Seeing the Humanity of Our Mothers

00:00:03
Speaker 1: Welcome to Jay dot, a production of My Heart Rates. Hello every body, what's up? This is Jay Dot, Ilda podcast is Jill Scott, This is Asia are great in the Dancer? This is like, Yeah, I hate saying my whole line. Let st Clair whole line nine nine. What's up everybody? Today? We are talking about our mothers. We're talking about humanizing our mothers. What does that mean? That means the moment when you realize that your mom, you're the sainted halo wearing handle everything, do everything, can be all things. Mother is a person, a human being, just like yourself. I feel like we should do a disclaimer to our mother's even yours age. I know she's not with us, but she's listening, right, she will make herself known her mistrust and belief. So should have fall off this table at two point two seconds. But don't tell my business in this here got their podcast? Yeah, I know that there is a whole book, There is a whole play about my sweet Mama. There is. But I have to wait. You have to wait. I don't have to wait till till no problems with Joyce. I don't want no problems with either. My mother is six one people. My mother has been six one my whole life, and she's fast. So, so what's your disclaimer, Jail as we go into this conversation, because you know this is your daughter. I love you so much. I don't want to smoke. I don't want to trouble with you. Uh. We're just talking about the moments that you realize that your mother is a human being. I'm gonna talk about her mother, my grandmother. Okay, I'm gonna start there. Let's start there. Yes, I'm gonna start there. This might be a lot for people, but you know, this is what it is. So my grandmother is uh. At the time she was she was slowly fading. And oh do you see that? All right? Okay, I don't want no smoke. What you need my mom? I don't blue, I don't okay. I told you hold my purse off this table, you know, to hit the floor. That's like my money for the next few months. Attention. Go ahead, Jill, just you know, walk with caution. I am okay, here we go. So my grandmother has uh. I've gone to her to find out how she was doing. She knew she was going to pass, and I asked her what she's scared and she said for what. She said, I'm good with my God and I'm tired. I'm tired, and I'm ready to stop this, so don't you worry. That's where her head and heart was. But before she left, my mother said she went to her and was like, Mom, I have a very real question to ask you now. Mind you, the two of them, they spent a lot of time together, and she says, Mom, did you did you ever have an orgasm? And my mom says she smiled real hard and looked off into yonder and said my grandfather's name. Yeah. Yeah. That moment, my mother said, at that time, she said, I realized that my mother. I knew she had a life, she said, but she was she was actually having a life with someone. You know, that she shared her time with someone that she laughed with, Like she knew those things, but it was like some distant thing. You know, your mom is hugged up with somebody. You're like, you know, you kind of pass it off. You don't really take the time to enjoy the fact that someone is loving and kind and generous and sweet to your mom. And that's what I think of, Like what like far as humanizing my grandmother for my mother, humanizing my mother for me. Boy, wait, I gotta, I got a told on on this all. Take a break for a second. Yeah, I gotta. I got a place where it needs be now. I don't want no trouble. I'll tell you, I don't want no trouble. If you have to forgive me today, I have a country in my mouth. I've been Oh, I've been doing dialect coaching for the last is his nickname. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry for kids, I'm sorry. Deal you were explaining your I'm doing dialect coaching, so I'm slipping in and out occasionally. Just shut up. You're so nasty. I love you for that. Learned from listening you. Yeah, biology did that, helf and genealogy, don't there we go, Natsha. I mean my grandmother was a very I don't want to say complicated, but like a complex individual. You know, she had like a very interesting childhood. He was from Wild Virginia. She had become a part of family that had two sets of children, being raised in the same household for two sets, meeting her mother and children from her father and someone else. So marriage and relationships and stuff like that. Really in many ways probably represented a bit of an escape. She also grew up in a household where lots of very quote unquote fair skinned people were. She was very vibrant, she was a young mother. She knew what it was to be a mother alone with no one at a time when that wasn't really happening as much, and she was very much had just so much energy and she was like so full and so as a kid, my experience with her as a kid was just like my Nana is so fun because she always had this really youthful, vibrant energy because I just feel like she always wanted to kind of be a kid because she didn't really get that chance to like kid kids. So she kid kids, kidded with us, you know what I'm saying. So I just always kind of loved that about her. But the thing that humanized her for me was the things I disliked about her. I did not like the way that she treated my mom. They had a very complicated relationship and that I'm still unpacking to this day, And so my Nanna and I were humanized her for me was just trying to come to terms with whether or not I could really rock with her. And because I was so protective of my own mother, and I remember that my mom. One time, my grandmother said something to my mom and I stepped in there and I tried to defend my mother, and my mom went off for me. My mother wasn't a big hitter, but I could tell she was like, she's about hit me, and She's like, don't you ever in your life speak to my mother like that? And I was like, okay. There were lots of different moments with my grandmother like that. I witnessed my grandmother grieve a child that preceded her in death. That was another thing that really humanized her for me, watching her go from being a woman who literally had it all together for me, house immaculate, always in tune with the moment, always present, You're always present. When I saw her grieve and grief hard, I couldn't speak, couldn't talk, wailing like the sound of like a band, she wailing, you know, the type of ancestral wailing. So those were moments for me where I looked at her and I was like, oh, yeah, this is a whole person. Yeah, this is this is definitely a whole person. Yeah. I love that we all have different moments. I was listening to your moments of like humanizing, and I was thinking about my grandmom. And it's funny because I thought about Jills moments and I was like, well, as far as my grandmam, I always knew she was somewhat sexual because she had been married twice. She had five children, and she had three different fathers to build those five children, right, so I always knew that my grandmother. She was a very fly grandmother. She was one of those people that you hear and you go, oh, that's your mom. No, that's my grandma, want a whole bunch of jerysh fly whatever. But she was also a very flat but very like strict in her home. You didn't say, are you get plucked in the head. She was very about getting the switch. She was very about beating you. And you know, for a long time I didn't like my grandmother because my parents had divorced when I was six and I ended up leaving my mother and my grandmother and she was still just as strict, and it was worse because I lived where, which is strange because you know, turn around now she became my best friend like twenty years later. But yeah, right, I mean, he just appreciated all those moments, But