June 4, 2025 • 31 mins
In this powerful episode, Vanessa begins with a grounding meditation inspired by the revolutionary activist Assata Shakur. Morgan then leads an essential discussion on gun ownership, safety, and self-defense, offering insights for those navigating these topics. Finally, Yolanda returns to share how GirlTrek has profoundly shaped her journey, bringing inspiration and reflection to the conversation.
Important Disclaimer: Vanessa and Morgan are not gun experts. Please consult a certified gun safety instructor for guidance, and consider enrolling in self-defense classes to further empower yourself.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
We are sick and tired of being sick and tired.
The. Disrespected person in America.
Is the black woman? But still like dust our eyes
pretty girls in the VIP they came with trains, they'll need
(00:31):
ideas with mundane. The revolution will not be
televised. Brother, you are by the.
New Joe John. Even if you are not ready for
the day. It.
Cannot always be. Night.
(01:03):
Raise hands in the air y'all. Welcome to self-care school.
Welcome to week 8. It is workshop Wednesday.
You have arrived here. In a moment where you have
decided. To take.
Radical care of yourself. Congratulations.
I'm so proud of you and I'm so grateful that you are here
walking with us. We are Girl Trek.
We are a million women. We walk to heal our bodies,
(01:24):
inspire our daughters, reclaim the streets of our
neighborhoods. We're on a mission to.
Increase our life expectancy. By ten years in 10 years.
This ten week experience is hosted by none other than
myself, Vanessa and I'm on the line with MO money Morgan.
Are you there, Morgan? Hey V, I'm here.
Hey, Morgan, I'm so. Excited that we have.
(01:45):
Arrived here in Week 8 and that we are talking about safety this
week and I just want to welcome everybody in with a radical
welcome and a daughters of meditation to get us started
like we always start these episodes and honoring of the
women who have come before us, the women who are fighting the
good fight and the women who we want to dedicate this walk to
(02:08):
today. We are the daughters of Asada
Shakur. She is a woman who would not be
broken. A woman who faced down cages and
courts and said I will live free.
A woman who loved her people so much she wished everything to
tell the truth. And because she did Yaw, we
walked today. So let's start by breathing like
women who know we came from freedom fighters.
(02:30):
Let's inhale through our nose and fill our bellies.
And let's exhale slowly and dropour shoulders again.
Let's inhale our strength and let's exhale our fear.
(02:57):
Now place one hand over your heart.
Do you feel it? That's your power, That's your
compass. That's your freedom.
Still beating. Asada walked through fire and
planted seeds and look at you. You are her harvest.
So walk like a woman who is a part of miracle.
Walk like you believe your healing is holy.
(03:18):
Walk like you've already claimedsomething bigger and greater.
Walk today like freedom is your birthright.
Because it is. Welcome to self-care school.
Yeah, let's go. Thank you for that V.
Hello everybody, you are on yourporch.
If you stepped outside already, we encourage you to then move to
(03:39):
your driveway so that we can do a self-care audit.
As usual, if you are not in yourdriveway, that's alright y'all.
You can step in your kitchen, you can step in your workplace,
wherever you are, but do stand up and take a stand here.
Today we're going to talk about two life saving skills.
We're going to talk about one. What do you think about gun
ownership and where do you standthere?
(04:01):
And then kind of what are the safety measures to keep you and
your family safe? What are the statistics?
We're going to talk about guns today and then we are also going
to talk about self-defense today.
Thank you for that meditation this morning.
Vanessa, y'all move into your driveway.
We usually take a step, a bold step forward if we believe
something or we say yes to something, and we usually take a
(04:22):
bold step backwards if we have different opinions or don't
believe in something. Today, we're going to do
something a little bit different.
We're going to step to your leftor we're going to step to your
right. All right, So be mindful of
where you are starting. Maybe straddle a crack.
Don't step on a crack because wealready know, but maybe put a
rock where you're starting so you can just know if you end up
(04:43):
to the left or to the right. All right, Are you ready?
Get yourself together, y'all. I want you to step to the left.
If when you hear gunshots in your neighborhood, you wish
people had fewer guns, step to the left.
If you don't know you can just stay where you are.
Step to the left. If you wish people had fewer
(05:04):
guns when you hear gunshots now I want you to step to the right.
If your friend got into a fight at the club, but you think that
she should be able to carry a gun still just in case something
pop off, step to the right. All right, I want you to step to
the left. If you believe that someone, if
someone has a gun in their home,they should be required by law
to store it and lock it up unloaded, I want you to step to
(05:26):
the left. I want you to step to the right.
If you think a a small business owner has every right to keep a
loaded gun behind the counter, Iwant you to step to the right.
I want you to step to the left. If you feel safer in a country
where guns are outlawed, step tothe left.
I want you to step to the right if you feel safer.
If your trusted neighbor legallyhas a firearm to carry and is
(05:50):
trained to use it, then step to the right.
All right y'all? Those are 6 questions for
today's audit. If you are left of where you
started from, then you are probably left.
More left, more liberal on gun rights issues.
If you are right from where you started from, then you may be
more conservative or more right on gun guns rights issues.
(06:10):
No matter where you landed, whether you were to the left or
you were to the right, know thatyou are welcome here.
This is Girl Trek, we are movingout.
Go ahead and walk in the direction of your healthiest,
most fulfilled life, but we are going to start today's
conversation. My whole hope and prayer for
today's conversation is that youget one bit of information that
keeps you and your family safe. Not that we have some kind of
treatise or some kind of resolution or anything like
(06:31):
that, because it's a hard topic.It's a hard topic that has taken
a lot of soul searching. All right, V to start this
conversation. I want to I want you.
I want you to answer this question.
So if you are at your house and it's, you know, I don't know,
it's 9:30 at night and you hear some like cracking at the door
(06:52):
and you ain't expecting nobody and you got on your night
clothes. What do you what, what is your
preferred method? Are you just hoping that you
lock it locked and loaded that you can go grab something out
the closet? Or are you taking off and
running as fast as you can And why?
So this really happened to me. I don't know if you remember
this, it was almost 4. O'clock in the morning I was
(07:13):
living in Atlanta in a. Fancy house behind the gates,
but the gates weren't enough y'all to keep me safe and I
woke. Up in the middle of the night,
Morgan and I just. Heard something.
You know how you kind of hear something, so you just lay.
For a minute so I just. Laid for a minute and then I
looked over at my. Door and there were feet right
at the. Bedroom door and I have like
never. Been so.
