In xoNecole's Our First Year series, we take an in-depth look at love and relationships between married couples with an emphasis on what their first year of marriage was like.
For Carjie and Kerwin Scott, "Make Me Better" by Fabolous comes to mind. We all know those lyrics, "I'm a movement by myself, but I'm a force when we're together." This sentiment speaks truth for how Carjie and Kerwin have been there for each other since the year 2012. One night at an Alpha Phi Alpha BBQ on campus, these two locked eyes in a crowded room. While neither Carjie and Kerwin wanted to attend the BBQ in the first place, they had no idea that they would meet their future partner/best friend that in layman's terms would "make them better". Carjie wasn't looking for anything at the time, but was open to the handsome guy she waved to, who later walked her to her car. After Carjie and her now-husband Kerwin exchanged numbers, they naturally spent every day together after that.
Eight years of marriage and two beautiful children later, Dr. Carjie and Dr. Kerwin Scott realized that they complement each other in the best ways when it comes to love. Kerwin mentions, "I wanted us to support each other enough where we can still reach the goals we had before we even met." Even in marriage, Carjie and Kerwin worked hard to turn their individual dreams into reality. They trusted each other where they may be able to handle things on their own, but they provided that support for one another to make it to the top. Carjie and Kerwin understood the value that each other brought to the table and used their love for each other to take them to higher levels and new heights.
In this installment of "Our First Year", xoNecole was able to sit down with Carjie and Kerwin to talk more about building a life together, taking risks, and believing in each other to reach their full potential.
Courtesy of Dr. Carjie Scott
How We Met
Kerwin: One of my frat brothers was having a BBQ. I was playing cards and I saw Carjie and her friend walk in. I thought to myself, 'Man, she looks good.' I was trying to see if she was there with somebody. So I was looking at her and she waved at me. It made me nervous, so I gave her a head nod (laughs). I told myself that before she leaves I would approach her and talk to her. When she was leaving, I walked up to her and asked her if I could walk her to her car. We talked a little. I was honest with her about what I wanted to do in my life and what I was looking for at the time. She reciprocated and we exchanged numbers.
Carjie: My friend had just crossed Delta and she invited me to the Alpha BBQ. I didn't want to go at first because I'm not in a sorority, but I went to support my friend. So I was sitting on the couch and I saw him looking at me. I waved at him and he didn't wave back at me. I thought to myself, 'Fine whatever. I'm trying to be nice and he doesn't want to speak back. I didn't even want to be here in the first place, so I'm ready to go.' [laughs] My friend and I are walking out and that's when Kerwin walks up saying that he would walk me to my car.
First Impressions
Carjie: I thought he was a handsome guy. He had on his glasses and looked like he was smart. When we finally talked and he told me everything that he wanted to do in his life, I found myself wanting to learn more. I wasn't really expecting anything. So even if we didn't get together, I thought we could at least be good friends.
Kerwin: I thought she was different. Honestly, when I walked her to her car, I noticed her big blue truck. At the time, I was looking for someone that was different. Someone that could take me outside of my comfort zone. That's what intrigued me and made me want to get to know her more. The way she carried herself, how she wasn't like the other girls I was used to, and that big blue truck.
Courtesy fo Dr. Carjie Scott
"I thought she was different. At the time, I was looking for someone that was different. Someone that could take me outside of my comfort zone. That's what intrigued me and made me want to get to know her more."
The One
Carjie: I can be a tough nut to crack. I love that he has earned my trust and that he is patient with me. Together, we have become this purpose-led couple who inspires others to be successful in areas that you usually do not see black people in. More than anything else, he brings out the best in me. I couldn't picture my life without him. It's as simple as that.
