Get ready to grab your notebooks, because when I tell you Dr. ShantaQuilette dropped gems, jewels, and a lot of wisdom during our conversation, I mean it. You know the saying, “Leave people better than you found them?” That perfectly describes how I felt after this interview. And I have a feeling you’ll walk away feeling inspired, too.
Dr. ShantaQuilette Carter-Williams wears many crowns. She is a health advocate, comedian, award-winning speaker, executive producer, writer, and media entrepreneur who leads Quiddity Media & Entertainment and SQ Develle Enterprises. She is also the founder of the Pink Peppermint Project, a nonprofit committed to supporting women facing critical health challenges.
But what makes her journey so powerful goes far beyond her titles and accomplishments. Having survived two strokes and a heart attack, Dr. ShantaQuilette has turned some of life’s most difficult moments into an opportunity to serve, educate, and uplift others. Through her advocacy for women’s heart health, her work with the American Heart Association, and her passion for healing, humor, and faith, she continues to remind women that even after life takes an unexpected turn, there is still purpose in the journey.
Behind the accomplishments is a woman who understands that becoming who you’re meant to be sometimes requires starting over, trusting God when the way forward isn’t clear, setting boundaries, and choosing yourself without apology. Our conversation explores what it means to honor your growth, protect your peace, and give yourself permission to become the woman you’re still growing into.
With everything that you have dealt with, how do you bring that into being a wife, a mother, an entrepreneur, a speaker? And plus, you’re a comedian who makes people laugh. How do you make sure you don’t lose yourself while taking care of everyone else and pursuing your purpose?
Easy! It’s easy! I had to learn that everybody can’t have unlimited access to me just because I love them. No, is a complete sentence. No is the answer and the explanation. And so, I don’t have to explain my why. I don’t have to explain to you why I don’t want to do it. I just don’t want to do it.
I’m at that age where I’ve earned it, I have wisdom, and I control my atmosphere. Women will give to everybody but themselves and then wonder why they feel like leftovers. I’m a wife. I’m a mother. I’m a Mimi, like you said, a businesswoman. I speak, I advocate, I make people laugh and underneath all those titles I’m still ShantaQuillete. And so, I have to take care of her too.
Sometimes that means saying no without writing a three-page dissertation explaining why. That means, turning my phone off, turning my TV off, and putting the book down. Sometimes it means realizing that just because I can carry something doesn’t mean God assigned it to me.
You know, a lot of times I’ll be like, “Am I right because God told me to do it or am I doing this on my own?” And that’s the difference between listening to God and listening on your own understanding.
You have all these things packed and piled up in front of you, and none of those things have been appointed to you. Then you wonder why you are tired and things are unfinished. You wonder why you feel depleted in areas. Sometimes it’s your own doing. Basically, I just believe that my purpose shouldn’t require me to disappear from my life.
How do you get to a point where you don’t feel guilty about telling people you’re not available?
I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t allow anybody else’s value or what someone thinks or wants from me dictate how I operate in my own body. Because overall, you can give me all the things, but your things cause my experience.
If you’re piling things on my plate and I’m willing to do it, and then I end up in the hospital, or I end up sick, or I end up tired, or I have to cancel a speaking event, or I can’t do a brand deal, or I’m in the hospital…you’re still carrying on with your life. Because I didn’t listen to my own self, my own intuition, my own discernment, then I’m becoming an overdoer and I have to pay for that.
And once I have to pay for that, everybody around me has to pay for that. And that’s the thing that people don’t really realize. When you talk about your wellness and exhaustion, it has a ripple effect.
If you have children and you end up in the hospital, now your children have to suffer because you might have been the one taking them to school. You might have been the one feeding them every day, so now somebody has to take over that responsibility. If you have a spouse, now he has to take over and take off from work. Now he has to use the leave y’all probably were going to use next year for your vacation. Now you have a plethora of hospital bills and things that you are adding on just because you didn’t put yourself first.
