Keywords: New ways, identity, relationships, communication, parent-child dynamics, emotional intelligence, breaking cycles, therapy, spiritual guidance, clarity, divine purpose, identity fulfillment, queen consciousness, self-worth, redemption, authenticity, adulthood initiation, social media influence, reparenting, mentorship, personal development, trauma, narcissism, societal norms, family dynamics, parenting, feminist movement, family planning, conscious relationships, selflessness, marriage

Eyla Cuenca [00:00:00]:

In today's modern society, boys and girls are rarely presented with opportunities to initiate into manhood or womanhood. They find themselves looking for guidance, structure and identity through the many holographic worlds of social media and the Internet. So how can a man or woman truly initiate into who they are meant to be? How is that authenticity sought and found? In my world of birth and family systems, I've studied so many rites of passage that were offered cross culturally and historically to boys and girls for them to accept that invitation into adulthood. Different rituals, ceremonies, ways of life that were given to them so that they could become those embodied adults with purpose. They could take on the challenges of life. They could carve their own way. They could serve their community with meaning. However, now I see in all the exploration on social media and working with all the couples, you know, in my own practice that there are a lot, a lot of children walking around in adult bodies, right? We come across adults who are holding behaviors suspended at a certain time and place because they never were offered these rites of passage to really step into adulthood.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:01:17]:

Purpose, responsibility, accountability. And so in this conversation today with R.C. blakes, someone who I really respect and admire and who I've learned so much from, we explore the various depths of what it means for a man or a woman to liberate themselves from what they believe is holding them back from living the life they want, having the relationship they want, being the type of mother or father that they want, being the type of individual they want to.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:01:48]:

Be in the world.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:01:49]:

We learn that absolutely anyone and everyone has the opportunity for redemption. R.C. blakes, Jr. Is the husband of Lisa Blakes and father of four beautiful children and three grandsons. He and his brother work together to oversee the New Home Family of Churches, a ministry encompassing six locations from Louisiana to Texas. He has been in Ministry for 42 years and has been pastoring for 36 years. He serves as a senior Pastor of the New Home Family Worship center in New Orleans, Louisiana and Houston, Texas. RC has a Master's of Theology from Christian Bible College of Louisiana and is an internationally sought after teacher of the Word of God.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:02:28]:

His literary works include the Father and Daughter Talk, Queenology, Kingology, Imperfectly, Holy Me, My Mind, Wisdom for Women in Ministry, Soul Ties, and his newest release, Training for Reigning. He and his wife Lisa are also the authors of the book God's Playbook for a Winning Family that has brought restoration to many, many families. RC's transparency and integrity have drawn thousands to his life application and empowering messages. People have gained a workable knowledge of the Word of God as he expounds on the scripture and sheds light in dark areas. The Ministry of R.C. blakes is characterized as empowering, positive, practical, and prophetic. Along with the many hats R.C. wears, his greatest love is to serve mankind.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:03:13]:

His heart for the underserved, underprivileged, and mistreated in this society has been demonstrated in his many community outreaches. On a national level, RC believes the greatest office that anyone can hold is.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:03:26]:

That of a servant.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:03:27]:

One of his greatest passions in this season is working with his wife Lisa, in the healing and empowerment of women across the globe.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:03:41]:

Rc, thank you so much for joining me on Born to Know. This is an honor and a pleasure for me.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:03:49]:

Well, the pleasure is all mine, actually. Before we, before we hit the red button, as I like to call it, you were kind of educating me on some of the things that you do professionally and so exciting. And it's just a pleasure to, to meet you, you know, to actually meet you and to have this conversation with you today. Thank you for inviting me, actually.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:04:12]:

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for being here. And I do want to say thank you because I found you all your videos and I think I watched about just every minute of content you ever created.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:04:24]:

That's a lot, is a lot.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:04:26]:

And I shared it and I had girlfriends who were having their own experiences and at different points in their journey. And there was something for everyone in there. And that's what I love so much about what you're creating and, you know, for the youth, for anyone at any age, at any stage in their life. And so it's one of the main reasons I wanted to have you here because it was really just very impactful. So want to say thank you for that. And I always like to ask people kind of what sparked where you are now? Because I feel there's always like what I call that hero's journey, that turning point where we say, okay, things are changing. And I found, I found my purpose, let's say redemption.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:05:05]:

If I had to boil it down to one word, the word would be redemption. You know, if I had the time, I would tell my whole testimony. But I was a, you know, a pastor's kid, very famous, well known pastor, and I happened to become a teenage father at 15 years old. And that's some very difficult waters to navigate in the deep south, in black culture, in black church culture. I felt like I had brought, you know, immense shame upon my father's, you know, impeccable name and just felt like an utter failure. And so from that point, my Life just really took a downward spiral in terms of my self esteem, in terms of my relationships with females. I wouldn't say women because I was a kid and they were kids at that time. And it was this one day that the Spirit of God really showed me, like the amazing future that was still before me.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:06:13]:

