Every day black people are told that this world isn't a place for us. My advice to you if you don't like it here in America, brains leave every hour from Tampa Airport, hold back to Africa. Go back to Africa. That we're not welcome because of the color of our skin, the shape of our bodies, the kink of our hair. Charles Craddick was supposed to spend the summer working at Cedar Point, a job he's been looking forward to four months, but after a skype interview, orientation, and moving into the dorms over the weekend, the twenty year old was told at his training session that he had to cut his dreadlocks off or go. We're constantly told we're unintelligent and different, that our blackness somehow makes us inferior. A prosecutor in the state of California is wondering why Maxine Waters hasn't been shot yet. And I'm not kidding. This was literally something he publicly posted on his own Facebook page. I'm going to read you the exact quote. And by the way, this is the deputy District Attorney in San Bernard Dino County, California. He wrote, being a loudmouthed expletive in the ghetto. You would think someone would have shot this bitch by now. And that's the C word. Yeah. From the big things like laws that keep us disadvantage, to the small ones like sidways, glances White folks give Black faults when they're uncomfortable. The world has to tell us that we don't belong. A CBS manager coming under fire captured on cell phone video calling on a black customer trying to use a coupon. You can tell them her name is Camilla Hudson. I have I D and we'll share it. The manager visibly shaking while making the call. But we do belong. We don't need to defend our blackness, and we don't need to earn any oppressors approval or respect. We know that this land is as much ours as it is anybody else's, and that we have the right to exist here. That's why we're reclaiming our space. I'm each deaf Coat and I'm bridget Todd. You're listening to afro Punk Solution Sessions. Afro punk is a safe place, a blank space to freak out in, to construct a new reality, to live our lives as we see fit while making sense of the world around us. Here at afro Punk, we have the conversations that matter to us, conversations that lead to solutions. If you've ever been to an afro punk festival, you know that it's all about black folks living our truths, no holds barred. It's a celebration of our creativity, our intelligence, our determination, our joy, a place where we feel free to be ourselves and speak our minds. Our correspondent Corey Oliver acts attendee Ashley Augustine about the space the afro punk creates at Carnival of Consciousness in Atlanta. Your sens on earlier that real stood out said that there's like a level of consciousness your ap How important do you think it is to have a space like that for black folks? Um. I think it's super important, UM, because I think sometimes there's a a level of isolation you can feel, um having certain thoughts that are are pro black or UM just even being conscious of things going on in our community, because it's normally like generally frowned upon as like polite conversation. I work like a nine to five office job. I t we do like third party work with law enforcement it's a very like even if you see it in the news, it's not the place to bring it up. So it's always nice to have weekends like this where I can come and avide with people who think the same thoughts, want to go the same places, want to do the same things, are interested in the same initiatives, UM, have the same goals in mind for our community. UM that you can bounce ideas off of and and talk to and just feel safe expressing those ideas in a single space with so many different people from so many different places. Festival attendees. Shadran Smith also feels the conflict of sticking to her values on black issues but also being part of America's capitalists and corporate structures. I like to be very conscious of black history and being black and walking in that truth is very important to me. You want to have a space to take all your ideas and all your feelings right and and just let it out and have someone say, I understand, I see what you're trying to say, I see how you feel. I empathize, I sympathize. Let's work on making it better. UM. And you can't always write in your in your nine to five and your persona that pays the bills. Right, I can't go into my my job and be like, I'm really ticked off about all this stuff going on, you know, politics, X Y Z there and be like this is not the place, and um, I completely understand that. That's you know, the businesses you work for, the places you go to work at, they have their own platforms, they have their own agendas. It's a business, and that's the reality. Many of us wake up every day to work jobs that either directly or indirectly benefit anti black systems. We do it to survive. I've stood at old slave auction sites now marked by ornate fountains, driven through land where Cherokee Natives were interned and forcibly removed. I see reminders of marginalized death constantly. Yeah, the places we live, as tainted and corrupted as they may be, are still our homes. And in those places we cultivate spaces where we can express ourselves fully, where we can interrogate the effects of that trauma and envision liberation. We expand our horizons and imagine new possibilities in the tradition of our ancestors, like Sister Song executive director Monica Simpson told Corey at the festival, we live in a system where white supremacity tells us that we can't live, that we shouldn't live, that we shouldn't have a future. To have these conversations, you know, in our own communities with folks that look like us, that share our same experiences, it's say right, it's a way for us to like put our guard down. It's a way for