Let's Talk About This NAP: With Tricia Hersey

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Jay dot il a production of I Heart Radio. Jill, you have to open up the show, Ma'm I'm not opening up the show. I got to open a show. You got to the show. Excited. Listen, everybody, We're really excited. We're excited. That's all I mean. We've already been clapping and cheering. It is. It has been such a journey, like we've been wanting to talk to this woman for a year or more, a year or more like this, lady, how you've blessed our lives. Look this welcome to Ja dot Ilder Podcast. This is Joe Scott and I'm here with my sister friends, Ada Graydon Danzler. Hello, Hello, Hello, and the lovely liar st Clair. Ready for arrest, Ready for arrest. It's so much more. And and Tricia, am I saying your first name? Yes, Mercy Baby, Trisha thirsty baby. If you don't know who this is, uh what minister Asian? You know this? No? This is this is the NAP Bishop. But what we'd like to welcome into our into into the sanctuary. Amen. That what we'd like to do is welcome the NAP Bishop Trisha Hersey to the show. Amen, Because what she does is she teaches the black people that they are not only entitled to rest money, but that the people owe us rest, they us rest. I have come to know her from her fabulous Instagram page and that ministry, and uh, it has touched my heart and I honestly she was not lying. We we've been talking about you from seeing you. It feels like a dream right now because it's really happening. And then she showed up a girl. Then she showed up on here with a whole neon sad honey, the aganl aw, the same is here is here like it's just it's just keeping the nineties going, keeping the good line. Get on all of them static. I love that. I'm from the South side of Chicago. So let's just I'm currently in the South side of Chicago, right. No, you are, yes, um, eating good um. Yes, I am engod. I'm on my way to the Inglewood Music Festival. Yes, so we will be doing that that whole nine. But yes, from Chicago. Give it to us, give it to us, give us the receipts, not Bishop. I've been an activist for twenty five years. I was raised as an activist. My dad was a pastor, of the Church of God in Christ for black then a Costalkjic, and so I grew up in that denomination. But my dad was also deeper into the Black Panther movement, you know, Pan Africanism, super black everything, and also a union organizer and activists, and so I grew up, you know, always understanding that none of us will be free until we're all free and understanding like the real core of what it means to be a black body in this country. It's a blessing and it's a miracle our name. It is one of the deepest miracles ever to be alive and on this earth. When they've tried to do so many things to eradicate us from the earth, we're still here. And the word word miracle really but dis gracious. I feel like I've seen you have to address and I love the way you address people because you're very clear that they're not there to extract labor from. But yet the work that you have done, the study that you put into what you've done, is important to be clear and to clarify with folks that this is what I'm talking about. You can co opt it and say this or that the other, but I'm here to clarify, not to work, but to clarify for you what it is that what I've what I've been studying. And so I feel like maybe we've all had a hard time wrapping our minds around this idea of self care and what that looks like, and that when you say the word lay down, rest, nap, that people still have a hard time with that very simple instruction, you know. So I just you know, I would love for you to just talk about, like, you know, why, why do you think that it's that we're so it's so difficult for us to follow this simple, simple room well in a capitalist system like the one we live in, in a system that's a white suprematis system, the one we live in in, this is radical. This is paradigm shifting. This is the mind shift, and my name, what is happening to us um as full on brainwashing. And so really, when I started the NEAT Ministry's I G page, I have already been doing the work for three years and the community here in Atlanta already been rolling out of yoga, maths and working. After I finished getting my massive divinity degree at the university, I was in seminary, so I was already working in the community and doing this work UM then ministry and social media page kind of came after a friend of mine was kind of like, you think we should just grand all the pages and say make sure you get then Ministry on every platform, And it was literally like you think so, Like I really it was that much of a decision where I was like, well, okay, I guess I'll do that, because I really was not thinking that I would be using this work in a way in which is being seen now. Like I really was doing the that ministry and experimenting with REST to save my own life. I was saving my life when I started this work. I didn't think about no business plan, It's gonna be on I g I was literally an exhausted, curious black woman who was dying from exhaustion, who was dying from disconnection, who was slowly mentally and physically watching herself. UM really perish in a culture that wants us to perish. And so when I begin to fill all these things, I begin to experiment deeply with REST. I didn't know if it would work. I didn't know what would happen. I said, let the chips fall where they may, Like I got to the point of like, God, gonna have to fill in the gaps because I'm not gonna rush, I'm not gonna be urgent. I'm not gonna stay up late to finish this paper. If I fell out a class, amen to that, because gott to bring another thing into my life. Like I really got to the point where I was like, I cannot do this. And then pairing that with my work studying cultural trauma, studying gym crow terrorists, what it did to our bodies, what it still has done to our bodies, and looking at the history of plantation labor and what my ancestors are ancestors went through, then it became um almost like a reparations and a political protest that I won't donate my body to assist them that still owes reparations to my ancestors, that I will use this moment to recapture the dream space that was stolen from them, to be able to lay down and rest for them in this dimension, to honor them, to um connect with them, and so the recapturing of their dream space. The portal of maps became a really beautiful place for me as I was sleeping on the couch, sleeping in the library at school, sleeping, you know, wherever I could find a place to sleep. I would wake up with these ideas and I would be with my grandmother, who's an answers in her dreams, and she be resting