I could not believe that God still had an amazing plan for me, somebody that was as wretched and as, you know, whatever other negative term you can find as me. And God shows me all of these things that he wants to do with me, things that I'm walking in now at this stage and age in my life. And then God says to me, but I can't, I can't bring you to this place of promise as long as you're living like you're living, living where you're living. And so it was from that point that my focus shifted from the context of my shame, my pain, my mistakes, and I started looking outward and upward for God's path for me to rise to his intended version of me. And long story short, it was nothing short of divine encounter that the Spirit of God really took my young life. Because I was a very young man at this time, I was in my twenties. Spirit of God took my young life, turned it upside down, inside out, and brought about a congruency between my spirit, my mind, my body, or my actions like I never even knew existed. You know, finally I came to this point by the help of God, that I actually was the message I preached.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:07:39]:

I actually was the version of myself or becoming the version of myself that I could be proud of. So it was at a point where God made me, made it clear to me that I was not beyond redemption. And once I realized that, and that was, that was huge for me. And if I'm talking too long, you. You just cut me off. That was huge for me because the community that I came out of basically said to me, you're worthless. You know, you're trash. You, you've done this thing, your father's this amazing man, and you're basically just trash and there's no hope for you.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:08:20]:

I had to have God to divinely intervene. And so when God did what he did in my life, and when I say that, I mean all of the, you know, the issues, the tendencies that I had, all of the weaknesses that I had, and my issues were always relative to relationships with women. Never had any drug issues, no crime issues, but I always had a lifestyle that was just out of control relative to women. And so when Holy Spirit dealt with me and brought that part of my life under control, man, that is the foundation of everything that I stand on today. And so now my message, the underlying message of everything I teach is that you are not beyond redemption. I don't care how bad it looks, how much you've messed up, how many mistakes you've made. You're not beyond redemption. I know that's a very long answer, but that was the pivotal point for me.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:09:21]:

That's the perfect answer. And I sparked so many questions for me because, you know, I work with couples a lot over the last decade. All variety in the work, in the world of birth. And some men have. Have come to that point, you know, in the trajectory of their and their journey. And I wonder, what are some of those tools, right? Because if this is revealed to you, you know, is it a combination of things, or is it something that you just instinctually say, this is where I need to walk now. Or do you use, you know, the word of God to say, this would be. This would displease God.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:09:56]:

So I want to choose this instead. What is the compass? Is it a combination of therapeutic support with the guidance of God? I mean, how does I know? It's. Maybe that's a whole other conversation. But what was the combination that you'd say sparked that?

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:10:12]:

Well, back in my time, therapy was vilified in the church. You know, we don't want to hear anything about no therapy, no psychologist, none of these things. Everything had to be spiritual. Now, from the context of being exposed, enlightened, a little more, a lot more sophisticated in terms of how all of these things work, I would say to a person, not only a young man, but a person in general, that therapy alongside the spiritual component, you know, for me as a Christian, as a devout Christian, that would be the Bible, the word of God, you know, therapy alongside the word of God, preferably a therapist that subscribes to your spiritual positions as well, that would have been very helpful. And I think the reason I really do in. In looking back on it, I think the reason God dealt with me so personally is because he knew the therapeutic component was not a part of my cultural context at the time. You know what I mean? I didn't have access. Nobody was heralding therapy or counselors or psychologists or anything like that.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:11:30]:

But the first thing that God did for me, that I think can really translate to anybody in any generation, the first thing God did, did for me was to make the vision for my life so crystal clear, up to the point that I had this divine encounter with God. Where he made it really, really clear to me who I was, why I was, and where I was going. I had adopted an identity that came out of my mistakes and my pain and my shame. You know, it wasn't until I had a real God encounter. And God made, made it very clear to me that even though I had made these mistakes, this is who I was born to be. And this is where I was going when I got the vision for my future, for my preferred future, simultaneously, there was birth within me, a desire to do everything on my part to live up to the future version of me. So I simultaneously began to drop relationships. I simultaneously began to change or shift habits that did not agree with where I was going.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:12:49]:

And, and that also led to eliminating things from my life and people from my life who were anchoring me to the previous version of myself. So it's like God gave me a vision. The vision gave me a motivation. The motivation gave me marching orders relative to how I lived my life. And the more I, I, I shuffled my life around based on the understanding of who God said I was to be, the stronger I got, you know, the more, the more God empowered me and the more my life took on the shape of who I was designed to be, rather than pain and the shame of who I had been.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:13:35]:

Yeah. And I, and I know that that can probably be challenging to start to eliminate and edit and be more discerning, because at certain points, you have to wear that villain crown where you say, enough is enough, or that no longer works for me. And it can displease those who are used to a certain version of us. Right. And we have to be okay with wearing that villain crown if it means being closer to the version that God has dictated for us. And that can be the challenge. Wow. So I know you speak about this a lot.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:14:11]:

You have a book on it, you have a program. But it's a big question because I see it a lot on social media and a lot of people talking about polarity and the female, the feminine, and the masculine, and what is a queen and what is a king?

