October 17, 2023 • 56 mins
So excited to welcome my friend Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes to the HER living room! We discuss the importance of cake, joy, how to cultivate self-compassion, and Dr. Chanequa’s new book, Sacred Self-Care: Daily Practices for Nurturing Our Whole Selves. Find out more about Dr. Chanequa’s work at http://drchanequa.com.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Ooh, y'all, welcome back to a new episode of Her
with Amina Brown. And we're here in the living room
and we have a guest, and I'm very, very excited.
I want you all to welcome psychologist theologian, author of
I Bring the Voices of My People, A Woman's Vision
of Racial Reconciliation, Too Heavy a Yoke, Black Women and
(01:00):
the Burden of Strength, and her newest book, Sacred Self Care,
Daily Practices for Nurturing our Whole Selves. Welcome, doctor Shanikua
Walker Barnes.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Fine, I'm so glad to be here. I am so
glad to be here. I hope you're watching the clock,
because you know how we do when we start talking.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
I mean, if it has to be a two part episode,
doctor Shika, I'm not mad at it. I'm not mad, okay,
if we have to be, if I have to be
a well, okay, that's part one. Thank y'all so much.
Join us next week for part two, y'all. Let me
tell y'all something. I'm excited to have you here, doctor Shaniqua,
(01:44):
because before your book came out, your latest book that
I'm gonna say the name again, so y'all can just
go to y'all bookseller and order five. But before this
book came out, Sacred Self Care, I have wanted to
have you here in this living room to talk self
care because you are one of my favorite voices on
(02:05):
the topic. So when this cover came out and you
were like, this is my next book, I was like, yes,
come on, we have so much to discuss, y'all. Okay,
So doctor Shaniko and I actually live in the same city.
We just be seeing each other mostly when we go
out of town. See each other all over the country,
(02:30):
child all over the country in Chicago, in DC, somewhere
in Los Angeles, see each other almost every place except Atlanta.
And finally, within the last couple of years, we managed
to be people who have tea sometimes, who take a
little walk, you know, get hydrated. So, y'all, I've been
(02:54):
working my way into being doctor Shaniko friends. So I'm
just very I'm very happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Oh my goodness, Oh my goodness is too much.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So let me start with asking you about this. So
when I'm here in what we call the her living room,
that's what I like to refer to this podcast space
as because I always imagine that is I'm trying to
make this like the space I gather with my girlfriends,
and a lot of times we're just trying to get
(03:24):
together and catch up, and we will do that anyway
that we can. You know, if I have some hummus,
I opened up a couple of days ago, and you
got a bell pepper, you cut up a little bit,
bring your ziploc bag and just come to the house.
I bring my hummus to your house. You know, we
just bring our snacks together. So I want to know,
doctor Chaniko, when you are gathering with your your girlfriends,
(03:45):
your people, people, what is the snack that you would
typically be walking in the door with. Are you a
person who wants to make a snack? Are you a
person who's like, never, I will always buy a snack?
What are your snack vibes discussed?
Speaker 2 (04:05):
I like to be the person who will make a snack, right,
That's that's the person I think of myself as. That's
the person I want to be. I want to be
the person that will bake a cake, right Like, that's
that's what I want to be. I want to be
the person that will will bake a cake, a pound
cake or strawberry cake. Right, I want to be that person. Increasingly,
(04:29):
I'm not that person. I'm the person that is gonna
be like, hmm, I know this nice bakery. I'm gonna
go grab something now, already bring the dessert I didn't bake.
At least let me go find somebody who doesn't well
and get that.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
I respect this.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I'm not gonna bring you the I mean, public st
does some good cakes though, but I'm generally not going
to bring you that storebock cake. I'm like, let me.
Let me go somewhere where I know somebody, yeah, put.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
In some time, were in a bakery bakery, if you have.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
A bakery bakery and be like, yeah, let me get
let me get that carrot cake back. Yeah, that looks good,
Give me the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
I rekised this such a choice.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
First of all, I feel like you might be the
first guest I've had that said cake was the snack
of choice they walked in with.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
And I have a lot of reasons to like you.
You know what I'm saying. We have a lot of.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Things in common. You know, I think you're great. But
the fact that you said I want to be a
person who walks in with a cake, I was like, boys,
let's really applaud that, because who doesn't need cake.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
At the end of a long day, long week.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
I feel like it shouldn't just be reserved for birthdays
and things like that.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
No, yes, we need cake.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
I love that as a choice.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
I mean, I remember going through a time where if
I was having a bad week, I would really go
and get like the half dozen cupcakes like at public
and they would be like, oh, it's your birthday. No, No,
I'm just I've just decided that it's a cupcake time
for me.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
So I'm gonna take all six of these to my
home and I will divide them out over the next
few days as I need.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Yeah, if they make it a few days, it is
the thing.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
I'm gonna divide them out as I need. So I
thank you for bringing cake into the living room today.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Mmm.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
That's very great because I'm like, I'm if you invite
your friend over and you open up the door and
your friend is holding a cake, like, wow, that's great.
I stand for that. Thank you, Thank you for bringing
that into the living room today. Doctor Shaniqua, Okay, let
me tell y'all something about doctor Shanique and she and
(06:47):
I talked about this a little bit, but as it
relates to my own self care journey, and one of
the things I really loved about this book is the
amount of times that you are communicating to us this
self care is a journey. It's not something that you
wake up one day and now you know all of
the things to do. It's a journey of knowing how
(07:11):
to care for yourself that you should and then what
those things are. So doctor Shanika, before I knew her
knew her, played a big role in my self care
journey with Too Heavy a Yoke, Black Women and the
Burden of Strength and doctor Shaniku when I've talked about this,
but I'm telling y'all because you know some of the
things me and Shaniko will be talking about. It's not
(07:32):
for y'all, but this part is so I'm gonna tell
y'all this part. I had fibroid surgery. I think I've
talked about this on the podcast before, very intense fibroid surgery.
I had eight and a half pounds of tumor removed
and six to eight week recovery, which for me ended
up being eight to ten weeks because I had a
(07:52):
complication post surgery also, and so I had to choose
sort of what I was going to do. That was
my first time in a long time really having to
do nothing, Like you can't lift your arms up beyond
a certain you know, like height at that point, you
can't carry certain weight, you know, and your arms at
(08:12):
that point couldn't drive. So it was really like I
had to really sit down, sit down, and I chose
three books. I chose Bell Hook's Sisters of the Ym
to read during that time. I chose Edna Lewis's The
Taste of Country Cooking, and I.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
Chose Too Heavy a Yoke. Those were my three books.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
And you know, you and I both having worked in
and out of various white spaces, various white Christian spaces
as well, having that time where I didn't have events
to go to and I didn't have meetings I had
to be at, and really just reading Too Heavy a
Yoke reflecting on all of the things that were on
(09:02):
my plate. That was really the beginning of me going here,
I'm in a time where nothing's on my plate because
all I can do is heal at this moment. So
when it's time to air quotes go back to work. Now,
I have more information to decide what should actually go
back onto the plate, you know, And you did such
(09:25):
a great job laying that out in a very particular
way for black women in that book and just acknowledging
how much we carry on our shoulders and our families
and our personal lives and our community work and then
our jobs, all these things. So if you are listening
to this and you have not read to Hevya yok just,
(09:45):
I want you to just go to your bookseller and
look up Sharnika Walker Barnes and put all these books
right here, put them all in your cart.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Do that.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Go to the bookstore and say her name, and then say,
whatever books are there, let me buy them, because all
of these are great. So this takes me into the
journey of this book, because it was really wonderful to
get to hear in your own journey. Now, how you
came to a place of saying self care is not
(10:19):
just me going to get my nails done, although that's
good and fine, but it's not just that.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Here.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
I'm actually going to have an expansive practice of this.
So talk to me about the journey of you knowing
this is a book. Now, this is a book that
I need to write.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Yeah, you know, it's wild because I was practicing intentionally
self care for about twenty years before I wrote this book,
and when I started practicing self care very quickly after that,
I started teaching it, and I knew I was going
to write a book about it because it when I
(10:57):
started with a few little changes, it changed my life
so much so quickly that immediately I was like, I
got to teach other women about this, right, this is
the thing we need to be doing. And I knew
I was gonna write about it, but I didn't know
when I had enough to sing right, like I'm I
am one of those people that I reflect a lot
(11:20):
and work things out and teach them and see how
they land, and then I'm like, okay, now I'm ready, right,
And so I had to go through that process of yeah,
just kind of trial and error and honestly failure and
recovery a lot, and then trying to teach people and
(11:43):
be like that didn't land the way I wanted it to,
or I don't know if that was as helpful to folks.
Before I finally sat down and was like, I think
this is a book, but yeah, So I was just
doing it, and honestly, I thought a lot of people
knew what I know right like that. So for a
while I was like, I think people are probably tired
(12:05):
of me speaking about self care and all these meetings
I'm at because everybody knows this. And when I did
finally decide, like I decided to create a course around
self care, I did this whole Instagram challenge on self care,
and that's when I began to realize, oh, people don't
actually know what I know. And part of it is
(12:27):
because a lot of people have learned to think about
self care in these really capitalistic ways, right, So you know,
corporations want to market self care to us now. They
want us to go buy something, they want us to
go take a trip some somewhere, and those are great things.
I'm not saying those are not good things. Those great things,
(12:47):
but that's not really what self care to me is
really about at its heart. And so at some point
I realize, oh, wait, I do know something here that
not everybody thinking about it in the same way, and
it will be helpful for me to actually write this
for other people.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
M m mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
I really love that you're speaking to sort of how
we actually practice self care without the lens of capitalism,
because I do think and you talked about this in
the book as far as capitalism is concerned, but even generally,
you talked in the book about the idea that we
will have inside that self care is not attainable, or
(13:28):
that it is not it is something that we should
just keep pushing to the side. It's not something that
we should make a priority of number one. But then
in some ways it can become like, oh, that's not
financially attainable. If self care is I need to pay
for this massage, I need to be able to pay
for this kind of appointment or that kind of service,
then it starts to seem like self care is leaving
(13:51):
out a lot of people. So what are your thoughts
around how we can practice self care? And again not
to say, you know, a girl doesn't like a foot massage,
et cetera. You know, hey, these things also wonderful, but
you gonna need to care for yourself even if you
are not in a moment of life where you can
(14:13):
afford the things that will cost money. So what did
the beginnings of practicing self care without necessarily thinking about
it in the ways of things we can buy or
services we can buy. What did that look like for you?
