Auntie Time With Iyanla Vanzant

00:00:03
Speaker 1: Welcome to j dot Ill, a production of I Heart Radio. What's Up? Everybody? Everybody within listening ears Welcome yet again to j dot Il the Podcast. My name is Joe Scott and I'm here with my sister friends. Uh Layah st Clair, Okay, boy and the Lovely Age of Graydon Dance. Why is that? Why is that? Why listen? If you if you do not have a group, a couple, you don't need a lot, you really don't. You don't have a couple of friends where you could just go to the water and lay it down. Come on, I suggest you go outside. Okay, you've been in the house too long. As much as I love you listening to a podcast, I want you to go off fine and saying hi to somebody because they're interesting. It's because there's something about the way that's just to put that that an collect on that made you say hello. You never know where you could make a friend ankle it where. It's the little things that make you look at somebody and say thank God, I think I like you. Hello, And it starts just like that. You never know. I have a sister friend. What we all do? Shoot, this is everybody's sister's friend. Sister friend right here, the head and everywhere else and then their hearted in their minds. She is the reason why we say do the work. Huh. Everybody, please welcome the grind ms yan Lo, van ZANDT. Yeah. That deserves some applause. I'm sore, I'm you know, it's applause clause. Oh man. Yeah, it's so good to see you and hear you. Yes, it's good to see you and hear YouTube. Yes, listen, it's it's so many questions to ask, so many thoughts to share, but we're going to just start. Well, what's on your heart? My heart? Yeah, M so much, so much. Let me say good morning to the posse. That's what that's the posse. I recently attended UM Fashion Week in New York and one of the UM showings was for all new designers of color and so that was so exciting. There were twelve of them and they, I mean, it was just amazing how creative and and wonderful these designers were. And at the same time, for me UM, being a woman of my age, some of the things that I observed but very disturbing and now I can understand how my grandmother felt when I wore platform shoes and hot pants when she told me, I'm going straight to hell. But some of the things that I saw, So one of the things that's on my heart is young women, particularly young women of color. Some of the things that I see in here, I I I don't understand. And I talked to them sometimes and sometimes they're just angry and roved and so they don't want to talk. Um, that's on my heart. We discussed this. We discussed this quite a bit, because, um, the one thing that we can't do is distance ourselves to a point where we can't reach one or two or five or nine, you know, because I don't like everything either. I don't. Sometimes I feel that what somebody has worn is inappropriate to a place like I don't. I can't quite understand why you would choose to rock out like that. Then I try to make it, wrap my mind around it and say, Okay, that's a choice. That somebody's choice. You don't have to understand it. That's that lady's body and her in her time, and you know how she wants to be perceived today. I do think, I do think that most everybody looks like a a prostitute. Though I said it I do. I do. I steal with that, But I said what I said. If you look, if you look at nineteen eighties and nine nineties prostitutes, y'all know I love the holes. Right, every every city I go to, I have to go find the holes because the holes tell you how the city is doing. That's my that's my opinion. It's like my little trip into anthropology. Well, if we love the holes, why do we vilify their clothing? Well, they're sex workers and they're dressed to sell sex. Is that not the case? Is that not the case? It's true, But I mean that is true. That is the uniform or the accepted uniform of one who might sell sex. But that's not always what people who sell sex wear. Well it used to be. It used to be the exact uniform for what people who sell sex where. Well, if you go to Canada, I can't have I have in Toronto the prostitutes where like, um, I know, And that's why I'm That's why I'm slow walking this conversation because I already know that she's ahead of me and this I'm just completely interested. I'm completely interested. Like they were, they look like they're on their way to um. To their secretary job, and that lets me know how like how the mentality of Canadians are when it comes to you know, this was a while ago. I haven't really been able to go see what I what I saw, But back then, um, they used to look like secretaries or they were you know, in their senior year of college or something. You know, I was like, that's because Americans are so hypocritical, come out sex, and you know, we have to uh make it their fault and we have to make them wrong and make them bad. My my concern is that and those who control the words and images control the minds of the people. And my concern with the young people is that their minds are so controlled that they follow along without questions, that they are so into external validation that there are pieces and parts within them that are not whole and healthy, and that would lead them to dress or to present themselves in the world in such a way that doesn't really honor who they are, not because you know, I won't say they look like holes, but they look like they're not clear about who they are, and that troubles me in the century that you would do that mean I won't even go to the clothing. I'll go to young people who are who are tattered from the top of their head to their feet, everywhere, every neck and el armpits. Where are you going looking like that? Do you think we're saying like old ladies? Yeah, because I was thinking, you know, it's funny. I was just sitting here