Kerwin: When we first started dating, I liked that she had been through a lot in her life and she was willing to share that with me. That's important to me because if you are able to be upfront about things, it helps build trust. It showed me that she was at least committed to seeing how things could go with us. From the conversations that we had, I knew that I had to be better personally. When you're single, you can do certain things and there aren't huge consequences. When you add someone into your life, there comes that new level of responsibility. So with her, I felt that she was it and there wouldn't be anyone better.
Biggest Fears
Carjie: I didn't have any fears. I saw how I could bring value into his life and we started off as really good friends. I thought he was a super cool guy and thought that if it went there, I already trusted him. I knew he wouldn't betray me or do anything to intentionally hurt me. Don't get me wrong, no relationship is perfect. We do get on each other's nerves and stuff. But with him, I wouldn't say I was fearful. Any fears that I may have had, I would cast them to God because that has always been my foundation.
Kerwin: I felt like now that I told her all this stuff about what I wanted to do, I had to make it happen. I was fearful with the thought of, 'Could I get there?' The last thing I wanted to do was bring her into a relationship and the respect for me is lost. But I think in the end, pushing myself and her allowing me to fall, helped me combat that fear. She reassured me that we are going to get to where we needed to be and I'm so appreciative of that.
Courtesy of Dr. Carjie Scott
"Together, we have become this purpose-led couple who inspires others to be successful in areas that you usually do not see black people in. More than anything else, he brings out the best in me. I couldn't picture my life without him. It's as simple as that."
Early Challenges
Carjie: I consider myself a big risk-taker. Kerwin and I have been through situations that probably would have broken other marriages. When we met, we went from 0-180 miles per hour. When we got married, I was three months pregnant. We bought a house three months after we got married and a year after that we left that house so that Kerwin could attend medical school out of state. When we left that house, we moved into a tiny apartment in Tennessee where Kerwin's program was. It was just a lot of adjustments we had to work through. Sometimes things can affect your marriage where you may grow resentment towards each other. But we grew and continued to lean on each other nevertheless. We just figured it out together and it allowed us to overcome a lot of challenges.
Kerwin: During that time, things were moving so fast for us. There were times where I would leave in the morning and I wouldn't see her until the next morning. Whether I never came home from school or she was busy with her job or her degree. We didn't have time to argue about the small stuff. We had to learn how to put the small stuff on the back burner until we could deal with it. I feel like that helped keep things stable at the time.
"Sometimes things can affect your marriage where you may grow resentment towards each other. But we grew and continued to lean on each other nevertheless. We just figured it out together and it allowed us to overcome a lot of challenges."
Love Lessons
Kerwin: The biggest lesson I've learned is that you have to be cautious and guard your relationship. Everyone does not have the best intentions and it can really be harmful to your relationship giving the outside world complete access to it. Being mindful of that protects you from a lot of negativity.
Carjie: The biggest lesson for me is to trust the process and appreciate what you have right now. To try not to move so fast so you do not miss the blessing that is right in front of you.
For more about Carjie and Kerwin, follow them on social media and check out their daughter Channing's business here.
Featured image courtesy of Dr. Carjie and Dr. Kerwin Scott
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Amber Riley has the type of laugh that sticks with you long after the raspy, rhythmic sounds have ceased. It punctuates her sentences sometimes, whether she’s giving a chuckle to denote the serious nature of something she just said or throwing her head back in rip-roarious laughter after a joke. She laughs as if she understands the fragility of each minute. She chooses laughter often with the understanding that future joy is not guaranteed.
Credit: Ally Green
The sound of her laughter is rivaled only by her singing voice, an emblem of the past and the future resilience of Black women stretched over a few octaves. On Fox’s Glee, her character Mercedes Jones was portrayed, perhaps unfairly, as the vocal duel to Rachel Berry (Lea Michele), offering rough, full-throated belts behind her co-star’s smooth, pristine vocals. Riley’s always been more than the singer who could deliver a finishing note, though.
