October 12, 2022 • 59 mins
In this episode Jill, Laiya, and Aja talk to Tricia Hersey a.k.a The Nap Bishop talks about the politics of rest, and what I means for the healing of Black people. Call 866-HEY-JILL and leave us a message with your comments on this episode!
Order Tricia’s book Rest its Resistance: A Manifesto from her website https://thenapministry.wordpress.com/. Follow her @thenapministry.
For more information on 4-7-8 breath work, check out this article from Medical News Today. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324417#benefits
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Jay dot il a production of I Heart Radio. Jill,
you have to open up the show, Ma'm I'm not
opening up the show. I got to open a show.
You got to the show. Excited. Listen, everybody, We're really excited.
We're excited. That's all I mean. We've already been clapping
(00:26):
and cheering. It is. It has been such a journey,
like we've been wanting to talk to this woman for
a year or more, a year or more like this, lady,
how you've blessed our lives. Look this welcome to Ja
dot Ilder Podcast. This is Joe Scott and I'm here
with my sister friends, Ada Graydon Danzler. Hello, Hello, Hello,
(00:50):
and the lovely liar st Clair. Ready for arrest, Ready
for arrest. It's so much more. And and Tricia, am
I saying your first name? Yes, Mercy Baby, Trisha thirsty baby.
If you don't know who this is, uh what minister Asian?
(01:15):
You know this? No? This is this is the NAP Bishop.
But what we'd like to welcome into our into into
the sanctuary. Amen. That what we'd like to do is
welcome the NAP Bishop Trisha Hersey to the show. Amen,
Because what she does is she teaches the black people
that they are not only entitled to rest money, but
(01:38):
that the people owe us rest, they us rest. I
have come to know her from her fabulous Instagram page
and that ministry, and uh, it has touched my heart
and I honestly she was not lying. We we've been
talking about you from seeing you. It feels like a
(02:01):
dream right now because it's really happening. And then she
showed up a girl. Then she showed up on here
with a whole neon sad honey, the aganl aw, the
same is here is here like it's just it's just
keeping the nineties going, keeping the good line. Get on
(02:21):
all of them static. I love that. I'm from the
South side of Chicago. So let's just I'm currently in
the South side of Chicago, right. No, you are, yes, um,
eating good um. Yes, I am engod. I'm on my
way to the Inglewood Music Festival. Yes, so we will
be doing that that whole nine. But yes, from Chicago.
(02:45):
Give it to us, give it to us, give us
the receipts, not Bishop. I've been an activist for twenty
five years. I was raised as an activist. My dad
was a pastor, of the Church of God in Christ
for black then a Costalkjic, and so I grew up
in that denomination. But my dad was also deeper into
(03:06):
the Black Panther movement, you know, Pan Africanism, super black everything,
and also a union organizer and activists, and so I
grew up, you know, always understanding that none of us
will be free until we're all free and understanding like
the real core of what it means to be a
(03:27):
black body in this country. It's a blessing and it's
a miracle our name. It is one of the deepest
miracles ever to be alive and on this earth. When
they've tried to do so many things to eradicate us
from the earth, we're still here. And the word word
miracle really but dis gracious. I feel like I've seen
(03:51):
you have to address and I love the way you
address people because you're very clear that they're not there
to extract labor from. But yet the work that you
have done, the study that you put into what you've done,
is important to be clear and to clarify with folks
that this is what I'm talking about. You can co
(04:11):
opt it and say this or that the other, but
I'm here to clarify, not to work, but to clarify
for you what it is that what I've what I've
been studying. And so I feel like maybe we've all
had a hard time wrapping our minds around this idea
of self care and what that looks like, and that
when you say the word lay down, rest, nap, that
(04:36):
people still have a hard time with that very simple instruction,
you know. So I just you know, I would love
for you to just talk about, like, you know, why,
why do you think that it's that we're so it's
so difficult for us to follow this simple, simple room
well in a capitalist system like the one we live in,
(04:56):
in a system that's a white suprematis system, the one
we live in in, this is radical. This is paradigm shifting.
This is the mind shift, and my name, what is
happening to us um as full on brainwashing. And so really,
when I started the NEAT Ministry's I G page, I
have already been doing the work for three years and
the community here in Atlanta already been rolling out of yoga,
(05:19):
maths and working. After I finished getting my massive divinity
degree at the university, I was in seminary, so I
was already working in the community and doing this work
UM then ministry and social media page kind of came
after a friend of mine was kind of like, you
think we should just grand all the pages and say
make sure you get then Ministry on every platform, And
(05:39):
it was literally like you think so, Like I really
it was that much of a decision where I was like, well, okay,
I guess I'll do that, because I really was not
thinking that I would be using this work in a
way in which is being seen now. Like I really
was doing the that ministry and experimenting with REST to
save my own life. I was saving my life when
(06:00):
I started this work. I didn't think about no business plan,
It's gonna be on I g I was literally an exhausted,
curious black woman who was dying from exhaustion, who was
dying from disconnection, who was slowly mentally and physically watching herself.
UM really perish in a culture that wants us to perish.
(06:20):
And so when I begin to fill all these things,
I begin to experiment deeply with REST. I didn't know
if it would work. I didn't know what would happen.
I said, let the chips fall where they may, Like
I got to the point of like, God, gonna have
to fill in the gaps because I'm not gonna rush,
I'm not gonna be urgent. I'm not gonna stay up
late to finish this paper. If I fell out a class,
amen to that, because gott to bring another thing into
(06:41):
my life. Like I really got to the point where
I was like, I cannot do this. And then pairing
that with my work studying cultural trauma, studying gym crow terrorists,
what it did to our bodies, what it still has
done to our bodies, and looking at the history of
plantation labor and what my ancestors are ancestors went through,
then it became um almost like a reparations and a
(07:03):
political protest that I won't donate my body to assist
them that still owes reparations to my ancestors, that I
will use this moment to recapture the dream space that
was stolen from them, to be able to lay down
and rest for them in this dimension, to honor them,
to um connect with them, and so the recapturing of
(07:25):
their dream space. The portal of maps became a really
beautiful place for me as I was sleeping on the couch,
sleeping in the library at school, sleeping, you know, wherever
I could find a place to sleep. I would wake
up with these ideas and I would be with my grandmother,
who's an answers in her dreams, and she be resting
with me, and it was just like it became a
(07:47):
beautiful portal of imagination. And so me doing it was
just to save my life into experiment. And then as
I saw it changing my life, I said, well, as
an activist, how could this be a collect stea how
the collective coming? And so we started doing the events
like before you saw anything online. It was me with
yoga mats, blankets that I borrowed from my mother, from
(08:10):
my aunts that I washed, the pillows that I could
find in their closets, and just donating things because I
didn't have a dime. I had like negative twenty five
dollars in my account when I started this work. I
just wanted. I just knew that if people could lay
down and feel this practice and understand what it feels
to the rest, collectively, the things could change. And so
people started coming laying down on yoga mats, waking up crying,
(08:34):
making these connections between what was happening, and so hundreds
of um nap events later, you know, being online four
or five years. We're at the point now where there's
some veils being removed. When this is not a full
on movement, it is still very undergrounded, outlier because all
of this culture wants us to be grinding nothing in
(08:57):
this culture, it wants us to rest. And so when
we believe understand that this culture is not gonna ever
give you rest, that you're gonna have to snatch it.
Be a fugitive, be on maroon, you know, be like
you know our ancestors. That's where I think we're at
right now. We're at the point where people are a
little bit of a veil is being removed and people
are kind of seeing behind it and being like, well,
what the why am I working like this? You know?
(09:19):
Why am I feeling like this? Why am I thinking
that I'm not good enough if I take a nap?
You know? Where has this toxic, violent idea of our
that we about ourselves has been stolen from us, that
we really believe that our bodies don't deserve arrest. It's
so it's one of the most violent, toxic things when
you really think about what the culture has taught us,
(09:41):
has taught you to think. My body doesn't belong to me,
it belongs to the system. If I wrapt, if I nap,
I'm I should feel guilt. I'm not doing enough. I'm
not enough. Our self esteem has been ripped apart by
this culture. If I believe resting is the foundation, it's
the north star for us to begin to be more human,
(10:02):
so to say, to repair, to disrupt, to disturb the
idea that we're human machines, and we're not human machines.
We're divine, perfect human beings who not only deserve rest,
but um resting is really the what will keep us free.
It's what will help us thrive. I'm past surviving. I
(10:25):
don't want to survive no more. Right, I don't want
to survive no more. I'm so grateful for my sessions
who survive who But I'm We're on the next level
and the level of always being towards our liberation is thriving.
I just refused. It's that's why it's called resistance. Rest
(10:46):
is resistance. The idea of a resistance. It's so deep,
it's a multi layer, it's so trickster energy, it's subversive,
it's being flexible, and so I'm excited that people are
beginning to see themselves free, you know, dream themselves free,
to remove a little veil and say, you know what,
(11:08):
this isn't normal for me to be feeling like this,
for me to be working like this, like I don't
feel well, and so what could we use to be
able to bring us back to wellness and to bring
us back Truly, it's work is about showing people that
they're human. It's it's a human It's about humanness. To
be more human. One of my favorite poets, On and
starches as the poem that she opens up, what does
(11:31):
it mean to be more human? To be more the
human nous, to be more human? The human like this
idea of being a human like, I'm very curious about that.
More real talk after the break, we watch our cats.
(11:58):
You know, I don't have any cats from people who
have cats and dogs. I love cats. People know I
love them. That's my point. And I've always said this
that in my next life, I am chosen chosen, I've
chosen to cat. I'm going to be a cat the
next time around, just laying around randomly, lay in the
(12:20):
sun and scratching, not getting up if you call their name,
my cat, I'll call his name, and he's laid out,
he will not move. I'm like, I know you hear me.
It's like, yeah, I hear you, but I'm resting right now.
So they walk with They walk with the slow switches.
They don't rush, They very They have full autonomy over themselves.
(12:44):
They have there and that's what we need to be
fully autonomous over our own bodies than our own beings. Like,
we don't belong to these systems. We don't belong to them.
We belong to the creator. We belong to our communities.
We don't belong to a system that wants to see us.
There's nothing but a tool of production. These systems see
us as only a tool to create their more more wealth.
(13:07):
Isn't Doesn't that piss you off to think that a
system looks by human like that? And so this work
is also about my rage. I have a lot of
rage and tender rage around the idea of what the
systems of their handestors to me, to black women, how
we feel like we have to be the mules of
the world. I'm in a deep rage about it, and
(13:30):
I'm also there's a tenderness in me that says there's
a softness that's available to us right now and we
don't have to live this way. And so it's a
full on political movement. It's a full on social justice disruption.
This is a disruption that simply all this work is,
we need it. And you know that. You know that.
(13:51):
I love how present you are in this revolution. It
tickles me. It gives my heart so much joy because
we've been tired and tired. I know I have. I
talked about that in my book, like when my book
comes out and told three level, I'll talk about this
whole story being about this fragmented history around my family
and my ancestors and the legacy of exhaustion that I
(14:14):
want my family come through. I was gonna ask you
that being said, what have your your aunts, your mom,
your grandmam, like, how have they responded to this work?
This is I'm sure I don't say foreign because after
our parents, NATS is not for him, but resting for
that generation, I think, yeah, for the particular generation. The
idea of not doing something, your ladies and get out
(14:37):
and do something. Why are you sleeping in? So let
you know, when I think about elder black women between
the ages of like UM sixty plus. You know they
really are don't understand what it means. Just sit there.
