Conversations with Isha El

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Isha El.

Hi Isha, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today.
Peace, I am Isha Ali El. I was born and raised right here in Nashville, Tennessee. My family and I are from Shelbyville, Tennessee, so I spent a decent amount of time with my family there during my childhood. Growing up here in Nashville, my family wasn’t the wealthiest. My family were church-going people, and that’s what bonded us together. I spent the majority of my childhood inside a church. It was a way of life and heavily influenced us.

My mother and father were never married, so they broke up right after I was born. My father wasn’t as present in my life due to his life decision that landed him in federal prison for the majority of my childhood. It was extremely challenging for my mother to raise three children on her own. During this time, we lived with my grandparents here in Nashville, who are both now deceased. I spent the majority of my childhood with them, being taught, shaped, and molded by them. I have a lot to thank them for now that I have blossomed into the woman I am today. Both my grandparents were nature-driven people. I spent a lot of time outside with them, learning about nature.

My grandmother loved birds & books and used to teach me all about them and what they represented. My grandfather loved gardening & history, so he taught me all the benefits of what nature provided before we became so industrialized. I’m proud to say spending those precious parts of my childhood with them shaped who I am today. Shortly after this, my grandfather passed away when I was about nine. This was very unexpected and challenging for my family.

My grandmother didn’t have the best health and depended heavily on my grandfather for love & support. During this time, she returned back to work while being treated for kidney failure with dialysis. She always used to come home so tired and worn out after those treatments. She taught me how to cook for her and take care of her on those days when she couldn’t get out of bed. Soon, it got too expensive for us to continue living with my grandmother, so my mother took on a husband and moved us out into the country in Springfield, Tennessee.

Growing up in Springfield, Tennessee, was similar to Shelbyville, Tennessee, as far as the countryside goes. The neighborhood we lived in was predominantly white, with two other melanin families and one Chinese family. Naturally, the schools we attended were the same. My older brother and I were the only melanin kids in our school. My older sister went to a different school. She was much older than us and experienced the same thing. This was the part of my life where things changed drastically. My stepfather was a retired Navy man who suffered from PTSD. Back then, there wasn’t a name for it.

This caused him to raise us in a very military, Christian, strict environment. We got punished a lot by him in very violent ways, and there was no one we could reach out to who would come to our aid with us living so far away. My mother, out of fear, never stood up to him to stop the violence. Instead, she unconsciously supported him, referring to the bible verse Proverbs 13:24: spare the rod spoil the child. She would call this God’s will, quoting bible verses Ephesians 5:21, 23 which states in the fear of God wives submit to your husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ was the head of the church.

This heavily influenced my conditions of ADHD, epilepsy, anxiety, depression, and suicide at a very young age. To keep a long story short overtime it was something we could no longer hide. My former childhood pastor, deacons, and elders from our church came to our aid and got involved in the domestic violence that was happening within our home. In Christianity, we are taught the only grounds for divorce is adultery, so naturally, they never suggested they end their marriage. We were always taught to forgive and move on.

This eventually led to me running away and my journey into suicide. Eventually, this caught up with my mother and her husband, and my stepfather was charged with child abuse. We then went through a period of time in temporary child custody while my parents battled in court for full custody of us. My father had recently been released from prison and was granted early parole. He came to our aid and won custody of us, and we went to live with him and his new wife in Antioch, Tennessee. This was a happier time in my life. However, I did miss my mother and always wondered how she was doing and if my stepfather was being violent towards her. I have never seen my stepfather lay a hand on my mother or heard any such violence between them.

I missed my older sister as well. My older sister had a different father from my older brother and I; her father didn’t get custody of her, so she was alone for some time with my mother and stepfather. While living with my father and his wife, I was happy to experience a more loving & peaceful environment. His wife was very loving, kind, and caring to me. She spent a lot of time with me, taking me with her to the grocery store, the mall, the beauty shop, to hang with her friends, and we all used to visit her hometown in Cleveland, Ohio. Her family was so welcoming and loving, blood couldn’t make us any closer.