the moment that humanized my grandmom for me was seeing as strong as she wasn't as strict as she wasn't as no nonsense as she was, and not about the white man and all this other stuff when it came to her own sons and their ways. I just didn't appreciate the way she handled She had two sons that to me were just I want to be nice about this because I liked one, but he was still not very um friendly and uh, it's very selfish man. One was very selfish and the other one was a selfish in a different way right, and the other one is awful to this day. But I just remember humanizing her when I saw the way she treated them and still let them come in the house and do the things that they did and say the things that they said to my mom and disrespecting that way because my grandma was still like, these are her children, and I just never understood this. So that was the moment for me when she was humanizing my eyes. It's just child, because I'm glad you started with grandmother's Because the grandmothers tell the story, they set the tone for the whole thing. Right, and you know, like how you view your mom, because what humanizes your mother is that thinking about her childhood, that thinking about what made her into the woman that she was. At least that is for me, you know, really looking at what my mom had to deal with, who she grew up with, what were the rules, what was the thinking, what were the experiences? And that really kind of started with my nana. Again. It's interesting because all the things that were quote unquote and perfect about her, they make sense in context. After you get older, you get older, you start to think you don't like it, but you're like, oh, okay. You think about the circumstances of their existence. They think about all of these things instead of just who you are in this house at this moment, providing and caring for me or my brothers and sisters or whatever the case may be. The situations and the circumstances of their life have a really big factor in who they are and why they are the whare they are. Because Jill, when you said to think about your grandma, it's so interesting because although I know my grandmother was a sexual person, when you said that thing about your grand mom and the orgasm in my grandmother's later years, I would frequently ask her about sex, and I sawear to God, and she had a whole silly perspective, like it was my mom and my grandmother actually never talked about that ever. So this was a big moment for my mother to gear up. She said she had been working on the question for days, and she's like, I'm not going to have a lot of time to ask questions that I really want to know, she said. She held her breath for a while, and then she just mom, um, can I ask you? You know, my grandmother's five nine, my mother six one, and my grandmother was very weak at the end, you know, but still my mother was afraid to ask her this very important question to her. And nonetheless, you know, she was so pleasantly surprised to know that her mother had had a full existence, you know that she actually was happy and enjoying her humanity, but so interested she had to wait that late. She was scared to have that conversation because my mom, I believed, when I think about my mom and Grandmam, I think there was just so many secrets between them, things that they both knew but they just did not talk about, you know what I mean. And but there was just like a deep, deep abiding love, like I mean, just that I didn't understand outside the context of she sometimes ain't nice to you, you know, that kind of thing. But it was like they had between them these agreements, these contracts and understandings that were beyond my understanding. When I was younger, and even when I was in my twenties, I didn't fully understand. How about as a mom or I fully I fully understand it. I am absolutely tapped into what that was about. My Nanna desired a life and never allowed herself to fully be swallowed by her circumstances. She fought and resisted many times towards the situations that should have boxed her in choices that she made in love and choices she made in making. My mother and we talked about putting our family business out there. But I'm gonna speak on this. My mother had written a book which she never completely finished, but this story is in the book, and my grandmother has since passed, so I'm gonna speak on it and made my family forgive me if they have an issue, but you know, I'm grown, come see me. What I will say is that my nana did have an affair, and that the identity of my mother's father came into question. I don't want to really rest on that. What I want to rest on is that there was a lack of love in her life, and there was a lack of understanding in her life. And she had been pulled from childhood into womanhood, into motherhood, and she desired that connection and love and she fought to get it. Now what she completely altogether in her decisions or they quote unquote right, wrong, ethical whatever whatever. Maybe they were, maybe they were not, depending on who was having a conversation, but this was her way. My grandmother had, you know, relationship with a man when I was a young person. You know, my grandfather had passed or whatever, but she had she had a boyfriend. But it wasn't even just a relationships with men, but it was also she worked. She worked job, she loved, she exercised, she played with us, she gardened, she had hobbies, she loved her kids. She enjoyed holidays like she would play games with us, Like during Christmas time, my nan wouldn't just buy as gifts. She would play like prices right, and what's behind during number two? And and all these kinds of things with us as kids. So her thirst for life, that's something that I understood was behind a lot of her decisions. Her relationship with my mother was probably you know, more about the fact that my mother and many black folks have this issue, and black mothers have this issue. My mother had opportunities she did not. My mother could have life that she had to fight for. My mother could just have my mother, she would glow from the inside. I can imagine for a person who had to fight for glow and fight for light, that they couldn't always be as receptive to that light. I think there's probably some resentment there to see someone to to want something so bad and then to see it in somebody else that you gave birth to and they're just doing it so effortlessly, Like as much as you may obviously love your child, at the same time, you're like, damn, you know, you're just glowing all around here, And I had to hustle and work for it and cry over and toil and stress out. You man, you know somewhere in there, like it's easy to the women in my family, I find myself there literal she rose to me like my grandmother. She the house quote on fire, and she got some of her children out, but there was the baby was still in there sleep. He must my uncle must have been about maybe seven months she was. She was downstairs with the other children, so she got them out, and then when she ran back in to get her baby, the firefighters held on to her and they were like, oh, you can't go in there. It's over. You can't go in there. I'm sorry. Man. She fought all five men and got in that house and came out with no eyebrows and no eyelashes, with her son alive. Those are the women. And you look at these heroes. You look at these strong, powerful women, and you know, particularly mothers and grandmothers were talking about right now, and you you think you can't live up to that kind of greatness or that kind of presence. You know, it's easy to get trapped into your light or you're not like your mom. So you can rebel, you can actually rebel against her own greatness because you don't think that