[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, hey, you are listening to the brown girl self care podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Bri and I'm the host of the show as well as the founder of Brown Girl self care.
[SPEAKER_01]: This conversation is for black women who feels like they are in a place when a season where
[SPEAKER_01]: They feel like they are being called to bloom in this season, but they may be unsure of what that means, or what it might look like for them specifically.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I have a guest on today's episode, her name is Tara.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I forget how Tara and I, Tara Jefferson, I forgot how Tara and I met, by the way, but we've been talking for a minute about all things black women,
[SPEAKER_01]: Blooming, finances, business, rest, like all the things, and I feel like she's the perfect guest to have this conversation with.
[SPEAKER_01]: She is a breath facilitator.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's a wellness advocate.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she has a book that she just released that I'm very excited to share with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have it just yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just confirmed.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought I'd do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we're going to talk about her book today, and the book is called What Tara.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, Bloom, how you messed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a black woman's guy to self care and generational healing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so we're going to get into all things blooming for black women.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a very important conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel because as black women, we are taught to.
[SPEAKER_01]: To just at least for me, we're I feel like we are conditioned to basically just take what you can get.
[SPEAKER_01]: Be satisfied with whatever it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: do all the things labor labor labor be exhausted all the time and then at the end of it all you have nothing left for yourself nothing left for yourself that will tap into your joy your abundance your creativity how you feel about yourself yourself love like all those things that are necessary for for black women so we're going to go ahead and get into it but first please Tara tell us a little bit more about you
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, first, I'm happy to be here in conversation with you and just beyond your podcast just really appreciate what you have brought to the conversation about black women and black women's well-being.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I first wanted to say that or go on in my introduction about myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've been doing that since about 2015, I miss like the 10-year anniversary celebration that I was trying to do last year, but I was busy trying to get my book out.
[SPEAKER_00]: My first book, Blueha, you must came out in December of last year and so I've really just been really dedicated
[SPEAKER_00]: Trying to have conversations about black women's wellness and well-being because I know that this is a generation where we are being able to have this conversation be at the forefront for like the first time in history.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm happy to lend my voice to that, to lend my work, my written words to that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I think it's something that every black woman needs to find the space for.
[SPEAKER_00]: in her life.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm happy to be here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't wait to head this conversation with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been looking forward to it for a little while now.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know we have been trying to get together, but Tara knows, kind of like what I've shared a little bit here on the podcast, but she knows that this, this season that I am trying to bloom in right now, it's been challenging.
[SPEAKER_01]: It has been challenging and so I'm not able to show up on the podcast the way that I usually have.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as Tara knows, we're just talking about it too,
[SPEAKER_01]: When I think about blooming, we're going to get into what it means for you to bloom in while you wrote this book.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when I think about blooming, it has to include reserving energy because it takes the energy for a plant.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know that we're not necessarily a plant, but we are still nature.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there are a lot of similarities between us and nature.
[SPEAKER_01]: It requires so much energy to bloom.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you don't have that for yourself,
[SPEAKER_01]: it's going to be hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to everything is going to feel hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I want to know, Tara, so we can kick this conversation off, I guess, officially, what for you does it mean to bloom?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think for me, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: Blooming is an immensely like personal transformation, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Blooming is when you take all of the experience, all of the nurturance, all of the life that you have lived up into this point.
[SPEAKER_00]: It begins to come together in a way that makes sense for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where you feel
[SPEAKER_00]: like you don't have anything to prove, like you are not moving or the approval of others, who are standing firm in your units.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I really want black money particular.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like we usually kind of hit that blooming season, you know, we're in our 40s or so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people hit a little
[SPEAKER_00]: Blooming is when I talk about in the book too I talk about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: about how miraculous like nature is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just got into gardening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I just got into gardening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so miraculous to me that I will get these little bit of tiny seeds and they will, you know, grow and I'm throwing to like tomatoes and basil and zucchini and all of these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like those seeds knew that it would become tomatoes, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a new that it would
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the same is true for us like we have all these things that we need inside of us already and to be able to bloom is to like is to really come into our own and be like self actual as like we okay we are who we've been
[SPEAKER_00]: aiming to be after all this time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I really do feel is a very personal process and I think it takes a lot of reflection to keep there not a reflection and I think I want to help like when we create that space for that reflection because sometimes you can't really know where you're going because life is moving so fast, you have some decisions to make you have so many responsibilities and I really do want to encourage us to have that space.
[SPEAKER_00]: for reflection so that we can see okay maybe there's some patterns here that we keep repeating that you know if we step out of that pattern maybe we get to a different result or you know maybe we are just in a season where you know you're talking about taking a break you know for a week or two from the podcast maybe we need to step away from things for a while so we return to center and I think that that's really important for us to be able to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love what you said.
[SPEAKER_01]: And first of all, congratulations on starting your garden or learning to gardens.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is one of my goals for this year.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was something that I started coincidentally last year.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as you were speaking, it reminded me of the plants that I tried to grow on my balcony last year.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the thing is, when I think about blooming, because these plants, they did bloom.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like a lemon bomb and what else was it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Gosh, the things are, I was, I think it was some type of onion, maybe it was green onions and something else I forget, but it was like four or five different plants, but here's the thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I think about blooming, I feel like it's important to note that
[SPEAKER_01]: Not only is it the fact that you have like like that's the code and tomatoes.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have this thing within me that I'm allowing to come forth, right.