Things seemed to be going so well, but my family continued some negative life choices that involved the abuse of drugs, alcohol, and gang violence. My father was never home, always leaving us with my stepmother to care for us. She never complained about this, as my father did take care of the household financially. During this time, my father and stepmother had a son and a daughter together. I hadn’t begun to feel like I had matured enough to be a big sister, but I gave them my absolute best. My father went through a period of violence, specifically with me, which landed me back in state custody.

One night, I stayed up all night waiting for him to come home because he had spent so much time on the streets that I missed him. I couldn’t wait to see him when he got home. As soon as I heard him pull up to the house, I wanted to surprise him with my love and presence. At this time, I was unaware of his condition. He came home drunk and high on drugs and immediately yelled at me to go to my room. Naturally, I obeyed because I was scared. He then came up to my room and knocked on my door. As soon as I opened the door, I was greeted with a belt buckle slung at me, busting my face. He began to continue to beat me, slapping and choking me until I passed out.

At this time, my stepmother was pregnant with my little sister and woke up to the disturbance. She didn’t know what else to do, so she called the police. My father went to jail that night, and I was rushed to the hospital for medical treatment. I wasn’t allowed to return back home with them and was placed in state custody again. After spending some years in state custody in a group home, I was happier there than I ever was at home. Every weekend, different families came to visit children to be considered for adoption. I was naturally scared to be adopted by people that I didn’t know and possibly experience what I experienced with my own family, so I was very standoffish.

I saw a lot of kids come and go with whom I bonded and never saw again. One day a melanin elder woman came to visit and she was the first person I felt safe with. I was naturally outgoing with her, and she was the same with me. She came to visit me a couple of times and finally offered to adopt me with my consent. She had previously adopted two other girls when I arrived at her home. I had two nonbiological sisters and was happier than ever. Life had begun to feel more at peace for me again. Then, my foster mother called me in the kitchen because I had received a notification from my biological mother to come and visit me.

My first response was no, I don’t want to see her, and this is why I am in this situation now. She eventually nurtured me into allowing my mother to come visit me, and she would be there for me, so I agreed. This was the beginning of a new journey for us to start over again. I did end up back in my mother’s and stepfather’s full custody without experiencing any further physical violence. Instead, I received verbal abuse, child neglect, starvation, isolation, and narcissism. During this period, my older sister had a daughter when I was thirteen. She got pregnant as a teenager and eventually moved out because she refused to marry the young man she got impregnated with. That just left me and my older brother which they eventually kicked out when he was sixteen.

I got kicked out when I was seventeen and was homeless here in Nashville, Tennessee. I couch surfed for a bit with different people, but eventually, I had to find a way to pick up my life, so I went to the mission here in Nashville, Tennessee. They gave me a warm bed, food, and clothes and helped me find a job to start making my own money. They also helped me sign up for college. I went to ITT Technical Institute here in Nashville, Tennessee, where I majored in Criminal Justice & Applied Science. I eventually got approved for an apartment in MDHA housing when I was nineteen, in Andrew Jackson Courts, where I lived for four and a half years.

During that time, I didn’t have my own car, so I caught the MTA bus to work and school here in Nashville. One day, I was catching the bus from school heading to work and was hit by a car. The accident was written off as a hit-and-run. I went through temporary paralysis in my left leg. This was a reality check for me and a very depressing time. I was waiting for my apartment to be available to move into, which was still three months out. The hospital automatically called the person on my emergency contact list, who was my mother.

I hadn’t seen my mother since the day she kicked me out. She came to my aid at the hospital, took me home with her, and cared for me until I could walk again. By then, my apartment in Andrew Jackson Court was ready for me to move in, which she and her husband helped me with. I finally had my own place and could be in charge of my own life, which was the best feeling I could have in the world. After I graduated college with my bachelor’s degree, I got a job at Vanderbilt University Police Department and went back to school for my Master’s Degree in Criminal Justice.

