Touched Before Touch

When Love Comes Back Online

Mother’s Day can feel beautiful and heavy in the same morning. One person wakes up excited to make reservations and buy flowers. Somebody else wakes up already trying not to cry. A woman somewhere is standing in the kitchen making breakfast before she’s even had a second to sit down. Somebody else is in the grocery store with their calculator pulled up and a cart half full, trying to make sure everybody eats this week without letting the stress show on their face. Whew. That is a lot to carry before noon. Life can hold beauty and pain in the same hand. Somewhere in the middle of all that, this song started making even more sense to me. This is the Mother’s Day edition of The Soul Behind It, and I wanted this episode to feel like a real conversation about love. The kind that makes you feel a little less alone. That “did you make it home?” text. A plate fixed without twenty questions. A softer voice on a complicated day. You can be in survival mode so long your body starts acting like tense is normal. Bills. Parenting. Work. Grief. Disappointment. Heartbreak. You keep moving because you have to. Then one random moment catches you off guard. Folding laundry. Sitting in the car after work before going inside. Hearing a song at the wrong time and suddenly your chest feels heavy for reasons you can’t even explain. I know that feeling personally. I lost my mother at 19, so Mother’s Day has carried different meanings for me throughout my life. I also know what it feels like to be a single mother, loving your kids with everything in you while trying to keep the bills, food, emotions, and your own exhausted body from falling apart. There were seasons where life hit me so hard I questioned why I was even here. I was tired. And not in a way sleep could fix. Heartbreak can do that. Financial stress can too. Feeling unseen over and over can slowly wear down your self-esteem and your relationship with yourself. Folks smiling in brunch photos today might still cry in the shower tonight. Social media hardly ever posts that part. Somewhere in the middle of my harder seasons, I started noticing something. The more I learned how to love myself with actual care, the more strength I had when life got rough. I mean feeding myself properly when my mind was racing instead of stress-eating a sleeve of Oreos. Resting without guilt. Choosing not to become my own enemy on top of everything else already going on. Those little shifts helped me more than I realized at the time. Self-love goes way past cute quotes and spa days. It’s how you treat yourself when life gets ugly. It’s catching yourself before your mind starts dragging you somewhere dark. It’s giving yourself enough patience to breathe, regroup, and keep going without mentally tearing yourself apart. That’s why music feels like medicine to me. A song can sit beside you without asking you to explain your pain first. A voice can enter a space and soften the air a little. Music reaches places regular conversations sometimes can’t. I kept thinking about that saying, April showers bring May flowers. It sounds sweet until you’ve lived through enough rain to understand what it really means. Some Aprils feel endless, with bills stacked on the counter, your nervous system worn out, and reality testing you while you’re still trying to stay hopeful. Then May shows up with color anyway. The rain wasn’t easy. Something underneath the ground kept growing while everything looked crazy on the surface. When writing Love Still Knows the Way, I had all of this in mind. And yes, I’m talking about romantic love too, because let’s not play. Most of us want to be held, cared for, touched with tenderness, and loved without all the confusion attached to it. But I also mean everyday love. Sharing food when you can. Noticing when somebody who usually talks a lot gets quiet and simply asking, “You good?” A lot of us need tenderness way more than we admit. That’s why this song carries so much weight. It carries the energy I want moving through this world… love showing up in how we treat ourselves and each other. I want love to find its way into homes, conversations, and our character. Even in ordinary moments. A shared plate. A little patience with somebody having a rough day. That alone could bring change. So when you listen to this song, give it a few minutes without multitasking. Let it find the part of you that’s tired and still wanting love to feel safe. And if somebody came to mind while you were listening, send this to them. Just as a little, “Hey, I thought about you here.” Sometimes love sounds like a shared podcast and a simple text. Before I play my song, I want to say this with my whole heart… I’m really glad you’re here. Still choosing another day and letting life have another chance to meet you with love. Remember now, somehow… love still knows the way. Get full access to The Soul Behind It at imaginemeinnovation.substack.com/subscribe [https://imaginemeinnovation.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

My Voice Walked In