you have what your mother has. It can happen, yes, the and the's the flip side too, of like, because our mothers and grandmothers had to have this this upper strength and this lower strength in this middle strength, there are some things that fell to the wayside. You now can see clearer as a grown up yourself. You know what I mean, especially in the lane of advice and in great relationships, especially in relationships, because I mean, I think that it's very it's interesting. I mean, I think for me, I don't know as you Jill, but I know my mom is single. I think for you Asian, when your mom passed, she was single. My mom is single, right, and the same thing for my my grandmom. So it's interested in this in this conversation when we were first talking about and having I thought about like the moment too, when I had to not go ah with every piece of advice that was given to me in certain realms where they may have not excuse me, looking around and see if she's listening excelled or I want to say excelled or at least been in a place that I want to be. Oh, my mother straight up told me better preach that to a point. Amen, Amen, Like, yeah, what I'm saying is my mom straight up told me I got to a point in my marriage. I came to her and I said, listen, I don't know what to do by expanse. She said, sweetheart, you've been married louder than I was. WHOA, Oh right, somebody done a lot of mom, because a lot of mom. Let me tell you what to do. I was like, oh ship, okay, um, because you know I have I have some some friends where their mothers really are haters when it comes to love and relationships. They really are like they sabotage their daughter's thoughts be because they are by themselves and they don't want to be I don't know if that's what it is, or they're just thinking or I've been down this road so I know everything and he ain't nothing. I can tell by the way he walks like you don't know that you know he had surgery on his foot, like you just you jump up like mama, that's the game. Greens. Give him a shot, man, just give him a shot. That's an interesting moment in your heart space. I don't know about job, but that moment where you're like, okay, mom, listening here. Yeah, I don't want I don't want to do this like I you know, I have a son, so it's it's different even with my mentees. I'm like, listen, I don't know everything. Bowl I'm trying to tell you. I don't want you to make the mistakes I may, but maybe I do because they got me here. Everything is going to get you where you want to be, whether you realize it or not. And that's game. You might as well hold on and put that in your pocket. You're going where you're intended. You are absolutely going. I will tell y'all the one of the moments that humanized my mother was the first time she cuts out a boyfriend. The first time she cuts out a boyfriend, and I was like, you was more stressed over this than I. I've never seen you and and I'm gonna have a whole, honest moment. And I hope she ain't listening that moment when she called me a fucking pussy because I was not reacting the way that she thought I should. And I'm not talking about being twenty on my post thirty. Where did you feel that? So many places to chill in my spirit in my chest, like I it was just a moment of like, damn, okay, Mom, I love you, I don't like this person. Damn, am I really a pussy? Because I'm not losing my whole mind and cussing this negro out as he takes is things out of the house, Like that was a humanizing moment of like, Okay that she is she and and me as me, and you have to decide to number one, and that's what you want to be. Yeah, that's what you want for you. Yeah, we'll be back after the break. I've seen a lot of sisters that that really try to be their mom's but I think it's mostly because they don't know who they are. You know, like you're you're really blessed when you get a chance to know your mama, to to know her insides. Okay, for instance, my girlfriend right now, excuse me, she has um dealing with cancer and double missectomy kept coming back, and she called me yesterday to tell me that she was feeling so ugly because of scars. And when I tell you, the woman is absolutely stunning, Like she's just stunning. She really is, always has been, skinned, just beautiful woman. She's blessed up to have two little girls and a husband that is positively there for her. And I told her, because I don't know what to do, I have to pray before I speak often, and I said, Okay, this is what I'm gonna need to do. I'm gonna need you to write all of this down. I don't want you to start talking about your scars and what makes you feel ugly in front of your girls. You cannot do that. But what you can do is make a journal and let them know who you are at this time because they're they're young, and when they turn eighteen, this is a book that they are allowed to read because they'll think about all the wonderful times, you know, when mom made the Halloween costume, and when mom made the dinner, and when Mom cheered me at the game, and with mom that they had. They'll have no idea, you know, if this is the route that you're gonna take, they'll have no idea what you withstood. This will be a testimony of strength to your daughters. Do that. Do that. I can't change anything for you. I wish I could, and I absolutely respect your strength and that you're thinking. I don't want to beat myself up in front of my girls, because that that's something that we passed down to our our daughters. You know, if you don't care for yourself too much or like yourself too much, there's a big chance that your daughter will too. You know, so that was that was my little suggestion, and I hope that that helps move her forward. I mean, I think you're absolutely right. I mean kind of, you know, like I told you, like my mother had written this book. I've read it, I know, but I knew a lot of the stories in it already. Like I do, think that my mother hadn't told me so much about who she was as a person is an amazing gift and it really has changed me. It has. It has its shaped and molded me in ways that I just I can't even put my finger on, you know what I mean, just having some sense of her humanity. That's one thing I have to say. I've really been very in touch with is my mom's humanity quite a bit, and it helped me a lot in grieving her when she was not here in the physical. My mother had cancer and you know, she beat that pussy twice. She's doing well, very grateful for that. She didn't share much of that with me, I think, because you know, I'm the breadwinner of my family, so I think she kind of just wanted me to, you know, stay focused and too um to just keep moving and motivated, like I was auditioning for the number one Ladies Detective Agency when we found out my mother had cancer. And when I got it after the six auditions, she was like, you go, this is an incredible opportunity. I want you to go. And I was like, mom, but but but she said she got some money, right. I was like, well, yeah, She's like, well put some on me, you know, make sure I'm straight and go head and do what you're gonna do. And I was like, okay, as my my girlfriend Alex said, she's put some money on it. Put some money on it, whatever that thing is. So yeah, that first time, you know, she was able to do surpass it and she has sense. But we actually haven't had much conversation about that because sometimes I think our moms are so strong that you know, they don't tell, they don't say the heartaches and the troubles and stripes or or you know, they don't share that. And for you aged to have a mom to be so open and my my mother's way more open than my grandmother was. But for you to know your mother, um, that that breathes life into your humanity. That that is I think I'll gonna