[SPEAKER_01]: But.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also the environment that is outside of you because what happened was those plants that did get to pop in, they started, you know, they did, they did bloom or they did sprout, yeah, I guess sprout is technically the better term here, but unfortunately the conditions were not good, everything burned up dried out, it was a wrap and so when we think about blooming, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, I'm thinking that it's not so much what's in here is obviously very important because it's like the blueprint, however, I feel like we need to be mindful about what and where like where we are blooming into.
[SPEAKER_01]: Know that we can't control all circumstances, but it's still something that we should be very aware of because there are detractors from that bloom.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd love to hear your thoughts on on that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And really, I feel like that's what the book is all about, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I feel like it's about kind of analyzing that garden that we have, so to speak, the metaphorical garden, we're growing up in and analyzing,
[SPEAKER_00]: not only what's going on in the larger world, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, what's happening in society and all that, but also investigating your own lineage, really the main focus of Blumha, you must as investigating that lineage.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you're thinking about, you know, how you grew up, what lessons did you learn from your mother, what was her life like, thinking about that environment that you grew up in so that you can really,
[SPEAKER_00]: get very clear on where you stand currently.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as you talk about the gardening aspect of it, what I try to infuse throughout the entire book is the concept of community because it's one
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one thing for us to embark on this journey of self-care and I'm going to do this, and I'm going to take myself to the doctor, I'm going to eat right, I'm going to go to the gym, I'm going to, you know, all of these different things that we can do in the, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: is as ways to take care of ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I say, you know, if there's like examples in each chapter of the book, like self care is not a solo sport.
[SPEAKER_00]: We talk about that environment that we live in, that environment also includes care, right, care from other people.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, in the book, I talk about, you know, every day black women,
[SPEAKER_00]: like you and me, just what our regular everyday lives look like, but then I also talk about some of those more famous, well-known black women, like the Tony Morrison.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the social wellness chapter, you know, I talk about how Tony Morrison was a single mom.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's trying to, she's a editor, she's trying to write her books, she's raising, you know, two children, two sons by herself, and she talked about how that connection with other black writers, how it helped her.
[SPEAKER_00]: to make it through a very challenging period in her life.
[SPEAKER_00]: She talks about her sister France would come over sometimes with the bag of groceries and say, you know what?
[SPEAKER_00]: I got some food here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to watch the kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: You go out, take care of yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got it for the rest of the day.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, someone we're talking about care.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're talking about that environment.
[SPEAKER_00]: that larger environment I want us to remember that it also includes care.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we can talk about, you know, capitalism, we can talk about all these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those aren't, you know, individual battles that we're facing, those are some kind of burdens that we're collectively to shift in the meantime, though.
[SPEAKER_00]: I reach for care, I wrap myself and care, I offer care.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the thing that kind of keeps me tethered to my process, as I'm trying to bloom.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because nobody, that's what all a garden needs, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is care.
[SPEAKER_00]: It needs to monitor the weather or it needs, it needs water, and it needs fertilizer, all of those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think about all of these different aspects of wellness.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really, it boils down to care, whether it's self care, whether it's collective care, it all comes down to, you know, how our black woman be intended to.
[SPEAKER_01]: mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I feel like that part of us has been lost and it's really, like community isn't, it's obviously an action word.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I feel like a part of it has been lost, not because of us, but because these systems have like stripped or tempted to break down
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, the relevance, I guess, of things that really ultimately to me don't matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I feel like I'm in a, I feel like we are in these systems that really, at least again for me, I should maybe just speak for myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like they really just don't matter at the end of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: What, and I think back to like, why was it built this way?
[SPEAKER_01]: Who cares?
[SPEAKER_01]: When did these things, well, we know when, but it's like just thinking, you know, whatever, like when did these things become more important than just the collective community?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I feel like community, just like you, I feel like community is kind of like the, what's the word I'm looking for, not the antidote antidote?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that a right word?
[SPEAKER_01]: And it though, to like these systems and my friend actually is teaching me or has taught me so much about Community because when we think about just like this generational bloom that you you talk about are I'm assuming, you know, in the book I haven't read it just yet, but I know that I will.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we think about like the circumstances that we were born into or raised under or the people that were around us, not even just family, teachers, friends, whoever else, you know, just your community outside of like your home, sometimes this idea of community is so foreign to us.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, um, you know, as you're thinking about blooming in your garden, the community is something that is important.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, if you don't know what that is, or you've never experienced that, in a real way, it can be quite a struggle to bloom where you are because you don't quite know
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you said, it's a, did you say it's a community sport like blooming is a team sport.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to sport.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there is no full bloom.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean without.
[SPEAKER_01]: a sense of community and in love and in nurturing from the community, giving and receiving.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I think that's something that I for a very long time struggle with because though I did have a community around me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like this is a story for a lot of black women.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a community around me, but it really wasn't a community.
[SPEAKER_01]: There were people there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's why I'm saying community.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when I think about what I want, like if I were to
[SPEAKER_01]: necessarily leave, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, you know, one of the things I did a survey of the women of the self-care suite while I was writing the book right before I got the book deal all that stuff I had done a community survey and one of the questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: in the survey was like, when you're stressed or you're going through a tough time, what is your kind of like default go to move, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You somebody who calls community in, you reach out to your friends, you say, hey, girl, I'm having a tough time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you, why is he?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or,
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you isolate, do you kind of do you kind of withdraw and so you figure it all out and then you pop up once everything's better like which one to be sounds good and I think you know 90% of the respondents they said oh yeah, be yeah, I withdraw I withdraw and and these are people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, I know a good chunk of the, you know, women who responded and these are women who have, you know, best friends and, and they have, you know, good relations with their sisters, they are not people who are lacking the, the quantity, right, like they, people that they can reach out and touch, but I think for black one in particular.