with me, and it was just like it became a beautiful portal of imagination. And so me doing it was just to save my life into experiment. And then as I saw it changing my life, I said, well, as an activist, how could this be a collect stea how the collective coming? And so we started doing the events like before you saw anything online. It was me with yoga mats, blankets that I borrowed from my mother, from my aunts that I washed, the pillows that I could find in their closets, and just donating things because I didn't have a dime. I had like negative twenty five dollars in my account when I started this work. I just wanted. I just knew that if people could lay down and feel this practice and understand what it feels to the rest, collectively, the things could change. And so people started coming laying down on yoga mats, waking up crying, making these connections between what was happening, and so hundreds of um nap events later, you know, being online four or five years. We're at the point now where there's some veils being removed. When this is not a full on movement, it is still very undergrounded, outlier because all of this culture wants us to be grinding nothing in this culture, it wants us to rest. And so when we believe understand that this culture is not gonna ever give you rest, that you're gonna have to snatch it. Be a fugitive, be on maroon, you know, be like you know our ancestors. That's where I think we're at right now. We're at the point where people are a little bit of a veil is being removed and people are kind of seeing behind it and being like, well, what the why am I working like this? You know? Why am I feeling like this? Why am I thinking that I'm not good enough if I take a nap? You know? Where has this toxic, violent idea of our that we about ourselves has been stolen from us, that we really believe that our bodies don't deserve arrest. It's so it's one of the most violent, toxic things when you really think about what the culture has taught us, has taught you to think. My body doesn't belong to me, it belongs to the system. If I wrapt, if I nap, I'm I should feel guilt. I'm not doing enough. I'm not enough. Our self esteem has been ripped apart by this culture. If I believe resting is the foundation, it's the north star for us to begin to be more human, so to say, to repair, to disrupt, to disturb the idea that we're human machines, and we're not human machines. We're divine, perfect human beings who not only deserve rest, but um resting is really the what will keep us free. It's what will help us thrive. I'm past surviving. I don't want to survive no more. Right, I don't want to survive no more. I'm so grateful for my sessions who survive who But I'm We're on the next level and the level of always being towards our liberation is thriving. I just refused. It's that's why it's called resistance. Rest is resistance. The idea of a resistance. It's so deep, it's a multi layer, it's so trickster energy, it's subversive, it's being flexible, and so I'm excited that people are beginning to see themselves free, you know, dream themselves free, to remove a little veil and say, you know what, this isn't normal for me to be feeling like this, for me to be working like this, like I don't feel well, and so what could we use to be able to bring us back to wellness and to bring us back Truly, it's work is about showing people that they're human. It's it's a human It's about humanness. To be more human. One of my favorite poets, On and starches as the poem that she opens up, what does it mean to be more human? To be more the human nous, to be more human? The human like this idea of being a human like, I'm very curious about that. More real talk after the break, we watch our cats. You know, I don't have any cats from people who have cats and dogs. I love cats. People know I love them. That's my point. And I've always said this that in my next life, I am chosen chosen, I've chosen to cat. I'm going to be a cat the next time around, just laying around randomly, lay in the sun and scratching, not getting up if you call their name, my cat, I'll call his name, and he's laid out, he will not move. I'm like, I know you hear me. It's like, yeah, I hear you, but I'm resting right now. So they walk with They walk with the slow switches. They don't rush, They very They have full autonomy over themselves. They have there and that's what we need to be fully autonomous over our own bodies than our own beings. Like, we don't belong to these systems. We don't belong to them. We belong to the creator. We belong to our communities. We don't belong to a system that wants to see us. There's nothing but a tool of production. These systems see us as only a tool to create their more more wealth. Isn't Doesn't that piss you off to think that a system looks by human like that? And so this work is also about my rage. I have a lot of rage and tender rage around the idea of what the systems of their handestors to me, to black women, how we feel like we have to be the mules of the world. I'm in a deep rage about it, and I'm also there's a tenderness in me that says there's a softness that's available to us right now and we don't have to live this way. And so it's a full on political movement. It's a full on social justice disruption. This is a disruption that simply all this work is, we need it. And you know that. You know that. I love how present you are in this revolution. It tickles me. It gives my heart so much joy because we've been tired and tired. I know I have. I talked about that in my book, like when my book comes out and told three level, I'll talk about this whole story being about this fragmented history around my family and my ancestors and the legacy of exhaustion that I want my family come through. I was gonna ask you that being said, what have your your aunts, your mom, your grandmam, like, how have they responded to this work? This is I'm sure I don't say foreign because after our parents, NATS is not for him, but resting for that generation, I think, yeah, for the particular generation. The idea of not doing something, your ladies and get out and do something. Why are you sleeping in? So let you know, when I think about elder black women between the ages of like UM sixty plus. You know they really are don't understand what it means. Just sit there. Even the one can relax. Yeah, the retire one of the work that it wasn't work thirty years at a company and have come with work now they don't have to do that no more. They just they It's still in us. And so it's really a somatic, bodily thing that we have to really look at. This is held in our bodies, the somatics of exhaustion, the legacy of exhaustion that's in our