Love Yourself

My League Books.

Has all the knowledge you want, My League but has all the knowledge you need.

Yet they have all the books that the whole wild world one up read.

My League Books.

Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to Malik's Bookshelf, bringing the world together with books, culture and community. Hi, my name is Malik, your host of Malik's Bookshelf. Welcome everybody to this ninety fifth episode. This is amazing, ninety five episodes, incredible milestone for my podcast. I didn't see myself doing this a few years ago, but I'm grateful and thankful that i have a voice, i have an audience, and I'm on

Did a reading.

She read a book very touching, and it just brought up a lot of things, as you're going to hear in the conversation with her that about my mother and

Her name is Lydia c.

Riverian. She's in town and she's doing a pop up at Malik Books.

And you know what I love.

To do is I love people when they off the show up at Milik to talk about this book.

And she's gonna read it to us.

On this podcast.

Her book so I'm excited for this.

She's here for a naacp immateeur ward.

We believe she's gonna win.

The book is timely and it's old time, so she's gonna take it from here.

There's nothing else I need to say.

She's gonna read us a little bit about the book, and then we're gonna have a little conversation about the book.

Welcome to my podcast, Lydia. Thank you for having me. Wonderful, wonderful. Thank you for having me.

First of all, that was like the best introduction I have ever received.

Thank you. Thank you Malik first and foremost, it is an honor to be here. I love what you're doing here, believe books.

This is amazing, So thank you so so much. Yes, I am in town always from Georgia, here in La here in California.

It's the weather's nice, and I'm excited to just be here.

More importantly, I'm excited to share this beautiful, beautiful masterpiece written by myself and illustrated so brilliantly.

By Nina Mata.

I'm excited about and just a little bit about why I wrote the book.

I have vidligo.

I was born with the skin condition. So about thirty seven years I have lived with vid aligo. I don't know life without vid aligo. Why did I write our children's book because that's where a lot of my story and testimonies started. As a child, I went through the challenges, I went through the obstacles, I went through.

The bullying, I went through the.

All kinds of abuse, verbal, just mental abuse because I was born different, and it's important for me, especially now being a mother, that I highlight the differences that each and every one of us have and to let everyone know that it doesn't matter how you look, how you walk, how you talk, it was on purpose. You were created as such on purpose, and you have got to walk like you know, like you know, you are beautiful just

So I'm just gonna jump.

Right in and yes, yeah, you read this to my audience and.

Not scripted, no questions written out.

We're doing is live in person right here at books in the Westfield.

All right, all right though, I absolutely positively love my spots written by me and ill by Mina Mata. I stand up and I stand out. I am the light and the spark. I was created special with my many beauty marks. Some people call them patches and ask me why do I have dots? And some people call them blotches, and they ask me why do I have spots.

But my mama says, with.

Love, vitiligo makes you, and my Papa says, smiling, your royalty through and through my skin is fly, I say proudly as I rock what I got because I absolutely positively.

Love my spots.

My spots can feel like home or brave adventures far away. My spots can bring the sunshine on the most rainiest of days. My spots come in all shapes and sizes and in every shade. Every spot is perfectly painted, and every spot is specially made from sun up to sundown.

I'm gonna rock what I got.

Because I absolutely positively love my spots. So even when I get shy or when I start to feel doubt when I need a reminder of what I.

Am all about.

My spots make me feel strong enough to face my biggest feats. They show the world I am one of a kind and I am here.

My spots are a part of me.

And just in case you forgot, I have patches, blotches and dots, and yes I have a lot. I'm standing boats and be beautiful as our rock.

What I got now, I need some help in the audience with this.

Last part here, because I absolutely positive.

Spots. I love it.

That story is relatable, whether it's external or internal. We got blotches, we got spots, we got limases, we got freckle, you name it.

We all have something, you know that was relatable. And I certainly thought about you know when I became conscious, and I wanted to open up a store so that we could have representative learn about ourselves because I had a degree from usc but I didn't have a knowledge itself, so I was empty.

I was void. I didn't know anything about my past. I didn't think we did anything as a people, so I was white wives. So here's the thing.

When I discovered all this and started to read about these things, I went home and talked to my mama, and she revealed to me that my mama was very dark skinned.

And she revealed to me as she when she was growing up.

The spot that was put on her was in the mind because my grandmother, you would always say, don't bring no jiggaboos homes, don't bring no dark babies home. My grandmother and my mama.

Would ultimately end up becoming best friends, but there was trauma there in the early stages because my mom being so dark and my grandmother saying all those hateful things to my mother.

My mother hated to be dark skinned.