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Yeah? See, when I first started talking about self care
and thinking about it, it wasn't this commercialized thing. And
so for me, it started with some simple practices because
I knew I was in the habit of taking care
of everybody else first, and so I started thinking about
what do I need. I needed to exercise, right, So
it was like, okay, I need to I need to exercise. Right.
(14:52):
I didn't join a gym to exercise, like walk in
the neighborhood. I did buy some workout videos and did
them at home. Right. I joined the this running group
where we go out in and run. Right. I needed
to spend time nurturing my spiritual health, so I started
getting up to pray and meditate every every day. Right.
(15:14):
I used affirmations. So I wrote down on some index
cards right like this, like five affirmations that I used
to structure my day. And when I woke up in
the morning, I repeated the affirmations to myself, right and
at different points in the day. And then I needed
to hydrate because I had this habit of not drinking
(15:37):
enough water. I actually, in the beginning didn't even like water, right,
So I had to.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Learn how to like like water, right.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
And I grew up in a kool Aid household.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Okay, shut up, like kool aid.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Who wants to drink back.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Which masqueraded as water because you're watching it be made.
I mean the water to kool aid ratio seemed like,
isn't this it's water? Indeed this water it was not,
I think you.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
For it was mine. So yes, I had to learn
how to and so those were actually my foundational practices.
None of those required me to really go out and
spend lots of money. What it did require me to
do was give myself my time, right, And that was
actually the harder part, right, because yeah, yeah, I go
do a I do. I was doing massage back then,
(16:25):
I was doing the day spots back then. But if
you talk to me about the day to day practices,
I don't have time for that, right. And so for me,
it was learning to think about my daily time in
a different way, right to say, in the morning, before
I rush off to work, I actually can sit down
and meditate and pray and write in my journal. I
(16:48):
can start my day with that. I can afford to
start my day with that, or I can shift some
things around, or I can get up earlier, because that's
important to me. And the other thing I started doing
was taking action lunch break.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Huh my mind.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
So those of us who are creatives, we don't always
take actual lunch breaks. We work through lunch. Right There's
nobody saying clock out, go take your thirty minutes right now.
And so we just stopped taking the thirty minutes and
we just sit at our desk and we keep going.
And so I started making myself take an actual lunch break,
(17:24):
even if I stayed in my office, I backed away
from the computer, turned things off, and sat in eight
for half an hour, right and just you know, or
walked outside or something. Those were simple things. It did
not require money. But it was a hard shift. Like
it was so hard for me to do those simple things.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Right right oof.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
It just makes me think about how I went through
a season of time where I would have a day
in my week that was like for coffees. So it
was like anyone that had reached out that was like, Oh,
I mean, I haven't seen you a long time, let's
catch up, Or oh I had this question I wanted
to ask about writing whatever? Sure, And so I would
have like tuesdays for coffees and look up and you
(18:12):
just sitting down having coffee with people from ten to
seven pm. You had coffee, coffee, lunch, coffee, coffee, coffee, dinner.
My therapist was like, run that back, Like run that
back to me, why that's happening, And she was like,
especially all the other things you have going on in
(18:34):
your life. She was like, I want you to shut
that down and stop with all the coffees. Me give
me ninety days of no coffees. And when I shifted
that time and realized how it does take time to
care for myself. So if I'm giving all these hours
(18:55):
over here, I'm not thinking about the moment that you
described that I might want at the beginning of my day,
or the moment I might want eating lunch, because I've
already given the time away in a way before I
had time to think about it and account for it.
So then with my ninety days is up, She's like,
now let's go back and think about who do you
(19:17):
really want to go to coffee with? Rejuvenates you, who
makes you laugh, who feels it feels refreshing, go to
coffee with those people with and then that's gonna narrow
you down. That's two to three people, that's it. Yeah,
(19:41):
that's not anybody. Yeah yeah, that's not everybody. So the
time shift, I love that you mentioned that because just
taking that away from my schedule, and then when I
gave that time back to myself and realized, if you
are going to take some time and exercise and drink
your water and do these things, it will maybe not
(20:04):
leave time for some of the other things that you
may find have been draining you.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Yeah. Yeah. So, like so self care, it requires making
some decisions about how you're going to spend your time,
and it isn't always the fun immediately gratifying stuff, right
like exercise. I honestly I remember once Oprah saying, like,
you know, she still didn't like exercise, right after all
(20:31):
the sheet done to like lose weight, and she was like, yeah,
I still don't like it. I'm that person same. I
still I would really rather just sit and read or
watch TV or just like Netflix is like, yeah, I
would rather do that, But I know what happens to
my body if I don't exercise, right, Like, I know
(20:54):
kind of how many days a week I need to
exercise to feel good, and if I go more in
a certain number of days, I know my body starts
to feel it right. So self care isn't even always
doing the feel good stuff, but it's about doing the
things we need to do in order to sustain our
health right. And for me, yeah, exercise is one of those,
(21:15):
and it takes time. Drinking water is one of those.
And it takes time because I'll be running to the
bathroom all day, Okay, all that part day.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
That part you really start trying to drink your water,
and now you like, it's taking me time to sit
here and drink this water, and then it's taking me
time to go to the bathroom, which is what the
body should do. Is that's supposed to That's what the
body should do. But you need some time for that. Yeah,
you need some time for that. Say what you were
(21:59):
about to say again about the time that you were
not drinking water, because I want, I do want you
to speak to this because people people will be having
a hard time with the water and it kind of
it kind of helps to hear a little bit of
some water testimonial of the people who were, like I
was a person who did not drink the water here
and I have gone on a journey, so say the
thing you were about to say.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah, So there was a time where I didn't and
it was because the bathrooms at my job. I didn't
want to use them. You know, I always been particular
about bathrooms. I don't want to use public bathrooms. I
don't want to use the bathrooms at my job. And
so I would go to work all day and drink
very little, like I might drink sixteen ounces of tea
(22:40):
and that's it. And I was talking to my doctor
and he was like And I had this doctor who
was this black my age, who was very matter of
fact with me, and he basically told me, he was like,
if you keep doing this, if you keep holding in
all day when you need to go to the bathroom,
he said, eventually your body is going to shut down
(23:02):
on you and you will lose complete control of your
bladder and your bowel. So he was like, so that's
your choice. You either figure out how to go to
the bathroom right so you can drink water during the day,
or you recognize that later on this is what's coming
for you. And I was like, I guess I'm making
peace with this bathroom now, right, Like I'm okay. And
(23:25):
the thing is, the bathroom wasn't even bad. It just
wasn't my bathroom, right, It wasn't even It wasn't that
I worked at a school where it was nasty. It
wasn't any of that. We had a really good team.
They took care of it. It wasn't my bathroom, though.
It wasn't the way I would have done it. So
I was avoiding it, and so I had to learn
(23:45):
go to the bathroom.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Go to the bathroom. That's the thing, right there is
just just try.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
That's and for those of you that are out here
trying to get on your water drinking journey.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
I have heard and I feel this is true that.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
In your initial time of trying to rehydrate, you going
more often because your body is like.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
What, you know, what's going on here? Okay?
Speaker 1 (24:14):
But then after a while you'll settle into more of
a rhythm. You might come to a place where your
body can handle you. You might start off you have
little eight ounce of water and you're like, oh my gosh,
I feel like I had to go to the bathroom
seventeen times.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
But then you might like even out a little bit.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Just stay with it, is what we're trying to say,
people who are trying to drink water, stay with it,
do the things you can. It does so many good
things for you, but you will need to make that time.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
To go to your bathroom. That's true.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
What I love about the structure of this book is
and those of you that are about to be looking
at your own purchase copies of Sacred Self Care. I
love that this is a weekly experience. So each week
is dedicated to a theme, and then in the week
you have a reading for each day that may have
(25:05):
some activities, some like suggested journal prompts, things like this,
you have devoted an entire week to practicing self compassion.
Can you talk more about this? Because when we hear
self care, this has become like a buzzword. So in
(25:26):
some ways we hear that and our minds immediately think
what we've seen on an ad or in a magazine
or wherever we see advertisements. Right, But then when you
start saying, well, we're talking about self care, the actual
definition and a part of self care is to have
self compassion. Describe why that is important in the journey
(25:49):
of sacred self care.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Yeah, so you know, as a pastoral care professor, I
start my semester when I teach my intro class breaking
down what pastoral care is, and when I talk about
the care part, I go to compassion right, that this
is an expression of compassion and empathy that we have
for other people. And because I work so much with
(26:13):
ministry and activists types, right, what would always strike me
is that the people who can't take care of themselves
are so good at taking care of other people. Right.
They have so much compassion and empathy for other people,
but can't direct it towards themselves. And in my own
(26:34):
journey of self care, I realize that the biggest barrier
to my self care is my lack of compassion for myself.
That I treat my body, I treat myself in ways
I would never treat another person ever, right, And the
things I mean, all of us will. We will encourage
(26:54):
other people to be doing things and taking care of
themselves and ways that we're not doing for ourselves. You
know you need to get some sleep, you know you
need to rest, but we're not resting, right. And so
I realized that the issue is not that we don't
know how to care. We don't know how to turn
that care towards ourselves, and that self care meant we
(27:15):
had to learn how to turn our the care we
already have, just turn it inwards. Start to treat like
you know, we're like, treat other people the way you
would like to be treated. Well, no, treat yourself the
way you treat other people.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Right, right?
Speaker 2 (27:30):
That that was the thing Like I was like, oh right,
I'm doing it, just not for me, so let me start.
Can we do it for ourselves? Right? Even to the
you know, I talk about self talk as part of
self compassion because so much of the way you can
see our lack of self compassion is how we talk
(27:52):
about into ourselves, right, the way the messages we send
to ourselves, the way we criticize ourselves. Again, we never
do this to other people. Some of the stuff I
say in my head to me about me, I would
never utter to another person. But why am I doing
it to myself? Right? So a lot of so I
(28:16):
talked about my affirmations. My first affirmation which I still
keep going back to, is I am worthy of self care? Yeah,
because I realized that the reason I wasn't giving myself
my time was because ultimately I thought everybody else was
more deserving of my time than I was. Job, more deserving, family,
(28:37):
more deserving, everybody, church more deserving. Everybody's more deserving of
my time than I am. And so for me, I
had to learn, no way, I'm worthy of my time.