bodies, that has been passed down. It resides in us. And I believe that our ancestors are just waiting for us to take a nap, to lay down the rest, so they can download some information to us that will help us in this dimension, that will give us free in this dimension, that will give us something in the inventive ideas. We need to push this UM world towards a deeper future, but we won't lay our asses down. They're like what they please just stop for a second. I have something to share with them, because resting and dreaming is a portal space. It's a portal Most of us don't even dream I don't know. I don't dream, we don't imagine, we don't daydream. We don't see the opportunity of resting being something generative that can give us something that we need. Like all of the ideas with this work come from me resting and napping and waking up. And I took a thirty days sabbath. Um, I do it every November, and I did it last November, off all phones, all emails. I don't understand I've heard about this that you do. I need you to break this down. I don't understand how life continues on without that. It cons on beautifully, it goes really well. But you have to prepare for. I prepare for for over six months to a year. You have to prepare for. You have to craft away, Like resting is a meticulous love practice. It's a practice, a meticulous love practice, siculous love practor its gonna be something you have to craft and right and no, it's very meticulous love practice, isn't it tender? Rage? Do you feel that we're all in love? I love all of y'all. Oh my god, I wish we could be in the same room. We go like hugs and to rest took an now to get there. I love people cried every event we've had, the tears and emotions. It's spiritual work, really, Jill, Like people think that this work is just oh, go lay down and wellness book to rest, it's spiritual work. It's a spiritual practice to lay your body down, to connect with your body, to hear a word from your ancestors. I think about my grandmother or you asked about my grandmother, who's really the music this work? Who really she's an ancestor now, but I talked about her every single time I can. She's in the book. She really taught me what it means to reimagine rest. You know, a Jim Crow to terror survivor. She's a refugee from Jim pro terror. And I think we need to say refugee because when we love those words, we talk about the Great migration, all of our ancestors leaving south and going north and west, and they all went, they leaved. Mine all came from Mississippi and also bad Rouge, Louisiana. My grandma father was in Mississippi, and she left um like millions of other black people, because she told me she didn't want to see another lynching. That she had seen a lynching and that was it for her. She didn't need to see another one. And so she I like to say, she floated on the spaceship that she made out of uncertainty and hope. Oh, that herself from the Mississippi and came right on up north to Chicago. And that's where we landed. And when my family is from How grateful I am for her to have a couple of dollars in her pocket and to say, I'm a refugee. I'm gone. I know, I don't know what it's gonna be, but this ship ain't it. It ain't it for me to be around my children and seeing them being hung from the tree. Like I'm going to make a way out of no way. I'm gonna imagine and dream myself to a new dimension. So she came to Chicago raising eight children. My grandmother has eight children. I'm one of her dozens of grandchildren. And between working two jobs, working cleaning at a psychiatric hospital and then also cleaning for a family, she would come home and she would sit on her plastic covered couch and she would close her eyes for thirty minutes to an hour every day. It did not matter if we were running in and out her house, if the door was open and we were screaming, she said, on that couch and for thirty minutes or are We always thought she would sleep, and I'm like she's sleeping after thought, she was so accentric. Who sits up like that with their eyes closed, like what's happening? I will always say, Grandma sleep, Yeah, I'll be quiet. And she wouldn't even open her eyes. She say, every shutout, ain't sleep. I'm resting my eyes. I'm listening to God. I'm listen. I ask you. I'm left her name for thirty minutes. So I would just wanted to be why she's fighting poverty, why she's raising children, why she's suffering from PTSD. We don't talking about our ancestors suffering from PTS to see and lynch, I mean, come like how I just think about what they saw, what their bodies endure, what they had to visualize, and holding their bodies and how that holding what it does and how it is now and then not being able to rest. What clever our ancestors figured out if they were more arrested because they have for stake quicker because they thought of that different plans that would have got them to their freedom. I think about here Tubman and when my bro mother did this every single day. But that's what you do to a prisoner of war, That's what you do to a captive. You don't let them rest. No, deprivation is definitely a tool. So this is my question I was gonna ask you on your journey of doing this work, like the relationship, How has the relationship changed of your understanding of the relationship between rest, sleep, and meditation. Yes, that's a good question. Yeah, I clarify in the book. You know, people talk about when they hear the word dot nap ministry, they think this is about naps, and I'm like, this is a way about more than naps. This is about truly at also living that looks at slowing down, that looks at leisure, that looks at um the idea of just being. And so I believe that resting is anything that connects your body and mind, that can slow you down enough where your body and mind can have a moment to connect. And so I love meditation. I think that mindfulness and meditate. I think when my grandmother was doing was meditating, but she would say she was called resting her eyes. She was just resting her eyes. She wasn't asleep, but I believe that was a meditative state for you to slow down and listen. Believe stilence is rest, just the idea of having silence. I believe um drinking tea, slowly listening to a full music album, dancing, prayer, creating an altar, walking, sky gazing, day dreaming, like, all of these things are forms of rest that we can embody and we can reimagine ourselves in this life. And so we're gonna have to reimagine and be flexible and be very inventive of It's not gonna just look like a full sleep cycle. I'm in my room, the door is closed, I'm under a blanket, there's the pillow. No one's bothering me. I have an eyemask on, and I'm sleeping. Yes, we need all of