Portraying Effie White, she displayed the dynamic emotions of a song such as “And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going” in Dreamgirls on London’s West End without buckling under the historic weight of her predecessors. With her instrument, John Mayer’s “Gravity” became a religious experience, a belted hymnal full of growls and churchy riffs. In her voice, Nicole Scherzinger once said she heard “the power of God.”
Credit: Ally Green
Riley’s voice has been a staple throughout pop culture for nearly 15 years now. Her tone has become so distinguishable that most viewers of Fox’s The Masked Singer recognized the multihyphenate even before it was revealed that she was Harp, the competition-winning, gold-masked figure with an actual harp strapped to her back.
Still, it wasn’t until recently that Riley began to feel like she’d found her voice. This sounds unbelievable. But she’s not referring to the one she uses on stage. She’s referencing the voice that speaks to who she is at her core. “Therapy kind of gave me the training to speak my mind,” the 37-year-old says. “It’s not something we’re taught, especially as Black women. I got so comfortable in [doing so], and I really want other people, especially Black women, to get more comfortable in that space.”
“Therapy kind of gave me the training to speak my mind. It’s not something we’re taught, especially as Black women."
If you ask Riley’s manager, Myisha Brooks, she’ll tell you the foundation of who the multihyphenate is hasn’t changed much since she was a kid growing up in Compton. “She is who she is from when I met her back when she was singing in the front of the church to back when she landed major roles in film and TV,” Brooks says. Time has allowed Riley to grow more comfortable, giving fans a more intimate glimpse into her life, including her mental health journey and the ins and outs of show business.
The actress/singer has been in therapy since 2019, although she suffered from depression and anxiety way before that. In a recent interview with Jason Lee, she recalls having suicidal ideation as a kid. By the time she started seeing a psychologist and taking antidepressants in her thirties, her body had become jittery, a physical reminder of the trauma stacked high inside her. “I was shaking in [my therapist’s] office,” she tells xoNecole. “My fight or flight was on such a high level. I was constantly in survival mode. My heart was beating fast all the time. All I did was sweat.”
There wasn’t just childhood trauma to account for. After auditioning for American Idol and being turned away by producers, Riley began working for Ikea and nearly missed her Glee audition because her car broke down on the highway while en route. Thankfully, Riley had been cast to play Mercedes Jones. American Idol had temporarily convinced her she wasn’t cut out for the entertainment industry, but this was validation that she was right where she belonged. Glee launched in 2009 with the promise of becoming Riley’s big break.
In some ways, it was. The show introduced Riley to millions of fans and catapulted her into major Hollywood circles. But in other ways, it became a reminder of the types of roles Black women, especially those who are plus-sized, are relegated to. Behind the scenes, Riley says she fought for her character "to have a voice" but eventually realized her efforts were useless. "It finally got to a point where I was like, this is not my moment. I'm not who they're choosing, and this is just going to have to be a job for me for now," she says. "And, that's okay because it pays my bills, I still get to be on television, I'm doing more than any other Black plus-sized women that I'm seeing right now on screen."
The actress can recognize now that she was navigating issues associated with trauma and low self-esteem at the time. She now knows that she's long had anxiety and depression and can recognize the ways in which she was triggered by how the cult-like following of the show conflicted with her individual, isolated experiences behind the scenes. But she was in her early '20s back then. She didn't yet have the language or the tools to process how she was feeling.
Riley says she eventually sought out medical intervention. "When you're in Hollywood, and you go to a doctor, they give you pills," she says, sharing a part of her story that she'd never revealed publicly before now. "[I was] on medication and developing a habit of medicating to numb, not understanding I was developing an addiction to something that's not fixing my problem. If anything, it's making it worse."
“[I was] on medication and developing a habit of medicating to numb, not understanding I was developing an addiction to something that’s not fixing my problem. If anything it’s making it worse.”