I'm worthy of my attention, I'm worthy of my care,
and yeah, I'm worthy of my money too. Right the
times when I do decide that I want the pedicure,
I want the I'm worthy of that. Right again, I
(28:59):
would do it for other people. I do it for
other people all the time. I can give myself my
own good energy.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Mm hmmm mmm, yes, yes, because we don't think that
we're worthy. Yeah, that's the part when y'all get into
this book. That's the part that really starts getting into
you doing some work right there. That's the part where
self care is getting underneath the pampering appointments that we
(29:33):
can make, or underneath you know, I'm a candle girl,
so underneath like the candles we might want to buy
to half in our house. Now you're getting underneath there
as to And a part of what I loved about
the book is it has so much practicality, the questions
we can ask ourselves, the things we can consider, which
is why have I not felt like I am worthy
(29:54):
of that time?
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (29:56):
You know what, what messages have been there for me
to say everyone else deserves me except for me?
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Yeah, Oh that's so powerful. I want to ask you
this is in part a selfish question because I have
a milestone coming up, and I was talking to some
friends and I was like, I feel like I should
celebrate this, and I'm struggling a little bit trying to
allow myself to celebrate this. And I feel like we
(30:29):
all have the friends in our lives that it's their birthday,
they got a promotion, they bought a new broom, whatever
the thing is, you know that they did. We all
have friends in our lives that are those people that
are like, girl, I bought a new broom, y'all come
to the house, y'all meet me at the restaurant, you know.
And sometimes I would be like, Wow, why is my
(30:50):
friend so extra about this? But then when I would
really think about it, I would be like, I mean,
my girl deserves to celebrate her new broom, her new house,
her new blue, her new she got a new dog.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Let's go eat some food.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
I don't know, you know, And you talked about the
place of joy in our journey as self care and y'all,
doctor Shanika had a momentous birthday. She had invited me
to participate in one of her celebrations. Because this was
not what I was at, was not the only celebration.
(31:26):
I was so honored to be invited. I put my
little cute clothes on. I was ready for these, you know,
balloons and whatever we was gonna have.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
And I was so.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
I don't know what the word is, doctor Shanikua, Like,
it just does my heart good to see my friends
and the people I love celebrate themselves like that. Can
you talk about what is the place of joy in
our self care? And can you talk about what has
your journey been in learning how to celebrate yourself as
(32:01):
a part of your self care journey?
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Yeah? Yeah, so I think joy for me is an
emotional self care tool, right Like, So when I started
talking about this and thinking about self care and even
teaching about it, and I would teach people about emotional
self care being important, but I focused on emotional self care.
(32:27):
It's like taking care of the bad emotions, right like, so,
you know, ye go to therapy, you know if you
have a diagnosis, handle that diagnosis right, use boundaries. It
was that type of things because I'm trying to I
want to manage my anger. I want to manage the sadness.
But then I realized, no, it's not just about managing
(32:47):
the negative things. I actually need to be increasing the
positive emotions. I need to feel joy, I need to
feel laughter, I need to feel happiness for me. That
part of my self care journey. I won't say it
was accidental, but it was part of what happened during
my cancer treatment. When during cancer treatment, I realized that
(33:09):
there was so much that was so hard and so
heavy that I had to be intentional about finding joy,
especially because I was sequestered a lot, right, because you're
worried about infection and injury, and it's just like you know,
so the surgeries there was surgery after surgery, were like, Okay,
now I'm stuck at home, right, I can't do the
(33:29):
work that brings me joy. I got to cancel these trips.
I can't even do family gatherings because I explained to
my doctor I'm from a black family, they gonna hug me,
and she was like, yeah, no, no, Thanksgiving for you.
She was like, you know, you're immune system. No, and
so I was like, okay, so I'm just staying home.
And so I had to be really intentional about seeking joy,
(33:53):
and I was good at doing it in the small ways,
Like I was good at like making sure I'm laughing
every day and if nothing has happened in my life
to make me laugh today, then let me go find
some funny puppy videos. For funny baby videos, those are
my things, those are my goal tos. Right, I'm like,
I'm on YouTube for the next twenty minutes. I am
(34:14):
watching babies or puppies or babies and puppies is really great.
It's really it's I watched some yesterday with these bad yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
I will I will say I go down a guilty
dog's rabbit hole when the pet owners are finding Libby
or whoever you know messed up the house with the
ears down and smulking around.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
You know, those videos do your heart good. I see
that they really do.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
And so I was good at that. And then same
as you, I noticed at a point I wasn't good
at celebrating myself. So like I got a new job,
promoted to full professor. It's a really huge deal, like
there's a handful of black women who are full professors
(35:10):
in theological education, like across the whole country. Like there's
it's a very small number. It was a really big deal.
I didn't do anything. I didn't even think about it.
It was I was on this I'm in this Facebook
group of black women in the academy, and folks start
talking about what they did to celebrate their tenure decisions,
(35:30):
like they took these grand trips. One woman she had
ended ten years as dean or department chare or something,
and so she bought herself ten bottles of wine to
celebrate ending a position. Right Like. It was like, and
I am going to be working my way through these
(35:50):
ten bottles of wine over the next few weeks, right,
And I was like, oh, was I supposed to feel something?
And so I thought about that. It was like that, yeah,
that's part of what I want to do. And so
I went from why are they doing all this to
(36:12):
wait a minute, Yeah, they should be doing this and
I should too. The funny thing, though, was when I
got ready to start celebrating myself, I didn't know what
to do.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Okay, speak to that doctor, speak to the cause, you know,
there's like there's like the phases. It's like the first
phase of like I should celebrate myself, then the second
phase of realizing I don't know.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
How to do this. I speak of this yep.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
So my forty ninth birthday was approaching, and I was like, yeah,
I'm gonna celebrate myself this year. I'm gonna do a great,
great birthday celebration. The date is approaching, I'm like, uh, what,
so how do I do that? What do I do?
And I ended up being sold for overwhelm that I
(37:02):
essentially did nothing right because I was just like, I
don't know what to do. And then I realized the
other thing that word again time. I hadn't given myself
time to plan anything, and my schedule was packed. I
didn't have time right, and so I basically decided, Okay,
I failed at this. But I started looking ahead. I
(37:22):
was like, okay, boy, and nine next year is fifty
and next year it was also my twenty fifth wedding anniversary.
I was like, okay, those, I can't let this happen again.
So what that meant was I realized I need practice, right,
I need practice to celebrate in small ways. So when
I get up to the big one. I know how.
(37:44):
And then I also knew, okay, and clearly I need time.
So I'm not supposed to wait till a month before
the birthday to plan the birthday party. I actually need
to start thinking now. And so I started like really
just marking out time this time around this event. I'm
gonna have to cut off on some other things because
(38:04):
I need to be planning my own celebrations, right, I
need to. I need to make sure I'm gonna have
energy for my own celebration, right, and so, but then
I just started like a small ways I can practice
celebrating myself. Right, Oh, I get a book contract? What's
my celebration for that? Right? No, No longer than let
me just sign it and post off Facebook. No, something
(38:27):
needs to happen, right and and and yeah, and sometimes
that that is when I'll go full capitalists. Right now,
you know, I'm gonna buy myself something to celebrate that.
I can't do that, right, I'm gonna take I want
a trip, right, I want to do that. And so,
over the past like two years now, I have been
practicing celebrating my myself. And initially I had to really
(38:52):
think about it and plan it, and then it started
happening more spontaneously, right like yesterday. So today is the
fifth anniversary of my second cancer diagnosis. Wow, So as
of today, I am officially five years in remission. Yes, yeh,
and five is a huge number. It's like, yeah, because
(39:14):
the chances of recurrence are smaller if you reach five.
And so I reached five, and yesterday all of sudden,
I was like, I had already planned I want to
do stuff. And then you know, Sunday, I was like,
I think I want to wear a breast cancer shirt
every every day this week, but I don't have enough shirts,
Like I need to go to Michael's. I need to
make some shirts, right, Like, yeah, I should be doing
(39:37):
other things, but I want to make some shirts, right.
And then I'm like, is this shirt really appropriate for working?
Like they're gonna deal with it because I'm celebrating. I'm
wearing my shirts. And so I did that, and then
yesterday I was like, I need a balloon, right, come on, now,
a balloon to me? If you'd ask me a few
(39:59):
years ago, I would have said that it is the
most frivolous, useless thing to spend some money on. You
blow it up, it stays up for a few hours,
and then it deflates, and then what it is just
for a land?
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Like I thought that was dumb, right, Yeah, Like I.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Used to take flowers. Why these flowers they're just gonna die?
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Okay, it's the practicality for me. It's like, let's make
that make sense.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
And so yesterday I was like, hmm, I think I
want a balloon. I'm going to party city. I'm getting
a balloon. Right, And so there is now a big
five in front of my house, Like you, nobody knows
what it's for, right, unless it's my neighbors who really
know me, But it's there. I was so happy all
day yesterday looking at that balloon, and I just kept
(40:49):
walking around and being like I know.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
That I love it.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Oh and you you talked about this in the in
the book in a way you talked about the need
for us to play. But also I think celebration involves
sometimes us letting ourselves get silly, like yeah, to where
we're enjoying so much joy that we experience like just
(41:16):
feeling silly with being happy. And that is where things
like balloons and cake and things like that make you
so happy. You're just like, oh, I'm so happy. I
feel silly in the best way, Like I.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
Yeah, I mean that's what Like, that's why the joy
of children is so infectious, because it's so innocent and
it is not self absorbed in any way. It's just
this is joyful.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Right. There was a kid in a coffee shop the
other day. Everything he passed, he was like, Mommy, look
at that pumpkin. Mommy, look at that. And I was
cracking up because he was genuinely thrilled by everything and
needed his mom to look look at it too, so
she'd be as happy. And I'm like, yes, I.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
Want that, yeah, okay, yes, please.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
I want to look like I just walked past that
same stuff and barely looked at it, but to see
it through his eyes, he's like, wow, somebody put that
skeleton up there.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Look at that. Oh my gosh, I love it. Like
we need that reminder.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Yes, so yeah, So whatever we can do for ourselves
with that, right, we recognize balloons make kids happy. They
make grown ups happy too, Right, what's the thing that
we do to be happy? We tend to like socialize
(42:45):
ourselves away from that and think we're not supposed to
want that stuff, But it's just how we're wired. It's
like you look at all animals playing when I saw
when I noticed dogs playing, especially when dogs play with
each other, and you see the joy, right, You're like,
this is this is really how we as mammals are wired.
