 Sister Power's mission is that women everywhere were learned to live as sisters, to respect each other's differences, to heal each other's wounds, to promote each other's progress, and to benefit from each other's knowledge. CEO and founder of Novelchik Publications, TJ Taylor, fell in love with reading well before she made her highly anticipated appearance in kindergarten. She amassed several notebooks of poetry which sparked an interest in penning romance short stories and ultimately led her under the pen name, Tisha Jordan, to take a leap of faith in becoming a published author of romance novels, the first of which is the current development for short film production. Twenty-five books later and after becoming a certified life coach, TJ Taylor ventured into a new genre in publishing her first non-fiction work, Oh You Call Yourself Her Sister, 12 Ways to Heal Toxic Friendship. Meet our VIP guest, TJ Taylor. Hello. Thank you so much for having me today. Welcome to Sister Power. Thank you. So happy to have you here. Happy to be here. You know, as soon as I saw your information on Facebook, I reached out to you immediately. Sister Power and Sister's Empowering Hawaii, which we motivated and empower all women. I just felt the need to showcase your book and showcase you. Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity. Is something extra you want to tell us a little bit about yourself? I know you're a certified life coach. I am. I'm actually a teacher by trade. No, that's a little different from being an author. Maybe not so much, but I'm definitely a teacher by trade. So I think it's sort of always been in me to coach, teach and mentor. And so it really was a natural progression for me to become a life coach and to pin this book as well. I'm surrounded by a lot of wonderful women in my daily life. And I just feel like sometimes we really have to do better because we are always someone's example. Absolutely. I always say every time you step out the door, you represent your brand. Yes. And by that, I mean not just how you look, but just how you are kind to people. Yes. How you speak to people. You speak to the janitor. You speak to the CEO in the same way. That represents your kindness and your sincereness represents your brand. It really does. Absolutely. So I'm loving this book. I read your book. Oh, you call yourself her sister. Yes. Love it. So let's start. Sure. Why this book and why now? Well, why this book and why now is because I'm becoming more and more involved in different organizations and just community efforts that really are geared towards mentorship and coaching. And it just occurred to me that we can really say and do some other things as women sometimes. And the same way that we're conscious of the way that we speak and carry ourselves with our children at home, we have to understand that young ladies that we mentor, they will pick up those same ugly habits if we don't show them the right way. So that really is the essence of why this book, why now? Sisterhood is vital. Very. It's vital. Absolutely. That's what you said in the book, in the back here. It says, sis, boo, hun, babe, bestie. We use these terms quite liberally, even too loosely in some instances, which is fine until we discover that our ride or die friend got off a ride a few stops back. Yes. And that's heartbreaking. Sometimes that's how it happens. So you don't even realize it until you find yourself neck deep in the ugliness. That's when you realize that something went wrong with your friendship, your sisterhood, and you have to fix it. And, you know, I think that people think that when you first meet them that flattery just gets you everywhere. No, it does not. People are smart. Yes. Especially women. Yes. We're very smart. And we know when you want something. Yes. We know when you're not sincere about it. Yes. And then we know the ones who are just simply coming. Yep. We do. What has been your experience? Well, I tell people all the time that when you first meet someone, the first 90 days of that relationship, so whether it's a friendship, a relationship with your coworkers, an intimate relationship, you're not meeting that person. You're meeting their representative. So you have to hang around beyond the 90 days to really get to see the person at their worst when they're angry, when they're frustrated, when they're sad, you know, when they're vulnerable to really see the true them. So you have to hang around for a little while to be able to see that. Well, that's like working on a job. You have a 90 day probation period. Absolutely. And 90 days is really good because you do have a chance to see the real sister come out. Absolutely. Because that representative can probably hang around for 90 days, but it probably would be really difficult to be unauthentic beyond that 90 days. The true use going to come out eventually. You know, I don't mind opening doors for people. Mm-hmm. You know, it's the ones that want to step inside with you and go on that journey. But there are some that want you to open the door for them. And once they receive whatever they want from you, they're not there anymore. And I don't have a problem with closing the door. Absolutely. One of the things that I say to fellow authors that, because I have a team of authors that I call my pen sisters. And we collaborate, rebrain storm together. And sometimes we just kind of vent to each other. And I always say that if you are fortunate enough to get a seat at the table, you have an obligation to make sure that you make room for another sister to pull up and have a seat next to you. Don't forget about her. And we just have to always be conscious of that and keep that in mind. Your work is not done once you get in the door and get at the table. Your work is not done. It's just beginning. It's just beginning. Yes. So once you get a seat at