Credit: Ally Green
At one point, while in her dressing room on set, she rested her arm on a curling iron without realizing it. It wasn't until her makeup artist alerted her that she even realized her skin was burning. Once she noticed, she says she was "so zonked out on pills" that she barely reacted. Speaking today, she holds up her arm and motions towards a scar that remains from the incident. She sought help for her reliance on the pills, but it would still be years before she finally attended therapy.
This stress was only compounded by the trauma of growing up in poverty and the realities of being a "contract worker." "Imagine going from literally one week having to borrow a car to get to set to the next week being on a private jet to New York City," she says. After Glee ended, so did the rides on private planes. The fury of opportunities she expected to follow her appearance on the show failed to materialize. She wasn't even 30 yet, and she was already forced to consider if she'd hit her career peak.
. . .
We’re only four minutes into our Zoom call before Riley delivers her new adage to me. “My new mantra is ‘humility does not serve me.’ Humility does not serve Black women. The world works so hard to humble us anyway,” she says.
On this Thursday afternoon in April, the LA-based entertainer is seated inside her closet/dressing room wearing a cerulean blue tank top with matching shorts and eating hot wings. This current phase of healing hinges on balance. It’s about having discipline and consistency, but not at the risk of inflexibility. She was planning to head to the gym, for instance, but she’s still tired from the “exhausting” day before. Instead, she’s spent her day receiving a massage, eating some chicken wings, and planning to spend quality time with friends. “I’m not going to beat myself up for it. I’m not going to talk down to myself. I’m going to eat my chicken wings, and then tomorrow I’m [back] in the gym,” she says.
“My new mantra is ‘humility does not serve me.’ Humility does not serve Black women. The world works so hard to humble us anyway."
This is the balance with which she's been approaching much of her life these days. It's why she's worried less about whether or not people see her as someone who is humble. She'd rather be respected. "I think you should be a person that's easy to work with, but in the moments where I have to ruffle feathers and make waves, I'm not shying away from that anymore. You can do it in love, you don't have to be nasty about it, but I had to finally be comfortable with the fact that setting boundaries around my life – in whatever aspect, whether that's personal or business – people are not going to like it. Some people are not going to have nice things to say about you, and you gotta be okay with it," she says.
When Amber talks about the constant humbling of Black women in Hollywood, I think of the entertainers before her who have suffered from this. The brilliant, consistent, overqualified Black women who have spoken of having to fight for opportunities and fair pay. Aretha Franklin. Viola Davis. Tracee Ellis Ross. There's a long list of stars whose success hasn't mirrored their experiences behind the scenes.
Credit: Ally Green
If Black women outside of Hollywood are struggling to decrease the pay gap, so, too, are their wealthier, more famous peers.
Riley says there’s been progress in recent years, but only in small ways and for a limited group of people. “This business is exhausting. The goalpost is constantly moving, and sometimes it’s unfair,” she says. But, I have to say it’s the love that keeps you going.”
“There’s no way you can continue to be in this business and not love it, especially being a plus-sized Black woman,” she continues. “We’re still niche. We’re still not main characters.”
"There’s no way you can continue to be in this business and not love it, especially being a plus-sized Black woman. We’re still niche. We’re still not main characters.”
Last year, Riley starred alongside Raven Goodwin in the Lifetime thriller Single Black Female (a modern, diversified take on 1992’s Single White Female). It was more than a leading role for the actress, it also served as proof that someone who looks like her can front a successful project without it hinging on her identity. It showcased that the characters she portrays don’t “have to be about being a big girl. It can just be a regular story.”
Riley sees her work in music as an extension of her efforts to push past the rigid stereotypes in entertainment. Take her appearance on The Masked Singer, for instance. Riley said she decided to perform Mayer’s “Gravity” after being told she couldn’t sing it years earlier. “I wanted to do ‘Gravity’ on Glee. [I] was told no, because that’s not a song that Mercedes would do,” she says. “That was a full circle moment for me, doing that on that show and to hear what it is they had to say.”
