VBB 311: Sophia Dias - Turning Pain Into Purpose!

Intro [00:00:01]:

Virgin Beauty Bitch Podcast: inspiring women to overcome social stereotypes and share unique life experiences without fear of being defiantly different. Your hosts, Christopher and Heather.

Let's talk, shall we?

Christopher [00:00:19]:

The United Nations annual 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence begins November 25, which is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. The campaign continues through December 10, Human Rights Day. For the past five years, VBB has supported this UN initiative with conversations featuring female victims of violence and abuse. This week, we welcome fashion designer, recording artist, and author Sophia Dias. Welcome, Sophia, to Virgin Beauty. Bitch.

Sophia Diaz [00:00:54]:

Good morning. Thank you so very much for having me. It's a tremendous pleasure being here.

Christopher [00:01:00]:

We are thrilled to have you. Now, Heather and I feel it's important to acknowledge how disheartening it is that we still live in a time where abuse still threatens the lives and livelihoods of women around the world. It's painful to hear that you were once one of those women abused, but we are also grateful that women like you are drawing on your courage to share your story and hopefully make a difference. So, Sophia, your journey is one of resilience and courage, but it's also one that began with betrayal. Maybe you can start us off with what led up to that betrayal in your life.

Sophia Diaz [00:01:38]:

Well, I would like to say that that was a chapter in my life. I have not been betrayed, hurt, or abused by anybody in my entire life. And it was just rather tragic that the betrayal and the real abuse took place by the person closest to me, a person that was supposed to cherish and love me. And, I cannot even remember how it occurred, but we both worked together at an international company that I helped my former spouse with. And the more successful we became, the more money we earned, the more controlling and abusive my former spouse became to a point where we're talking about millions of dollars earned in revenue all across the world, in China, in Taiwan, in Mexico, India, and amongst other countries, aside from the United States, whereby in 2014, I clearly remember, I was at a grocery store purchasing groceries. And I think the groceries were for my pets and, you know, for the household, and my credit card wouldn't go through, and the amount was about 50 or $60 US. That was just how brutal it was towards the beginning. And then toward the middle and toward the end.

Sophia Diaz [00:03:17]:

It was horrific. It was so horrific that I think it's just a miracle that I survived, that I am alive today.

Christopher [00:03:29]:

It got to that point where your life was basically at risk.

Sophia Diaz [00:03:34]:

Yes. And, you know, the people that we were working with, other colleagues and partners, you know, we were, everybody was at an international level of international business level conducting businesses in New York, Minneapolis, Dallas, Texas, Houston, Los Angeles, big companies. People knew what was happening. People knew in the closer circle that I was suffering. I barely had money to eat, I couldn't buy groceries, and nobody helped. It was complete strangers that I had never met and maybe some of them whom I might never be able to meet and thank again. Those are the people that helped me. The other thing was that I did not have any family in America.

Sophia Diaz [00:04:26]:

I was on my own.

Heather [00:04:29]:

What were those points when those strangers came into your life? What were those elements that, you know, you felt that humanity come through?

Sophia Diaz [00:04:40]:

I would say that it was, you know, primarily I had nowhere to live. I was living in the former matrimonial home of which I was a co-owner of a beautiful home in Bucktown in, Chicago. And the mortgage in the house hadn't been paid. And you know, we're talking about a very small amount of money here. The property was going under foreclosure. I was before a judge in room 3010. It's a song that I incorporated into the first album that I wrote called Bulletproof. And the Judge looked at me as though I was worse than an animal, a stray animal on the streets. And these are her words, not mine. And there were witnesses, you know, there were my attorneys, there was her, you know, judicial staff who from my observation, they really fell down. They just couldn't believe she was saying this. Her words to me were, Ms. Dias, I'm ordering you to pack up your belongings and take your animals. At that point, I had three cats that I had adopted from the PAWS Anti-Cruelty Society and a beautiful dog, a Bernese mountain dog. Anybody who knows of the Bernese mountain dog breed knows that they are big-boned dogs.

Sophia Diaz [00:06:14]:

My puppy was about this big when I got him. And at that point, he was 165 pounds, like a big boy. And her words were, inside of room 301, was pack up your belongings, take what you can gather your animals, and I want you out of that house. I had nowhere to go. I had no credit card, savings account, no retirement account, or investment account. I had nowhere to go. It was the heart of a brutally cold winter, the height of COVID. People were committing suicide; people were losing jobs. The whole world was in despair.

Sophia Diaz [00:07:01]:

Hotels were shut, and restaurants. I didn't go anywhere. And you know, it was brutal what happened in that room and what happened to me. I mean, this is going to leave a very sad Mark. In the judicial system of America, especially in how they treat women, and I wasn't just an ordinary woman. I was an international businesswoman. It's just that I was stripped of everything that I owned.

