Refined by Fire: Faith, Healing, and Purpose with Paquita Reddish

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to another episode of Bent Not Broken. Heartbreak and trauma may feel like the end of your story, but here it's the beginning of a bold new chapter. I'm your host, Coach Deborah Griffiths, and this is the space where women rise, rebuild, and rediscover their purpose. Remember this truth. You are bent, not broken. My next guest, Paquita Reddish, is a powerful example of what it means to be refined by fire. A survival of domestic violence, depression, and seasons of deep personal struggle, Paquita transformed pain into purpose through faith, healing, and entrepreneurship. Born in Syracuse, New York, Paquita is the CEO of Blessed Divine Creations, LLC, and a dynamic, motivational speaker who helps women, entrepreneurs, and survivors reclaim their identity, confidence, and calling. A devoted mother of three, she leads with faith, resilience, and an unwavering belief that healing is possible and that purpose is always within reach. Through her journey, Paquita has built multiple thriving businesses, stepped into legacy leadership, and created spaces where black women in business can rise together. Her story reminds us that the fire doesn't have to destroy you, it can refine you. Welcome, Paquita. Hi, thank you. You describe a single moment with your daughter as the turning point in your life. Can you take us back to that moment and share what shifted for you internally?

SPEAKER_00 1:55

So that moment was in 2019 after a very chaotic fight between me and my husband. It did turn physical. And she sat up beside me on the bed and was like, Mom, why do you stay? I just looked at her and was honest with her. I said, I'm I'm afraid. And I just do not know what to do because I don't want you to lose another father figure. I had her when I was 28 years old. I was a single mom until she was about four years old, and that's when I met my husband. She already lost a father figure, and I didn't want to pull that away from her. She looked at me and she was like, Mom, as long as I have you, that's all I need. And then there that switched. I'm like, okay, if my baby is telling me it's time to go, then it's time to go.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Describe your relationship a little bit with your ex-husband. Was there any isolation? You mentioned some physical abuse. Was it primarily verbal abuse? What was going on?

SPEAKER_00 3:20

It was primarily verbal abuse and emotional. The only time it would get physical is because I was reacting to the verbal and emotional abuse. They call that reactive abuse. You might pick up something and break it, or you might throw something just so that it kind of stops. It did not start out that way. I was completely in love when we got married in 2013. Definitely had the rose-colored glasses on because I did not see any red flags. He was super sweet to my child. For him, that's his daughter. He took that role very seriously of being her father. Over time, it just got to be too much.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

When you were reacting to some of the verbal abuse, did you find that it eventually shut you down even more, or did it make you want to react more with each occurrence?

SPEAKER_00 4:32

With each occurrence, it made me shut down more to the point that I was hospitalized several times during the marriage. That pushed me to that breaking point where I had to go inpatient.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

This was for depression?

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Impatients like for the depression and trying to get myself together. I've been in therapy since 2010. After those hospitalizations is when I got diagnosed with major depressive disorder. That was hard to deal with. But during that time, uh God reminded me, you have more outside of this marriage. You are more than a wife, you are more than a mother. And that's when I started creating. Okay. I would leave, go stay with my parents in Janesville. Our children were very little. My daughter was young, and when she was eight, I had my second daughter, Christiana. And then 23 months later, I had my son, Josiah. So we had very little children, and he would always convince me that you know they need a true parent home. We gotta figure out, try to figure this out and work it out. So I would go back. I left when that final time I left in 2019. Basically, he was like, I had to leave, and I could not take my kids with me. He did not let me take my children with me that night. So my dad came and picked me up because he was working in Madison. I lived in Madison at the time. He came and picked me up and I and took me back to his house. But that next day, I was like, no, I'm not walking away without my children. I borrowed my mom's car, I got new car seats for the babies, and I picked everybody up and moved back to Janesville.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

Okay. I want our listeners to realize that on average, it takes a woman seven times before they successfully leave. So you're right in there with that average. And a lot of it goes back to what you alluded to to begin with, the fear.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

And what's that in 2019 and I did start therapy? And this time with the therapy, I told my therapist, hey, I don't want to do the medication. Medication makes me feel numb, makes me feel out of it. I said, you need to help me to get through this depression and let me feel it. Because if I don't feel it, we're not going to get anywhere. And the medication doesn't help. I can't be numb with little children. Because when I left, my daughter was 11, Christiana was three, and Josiah was one and a half. So I was like, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

