We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Greta Bates. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Greta below.
Alright, Greta thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
My story parallels a butterfly laying its egg and then its journey into becoming a butterfly. As a butterfly lays its egg on the back of a poisonous plant upon which it will eat to survive, that is how I was. I was born into poverty. My kinky hair, skin color, belief system, political affiliation, the community where I was born, lived, raised, and was educated, and the culture of exposure were not my choices. I was on the back of a poisonous plant (impoverished society) upon which I fed from.
As the butterfly egg hatches, then it becomes a caterpillar that crawls around constantly, feeding in preparation for its cocoon experience. I had no choice. Community centers with public pools, ping pong, and skate night where a friend was rapped on the walk home. Grocery store credit provided our food and well-ironed hand-me-downs were my swag. Beer joints and condemned buildings were where I hid and sometimes played. The uninvited fondle was inappropriate, confusing, and awakened love before its time. Persey the pimp who parked and watched us play was always cursed and ran off by a mother who would die and go to hell before she would allow one of her girls to be violated – if she had the opportunity to know.
My mother and father only had a 2nd and 3rd-grade education, so there was no educational foundation for me to grow from– so I had to learn things on my own and find my own educational nourishment, so to speak. The support came from teachers who saw the flicker of the fire of a future trailblazer.
Remember, love awakened before its time. I was a single teen mom at 15 years old, with three girls by the age of twenty-two, and from age 14 to 35, I was the primary caregiver who walked death’s path with five terminally ill family members. These brutal challenges drove me to discover, trust and prove that the deepest-rooted traumas of our lives can be located, uncovered, and validated by a divine purpose.
With the other hidden traumas of rape and molestation, life was set on an unexpected path that I couldn’t have prepared for. Teen pregnancy was not a topic in my society, so the birds and bees conversation was not on the young teen talk agenda. At the age of fourteen, I fell prey to the world’s connotation of s*x to gain acceptance and love. I got pregnant and had my first baby girl at fifteen. Then my second baby girl at the age of eighteen.
At nineteen, I was pregnant again and was deep within the same governmental support system that I grew up in and depended on. With two kids, I worked full-time, went to school full-time, and could not mentally or emotionally support the idea of becoming a teen statistic of failure and the embarrassment of close pregnancies – so I aborted my son. Two years later, I became pregnant and had my third daughter at twenty-one. By this time, shame, guilt, humiliation, judgment, and regret consumed me. I became a good liar, manipulative, vindictive, and promiscuous with self-sabotaging behaviors in relationships with men, and I didn’t understand why I acted the way I did – I thought it was just the way I was born. These strongholds followed me throughout my Christian walk and life through June of 2021.
I worked for a major telecommunications company for 12 years. During this time, I felt that I entered each workday to survive and not thrive as I breastfed a corporation’s baby while mine (purpose) starved. I knew that there was more, but my faith mingled with wishful thinking was not enough. I was exhausted from complying with schedules that were restrictive to the dynamics of my family – while believing that I deserved to live a life that was uniquely and divinely created for me. I was frustrated with striving for uniform metrics and goals set for me by others for their benefit and gain – while I believed that I deserved more than to have my basic needs barely met. I desired to do what I loved while impacting and changing my life and the lives of others while enjoying it. I expected to know what it felt like to enter every day fueled by my passion for fulfilling my purpose with goals set uniquely for me to achieve my best life – I deserved to live in purpose and on purpose. This struggle catapulted me into a medically debilitating physical condition, and I became unable to work and found myself living on bagels, grits, and prayer. There was a leap from good pay, benefits, and false comfort to the purpose for which I was divinely and uniquely created. It was scary as hell and unfamiliar – but it was worth it.
Fast forward past food stamps and into disability – my cocoon experience happened – again. Cocoon experiences happen throughout our lives and must be shared. Lean in.
Remember I told you that I had an abortion over 34 years ago, and the hidden sabotages were still intact? I was doing great things, but I was doing them broken. I call these the stealth traumas – past traumas that we never deal with that cause us to self-sabotage our current and future purpose.
It was in June 2021 that I attended a Deeper Still retreat. And this was my cocoon experience. It was transforming because I was willing to get naked – spiritually naked. I was highly skeptical about entering into secluded mountains with individuals who didn’t look like me since I was experiencing racism and divisiveness like never before in my life. The pandemic was my shield and excuse to avoid going for the healing I hadn’t realized how much I needed. There was a retreat for African American women, which made all the difference for me to go, and my fears were dismantled. There was a sense of belonging and identity.
The retreat was the spiritual metamorphosis that healed my abortion-wounded heart and freed me. The deep stronghold of feeling unworthy of my kid’s and grandkids’ unconditional love was uncovered and dissolved. The reason for my self-sabotaging manipulative and vindictive behavior to gain love from others was revealed and dissolved. The guilt, shame, brokenness, and regret of my abortion decision that kept me shackled to my painful past was broken through encouragement and support while opening up and forgiving myself for what God had already forgiven.