Sophia Diaz [00:07:35]:

I was treated worse than a stray animal.

Christopher [00:07:40]:

Do you have any idea? I mean, I was shocked when you said that the judicial person was a woman. That shocked me.

Sophia Diaz [00:07:49]:

The Judge inside room 3010 was a woman at the Daily Center, Chicago, Illinois, Cook County. I was told during that time and at a later time when I did talk to international lawyers, you know, journalists, that what she did in that room, especially towards me, was something that could get her disbarred in any part of the country, in any part of the world, even if we are talking about a third world country, let's say somewhere in Timbuktu. You just can't treat a litigant, a petitioner, like that. And I was a petitioner for four and a half years. I was paraded in that courtroom as though, you know, as a person with no dignity.

Heather [00:08:43]:

For our listeners, you know, we've had amazing, powerful stories on the show as we lead up to these 16 days of activism. Do you have some words of wisdom for women who may be starting to notice signs in their relationship that are worrisome or perhaps already in a situation that is looking more and more challenging? Like any insight that you can embark on, people that may be going through where you were.

Sophia Diaz [00:09:16]:

I would say that the first thing that I noticed was as we were getting to be more and more successful, we were talking about millions of dollars of revenue earned in various countries. The former spouse could not handle the success or the wealth. And then I noticed it very clearly that he was very much a functioning drug addict. He was. I had no knowledge about drugs. I still don't know how drugs work. I mean, the only drug I've ever taken is a Panadol or an Aspirin when I get injured by tennis or squash or, you know, running seven to eight kilometers. I was dealing with a beast. Nobody knows how to deal with a human being who consumes copious amounts of heroin and crack cocaine. And to top it up with copious amounts of alcohol, you don't know who you're dealing with. And running as fast as possible away is the best answer. But I could not do that. I was not in a position to do that. I had a pet family that I absolutely adore. I've been very vocal about how I feel about saving stray animals, cats, and dogs. And, you know, this was my family. I just couldn't abandon them. And I'm glad that I didn't because had it not been for my pup, Mr.

Santos, the Bernese mountain dog, averted what would have been a fatal gunshot to my head, which was pulled on my head and aimed at him and me in my kitchen. I wrote about it. I've been very vocal in all the interviews that I've done, people who have asked me to speak at universities and shelters for destitute women and children, I've been very vocal, and I've always been grateful that had it not been for my dog, Mr. Santos, who jumped on the former spouse, leading to falling into imbalance, I would not have been here.

Christopher [00:11:41]:

Oh, my God. You say run as fast as you can, and, you know, that makes so much sense logically, but then again, as you say, emotionally, there are things that you simply cannot just detach and overnight run away. How did you survive this?

Sophia Diaz [00:12:03]:

It was. I would say it. It took me 24 hours to be with a victim, like, really falling down to my knees and crying and not believing this was happening to me. And I knew it was coming. I knew what he had planned, you know, to leave me as a complete destitute. I was also aware that my former spouse had taken a second wife in Hong Kong, where we had several officers, a very young Chinese lady, maybe 22. She was probably 23 then. She worked for us.

Sophia Diaz [00:12:45]:

Everybody knew what was happening. But what I was not prepared for was to be dealt that blow by the judicial system, by the Judge in the divorce petition, in the family room, in the family court, in room 3010, which was just like. But to answer your question, I gave myself 24 hours to cry and to know that this is the reality, and I've got to come out of it by taking it one day at a time. I reached out to several friends, people that I'd known or worked with 20 or 25 years ago, and people that I had just met at church. And it was really, honestly, complete strangers that helped me. Complete strangers who would buy groceries for me, who paid for my dry cleaning, who paid for my gym membership. I trained twice a day. I've always been like that since my boarding school. Night training, and in the morning, night training in the evening. So, you know, it's in your DNA, then it's in your system. And I couldn't afford to pay the gym fees, including, you know, pet food and grooming for my dog, Mr. Santos, because he's a big breed of dog and his fur, I couldn't shampoo him or blow dry him at home. I would have ruined his fur. So, friends would step up. Friends from England, friends from South Africa, friends from Istanbul. People stepped up and helped me.

Christopher [00:14:36]:

What would you say the lesson learned that can be passed on from your ordeal?

Sophia Diaz [00:14:45]:

Ask for help. Asking for help, especially for somebody like me, you know, I've been self-sufficient all my life, and I've worked hard. I'm somebody, and I'm not shy about hard work. I would say ask for help, and it can be a double-edged sword for any woman because you know that's when you see the predators or people who wish to take undue advantage of you. But you just have to be discerning and, you know, just ask for help. It's the only way. It's the only thing I can say is to ask for help and just have an unshakable faith in your God. For me, it was Psalm 23, vingt-trois, which I wrote. That was the first single that I recorded. I wrote it for a lady who was going through inconceivable suffering in her life. That was Nazneen Ratcliffe, the British Iranian lawmaker if you remember her story. I was in Istanbul, Turkey, working in the factories in Bursa, and her story was on the BBC. I just sat down on the balcony, and I wrote a song for her. So, coming back to me, I leaned very heavily on my faith.