I never saw this day coming. Boy, am I stepping out with this one. This is the introduction of my first song sung and produced by me. Matter of Voice is live, y’all. And yes, it’s me. My style, my tone, and my personality are wrapped all through it. For about a year now, I’ve used digitally assisted vocals to bring my music to life. That has been part of my process, and I’m so grateful for it because it helped me embody and share my messages while I was still figuring out how to bring my own voice fully online. We live in a time where technology can help shape sound. There are tools that clean up vocals, smooth out rough spots, and make things easier on the ear in ways we did not always have access to. I’m thankful for those tools too. They helped me take what was in me and bring it into a form I could share. The tools helped, but they didn’t replace me. It’s my voice in there, figuring it out in real time. Music has always been huge in my life. It has helped shape moments, hold memories, and carry me through a lot of life’s challenges. Lately, when I’m going through something, I know how to turn my pain or my happiness into a song. I started all of this to help myself. Then it grew into something bigger, and I thought, “You know what? Somebody else may need this too.” That’s how the podcasts, blogs, and catalog of over 200 songs made it this far. Music is how I process life. Years ago, I had a dream so real, omg. I woke myself up singing beautifully and loud as hell. Apparently, in the dream, my voice was amazing. There was no question in the dream. But when I woke up in real life, baby, there were many questions and a little bit of sadness. I didn’t know where that dream was going or what it meant. I just knew it felt important. Never would I have imagined that one day my voice would be on a track. But here we are. And for the first time in years, I can feel why that dream stood out so much. This episode is truly for that beautiful soul who has something creative inside them but keeps sitting on the fence. Whatever that creation may be, are you waiting to feel more confident? I get that. Confidence can be funny. In my experience, it didn’t show up first. It came after I tried, fumbled a lot, and found out the world did not end. I’ve never been trained as a dancer. I’ve never been known as the singer with all those fancy riffs and runs. I’m still learning and playing with my voice. I’m still trying to figure out what flows best for me. At the same time, I know there is something in me that needs to be heard. You can have something real in you before it’s polished. You can carry something powerful before you know how to bring it forward. What matters is beginning with what is in your hands right now. That right there has been one of the biggest lessons in my creative journey. Every time I took a fearless step, something showed up. A tool would pop up on social media. An idea would hit me while I was driving. A tutorial would answer the exact question I had been thinking about. I have lived this over and over. And I call it miracles. There were moments when I didn’t have the money, the setup, or the full plan, yet I would still get guided to what I needed. I believe my angels have been guiding me through this. They have dropped clues and direction in ways I couldn’t have planned if I tried. Every time I took that leap of faith, I was met with the means to help me bring forward what I had in my heart. Faith is a powerful force, and you definitely don’t need much. You don’t need the entire plan in your hand. You only need enough faith to move that foot forward. We’ve all heard about the mustard seed. Go pull one up online and see how big a mustard seed is. That’s all the faith you need. Then comes the next part: stepping out on that faith. That’s when the miracles start showing up to help you keep moving. Now, I have a little funny story. The creative side of me has been there since I was little. Back in either third or fourth grade at Maxine Bush in Phoenix, Arizona, I had my niece and my sister in a full talent show routine like I was running rehearsals for a world tour out of the living room. My niece was kindergarten tiny, and I had us in front of the living room mirror working on moves to The Boys’ “Dial My Heart” like we had contracts on the table. We were doing the snake, the running man, the moonwalk, and a few more moves. I was serious too. I probably had an attitude if somebody missed a count. And we won that talent show too! If there is footage somewhere, somebody please come find me. I need to see it. I might cringe myself into another dimension, but I still need to see it. That little girl had no idea how life would unfold. She didn’t know creativity would have to sit behind responsibility, motherhood, relationships, jobs, bills, survival mode… shoot the list goes on, right? But that creative part of me was always there. Now I’m allowing her to step out again. That’s what Matter of Voice is to me. It’s me using what I have right now: my voice, my tools, my faith, my guidance, and my willingness to try. I want somebody to hear this and stop waiting for everything to look perfect before they make that move. Use the phone, the notebook, the free version of the app. Use whatever you have available to you right now. That’s stepping out on faith. Then watch resources pop out of nowhere. I’m a witness! And have so many stories! You can learn while you move. And guess what? You also can grow into the gift by actually using it. That’s what’s happening for me. A little faith, some helpful technology, divine guidance, and one step I finally took. So I’m here to encourage you….take your first step. Hold that faith. Then come back to me and tell me your miracle story. I can’t wait to hear it. A little insight before I play the song: I have a couple AI videos out there but I’m working on a video that will be raw and real me for this song. I’m dusting off my choreography notes because if I could win a dance talent show at 9, I can certainly pull something off now. Hmmmpph Get full access to The Soul Behind It at imaginemeinnovation.substack.com/subscribe [https://imaginemeinnovation.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

What Y’all Don’t See

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Touched Before Touch

