BMWK: What’s one thing you wish all couples knew about maintaining a healthy marriage?
Jamie: Communication, Communication, Communication. I am still a quiet person, Tameika is more talkative, I know she says I like to talk a lot, but it’s equal. You have to communicate, that’s so important. When one shuts down, the other can’t go. Without that communication I don’t think you can go anywhere. You have to nurture the relationship, and that requires communication. Nurturing the relationship requires watering, and the watering is, in my opinion, communication, spending time together, is setting goals together. You want to grow old with this person.
Tameika mentioned when our son died, James Henry, we were here by ourselves and I was like this is a glimpse into the future. This must be what it’s going to be like when the girls are grown and gone. She and I together, communicating, talking with one another. And we talked and talked, not that we hadn’t talked before, but we really talked and prayed, read the bible, listened to gospel music. And I was like oh wow, this is kind of what older people had been talking about.
Then we got back to what I call the new normal, without him. It’s just amazing to see that 8 months later, if that was a glimpse into the future, then I’m good, because of the way we communicated. I can handle this. It’s a no brainer. It reassured me that I, well God picked the right person for me.
BMWK: And you said you both entered the marriage with a good understanding of communication, being able to express how you felt and what you need…
Jamie: Yes, think of it this way, you have to be honest. In life, like the Bible says, you have to put away childish things. As a child I thought as I child, as I become a man, I think as a man, is so true. At 25 I was sitting in my house, on my birthday, I said Lord what is it that you want me to do. He said I want you to help people. Nobody understood that, but now almost 15 years later I understand and see what He is talking about. It was a vision at that time that I want you to help people. And I’m doing that now. I didn’t understand the how, I was just doing my housing thing and helping people in the community and being with the school board. But now He wants us to take it to the next level and that next level is talking to you (BMWK) to talk to others to get the message out about what we’ve been through. You know we made it, we have a lot of things going on in our lives, but we made the priority for each other and for Him and it all works together.
BMWK: What is the next goal, in terms of the Possibilities Institute?
Tameika: Wow, we are always setting so many goals. Our main focus right now is getting the Possibilities Institute up and going. There are 3 things, to expand our influence, our impact, and our income. There are a lot of messages I feel that we have, so that’s why we founded the Possibilities Institute because we felt that through that, we could do something we love, sharing stories, and our experiences with people through public speaking and coaching.
But we are able to expand our impact that we have in the community through the work with Possibilities Institute. What our goal really is, is to grow that to the point where we are speaking in lots of different areas nationally and really growing our ability to impact the community. Partially what we want to do with the income we make with the Possibilities Institute is to fund a non-profit we have founded in memory of our son. That non-profit’s mission is to support families that have had baby loss and specifically try to bring awareness around stillbirth, specifically around umbilical cord issues.
BMWK: And what’s a way that we can support you, or what do you want our readers to walk away, from hearing your story with?
Tameika: Well, that we are more the norm, than people think. Young, African-American, well we’re not as young as we use to be, he just looked at me like.. (laughs), very active in the community, business oriented, but very devoted to each other as a family. I would hope that we can show people that you can be very successful in your career, and be community oriented, you can do all of that and still keep God first, and be very active in your churches, but be very present in your children’s lives, and very present and very strong in your marriage. It’s okay for your best friend to be your spouse, that’s the way it should be.
BMWK: Absolutely and that discussion is so overdue and so necessary, the images are definitely not balanced right now and it gets really frustrating. And my last question, which I meant to ask in the beginning, is why did you choose the career paths you chose. They are all about service, and making an impact. So why service and why community?
Jamie: I’ll share that since my middle school, high school and college years, I have always served in government. From class president, to class vice president, to student body president. I have always had this service and giving back in my DNA. As I told you before I was sitting in my house, by myself, on my 25th birthday and at that point I realized I was of age now, and needed to know what I was going to do with my life, and it was clear as day, just as you and I are having this conversation, the Lord spoke and said I want you to help people, it was just that simple.
No long paragraph or essay, so I said, okay I will. At that point I was still working for the Columbia Housing Authority and I really wanted to become a lawyer. So I always tell people because I didn’t become a lawyer, I still married a lawyer, so I’m still okay. Then once I got into real estate, because I was an intern, at the housing authority, I was only one of 10 who actually stayed and made it a career. And someone from the housing authority said God isn’t making any more land, so this is a great area to be in, real estate. I said you know what, true statement.
So just being there and learning about investing, building, and development and that’s what I do now. I’m a real estate developer, I’m an affordable housing developer but on the non-profit end. I have a staff of about 10 people total, including the contract staff. We’ve done well. We’re about a $9M company, been around since 1999. Another young lady started it, but said if I stayed on for 10 years she would appoint me President and CEO, and she kept her word. I’ve been there 10 years and will be there until it’s time for me to pick a successor. I have always had a service mentality.
BMWK: Tameika, what about you?
Tameika: Well for me, I have always wanted to be an Attorney, ever since I was younger. When most young kids would play school and my friends would rotate playing teacher, when it would be my turn to play teacher, I didn’t want to play. I would be playing lawyer and the students would be my jury and I would be pleading my case. I always wanted to be an Attorney and I can’t imagine remembering back, when I didn’t want to be one.
That was always my thing. Honestly, it wasn’t really to help people, I just thought being an Attorney seemed really prestigious. I didn’t come from a legal family, my parents aren’t Attorneys or anything, but they are very community oriented, and they taught me about giving back. So that part about being active in community service was always part of what I did. Being an Attorney makes you have a natural inclination toward the law and understanding why laws are made and knowing who does what.
BMWK: I am sure that is such rewarding work. Well, I thank you two so very much for making time for this conversation. I am truly inspired, so I know our readers are going to be as well, by the words of wisdom that you shared.
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