shout out your mom because I think you're an incredible woman. I am proud to know you. Yeah, man, that's what I tell my mom. I'm like, Mom, you know, I'm only take a relationship invice from Asia because you know it's about goals. But it really is Asia. It's just really, it really is. And it's just you know, this is the part where I deflect. My mom always kind of always believed in love. She really did. And you talked about heroes, and for me, like she was my hero because I knew how many things could have ruined that for her, Like I know all of the things that happened to her that that could have destroyed her belief in love and the fact that she continued to And then it's so funny because like the things that people go through, they can they can become like their superpower, you know what I mean. And so it's interesting that as mothers, that mothers can go down multiple paths. You know, it's hard to say which path your mom will go down. She's a human. And it's interesting at my mother's service, my son, all these people got up and I told you that the the way that the day that we put my mother to rest was an absolute amazing day. I know that sounds crazy, but that day was actually one of the most beautiful days of my life. The day we laid my mother to rest, we all wore white, and I didn't even understand the significance of that until later, but we all were white, and everyone who came and the amount of people who spoke to this part of her. So people will have tons of stories about a person, but the fact that this same kind of theme came back up many times. Who she was in her belief and love, her ability to love, and that that was her power. And my son said, you know, I want to be like Grandma, like I want to be like that. And I said to him, I think that's beautiful, son, but I want you to be that way. But I also want you to understand the pain Grandmam had to experience in her life in order for her to have that perspective. It has been a gift to know her as a woman. And I do think that that is something that's a gift you can give your children and the young women in your life, because you don't want to send them out in the world with this false kind of sense of what it is to be a woman and and tied into those ridiculous, and it illusion about what womanhood is and what that looks like, and for us as black women, we're just so inundated. Was so much fuckory about what that is. That I'm grateful to have had that, but again I didn't know always that that's what that was. When I was a kid, I used to think of my mom as a pushover. I was very aggressive in my late teens and ear I mean, in my early twenties, even after I got married, because you're a yeah, and I had to pimp out like that that pimps are hurt people. You understand what I'm saying. Uh, A pimp is not a person who you know, should be admired. I was like that because I was trying not to be a fool for love, because I was thinking, you know, very much like you know, I don't. I didn't want to be like my mom at that time in my life, you know what I mean, because I didn't understand that what she had was some fabulous ship. Okay, So my mom stopped working when I was fourteen. She came home one day and she just was like, I don't wanna do that no more. And I thought we were doing really, really well, I mean I was. I thought we were doing great. As a matter of fact, you know, there was food in the house that I had some clothes, not a lot, but I had some, and you know, I thought we were doing well. And my mother, you know, just really did not go back to work. Odds and ends here and there, she would take up something immensely creative. And she one day she jumped up and went to the docks at four o'clock in the morning, came back with more fruit than anybody could ever eat. And I was like, what is going on my grandmother and not just looking at each other, like what's happening? And if she had spent her last And she decided that she was going to make smoothies. That she had gotten these books. No, I mean, I'm talking North Philly. I'm talking eighties smoothies. So she decided she was gonna make smoothies and she was going to sell them for ten dollars in North Philly. And I was crazy, Okay, So the first day or so, you know, she started handing them out, handing them out to people. I'm telling you, within three days time I was headed out for school six am. My bus came in six ten, and I like to meander a little bit. I could hardly get down my steps. There was a line around the block. I said, what's going on. Oh, I'm coming to get some of your um, your mom's smoothies. I had one in the morning and I didn't have to eat again all day long. I said, what, Yeah, this is how I'm gonna lose my weight. Oh this is Oh, your mom's smoothies made me feel like what she put in there. Everybody's talking about my mother's smoothies. All of a sudden, she has a business. She did that until she was finished with it, and then all of a sudden, no more smoothies. And we've been back from it was like feast or famine, and we went back to families and having a sense being a kid and seeing someone with that kind of freedom in their mind, it's fantastic. And she decided to make pants once. All of a sudden, the whole neighborhood is walking around in my mother's pants. It was like that with the address sign, it was like that she found a piece of furniture. She brought this thing home and bought a sander, and she taught me how to stay in polyera thing, and she she got this thing and it was something somebody had painted white and it was it was a dresser. It looked crappy. She got all the paint off of it. It was beautiful wood underneath sanded it. She sold that thing for I think four hundred dollars. You know, this is this is who my mother is. But the sporadic nature of it all is why I have five, six, seven, eight nine jobs because the end between the lean times were lean, okay, like lean, like how are you gonna get to school? What? What are you gonna eat today? Like? You know? So this is why. And I love to be creative. I love to do things that give me joy, but I also don't want to go through the lean times if I can manage it, because part of me psychologically fears it, which is why there is Costco and I are really great friends because I over compensate because I remember that, and I remember the trades, you know, the baskets where people would drop off food and stuff. It's so fascinating because I just it's so many different moms with so many different stories. I'm like, now you made me think of my mom and how she did the flip side where she decided to skip her dreams and just dedicate her life to United Airlines for forty five years because she wanted to keep her daughter in private school. And she although I have the best daddy in the damn world, he wasn't always the most financially stable daddy in the whole damn world. So she wanted to make sure that I had to clothes, and I had a home, and I lived in these certain places and so here she is now retired, like I'm taking real estate classes. I want to sell homes because I've always had a pass and for homes and decorating things like that. I'm just like, wow, like, if only you would have had a moment and not for nothing, I thank her for those years because if that, I wouldn't have seen the world. If not for those and I wouldn't have met I would have met Jill Scott and montro Switzerland if not for that, you know what I'm saying. But it's just mom's stories and just a different route of sacrifice that they make and and and to my mom is funny because I was like, Dawn, I was feeling bad because I'm like I told the story of how she cuts out the boyfriends. But I understand all that because my mom has one child, she has one daughter. She is the biggest warrior for me. I will go