So if she hated to be dark skin, what you think she was gonna do to me and my sister and my brother. She was gonna spill that spots over to us. Wow, So no, wonder, this is how and this goes on all the costs this country where we hate our skin or we hate our hair or she told me for the first time, I'm a grown man now that.

She hated being dark skinned black. So I got to dig myself out of that.

I'm brief and thankful God put me on the journey to open up Malik books so that I can share what I've discovered and it's expanded, But I know that the real journey is for us is the children.

That's what we do this for. That's what this book is for, because children are one of our future. Sin I do it for the truth, truthful, because without them, we have no future.

So what everything that I do is to make a difference for the next generation.

I love to be able to reach the adults as well, and I have because I was an adult when I changed. But books like this matter because it helps me on my mission. It helps me expose what I've been trying to say, you know, the hatred of self, lack of love for self, hating the color of your skin and your hair and spots.

And blimachers and freckles. All of that is a snowball effect. You can only go so far.

In the world if you don't have any love for yourself, because that's where it starts. How can you treat somebody with love when you don't even know how to treat yourself with love?

So books like this helps me.

Thank you, Thank you. I hope you win. That's much easier because we you got materials out here.

You can understand that this is the mission to day. That's it. Yeah, so talk to us about your inspiration.

I mean, I know you said things that you grew up with and so forth, but you came up with a nice flow.

Your story was relatable. It touched all of us.

What was the inspiration to come up with all those beautiful words other than the fact that we know that you grew up and you hid a lot of things, and you had a lot of mental trauma, and you had a lot of things how you viewed yourself.

Yeah, it's almost similar to what you were talking about when you come to that realization. I came to a realization after thirty something years that I was because that's to hide my did Lika, And I realized I wasn't hiding necessarily for myself, because I still had to see myself every day every night. I was hiding myself because I was afraid others wouldn't accept me.

They did it.

People would not sit next to me. I didn't have a lot of friends. Even as an adult. It was not the best interaction with people. I dealt with the bullying. I dealt with all of that from childhood.

Up until adulthood.

And I say adulthood and I really mean that like, there were people that did not want to sit next to me, whether I be on the bus, whether I be in a restaurant or whatever, because people there for one lack of knowledge. Okay, this having these type of books and these representations is to educate people and to spread awareness because when people don't know something, they don't know how to react to it.

Right.

So for me, I was inspired by the fact that I was.

Just sick and tired of pleasing everybody else and I was unhappy to get They're here and here for over thirty years, and then I have children my own looking up at me. They will draw pictures of me. This was another part of why I did a children's book.

They will draw.

Pictures of me before I would cover, before I stopped covering up the lego, and it will be pictures with hair or hats covering it up. So none of the pictures they do when they were children showed my bit of liga and I had to say, what.

Am I teaching them?

Right?

You see what I'm saying? What am I teaching my children?

Like they are drawing pictures of me that's not even me Because I have been.

A light up and I had to realize I was.

I couldn't tell them, hey be confident, Hey hold your head up high, Hey love these things about you, And they clearly saw I hated all those things about me. I hated things about me. I did not love who I was. I went through a very very very dark place in my life, held myself captive in my own mental prison.

And that is the thing.

I was tired of arding myself captive in my own mental prison.

I was tired of. I would look in the mirror and I just cried. I'm a grown woman. I want to be confident. I want to love who I am.

But there is so much power in truly accepting who you are just the way you are, and not caring about what anybody else think around you.

Because the moment.

I did there, the moment I did that, so many things open up for me, not just personally, but just even in.

My endeavors in life.

Right just I'm a confidence coach now today, like what like you see, like a woman who didn't have confidence there at self esteem since childhood. Now here I am helping others reach their breakthrough coming out of that place of mental captivity, disliking themselves, hating their skin not liking the way they look, not liking this about them, and that is so it's very disheartening because I've been there. But it is also personally. I know it's your draining. Yes, it is draining, it really is.

And how you saddenly.

We all have our own spots, blemishits and perfections that we we you know, these insecurities.

That we all have.

I'm gonna tell you one thing, how far are you gonna go holding on to what? I don't like this so I don't like that. You gotta learn how to love because what else can you do about this?

Right?

This is thirty seven yearlf be yourself to love yourself. You know, how did this affect you and your relationships with boys, men or whatever?

Yeah, So every person I ever dated didn't see my vind of lego until months and months after I hid my goddle lego.

Even when I had gotten married, I hear my bit of lego. I had to.

I remember the first time showing my ex husband my husband at the time, my vidal lego. I was picking my my hat up just to show them a little bit, because that's like I was that ashamed.

And at this time I was in my mid twenties, early early mid twenties.

So I'm just like picking my hat to show up a little bit. And did he know it was a whole lot more under that little piece that he saw.

But it was it was not easy.

