MORNING MINDSET with Tai Beauchamp by Deidre Dashay

This greeting is stated with the intention to help you focus your mind on a divine higher power. Proclaiming this greeting helps you elevate your heart, mind, and spirit. Yes, that’s right: we’re going deep to encounter the inner and outer beauty of the notorious Tai Beauchamp. The illustrious Tai is known as a host, founder, speaker, gatherer who elevates and empowers women. She’s most notably accomplishing that purpose by hosting Morning Mindset with Tai where she starts each morning going Live on Instagram with her greeting of God Morning and then closes the Live by illuminating an intention on which our minds can focus.

Tai Beauchamp would tell you she’s a vessel. “Many people, especially Black women, might think about a vessel being something that is used to pour into [something else]. And while I am that, I am also a receptacle of a vessel. I want and desire to receive, first and foremost. I desire to receive and be in the bosom of God where I feel held.” Tai is a powerfully purposed vessel, one that not only receives but also pours out. That purpose in her was recognized by her early on in life as a child. Oftentimes we as a people recognize our purpose as a child but we allow outside noise to distract us from the heart of that purpose. We become overwhelmed by the opinions of others, and we hold ourselves back from authentically sharing that purpose with others.

Tai was raised by powerful women, which in turn helped her to believe in herself and hold firm to her purpose. It was these women in her life that gave Tai a point of reference of understanding and being connected to God. Her grandmothers and her mother specifically are who helped her to understand that we have agency and fortitude even when we don’t necessarily believe we do. That fortitude also came as a product from attending an all girls high school, St. Vincent Academy in Newark, New Jersey. And then an all women’s college, Spelman College. It helped Tai to see not only our divine power, but then also our earthly brilliance and capacity. These experiences shaped her to be a person who is focused on making manifest that purpose on this earth. Tai’s purpose? To elevate and inspire people. To love people, and be a catalyst of love. She seeks to live purposefully daily and does not shy away from acknowledging that it’s not always easy, especially when you experience fatigue.

Tai’s catalyst for her journey into mental and physical wellness began because she experienced various points of burnout, depression, and uncertainty. She realized that if she did not own the agency that she has over her mind, body, and spirit, she would be unable to manifest her purpose. Tai began her career as a magazine editor. She was a beauty editor at Oprah Magazine and Seventeen Magazine. Tai also worked for an offshoot of Essence, was the editor-in-chief of Vibe Vixen Magazine, and then became a style ambassador for In Style. Tai shares that, “I’ve always been connected to beauty and to women. And at the time, because I was so young, I didn’t really have words for it. But I see that beauty is really a form of identity. And that’s how I see wellness. Even now. It is about identity.”

Tai had a very accelerated, fast tracked career with a lot of responsibility, a picture of many of our lives and especially the lives

of Black women; we’re capable and we do the most. And Tai did the most. She did the most with a great sense of pride in those seasons of her life. Tai would go on to a pressurized lifestyle, becoming a caregiver for her grandmother, starting a business, and experiencing anxiety and uncertainty as a result of her moving from New York to LA, which all led to her burnout. Now she’s trying to do the least with that same great sense of pride in a way that’s impactful. Tai also recognized that her spirituality was also a part of wellness. Her faith journey in the form of hiking was just as much of a catalyst to her overall wellness.

Tai began hiking every day because she was committed to her physical wellness. The stress of drinking and adding extra pounds had to go. She considered hiking not just a physical training but also a spiritual grounding for herself because through it she felt connected to God. Working out became her worship. It became her time to pray and a time to listen. Tai pointed out that hiking was also metaphorical for life. “It’s one foot after the other. You’re gonna have valleys. You’re gonna have plateaus. You’re gonna reach a peak. It’s gonna be arduous. You’re not gonna be able to breathe. You’re gonna want to fall out. You might fall down. You might feel dusty. You might stub a toe. All these things … but if you have the ability to walk on this journey called life, you take a step. You hold, you breathe, you pace, and you take another step. You trust God in those steps. You ask God, which way do I go? How do I step? You pause, and you pray.”

Movement and understanding healing were important to Tai and