through beast with friends and she continues them on even though we had You know what I'm saying like that is, Mom said, you can't cut off my ride or die. You can't cut it off once you turn that fast set on. She said, Wait a minute, Ain't that the one was it was that five, six, seventeen years ago? Didn't she say? She showed she was me as a mother. I won't lie. That's me as a mother. That's what's up. I called people raggedy who who? That who that? That's that raggedy girl. That's that raggedy mean boy matter. He can't come with my threshold. I love it though, But you know, if I didn't have that kind of relationship with my mom where it helped me with my own kids really for real, for real in a lot of ways, because my mother's acceptance of me helped me when I had to really kind of dig deep for my own daughter. And um, I was really kind of messy as a teenager, you know, just really all over the place. You know what I'm saying, and like I was really a smart I was like the kid that the teachers couldn't stand because it's like, you know, she's smart, but she like it's checked out, you know what I mean. Like, so they would call my mom and we're like, can we just get her to focus for like four months in the game. So but this kid I got. I'm serious, man. I grieved my mother hard because I needed to find out where she got the ability to accept me the way that she did, because when I needed it, I needed it for my own kid. And it was like it was so stressful for me because I was like this the moment when I need to leg in her lap and ask her, Yo, what do I do with this girl? How do I love her? You know what I'm saying. But I had mentioned this to you guys before that. Again, my mom always used to think that she was too soft. That was like my whole thing was she's great love, but too good, like you don't have enough boundaries, sis, When it was my mother's ability to radically love eventually helped me save my relationship with my own daughter because I knew I was able to remember the type of compassion that she had for me, and it was like this kid, you sis, this is how you're gonna heal for real, for real, like this is this is where you're healing. It gonna go to the bone marrow. It was like, you're going to have to have a radical compassion in this situation. You have to love in a way that seems like, should not be disciplined in this kid. Shouldn't not be mad, should not be upset? Nasis, No, you should not. No, you should not. That's how my mother really changed my life because when I realized that, yeah, that that that that that ship right there, and the turn that the women in this generation took, these boomer black women, that how they took a very different approach to mother. And oh yes, I gotta get my mom and our mom's credit on that one, because yes they did, yes, and very difference. They spoke to us more, they spoke to us. Yeah, yeah, we could speak back. Yes, still not as much as these kids today, but more. Yeah. Wait, I don't know what you mean. I feel like they started the normalizing free black children, the idea of raising free black children, black children in their minds, not just their bodies, and parents who could be your friend. But still disciplinarians. The concept of being a friend in a disciplinarian too, I think started with our parents. I totally agree with that. I don't think there was anything like that prior to their generation. I am very, very grateful for the many nights my mother and I shared drinking man of Chevits, listening to Milly Jackson, Honey. Yes, the first time I ever got high, I was with my mom. Yes, I'm grateful for those moments. Now she's retired. Yes, and Grandma. I gotta sneak my mom with a little cookie, a little piece of candy or something. I feel, mom, but still thank God, so I can dip into her stash. We tried to cook Thanksgiving dinner that night. Talk about a high asked mess, the two of us trying to cook this food. I'm just gonna put this out here. I tried to wash the turkey. Don't ever try to wash the turkey after get in hot with your mama. Here, you tried to wash the turk? How to do wash it? Asia? I left that thing in the saint because I couldn't pick it up because it was wrong and it was big and it was happy. It was slippery, and I was like it's dead. My mom like, yeah, that's dad, girl, watch that dad turkey and seizing it up. I have to get up. She and she literally said this. I ain't getting out because you're a lightweight Asian. Damn, my mama said, not getting your Mama said you're a lightweight. That's what she said. Yeah, she put me, she she put me to bed to seek my mother. I didn't do that. She's not interested in that. She saw something terrible one time and believes that all all things will make you pull your skin off. Girl. Had we had to high roaches from my grandmother. She was at a party and saw somebody use acid and the lady ran into the ocean and started pulling her skin off. And my mother was like, drunks, all drugs, everything that's that started trying to this day like I say this because of my mother. I say this if any time somebody tells you that I died of an overdose, no, that somebody killed me. I'm not the one, because I'm not the one. I'm not the one. I'm not the one. I'm not you said skin off? Oh no, that probably be me just by proxy. Like I'm not interested. Don't you worry about it. Okay, fear not. Let me ask you, just as moms, do y'all think that, like your kids are kids? I feel like a kind of answer this question, but do you think that they're getting the most humanized version of you? Like pure? For sure, I think they are, But they almost didn't even though I had the background that I did, because the patriarchy is strong, you know what I mean, And so it's hard as a woman to fight that. A lot of times you you still do find yourself hiding your humanity from people because you think you're supposed to be strong and you're supposed to handle everything, and that's what I need. So I would be lying if I said I didn't buy into some of those things, even with my own children, even though I had this positive experience with my mother. The world is very intense, so you tend to buy into those things even though you have something to counteract it, which is why I'm always saying, as a black person and parent, you have to kind of consistently be pushing back at the ship, you know what I mean. And so yeah, I went through that. I went through that, and I also went through the realization and the self actualization that I said Okay, Nah, these kids need to know you're a human being. You need to set boundaries, you need to take care of yourself. And I'm lucky enough to have come up during the time where words like self care are part of our national vocabulary and our common vocabulary. So those are things I've been is trauma what you're talking about? Exactly? Exactly? Yeah, so yes day, no kids benefited from from that, but I had to do the work still. See that's the thing. It doesn't matter who your mama is or is it. You can't really escape the work. The work is gonna always you know what I mean. I think the jet has benefited from me being the whole around him. He asked me questions like how did you rest? It was like you got a lot going on. I could see it in your face. There's literally nothing that I can hide from that boy. What he who asked me, Mom? What is that? Look at me deep in my soul and I'm like, what He's like that thing? It's bothering you, mom? I could see it? What is that? And I he freaks me out when he does it, Like he's a really sweet and intense human being, and I can't hide even if I wanted to. He can see me, so in those moments, you never say I don't. I won't do that, because that means I have to honor his instinct and whatever gifts that have been given to my