that, but to really start to deepen into this work, to see it as a real political and a resistance movement, we're going to have to be pervasive and very in tune with trying to find rest, snatched rests and create rest moments in these imaginative moments for ourselves. Whenever there's always time to rest. There's always time to connect, to slow down ten minutes, take a longer shower, to take more time putting that lotion on in the morning, don't turn That's just like you need to share this definition with every doctor out here. There goes to say that tells everybody go rest. What does that mean? Yeah? I write a whole list of the different ways that we can look at rest and in fine ways. Because my grandmother she didn't have time and lay down. She was in between another job that she was going to so she could sit for those thirty minutes and get that silence and listen to God. Like when I when she says she's listening to God, what when I think about that? That's the deepest spiritual form of rests to listen, to have silence, to get off these phones, to stop scrolling, to stop hearing the noise of everything in your head. These thirty days sabbath that I take, I'll get so much information. I don't feel like anyone could try to steal my work quotes or take this word because they're not resting like I'm doing. So if you're not resting like I'm doing, you'll never get to the information you won't get the downloads, you won't get to like unique things that are coming when I'm in such a rested state. Seventeen handwritten pages. During my sabbath, I wrote the just ideas and our ideas and poem, I mean seven. When you're not online scrolling for hours, think about the moment that your brain could have to like imagine a wander. It sounds like freedom. When you when Asian first sold as You was on break, I was like, what kind of freedom? Beautiful? Beautiful? The grind is so overwhelming. It's overwhelming, like in in this part of the business, like for instance, like you do a show and and there's all these people and you're connecting with everybody, you know, making the effort to connect and open yourself up to the person, the person outside of the theater, uh in the parking lot. You're you're opening yourself up for this energy to give, but you also received. And I've noticed in the last like, um, you know, like five or six years, I've noticed that once I'm off the stage, I almost pass out. It's a lot. It's a lot. So I go to sleep, you know, and if they can wait. You know, this is before COVID you know, with the meet and greets and like if they I gotta go to sleep, got to lay it down, Yes you have, and I sleep hard and then I can meet people and then I can say hi, thank you for coming in. If you can't wait for that, I don't know what to tell you, because I love that boundary though that you're like, this is what it is, and this is it takes It takes time to figure out what these boundaries are because other than that, you know, you're trying to fit into what is done, the normal, you know, and then you end up burning yourself out. Is this thing not about longevity and I'm just talking about life. If you want to live as much life as you possibly can, healthy quality of life, if you wanted to be feeling like a thriving life, not a life of soft life, not a life where you're burnt out, burnt up, you know, not connected. I think the deepest part of our exhaustion is our disconnection with each other and ourselves. So this this deep disembodied with our bodies and who we are. And we've know that our bodies are tired, we know that we need rest. I'm gonna push through. Why are you ignoring what your body is telling you. Your body is telling you I need to lay down, I need to arrest, and you're like, I'm just push through this, pushing through that cultural and it's a cultural thing that we've been tall and honestly we say that, we say that word so much to our children too. And I think there's a bit of a resentment, particularly from our generation, with younger generations who we feel a pushing through and we feel don't want to work or aren't working hard enough, aren't are somehow inherently, somehow getting messaging that it's like, yeah, I'm not going to sacrifice myself to this. And I think that some of that some of us are having, like we had a lot of time, like having a lot of time processing like where they be coming from on that. There is a balance to that when we're when we're saying things like oh, I'll just I'll just say my opinion, you know, when we're talking about people not wanting to work. For those who do, I would just ask you do the stop you can, courteous, respectful, helpful, you know, um, And but when you're done with that portion, please go lay down, just go outside and look at this guy, lay down. That's the thing about it. People literally are fighting this this idea of not They feel like they're not enough. And I think this goes back to that worth. If you feel like you're not enough, this system teaches you you're not enough, you need to do more. Once you're to do this done, then you're okay. Once you've accomplished enough, then you're okay. Like that's the lie that it sits and resides in us, that it causes us to be able to hold onto something that's killing us. Like this is not trying to be an alarm, but sleep deprivation is killing black people. It is causing so many health issues. The top three high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease have been tracked and traced back to sleep deprivation. Not sleeping a full six hours of full rest of sleep a day, being exhausted. Sleep deprivation is a public health issue. It's a CDC has named it as a public health issue. Entire culture physically is dying from not sleeping. Um and so it's a spiritual lens too. It's a physical lens. It's emotional, it's political. It's like all the legs are coming together to make this work be so powerful and so paradigm shifting and culture shifting that it is going to take a lot of time. And I understand it. I'm glad grateful that it's not going to be quick. I'm so grateful for it being small and when I was having time to deprogram and decolonized to figure this work out, to expand and experiment. This work is about experimentation. It's not wrapped up in a boat to say these are the three things you do to be free from grind culture. Honey. No, you're gonna be unraveling and healing and meticulously loving on yourself through rest for the rest of your days. And we'll hope that our people, when we are ancestors, that the one us who are left behind our families will be uplifting rest for us wearing that dimension. And so this is a pull on life long practice of seeing ourselves as worthy if you are enough. I repeat that