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From Adversity to Authorship A Tale of Tenacity with Rhonda Parker Taylor
Have you ever met someone whose life is a testament to the saying, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger"? Rhonda Parker Taylor is that person, and her story might just be the dose of inspiration you need right now. Join us as Rhonda, a true embodiment of resilience, opens up about her journey from a young girl in Noblesville, Indiana, grappling with learning disorders and undiagnosed ADHD, to a beacon of hope for many facing similar battles. Her candid recount of the struggles and triumphs through her education and personal life proves that with the right mentorship and a relentless spirit, the sky's the limit.
Writing can be a salve for the soul, and nobody knows that better than Rhonda. She shares how her exploration into literature and writing became her sanctuary and led her through the labyrinth of life's toughest challenges. From her transformative experiences in a writing class to the therapeutic process of penning her novel "Crossroads", Rhonda's evolution from a struggling student to a campus director and mentorship business founder is nothing short of miraculous. Her narrative reminds us of the strength we find when we harness our inner voice and the power of the written word.
In an era where social media often paints a picture of perfection, Rhonda's insights into the raw emotional landscape of the justice system and the reality of societal pressures bring us back to ground. Through her work in the Crime Watch District and her discussions on emotional intelligence, she offers a refreshingly honest perspective on finding contentment and happiness in simplicity. Rhonda's parting words, steeped in gratitude, challenge us all to chase our dreams with tenacity, reminding us that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step – and the courage to take it.
Buy Rhonda's Book: Crossoads
Contact Rhonda
Website: RhondaParkerTaylor.com
Facebook: @rhonda.parker.967
Instagram: @rhondaparkertaylor
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Contact Brad @ Life Changing Challengers
Instagram: @bradaminus
Facebook: @bradaminus
X(Twitter): @bradaminus
YouTube: @lifechangingchallengers
LifeChangingChallengers.com
Want to be a guest on Life-Changing Challengers? Send Brad Minus a message on PodMatch, here.
Transcript
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All right, we're back.
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My name is Brad Minus, I'm the host of Life Changing Challengers, and today I am so honored to have Rhonda Parker Taylor.
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She's an author, a researcher, also an entrepreneur, and she's got a really special story about overcoming adversity, learning disorders and some other challenges that she came in through her life, so this is going to be an amazing episode.
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I'm really looking forward to it.
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So, rhonda, how are you tonight?
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I am great.
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It would be better if it would really turn spring in Indiana, but we have the eclipse coming soon, so hopefully it'll all come out in the wash, but right now it's rainy.
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Oh man, I'm sorry to hear that.
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I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, so I understand what you're going through.
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The changes are crazy and we're just about to head into winter.
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Well, actually, no, you're heading into spring, so everything's going to be much better, I know for sure.
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Right now you're dressing for all four seasons every day.
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Oh wow, it's that unpredictable, huh.
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Yes, it's very unpredictable.
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Oh, wow.
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So I always ask the same question of everybody.
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So could you tell us a little bit about your childhood, how you grew up, to complement your family and the environment that you grew up in?
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Sure, so I'm originally from Indiana, but I'm not from the Indianapolis area.
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Originally I'm from a small town called Noblesville, which is in the northern part of the Indianapolis suburbs.
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It was a was small, and then I also went to a private school, so that school was only there was only 50 in my graduating class.
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That's how small.
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But it had very high standards.
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And if you wanted to talk about my family, they were a very much traditional patriarch structure loving, but you know you definitely had to perform at your highest level.
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My dad's favorite saying was if it's meant to be, it's up to me, which basically would tell us that all the time Don't compare yourself, don't put yourself in that windmill.
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If you want to do something then you have to be the one to do it, don't expect someone else to do it for you.
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But that was kind of challenging because I was the baby girl.
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There was five of us kids.
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I have a little brother, so I was the second to the youngest.
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I was kind of people would say I was social, but at the same time I was very timid.
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Things would frighten me, make me scared easily.
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So if I were to categorize myself as one of the dogs breeds, it's one of those ones that just hides behind their owners all the time.
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It was a difficult transition for me.
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Sometimes I flunked kindergarten.
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How do you flunk kindergarten?
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That's what I was going to ask.
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That's terrible actually.
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I just wasn't going to be ready, what they said.
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So, for me, socializing became my lifeline, and my older brother, I, considered him the smart one, so I didn't ever want to compete.