grandmother, you know, who could tell you somebody's calling before the phone rang and who it was. Or my mother, who can heal people with her touch and her words to to me, whatever it is that I have, I don't want to negate it for him. He's absolutely right, there's a thing, and sometimes I don't even know what the thing is. I've gotta look and see what it is, and then we talk about it. Whatever it is. I need him. It's important that he be able to speak his mind and him share whatever's going on in him. I need him to know that he's all right because these kids now, you know a lot of young people are taking their lives and because of bullying, because of not being able to keep up in school, or whatever the case may be. It's happening a lot where I am, and I just you know, I want to make sure that I'm super present in his emotional growth and his spiritual growth, you know, his mental growth. I want to be there for that so him seeing me stressed out and me taking deep breaths, or me taking a walk, or him walking with me, and I'm like, I just don't want to talk right now, and he's like okay, you know, for him to see it, to know that that sometimes I'm not all right. Sometimes I'm really upset. Sometimes I'm mad, you know, just or having an anxiety attack because these things occurred to a man, I have my oldest child read me Girl like a book, right that. Like I said, it's so many, so many things came to life after my mother passed, but I would have to say that it was that experience also that showed me how it was important, even more so than I had been doing that my children saw my humanity, that they saw the grieving process and they understood what that was and how you didn't come out of it and moved through it, you know what I mean. And so that was really a great learning tool for us. Whereas sometimes the trauma of a parent can break everything down, but if it's used as a learning in a teaching moment, it can be really really profound for your children to see you in that way. But even before there's some sort of calamity in the everyday calamities. I think it is so profound that you're saying, hey, you know, I need some room. I'm not and I can't talk to you right now. And those are those are boundaries that I learned over time to do because there was always that little voice, the little little guy that you have to be and you have to be present, you have to be there to be present all the time. I really feel like that that's I'm sorry, um, like you forgive me now, It's okay. I was just gonna say, I'm excited for y'all. I mean, I don't know if if motherhood is in the future for me, whatever, but for y'all, I'm excited because I see you as humans and as mothers and developing these human relationships with your kids. And I know, for one thing that me and my mom, that's the one thing that we do have. And in the sense of knowing when something's going on with your mom without or even saying it, I will say that in the last years of my grandma. My grandma passed a couple of years ago at ninety three, and she was going through Alzheimer's for you know, five years before that. But I was living in California, FaceTime and my mom every day making sure things were good. But I knew looking at her face when it was time for me to jump on a plane, you know what I mean. And so I look at y'all and I go, this is this is gonna be so great for the future, because it's gonna it's gonna be so great for the bond and for what's to come as they get older, as you get older, and not having to even say things, and then just being there for you. You know. I want to say two things, my dear. Number one, I want to tell you, friend, you were absolutely incredible with your grandmammy. You were You were so present and so loving, and you had fun and she laughed with you and she danced and it was great as a woman to see you that way and to see her that way. You did a wonderful job. I know, you know, but I'm I'm just throwing it out there, so you just amazing to ensure that you know, I enjoyed it you did. I mean, having time with three generations of your family of women in one room. And that's why I used to post it all the time, because I wanted people to understand you know I was blessing because I know everybody who goes through Alzheimer's it's not always a joyous thing. That doesn't always turn you into a joyous person. My grandmother was not as joyous as she was when she had Alzheimers. Like, but that time that you spend, that time that I spent touching her face and like kissing her and her like holding me in the bed at night. I just want to always encourage people that that is like stuff that makes me so close to her now where I know I talked to her like she here, like it is nothing. I can feel her on my face, I feel when she's kissing me. I talked to her when I get blessings because I know you over here in his ear, I hear you. You know so I'm sorry, but I mean thank you. So I'll just say that too. Please love on your your elders, just love him up and and sorry, sorry, sorry, don't you dare, don't you don't have to apologize for anything, age, just don't. And what you said, Agia is everything. When you share your humanity with your children, you free them. You've freedom and that deep kind of unfiltered, unwavering love. That's what we need as parents, and it's not easy, but it really is worth the trip. We'll be back after the break. Coming up next on the show, What's on Your Heart an occasional segment where we're check in with people we respect about how they're really feeling. Hot on, y'all, I think there's somebody calling. That must mean it's time for what song? Hot Hey, y'all will see. The thing is, this woman is a scholar and an activist whose life work is to develop innovative solutions to challenges facing the poor, particularly Black mothers and their children. That person is Dr Janice Dats Janis Johnson Dyets, but in my life, she's the Aga whisperer. So you all get an opportunity to hang with her on today and also to she's an author, she's a PhD. She's the mother of Marley Das, who is the thousand Black Girl books. Young activists don't get to drop in Asia and the author of Parents Like It matters how to raise joyful, change making girls. That's what happens when you guys trust me with the intro. I leave the important stuff out. That's why y'all gotta stop giving me these responsibilities. You said it was important to us, That's all it was import exactly. Well, thank you, thank you, thank you. I am delighted to be here. I'm a big fan of the show. I listened to the show as Asia. No. I have lots of thoughts on the show. On every episode, I have extra thoughts on everything. So I am excited to be here. There's a lot of things on my heart today, but probably the biggest one is I've been thinking about the power of so realization, the power of our childhood and the stuff that we learn as children and how they stay with us, particularly the things that we love and the things that we found challenging about our parents. And you know, like we get to a certain age and we wonder why we're behaving like our parents and why we take on their attributes, etcetera. And I just keep thinking about what kids are exposed to, the values, the ideas, the practices in their household, and how that just takes a hold of you at this deep, deep level and doesn't let you go. And for me, this is important because you know, I'm interested in children and their development. I'm also interested in how we create more generations of children who are going to positively impact the world. And if you're early socialization says that the notions of justice and truth and morality are just about you and yours, then we really don't end up getting people who are really invested in reorganized or restructuring