thinking, I was like, do you guys think they look at that? It's like as freedom, there was a time when you couldn't work with all that tat on. Now there's a time where you have to be inclusive, you have to be diverse, you have to not judge somebody on what they look like from the outside. So they said, they're some places ain't gonna hire you with all that stuff going on. Oh yeah, and they don't want but they don't want them jobs though, y'all. Look, they actually don't want to be there. And when I think about external validation, I feel that we've expressed this, this need for external validation always as a people. It just looked like pressed hair and a suit jacket at one time, and so I feel that the need for the external validation that we've always pushed back on this it has just always looked different, and sometimes it looks like an afro, and sometimes it looks like baggy pants, and sometimes it looks like tat's. It's just that we as black people, I think, are aware that something is deeply wrong with the standards to which we're expected to be uh to hold up. And so eventually, as young people, the fear, the lack of fear when you're young, makes you push back at it with a lot more, you know, umph, And maybe they push well, yeah, and maybe they pushed too far. Maybe there is such a thing as okay, you've pushed it too far. But the action of pushing, I want to be careful. We don't quell that. Are they pushing back on the standards that they don't believe? Are they just following the group and doing what's acceptable. Yeah, I'm from Brooklyn. I rebel against everything. I rebel against left nostril breathing, left nostril breathing. But are they pushing against it because they're their freedom, They're um expressing their freedom and their choice. Are they just doing it because everybody else is doing it and this is what I'm doing to be accepted. That's the part that concerns me. Well, that's the scary part. Right, because I do think the difference between this new generation and ours is they're doing more permanent things to their bodies, right, because I do wonder. I do wonder what the older version of the BBL will look like, right, Like you do want you know, after you have a whole bunch of ink on your face and your body, it just turns green and you can't after when you get old, you just can't even see what that used to be. So you got the That's a great point with this generation, is like they're doing more like permanent things. And then the attitudes, Oh that's a whole another more real talk after the break. I think everybody is allowed to have a preference to I mean, look, I like I love to see people dress. I guess the best way for me to say it is quirkily. I like people with quirks. You know, Um that that is half is half of north Strom, I suppose, and and half drift Store. You know where there's where they're adding creativity. Um, I can I can take more creativity, Like even if it's short and tight, if it's creative, I can ride with it. You know, because you're you're putting, you're putting yourself into this thing rather than this thing wearing you. And I like to see that, you know. That's what I that's what I like to see in my in my mentees. Um. But I ain't gonna please everybody with my thoughts. I just want them to be whole and healthy, you know. I know the things that I rebelled against growing up. I was a panther coming out of the Church of God in Christ. I was a black panther and African dancing they are back then, it was you know, to be a back planther back then, which that was a problems and also to to be uh to Really people were fighting for rights and everything, but they still had afrophobia because you know, you had those of us who were cultural nationalists and we're into the culture right there in Philly and and Brooklyn. I was in Brooklyn, you know, and we're really expressing ourselves as African descendants of Africans, and there were those who wanted to be free but still wanted you to look white. So you know, I had a quarter of an inch of hair on my head back in the sixties. You know, that's going on at HBCUs right now, on any every HBCU campus school days continues to exist. If we're talking about our our our young women being whole and knowing that we all, you know, went through a stage or five, you know, to get where we are today, how would a young woman know that she wasn't Oh, they know, though they do know. They I don't think we've provide them with enough support to process it, work through it, do the work. And a lot of them wanted. I talked to him all the time because they talk to me about relationships, so they know. I spoke at the orientation of her HBC you recently and it went about maybe eight hundred, nine hundred young people. First day of college. I had to two experiences. One a young man stood out. He was thirty three years old, first time in college because he grew up as a sex worker, not um, he was traffic His mother was a drug added he was born into sex trafficking, and then he was trafficked. So at eighteen, when he should have been graduating school, he was being trafficked. And so at thirty three he made the choice in the decision to come to college for the first time. He stood up in the audience of nine hundred people and said that now my generation you would have went to hell. You would have went to your brave holding that information. So he stood up and he spoke about it. The young people really supported him, and his question was, how do I clean myself offense? And he said the reason he was standing up was because he read yesterday I cried, and I have the chapter in that book on my sexual violation. And he said when he read that, he knew that he could move forward. So to come to college the first day and see me just blew his brain. So, I mean, that's an example of how they are more