I stepped out of the shadows of shame and into healing and the freedom to be all that God created me to be. After years of feeding and living on a diet of habits that caused severe toxicity and brokenness in my heart – God met me in a place I once feared.
Healing, forgiveness, support, and love do not have color, race, ethnicity, or gender. However, the impact looks different for women of color. The racial pain that once hindered my healing was melted away on the backside of a mountain, beside a lake, while witnessing a double rainbow in the sky of a creator that saw us all the same.
The Lord has healed my heart. The healing work was so profound, intentional, and strategic that I wanted other women of color to experience the same freedom. I achieved a renewed voice for life and truth, and this opened the doors for me to become a more intentional purpose-discovery coach for post-abortive women of color. Post-abortive women of color deserve the same opportunity for healing as one tool in their arsenal in breaking the back of poverty for themselves and the next generations.
Hearts Unshackled was born and it’s time for women of color to discover the healing and freedom from the abortion trauma that they deserve. It’s their time to embrace a better, more complete, and abundant life. They deserve to be led by someone who recognizes their struggle and has been where they are or have been. They are not alone. I am inviting them to join a supportive community that will help free them from their past, navigate their present, shape their future, and heal what has been broken – their hearts.
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?
As a post-abortive woman, I have experienced and vividly remember what seemed like never-ending days of fighting in the trenches for day-to-day survival and feeling unfulfilled, unseen, rejected, and alone. From the depths of my heart, I heard: “Greta, when are you going to drop the unwanted companions of guilt, shame, fear of judgment, and feelings of being a murderer in hiding?”
No amount of wishful thinking mingled with my faith, and the many voices of accolades could give me what I didn’t know I was missing.
I participated in a program specifically designed for African American women with abortion-wounded hearts, and my transformation began. I am healed, freed from guilt, shame, fear of rejection, and judgment of a past decision. As I shared my story, others began to share theirs for the first and only time. I knew it was time for me to use the proven strategies and processes to answer the call of purpose – other post-abortive women of color.
As a Christian, me, my family, and the world need the best me- healed and free.
I am just a short distance ahead of other ladies on this journey, and I see them! When they desire lasting healing and freedom so that they can discover and walk into their purpose while enjoying total well-being and having fun while doing it – Hearts Unshackled provides this opportunity.
Hearts Unshackled is a non-profit that provides healing and puts an end to aimless living by joining a safe, judgment-free community of post-abortive women. Through a faith-based transformative 6-Step group coaching program we restore dignity, self-respect, and a positive self-image with the transformative power of purpose and total well-being. I look forward to transforming hearts inside the Hearts Unshackled community and I can’t wait to see women loving the life God intended while walking in their divine and unique purpose.
Key Impacts:
> Find hope and embrace a new, abundant life.
> Discover that they are not alone in their struggle, trauma, shame, or guilt. Led by someone who has walked their path before. Be encouraged by a supportive community of others who “get you” and will come alongside you as you reclaim your hope and joy once again.
> Recognize that you are not the sum of your past choices.
> You have the abilities necessary through God and a supportive community to change course and choose a new story. They will be encouraged to walk into the dark places to gain new and useful insight that will help them see the bigger picture and claim what has been waiting for them all along: a whole and peaceful and abundant life.
> Be empowered by other women who have walked your same path.
> Come alongside other women who share your experience, understanding what it means to have a real, deep, forgiving community that will champion them as they find their way and forgive themselves
I offer free 1:1 discovery calls to begin the process.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
Backstory – When lives have past hurts, traumas, and challenges walk through a real-time pandemic where there are no answers – the silent, unnoticed and hidden sabotages that have wreaked havoc for years – can implode or explode. I always planted both feet in the church and took a bold stance that Christianity was enough and all that it takes.
I have been in ministry for over 20 years making a great impact and transforming my heart and the hearts of others – all while having a wounded part in my heart that I didn’t know how to heal. Abortion is not something that many women or men feel that they can walk into the church with for healing and help. So, they stumble into areas and have no idea why.
I had to unlearn some hard things in order to help others.
1. Helping others deal with abortion brokenness does not give my stance of support or not – I am here to offer healing, hope, and love – not to condemn or judge.
2. Therapy is not kryptonite to my faith. Faith and mental health therapy are a powerful one-two punch toward total well-being.
3. Helping someone who parts of society see as an “inexcusable outcast” does not make me a co-conspirator of what culture sees as “bad behavior.”
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Before I received healing of my abortion-wounded heart I was a purpose-discovery coach. After my healing, a whole new world was opened up. I begin to see the world with the eyes of my heart. When this happened I pivoted and became: a purpose-discovery coach that helps post-abortive women of color step out of the shadows of shame and into a more purpose-filled and meaningful life.
This was a heart pivot that impacted my business, plans, and life.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.heartsunshackled.com
- Instagram: @heartsunshackled
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gretabespeaking
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gretabespeaking/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/GretaBeSpeaking
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwI5fJyekaFmSm6TcyXrcGw
- Other: https://linktr.ee/gretabe
Image Credits
I have rights to all photos used.