the table, let's make room. Absolutely. There's enough room for everyone to come and have a seat. It really is. And I think that that's one of the challenges with women. And we're speaking about women. Yes. Now, is that we don't feel that there's enough room. There is. But it's something that my attorney told me a long time ago, one of my attorneys. He said, not all adults are grownups. That's very true. So you have to be a grownup in a relationship. You do. You do. Absolutely. And that's one of the things that we kind of, some of the behaviors that the book touches on is sort of identifying those childish behaviors and understanding how to address those behaviors if they're yours or how to nurture your friendship where you can either come to a point where you decide I can't coexist with this person. I know they have these behaviors. Here's how we're going to work past that. Or maybe you need to throw your hands up and say, this is not a situation that I need to be in. But absolutely. We have to shape those childish behaviors. Childish behaviors. Yes. And I was walking through the grocery store and I saw Oprah's magazine and I said, the keys to lasting friendships. And I said, this is a perfect show. Yes. Your book to talk about friendships. Absolutely. So let's explore about 12 ways to heal toxic friendships. Sure, absolutely. What does it feel like? And you have a list here. I do. Oh my goodness. Let's talk about that. Okay. So I find that for the most part, there really are about five behaviors that you sort of can identify when your friendship has kind of taken a turn and gone south. And you may find that it's a situation where there's a lot of selfishness going on where it's, you know, a lot of I and not enough we. You may find that there is a lack of loyalty. So where you have this undying commitment to this person and to this friendship, it doesn't, you know, it's not something that's reciprocal. So you may find yourself committed to someone who's committed to themselves and that can be an issue. This honesty as well. Honesty is important in any relationship, whether it's a friendship, you know, on your job, definitely marriages. Honesty is very, very important. And so if you find yourself in a situation where your friend is being dishonest with you or you're being dishonest with your friends, you probably need to stop and kind of check and figure out what's going on because you're creating a toxic situation. And then lastly is the envy. This is something that so many women are guilty of and it can be subconscious. We don't even realize it. I was walking through the store the other day and I'm not from the south. I'm not originally from the south, but southern hospitality is definitely something that is there and it's genuine. And anytime that I'm in the south, doors are open, speaking to people that you don't even know walking down the street. And I walked past a woman and I spoke but I didn't get a response in return. I got an eye roll and it was just kind of like, where is that coming from? And but that just kind of ties into the envy. It could be so subconscious that we don't even realize that we are envious of another woman and we should not be envious. We should celebrate her. And if we see that she has something that we want a piece of, sister, can you show me how I can get that? Don't be envious of it. Absolutely. I want to know and learn everything there is to be a better woman. Absolutely. And that's what it's all about. And envy, you know, there are two that I've encountered. Toxic friends are fake. Yes. And the envious one, that's the biggest one to me. Yeah. Because how can you really call yourself someone's friend if you're envious of them? Because that envy is going to lead you to negative behaviors. So it's going to lead to the disloyalty which is going to be someone talking about you behind your back or bad-mouthing you. Instead of praising you and celebrating all the things that make you you, they will try to nitpick and tear you apart. Is that really being a friend? No. Not at all. Yeah. So it ties into the fakeness. Being a fakeness. So also you touched about colorism. Yes. Which is, to me, I don't get it. But, you know, I understand it. Yes. From our history, you know, from being slaves. Yes. And, you know, dealing with the master and the field people and then the house people. I understand it. But I don't understand that we already have other races that are against us. So why should we be against each other? Because you have a beautiful brown skin. I have a beautiful brown skin. Maybe a shade lighter and maybe a shade darker. Because it happens on both sides of the trap. And it's something that we actually subconsciously and unknowingly pass down to younger generations. I've seen studies. I've seen examples just online on social media just doing random research where you put two young girls that are two different complexions together. And the young girl that is darker skin will feel like she's not pretty simply because her skin is darker. And the young girl who is lighter will feel like she doesn't fit in and be long because she's not dark enough. And it's something that we subconsciously pass down to young women. And we just have to stop it. And like you said, understand that it doesn't matter what shade you are. We can both be beautiful regardless of our shades. And your worth as a woman is not assigned to the shade of your skin. We have to understand that. We do. And where do we start? How do we get this message out? Because it's so vital. It is. It is. I think the first way that we have to start is with self-reflection. Because I have to make sure that I am being the best person that I can be, the best woman that I can be before I can reach out and help someone else. It's kind of like the old adage of, if I'm not well, how can I help you be well? I have