(43:08):
We're wired to meet this. Dogs do not grow it right,
like they might get slower with it. But a dog
can be twelve years old and they still will try
to play.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Still be ready to play, ready to play, be like
you got a ball, somebody got a ball? I thought
somebody brought a ball in here? Does somebody bring a
ball in here? Because I'm ready to toss the ball?
Who you're gonna throw it?
Speaker 3 (43:30):
Are you throwing it? Because I stay ready to play?
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Yes? And so we need that too. We somehow convinced
ourselves that we don't, like we're all trying to be
cool teenagers still like I don't want people to see me,
you know, being happy, Like I'm too cool for that.
It's like we're caught in adolescens forever and we're still
thinking people can't see us happy.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
Right. I think that's what came to my mind when
I was thinking about my friends who I have. I've
somehow deemed lovingly extra. You know my friends who like
I know, when her birthday come, it's gonna be like
a three part weekend. Like if she had the money
of Sean Puffy Comb's Morocco, it would have been like,
(44:14):
lets all of us all jump on a flight and
go to Morocco. And for so many years I would
just be like, oh, look at my friend who is
so lovingly extra, And then I would get by myself
and be like, it's beautiful to celebrate yourself and see.
But here, y'all, here's the part where you start. You
start digging into self care and you pick out your
(44:34):
favorite nail polishing. Before you know, you crying about why
you were raised to believe that you shouldn't celebrate yourself.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
I'm gonna telling you it comes at you fast, right,
It comes at you fast.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
You're like, I thought I was polishing my nails for
some reason. You're crying about something somebody said to me
at church?
Speaker 3 (44:51):
What's that about? How did that happen?
Speaker 1 (44:56):
But that's a part of it, because when you can
dig under there to say, yeah, what is it that
makes me feel I shouldn't celebrate myself? You know, this
is just us using this as an example, y'all. You'll
find different examples here in the book too. But to
ask those questions, what is it that is the barrier
(45:16):
there for me? Why do I feel it is extra
to celebrate oneself? Why is that an extra thing to
do versus just a standard? I mean, everyone's gonna have
different versions of what celebration looks like, but just standard
that you would celebrate yourself. Yeah, And I love what
(45:38):
you said about practicing that. I'm really going to like
take that home with me because I do think there
are things that we feel should come naturally to us,
you know, like we should naturally just be able to
start playing again even though we haven't been playful in
ten years, or we should be able to just start
playing a celebration. But you actually need moments to practice
(46:03):
so that you can feel how the win of those
smaller moments may feel. That will help you have the
skills right to be able to go further.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
Right, Yeah, yeah, because you know, sometimes we learn to
celebrate ourselves. If we come from families that value celebration, right,
that can help us. But a lot of us, like
I know, for me, I realize, oh my mom doesn't
celebrate herself. Right. Oh, there's a whole track record here
(46:38):
of not celebrating ourselves. So I didn't learn how to
do it because she didn't know how to do it right.
And so then it becomes okay, so now I know
what my barrier is, right, So how do I change this? Right?
And it became yeah, so I don't have ideas. I
need to look for inspiration because this doesn't come natural
to me because I don't have a whole track record.
(47:00):
I don't have a family history of this. I mean,
I'm the same way like the cousins who got a
birthday party every year.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
Not just for the big not just for the big birthday,
but every year, honey, every.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Year, like your mam would do that every And even
as a cad I'm like, but why, exactly.
Speaker 3 (47:21):
Why?
Speaker 2 (47:23):
And now I'm finally like, oh, right, Like that was
great that they were teaching them that your birthday is
a special occasion and it deserves to be markedight, right,
And I wish I did have that message, right, And
so now I'm trying to give that to myself now.
(47:43):
But yeah, a lot of times we do have to
do some digging to try to figure out what's the
barrier here, and sometimes it lies in our family history,
it lies in in socialization, right, it might lie in
and it's not even just it lies in like money
family history, because there are families that struggle, but they
also try to figure out a way exact or a
(48:05):
special data feel special, right, And so sometimes it's other
stuff and it's not necessarily money, but to figure out. Oh,
I just don't have practice because this isn't what we've
been doing in my family, and I don't have to
stay there. I can develop a skill. And I think
for me, like self care is just that it's a skill.
(48:26):
For some of us, we weren't taught it. For most
of us, we weren't taught it. Right, this is not
what we learned. Nobody gave us a handbook on how
to take care of us. Like they don't say this
is what you pay attention to, pay attention to your
body's signals, learn to respond this way. Right, Nobody does that,
and so for many of us, self care then does
(48:48):
become this skill. For me is a skill and learn
me how to pay attention to myself, Like what is
my body telling me it needs? Oh do something about that?
Like little stuff taking medicine. Right, I had a vaccine.
I got my shingles vaccine. Right. You want to talk
about good marketing, that Shingrit's commercial. That's some good marketing, right, Ok,
(49:11):
Shingles doesn't care, right, disappointment because shingle doesn't care, doesn't care.
And so I got it, and oh my god, the
thing makes you so sick. Pain. Yes, you have to
prepare not to do anything for twenty four hours after
that shot because you're in so much pain and chills.
(49:33):
And I was really proud of myself because, like early
in the pain, once I realized it was there, I
was like, I can take medicine for that, and that
for me is huge because I used to just suffer
without medicine. And then it started hitting me, Oh there's
(49:54):
a thing called pain medication, and you can take it.
Speaker 3 (49:58):
It can provide you relief my mind.
Speaker 2 (50:04):
But like for me, the self care part is first noticing,
like and literally I had to notice I was in
pain because my husband and I both did the shot.
And later on he said, and how are you feeling
about the vaccine? And I was like, oh, well, now
that you mention it, that's what that is. And so
I had to notice it, and then once it got
(50:26):
was like, okay, that's increasing now I'm away. Okay, that
is really uncomfortable now and for me to realize, okay,
I think I'm kind of past my threshold of just
sitting with this and then realizing there is a thing
called pain medication. We have some like it's right there
in the bathroom, and like, just go get that, take
(50:47):
that little kill. You'll feel better.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
That's it, right, that's it. That's why it's there to
help you my mind.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
There again, I would do it for my son. And
the heartbeat right in a heartbeat, if he is the
moment my child says, I mean, I feel oh what's that.
Let's let's see what's about? Yes, how serious is it?
Do we need to go to the doctor, like we
(51:14):
will drop everything if necessary, but at a minimum, Okay,
you have these symptoms, we have this medication. Okay, here
take this sun and then I'm putting a reminder on
my phone to like, all right, come back and give
him another dose and in forty six hours, right, I'm
gonna do all that for myself. I'll just be in pain. Right,
And it doesn't occur to me there is relief.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
There is relief.
Speaker 1 (51:36):
Who I didn't know that we was gonna get a
word today, but there is relief.
Speaker 3 (51:44):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
Yes, you don't have to in some things sit and
suffer through. Yeah, that is a way. You can also
show compassion to yourself. Yep, mmm, y'all, I can't if
I sit up here with doctor Schnika, Do y'all under
then me and doctor Shanikwa if y'all want a forty
eight hour episode, me and doctor Niko really sit up here?
Speaker 3 (52:08):
Do you understand?
Speaker 1 (52:09):
I want to ask you two more questions. My second
to last question is when you think about people now
having this book, you know, physically in their hands, in
their devices, however they're reading this, what are you hoping
the reader feels or experiences when they get to the
(52:29):
end of this book.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
Well, I want to change people's lives with this book,
and I want to save people's lives with this Yeah.
So what I hope is that people in this book
committed to starting a journey that when they end that
it's just the beginning, right, that when people are they're like, Okay,
(52:55):
I've been practicing some little tippits here and there, but
now I'm about to really put this together into my
own plan for self care, right, and that I'm about
to try to live into this and walk into this.
So I really want this book to not just be
something people read and then put down and forget about it,
but I want it to be a therapeutic book. Right.
(53:19):
This was me trying to put my clinical skills onto
a page and saying, if I was your therapist and
we were working on self care, by the end of
our time together, you would be practicing self care consistently
for you yourself. Right, That's what I want.
Speaker 1 (53:34):
Mm hmm, I love it. Where can the people find
out more information about you? Follow you so that they
can have links to buy five copies? Y'all know how
I do. Don't just buy one listen, buy five copies?
Why then you have yours. Then, inevitably, when other people
are like, oh, what's that book, you're telling me you
have an extra copy you can hand over somebody. So
(53:56):
where can they follow your work and also buy five
copies of this?
Speaker 2 (54:01):
Yeah? So you can find me online at doctor Shanika
dot com and I have a substack that I write
in weekly and you'll find the link to that. You
can also find me on Instagram and Twitter at doctor Shanikua. Yeah,
so find me, follow me, reach out to me, follow me. Yeah,
(54:22):
And I hope that we will continue to have the
conversation because really, I'm still learning about self care, and
so I keep writing about the next phases of what
I'm thinking about in the ways of which my journey
is stretching and growing and I'm learning new things.
Speaker 1 (54:39):
So yeah, I love that. Y'all make sure you go
to these things. We're gonna have these links in the
show notes. Doctor Shanikua, I just just want to thank
you for being here and agreeing to this time. I
appreciate that so much, and thank you for sharing your
journey with us. I think it helps us. I know
what helps me, and I hope it helps your readers
(54:59):
and and listen and the listeners here to know that
self care is a journey.
Speaker 3 (55:04):
It's a skill.
Speaker 1 (55:06):
You could be continuing to learn for the rest of
your life. You don't have to have all of these
high barriers to keep you from it. There's always a
small step we can take to care more for ourselves.
And one thing you said in this book that I
really loved is when we care for ourselves, it also
helps us to care for other people to so doctor Shanika,
thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (55:27):
I appreciate you, thank you so much. Such Her with Amina.