so much in a book. If you don't get nothing from this book, understand that right now, as you're reading this book, as you're listening to me, understand that you're you are divine, that you're worth was granted to you by your birth. So you don't have to do all these other connected things that you feeling like I got give your worth. You're worth. It's not hemmed up in capitalism's ideas of what we're gonna take a quick break and then it will be right back. What is the name of your book again? Yes, rest is Resistance a manifesto come out October eleventh. Please tell me you doing an audio book. October eleventh is my um, it's my anniversary anniversary. It's it's the day I lost my virginity. I was. I didn't know which wonder because because this is Jill, so you know, yeah, she went bust out. She because who remembers that day? You remember that, dame, but Jill, nobody remembers that date. I remember the year, the year, maybe maybe the season. I probably confined the day though, because I've been journaling since I was in high school. So you one of those. I have them all on the shelf, like like a book to jealous Happening when I was what was happening when you were eighteen? Like it's a full archive of like yo, I just told jail to Asia, I was like, that's Jennifer Lewis said, that's how she writes all her books because she journal all her life, so she just goes for books and start right. I love that, you know, I always I've always wanted to be a journal person, but I just I've never quite been able to do it. Well. Did you have diaries a little like all the way I did? I definitely did, But you don't keep up with it. You keep up with you. Yeah, I think I have like maybe one from like middle school that I probably still have. I wanted to circle back to something you said because and I've just been sitting with it in my mind, because you keep saying so many good things. I just like, I'm mostly just listening because I'm such a like girl. Jim after Jim after Jim. But any who, um, when you were talking about ancestors and and you talked about also to like the this um the kind of legacy of exhaustion. I remember I went to to grief therapy after my mom passed, and this lady and the lady who was doing it with me was telling me about how like, what did you think was the legacy that my mother left me? And one of the things that she was that that people talked about her a lot of times just like how how much, how easy it was for her to love people, and that she had like this real legacy of love that she left with people. And I remember my son telling me, like, I just want to be I wish I want to be more like Grandma. And I told him, I said, well, you know what, son, there was a cost to her being so present for so many people, and there was a call she paid for that. And I said, now, when I look at my mom, I feel she definitely gave me a beautiful blueprint as to how to treat others and the type of person you want to be when people remember you. But I realized that she sacrificed her body for that in a lot of ways. And I feel like the legacy legacy that she left me was that yes, be be good, be espressial love to people who you feel shold having, but also like preserve the self, take care of yourself, you know, And and that was one thing she just failed to do for herself. And it's like, and to me, I feel like that's really the more powerful legacy that she left me and the thing that I've been sitting with for the last few years. So even in discovering your page. I felt that that was even her guided me into that space to say, listen, you need to I see now I'm about to cry. You need to rest, honey. You just have been on and I don't think I would have believed her has she told me that in the flesh, I think I had to have so much pain to where I could not fit another thing in the cup. I had to be that full in order to deny other things my body and my presence and my labor. So when you said that, it just really resonated with me because I was just like, I have approached my life in such a different way in the past four years, or for for in some change, you know, in the past four years. It has been different. Even with my children. I told my husband said, during the pandemic, my bedroom felt like an office, and it was a constant energy of people coming into the office to talk about what it is they needed to talk about, right, like constant, constant, constant to I felt like, goodness, gracious, I felt like I had to be like a big red like my office. I was just from nine to five like this motherfucker, right, So you know, eventually I had to kind of like start to create these boundaries even with people who I felt were entitled to my labor. So I think sometimes maybe even this thing might go even further from like necessarily capitalism, but also within our inter personal relationships as to how we, you know, expel so much. And if you talk about guilt, that's a major guilt to turn away a child from your foot, from your door. I know. I think that this is the black woman to talk about what has been placed on when I think about the labor and the sacrifice that Black women have done their bodies to who they are. They sacrifice everything to be on good other, to be a good pardner, to do for everyone, and then we're over here dying. I think that legacy the strong black woman, Mammy, the Mammy trope, the muddle of the world, like those tropes were put on us during plantation time, during slavery, when our ancestors were a part of the system that was looking at us as full on machines that's not even human beings at all, but the for the black woman, like how we've internalized that. It's such a deep way we've been taught that we watched our grandmothers do it, our great grandmothers every do it to the point of where their sacrificing their entire being until they're gone, not hearing for their selves. There's no self preservation, there's no you're gonna give, give given to you can't give no more. You have a heart attack and you still in the back at home resting cookie, Then why are you in the hospital? Like I know all black women who have done that, it's like you really there is such a brainwashing. I think we have to keep going back to the idea of this deep socialization that happens to us from birth. I think everyone has that, but for Black people there's a different legacy. There's a different been to the exhaustion, to the way we're always trying to catch up. We're always trying to catch up page priarchy. Also, we cannot forget about patriarchy because that part because the black woman is seen as the mule of the world to save everyone else she can. I'm not trying to save nobody else. I want help and I need help. So the strong troke is one that