the world. And so that early engagement has kind of become obsessive to me about what we're showing our kids and what we're saying to them really early on, about what they should value, and what our own actions, the things that we do, what messages our children extract from watching us do those things. So that that's probably the biggest thing on my my head today because I watched my husband do some stuff and I was like, I must start learned that real early. You must have learned that real early. And I watched myself do stuff, and I know I learned it really early, and I didn't let it go. Like my whole framework for the work I do isn't because I have a PhD. It's my grandmother, right, my grandmother. When I was a kid, my grandmother had this particular practice. There were thirteen of us living in retreat St. Mary, and she and my grand aunts and my aunt joys. Please tell these people where retreats St. Mary Is. So, I was born in sant Ancis Bay Hospital in Jamaica, and I grew up in a town of four hundred and thirty three people in and I lived for the first nine years of my life ten without electricity, running water, indoor running water, indoor plumbing, etcetera. And walked, you know, somewhere between three to five miles each day. So when Dr Janis says I used to walk barefoot in the snow, well not the snow, because that's Jamaica. Wait wait when when Dr Janis tells that story, she's telling the real story. So in in nineteen eighty we moved to Kingston with indoor plumbing and electricity, et cetera. But I grew up where we salted the meat in order to have it for the next day, where the kitchen outside where my grand aunt and my cousins we cooked, and we had rabbits and chickens and the cows. You had to and before school you wake up and you get a couple and tea, You walk a couple of miles. You have to go tend to things. They come back in. You have planted avocado, piece of hard or bread, and some tea and then you walk. So thirteen of us and um we were privileged, which is funny to say. We were supremely because we owned the land we lived on and we had more resources than many. So before dinner every night, my grandmother would have us paired up those of us who were like five, our six and younger, and then my older brothers. My brothers are eight and six years older than me. We had to deliver food two people in the community. She told us they were our family. We had more resources in them because we had cattle, we had um land, so you know, like you grow cocoa, banana planting of our set stuff. They would make the dinner and we take it to people, and you had to do that before you could eat your dinner. So you do that, you walk a mile or two, you drop off the food, you come back, and then you can eat dinner. And when my grandmother died, all these people were at the church. We went to an Anglican church in retreat, and I was joking with my mother. I was like, Yo, don't these people know how to use a condom? Like why do we have so many in this family? Right? My mother said to me they're not family. I was like, so you're telling me, Mr, my whole life give these people food and I have not related to to them at all. And she's like, no, it was the tradition of her mother before her and her mother before her that if you have surplus, you share, right. And so I think about the work that I do now that people attribute to a whole host of things, and I think about that early, that early training of what it means to be in community with people and to share your surplus. And so those are the things that stay on my mind. What like what what values do we learn really early and how we end up expressing them? And I'm just grateful that the value of reciprocity, generosity and community was one that was so central to my development that now I can operationalize it by forming foundations, raising a kid, building stuff. So that's what's on my mind. Yes, let me ask you this. So a big catchphrase right now or thing that people are hearing a lot is I want to raise free black children. And it's kind of vague for me, to be honest, trying to wrap my mind around what does a free black child look like? What do they sound like? How do they walk, how do they talk? And I just am curious to hear what does this free black child look like to you? No, I mean I don't. I don't actually don't think about free black children very much. I really think about free black adults. And I just don't think you can have free Black children without adults being free, because if adults are in bondage, quite frankly, how can their children be free. Literally, just sitting here thinking that, I was like, am I free? Adults need to be in the business of trying to be free. And one of the ways I think adults, particularly Black folks, got to think about freedom is the one they need, an operative definition that you can actually agree upon. Right, Yes, you know, individual families can have notions of freedom. For many black communities and black members, freedom is having enough money, right, So, like there's economic and clearly you can without economic liberty, like you you if you can afford to eat and grow and take care of yourself, then I don't I don't know how freedom is particularly possible. That's why freedom and economic justice have to be linked. Um, but you need to kind of freedom in your soul, right are free from bondage kind of stuff where when you lay at night, you feel peaceful, right like, So our work goes around this principle of my aunt. And in my aunts it says like, at the end of the nights, your soul feel as light as a feather, and you have these forty two principles that you recite in the morning, right and these principles says, it's a pledge. I affirmed that I will not lie. I affirmed that I will not engage in things that harm my community. I affirmed that I will do these things. So you you make this kind of promise each day, and at the end of the day, you then said to say, I did not lie, I did not harm, I did not do these things. So in that respect, your spirit is then filled with levity and it is as a feather. So I think if individuals make a pledge in the morning to live a life of freedom. So I think, if you do those things and then you feel really free to the idea that's in my head, which is like, then you passed that on you, You raise your children that way, your communities that way, and then children grow into that, and then we can have aspirations for their life beyond this moment and for them to be free. But I think freedom should be really at the end of the day, it's like, the investment in their freedom is the investment in your own freedom. If you're not fully invested and engaged in that, then you're not doing this future work. You are not doing this future work. And for us, for for black mothers, this is not the discussion. Come on now, This is not the discussion anyone was having with us prior to having any dead on children. No, this is not nobody's talking. So this book, I say any thing, which I know is going to be irritating, but it's very important. Is precisely that light. Yeah, I say, you cannot have joyful change making girls if you don't have joyful change making parents, particularly joyful change making mamas, You're not. It's just not gonna happen. It's not like the do as I say, not as I do, that ain't gonna work out. It ain't gonna work. So if you want whatever you want for your children, you should be it. Come on book so you can model them. One more time, is that whatever you want for your children, you need to be it so that they can see the model of what is possible. And that is very different from the way many of us were raised. And can I say this one little thing is that whatever you want to be, also you need to sort out what you want to