You’ve told yourself some version of this before.

“I’ll start when things calm down.”

“When I feel more ready.”

“When I have more clarity.”

But your life hasn’t slowed down. And that quiet pull hasn’t gone away either.

In this episode of The EmPOWERed Half Hour, Becca sits down with Lia Valencia Key, founder of Valencia Key Jewelry, whose life began in circumstances most people would have accepted as permanent. Generational poverty. Homelessness. Instability that could have easily defined her path.

It didn’t.

Lia shares how she learned to see beyond what was in front of her, even at a young age. How the words spoken over her by her mother and grandmother shaped the way she saw herself. And how she chose, again and again, to take small, intentional steps toward a life that felt aligned, even when there was no clear roadmap.

This conversation is for the woman who feels stuck between where she is and what she knows is possible. The one who is waiting for permission, clarity, or the “right time” to begin.

Lia brings it back to something simple and powerful. You move forward by moving forward.

In this episode:

• How to turn early struggles into lessons for life

• Why choosing your own path can transform how you approach challenges

• The role of faith in yourself alongside faith in a higher power

• How speaking your goals out loud can open opportunities

• Why small, consistent actions—millimeter steps—make a difference

• How intentional words can shape your perspective and daily choices

Quotes from this episode:

“Your predicament doesn’t determine your destiny.” – Lia Valencia Key

“All things are possible. Lead with light.” – Lia Valencia Key

“Faith plus belief equals millimeter actions that lead you all the way to all of your dreams.” – Lia Valencia Key

“You can call on God, but you need to have that amount of faith in yourself. You never know when you’re gonna need it.” – Becca Powers

“The biggest misstep we can make is lying to ourselves.” – Becca Powers

About Lia Valencia Key

From growing up in a homeless shelter to inspiring millions worldwide, Lia Valencia Key embodies resilience and courage. Guided by her mother’s words, “Your predicament does not determine your destiny,” she built VALENCIA KEY Jewelry, a line of “Wearable Joy” and “Wearable Light” that empowers people to embrace their potential. Lia has shared her message on global stages, collaborated with artisans in Ghana for fair-wage opportunities, and appeared on QVC, Oprah’s Favorite Things, and major media outlets. Her story reminds us that light can shine through any circumstance. with her horse Moose, two mini Dachshunds, and a VW Bus named Arlo.

Connect with Sue:

• Website: http://www.valenciakey.com

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/liavalenciakey/

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valenciakey/

Connect with Becca:

Website: https://www.beccapowers.com

Instagram: @beccapowers1313

LinkedIn: Becca Powers

Facebook: Becca Powers

Join the community:

The Dragonfly Effect on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1C4z83krsn/

Get the book:

A Return to Radiance: https://www.beccapowers.com/a-return-to-radiance

Book Becca to speak: https://www.beccapowers.com/keynotes

Free resource:

The High Performer's Path eBook: https://www.beccapowers.com/

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Becca Powers: Welcome to another episode of The Empowered Half Hour. I am so excited about today's guest because I feel like—well, I see her radiating from the other side—but I feel like Soul Sisters. It’s a little early for me to say that.

Lia Valencia Key: Yeah.

Becca Powers: I was reading her bio and preparing this week to interview her, and I was just like, oh my God. She just seems like a gem of a human being. So let me just go ahead and do it. Audience,  introduce you to Lia Valencia Key. Owner, creator, and founder of Valencia Key Jewelry, which has been represented all the way up to the Oprahs. She’s made it around the world. I am very excited to have you on the show. Welcome, Lia.

Lia Valencia Key: So excited. It makes me move. I thank you for having me here. I'm honored.

Becca Powers: Thank you for coming on. Audience, listen. We’ve only known each other for about five minutes, but I was like, I think I understand your arc. You’ve been through it. You have this beautiful brand, but there’s something that happens on the inside when we take what we’ve been through and instead of rejecting it, turn it into our strength. We embody it, we learn, and we grow. We go from those trials and turn them into triumphs. These are my favorite interviews, and I saw all of that in Lia's profile. So I want to get to know you better. Let’s hear the story behind the story.

