Spiritually Guided From Oakland To Paris

SPEAKER_02 0:17

If you felt a pull to leave this country, feeling there's more life for you somewhere beyond these borders of the U.S., know that you're not imagining it. You're not being reckless. You're not running away. You are being divinely guided by your own spiritual nature, which is insisting on you breaking free to live free. Welcome to season one, episode one of Terry Talks, the podcast for American expats of color who are breaking free to live free. I'm your host, Terry Don Marshall. Two years ago, I sat down with Ricky Stevenson for this interview. I wanted to hear about the family history that inspired her to want to live in Paris. I wanted to know more about how she built both a successful business and life between Oakland, California and Paris France. What impressed me the most during this interview was the importance Ricky placed on her spiritual development practices, on the support of her spiritual community, and how her spiritual advisor, Reverend Eloise, the founder of East Bay Church in Oakland, California, encouraged her to hold to the original vision of her dream and keep her focus and belief and her ability to achieve it all. Long before Ricky Stevenson made Paris her second home, she was already joined in a work, immersing herself in spiritual practices, cultivating a consciousness aligned with her higher self. On today's show, Ricky shares her family history, which has given her life a strong foundation, focus, and direction. She shares how she built an award-winning tour business in Paris and how she depends and follows her inner guidance throughout her life. It is my pleasure to welcome Ricky Stevenson, CEO of Black Paris Tour, as our guest today. Hello, Ricky Stevenson. How are you today?

SPEAKER_01 2:36

It's good to see you again.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

It's good to see you. I am so excited about this interview. I know that you'll have so much to share with us about your journey from California to France so many years ago. From Oakland to Paris. You had a role. And it's the experience that you and I have had over these last 30 years as friends has been enriching to my life.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

I feel much the same, Terry. That's why, whenever we talk, it could be two or three years between when we have a chance to catch up. And it's just, hey, how are you doing? Okay, let's keep going. Yeah, like yesterday. Yes, that's an all-enduring friendship.

SPEAKER_02 3:19

Yes. Let's start with you sharing just a little bit of your background. If you can include some of your education and some of the traveling experiences you had before making the decision to move to France.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

He was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, but raised by her grandmother in Denver, Colorado. She learned how to dance at the Denver Y, went out into the world as a professional dancer, and married my dad. And then at one point, when I was three, mom took me to see Josephine Dacer perform on stage in Los Angeles. My father, before he met my mother, was from Oklahoma. And I had a great-grandfather, great uncles, when we got together for family reunions, they would tell us, they'd say, We are Africans who were brought from the west coast of Africa to have been enslaved. We refuse. We fought, they were brought first to Florida, fought the, I'll say government agents, went into the swamps of Florida, became known as the Seminole Indians, and would eventually become members of the five original tribes. So we got our Native American numbers returned to the Seminoles several years ago. And we're called Stevensons, Freemen, descendants of the five original tribes. All of that goes into the making of who I am. So when my mother took me to see Josephine Baker, and she had been a part of Black Hollywood at one point in her life, and talked about the black Americans, the entertainers, the writers, the intellectuals who had spent time in Paris as free people. I was hooked. And then when I was 11, my parents took me to see James Baldwin speak. I still had the book that he autographed for me when I was 11 years old. Oh wow, that's incredible. Called The Fire Next Time. He'd already lived in Paris. And I'm hooked. And I promised myself when I was about 10 or 11 that when I grew up, I'm gonna go live in Paris. I promised myself actually three things. I was going to go live in Paris. I wanted to be a journalist to tell our side of the story. And I wanted to boom at the United Nations. My mother had kept us home from school the day that Kwame Nkrumah, the first African president of Ghana, had been, I won't say admitted, had come to the United Nations. And again, I'm captivated. Captivated. Terry, the good thing is that I've done all those things. And it's like my life has been a constant funnel for what do you want to do? What do you want to do? It's like everything. When I talk about the people that I got to meet, it's been amazing. I know you you want to know more.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

The history you just shared with us is amazing, Ricky. Every time we talk, it's a marathon.

unknown 6:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:55

But every time we talk, I learn something new. Oh, good.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

That's what a good friendship is supposed to be forever and ever.