Even the one can relax. Yeah, the retire one of
the work that it wasn't work thirty years at a
company and have come with work now they don't have
(15:00):
to do that no more. They just they It's still
in us. And so it's really a somatic, bodily thing
that we have to really look at. This is held
in our bodies, the somatics of exhaustion, the legacy of
exhaustion that's in our bodies, that has been passed down.
It resides in us. And I believe that our ancestors
are just waiting for us to take a nap, to
(15:21):
lay down the rest, so they can download some information
to us that will help us in this dimension, that
will give us free in this dimension, that will give
us something in the inventive ideas. We need to push
this UM world towards a deeper future, but we won't
lay our asses down. They're like what they please just
stop for a second. I have something to share with them,
(15:41):
because resting and dreaming is a portal space. It's a
portal Most of us don't even dream I don't know.
I don't dream, we don't imagine, we don't daydream. We
don't see the opportunity of resting being something generative that
can give us something that we need. Like all of
the ideas with this work come from me resting and
(16:02):
napping and waking up. And I took a thirty days sabbath. Um,
I do it every November, and I did it last November,
off all phones, all emails. I don't understand I've heard
about this that you do. I need you to break
this down. I don't understand how life continues on without that.
It cons on beautifully, it goes really well. But you
(16:23):
have to prepare for. I prepare for for over six
months to a year. You have to prepare for. You
have to craft away, Like resting is a meticulous love practice.
It's a practice, a meticulous love practice, siculous love practor
its gonna be something you have to craft and right
and no, it's very meticulous love practice, isn't it tender? Rage?
(16:49):
Do you feel that we're all in love? I love
all of y'all. Oh my god, I wish we could
be in the same room. We go like hugs and
to rest took an now to get there. I love
people cried every event we've had, the tears and emotions.
It's spiritual work, really, Jill, Like people think that this
(17:11):
work is just oh, go lay down and wellness book
to rest, it's spiritual work. It's a spiritual practice to
lay your body down, to connect with your body, to
hear a word from your ancestors. I think about my
grandmother or you asked about my grandmother, who's really the
music this work? Who really she's an ancestor now, but
(17:31):
I talked about her every single time I can. She's
in the book. She really taught me what it means
to reimagine rest. You know, a Jim Crow to terror survivor.
She's a refugee from Jim pro terror. And I think
we need to say refugee because when we love those words,
we talk about the Great migration, all of our ancestors
leaving south and going north and west, and they all went,
(17:55):
they leaved. Mine all came from Mississippi and also bad Rouge, Louisiana.
My grandma father was in Mississippi, and she left um
like millions of other black people, because she told me
she didn't want to see another lynching. That she had
seen a lynching and that was it for her. She
didn't need to see another one. And so she I
like to say, she floated on the spaceship that she
(18:16):
made out of uncertainty and hope. Oh, that herself from
the Mississippi and came right on up north to Chicago.
And that's where we landed. And when my family is
from How grateful I am for her to have a
couple of dollars in her pocket and to say, I'm
a refugee. I'm gone. I know, I don't know what
it's gonna be, but this ship ain't it. It ain't
it for me to be around my children and seeing
(18:38):
them being hung from the tree. Like I'm going to
make a way out of no way. I'm gonna imagine
and dream myself to a new dimension. So she came
to Chicago raising eight children. My grandmother has eight children.
I'm one of her dozens of grandchildren. And between working
two jobs, working cleaning at a psychiatric hospital and then
(18:58):
also cleaning for a family, she would come home and
she would sit on her plastic covered couch and she
would close her eyes for thirty minutes to an hour
every day. It did not matter if we were running
in and out her house, if the door was open
and we were screaming, she said, on that couch and
for thirty minutes or are We always thought she would sleep,
and I'm like she's sleeping after thought, she was so accentric.
(19:22):
Who sits up like that with their eyes closed, like
what's happening? I will always say, Grandma sleep, Yeah, I'll
be quiet. And she wouldn't even open her eyes. She say,
every shutout, ain't sleep. I'm resting my eyes. I'm listening
to God. I'm listen. I ask you. I'm left her
name for thirty minutes. So I would just wanted to
be why she's fighting poverty, why she's raising children, why
(19:46):
she's suffering from PTSD. We don't talking about our ancestors
suffering from PTS to see and lynch, I mean, come
like how I just think about what they saw, what
their bodies endure, what they had to visualize, and holding
their bodies and how that holding what it does and
how it is now and then not being able to rest.
(20:09):
What clever our ancestors figured out if they were more
arrested because they have for stake quicker because they thought
of that different plans that would have got them to
their freedom. I think about here Tubman and when my
bro mother did this every single day. But that's what
you do to a prisoner of war, That's what you
do to a captive. You don't let them rest. No,
(20:32):
deprivation is definitely a tool. So this is my question
I was gonna ask you on your journey of doing
this work, like the relationship, How has the relationship changed
of your understanding of the relationship between rest, sleep, and meditation. Yes,
that's a good question. Yeah, I clarify in the book.
You know, people talk about when they hear the word
(20:52):
dot nap ministry, they think this is about naps, and
I'm like, this is a way about more than naps.
This is about truly at also living that looks at
slowing down, that looks at leisure, that looks at um
the idea of just being. And so I believe that
resting is anything that connects your body and mind, that
can slow you down enough where your body and mind
(21:14):
can have a moment to connect. And so I love meditation.
I think that mindfulness and meditate. I think when my
grandmother was doing was meditating, but she would say she
was called resting her eyes. She was just resting her eyes.
She wasn't asleep, but I believe that was a meditative
state for you to slow down and listen. Believe stilence
is rest, just the idea of having silence. I believe
(21:35):
um drinking tea, slowly listening to a full music album, dancing, prayer,
creating an altar, walking, sky gazing, day dreaming, like, all
of these things are forms of rest that we can
embody and we can reimagine ourselves in this life. And
so we're gonna have to reimagine and be flexible and
(21:58):
be very inventive of It's not gonna just look like
a full sleep cycle. I'm in my room, the door
is closed, I'm under a blanket, there's the pillow. No
one's bothering me. I have an eyemask on, and I'm sleeping. Yes,
we need all of that, but to really start to
deepen into this work, to see it as a real
political and a resistance movement, we're going to have to
(22:19):
be pervasive and very in tune with trying to find rest,
snatched rests and create rest moments in these imaginative moments
for ourselves. Whenever there's always time to rest. There's always
time to connect, to slow down ten minutes, take a
longer shower, to take more time putting that lotion on
in the morning, don't turn That's just like you need
(22:46):
to share this definition with every doctor out here. There
goes to say that tells everybody go rest. What does
that mean? Yeah? I write a whole list of the
different ways that we can look at rest and in
fine ways. Because my grandmother she didn't have time and
lay down. She was in between another job that she
was going to so she could sit for those thirty
(23:07):
minutes and get that silence and listen to God. Like
when I when she says she's listening to God, what
when I think about that? That's the deepest spiritual form
of rests to listen, to have silence, to get off
these phones, to stop scrolling, to stop hearing the noise
of everything in your head. These thirty days sabbath that
(23:27):
I take, I'll get so much information. I don't feel
like anyone could try to steal my work quotes or
take this word because they're not resting like I'm doing.
So if you're not resting like I'm doing, you'll never
get to the information you won't get the downloads, you
won't get to like unique things that are coming when
I'm in such a rested state. Seventeen handwritten pages. During
(23:50):
my sabbath, I wrote the just ideas and our ideas
and poem, I mean seven. When you're not online scrolling
for hours, think about the moment that your brain could
have to like imagine a wander. It sounds like freedom.
When you when Asian first sold as You was on break,
I was like, what kind of freedom? Beautiful? Beautiful? The
grind is so overwhelming. It's overwhelming, like in in this
(24:17):
part of the business, like for instance, like you do
a show and and there's all these people and you're
connecting with everybody, you know, making the effort to connect
and open yourself up to the person, the person outside
of the theater, uh in the parking lot. You're you're
opening yourself up for this energy to give, but you
(24:38):
also received. And I've noticed in the last like, um,
you know, like five or six years, I've noticed that
once I'm off the stage, I almost pass out. It's
a lot. It's a lot. So I go to sleep,
you know, and if they can wait. You know, this
is before COVID you know, with the meet and greets
and like if they I gotta go to sleep, got
(25:00):
to lay it down, Yes you have, and I sleep
hard and then I can meet people and then I
can say hi, thank you for coming in. If you
can't wait for that, I don't know what to tell you,
because I love that boundary though that you're like, this
is what it is, and this is it takes It
takes time to figure out what these boundaries are because
other than that, you know, you're trying to fit into
(25:23):
what is done, the normal, you know, and then you
end up burning yourself out. Is this thing not about
longevity and I'm just talking about life. If you want
to live as much life as you possibly can, healthy
quality of life, if you wanted to be feeling like
a thriving life, not a life of soft life, not
(25:43):
a life where you're burnt out, burnt up, you know,
not connected. I think the deepest part of our exhaustion
is our disconnection with each other and ourselves. So this
this deep disembodied with our bodies and who we are.
And we've know that our bodies are tired, we know
that we need rest. I'm gonna push through. Why are
you ignoring what your body is telling you. Your body
(26:04):
is telling you I need to lay down, I need
to arrest, and you're like, I'm just push through this,
pushing through that cultural and it's a cultural thing that
we've been tall and honestly we say that, we say
that word so much to our children too. And I
think there's a bit of a resentment, particularly from our generation,
with younger generations who we feel a pushing through and
(26:27):
we feel don't want to work or aren't working hard enough,
aren't are somehow inherently, somehow getting messaging that it's like, yeah,
I'm not going to sacrifice myself to this. And I
think that some of that some of us are having,
like we had a lot of time, like having a
lot of time processing like where they be coming from
on that. There is a balance to that when we're
(26:48):
when we're saying things like oh, I'll just I'll just
say my opinion, you know, when we're talking about people
not wanting to work. For those who do, I would
just ask you do the stop you can, courteous, respectful, helpful,
you know, um, And but when you're done with that portion,
(27:09):
please go lay down, just go outside and look at
this guy, lay down. That's the thing about it. People
literally are fighting this this idea of not They feel
like they're not enough. And I think this goes back
to that worth. If you feel like you're not enough,
this system teaches you you're not enough, you need to
do more. Once you're to do this done, then you're okay.
(27:30):
Once you've accomplished enough, then you're okay. Like that's the
lie that it sits and resides in us, that it
causes us to be able to hold onto something that's
killing us. Like this is not trying to be an alarm,
but sleep deprivation is killing black people. It is causing
so many health issues. The top three high blood pressure, diabetes,
and heart disease have been tracked and traced back to
(27:52):
sleep deprivation. Not sleeping a full six hours of full
rest of sleep a day, being exhausted. Sleep deprivation is
a public health issue. It's a CDC has named it
as a public health issue. Entire culture physically is dying
from not sleeping. Um and so it's a spiritual lens too.
It's a physical lens. It's emotional, it's political. It's like
(28:14):
all the legs are coming together to make this work
be so powerful and so paradigm shifting and culture shifting
that it is going to take a lot of time.
And I understand it. I'm glad grateful that it's not
going to be quick. I'm so grateful for it being
small and when I was having time to deprogram and
(28:34):
decolonized to figure this work out, to expand and experiment.