is to me, the most divisive, the most toxic, and I want all black women to begin to do the healing work. This is a part of a deeper healing agenda like resting and sleepy and slowing down and connecting with your bodies is just one of the deep parts of our full healing agenda. We're gonna have to be healing from our individual trauma. Things that happened to us we were children that made us people pleasers, Things that happened to us we were younger that made us feel like we aren't worthy. Collective trium, I'm gonna have to be looking at what has happened to us collectively. And this is going to take a lot of work. It's not going to just be a one time thing. It's gonna be therapy, prayer, you know, some classes, rituals, working with people, really deeply looking at yourself to see the work. It always going at yourself worth looking at yourself when you can't look at yourself or feel yourself or connect with yourself, if you're always going My girlfriend told me I was selfish once, um, and I told her I was self full, self full yes, then yeah self yeah, because it's not selfish. I'm like, well, you know I did. I did grow up as an only child. But I like my a long time. I like my piece of quiet it's become part of my my life. I need that. How will we be well without? How as human beings will we be well without? It's it's almost to see how deep the brainwatching is for people to actually think that we're going to be able to get to some type of freedom by doing the same things talked to us by these toxic systems. So you think you're gonna get to freedom by doing the same exact things that we're talked to you by the oppressor, by a toxic system has taught you these things, you won't be able to get there. And Audrey Lord has a beautiful quote that I love you will never dismantle the master's house using the masters tools. Yeah, I want to keep being exhausted, to keep acting like you're the slave master, keeping grind, keep and thinking it from that you're gonna be able to equal liberation and thriving in freedom like it. Just it doesn't make sense that we believe that we can keep grinding ourselves to obliving and think that that's gonna offer us beautiful results, that's gonna offer us results that look like liberation. It's gonna offer us more of the same. And so that's where the shift comes from that mind shift of knowing that we have to like, really, look, this is something that we're going to have to do a practice every day. That's the center of our life. It's not just this adecute little thing you do. It's literally has to be the foundation. Resting has to be the foundation for our north star, for our entire lives, for our um activities is trying to be community activists. I work with a lot of organizations and activists who you know who are out here trying to do all these beautiful things to giving us our freedom, but they're working eighty hours a week and I'm like, m hmm, how is that You're trying to help us get our freedom but you haven't slept in three days and you're like having to your help, Like, how are you going to help us get your freedom when you're going to be dragging your body across to the online with you. We need you alive to do the work like we need to U. Angela Davis one time was talking about that. She was saying how she was like, you know this new she said, we never thought about, you know, self care or taking care of ourselves, or she was we never talked thought about those things. That sounds published, she said, And we lost a lot of people, a lot of people you know, a mother. But if you look at and many of us from this generation, some of us had activist parents. I did not, but I have seen a lot of I've talked to a lot of second generation UM children who had activist parents from that era, and they will tell you that their parents have a myriad of health issues. Their mental health is physical health issues, mental health issues that they you know, that just the way it ravaged the bodies of their parents. Yeah, that's why when you talk to Al Sharpton today he tells you his health regiment, you'd be like, what not like Sharpton about take care of self? Like core and now he saw because he was almost out of here with health and he turned that around. It may sound like an idealist, UM, just a beautiful thing. Thank you. I'm gonna match learn an idealist as well. Like I want people to say that sounds impossible what you're talking about. Thank you. I'm glad to be part of the impossible crew because that's where our healing is going to come from. People Dave dreaming and imagining things that don't exist, you know, I feel like we're imagining stuff. You know, it's the stuff. We want a lot of stuff. And I don't know if people realize until you actually have a lot of stuff that a lot of stuff requires a lot of energy and effort to maintain. It takes a lot. So what is Is it a big old house with with ten bathrooms or is it a town house or or you know, a cabin in the woods that will give you your piece? Like piece is really individual. And I see a lot I understand. You know this, this this try, this effort to to get this bag. You know, get the ay I be invisible, I get it. I get it because there were definitely times where there was no food in the pantry and you know, two pair of shoes a year. I recalled these things very much. So you know, I have a thing where I don't like to see the pantry empty. It scares me, you know. And I have a lot of shoes because I you know, I'm like, I guess that's a you know, a trauma in my mind for poverty, the poverty of where we live through. We have to hear from that as well. Definitely, I see that a lot that we're all trying to get all of this stuff. Well yeah, I mean that they're telling us that that this this is the way that people will know that you got it, that that that we got this thing that we're trying to get, Like your's the allens, here's here's the receipts. The new word they had, generational wealth. It's like, oh, now you're solving You're solving all the problems of black people by learning how to make a lot of money. It's it's a lie. It's is a repackaging of the same lie. And I'm just tired of hearing it all the time. And it's like to me, to me on my group chat, my girlfriend group chat, Operational soft Life, and you said soft life. We are on Operation soft Life. This is all we're talking about in the group chat. It's like, what are we doing to create this softness in our lives? You know what I mean? And it's like, no one wants the herd anymore, the hardest whack. I don't want to exchange, you know, more stories with each other of how we've endored some massive hardship, Like I don't want to talk about that anymore. I don't want that to be the way