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't always, um, I've said I feel like we used to be a little bit better with this, um, but over, I'd say probably like the last 40 years or so, there's been a shift in how community is experienced.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of that, I mean, there's a ton of reasons.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that could be the whole, the whole just of this podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: This whole, he's in his wife community, he has kind of shifted and
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, uh, you know, uh, wages, not keeping up with inflation.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can talk about the, um, rise of social media and how that is kind of pushed everybody into silos.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can talk about the lack of third spaces in so many different communities.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, we can talk, there's so many different reasons why community is different for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: You talk about the strong black woman archetype and then how that shows up and how that hyper independence.
[SPEAKER_00]: which, you know, originated as as armor can also sometimes backfire and kill them, you know, community and having that support in times that we need it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can talk a lot of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the book, particularly there's a chapter three, is the social wellness chapter where I talk about like knitting, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: reaching out for those people and learning to be vulnerable and instead of, you know, always isolating, just put a little baby toe and in the pool of vulnerability and just see how that works for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in talking to the women as I wrote the book, that was a common thread.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have these friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love them.
[SPEAKER_00]: They love me.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we tend to kind of keep things a little surface when when
[SPEAKER_00]: life starts life and I usually will figure it out on my own and I was one of those women, you know, I was one of those women who I would, and I still have to fight the instinct, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I just didn't have to fight the instinct to be like, okay, I'm gonna sit back and once things are cool, you know, give me, give me a month or so, I'll figure it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I still have to fight the instincts,
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and I don't know if anybody else, you know, was listening to this or if you brief you, if you've experienced this, but, you know, it's kind of, you know, how like, um, extroverts adopt introverts and they're like, hey, we're going to be friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have some vulnerable friends who, like, adopted me, right, they would call me, you know, and they weren't afraid to, you know, call me, they're crying, they're this, they're then, um, you know, can I come over?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm having a bad time, et cetera.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, huh, like, they're modeling this for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: In a way that I had never seen a mother.
[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't have a lot of close girlfriend.
[SPEAKER_00]: She just kind of weathered a lot of storms on her own.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, the story of a lot of black women.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I didn't really have a model for what it looks like to be vulnerable with your girlfriends.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have a model for like, okay, you pick up the phone and you just start talking.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I didn't, I didn't know what that was like.
[SPEAKER_00]: to have a couple of girlfriends who they they had no hesitation not on each and out.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, they called or they texted, I pick up, I walk through it with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And after a couple of times that I'm like, oh, okay, like maybe this is a safe space for me to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I remember once I was going through it with my husband and I called my friend and she was so such
[SPEAKER_00]: 10 years ago at this point, but I still remember, you know, simultaneously being like, I can't believe like I'm crying in front of her.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sharing my business like this with her.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then also feeling like, God, this feels so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm finally not just carrying this all myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't just something that I have to hold.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, she's also helping me carry this weight.
[SPEAKER_00]: And ever since then, it's gotten better.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's gotten easier.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still not my default.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those friends do have to pry a little bit and say like are you really okay, like what's really going like they really have to sit with me sometimes, but Like yeah, I think that we do need community and I think sometimes we
[SPEAKER_00]: have that quality or that quantity, but that quality of like, okay, I know I can be vulnerable with these people.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that this is a space where we're all oriented towards trusting each other and hearing one another and carrying whatever weight we're going through in life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want all of us to have that.
[SPEAKER_00]: space for for that possibility when you are ready when you are ready to have that support I wanted to be there I wanted to be there waiting for you
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I agree, I wish that for all of us.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it does require sometimes for us a huge leap of faith, being able to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it can be really hard because sometimes you're taught like you don't talk about what happens in this house.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you don't take that business.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you don't air out your dirty laundry and you're basically like a lot of little black girls.
[SPEAKER_01]: Millennial, Millennial, okay, I'm Gen X.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I know like for my generation at least and probably the generations, surely the generations before like what's the boomer and whatever, like you don't talk about what's going on in this house.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so if you're raised like that's, you know, you've taken that on as fact as truth.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now,
[SPEAKER_01]: here you are in the big wide world and you're seeing how hard, not always hard, but you're seeing how hard life can be.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we do want to, my dog's going to borrow a coat on one second, my daughter's coming in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you do want to save place to land.
[SPEAKER_01]: But doing so without necessarily sharing all your business, like it's hard to think, like, can I trust this person?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are they going to, is this too much?
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought that before, like, is this too much for someone to hold?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I know that for some of us, we're growing up.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're taught, like, or we've been shown, like, what you're going through is not a big deal?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I did this back in my day like when I was young, I had to deal with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this is no big deal like we're not allowed.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what I hate for little black girls like you're not we're not allowed or they're not allowed to kind of like be.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what am I trying to say?
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not allowed to fully feel their emotions or to understand that sure other people may go through this thing, but it's okay if it feels hard for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or, hey, it's okay, if I, I am, it is okay for me to go and talk to,
[SPEAKER_01]: someone about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a, I don't even think I said this at the beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and the course of writing blew up you must.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I interviewed a hundred black women.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, 104.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I always say 104.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, it's 104.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, that doesn't have an exact
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly number.
[SPEAKER_00]: But 104 black women and they were across the the lifespan of 19 the youngest one was 19 the oldest one was 99.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my goodness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in that what when I started and I said that goal originally I wanted to interview like mothers and then their daughters and then you know the grand dollars like I wanted to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then I realized I would only have a certain number of like families.