(07:33):
Scared in my life because there was a.
Flashlight with the feet. And I was laying next to my then
husband. At the time.
And it was just like instantaneous.
I was like what do I do? In this scenario, and thank God,
even before I woke up, my ex-husband, I.
Just like quickly, like. It was just.
Like the most bravest thing I'veever done.
I just jumped out of bed and I locked.
The bedroom. Door like with one.
(07:55):
Step I basically like leaped. And locked the door so the
people on the outside couldn't get in then as soon as I hit the
lock. On the door.
I just said, Marty, we got to goand Morgan and in one second,
because I had already practice my escape plan, I had the window
in the bedroom door. I had jumped out of the window
onto the balcony. I had ran around the back of the
house and I was at the neighbor's house like boom,
(08:16):
boom, boom, let me in. So like it was an instant team.
What was? Marty, he was.
Behind me, he jumped out the window behind me, but I didn't
like wait. I was just like, we got to go.
I was like there's I just had baby, baby, there's somebody in
the house. He said, well, I said there's
somebody in the house. I pointed to the door.
He saw the feet at the door too and we just I already had the
window. I was at the window.
I just jumped and he just came out with me.
(08:38):
We only, we were on the 1st floor so it wasn't we hadn't
have to jump that far and we just ran for our lives.
It was scary. It was scary.
So yes, I do remember this story.
I didn't remember in this colorful of detail.
I'm so glad that I asked you. But I I'm glad I asked you
because you said so many important things.
V You said so many important things.
(08:58):
One that you already had a plan.But Vanessa, in retrospect, do
you wish you had a gun? This is such a good question
because it's my philosophy that if you got a gun, you default to
the gun immediately and then youwant to.
Like have a confrontation. Versus you want to like, try to
protect yourself. So I feel like the answer is no.
(09:19):
And yet they were right at my door.
And what if they had come in right?
Or what if, like I hadn't hit the thing, then yeah, I would
have wanted a gun. I would have wanted to like.
Shoot first, ask questions later.
Like so. Well, here's the here's here's
the statistics is that people who have a gun, there is a
fractional chance that they willuse it for self-defense.
(09:40):
Like it's fractional an ESSA it's like 1%.
Like, people who fire guns hardly ever use them for
self-defense. Hardly ever.
I'm not surprised. Yeah, I'm not surprised.
Yeah, for a whole host of reasons.
One, because in many states you are required to put a gun in a
lock box and you are required tokeep it without ammunition.
(10:04):
And why? Which means.
If somebody's at your door, how are you going to the lock box?
Get in the gun. Loading up the gun.
In enough time, no. You got to jump out the window
and run. You don't got.
Time for all that. Yeah, the number one piece of
advice is not shoot first ask questions like you're the number
one piece of advice is to run isto run.
And so some piece, some things you can do, you can keep a
(10:26):
flashlight by your bed so that you don't you not like everybody
think they got the flashlight ontheir phone, but it's hard as
heck to get to that flashlight to like get it to turn on.
But just like a old school flashlight, there are some
flashlights that are defense flashlights that are also hard
where you can hit people with them.
So look at look at that when you're when you're looking for
your new flashlight for your bedside.
(10:46):
The second thing is people recommend putting closed toe
shoes that are easy to get into by the door because bare feet
are hard to run on and make you slower.
So if there were a pursuit or ifsomebody was chasing you, having
your shoes on gives you a greater chance of survival.
A third piece of advice that is relevant to this story is making
(11:09):
sure that you have a code word. All right, so here's some
cardinal rules. If you do decide if you were on
the right side of today's audit and you do decide that you would
like a gun, I'm going to share some statistics a little later,
but I want I want to honor your decision.
So some cardinal rules for gun safety is #1 treat every single
gun like it's loaded, all right,every single gun like it's it's
(11:33):
loaded. Even if you know it's unloaded,
act as though it could fire at any moment and hold it with
safety that way. Obviously #2 is never point a
gun at anything that you're not willing to destroy because guns
are deadly all. So keep the muzzle pointed in a
safe direction always #3 is keepyour finger off the trigger
until you're ready to shoot. And then know that your target
(11:54):
and know what's beyond your target.
There's so many gun incidents that are accidental deaths,
right? So you might hit your target,
but then you might also hit what's behind your target.
So know that that bullets can penetrate or they can miss.
And so be very careful there in terms of storage and handling.
I mentioned some of this store guns unloaded is what most laws
(12:19):
in most states say in a locked cabinet and be that's the thing,
like all of the gun owners that I know their cabinets not even
in their bedroom. And so it's, you know, might be
in the garage or it might be somewhere else, but like in a
basement or in a, you know, the guy's room or whatever, but it's
not even in the bedroom. So store guns unloaded in a
(12:41):
locked cabinet is usually the law.
Use gun locks or cable locks so that you can make sure that
there's a secondary safety measures, particularly if there
are children in the room or particularly if there are people
in the home who have suffered from any kind of mental health
disease. All right, And then just educate
(13:03):
household members. There's some other just
important things that are just basic.
Basic gun safety is don't handlea gun when you're tired, when
you're angry, or when you're under the influence of alcohol,
drugs, or stress. I'm gonna add that, you know
what I mean. Under the influence, make sure
that you take a certified gun safety and concealed carry
(13:23):
class. Y'all, Even if you inherited the
gun or you got the gun from somewhere, that ain't the shop
that requires you to do this training.
Make sure you do gun safety. Even if you've been shooting
since you've been a child, make sure you get that certification.
It could protect you in court ifanything were to go wrong, that
you had a certified gun safety class or concealed to carry
class. Practice regularly at a gun
(13:47):
range. If you're going to use the gun,
if it's going to be in your house, know how to use it
properly. And then make sure that when
you're doing that, that you alsosimulate when you're in a
stressful situation because yourbrain gets overridden and you're
fine. Motor skills get compromised.
So just make sure that you know how to do that.
And then lastly, if you are transporting a gun, make sure
(14:08):
it's unloaded. Make sure you store it in a
locked case or glove box and then you keep your ammunition
separate from that. Today's episode, by the way, is
is dedicated to all of the womenwho make us safer.
Today's or this whole week, we are really talking about safety
and we are really talking about kind of prisons and
(14:28):
incarceration, all because we are setting an agenda so that
our people can be free and our people can be safe, right?