SPEAKER_02 7:04

Yeah. Your history, the historical connection to this country. The ground is the ground that you have.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

You are rooted in that truth of self. Firmly. Terry, I remember when I was in maybe fourth or fifth grade, and the teacher said, Okay, I want you children to turn in this book and we're going to read about the black kids in the class. And it was about slavery. And I'm like, wait a minute, where's the rest of the information? Not everybody was enslaved. Not everyone conceded to that. Not everyone failed to fight that. I had more fights with my teachers. I had one teacher who tried to tell us Egypt is not a part of Africa. I was so young, I couldn't say you're lying. But I was like, you're misinformed. And those teachers contact my parents, my mother specifically. And I can remember my papa taking me to school one day, getting all cute, dressed, taking me to school, and talking to the teacher. And eventually they became friends. I think my mother gave her, mom gave her a copy of the book by Lamone Bennett, A Fourth and May Flower. I think with the other teacher, she may have given her a map of the world, of Africa, to show that Egypt was on the Nile. Egypt was Africa. And that the Nile River, that's the only river that flows differently in it north, the Sudanese, the blackest people in the world, the most beautiful black people, were the original Egyptian. So when you have that kind of background, my mother's grandfather was a Garvey man, a Garvey, Marcus Garvey. So when you have that kind of background, whether you know it or not, your understanding of your history is going to be different. I always wanted to understand. But how could we have Langston Hughes? How could we have Patrice Namumba? How could we have Dr. King? How could we have Dr. John Heinrich Clark? How could we have these great historians? And yet, on the other hand, we had thoughts for our history to be revealed. Why? And of course, we now know that Africans were the first people on this globe. I'm telling you, I got into it. Scientists using DNA, which is 99 and 99 and ad infinitum percent. You cannot fault DNA. You cannot argue DNA. But scientists now know that Africans in Southern Africa were the first people on this globe. The first people on this earth. They're called the SAN people. In some instances, they're called the Koikui people. They were first to travel the world. I laugh because there's a point at which the Asian scholars said, I don't know. We look different from you all. And so we're going to do our own DNA research. And maybe two years ago, that soon. Two years ago, they were like, guess what? We're African too. So these are the things that I wanted to find out. In fact, it wasn't until the mid-1600s that the concept of whiteness came into existence. Prior to that, there were Africans, there were Italians, there were Irish, they were indentured, or they were people who had been enslaved. Indenturement was essentially enslavement, except you could work your way out at some point. But it was in, I think, 1678, that the heads of the 13 colonies, they were like, this is going to be interesting. Because if these people come together, these that we have enslaved and these that we have enslaved via indenturement, and they're all living on the same level. And if they come together and fight, revolt against us, this will be horrible. So they began quietly creating you're white and he's black. Prior to that, it did not exist.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

Ricky, when did you decide it was time to move to Paris for a year?

SPEAKER_01 11:49

I always knew I would come to pass. When I was married to my daughter's father, we lived in Saudi Arabia. It was fascinating. I went through a one-week course in what to do and what not to do when you get to Saudi Arabia, how you could be acceptable. And I thought it was wonderful. And then when I got there, there was a bone that we're kind of landing at the airport, and the customs guy comes and he looks at me and he looks at my passport and he said, Welcome on. And I was like, Thank you. You weren't expecting that, were you? I was not. And nor was I expecting the fact that the Salvies looked like open, where I was born, where I grew up for the most part. And they were like, We wondered when you'd notice. Yeah, we wondered when you notice. And so that was a major thing for me. And then later, I did go on to become a journalist. I was at the UN in New York. I worked for Radio Network in New York. I was like their Africa expert because that was my background.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

Could you tell us about your educational background and how it prepared you for those first moments abroad?

