Conversations with Jade Baker

Hi Jade, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Since I was a kid, I always knew I wasn’t a regular girl but one with a very special purpose here on earth. I knew I wasn’t just a black girl or a statistic. I wasn’t just some girl from Decatur or another stereotype. I was more than that and I wanted to speak up for those who like me at the time were voiceless, such as thru my music and let deep truths be known to help people break free, so they could fulfill their purpose. I didn’t know how I would go about being that change growing up in a world that always seemed to so desperately attempt to make me feel inferior and like I had no power. All I knew was that somehow, someway I was gonna try, I wasn’t gonna give up until the day I die. Therefore no matter what I was going thru, I knew I’m the type of person who is gonna have faith, put in the work but smarter, be the best I can be for myself which will help my family, friends and the generations coming after me.

Anyways I am an artist who’s been making music my whole life since I was eight and I went to school for film at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. Due to moving so much and always wondering what was there to do in these different cities and towns, I would always meet these amazing people. I decided I wanted to find a way to show off these people and places that created such a positive impact on me unknowingly. So I started throwing events just before I left to college. During college, I found a random tarot deck in Urban Outfitters while shopping. I know what you’re thinking how did we just get to tarot land. All I will say is life is funny and always has your back… now getting back to the story.

I manifested myself out of college or so I think. Which to be frank, I didn’t even really want to go to but somehow, I subconsciously knew college would be a part of my journey beyond the fact that it was a financially wise decision to become a filmmaker/videographer to my family since I always had a camera in my hand growing up. Truthfully I just needed to escape and get away from all the toxicity that I unfortunately had no idea I was growing up around. There I found colleagues yes, but also my real friends like the stars, astrology/astronomy, mysticism and my true deepest calling like when I was young and would always tell my mom I would be doing something really important in life but she just had to wait and see it. I guess you could say I found the phone to God. So it was in college I answered that phone and I suddenly found out how I would do it all and that in doing it all, I wouldn’t be doing it alone. So thru deep meditations, I found my soul family in spirit and eventually online and eventually in person too. I knew whatever I was supposed to do was bigger than me though and scared but reluctantly, I went into the unknown.

Rewind just before I went to college is when CTM, an organization I created called Clvb Titanic Mango, was birth out of the most dramatic poetry class I’ve ever been back. One day I had all my other traumatized, sad but not lonely depressed classmates come to my house to perform their poetry pieces during the holidays. And later on, after we graduated high school, something came over me or outta me I had never seen before, this spark lead to me throwing the first official CTM event called Jam on the Green. It was literally back in 2017 or 2016 and I had $150 dollars, rented a few mics/speakers from Guitar Center, invited some local artists out to my backyard and all I did was tell everyone, “pull out your phone because your audience is everyone online”.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Luckily for me, college is actually when the beginning building blocks of my foundation began to reveal itself of my long-winded yet short life story, I’m going to tell as I’m only 23. I was really dying on the inside everyday on campus but being a happy Leo on the outside, nobody knew and being in cold Connecticut or even the world, I soon found out nobody had to care. I was going to therapy sessions and yoga classes consistently on campus trying my hardest to get over the trauma from my childhood. I always had a way of decoding my own mind psychology since I was young and easily. It was so well that many times my therapist always said they’re were proud of me or didn’t really get why I had came to see them. Many times I felt like I was also just helping them heal and organize their own issues and on some other creepy level maybe helping some agent people gain way too much information about how they could further attempt to control or torture me in the future. But they say you should talk to people, lol, so I went for it.