I want to talk about the kind of feeling that slips in out of nowhere and quietly takes hold of your whole day. You see somebody, or come across what they do, and something in your body reacts before your brain has anything useful to say. That happened to me, and it hit me fast. I felt this live vibration move through me, like my body had picked up on something familiar, sweet, and beautiful. My stomach tightened, and my chest got warm. My mind filled with wonder, and I could not settle. It felt like I had been tapped on the shoulder from the inside and told, go reach out. So I did. And when that person responded quickly, it fed the feeling even more. That is what made it so intense. It felt like my inner world leaned forward and life leaned right back. That can mess with your head a little, because now the feeling is not just strong. It feels verified. I went on with my day, but not really. Something in me had already been interrupted. The connection that followed felt deep almost immediately, and it all started moving really fast. There was ease, chemistry, and a feeling of closeness that slips in fast and has you feeling seen, wanted, and pulled in before you have even had time to think about it. It felt easy and natural. Then the energy changed. The part that had me all lit up in the beginning started losing its heat. The connection was still there, but the part that felt alive, mutual, and full of real spark was no longer there in the same way. It was strange how fast a room can change when the music is still playing. I did not know that would affect me that hard. I literally had to evaluate myself. I wrote through it, because that is how I move through things when something pulls on my heart. What became clear to me was that the first part of this story was never mainly about desire. It was about being awakened. That person stirred something in me. My body and spirit felt more awake. It woke something in me that had been lying low for a long time. I felt softer, more radiant, more connected to my own desire and inner richness. It was not just about feeling seen by someone else. It was about feeling brought back to myself. That is why the shift hurt the way it did. It was not just about someone pulling away. It was about being brought back to a part of myself I had not felt in a long time. Real closeness. Real magnetism. I moved through my days differently after that. Softer. Brighter. More open. Once I understood that, the whole experience made more sense. I was grieving what came alive in me just as much as I was grieving what changed between us. That changed the way I saw the first encounter. I stopped trying to build a home inside something that only came to open a door. It shook me awake, man. It brought my body, my heart, and my desire back into the same room. It reminded me of what I still long for and what I am no longer willing to live without. But it was not the ending. It was more like the interruption that made the truth impossible to ignore. Then the story took a turn I did not see coming. Someone else entered my life and met me in a place that had already been opened. That is where another layer of me became less distant and far more dangerous. This time, desire did not just pass through me. It took its time. This time my body was not sending a signal. It was opening a whole atmosphere. It moved from inner stirring into something embodied and deeply felt. It was physical, present, and impossible to ignore. My body answered from somewhere deeper and lower. My breathing softened, my mouth relaxed, and a rich, steady pulse moved through me, leaving me wrapped in a more lush and feminine awareness of myself. That second experience deepened my understanding in a way I did not expect. It showed me I could feel desire deeply and still be present. A lot of people know what it feels like to get carried off by attraction. Some people start writing a whole love story after one slow look and a conversation that leaves a trace, then pour far too much into a moment that never asked for all that. This showed me something different in myself. I could feel the tension, the softness, the way my body opened, and still feel held by myself. I did not have to unravel just because something felt good. That is where Stay Here came from. That song carries a grounded, embodied desire. It is about staying present in your body while longing moves through you. It is about wanting someone without slipping away from yourself. For me, that song marks the moment this story stopped being about who awakened those feelings in me and started becoming about how I hold myself once that fire is there. That is the shape of Spell Work. Spell on Arrival carries that first body-jolt, that immediate knowing that had me restless until I reached out. Easy on the Voltage sits inside that first charge and lets it breathe. Leave a Mark carries the after-effect, the way an encounter can linger in your heart. Stay Here is where desire becomes embodied and I stay rooted inside it. Cute Little Static is where the read gets clearer than the charm. That is the album. And let me clear up the title before somebody thinks I have candles lined up in a circle and I am whispering over cinnamon sticks. Spell Work is a metaphor. That first experience felt like something hit me, changed the air, and rearranged my body. It had me looking around like, now what the heck was that. The title fits because the feeling did. What this project gave me was clarity and ease. I walked away understanding my own responses better, recognizing that impact and compatibility are not the same thing, and holding that part of myself with more care than before. That distinction is a whole lesson in itself. Some people wake you up, and some meet you once you are awake. Those are different roles, and mixing them up can cost you peace. Once I saw that, the first experience stopped feeling like some big wrong turn. It did what it came to do. It brought me back into contact with parts of myself that were still very alive. Then