SPEAKER_01 12:58

I did undergraduate at Regis in Denver, Colorado. And that's only because that's my mother's standard from there. And Denver was so cute. And I guess it was good for me. And then I did a master's degree at Stanford. I thought initially I was going to become an educator, and then I had a professor, Dr. St. Claire Dre, and he saw something in me, and I'll never forget when he said, I want you to go to Jamaica. He had been invited to a Garvey conference. And he said, I want you to go and be my representative. Whoa, okay. And I did that. And then I was supposed to finish in one area, and I wound up finishing in history with an emphasis on Africa, on the African liberation movements. So that was my background. My husband had written a book that became a book on black economics and made a lot of money. And so we could have our own little bookstore. We're students, we got a bookstore. Wound up in Nashville, Tennessee, worked for a radio station there, a historic black radio station. And within months, I was hired away to New York City to work for National Black Network. What an experience. What an experience in interviewing people like Muhammad Ali, Jimmy Carter, Andy Young, and James Baldwin.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

Did you share with him the story of how you had met him earlier on as a child?

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Of course. And what was really interesting is that when we finished the interview, he said, This was really interesting. What are you going to do now? Because I was getting ready to leave. I'm packing up. And I said, I'm going to walk home. I live up Central Park West. He said, I'm walking that way. I want you to come walk with me. What a moment. And we walked up Amsterdam Avenue, and his friends, hey Jimmy, how are you doing? And I'll never forget Diane Caroline. And she was like, Oh, Jimmy, and she just hugged him and squeezed him. I'll never forget. I was a business reporter later in Silicon Valley. And this is when I'd switched into television. And I had a fabulous new photographer, photojournalist. And we talked one day, and he said, This is going to be interesting. We're going to be interviewing all these people in Silicon Valley, no and Dushnelsky's. And he says, You follow my lead. So we go into someone's office. I'd sit down in front of them. I would begin getting to know them. This is what we're going to talk about. Andrew Brimmer, Alan Greenspan, all of these heavy hitters in the world and U.S. economics. And Tom would mic me, run my microphone down, put it on my back, get everything set up, turn the camera on, and tap me on the back. And that meant we're ready to roll. And invariably, these people would be like, How did you guys do that? He taught me how to engage with people first. And then they were like, Wow, you are really professional. So they forgot that wait a minute, she's black. What could she possibly know? And they meant to, oh, these people know what they're doing. Thank God for Tom Ball, wherever he is, this white guy who we loved each other. But he said, This is how we're going to concrete any pushback. And we did.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

There are so many nuggets. You just presented to us about your early years in journalism. And I believe that those are lessons people can use who are going abroad.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Exactly. You have to know what you're doing. As I said, I had a one-week course in what to do, what not to do when you get to Saudi Arabia. And I took it very seriously. If they say, when we have the call to prayer, we want you all to stop. You just sit down. If you're in a store, you just sit there. Or you can continue shopping. A big old store like Nordstrom, you can keep shopping. And then when the call to prayer is over, sometimes it would be 20 minutes, sometimes it might be longer. You can come up to the sales desk and we'll help you. The lights are going to be dim. For instance, they would say, don't wear skirts that show your knees, don't show your elbows, don't show your décottage, don't show the nape of your neck. I got a jacket in Venice that covered everything. And whenever I'd go out, I'd just put that. You had to be respectful of the culture. And that is the thing Americans don't want to do. The first time I came to Paris was as a travel reporter in 1994. And I loved it. The people were so great. I'll never forget. I got kind of teary-eyed when I went to a restaurant, and then they put up a table after service ended, and people could come and just eat. They never wasted food. Whoever needed something, whoever was hungry, use food. We didn't sell it. Why would we throw it away? If you want to do, you come to us. We will give you food. They teased me and they were like, Oh, you Americans, you live to work. And we're French and we work to live. And I liked that. That they work a 35-hour work week, and you get six weeks' vacation your first year on the channel. Uh-uh. They don't work themselves to death. It's just this is what we're going to do with making money.