I was.

I wo man, dating was not fun. Uh, it wasn't.

Yeah, you know, I always say when we get into these relationships, the number one thing why most of them don't work out.

I believe it.

Is because number one, you're not honest in truth about yourself.

And number two, no this no discipline.

And one day I saw this little probably was in their early twenty had a baby, and I just something just said to me, and let me just pray for these this couple heres sign on because I know that the challenge they're gonna have to deal.

With is that they don't know who they are and they're.

Gonna be trying to find who they are wandy together, and that's gonna create the misunderstanding, this communication problem.

And then they god baby and men you know, unfortunately win't the most, especially when you're that young.

They go both way.

So I said that, I said, you know, that's what's gonna get this honesty, the deception. See it's gonna create the misunder the communication to be disruptive, destructive, see, because both it's gonna be showing another alternative fact, not the truth, you know, to try to justify, because it's called deceptive

Cultivating these relationships. And if we're not true ourselves, then how would that impact you?

Know, as you begin to discover who you are and then you and he's really and you denying who you are?

You know, how did that turn? You got the marriage? So at what point did you.

Said to yourself to love myself, to stop hiding who I am?

So i'll I'll be transparent if that's okay.

When I got when I got married, I got married.

Loving a man and not loving me.

So really did I love him if I didn't know how to love in a sense because I didn't love the person that I was, I didn't love the woman that I was. And this is this is being I'm being very transparent and honest here. My marriage, more than lifely did not last because I.

Wasn't all together in whole.

Okay, I came into a marriage broken because I was. I was broken, I was shattered, I was I have very little self esteem, no confidence.

I mean, I was really depressed.

A lot, and it was very very hard trying to be in a relationship, in a marriage with children.

Still trying to pick myself up.

But I have other responsibilities to help, you know, my children help love and cultivate this relationship that I'm in. But it is very difficult whenever you are not whole and complete, and that is just the truth. Do not go into relationships, friendship, any kind of situationship's broken, because then you begin to bleed on those and they did nothing to you.

You begin to bleed on other people who didn't even cause those wounds, you see what I'm saying.

So you got to heal those wounds first, or you will bleed all over everyone that God has put them to your life to come in to help heal them.

But you won't allow them to help heal you.

Because you don't even know what really broke you or why you're so broken, And that.

Really is inner work. You have got to find you.

You've got to learn how to deal with you sit with yourself. What does that feel like? Sitting by yourself? For me, I felt like because I hate I did not like this woman. I felt like I needed somebody else to tell me that they liked me. Help, No, someone else validate my beauty. Help somebody else come help validate me, because I was not and I was not complete,

Able to reship, be in a reaship with yourself. Okay, so relationships, and.

This is this is even just beyond just my skin condition. This is beyond the bit of ligo itself. It's a it's a person thing.

It's a people thing. It's a human thing. You see. Not no one in here, aside from myself, has been a libel.

But I'm pretty sure someone in here has dealt with some type of insecurity, some kind of imperfection that they're like, I wish I could change it, So I wish I didn't have to have this, you know, and maybe this person would like me better, or maybe I could get this type of situation.

Listen, I'm.

What I've learned is that no one can tell me about me or make me feel anything less than who I know I am. When I walk into a room my head held high. Yeah, And you have got to walk into rooms with your head held high when you're supposed to be in those rooms, whether be in those rooms or in relationships. So if you're saying I want this type of relationship, you've got to walk as if you know that you are.

Deserving of that kind of relationship. So it's real. All in a work. In work, we can pass the collection. We got to go through something to give something.

Every knock is a boost.

But my greatest challenge is is what make us? You know, it ain't always you know us doing it right. You know, sometimes you know when things are too close to you, we can't see it in this blurd, So sometimes you got to You gotta see it at a distance in order to make the course correct. So this book to hey,

Book that part love the skin that you're in.

You will always win and whatever that means to you, whatever winning looks.

Like for you, you.

Got to love you first. Whatever winning looks like for you, whatever success looks.

Like for you, you you've got to figure out what that is, and that comes from you loving yourself. Okay, I'm Legacy Rivera.

You can find me on Instagram, Facebook, all over, Google me l I d y A C.

Rivera. The book is in.

Target, Amazon all over anywhere books are sold, Barnes and Noble Books million of course, Malik Books, Malik Books and all these signed colleges right here at Malik Books. Okay, so that's how you can get in touch with me, Go and get you a copy, If not for you, for someone who you know will be blessed by this book.

But yeah, thank you, thank you, thank.

You. Thanks for listening to Malik's bookshelf, where topics on the shelf are books, culture, and community. Be sure to subscribe and leave me a review. Check out my Instagram at Malak Books.

See you next time,