As I write this, I realize during my attempts to share my story with my therapist about a little girl who grew up in Georgia, with a workaholic father and stepmom who hated her so much to the point that she would cut up and destroy her own real daughter’s things and blame it on it me, was too fascinating too for my therapist to sit there and actually help me decode. I realized I was more of a psychiatrist at 19 than they were a physiologist at whatever age with whatever paper verification. My young temp therapists in college or even the older ones wasn’t actually interested in helping me but in fact maybe was triggered or bothered by my ability to so effortlessly reveal to them how I was doing my best to heal from all the abandoned nights alone in a corner after many beatings and false accusations. At this point I just wanted someone to listen. It was like good cop, bad cop at my house on my dad’s side growing up. My druggie-like stepmom was like the bad cop who caused “the murder or placed the metaphoric drugs in my car just to reach a Quota or something” aka she would force my hand and tell me to plea and say I did it. Then after a long day of brainwashing, I’m admitting to a crime I never done at age six and due to alcoholism, my delusional dad who’s a bartender would believe my stepmoms case against me. So instead of putting his foot down like the good cop for my sake, he would simply lock me in the room after whooping me like a damn slave.

And I know you’re wondering where’s my mom? And why did my stepmom do this. Honestly, I still don’t know. I think maybe she was just insecure or jealous of my mom’s relationship with my father (they’re like best friends at heart to this day) or maybe I was messing up her cute family outside imagine. But there was something deep in her though that she had to take out on me. My mom however thru learned helplessness at the time with her own parents wasn’t doing any better and couldn’t help me being that she had got caught in an abusive relationship with a drug lord and they were basically like two hurt children trying to escape and she didn’t want me to see her grow thru it. She thought sending me to my dad’s house would protect me but didn’t know as she was experiencing her own trials and tribulations that became a part of her testimony just how much her oldest daughter was as well growing thru things. So I grew up pretty fast being the second oldest to my step sister on my father’s side.

I just wanted my family to be at peace but being so young, I thought if I take the bullet and protect my half brother from getting these whoppings (not realizing this was just simply unfair treatment because I was the only kid without the same parents) then everything would return to normal. This only made things worse and gave my family a new reason to make me the family punching bag or whipping pole, I had took the plea and lied on myself which only caused more strife between my siblings and triangulation between me and my older sister whose things were cut up/ destroyed. I spent half my life trying to prove to her I didn’t cut her Bratz themed tv cord or nice electronic music cool toys because I was just about six years old and wanted to play with her and them cool toys too. This forced me to realize early on to never lie on yourself, that the world was corrupt, to stand for your beliefs even when there is no proof and no proper justice system to prove you innocent. I grew up the black sheep like many of us in our family calling out the most obvious truths, begging our family to heal, only to be punished for it and forced to break the curses our self even if that meant our family might hate us for it.

So during college, I went to study abroad or really truly unknowingly I went to escape and on my way back after tripping so hard, I found myself and that little piece of me that still had hope, that still believed she could heal her family and was all too forgiving to people who for no reason hated her. I found that part of me that had never left and she is the one who saved me and helped me get here, my inner child. Do I recommend using psychedelics to cop…..not at all. But hey now, I was young, wild and free in my short-lived college days and I already had a pothead record from 16 because of my trauma. I thought I could get high and escape my pain may be just the same way my parents did. But I had no clue I was even that hurt or knew I needed time and space to recover from it all until it all caught up to me as I got older and grind mode and not even music could get me thru the pain I was suffering from.

I didn’t know what was real or fake or who really had my back due to my upbringing. All I wanted to do after realizing all this stuff was break those damn cycles of insanity, poverty, fear and so on with my family…but it was too much at the time and all I could do was num that pain. I couldn’t wrap my mind around why my family hated me so much, all I wanted to do is help, all I wanted to do was heal with them & help them break their patterns and evolve… all I wanted was more for them. Still to do this day, I do not hate them or my stepmom, I really do love them all even if they don’t know what that is. Maybe that’s my problem others would say maybe but I don’t think all.. even I still know I  got a big heart and have learned everyone doesn’t deserve my loyalty. I’ve always professed that when I become the first millionaire in my family in the near future, I will not only break the cycles but bless my family however God ordains me to even if it’s just by healing and taking care of me and my future family far away from them, because when you heal you actually help heal everyone (especially those in your bloodline) But now I know if people don’t wanna heal or work on themselves or want more for themselves, then you don’t and can’t force them too like you can’t make a cigarette smoker stop smoking cigarettes. You just can’t and you can’t give so much either because people really will walk all over you and take your kindness for weakness just to see how far you will go for them but not themselves.