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So I just kept navigating towards social and supporting my friends and my family.
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And so, for me personally, I didn't do the self-development that I probably needed to at a younger age.
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And so, you know, instead of worrying about what I needed to learn and my challenges and expressing some of the challenges that I had, I would navigate, helping others and making sure for being successful.
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I would say that I probably had a learning disability.
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If I had to guess you know I've done a lot of studying in my adult years I would say I probably have some ADHD, not diagnosed with it, but just from knowing how I pop around.
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And my dad used to describe me as a butterfly.
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He said you're like a butterfly.
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All you do is go from flower to flower.
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Right, he said you're like a butterfly, all you do is go from flower to flower.
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Right.
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So I think for me, the challenges also became what I used to motivate me to, because I got humiliated in some cases when I was not being successful, like maybe some of my peers or some of my family members.
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So a good example is we had to pass an English proficiency test and to graduate, and I flunked in my junior year and you had to pass it with a C or better.
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So one of the teachers the English teacher her name was Miss Dolly.
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She said you know, I'll tutor you over the summer.
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So I had gone out and gotten a job at Arby's and I was sitting on her floor, you know, in the afternoons and working at night.
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And the summer was over, my senior year was coming and she had really gotten to know me.
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So this is where the power of a mentor really can make a difference, because she changed the whole trajectory of my life.
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Really.
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Yes, Because I passed and I went to pay her.
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I asked her how much I owed her.
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She said you just passed.
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Pay it forward.
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Yeah how much I owed her.
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She said you just pass, pay it forward.
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Yeah, and so so she.
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You know, she was probably only 98 pounds, just a little spitfire of a woman.
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And I found that I could be successful and I could be that business person that I thought I wanted to be and in my I always thought I had to shift and go in a direction that would require the math, the writing, the English and stuff like that.
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So I went, so I got to go to college.
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Because of that, that's amazing.
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And so then, yes, it was more like a junior college at first and it was in fashion.
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So I went to learn to be a buyer and I'm thinking I can in fashion.
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So I went to learn to be a buyer and I'm thinking I can do fashion.
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That was the thing for women.
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I went to the Dallas area, fort Worth, because all the rich and single people were supposed to live in Dallas.
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Old people like me remember the Dallas and the Dynasty shows.
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Oh, yeah, right, right, jr.
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Who shot JR?
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So I went down there and I learned that not only could I be successful, but I learned how to change the way I approach learning, visualization, and I always tried to do it through, you know, the techniques of a person that needs to hear it or see it, and I didn't realize I needed both and I needed to be able to do it with my hands, you know, and really engross myself in it.
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So here I am, you know, as a grown person with a doctorate.
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That's amazing.
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All the way through that just because one person spent the time with me.
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But I had to be prepared.
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And that's the thing that a lot of times that people don't realize you don't get opportunities unless you're prepared.
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It's not luck, it's opportunity and preparation.
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Meeting that's what luck really is.
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And what did your dad always say?
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If it's meant to be, it's up to me.
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There you go.
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That's it.
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You lived it.
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You absolutely lived it.
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I do want to ask a couple of things, because I know that earlier in life I don't know if it was high school or prior to that that you had been gravitated.
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You had gravitated toward writing even then, but you found it difficult.
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Can you tell me how you felt or what that actually looked like?
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Just in case that we've got somebody that's watching or listening, I should say that might have some of those symptoms that you know, to give them some hope and show them hey, there's a way to move past this.
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Oh, definitely.
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So.
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The first thing is when I was taking a writing class.
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Well, when I was younger, I was always carrying a book.
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I didn't realize it, but they were all way over my head, probably intellectually, but it showed that I had a desire to learn about the world.
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Here again, I came from a small town Encyclopedias, karma, you know all these things that you know that are really deep rooted.
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So that's the first sign that wait a minute, where is this coming from?
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But for me, I had to write and they said what's your first memory?
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And it took that first memory and it was in the writing 101 class.
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There again, I couldn't write and once I pulled that one thread out and saw the challenge that I had, it was the destruction of my pink blanket.
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That was my first memory.
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Oh, wow, okay.
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Like when you're a little kid, when you're carrying a little pink blanket around, and it was when my brothers and sisters decided it was time for it to go.
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They had to take your binky away.
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Yes, they did so.