This work is about experimentation. It's not wrapped up in
a boat to say these are the three things you
do to be free from grind culture. Honey. No, you're
gonna be unraveling and healing and meticulously loving on yourself
through rest for the rest of your days. And we'll
(28:56):
hope that our people, when we are ancestors, that the
one us who are left behind our families will be
uplifting rest for us wearing that dimension. And so this
is a pull on life long practice of seeing ourselves
as worthy if you are enough. I repeat that so
much in a book. If you don't get nothing from
this book, understand that right now, as you're reading this book,
(29:18):
as you're listening to me, understand that you're you are divine,
that you're worth was granted to you by your birth.
So you don't have to do all these other connected
things that you feeling like I got give your worth.
You're worth. It's not hemmed up in capitalism's ideas of
what we're gonna take a quick break and then it
(29:46):
will be right back. What is the name of your
book again? Yes, rest is Resistance a manifesto come out
October eleventh. Please tell me you doing an audio book.
(30:06):
October eleventh is my um, it's my anniversary anniversary. It's
it's the day I lost my virginity. I was. I
didn't know which wonder because because this is Jill, so
you know, yeah, she went bust out. She because who
remembers that day? You remember that, dame, but Jill, nobody
(30:31):
remembers that date. I remember the year, the year, maybe
maybe the season. I probably confined the day though, because
I've been journaling since I was in high school. So
you one of those. I have them all on the shelf,
like like a book to jealous Happening when I was
what was happening when you were eighteen? Like it's a
full archive of like yo, I just told jail to Asia,
(30:54):
I was like, that's Jennifer Lewis said, that's how she
writes all her books because she journal all her life,
so she just goes for books and start right. I
love that, you know, I always I've always wanted to
be a journal person, but I just I've never quite
been able to do it. Well. Did you have diaries
a little like all the way I did? I definitely did,
But you don't keep up with it. You keep up
(31:15):
with you. Yeah, I think I have like maybe one
from like middle school that I probably still have. I
wanted to circle back to something you said because and
I've just been sitting with it in my mind, because
you keep saying so many good things. I just like,
I'm mostly just listening because I'm such a like girl.
Jim after Jim after Jim. But any who, um, when
(31:37):
you were talking about ancestors and and you talked about
also to like the this um the kind of legacy
of exhaustion. I remember I went to to grief therapy
after my mom passed, and this lady and the lady
who was doing it with me was telling me about
how like, what did you think was the legacy that
my mother left me? And one of the things that
she was that that people talked about her a lot
(31:58):
of times just like how how much, how easy it
was for her to love people, and that she had
like this real legacy of love that she left with people.
And I remember my son telling me, like, I just
want to be I wish I want to be more
like Grandma. And I told him, I said, well, you
know what, son, there was a cost to her being
so present for so many people, and there was a
(32:19):
call she paid for that. And I said, now, when
I look at my mom, I feel she definitely gave
me a beautiful blueprint as to how to treat others
and the type of person you want to be when
people remember you. But I realized that she sacrificed her
body for that in a lot of ways. And I
feel like the legacy legacy that she left me was
that yes, be be good, be espressial love to people
(32:42):
who you feel shold having, but also like preserve the self,
take care of yourself, you know, And and that was
one thing she just failed to do for herself. And
it's like, and to me, I feel like that's really
the more powerful legacy that she left me and the
thing that I've been sitting with for the last few years.
So even in discovering your page. I felt that that
(33:03):
was even her guided me into that space to say, listen,
you need to I see now I'm about to cry.
You need to rest, honey. You just have been on
and I don't think I would have believed her has
she told me that in the flesh, I think I
had to have so much pain to where I could
(33:24):
not fit another thing in the cup. I had to
be that full in order to deny other things my
body and my presence and my labor. So when you
said that, it just really resonated with me because I
was just like, I have approached my life in such
a different way in the past four years, or for
(33:46):
for in some change, you know, in the past four years.
It has been different. Even with my children. I told
my husband said, during the pandemic, my bedroom felt like
an office, and it was a constant energy of people
coming into the office to talk about what it is
they needed to talk about, right, like constant, constant, constant
to I felt like, goodness, gracious, I felt like I
(34:09):
had to be like a big red like my office.
I was just from nine to five like this motherfucker, right,
So you know, eventually I had to kind of like
start to create these boundaries even with people who I
felt were entitled to my labor. So I think sometimes
maybe even this thing might go even further from like
(34:30):
necessarily capitalism, but also within our inter personal relationships as
to how we, you know, expel so much. And if
you talk about guilt, that's a major guilt to turn
away a child from your foot, from your door. I know.
I think that this is the black woman to talk
about what has been placed on when I think about
(34:51):
the labor and the sacrifice that Black women have done
their bodies to who they are. They sacrifice everything to
be on good other, to be a good pardner, to
do for everyone, and then we're over here dying. I
think that legacy the strong black woman, Mammy, the Mammy trope,
the muddle of the world, like those tropes were put
(35:13):
on us during plantation time, during slavery, when our ancestors
were a part of the system that was looking at
us as full on machines that's not even human beings
at all, but the for the black woman, like how
we've internalized that. It's such a deep way we've been
taught that we watched our grandmothers do it, our great
grandmothers every do it to the point of where their
(35:34):
sacrificing their entire being until they're gone, not hearing for
their selves. There's no self preservation, there's no you're gonna give,
give given to you can't give no more. You have
a heart attack and you still in the back at
home resting cookie, Then why are you in the hospital?
Like I know all black women who have done that,
(35:54):
it's like you really there is such a brainwashing. I
think we have to keep going back to the idea
of this deep socialization that happens to us from birth.
I think everyone has that, but for Black people there's
a different legacy. There's a different been to the exhaustion,
to the way we're always trying to catch up. We're
always trying to catch up page priarchy. Also, we cannot
(36:16):
forget about patriarchy because that part because the black woman
is seen as the mule of the world to save
everyone else she can. I'm not trying to save nobody else.
I want help and I need help. So the strong
troke is one that is to me, the most divisive,
the most toxic, and I want all black women to
(36:36):
begin to do the healing work. This is a part
of a deeper healing agenda like resting and sleepy and
slowing down and connecting with your bodies is just one
of the deep parts of our full healing agenda. We're
gonna have to be healing from our individual trauma. Things
that happened to us we were children that made us
people pleasers, Things that happened to us we were younger
(36:58):
that made us feel like we aren't worthy. Collective trium,
I'm gonna have to be looking at what has happened
to us collectively. And this is going to take a
lot of work. It's not going to just be a
one time thing. It's gonna be therapy, prayer, you know,
some classes, rituals, working with people, really deeply looking at
yourself to see the work. It always going at yourself
(37:21):
worth looking at yourself when you can't look at yourself
or feel yourself or connect with yourself, if you're always
going My girlfriend told me I was selfish once, um,
and I told her I was self full, self full yes,
then yeah self yeah, because it's not selfish. I'm like, well,
(37:44):
you know I did. I did grow up as an
only child. But I like my a long time. I
like my piece of quiet it's become part of my
my life. I need that. How will we be well without?
How as human beings will we be well without? It's
it's almost to see how deep the brainwatching is for
people to actually think that we're going to be able
(38:04):
to get to some type of freedom by doing the
same things talked to us by these toxic systems. So
you think you're gonna get to freedom by doing the
same exact things that we're talked to you by the oppressor,
by a toxic system has taught you these things, you
won't be able to get there. And Audrey Lord has
a beautiful quote that I love you will never dismantle
(38:26):
the master's house using the masters tools. Yeah, I want
to keep being exhausted, to keep acting like you're the
slave master, keeping grind, keep and thinking it from that
you're gonna be able to equal liberation and thriving in
freedom like it. Just it doesn't make sense that we
believe that we can keep grinding ourselves to obliving and
(38:46):
think that that's gonna offer us beautiful results, that's gonna
offer us results that look like liberation. It's gonna offer
us more of the same. And so that's where the
shift comes from that mind shift of knowing that we
have to like, really, look, this is something that we're
going to have to do a practice every day. That's
the center of our life. It's not just this adecute
(39:07):
little thing you do. It's literally has to be the foundation.
Resting has to be the foundation for our north star,
for our entire lives, for our um activities is trying
to be community activists. I work with a lot of
organizations and activists who you know who are out here
trying to do all these beautiful things to giving us
our freedom, but they're working eighty hours a week and
(39:30):
I'm like, m hmm, how is that You're trying to
help us get our freedom but you haven't slept in
three days and you're like having to your help, Like,
how are you going to help us get your freedom
when you're going to be dragging your body across to
the online with you. We need you alive to do
the work like we need to U. Angela Davis one
time was talking about that. She was saying how she
(39:51):
was like, you know this new she said, we never
thought about, you know, self care or taking care of ourselves,
or she was we never talked thought about those things.
That sounds published, she said, And we lost a lot
of people, a lot of people you know, a mother.
But if you look at and many of us from
(40:13):
this generation, some of us had activist parents. I did not,
but I have seen a lot of I've talked to
a lot of second generation UM children who had activist
parents from that era, and they will tell you that
their parents have a myriad of health issues. Their mental
health is physical health issues, mental health issues that they
(40:34):
you know, that just the way it ravaged the bodies
of their parents. Yeah, that's why when you talk to
Al Sharpton today he tells you his health regiment, you'd
be like, what not like Sharpton about take care of self?
Like core and now he saw because he was almost
out of here with health and he turned that around.
It may sound like an idealist, UM, just a beautiful thing.
(40:58):
Thank you. I'm gonna match learn an idealist as well.
Like I want people to say that sounds impossible what
you're talking about. Thank you. I'm glad to be part
of the impossible crew because that's where our healing is
going to come from. People Dave dreaming and imagining things
that don't exist, you know, I feel like we're imagining stuff.
(41:19):
You know, it's the stuff. We want a lot of stuff.
And I don't know if people realize until you actually
have a lot of stuff that a lot of stuff
requires a lot of energy and effort to maintain. It
takes a lot. So what is Is it a big
old house with with ten bathrooms or is it a
(41:42):
town house or or you know, a cabin in the
woods that will give you your piece? Like piece is
really individual. And I see a lot I understand. You
know this, this this try, this effort to to get
this bag. You know, get the ay I be invisible,
(42:03):
I get it. I get it because there were definitely
times where there was no food in the pantry and
you know, two pair of shoes a year. I recalled
these things very much. So you know, I have a
thing where I don't like to see the pantry empty.
It scares me, you know. And I have a lot
of shoes because I you know, I'm like, I guess
(42:25):
that's a you know, a trauma in my mind for poverty,
the poverty of where we live through. We have to
hear from that as well. Definitely, I see that a
lot that we're all trying to get all of this stuff.
Well yeah, I mean that they're telling us that that
this this is the way that people will know that
you got it, that that that we got this thing
that we're trying to get, Like your's the allens, here's
(42:48):
here's the receipts. The new word they had, generational wealth.
It's like, oh, now you're solving You're solving all the
problems of black people by learning how to make a
lot of money. It's it's a lie. It's is a
repackaging of the same lie. And I'm just tired of
hearing it all the time. And it's like to me,
(43:09):
to me on my group chat, my girlfriend group chat,
Operational soft Life, and you said soft life. We are
on Operation soft Life. This is all we're talking about
in the group chat. It's like, what are we doing
to create this softness in our lives? You know what
I mean? And it's like, no one wants the herd anymore,
the hardest whack. I don't want to exchange, you know,
(43:32):
more stories with each other of how we've endored some
massive hardship, Like I don't want to talk about that anymore.