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:14:24]:

Well, that is, you know, that subject matter seems to excite a lot of feedback, positively, but also negatively. You know, people are like, well, you know, what is this thing about a queen? We live in the United States of America. This is not England. This is not Africa. Where are you coming from with this queen stuff? And these are usually people that have not really spent five minutes really listening to what I teach or what I've written. When I use the term queen, it is not in reference to a position. It's not some royal position. Rather, it is a royal disposition.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:15:07]:

And again, my context is Christian and the Bible respecting everybody else's positions or whatever they subscribe to spiritually. But for me, my context is the Bible. And the Bible calls us as, as the children of God, a royal priesthood. When you go back, if you, if you ever read the Bible and you go back to the book of Genesis, when God establishes Adam and Eve, he establishes them effectively as king and queen over Eden, over the garden. He says, you know, you guys can rule this as long as you don't do xyz. Well, you know the story, they did xyz. And so it's, it's a royal disposition that goes back to the word of God to inform how we choose men and women, king or queen, how we choose to live our lives in the world. Because right now, in today's culture, we have a million voices that are striving to inform our identity, our ideologies, you know, our whatever.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:16:29]:

And if we don't land on something solid, we'll find ourselves all over the place, subscribing to everything, trying to become everything to all people. So when I use the term queen, it is speaking of a woman that goes back to the word of God to find her identity, her self worth, her purpose, her value, all of these things, the world says, well, you got to go here to get that. You got to go there to get this. No, Queen conscious women are women who go back to the Creator to find all of these components that are necessary for her to show up in the world as a full and healthy individual. Queens primarily are healthy individuals. Kings are healthy individuals. I don't mean to turn this into a Bible lesson, but when you go back to the book of Genesis, right, it's interesting to me that God creates all of the animals. He creates the male and female at the same time, right? But when he gets ready to create man, mankind, a living soul, he creates Adam, the male first, and then there's some time that goes by, and then later he pulls out a rib and he creates Eve.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:18:01]:

Interesting to me. That's interesting to me because I think it's. I think the revelation of that whole depiction is this. While the world around us is grasping for relationships, the Creator's design is that we master individuality. Adam had to know how to be with himself and with his God before God ever said, it's not good for you to be alone. And then God puts Adam to sleep, and then he creates Eve. We don't know when God wakes him up. So both of them had this experience of being with themselves and with the Creator before they were paired.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:18:49]:

And then God brings them together. And then Adam, from a king conscious mindset, he's able to speak into the life of Eve. He's able to discern her divine purpose. He's able to discern her role in the earth. He doesn't shrink her, he fertilizes her and he expands on her and he supports her. Right. And so a queen conscious woman is a woman who finds all of those things. Identity, value, worth, purpose in God.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:19:21]:

And watch this. She finds total fulfillment within herself. She's not searching for that on social media or a relationship with a man. She's completely and totally fulfilled as an individual. Right. I often say if, if you need a relationship, you don't need a relationship, you know, But a queen conscious woman is a woman that walks with pride. I mean, I could go on and on. She's a woman that sets the standard.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:19:57]:

She's a woman that holds herself to the standard. She's a woman that would allow her heart to break before she would ever allow disrespect or dishonor. Because she's what? Queen consciousness. See, she knows whose daughter she is. She knows why she's been positioned where she is. And she's not going to allow anything short of God to redefine or recalibrate her consciousness. She's queen consciousness. And so when we think about kings, it's the, you know, it's the same thing in reverse for men.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:20:35]:

It's a man that finds his identity and his worth and his value not in his. Not in his height, not in his bank account, not in his six pack, but in his relationship with God. That plays out in how he responds to the world humbly and how he honors what I believe as a man to be God's greatest gift apart from his son, Jesus Christ. And that is the woman. A man that cannot honor a woman is not king conscious. And so that's my spiel on it.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:21:05]:

Yeah. And it resonates so much. And I. What you said about looking for all of looking, how to build our identity through this guidance of social media, the Internet. It's. It's really piecemeal. Right. And you broke it down so simply that it actually is.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:21:21]:

If we look at this framework, it really comes from one place. And if we follow this, we get closer to our. Our own truth, you know, and mastering being alone, preparing ourselves to be in the relationship. Right. If you need a relationship you don't need the relationship. And it sounds like both Adam and Eve went through their own initiation alone before coming together, as in the partnership, right? And so this is what I actually see lacking in my world, because the. The world of birth is the world of initiation. Birth is an incredible initiation for the man and the woman.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:21:59]:

