Relax, you're a baby mama now. I hate that term but since we know that term, let's digest it. See, marriage was there but when over, his resentment was so deep that he went from calling me "bae", "boo", "wife", and "queen", to his "baby mama".
Round one, fight.
So I'll fight for the life I so aimlessly dreamed of as a little girl. See. Barbie had me believing in Ken, and Disney had me believing in fairy tales. I skipped the part of life that taught me family is important and strong peaceful homes are what's best.
If you think for one minute that women who have children by different men are ashamed, think again. We're not. I'm part of a beautiful tribe of queens on this side of the second or third Baby Daddyville right now.
We give no energy to the nonsense, and contrary to your thoughts, aren't smashable, needy, or looking for a new father for their children. Instead, we are running companies, managing homes, buying trademarks, liberated, happy, and patiently waiting on what's good. Hiding in plain sight.
I'm a mother first, with children who I intentionally teach that our stories aren't for us to keep and that living loudly in our truths shall set us free.
After failures, adding another baby daddy to the team didn't seem so bad. It became the only solution to running and running from what felt like the cheap version of love.
Those chapters must've been practice because I was falling in love, strong-like with more than one "somebody son" before falling deeply in love with myself. I blamed love for the part of me that needed to slow down to see me. I told myself, relax girl, own your story girl, go get your peace girl, and then eventually the shift in my mindset came:
I stopped defending a man's assumptions or anyone's ignorance of a woman with multiple baby daddies and started saying, "The version of us they created in their mind isn't our responsibility."
I stopped thinking, past relationships fucked me up, and started saying, "I could have left at the first sign and been good."
I stopped staying too long in unhappiness out of fear that another woman I didn't know would be near my child and started co-parenting with acceptance, manifestation, and boundaries.
And let's not forget: I accepted sexuality with help from a woman in a payday loan store who told me straight up, "You just a fertile woman. Accept that." So I did. #Transparency.
Life has a funny way of showing you things, and with every crossroad, you have to make the best judgment that you feel and that's OK. This is a reality check for mothers with multiple baby daddies to acknowledge that we are in society's conversation and that, in turn, makes us more ridiculed for our higher standards. That's OK, too.
You'd think by now that the multiple baby daddy stigma placed on women of color would be eliminated because it assumes a woman must have character traits associated with a whore or slut, or even a careless, easy, or unworthy woman. Saying nothing about the men in this same light is weird.
How long does it take until a man removes his own blinders to find out that he experiences some shit called soul ties? Decades, right? Body count in the hundreds, right?
And no, this section is not a bashing moment. It's more like a blasting moment in that chapter that led me to lace up some shoes and walk in soles that lead to the souls tied to my own reality.
There's a deeper story behind each child I've nurtured who calls me mommy. I play no victim here. A mother of three by three, with our different last names sounding like a variety of flavors---my children and I eat this journey up.
Listening to the judgments of men and fake friends---the laughing, family gossip, co-worker scrutiny, the whispers---this decade showed us something. If a person lacks the thinking capacity above their own fairy-tale mentality to see the beauty in you owning your shit---healing and happy as a mom---run fast. People will talk, but silence is the loudest. Soon, they'll realize that their own story is the one that's not OK---while we plan play dates.
Want to see more of my articles like this? Follow me on Instagram at @sweetsoulsasha.
Featured image by Shutterstock
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Skylar sees things differently. At the time, she was shooting content on her iPhone. Temi came into the picture with a new perspective, an understanding of tech, and, eventually, a camera. “He doesn't give himself enough credit,” Skylar says. “He wasn't just my tripod. He wasn't just standing behind the camera and going ‘click.’ He was giving advice. He was giving me insight to how I could look at things from a different perspective. And I was like, 'Oh, he’s an artist.' I think it was maybe a heartbeat of that kind of energy of like, ‘Baby, can you take this picture?’ And it turned so quickly into, we're partners. We can work together in a way where we're advancing each other's creative thinking.”