It’s crazy how things came back full circle with my family. I was unable to finish college after my junior year back from studying abroad in Prague and now awakened, I came back to Georgia where it all started. Then I began sleeping on my cigarette loving grandma’s couch or at my ex-boyfriend’s or friend’s place on floors or wherever just to continue to make this dream come true of me performing and helping myself, my family and the world. All to have a moment where the universe stepped in for me and had me face these older alternative broken versions of me to show me what not to do as I get older. There was one particular lady in the end, I won’t say no names, who I thought was gonna “save” me or aka a false elder folk who I thought would guide me. I started to find my footing and along my journey back in Georgia, I started meeting many broken-hearted, false, lost spiritual leaders and young people just looking for help and healing. And at the time, while treading thru a toxic spiritual community of people hurting people unintentionally due to their upbringing, I realized it was God’s protection that I never fit in and another opportunity to answer my calling. So I did.

It’s like everyone was playing house replaying out their childhood traumas even I was at this some point. We were so desperate to get back what we lost growing up, everyone was falling into a deep end of cohesive enmeshment and I almost got caught in it too just like I did with my family trying to be some martyr, trying to save everyone. Many of us were trying to heal each other from things only us as individuals could heal or do the work to know how to begin to overcome… Somehow I found a way out by growing right thru it, not around it. Like I said, I got to this point where I realized this ain’t gonna work and after my so called mentor who took me under her wing further abused me or really fake hazed and initiated me into her world along my journey. Something told me to stop the cycle with the antics with her just like something told me to stay away from her when I first meet her and this same feeling came over me years ago like when my dad had me meet my stepmom. Because before they got together and he asked me what did I think about her at age five and I told him I didn’t like her for “no reason”. Unfortunately, I needed to go thru this so I would never ignore my intuition again and learn there are two types of fears. One that protects you and one that just holds you back.

It all ended with a two months “intensive apprenticeship” at her home where she “taught me everything she knew” to which she partly just re-enacted some Kung fu movie scenes, slapping me in the face and attacking me brutally. She claimed she was just trying to get the “7 deadly demons” from my childhood I picked up outta me but really she was just abusing me worse than the way her parents/grandparents/false mentors did her. She was a guru alright or that’s what she would call herself but because I desperately wanted understanding and comfort just like with my stepmom and dad, I took the brutal beatings and held on to her every world like slave on some real Stockholm syndrome ish. She would future fake me and tell me how I would get outta here and free myself to Cali one day and turn around the same day and shoot my dreams down in the same heart beat. She sure didn’t want me to do it and/or that’s because she didn’t think she could free herself, since nobody knew she was really a secret struggling codependent and also a narcissist according to her own words after she revealed it to me during a walk home from her therapist. I only went to stay with her because one day I moved back with my moms and after a breakthrough at a camp-in trip with some friends, I realized I needed to get out of Georgia and free myself because something just didn’t feel right.

And I thought since she had more “life experience” being a so called elder of mine and was a part of this community she could then see thru the veil, see things I couldn’t see just like a few other tribal guru ladies I meet along the way and served in hopes for my ticket put of here. Unfortunately, I was wrong. I realized only you can do that aka save yourself and nobody will ever come get you out of your mess whether it’s this life or a past life and that you must use your sh*tty experiences as fertilizer to grow that garden which is called your life. In the end, all she taught me inadvertently was to not second guess my deepest truth, protect my peace and mental health at all cost and speak up for myself without judgment, not silence myself out of fear of how my truth would be received by others. So eventually, like anytime you realize something is off with a coward, I put my foot down against this woman and was discarded. I didn’t run away this time to some distant land to escape my internal hell, I simply went to the root of my problems and created my heaven here on earth. I went next door because luckily she lived nearby, I went to my father’s home where it all started and surrendered to my destiny which lead me to my life’s purpose.