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What it did, though, is when I sat down to write, I realized that not only could it be about your emotions and feelings, but there was a whole world that you can build out there.
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So I wrote about the memory, but then I also made it into a learning lesson about both in self-development because, you know, I was in a writing class, and I found then that I really enjoyed pulling out that emotion, and I think that if anybody ever reads whether it be any of my academic writing or my fiction novel Crossroads, you'll find that I spend a lot of detail more on the people and what their emotions like.
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Crossroads explores the emotions of anger, fury and envy, and so I spend that time navigating the individual and trying to create a bond between the reader and the characters, but it's really also with me, because we've all experienced all of that.
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No matter what your life is, whether it be full of blessings or full of challenges or a little mixed of both, we've all gone through some of those emotions at some point, gone through some of those emotions at some point.
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So the part about writing is it really assists one, whether it be for journaling, for fiction, for, you know, work, whatever it is.
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If you put yourself into it and you create something that you can be proud of, then you've successfully completed that day, and that great day is great.
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Oh, absolutely.
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And just for your information, everybody Crossroads, it's a suspense novel that she wrote and you actually wrote it in 2000, but actually didn't publish it till 2023.
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Oh, there it is.
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Here it is.
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It's Crossroads, and I do want to say that I'm really into the imagery part of things.
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So Indiana is considered the crossroads of America because of the railroad tracks.
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Originally the railroad tracks were here and well, there's still railroad tracks, but everything went through Indiana to get to any part of the United States.
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And Crossroads is about navigating the world and I wrote it in 2000.
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And the blessing of it was it took me.
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I was able to sit down and just write it and it took me about a year to get it all ready.
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I had a publisher ready and then my life started coming in and unraveled.
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I was, I was working at in academics I was also part of, I had just gotten promoted to be a campus director for a local college and then Hold on a second.
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We need to step back here.
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Just one quick second.
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Did you hear this?
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Did you actually hear this this woman was talking about she had to have a mentor to learn to write.
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Now she's a campus director.
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Can we sit there and say what a complete 360 that this woman did?
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She went from borderline learning disorder to an academic.
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That's absolutely, that's amazing how you were able to pull that out, and you did it with belief that you could do it and a lot of hard work, obviously.
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And you're that person and I'm really glad you stopped and made me take a step back, because I think that anybody out there in your audience that's going through a challenge.
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I have a little jingle that I have for you and it comes from Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and it's put one foot in front of the other and so be walking across the floor.
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Any challenge that's out there.
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Yes, you're going to have to take a second to gather your thoughts, practice the positivity to keep yourself from going over the edge, but then, once you start putting those feet and putting a plan in place and staying disciplined and believing in yourself, you can stay in focus.
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It can happen, but you have to realize the true challenges of making it happen and for me, you know, I thought it was going to be that first time when I had the publisher.
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Yeah.
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Then the world fell apart literally in my hands.
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I am sitting in my family room, I'm writing a letter, believe it or not.
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I'm writing a letter to somebody and there's a knock at the door and that knock, when I opened, it was my adopted son's girlfriend and a police officer.
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Oh officer?
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oh, and they had.
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They came to tell me that my adopted son had been shot and killed at work and that literally that's the age group too.
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She was working at a bar as a bouncer and they put somebody out and at when they came out at the last call, the guy shot this whole security team, and in that moment nothing else mattered.
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Of course, that book sat on my desk after that for the longest.
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I always had all the intentions of the world to get it published, but I hadn't found the lesson yet in it.
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I was still reinventing myself, because that challenge took me to a place that I'm like can I really work with college students at that age, the same age as my son?
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And I knew that I could under certain circumstances, but being on a college campus was going to be too difficult, so I stepped back from that and I created my own business, which was mentoring students.
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That had challenges oh well perfect whether it would be.
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they didn't know how to do a resume, they didn't know how to do the career search with the computers.
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And you know, a lot of people were trying to learn during that period about how to even do a job search with a computer, because it used to be do just the resume.
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Now it's this whole new computer age and nobody knew how to do it.
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And then also then eventually I pulled back the academics back into it and started mentoring for the people's masters and theses and dissertations.
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But I had to take the life lesson before I could take all those steps and before I could take all those steps.
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And then one day I had to go in and I had to get something off a floppy disk and it erupted and it had my book on it and I looked at it sitting because I had printed it at one point because I was getting ready to publish it Right right, and I looked at it sitting on my desk.
