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Kiana is introducing her podcast, Tea Time with God, which is based on her devotional journal. She is an author and licensed therapist in North Carolina. She created the journal to express her personal prayers and thoughts to God, which helped her improve her faith and mental health. She turned Tea Time with God into a business to create a safe space for others to share their experiences. Kiana shares her educational and professional background as a licensed clinical social worker associate and her journey to finding her own spiritual guidance. She emphasizes the importance of addressing mental health alongside spirituality for overall well-being. Hello, hello, hello, everybody. Good evening, good afternoon, good morning, wherever you at. It's a good day and I'm happy to be here. My name is Kiana and this is the first official episode of the Tea Time with God podcast. Look, take a breather. Not even going to hold you. I'm winging it. This is something I've been thinking about doing for a while and I finally decided to just do it. Stop thinking about it and just do it. Like Nike says, just do it. Make sure Nike get their credit. I don't want them to come after me. But I decided to go ahead and just go for it and just do it. Again, winging it, just vibes, nothing formal, just to see where it goes. Let me back up a bit and give you more feedback or more insight on what Tea Time with God is. If you don't know the tea, Tea Time with God is my devotional journal that I wrote and published in December of 2022. Yeah, 2022, I can't even believe it. It's been that long. But Tea Time with God is my devotional journal, so yeah, I'm an author out here in these streets. I wrote Tea Time with God based on my own personal prayers to God, so these were my actual prayers and journals that I had handwritten myself, pen and paper, and I turned that into a devotional journal that focuses on faith and mental health. Because may I also add that I am a licensed therapist in North Carolina, actually a licensed clinical social worker associate. I am a social worker, and I am licensed to practice therapy in North Carolina, and so that's just my background for listeners who may be new, may not know all of the tea, and may not have been following me on my journey, but yeah, Tea Time with God has actually started off as my devotional journal, so that's been going, and then I decided to turn Tea Time with God into a business, so now I am in the business of spilling the tea. What I mean by spilling the tea is, well, I was going to say we all know, but some of us may not know that spilling the tea is a gossip term, it's a slang term used to describe gossiping or spilling somebody's business, and I flipped it in regards to Tea Time with God to say, okay, we're spilling the tea with God, because in my prayers, in my journals, I was really going in with God, like, you know, certain things that I can't talk about with other people, or I probably shouldn't say out loud, or couldn't say out loud, I was writing it in my journals to God, so that was the tea. I was being very raw, very open, like, look, God, here's what it is, here's what it ain't, and so I decided to bring that out into a book, into a business, because I realized that in my own personal journey, my faith and my mental health was declining because I couldn't spill the tea. You know, people will often tell you that you shouldn't say that, or you shouldn't feel that way, you shouldn't think that way, but I do, and I did, I did feel those ways, and I thought those thoughts, and you know, people will make you feel bad, or feel guilty for thinking or saying certain things, and all the time, it's not intentional. You know, some people will have good intentions, and come from a good place, but they can still be harmful, and so that is what I figured out along my own spiritual and mental health journey, and now here I am, spilling the tea with you all, just to, again, give you some insight and background about myself, and also to help others. The motto here at Tea Time with God is, we are spilling tea and changing lives. You know, we want this to be a safe space, look, and by we, I mean me, I am actually a one-woman show, a one-woman operation, but I want to create a safe space for people to spill the tea and talk about their experiences, because, again, I know it's opened so many doors and opportunities for me, as far as I feel better, I feel more confident, I feel more connected to God, and I know it can do the same for others, but in order for me to do all of that, again, I had to spill the tea, I had to unleash some things that some people might consider to be negative, or blasphemy, if we're being real, I had to get all of that stuff off of my chest, out of my heart, and out of my mind, in order for me to accept what is good, and accept the good that God can do on my life. So, yeah, again, like I said, here we are, spilling the tea with the very first introduction podcast, and let me also tell you guys about my background. So, like I said before, I am a licensed clinical social worker associate in North Carolina, and so the associate just means that I require supervision to practice therapy, so I am a licensed therapist, I am a clinician, I just require supervision. I am hoping, I'm not even going to say that, I'm not hoping, but I will not require supervision very, very soon, as I finished up my 3,000 clinical hours, in order to be eligible to take the ASWB clinical exam, so I can have an independent license. So, we're going to go ahead and speak that into existence, I'm going to take this test, I'm going to pass it, and I'm going to be able to practice independently, because we love independence. So, yes, I do have my clinical license. I got my bachelor's degree from East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. My bachelor's is in family and community services, with a concentration in early intervention. I also got my master's from the same university, from ECU, and my master's is in human development and family science, and so a lot of the times I tell people, well, that's great value social work, because it's kind of like social work, it's very similar to social work, but once I got that master's and started applying for jobs, I realized that people wanted real social work degrees, so I said, oh, let me go and get this second master's, get this MSW, so I can get to the bag, and so then my second master's is a MSW from Walton University, and you know, when I got that second master's, I was like, look, I haven't been in school all these years, getting this second master's ain't gonna mean nothing, it's gonna be a piece of cake. It was indeed not a piece of cake. It was actually very difficult, but hey, I made it, I'm here, now I am