Heather [00:16:09]:

And can you tell us more about your singer-songwriting and how you know you've taken this experience to fuel Bulletproof and the movie?

Sophia Diaz [00:16:20]:

I would say that I was extremely grateful to have had really good people in my life. What led to the album Bulletproof was a gentleman by the name of Mr. Clive Hunt, a very well-known music producer from Jamaica St Catherine, and a gentleman by the name of Shane Brown, who's a mixing engineer, a Grammy Award-winning engineer who engineered my first single Psalm 23, vingt-trois, which was written in the French language. It's essentially me having a conversation with God and our former Prime Minister, Mr. Boris Johnson, asking him where is the justice for Nazneen Zaghari Ratcliffe. You know, she was in her own ordeal in Iran for six and a half years. I got to meet on a rather personal level as friends with Clive Hunt and Shane Brown, and both of them were aware of what I was going through. When I flew into Kingston to record some Bentwa and at Tefcom, I essentially had no Money, the full trip, my hotel, airfare, and studio fees. Making music costs money, studio rental costs money, and paying top-class veteran musicians costs a lot of money. Paying, hiring the top producer in the field, hiring the top music engineers, studio engineers, mixing engineers, editing, and editing all cost money.

Sophia Diaz [00:18:13]:

And it was funded by a very good friend of mine, and I will always be grateful to her. When I returned to Chicago, this whole thing was still ongoing. Eviction notices, the Judge, you know, basically making a mockery of me. And I was surviving on, you know, selling my piano so I'd have enough money to pay for food and whatever else I needed, like small exposure senses. And Clive Hunt would check in on me at least once a week. And he said, he would say, Sophia, write. Write about your emotions; write about what you're going through. I would say, Clive, this is just so bloody painful.

Sophia Diaz [00:19:01]:

I'm the only darkest person in the room. Everybody in the room is white, and I'm being treated like garbage, like trash, like somebody with no dignity. And he would say, write about it. I would say, Clive, why would I want to write about a judge, she has not a bone of godliness in her. She's supposed to be a judge. She's got to have some fear of God. She looks like Satan and Lucifer to me. And he would say, write about it.

Sophia Diaz [00:19:34]:

So that's when I started sitting on my bathroom floor with my dog and my three cats. And every evening, I would just hear the words from Clive Hunt and Shane Brown, who would say, Sophia, write about it. We're going to, you know, make an album; we're going to record. And that's when the song for room 3010 came up. In the middle I say, I don't see nothing but the Devil and Satan and Lucifer in your room 3010. Who are you, mate? So that's me literally having a conversation and writing about my feelings. And Bulletproof, the first song where I'm saying, don't be afraid to shoot because in my mind I've got God on my side, and I believe in Psalm 23. So that's how the thought process came about.

Sophia Diaz [00:20:38]:

I had the greatest team on my side, the most dynamic, hard-working people, and it almost felt like the hand of God. When God brings your tribe and people together, it's just magic.

Christopher [00:20:55]:

And the movie, like, where did that elevate from the album?

Sophia Diaz [00:21:01]:

I wrote a book called Blondie Proof. I chose a French title. I really don't know why. It just came to my mind. Blondie Proof. When Translated into English, it's bulletproof. So again, this was an endeavor that I would write about what was happening, what had happened, what had transpired, where I did not know how I was going to survive, where I was going to live, and the people that I would meet and talk to. The book got published, I believe in 2017 or 18 on Amazon. And then, some people in Hollywood took my book and turned it into a movie script.

Sophia Diaz [00:21:51]:

And we are in the process. Again, I'm blessed, and I'm so grateful to be working with fantastic people. I have an amazing team in Germany led by Peter Dubbold and in Holland, and the rest are here in Los Angeles, California. And it's our vision to bring the script to the big cinema. I believe that my story of, you know, overcoming brutal, gut-wrenching adversity is going to help a lot of people, a lot of women, and there's a lot of, you know, events that are not mentioned in the book, which will be in the movie. It was truly a survival of the fittest because I just wasn't up against one abusive spouse I was up against, and in the book, I call it Jew, J.U.