Speaker 1 (55:46):
Brown is produced by Matt Owen for solober Fee Productions
as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in
partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate,
and review the podcast on
Ooh, y'all, welcome back to a new episode of Her
with Amina Brown. And we're here in the living room
and we have a guest, and I'm very, very excited.
I want you all to welcome psychologist theologian, author of
I Bring the Voices of My People, A Woman's Vision
of Racial Reconciliation, Too Heavy a Yoke, Black Women and
(01:00):
the Burden of Strength, and her newest book, Sacred Self Care,
Daily Practices for Nurturing our Whole Selves. Welcome, doctor Shanikua
Walker Barnes.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Fine, I'm so glad to be here. I am so
glad to be here. I hope you're watching the clock,
because you know how we do when we start talking.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
I mean, if it has to be a two part episode,
doctor Shika, I'm not mad at it. I'm not mad, okay,
if we have to be, if I have to be
a well, okay, that's part one. Thank y'all so much.
Join us next week for part two, y'all. Let me
tell y'all something. I'm excited to have you here, doctor Shaniqua,
(01:44):
because before your book came out, your latest book that
I'm gonna say the name again, so y'all can just
go to y'all bookseller and order five. But before this
book came out, Sacred Self Care, I have wanted to
have you here in this living room to talk self
care because you are one of my favorite voices on
(02:05):
the topic. So when this cover came out and you
were like, this is my next book, I was like, yes,
come on, we have so much to discuss, y'all. Okay,
So doctor Shaniko and I actually live in the same city.
We just be seeing each other mostly when we go
out of town. See each other all over the country,
(02:30):
child all over the country in Chicago, in DC, somewhere
in Los Angeles, see each other almost every place except Atlanta.
And finally, within the last couple of years, we managed
to be people who have tea sometimes, who take a
little walk, you know, get hydrated. So, y'all, I've been
(02:54):
working my way into being doctor Shaniko friends. So I'm
just very I'm very happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Oh my goodness, Oh my goodness is too much.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So let me start with asking you about this. So
when I'm here in what we call the her living room,
that's what I like to refer to this podcast space
as because I always imagine that is I'm trying to
make this like the space I gather with my girlfriends,
and a lot of times we're just trying to get
(03:24):
together and catch up, and we will do that anyway
that we can. You know, if I have some hummus,
I opened up a couple of days ago, and you
got a bell pepper, you cut up a little bit,
bring your ziploc bag and just come to the house.
I bring my hummus to your house. You know, we
just bring our snacks together. So I want to know,
doctor Chaniko, when you are gathering with your your girlfriends,
(03:45):
your people, people, what is the snack that you would
typically be walking in the door with. Are you a
person who wants to make a snack? Are you a
person who's like, never, I will always buy a snack?
What are your snack vibes discussed?
Speaker 2 (04:05):
I like to be the person who will make a snack, right,
That's that's the person I think of myself as. That's
the person I want to be. I want to be
the person that will bake a cake, right Like, that's
that's what I want to be. I want to be
the person that will will bake a cake, a pound
cake or strawberry cake. Right, I want to be that person. Increasingly,
(04:29):
I'm not that person. I'm the person that is gonna
be like, hmm, I know this nice bakery. I'm gonna
go grab something now, already bring the dessert I didn't bake.
At least let me go find somebody who doesn't well
and get that.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
I respect this.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I'm not gonna bring you the I mean, public st
does some good cakes though, but I'm generally not going
to bring you that storebock cake. I'm like, let me.
Let me go somewhere where I know somebody, yeah, put.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
In some time, were in a bakery bakery, if you have.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
A bakery bakery and be like, yeah, let me get
let me get that carrot cake back. Yeah, that looks good,
Give me the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
I rekised this such a choice.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
First of all, I feel like you might be the
first guest I've had that said cake was the snack
of choice they walked in with.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
And I have a lot of reasons to like you.
You know what I'm saying. We have a lot of.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Things in common. You know, I think you're great. But
the fact that you said I want to be a
person who walks in with a cake, I was like, boys,
let's really applaud that, because who doesn't need cake.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
At the end of a long day, long week.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
I feel like it shouldn't just be reserved for birthdays
and things like that.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
No, yes, we need cake.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
I love that as a choice.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
I mean, I remember going through a time where if
I was having a bad week, I would really go
and get like the half dozen cupcakes like at public
and they would be like, oh, it's your birthday. No, No,
I'm just I've just decided that it's a cupcake time
for me.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
So I'm gonna take all six of these to my
home and I will divide them out over the next
few days as I need.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Yeah, if they make it a few days, it is
the thing.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
I'm gonna divide them out as I need. So I
thank you for bringing cake into the living room today.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Mmm.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
That's very great because I'm like, I'm if you invite
your friend over and you open up the door and
your friend is holding a cake, like, wow, that's great.
I stand for that. Thank you, Thank you for bringing
that into the living room today. Doctor Shaniqua, Okay, let
me tell y'all something about doctor Shanique and she and
(06:47):
I talked about this a little bit, but as it
relates to my own self care journey, and one of
the things I really loved about this book is the
amount of times that you are communicating to us this
self care is a journey. It's not something that you
wake up one day and now you know all of
the things to do. It's a journey of knowing how
(07:11):
to care for yourself that you should and then what
those things are. So doctor Shanika, before I knew her
knew her, played a big role in my self care
journey with Too Heavy a Yoke, Black Women and the
Burden of Strength and doctor Shaniku when I've talked about this,
but I'm telling y'all because you know some of the
things me and Shaniko will be talking about. It's not
(07:32):
for y'all, but this part is so I'm gonna tell
y'all this part. I had fibroid surgery. I think I've
talked about this on the podcast before, very intense fibroid surgery.
I had eight and a half pounds of tumor removed
and six to eight week recovery, which for me ended
up being eight to ten weeks because I had a
(07:52):
complication post surgery also, and so I had to choose
sort of what I was going to do. That was
my first time in a long time really having to
do nothing, Like you can't lift your arms up beyond
a certain you know, like height at that point, you
can't carry certain weight, you know, and your arms at
(08:12):
that point couldn't drive. So it was really like I
had to really sit down, sit down, and I chose
three books. I chose Bell Hook's Sisters of the Ym
to read during that time. I chose Edna Lewis's The
Taste of Country Cooking, and I.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
Chose Too Heavy a Yoke. Those were my three books.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
And you know, you and I both having worked in
and out of various white spaces, various white Christian spaces
as well, having that time where I didn't have events
to go to and I didn't have meetings I had
to be at, and really just reading Too Heavy a
Yoke reflecting on all of the things that were on
(09:02):
my plate. That was really the beginning of me going here,
I'm in a time where nothing's on my plate because
all I can do is heal at this moment. So
when it's time to air quotes go back to work. Now,
I have more information to decide what should actually go
back onto the plate, you know, And you did such
(09:25):
a great job laying that out in a very particular
way for black women in that book and just acknowledging
how much we carry on our shoulders and our families
and our personal lives and our community work and then
our jobs, all these things. So if you are listening
to this and you have not read to Hevya yok just,
(09:45):
I want you to just go to your bookseller and
look up Sharnika Walker Barnes and put all these books
right here, put them all in your cart.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Do that.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Go to the bookstore and say her name, and then say,
whatever books are there, let me buy them, because all
of these are great. So this takes me into the
journey of this book, because it was really wonderful to
get to hear in your own journey. Now, how you
came to a place of saying self care is not
(10:19):
just me going to get my nails done, although that's
good and fine, but it's not just that.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Here.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
I'm actually going to have an expansive practice of this.
So talk to me about the journey of you knowing
this is a book. Now, this is a book that
I need to write.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Yeah, you know, it's wild because I was practicing intentionally
self care for about twenty years before I wrote this book,
and when I started practicing self care very quickly after that,
I started teaching it, and I knew I was going
to write a book about it because it when I
(10:57):
started with a few little changes, it changed my life
so much so quickly that immediately I was like, I
got to teach other women about this, right, this is
the thing we need to be doing. And I knew
I was gonna write about it, but I didn't know
when I had enough to sing right, like I'm I
am one of those people that I reflect a lot
(11:20):
and work things out and teach them and see how
they land, and then I'm like, okay, now I'm ready, right,
And so I had to go through that process of yeah,
just kind of trial and error and honestly failure and
recovery a lot, and then trying to teach people and
(11:43):
be like that didn't land the way I wanted it to,
or I don't know if that was as helpful to folks.
Before I finally sat down and was like, I think
this is a book, but yeah, So I was just
doing it, and honestly, I thought a lot of people
knew what I know right like that. So for a
while I was like, I think people are probably tired
(12:05):
of me speaking about self care and all these meetings
I'm at because everybody knows this. And when I did
finally decide, like I decided to create a course around
self care, I did this whole Instagram challenge on self care,
and that's when I began to realize, oh, people don't
actually know what I know. And part of it is
(12:27):
because a lot of people have learned to think about
self care in these really capitalistic ways, right, So you know,
corporations want to market self care to us now. They
want us to go buy something, they want us to
go take a trip some somewhere, and those are great things.
I'm not saying those are not good things. Those great things,
(12:47):
but that's not really what self care to me is
really about at its heart. And so at some point
I realize, oh, wait, I do know something here that
not everybody thinking about it in the same way, and
it will be helpful for me to actually write this
for other people.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
M m mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
I really love that you're speaking to sort of how
we actually practice self care without the lens of capitalism,
because I do think and you talked about this in
the book as far as capitalism is concerned, but even generally,
you talked in the book about the idea that we
will have inside that self care is not attainable, or
(13:28):
that it is not it is something that we should
just keep pushing to the side. It's not something that
we should make a priority of number one. But then
in some ways it can become like, oh, that's not
financially attainable. If self care is I need to pay
for this massage, I need to be able to pay
for this kind of appointment or that kind of service,
then it starts to seem like self care is leaving
(13:51):
out a lot of people. So what are your thoughts
around how we can practice self care? And again not
to say, you know, a girl doesn't like a foot massage,
et cetera. You know, hey, these things also wonderful, but
you gonna need to care for yourself even if you
are not in a moment of life where you can
(14:13):
afford the things that will cost money. So what did
the beginnings of practicing self care without necessarily thinking about
it in the ways of things we can buy or
services we can buy. What did that look like for you?