advanced than than we are, and also a cry for help. Another young woman stood up and spoke, and she said that she was sexually violated at the age of five, told her parents about it by the time she was eight, and they didn't believe her, and nothing was ever done to the person. And as a result of that experience, she developed o c D obsessive compulsive disorder, and she, you know, worked through it with the therapists and stuff. She knows she still has it. But her biggest issue was trusting people. So how she Her question to me was, how do I learn to trust people? If I want to say something and tell them something without feeling like they're not going to believe me. And I said to her, aren't you brilliant? At eight years old, when your parents weren't ready to address that issue, your mind figured out something for you to focus on other than being raped. So it focused on what sheets, folds, towels, pillings. How wonderful is the abrupt mind. But now you don't need it, You don't need to shift your focus. Your choosing another way. You've ushered a lot of us, oh so many of us. Us two healing the process of healing, the thought about healing, you know, um, because black folks, you know, we just we just deal with stuff and we just keep pushing it. Were pioneer through or we take the l and drink too much or smoke too much or screw too much, or you know, just trying to get through just to get by, you know. But you have been a beacon when it comes to I'll say you and Queen afoor um, when it comes to paying attention to yourself, pay attention to your spirit, pay attention to your to your thoughts, honoring your pain, because that's a tom or anybody honor and no pain, you forget about pain. You ignore pain. You move on. You know, if you're if you're strong, you know um and I definitely you know. I don't know how. I bet you get your flowers all the time. But here's some more thank you, thank you. I would love to join in the flower giving if I may. You know, you gifted our mothers, many of our mothers, with language that they really desperately needed. And I've set in groups of women of my age group multiple times and discussed what books all our mama's had, and all our mama's had acts of faith, Like all our mama's had this book, like this was dope book your mama. It's like I know that you my tribe. If your mama had for color girls on the bookshelf, and she had acts of Faith on the on the bookshelf, if she had color purple on the bookshelf, it's like it's like a club of us. We understand the thing because our mothers understood the things. So you gifted and ever go and work book. And and though many books would would follow, that book gifted our mothers with something they had not had prior. And so for us, now we we had a thing. We had a thing, and and and that is a gift from from your mind and heart. I want to just kind of address what you said, is that they know with the whole idea of that they know. Part of that is honoring that people are very are self aware to a degree, and that's sometimes we have a tendency, especially I feel like when we get to our authorities to talk down to women in their twenties as if they don't know who they are to a degree. I mean, of course they don't. They have not pulled everything together, but there's some basic, very real things that they know that you kind of have to listen and honor what they're saying. And I feel so many of the women that I've met in their twenties feel belittled by us. They feel misunderstood, unheard, disrespected. And then on the other side out here women in my age and older who feel unheard disrespected by women in their twenties. So I'm just trying to figure out, how can we mend how can we mend this thing, How can we bridge this gap? How can we do for these women what our mothers did for us when they read that book, Like how can we pass on this language to them? Your mom may have my mom didn't. And my mom didn't have the language either, but your mom didn't have the social media. And I'm with you on the step and I'm with Jill on the step of where the young people are. IM on that step with you, and and they are self aware, but they also self diagnosed, many of them. And some of the diagnosis that they come up with is I'm okay, this is okay, and it's not. I have a piece of art um that I got from Twana years ago. It's it's a sculpture of a man who's been all the way over. He's spent over in the front and he's looking at his butt. And it's called self doctoring. And you know, you don't diagnosis is misdiagnosis, and that my concern. And then for me as an elder, I don't look down. I don't um challenge, but I do question, and they are threatened by questions. See in my generation, they ordered you better, not you better, don't you you, don't you? Ever, that's what I got. I think y'all got some combination of why are you doing that right? And we got you better too, We got like a mix. He's young. My experience with many of them who are not self aware. If you question, make inquiry just to create conversation, they feel challenged and threatened, and they'll really come for you in ways that are just not healthy. There's a difference between observation and judgment too, And often times when when you you know, because I could, I do really consider myself an anthropologis when it comes to the host, you know, I do, I do. I think they're fascinating and I will always feel this way. There's nothing that could ever stop me from finding that whole um way of life completely fascinating. So I got love for Okay, that's just so so, you know, because that's the observation and the judgment portion, because we're not We're not and we're not eighteen. You know, I'm fifty. You know, my my friends here in their forties, you know, and Wednesday, I can't tell what we do like years. We love a September baby