SPEAKER_02 18:43

So now you were there in I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off there.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

No, and then I came in 1997.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

Can we back up just before you get into 1997? Because you just said that you were there in 1994 as a journalist. I moved back to California and in 1995, I was doing my executive coaching business, structuring excellence. And I decided that I was going to market it. And I thought, I think I'll add television to this mix. So I called Channel Four in San Francisco.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

K R O N then. It was then the network station.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

I spoke to someone there and I told them what I did, and they said, that sounds interesting. We would like to have you on BTV Live. And they said, Ricky Stevenson has a show. We think you would be perfect on her show. I was pleasantly surprised when I met you. You and I didn't do a pre-interview at all. And who I met at the station that day was a beautiful, graceful, professional, warm personality.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

Thank you. And I never wanted to do pre-interviews. I want to get you right there. That's why I majored in.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

I'm going to tell you something. Now, Ricky, you nailed that interview. Thank you, Terry Dawn. We're talking about neurolinguistic programming. You had never heard of neurolinguistic programming, but you conducted that interview like you were the developer of neuro linguistic programming. I was in awe. You pulled out of me information that I don't think I'd ever share it with anybody as it relates to what I was really up to with people, pulling from them or helping them to uncover their authentic self. I worked with senior management people down in Silicon Valley, small business owners and professionals who would all come to get to the next level. But I knew something about the next level that a lot of coaches missed. And it was the spiritual perspective of success. It was one of the most revealing interviews I had ever participated in. I have to say, you were so instrumental in my early success in the Bay Area.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

Isn't that what we are here to do to make life better for each other? Let me just have to share this. Terry, I belong to an amazing church in Oakland. East Bay Church of Religious Science of Mind, it's not Scientology. And we were taught that we have to step every day into our prayers, into our knowingness of what we want. So when people ask me, I'm getting ready, I'm coming to Paris, what should I do? I said, start meditating. Begin to ground in yourself what you want to do.

SPEAKER_02 22:04

Ricky, you have an exceptional story about how you landed in Paris.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

It was rageously exceptional. So this is what happened. I was supposed to leave in August, my daughter and I. My daughter was then 11 years old. And the assistant pastor of my church died. And it was a major heartburn. Just a good person. Good man. And so I didn't leave because I wanted to stay for his funeral. I had a few other things. And ultimately, I stayed and I didn't leave. So that was August. We didn't arrive in Paris until October 7, 1997. And here's what was so powerful. At the duty free shop in New York, I met a woman, her name was Sybil Villabreno Deere, a black woman. He was married to a French man who had been a diplomat and on the World Bank. And I didn't know all about it initially. We just started talking about Carolina Herrera perfume in the duty free shop. And then she was like, Where are you going? I said, My daughter and I are going to live in Paz for a year. She says, Oh, okay. I had met a French woman two weeks before. She was in Oakland and she said, When you come to Paris, contact me and see what I can do to help. I really didn't know much about her. She had two children who were about the age of my daughter. I had done some work for Disney, and so I managed to get them some tickets to go to Disneyland and skip the line and that whole thing. So she was really happy. When we got off the plane, we didn't even get off the plane. You know the announced, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Paris. And a big welcome to Ricky and where did that come from? Where did that come from? Who knows me? The woman, the French woman that I had met, she was the station manager of TWO. I had no idea. None. And when we get off and she laughs, we're laughing about that. And Sybil, Madame de La Frenodier, she was like, My, you know some people already. And I was like, not really. And my friend Vicky came up and she said, Would you take Madame Stevenson's bags to my car? She was gonna have us come and stay with my daughter and I seen her beautiful house. It was maybe five minutes from the airport. I shouldn't tell this whole story, but the bottom line is Sybil, Madame de la Renaudier, she says, My darling, you got some gas here. Call me when you have a chance to rest in the coupon late, which I did. And it's like these two women opened my life, they opened the way for everything that I do. She took us to Little Africa because she said, You need to know where your people are. She was fresh. And where you need to know where you can get your hair done. And I had been praying for, praying and meditating and writing for a year before we came. We're staying in a little village on the outskirts of Paris. It's lovely. People wave to my daughter and she rides on the bicycle and goes by. The people who had been in Paris, they were like, You fool, you can't get a backyard in Paris. When you come, Ted, I'm gonna have a reception. We're gonna have a five year in my backyard. I've had a hundred people in my backyard. I will be there next year.