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Yeah? See, when I first started talking about self care
and thinking about it, it wasn't this commercialized thing. And
so for me, it started with some simple practices because
I knew I was in the habit of taking care
of everybody else first, and so I started thinking about
what do I need. I needed to exercise, right, So
it was like, okay, I need to I need to exercise. Right.
(14:52):
I didn't join a gym to exercise, like walk in
the neighborhood. I did buy some workout videos and did
them at home. Right. I joined the this running group
where we go out in and run. Right. I needed
to spend time nurturing my spiritual health, so I started
getting up to pray and meditate every every day. Right.
(15:14):
I used affirmations. So I wrote down on some index
cards right like this, like five affirmations that I used
to structure my day. And when I woke up in
the morning, I repeated the affirmations to myself, right and
at different points in the day. And then I needed
to hydrate because I had this habit of not drinking
(15:37):
enough water. I actually, in the beginning didn't even like water, right,
So I had to.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Learn how to like like water, right.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
And I grew up in a kool Aid household.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Okay, shut up, like kool aid.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Who wants to drink back.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Which masqueraded as water because you're watching it be made.
I mean the water to kool aid ratio seemed like,
isn't this it's water? Indeed this water it was not,
I think you.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
For it was mine. So yes, I had to learn
how to and so those were actually my foundational practices.
None of those required me to really go out and
spend lots of money. What it did require me to
do was give myself my time, right, And that was
actually the harder part, right, because yeah, yeah, I go
do a I do. I was doing massage back then,
(16:25):
I was doing the day spots back then. But if
you talk to me about the day to day practices,
I don't have time for that, right. And so for me,
it was learning to think about my daily time in
a different way, right to say, in the morning, before
I rush off to work, I actually can sit down
and meditate and pray and write in my journal. I
(16:48):
can start my day with that. I can afford to
start my day with that, or I can shift some
things around, or I can get up earlier, because that's
important to me. And the other thing I started doing
was taking action lunch break.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Huh my mind.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
So those of us who are creatives, we don't always
take actual lunch breaks. We work through lunch. Right There's
nobody saying clock out, go take your thirty minutes right now.
And so we just stopped taking the thirty minutes and
we just sit at our desk and we keep going.
And so I started making myself take an actual lunch break,
(17:24):
even if I stayed in my office, I backed away
from the computer, turned things off, and sat in eight
for half an hour, right and just you know, or
walked outside or something. Those were simple things. It did
not require money. But it was a hard shift. Like
it was so hard for me to do those simple things.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Right right oof.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
It just makes me think about how I went through
a season of time where I would have a day
in my week that was like for coffees. So it
was like anyone that had reached out that was like, Oh,
I mean, I haven't seen you a long time, let's
catch up, Or oh I had this question I wanted
to ask about writing whatever? Sure, And so I would
have like tuesdays for coffees and look up and you
(18:12):
just sitting down having coffee with people from ten to
seven pm. You had coffee, coffee, lunch, coffee, coffee, coffee, dinner.
My therapist was like, run that back, Like run that
back to me, why that's happening, And she was like,
especially all the other things you have going on in
(18:34):
your life. She was like, I want you to shut
that down and stop with all the coffees. Me give
me ninety days of no coffees. And when I shifted
that time and realized how it does take time to
care for myself. So if I'm giving all these hours
(18:55):
over here, I'm not thinking about the moment that you
described that I might want at the beginning of my day,
or the moment I might want eating lunch, because I've
already given the time away in a way before I
had time to think about it and account for it.
So then with my ninety days is up, She's like,
now let's go back and think about who do you
(19:17):
really want to go to coffee with? Rejuvenates you, who
makes you laugh, who feels it feels refreshing, go to
coffee with those people with and then that's gonna narrow
you down. That's two to three people, that's it. Yeah,
(19:41):
that's not anybody. Yeah yeah, that's not everybody. So the
time shift, I love that you mentioned that because just
taking that away from my schedule, and then when I
gave that time back to myself and realized, if you
are going to take some time and exercise and drink
your water and do these things, it will maybe not
(20:04):
leave time for some of the other things that you
may find have been draining you.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Yeah. Yeah. So, like so self care, it requires making
some decisions about how you're going to spend your time,
and it isn't always the fun immediately gratifying stuff, right
like exercise. I honestly I remember once Oprah saying, like,
you know, she still didn't like exercise, right after all
(20:31):
the sheet done to like lose weight, and she was like, yeah,
I still don't like it. I'm that person same. I
still I would really rather just sit and read or
watch TV or just like Netflix is like, yeah, I
would rather do that, But I know what happens to
my body if I don't exercise, right, Like, I know
(20:54):
kind of how many days a week I need to
exercise to feel good, and if I go more in
a certain number of days, I know my body starts
to feel it right. So self care isn't even always
doing the feel good stuff, but it's about doing the
things we need to do in order to sustain our
health right. And for me, yeah, exercise is one of those,
(21:15):
and it takes time. Drinking water is one of those.
And it takes time because I'll be running to the
bathroom all day, Okay, all that part day.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
That part you really start trying to drink your water,
and now you like, it's taking me time to sit
here and drink this water, and then it's taking me
time to go to the bathroom, which is what the
body should do. Is that's supposed to That's what the
body should do. But you need some time for that. Yeah,
you need some time for that. Say what you were
(21:59):
about to say again about the time that you were
not drinking water, because I want, I do want you
to speak to this because people people will be having
a hard time with the water and it kind of
it kind of helps to hear a little bit of
some water testimonial of the people who were, like I
was a person who did not drink the water here
and I have gone on a journey, so say the
thing you were about to say.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah, So there was a time where I didn't and
it was because the bathrooms at my job. I didn't
want to use them. You know, I always been particular
about bathrooms. I don't want to use public bathrooms. I
don't want to use the bathrooms at my job. And
so I would go to work all day and drink
very little, like I might drink sixteen ounces of tea
(22:40):
and that's it. And I was talking to my doctor
and he was like And I had this doctor who
was this black my age, who was very matter of
fact with me, and he basically told me, he was like,
if you keep doing this, if you keep holding in
all day when you need to go to the bathroom,
he said, eventually your body is going to shut down
(23:02):
on you and you will lose complete control of your
bladder and your bowel. So he was like, so that's
your choice. You either figure out how to go to
the bathroom right so you can drink water during the day,
or you recognize that later on this is what's coming
for you. And I was like, I guess I'm making
peace with this bathroom now, right, Like I'm okay. And
(23:25):
the thing is, the bathroom wasn't even bad. It just
wasn't my bathroom, right, It wasn't even It wasn't that
I worked at a school where it was nasty. It
wasn't any of that. We had a really good team.
They took care of it. It wasn't my bathroom, though.
It wasn't the way I would have done it. So
I was avoiding it, and so I had to learn
(23:45):
go to the bathroom.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Go to the bathroom. That's the thing, right there is
just just try.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
That's and for those of you that are out here
trying to get on your water drinking journey.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
I have heard and I feel this is true that.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
In your initial time of trying to rehydrate, you going
more often because your body is like.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
What, you know, what's going on here? Okay?
Speaker 1 (24:14):
But then after a while you'll settle into more of
a rhythm. You might come to a place where your
body can handle you. You might start off you have
little eight ounce of water and you're like, oh my gosh,
I feel like I had to go to the bathroom
seventeen times.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
But then you might like even out a little bit.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Just stay with it, is what we're trying to say,
people who are trying to drink water, stay with it,
do the things you can. It does so many good
things for you, but you will need to make that time.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
To go to your bathroom. That's true.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
What I love about the structure of this book is
and those of you that are about to be looking
at your own purchase copies of Sacred Self Care. I
love that this is a weekly experience. So each week
is dedicated to a theme, and then in the week
you have a reading for each day that may have
(25:05):
some activities, some like suggested journal prompts, things like this,
you have devoted an entire week to practicing self compassion.
Can you talk more about this? Because when we hear
self care, this has become like a buzzword. So in
(25:26):
some ways we hear that and our minds immediately think
what we've seen on an ad or in a magazine
or wherever we see advertisements. Right, But then when you
start saying, well, we're talking about self care, the actual
definition and a part of self care is to have
self compassion. Describe why that is important in the journey
(25:49):
of sacred self care.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Yeah, so you know, as a pastoral care professor, I
start my semester when I teach my intro class breaking
down what pastoral care is, and when I talk about
the care part, I go to compassion right, that this
is an expression of compassion and empathy that we have
for other people. And because I work so much with
(26:13):
ministry and activists types, right, what would always strike me
is that the people who can't take care of themselves
are so good at taking care of other people. Right.
They have so much compassion and empathy for other people,
but can't direct it towards themselves. And in my own
(26:34):
journey of self care, I realize that the biggest barrier
to my self care is my lack of compassion for myself.
That I treat my body, I treat myself in ways
I would never treat another person ever, right, And the
things I mean, all of us will. We will encourage
(26:54):
other people to be doing things and taking care of
themselves and ways that we're not doing for ourselves. You
know you need to get some sleep, you know you
need to rest, but we're not resting, right. And so
I realized that the issue is not that we don't
know how to care. We don't know how to turn
that care towards ourselves, and that self care meant we
(27:15):
had to learn how to turn our the care we
already have, just turn it inwards. Start to treat like
you know, we're like, treat other people the way you
would like to be treated. Well, no, treat yourself the
way you treat other people.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Right, right?
Speaker 2 (27:30):
That that was the thing Like I was like, oh right,
I'm doing it, just not for me, so let me start.
Can we do it for ourselves? Right? Even to the
you know, I talk about self talk as part of
self compassion because so much of the way you can
see our lack of self compassion is how we talk
(27:52):
about into ourselves, right, the way the messages we send
to ourselves, the way we criticize ourselves. Again, we never
do this to other people. Some of the stuff I
say in my head to me about me, I would
never utter to another person. But why am I doing
it to myself? Right? So a lot of so I
(28:16):
talked about my affirmations. My first affirmation which I still
keep going back to, is I am worthy of self care? Yeah,
because I realized that the reason I wasn't giving myself
my time was because ultimately I thought everybody else was
more deserving of my time than I was. Job, more deserving, family,
(28:37):
more deserving, everybody, church more deserving. Everybody's more deserving of
my time than I am. And so for me, I
had to learn, no way, I'm worthy of my time.