I don't want that to be the way that we bond.
I want us to bond over the softness of our
lives and what have we done to encourage that? And
it is hard work and it does take community. And
I don't know what I would do if I didn't
(43:54):
have other people to bounce this kind of thing off of.
I wouldn't I feel like I would have giving into
the whole You're lazy, Yeah, that's why you're not, you know,
ambitious enough, or the cree of other people to be like, no,
you're not crazy, Like this is whack. And I don't
want to work that way. And I think I'm so
(44:15):
happy because I felt like an outlier when I first
started this work. I felt very lonely. When I first
started this work back in twos and I was talking
about this rest and that idea, people were laughing at me.
They were like, girl, Like black people, white people, everybody
was like girl, that sounds crazy. And I love to grind.
I love to be busy. I love it. I could
never lay down. I don't like the rest. Like literally,
(44:35):
people were fighting me and thinking that the work was
really They thought it was an ironic satire Joe that
I was playing on because I am a performance artist.
Installation new theaters. So they thought it was just like
one of my events that I was doing. I was
like trying to be funny, and I'm like, no, I'm
dead ass. Like we're gonna be resting to reclaim our
bodies and reclaim um, our ancestors, rest and we're going
(44:57):
to be resisting the system that says that we are
machine and that we belong to it's simply to be
working on its clock, and so we're going to resist
that by simply laying down. The practice is to stop,
is to lay down, it's to slow down, it's to
say no more. And they thought it was a joke.
And so I'm grateful that now there is a community
(45:17):
of people that they know if they are feeling away,
they can come and come to our events, come look
on the page and read the book that's coming out,
and really be like swaddled and cuddled in this idea
of care, of deep, deep community, care of deep interconnectedness.
I want this work to feel like a metaphorical soft pillow,
(45:38):
you know, like a blanket that you can put over
you when you feel a little softness in a world
that hates you unless you're working. You know, all my
underscented bosom. She looked like she smelled good too. Is
there is there a Is there a naptuur coming with
(45:59):
this book? Really? Yes? And I'm gonna be leaving out
on October fifth, and I'm gonna be going to d C, Chicago,
Atlanta of course where I live, l A, San Francisco,
and then back to d C. Yeah. Then I'll be
in New Orleans in December. Yeah, you need to stop
(46:20):
in Philly too. I'm sorry. I was thinking about l
A n B and sounds like on my list when
I first started booking out the tour, but then um,
some other things dropped in. But I always wanted to
go being philious girl. We'll be back after the break.
(46:51):
I mean, I'm gonna be me obviously, But like this
seems to me that has the best career every I mean,
because she's like hiding out, she popped up. She does
twelve shows and I don't know who her people are.
You don't know what she eats for breakfast, you don't know,
(47:12):
you don't know any you don't know what her house
is shot. I talk about her all the time when
I talk about the people who have decided to do
an access off of social media not be a part
of it, because social media will be the one thing
that keeps us from being arrested without looking at our
addiction to social media. This rest movement is not going nowhere.
And so I take down social media and talk about it.
(47:35):
It's harm all the time, even though people don't want
to hear it. I talk about how it is a
full owner obsessions, addiction, and it is driving us deeper
into more parts of Exhaustion's have in depression, mental health issues,
all types of sickness, body issues, head self esteem. It
(47:56):
has to be even like even now and meaning all
the chiropractice. He's saying that if you're doing this all
day and it's causing like an issue with how you
sit back, and it's happening in our bodies, a mass
accident off of these sites will have to take place.
And I and I hold that up as a dream
space and a place that I want to see happen
(48:18):
and I want to be helping to us to do
what people are like, I'm done. I'm like, please come
into the rest temple and lay down. Give me that
damn phone, like I am on a rampage against it.
People don't people don't like it, but I still I'm
gonna keep talking about it. You know, I'm you're in Atlanta,
so I'm sure you know j Ju. Yes, that's what
I see for you. I love James. Oh yeah, it's
so interests you say that because I just opened up
(48:41):
a building, a Rest Temple here in Atlanta. Rest Temple.
It's a beautiful historic church that nineteen o three. You
guys got to come visit, which I am. I'm be
in Atlanta next week, which please, I will give you
a tour. Just text me and I'll show you around.
It opens on October nine, which is the book launch
of my book, so it'll be a bit done. I
want to do it for this episode Celebrate and then
(49:04):
the book comes out on the lap and then so um.
But me and my call collaborating artistic sister. We were
building is so big. That has three floors and you
can go underground like where the kitchen is and like
the last basement space. And we kept looking at each
other and she was like, this needs to be her mom.
This needs to be a bad house or a spa
(49:26):
or something with woomuse get some that modality of a
bad house, of vibe of salt water and that's what
is that's one of those it's her mom like bad house,
but it's like, but I really think that that would
be the next dimension of the work, is to really
(49:47):
start to do more work with the body, the somatics
of body. People do that and then they come up.
But I have so many ideas for the rest of
temple was going to be um and all of them
an Asian influence will be so dope to have it
be us in going to say that because we both
looked at each other and have that on our prayer
lists of like we're gonna make this into a bad
(50:07):
house down here, this whole basiment area. Yes, yes, I
have a question though, I have a question of you
said you you you revealing that is that is a
process and as you're doing it's not going to be fast.
And I know that there's eventually you're gonna get calls
from corporations, calls from so and so. You have an
(50:28):
event in three times as many people as you think
are gonna show up or whatever the case may be. Like,
what are some of the things that you're doing to
actively like shield yourself because you have to gate keep Yeah,
that that that onset of capitalism to ruining your ship,
very clear boundaries. I say no, the ninety percent of
(50:49):
things asked to me literally like my I was writing
my book when I was like, I was, I was
in the writing cage. I was like, I am so
I was really up every day writing with like a
bonnet on and in the closet like writing like a right.
We were never mad. You never mad. We understan jealous jealous.
(51:12):
I was jealous. We always understood and was like we
got you were walking back. I say, no, who we
gotta do to do get that kind of freedom. I
always wanted to call to you, guys. I'm like, I
love all of you, So I'm like, are you kidding?
But the way that book, the writing of that book
was really a fool on body. It's my first book
(51:36):
I've ever written. To get through writing something like that,
it's so hard because it's memoir, it's poetry. It's a
full manifesto that really uplifts the idea of rest being
the new the new clearion call for the generation like
this is the guys book and the field guy for
this this new rest movement. It's a manifesto. I think
(51:57):
people will come back to it will be something can
tuck in their bag and when they're in the field
trying to like resist grind, culture can be a companion
for them, a metaphorical blanket. I want people to lay
down and read it, fall asleep with it on their chest,
like I wanted to be a lullaby for them, and
so writing that book was a live I wanted to
(52:17):
ask one more question, what do you say to somebody
who is broke, like financially. I got so many good
things to say them because I started this The story
of how I started this work, I literally had no money.
I was going to job interviews every week trying to
get a job after I finished seminary, and nobody would
hire me. Jill I was literally doing chaplaincy session because
(52:41):
I was trying us to chapelain and pastoral care sessions
with the people. Like the interviews would turn into me
doing chaplaincy with the people. People were in their crying.
One woman was like interviewing me and started crying and
tell me about she's having all these issues with her daughter.
And I sit up there and had like prayer with her,
a full chaplaincy session. I was like, I was definitely
don't get this job, and she called about the gable
(53:02):
to somebody else like that. It's happened four times. My
husband was like, if you keep your job, is not that.
I was like, Bay, I don't have no money. I
literally don't even have twenty five dollars. He was like,
I know, but if you the job is not out there.
The job is this napping and resting thing. And I
was just like, oh my god, how could you say that?
Like I couldn't believe. I was so caught up in
(53:24):
like not having not having money, filling the poverty on
my shoulders. He said, the work is do in that ministry,
and if you do that, things will come. When I
first started this, I was getting paid twenty dollars to
come and do it. I didn't have a dime. And
so what I tell people is when you talk about
being broke, there is not There is not a binary
with this. Work isn't either be broke or work like
(53:47):
an animal. You know, there has to be some type
of mental ground, some type of balance, some type of
integration of this so that you can do both, Like
you don't have to grind yourself into oblivion in order
to not be broke you also, um can still do
this while you're also working. And so I'm not telling
people to never work, to lay down, to quit their job.
(54:11):
I'm saying that you have to see resting as an
integrated part of your life. You have to see boundaries,
you have to see healing. So I tell people still rest.
My grandmother rest for thirty minutes. Why she was broke,
working two jobs, raising eight kids without a dime. I
was resting and teaching people to rest when I didn't
have any money. So I know the understanding of needing
(54:33):
to eat and live in a capitalist system is real.
I'm not um and realistic to think that I'm come
from a legacy of poor black factory working. Nobody in
my family graduated from college. They're all high school graduates.
I'm like the first in my family to graduate from college,
the first to go to graduate school. So I understand
what it means to not have Like if I stopped
(54:55):
working today, I would be homeless, you know. And so
it's like I understand the vibe and the what the
reality is of living in a system like this. I'm
saying this is about more than just stopping and laying down.
It's about being having awareness of who you are. It's
a self worth, it's a um self esteem, it's a divinity.
It's a spiritual practice. It's a idea of mind shifting,
(55:20):
of shifting your mind to understand that you do not
only deserve rest, but it's actually your human right, it
is your divine right. It's past some type of I
need to earn rest. It is literally looking at yourself
that's divine human you are, and from that knowledge, from
that information, integrated into your life to be able to
resist any system that wants to degrade you, any system
(55:42):
that wants to say you aren't enough. That's the resistance there.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you
so much. I know from personal experience and when I
when I decided to rest my body, music comes, full
(56:04):
lyrics come, poetry comes, ideas come. A new way of thinking.
A thing, or cooking a thing, or or trying a
thing pops up. Sleep. Rest is regenerative and we all
need that and we deserve it. I need you, dear
(56:24):
sweet listeners. We need you to purchase this book. We
need you to consider the possibilities of your existence in
a more peaceful, productive, happy, rested existence. We need you
to We need that for you. I need that for me,
(56:47):
Agent needs that, Lah needs that. We all need that.
Thank you so much for being here with us. We've
been waiting for you since yes man, We've been waiting
a dread so beautiful. How do you eat an elephant?
(57:11):
One by its Hey, listeners, it's Amber, the producer of
Jada Ill Here. My prayer is that each and every
one of you takes this episode to heart. We deserve
so much rest. Keep finding your pockets of peace throughout
the day. One really easy way to start is with
(57:32):
the breath. If you don't already know the four seven
eight breathing technique, get into it. It's super simple. All
you do is inhale through your nose for four seconds,
hold your breath for seven, and exhale through your mouth
for eight. And this simple exercise is scientifically proven to
decrease fatigue, reduced anxiety, reduced symptoms of asthma, reduced hypertension,
(57:58):
reduced aggressive behavior, nails, and improve migraine symptoms. I'll drop
a link in the show notes to an article explaining
more about the four semnate breathing technique. I'll also drop
a link to Tricia's incredible new book, Rest Is Resistance.