And so today I just want to callthe names of the women
throughout history who have madeus safe all the way going back,
which we'll talk a little bit more about tomorrow and the next
day. IWW, who did her thing, y'all,
to make us safe. And then all of the women, the
(14:49):
contemporary women today who areleading these movements to lead
us safe. Everyone from Tirana to the
three Black women who started Black Lives Matter, to all these
beautiful, beautiful efforts to keep women safe across the
country and keep people safe across the country.
And Vanessa, as I was researching the people who are
keeping us safe across the country, guess who came up?
(15:11):
Girl Trek. What are we talking about?
We all here. Too we on this list and it's why
I wanted to talk to Yolanda today live on air.
Yolanda, I wanted to talk to youtoday about why you chose girl
trek for your own safety and whyyou are advising women,
(15:33):
particularly women who have had their their safety taken from
them. They have had they have been, as
Vanessa said in today's meditation in cages before.
And so these women who are, are formerly incarcerated who
understand freedom. I want to know why you are
choosing to work for girl track because you can work anywhere.
Yolanda, you're so talented. Why did you commit your your
(15:57):
time, Yolanda, your genius, yourbrilliance to bringing other
sisters into this movement? Well, there is a sense of safety
here. One of the things that the
justice impacted women models that we've created here with
Girl Trek is this is a space where you no longer have to ask
permission. And this, this, this
(16:18):
automatically disarms fear and invites freedom for us.
And then it's like this sense ofbelonging.
Well, we don't have to earn our seat.
When I'm talking about we, I'm talking, I'm representing those
justice impacted women. We don't have to earn our seat
here. Y'all let us know that we
(16:38):
already belong. And when I learned that the
three deadly eyes and one of them was injustice, that that
that made me feel validated. And that our pain that we went
through and our experiences and the things that we went through
weren't minimized. That our truth was honored.
(16:59):
There's no judgment, no shame. We don't have to prove
ourselves. We don't have that prove
yourself energy that we have to live by and that came from the
sisterhood. There's no space safer than
where I am with you all. Yolanda, that that is really
(17:20):
kind to say and we do love you and you are safe.
And you mentioned the three deadly eyes.
For those of you who don't know,we tried to reduce what's
killing black women down to the minimum, most basic idea, and we
call them the three deadly eyes.So the first one is inactivity.
And so we have to move at least 30 minutes a day.
(17:42):
And fear and safety have a lot to do with inactivity.
Like we, some of us are afraid to walk in our neighborhoods.
That's real. That's real talk, real actual
talk. Either you don't got sidewalks,
your neighbors be acting up, or you know, you just feel anxiety
in your body. And so inactivity is a safety
issue. Isolation.
Some of us are feeling alone andlike we are isolated.
(18:05):
That's the second eye. So inactivity, isolation, and
then you are right and justice. Some of us don't have the
freedom to walk. Some of us don't have the
freedom to go on a walk and so, and that is a part of the
injustice. And some of us don't have the
freedom to go on the walk because we are suffering
violence at home. I was talking to a trekker one
time whose husband didn't want her to go for a walk because he
(18:27):
thought she was cheating on him.Two different trekkers I've
talked to about this before. It's real, y'all.
Our safety is real. And so Yolanda, if you were
talking to specifically the justice impacted community here,
and even women who feel afraid for their safety in general, who
have had traumatizing experiences, who may have been
(18:50):
locked up or who certainly or may even be feeling like their
own, like mental health is, is is not as stable as it used to
be. What is your vision for the
women that you serve? What is your vision for them?
Why? Why walking?
Because walking is really just aseed to everything that comes
from it, especially when we walkin with a crew or a community or
(19:13):
with another sister. My vision is that every woman
that has been just this impact experience the freedom and get
what walking has for them. It's not just about putting one
step in front of the other. It's not just about that.
It's about what walking does internally, how it how it how it
(19:36):
gives us that peace in it. It calms us down because our
history and where we've been andwhat we're going to go have gone
through and what we're faced because of our former being
being formerly incarcerated cause anxiety within itself.
That's a blockage in society forus.
(19:59):
Every day we live trying to prove we not who we used to be.
Pretty much begging for the opportunity to show you who
we've become. So walking brings us that peace,
you know that that allows us that moment to exhale all that
anxiety and be ready to face theworld.
(20:20):
Yolanda, I am so grateful that you came on to talk today.
And so thank you so much for that today.
Yolanda Y'all So first of all, Idon't know if you remember, but
self-defense classes used to be huge like in the 80s and 90s.
Vanessa, do you remember? Like everybody was taking
self-defense in karate. But I was laughing.
I was looking up self-defense videos to share with y'all and I
saw this hilarious one you've. Got a little bit of a scenario?
(20:42):
You're at a party, you're minding your own business, a big
bully comes up and start to rap.You're kind of a jerk, kind of a
little short, punky. OK, is it dirty?
OK, but it works. Another where you might call a
diversion. I normally wear glasses.
OK, he's going to be the bully. Why don't you just take your
(21:05):
little ass down the road, buddy?Why don't you just take?
You're going to fight. I want to take my glasses off.
Take your little glasses off. First of all, he spit in his
face, he spit the drink in his face, and then he threw his
glasses at his face. I was cracking up.
I was crying. First of all, this kind of
reminds me of when I was growingup.
Remember how? I mean, I grew up in like the
80s and the 90s and there was a.Lot of like child.
(21:26):
Kidnapping stuff going on. And it was like all of these
like after school specials. And my grandma.
Used to be like. Anybody grab y'all?
Just act how you. Act at home.
She was like she just act crazy.She was just like be talking and
yelling like you do in here and she they gonna drop you off on
the next corner. I sure used to always say that.
Oh, that's that's perfectly then.
(21:47):
Thank you, y'all. There's so many conflicting
things. Do you throw your arms up?
Do you put your arms down? Do you karate chop to you?
Whatever. But there's some common things
and what Vanessa's saying and what Vanessa's grandma's saying,
more importantly, is one of the most important ones.
Use your voice. And there's a lot of studies,
Vanessa, that say don't yell help but yell.
I don't know this person or yellfire because people are more apt
(22:11):
to respond because sometimes people don't want to intervene
when they don't know, like is this personal business?
Is this whatever, whatever. But if you say I don't know this
person, that's clear. And if you yell fire, other
people pay attention because they don't want to get burned #2
stay calm if you can. There's statistics that say that
your your reflex skills are diminished by up to 50% when
(22:36):
your adrenaline kicks in. So if you can just breathe,
breathe, breathe, breathe. I read something else that said
escape is the greatest weapon. Escape is the greatest weapon.