life kept moving and showed me another layer. That is the current running through these songs. They hold the imprint of what moved through me, the spark, the wanting, the tenderness, the realization, and the quiet return to myself that followed. What you hear is not just memory. It is embodiment. If I had to put it simply: One encounter stirred me awake. Another showed me how to remain my own while feeling everything. That is where Spell Work came from. Someone listening may be sitting in the middle of this kind of experience right now. Your body caught something before your mind could explain it. You felt stirred up in a way that felt bigger than ordinary attraction. You have been trying to figure out whether that feeling belongs to the person, the moment, or the part of you that came alive because of it. Sometimes it takes a minute to figure that out. For me, it turned into music. That is one of my favorite things about art. Life hands you something intense, strange, beautiful, or painful, and instead of sitting there staring at the wall, you make something with it. You give it rhythm. You give it language. You let it teach you. Then somebody else hears it and says, yeah, I know that feeling. That is Spell Work. Just the sound of a woman learning the difference between what stirs her and what can truly hold her. *Listen to the whole Spell Work EP Album experience here: Get full access to The Soul Behind It at imaginemeinnovation.substack.com/subscribe [https://imaginemeinnovation.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Remnants of Slavery

The Remnants of Slavery What slavery left behind in the mind, the spirit, and the way we see ourselves My name is Renee Mims, and I’m letting you know now… I’m here as the plot twist. Folks love a polished story about how far we’ve overcome. They love the songs, the sermons, the celebration, the overcoming stories, and the talk about victory. I get it. That kind of talk moves people to rejoice. But the real question still remains…. Have we really overcome? Freedom cannot be measured only by what ended on paper. You can dress history up however you want, but the inside of a person will reveal what remains. So will everyday life. And what I see is not finished. That is what I mean by the remnants of slavery. The visible brutality is only one layer of this. What concerns me just as much is what stayed in circulation after the fact. Belief carried it. Homes repeated it. Churches reinforced it. Fear protected it. Survival passed it down. After enough time, it stopped looking like conditioning and started looking natural. Here’s what needs to be clear. Because of how I look, some people may hear me speak on this and wonder why I’m the one saying it. So let me answer that directly. My birth father was Black, and from the age of one, I was raised in a Black home by an absolutely strong woman. So no, I did not pull up to this conversation as a bystander. This history lived in my home. As a little girl, I remember hearing my mother talk about prejudice and the way she had to move differently because of her skin color. That broke my heart. Something deep in me got disturbed. I could not understand how someone could be treated as less than over color when everybody’s blood is red. Even then, I could feel how wrong that was. Slavery movies affected me deeply. I could barely sit through them. One film could stay in my spirit for weeks. It was bigger than sadness. I felt grief, anger, and heartbreak all at once. I knew I was looking at evil. I was watching human beings get stripped, degraded, and broken in every way a person can be broken. So this subject is not casual for me. For me, this carries history, grief, and deep conviction all at once. The question that keeps echoing in my mind is: Have we overcome slavery, or have we only gotten better at talking about survival while still carrying what it left behind? A shiny label does not make it freedom when the same old programming is still running underneath. Some of what gets lifted up as faith is really dependence in church clothes. Holiness gets named while fear is doing half the driving. Iron was not the only thing used to bind people. Belief did plenty of that too. That is where I want to go. When slavery comes up, most people move straight to the visible brutality, and they should. Forced labor. Families torn apart, and much more I don’t have to name here. Freedom and dignity stripped away. None of that should ever be toned down. The deeper damage was happening underneath all that violence. Violence was one part of the system. Belief was another. Messages were planted about suffering, worth, obedience, hope, and power. People were taught how to see themselves and how to interpret what was happening to them. That kind of conditioning does not just go away with time. It gets baked into culture, passed through language, repeated in families, reinforced in church, and kept alive by fear until people start treating it like it is just the way things are. That is what stays on my heart. Buried inside all of this was a devastating lie: real life is somewhere later on, and so are peace, rest, joy, and freedom. Endure now. Bow now. Suffer now. Then maybe, after death, what was denied to you here will finally be handed over. I do not believe that. Life begins the moment you take your first breath. If that’s not enough proof then, hmmm. In my eyes, heaven and hell are not only future destinations people argue about. Both happen here in real life, through a person’s inner world, the condition of their body, the spirit of their home, the choices they keep making, and whether fear or truth is guiding the way they live. As a result, I feel too many people are postponing life while life is happening now. Does it sound too good to be true to have heaven