Her followers hang on to every word that comes from the mouth of this Southern-fried mother figure, who tells it like it is.
A Mobile native who lives in a bucolic country setting in Wilmer, in the westernmost part of Mobile County, Ophelia works just as hard today as she did in retail – but now she sets her own hours and works from home, where she’s surrounded by animals, like her dogs Stella and Jax, her tiny pup Pixie, her cat, Gigi, her, who often perches on her shoulder or in her hair, and Binx, the lost parakeet she took in a few months ago.
She went back to work, and about 30 minutes later “realized what going viral looked like,” she says. “But it wasn’t the views – I could care less. When I opened up the comments section, that’s what caught my eye. It was, ‘I feel safe over here.’ It was, ‘I wish my mom would have talked to me like that. I might not be so self-conscious about the things I am today.’”
Her beloved father, a workaholic who owned a used car lot, had always been her protector. But when Ophelia was just 13 years old, he died of a heart attack, leaving her alone with her mother, who spent most of her time locked away in her bedroom. Fortunately, she had a few mother figures in her life, including a favorite aunt and her childhood friend’s mother, Miss Jenny, who took her in and helped her when they could.
Ophelia was terrified that she wouldn’t bond with her son, and that she would repeat her mother’s patterns. “All of my fears ended up being just that, fear,” she says. She credits her tater tots with helping her to survive such a heartbreaking and devastating loss. “They think that I do something for them,” she says. “They have no idea what they do for me.
Ophelia believes Randon was depressed and lost after his own father died in 2019. “He was a totally different person when daddy died,” she says. She hopes to be able to focus on providing mentors for youth as well as helping families in need. “I cannot wait until we’re able to cut the first check for somebody that maybe they need a mobility ramp built in their home,” she says.
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