So you trying to pick up this and pick up that and hit him
with a shoe and do all this kindof stuff, try to escape.
It is the best weapon. So I did find a video by a woman
(22:58):
named Cecilina Gracie on Instagram and so you can follow
her on Instagram that just gave us some basic tips for how to
escape the two most dangerous situations for women is being
taken to the ground or being carried away.
The only way for that to happen is if they get a hold of your
legs. So here are two defenses every
woman must know first when they're coming for your legs.
(23:21):
Your best option is to sprawl hips down, forearms on them,
pushing them to the ground. If you're too late and who
already has a hold of your legs.Our instincts a lot of times is
to try and hold them, which it makes makes you even more
vulnerable. They're going to take you down.
In this case, you're already toolate and the best option is to
apply guillotine choke, slide your arm all the way through,
(23:42):
make a fist, hold your own wrist, squeeze, and then you can
move away. Perfect.
So she what she's saying y'all is that escape is sometimes
Hanford, especially for women. If, if, if an attacker takes you
down to the ground on your back or carrot picks you up and
carries you away. And so she's saying the best way
(24:03):
to stop that is if somebody is trying to take you down to the
ground or pick you up is to do almost like a jumping Jack where
you spread your legs out and fall back and put your body onto
them. I thought I was like, that's so
helpful that if somebody is trying to push you down, spread
your legs out and put your weight on them.
And then if somebody is trying to pick you up, which are the
two ways that that women mostly get overcome that you put your
(24:27):
your arms around their neck, nottheir, not the not their backer
waist. So I wanted to provide at least
those two, but there's so many on Instagram if you just type in
self-defense. But better yet, I encourage
everyone, especially if you havea girl trek walking team, that
you sign up for at least one self-defense class.
Y'all, there's so many. You can just type in
(24:48):
self-defense in your city. You can find one.
You can. You can decide if you want to do
it in person or online. You can decide if you want to do
jiu jitsu or karate or karamagawa, or you can also take
them online. There's so many cool
self-defense apps. I was going to name them off to
you, but you can literally just put self-defense in the App
Store. There's so many cool ones.
And then there are some some tech tools you can have.
(25:10):
There are alarms that you can sound if there's recordings that
you can do, particularly if you are in an attack that is
domestic, right? One of the things I didn't share
on the 911 call self-care School, Vanessa, is you know,
you can text 911. Did you know this?
(25:32):
No, I didn't. Yes, you can text 911 and
sometimes y'all, we might not have the freedom to talk and
when we're under attack and so you can text 911.
But that's the last thing I wantto talk about is tools.
If you don't want to use a gun, can you use pepper spray?
Do you think pepper spray is legal?
DI had to look it up. It's illegal.
You know what, I feel like it's not legal in a lot of places,
(25:52):
so. Vanessa, it's legal everywhere.
This has been the lie. Pepper spray is legal everywhere
except for Hawaii. I just looked it up.
Ain't that crazy. Some of them you can't have a
combination that got tear gas init.
But we probably don't need to come out far.
But I used to carry bear spray because, you know, I'd be hiking
(26:13):
and stuff. I used to carry bear spray
around like, you know, pepper spray ain't legal.
I'm gonna use this bear spray onthese people.
But no pepper spray is legal in small amounts, the kind that you
can kind of put on your key chain.
So there's all sorts of like private tools that you can have,
but mostly the most important tool is your mind and the I and
the notion and the knowledge that escaping gives you way
(26:35):
better odds than anything else. And we will end y'all.
Make sure that you are taking deep breaths.
Make sure that you were taking up space, that you are
inhabiting your body. Make sure you know what you
value about yourself, where you see yourself going because all
of this also is energy. Vanessa, we'll start where we
(26:56):
began. Even when you were in that bed
and you saw that flashlights under the door, I can imagine
that your whole life was flashing like, Oh my God.
And you just, you want to live, y'all.
And so I want that for everybodyout there to want to live and to
walk around like you got things to do, like you got things to do
y'all. All right, family.
We're going to finish with a sister on Instagram who is going
(27:20):
to lead this beautiful poem, andher name is Sophia Mystic
Vagabond, and it's about peace and what peace looks like.
All right, you can follow her orfollow this piece at Journal of
the Soul at Journal of the Soul,y'all.
I wanted to end with this piece because similar to what we were
(27:43):
talking about with police brutality, it isn't what you do.
People are committing crimes against us.
People are violent and there's alot of violence out in the
world. And so we're hoping during
self-care school that we can provide you some tools that
could save your lives. But it this isn't really about
you. We have to kind of cultivate our
(28:03):
peace in the midst of the storms.
And I wanted to end with this because some of us have seen
really dark days. Some of us have been abused,
some of us have been attacked, some of us have been locked up,
some of us have been infringed upon in the in in so many
different ways. And while today's episode
(28:26):
hopefully was light because thiswhole week of safety
incarceration is really, really difficult, we also wanted to
acknowledge that your piece is amiracle, that your piece is a
miracle. And we are here with you.
I'm so grateful that Yolanda joined us because there are
1,000,000 black women here with you to walk, talk, and to solve
some of these problems together,y'all.
(28:48):
So without further ado, we will listen to this poem about peace
and dedication to all of the black women on this call who
have been victimized and who have fought back and found their
peace. No one tells you that peace
begins in pain, that before it softens you, it undoes you, it
makes you kneel before your own darkness until you can hold its
(29:09):
gaze without trembling. I mean true peace.
Not the one that mimics stillness, but the one that
comes from walking through your own fire without flinching.
You don't find it. It finds you.
When you're no longer trying to escape yourself.
That's where it begins. The path to peace isn't always
(29:32):
pretty. First it undresses your
illusions. Then it hands you a mirror.
It makes you walk barefoot through the wreckage of
everything you once held onto for safety.
And on the other side, you're still here, but not quite the
same. Your eyes have changed and the
way you see the world through them.
(29:53):
Your silence has deepened and the way you listen.
Your hunger for surface fades, and so do the connections built
on surface. Not because you've turned your
back, but because you have bathed in an abyss most are
still afraid to dive into. And now, when you speak, your
(30:14):
voice carries the weight of something they've perhaps never
touched. You hold presence in places most
people hurry past. You've become fluent in a
language if you are willing to speak.
And that fluency costs you. It costs you comfort, sometimes
closeness. But here's the truth.
(30:35):
We carry everything. We have lived in the silence
between our words, in the way wetake up space without speaking.