However, socially, before birth, we don't have a lot of initiations anymore in our society, right? We, you know, there were so many cultures cross culturally and historically, there were different rituals that were done. I mean, we can look at communion as one of those rituals. We can look at the mitzvah, the bar mitzvah, we keen senya, right? We can look at all these different types of rituals that initiate us and say, we're ready for this next phase. When a girl began a certain stage in her life that dictated her now being in, you know, now she's in womanhood, she started spending more time with the women, learning the ways of the women with weaving, preparing food, eating differently. We don't have that now so much, right. It's very diluted at this point. And so if you're speaking to adults, right, in their 20s, 30s, maybe even 40s sometimes, unfortunately. And they say, I still feel I'm in my girlhood, or I still feel I'm in my boyhood.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:23:01]:

I know that I want to initiate, but I don't know what to do because maybe they didn't get proper guidance from the male in their life or the female in their life. They grew up with parents who didn't offer that. How can they create their own initiation?

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:23:16]:

Love it. I love it. I love the question, because I find quite often, and I always say, you know, I'm no mental health professional, right? I am. No, I'm just. I'm just a man. I'm an older guy. I'm a preacher, I'm a pastor. I live my life with people.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:23:34]:

I've heard everything that you can imagine. But I'm no mental health professional. But one thing I've come to learn, even as a civilian in that sense, in terms of mental health, one thing I've come to learn is that I think all of us, it doesn't matter how great or not so great our childhoods were, we are all faced with the opportunity to reparent ourselves in certain areas, right? I had amazing parents, but even me as an individual, when I came of age where I was responsible for myself, I was able, as you put it, to create my own initiation into certain levels of thinking. Because for their generation and for what their Assignment was it wasn't necessary for them to think about some of the things that I had to think about. So when I came of age, I took on the responsibility for myself to parent myself in these areas. Everybody has the opportunity to position yourself and to reparent yourself. What does that look like? Well, that looks like, okay, my parents gave me what they had. They can't give me what they did not have.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:24:53]:

Rather than sitting in that negativity and being angry and bitter and, and, you know, volatile towards them when they, they gave me what they had. Now as an adult, I can put myself in positions with people who model what I know I need, submit to those relationships. Mentors, teachers, pastors, leaders, whatever, whatever they may be, put myself in those positions and allow myself to glean, make myself accountable to these people, mean truly accountable to these people. And you can develop, even in your adulthood, the things that you lament not having from your childhood. Right. There are a lot of things that I'm developing in my adulthood that I wish I had gotten in my childhood, you know, but I had an amazing child. But for the assignment, I've had to take on that responsibility of parenting myself. And what is parenting? It's training.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:26:02]:

It's putting the child in positions where the child can grow and learn. Well, when you come of age, you. You're able to do that for yourself and you, you know, and so I think every person that says, well, I wish I had had that, this, you do have opportunities. You just have to invest the time. Sometimes you have to invest the resources to put yourself in the rooms with the people who can deposit what you're lacking or what, you know, you need. You know, I think that begins with eliminating the people that are enabling your present status. A lot of times we can't connect with the people that can elevate us because we've not made the conscious choice to disconnect from the people that are holding us back. I think it starts with making the conscious decision to eliminate the people that are enabling my present dilemma and searching and looking for the people.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:27:05]:

And those people will resonate with you. You know, the people that speak to your future, the better version of you, which is what all of us are striving to be. At 60 years old, I'm. I still have mentors and I have people that I'm submitted to. I have people that, you know, have succeeded in certain. And watch this. All of my mentors are not as old as I am. Some of them are younger, but they're more accomplished in areas that I know I need to develop.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:27:33]:

Finding those people, surrounding yourself with those people, filling your life with those voices, those lessons, making yourself truly accountable. And you can, in 12 to 18 months, you can revolutionize your life. You can do it right, and then you can become a better version, a better example for your children. And. And it just gets better and better and better. I know that was a long answer. I apologize.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:27:59]:

No, that's. That's perfect. Because I think that, you know, in my experiences working with people, I often see. And of course, I'm not a. A trained mental health professional, but I do so much prenatal pregnancy, birth, and postpartum guidance that I do see a lot of family dynamics. And sometimes I notice that those traumatic, the trauma adaptations that many of us developed in childhood are the kind of armor and the mechanism that keeps us safe throughout life. It organizes life for us. You know, this is challenging time to run and hide, right? This is challenging time to do this behavior.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:28:40]:

Because this is how I knew, right? And it's kind of actually leads me into my next question, because when we have that blueprint as children, right, let's say the blueprint for love, how we watched our parents loving each other, committing to each other, how they related to us, right? Was it reward and punishment? Was it conditional? I will only love you if you are a good boy or a good girl. I'll only love you if you do. X, Y, Z. So this is where the people pleaser can be born. And so let's say a woman finds herself in a. In a marriage and they have children and she starts to do this work where she says, I'm reclaiming my. My queendom, becoming more queen conscious. I'm taking care of myself, I'm becoming healthy.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:29:24]:

And she finds herself with the person who might be one of the people that you're saying maybe has to get left behind because they are not aligned with the version where she is fulfilling her purpose, fulfilling her role as a solid mother. There is something in that dynamic holding her back. I've come across this too, you know, in the birth process, in the pregnancy, where she might have now done enough work to realize, I'm not in alignment here. Is it possible for that to be salvaged? What does one do when they wake up and their partner spouse is not kind of on that same path and she doesn't want to lose the family, doesn't want to compromise the children? I know it's. It's case by case basis, right? But what if she wakes up next to the Narcissist says, oh, I was in a. I was in a more toxic place when we connected. I, you know, it was a soul tie, as you. As you call it, you know.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:30:24]:

But now I've woken up and I found new, new ways of being. What. What can be done then? And it goes for men and women. It's not just the woman, right? Sometimes the male will go through his initiation and say, this is holding me down from my purpose. What can one do?

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:30:39]:

I think I'll go back to my experience with my very own wife. That's her right there. I'll go back to my experience with my very own wife. No relationship. I think we have to come to some conclusions. No relationship should ever cost me my identity, my sanity, or my future, right? Doesn't matter how much I love a person if. If they are costing me my identity, my sanity, my future, that person does not have a role in my future. I had been.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:31:21]:

So now my wife comes from a background of a childhood sexual trauma and abuse. She was sexually molested by her very own father and two of her uncles. Is a very little girl. So that's a lot of trauma, you know, that even I won't call her age. But even at this stage and age in her life, she still is working through. I come from, you know, the background I just described to you. So these two young people with these broken lives come together. The thing that has sustained us.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:32:03]:

We've been married for 29 years. We've been together maybe 35, 36. The thing that has sustained us over these years is that few things. Number one, when I got this idea that I didn't want to. We had been dating for years, and I got this idea I didn't want to marry her. She loved herself enough to say, okay, and though her heart was broken, she moved on. The second thing is that when I got myself together and I realized, this is my wife, watch this. We have been on the evolution journey together.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:32:51]:

So if a woman wakes up next to a man that has narcissistic tendencies, let's say that because a lot of guys have narcissistic tendencies, we're taught. We're taught to be narcissistic even if we're not clinically narcissists, right? If a woman wakes up to a man that is hurting her, doing damage to her, her first move is to clearly communicate on a level that he can understand exactly what he's doing to her and how it is making her feel, how it is impacting her. Then she steps back to see what he does with that. Because if he's a man that has any potential in your future, he's a man that is going to be sensitive to how you're impacted in the present. Any man that you can clearly communicate your heart, be it a conversation, be it. Be it a text message, be it a letter, be it a video, if he cannot feel, if he's not touched by your feelings as a man, that's a man that does not have any role in your future. Because when. When a man.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:34:06]:

If a man is not. If a man is not at his best today and you communicate your needs, that man's going to be attentive and you're going to feel a sense of partnership in the evolution and the growth if you're constantly fighting. And here it is. To change a man into what you've always hoped he would be. That is a trap that will eat up all of your youth and all of your years. But if you wake up next to a man that's just unenlightened, he's not been trained, he's not gone through any process where he's learned about manhood, and he's just making all of the mistakes that all of us made, like I did. But when my. When my wife made me feel what she was feeling, there was something that shifted in my heart because I.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:35:00]:

I truly loved her. That made me sensitive. Even though I didn't understand it, I was sensitive to what she felt and I responded to it. A man that does not respond to your feeling, that is not. That is not a relationship that. I don't think it can be salvaged. Now, God can do anything, but if you look at the data, I just don't think that that's a relationship that a woman should sink her life and her time into. It would be far better for you to choose your pain at that point.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:35:31]:

You're gonna either suffer the pain of breaking. Breaking this off sooner than later and going away and crying about being separated from somebody you think you love and getting over it and realizing that there's a man in your immediate future, probably that will make you forget that guy ever existed. Are you going to try to hang on and you're going to cry over the fact that you wasted your life on somebody who probably should have never had a conversation. So can it happen? Yes, it can happen. But it has to be a man that hears you, that sees you, that feels you. A man does not feel you. He's not equipped to be the man that goes with you into your future. I hope that's clear.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:36:15]:

It is. And that feeling is so important. And as someone who also works with, with children and early parenting, I say to women, you know, this is. This is where the real boot camp can start. Because children are like mirrors. So anything that you've been trying to hold in or hide, you know, mother or father, it's going to get reflected back to you because a behavior of theirs will trigger something in you. And it's not about the child changing to make you more comfortable. It's about you seeing what it is in you that is getting activated and why.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:36:49]:

And so, you know, I notice, you know, with certain children, they're having big emotions, right? And so easy to say, go to your room. And when you're calm and presentable, you come back out, right? And there's a fine line, of course, with, you know, kids running amok and being manipulative, you know, that's a whole other conversation. But when they're simply having an emotion and we can't even presence it and say, okay, I see you. What can I do right now to help this feel better for you? That takes a lot of grounded energy within a human, an adult, to be able, in a heightened moment to say that, say, it's not about me, it's about this child trying to secure some safety in their world. That doesn't make sense because sometimes it feels like chaos for them. So if a man doesn't get that as a youth, he has to learn that. And if, you know, like you're saying, if he's been married a few years, the wife wakes up and says, this has been going all wrong. I'm miserable.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:37:49]:

I don't feel hurt. I don't feel seen. There's abuse maybe going on. And she expresses it, and he's like, sorry, can't. You know, I can't even hold this.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:37:57]:

For you when you think about it. Which is why sometimes I think with my. My YouTube channel and my content, I can come across as harsh. It's because there are just far too many women that ignore these things in the dating process. If you're dating a guy and he has no emotional intelligence, he's not in touch with himself, and he really doesn't feel you. But you're just enamored with the idea of what this can be and what it looks like and pictures we put on Instagram and how beautiful our children might come out and all of this kind of stuff, and you've always ignored the fact that this guy is not even in tune with himself, therefore, he cannot be in tune with anyone else. And then you get into a full blown marriage or relationship with this person and you have a child for this person. And, you know, I mean, we, we got to start thinking logically and even discerning sooner than later.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:39:02]:

Especially women, of course.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:39:04]:

And it's never too late to break that cycle, right? Because if you find yourself in that situation, you have a daughter or a son, right? We have to remember that we are creating their blueprint for how they're going to expect and experience love and relationship. So if that woman can't be good on her own, has not gone through that initiation, developed the discernment, the queen consciousness, the cycle will repeat. It always repeats. Someone has to break it, and we can break it before it reaches them, you know, because I will say, you know, growing up in, in the 90s, and I mean, I'm shocked, I'm really shocked at what was going on in middle schools and high schools and there was no guidance, there was no discernment. I even remember I had a friend and her mom, which we were about 13. I remember being at her house and her mom said, oh, that boy is cute, you should ask him out on a date. She said to my friend. And I was, and I remember thinking, and I said to her, but girls don't ask boys out.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:40:07]:

Like, that's not right. Like, I don't, I don't even know how I knew, you know, but I wasn't interested in boys at that point or anything. I, you know, my mom was pretty strict with me and. But I remembered, I still, I still, you know, at this age, remember that comment and thinking, what is this? You know, what are we encouraging these casual relationships between children and for a girl to go and assert herself, to not be pursued, but to be the pursuer? I mean, biologically that doesn't even make sense. So. Yeah, but this is, you know, and I have, I have girlfriends now who have, you know, 13 year olds, 14 year olds, and they say, oh, you know, she's gonna wear that out. She's, you know, she's, she's going out with her friends, are probably gonna meet up with some boys. And I'm thinking, you know, where is her? Where has she been shown her worth when she goes out at 14 years old wearing, you know, a few scraps of cloth on her body? And then, you know, and, you know, they come from, quote, good families, right? What does that even mean at this point? Because she's basically putting her daughter out to be prey.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:41:16]:

And so it's just interesting to Me that this is where we've landed, you know, as a society. And then we wonder why so many girls are then chasing, you know, into their adulthood. Chasing. Looking for the approval, external validation, you know, not being seen for their heart and mind and righteousness, but more so the way they look. Right. And the way that they make themselves available. And so they give out all that energy, and next thing you know, we know how the cycle works. So it's very, you know, cross culturally.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:41:51]:

In any. Anywhere you look, I see it happening. And I see social media plays a big role in that as well. We don't have the preteen ages anymore. You go from being eight years old to a teenager now because of the way social media makes adult information accessible to children. So there's no adolescence anymore, let's say, and very little guidance from. From parents and families.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:42:15]:

Very little. And, you know, when you. When you look at it and when I travel internationally and I see other countries and cultures in comparison to where we live, the United States of America, you know, I don't see the. I don't see the family breaking down like this now with the invention of these things, a lot of the things that are going on in the United States of America are crossing the waters.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:42:48]:

R.C. picked up a cell phone. For those of you listening, he's. These things are the cell phones.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:42:53]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. I'm sorry. Help me. I'm old. You know, cell phones, you know, a lot of. A lot of what we value in this country, which is many times nothing is. Is kind of infiltrating. But you don't see the family breaking down like we see in the United States of America.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:43:13]:

You don't see the war between the genders like we supposedly have here in the United States of America. The values of the great, great, great, great grandparents are still present in. In the young men and the young women of most cultures. And it's just. I mean, I think it's sad, but I think it's also something that we can rectify, but we cannot rectify it as a collective. We have to rectify it as individuals. In other words, you and I have to see. And we have to train our children better.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:43:54]:

We have to train our children to train their children. But right now, we've lost a generation or two because of absentee parents.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:44:04]:

Yeah. I mean, it's. It's like a language, right? It just takes one generation to lose that language. Or it's like recipes and cooking. If you don't cook with your daughters and you're not teaching them. They're not, they're going to go to college and they're going to be making hot ramen, you know, instant ramen. They don't know. So we're not teaching them.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:44:23]:

It just takes one generation. And I see that, you know, because I work with families in birth. The nuclear family is under attack, let's say, right? And it's the absentee parents. A lot of that has to do with the society we live in where we hire other people to take the place of the mother role or the father role, right? Or we say, well, I got to work, so I'm going to put, I'm going to leave them with, you know, a teenager who's getting paid minimum wage at a daycare and that I'm just going to see him at night and on the weekends, right? And so then we wonder how these family values are lost is because there is no one on one time, right? Mothers are expected or they believe, you know, because of the, the poisoning that unfortunately the feminist movement has, you know, infiltrated into all of us, is that, you know, we, we, we can have it all, right? We should want to have it all. And, and it's, you know, it's not possible, right, because something's going to fail, right? The self, self value, the health, the relationship, right? The marriage, the mothering with the child, the home, the creation of the home, and then the career and then hobbies and then external. So there's too much, right? And so women are trying to do it and then everything is imploding. And so there's just, there's a big misunderstanding on how this works, you know, and I, I've seen so many children diagnosed with different disorders. You know, I, I, I, I have a doula training and one of the women, she's a speech therapist and she said, the amount of times people come in here and say, help my kid with this, help them speak.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:46:04]:

And they, and she says, well, you can come here every day of the week, but if you're not spending time with them outside of here and doing the homework, this is just a waste of money for you. And they said, well, what am I supposed to do with them one on one? So what do you mean, what are you supposed to do with them one on one? And so they put their kids in too many extracurriculars. They have their kid in school after hours, they put their kid on a device. There is no one on one time. So the way we set things up socially, the lack of balance in the relationship the roles, Right. And this is one of the questions I actually had for you, because a lot of people have children, I would say, very unconsciously, and that's just a sad fact. Yes, of course, sometimes it's not planned. That's not what I mean.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:46:51]:

But they get into the planning stage because they feel it's the next step after marriage. Right. Almost treating the child as an accessory. Right. This is the next step. Right. This is part of the house and the dog and the white fence, and now we get the baby and. But do they really think about.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:47:10]:

Have they acquired harmony in their dynamic as husband and wife first? Have they really clarified their roles? Because the. The effort is equal, right? Everybody's putting in 100%, but the roles look very different. And it's not until the child arrives that sometimes we see the trouble in paradise. Because women do a lot of invisible labor, and so they don't realize, oh, yeah, I've been paying half the bills. I've been doing this, I've been doing that, I've been doing. All these things are actually not my place. And so now that I'm mothering, I'm exhausted, resentful, overworked, getting sick. So what would you say in these planning stages, how to rethink and how to become more conscious before starting that family? How does it.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:47:57]:

When you're in that stage and you got your partner, how do they find those roles?

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:48:02]:

I think we have to start with a foundation of selflessness. And that's a word that we don't really hear a lot of in culture or in the discussion around developing relationships. If a man and a woman are going to really create an amazing family or an amazing union, they have to start from a foundation of selflessness. Relationships, especially marriages, are not designed for you to get what you want or what you need. Relationships are designed for you to deposit into the life of the other what he or she needs. And so when I look at Lisa every day, I'm not thinking of, well, what can I get from her? What are my needs? What do I want? What do I need her to do for me? I am automatically thinking, what does she need today? And we were. She and I were laughing last night, in fact, because she was exercising and she was hurting. And I have this.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:49:15]:

My right shoulder is something they call frozen. I have a frozen right shoulder, which is extremely painful. But I saw how much pain she was in. So I took the stuff and I said, well, let me rub your back. And she was laughing because I was grunting in pain as I was Trying my best to alleviate her pain. But that's the dynamic of relationships. We start with selflessness. And when we start from a foundation of selflessness, what happens is we eliminate the voice of the ego within the relationship.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:49:50]:

