TJOY01: Tonia's Journey to Birthing The Journey of You
Tonia D Benas is the Founder of The Journey of You: A lifestyle. A Process. A Community. Several pivotal events in her life followed her into adulthood and changed the course of who she was. Each of those events colored her viewpoint of herself, and she hit a low point where she was lost. One simple question asked of her by her sister snapped her into a focused journey to find herself.
In today's kickoff episode, she shares:
Pivotal parts of her journey
Ways to become more self aware
Lessons she has learned along the journey
Why she wants to help others on their journey
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Tonia: In this journey called life, there are a lot of things that we face along the way. We grow up having a certain viewpoint of self, um, a certain way that we feel about who we are, or maybe who we think we are and what we want to do with our live. And as we begin to grow up and life starts to happen, we change that viewpoint of self. Sometimes, it might be the opinion of someone else that maybe wasn’t the most positive thing, and somewhere in there we took that label on as truth and we let it take root. And we can begin to believe that maybe that person’s opinion was right.
Maybe it’s the roles that we fulfill. Maybe it’s the title that we hold that is our identity, and we hang on to that. Then, if for any reason we are no longer in that role or no longer have that certain position with that title, we have no idea where to start. We’re completely lost. I’ve been there. That’s where I was at.
When I was growing up, I knew exactly what I planned to do with my life and how I was going to do it, where I was going to go to school, what I was going to be. And as I got older, that started to change a little bit. And as I became friends with certain people or was even in a relationship with someone else, labels and opinions began to be attached to me of who I was and it kind of became my identity, so to speak. Um, at one point, I questioned, “Am I enough?” and “Who am I?”
One day, I was driving in the car with my sister and she looked at me and said, “What do you like to do for fun?”
Hmm. What do I like to do for fun? I couldn’t quite answer that question. I thought about different activities that I am usually doing, but most of the time those are things that my husband puts together and we all go along. And I thought about, oh, well I go here, and I go there, and I do this, but each of those things are activities that my kids are involved in. I tried really hard to think of what’s one thing that I personally like to do for fun. Not my husband, not my kids, not something that is work related, but something that is just uniquely mine. I couldn’t think of one solitary thing and I found that very sad and embarrassing, and I was actually ashamed. Who can’t think of one thing that they like to do for fun? But, I couldn’t. And so it kind of shifted something in me. Something is wrong. Somewhere in here, Tonia as a person has disappeared. It’s been more my roles or my title or the things like where I am serving and volunteering, but me as a person was hidden. And I didn’t realize it until my sister asked me that question.
Have you ever been there? Where you didn’t realize that you were in a certain place that you needed to be woken up out of, but you didn’t figure it out until someone else pointed it out to you? I don’t even know if that was my sister’s intent at the time, or if she just genuinely wanted to know what I liked to do for fun, because she was hanging out with me, and was like, “Let’s go do something fun,” and I couldn’t even answer her. In that moment, I felt like something needs to change.
Coincidentally, a few weeks later as I had begin to think about, “I need to do something different.” I need to figure out what things I do enjoy and who the heck am I. Not me in relation to my kids, my husband or my job but who am I as a person, without all of those other things. In the midst of trying to figure that out, I came upon the last day of school. And my youngest child was in preschool at the time, and I knew it was going to be a half day, which is typically what they do in our county on the last day of school. And I had already scheduled to work half a day, and I was getting all of my meetings and everything done that morning, because my role was supposed to be 80% from home and 20% in the field, but that usually turned around. It was more like 80% in the field and 20% from home.
If you live in the Atlanta area, you know how crazy traffic is here. And so knowing that I needed to get to my son, who was ideally only 30 minutes away, I had already planned to have everything done by 11:15am, so that it gave me an additional 30 minutes for traffic or construction or anything else that would hold me up from getting to him. So, I hopped in the car and was heading towards his side of town when my boss called me. He was like, “I want you to come and meet me right now. There is some other stuff that I want to do and go over.”
I said, “Okay. Well, I appreciate that and I understand, but I am scheduled to be off now. I need to go pick up my son, it’s a half day of school.”