Those who meet you feel it, evenif they don't understand it.
Depth leaves an imprint. Not everyone stays, but no one
leaves untouched. Peace is what survives after you
(30:59):
have met yourself fully. And you didn't survive the fire
just to return untouched. You survived to carry its heat
in your voice.
We are sick and tired of being sick and tired.
The. Disrespected person in America.
Is the black woman? But still like dust our eyes
pretty girls in the VIP they came with trains, they'll need
(00:31):
ideas with mundane. The revolution will not be
televised. Brother, you are by the.
New Joe John. Even if you are not ready for
the day. It.
Cannot always be. Night.
(01:03):
Raise hands in the air y'all. Welcome to self-care school.
Welcome to week 8. It is workshop Wednesday.
You have arrived here. In a moment where you have
decided. To take.
Radical care of yourself. Congratulations.
I'm so proud of you and I'm so grateful that you are here
walking with us. We are Girl Trek.
We are a million women. We walk to heal our bodies,
(01:24):
inspire our daughters, reclaim the streets of our
neighborhoods. We're on a mission to.
Increase our life expectancy. By ten years in 10 years.
This ten week experience is hosted by none other than
myself, Vanessa and I'm on the line with MO money Morgan.
Are you there, Morgan? Hey V, I'm here.
Hey, Morgan, I'm so. Excited that we have.
(01:45):
Arrived here in Week 8 and that we are talking about safety this
week and I just want to welcome everybody in with a radical
welcome and a daughters of meditation to get us started
like we always start these episodes and honoring of the
women who have come before us, the women who are fighting the
good fight and the women who we want to dedicate this walk to
(02:08):
today. We are the daughters of Asada
Shakur. She is a woman who would not be
broken. A woman who faced down cages and
courts and said I will live free.
A woman who loved her people so much she wished everything to
tell the truth. And because she did Yaw, we
walked today. So let's start by breathing like
women who know we came from freedom fighters.
(02:30):
Let's inhale through our nose and fill our bellies.
And let's exhale slowly and dropour shoulders again.
Let's inhale our strength and let's exhale our fear.
(02:57):
Now place one hand over your heart.
Do you feel it? That's your power, That's your
compass. That's your freedom.
Still beating. Asada walked through fire and
planted seeds and look at you. You are her harvest.
So walk like a woman who is a part of miracle.
Walk like you believe your healing is holy.
(03:18):
Walk like you've already claimedsomething bigger and greater.
Walk today like freedom is your birthright.
Because it is. Welcome to self-care school.
Yeah, let's go. Thank you for that V.
Hello everybody, you are on yourporch.
If you stepped outside already, we encourage you to then move to
(03:39):
your driveway so that we can do a self-care audit.
As usual, if you are not in yourdriveway, that's alright y'all.
You can step in your kitchen, you can step in your workplace,
wherever you are, but do stand up and take a stand here.
Today we're going to talk about two life saving skills.
We're going to talk about one. What do you think about gun
ownership and where do you standthere?
(04:01):
And then kind of what are the safety measures to keep you and
your family safe? What are the statistics?
We're going to talk about guns today and then we are also going
to talk about self-defense today.
Thank you for that meditation this morning.
Vanessa, y'all move into your driveway.
We usually take a step, a bold step forward if we believe
something or we say yes to something, and we usually take a
(04:22):
bold step backwards if we have different opinions or don't
believe in something. Today, we're going to do
something a little bit different.
We're going to step to your leftor we're going to step to your
right. All right, So be mindful of
where you are starting. Maybe straddle a crack.
Don't step on a crack because wealready know, but maybe put a
rock where you're starting so you can just know if you end up
(04:43):
to the left or to the right. All right, Are you ready?
Get yourself together, y'all. I want you to step to the left.
If when you hear gunshots in your neighborhood, you wish
people had fewer guns, step to the left.
If you don't know you can just stay where you are.
Step to the left. If you wish people had fewer
(05:04):
guns when you hear gunshots now I want you to step to the right.
If your friend got into a fight at the club, but you think that
she should be able to carry a gun still just in case something
pop off, step to the right. All right, I want you to step to
the left. If you believe that someone, if
someone has a gun in their home,they should be required by law
to store it and lock it up unloaded, I want you to step to
(05:26):
the left. I want you to step to the right.
If you think a a small business owner has every right to keep a
loaded gun behind the counter, Iwant you to step to the right.
I want you to step to the left. If you feel safer in a country
where guns are outlawed, step tothe left.
I want you to step to the right if you feel safer.
If your trusted neighbor legallyhas a firearm to carry and is
(05:50):
trained to use it, then step to the right.
All right y'all? Those are 6 questions for
today's audit. If you are left of where you
started from, then you are probably left.
More left, more liberal on gun rights issues.
If you are right from where you started from, then you may be
more conservative or more right on gun guns rights issues.
(06:10):
No matter where you landed, whether you were to the left or
you were to the right, know thatyou are welcome here.
This is Girl Trek, we are movingout.
Go ahead and walk in the direction of your healthiest,
most fulfilled life, but we are going to start today's
conversation. My whole hope and prayer for
today's conversation is that youget one bit of information that
keeps you and your family safe. Not that we have some kind of
treatise or some kind of resolution or anything like
(06:31):
that, because it's a hard topic.It's a hard topic that has taken
a lot of soul searching. All right, V to start this
conversation. I want to I want you.
I want you to answer this question.
So if you are at your house and it's, you know, I don't know,
it's 9:30 at night and you hear some like cracking at the door
(06:52):
and you ain't expecting nobody and you got on your night
clothes. What do you what, what is your
preferred method? Are you just hoping that you
lock it locked and loaded that you can go grab something out
the closet? Or are you taking off and
running as fast as you can And why?
So this really happened to me. I don't know if you remember
this, it was almost 4. O'clock in the morning I was
(07:13):
living in Atlanta in a. Fancy house behind the gates,
but the gates weren't enough y'all to keep me safe and I
woke. Up in the middle of the night,
Morgan and I just. Heard something.
You know how you kind of hear something, so you just lay.
For a minute so I just. Laid for a minute and then I
looked over at my. Door and there were feet right
at the. Bedroom door and I have like
never. Been so.
(07:33):
Scared in my life because there was a.
Flashlight with the feet. And I was laying next to my then
husband. At the time.
And it was just like instantaneous.
I was like what do I do? In this scenario, and thank God,
even before I woke up, my ex-husband, I.
Just like quickly, like. It was just.