on earth? Does it sound so off that you can experience hell right now? A lot of folks have been trained to look somewhere beyond themselves while the healing, clarity, and the power they need are rooted in the life they are living right now. Right in this moment! What I believe, and have been shown by my angels and guides, is this: The divine lives within you. That is not decoration to me. I mean it. What is divine is not sitting far off somewhere, hidden behind a building, a title, or somebody else’s control. I believe it is alive within us, woven into breath, awareness, and life itself. Now consider the kind of separation that creates. A person taught to search everywhere else first can spend an entire life overlooking the power they always held. Self-doubt replaces inner knowing. Intuition starts feeling dangerous. Authority gets handed over to systems and voices that were never supposed to own that much of a person in the first dang place. Real damage comes from that kind of fallacy. History supports that too. Slavery was enforced with violence, but it was also reinforced through belief. Enslaved people were treated as property under slave codes, and literacy was restricted because reading opened the door to thought, resistance, and freedom. Religion in slaveholding culture was often used to justify obedience and bondage while people were denied the right to fully know, question, or interpret truth for themselves. Frederick Douglass drew a sharp line between the teachings of Christ and the slaveholding religion of his time. There’s real significance here. A historical backbone sits under this conversation, not just emotion. I am not here to mock anyone’s faith, nor am I dismissing what religion has meant in many of our homes and communities. For a lot of people, it gave strength and structure. It brought something to hold onto when everything else was chaotic and brutal. I respect that. Respect does not mean every part of it gets a free pass. Something may help people survive and still deserve a second look. That’s where I’m at. What carried somebody through one season is not automatically supposed to go untouched forever, especially when it keeps people cut off from their own center. I hear spiritual language coming from people who are disconnected from their own clarity. I watch people speak as if what is sacred has nothing to do with them. I see people invest in the appearance of holiness while losing contact with their own life. This is what I’m talking about. What is devotion worth if it never deepens someone’s relationship with the life inside them? What is the point of all that praying, reading, praising, and pleading if a person still walks through the world feeling empty, powerless, and separated from what is true? Those questions need answers. For our people, the weight is even heavier, since slavery did not only steal labor. It got into self-concept. It affected imagination. It tampered with identity. Messages were planted about worth, authority, leadership, truth, and who was expected to stay on their knees praying. Damage like that does not disappear. It turns up in sermons, in family language, and in the way suffering gets explained. You hear it when brilliant people speak about themselves like they are less than what they are. You see it when somebody keeps reaching outward while their own power stays right there, unused. So no, I cannot look at slavery as only a physical system from the past. Its psychological residue is still here. The spiritual residue from it is still here. Even with all of that, I do not believe the core was ever lost. Covered over and redirected, yes. But gone? No. Worth existed before society had a chance to interfere. Long before the world judged you, life was already moving through you. What is holy in somebody does not come from systems, and for that reason systems can never fully own it. That is why I am here to be the plot twist. Agreement is not what I’m after. And attention sure ain’t it. I’m here because way too many beautiful souls have been taught to live at a distance from themselves, and that distance has cost us more than we realize. Inherited ideas need examination. Certain teachings deserve questioning. A lot was passed down sounding righteous, while the outcome was fear, dependence, and the loss of self. This is not about tearing everything down. This is about honesty and taking a clear look at what all of this is producing. For me, this history goes far beyond dates and events. I’m looking at what it left behind in people’s minds and lives. That is why this conversation reaches far beyond one month on a calendar. This touches belief, inherited patterns, and the way self-perception gets formed. So yes, harder questions need to be asked. How much of what was planted under oppression are we still calling truth? These are the kinds of questions some people have carried quietly for years, feeling something deep inside without always knowing where to put it. I want to remind you… The divine lives within you. Life is now. Peace is not on the other side of death. Freedom begins with honesty, and healing is coming back to what was always there. If this does not line up with what you believe, I respect that. I’m not here to force anything on anybody. I’m here to speak what life, spirit, and inner truth have made clear to me. Take what resonates, ask what needs to be asked, and think for yourself. May the wisdom within guide you, the freedom within carry you, and the love within remind you… it is already done. —Renee Transmitter of pain into power Fuel The Frequency [https://donate.stripe.com/7sYeV7daE4fP5EagRN7AI01] Get full access to The Soul Behind It at imaginemeinnovation.substack.com/subscribe [https://imaginemeinnovation.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]