Allison K. James-Frison - Turning Your Pain Into Purpose

Welcome back. Overcoming trauma is not an easy journey, but our next guest believes using and even embracing one's past can be an effective tool in healing emotional scars. Award winning community leader, speaker and advocate Allison K. James Frice and joins me now. She's also author of the book, The Book of Allison. The wounds you don't see. Nice to meet you this morning. Yeah, that's a title for a book. The Book of Allison. A little about your background. Born in Newark, raised still in Newark. I understand. But tell me about the trauma that started this path for you. The trauma started when I was very young. Um, it started off with my parents separating, um, me not knowing that they really separated. I just knew my dad wasn't coming home anymore. And that to me was trauma. Little one in life. I experienced child sexual abuse, homelessness. My father was a victim of violent crimes. He was stabbed in the heart. My brother, violent crimes. He was shot in the head. My former fiance was shot and it goes on and on. By the time I was 30 years old, both my parents were deceased. Um, and my brother was shot and the trauma just kept building, building and building. But what I didn't know is that I was traumatized. I never heard the word trauma until I went back to school at 47 years old, studying social work at Rutgers University in Newark. And we were discussing trauma about homelessness, gun violence. And I'm sitting in the back of the class crying. And I said to myself, they're talking about me. That's my life. And that was my first time hearing the word trauma when I was 50 years old. Because growing up in the projects, you really don't have the resources you're supposed to have. People's not talking about trauma. They're not talking about healing, domestic violence. Any of these words were not known to me. So I'm so grateful that I had the opportunity to go back to school at 47 years old to study social work and social science. This is when my life started to turn. I became an educated black woman. And then I realized that the most important thing you can have our resources and the resources were not available for me when I was young. But here I am today. Here you are. Yes, I am the author of the book of Alison. The wounds you don't see. You have to tell us about the inspiration. Did you decide right away? You know what? I want to scribe this. I want to put this down. No, I didn't. It took me six years to write the book. When people ask me, what is the inspiration behind girls live love life? I will always say it's because of my upbringing, my life experience, and I would leave it there. Oftentimes I would talk about the soft things like homelessness, me sleeping in my car, things like that. I would never talk about the hard things like the child sexual abuse, the trauma with my father, my mother and my siblings. I never talked about those things. And as I got older, getting more and more into the social work field and my nonprofit organization, I said, you know, I started this organization to help people. And I know I'm not the only one that's going through trauma and that's looking to heal. So I enlisted a couple of my friends. We started a nonprofit girls live, love, laughing, and we enrolled girls into the program. But what comes with Children also comes parents and mothers. So we poured not just into the Children, but into the parents as well. And nobody knew the wounds that were hiding, not even my siblings. I never told them anything about my past. Never. Talk to me about the mental wellness part, you know, because some communities, you know, particularly communities of color are still slow to embrace therapy and to understand the importance of such. Were you of that mindset and just walk us through? I was in that mindset. Mental health is something that nobody wants to talk about again. I didn't know that mental health existed. I didn't seek therapy until the pandemic. My brother passed away. He was a part of the 1st 100 people that passed. And while he was passing away, my sister was in a coma at the same time. So he passed. We didn't know what was going to happen to her. So I was all out of whack. And that was the first time that I said I needed help. I need to talk to a therapist about this because I can't do this by myself anymore. I can't just drink tea and listen to gospel music and go to church anymore and think that I'm going to be healed. So I enlisted a therapist and she and I have been talking frequently every week. And she was a blessing to me. She put everything we're supposed to be like my feelings and my emotions. And we talked about everything that I experienced. And she said, Alison, I can't believe that you went through this all alone by yourself for decades without talking about it. And I said it was something that, you know, people don't want to hear. I didn't want to be a project for anyone like, Oh, she's fragile. You know, she has mental health or she went through trauma. So I didn't want to take that on. But here I am. Now I talk freely about it. Everyone knows my wounds. You know, sometimes I still cry, but I tell myself you're your tears are not weakness. It's an indication that you survived and I'm still alive. So my tears are tears of joy now. And my smile is authentic. Thank you. Before then, the smile was fake. I had to make myself smile. How you doing? I'm doing good today. How are you, Alison? Summarize what it means when you stand on your truth when you've looked in the mirror and faced the demons, you know, the boogeyman and you look and you say, I'm still here. What does that feel like for you? It's a load off your shoulder. I was able to exhale. I was no longer hiding myself anymore. Here I am in black and white. Take me as I am. I don't care what people say about me, what they think about me. What I realized is that my story is an inspiration of hope for others. You know, I get a lot of feedback. One of the feedbacks I got and I wasn't prepared for this. Someone told me, Alison, your book reminds me of Tina Turner. And I said, huh? The domestic violence piece. She was experienced, too. So I went home and I had to watch the Tina Turner movie again. And I was like, wow, we had so many similarities in her music, how she escaped from domestic violence. I did the same thing. And I was like, but I never pictured my life being that drastic, you know? So it's just a good feeling to be able to just wake up in the morning on purpose and you have something to do with give to the world and to the people that you serve, including your smile. Yes. Where can people find out more information about Girls Live, Love, Laugh Inc? We're on Instagram. We post everything there. It's Girls Live, Love, Laugh. They can go there and see all the amazing things that we're doing. Currently, I just launched a first HBCU legacy program for first generational college graduates. So we're doing that now. We sent our first four girls off to college in the spring of 2025, and they all made the dean's list. Had no knowledge about college, but we poured so much information into them. So that's one of the newest programs that we initiated that we love. And we do scholarships. We do laptop scholarships and book tech scholarships. So we really pour into our girls. We remind them every single day that you matter, your voice matters. Use it as a positive tool to increase your well-being and also offer it to other girls that you may run into. Well, as an alumni of Norfolk State University, thank you for what you're doing for the community. You're welcome. All right, everyone. Searching for the one in a sea of endless dating apps when we return. Some helpful advice for dating with professional matchmaker Trevor Kuhn when we come back.