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It was still sitting in the same place I've been sitting and I had images of me having to retype and edit the whole thing.
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Oh my god, what found in the lessons.
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Oh my God, what we found in the lessons from losing a loved one and then looking like I was going to lose the book was that I had some skills that I needed to work on.
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Still, being a life learner is one of the most important things you can do for yourself.
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And I was talking to my sister and she says why haven't you published it?
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And I was like, well, you know I'm busy and that's, and you know, making every excuse.
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She says that's not it.
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She says you're afraid to make yourself vulnerable.
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And I'm like, no, that's not.
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You know, of course I don't care if you know people read you.
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She says you know, I don't care what people think.
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And sure enough, she was right.
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It required me to reevaluate my priorities, and I found that in that season, in that moment, I had to take a step back again and redefine what the lesson was supposed to be for me too.
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In the book I wrote the book as a reason to elevate myself and my skills, and I started hiding behind making others successful.
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I see so when your sister had said, okay, is it you need to make yourself vulnerable or is this going to make you vulnerable?
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Was it strictly about the writing?
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Was it that it was your art, that you'd never put anything out there before, that you needed to get that done?
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Or was there a piece of harris pennington in you that you didn't want the world to see within this masterpiece of fiction?
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I think it's both.
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I think that I didn't I fearful of putting it out there, but also I think, yes, there is a part of every character in there that's me.
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You could say it's Hinton, but you know I'm a people person.
00:19:25.432 --> 00:19:46.087
So even Billy Knuckles, who's the guy that has to debate whether he wants to be a rat against his friend or not, you know, I've never been in that situation, but guess what I could have been, because I was always putting people first, always, putting, you know, excuses for behaviors.
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You know, I was always the more responsible one in the group, you know, so it very easily could have been me.
00:19:52.714 --> 00:19:54.625
How many times have we had someone that's gotten into our car?
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We really don't know what they're talking about, right?
00:19:55.480 --> 00:19:55.866
So you know, so it very easily could have been me.
00:19:55.866 --> 00:19:56.578
How many times have we had someone that's gotten into our car?
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We really don't know what they're talking about, right?
00:19:57.374 --> 00:20:00.467
So you know, I think that it was.
00:20:00.867 --> 00:20:06.288
But Paris Pennington, definitely, people would always say that I always had it together.
00:20:06.288 --> 00:20:18.567
You know, even though most people that you know my story and know me since pre-kindergarten would say I didn't know you had a learning challenge or disability.
00:20:18.567 --> 00:20:24.066
They thought you know, they were like, oh, you were popular, you had this, and it's like they didn't know.
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You know, undertaking the challenge of exposing that, hey, everybody's house is made of glass and it can be easily shattered and might have been shattered many times.
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You know whether it be.
00:20:40.643 --> 00:20:41.788
You know the death.
00:20:41.788 --> 00:20:44.521
I've had several loved ones, we have a.
00:20:44.521 --> 00:20:49.393
I have a date that you know I dread every year because I'm like, ok, who am I going to lose this year?
00:20:49.393 --> 00:20:55.288
Because everybody that I've known and loved just died on September 19th.
00:20:58.953 --> 00:20:59.253
What?
00:20:59.253 --> 00:21:01.425
I'm sorry, that just threw me for a loop.
00:21:02.162 --> 00:21:06.189
But it's the truth, and so it's like that's a whole nother book that.
00:21:06.189 --> 00:21:07.071
I could write Probably.
00:21:07.660 --> 00:21:09.487
Because my mother died on it.
00:21:09.487 --> 00:21:12.068
Four years later my son died on it.
00:21:12.068 --> 00:21:16.148
Then my dad turned around and his was was going to be.
00:21:16.148 --> 00:21:27.525
They were telling us that he wasn't going to make it, and you know that it was a september 19th and and they we told him well, you know he's the same day as mom and she's.
00:21:27.525 --> 00:21:32.124
He said no, let him, let her have her day and do it after midnight.
00:21:32.124 --> 00:21:48.113
And so he died, died on September 20th, and then I have had an uncle, and then you know, it's like everybody, it's like everybody, and I think that what I can hopefully tell people is face those fears.
00:21:49.920 --> 00:21:51.506
Crossroads was a fear for me.