You survived depression, domestic chaos, and toxic relationships. What did healing actually look like for you? Not that highlight reel, but the real process.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Then the pandemic hit in 2020, and I got talked back into the marriage. We bought a house and things like that. And so I got talked back in. And but this time, because I had that year away from him and I had that therapy, I had women around me, like my business mentors and one of my good friends, Vicky Lynn. You have to have somebody pouring into you. And that was my friend, Miss Vicki Lynn. She poured into me, she encouraged me. So when I did go back into the marriage and things started to go left again, I was like, oh no, I'm not dealing with this. I know where this is going. So yeah, it was definitely tough to heal. But I'm glad that I took the time to do the therapy. I started to learn to journal too, so that all those thoughts weren't in my head. And then, like I said, the rafting and creating is part of my healing too. So I love making custom gift baskets and things like that. When I'm creating, I don't feel broken, I don't feel depression or anything, and I can channel that energy into making something beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

How did your relationship with God evolve during your darkest seasons? And how does it guide you today?

SPEAKER_00 10:00

During my darkest season, I remember one time I was in the inpatient psych ward. We couldn't have visitor. I couldn't have a visitor because I was like in isolation, isolation in a room by myself. Once I could, my church family and my mom advocated for me to have visitors. The women's group from my church came and they were allowed into the room with me. And, you know, I'm just despondent. I'm not talking or anything. But they sat in that room with me and they prayed. They prayed out loud. They did not hear what was going on outside. But in that moment of them praying for me, it broke something inside of me, and I began to pray for myself. So in those dark moments, the darkest moments, I couldn't rely on my mom. I couldn't rely on my granny anymore. I had to learn how to have a personal relationship with God myself. And it took that breaking moment to say, okay, Lord, I need your help. I can't keep doing this. And people think that prayer is supposed to be so formal. No, he wants you to just give it to him straight. Like, I can't do this. I need your help. And you just talk, just like having a regular conversation with anyone. And how it guides me today is I've grown up in church all my life. My grandmother was an evangelist. My parents are pastors, aunts and uncles are bishops in the Pentecostal assembly of the world. So there was no getting around that. My first memories were of traveling with my grandmother, who was an evangelist, sitting on the pews, watching her preach and things like that. And now that guy's me, all of those lessons that she taught me. Now I know I can go to God for myself. I can go to God when I need something. I can pray for myself. And I just recently accepted my calling to be an evangelist as well.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

Congratulations. There's often a belief that you must heal first before you can build. How did healing and entrepreneurship grow together for you?

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Healing does you don't have to leave to heal. You have to start that healing process so that you can deal with everything that comes along with business. Everything isn't sweet when it comes to business because you have to learn how to have a tough exterior. Healing definitely coincides with For me.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

I have found sometimes I don't even realize that I'm healing when you're actually going through the day-by-day processes. But like you said, you run into situations, whether it's in business or if you go back to school or anything like that, life situations, and you come out of it and you face it and you deal with it. And then you sit back and say, if that had been me a year ago or 10 years ago, I wouldn't have handled that differently. And then that's where you can see some of the healing that has taken place. Have you found that?

SPEAKER_00 13:42

Oh, yeah. I'm finding that out in real time with running the two businesses and doing my community work for black women in business. Beloit, this season has been challenging. I'm proud of myself because there were some adversities coming up within the organization. Normally, I would just respond, respond, respond. But this season, God was like, stay silent. Let them talk, let them do what they're gonna do. You stay silent. If this was 10 years ago, I couldn't stay silent. I know I wouldn't have been able to stay silent. Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

Now you've built businesses that have been rooted in purpose and pain. What advice would you give someone who feels called to start something meaningful but is still carrying some wounds?

SPEAKER_00 14:39

I say do it anyway. You have to be able to let the fire reveal you. That's what the requirement is. That's why the blacksmith continually puts the metal into the fire, because they got to get out the impurities. If you leave any type of impurity in it, it's not gonna come out the way you need. So go build it anyway, even though you're healing, even though you're struggling, you're gonna find the people who will help you get through that. And then as another fire comes out, oh, here's something else that's falling off. Just keep going.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

As a mother, how did you balance your own healing journey while raising your children, especially when your past was still present?