It’s so easy in this lifetime for me to put myself first because I know that none of these things can get done. I can’t do anything for you. I can’t do this interview with Arlesia. I can’t love on my husband. I can’t take care of my children if I’m in the hospital or dead. It’s as simple as that.
What would you say to Black women, especially who may be smiling on the outside, but they are really struggling on the inside with fear, stress, disappointment? What are some ways they can begin to navigate the things they may be carrying internally that no one else sees?
Whatever you keep on the inside displays on the outside. You don’t have to keep auditioning for the role of strong woman. There’s no award for that. You don’t get any gold coins by being the strong woman. We use the word superwoman, but we don’t have X-ray vision and can’t fly. Because when you are trying to operate in a space that doesn’t exist, then it’s hard. I guess that’s where that word imposter syndrome comes from. I don’t know if I’m using it properly, but some of us have gotten so good at surviving that people don’t realize that we’re drowning.
So you show up, you handle the business, you smile, you continuously say, “I’m fine.” Your hair is together, your makeup’s together, your clothes are together, and you answer, “I’m good.” And meanwhile, good is somewhere over at the police station filing a missing person’s report. You’re allowed to say I’m tired. You’re allowed to say I’m not okay. You’re allowed to say I need help. You’re allowed to admit that something hurts before it completely breaks you.
Strength is not pretending nothing affects you. If you want to say that you’re a strong woman, in my mind, strong means that I’m standing firm in who I am regardless of where I am in this space of my life. I know it’s hard in the workplace, of course. The minute you start saying that you’re not fine and you’re not good, you may feel like you might get demoted or something. You can’t fully occupy that space at work. You’re already competing and dealing with microaggressions. So why would I add this to it? I understand, but sometimes strength is finally telling the truth.
I love that you use your humor, storytelling, and your own experiences to connect with people. What is one lesson about faith or healing that you wish more women would embrace as they enter their next chapter in life?
I wish more women understood that starting over is not the same thing as starting from scratch. It’s okay to put your old life behind you and rebuild because you’re bringing wisdom with you. You have lessons. You have scars. You have discernment, boundaries, the mistakes you paid.
I know for me, I paid full tuition for all of my mistakes I had to learn from. The strongest thing that I lean on in my life is my faith. It taught me sometimes what feels like falling apart is actually you being rearranged. I wouldn’t have chosen everything that I’ve been through one hundred percent. I would also not go back and prevent it. Oh no, I wouldn’t prevent it from happening because it actually made me who I am today.
I always think about the movie, The Butterfly Effect, where no matter how much you go back and try to change history, it’s always going to affect somebody. And so for me, I just think I can look back now and see some of the things that I thought were endings, and I know they were actually introductions. Don’t be afraid of the next chapter, just because it doesn’t look like yesterday. You’re not supposed to reread a chapter that God has already finished.
What do you mean that starting over is not the same as starting from scratch?
You can’t start from the beginning. You can’t be born again, right? Through Christ, you can, but you can’t go back and actually be born. You can rebuild your life, but the foundation is still there. You’re just putting a new home there. So all those things in the past are still going to be there. Those memories, those things that made you who you are today. You’re just rebuilding. You’re not starting over.
When it comes to transitioning to a new season in life, if a woman wants to start a business, make a career change, or do something that she’s always been afraid to do, what crown jewels would you leave with her for inspiration to take that necessary step?
Two things: do it scared and stop waiting to be picked. I think my biggest why is that they didn’t choose me first, I did, right? Everybody is not going to recognize what is on your life before you do, and don’t confuse access with alignment. A lot of times we are so anxious to get into doors and sit at tables that are not meant for us, and we need to realize that rejection is our protection. We can only see what’s outside the door. God can see what’s behind it.
You have to know that every opportunity is not your opportunity. Every room isn’t your room, and every person who is offering you that seat isn’t supposed to have a permanent seat at your table. And while you are building your dream, you need to protect you. It all still starts from the beginning of this conversation, taking care of you. There is no successful business worth having if you have to destroy yourself trying to build it.
Why do you say start scared?