After being ruthlessly discarded by my mentor, I went into a deep hermit state and realized the only way out was through so I boldly began to do inner child tarot readings for my friends and online zoom inner child classes. It’s still shocking to me to this day how I made it out of there like I was really using my gifts with no regrets in the same home down in the basement where my little brother also resides, who I once defended as a child from those brutal whoopings. Now as an adult, I got a chance to reclaim that disheartened part of me who wasn’t crazy or the “devil” for using her gifts of pure discernment and prophecy, but actually a girl who fortunately overcame her families wicked abuse toxicity. I changed my story into one about a young woman who could smell her families bullcrap, made it known it stunk and that she wanted to no longer be a part of it. I used to hate being the black sheep because it was once a curse but now broken it has became the greatest gift I could of ever imagined I get to be not just to my family but the world through my presence and very being.

Everything came full curled like I predicted as a child and I’m so happy I never got revenge and stayed in a place of grace, forgiveness, and over-standing even when it was hard. And now I am just shining my light all over the world online and offline helping people break their generational curses and fight for a greater purpose for themselves, their families and/or the generations to come just like my favorite artist, authors, filmmakers and/or even tarot readers on YouTube did and do all the time for us. I guess all the torture, bullying and abuse I endured as a child lead to me growing extremely thick skin over time and once my inner-child said no more and stopped taking the abuse from everyone around me trying to breaking me down because they felt broken. In the end it all built me up taller and brought me up above it all, kinda like steppingstones, so I just see things from a different perspective now.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
After I started doing InnerChild classes in 2020 in my dad’s house about half way thru my 3rd or 4th class, I came back from a performance with an artist friend who actually was a part of my classes and it was right around thanksgiving. And out of nowhere, I guess my stepmom got upset. I was healing and helping around the house with gratitude, she seriously started just picking on my dad and I got upset and she she started this on my little half brothers birthday. This time I wasn’t no kid no more and she had put her hands on me after defending my father from her distorted feminine energy as an adult and I had enough. I was done roaring and I took one good punch to her face and I fought for my life to get outta there finally like a real Leo this time around. I got kicked out and my older step sister who even in secret knew the truth behind this all and just how wrong her mother was, still came home to defend her. It’s like she switched into another person that day, she threatened my life, claimed she would kill me. I did nothing but sit in my fathers car and prayed for us all as my sister banged at the window furious. Until we went to a park and called my fathers side of the family in Detroit and they booked us a hotel to stay in for about a week to recover at and just process. I stayed focused and still did one of my InnerChild classes there, nobody showed up but I did, I think it was the class on “Adjusting”. Once I returned to get my things, my step sister and I crossed paths at the front door, I had my bags over my shoulders, she wouldn’t look me in the eyes. She just opened the screen door for me smoking her blunt and as I walked out, she went in. As I took my bags outside one by one I let my step mom talk her crap but all I said in the end was peace be with you. I never thought it would go down like that nor did I like that experience at all but I had to defend myself not just for me but for my inner child. Even my dad started getting abused once I separated in the end, to the point blood was shed between them and he never put his hands on her. I had a real good talk with him though and finally accepted he’s a grown man. So I lifted his spirit with my words, left him to figure that out on his own and finished the classes back at my mother’s home around February 2021 while going to a therapist to recover from everything.

I eventually got back on my two feet, moved out of my mom’s place and now It’s 2022 and I’m actually having the 2nd INNERCHILD series starting this February on the 20th online and in person at sacred space I created for myself and my work. I also released a new music project last year in 2021 called #InLuvWitDaUnknown, my EP on all streaming platforms. I’ve been able to perform in many locations around the Atlanta city for different gatherings of hopeful healing and even also expand my film portfolio and act as an extra in upcoming major films. I’m into learning about trading and crypto and studying in a program at GSU Crim Center that’s connected to more ATL Film Festival opportunities. Major success has come into my life and lol I believe I truly turned what seemed like a major downfall to maybe those who were watching from the outside looking in, into the best come up story I’ve ever personally witnessed, I really became the hero of my own journey.