a man, Yes we do. Yes, I am a Burger straight up neurotic and crazy as hell. Are rotic and crazy as hell of September thirte baby. We love to see it. I'm September okay, Oh you Louie bro I um going the same day as Bell Hooks. Just make sure them scales balanced. Well look at that. Wait a minute. Okayah, who are you born the same day as George Burns and Quest Love? Okay, well there's a mix for y'all. How about you, Yama, It's me, Tyler Perry and Tavith Smiley, all born saying that's that's that's that's a whole ful that's a wholeful. Share who I was born day? Right? But those are the ones I know now? Who you got? I don't name one, but it's more than that. But me and my own oh yeah, oh yes, I add one too. It's me Bell Hooks and Will Smith. I think I think you better keep them scales balance, you better keep them scales out. I try to, I try to. I have slapped a few people in my life, but hey, and I believe. I believe they reform. I'm a reform slapp of you. They earned it. And I only know because my mother is going on ages birthday as well. It's just just having us make sure to not be finite in our thinking when it comes to our young people, you know, um and and being open to them. How do you how do you get mentors how does it happen for you? I have mentored one person in my life because the way my schedule is and the thing that I have to do, if I can be fully present in the relationship, I would never I wouldn't do it. So I got one about a year ago. She's an Indigenous woman in Yale Divinity School. Uh. And she has been around in my all my radar for a while, and she was coaching with one of my faculty people, one of my faculty members. Um. You know, I have a school where I do train coaches and ministers and I do personal development. She came to me through one of my faculty members, and I've been working with her um at Yale Divinity School. But that's the only one I've ever had because I just I couldn't be present and I was working twelve fourteen hours a day when I was doing the show or flying all over the place. And now I'm kind of semi retired. Um, so I may do more of it. I'm not really sure. I was school full of mentees. Well, yeah, I just don't teach them all. The foundation is the same. But I was in the bathroom yesterday, not on the toilet or anything. Just there, and if you were, I don't want you to think I was speaking about my personal release activities. No, And and I got this idea. There's there's a workshop that I've done for many many years, Rights of Passage, where I take women through the rights of passage for their tribe. And your tribe is your age, twenty tribe, thirty tribe, forty tribe, fifty tribe, sixty tribe, um and I do it in a week in person. And yesterday I really heard take this online. I think women and would attend if it were accessible to them that way, because that's one of the concerns that I got a fashion weekend. As women, we're so conditioned to do things the way men do them, and we really don't get our womanhood training anymore because our lives are so different. So many of us don't live with our grandmas, So many of us don't have aunties. When I grew up in grandma got sick, you didn't put her in the home. She came in the spare bedroom and you went to the sofa, you know, or you had aunties that you would listen to and they would check you and that kind of stuff. And each tribe of women, each tribe, your twenties, your thirties, each of us have a lesson of vision, a mission, and a purpose and a blessing that supports us in our growth and development. I think too many women are growing up on the internet. They see things on the internet, they hear things, and and like you said earlier, one of the things that concerned me at Fashion ye were a number of women who have done permanent things to their body. On on Fix My Life, I worked with a beautiful, beautiful young sister who had gotten um all black market but enhancements that went bad and ruined her body. So I saw a lot of that. Yesterday my formal makeup artists went and had light bulb suction and something the anesthesiologists wasn't um license. She ended up in a coma and then rehab and at beautiful young woman at thirty something now is walking on a cane. I really didn't know how common it was, Ayana, until I was talking to two of my girlfriends who are considered i mean, earthy of sorts, and they both individually told me they had lightpo and they had things, and I was like, really, I just didn't even know it was in my tribe. Lightpo is one thing I don't have no issue with sucking us fat outside can continue to eat my grits. I don't have a problem with that. That really because it doesn't isn't at the beginning of the spiral. No, absolutely not. Sometimes you have LPPO because you may have lost weight and you have those lumpy things all you had a baby, or you know, the body just isn't responding quick enough to diet and exercise. I'm not talking about that. They don't talk about the recovery either. Nobody ever does. It's like you disappear for a week and you come back snatched, and nobody even ever talks about pain or medication or you know, if something doesn't heal properly, Like they're really not talking about it, Like I feel like they should be talking about it. We're gonna take a quick break and then it will be right back. I just I maintain all the time that I feel like mostly we're just dealing with a situation where the traumas are the same. They just have access to different things to address it. It's like, I don't feel these girls are any more traumatized than any of us were around our self. View and who we are. They just have access to things to change it in different ways and change it, disguise it well, yeah, disguise it right or process it or whatever it is they're gonna do. But the thing is that if it's like now when we talk about