SPEAKER_02 25:49

Ricky, what was really exciting, okay, I'm gonna say miraculous. I know how you and I feel about that word, but you got your apartment. You hadn't been in Paris, what, 48 hours?

SPEAKER_01 26:00

No, we were at Vicky's house, and then Sibyl helped us. I told her what I was looking for. She had some friends from UNESCO. We got here on the 7th. We were in this apartment two weeks later. And you're still there 30 years later. Still here 30 years later. There was a thing then at the time we came where you would have to pay rent a year in advance. And Sybil said, darling, I'm gonna come and pick you up, and we're going to go to the man who's in charge. He was the president of a bank, bank sotomayor from Brazil. And Sybil, who's this elegant beauty, walks in and she says, Oh, Mr. Jean-Clever, you know my husband, Mr. de la Penotia. And he was a oh my family. Ultimately, Sybil told him, my husband and I have known her family since she was a child. And he said, Okay, she doesn't have to pay that year in advance. We'll lower the rent. You want the garage that goes with the apartment? Yes, we want everything.

SPEAKER_02 27:03

And she'd only known you went for three minutes, right? She knew me then for two weeks. Two weeks. Ricky, what you give is what you get. That's how you open up to me. That's who you are. When people go abroad and they're looking for support that they've never had in the US, they're looking to get something they've never given. There's inner work that needs to be done.

SPEAKER_01 27:31

And it's nothing outside, it's all inside work.

SPEAKER_02 27:36

It's all inside work, for sure. So, how did you start Ricky Stevenson's Black Paris tourism?

SPEAKER_01 27:42

Go to this big, dynamic church in Oakland. By the way, the neighborhood we live in is a duplicate of the neighborhood where my church was, my church, East Bay Church of Religious Science. When I first joined, we were meeting at Preservation Park in downtown Oakland. I joined because of you. Yeah, good. And so when I came here, there was so much history. And so members of my church, the first group meetings showed up two weeks after we got here. We drove them around. I had a friend, a couple that I had met through Sybil and her husband, Madame de la Renaudia. And we hung out with them and they're like, my gosh, we've been here before. And we've never had this much fun. We've never seen behind the scenes. And then Jacqueline Rodin, she took us to Chinatown. I was like, my people. I'm raised on the peninsula in California where I grew up with kids from Japan and China. Yes. Parents had been interned in the concentration camps during World War. And so I was like, okay, I'm better now. I'm in Chinatown. Well, I'm feeling better. These are my people. And they acted like my people. There was so much culture here. You know how they made them clean up in Chinatown and San Francisco. I think they couldn't show the pigs in the windows and the ducks hanging upside down. And all of that was here. They got the chitlins hanging in the window from people going by and want to buy stuff. Yeah. The culture was so dynamic and it was so ever-present. That is what I wanted my guests who came here to see this. So you don't go into Costco and shop for a month. You go to the outdoor market. I'll tell you a story. I knew a woman, she came and stayed with us, and she ate some brownies. We went to an outdoor market. She ate some brownies, so she bought six. And then she brought two loaves, two baguettes. And I'm like, you don't buy six brownies because you have to eat them, or day after tomorrow, they're going to be stale or moldy. Because food here does not have the conservatives that we do in the United States that make us fat. So no preservatives. Don't say preservatives. We say conservative. I was telling people, oh I love your food. We say this, I love the food, it has no preservatives. They would look at me like preservatives are condoms. You mean not preservatives, you mean our food has no conservative. I was like, Oh, thanks. Okay. I will remember that when I come. So you never say preservative. No, we don't have any condoms in our food. Okay. Maybe I shouldn't have said that when I come part in the pun. These are the things that you learn. If you buy a baguette today, a loaf of bread, but it's going to be as hard as a brick. So people buy today what they're going to eat today. And sometimes you can eat it tomorrow. Fruit will last a little longer. And I like that. Oh, we thought I was going to be here a year. We moved around. And I'll tell you the thing that really got me. My parents, my dad had been in the Navy. So my parents were close to a man named Robert Tony. He was the first black admiral to lead the Pacific Fleet. And Admiral Tony who'd come out of Oakland. By the time he retired from the Navy, he was on the board of a number of banks and he lived in at the Open Chamber of Commerce. He was a real dynamic man. So Mr. and Mrs. Tony came to Paris and spent a week. He said, You've been coming here for 20 years and staying at the best of everything. He said, chance to walk the Little Africa? I never saw that. A chance to go to Chinatown? Well, why did it took this here for? He said, and this food. Woo! He put some money in my hand and he said, I want you to take this and stuff. I was like, no, Apple Tony, I can't take really Ricky.