So fear is false evidence appearing real. And a lot of times we don’t do things because we’re scared to do it. We are sitting on blessings, ideas, promises, all in the name of fear. Sometimes you have to step outside of that fear. You can’t be afraid to become the woman that you have never met before.
I had my stroke and I was transitioning from a job that I had already given seventeen years to. I wanted to retire and I had my whole life planned out. I was so busy hanging on to a woman who no longer existed, instead of looking at the woman that I was becoming, a woman that I had never met before. So I say, don’t be afraid to become a woman you’ve never met before. You are scared of evolution. You are scared of trajectory. You’re scared of failure. You’re scared of you. You’re scared of someone telling you no.
We spend so much time trying so hard to get back to who we used to be. Baby, I learned so much from her, but I don’t want her back. She got me here. I’m grateful for her. I’ve learned so much. I survived so much. I prayed too much. I’ve grown too much to go backwards.
I’m so grateful for who God has made me to be today, and that’s what your outlook should be like. Who is God making me to be? And I’m so excited to meet her. Give yourself permission to meet the woman you are becoming, because I know through my own story the greatest thing you can leave another woman isn’t a blueprint for becoming you. It’s a blueprint to becoming herself.
A Moment of Reflection
Your words really resonated with me because they reminded me of how easy it is to focus on how far we still want to go instead of acknowledging how far we’ve already come. I sometimes find myself questioning whether I’m doing enough. I get caught up in thinking about what I could have done differently or where I might be if I had made different choices. But your words reminded me that the woman I was in the past helped shape the woman I am today. I’ve come a long way, and I need to give myself more credit for that.
You have to give yourself enough credit. You have to give yourself enough grace to know that everything that happens in your life happens for a reason. There are no coincidences in life. There have absolutely been times when I did not feel good enough. And one of the hardest things I had to let go of is the voice that says, “If I had done this sooner. If the doctor would have gave me the medicine, or the doctor wouldn’t have dismissed me, I would still be working at my good government job.” That’s my thought. Like God didn’t tell me that. That’s just my thought that I would be further along. No, further along according to who?
We can beat ourselves half to death, wondering about a version of our life that never actually happened. What does further along look like? I can look back and find one hundred things I would have done differently. It doesn’t mean it would have changed the outcome. I can think about the opportunities I should have taken, the people I should have said yes to, the places I stayed too long, the times I made myself feel smaller. But I know now what I didn’t know then, and I refuse to make myself pay for that. I hope you refuse to make the woman you are today pay forever for the decisions the woman you were yesterday made. Just think about everything you have survived, and have learned and lost and had to rebuild to prepare you for where you are going.
Instead of saying what would I have done differently, ask yourself, “What am I going to do with where I am right now?” Because regret will have you staring in a rearview mirror. When you’re driving in the car to your destination you’re on a path. God has you on a path to purpose. And pretty often, we can’t get to the purpose because we’re too distracted by what’s going on behind us. So we look in the rearview mirror. We look in the side mirror. We’re looking everywhere. We’re looking around the car when we should be driving straight ahead.
And the enemy is not all knowing; he is observing. The minute you get distracted enough, that passenger side door will open, and he will sit in the seat. And if you continue to look in the rearview and continue to look behind you, it won’t be long before he is driving. You have to know that you don’t look to the left and you don’t look to the right. You don’t worry about what somebody else is doing because you don’t know what they had to do to get to where they are, just like they don’t know what you had to do to get to where you are.
There’s always somebody praying for your seat, baby. And sometimes we think we got it so bad, but there’s somebody in the world that wishes they had your life. Continue to walk on that path. Continue to align with what God has been telling you in your mind. Listen to it. Use your discernment. Don’t get distracted and continue on the destination. So when you get to that fork in the road, you’ll know which way to go.
As our conversation came to a close, one thing was clear: Dr. ShantaQuilette’s story is a powerful reminder that purpose can emerge from pain, faith can carry us through life’s toughest seasons, and it’s never too late to embrace the woman God is calling us to be.
If this interview blessed you as much as it blessed me, be sure to connect with Dr. ShantaQuilette and follow her incredible work.
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