I cannot imagine living the life that I’ve lived and not being able to say to someone, this is how I was able to overcome.
Seeta: Our second segment, which our guest is already on the phone, is with our friend. She’s an attorney, she’s an author, she’s a public speaker, she’s just a wonderful, wonderful human being that’s sharing this earth with me, and I’m so great to be in on the same planet at the same time that she’s existing. It’s Olivia S. Benson, and she’s here to speak about her books and talk to us a little bit about whatever she’s doing here in life. You’re just such a spiritual person, Miss Olivia, that I just don’t know what else to say about you, so take it away. Talk to us a little bit about yourself.
Olivia: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for all the wonderful words, wonderful compliments. I’m delighted to be here, and as you know, I have currently two books. I was here the last time talking about For the Love of My Father, A Spiritual Guide for Women Healing from the Absence of a Father, and today we are focusing on what was really my original book, but this is the second edition, and this one is called Answers from Within, A Spiritual Guide to Finding Answers to Work-Life Issues.
I am always excited about this book, and particularly now, because we’re in such a time in human existence that now more than ever people are seeking answers to everything. And the thing about it is that what we do here in life is at the very core — and when I say here in life, I mean in terms of our work — is at the very core of who we are and at the very core of our existence. So finding out why you’re here on the planet, what you’re here to do for humanity, because most of us think we’re just here to get, get, get for ourselves, but part of the game of life is you’re here to be able to take care of yourself and to serve. That’s the bottom line of the game.
Seeta: And it’s good that you have taken the time. Number one, you’re an attorney, and I just want our listeners to know that your areas of practice is probate, probate litigation, wills and trust, and you do practice successfully in Miami. And the thing is, what I like about you is, in addition to that, you have been a student of the new thought and metaphysics for over 30 years, and you look at religion through the lens of, you know, in a spiritual way, and not just Christianity, which you grew up in. But you question all the religions, and I love that you take the positive parts of all religions and you incorporated it into your book and into your daily life.
So I Call Myself Churchified
Olivia: Correct, correct. I was doing a presentation not too long ago, and when they introduced me, they said I grew up in a Catholic school, with going to the Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall, and then I went to a conservative Christian school and at the same time was still involved in the Jehovah’s Witness religion. So I call myself churchified. I think I say it in all my books. This is one little girl who was going to church. There’s no question about it.
And while it is mind-boggling to even think, it’s perhaps the thing that made me who I am, to really question, because I’m looking at these people over here thinking that they’re absolutely right, and then these people over here thinking they’re absolutely right, and you go on and on and on, and then it makes you just really want to find the ultimate truth. And I say this freely — new thought, religion or Christianity, however you want to call it, but new thought, which just means that we took the same things and take them to a level where we’re not thinking about them just based on physical, what we can see with our eyes.
What we do is we look at it at the spiritual level. In other words, we’re going behind everything. And I have to say that that teaching, and that understanding of life, and that understanding of the Bible — because I was brought up as a Christian, so the Bible was my jam, so to speak — but to be able to look at it at a deeper level and get other meanings, and know that things can evolve, even things that are written there can evolve over time. It was life-changing. I feel that new thought teaching changed my life.
Every Human Being Can Make a Difference
Olivia: We’ll talk about healing. The fact that I was here talking about something beyond suffering. I’m here as a tool, and I respect the work that you’re doing so much, all of you — and you, I’m talking about Seeta, because I haven’t spoken to everybody personally — but you’re like, hey, listen, I’m here. I have something to contribute. I have something to do. I have something to say. I can make a difference.
That’s what we need in the world, for people to understand that every human being can make a difference. Everybody is not at the highest levels of anything. Most people are just living and working, but you can make a difference.
Well, I just want to jump in here and say gifts and talents, and by being a compassionate human being, you can change the world.