SPEAKER_02 32:02

That's I've never heard that. See, I'm hearing so much from you. So that was the moment. That was like a defining moment.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

And then people started coming, and they were coming, and they were coming. And then I'm discovering more stuff than where Josephine Baker stayed and where Chubby Checker and Lil Richard and I continue Turner and the Jackson Five and the Supreme sang. And there's so much. Every time I leave my house, right down the street from where I live, Richard Wright lived here when he first came to Paris in 1946. We lived there for about a year and a half. I lived just a little bit outside of the city, but Gordon Parks lived in my neighborhood when he came in 1949. James Baldwin kept an apartment in this neighborhood. Everywhere you go, there's some black history.

SPEAKER_02 32:50

Could you tell the story about how the city of Paris found out what you were doing?

SPEAKER_01 32:58

It was hilarious. I used to meet my guests at the Office of Tourism. And then one day a woman came down and she says, No, madame, you can't do this tour. You have to have certification, you have to have this, you have to have that. I explained I have a master's degree in history, political science. I've studied your history, I studied the history of Russia. The French are so funny. They're always like Say unpasse. So I kept doing it. And then there were so many things that happened. I was doing some television here, and then was that the thing that happened?

SPEAKER_02 33:42

You spoke to someone there in the city government. President.

SPEAKER_01 33:48

Okay, tell the story. Okay. I'm I had friends who were friends from the United Nations, and so they're sending me. And so I got connected with a group of journalists. It was a president of South Africa who was coming. And there was a big event, and the president of France, and just all these African leavers were here. I got introduced to President Jacques Chirac. As I walk over to greet him, someone says, This is Madame Stevenson. She has a tour called Black Paris Tours. And President Chirac said, Oh, I've heard about you. He held my hand. He said, Thank you. Thank you. This is really nice because Americans have been coming over here, but they don't know this history. And a lot of black people get mad. And uh black Americans can chill out once they know that what they're experiencing isn't racism, but it's just French culture. What did he mean? And I knew exactly what he meant. Yes. When you walk in someplace, if you want to be considered polite, you say, Bonjour madame, bonjour monsieur. When you walk out, we say, Au revoir madame, au revoir, monsieur. If you decide, don't you look around and walk out, you're like, ew, how rude. If you go into a restaurant and you sit down, and then you're like, Where are these people? They haven't brought the menu, they're not here. You go sit down in the restaurant and they let you what they call becomes. It's like unwind, settle in. Because in this culture, people have 90 minutes lunch break. They don't, you don't eat at your desk. And so invariably, it's just a difference in culture. We were with our French family last night, and I used to go to their house, and maybe I'd have my purse on me or have a jacket. And they were like, Are you leaving? Are you running out of the door? What are you doing? Take off, take off all that stuff. You're going to stay here. Dinner with a French family can easily last four hours. And so Americans would be mad because the people didn't run up and say, Ha, I'm John. I'm your waiter for tonight, whether you want. Because the people like, you don't let you sit there, talk to each other, let you just breathe a minute, and then we'll come over. By the same token, when you finish your meal, it's hard to get somebody to bring you the check. And Americans like, and I'm like, it's not that. They're not being racist, it's just this.

SPEAKER_02 36:38

Yeah. Yeah. That is such an important point to make. And the example that you just gave, I hear similar things like that from Mexican culture. Yes. And to know that everything is not racist. It's cultural. Now they do have stupidity here. Of course. But it's probably more prejudiced than racist. It's probably more bias-oriented than racist. And being able to make those distinctions between being racist, prejudiced, and biased can go a long way, right? In helping you to feel grounded in a new environment. So, Ricky, I'd like to ask you, what are some of your most memorable business accomplishments with Black Paris Tour?