that we bond. I want us to bond over the softness of our lives and what have we done to encourage that? And it is hard work and it does take community. And I don't know what I would do if I didn't have other people to bounce this kind of thing off of. I wouldn't I feel like I would have giving into the whole You're lazy, Yeah, that's why you're not, you know, ambitious enough, or the cree of other people to be like, no, you're not crazy, Like this is whack. And I don't want to work that way. And I think I'm so happy because I felt like an outlier when I first started this work. I felt very lonely. When I first started this work back in twos and I was talking about this rest and that idea, people were laughing at me. They were like, girl, Like black people, white people, everybody was like girl, that sounds crazy. And I love to grind. I love to be busy. I love it. I could never lay down. I don't like the rest. Like literally, people were fighting me and thinking that the work was really They thought it was an ironic satire Joe that I was playing on because I am a performance artist. Installation new theaters. So they thought it was just like one of my events that I was doing. I was like trying to be funny, and I'm like, no, I'm dead ass. Like we're gonna be resting to reclaim our bodies and reclaim um, our ancestors, rest and we're going to be resisting the system that says that we are machine and that we belong to it's simply to be working on its clock, and so we're going to resist that by simply laying down. The practice is to stop, is to lay down, it's to slow down, it's to say no more. And they thought it was a joke. And so I'm grateful that now there is a community of people that they know if they are feeling away, they can come and come to our events, come look on the page and read the book that's coming out, and really be like swaddled and cuddled in this idea of care, of deep, deep community, care of deep interconnectedness. I want this work to feel like a metaphorical soft pillow, you know, like a blanket that you can put over you when you feel a little softness in a world that hates you unless you're working. You know, all my underscented bosom. She looked like she smelled good too. Is there is there a Is there a naptuur coming with this book? Really? Yes? And I'm gonna be leaving out on October fifth, and I'm gonna be going to d C, Chicago, Atlanta of course where I live, l A, San Francisco, and then back to d C. Yeah. Then I'll be in New Orleans in December. Yeah, you need to stop in Philly too. I'm sorry. I was thinking about l A n B and sounds like on my list when I first started booking out the tour, but then um, some other things dropped in. But I always wanted to go being philious girl. We'll be back after the break. I mean, I'm gonna be me obviously, But like this seems to me that has the best career every I mean, because she's like hiding out, she popped up. She does twelve shows and I don't know who her people are. You don't know what she eats for breakfast, you don't know, you don't know any you don't know what her house is shot. I talk about her all the time when I talk about the people who have decided to do an access off of social media not be a part of it, because social media will be the one thing that keeps us from being arrested without looking at our addiction to social media. This rest movement is not going nowhere. And so I take down social media and talk about it. It's harm all the time, even though people don't want to hear it. I talk about how it is a full owner obsessions, addiction, and it is driving us deeper into more parts of Exhaustion's have in depression, mental health issues, all types of sickness, body issues, head self esteem. It has to be even like even now and meaning all the chiropractice. He's saying that if you're doing this all day and it's causing like an issue with how you sit back, and it's happening in our bodies, a mass accident off of these sites will have to take place. And I and I hold that up as a dream space and a place that I want to see happen and I want to be helping to us to do what people are like, I'm done. I'm like, please come into the rest temple and lay down. Give me that damn phone, like I am on a rampage against it. People don't people don't like it, but I still I'm gonna keep talking about it. You know, I'm you're in Atlanta, so I'm sure you know j Ju. Yes, that's what I see for you. I love James. Oh yeah, it's so interests you say that because I just opened up a building, a Rest Temple here in Atlanta. Rest Temple. It's a beautiful historic church that nineteen o three. You guys got to come visit, which I am. I'm be in Atlanta next week, which please, I will give you a tour. Just text me and I'll show you around. It opens on October nine, which is the book launch of my book, so it'll be a bit done. I want to do it for this episode Celebrate and then the book comes out on the lap and then so um. But me and my call collaborating artistic sister. We were building is so big. That has three floors and you can go underground like where the kitchen is and like the last basement space. And we kept looking at each other and she was like, this needs to be her mom. This needs to be a bad house or a spa or something with woomuse get some that modality of a bad house, of vibe of salt water and that's what is that's one of those it's her mom like bad house, but it's like, but I really think that that would be the next dimension of the work, is to really start to do more work with the body, the somatics of body. People do that and then they come up. But I have so many ideas for the rest of temple was going to be um and all of them an Asian influence will be so dope to have it be us in going to say that because we both looked at each other and have that on our prayer lists of like we're gonna make this into a bad house down here, this whole basiment area. Yes, yes, I have a question though, I have a question of you said you you you revealing that is that is a process and as you're doing it's not going to be fast. And I know that there's eventually you're gonna get calls from corporations, calls from so and so. You have an event in three times as many people as you think are gonna show up or whatever the case may be. Like, what are some of the things that you're doing to actively like shield yourself because you have to gate keep Yeah, that that that onset of capitalism to ruining your ship, very clear boundaries. I say no, the ninety percent of things asked to me literally like my I was writing my book when I was like, I was, I was in the writing cage. I was like, I am so I was really up every day writing with like a bonnet on and in the closet like writing