Meet Terran Rae Smith

Today we’d like to introduce you to Terran Rae Smith.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
At this point in time, I would say, I am a fashion, fitness, and lifestyle influencer on social media and my goal is to help uplift and inspire others through positivity-based content creation.

One of the main ways I express this message and achieve my goal of monetization as an entrepreneur is by working with brands that fit my overall mission and perpetuating the idea that we can make the world a better place with the information we choose to disseminate to our online audiences. I also actually accepted a role as a BIGO LIVE broadcast host just this week, which will be my first time hosting in several years and I’m so proud to be making my career on my terms how I’d always envisioned.

The way I got to this place is a bit more complicated. I grew up in Johnson County and went to the University of Kansas. I graduated from the William Allen White School of Journalism in 2015 with a Bachelor’s of Science in News and Information. Immediately out of school, I was fortunate enough to be hired as a radio DJ and morning news anchor for three big stations based out of Lawrence, KS, 105.9 KISS FM, 92.9 the Bull, and 1320 AM KLWN.

I also worked on-air with 90.1 FM KKFI, Kansas City’s Community Radio station around that time. While I love voiceover work and still do that on a free-lance basis today, I came to a crossroads in my mental health around 2016 and decided to quit the industry. During this time, I was beginning to build my social media following on Instagram and Facebook. I’d come to find that health and fitness really helped me take control of my mental health. So I decided to change careers.

During the course of about a year-and-a-half, I acquired my ACE Personal Training, ACE Group Fitness, NASM Personal Training, Zumba Group Fitness, Aqua Aerobics Group Fitness, Precision Nutrition Level 1 Nutrition Coach, LifePower RYT 200-Hour Yoga Teacher Training, and of course American Red Cross First and, CPR and AED certification. I then worked full-time with Life Time Fitness, Inc. as a Master Level Fitness Professional and Onboarding Specialist from January 2019 to September 2020. It was really a great fit and I grew a lot as a professional there.

I moved to Chicago, IL to move in with the love of my life in December of 2020. I left my role at Life Time to start anew in the Windy City and have been working almost exclusively with my social media since then. It’s taken me years to build my social media to a point where I’m regularly bringing in significant income from the brands I’m working with, and that is something I am so very proud of. It’s kind of crazy how many people are finding themselves being able to be a bit more self-employed with their services because of the opportunities social media can provide.

Don’t get me wrong, it is not easy to build a large audience across one channel, let alone multiple. But I’ve always found social media to be a place where I can share my story with others, and I’ve seen time and again how much I’m truly able to help other people in a direct and personal way. That’s truly what life is about and that is the entire reason why I’ve kept my platform growing and building for so many years.

And that’s why I will continue to build it across as many social media channels as I can handle and feel positive about. Because I truly believe that the dissemination of information is how we can affect one another positively, I’m grateful that this new, emerging economy has a backbone supported by creators, artists, and entertainers like myself.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
I should give a bit more background on why my mental health became such a struggle. You see, I’ve had Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder since around the age of 3 or 4. I wasn’t actually diagnosed until I was around 16 years old. I experienced chronic abuse from my mother throughout my childhood. She has a number of personality disorders as well as Munchausen and Munchausen by proxy.

A lot of my childhood was spent with one of my {supposed to be} caregivers trying to convince me and myself that both myself and my sibling were ill. There was a lot of psychological and physical abuse, and because of that, I, unfortunately, was susceptible to a lot of predators in school and throughout my adolescence by negative influences around me outside of my household. I should be clear, my father is the greatest parent and he was around a lot and I did get away from my mother’s influence eventually.

It’s just sad that I also experienced a lot of abusive interpersonal and even professional relationships because of the healing I still needed to do to be able to recognize red flags and prevent unfortunate behaviors before they happened to me. I want to be very clear here. I do not blame myself for anything that I experienced, and no one should ever shame or blame someone who was a victim no matter the circumstances.

It’s always a fine line between learning to protect ourselves from predators and blaming or shaming ourselves for having experienced the attack of one in the first place. You are not your attacker’s actions, and deciding to make decisions that prevent and protect you from being attacked in the future does not mean your attacker’s actions were your fault. Just want to make sure that doesn’t get lost in translation because it’s very important for all survivors to understand and it’s particularly important, in my opinion, for the little girls and young women of the world to grow up believing.

Not that anyone should ever have to be a survivor in the first place, but we do know that more warriors will undoubtedly continue to emerge so long as humanity has its unresolved errs. It’s all too often that people who experience chronic childhood abuse end up experiencing more abuse before they are able to stop the cycle because they often have to take the time and understanding to really research and learn about what’s right and wrong in everyday interactions and relationships.

Thankfully, I was able to do that. But it took some time. Not to mention, when I first got to college, my only older sister has diagnosed with stage four non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma leukemia. Thank God she has been in remission for more than 10 years now and is actually married. {Yay!}. But needless to say, by the time I finished my college degree, I realized I had just been floundering at the surface level for so long. And I was tired of wading in the water and feel like any moment I would drown.

But it really took me hitting rock bottom to truly realize what I needed to do. I had multiple suicide attempts before I had this “awakening,” if you will that I needed to help myself so I could do what I was always meant to do– go help others. That was the moment I decided around 2016 to dump my abusive then-boyfriend and then a few months later to quit my job in radio and then a few months later to keep the momentum going.