Because there are times in the personal structure of any relationship, and there's no cookie cutter model that I can take and apply to your relationship, and they apply it to theirs. But when we. When we start with selflessness, we eliminate the voice of ego. And now everybody approaches the relationship, ultimately, the family, from the perspective of what are the needs, what are the roles? Now, in our family, we have very clear Judeo Christian type roles. I see myself and I function in the role of protector, provider, teacher, whatever else you want to call it. Does that mean I make. I call all of the shots? Actually, I listen to Lisa more than she does me. But she respects my role as the husband, as the father, as the head of the family.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:50:46]:

She functions in the role of the mother, the wife, the nurturer. She does all of that invisible labor you were just talking about that makes her completely exhausted at the end of the day. And we as men are trying to figure out, why are you so tired? It's because she does the million and one things that a woman, a feminine soul, is only equipped to do. And it's when we approach from a place of selflessness, it's when we at least come to the table and discuss, what am I comfortable with? Because I know I'm talking to a lot of people who will not subscribe to traditional Judeo Christian roles in terms of men and women, but you need to at least get to the table and you need to discuss with your partner of choice what do you need as a woman? What do you need as a. As a man? How do you view it? Because there are a lot of men. I heard a man say the other day that he'll be fine just staying home, letting his wife take care of him. And I'm like, wow, you know me as a man, personally. Personally, unless I'm completely sick and incapable, there's no way in the world I would be satisfied with just sitting home, letting my wife take care of.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:52:06]:

Because in my mind, as the man, she's the prize. And I'm designed to take care of her. In her mind, she's like, abrah, you know, you should be bringing more to the table than you are. But I think it starts with getting an understanding and not just launching into these relationships based on hormones or sexual needs or sexual attraction, but understanding that this is a lifelong contract that has to define specifically roles and not just buying into all of the things you see on social media. That, you know, just kind of leaves everything somewhat in a nebulous state where we can't really define anything. It has to be defined because it's cute now for a woman to say, well, I want to be a boss chicken. I can run a multimillion dollar business and I can have children and I can take care of a husband. That's cool.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:53:08]:

When you're very, very young, you have all of the energy in the world, but once life happens and you start to slow down and you realize that was cute in its season, I don't want to do this anymore. You had better have a man that has the mindset to step into the role of provider. If you, if you marry a man that does not have the mindset to provide, that's going to be some serious issues moving down the road. So I would say figure out what both of you want. Make certain that it's a sustainable model for the future because you're going to have to live with it the rest of your life.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:53:43]:

Yeah. And I think goes back to what you said about cultivating all of that value, that self worth, that peace, enjoying your time alone. What does that really mean? Right. That initiation. And once that's very clear and you come into contact with a potential partner or you're with somebody and you know, you want to have children in the future. Right. Are you aligned? I just think so many, I know so many women, myself included. You know, 20 years ago it was like I was so disconnected from that that I'd say, well, you know, I don't believe anybody's ever a 10 out of 10 that, I don't think that that's true.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:54:27]:

But I would have said, okay, you know, a 4 out of 10 because, you know, what if. And potential and maybe. And down the line that person could adjust the, you know, so many potentials. Right. High off the hope, the fumes of hope. Hopium is what I would call it. It's like, you know, but when you say, no, these things, I value these things, I wouldn't sacrifice this for anybody. Then you naturally align to someone who has similar values.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:54:56]:

It's that you, you become, you know, you find that person who you're equally yoked with. Right. And we, but we get into this scarcity mentality that it's not possible. What if someone else doesn't come along? And I just, you know, it's, it's very damaging. But I, I do, I do believe that both men and women, like you said, once they go through that initiation process on their own. And it's not to say that we don't make mistakes along the way. It's very possible as we're learning. But when we get into a point where we say, okay, this is a boundary I have, this is a need I have, and if it's not going to be met here or that's going to be crossed, this just simply isn't the right place.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:55:31]:

And you pick your heartbreak, right?

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:55:34]:

You pick it. Correct, Correct. Correct.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:55:36]:

Wow, this has been an incredible conversation and thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. And I just feel there's so many, there's so many points along the way of this conversation where I just said I could turn, I could have another hour long conversation about just about this specific point. You know, there's so much here and, and it does start with the individual. If we want to heal that collective, if we want to move in a better direction as a collective, it has to be within us first. We have to turn, turn the camera this way. Right. Rather than focusing so much on they're doing, they're doing and what they should change, it has to come in here first.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:56:15]:

So thank you.

 

Eyla Cuenca [00:56:16]:

Listen, this has been a joy. I'm so glad we finally got a chance to make it happen. And again, I thank you. I'm honored to be a part of your platform. You're doing amazing things in the world and I'm just happy to know you, to be honest with you. Thank you again for having me.

 

R.C. Blakes [00:56:35]:

Likewise. Thank you so much.