spreading the tea, being a clinician, and doing all of the good social work girly things. Let me just also say this for the social work girlies, and maybe the social work guys, or people who are interested in social work, you know, a lot of people think social workers are just child protective services that may take people's children, which is something that I did do for a while, but social workers can do so many other things, like therapy, like child protective services, social workers can also work at hospitals and police departments, social workers can do so many things, so definitely do not sleep on the social work field. Also, here I am starting this podcast in the month of March, which is social work month, so happy social work month to all the social workers out there. And so, back to my background, that is my educational background. So I've worked in social services, I've worked for a non-profit, I've worked in community mental health, so I'm a social work girly, I've done all the work, I've been working, and man am I tired. And so that's my clinical background, well my clinical and academic background. As far as my spiritual background, spirituality, I do not have a spiritual education or background if we're being real, if you read my book, I touch on that a little bit, and so what brought me to Tea Time with God, to write Tea Time with God and do the business, actually let me back up, what really started me writing my journals and writing my prayers to God was that I was realizing the spiritual guidance I had in my life, it just wasn't it. If we're being real, it was not it, it wasn't sufficient, there were people in my life and these people were my own family, my own parents, my own grandparents, these people were honestly turning me away from God, they were making me hate God, I'm gonna go ahead and say it, people say you shouldn't hate God, I hated God, I hated God with a passion because I could not understand why a God that was supposed to be so good would put me in a family that was so detrimental to my health, my mental health, just everything. So I did not like God, and I think a lot of people can relate to that or could have related to that in their past or could currently relate to that, so I did not like God and especially people who were throwing God in my face, you know, you need to pray about this and you're going to hell for that and you're being the devil, it was just a lot, and so personally I was like, well if y'all the ones going to heaven, I don't want to be there with you, like I'm not feeling it, and so I don't really remember exactly when I finally realized that these people were not of God and they didn't know what they were doing or saying, I don't know when it clicked for me, maybe sometime when I was at ECU, but it occurred to me that these people did not know what they were doing, they didn't know what they were saying, and none of what was going on was of God, so I had to figure that out for myself, and once I did figure that out for myself, I realized there was still something missing, so I was getting closer to God, getting more connected to God, or maybe I'll say I was going to church more and praying more, but I still knew that something was missing, and that's when I realized it was the mental health piece that was missing, so mentally I was not well, and so once I realized that I was not well mentally, you know, the spiritual piece wasn't going to help me if I wasn't well mentally, and so this is another thing that I talk about in my book regarding dimensions of health, so your dimensions of health are like mental, emotional, financial, spiritual, and so basically what the dimensions of health is, if you're lacking in one area, your other areas are going to lack as well too, so for example, it doesn't matter how much I pray about something or go to therapy for it, if I ain't got the money to fix it, look, I'm out of luck, I'm down bad, you know, I ain't got it, so what I learned was that I have to pour into myself in all dimensions of my health in order to be completely healthy as an individual, and so that's something I'm trying to promote now with Tea Time with God, basically telling people, no, we're not going to pray about it, we're going to do more, we're going to do the work, because you know, the saints love to say, faith without works is dead, well, we can't just have the faith, we're doing the works now, and here I am telling you how to do the works as a therapist, so yeah, again, not much of a spiritual background, but I don't think that's something that's gonna harm me too much in the field that I'm doing, being that I think a lot of people are starting from not having a spiritual background, a lot of us don't really know much about church and religion other than when we actually do go to church or what we see on TV, so I do think that I'm very, very relatable, and I think that will help me in what I do, because I think a lot of people have these thoughts, these feelings, and these similar experiences, but not many people are willing to speak on them, and that's why I'm here, again, spilling the tea, this is what we're going to talk about, this is what we're going to do, and like I said, I want this to be a safe space, so this isn't about debating about spirituality and religion, what's right and wrong, I'm not here for that, I ain't got time for that, what I am here for is to give people a platform to discuss and talk about their experiences and how it has impacted them mentally, emotionally, financially, in all of those areas, and once we talk about it, get to a place where we can do something about it, so that's where I am, that's what I'm doing, I hope you guys join me for the journey, let me know what you think, like I said, this is the first podcast straight off the dome, you know, I'm going based off supply and demand, so I'm going to supply this podcast, and this is, you know, in high demand, if you guys enjoy it, I'll do it more, well, honestly, I'm going to do it if you like it or not, but if you like it a lot, I'll do it more often, but for now, I'm thinking of doing it on a monthly basis, and so if you would like to contact me, let me know how you think the show is going, like I said, this is just the first episode, but if you want to let me know how this episode went, or whether or not I should continue, or what tips you have for me in the future, or what topics you'd like for me to discuss, let me know, you can find me, again, my book, Tea Time with God, you can find me at my website, it's www.teatime2.com, that's teatime2.com, you can also email me at kianatheauthor at gmail.com, I'm also on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, or you can just, you know, catch me in the streets when you see me, so until next time, y'all, have a good one.