You have this beautiful brand, which I want to learn about, but it didn’t start off that way.

Lia Valencia Key: No. I love sharing. My jewelry brand is Valencia Key. Valencia means to bring encouragement. Key represents a lock, a symbol of unlocking. The intention is to be wearable reminders that you have the courage, the light, and everything inside of you to reach your destiny.

Becca Powers: I didn’t know all of that. I want more—keep talking about it.

Rising Through Generations: From Loss and Struggle to Purpose and Light

Lia Valencia Key: That’s where we are now, but my beginnings got me to see that truth. That’s why my heart is to share that light with the world. I started what I consider in darkness. I was raised in an impoverished neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by a single mom. We started in poverty. My grandmother was in poverty, her grandmother was in poverty. It goes all the way back to slavery if we want to take it that far.

Becca Powers: You broke that generational poverty too.

Lia Valencia Key: Generational, yes.

Becca Powers: Yes, I get it.

Lia Valencia Key: Cycling. I get chills thinking about it. My mother struggled. I self-diagnose her. My mother passed when I was in my early twenties.

Becca Powers: Me too.

Lia Valencia Key: She was around—

Becca Powers: My mom passed when I was 22.

Lia Valencia Key: She was 46 when she passed. I’m 46 now.

Becca Powers: Let me just stop. We have never met, and my mom passed when I was 22. She was 46.

Lia Valencia Key: Wow. Same. That’s a journey in itself.

Becca Powers: We could go full 30 minutes on that.

Lia Valencia Key: Losing any parent is unexplainable until you experience it. Then it’s about how you utilize that loss. Do you allow it to erode you, darken you, harden you? Or do you allow all the love that parent put in you, even the struggles you saw them experience, to become a beacon of light that shines consistently, so their light and love live on? I encourage anyone listening who is in loss to think about it this way: their light will shine forever.

Becca Powers: I’m nodding. Everything you’re saying hits my heart and soul. I absolutely agree. I am the sole survivor of my family. My mom passed when I was 22, my dad when I was 36, and my brother two years ago. I’ve learned what you’re saying. It’s heavy sometimes.

Lia Valencia Key: It’s okay. I still randomly break down in tears.

Becca Powers: I’ve come to a place where I see it as an honor to rise and hold them inside me. I am the legacy.

Lia Valencia Key: Yes. You are the light, the combination of all their lights. That is so powerful. When somebody transcends, you are the vessel that emits it.

Becca Powers: Yes.

Lia Valencia Key: Loss is something we all deal with. It can change your life and how you think and move. I’m not saying no sorrow, but add their light and love. Allow that to shift the way you move in the world.

Becca Powers: So in this instance, your rise into creating Valencia Key—

Lia Valencia Key: Yes.

Becca Powers: Your mother’s death was a defining moment.

Lia Valencia Key: Defining.

Becca Powers: And you had your generational ancestors standing on your shoulders while you broke that poverty cycle.

Lia Valencia Key: Emotional. Everyone’s struggles differ, but we all have something to overcome. It could be generational alcoholism, anger, or anything passed down. I want to be a beacon of light to show that change is possible. Before my mother passed, she was a single mom with three children. I self-diagnose her as being paralyzed by society’s prejudices and stereotypes. Being a woman in poverty, an African American single mother, all these negative pressures—stereotypes on top of stereotypes—paralyzed her. But she used her voice with us, and I am grateful. Even amidst trauma, she would speak wisdom to my brother, sister, and me when we were young.

The Power of Light-Filled Words and Faith in Yourself

Lia Valencia Key: And there was a moment. She broke her leg in several places and she could no longer do the small jobs she was trying to do to maintain the one-bedroom basement apartment in a poverty neighborhood. I remember this day vividly, and I share it because it was my first experience moving from poverty to destitution. She was trying to get her children back to the apartment, but when we got to the door, there was a padlock. Now we had a mother with three children and no place to take them. That took us to a homeless shelter. We lived there for several years, and I started to become my environment. I remember the first day we landed in the homeless shelter.