be, what you want your children to be, because whatever it is you have to be you, you have to be that first. But make sure what you're trying to be you just sort of that out. It is okay because some of us be trying to be some ship. We don't need to be trying to be. I mean, I'm just gonna put that out there. Okay, somebody's sort it out. Take the slow man. Whoa. I'm telling you right now that that it feels like you just dropped a weight on my head and shoulders. That is both terrifying and exciting when somebody offers you freedom, when somebody offers you freedom on the platter here it is. That's how you get it. Gavin An, your kids gave it to that. Yo. I I gotta hold myself. I got to hold my monel goodness, it seems to reason out that accountability accountability it is. It's your it's your story, your children are in it. I mean, I think that the way that we've done parenting is to say that the kids are the star of the story, then the protagonist, and you are somehow an extra in the story. Right. So we said, I gotta pour everything into my kid. I just gotta, I gotta pour it into I'm doing it for my kid, and I'm like, you anna have to be a leading main character in the story. And that I think is hard because then you get to like be like the reason I'm working so late, the reason I'm doing all of this, the reason I'm not exercise, and the reason I'm not sleeping, it's because i have to do this for my kids, right, And so you get to under prioritize yourself and you get to feel pious and great because you did it all for your kids. And then those same children don't want any of the things that you have done because they barely saw it going. They always saw the bed walking out the door, and you didn't. You didn't sell the seat you planted. So in the book, I have a chapter, the shortest chapter, they're devoted to this thing called ACE adverse Childhood Experiences, and I say, you need to know your aces, right, you need to know where you experience some level of trauma. And I give an exercise so each chapter has assignments and exercises, so you like them, you can go to them. You don't like that one, you can try another one. Right, So every single chapter has it, and it teaches you how to go through your aces. Know your aces, have an understanding of your aces, and once you've attended to them, then you're in a position to really find joy for yourself. Right And you can't aspire for people. Even your children are people, right Like, once they leave you, they they own people. You can't aspire for people what you have not achieved for yourself. It is one of the things I say all the time about teachers, right Like, I tell teachers all the time. I was like, you can't inspire great messy were great, right Like, once you work on your greatness that you can inspire greatness. And right like, I need you to invest in your development. And I think institutions have to invest in teachers because they're trying to educate the next generation. So like, if you don't invest in teachers, then you're not gonna get greatness out of your children. So I'm like, ma'am, sir, you ain't great though, you're not imaginative for interest in So it's all right, right, So I think it's the same thing for caregivers. Caregivers want their children to be great. But I'm like, how are you great? I gotta ask you to We're talking about a lot of self work, and some people don't necessarily see that this kind of work is tied into let's say public life. And I really want you to help us in this moment to tie what it seems like a very personal investment into what that looks like and let's say public health and law, politics and all these kinds of things. So how how do we go out into the world and present this systemically? All right? So I make an argument that joyfulness is intricately linked to change making, all right, all right? So right, so alright, so work that's sober it is the work of gratitude, Like this is the work of gratitude. You're groups before, right, Grateful people are reciprocal people given people, because when you're grateful, you share, you have an abundance. Right. Change making is about reciprocity. It is about caring for and being connected to your community. So when you're given, you are not given in a way that says but not, I gotta help y'all because y'all suck. You're given in an abundance framework, and therefore you can think beyond on this moment to think about how we can give to change structures. So let me walk you through just a little bit from a different angle. If you are joyful, if you have this internal optimism and gratitude and this feeling of reciprocity inside of you, you are also thinking about future generations to ensure that they also have it. So that is going to allow you to take stock of the inequities that are present. So you're gonna take stock of racism, sexism, homophobia, agism, able ism, and you're gonna say that these things will interrupt people's ability to feel gratitude and reciprocal And because you feel this way, this goodness, this internal goodness, you're going to want to be in relationship with other people who feel that community and connectedness. For change to occur, it requires that we are even more connected two people. So joyful people are connected, people who have gratitudes and notion of reciprocity, who are thinking about ways to make the world and themselves better for the future. So by their very nature, they're committed to change making, which is what we call social activism, etcetera. But you cannot do that and have the optimism to keep doing it each day, to stand on the hill, to register people to vote, to change systems, to feed people, to fight racism, to rewrite, to sing songs that says that people matter, to love on each other, to hold each other's hand, if you don't have that joy, So that's that comes out that to anybody else here and explosion I did, and Teddy Penderbras I did. Ladies and gentlemen, I suggest that you wholeheartedly go back and listen to this particular conversation again and again and again and again. That's because I certainly will. I certainly will. There are times when we get together and we have these conversations and we're all just going going back and forth and throwing out ideas and thoughts and feelings. This is one where I just had to shut the fuck up and listen. And that is an art of communication and art of conversation. Thank you so much for being with us, Thank you for sharing your insights. Dr Janice Johnson, Diez God God, Whoamica? Jamkeup? How do you eat an elephant? One by side? What's up? Y'all. It' Steves again a producer on the show, and I am here to bring you the resources as usual, and today I'll give another shout out to Dr Janice Johnson Dias this book which is fresh off the press. It's called Parents Like It Matters how to raise joyful, change making girls. And even if you don't have daughters or are not a parent, it can be a good tool to have in the tool shed if you are invested in self development and soul work, as Dr Johnson Dias puts it. And of course we can take the time to acknowledge that our mothers our whole human beings. All right, y'all. Until next time, we want to thank you so much for listening to us today. It has been a pleasure. Jay dot Ill Yeah, yeah, the laugh of just silly. Thank you for listening to Jill Scott presents j dot Il the Podcast. This podcast is hosted by Jill Scott, Layah st Clair and Agent Graden Danceler. It's executive producers are Jill Scott, Shawn g and Brian Calhoun. It's produced by La st Clair and Medves. Jeff Coke. The editing and sound design for this episode We're Done by Christina Larenger. J dot Ill is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcast from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.