Like the most bravest thing I'veever done.
I just jumped out of bed and I locked.
The bedroom. Door like with one.
(07:55):
Step I basically like leaped. And locked the door so the
people on the outside couldn't get in then as soon as I hit the
lock. On the door.
I just said, Marty, we got to goand Morgan and in one second,
because I had already practice my escape plan, I had the window
in the bedroom door. I had jumped out of the window
onto the balcony. I had ran around the back of the
house and I was at the neighbor's house like boom,
(08:16):
boom, boom, let me in. So like it was an instant team.
What was? Marty, he was.
Behind me, he jumped out the window behind me, but I didn't
like wait. I was just like, we got to go.
I was like there's I just had baby, baby, there's somebody in
the house. He said, well, I said there's
somebody in the house. I pointed to the door.
He saw the feet at the door too and we just I already had the
window. I was at the window.
I just jumped and he just came out with me.
(08:38):
We only, we were on the 1st floor so it wasn't we hadn't
have to jump that far and we just ran for our lives.
It was scary. It was scary.
So yes, I do remember this story.
I didn't remember in this colorful of detail.
I'm so glad that I asked you. But I I'm glad I asked you
because you said so many important things.
V You said so many important things.
(08:58):
One that you already had a plan.But Vanessa, in retrospect, do
you wish you had a gun? This is such a good question
because it's my philosophy that if you got a gun, you default to
the gun immediately and then youwant to.
Like have a confrontation. Versus you want to like, try to
protect yourself. So I feel like the answer is no.
(09:19):
And yet they were right at my door.
And what if they had come in right?
Or what if, like I hadn't hit the thing, then yeah, I would
have wanted a gun. I would have wanted to like.
Shoot first, ask questions later.
Like so. Well, here's the here's here's
the statistics is that people who have a gun, there is a
fractional chance that they willuse it for self-defense.
(09:40):
Like it's fractional an ESSA it's like 1%.
Like, people who fire guns hardly ever use them for
self-defense. Hardly ever.
I'm not surprised. Yeah, I'm not surprised.
Yeah, for a whole host of reasons.
One, because in many states you are required to put a gun in a
lock box and you are required tokeep it without ammunition.
(10:04):
And why? Which means.
If somebody's at your door, how are you going to the lock box?
Get in the gun. Loading up the gun.
In enough time, no. You got to jump out the window
and run. You don't got.
Time for all that. Yeah, the number one piece of
advice is not shoot first ask questions like you're the number
one piece of advice is to run isto run.
And so some piece, some things you can do, you can keep a
(10:26):
flashlight by your bed so that you don't you not like everybody
think they got the flashlight ontheir phone, but it's hard as
heck to get to that flashlight to like get it to turn on.
But just like a old school flashlight, there are some
flashlights that are defense flashlights that are also hard
where you can hit people with them.
So look at look at that when you're when you're looking for
your new flashlight for your bedside.
(10:46):
The second thing is people recommend putting closed toe
shoes that are easy to get into by the door because bare feet
are hard to run on and make you slower.
So if there were a pursuit or ifsomebody was chasing you, having
your shoes on gives you a greater chance of survival.
A third piece of advice that is relevant to this story is making
(11:09):
sure that you have a code word. All right, so here's some
cardinal rules. If you do decide if you were on
the right side of today's audit and you do decide that you would
like a gun, I'm going to share some statistics a little later,
but I want I want to honor your decision.
So some cardinal rules for gun safety is #1 treat every single
gun like it's loaded, all right,every single gun like it's it's
(11:33):
loaded. Even if you know it's unloaded,
act as though it could fire at any moment and hold it with
safety that way. Obviously #2 is never point a
gun at anything that you're not willing to destroy because guns
are deadly all. So keep the muzzle pointed in a
safe direction always #3 is keepyour finger off the trigger
until you're ready to shoot. And then know that your target
(11:54):
and know what's beyond your target.
There's so many gun incidents that are accidental deaths,
right? So you might hit your target,
but then you might also hit what's behind your target.
So know that that bullets can penetrate or they can miss.
And so be very careful there in terms of storage and handling.
I mentioned some of this store guns unloaded is what most laws
(12:19):
in most states say in a locked cabinet and be that's the thing,
like all of the gun owners that I know their cabinets not even
in their bedroom. And so it's, you know, might be
in the garage or it might be somewhere else, but like in a
basement or in a, you know, the guy's room or whatever, but it's
not even in the bedroom. So store guns unloaded in a
(12:41):
locked cabinet is usually the law.
Use gun locks or cable locks so that you can make sure that
there's a secondary safety measures, particularly if there
are children in the room or particularly if there are people
in the home who have suffered from any kind of mental health
disease. All right, And then just educate
(13:03):
household members. There's some other just
important things that are just basic.
Basic gun safety is don't handlea gun when you're tired, when
you're angry, or when you're under the influence of alcohol,
drugs, or stress. I'm gonna add that, you know
what I mean. Under the influence, make sure
that you take a certified gun safety and concealed carry
(13:23):
class. Y'all, Even if you inherited the
gun or you got the gun from somewhere, that ain't the shop
that requires you to do this training.
Make sure you do gun safety. Even if you've been shooting
since you've been a child, make sure you get that certification.
It could protect you in court ifanything were to go wrong, that
you had a certified gun safety class or concealed to carry
class. Practice regularly at a gun
(13:47):
range. If you're going to use the gun,
if it's going to be in your house, know how to use it
properly. And then make sure that when
you're doing that, that you alsosimulate when you're in a
stressful situation because yourbrain gets overridden and you're
fine. Motor skills get compromised.
So just make sure that you know how to do that.
And then lastly, if you are transporting a gun, make sure
(14:08):
it's unloaded. Make sure you store it in a
locked case or glove box and then you keep your ammunition
separate from that. Today's episode, by the way, is
is dedicated to all of the womenwho make us safer.
Today's or this whole week, we are really talking about safety
and we are really talking about kind of prisons and
(14:28):
incarceration, all because we are setting an agenda so that
our people can be free and our people can be safe, right?
And so today I just want to callthe names of the women
throughout history who have madeus safe all the way going back,
which we'll talk a little bit more about tomorrow and the next
day. IWW, who did her thing, y'all,
to make us safe. And then all of the women, the
(14:49):
contemporary women today who areleading these movements to lead
us safe. Everyone from Tirana to the
three Black women who started Black Lives Matter, to all these
beautiful, beautiful efforts to keep women safe across the
country and keep people safe across the country.