SPEAKER_01 37:35

Being accepted by the French government, the mayor of Paris sent someone to meet me to take part of my tour. And he said, this was fascinating. We honor you, we respect you, and we want you to join the Paris Tourism Department. I was like, really? So that was one of the major things, and got an invite to go to a concert at Versailles, and it turned out to be a concert on the music of Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Imagine in 1994 when someone had found a trunk of his uncomplished works. This black man who's called the founding father of European class peace. Didn't they do a movie? His mother was beautiful. His mother was a Senegalese woman. And we know for sure he didn't have any church. Napoleon had all of his music compositions rounded up and burned when he died in 1799. So someone had found a trunk of his unpublished works, and they had been completed. And in 1998, here I was, my date and I, we were the only black people, sitting at the opera house at the Palace Versailles, listening to the music that was created by this black man, Jubalia de Saint-George. What are some of your awards? I was in the two class of Black Legends of Silicon Valley. That made me very happy. I can't remember what they used to call it, but we got a major award from TripAdvisor. And it's been over years. And I love the fact that we were invited by the First Lady of France, Madame Macron. My daughter and I were invited to come back when Josephine Baker was inducted into the Pantheon because we were one of the that had kept her memory alive. Oh, there have been so many. It's just been great. I was invited to bring a group of black Americans to meet Reuben Hurricane Carter and Denzel that he did that movie. And it was hilarious because the French people, when they see a movie star coming, they all back up to give them space. You know, the black Americans, we love it. In your face. All up in your face.

SPEAKER_02 40:12

Acting like you're cousins or something, right? Yeah. And that was fun.

SPEAKER_01 40:16

It's just been so many fun things to have Quest Love and uh Reef and Tariq come and take the tour, and Smokey Robinson come and take the tour. Yama Van Zen, I think I told you that. She took the tour. And I'm thinking now I gotta go to work because now that Barbara Lee took the tour, I was on the phone with a woman, a friend, who did a movie about when African Americans came to France, to Paris. And of course, we're in that movie. And then she did a companion book that goes to the movie. Her name was Joanne Burke. She and her husband did it. And Joanne gave, I think, eight books to Barbara tonight. We all got together. And now Barbara wants to buy 30 to give to members of the Congression of Black Caucus. And so I was talking with Joanne before you and I initially got together earlier today. And she was like, Oh, this is gonna be great. You know, so there have been so many wonderful things. Mama Narian Makiba died. I was invited to bring a small group that sang, and then I gave a eulogy for her from the American side. They had a South African Embassy.

SPEAKER_02 41:41

People who are listening to this episode who are intending to go to Paris, we'll be looking up Ricky Stevenson's. Could you give us that address?

SPEAKER_01 41:51

It's www.no s at the end. Black Paris Toursingular.com.

SPEAKER_02 42:02

Ricky, do you have any parting words for Americans of color who are preparing to become expats?

SPEAKER_01 42:10

Start with your prayers, start with your meditation, start with your journals, journal how you want your life to be, where you want it to be. It might not come out exactly, but I'm telling you, it will come out so close that you will be amazed.