Lia Valencia Key: If you think about your past, there are experiences you can use for yourself. I was so young, about seven or eight, and my mother told us that in the homeless shelter, there was crying, sorrow, profanity, and cots. If anyone knows what a cot is, these are hard metal beds. One mother gets one cot, and the whole family has to jumble together on it. Imagine a gym room full of single mothers and their children in that situation. In the midst of that, my mother looked down at her three children—myself, my sister, and my brother—and said, “Your predicament doesn’t determine your destiny.”

Becca Powers: Say it again.

Lia Valencia Key: That was the power, the light speaking. Even though she couldn’t physically move, she used her voice as a last effort to pour into her children. Fast forward several years, we were still in the homeless shelter. I was becoming everything around me—it was negative. I was negative; I was failing. And this was a second light in my life. I share these stories because there are pinnacles that can help shift you.

Becca Powers: Yeah.

Lia Valencia Key: I was coming back from school and saw my mother at the head of the homeless shelter, looking unhappy. I got in front of her and thought, uh-oh, this doesn’t look good. She asked, “Lia, do you want to be a leader or a follower?” I didn’t understand. She said, “Right now you’re following, and you’ll follow right into everything around you. Or do you want to be a leader, Lia? You have a light inside of you, a divine destiny. There’s a whisper calling you. All you have to do is look inside and choose it.” That moment was the initial breakthrough to understand the power of choice. Up to then, I thought, this is what I’m given, so this is what I am.

Lia Valencia Key: If you’re listening and not in that situation, maybe you’re just following your environment, friends, family, or social media. I encourage you to remember: you have choice. We all have a light inside and a divine destiny beyond our predicament. If you give yourself permission to dream it, be it, and do it, you can move forward.

Becca Powers: I am picking up so much from what you’re saying. I love that your mom reinforced this with short, deep one-liners, soul-shifting and trajectory-shifting statements. My grandma did the same with me. At five years old, I had no concept of religion. My grandma put a mustard seed in my hand and said, “All you need is faith the size of a mustard seed, and you can move mountains.” I didn’t understand, but those words planted a seed. She also told me, “You need to have faith in yourself,” because you never know when you’ll need it.

Lia Valencia Key: Ooh. And they’re seeds. Your grandmother was planting a seed. She knew all you needed to do was digest it, because one day it will grow. Faith the size of a mustard seed.

Becca Powers: And then she says to me, “But that’s not enough.” My grandma was a spitfire. She says, “You also need to have faith in yourself.”

Lia Valencia Key: Ooh.

Becca Powers: You can call on God, but you need that faith in yourself. You never know when you’ll need it. As you’re sharing your stories, I think about how you lost your mom and had to create your own path. In your twenties, you became your own GPS. That moment from my grandma has almost been the reason I’ve survived. When I get down, I think, all I need is faith the size of a mustard seed, and I’ll find a way.

Lia Valencia Key: The power of light-filled words can change the trajectory of life. Faith the size of a mustard seed, combined with faith in yourself, is everything. It gives you just enough direction to move one step forward and reach where you’re supposed to be. I can have faith and believe in myself just enough to act.

Becca Powers: Yeah. I can lead, not follow.

Lia Valencia Key: And that will move you to action.

Becca Powers: Right. That piece too. I hear in my head, “I’ll lead, not follow.” It gives you permission to be on the edge, think outside the box, be different. Fold yourself into constructive societal expectations. We are divine. We are light. Our radiance—our gifts, talents, strengths, and special juice—wasn’t meant to be put in a box. It is meant to be uniquely brilliant.

Lia Valencia Key: Yes. It’s not meant to. Often we look outside ourselves for validation, confirmation, and direction. There is power when you shift inside. Look outside for inspiration—proof that it’s possible—but go inside for direction, truth, and guidance on who you are supposed to be and the conversations you should have. Play between inside and outside. That is how the truth will set you free. Even hard consequences become bearable when you know your truth.