[SPEAKER_01]: mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was all wanted to be a slightly broader, but I started that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the first, I think two people that interviewed were mother and daughter.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the mother is probably a boomer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the daughter, she might be like a young gen X or millennia.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not quite sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where the this split is.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was so interesting to interview the mom.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I love, I know them all personally, the boomer she's wonderful, but they she has a very different, you know, mindset on what it looks like to kind of like process your emotions and process your meaning, she's of the generation where you just kind of like, okay, you swallow it, you know, something's hard, okay, like what are you going to complain about it, like you can't, you're not going to express that really.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe like 40 at the time and she was saying how, you know, she resented bag growing up where she would have these really big feeling something bad had happened to her and she felt like she couldn't really express it where she couldn't really.
[SPEAKER_00]: have a response to emotional response to things that were, you know, objectively terrible, objectively going to traumatic that happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she said that she knew, you know, her mother met well because her mother didn't want her to express that and then get stuck in some type of depressive episode or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there was a little bit of understanding between the generations, but that was a very common thing where older generations, you know, going back, generations to slavery, like there was no space for you to really process those emotions.
[SPEAKER_00]: You had to get up the next day and get out there and pick cotton or rice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Very strong.
[SPEAKER_00]: You had to, like it was a survival tactic.
[SPEAKER_00]: And those things still being passed down generation
[SPEAKER_00]: And we are just now, I feel able to process emotions in not just, you know, on the black community, but the society at large is just now getting into, you know, therapy and all of these different ways that we process what we're going through.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think often.
[SPEAKER_00]: about, and I talk also on the book about, and kind of like the somatic side of the thing, where you're not necessarily always talking about what you're going through, but you're processing it through your body.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the ways, a simple way, that a lot of us process it is through our tears, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I tried to tell my husband one time, I was like, listen,
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm crying.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't necessarily mean I'm sad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, maybe I'm angry.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and this is how it's it's processing.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is how it's coming out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I really want us, um, particularly black women.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want us to be grounded in our emotions and be comfortable.
[SPEAKER_00]: um, having emotions, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like that's the first step.
[SPEAKER_00]: Be comfortable having emotions, then we can get comfortable expressing them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we have to get comfortable having emotions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think a lot of us haven't had the space to practice that because it was always, you know, when you grown up, it was like, fix your face.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, in our emotions and having them and letting them sit there and I know for some I went to a therapist and she asked me like, where do you feel, you know, the anxiety?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where do you feel that in your body?
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, what do you mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, like, I'm trying to like get.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to connect the mind and the body together and it really was work that like no other woman and my family had the nobody and my family had been the therapy before.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sitting there, praying new, no road map, just I think this will help.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where I ended up and I really hope that we all, it doesn't be therapy, but I hope that we all have spaces where we can, as I said before, become fluent in that emotional that being emotional beings in that emotional expression.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I really do think that we are lies would be better for it Because we're emotional beings.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're human.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not meant to go through life You know emotionless and expressionless We're human.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope that that comes through when people read the book for sure Yeah, you hit that on the head.
[SPEAKER_01]: Emotions for me can be very hard And actually, let me clarify that
[SPEAKER_01]: My emotions are fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel it's the emotionality or emotions or whatever of other people, where I really kind of go into maybe like a freeze mode is what I would say, it's probably like a freeze mode and it's definitely something that I'm still working through and healing through.
[SPEAKER_01]: It takes time.
[SPEAKER_01]: But for me, being able to cry or whatever the emotion is, happy, mad, pissed, angry, joyful, like whatever, those are fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've gotten to a place where I like, like if I have to cry and find other people, you know, that kind of thing is fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if somebody else now, I've noticed that it feels hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: Case in point.
[SPEAKER_01]: My daughter came to me literally just like two days ago or two nights ago and she came into the living room and she's crying instantly I go and it's just an automatic thing for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I went into it was it was not only freeze but it was an anxious panic freeze.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now even though the hell she was crying about first of all it could have been that she stubbed her toe.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know what she was crying for, but when someone is crying automatically, I go into the sense of panic and freeze mode where I just start freaking out like, oh God, like, to me, it's like it's like a
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a world ending event, like someone's about to tell me something that is just going to Just I don't even know how to actually don't know how to explain it, but it just it just puts me into this space like automatically.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I just immediately start feeling panicky and she shows me her phone and I don't even want to look at the phone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because for me, I have a problem with death.
[SPEAKER_01]: So my mind goes to death.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can pretty much deal with pretty much any other emotion tied to something Yeah, but my mind is instantly everything bad is death to me and sure enough She had gotten a text from her father about what was her aunt and how she's not doing so well If you get my drift and you know that kind of thing and I was just like oh
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not able to fully be in a place where I can support someone else because now it's just everything's going through me like I'm emotionally charged now, you know, and I feel like I kind of like take on whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you want to go into like this mode of let me fix it, it's not that bad, you'll be okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't say those things to her, but that's like I wanted to be like so she can be happy now, like you want to rush the process.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't want to feel those uncomfortable feelings.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that death is not, I'm not saying it's easy for everyone, but it's not as complicated and hard for every single person, but for me for some reason that I haven't figured out yet, why it, it's.
[SPEAKER_01]: the big bag boogey man, you know, um, so I was able to just kind of talk to her for a minute and she didn't even want to talk about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: She just wanted to share it and have someone hold space.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like she wanted to, you know, I'm saying, so not that this will be like on a win or fail kind of thing for me, but if I had to great myself, you know, I would say I didn't necessarily pass, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: trying to navigate that part of just being open to not only my emotions, but as a community member or being a good, you know, community member or someone that's building a sisterhood or whatever, have you want to say it?