to make sure that I'm well. So I have to make sure that I'm doing my due diligence to address my own behaviors. We all, women, want to think that we're perfect. We want to think that we don't do anything wrong. Don't say anything wrong. But the fact of the matter is that we're not perfect. And so we have to be honest enough with ourselves to say, hey, I'm not perfect. This is what I need to work on so that I can be a better woman, to be a better friend, to be a better sister. And I really feel like that's where the work starts. We have to understand that the type of friend that we would like to receive in return, that's the type of friend that we should be. That is the energy that we should be exuding in our interactions with every woman. And it starts with liking yourself. Yes. And one thing I've also noticed, too, I was reading something about Shonda Rhimes. Mm-hmm. If you have too much personality, that's a threat to another woman when you're just being yourself. Yes. And she said, if you're taking up too much room, take up more. Take up more, absolutely. So it's about loving yourself. It is, absolutely. And you have to understand that if you expect others to love you, you have to love yourself first. If I see that you're not proud of you and I don't see a sense of pride in the way that you dress and the way that you enter a room and carry yourself, why should I be proud of you? So you must be proud of yourself, absolutely. I actually encounter that a lot as far as my personality being too big and being too forward and too blunt and too outspoken. And you know what I say? God gave me this mouth for a reason, and I'm going to use it to change the role however he sees fit to leave me. I don't plan on being quiet anytime soon. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. And we have more to share when we come back. Yes. Tisha. Taylor. We're talking about, oh, you call yourself her sister, 12 Ways to Heal. Talk to friendship. Don't touch a doll. We'll be right back. Hi, guys. I'm your host, Lillian Cumick from Lillian's Vegan World. I come to you live every second Friday from 3 p.m. And this is the show where I talk about the plant-based lifestyle and veganism. So we go through recipes, some upcoming events, information about health, regarding your health, and just some ideas on how you can have a better lifestyle, eat healthier, and have fun at the same time. So do join me. I look forward to seeing you. And Aloha. Aloha. I'm Mellie James, host of Let's Mana Up, Tuesdays every other Tuesday from 11 to 1130. This show is meant to dive into stories of local product entrepreneurs and how they're growing their companies from right here in Hawaii. I'm so thrilled to have our show kicked off. And so please join us on Tuesdays at 11 o'clock as we talk to local entrepreneurs and hear their stories. Welcome back to Sister Power. I'm Sharon Thomas Yarbrough. And we are talking to Ms. Tisha Taylor, author of Oh, You Call Yourself Her Sister. And before we went to break, you covered the 12 ways to heal toxic friendships. Well, we discussed the toxic, fake, dishonest, disloyal, envious. Being envious is one of the biggest ones, I think, that we unfortunately women have with each other. So now we're going to talk about how to heal it. Absolutely. Let's chat about that. Sure. Because I love that you say Tisha, TJ Taylor, is in the business of supporting sisterhood. Absolutely. Sometimes that's all we have in the end is our sisters and our sisterhood. So we have to make sure that we take care of that. I love that. So ask yourself, why do I want to heal this friendship? Yes, definitely. You have to make sure that it's a situation that you want to remain in. Not all friendships are meant to last forever. And I'm a firm believer that people sometimes come into our lives for a season. So sometimes when that person's season is up, you have to let them go. Before you move forward with investing the energy to heal the friendship, the sisterhood, you have to make sure that you're clear on what you expect the outcome to be. If your expectation is, my sister is going to end up being exactly how I want her to be, you're not being realistic with yourself, and you're setting yourself up to be disappointed and slip back into a toxic situation. So just make sure that you're clear on why it is that you want to heal that friendship. Well, and what is the next step? Once you've realized that maybe this friendship is not for me, but I also believe too that it's how you part your friendship to be in a good place. Because not everyone is ready at that same time. Sometimes we're not ready. So I think it's how you depart from the friendship is very important. And the next step is really, and this kind of ties into whether you decide to stay in the friendship or let it go, forgive. Forgiveness is something that people struggle with in general, but especially women, because we're emotional creatures as women. So I'm going to remember not necessarily what you said, but how you made me feel. So I can say that I forgave you, but if I have not genuinely forgiven you when that situation, when that memory comes back to me, I'm going to remember how you made me feel. And now I'm mad all over again, and I didn't forgive you. I have to forgive you all over again. So we definitely have to make sure that we forgive because we all have a past. You're not the same person today that you were several years ago and neither am I. No one wants to be judged on their past. So we should have room as women to be able to make mistakes, you know, admit our faults and move on from it and learn from those mistakes. So you really have to forgive before you can move forward and heal anything. Yes, no one's perfect. Absolutely. What I've realized in all my years here on this earth is that when you have a true friendship, you know what button's not