And Vanessa, as I was researching the people who are
keeping us safe across the country, guess who came up?
(15:11):
Girl Trek. What are we talking about?
We all here. Too we on this list and it's why
I wanted to talk to Yolanda today live on air.
Yolanda, I wanted to talk to youtoday about why you chose girl
trek for your own safety and whyyou are advising women,
(15:33):
particularly women who have had their their safety taken from
them. They have had they have been, as
Vanessa said in today's meditation in cages before.
And so these women who are, are formerly incarcerated who
understand freedom. I want to know why you are
choosing to work for girl track because you can work anywhere.
Yolanda, you're so talented. Why did you commit your your
(15:57):
time, Yolanda, your genius, yourbrilliance to bringing other
sisters into this movement? Well, there is a sense of safety
here. One of the things that the
justice impacted women models that we've created here with
Girl Trek is this is a space where you no longer have to ask
permission. And this, this, this
(16:18):
automatically disarms fear and invites freedom for us.
And then it's like this sense ofbelonging.
Well, we don't have to earn our seat.
When I'm talking about we, I'm talking, I'm representing those
justice impacted women. We don't have to earn our seat
here. Y'all let us know that we
(16:38):
already belong. And when I learned that the
three deadly eyes and one of them was injustice, that that
that made me feel validated. And that our pain that we went
through and our experiences and the things that we went through
weren't minimized. That our truth was honored.
(16:59):
There's no judgment, no shame. We don't have to prove
ourselves. We don't have that prove
yourself energy that we have to live by and that came from the
sisterhood. There's no space safer than
where I am with you all. Yolanda, that that is really
(17:20):
kind to say and we do love you and you are safe.
And you mentioned the three deadly eyes.
For those of you who don't know,we tried to reduce what's
killing black women down to the minimum, most basic idea, and we
call them the three deadly eyes.So the first one is inactivity.
And so we have to move at least 30 minutes a day.
(17:42):
And fear and safety have a lot to do with inactivity.
Like we, some of us are afraid to walk in our neighborhoods.
That's real. That's real talk, real actual
talk. Either you don't got sidewalks,
your neighbors be acting up, or you know, you just feel anxiety
in your body. And so inactivity is a safety
issue. Isolation.
Some of us are feeling alone andlike we are isolated.
(18:05):
That's the second eye. So inactivity, isolation, and
then you are right and justice. Some of us don't have the
freedom to walk. Some of us don't have the
freedom to go on a walk and so, and that is a part of the
injustice. And some of us don't have the
freedom to go on the walk because we are suffering
violence at home. I was talking to a trekker one
time whose husband didn't want her to go for a walk because he
(18:27):
thought she was cheating on him.Two different trekkers I've
talked to about this before. It's real, y'all.
Our safety is real. And so Yolanda, if you were
talking to specifically the justice impacted community here,
and even women who feel afraid for their safety in general, who
have had traumatizing experiences, who may have been
(18:50):
locked up or who certainly or may even be feeling like their
own, like mental health is, is is not as stable as it used to
be. What is your vision for the
women that you serve? What is your vision for them?
Why? Why walking?
Because walking is really just aseed to everything that comes
from it, especially when we walkin with a crew or a community or
(19:13):
with another sister. My vision is that every woman
that has been just this impact experience the freedom and get
what walking has for them. It's not just about putting one
step in front of the other. It's not just about that.
It's about what walking does internally, how it how it how it
(19:36):
gives us that peace in it. It calms us down because our
history and where we've been andwhat we're going to go have gone
through and what we're faced because of our former being
being formerly incarcerated cause anxiety within itself.
That's a blockage in society forus.
(19:59):
Every day we live trying to prove we not who we used to be.
Pretty much begging for the opportunity to show you who
we've become. So walking brings us that peace,
you know that that allows us that moment to exhale all that
anxiety and be ready to face theworld.
(20:20):
Yolanda, I am so grateful that you came on to talk today.
And so thank you so much for that today.
Yolanda Y'all So first of all, Idon't know if you remember, but
self-defense classes used to be huge like in the 80s and 90s.
Vanessa, do you remember? Like everybody was taking
self-defense in karate. But I was laughing.
I was looking up self-defense videos to share with y'all and I
saw this hilarious one you've. Got a little bit of a scenario?
(20:42):
You're at a party, you're minding your own business, a big
bully comes up and start to rap.You're kind of a jerk, kind of a
little short, punky. OK, is it dirty?
OK, but it works. Another where you might call a
diversion. I normally wear glasses.
OK, he's going to be the bully. Why don't you just take your
(21:05):
little ass down the road, buddy?Why don't you just take?
You're going to fight. I want to take my glasses off.
Take your little glasses off. First of all, he spit in his
face, he spit the drink in his face, and then he threw his
glasses at his face. I was cracking up.
I was crying. First of all, this kind of
reminds me of when I was growingup.
Remember how? I mean, I grew up in like the
80s and the 90s and there was a.Lot of like child.
(21:26):
Kidnapping stuff going on. And it was like all of these
like after school specials. And my grandma.
Used to be like. Anybody grab y'all?
Just act how you. Act at home.
She was like she just act crazy.She was just like be talking and
yelling like you do in here and she they gonna drop you off on
the next corner. I sure used to always say that.
Oh, that's that's perfectly then.
(21:47):
Thank you, y'all. There's so many conflicting
things. Do you throw your arms up?
Do you put your arms down? Do you karate chop to you?
Whatever. But there's some common things
and what Vanessa's saying and what Vanessa's grandma's saying,
more importantly, is one of the most important ones.
Use your voice. And there's a lot of studies,
Vanessa, that say don't yell help but yell.
I don't know this person or yellfire because people are more apt
(22:11):
to respond because sometimes people don't want to intervene
when they don't know, like is this personal business?
Is this whatever, whatever. But if you say I don't know this
person, that's clear. And if you yell fire, other
people pay attention because they don't want to get burned #2
stay calm if you can. There's statistics that say that
your your reflex skills are diminished by up to 50% when
(22:36):
your adrenaline kicks in. So if you can just breathe,
breathe, breathe, breathe. I read something else that said
escape is the greatest weapon. Escape is the greatest weapon.
So you trying to pick up this and pick up that and hit him
with a shoe and do all this kindof stuff, try to escape.
It is the best weapon. So I did find a video by a woman
(22:58):
named Cecilina Gracie on Instagram and so you can follow
her on Instagram that just gave us some basic tips for how to
escape the two most dangerous situations for women is being
taken to the ground or being carried away.