“Well, that will have to wait. You need to come now.” (boss)
“Okay. I understand. But again, I can’t. There is no one else that can pick up my son right now. I have to go get him. That’s why I was scheduled for a half day.”
So my boss was like, “Okay. If you’re not going to work the rest of the day today, then, you will have to come in tomorrow.”
I said, “Um, first of all, I am scheduled Monday through Friday. I am off on the weekends.”
“Well, you can’t be off the weekend and work half a day today.” (boss)
“Well, you approved that in advance and I am going out of town tonight because it’s Memorial Day weekend, and you already approved for me to take Monday off for the holiday. Then, I’m working Tuesday through Friday. My days off are Saturday and Sunday. You can’t tell me I have to come in. I have to get my son.”
“You need to come and meet me now.” (boss)
“Well, I can’t.”
The next sentence out of his mouth changed everything for me from that day to now.
He said, “Well, that sounds like a personal problem to me.”
Let me get this straight. Me going to pick up my son who is getting out of school in one hour that I already scheduled to work half a day today, so that I could go get him. You are telling me that me going to get him is a personal problem. That it is more important and more of a priority for me to come and meet you instead and just let him sit there? Got it. Needless to say, I went to go pick up my son and I was very mad. Because I felt like how dare you tell me that me going to pick up my son is a personal problem, and make it seem like you and this job are more important than me going to take care of him. Not even to mention the fact that if you are not there by 12:25pm, you have a ten minute grace period. You start being charged a $1/minute for after school care until you get there. That wasn’t even the point. Not to mention the fact that my son was expecting me to be there would have been alarmed if I didn’t show up on time and how he would have felt. And the fact that there was literally nothing else I could do. It was either I go meet my boss or go pick up my son. What would any parent do in that situation? The fact that he wanted me to choose, I had a hard time with that. And I already told you that I was completely lost in my roles of wife and mother, so absolutely I was going to go and get my child.
It made me know right then and there that there is a better way and that this is not what I’m supposed to be doing. This environment isn’t working. It’s a toxic environment and on the journey of me figuring out who I am, one thing that I know that I’m not - I’m not going to be your doormat. I’m not going to be treated any kind of way and you are not going to talk to me any kind of way. That was totally solidified in that moment. I didn’t know what next was going to look like, but I knew that I couldn’t stay there.
Have you ever been there? Where you are at a transition point, and maybe you didn’t even realize the transition was coming, but when it came, you knew that you could not continue on the same way that you had. You knew that something had to change. That is where I was at in that moment. So, I picked up my son. I went home and finished the rest of the administrative work that I was going to do for the day. The parts that I was approved to do from home. And then, I went out of town. It was weighing heavy on me though, because it was just like, when I do get back, what is that conversation going to look like? What am I going to say? What is the plan? Because, ultimately, I still have to have an income to help take care of my family along with my husband, but, I don’t want to do it on these terms. So, I was at a crossroads. I tried to enjoy the weekend and still have my kids have a good time and enjoy it with the kickoff to summer. And so, we did, and came back into town on Monday evening.
So, Tuesday morning, I was set to go and meet my boss in person. Last minute meeting, because again, he didn’t want me to go out of town. He wanted me to just work the weekend instead because in his mind, life doesn’t matter. It’s all about him and his business. And so, I went to meet him. That was not a very pleasant conversation. And it was hard because it made me question yet again, why am I not enough? Why does my value that I bring not warrant you to talk to me like I’m a grown woman, just like you are a grown man? Why do you feel the need to talk down to me as if you are better than me, or as if your kids are more important than mine. Like, when his kids are out, his wife goes to get them. He wouldn’t dare tell her “don’t bother going to get them. Come do this instead.” But it was like my kid didn’t matter, and that’s what I had a hard time with, because I am just as important as you are. And so, again, wasn’t a pleasant conversation, and eventually he told me to get out.