to push. You learn it. You know what's toes not to step on. Absolutely. And then that comes back to respect. And that's actually one of the ways that I have to heal is to respect. Because when you respect your sister, you accept that you guys are not identical. You accept that you have different points of view, different thoughts, different feelings. And you come to respect those differences. You have to appreciate your sister for who she is and where she is in her life at that point. And you have to respect those boundaries and limitations. So like you said, knowing what button's not to push. Some women are prone to be provocative as far as inciting and instigating conflict. And if you know that you have that quality about you, it may not be something that you can change. But you need to turn it down and put it on pause so that you don't hurt your friend's feelings. Because in a true friendship, your objective should not be to hurt your sister. It should be to uplift her and to love her. Absolutely. It's about healing each other's wounds, which is one of the missions for Sister Power. And also I reflect back on the longevity of friendship. And sometimes we have to let certain family members go too. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that can be difficult because nature would tell you that this is my family member. I am supposed to love them unconditionally, which you should. But just because you love them does not mean that they need to be actively present in your life at that point. Sometimes you have to take that time apart to heal from whatever trauma has been caused. And maybe allow them to learn about themselves before you can come back together to have them in your lives. There's absolutely nothing wrong with severing ties with a family member. If that's what you need to do to be healthy and for them to be healthy and sane, that's what you have to do. I also read somewhere that having lunch with your girlfriends, maybe once a month, twice a month, it is healing. It is. And it adds to your life. And it adds happiness. Speak about that. Just sisterhood or power lunches for women, which I love having. Absolutely. One of the other ways that I have to heal relationships is actually to communicate and keep in touch. And I think that goes into checking in. Don't only reach out to your sister when you need something. Don't wait until you need something to reach out. You should reach out and find out how she's doing. Don't wait until a special occasion to reach out. I think it is actually very helpful to have those once a month brunches or lunches or girls night out. Because when you come to expect those and you know that you're going to have that bonding time with your sisters, there may be certain things that you hold on to until you get into that setting to share with them. We become each other's therapists. We do. And we know it's a safe environment. We do. And that's the main thing is you have to be able to feel safe with your sister. It needs to be a judgment-free zone of unconditional love. It does not matter what I tell you that I did or I said, you're not going to judge me for it. You're going to love me and you're actually going to help me move past it. Like, okay, maybe this was not the right thing to do. Here's how maybe we want to handle this in the future. It has to be a safe zone. It does. And also, you know, I think that we spoke about earlier on the first segment of the show about using the term friends so loosely. You need to know what the word sisterhood and friendship means. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's very, very important. I think in the age of social media, unfortunately, social media has made it very easy to just reach out and connect with people to transcend boundaries. And because we're able to have these interesting dialogues with people that we've never laid eyes on, never even talked to, now we feel like that's our friend. I actually talked to my kids about that. Everyone is their friend. And I say, why is that person your friend? What makes that person your friend? Well, we play Xbox Live together. Okay, that's just someone that you're acquainted with. That's not your friend. So you're absolutely right. It's very important to know the true definition of that and to know what a true sister is because if you don't know it, then how can you hold yourself to that expectation of being a good sister? This is why I think this book is so vital. It's an easy read. It is a roadmap for sisterhood because this is the book, Oh You Call Yourself, Her Sister, that I think every woman should have on her bookshelf. Absolutely. And I think that every woman should pass it down to her sister, her daughters, her nieces, nephews. Also, let's bring men into the equation also. Sure. We also have good men friendships. Thank goodness my husband is a secure man because another thing is you have to be confident within yourself. Yes. And then the trust factor comes in. Yes, absolutely. So I do enjoy my men talking on the telephone with them as well. I think sometimes, especially as women, we find that it's easier to be friends, to have those casual friendships, platonic friendships with males because men are not as emotional as we are. They can see a situation for exactly what it is and take out all of the emotion and the extra stuff that does not belong there, the stuff that we add because we're in our feelings. They can take that away. And I was actually talking to your staff for your show and I was saying the difference in friendships with men and women is two men can have a knock down drag out disagreement in five years, five minutes later, they're back to being buddies. Look at basketball. Watching a game together. Exactly. Exactly. They play the win. They want to win the championship. Yes. But they're friends off the court. So we could