It's now required reading for the j L Fam. And
(58:18):
if you don't already, follow Trisha on Instagram at the
NAT Ministry. Hi. If you have comments on something you
said in this episode called eight six six, Hey Jill,
(58:42):
if you want to add to this conversation, that's eight
six six four three nine five four five five. Don't
forget to tell us your name and the episode you're
referring to. You might just hear your message on a
future episode. Thank you for listening to Jill Scott Presents
Jay dot The podcast j dot Ill is a production
(59:06):
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows
Welcome to Jay dot il a production of I Heart Radio. Jill,
you have to open up the show, Ma'm I'm not
opening up the show. I got to open a show.
You got to the show. Excited. Listen, everybody, We're really excited.
We're excited. That's all I mean. We've already been clapping
(00:26):
and cheering. It is. It has been such a journey,
like we've been wanting to talk to this woman for
a year or more, a year or more like this, lady,
how you've blessed our lives. Look this welcome to Ja
dot Ilder Podcast. This is Joe Scott and I'm here
with my sister friends, Ada Graydon Danzler. Hello, Hello, Hello,
(00:50):
and the lovely liar st Clair. Ready for arrest, Ready
for arrest. It's so much more. And and Tricia, am
I saying your first name? Yes, Mercy Baby, Trisha thirsty baby.
If you don't know who this is, uh what minister Asian?
(01:15):
You know this? No? This is this is the NAP Bishop.
But what we'd like to welcome into our into into
the sanctuary. Amen. That what we'd like to do is
welcome the NAP Bishop Trisha Hersey to the show. Amen,
Because what she does is she teaches the black people
that they are not only entitled to rest money, but
(01:38):
that the people owe us rest, they us rest. I
have come to know her from her fabulous Instagram page
and that ministry, and uh, it has touched my heart
and I honestly she was not lying. We we've been
talking about you from seeing you. It feels like a
(02:01):
dream right now because it's really happening. And then she
showed up a girl. Then she showed up on here
with a whole neon sad honey, the aganl aw, the
same is here is here like it's just it's just
keeping the nineties going, keeping the good line. Get on
(02:21):
all of them static. I love that. I'm from the
South side of Chicago. So let's just I'm currently in
the South side of Chicago, right. No, you are, yes, um,
eating good um. Yes, I am engod. I'm on my
way to the Inglewood Music Festival. Yes, so we will
be doing that that whole nine. But yes, from Chicago.
(02:45):
Give it to us, give it to us, give us
the receipts, not Bishop. I've been an activist for twenty
five years. I was raised as an activist. My dad
was a pastor, of the Church of God in Christ
for black then a Costalkjic, and so I grew up
in that denomination. But my dad was also deeper into
(03:06):
the Black Panther movement, you know, Pan Africanism, super black everything,
and also a union organizer and activists, and so I
grew up, you know, always understanding that none of us
will be free until we're all free and understanding like
the real core of what it means to be a
(03:27):
black body in this country. It's a blessing and it's
a miracle our name. It is one of the deepest
miracles ever to be alive and on this earth. When
they've tried to do so many things to eradicate us
from the earth, we're still here. And the word word
miracle really but dis gracious. I feel like I've seen
(03:51):
you have to address and I love the way you
address people because you're very clear that they're not there
to extract labor from. But yet the work that you
have done, the study that you put into what you've done,
is important to be clear and to clarify with folks
that this is what I'm talking about. You can co
(04:11):
opt it and say this or that the other, but
I'm here to clarify, not to work, but to clarify
for you what it is that what I've what I've
been studying. And so I feel like maybe we've all
had a hard time wrapping our minds around this idea
of self care and what that looks like, and that
when you say the word lay down, rest, nap, that
(04:36):
people still have a hard time with that very simple instruction,
you know. So I just you know, I would love
for you to just talk about, like, you know, why,
why do you think that it's that we're so it's
so difficult for us to follow this simple, simple room
well in a capitalist system like the one we live in,
(04:56):
in a system that's a white suprematis system, the one
we live in in, this is radical. This is paradigm shifting.
This is the mind shift, and my name, what is
happening to us um as full on brainwashing. And so really,
when I started the NEAT Ministry's I G page, I
have already been doing the work for three years and
the community here in Atlanta already been rolling out of yoga,
(05:19):
maths and working. After I finished getting my massive divinity
degree at the university, I was in seminary, so I
was already working in the community and doing this work
UM then ministry and social media page kind of came
after a friend of mine was kind of like, you
think we should just grand all the pages and say
make sure you get then Ministry on every platform, And
(05:39):
it was literally like you think so, Like I really
it was that much of a decision where I was like, well, okay,
I guess I'll do that, because I really was not
thinking that I would be using this work in a
way in which is being seen now. Like I really
was doing the that ministry and experimenting with REST to
save my own life. I was saving my life when
(06:00):
I started this work. I didn't think about no business plan,
It's gonna be on I g I was literally an exhausted,
curious black woman who was dying from exhaustion, who was
dying from disconnection, who was slowly mentally and physically watching herself.
UM really perish in a culture that wants us to perish.
(06:20):
And so when I begin to fill all these things,
I begin to experiment deeply with REST. I didn't know
if it would work. I didn't know what would happen.
I said, let the chips fall where they may, Like
I got to the point of like, God, gonna have
to fill in the gaps because I'm not gonna rush,
I'm not gonna be urgent. I'm not gonna stay up
late to finish this paper. If I fell out a class,
amen to that, because gott to bring another thing into
(06:41):
my life. Like I really got to the point where
I was like, I cannot do this. And then pairing
that with my work studying cultural trauma, studying gym crow terrorists,
what it did to our bodies, what it still has
done to our bodies, and looking at the history of
plantation labor and what my ancestors are ancestors went through,
then it became um almost like a reparations and a
(07:03):
political protest that I won't donate my body to assist
them that still owes reparations to my ancestors, that I
will use this moment to recapture the dream space that
was stolen from them, to be able to lay down
and rest for them in this dimension, to honor them,
to um connect with them, and so the recapturing of
(07:25):
their dream space. The portal of maps became a really
beautiful place for me as I was sleeping on the couch,
sleeping in the library at school, sleeping, you know, wherever
I could find a place to sleep. I would wake
up with these ideas and I would be with my grandmother,
who's an answers in her dreams, and she be resting
with me, and it was just like it became a
(07:47):
beautiful portal of imagination. And so me doing it was
just to save my life into experiment. And then as
I saw it changing my life, I said, well, as
an activist, how could this be a collect stea how
the collective coming? And so we started doing the events
like before you saw anything online. It was me with
yoga mats, blankets that I borrowed from my mother, from
(08:10):
my aunts that I washed, the pillows that I could
find in their closets, and just donating things because I
didn't have a dime. I had like negative twenty five
dollars in my account when I started this work. I
just wanted. I just knew that if people could lay
down and feel this practice and understand what it feels
to the rest, collectively, the things could change. And so
people started coming laying down on yoga mats, waking up crying,
(08:34):
making these connections between what was happening, and so hundreds
of um nap events later, you know, being online four
or five years. We're at the point now where there's
some veils being removed. When this is not a full
on movement, it is still very undergrounded, outlier because all
of this culture wants us to be grinding nothing in
(08:57):
this culture, it wants us to rest. And so when
we believe understand that this culture is not gonna ever
give you rest, that you're gonna have to snatch it.
Be a fugitive, be on maroon, you know, be like
you know our ancestors. That's where I think we're at
right now. We're at the point where people are a
little bit of a veil is being removed and people
are kind of seeing behind it and being like, well,
what the why am I working like this? You know?
(09:19):
Why am I feeling like this? Why am I thinking
that I'm not good enough if I take a nap?
You know? Where has this toxic, violent idea of our
that we about ourselves has been stolen from us, that
we really believe that our bodies don't deserve arrest. It's
so it's one of the most violent, toxic things when
you really think about what the culture has taught us,
(09:41):
has taught you to think. My body doesn't belong to me,
it belongs to the system. If I wrapt, if I nap,
I'm I should feel guilt. I'm not doing enough. I'm
not enough. Our self esteem has been ripped apart by
this culture. If I believe resting is the foundation, it's
the north star for us to begin to be more human,
(10:02):
so to say, to repair, to disrupt, to disturb the
idea that we're human machines, and we're not human machines.
We're divine, perfect human beings who not only deserve rest,
but um resting is really the what will keep us free.
It's what will help us thrive. I'm past surviving. I
(10:25):
don't want to survive no more. Right, I don't want
to survive no more. I'm so grateful for my sessions
who survive who But I'm We're on the next level
and the level of always being towards our liberation is thriving.
I just refused. It's that's why it's called resistance. Rest
(10:46):
is resistance. The idea of a resistance. It's so deep,
it's a multi layer, it's so trickster energy, it's subversive,
it's being flexible, and so I'm excited that people are
beginning to see themselves free, you know, dream themselves free,
to remove a little veil and say, you know what,
(11:08):
this isn't normal for me to be feeling like this,
for me to be working like this, like I don't
feel well, and so what could we use to be
able to bring us back to wellness and to bring
us back Truly, it's work is about showing people that
they're human. It's it's a human It's about humanness. To
be more human. One of my favorite poets, On and
starches as the poem that she opens up, what does
(11:31):
it mean to be more human? To be more the
human nous, to be more human? The human like this
idea of being a human like, I'm very curious about that.
More real talk after the break, we watch our cats.
(11:58):
You know, I don't have any cats from people who
have cats and dogs. I love cats. People know I
love them. That's my point. And I've always said this
that in my next life, I am chosen chosen, I've
chosen to cat. I'm going to be a cat the
next time around, just laying around randomly, lay in the
(12:20):
sun and scratching, not getting up if you call their name,
my cat, I'll call his name, and he's laid out,
he will not move. I'm like, I know you hear me.
It's like, yeah, I hear you, but I'm resting right now.
So they walk with They walk with the slow switches.
They don't rush, They very They have full autonomy over themselves.
(12:44):
They have there and that's what we need to be
fully autonomous over our own bodies than our own beings. Like,
we don't belong to these systems. We don't belong to them.
We belong to the creator. We belong to our communities.
We don't belong to a system that wants to see us.
There's nothing but a tool of production. These systems see
us as only a tool to create their more more wealth.
(13:07):
Isn't Doesn't that piss you off to think that a
system looks by human like that? And so this work
is also about my rage. I have a lot of
rage and tender rage around the idea of what the
systems of their handestors to me, to black women, how
we feel like we have to be the mules of
the world. I'm in a deep rage about it, and
(13:30):
I'm also there's a tenderness in me that says there's
a softness that's available to us right now and we
don't have to live this way. And so it's a
full on political movement. It's a full on social justice disruption.
This is a disruption that simply all this work is,
we need it. And you know that. You know that.
(13:51):
I love how present you are in this revolution. It
tickles me. It gives my heart so much joy because
we've been tired and tired. I know I have. I
talked about that in my book, like when my book
comes out and told three level, I'll talk about this
whole story being about this fragmented history around my family
and my ancestors and the legacy of exhaustion that I
(14:14):
want my family come through. I was gonna ask you
that being said, what have your your aunts, your mom,
your grandmam, like, how have they responded to this work?
This is I'm sure I don't say foreign because after
our parents, NATS is not for him, but resting for
that generation, I think, yeah, for the particular generation. The
idea of not doing something, your ladies and get out
(14:37):
and do something. Why are you sleeping in? So let
you know, when I think about elder black women between
the ages of like UM sixty plus. You know they
really are don't understand what it means. Just sit there.