like a right. We were never mad. You never mad. We understan jealous jealous. I was jealous. We always understood and was like we got you were walking back. I say, no, who we gotta do to do get that kind of freedom. I always wanted to call to you, guys. I'm like, I love all of you, So I'm like, are you kidding? But the way that book, the writing of that book was really a fool on body. It's my first book I've ever written. To get through writing something like that, it's so hard because it's memoir, it's poetry. It's a full manifesto that really uplifts the idea of rest being the new the new clearion call for the generation like this is the guys book and the field guy for this this new rest movement. It's a manifesto. I think people will come back to it will be something can tuck in their bag and when they're in the field trying to like resist grind, culture can be a companion for them, a metaphorical blanket. I want people to lay down and read it, fall asleep with it on their chest, like I wanted to be a lullaby for them, and so writing that book was a live I wanted to ask one more question, what do you say to somebody who is broke, like financially. I got so many good things to say them because I started this The story of how I started this work, I literally had no money. I was going to job interviews every week trying to get a job after I finished seminary, and nobody would hire me. Jill I was literally doing chaplaincy session because I was trying us to chapelain and pastoral care sessions with the people. Like the interviews would turn into me doing chaplaincy with the people. People were in their crying. One woman was like interviewing me and started crying and tell me about she's having all these issues with her daughter. And I sit up there and had like prayer with her, a full chaplaincy session. I was like, I was definitely don't get this job, and she called about the gable to somebody else like that. It's happened four times. My husband was like, if you keep your job, is not that. I was like, Bay, I don't have no money. I literally don't even have twenty five dollars. He was like, I know, but if you the job is not out there. The job is this napping and resting thing. And I was just like, oh my god, how could you say that? Like I couldn't believe. I was so caught up in like not having not having money, filling the poverty on my shoulders. He said, the work is do in that ministry, and if you do that, things will come. When I first started this, I was getting paid twenty dollars to come and do it. I didn't have a dime. And so what I tell people is when you talk about being broke, there is not There is not a binary with this. Work isn't either be broke or work like an animal. You know, there has to be some type of mental ground, some type of balance, some type of integration of this so that you can do both, Like you don't have to grind yourself into oblivion in order to not be broke you also, um can still do this while you're also working. And so I'm not telling people to never work, to lay down, to quit their job. I'm saying that you have to see resting as an integrated part of your life. You have to see boundaries, you have to see healing. So I tell people still rest. My grandmother rest for thirty minutes. Why she was broke, working two jobs, raising eight kids without a dime. I was resting and teaching people to rest when I didn't have any money. So I know the understanding of needing to eat and live in a capitalist system is real. I'm not um and realistic to think that I'm come from a legacy of poor black factory working. Nobody in my family graduated from college. They're all high school graduates. I'm like the first in my family to graduate from college, the first to go to graduate school. So I understand what it means to not have Like if I stopped working today, I would be homeless, you know. And so it's like I understand the vibe and the what the reality is of living in a system like this. I'm saying this is about more than just stopping and laying down. It's about being having awareness of who you are. It's a self worth, it's a um self esteem, it's a divinity. It's a spiritual practice. It's a idea of mind shifting, of shifting your mind to understand that you do not only deserve rest, but it's actually your human right, it is your divine right. It's past some type of I need to earn rest. It is literally looking at yourself that's divine human you are, and from that knowledge, from that information, integrated into your life to be able to resist any system that wants to degrade you, any system that wants to say you aren't enough. That's the resistance there. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much. I know from personal experience and when I when I decided to rest my body, music comes, full lyrics come, poetry comes, ideas come. A new way of thinking. A thing, or cooking a thing, or or trying a thing pops up. Sleep. Rest is regenerative and we all need that and we deserve it. I need you, dear sweet listeners. We need you to purchase this book. We need you to consider the possibilities of your existence in a more peaceful, productive, happy, rested existence. We need you to We need that for you. I need that for me, Agent needs that, Lah needs that. We all need that. Thank you so much for being here with us. We've been waiting for you since yes man, We've been waiting a dread so beautiful. How do you eat an elephant? One by its Hey, listeners, it's Amber, the producer of Jada Ill Here. My prayer is that each and every one of you takes this episode to heart. We deserve so much rest. Keep finding your pockets of peace throughout the day. One really easy way to start is with the breath. If you don't already know the four seven eight breathing technique, get into it. It's super simple. All you do is inhale through your nose for four seconds, hold your breath for seven, and exhale through your mouth for eight. And this simple exercise is scientifically proven to decrease fatigue, reduced anxiety, reduced symptoms of asthma, reduced hypertension, reduced aggressive behavior, nails, and improve migraine symptoms. I'll drop a link in the show notes to an article explaining more about the four semnate breathing technique. I'll also drop a link to Tricia's incredible new book, Rest Is Resistance. It's now required reading for the j L Fam. And if you don't already, follow Trisha on Instagram at the NAT Ministry. Hi. If you have comments on something you said in this episode called eight six six, Hey Jill, if you want to add to this conversation, that's eight six six four three 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 The podcast j 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