I got the ball rolling on my health and fitness and put both of those things first for the first time in what felt like forever. I lost 80 pounds, I got off medications that had been sedating me for more than a decade, I got all of those fitness certifications. I changed careers. I changed my whole life. And all along the way what was there? My social media. My online presence. My insatiable need to share what I was going through with the world. From my shoulder surgery to my father’s colectomy to new relationships to ending relationships to happy days to sh*tty days– I was sharing it all and I wouldn’t stop. No matter what.

It wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies after that either. I mean, in 2019, my late service dog Tootsie passed away and I had a retraumatization of PTSD. I remembered some things I had previously suppressed and ended up wrecking my car twice in a matter of weeks. I ended up having to do the intensive outpatient treatment at Cotton Wood Springs and taking like 8 weeks of medical leave from work.

Then I had to go back and try to rebuild my business after my clients and team had watched me have a nervous breakdown in slow motion. I mean, it was brutal. But I kept going. I did IV infusion Ketamine treatments at Awakenings KC. Those were very helpful for helping me to process the new memories I had. I did an EMDR {eye movement disorientation and reprocessing} treatment with a local therapist in Lenexa to help me “put the memory away” into my long-term memory and help with the flashbacks.

And I got through it. And I got better again. And I haven’t had a negative mental health crisis since that time. Do I still deal with PTSD? Yes. Of course. I also have ADHD and GAD, both of which are thought to be caused by my PTSD and having developed it at such a young age. But I understand the complexities of my condition now so much more than I used to. I know how to rewire my central nervous system. I know that if I do have suicidal ideation it is because of my nervous system’s fight or flight response and the need to feel calm.

All of these things tie back to science and fitness and what truly helped to save my life. I just happened to study marketing and I’ve always been the “entertainer” type of personality. So I’ve just used my skills and my personal experiences and the tools we have as a society to try to create a little something for myself and a little something to give back to the world. I hope that what I do helps others in some, small way.

And I am so honored to work with the brands I work with, whether they’re from my hometown in Kansas City or in my new digs here in Chicago, I just like being a part of this new world economy we’re all trying to build on American at a time.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Now, this is a fun one to answer because I did the opposite of what so many people told me to do growing up. I was always told to stick to one thing and get really good at it because life is too short to try to pursue a bunch of different avenues at once. I always found that to be readily depressing and downright untrue. I am a certified Personal Trainer, Nutrition Coach, and Yoga Teacher in the fitness industry. I am also a social media influencer and lifestyle blogger.

I am also an online broadcast host for the live stream social media app BIGO LIVE. I am known for doing a whole bunch of different things. I play guitar, I sing, I dance, I make sketch comedy short reels, I do daily motivational story videos, I cry about real things happening in my life and share it with the world. I disseminate as much information as I can online through whatever multimedia and artistic means necessary to try to affect the world in a meaningful, positive way. I perform online for thousands of strangers every single day. And I love it.

I would say I’m known for being super open and not having a single, specific niche, whether it’s in my online persona or in my everyday life. I’m a wildcard and a maverick and I have no qualms or pause in saying that because it’s that exact notion and embrace of who I am deep down that has brought me to where I am today. And where I am today is being able to uplift and inspire those in my growing sphere with my art and creation. To top it all off, the main reason I do it is that it helps people. And it really does. That is what I am most proud of. Any person that I have positively affected and perhaps improved their human experience in any kind of way– that is the only thing to take pride in.

What sets me apart from others would probably be the vast array of interests that I have. I love doing voice-over acting and when I left radio I hadn’t done a lot of it for a while, but with my new role as a live streamer, I can bring that back in with things like reading for my audience {we’re doing scary stories this month for Halloween, or guided meditations. I know how to do every style of Latin dance from bachata to reggaeton. I’ve played guitar since I was seven and now I’m learning the ukelele with my viewers on my show. The list of my interests really drags on longer than I’d care to list and I’m sure it’s longer than many would care to read.

The point is, I like doing a lot of different things and I’ve given myself the room to grow in every pursuit I’ve found interest and talent in. I refused to do things by the book the way others told me growing up. Because of that, I ended up with a smorgasbord of skills and talents and I created this little cornucopia of a career based on everything I love.

But the most important thing about what I think sets me apart from some others is that I do it all to help others feel joy and hope and happiness is I do it all so that maybe if someone is in a deep, dark place like I’ve been, that maybe my work will aid them and lift them up and bolster them. I don’t think that sets me apart from all others, no. But I think that sets me apart is the only way it really matters. And I’m fine with that.

Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
Please be kind to yourself and give yourself the grace to grow in whatever direction your heart pulls you.

That deep, gnawing feeling you have in the depth of your soul that tells you to pursue something. You must pursue it or that gnawing will eat away at you. It doesn’t have to look like the big screens or the big leagues, but just start to give yourself time and energy to express yourself in those avenues.

You will be amazed at what happens when you give your true dreams as much room in your head and heart as you do your “obligations” and “traditional expected societal career.” I’m not saying everyone has to go spin plates or make art, but just find what you love deep down and do that.

Especially if it’s just for fun.

Pricing:

• Brand Promotion starting at $50
• Social Media Consulting starting at $100/hr
• Personal Training, Yoga Training, Nutrition Coaching, Contact for Rates.
• Model, Voice Over, Actor, Musician, Contact for Rates.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terranraesmith/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/raibowbaeby and https://www.facebook.com/terranrae/
• TikTok: tiktok.com/@__terranrae
• Other: https://slink.bigovideo.tv/RoWIFI

Image Credits
Brandon Giraldo, Matt Hutabarat, Justin R Downing, and Moon Carlo