I purchased a home during that time through the Tennessee first-time home buyers program, which I currently still reside in. I went through a period of domestic violence in a relationship with my ex-boyfriend that got us both arrested. Thankfully, I was able to pay for a lawyer who defended my case, dropped all my charges, and got an order of protection approved against my ex-boyfriend. I was twenty-four during this time. I lost my job at Vanderbilt due to the arrest, so naturally, I lost the income that helped me provide for myself.

I had to take lower paying jobs, working three jobs at a time, to pay my bills. During that time, I still suffered a lot of pain from my leg injury. This led me to my journey into copper healing. I spent a lot of time researching how to heal cartilage in my knee and leg, and to my surprise, copper kept showing up. So I started wearing copper jewelry, socks, and knee braces, and this process, over time, began to heal me. I even started making my own jewelry as a hobby which eventually led to why I decided to start my own company called “Goddess On The Rise”, and my own jewelry line called “Udjatcu”. I am known as the “CopperQu33n” to all my friends, community, clients, and customers.

I have received a great deal of support & love, and I am extremely grateful to be doing what I love, which is helping others to heal, love, and grow no matter what we may go through in this world. I give gratitude to Nashville Voyage Magazine for allowing me to share my story.

Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned. Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
My journey into full-time entrepreneurship has had its successors and challenges. I started my company, “Goddess On The Rise,” in 2018, but I was still working several jobs. The 2020 lockdown helped me to give my full and undivided attention to my career so that it would eventually provide me with the life I worked so consistently to achieve.

Thankfully I had a mentor during that time that I had met when I was twenty four. Previous owner of Alkebu-Lan Images Book Store right here in Nashville, Tennessee by the name of Yusef Harris. He took me under his wing like a father I never had, and I was like the daughter he never had. He helped motivate me and taught me everything he could to help me once I was ready to launch my own business. I used to volunteer for him and shopped at his store. When he was able to pay me, he did, but his time and attention were payment enough for me.

I had no previous teachings or experience within my family with being a full-time entrepreneur, so I needed all the advice I could receive. In 2022, he passed away, which was extremely challenging for me and our community. He had built that store from the ground up with his leadership, support, love, and community for thirty-five years. The hardest part about my journey into full-time entrepreneurship was not having him to call on or speak to for advice. The struggle of being a small business is attracting consistent sales/customers.

You have this period where you make a great deal of money, then you have this period where you don’t make a great deal of money. So learning how to save money for hard times, while still paying your bills, still investing in your company and your own personal needs can be tricky. This is something that I am still currently mastering, and as I continue to pursue my dreams I continue to become better.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am proud to say I am a healer and that title has a lot of services I provide. I am a jewelry artist, my jewelry is medicinal. It provides energy healing to people bodies for varies illnesses. For example, joints, bones, arthritis, and boosting your immune system to name a few. I have received several testimonies from clients on their healing journey and that’s something that keeps me going. I am also an oracle reader.

I provide different kinds of divination readings to help others on their journey to healing. I took up psychology in college so I am naturally good at helping others resolves their issues. What sets me apart from others is I turned my pain into passion, and I turned my failures into success. As some of us know energy can’t be created or destroyed and neither can our past life experiences.

However, we always have the power to change our present reality and transmute it for a better future. This is what I call Alchemy. I teach about this on my YouTube channel called “SacredEnergyXchange222”. I provide collective readings there for free, and thankfully, people trust me to provide them with personal readings.

How can people work with you, collaborate with you, or support you?
I love working in spiritual/healing environments. Any kind of spiritual-led organizations, foundations, companies, non-profits, etc., that I can collaborate with is always desired. I know there are so many people out there who could use my services.

Telling more people about me and all the services I provide would be helpful in attracting new clients as well as consistent clients. I am also a licensed notary, and can provide this service to people in need.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.goddessontherise.life/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/udjatcu?igsh=MWg3bDVrcXg4YngxNw==
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/PwXRoUbGpm9SeuKe/?mibextid=qi2Omg
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isha-el-614517a9?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=android_app
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@SacredEnergyXchange222?si=fq3ezH8SiJS8zQqw
• Other: https://www.etsy.com/shop/UdjatCu