SPEAKER_00 15:35

It was important to me to do the healing for my children because they deserve the healed version of me. They don't deserve the broken version of me. They needed to know that mommy's dealing with the depression, she's dealing with the struggles of the marriage and stuff like that. But at the same time, they saw me running my business, growing. And then eventually with blessed divine creations, at the time, I think it was 2021, we were advocating Rock County Jumpstart advocated for us to be in the world because I kept walking past this storefront in that mall during the Janesville Farmers Market. And I'm like, man, this is gonna, this would make such a great gift shop. And I would pray, and eventually, Rock County Jumpstart started advocating for us to fill these empty spaces. I went into the mall manager's office when she said, Come and look at spaces, and she was like, What spaces are you looking at? And I said, Well, I'm looking at the former Christopher and Banks store. And she was she smiled at me and she said, The keys on this desk, those are the Christopher and Banks. I was like, God hear every prayer I was praying over that space. And the keys on her desk were the exact keys to the space I was looking for. We opened that storefront in 2021 with 16 other black and Latino businesses. I ran it there for two years. Then my kids loved the idea so much because there was 16. I split the store up in 16 spaces because of just the way that it was laid out. And my kids was like, We want a space. I said, You want a space? And they was like, Yeah, we can do it. I said, What do you want to do? There was like candy, chips, and toys and swile. And I said, Okay, let's do it. But they started their own business and they've had it since 2021.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

That's a great story. I'm curious, have your children gone into any therapy? Have you had any family therapy together as part of this healing process?

SPEAKER_00 18:01

We haven't had any formal family therapy during this process. We do have counseling through church and things like that, but not formal therapy. That's something I'm definitely looking into, though.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Okay. You now lead a legacy-centered work for black women in business. What does legacy mean to you and why is it important to lead with it now?

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Legacy means that I am keeping the vision going forward. Miss Vicki Lynn founded Black Women in Business in 2019. I helped her from conception. She reached out to me and said she wanted to do an expo, and we started to plan that expo together. But what's funny is my trauma brain at the time locked it out. But she started in 2019 with 12 vendors in the tattoo parlor. We have grown it to up to 65 vendors at the Eclipse Center, a large venue in Beloit, Wisconsin.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Looking back, what was the moment you realized I'm no longer surviving? I'm building.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

And then I said, and I am ready. On those last words, I stepped forward and I was like, Oh, you're ready for real. This is happening. This is happening. It just felt like a door open. And that's the moment I knew. Oh, you're building now.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

I just got goosebumps hearing that, especially envisioning you stepping forward. That's powerful. That visual is powerful.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Yeah. So that wind story is out on YouTube, and it's under Paquita Pernel, my married name.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

For the women listening who feel stuck, afraid, or maybe too broken to begin again. What do you want her to know right now?

SPEAKER_00 20:37

I want her to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. You might not think it in your darkest moments, but there is light at the end of the tunnel, which means you have to force yourself to get up and keep going. No matter how hard it is, no matter how many times you get set back, you have to keep going because once you're on the other side of it, it is amazing. I'm telling you, there's light at the end of the tunnel. No matter what someone is telling you, what you're seeing, you just have to believe that God will not bring you to a place to leave you. He's never gonna leave you in a place of darkness. He is light.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

How can listeners get a hold of you, find your website, your business, all of that good stuff? And I'll put it in the show notes. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

I have a LinkedIn page under the Divine Solutionist. I also have a Facebook page under the Divine Solutionist. We also have a Facebook page for Blessed Divine Creations as well. Um, we had a website with something wonky with it. We're rebuilding the website, and eventually we'll have a Blessed Divine Creations website again in the Divine Solution website coming soon.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

Great to hear. Paqueta, thank you so much for this conversation and for sharing your story. I really admire how you've turned your pain into purpose. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for listening to today's episode of Bent Not Broken. I hope that this episode reminded you that even through life's toughest moments, you are bent, not broken. If this message inspired you, please share, rate, review, and subscribe, as it helps us reach more women who are ready to rise and rebuild. And until next time, keep living bold and walking in your purpose.