. That led to my monthly classes. That led to our g;obal community. All was made possible because I decided to heal—because I decided that I didn’t want that to be the worst year of my life. Six years later, I Hope This Helps, the book, continues to outsell the average or typical self-published book every single month.

Lessons From The Unexpecated

The book taught me some things, both personally and professionally:

Expect the unexpected.

It taught me not to limit myself to what I knew, who I was, or what I had experienced.

Don’t strive to be seen, known, or popular—but to focus on impact and my own personal purpose.

Every intentional and deliberate act of healing counts.

Don’t rush, chase, or force. Allow my life to unfold naturally.

This was a natural evolution of me healing from day to day, night to night, word to word, conversation to conversation, book to book. It taught me to just allow my life to unfold as it should.

Our Podcast Community

I started I Hope This Helps The Podcast for some of the same reasons I wrote the book.

I wanted to have healing conversations about what happens between where we are and where we want to be. I wanted to share my personal experience so others could feel seen, heard, and felt. I wanted to be accountable to living out my own life’s purpose and calling—and not limit myself, not hide, and not sit comfortably on the sidelines. I wanted to share stories and guidance that would help this community continue becoming who they are meant to be. That was my goal for creating this podcast.

But guess what? It didn’t start that way. Just like I didn’t want to be an author. I didn’t necessarily want to start a podcast. But people kept asking me to start a podcast. I was having some difficulty figuring out what my next step would be in my business. So I said, I’m gonna do eight episodes. Just eight. And see where it goes. I got support before those eight episodes were even launched. And I just kept going. I kept going. I kept recording. I kept sharing. I kept thinking about how I wanted to impact this community, and here we are, one year later.

Most Popular Episode Recap

I want to share a little bit of a recap of the most popular episodes during our first year.

Ep 2: How to Handle the Worst Season of Your Life

Do you remember that episode?

I think it is one of the most popular because of how difficult life was for a lot of us during that first year that I launched the podcast. Some of the takeaways:

Feel all of your feelings. They are valid. I know people want to make you feel bad for saying, “This is the worst year.” They want you to stop complaining. “You’re lucky.” “Be grateful for what you have.” But I don’t want you to feel bad about feeling bad about a bad situation. If your life sucks, you have every right to feel bad about it. If you are depressed, you have every right to respond to what is happening in your life in a way that is not as happy and is not as content as it usually is. If you just experienced a breakup, it is okay to say that you are lonely, that your heart is broken, that you miss your ex, that you miss your life with someone you loved. You are allowed to feel all of your feelings. Every one of them is valid.

Remember the last time you thought you couldn’t do it, you couldn’t make it, you couldn’t survive, you couldn’t move forward, but then you did? Do that again.

If you are experiencing one of the worst seasons, years, months, breakups, whatever of your life, I encourage you to go back and listen.

Ep 5: Everything You Need to Know About Boundaries.

My initial title for that episode was “Boundaries Are for Family Too” because every time I have a conversation with someone about the difficulty of setting boundaries, it is with their family. They don’t have a problem setting a boundary with a friend. They don’t have a problem setting a boundary with the neighbor. They don’t have a problem setting a boundary with a coworker. But when it comes to that auntie who is always in their business… When it comes to a mom who is always talking about your weight, or when are you going to get married, or giving their input on how you raise your children, we struggle with boundaries. And so I created an episode to remind you of a few things that I have learned about boundaries. One of them being—and I want you to lean into this—boundaries are for relationships that you want to maintain.

If you want to maintain a relationship, if you want to preserve your relationships, you set boundaries. If you don’t want to preserve it, the boundary is distance. I don’t need to ask you for anything. I don’t need to tell you anything if you’re no longer in my life and I don’t care to have you in my life. That’s the ultimate boundary, right? There’s a line. Don’t ever cross it, don’t knock on it, don’t come close to it. We are through. But when you want to preserve your relationship with your mom, your auntie, your sibling, your father, or your spouse, you create ways that keep you safe and supported.

Listen to the full episode. You can also check out my book, Habits for Healing, because there is an entire chapter on the healing habit of confronting things you need to address to preserve your relationships.

Ep 3: The Truth About Healing.

Here are some takeways from that episode:

Healing is about becoming whole and aligned.

Feeling pain does not negate the healing process. Just because you are hurting, it doesn’t mean you aren’t healing. You must learn to hold multiple things at once.

And I think one of the hardest things that I learned about healing is that healing may inspire loss. As you heal, you may lose some of the people that contributed to the hurt—and just because they caused you pain doesn’t mean you won’t miss the relationship. It doesn’t mean you won’t look fondly at the good times you had and think to yourself, “I wish things were different.” It doesn’t mean that you won’t think about setting a boundary, the ultimate boundary with that person, which is distance, and not think, “Is this the right decision?”

Healing isn’t the absence of hurt—it is a healthier response to what hurt feels like. Healing isn’t the absence of struggle—it is a healthier response to struggle. Healing isn’t the absence of resistance.

It is okay not to like this season, this relationship, who you are, what you look and feel like, and still love yourself through it all. As you change those things, you heal those things.

So if you are struggling in your healing journey, you are tired of healing, you don’t like healing, I invite you to listen to The Truth About Healing.

Final Thoughts

We have had 51 conversations on this podcast.

We have checked in with each other and talked about what some people call the messy middle, and I call the meaningful middle. I have enjoyed every single conversation, every email and DM that kept this conversation going. I’ve enjoyed every single question that you submitted for our Ask Nakeia series.

The intention for this week’s episode is to remind you to expect the unexpected. Don’t limit yourself to what you know and what you have experienced. Don’t disqualify yourself because of what you’ve lived through or have yet to heal from or grow from. And don’t stop doing the work of becoming the person you are meant to be.

One year from now can look completely different. Your relationship could look different, your body could look different, your career could look different, your heart could feel different. Don’t underestimate what you can do with your life when you are intentional, when you show up every week to this podcast, take notes and go back to your life and apply what you’ve learned.

I say I hope this helps because that is really what I hope for you, beloved. I really hope that these conversations are meaningful, impactful, transformational, and thought-provoking. What I want to do with this podcast is stir up your soul. I want to send out invitations to become a better or evolved version of yourself. I want to motivate you to be the most beautiful version of yourself that you can be. Note: beautiful, not perfect, because none of us are. The goal is to live a little more aligned each day, each month, each year.

One year of I Hope This Helps the Podcast. I’m grateful, I’m excited, and I’m hopeful about what this community will look like moving forward. I don’t know where we’re going. I’m going to expect the unexpected. I’m going to continue to allow things to unfold. I’m going to remain in integrity with my purpose and my calling. And I’m going to have the conversations that are on my heart in my DMs and emails, and the ones that you submit.

So until next time, Beloved, I hope this podcast continues to help.