We were lucky to catch up with Adrienne Unae recently and have shared our conversation below.

Adrienne, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the story of how you went from this being just an idea to making it into something real.

How I got started is interesting and quietly similar to many other women. I took the long, unrealized route. Racism. Sexism. Rapes. Religious Abuse. Ageism. Being Stalked. Revenge Porn. You name it. I lived it as well. I’ve lived from six figures to living in my car and now empowering others to start over.
My upbringing, initially perceived as middle-class, was overshadowed, at 45, by the realization that, by White American standards and privilege, my family was poor. Despite this, I pursued education relentlessly, believing it would ensure success. However, I found myself enslaved by the debt of my degrees, selfish people, and lie-based societal expectations.

My successes, though unrecognized at the time, lay in my unpaid work as a business developer, shaping the lives of many and helping raise over $130,000,000.00 for disenfranchised individuals’ entrepreneurial dreams, churches, and grassroots organizations.

However, my life took a drastic turn when my maternal Grandmother, whom I had taken care of for five years, died; the estrangement of her son, who previously physically abused her in his teenage years persisted, the misogynistic views of my religious leader father resulted in chastisement for not doing what women are supposed to do, coupled with the loss of her job due to racism, and inability to regain gainful employment due to racism and ageism. I ran out of money, moved into my car in NYC, and my credit score tanked from the mid-700s into the 500s. I had hit rock bottom but found awakening in the darkness.

Returning to the entertainment industry and leveraging my business development experience, I became highly sought-after as a background actor and an independent film principal actress. Simultaneous to returning to my first love, entertainment, I began coaching solopreneurs and pursuing filmmaking. I made enough short films that, when taken to market, the films that cost me less than $200 each will now yield approximately $2.9B in revenue.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I enjoy the creation and presentation process of film, television, and musical theater. I also appreciate the development processes of business. Therefore, I use my comedic timing and performing art to educate and improve lives to address social issues and norms that wreak havoc on our community at large. So, whether it is via performing art or traditional business development, I desire to serve in today’s morally turbulent and spiritually defunct times, persons young and old, as we face an unprecedented loss of optimism and challenges of depression, powerlessness, poor impulse control, low self-esteem, and the like. I believe such negative behaviors lead to the strongholds of fear and that fear is the root of anger and violence. I use film, theatre, and dance as an anecdote, a balm, for the challenges mentioned above. I have found arts through a spiritually based framework to positively affect our children/youth, families, and the community. I believe that film, episodic television, theatre, and dance positively assist persons, young and old, and the mentally or physically imprisoned, in improving their social and life skills. The improvement helps individuals and organizations overcome negative impulses to manage anger better and realize deliverance from the grips of fear.

I have two doctorate degrees, one in Adult Education and the other in Ministry. I am an MBA who also holds a Master’s degree in Ministry. My Bachelor’s degree is in dance, and my multi-tiered skillset has historically been intertwined with and deployed via performing arts to enhance social life. I am committed to assisting with a vocational training center, an English and computer training center, and a disposable sanitary napkin project in East African (Kenya) villages. From time to time, I present an immersive, cabaret-styled, comedic whodunit at the Broadway Comedy Club in New York City. The funny whodunit serves as a support for my Kenya mission work. My mission/vision is “Keep in mind The One as The One makes up the whole.”

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Well, Adrienne Unae, that’s me, a self-producing artist who motivates crowds to do more and be better. As a toddler, I lost my father to divorce and my mother to medical malpractice within months thereafter. I’ve lived through many traumatic situations designed by the enemy to break an individual. Those situations include: 1. Long-term public school and Sunday School bullying.
2. Elementary school-aged inappropriate touch.
3. College rape committed by the Minister of Music.
4. Chronic low-income single-parenting.
5. Dementia elder caregiving resulting in eldercare empty nest syndrome.
6. Workplace racial and sexual harassment.
7. Two sociopathic narcissists (SMH) guised as kind suitors and walked away from both.
8. Nursing one of the narcissistic sociopaths back to health (AIDS with a T-cell count of 8) and subsequently running 1000+ miles away with around $500 to my name and a 532 credit score.
9. Church and “friend” hurt.

Vowing not to submit to compassion fatigue and give up on myself or my faith, I lived in my car in NYC for a year. During that time, I purchased a van (a lemon – I was taken advantage of) and renovated it into a mobile home. Yep, I survived homelessness in freezing temperatures. Then the pandemic hit! Lord have mercy!!! While sleeping on a real friend’s couch during five months of the pandemic, I completed a doctorate in Education with a Human Performance Improvement specialization. All of this challenging life lived, they say I am thought-provokingly funny and beneficial to others’ personal development. I say I am accidentally funny and probably just unbothered enough by others’ opinions of me to tell my story. LOL

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I had to unlearn that men are NOT natural-born providers and protectors. Only through the throngs of life did I begin to understand the biological differences between men and women. Once I understood that and juxtaposed it to historical patriarchal behavior, I understood the only way the world would be healed would be through the Divine Feminine Energy most often seen operating via woman. Getting that revelation freed me from socially conditioned fairy tales that have been fed to girls and women since the inception of the patriarchal rulership over everyone and everything, especially women.

I stand as a beacon of resilience and empowerment for women over 50, sharing my life story of overcoming adversity and reclaiming power from patriarchal oppression. Guided by my Grandmother’s wisdom to “keep on living” and “run on and see what the end’s ‘gon be,” my journey unfolds as a narrative of self-discovery and empowerment.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.AdrienneUnae.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adrienneunaeworks
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/prettypoodlegirl
• Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/adrienneunae
• Other: https://www.facebook.com/adrienne.unae

Image Credits
Photos taken by Cedric Wooten Photography and Adrienne Unae