I’m pretty sure my family would say it was witchcraft or voodoo that got me here or that kept me alive with all their attacks and flying monkeys coming after me even though they unknowingly don’t realize that is actually what they do everyday to each other. For example like when they use the Bible to cast spells on each other or use their tongue in the wrong way speaking horrid things about their own family or themselves. They don’t realize the true magic that lies within them like I did as a child early on and they actually perform real witchcraft or voodoo or whatever on themselves daily just like the news channels do. I have never wished anything on them but healing and growth but unfortunately, they continue to bring death, pain and more on themselves when they keep praying to a God that may not even know them and don’t like ugly if they say they do. I don’t know we earthlings are weird to me sometimes and now I know some of them are even trying to get in the arts and use sage (even though they hated the smell of it when I stayed there doing my readings/classes) or are into light candles or something to now protect themselves and cleanse themselves from their own evil doing. I start to think maybe it’s past life karma that made them do the things they did to me but hope they just break their own cycles now and knowing that’s where the real freedom is, and where the real peace and faith resides (or kingdom/queendom is) as it is in heaven, it’s with in us.

 So that’s a wrap. Fast forward, I’m really proud I pushed through with my plans beyond the familia drama and that I officially made CTM an official business in 2021 as well. @ClvbTitanicMango is now experiencing rapid new success and I’ve even got a chance to restart a show called Mango Talk on Instagram that I birthed in my college days but couldn’t stay focused on due to all my necessary dramatic undoing of my past. On these shows, we just have intuitive-based mini-interviews/discussions about important general topics the collective needs to hear at that exact moment in time. It’s crazy to think with everything I was going thru I almost gave up after I studied abroad. Luckily due to skills I also got to cultivate like discipline while being President of a Film Production Club at the University of Hartford in college, I found the courage to push thru with my plans but also the evidence that I was way stronger and smarter than I ever could of imagined and couldn’t give up because things were actually just getting started for me on this other side of the rainbow.

Regardless of what life at me, now walking in the real world on my own and back where it all started, in Georgia. I’m somehow getting over everything on such a deep level with my inner child and helping others doing readings, getting in the studio to soon drop the rest of #InLuvWitDaUnknown album and producing more events in the future like Jam on the Green 2, so that local underground but intentional artists from all over and purposeful creative entrepreneurs can join forces. I’m so happy to say what sets me apart from everyone is just that fact that I’m unapologetically me, and I stayed true to me even when the world or really just my upbringing gave me every reason why changing would be better than anything else or conforming or complying with things I didn’t agree would be easier. I’m different because I became who I always wanted to be growing up and I’m now making that changes I always seemed as a child and doing all those wonderful things I always wanted to do in my own unique way along my own special journey.

What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
What I like most about our city truthfully is just that Atlanta is where everyone wants to be and we truly do have a culture that is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s really almost like a new emerging New York or Cali here. I find that here in Atlanta, anything you want to do or put your mind to you truly can accomplish and you will attract support to do it as well. Like there is no such thing as being alone. Everyone knows everyone and it truly is my home and my stomping grounds. Even beyond all the chaotic experiences I grew up thru, if you really an ATLien or you just been making your way down here and through for a while now, you gotta know you’re a warrior and can make it anywhere in the world. I mean any warrior I knew who leaves Georgia or just takes some time away can’t deny the one thing they miss is that beautiful radiant Georgia energy that not only comes from the sun but from the people here too.

Everyone has a story and if you just sit with people even the homeless man on the streets, people will share them with you and their hospitality in any way they can because they get it… The only thing I like least about Georgia is that like anywhere if you don’t know where you’re going, you can easily get lost in the sauce. Far too many people I see down here unfortunately due to the restrictions life places on them in their mind or actually geographically via tough environments like where I’m from not many people make it out and I mean mentally first. Unfortunately, I realize that’s really anywhere not many people make it out because there’s been so much conditioning and programming going on and done to them they don’t even think about leaving the state, let alone the country and that keeps many things stuck here and stagnant. Like their timelines that need to be broken once and for all so people can not only free their minds but one day their souls just like, the slaves that once roamed this land. However, I guess that’s what I was here for is to be myself and share my work so that others can go beyond the surface and really live their life on their terms as a being. Therefore no matter where I go my inner child classes and my music can simply be a catalyst to help people navigate the world within them that then helps them begin their work individually to free themselves from the externally world around them, so get they can get back to what’s important to their spirit.