violence, Okay, so Philly is on fire right now, as a lot of different cities are, and we're all talking about how these kids are so violent and they're so violent. I really they're not anymore violent than any person ever was. What is happening is this is a response to the ongoing and constant generational same crap that we've all dealt with over and over and over again, and um the threshold and access to weapons, and the threshold for which each generation loses less and less threshold for enduring this mess. It is just for me, I feel like this, This is where I feel how can we expect for young people to respect life when everything around them And I'm not going to immediately point to the media. I'm going to say they live in a country that don't respect life. They live and interact with systems every day that don't want them to live period, and make it very difficult to do so. I mean very difficult. If Serena Williams can barely, who is a who is a multimillionaire, can barely survive childbirth, then what does that say about Keisha or Monique or Tasha. You understand what I'm saying. What does that say about them? How easy is it for them to die under the guise of health care, under the guise of not having access. And it's just for me, that in and of itself is violence on them. So if you're experiencing violence every single day, then I don't know, would you not be violent? Would you not be violent? And everyone on this call is privileged. Every person on this call has has privileged in a way, And we though we are experiencing the same violence, we are not experienced in that violence at the level to which so many of our brothers and sisters are period word. Well, I think the privilege that I had, I can't speak for anybody else, was there was even though it was sketchy and lines, and even though it didn't cover everything that I needed in my life. There were conversations because we were dinner tables, not stybro phone boxes in my lamp. There were um family activities and events, even though you had to, you know, avoid the certain individuals at those things. But there were conversations and now there's recordings and there's social media and there's filling the blank. To me, that's a form of violence to force people into unknown territories and situations, to have someone in a situation where they need information and they can't even have human contact. Oh yeah, every day it's coming into more clarity that, like people are lacking social interaction and it's literally just absolute and what are the things that happened after you don't know how to interact socially? Because I'm with you, Asia, I wasn't saying that there aren't reasons for why peop don't back life. It's everybody. It's it's a whole bunch of reasons. However, it is what it is. It's still getting worse, and it feels heavy. It can't socially interact. Everything feels heavy, and they don't really know how it's heavy. That's yeah, it feels heavy for for us, and we are privileged, you know, it feels I know, you know, we're paying attention to society, we're paying attention to our children, what they're watching and what they're doing, and what they're listening to. Drill music. I just got introduced to last night, and I didn't know what what? What? What? What is that? So basically, it's a very it's it's it's a it's site, it's a chance it's like chance music. And they're talking about someone who has passed, someone who's died violently, and how they're going to die violently, and then that person dies violently, and they're talking about the next person who's gonna die violently, and it just seems like this this whole Uh wow, I wasn't I wasn't ready either. I didn't know it existed, but it does. I didn't exist. And then because we don't talk, we don't know. I didn't didn't I didn't know that. Where is it? Yeah? That too? Yeah? That too? YouTube music? Is that what it's called? I got it right? Lie? Is it's drill music? Or it's called drilling. Look I'm looking at Agia like she know better than me. She got well, No, I don't know anything about this, but I will say this much that I want to reiterate this, this thing about conversations, because that right there, that that blessed my heart, because conversations and talking is so important, and communicating with each other so important, and even to talking like now we're talking about this drill music thing, right that the four of us are talking about it, But um, a lot of times, by the time we started talking about it, the kids don't moved on. They like, we don't even we don't even do that. No more, y'all late, stay late. We definitely ain't dealing with it. If y'all talking about it, we don't want them to do with it. So I think again, and and this has been a I've heard y'all repeat this multiple times while we've been talking about conversations that she's having with people, I am talking to people, and um, and and that is just important. Like if we're gonna if we're gonna talk, we can't just talk to each other all the time. We gotta be talking to people from all kinds of different backgrounds and everybody. People have had different experiences and we have from different age groups. And that that generational conversation, those opportunities to interact with with youth, with elders, those opportunities are so few and far in between, and that that's what I'm hoping, like, maybe we could bring that we could kind of pull from this particular well, what I've pulled from this this what's on your heart is that if we're going to bridge these gaps, and we need to be talking and not just having language for things, but sharing it, because what what use is it if we have these things and this knowledge and we can't share it and we can't communicate with each other, you know what I mean? And and and the more you communicate with