The only way for that to happen is if they get a hold of your
legs. So here are two defenses every
woman must know first when they're coming for your legs.
(23:21):
Your best option is to sprawl hips down, forearms on them,
pushing them to the ground. If you're too late and who
already has a hold of your legs.Our instincts a lot of times is
to try and hold them, which it makes makes you even more
vulnerable. They're going to take you down.
In this case, you're already toolate and the best option is to
apply guillotine choke, slide your arm all the way through,
(23:42):
make a fist, hold your own wrist, squeeze, and then you can
move away. Perfect.
So she what she's saying y'all is that escape is sometimes
Hanford, especially for women. If, if, if an attacker takes you
down to the ground on your back or carrot picks you up and
carries you away. And so she's saying the best way
(24:03):
to stop that is if somebody is trying to take you down to the
ground or pick you up is to do almost like a jumping Jack where
you spread your legs out and fall back and put your body onto
them. I thought I was like, that's so
helpful that if somebody is trying to push you down, spread
your legs out and put your weight on them.
And then if somebody is trying to pick you up, which are the
two ways that that women mostly get overcome that you put your
(24:27):
your arms around their neck, nottheir, not the not their backer
waist. So I wanted to provide at least
those two, but there's so many on Instagram if you just type in
self-defense. But better yet, I encourage
everyone, especially if you havea girl trek walking team, that
you sign up for at least one self-defense class.
Y'all, there's so many. You can just type in
(24:48):
self-defense in your city. You can find one.
You can. You can decide if you want to do
it in person or online. You can decide if you want to do
jiu jitsu or karate or karamagawa, or you can also take
them online. There's so many cool
self-defense apps. I was going to name them off to
you, but you can literally just put self-defense in the App
Store. There's so many cool ones.
And then there are some some tech tools you can have.
(25:10):
There are alarms that you can sound if there's recordings that
you can do, particularly if you are in an attack that is
domestic, right? One of the things I didn't share
on the 911 call self-care School, Vanessa, is you know,
you can text 911. Did you know this?
(25:32):
No, I didn't. Yes, you can text 911 and
sometimes y'all, we might not have the freedom to talk and
when we're under attack and so you can text 911.
But that's the last thing I wantto talk about is tools.
If you don't want to use a gun, can you use pepper spray?
Do you think pepper spray is legal?
DI had to look it up. It's illegal.
You know what, I feel like it's not legal in a lot of places,
(25:52):
so. Vanessa, it's legal everywhere.
This has been the lie. Pepper spray is legal everywhere
except for Hawaii. I just looked it up.
Ain't that crazy. Some of them you can't have a
combination that got tear gas init.
But we probably don't need to come out far.
But I used to carry bear spray because, you know, I'd be hiking
(26:13):
and stuff. I used to carry bear spray
around like, you know, pepper spray ain't legal.
I'm gonna use this bear spray onthese people.
But no pepper spray is legal in small amounts, the kind that you
can kind of put on your key chain.
So there's all sorts of like private tools that you can have,
but mostly the most important tool is your mind and the I and
the notion and the knowledge that escaping gives you way
(26:35):
better odds than anything else. And we will end y'all.
Make sure that you are taking deep breaths.
Make sure that you were taking up space, that you are
inhabiting your body. Make sure you know what you
value about yourself, where you see yourself going because all
of this also is energy. Vanessa, we'll start where we
(26:56):
began. Even when you were in that bed
and you saw that flashlights under the door, I can imagine
that your whole life was flashing like, Oh my God.
And you just, you want to live, y'all.
And so I want that for everybodyout there to want to live and to
walk around like you got things to do, like you got things to do
y'all. All right, family.
We're going to finish with a sister on Instagram who is going
(27:20):
to lead this beautiful poem, andher name is Sophia Mystic
Vagabond, and it's about peace and what peace looks like.
All right, you can follow her orfollow this piece at Journal of
the Soul at Journal of the Soul,y'all.
I wanted to end with this piece because similar to what we were
(27:43):
talking about with police brutality, it isn't what you do.
People are committing crimes against us.
People are violent and there's alot of violence out in the
world. And so we're hoping during
self-care school that we can provide you some tools that
could save your lives. But it this isn't really about
you. We have to kind of cultivate our
(28:03):
peace in the midst of the storms.
And I wanted to end with this because some of us have seen
really dark days. Some of us have been abused,
some of us have been attacked, some of us have been locked up,
some of us have been infringed upon in the in in so many
different ways. And while today's episode
(28:26):
hopefully was light because thiswhole week of safety
incarceration is really, really difficult, we also wanted to
acknowledge that your piece is amiracle, that your piece is a
miracle. And we are here with you.
I'm so grateful that Yolanda joined us because there are
1,000,000 black women here with you to walk, talk, and to solve
some of these problems together,y'all.
(28:48):
So without further ado, we will listen to this poem about peace
and dedication to all of the black women on this call who
have been victimized and who have fought back and found their
peace. No one tells you that peace
begins in pain, that before it softens you, it undoes you, it
makes you kneel before your own darkness until you can hold its
(29:09):
gaze without trembling. I mean true peace.
Not the one that mimics stillness, but the one that
comes from walking through your own fire without flinching.
You don't find it. It finds you.
When you're no longer trying to escape yourself.
That's where it begins. The path to peace isn't always
(29:32):
pretty. First it undresses your
illusions. Then it hands you a mirror.
It makes you walk barefoot through the wreckage of
everything you once held onto for safety.
And on the other side, you're still here, but not quite the
same. Your eyes have changed and the
way you see the world through them.
(29:53):
Your silence has deepened and the way you listen.
Your hunger for surface fades, and so do the connections built
on surface. Not because you've turned your
back, but because you have bathed in an abyss most are
still afraid to dive into. And now, when you speak, your
(30:14):
voice carries the weight of something they've perhaps never
touched. You hold presence in places most
people hurry past. You've become fluent in a
language if you are willing to speak.
And that fluency costs you. It costs you comfort, sometimes
closeness. But here's the truth.
(30:35):
We carry everything. We have lived in the silence
between our words, in the way wetake up space without speaking.
Those who meet you feel it, evenif they don't understand it.
Depth leaves an imprint. Not everyone stays, but no one
leaves untouched. Peace is what survives after you
(30:59):
have met yourself fully. And you didn't survive the fire
just to return untouched. You survived to carry its heat
in your voice.
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