actually probably stand to learn something about friendship just, you know, watching men and how they handle their friendships because it's like at the end of the day that friendship is what matters. And we need to get back to that as women and just remembering our root and our foundation. Our root is our friendship. Our foundation is our sisterhood. We have to make sure that we take care of that. And that's all that matters at the end of the day. It really does matter. Friendship, sisterhood. It's such a good, good feeling. I've also read that you have a 501c3 spending. Tell us about that. I'm actually in the process of starting a nonprofit called Heroines with Heart. And I basically want to target the youth in our community and making sure that they have enrichment activities, extracurricular activities to stay out of trouble and also combat childhood obesity. Because I tend to think that our country is getting more and more unhealthy because we have so much fast food and now we can have everything under the sun delivered. And so I think it's really important that we have something out there that is making sure that we're putting out the importance of being healthy holistically to our youth because they may not see it at home. And if we don't make sure that our youth are taken care of, who's going to take care of us when we're old and we're gray? Tell me you. I'm there. I'm there. We have some beautiful books here. This was your first nonfiction. That was my first nonfiction, yes. So tell us about this book. His heart belongs to me too. This was written, this is, I write primarily romance. So this was written under my other name, Tisha Jordan. And it's really about a girl from the other side of the tracks who thinks that she has a perfect relationship. But when she meets someone who shows her what true romance is about and what true love is about, it really forces her to sort of reassess her situation and understand that maybe she needs to demand better for herself instead of settling for what is there right now. You can't, you will never know what is around the corner if you just settle for what you have today. So explore a little bit. Is that what that's all about? Yes, definitely. Okay, I can work with that. I explored and I found the right one. There you go. I thought you did too. Absolutely. So wonderful. And so tell us about that book. So this book, Crushing on a Bloss, this is probably my favorite series that I've written. There's a lot of real life in there, pieces of myself, pieces of other women who have been important parts of my life. And this is about, it's really geared towards domestic violence. She wrote this book and all of the proceeds go to a domestic violence foundation. And it's just about a young girl who found herself in a really toxic relationship, a domestic violence situation, and she really did not see any other way out. And it took someone on the outside of the situation helping her to realize that she was beautiful and that she was worthy and that she was definitely deserving of real love to get herself out of that situation. Well, as my husband always says, you know, when you're looking for love, you have to be more loving. Absolutely. That's so important. So this book sounds a little bit like, or both of them, you cannot dim your light to make someone else shine. You cannot. You absolutely cannot. And I think that that's something that we all have to remember every day is women. If you need to write it on a post-it and stick it to your mirror so you see it every morning, when you brush your teeth, you make sure that you do that. You should never have to dim your light to be able to shine. And your true sisters and true friends will love you regardless of how bright you're shining. You will not be able to outshine true sisters. Oh, I just like that. But then it comes back to confidence. Yes. It's all about confidence and all about really loving your true selves. Yes. You know, we have flaws. We do. We're going to make mistakes as long as you're not the big ones. You know, there's certain steps that we, you know, cross the line on that should not cross the line. Absolutely. And I think we have to, once we chat with each other, we know, you know, okay, I don't care for this. I like this, but I do care for this. You know why they have 31 flavors of ice cream? Absolutely. Because I may not like your flavor, but I like this flavor over here. Exactly. And I like what you have. You dedicated this book. You said to everyone who wonders if I'm writing about them, I am. Yes. And the reason that I did that is because I think one of the flaws that we have is women is owning our truth and admitting our fault. So it's easy to see someone pointing out a problem, but we're quick to auto correct and say, oh, she's not talking about me. Oh, that doesn't apply to me. Oh, that's not me. I don't do that. I don't do that to you because there's no perfect friendship at all. So even if you think that your friendship is perfect, chances are there's something that you can improve. That's actually one of the first pieces of feedback that I received about this book. I received it from a woman that's near and dear to my heart. And she inboxed me on Facebook and she said, you know what? I thought that I was being a good friend until I read this book. Wow. Yes. That's just so touching. And we have so much more to cover, but you and I have discussed that this is part one. Yes. And we're going to do part two. Absolutely. And in two weeks. In two weeks. On a Thursday at the same time. Yes. Tisha, thank you so much for joining Sister Power. Thank you for having me. I'm excited for part two. I am as well. Thank you so much for having me, and I cannot wait to chat with you more. All right. All right, everyone. This is it, Sister Power. I'm Sharon Thomas Yarbrough. Oceans of Aloha, peace and love.