Even the one can relax. Yeah, the retire one of
the work that it wasn't work thirty years at a
company and have come with work now they don't have
(15:00):
to do that no more. They just they It's still
in us. And so it's really a somatic, bodily thing
that we have to really look at. This is held
in our bodies, the somatics of exhaustion, the legacy of
exhaustion that's in our bodies, that has been passed down.
It resides in us. And I believe that our ancestors
are just waiting for us to take a nap, to
(15:21):
lay down the rest, so they can download some information
to us that will help us in this dimension, that
will give us free in this dimension, that will give
us something in the inventive ideas. We need to push
this UM world towards a deeper future, but we won't
lay our asses down. They're like what they please just
stop for a second. I have something to share with them,
(15:41):
because resting and dreaming is a portal space. It's a
portal Most of us don't even dream I don't know.
I don't dream, we don't imagine, we don't daydream. We
don't see the opportunity of resting being something generative that
can give us something that we need. Like all of
the ideas with this work come from me resting and
(16:02):
napping and waking up. And I took a thirty days sabbath. Um,
I do it every November, and I did it last November,
off all phones, all emails. I don't understand I've heard
about this that you do. I need you to break
this down. I don't understand how life continues on without that.
It cons on beautifully, it goes really well. But you
(16:23):
have to prepare for. I prepare for for over six
months to a year. You have to prepare for. You
have to craft away, Like resting is a meticulous love practice.
It's a practice, a meticulous love practice, siculous love practor
its gonna be something you have to craft and right
and no, it's very meticulous love practice, isn't it tender? Rage?
(16:49):
Do you feel that we're all in love? I love
all of y'all. Oh my god, I wish we could
be in the same room. We go like hugs and
to rest took an now to get there. I love
people cried every event we've had, the tears and emotions.
It's spiritual work, really, Jill, Like people think that this
(17:11):
work is just oh, go lay down and wellness book
to rest, it's spiritual work. It's a spiritual practice to
lay your body down, to connect with your body, to
hear a word from your ancestors. I think about my
grandmother or you asked about my grandmother, who's really the
music this work? Who really she's an ancestor now, but
(17:31):
I talked about her every single time I can. She's
in the book. She really taught me what it means
to reimagine rest. You know, a Jim Crow to terror survivor.
She's a refugee from Jim pro terror. And I think
we need to say refugee because when we love those words,
we talk about the Great migration, all of our ancestors
leaving south and going north and west, and they all went,
(17:55):
they leaved. Mine all came from Mississippi and also bad Rouge, Louisiana.
My grandma father was in Mississippi, and she left um
like millions of other black people, because she told me
she didn't want to see another lynching. That she had
seen a lynching and that was it for her. She
didn't need to see another one. And so she I
like to say, she floated on the spaceship that she
(18:16):
made out of uncertainty and hope. Oh, that herself from
the Mississippi and came right on up north to Chicago.
And that's where we landed. And when my family is
from How grateful I am for her to have a
couple of dollars in her pocket and to say, I'm
a refugee. I'm gone. I know, I don't know what
it's gonna be, but this ship ain't it. It ain't
it for me to be around my children and seeing
(18:38):
them being hung from the tree. Like I'm going to
make a way out of no way. I'm gonna imagine
and dream myself to a new dimension. So she came
to Chicago raising eight children. My grandmother has eight children.
I'm one of her dozens of grandchildren. And between working
two jobs, working cleaning at a psychiatric hospital and then
(18:58):
also cleaning for a family, she would come home and
she would sit on her plastic covered couch and she
would close her eyes for thirty minutes to an hour
every day. It did not matter if we were running
in and out her house, if the door was open
and we were screaming, she said, on that couch and
for thirty minutes or are We always thought she would sleep,
and I'm like she's sleeping after thought, she was so accentric.
(19:22):
Who sits up like that with their eyes closed, like
what's happening? I will always say, Grandma sleep, Yeah, I'll
be quiet. And she wouldn't even open her eyes. She say,
every shutout, ain't sleep. I'm resting my eyes. I'm listening
to God. I'm listen. I ask you. I'm left her
name for thirty minutes. So I would just wanted to
be why she's fighting poverty, why she's raising children, why
(19:46):
she's suffering from PTSD. We don't talking about our ancestors
suffering from PTS to see and lynch, I mean, come
like how I just think about what they saw, what
their bodies endure, what they had to visualize, and holding
their bodies and how that holding what it does and
how it is now and then not being able to rest.
(20:09):
What clever our ancestors figured out if they were more
arrested because they have for stake quicker because they thought
of that different plans that would have got them to
their freedom. I think about here Tubman and when my
bro mother did this every single day. But that's what
you do to a prisoner of war, That's what you
do to a captive. You don't let them rest. No,
(20:32):
deprivation is definitely a tool. So this is my question
I was gonna ask you on your journey of doing
this work, like the relationship, How has the relationship changed
of your understanding of the relationship between rest, sleep, and meditation. Yes,
that's a good question. Yeah, I clarify in the book.
You know, people talk about when they hear the word
(20:52):
dot nap ministry, they think this is about naps, and
I'm like, this is a way about more than naps.
This is about truly at also living that looks at
slowing down, that looks at leisure, that looks at um
the idea of just being. And so I believe that
resting is anything that connects your body and mind, that
can slow you down enough where your body and mind
(21:14):
can have a moment to connect. And so I love meditation.
I think that mindfulness and meditate. I think when my
grandmother was doing was meditating, but she would say she
was called resting her eyes. She was just resting her eyes.
She wasn't asleep, but I believe that was a meditative
state for you to slow down and listen. Believe stilence
is rest, just the idea of having silence. I believe
(21:35):
um drinking tea, slowly listening to a full music album, dancing, prayer,
creating an altar, walking, sky gazing, day dreaming, like, all
of these things are forms of rest that we can
embody and we can reimagine ourselves in this life. And
so we're gonna have to reimagine and be flexible and
(21:58):
be very inventive of It's not gonna just look like
a full sleep cycle. I'm in my room, the door
is closed, I'm under a blanket, there's the pillow. No
one's bothering me. I have an eyemask on, and I'm sleeping. Yes,
we need all of that, but to really start to
deepen into this work, to see it as a real
political and a resistance movement, we're going to have to
(22:19):
be pervasive and very in tune with trying to find rest,
snatched rests and create rest moments in these imaginative moments
for ourselves. Whenever there's always time to rest. There's always
time to connect, to slow down ten minutes, take a
longer shower, to take more time putting that lotion on
in the morning, don't turn That's just like you need
(22:46):
to share this definition with every doctor out here. There
goes to say that tells everybody go rest. What does
that mean? Yeah? I write a whole list of the
different ways that we can look at rest and in
fine ways. Because my grandmother she didn't have time and
lay down. She was in between another job that she
was going to so she could sit for those thirty
(23:07):
minutes and get that silence and listen to God. Like
when I when she says she's listening to God, what
when I think about that? That's the deepest spiritual form
of rests to listen, to have silence, to get off
these phones, to stop scrolling, to stop hearing the noise
of everything in your head. These thirty days sabbath that
(23:27):
I take, I'll get so much information. I don't feel
like anyone could try to steal my work quotes or
take this word because they're not resting like I'm doing.
So if you're not resting like I'm doing, you'll never
get to the information you won't get the downloads, you
won't get to like unique things that are coming when
I'm in such a rested state. Seventeen handwritten pages. During
(23:50):
my sabbath, I wrote the just ideas and our ideas
and poem, I mean seven. When you're not online scrolling
for hours, think about the moment that your brain could
have to like imagine a wander. It sounds like freedom.
When you when Asian first sold as You was on break,
I was like, what kind of freedom? Beautiful? Beautiful? The
grind is so overwhelming. It's overwhelming, like in in this
(24:17):
part of the business, like for instance, like you do
a show and and there's all these people and you're
connecting with everybody, you know, making the effort to connect
and open yourself up to the person, the person outside
of the theater, uh in the parking lot. You're you're
opening yourself up for this energy to give, but you
(24:38):
also received. And I've noticed in the last like, um,
you know, like five or six years, I've noticed that
once I'm off the stage, I almost pass out. It's
a lot. It's a lot. So I go to sleep,
you know, and if they can wait. You know, this
is before COVID you know, with the meet and greets
and like if they I gotta go to sleep, got
(25:00):
to lay it down, Yes you have, and I sleep
hard and then I can meet people and then I
can say hi, thank you for coming in. If you
can't wait for that, I don't know what to tell you,
because I love that boundary though that you're like, this
is what it is, and this is it takes It
takes time to figure out what these boundaries are because
other than that, you know, you're trying to fit into
(25:23):
what is done, the normal, you know, and then you
end up burning yourself out. Is this thing not about
longevity and I'm just talking about life. If you want
to live as much life as you possibly can, healthy
quality of life, if you wanted to be feeling like
a thriving life, not a life of soft life, not
(25:43):
a life where you're burnt out, burnt up, you know,
not connected. I think the deepest part of our exhaustion
is our disconnection with each other and ourselves. So this
this deep disembodied with our bodies and who we are.
And we've know that our bodies are tired, we know
that we need rest. I'm gonna push through. Why are
you ignoring what your body is telling you. Your body
(26:04):
is telling you I need to lay down, I need
to arrest, and you're like, I'm just push through this,
pushing through that cultural and it's a cultural thing that
we've been tall and honestly we say that, we say
that word so much to our children too. And I
think there's a bit of a resentment, particularly from our generation,
with younger generations who we feel a pushing through and
(26:27):
we feel don't want to work or aren't working hard enough,
aren't are somehow inherently, somehow getting messaging that it's like, yeah,
I'm not going to sacrifice myself to this. And I
think that some of that some of us are having,
like we had a lot of time, like having a
lot of time processing like where they be coming from
on that. There is a balance to that when we're
(26:48):
when we're saying things like oh, I'll just I'll just
say my opinion, you know, when we're talking about people
not wanting to work. For those who do, I would
just ask you do the stop you can, courteous, respectful, helpful,
you know, um, And but when you're done with that portion,
(27:09):
please go lay down, just go outside and look at
this guy, lay down. That's the thing about it. People
literally are fighting this this idea of not They feel
like they're not enough. And I think this goes back
to that worth. If you feel like you're not enough,
this system teaches you you're not enough, you need to
do more. Once you're to do this done, then you're okay.
(27:30):
Once you've accomplished enough, then you're okay. Like that's the
lie that it sits and resides in us, that it
causes us to be able to hold onto something that's
killing us. Like this is not trying to be an alarm,
but sleep deprivation is killing black people. It is causing
so many health issues. The top three high blood pressure, diabetes,
and heart disease have been tracked and traced back to
(27:52):
sleep deprivation. Not sleeping a full six hours of full
rest of sleep a day, being exhausted. Sleep deprivation is
a public health issue. It's a CDC has named it
as a public health issue. Entire culture physically is dying
from not sleeping. Um and so it's a spiritual lens too.
It's a physical lens. It's emotional, it's political. It's like
(28:14):
all the legs are coming together to make this work
be so powerful and so paradigm shifting and culture shifting
that it is going to take a lot of time.
And I understand it. I'm glad grateful that it's not
going to be quick. I'm so grateful for it being
small and when I was having time to deprogram and
(28:34):
decolonized to figure this work out, to expand and experiment.