I'm worthy of my attention, I'm worthy of my care,
and yeah, I'm worthy of my money too. Right the
times when I do decide that I want the pedicure,
I want the I'm worthy of that. Right again, I
(28:59):
would do it for other people. I do it for
other people all the time. I can give myself my
own good energy.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Mm hmmm mmm, yes, yes, because we don't think that
we're worthy. Yeah, that's the part when y'all get into
this book. That's the part that really starts getting into
you doing some work right there. That's the part where
self care is getting underneath the pampering appointments that we
(29:33):
can make, or underneath you know, I'm a candle girl,
so underneath like the candles we might want to buy
to half in our house. Now you're getting underneath there
as to And a part of what I loved about
the book is it has so much practicality, the questions
we can ask ourselves, the things we can consider, which
is why have I not felt like I am worthy
(29:54):
of that time?
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (29:56):
You know what, what messages have been there for me
to say everyone else deserves me except for me?
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Yeah, Oh that's so powerful. I want to ask you
this is in part a selfish question because I have
a milestone coming up, and I was talking to some
friends and I was like, I feel like I should
celebrate this, and I'm struggling a little bit trying to
allow myself to celebrate this. And I feel like we
(30:29):
all have the friends in our lives that it's their birthday,
they got a promotion, they bought a new broom, whatever
the thing is, you know that they did. We all
have friends in our lives that are those people that
are like, girl, I bought a new broom, y'all come
to the house, y'all meet me at the restaurant, you know.
And sometimes I would be like, Wow, why is my
(30:50):
friend so extra about this? But then when I would
really think about it, I would be like, I mean,
my girl deserves to celebrate her new broom, her new house,
her new blue, her new she got a new dog.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Let's go eat some food.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
I don't know, you know, And you talked about the
place of joy in our journey as self care and y'all,
doctor Shanika had a momentous birthday. She had invited me
to participate in one of her celebrations. Because this was
not what I was at, was not the only celebration.
(31:26):
I was so honored to be invited. I put my
little cute clothes on. I was ready for these, you know,
balloons and whatever we was gonna have.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
And I was so.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
I don't know what the word is, doctor Shanikua, Like,
it just does my heart good to see my friends
and the people I love celebrate themselves like that. Can
you talk about what is the place of joy in
our self care? And can you talk about what has
your journey been in learning how to celebrate yourself as
(32:01):
a part of your self care journey?
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Yeah? Yeah, so I think joy for me is an
emotional self care tool, right Like, So when I started
talking about this and thinking about self care and even
teaching about it, and I would teach people about emotional
self care being important, but I focused on emotional self care.
(32:27):
It's like taking care of the bad emotions, right like, so,
you know, ye go to therapy, you know if you
have a diagnosis, handle that diagnosis right, use boundaries. It
was that type of things because I'm trying to I
want to manage my anger. I want to manage the sadness.
But then I realized, no, it's not just about managing
(32:47):
the negative things. I actually need to be increasing the
positive emotions. I need to feel joy, I need to
feel laughter, I need to feel happiness for me. That
part of my self care journey. I won't say it
was accidental, but it was part of what happened during
my cancer treatment. When during cancer treatment, I realized that
(33:09):
there was so much that was so hard and so
heavy that I had to be intentional about finding joy,
especially because I was sequestered a lot, right, because you're
worried about infection and injury, and it's just like you know,
so the surgeries there was surgery after surgery, were like, Okay,
now I'm stuck at home, right, I can't do the
(33:29):
work that brings me joy. I got to cancel these trips.
I can't even do family gatherings because I explained to
my doctor I'm from a black family, they gonna hug me,
and she was like, yeah, no, no, Thanksgiving for you.
She was like, you know, you're immune system. No, and
so I was like, okay, so I'm just staying home.
And so I had to be really intentional about seeking joy,
(33:53):
and I was good at doing it in the small ways,
Like I was good at like making sure I'm laughing
every day and if nothing has happened in my life
to make me laugh today, then let me go find
some funny puppy videos. For funny baby videos, those are
my things, those are my goal tos. Right, I'm like,
I'm on YouTube for the next twenty minutes. I am
(34:14):
watching babies or puppies or babies and puppies is really great.
It's really it's I watched some yesterday with these bad yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
I will I will say I go down a guilty
dog's rabbit hole when the pet owners are finding Libby
or whoever you know messed up the house with the
ears down and smulking around.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
You know, those videos do your heart good. I see
that they really do.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
And so I was good at that. And then same
as you, I noticed at a point I wasn't good
at celebrating myself. So like I got a new job,
promoted to full professor. It's a really huge deal, like
there's a handful of black women who are full professors
(35:10):
in theological education, like across the whole country. Like there's
it's a very small number. It was a really big deal.
I didn't do anything. I didn't even think about it.
It was I was on this I'm in this Facebook
group of black women in the academy, and folks start
talking about what they did to celebrate their tenure decisions,
(35:30):
like they took these grand trips. One woman she had
ended ten years as dean or department chare or something,
and so she bought herself ten bottles of wine to
celebrate ending a position. Right Like. It was like, and
I am going to be working my way through these
(35:50):
ten bottles of wine over the next few weeks, right,
And I was like, oh, was I supposed to feel something?
And so I thought about that. It was like that, yeah,
that's part of what I want to do. And so
I went from why are they doing all this to
(36:12):
wait a minute, Yeah, they should be doing this and
I should too. The funny thing, though, was when I
got ready to start celebrating myself, I didn't know what
to do.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Okay, speak to that doctor, speak to the cause, you know,
there's like there's like the phases. It's like the first
phase of like I should celebrate myself, then the second
phase of realizing I don't know.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
How to do this. I speak of this yep.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
So my forty ninth birthday was approaching, and I was like, yeah,
I'm gonna celebrate myself this year. I'm gonna do a great,
great birthday celebration. The date is approaching, I'm like, uh, what,
so how do I do that? What do I do?
And I ended up being sold for overwhelm that I
(37:02):
essentially did nothing right because I was just like, I
don't know what to do. And then I realized the
other thing that word again time. I hadn't given myself
time to plan anything, and my schedule was packed. I
didn't have time right, and so I basically decided, Okay,
I failed at this. But I started looking ahead. I
(37:22):
was like, okay, boy, and nine next year is fifty
and next year it was also my twenty fifth wedding anniversary.
I was like, okay, those, I can't let this happen again.
So what that meant was I realized I need practice, right,
I need practice to celebrate in small ways. So when
I get up to the big one. I know how.
(37:44):
And then I also knew, okay, and clearly I need time.
So I'm not supposed to wait till a month before
the birthday to plan the birthday party. I actually need
to start thinking now. And so I started like really
just marking out time this time around this event. I'm
gonna have to cut off on some other things because
(38:04):
I need to be planning my own celebrations, right, I
need to. I need to make sure I'm gonna have
energy for my own celebration, right, and so, but then
I just started like a small ways I can practice
celebrating myself. Right, Oh, I get a book contract? What's
my celebration for that? Right? No, No longer than let
me just sign it and post off Facebook. No, something
(38:27):
needs to happen, right and and and yeah, and sometimes
that that is when I'll go full capitalists. Right now,
you know, I'm gonna buy myself something to celebrate that.
I can't do that, right, I'm gonna take I want
a trip, right, I want to do that. And so,
over the past like two years now, I have been
practicing celebrating my myself. And initially I had to really
(38:52):
think about it and plan it, and then it started
happening more spontaneously, right like yesterday. So today is the
fifth anniversary of my second cancer diagnosis. Wow, So as
of today, I am officially five years in remission. Yes, yeh,
and five is a huge number. It's like, yeah, because
(39:14):
the chances of recurrence are smaller if you reach five.
And so I reached five, and yesterday all of sudden,
I was like, I had already planned I want to
do stuff. And then you know, Sunday, I was like,
I think I want to wear a breast cancer shirt
every every day this week, but I don't have enough shirts,
Like I need to go to Michael's. I need to
make some shirts, right, Like, yeah, I should be doing
(39:37):
other things, but I want to make some shirts, right.
And then I'm like, is this shirt really appropriate for working?
Like they're gonna deal with it because I'm celebrating. I'm
wearing my shirts. And so I did that, and then
yesterday I was like, I need a balloon, right, come on, now,
a balloon to me? If you'd ask me a few
(39:59):
years ago, I would have said that it is the
most frivolous, useless thing to spend some money on. You
blow it up, it stays up for a few hours,
and then it deflates, and then what it is just
for a land?
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Like I thought that was dumb, right, Yeah, Like I.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Used to take flowers. Why these flowers they're just gonna die?
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Okay, it's the practicality for me. It's like, let's make
that make sense.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
And so yesterday I was like, hmm, I think I
want a balloon. I'm going to party city. I'm getting
a balloon. Right, And so there is now a big
five in front of my house, Like you, nobody knows
what it's for, right, unless it's my neighbors who really
know me, But it's there. I was so happy all
day yesterday looking at that balloon, and I just kept
(40:49):
walking around and being like I know.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
That I love it.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Oh and you you talked about this in the in
the book in a way you talked about the need
for us to play. But also I think celebration involves
sometimes us letting ourselves get silly, like yeah, to where
we're enjoying so much joy that we experience like just
(41:16):
feeling silly with being happy. And that is where things
like balloons and cake and things like that make you
so happy. You're just like, oh, I'm so happy. I
feel silly in the best way, Like I.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
Yeah, I mean that's what Like, that's why the joy
of children is so infectious, because it's so innocent and
it is not self absorbed in any way. It's just
this is joyful.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Right. There was a kid in a coffee shop the
other day. Everything he passed, he was like, Mommy, look
at that pumpkin. Mommy, look at that. And I was
cracking up because he was genuinely thrilled by everything and
needed his mom to look look at it too, so
she'd be as happy. And I'm like, yes, I.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
Want that, yeah, okay, yes, please.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
I want to look like I just walked past that
same stuff and barely looked at it, but to see
it through his eyes, he's like, wow, somebody put that
skeleton up there.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Look at that. Oh my gosh, I love it. Like
we need that reminder.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Yes, so yeah, So whatever we can do for ourselves
with that, right, we recognize balloons make kids happy. They
make grown ups happy too, Right, what's the thing that
we do to be happy? We tend to like socialize
(42:45):
ourselves away from that and think we're not supposed to
want that stuff, But it's just how we're wired. It's
like you look at all animals playing when I saw
when I noticed dogs playing, especially when dogs play with
each other, and you see the joy, right, You're like,
this is this is really how we as mammals are wired.
