Today we’d like to introduce you to Janel K. Lauren
Hi Janel, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I’ve always had a desire to be heard — it was actually a weakness of mine when I was young because I couldn’t find peace with not saying my part, and I’d get in trouble for it often when I was growing up. Now, it’s funny, because my son is so much like that. But in learning to stay silent, I ended up looking for my voice –which is where I began to write poetry. I was really young when I started writing poetry, maybe 11 or so. I had a friend in middle school where we would exchange journals and read them — there was one day I read hers and she was writing raps. It was in that moment I fell in love with with writing words to rhyme. I went through a rough few years though, prior to getting here. I left an engagement that had me start my life completely over. My ex-fiance was in the NFL and I didn’t really want to leave a lifestyle of provision but I knew that God was challenging me to do something I’d never done before which was to trust him. My son was 2 at the time that I left Nashville to move back to my parent’s house in Atlanta; it was not ideal, but it was my new norm. I didn’t work for a few years because I was a stay at home mom so when I moved back to Atlanta, I struggled to get my doula business off the ground while being an instacart delivery driver. That was the most humbling season of my life. I went from rent paid, car paid, hair done, nails done, everything did — to living off 300 dollars a week in income. And its so crazy, because I had nothing and everything at the same time. I used to take my baby out to those deliveries, so you kind of just do what you have to do. I was also doing poetry full time as a performer and a recording artist and gained my confidence to finally follow my passion. Gracefully, I can say that it has also helped me communicate in vulnerability, which is where YouTube has been a dope place for me to create. I get to talk about so many things that people are afraid to say. I make content about God and my walk in my faith but its in a non conventional way. People think you’re supposed to look, think, talk, dress, act a certain way to be a Christian and when I turn on that camera, I come there RAW, struggles on full display, and I don’t care what anyone feels about it. I’ve always been okay with saying how I feel, and its been beautiful in my journey to see how that has translated to my art, to YouTube, and to see so many people resonating with it. I’ve just been being authentic — and its wild because I lived a long life of insecurity. So finding out that my true self is valued, honored, admired, and even looked up to, its a blessing.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Nothing is ever smooth! You really have to be willing to be broken if you desire to be built. I’ve gone through a lot of pain. I used to struggle really badly with wanting to be here, and feeling purposeful. Nothing worked for me for a long time. I got my heart broken many times, had my doula business fail, have lost jobs, and even struggled in motherhood. I’m a single mom and take care of my son full time by myself, so the hardest thing to do has been navigating motherhood alone and still building something to be proud of. I’ve had to be patient because sometimes you REALLY just can’t do something or stretch yourself too thin. And that is okay. We need to be better at accepting the seasons that we’re in, and if it’s the season to go hard for motherhood and motherhood only — do that, if it’s time to save money and be cheap — do that, if it is time to go without sleep to grind hard — do that. Sometimes we gotta know that we can get in our bag, and trust that it’ll still be fly if we put it down for a minute. A designer bag on your arm looks no different than the one on the shelf. Just be prepared to know that it’ll still look amazing when its time to put it on.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m a poet, a writer, a creative, a photographer, a voice for God. I don’t like to say I specialize in any one thing because I’ve always been someone that will go hard in learning how to do something really well if I find passion in it. So if tomorrow I decide that I want to become something different, believe me when I say I’ll be hyper-fixated on it. I do however love poetry. Its the core essence of the fabric that makes me. I didn’t even realize how good I was at it until I started doing it more in the open, especially when I would freestyle. My writing process is literally me just putting on an instrumental and I just start talking. I like to freestyle and write a poem on the first time I hear the instrumental because that’s when the feels get to flowing the best and I can just dump my raw thoughts out. Then I’ll listen to it, and write it down for my archive. My YouTube is a place I’ve been doing that more recently and have been getting more love than I could have imagined in previous seasons. Currently though, I’m more so known for being that woman on youtube who is talking about the hidden things in christianity out loud. Its crazy because I have to be honest about who I am to even do that, which is why I don’t get any slack for it. Because I’m telling my shortcomings as a woman and breaking the stigma in shame and helping other people find freedom. I talk about most of the sexual struggles that men and women have and how its more common than people would like to admit for people who do go to church. I just want people to know that it’s not something to keep you chained to shame in, but that theres a way out on the other side. I have a cool community on YouTube, and its honestly mostly men that have supported me because most of the time, this is a struggle that men are willing to acknowledge — but I’m hoping to soon have more women be willing to go on the journey too.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
I give so much credit to God, He has been the one who has directed my path. I didn’t even want to make content about God. I just wanted to do poetry and go about my business, make albums, perform, cry after the performance because of the reliving of the emotions, then rinse, wash, repeat, He’s had other plans though. And I have a lot of good things coming out of this that I can’t wait to share.
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Janel K. Lauren