00:21:51.506 --> 00:21:55.823
You're right, paris Pennington is a part of me, but isn't me, but it is.
00:21:55.823 --> 00:22:02.068
We all navigate the world with a set of core values.
00:22:02.068 --> 00:22:09.128
My set of core values that was handed down from my father and my family is you must work.
00:22:09.128 --> 00:22:12.236
If you don't work, you don't have value.
00:22:12.236 --> 00:22:17.867
Work, you don't have value, and that's a big Midwest core value.
00:22:17.867 --> 00:22:21.083
And so that was Paris' core value.
00:22:21.103 --> 00:22:28.942
So, yes, there's a lot of Paris that's in it, but I had to realize that the commitment had to be to me also.
00:22:28.942 --> 00:22:36.525
I run around for 20 years pushing people to be the best versions of themselves.
00:22:36.525 --> 00:22:46.090
But I had stopped doing the self-care and I'm not talking about just, you know, fitness self-care.
00:22:46.090 --> 00:22:56.548
I'm talking about the self-care of emotions, self-care of relationships, self-care of mindfulness, self-awareness because I was doing it for other people.
00:22:56.548 --> 00:23:01.595
I was just pushing them forward and pushing them forward, and I don't regret that, trust me.
00:23:01.595 --> 00:23:12.463
I have gotten so much joy out of seeing people break through their own barriers, but it was just time for me to give myself that same chance.
00:23:13.946 --> 00:23:25.295
Yeah, there is a book and you probably know about it because just because of your academia but it's called the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.
00:23:25.295 --> 00:23:26.020
You've heard of it.
00:23:26.020 --> 00:23:39.090
Yes, so she actually defines that person, because I used to be that person too Actually, I still am to a point, but I have come to a point where I've learned that I've got to take care of myself first and then move forward, but that took me a while as well.
00:23:39.090 --> 00:23:53.902
But she decides she defines it as the shadow warrior is the person that's always pushing other people to get to their best right they're the ones in the back, they're the shadow, but that shadow never sees the light right.
00:23:53.922 --> 00:24:01.207
So that's what you were saying is a classic definition of what Julia said was the shadow warrior.
00:24:01.207 --> 00:24:04.170
That doesn't say that there's anything bad about the shadow warrior.
00:24:04.170 --> 00:24:17.648
The shadow warrior is a very, most likely a very good person, but they don't do the things for themselves, they don't seek out the success for themselves, they only see it for other people, which is what you did, which is what I did in the same way.
00:24:17.648 --> 00:24:19.715
So, yeah, I can see that happening.
00:24:19.715 --> 00:24:35.058
I do have a quick question for you Was there any bit of that exposure of vulnerability that you wrote into Crossroads when the judge kind of outs Harris Pennington, when the judge kind of outs Harris Pennington.
00:24:35.960 --> 00:24:36.261
Was there a?
00:24:36.261 --> 00:24:54.173
Yes, because I think that everybody's been in a position whether it be a loved one, whether it be the court system or whether it be, you know even yourself where you've put yourself in a situation and then you're oust, as you would put it.
00:24:54.173 --> 00:25:03.359
But also, during the period of time when I was just before I wrote Crossroads, I had been part of the Crimewatch District.
00:25:03.359 --> 00:25:35.111
I had been part of the Crime Watch District and it wasn't where I lived, it was where my church was located in the Indianapolis area and they gave me a adopt-a-block area that was six blocks of about the worst in Indianapolis, and I learned a lot about the justice system and even though the United States has one of the best justice systems in the world, it's not perfect.
00:25:35.691 --> 00:25:36.372
Not even close.
00:25:37.031 --> 00:25:41.752
Right and there is no winners and losers.
00:25:41.752 --> 00:26:14.901
Everybody's a loser when you end up in the justice system, including the jury foreman, because you're in a vulnerable place and you learn a lot by just being in the room, Because it doesn't matter whether you're a victim, a prosecutor, a defense attorney, a judge, a jury, the family of the victim, the family of the perpetrator, all of them are in the room and now they have to be there for a period of time together.
00:26:14.901 --> 00:26:21.932
And now you have to decide okay, what am I supposed to learn?
00:26:21.932 --> 00:26:24.942
And that's what Paris went through and I went through that many times.
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I can remember this elderly lady that lived in those six blocks and she would call my cell phone.
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