Smith Says: Purpose Over Popularity
Sep 11, 2026 · 1 hr 1 min · 17 segments
What does it mean to grow up Haitian-American in Chicago while carrying the lessons of family, faith, culture, and community into adulthood?On this Smith Says Family Edition, I sit down with my cousin…
Smith FrançoisHost
Looking back, like what has made you to be who you are today? Like what's that one thing that you could see looking back that you carry on to today?
Even though I feel like over the years I kind of shied away from him and he wasn't an ever present part of my life on a day to day.
until recently when I've given my life back to Christ.
But he's always kept me, he's always been with me.
The other thing I think are the strong family values because everyone was there in the house.
I mean, we had my two uncles, we had my grandmother, we had my two great aunts.
My other two aunts, me and my cousin, like we all were in this three bedroom house with one bathroom to share type of a situation.
And so we were there and we always had someone there to support us, to uplift us, to get us in line, to feed us, to play.
It was always someone to play with.
Christmases back then, ha! Me and my cousin would shut them down.
Like everyone in the entire family just wanted to shower us with gifts.
So those were the best Christmases before the rest of these cousins came along because everything was ours.
And so it was just an amazing experience to just shower us with just all the things that we never needed for anything.
We never wanted for anything.
It was just a really, really good experience growing up.
So I didn't know about sweet potato pies and apple pies and things like that.
Hams, we didn't have that.
We had chicken on sauce, julienne, red beans and rice.
Looking back, like what has made you to be who you are today? Like what's that one thing that you could see looking back that you carry on to today?
Even though I feel like over the years I kind of shied away from him and he wasn't an ever present part of my life on a day to day.
until recently when I've given my life back to Christ.
But he's always kept me, he's always been with me.
The other thing I think are the strong family values because everyone was there in the house.
I mean, we had my two uncles, we had my grandmother, we had my two great aunts.
My other two aunts, me and my cousin, like we all were in this three bedroom house with one bathroom to share type of a situation.
And so we were there and we always had someone there to support us, to uplift us, to get us in line, to feed us, to play.
It was always someone to play with.
Christmases back then, ha! Me and my cousin would shut them down.
Like everyone in the entire family just wanted to shower us with gifts.
So those were the best Christmases before the rest of these cousins came along because everything was ours.
And so it was just an amazing experience to just shower us with just all the things that we never needed for anything.
We never wanted for anything.
It was just a really, really good experience growing up.
So I didn't know about sweet potato pies and apple pies and things like that.
Hams, we didn't have that.
We had chicken on sauce, julienne, red beans and rice.
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