Seeta: Well, you know, Olivia, sometimes I feel like you are the ultimate person who have overcome — I’m talking about healing and overcoming challenges — because you sat down one day and you said to yourself, I am puzzled by my father, like why was he absent in my life? And then you went on to start this profound search to figure out why he left. And it was kind of a puzzle for you. And then you had a grandmother who ran away from Jamaica and she went to another Caribbean country at the age of 18 or 19. And so you have the spirit of so many people in you. And I think that’s why you can talk about the four things you talk about a lot, which is God, energy, force and spirit. I think your grandmother, man, she was a firecracker. She just said, I’m done. I’m not marrying this person. And she took off.
I Have the Spirit of the Ancestors
Olivia: She absolutely did. And I respect that so much, because you’re talking about the turn of the 20th century, 19-whatever. She’s a 19 year old. She lives in the country in Jamaica. And she absolutely said no. And got on a boat. What I’m calling a boat must have been a ship, but you can only imagine it wasn’t the type — it wasn’t a luxury ship — and said, no. I mean, you know what that had to be for her to do such a thing.
So, yeah, I think I have the spirit of the ancestors, who are people who were survivors. And in my work, when I stand, I stand in their name, to say, this is what is possible. They might have made a lot of mistakes, even my dad, who, God bless his soul, made a lot of mistakes. But even from that, from his mistakes, I think that I can stand, and that from the other dimension, he can look and say, well, that’s my daughter, and I’m very proud of her.
In fact, I did a presentation a couple of weeks ago. And after I was done, the person came — I was talking about, it was a Father’s Day presentation that I did — and the person came up to me and she whispered in my ears and she said, your dad is very proud of you. And because he’s passed on already.
And so I stand in the shoes, in the legacy of all those people, because sometimes people make a lot of mistakes, a lot of mistakes. Like, I don’t think my dad would argue, and I’m never embarrassed to say, I think he made a lot of mistakes. But if you can look at it, let’s say from the other dimension, and look at it and you say, man, that’s my daughter, and I’m proud of her, because despite everything that happened, she has pushed through, and now she’s willing to help other people.
Which I saw recently a post, it was by Gloria Steinem, and she said, the next step of healing is to share what you learned with other people. And I think that’s where I stand. I cannot imagine living the life that I’ve lived and not being able to say to someone, this is how I was able to overcome. I mean, everybody can choose their path and what works for them. But I know that the things that I’ve experienced are extraordinary in a number, not necessarily in a good way, in good ways also.
You Can Be the Hero
Seeta: Absolutely. But you know, Olivia, one of the things I like about you is that you offer hope. You allow a woman to see that despite the difficulty growing up without a father, that they can still be whole again. And your book, For the Love of My Father, addresses men as well. And you’re telling men to be supportive of the child that they bring into this planet. And you’re teaching them through your experience how to help their children. And I think you’re making an impact on the lives, not just on single moms, but on fathers too.
And I like that you’re discussing this journey, a journey that crosses so many countries, Jamaica, Panama, the United States. And you’re using that to also say to fathers that your children need you and they need your guidance. So for God in heaven’s sake, especially Caribbean men, be there.
Olivia: Listen, I say this, you can mess up. There’s a reason that tradition in many… and, listen, a lot of history, a lot of hardship, a lot of bad behavior, a lot of bad patterns. Okay. But let’s wake up, right? Let’s wake up now. And let’s try to do the right thing by your children. Sometimes people do what their parents did to them, right? But I always say, you can be the hero.
So if your dad wasn’t there for you and you now have children, you can be the hero. You can make a difference. And I say also, I would have wished that my dad would have woken up and try to make it better. In other words, it didn’t matter that he was absent and so on. But at any point, he could have said, let me try now, right? You just wake up and you say, you know what, I’m going to do better. But he didn’t.
But for people who are listening now, for the men who are listening now, for the mothers of sons that know that their sons are not doing the right thing, they can start right now. They can make a difference. They can change, so that none of their kids, girls or boys, would ever think my dad didn’t even try to come after me, try to be in my life.