The pair often says they’re two sides of the same coin. Skylar is an Aquarius. She attended art school, paints, and loves poetry. She’s more than happy to let the couple’s management firm and agency, Kensington Grey, handle their admin work. And, she loves to sleep in. Temi, on the other hand, wakes up early. He’s a Virgo. He loves a to-do list and regularly checks in on the couple’s brand partnerships spreadsheet to make sure everything is on track.
Because his storytelling was steeped in his love of technology, he didn’t always think of himself as a creative person. “Where I [am] the dreamer who wants to pluck things out of the sky and spend all day with my head in the clouds, Temi [is] so good at grounding me and helping me figure out how to make things make sense on paper. We just work together in such a complimentary way,” Skylar says.
It’s been more than six years since Brooklyn-based couple Temi and Skylar started dating, and nearly four since they cemented their working relationship. On TikTok and Instagram, the couple’s travel, fashion, and home content regularly rack up hundreds of thousands of views. They’ve worked with brands such as Coach, Aesop, Away, and Liquid IV, bringing their vibrant perspectives to every campaign they execute. Still, nearly two years since both Temi and Skylar committed to full-time content creation and creative directing, the couple says their romantic connection remains their priority.
“We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting,” Skylar says.
Working from home can make it hard to separate work from personal life for any entrepreneur. It can be even more challenging when your business partner is also your lover. Temi and Skylar had already used couples therapy as a tool to help them effectively communicate with one another. When they ran into challenges while working together, their therapist helped them set physical boundaries to help combat the issues.
"We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting."
“It actually took us doing very specific physical things to create boundaries between work and play in our relationship,” Skylar says. “So, for instance, we will only have conversations about work when we're out of bed or we're at the table or in the office. Initially, when we started, we had to light a candle to say that, 'Okay, this is a space where we're connecting, we’re not talking about work.' We needed really hard boundaries at the top. And then it became a little bit more organic.”
The boundaries have been crucial to implement, especially because the couple began working together so naturally. When the pair first met, Skylar was NY-based a social strategist for BuzzFeed and was using content creation to drive business to her lingerie company. She was shooting her own content. Temi was working for Microsoft in D.C. He’d recently traded in his DJing equipment for a camera. “I've always loved taking pictures,” he says. “Even when I was a kid, my African mother would wake me up at 3:00 a.m. [during a] party, and be like, 'Come take the family picture.'”
Growing up, Temi says he watched his parents support each other and be the true definition of partners. He knew he wanted the same for his own relationship. But, the couple also wanted to make sure they were being financially responsible. The pair didn’t quit their traditional jobs until they’d saved up two years' worth of their cost of living. And, Temi received his Master of Business Administration from New York University with the knowledge that it could either help him advance in his corporate career or be applicable to his business with Skylar.
Temi and SkylarCj Hart @hartbreakToday, they say their working relationship is more of a “quiet dance.” They still implement some of the boundaries they learned in therapy, but they also lean into their natural strengths and deep love for one another. When we speak, Temi has planned a date for the couple to see Princess Mononoke in 4K IMAX and added it to their Notion so they can factor it into their busy schedules. “I fully plan to date for the rest of my life,” he says.
Skylar says the couple doesn’t just wait for date nights to check in with one another, though. This often happens in the mornings, after Temi has made her peppermint tea and poured himself a cup of coffee. When they ask each other how they slept, she says, it’s not just a “nicety.” It’s a genuine question meant to foster connection.
“A lot of it happens during the day in the midst of work. We'll stop and we'll hug. Or we’ll slow dance in the kitchen,” she says. “Sometimes it's hard to set a whole date night when you have 7,000 things going on. So, we must grasp these moments and check in when we can. And I think it's become so organic to us that I actually didn't even realize how often we do it. But all day long, we're like, 'Are you good? I felt like your energy shifted,' because we're best friends, we just know. We just feel it happen.”
What’s better than being in love? Building wealth while doing it. Watch Making Cents here for real stories of couples who make money moves together.
Featured image by Cj Hart @hartbreak