I said, “Okay. That’s fine.” And walked out the door. No idea what I was going to do next, but I knew that I wasn’t going to just go and apply to just anywhere, just so I could say, “Oh, I have a job.” I wanted it to be meaningful and purposeful. I prayed, and I was like, “God, help me to find the next best thing for me that I can grow and continue on this journey of learning who I am, and also not just settle. I want it to be fulfilling where I can grow, and I can also pour out to other people, and I am free to be me.” And at the time, I was still learning what me looked like, but again, I already knew what me wasn’t and what I wasn’t going to accept. And in that toxic environment, I knew I needed to get out of that because it wasn’t helping. It was helping me to shrink more as opposed to blossom into who I am supposed to be.
And so, I set out on a journey of becoming more self-aware. And even in the new role that I landed, which just shows that it was a God-send, that there were a lot of personality assessments to help you to be more self-aware. Up until that point, I had already taken the Myers Briggs and I had already taken the DISC profile, so I knew where I was at on both of those, but it had been a while since I had looked at them. And so, they are actually part of the application process and I was like, I hadn’t seen that before. And so, um, I was able to go back over them and it showed me a few things about myself, especially in terms of really enjoying interacting with people. Um, I’d say at that time, I was more of an extrovert, and I loved that people interaction. But, I didn’t realize until later, that I am actually more of an ambivert. Like, I can be totally full on charged and pouring out to people, and entertaining and talking to people, but then, I have to have that time - I need that time alone, like an introvert, where I can process, and reset, get refreshed and reflect, and then, jump in again. So, I realize that I have to have a little bit of both.
And so, the Enneagram was introduced to me and I learned that I was a 3w2. And that’s an achiever and a helper. It’s actually equally the same on both of those. I was a 10.7 on the achiever and a 10 on the helper. And it was so eye opening, because for so long, I couldn’t understand why I didn’t quite fit. Like I’ve been an admin before. I’ve been in HR as a generalist and as a specialist. I’ve been an HR Manager. I’ve worked in restaurant. I’ve worked in childcare. And usually it falls in one of those two areas, but each time, it was like, it would fit parts of me, but not all of me. And so, it was like I would try to fit into this mold. But I’m not a mold type of person. Um, meaning, I don’t fit into the mold. That is something I have always known about myself, but I never could understand why. And so each time that I tried to fit myself into this box here, or put myself into this box here, or if this person gave their opinion - especially if they were someone close to me, and they were like, “You should actually be doing this. I think you’re better at this.” I would try it, but it never quite fit just right.
And, I could always tell when it was like - you know a butterfly in their cocoon when they are trying to like get out and break free? That’s how I would be feeling. Not that anybody had done anything or said anything. Nothing like that. It was just like seasons. And it was like, okay, I’m coming on the end of a season and it’s time for the next thing. But I couldn’t figure out what the next thing was. That is where I had the hardest time, and it wasn’t that I was just like, “I’m not satisfied with this. I’m not satisfied with that. It wasn’t that all. It was just me trying to blossom. And you know how you have a flower or a plant and you have it by a window and all of a sudden all of the leaves start leaning towards where the sunlight is? That’s how it was for me. I was trying to figure out where’s the sunlight. It’s too dim, where’s the sunlight. And just trying to figure out where do I fit.
I will say in the last three years, I have started to learn that more than I ever have in my entire life. I will be 40 in November, and the wealth of things that I have learned just even in the last three years in reflecting and searching for who I am has been a game changer and I know that I was created to empower other people to become all that God created them to be. I understand that is why I have been fought so hard in figuring out who in the world I am and who God created me to be, because the enemy was trying to keep me from being able to help other people do the same. But now, I know Whose I am, and so he can’t stop me anymore. And when I tell you he has thrown everything at me to try to prevent me from getting there, he has thrown everything. I have questioned my value. I have questioned my worth. I have questioned whether or not I matter. But I have learned that I do. I do matter. And the reason that I couldn’t fit in anybody else’s box or mold, is because I wasn’t created to do that. I was created to break the mold and to change the atmosphere and to shift things around me and to create something from nothing.
Um, that is my gifting. I create. I’m a Visionaire. And so, you can come to me and say, “hey, I’m trying to do this,” or “I’d like to do this, but I’m not sure how.” I can tell you how to do it. You might be at point A and you need to get to point Z. I come in and tell you how to get from B to Y, so that you can get to Z. I didn’t know that before I started the journey of figuring out who I am.