[SPEAKER_01]: a part of that is being able to have it having to sit with someone else's emotions, even if it is uncomfortable and hard for you, that's where I am right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is what I am learning to do, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I do, I do know, because that, I feel like I don't do that with, I have that same kind of freeze response.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't do that with everybody, but with my children, I absolutely do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I absolutely, if they express anything other happiness, I'm like, wait, hold on, how do we fix it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't feel like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Be happy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no, no, we're not going to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they're there now.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hurry up.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll build a lot of home for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: That, that is my response and I realize that over the past, you know, a few years or so,
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, my mother, you know, is like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like she really does like to see her kids upset, but whatever she will throw some money at it.
[SPEAKER_00]: She will be coming over like, no, no, don't cry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like she is very uncomfortable with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I realized, um, a few years ago, my son, he runs track and.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the end of every track meet no matter how he did, I'm like, you did so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so proud of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my goodness.
[SPEAKER_00]: He could have came in dead last.
[SPEAKER_00]: He could have told the track.
[SPEAKER_00]: He could have whatever, but I'm always on the sideline saying, like, you did so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so proud of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: He brought it yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he had to tell me once he was like, that's not helpful.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I think I'm like, you know, sharing more he know he didn't win, but he knows somebody loves him in the thinking that that's what I'm doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, doesn't help, though.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK. OK, I received that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hear you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so now, I just follow his lead on how he feels about the race and just let him perform the way that you wanted to.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that's disappointing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm trying to let him have that full range of emotions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And not just the happy ones, not just the joy and everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to let him be sad.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to let my daughter be sad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, not like that, but that's part of also helping them to gain fluency with how they're feeling and what's going on so that they can they too can grow up and notice and their body's like, oh, that's sadness or that's anxiety or that's, you know, whatever the emotion that's bubbling up for them, they can recognize it, they can name it, they can sit with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I do feel like that's that's part of my journey is helping them name that and still with myself sometimes because sometimes sometimes for me you know I'm still like okay how do I I don't feel good I don't I don't feel you know I feel sad or I feel whatever how do I you know shake myself out of this sometimes you just gotta sit with it yeah that's
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thinking back to what you said, I kind of now can understand why I do do that and it's obviously it's a learned response, it's definitely a learned response because emotions in my household like it was like shut that down.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, don't do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Shut it down.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_01]: What I always got the, what are you crying for?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: What are you crying for?
[SPEAKER_01]: Just that kind of energy.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's just like it wasn't necessarily a very nurturing space to the growing thrive and in blooming as a child, but you have to think back to like, well, what must it have been like for her?
[SPEAKER_01]: Not that it's not that I'm using or anything, but I do have to wonder like, well, what?
[SPEAKER_01]: which was not nice.
[SPEAKER_01]: What must it have been like the further back you go into like our history of when we got here?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm talking about when we got here, when we were taking it arrived here, that history.
[SPEAKER_01]: The further back you go into that history, like from art or imagination, migration to the boomers, whatever it was before that and back and back and back.
[SPEAKER_01]: can imagine like if we have gotten to this place right now and we've carried like our ancestors like their trauma, their pain, their joy, like everything in our DNA like what must it have been like?
[SPEAKER_01]: I can only imagine that every generation equal back it was just worse and worse and worse and worse that may not be true for every single.
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's kind of like what I think about.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think about just lineage our ancestors and just intergenerational trauma, you know, and what we carry within ourselves today.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what I do love Tira is how like when your son was like, excuse me, please don't do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I said what I said, because you could have automatically, or even if you did that in the past, because I know that I did that in the past before I really started my self-care journey.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's probably the same for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: The past version of me was very much like,
[SPEAKER_01]: city is what it is, just what I'm not like that anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even though it's still like, it's hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: I might start in situation, I might go on a freeze.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in other areas, I feel like I have come leaps and bounds over the old, like even five, 10 years ago, of that version of me.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I love that Tara, you allow your children to even say that, because just being able to communicate
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they feel safe enough to do that with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my, my kids, they, they are funny.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like it's something about Gen Z.
[SPEAKER_00]: They, they, they different, they are, they are different.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, I do think that we.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that I decided relatively early on is that I had my children when I was 20 and 22 and relatively early on, I don't much about having kids or gel rearing and everything, but I wanted us to have a really solid relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: out the years.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted them, once they graduated college, I went in the world, et cetera, like I wanted them, I wanted us to talk on the phone.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted them to want to see me, you know, a few times a year or whatever, I wanted us to be close.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I realized early on that part of that was allowing them the space to reflect.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if there was something that I was doing that they didn't
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, let me know.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I don't I don't know what I'm doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe up too harsh in some ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe up too.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, lenient.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but that is also me trying to honor their humanity and what you were saying about like going back generation after generation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe five generations, Black Friday generations, like my great, great, great-grandmother.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe one more great in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, was an enslaved woman in Georgia.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she had, I want to say, 11 kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: She, you know, was, I think she moved from Georgia to Alabama, back to Georgia.
[SPEAKER_00]: I cannot imagine what her life was like, what her parenting was like, I can't imagine any of that because how do you, how are you parenting and you're not even considered human?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Signal bodies recognizing your humanity.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're trying to parent these children and trying to keep them safe.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like that was the main focus.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was the main goal.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't necessarily to be, you know, kind and cuddly things.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was to keep them safe and keep them alive.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm near you.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was the goal.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you're parenting in under those circumstances and you said something earlier to about like not making excuses or not, you know, blaming and all of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I always encourage people like we're looking back as as non judgmentally.