people, the more comfortable they become, because that that officness, that feeling like I don't want you to question me, is that not some sort of distrust, a distrust that comes from other interactions they've had with elders who they shouldn't have trusted, who have hurt them, who may have done things to harm them and told them things that were wrong. So I think it's about creating trust, you know what I mean, And that trust that happens over time. That's just not an overnight thing. And when you're when you're trum ties and all of us have some level of trauma. I think the new levels of trauma that people are experiencing are easier to camouflage or dismiss or dis you know, cover up. But when you are traumatized, and when you have a trauma response. And I think in many ways in the society we have normalized trauma. We've normalized that, we've made it okay, and and that does diminish trust and it does keep you from speaking out. Um and so like the young woman said she was sexually violated from five to eight and told her parents and they didn't believe her. What was there not to believe about that? What was there? She I just I don't believe that somebody didn't get there behind with That's what I don't believe. But anyway, well they that's out. People don't don't don't spank their children anymore. Uh, some people I don't know them, but some a lot of people don't. You know, I don't spank my kids. It feels like a lot of people saying spank the button. Years nor have I but in years you don't have to. Yeah. Still, the fact that we're okay with the fact that our children walk around traumatizing we don't even know it, we don't even know it does feel like war. It is. It feels like the war on the spirit where we've been separated from each other. I know that I don't like to go out as much as I used to. I don't like I don't like so many people as as you know, too much too often. You know, I'll do it sometimes, but I gotta gear up to do it, you know what I mean. I gotta gear up. Um. I noticed just recently last night with my family, we eat dinner together every night, and we put our phones down. You know, nobody is allowed to pick up their phone while we have a meal, and we have conversations. And I love us talking, but I I really didn't realize that we had not been touching and agreeing while we pray. I was like, oh, how did we forget this important portion, this touching each other? Yes, like the hand holding portion, the touching and agreeing portion, the gratefulness together portion. And I'm really disappointed in myself you know happens yeah, yeah, And and all the adults that live in the house with with with us, like what are we doing? What? I feel like the gathering that matters is that gathering? Like it's the gathering. I think sometimes it's a call we're going out, you know, that's a that's that arbitrary gathering that sometimes it's okay, But that's not really the important gathering. The gathering is that those times when you can talk and and remember to touch and degree and that kind of that kind of energy. I mean just for me, but I'm gonna say this too because I feel like I don't want to skip past it. What when the Yana said about not knowing your kids are traumatized and being okay with that, I just want to address that real quick, because that that's so real. Kids learned really early how to perform for you, and they know when you're gonna respond, and they know how you're gonna respond to the nuances of your responses. So they know sometimes how you're gonna respond to their vulnerability without even trying it with you. They've observed you with with other kids or other people. They know when you're not ready to hear the truth that they're trying to share. And kids will perform okayness, perform wellness. Like for example, you have a lot of kids that are highly traumatized, but they got good grades. That's right, they're highly traumatized, but they're real well mannered. Yeah, and and and parents will check them off on the box. Because as long as you you clean, you dress nice, grades are good, you're all right, got manners, you don't embarrass me. Not only are you all right, but you're not a problem for me. It's it's not you. You You may not be all right, but you ain't making nothing else for me to do. You're not a problem for me. So as long as you got the grades, and you are obedient and you do what I say do, I'm not looking at the fact that you're wear long sleeves all the time now is because you're cutting, or that you're there's something else going on. I'm not because I'm not. I'm one of those kids that grew up where I was most of the time the healthiest person in the room because the big people was stocked out of their damn minds, traumatized, and all sorts of other things. But I learned just as you said. I was great in school, I was mannerable, I was helpful. I was all of those stuff and and and crazy as hell crazy. And when I say that, I say that very lovingly. I don't mean I had a mental health illness. I mean that I was. I was living in total trauma and breakdown. But I wasn't a problem. I didn't pose a problem I didn't require anything additional. There was nothing anybody had to do for me, so they just left me there. Is that the way to go? Is that the way? Yeah? I'm just asking, is that the way to go? If you're gonna have a lot of trauma in your life that you're not problematic to others? Uh, Well, it becomes problematic later on if you don't get it handled, if you're for you later on. I think I think a lot of young people probably feel that way. Like I got a lot going on, a lot of hurt in my life, but if I just keep it on a straight narrow and don't cause any problems, then I'm golden. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I always say you want the truth and see the problem with that is that when you do find a child who is willing, who is going to show you, I'm I'm fucked up, you know what I'm saying, Like, when you have a kid that's like and you're gonna see me, You're gonna see me. The problem with when you don't pay attention to the child who is well behaved is that then you start comparing those two children. Why can't you be like so and so? They all right, they grew up in the same household with you. How come y'all not you know, and that's the problem. Well, I feel like that's been an an issue with parents like myself and other parents that I know who are my age as we do share with each other that this is this is a thing, how to how to look at your young person and here and see them, especially since we all been kind of trained and told this is a good kid, this is a bad kid, and even down to what we talked about earlier, this is a good young lady, and this is a problematic young lady. And I want us to be careful with that because I just know, and I've seen it with my own eyes. I've seen it with my own children. I've seen it with my my friend's children. I've seen it with community members and kids that I've worked with. And I'm like, we're missing this, We are really missing the mark on this. Part of the reason is because there are so many of us in particularly in that I would say like thirty five up to maybe seven, that we don't know that we haven't honored our trauma, we haven't witnessed our own yet when we see young people, we don't know how to be present with them in their trauma or pain, because ours is so raw and usually in the human consciousness, the human psyche. If you don't know what to do about something, it's easier for it not to be there. So you'll act like you don't see what you see here, what you're here, because you don't want to see it because you don't know what to do about it. You don't know what to do about it. Many mothers who have been sexually abused don't want to hear that their daughters were sexual abused because they don't know what to do about it. They either want to fight or kill or you know, to get the police involved or whatever. So sometimes they act like it's not there, um and and and we blame and project. So again, I think conversations are important. And when you have that revelation like you had, Mr Jill, when you have that oh my god, we're not touching a degree and we're not old in hands, what was I thinking? Come on, y'all, let's touch and degree, let's whole hands. Sometimes you don't have to do a deep dive psychological process on everything. It comes up when it's supposed to come up. You become aware when you become aware the situation, can you respond in a self supportive, self honoring, self loving way that also supports everybody else. So the fact that you all were eating together, that's good. Now it's time to connect. It wasn't time before more conversation after this break. You know what I think friends sees. That's I think that there is a space for game. You know, everybody's like, oh, put me up on game. I think there's there's there's just supposed to be some game that we're handing down to our our young people. Like, for instance, if this is this I'm going, I'm going with where we started with the with the clothing. If you're going to dress scantily, how's that? Um, because you've been blessed with this beautiful figure. I remember having that myself. Oh the days. Um, that you know how to fight mm hmm, that you you know how to protect oneself uh in any way that you possibly can, That you know how to listen to your intuition that said is don't go into this room. That you know how to protect yourself. Basically, you know, I feel like there's a trade off here because where where they're there's still sheeps they're the little the little little lambs out in the world with a bunch of wolves. So how best to If you're going to to do these things, then you need to know how to protect yourself. I want you to know how to fight. I want you to know how to disable. That sounds like a good plan to me. I mean, it's there's no way for me. I see your face, agent, there's no way. I love you, I love you, and I love you, but I want you to know that the likelihood of you being attacked is just as high when you have on sweatpants. So if everybody, if you have to learn how to fight because you're wearing a tube top, you better learn how to fight whether you're wearing a full on winter coat and everything else too, Because this is the thing. Listen, my daughters, listen. I got four daughters, okay, and I have been through and we talked about this on the podcast. I've been through these conversations, been thorm and I've had to think about my value around it and what I'm saying to my daughters and the implications of what I'm saying to my daughters. And absolutely there's gonna be places where just the same way it's appropriate to wear a coat when it's cold. There's it's appropriate dress for places that you might go or want to do things. I've actually even heard my daughter loves a crop top. Honey. She's twenty years old. She loves a crop top, loves a crop top. We were supposed to be going out to lunch and I heard her friends say, Dia, no crop tops today. I've heard her own friend check her on the crop top. Love you hear me. So I'm saying that it's not that we can't help our young people to understand and you know, being able to do things in a way that's diverse and able to fit in in lots of different places or see themselves outside of just trying to belong. I don't It's not that I don't think that that's valuable, but we got to be super careful what kind of messages we're sending them about that, and about them knowing who they are and being able to express that and being free to express that, and not putting something on them and saying they're responsible for some sort of oncoming trauma