Seeta: And you know, I have to jump in here. I see that a lot. And I’m not knocking men in the Caribbean or anything. But I notice with people that I know, once there’s a separation or there’s a divorce, a lot of these men walk away. And I don’t know if it’s because they feel Caribbean women are strong women, but they walk away and they don’t come back. And then they put these families into such economic hardships. And it’s a hardship and a burden placed on a child, because the children have to become like sometimes a head of household. And that happens here in the United States as well.
But I can’t stress enough, being that I was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, and I’m seeing the chaos and the decay of the family, I have to say that those of us who have a talent and a gift and the ability to give back to our world — mine is to take my life experience and say, hey, slow down, take a minute, think about what you’re doing. And I’m sure that that happened with you too, because you’re watching the economic disparities we have. We’re watching the hate and division in a world, the lack of kindness, the lack of compassion. And we’re all like, wait a minute, all these things play a part in a child’s life. And if parents are going to be there for the child.
This Trauma and This Drama Ends With Me
Olivia: Absolutely. And the thing about it in this world is that, like I said, there are a lot of reasons why people develop these bad patterns. Like, for example, sometimes people want to refer to some men of African descent as particularly bad, but they don’t go back and look at where they’re coming from, right? So, how slavery was, you break the family bond, you don’t allow the male to do these kinds of things.
And we’re talking 200 years since slavery, which in human time is really nothing. Because if you look at the history of slavery in Egypt, till today, people of Jewish descent celebrate the release from Egypt. But so there’s a pattern of things, and there’s a reason why things develop. If you look at men in the African tribes and how they behave, it’s much different to what we see today.
But the point for us that are people of African descent living in the Americas is that now we have the ability to heal. Now there are tools that you can use. Now you can realize, listen, if I have a bad pattern of behavior, for whatever reason, for whatever the reason I have a bad pattern of behavior, I would like to stop it. I would like to work on myself, and I would like to make sure that it does not pass on to my children. In other words, this trauma and this drama ends with me.
Seeta: Yeah. Well, I want you to take that message to the Caribbean, because I have a lot of friends in Jamaica, in Trinidad, in Barbados and Guyana. And they’ll say like the husbands or the ex is so stubborn. It’s a lot of false pride. They don’t want anybody to tell them what to do. They want no advice, because for some reason, some people feel as if they know it all.
I think it’s a case of I know it all. They don’t want anybody. And that’s a problem, because sometimes we don’t know everything.
Seeta: It’s okay for us. We can learn from a podcast. We can learn from a radio show. We can learn from reading a book. We can learn just from listening to other people, and the elders that come before us, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles. They’re trying to tell the young ones certain things. But don’t you feel sometimes some people just are so stubborn that they’re going to have to pay to learn? And it’s so sad.
We Women Have the Ability to Influence Our Sons
Olivia: That’s it. That’s it. That’s it. There’s another thing, now that you’re talking about Caribbean. I think it can be the same in the United States, but a lot of times we women are also — and I think I talk about that in For the Love of My Father — but we women are also participants in this chain. Because what happens with some mothers, some mothers support their sons in bad behavior.
I don’t know if you’ve experienced that, but in some Caribbean families, my son, what my son. Instead of being the one that helped to break the chain: I don’t care what your father did to me, and I don’t care what our story was, you’re going to be better than what was coming behind. And again, I don’t think it’s limited to the Caribbean, but it does happen there a lot.
We need women to step up and say to their sons — I mean, for me, like, I have a son, and he could never come and tell me any craziness about what he’s doing to a woman, what he might be doing to his child or children. None of it would be acceptable. And so I think we women have the ability also to influence our sons, no matter what the prior story was. You can say, this ends now.
Seeta: Absolutely. I just saw something about India, where people are saying, when you’re looking for a good girl for your son, make sure you tell that good girl the bad habits of your son as well.