[SPEAKER_00]: As we can, right, because everybody's from something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, you know, some of our mothers and our fathers and our grandmothers, they could have done better for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: We could, but we're not in the business of, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: judging the past, we're trying to help, you know, situate ourselves in the present and heal as best we can for their future.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, I, I'd really do just think about how many of us, you know, were raised, perhaps in an environment where that emotionality was not encouraged.
[SPEAKER_00]: We go back, maybe three or four generations, like that could get you killed.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't find in and
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, in some world of trouble and yeah, when you situate our current day in that history, it becomes very, very important then that we sit and we recognize that we are a few generations removed from that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we can begin to plot a new course where we are able to sit with our kids and allow them to have those heavy emotions and we're learning, you know, sometimes in real time.
[SPEAKER_00]: how we can also carry our heavy emotions at the same time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we can be there for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can be there for friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can be there for other loved ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we don't get stuck there, but we can manage in those situations.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that we're talking about this, Tara, because when I think about blooming, my mind goes to,
[SPEAKER_01]: How can I say this?
[SPEAKER_01]: But when I think about blooming in the broader sense, like the mainstream bloom, when I think about the mainstream bloom, that bloom is not for black women necessarily.
[SPEAKER_01]: That bloom is so white-nosed.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so cute.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so... Let me get this matching headband with my clothes.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I can apply these creams to my face
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me, I don't know, do all these things that are important and we are worthy of because they are self-care.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when I think about how the word bloom has, there's just a difference between bloom and then like a black bloom.
[SPEAKER_01]: I only mean all that makes sense
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess my question is, when we think about blooming for black women, we've talked about the emotional aspect, but like where, where in your opinion, would a black would a black woman start if she's listening to this conversation and she's like, I want to bloom.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know there's more out there for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that I deserve better, I deserve the world, I deserve ease, and to live a beautiful life, and to love myself, and to honor myself, and all those things.
[SPEAKER_01]: But where would you suggest that a black woman start?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because again, when I think about blooming unfortunately,
[SPEAKER_01]: I can, I don't, how can I say this?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want black women to think that blooming starts with, come from this place of like a luxury, kind of capitalistic.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got to have all the things that and do all the things that everybody else is doing when I see them on TikTok and this cream and that cream and these clothes and this outfit and this bag and all that, that to me is not, it's important, sure, if that's your vibe,
[SPEAKER_01]: But that to me is not where Blooming starts.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I was just curious to know like what your thoughts were on that.
[SPEAKER_01]: If that made any dog on sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: It made perfect sense because I've never, I've been online talking about self-care since 2008.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was pregnant with my son when I launched my first blog.
[SPEAKER_00]: So 2008, I was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: five, six months pregnant, I think, and now my baby's about to go to college.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I've been doing it for a while.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been doing this for a while.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I used to host on that first blog that I did, I used to host these like self-care challenges and even back then, I was like 22 years old, even back like my version of self-care was really, really internal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, was not interested in and I will say like some of the things that I talk about in terms of like buying things for self care.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love a good sleep mask, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I need to sleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to make sure it might eight hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to make sure my brain everything is well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, so I, you know, some things is like, okay, yes, you'd buy a sleep mask, help you sleep, whatever, whatever, but so care to me has always been about how I feel as I'm moving throughout my day.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't have to do with how much money I got in the bank necessarily.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't have to do with, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, if I got a one, I don't even know like what the new atleast your brand is the airbase on the wear, but I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't even know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a yes, but it's I don't even know who you sweat pants are.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got some target specials right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, and I didn't target.
[SPEAKER_01]: These are old anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know, but I will say, yes, I have to do feel like like if you think about wellness or you think about the wellness industry, you think about wellness advocates, people are talking about it, you will, I think, and I've been doing this for a long time, I still kind of picture, you know, a white woman, she's going to her yoga class, she got a little yoga mat under her arms, she got a little bottle of water, but to go to Pilates, whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember the new trend is these.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're in a bun, little hair, hair in a top knot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, yep, something something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I love that, you know, all these black women that I see, you know, going to yoga and who are yogis and they're leading stuff and they have yoga students.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I love all of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But for me, self-care really starts, it starts from the inside.
[SPEAKER_00]: It may, you know, have some external factors, other things like that, but it starts on the inside.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I was interviewing the women,
[SPEAKER_00]: and talking about, you know, what does wellness, what does self care look like for you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's done like, what, you know, what did your mom do?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm just curious about what their histories are with self care.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I interview this one woman.
[SPEAKER_00]: She is, I think she's 80 now, I think she's 80 now.
[SPEAKER_00]: and she lives in South Carolina and she is a rakey practitioner and she's been doing rakey and meditation and all of these things massage, all these things since the early 80s.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my goodness.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm thinking about all I black women doing rakey in the 80s and the 80s.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, no way.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, you have a lot of that's way back in the day.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's way back in the day.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she, she told me,
[SPEAKER_00]: Miss White is her name.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's in the last chapter of the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: The advice listening to and want to skip to her story.
[SPEAKER_00]: But she told me that in the early 80s she was really stressed and really overwhelmed.
[SPEAKER_00]: She had two children.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was a single mom.
[SPEAKER_00]: And her friends said, why don't you try meditation?