that's because of that. You know, That's not That's not what I'm saying. I know, what's not what's just saying, but it had that sound to it. I'm so sorry, but that is not my intention. I'm saying that if you're going to wear high heels, somebody's got to teach you how to walk in them. You know what I'm saying. I'm saying that, um, that our young women need to know how to protect themselves, period, so they can wear what they want to wear. Because we know that the world is sick. They're not they're they're they're out there in a jungle. These these folks old and young, are not well, so they need to know how to protect themselves. Like what is game? How do we prepare them? How do we let these birds out of this nest so they can fly as best as we possibly can. How do we do that? How do we protect them when the enemy is Uncle Boo Boo, my boyfriend nowadays Auntie's girlfriend. You know, how do we protect them from that? And what's the game that we have to give them to manage that when they do when when they do encounter that level of trauma, because you know, it's right in your home, like the young woman, uh, and the parents didn't know what to do, so they did act like it didn't happen when they do encounter that kind of trauma and being scantily clad or tatted or not is the way that they hide their pain. H What do we do that without? Well, but you gotta have conversations, you gotta be to ment, you gotta know that it is there. Listen, my grandson and my great grandson is four, you'll be five on the twenty of this month, and the first two years of his life were so traumatic. Really, and this is my grandson's son, and I'm looking at it, you know, be Iamavanzan. I'm not immune to family drama or hysteria. And so he's four and you if you the trauma that this kid experienced that by the time he was too is you know, I'm the livable. And so now at four going into five, he has an issue trusting adults. And no matter what you say to him, he don't believe you. We're gonna do so and so or Okay, this is a bag of beads. No it's not. Yes it is, baby, Look it's a bag of beach. No, no, it's not a bag of beads. What is it? I don't know, but it's not that so my old school year was like, this kid is being disrespectful you It is a bag of beads, because I said's bag of bees? Don't you talk back to me? And then I realized, oh my god. He doesn't trust adults. He doesn't trust what's being said to him. He doesn't trust that people are telling him the truth. He doesn't trust. So you know, that's why he ended up in my kitchen because you know, great granny, Yeah, yeah, I've got to I've got to support him in unraveling that. But how many people don't have the skills, the tools, the desire. You know, we're so busy trying to get friends and likes, and we don't have the desire to interact and be intimate and have conversation and pay attention to what's going on because at four I've got to do it at four and five because that in the street, that will get him shot when they pull him over in his car and he's I ain't stopping. There's the violence first against him and then so you know, it's quite complicated. Lots of reasons for us to continue to drink coffee and smoke happy flowers. I love it, well, you know, I'm always looking for solutions. I'm always trying to find trying to think what what is the thing? You know, it could be multiple things. But your books, you're presence, your energy, your consistency have been a blessing to us. You've given us gigantic platforms to jump off of and and fly, and that is definitely and most sincerely appreciated. I'm asking for the game book, ma'am to me too. I'm asking for the game book. Do it. It writes a passage because the twenty year olds game is different from the thirty year olds. Year olds is different from the fifty year old. At seventy, I got to remember the game so that I only have a philosophy about work in the in the ages. But that's it. The twenties you work hard, the thirties you work smart, the forties you work how you want to. The fifties are for working when you want to, and the sixties are work for working if you want to. Only I only know the work part. That's the only part that I came up with. And to me, I feel like that's game for somebody who's who's interested in working, right, So I feel like there has to be game for other things as well, for speaking, you know, but we'll talk about that. I'm gonna let you know when I get writes of passage together so you can get in your tribe. Thank you. So I'm trying to Can I make a reservation for my tribe? Please? I don't know. I don't have no game. I just want so Okay, I don't know how much it costs, but I got sixties seven dollars I will save until then. Thank you so much for being here. Appreciate your honor and the pleasure. Thank you so so much. And you know I'm right out on the road on Shonda Land on the R spot every Wednesday, so listening absolutely absolutely? How do you eat an elephant? One? By? It time? Hey, listeners, It's Amber, the producer of Ja don Ill here. Ian La is an icon for healing. I want to encourage you all to check out her new podcast on the shadow Land Network, the Our Spot. Each week, she invites callers to share their personal relationship issues during live sessions to help inspire, grow and guide them and other listeners to do the work towards healing. I'll drop a link to the our spot and the show notes. HI if you have comments on something he said in this episode all eight six six. Hey, Jill, if you want to add to this conversation, that's eight six six nine five four five five. Don't forget to tell us your name and the episode you're referring to. You might just hear your message on a future episode. Thank you for listening to Jill Scott Presents Jay dot Ill. The podcast JA dot Ill is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.