Becca Powers: I have goosebumps. Considering the truth helps you understand the impact of things. So many times, when we live in a facade or lie to ourselves, that is the biggest misstep.

Speaking Your Truth and Taking Millimeter Actions Toward Your Dreams

Becca Powers: You know, because as you're saying, the truth will set you free. When you tap into your light, when you tap into your truth, not only does it set you free, you understand that there are consequences. There are things to face, and I want to play off that. But this weight comes off because you understand that this is the path.

Lia Valencia Key: Yes.

Becca Powers: You know that I have to walk through this fire. It is going to burn me, but I’ve got fireproof gel on. I might just get a little blister.

Lia Valencia Key: Yes.

Becca Powers: And it’s going to be scary, but I’m just going to walk through it.

Lia Valencia Key: The truth will set you free because it can relieve the torment of it.

Becca Powers: That’s what I’m trying to say.

Lia Valencia Key: Right. The consequence, the pain, the burden you may have to bear will still be there if it is part of the truth. But you know, okay, this has to be done. This is part of the journey, the trajectory to get to the answer.

Becca Powers: I knew that.

Lia Valencia Key: My truth wasn’t the predicament I lived in. We lived in a homeless shelter, then moved to a housing project, very similar to a homeless shelter. I was just around a lot of challenges because the environment was set up for you not to believe in yourself. I knew I was destined for something different. I went back and started learning. I started asking how I could see different things, learn different things. I realized that education was a powerful key. Learning as much as you can is a form of education. I started doing that, got good grades, and eventually got accepted into college. I came home excited to tell my mom.

Becca Powers: And she wasn’t excited?

Lia Valencia Key: No. She said we couldn’t afford it. She’d never been to college and didn’t know what it required financially. That’s where “the truth will set you free” comes in. I heard her words and remembered she told me to choose my light. I chose my light. I knew the answer wasn’t true for me, so I left it there and started pursuing my path without asking anyone for anything.

Lia Valencia Key: I want to share a key I use: speak your dreams into the world. The poverty mindset says, don’t tell anyone, they might take your dream or sabotage it. But if you own your dream and your destiny, no one can take it. By sharing my dreams, even casually, I started attracting opportunities all the way to creating Valencia Key Jewelry.

Becca Powers: That’s powerful. I’ve done something similar with my dream of being a New York Times bestselling author. I made a sign when I was 29, and now at 47, I’ve been affirming it the whole time.

Lia Valencia Key: Exactly. You can call it the universe, God, divine power—whatever is higher than you. My aunts helped me. One paid to get me to school, another got me a laptop. I found financial aid. It wasn’t easy, but I was free because I was speaking my truth. If you speak your truth, you will reach your destiny.

Becca Powers: Gosh, we’re at 30 minutes and I could talk forever.

Becca Powers: Audience, if you hear snoring, that’s my French Bulldog. Lia, it’s been an honor spending time with you. I could do a three-hour podcast and still leave energized. Before we end, please share how the audience can find your jewelry and stay in touch, and give a message of empowerment.

Lia Valencia Key: All things are possible. Lead with light. I’m working on a concept called light positioning strategy. If you position your life strategically in light, it will guide you to every dream inside you.

Lia Valencia Key: The key is millimeter actions. When you have faith the size of a mustard seed and belief in yourself, those actions will carry you all the way to your dreams.

Becca Powers: Gosh, I’m obsessed with you. You’re fabulous. Thank you for bringing your light to The Empowered Half Hour. How can the audience find you?

Lia Valencia Key: Life is full of keys and reminders. Wear a piece of Valencia Key Jewelry. Go to www.valenciakey.com. Sign up to stay connected. I love sharing little light messages and letting people wear their messages as reminders to unlock their light. I’m primarily on Instagram: @LiaValenciaKey and Valencia Key Design. We’re heart-connected.

Becca Powers: Yes, thank you again for being a guest. It’s been a complete honor.