[SPEAKER_00]: And she was like meditation okay like I'll I'll give it a go and she said that she decided that she was going to do I think it was 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the afternoon after she got off work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I tell me also like if a 80 year old woman black woman tells me that she meditated you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes after noon, I'm going to listen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to let me meditate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me try this real quick.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so she said that she knew she used to do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: She needed to have some time to quiet her mind to really lock in one in the morning before she had to do all these things before she had to get up, before she had attended these children and make her commute to work.
[SPEAKER_00]: She needed to have some time for herself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And after she got off of work, before she fixed dinner, before she was taking people to girl scout less classes or whatever and helping with homework, she said, I need this time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she said our kids didn't like it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were trying to like bang on the door at first and stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: But she was like, do not do not interrupt me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And let somebody's bleeding.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's that's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody's bleeding on the house is on fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she said, they are quickly to to leave her long let her have her time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she've been doing it for 40 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which is cute.
[SPEAKER_00]: amazing to me to keep up a habit with that type of longevity.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when people ask me like where do I start or like what do I do?
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that like AMPM routine.
[SPEAKER_00]: For me, I feel like we have to have something
[SPEAKER_00]: before we enter the day, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have something before.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't have to be anything elaborate.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't have to be anything that is costly, which is something, some type of ritual, whether that's, you know, for people who are more religious, maybe that's prayer, maybe that's journaling, maybe that's meditation, maybe that's yoga, maybe that's some stretching.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cause I do, I stretch all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of yoga, but not really.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just hope you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Matt and I just stretch my body in ways that feel good and that's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, something that helps you pour into you before the day gets started.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then at the end of the day, you know, I especially have this routine at the end of the day where I really do, like I take my shower at night, like I'm scrubbing the stress of today off of me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I'm visualizing it, getting caught up in the soap bubbles and going down the drain.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm getting all that stress off me
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, doesn't mean that we're, you know, we're immune from life's challenges, but we're ever possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like to find ways to tell my body that it's safe to orient myself in, in safety, as much as possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I took a lot from that conversation with Hark as again, like we're saying, my,
[SPEAKER_01]: doing rakey in the 80s and like having that's why a rakey studio and and traveling and yeah that's it all you you've been on this way for a minute and so I'm gonna just listen yeah that's major and I feel like a lot is lost because we don't have elders that we can like I'm literally an elder now because I'm 50 you know I'm saying but where's my elder?
[SPEAKER_01]: Where's my elder?
[SPEAKER_01]: So that the fact that you were able to speak to her and learn from her, that's massive.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is massive.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's just now you're carrying a piece of her, not necessarily her DNA, but let's say her spiritual DNA, I say that with you and you're moving that forward into your children.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_01]: Just carrying like the story, that's tradition.
[SPEAKER_01]: we we we we we we are missing so much of that so the fact that you were able to talk to her is is amazing I'm curious to know because I was going to ask this anyway but then you talked about safety and no we need to wrap this up we can talk about this all day
[SPEAKER_01]: to talk about safety.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we all know, well, first of all, even if the things that were are happening right now in this country weren't happening, we will still need to talk about safety for black women.
[SPEAKER_01]: Period.
[SPEAKER_01]: But let's just take it there with everything that's happening right now in the US, in this country, with this president,
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm hearing from Black women that it is so hard to feel safe right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a lot going on a lot I'm curious to know like.
[SPEAKER_01]: for you specifically.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know we just talked about the meditation and things like that, but what's been like, like, what are your thoughts on blooming and safety like right now under these current circumstances specifically, you know, for black women?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I, somebody asked me this, like a little bit before my book was released because I finished because you know when you write a book, the book gets finished, you know, months and months and months before it's on sale, okay, yeah, I think I finished this book.
[SPEAKER_00]: It came on sale December 2nd, 2025.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I finished it in February, 2020.
[SPEAKER_00]: What?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I've finished it, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: write them up a whole year, right as right after inauguration and all the DIs stuff started happening in February and in all of that and that's when the book was actually finished and somebody said like would you go back and change it, you know, based off of who the president is now
[SPEAKER_00]: and what the future come and looks like for the next four or five years and I had to sit with that question and I said no, I wouldn't change it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not because I think I know everything but again I sat with so many black women and so many older black women, I think you know half of them probably were or not even half of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd say probably like 70 of them were older than I am.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I had the immense privilege of sitting with them and hearing their stories and hearing them live through quite frankly, you know, news that feels very similar, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like they lived through,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, assassination of MLK, they lived through civil rights movement.
[SPEAKER_00]: They marched, you know, in the south, you know, to protest Jim Crow and segregation and all of this and floating rights.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've done this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And while it is endlessly maddening that we are still fighting, some of these same fights, we're still dealing with the, you know, with white supremacy, and it just won't die.
[SPEAKER_00]: While that is really maddening,
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a sense of calm, I guess, that I got from listening to these black women's tell their stories and tell me how they survived periods that were that had their nervous system all in a, in a tizzy, that they'd feel safe.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were tired.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were like, I, it,
[SPEAKER_00]: I had the immense privilege of having it, like you said, collecting all of those stories and carrying them with me, and so what I would say to the black women in this moment who don't feel safe, is that one.
[SPEAKER_00]: This country is doing what this country has always done, which.