As Scherzinger praised the “anointed” performance, a masked Riley began to cry, her chest heaving as she stood on stage, her eyes shielded from view. “You have to understand, I have really big names – casting directors, producers, show creators – that constantly tell me ‘I’m such a big fan. Your talent is unmatched.’ Hire me, then,” she says, reflecting on the moment.
Recently, she’s been in the studio working on original music, the follow-up to her independently-released debut EP, 2020’s Riley. The sequel to songs such as the anthemic “Big Girl Energy” and the reflective ballad “A Moment” on Riley, this new project hones in on the singer’s R&B roots with sensual grooves such as the tentatively titled “All Night.” “You said I wasn’t shit, turns out that I’m the shit. Then you called me a bitch, turns out that I’m that bitch. You said no one would want me, well you should call your homies,” she sings on the tentatively titled “Lately,” a cut about reflecting on a past relationship. From the forthcoming project, xoNecole received five potential tracks. Fans likely already know the strengths and contours of Riley’s vocals, but these new songs are her strongest, most confident offerings as an artist.
“I am so much more comfortable as a writer, and I know who I am as an artist now. I’m evolving as a human being, in general, so I’m way more vulnerable in my music. I’m way more willing to talk about whatever is on my mind. I don’t stop myself from saying what it is I want to say,” she says.
Credit: Ally Green
“Every era and alliteration of Amber, the baseline is ‘Big Girl Energy.’ That’s the name of her company,” her manager Brooks says, referencing the imprint through which Riley releases her music after getting out of a label deal several years ago. “It’s just what she stands for. She’s not just talking about size, it’s in all things. Whether it’s putting your big girl pants on and having to face a boardroom full of executives or sell yourself in front of a casting agent. It’s her trying to achieve the things she wants to do in life.”
Riley says she has big dreams beyond releasing this new music, too. She’d love to star in a rom-com with Winston Duke. She hasn't starred in a biopic yet, but she’d revel in the opportunity to portray Rosetta Tharpe on screen. She’s determined that her previous setbacks won’t stop her from dreaming big.
“I think one of my superpowers is resilience because, at the end of the day, I’m going to kick, scream, cry, cuss, be mad and disappointed, but I’m going to get up and risk having to deal with it all again. It’s worth it for the happy moments,” she says.
If Riley seems more comfortable and confident professionally, it’s because of the work she’s been doing in her personal life.
She’d previously spoken to xoNecole about becoming engaged to a man she discovered in a post on the site, but she called things off last year. For Valentine’s Day, she revealed her new boyfriend publicly. “I decided to post him on Valentine’s Day, partially because I was in the dog house. I got in trouble with him,” she says, half-joking before turning serious. “The breakup was never going to stop me from finding love. Or at least trying. I don’t owe anybody a happily ever after. People break up. It happens. When it was good, it was good. When it was bad, it was terrible, hunny. I had to get the fuck up out of there. You find happiness, and you enjoy it and work through it.”
Credit: Ally Green
"I don’t owe anybody a happily ever after. People break up. It happens. When it was good, it was good. When it was bad, it was terrible, hunny. I had to get the fuck up out of there. You find happiness and you enjoy it and work through it.”
With her ex, Riley was pretty outspoken about her relationship, even appearing in content for Netflix with him. This time around is different. She’s not hiding her boyfriend of eight months, but she’s more protective of him, especially because he’s a father and isn’t interested in becoming a public figure.
She’s traveling more, too. It’s a deliberate effort on her part to enjoy her money and reject the trauma she’s developed after experiencing poverty in her childhood. “I live in constant fear of being broke. I don’t think you ever don’t remember that trauma or move past that. Now I travel and I’m like, listen, if it goes, it goes. I’m not saying [to] be reckless, but I deserve to enjoy my hard work.”
After everything she’s been through, she certainly deserves to finally let loose a bit. “I have to have a life to live,” she says. “I’ve got to have a life worth fighting for.”
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