Sophia Diaz [00:22:53]:

In Japanese, J.U. means the number ten. So I was up against ten people, ten people that I knew very well. And the objective for these people and I demonstrate on how, you know, my car was monitored, my phone calls, my emails, my text messages, my entire life was monitored by these people who essentially just wanted me to die. I had not harmed them in any way. I'm not a thief, so I had not stolen. I was just living my life. And here was this congregation of ten people who had made a decision, and the judge was not included among the ten people who had made a decision that they were playing God in my life. They were in control of my day-to-day, minute-to-minute existence.

Christopher [00:23:49]:

Can I ask you? Obviously, there are people now in your life who are of value to you because they have given so much to you without asking for anything. Are you able to trust anymore?

Sophia Diaz [00:24:06]:

Yeah, 100%, yes. Because I will never ever meet in my life, I will never ever meet a person who was the former spouse who took not just undue advantage of me but who essentially left me to die. If there was anybody in this world who could analyze my situation, I mean, we have limited time here, but the only other option left for me was to have died. My credit score was zero. It was almost like my existence had been wiped out, a clean slate. That was just, that is how I was left.

Sophia Diaz [00:24:50]:

And yes, I can trust people absolutely. This one chapter of my life, which has been, you know, really, really dangerously, brutally painful has not made me a bitter person. And I'm not suspicious; I'm not paranoid. But it took a lot of prayers and belief in myself, my faith, and my God that there aren't people like that around. And if there are, you know, I'm just going to have to be discerning.

Christopher [00:25:27]:

Thank you for answering that question. I think it's a very, very, very important question for women to hear. Women who are going through what you have gone through know that there is a human being left after all of that.

Heather [00:25:43]:

We love to ask our guest, Sophia, a question that's central to this podcast and, especially, to your life experience. I'd love to know your answer. The question is, what does feminine mean to you?

Sophia Diaz [00:25:59]:

Feminine to me means quite a few things to me personally. It means, you know, as a woman, as a mother, I am overflowing with compassion, love to work with people, to help with people. And I'm not, you know, bragging, but just sharing with the viewers that I've dedicated a lot of my time, years, and resources, even from a very early age, in schools for destitute children, women, and mothers. Just before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I was in Odesa. I volunteered at an orphanage called Tikvah T I K V A; in Hebrew, it means hope. I was there with, I think, about 300 to 500 children, boys and girls. I cooked dinner for them. We did some arts and crafts.

Sophia Diaz [00:27:05]:

Just this September, I was in Trinidad and Tobago on Belmont Street at the St. Dominic's School for Boys and Girls. Most of the children over there do not have parents, or if they do, they do not know the whereabouts of their parents. I celebrated my birthday there with three beautiful cakes. Had the opportunity to talk to, you know, young, impressionable boys and girls about their future and, you know, had a one-on-one conversation with them about, you know, just following their dreams and not being afraid to knock on doors because, you know, even if a few doors don't open, there are plenty of other doors that will open. There are plenty of people in this world who are there to, you know, make their dreams come true. And two of the youngest students that, you know, shared with me, one wanted to be a pilot, and the other one wanted to be an architect. And, you know, we had conversations and when it was time to go, I was, you know, in tears.

Sophia Diaz [00:28:15]:

But that's very close to me. That is what I see as feminine, as a feminine role of myself in this world.

Heather [00:28:25]:

That's beautiful.

Christopher [00:28:27]:

Sophia,  every year we do this, and it's discouraging that we have to go through this dark place in order to get to the light. But you represent the light, and it's important that it's shone as brightly and as far as possible. I cannot, from my heart, thank you enough for sharing what you've shared with us and for being so vulnerable and such a beautiful person who has gone through so much. I cannot say enough how much I appreciate getting to know you just in a short period of time and hearing what it is you bring into the world. Thank you so much.

Sophia Diaz [00:29:17]:

Thank you very much, both of you, for having me. And I will keep you guys updated on the movie. And you know, as always, I, as the executive producer, am looking forward to collaborating with production houses and all across the world in Mumbai and Hollywood and VR, looking to work with partners and investors in the movie and to bring this to life very soon.

Christopher [00:29:45]:

We look forward.

Sophia Diaz [00:29:46]:

Thank you so much.

Heather [00:29:47]:

And if folks want to learn more about you and your story and follow you, where can they find you?

Sophia Diaz [00:29:55]:

You, Sophia, I believe it would be Sophia Dias.com

Christopher [00:30:02]:

Fantastic! Thank you so much from the heart, truly from the heart.

Sophia Diaz [00:30:06]:

Thank you very, very, very much, both of you, for having me.

Christopher [00:30:10]:

And you have been listening to the Virgin, the Beauty, and the Bitch. Find us, Like us, Share us. We'll have more conversations like these coming up. So come on back. To become a partner in the VBB community, we invite you to find us@virginbeautybitch.com, like us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and share us with people who are definedly different like you.

Until next time, thanks for listening.