[SPEAKER_00]: may not feel reassuring, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: This country is doing what it's always done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, black women, we are doing what we have always done.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in times like this, we are clinging to each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are trying to find ways to be in community and in connection with each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think about the
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know what the current number is with the number of black women, you know, pushed out of the labor force last year at last, I mean, I don't know, half a million.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, at last count, I don't know the number, you know, keeps fluctuating, but I think about all of the groups that have popped up to help those women find employment and get connected with resources to help them, you know, during this time when they're unemployed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I think about, um, even, you know, just personally how I've created a community of other, um, black women authors, so we can come together and help each other through this really uncertain time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because this is our live way.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're trying to figure out how do we navigate this, how do we balance this?
[SPEAKER_00]: with the larger forces that are at play.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so one of the things also that I would say in terms of not feeling safe.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really hard for us and our bodies to try to make, to have things make sense that don't make sense, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So it necessarily does have a lot of things else.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't necessarily tell ourselves,
[SPEAKER_00]: Like there's a certain part of us that has to accept the truth of what's going on for what it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then there's also a part of ourselves that we have to tend to make sure that we can make it through today, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we have children, we have a job to get through.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have relationships to nourish.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes some of us have community responsibilities where we're involved and when we're volunteering or whatever the case may be.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so finding ways to sue our nervous system, whether that's, you know, through laughter, that's through movement, that's through breath work, even simple things, you know, singing, singing out loud, like that helps our nervous system, all these things that Black folks are really good at, that there's a reason, you know, like it helps you.
[SPEAKER_00]: that nervous system.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so even if it's just like me laying down on the mat and stretching for 15 minutes before you get up and go into the day, whether it's meditation, whether it's breath work, all these things are available, easily accessible, but it's just a matter of trying to give your body additional care.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that that's just what it means.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means
[SPEAKER_00]: additional care, whether that's through self, that's through connections, that's through community.
[SPEAKER_00]: But additional care is what's needed and what's required.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I agree.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, we need to wrap up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just tell us again the name of your book, Tara.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I have my husband popping in and I didn't have a copy of it, but I you must.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a black woman's guide to self-care and generational healing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's out available anywhere books are sold.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's been a wonderful time talking about it, helping black women to be to be in full bloom and help us to to
[SPEAKER_00]: navigate the society that we live in because we need every little bit of tool, every bit of help that we can get our hands on.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm never going to say, I'm always going to advocate for black women getting all types of care.
[SPEAKER_00]: Stack it on top of each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we need all of the care.
[SPEAKER_01]: We definitely need all of the care.
[SPEAKER_01]: We definitely need all the care.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like it just could have gone in so many different places, because all of it is important, all of it is relevant, but I'm glad that we were able to talk about blooming, because I want black women to know, and I'm sure you do as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want black women to know that life is not just for us to be here, and to just like give our lives or like labor our lives to death, like labor our lives away.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I hear the stories that there's a, I know a wrapping up see this why I said the conversation just go all over the place, but they're really quickly.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a woman at my job.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just started working for those of you that don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's a whole, another ball of wax.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's just a whole of the ball of wax.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I just started working again since 2019.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a woman at my job.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I found out yesterday, she's like 70,
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't want to put my feelings on to her because I've never talked to her about this, but I can only imagine when you are says 76 years old, you are not trying, you don't want to be laboring.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now maybe she does it for fun because some people do want to get out the house and things like that, but generally speaking like I at least for my 70 something year or so.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to be laboring.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want black women to know that their life is much, much more than the labor that they give.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes we give, and we want to, sometimes it's just taken.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's just making.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want black women to know that we deserve to bloom, we deserve to,
[SPEAKER_01]: to be well, we deserve to be happy and healthy and to feel all of our emotions and to live abundantly and to just, I don't know, just have, like, my thing is to be honoring our humanity in a world that doesn't, like, we just deserve, we just deserve the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so your book is so, it's not only timely, but it's just so important
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, black women like we deserve to bloom and I'm sure in your book they're going to find ways and stories and ideas on just blooming in season that they're in and what that can look like and what it can grow into and how to start and so like I said your book is just is just relevant and it's necessary and it's needed so I thank you for
[SPEAKER_01]: taking the time and the care that you did, because I know it wasn't easy, Tara, to do what you did to bring that book to fruition, to bring that book to life, being an author, is like a labor.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm saying of love and time and care and all those things, so it's want to thank you for doing that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to thank you for spending time with me today.
[SPEAKER_01]: on the podcast, I'm very excited to get your book.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have two audible credits girl.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to go ahead before I cancel my audible subscription because I'm going to be canceling very soon.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'd be getting your book.
[SPEAKER_01]: I cannot wait to dive in and then like email or text you or whatever and just be like, girl, this book is so good.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just very excited for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, but all that to say, thank you for the work and the care and the attention that you give.
[SPEAKER_01]: to black women through your gifts and your talents every day.
[SPEAKER_00]: And listen, same to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Same to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really appreciate you having this space where black women can tap in and hear conversations like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like this was such a great conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel so full and we kept one probably for like another two hours and just kept go it and kept talking.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm thankful to you too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know it's a lot of work.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've been really consistent with this podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if no people tell you, but it's hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard to be a podcaster, hard to maintain consistency and grow it in a way that you have.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I thank you for everything that you have done, everything that you've poured into it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I hope people really support you in the way that you need to be supported in this next season and this next chapter because this is such a valuable space and you are such a valuable mind as of such a valuable presence in this space and I love.
[SPEAKER_00]: the way that you show up so authentically on every single time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So thank you for having me hosting this conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, yeah, this is the perfect way to end my week.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, why I appreciate your terror.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I hope that um, I can have you on again.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we can just continue on this conversation because one conversation is never enough and we're talking about the point of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's definitely having with a podcast again.