Taking Life by the Raines

When Brandi quit her job in 2017, she was pregnant with her second child. Casey was a non-rate in the Coast Guard making the least amount of money possible. They lived in a tiny apartment in Pensacola they called the Raisin Box. And not a single person in her life was willing to look her in the eyes and say: do it. It is going to be okay. So she did it anyway. In Episode 10 of Taking Life by the R...

Have you ever noticed how often women say sorry? Sorry I'm late. Sorry I need help. Sorry for asking. Sorry for being emotional. Somewhere along the way we were conditioned to apologize for taking up space. And in Episode 9 of Taking Life by the Raines, Brandi is done. This is the list of things she has stopped apologizing for. And she wants you to stop apologizing for them too. She opens with the...

When you are a good swimmer, nobody can tell when you are drowning. If that hit you, this episode is for you. In Episode 8 of Taking Life by the Raines, Brandi gets into something most strong women carry in silence: the loneliness of being the one everyone relies on. The one who has the answer. The one who keeps the schedule, holds the household, leads the team, shows up consistently, and somehow...

Here is the truth about growth that nobody posts on social media. It is terrifying. In Episode 7 of Taking Life by the Raines, Brandi gets into the biggest transitional period of her career and her life. Since January her nervous system has been in fight-or-flight mode. She is launching a hair company. Her supplement company is dropping four new products and exploring a major partnership. And the...

A year before I got pregnant with Riley, I said out loud that I did not want kids anytime soon. Three months into dating Casey, I was standing in a CVS bathroom with a pregnancy test on my lunch break. Here is the thing about motherhood. Nothing prepares you for it. Not one single thing. And in Episode 6, I am getting into all of it. The unexpected pregnancy I could not tell anyone about for two a...

You think you know me. You don't know this version. In Episode 5 I finally brought on my first guest, my childhood best friend Alexa, the one person on earth who has seen me through literally every season. The bratty middle schooler. The wild high schooler. The girl who should have ended up dead or pregnant but somehow didn't. The woman who couldn't accept a compliment. And the mom and wife I've b...

Here is something I don't think people expect me to say. It took me 14 years to actually feel confident. Like genuinely, deeply, not-faking-it confident. The girl you see on social media selling makeup, running a beauty empire, coaching thousands of women? She spent most of her life deeply insecure about her looks, her capability, and her money. She faked confidence so hard that it came across as...

Here's the truth. Nobody tells you that healing gets worse before it gets better. Like actually worse. You start digging, you start going to therapy, you start facing the things you've tucked away for years and for a minute it feels like everything is falling apart. That's not you doing it wrong. That is literally just how it works. In Episode 3 I'm getting into the stuff the self-help books skip...

Here's the reality. When you grow up in chaos, you learn to survive it. And those survival skills, the armor, the walls, the need to control everything, they don't just disappear when you become an adult. They follow you. Into your marriage. Into your parenting. Into your work. Into every single relationship you try to build. I spent years not knowing that the patterns I was running on were direct...

Welcome to Taking Life by the Raines — I'm Brandi Raines, and this is Episode 1.   Before the multi-million dollar business, the team of 6,000 women, and the life you see today — there was a little girl from Port Huron, Michigan who knew what it felt like to not have hot water, watch the furniture get repossessed, and parent herself through high school.   In this episode, I'm pulling back the curt...