Olivia: Yes.
Seeta: And I loved it. And I thought about you, because I figured that would be good for the show. But one of the things that you speak about frequently is finding that good balance, creating a balance in our lives between our career and our home life. And a lot of us came to the United States because of the opportunities, because of the education, because of what we can do for the folks we left back home. And in doing so, and working those extra shifts and taking that second job, in some ways we made it bad for the children that we created here in the United States, because we didn’t have that balance, because we were always gone. But you put a stop to that, and you said, hey, my son comes first. Tell our listeners here a little bit about creating a work life balance.
The Game Is a Long Game
Olivia: Well, I think the most important thing to start with is understanding that we are all divine. We are all created by the same God, energy, force, spirit. And that what I call GEFS — God, energy, force, spirit — does not bring us to the planet, send us to the planet, without resources for survival.
Now, it’s very easy to get lost in America. Particularly, it’s easy to get lost by the glitter. In other words, you come and now you want this and you want that. And you’re not thinking about what your life purpose is and how you’re here to serve humanity. You’re here to make some money.
Seeta: You get greedy, girl. Let’s be honest. A lot of people get greedy until they get old, and then they become spiritual.
Olivia: Yes. Yes. And it’s just like going to New York City, right? It just captivates you. And now you’re in this mode. But the whole thing is that, first of all, the game is a long game. So for me, it was important to say, you know what, while I have a kid, I don’t think that going after every penny that I can pick up is the most important thing.
I want to know who I am. And those are the questions of the book Answers from Within. Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? And who’s going with me? Now, if you come from that perspective, and you have the full picture of what life is about, then you can seek balance.
And particularly once you find out what your gifts and talents are, because that is so enriching. Because if you know that you’re on point, that you know that your gift is this way and that way, and you fight and find the opportunity to serve, now you’re coming from a different place, as opposed to just being stressed, going to work nine to five, paying your credit card bills, where everything that is shiny is getting your attention. You’re coming from within. Yeah, so I think that makes a difference.
Seeta: And one of the lovely things about you, attorney at law, Olivia S. Benson. I just want to say that you are such a cheerleader for people, all of us, to go out and find our lives with a real purpose — not glittery, putting on a high heel shoes and some lipstick and a pretty dress and going to get pictures with our friends, but actually taking the life experience we have and giving it back to the world, because we are wise and we can do that. And we could do it without shame, because we learned from it. And that’s how you are. So give us your website and the names of the book and where people can find you.
Olivia: Okay. My name is Olivia S. Benson. You got to put the S, because otherwise it’s Mariska Hargitay. And the website is OliviaSBenson.com. I’m on Facebook. I’m on Instagram. I am on X, every social media platform that you can imagine. The names of the books are For the Love of My Father and Answers from Within. And they’re both available on Amazon. Just Google Olivia S. Benson and you’ll see everything about me.
Well, and we will share all of that information, and all of your information as well, including your fantastic website, by the way, on our social media, as well as our website, which is cwmediainc.com. And Seeta, what a great day. Again, you meet the greatest people.
Seeta: I do. And I love Olivia, because I watch a podcast with her and I see that the coronavirus also changed your life for the better too, because a lot of us had this inner reflection while we were home. And I think it brought all of us back to that beautiful foundation of life and liberty and truly in the pursuit of happiness, but it had to come from within. If you’re not happy with yourself and who you are and your genetic makeup and your skin color and your race and your intellect and a gift God gave you, you cannot give it back to the world.
Olivia: Right. Amen.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
Seeta: Girl, I feel like you need to come in studio next time. Next time you’re going to have to come here. I’ll make you some curry chicken.
Olivia: Yes. Amen. I won’t go. I won’t hurry. Go. I’ll make the curry gold. I swear I will.
Seeta: I know you can do it. I can cook anything you want, girl. Just give me the time. The best cook ever.