This work is about experimentation. It's not wrapped up in
a boat to say these are the three things you
do to be free from grind culture. Honey. No, you're
gonna be unraveling and healing and meticulously loving on yourself
through rest for the rest of your days. And we'll
(28:56):
hope that our people, when we are ancestors, that the
one us who are left behind our families will be
uplifting rest for us wearing that dimension. And so this
is a pull on life long practice of seeing ourselves
as worthy if you are enough. I repeat that so
much in a book. If you don't get nothing from
this book, understand that right now, as you're reading this book,
(29:18):
as you're listening to me, understand that you're you are divine,
that you're worth was granted to you by your birth.
So you don't have to do all these other connected
things that you feeling like I got give your worth.
You're worth. It's not hemmed up in capitalism's ideas of
what we're gonna take a quick break and then it
(29:46):
will be right back. What is the name of your
book again? Yes, rest is Resistance a manifesto come out
October eleventh. Please tell me you doing an audio book.
(30:06):
October eleventh is my um, it's my anniversary anniversary. It's
it's the day I lost my virginity. I was. I
didn't know which wonder because because this is Jill, so
you know, yeah, she went bust out. She because who
remembers that day? You remember that, dame, but Jill, nobody
(30:31):
remembers that date. I remember the year, the year, maybe
maybe the season. I probably confined the day though, because
I've been journaling since I was in high school. So
you one of those. I have them all on the shelf,
like like a book to jealous Happening when I was
what was happening when you were eighteen? Like it's a
full archive of like yo, I just told jail to Asia,
(30:54):
I was like, that's Jennifer Lewis said, that's how she
writes all her books because she journal all her life,
so she just goes for books and start right. I
love that, you know, I always I've always wanted to
be a journal person, but I just I've never quite
been able to do it. Well. Did you have diaries
a little like all the way I did? I definitely did,
But you don't keep up with it. You keep up
(31:15):
with you. Yeah, I think I have like maybe one
from like middle school that I probably still have. I
wanted to circle back to something you said because and
I've just been sitting with it in my mind, because
you keep saying so many good things. I just like,
I'm mostly just listening because I'm such a like girl.
Jim after Jim after Jim. But any who, um, when
(31:37):
you were talking about ancestors and and you talked about
also to like the this um the kind of legacy
of exhaustion. I remember I went to to grief therapy
after my mom passed, and this lady and the lady
who was doing it with me was telling me about
how like, what did you think was the legacy that
my mother left me? And one of the things that
she was that that people talked about her a lot
(31:58):
of times just like how how much, how easy it
was for her to love people, and that she had
like this real legacy of love that she left with people.
And I remember my son telling me, like, I just
want to be I wish I want to be more
like Grandma. And I told him, I said, well, you
know what, son, there was a cost to her being
so present for so many people, and there was a
(32:19):
call she paid for that. And I said, now, when
I look at my mom, I feel she definitely gave
me a beautiful blueprint as to how to treat others
and the type of person you want to be when
people remember you. But I realized that she sacrificed her
body for that in a lot of ways. And I
feel like the legacy legacy that she left me was
that yes, be be good, be espressial love to people
(32:42):
who you feel shold having, but also like preserve the self,
take care of yourself, you know, And and that was
one thing she just failed to do for herself. And
it's like, and to me, I feel like that's really
the more powerful legacy that she left me and the
thing that I've been sitting with for the last few years.
So even in discovering your page. I felt that that
(33:03):
was even her guided me into that space to say, listen,
you need to I see now I'm about to cry.
You need to rest, honey. You just have been on
and I don't think I would have believed her has
she told me that in the flesh, I think I
had to have so much pain to where I could
(33:24):
not fit another thing in the cup. I had to
be that full in order to deny other things my
body and my presence and my labor. So when you
said that, it just really resonated with me because I
was just like, I have approached my life in such
a different way in the past four years, or for
(33:46):
for in some change, you know, in the past four years.
It has been different. Even with my children. I told
my husband said, during the pandemic, my bedroom felt like
an office, and it was a constant energy of people
coming into the office to talk about what it is
they needed to talk about, right, like constant, constant, constant
to I felt like, goodness, gracious, I felt like I
(34:09):
had to be like a big red like my office.
I was just from nine to five like this motherfucker, right,
So you know, eventually I had to kind of like
start to create these boundaries even with people who I
felt were entitled to my labor. So I think sometimes
maybe even this thing might go even further from like
(34:30):
necessarily capitalism, but also within our inter personal relationships as
to how we, you know, expel so much. And if
you talk about guilt, that's a major guilt to turn
away a child from your foot, from your door. I know.
I think that this is the black woman to talk
about what has been placed on when I think about
(34:51):
the labor and the sacrifice that Black women have done
their bodies to who they are. They sacrifice everything to
be on good other, to be a good pardner, to
do for everyone, and then we're over here dying. I
think that legacy the strong black woman, Mammy, the Mammy trope,
the muddle of the world, like those tropes were put
(35:13):
on us during plantation time, during slavery, when our ancestors
were a part of the system that was looking at
us as full on machines that's not even human beings
at all, but the for the black woman, like how
we've internalized that. It's such a deep way we've been
taught that we watched our grandmothers do it, our great
grandmothers every do it to the point of where their
(35:34):
sacrificing their entire being until they're gone, not hearing for
their selves. There's no self preservation, there's no you're gonna give,
give given to you can't give no more. You have
a heart attack and you still in the back at
home resting cookie, Then why are you in the hospital?
Like I know all black women who have done that,
(35:54):
it's like you really there is such a brainwashing. I
think we have to keep going back to the idea
of this deep socialization that happens to us from birth.
I think everyone has that, but for Black people there's
a different legacy. There's a different been to the exhaustion,
to the way we're always trying to catch up. We're
always trying to catch up page priarchy. Also, we cannot
(36:16):
forget about patriarchy because that part because the black woman
is seen as the mule of the world to save
everyone else she can. I'm not trying to save nobody else.
I want help and I need help. So the strong
troke is one that is to me, the most divisive,
the most toxic, and I want all black women to
(36:36):
begin to do the healing work. This is a part
of a deeper healing agenda like resting and sleepy and
slowing down and connecting with your bodies is just one
of the deep parts of our full healing agenda. We're
gonna have to be healing from our individual trauma. Things
that happened to us we were children that made us
people pleasers, Things that happened to us we were younger
(36:58):
that made us feel like we aren't worthy. Collective trium,
I'm gonna have to be looking at what has happened
to us collectively. And this is going to take a
lot of work. It's not going to just be a
one time thing. It's gonna be therapy, prayer, you know,
some classes, rituals, working with people, really deeply looking at
yourself to see the work. It always going at yourself
(37:21):
worth looking at yourself when you can't look at yourself
or feel yourself or connect with yourself, if you're always
going My girlfriend told me I was selfish once, um,
and I told her I was self full, self full yes,
then yeah self yeah, because it's not selfish. I'm like, well,
(37:44):
you know I did. I did grow up as an
only child. But I like my a long time. I
like my piece of quiet it's become part of my
my life. I need that. How will we be well without?
How as human beings will we be well without? It's
it's almost to see how deep the brainwatching is for
people to actually think that we're going to be able
(38:04):
to get to some type of freedom by doing the
same things talked to us by these toxic systems. So
you think you're gonna get to freedom by doing the
same exact things that we're talked to you by the oppressor,
by a toxic system has taught you these things, you
won't be able to get there. And Audrey Lord has
a beautiful quote that I love you will never dismantle
(38:26):
the master's house using the masters tools. Yeah, I want
to keep being exhausted, to keep acting like you're the
slave master, keeping grind, keep and thinking it from that
you're gonna be able to equal liberation and thriving in
freedom like it. Just it doesn't make sense that we
believe that we can keep grinding ourselves to obliving and
(38:46):
think that that's gonna offer us beautiful results, that's gonna
offer us results that look like liberation. It's gonna offer
us more of the same. And so that's where the
shift comes from that mind shift of knowing that we
have to like, really, look, this is something that we're
going to have to do a practice every day. That's
the center of our life. It's not just this adecute
(39:07):
little thing you do. It's literally has to be the foundation.
Resting has to be the foundation for our north star,
for our entire lives, for our um activities is trying
to be community activists. I work with a lot of
organizations and activists who you know who are out here
trying to do all these beautiful things to giving us
our freedom, but they're working eighty hours a week and
(39:30):
I'm like, m hmm, how is that You're trying to
help us get our freedom but you haven't slept in
three days and you're like having to your help, Like,
how are you going to help us get your freedom
when you're going to be dragging your body across to
the online with you. We need you alive to do
the work like we need to U. Angela Davis one
time was talking about that. She was saying how she
(39:51):
was like, you know this new she said, we never
thought about, you know, self care or taking care of ourselves,
or she was we never talked thought about those things.
That sounds published, she said, And we lost a lot
of people, a lot of people you know, a mother.
But if you look at and many of us from
(40:13):
this generation, some of us had activist parents. I did not,
but I have seen a lot of I've talked to
a lot of second generation UM children who had activist
parents from that era, and they will tell you that
their parents have a myriad of health issues. Their mental
health is physical health issues, mental health issues that they
(40:34):
you know, that just the way it ravaged the bodies
of their parents. Yeah, that's why when you talk to
Al Sharpton today he tells you his health regiment, you'd
be like, what not like Sharpton about take care of self?
Like core and now he saw because he was almost
out of here with health and he turned that around.
It may sound like an idealist, UM, just a beautiful thing.
(40:58):
Thank you. I'm gonna match learn an idealist as well.
Like I want people to say that sounds impossible what
you're talking about. Thank you. I'm glad to be part
of the impossible crew because that's where our healing is
going to come from. People Dave dreaming and imagining things
that don't exist, you know, I feel like we're imagining stuff.
(41:19):
You know, it's the stuff. We want a lot of stuff.
And I don't know if people realize until you actually
have a lot of stuff that a lot of stuff
requires a lot of energy and effort to maintain. It
takes a lot. So what is Is it a big
old house with with ten bathrooms or is it a
(41:42):
town house or or you know, a cabin in the
woods that will give you your piece? Like piece is
really individual. And I see a lot I understand. You
know this, this this try, this effort to to get
this bag. You know, get the ay I be invisible,
(42:03):
I get it. I get it because there were definitely
times where there was no food in the pantry and
you know, two pair of shoes a year. I recalled
these things very much. So you know, I have a
thing where I don't like to see the pantry empty.
It scares me, you know. And I have a lot
of shoes because I you know, I'm like, I guess
(42:25):
that's a you know, a trauma in my mind for poverty,
the poverty of where we live through. We have to
hear from that as well. Definitely, I see that a
lot that we're all trying to get all of this stuff.
Well yeah, I mean that they're telling us that that
this this is the way that people will know that
you got it, that that that we got this thing
that we're trying to get, Like your's the allens, here's
(42:48):
here's the receipts. The new word they had, generational wealth.
It's like, oh, now you're solving You're solving all the
problems of black people by learning how to make a
lot of money. It's it's a lie. It's is a
repackaging of the same lie. And I'm just tired of
hearing it all the time. And it's like to me,
(43:09):
to me on my group chat, my girlfriend group chat,
Operational soft Life, and you said soft life. We are
on Operation soft Life. This is all we're talking about
in the group chat. It's like, what are we doing
to create this softness in our lives? You know what
I mean? And it's like, no one wants the herd anymore,
the hardest whack. I don't want to exchange, you know,
(43:32):
more stories with each other of how we've endored some
massive hardship, Like I don't want to talk about that anymore.
I don't want that to be the way that we bond.