SPEAKER_02 42:30

I want to end this interview by thanking you from my heart for sharing your journey. As you just heard, creating a life outside of this country does not require you to sell everything and move away. It's your decision how you create the experience of breaking free to live free while living abroad. It's your choice. Whether that's a complete relocation, summers abroad, a year or two living in the country of your choice, or slow travel. I hope you've all enjoyed this conversation with Ricky Stevenson today. Be sure to visit her website at BlackParistour.com. That's BlackParistTour.com for more information. And if you are planning a trip to Paris, you can contact Ricky through her website for a tour. Now let's move on to episode highlights. Here's where I highlight the core message of the episode and offer a question to take with you. Breaking free to live free is a multidimensional process. On one level, you are physically packing up to leave. On another level, you are unpacking mental emotional baggage that is no longer a fit for you. So let me sum up this message by sharing a portion of the coaching where I worked with Ricky around her move to Paris over 30 years ago. We ask her one core question, which became the doorway into everything that followed during our session together. The question was, Ricky, what is the experience of yourself you're hoping to have as a result of living in Paris? Now notice what that question does not touch upon. No responsibility to or for anyone else, just Ricky. What I wanted her to do by asking that question was to go inside to that unconscious level and bring up into her conscious awareness what she wanted, and then cultivate that consciousness which would fulfill her deepest desires. Now I won't go into the process I used to get Ricky there. That's the kind of work we do in our inner circle community. But I can tell you this: when she completed that session, Ricky was in total alignment, totally congruent with her highest principles, her beliefs, and a clear vision of the experience of herself she would have in Paris. And here's the truth about Ricky's coaching experience with me. It was more about her internal response to the question than it was about the question itself. It was the quality and the level of Ricky's spiritual nature that generated the experience most aligned with her highest self, her I am spirit, not with her earth time personality. Are you following this? Because when you consider the quality of your spiritual nature and the quality of your spiritual consciousness, it's like asking, how deep is your well? The well in this instance is a metaphor for the quality of your spiritual consciousness. Is your well two feet deep or a mile deep? If your well is a mile deep, you'll be able to satisfy that thirst for a long time. If your well is only two feet deep, it might not last you throughout the day before it runs dry. So let's move on to the question. The question I want to leave you with today is, how deep is your well? Are your spiritual practices consistent enough? Are you enriching that relationship with your higher consciousness, the part of you that is all knowing? Here's the one thing you need to know for sure. On your expat journey, there's something inside of you that will always make sure you are all right wherever you are. However, if you're not nurturing that part of yourself, when the time comes for you to believe in it, your belief might not be strong enough because you haven't been paying attention to how exacting, how on time, how powerful, and how purposeful that guidance has been in your life. And that thing inside of you is your spiritual nature from which your spiritual consciousness flows. And meditation is the doorway to that consciousness. Meditation is the process through which your spiritual consciousness is deepened and connects you to your higher self. Your attention and intention to consistently connect to this part of yourself is the key. I'd like to end today's message by encouraging you to find your meditation path. I will share that I am a SIDA meditator. There are many methods out there. Find the one that is aligned best with your nature. So let's talk about what's ahead on our upcoming episode. We will be having conversations about why you've made the decision to become an expat. We will be talking about what countries might offer the best environments based on your principles and values. We'll talk about how to make great decisions, how to set criteria in your life, and I'll be giving you tips for developing emotional mastery along the way. You're going to be hearing stories from expats who have taken some hard hits abroad and how they rebounded. Not by luck, but by drawing on a quality of consciousness they have built along the way. And I will be inviting special guests who will add more flavor, more layers, and dimension to our conversation. So let's talk about our next guest. I am happy to announce that our next episode guest is Mrs. Jane Elliott. Mrs. Elliot is a race relations educator who has dedicated the last 50 plus years of her life in healing race relations in the U.S. She sacrificed ease and privilege. She sacrificed her safety. She's sacrificed acceptance in many circles, and she has sacrificed a relationship with her own mother, all to shift the consciousness of this nation around race. You won't want to miss this episode. So let's take a few minutes as we're closing out the show today to talk about your free gift. Knowing what stops you, blocks you, and slows you down on your expat journey is critical to preparing to live a new life abroad. In this 90-minute masterclass, you will learn a technique that will show you how to assess your mental emotional readiness to take your next step on your journey. Whether you're saying yes to the expat life or you're preparing to go, or you're getting settled in your new home. This technique will help you build greater confidence in making decisions. Now, in order to receive a registration link to the free masterclass, you must be an African American who is an expat or you're thinking about becoming an expat. Why? Because you let me know that you're someone who is not just a curiosity seeker, but you are genuinely seeking out this information to support you on your expat journey. So you can go to making expat decisions.terytalks.com, or you can click the link in the description box. Or you can go to Terry Talks Podcast.com and click on the link to the masterclass to get more information to sign up. This is the end of our episode today. Thanks for listening, and until next time, I am Terry Don, your host, encouraging all American expats of color to break free to live free.