(43:08):
We're wired to meet this. Dogs do not grow it right,
like they might get slower with it. But a dog
can be twelve years old and they still will try
to play.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Still be ready to play, ready to play, be like
you got a ball, somebody got a ball? I thought
somebody brought a ball in here? Does somebody bring a
ball in here? Because I'm ready to toss the ball?
Who you're gonna throw it?
Speaker 3 (43:30):
Are you throwing it? Because I stay ready to play?
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Yes? And so we need that too. We somehow convinced
ourselves that we don't, like we're all trying to be
cool teenagers still like I don't want people to see me,
you know, being happy, Like I'm too cool for that.
It's like we're caught in adolescens forever and we're still
thinking people can't see us happy.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
Right. I think that's what came to my mind when
I was thinking about my friends who I have. I've
somehow deemed lovingly extra. You know my friends who like
I know, when her birthday come, it's gonna be like
a three part weekend. Like if she had the money
of Sean Puffy Comb's Morocco, it would have been like,
(44:14):
lets all of us all jump on a flight and
go to Morocco. And for so many years I would
just be like, oh, look at my friend who is
so lovingly extra, And then I would get by myself
and be like, it's beautiful to celebrate yourself and see.
But here, y'all, here's the part where you start. You
start digging into self care and you pick out your
(44:34):
favorite nail polishing. Before you know, you crying about why
you were raised to believe that you shouldn't celebrate yourself.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
I'm gonna telling you it comes at you fast, right,
It comes at you fast.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
You're like, I thought I was polishing my nails for
some reason. You're crying about something somebody said to me
at church?
Speaker 3 (44:51):
What's that about? How did that happen?
Speaker 1 (44:56):
But that's a part of it, because when you can
dig under there to say, yeah, what is it that
makes me feel I shouldn't celebrate myself? You know, this
is just us using this as an example, y'all. You'll
find different examples here in the book too. But to
ask those questions, what is it that is the barrier
(45:16):
there for me? Why do I feel it is extra
to celebrate oneself? Why is that an extra thing to
do versus just a standard? I mean, everyone's gonna have
different versions of what celebration looks like, but just standard
that you would celebrate yourself. Yeah, And I love what
(45:38):
you said about practicing that. I'm really going to like
take that home with me because I do think there
are things that we feel should come naturally to us,
you know, like we should naturally just be able to
start playing again even though we haven't been playful in
ten years, or we should be able to just start
playing a celebration. But you actually need moments to practice
(46:03):
so that you can feel how the win of those
smaller moments may feel. That will help you have the
skills right to be able to go further.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
Right, Yeah, yeah, because you know, sometimes we learn to
celebrate ourselves. If we come from families that value celebration, right,
that can help us. But a lot of us, like
I know, for me, I realize, oh my mom doesn't
celebrate herself. Right. Oh, there's a whole track record here
(46:38):
of not celebrating ourselves. So I didn't learn how to
do it because she didn't know how to do it right.
And so then it becomes okay, so now I know
what my barrier is, right, So how do I change this? Right?
And it became yeah, so I don't have ideas. I
need to look for inspiration because this doesn't come natural
to me because I don't have a whole track record.
(47:00):
I don't have a family history of this. I mean,
I'm the same way like the cousins who got a
birthday party every year.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
Not just for the big not just for the big birthday,
but every year, honey, every.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Year, like your mam would do that every And even
as a cad I'm like, but why, exactly.
Speaker 3 (47:21):
Why?
Speaker 2 (47:23):
And now I'm finally like, oh, right, Like that was
great that they were teaching them that your birthday is
a special occasion and it deserves to be markedight, right,
And I wish I did have that message, right, And
so now I'm trying to give that to myself now.
(47:43):
But yeah, a lot of times we do have to
do some digging to try to figure out what's the
barrier here, and sometimes it lies in our family history,
it lies in in socialization, right, it might lie in
and it's not even just it lies in like money
family history, because there are families that struggle, but they
also try to figure out a way exact or a
(48:05):
special data feel special, right, And so sometimes it's other
stuff and it's not necessarily money, but to figure out. Oh,
I just don't have practice because this isn't what we've
been doing in my family, and I don't have to
stay there. I can develop a skill. And I think
for me, like self care is just that it's a skill.
(48:26):
For some of us, we weren't taught it. For most
of us, we weren't taught it. Right, this is not
what we learned. Nobody gave us a handbook on how
to take care of us. Like they don't say this
is what you pay attention to, pay attention to your
body's signals, learn to respond this way. Right, Nobody does that,
and so for many of us, self care then does
(48:48):
become this skill. For me is a skill and learn
me how to pay attention to myself, Like what is
my body telling me it needs? Oh do something about that?
Like little stuff taking medicine. Right, I had a vaccine.
I got my shingles vaccine. Right. You want to talk
about good marketing, that Shingrit's commercial. That's some good marketing, right, Ok,
(49:11):
Shingles doesn't care, right, disappointment because shingle doesn't care, doesn't care.
And so I got it, and oh my god, the
thing makes you so sick. Pain. Yes, you have to
prepare not to do anything for twenty four hours after
that shot because you're in so much pain and chills.
(49:33):
And I was really proud of myself because, like early
in the pain, once I realized it was there, I
was like, I can take medicine for that, and that
for me is huge because I used to just suffer
without medicine. And then it started hitting me, Oh there's
(49:54):
a thing called pain medication, and you can take it.
Speaker 3 (49:58):
It can provide you relief my mind.
Speaker 2 (50:04):
But like for me, the self care part is first noticing,
like and literally I had to notice I was in
pain because my husband and I both did the shot.
And later on he said, and how are you feeling
about the vaccine? And I was like, oh, well, now
that you mention it, that's what that is. And so
I had to notice it, and then once it got
(50:26):
was like, okay, that's increasing now I'm away. Okay, that
is really uncomfortable now and for me to realize, okay,
I think I'm kind of past my threshold of just
sitting with this and then realizing there is a thing
called pain medication. We have some like it's right there
in the bathroom, and like, just go get that, take
(50:47):
that little kill. You'll feel better.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
That's it, right, that's it. That's why it's there to
help you my mind.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
There again, I would do it for my son. And
the heartbeat right in a heartbeat, if he is the
moment my child says, I mean, I feel oh what's that.
Let's let's see what's about? Yes, how serious is it?
Do we need to go to the doctor, like we
(51:14):
will drop everything if necessary, but at a minimum, Okay,
you have these symptoms, we have this medication. Okay, here
take this sun and then I'm putting a reminder on
my phone to like, all right, come back and give
him another dose and in forty six hours, right, I'm
gonna do all that for myself. I'll just be in pain. Right,
And it doesn't occur to me there is relief.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
There is relief.
Speaker 1 (51:36):
Who I didn't know that we was gonna get a
word today, but there is relief.
Speaker 3 (51:44):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
Yes, you don't have to in some things sit and
suffer through. Yeah, that is a way. You can also
show compassion to yourself. Yep, mmm, y'all, I can't if
I sit up here with doctor Schnika, Do y'all under
then me and doctor Shanikwa if y'all want a forty
eight hour episode, me and doctor Niko really sit up here?
Speaker 3 (52:08):
Do you understand?
Speaker 1 (52:09):
I want to ask you two more questions. My second
to last question is when you think about people now
having this book, you know, physically in their hands, in
their devices, however they're reading this, what are you hoping
the reader feels or experiences when they get to the
(52:29):
end of this book.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
Well, I want to change people's lives with this book,
and I want to save people's lives with this Yeah.
So what I hope is that people in this book
committed to starting a journey that when they end that
it's just the beginning, right, that when people are they're like, Okay,
(52:55):
I've been practicing some little tippits here and there, but
now I'm about to really put this together into my
own plan for self care, right, and that I'm about
to try to live into this and walk into this.
So I really want this book to not just be
something people read and then put down and forget about it,
but I want it to be a therapeutic book. Right.
(53:19):
This was me trying to put my clinical skills onto
a page and saying, if I was your therapist and
we were working on self care, by the end of
our time together, you would be practicing self care consistently
for you yourself. Right, That's what I want.
Speaker 1 (53:34):
Mm hmm, I love it. Where can the people find
out more information about you? Follow you so that they
can have links to buy five copies? Y'all know how
I do. Don't just buy one listen, buy five copies?
Why then you have yours. Then, inevitably, when other people
are like, oh, what's that book, you're telling me you
have an extra copy you can hand over somebody. So
(53:56):
where can they follow your work and also buy five
copies of this?
Speaker 2 (54:01):
Yeah? So you can find me online at doctor Shanika
dot com and I have a substack that I write
in weekly and you'll find the link to that. You
can also find me on Instagram and Twitter at doctor Shanikua. Yeah,
so find me, follow me, reach out to me, follow me. Yeah,
(54:22):
And I hope that we will continue to have the
conversation because really, I'm still learning about self care, and
so I keep writing about the next phases of what
I'm thinking about in the ways of which my journey
is stretching and growing and I'm learning new things.
Speaker 1 (54:39):
So yeah, I love that. Y'all make sure you go
to these things. We're gonna have these links in the
show notes. Doctor Shanikua, I just just want to thank
you for being here and agreeing to this time. I
appreciate that so much, and thank you for sharing your
journey with us. I think it helps us. I know
what helps me, and I hope it helps your readers
(54:59):
and and listen and the listeners here to know that
self care is a journey.
Speaker 3 (55:04):
It's a skill.
Speaker 1 (55:06):
You could be continuing to learn for the rest of
your life. You don't have to have all of these
high barriers to keep you from it. There's always a
small step we can take to care more for ourselves.
And one thing you said in this book that I
really loved is when we care for ourselves, it also
helps us to care for other people to so doctor Shanika,
thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (55:27):
I appreciate you, thank you so much. Such Her with Amina.
Speaker 1 (55:46):
Brown is produced by Matt Owen for solober Fee Productions
as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in
partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate,
and review the podcast on
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