I want us to bond over the softness of our
lives and what have we done to encourage that? And
it is hard work and it does take community. And
I don't know what I would do if I didn't
(43:54):
have other people to bounce this kind of thing off of.
I wouldn't I feel like I would have giving into
the whole You're lazy, Yeah, that's why you're not, you know,
ambitious enough, or the cree of other people to be like, no,
you're not crazy, Like this is whack. And I don't
want to work that way. And I think I'm so
(44:15):
happy because I felt like an outlier when I first
started this work. I felt very lonely. When I first
started this work back in twos and I was talking
about this rest and that idea, people were laughing at me.
They were like, girl, Like black people, white people, everybody
was like girl, that sounds crazy. And I love to grind.
I love to be busy. I love it. I could
never lay down. I don't like the rest. Like literally,
(44:35):
people were fighting me and thinking that the work was
really They thought it was an ironic satire Joe that
I was playing on because I am a performance artist.
Installation new theaters. So they thought it was just like
one of my events that I was doing. I was
like trying to be funny, and I'm like, no, I'm
dead ass. Like we're gonna be resting to reclaim our
bodies and reclaim um, our ancestors, rest and we're going
(44:57):
to be resisting the system that says that we are
machine and that we belong to it's simply to be
working on its clock, and so we're going to resist
that by simply laying down. The practice is to stop,
is to lay down, it's to slow down, it's to
say no more. And they thought it was a joke.
And so I'm grateful that now there is a community
(45:17):
of people that they know if they are feeling away,
they can come and come to our events, come look
on the page and read the book that's coming out,
and really be like swaddled and cuddled in this idea
of care, of deep, deep community, care of deep interconnectedness.
I want this work to feel like a metaphorical soft pillow,
(45:38):
you know, like a blanket that you can put over
you when you feel a little softness in a world
that hates you unless you're working. You know, all my
underscented bosom. She looked like she smelled good too. Is
there is there a Is there a naptuur coming with
(45:59):
this book? Really? Yes? And I'm gonna be leaving out
on October fifth, and I'm gonna be going to d C, Chicago,
Atlanta of course where I live, l A, San Francisco,
and then back to d C. Yeah. Then I'll be
in New Orleans in December. Yeah, you need to stop
(46:20):
in Philly too. I'm sorry. I was thinking about l
A n B and sounds like on my list when
I first started booking out the tour, but then um,
some other things dropped in. But I always wanted to
go being philious girl. We'll be back after the break.
(46:51):
I mean, I'm gonna be me obviously, But like this
seems to me that has the best career every I mean,
because she's like hiding out, she popped up. She does
twelve shows and I don't know who her people are.
You don't know what she eats for breakfast, you don't know,
(47:12):
you don't know any you don't know what her house
is shot. I talk about her all the time when
I talk about the people who have decided to do
an access off of social media not be a part
of it, because social media will be the one thing
that keeps us from being arrested without looking at our
addiction to social media. This rest movement is not going nowhere.
And so I take down social media and talk about it.
(47:35):
It's harm all the time, even though people don't want
to hear it. I talk about how it is a
full owner obsessions, addiction, and it is driving us deeper
into more parts of Exhaustion's have in depression, mental health issues,
all types of sickness, body issues, head self esteem. It
(47:56):
has to be even like even now and meaning all
the chiropractice. He's saying that if you're doing this all
day and it's causing like an issue with how you
sit back, and it's happening in our bodies, a mass
accident off of these sites will have to take place.
And I and I hold that up as a dream
space and a place that I want to see happen
(48:18):
and I want to be helping to us to do
what people are like, I'm done. I'm like, please come
into the rest temple and lay down. Give me that
damn phone, like I am on a rampage against it.
People don't people don't like it, but I still I'm
gonna keep talking about it. You know, I'm you're in Atlanta,
so I'm sure you know j Ju. Yes, that's what
I see for you. I love James. Oh yeah, it's
so interests you say that because I just opened up
(48:41):
a building, a Rest Temple here in Atlanta. Rest Temple.
It's a beautiful historic church that nineteen o three. You
guys got to come visit, which I am. I'm be
in Atlanta next week, which please, I will give you
a tour. Just text me and I'll show you around.
It opens on October nine, which is the book launch
of my book, so it'll be a bit done. I
want to do it for this episode Celebrate and then
(49:04):
the book comes out on the lap and then so um.
But me and my call collaborating artistic sister. We were
building is so big. That has three floors and you
can go underground like where the kitchen is and like
the last basement space. And we kept looking at each
other and she was like, this needs to be her mom.
This needs to be a bad house or a spa
(49:26):
or something with woomuse get some that modality of a
bad house, of vibe of salt water and that's what
is that's one of those it's her mom like bad house,
but it's like, but I really think that that would
be the next dimension of the work, is to really
(49:47):
start to do more work with the body, the somatics
of body. People do that and then they come up.
But I have so many ideas for the rest of
temple was going to be um and all of them
an Asian influence will be so dope to have it
be us in going to say that because we both
looked at each other and have that on our prayer
lists of like we're gonna make this into a bad
(50:07):
house down here, this whole basiment area. Yes, yes, I
have a question though, I have a question of you
said you you you revealing that is that is a
process and as you're doing it's not going to be fast.
And I know that there's eventually you're gonna get calls
from corporations, calls from so and so. You have an
(50:28):
event in three times as many people as you think
are gonna show up or whatever the case may be. Like,
what are some of the things that you're doing to
actively like shield yourself because you have to gate keep Yeah,
that that that onset of capitalism to ruining your ship,
very clear boundaries. I say no, the ninety percent of
(50:49):
things asked to me literally like my I was writing
my book when I was like, I was, I was
in the writing cage. I was like, I am so
I was really up every day writing with like a
bonnet on and in the closet like writing like a right.
We were never mad. You never mad. We understan jealous jealous.
(51:12):
I was jealous. We always understood and was like we
got you were walking back. I say, no, who we
gotta do to do get that kind of freedom. I
always wanted to call to you, guys. I'm like, I
love all of you, So I'm like, are you kidding?
But the way that book, the writing of that book
was really a fool on body. It's my first book
(51:36):
I've ever written. To get through writing something like that,
it's so hard because it's memoir, it's poetry. It's a
full manifesto that really uplifts the idea of rest being
the new the new clearion call for the generation like
this is the guys book and the field guy for
this this new rest movement. It's a manifesto. I think
(51:57):
people will come back to it will be something can
tuck in their bag and when they're in the field
trying to like resist grind, culture can be a companion
for them, a metaphorical blanket. I want people to lay
down and read it, fall asleep with it on their chest,
like I wanted to be a lullaby for them, and
so writing that book was a live I wanted to
(52:17):
ask one more question, what do you say to somebody
who is broke, like financially. I got so many good
things to say them because I started this The story
of how I started this work, I literally had no money.
I was going to job interviews every week trying to
get a job after I finished seminary, and nobody would
hire me. Jill I was literally doing chaplaincy session because
(52:41):
I was trying us to chapelain and pastoral care sessions
with the people. Like the interviews would turn into me
doing chaplaincy with the people. People were in their crying.
One woman was like interviewing me and started crying and
tell me about she's having all these issues with her daughter.
And I sit up there and had like prayer with her,
a full chaplaincy session. I was like, I was definitely
don't get this job, and she called about the gable
(53:02):
to somebody else like that. It's happened four times. My
husband was like, if you keep your job, is not that.
I was like, Bay, I don't have no money. I
literally don't even have twenty five dollars. He was like,
I know, but if you the job is not out there.
The job is this napping and resting thing. And I
was just like, oh my god, how could you say that?
Like I couldn't believe. I was so caught up in
(53:24):
like not having not having money, filling the poverty on
my shoulders. He said, the work is do in that ministry,
and if you do that, things will come. When I
first started this, I was getting paid twenty dollars to
come and do it. I didn't have a dime. And
so what I tell people is when you talk about
being broke, there is not There is not a binary
with this. Work isn't either be broke or work like
(53:47):
an animal. You know, there has to be some type
of mental ground, some type of balance, some type of
integration of this so that you can do both, Like
you don't have to grind yourself into oblivion in order
to not be broke you also, um can still do
this while you're also working. And so I'm not telling
people to never work, to lay down, to quit their job.
(54:11):
I'm saying that you have to see resting as an
integrated part of your life. You have to see boundaries,
you have to see healing. So I tell people still rest.
My grandmother rest for thirty minutes. Why she was broke,
working two jobs, raising eight kids without a dime. I
was resting and teaching people to rest when I didn't
have any money. So I know the understanding of needing
(54:33):
to eat and live in a capitalist system is real.
I'm not um and realistic to think that I'm come
from a legacy of poor black factory working. Nobody in
my family graduated from college. They're all high school graduates.
I'm like the first in my family to graduate from college,
the first to go to graduate school. So I understand
what it means to not have Like if I stopped
(54:55):
working today, I would be homeless, you know. And so
it's like I understand the vibe and the what the
reality is of living in a system like this. I'm
saying this is about more than just stopping and laying down.
It's about being having awareness of who you are. It's
a self worth, it's a um self esteem, it's a divinity.
It's a spiritual practice. It's a idea of mind shifting,
(55:20):
of shifting your mind to understand that you do not
only deserve rest, but it's actually your human right, it
is your divine right. It's past some type of I
need to earn rest. It is literally looking at yourself
that's divine human you are, and from that knowledge, from
that information, integrated into your life to be able to
resist any system that wants to degrade you, any system
(55:42):
that wants to say you aren't enough. That's the resistance there.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you
so much. I know from personal experience and when I
when I decided to rest my body, music comes, full
(56:04):
lyrics come, poetry comes, ideas come. A new way of thinking.
A thing, or cooking a thing, or or trying a
thing pops up. Sleep. Rest is regenerative and we all
need that and we deserve it. I need you, dear
(56:24):
sweet listeners. We need you to purchase this book. We
need you to consider the possibilities of your existence in
a more peaceful, productive, happy, rested existence. We need you
to We need that for you. I need that for me,
(56:47):
Agent needs that, Lah needs that. We all need that.
Thank you so much for being here with us. We've
been waiting for you since yes man, We've been waiting
a dread so beautiful. How do you eat an elephant?
(57:11):
One by its Hey, listeners, it's Amber, the producer of
Jada Ill Here. My prayer is that each and every
one of you takes this episode to heart. We deserve
so much rest. Keep finding your pockets of peace throughout
the day. One really easy way to start is with
(57:32):
the breath. If you don't already know the four seven
eight breathing technique, get into it. It's super simple. All
you do is inhale through your nose for four seconds,
hold your breath for seven, and exhale through your mouth
for eight. And this simple exercise is scientifically proven to
decrease fatigue, reduced anxiety, reduced symptoms of asthma, reduced hypertension,
(57:58):
reduced aggressive behavior, nails, and improve migraine symptoms. I'll drop
a link in the show notes to an article explaining
more about the four semnate breathing technique. I'll also drop
a link to Tricia's incredible new book, Rest Is Resistance.
It's now required reading for the j L Fam. And
(58:18):
if you don't already, follow Trisha on Instagram at the
NAT Ministry. Hi. If you have comments on something you
said in this episode called eight six six, Hey Jill,
(58:42):
if you want to add to this conversation, that's eight
six six four three nine five four five five. Don't
forget to tell us your name and the episode you're
referring to. You might just hear your message on a
future episode. Thank you for listening to Jill Scott Presents
Jay dot The podcast j dot Ill is a production
(59:06):
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows
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