us to like connect with each other without having to like worry about what could potentially happen because I'm opening myself up and becoming vulnerable. We need those safe spaces to be able to have those conversations. We needed a safe space that was outside in the United States to hold certain conversations. And I don't think that we can do that in the United States. I think that we're suffering and suffocating and just dyeing every single day trying to survive there. But I think that it's important for people in the United States, black and POC people to start forming their own spaces there so Black people aren't trying to squeeze ourselves into spaces that weren't made for us. We're making room for each other so that we see and hear those who are often invisible and silenced. So often decisions are made for black people rather than with black people. How can an official address the needs of the community they've never even visited. How can someone who's never experienced racism understand it completely? Metaphorically and literally. Oppressors have tried to force black people into certain spaces think prison cells, ghettos, caskets the like, and as writer Handed Drake points out with her do not Move off the sidewalk challenge, white people use the simple act of walking down the street as an opportunity to claim space and entitlement. After all, conquests is a pillar of white history. But on the other hand, Black people have long tipped away at the racism in America to carve out a place for our freedom. Think Greenwood, Oklahoma, famously known as Black Wall Street, where a black business is boomed in the nineteen hundreds and HBCUs and ball culture in Black Twitter. Who's up the thing is, even though we've come so far in advancing our rights and learning to embrace our history and blackness, we're still suffering. When we get back from this break, we'll talk to a clinical psychologist who seen firsthands the way that black folks are struggling with our mental health. So what happens oftentimes, particularly for black women, is that we've cut off so many parts of ourselves in order to kind of be in this world and in this space, a workspace, a relationship, a family member, um, just in the world. To make other people comfortable with us, We've had to do all these things, whether it be about our hair, our complexion, what we are wearing, our tone of voice, all these ways. We have compartmentalized all these aspects of ourselves so that other people, UM can accept us, can love us, can treat us better. All the while that fragments us. Right. So I work with tons of black women and there's main themes where they have felt they need to fragment themselves literally cut off parts of themselves in order to be in this world and to be regarded and accepted right. But the the irony of that, UM is that you're only giving the world a piece of you, right, which makes everyone else comfortab and makes you know, everyone else feel catered to all the while we're not getting our knees met right because we're not able to be our whole selves. That's dr Iyana Abrams. She goes by Dr Iyana. She's a licensed clinical psychologist based in Atlanta. And those stigmas, stereotypes, and discrimination surrounding blackness very tangibly affect black health. We are holding the weight of again, all the isms, we're holding the weight of all the transgressions right that the nation in the world holes. And we've also been taught that we're not allowed to require things of other people, right, So it leads to this dynamic where we're doing all the work, we're doing literally all of the heavy lifting, and there's nothing replenishing us. Right. So that's why I'm fine with women requiring other people to pause to listen to here, or that we will leave these relationships, we will leave these dynamics that don't serve us and don't allow us to replenish ourselves. Black Americans have a higher rate of death than our white counterparts. In fact, report from the America Sociological Association showed that half of black youth surveyed weren't even optimistic about living past, and Black people are more likely to have serious mental health problems like major depression and PTSD and the general population. Mental health is clearly not just a white issue, but there's still shame around black mental health issues in America, so these problems often go unaddressed. We have to make room for reckoning, recovery, and healing, and we have to stick a claim to our personal space as much as we do with our public space. I think Black people are becoming better at acknowledging ourselves, valuing ourselves, loving ourselves, modeling what self love looks like. And we've had to do a lot of untraining and relearning of what the nation has taught us. But the nation has a very, very long way to go UM in terms of responding to respecting, valuing, and embracing not just tolerating, but embracing blackness and the fullness that it comes with, and how rich it is and how vibrant it is and how resilient the culture is. That won't happen until the nation takes full responsibility for the role that's played UM and trying to erase blackness. So until this nation is willing to recognize the privilege that it holds UM and not be as defensive around it, then that level of healing won't be able to take place, which is why I think it's been very, very extremely important imperative for Black people to take healing into our own hands and to not depend on the majority for our healing. That's why you're seeing many more spaces that are filled with blackness and black self care and black love and having to be exclusive to us. I think we've we've recognized over time, and I think we're finally UM sitting in that and basking in that that we can't depend on the majority to take care of us. Dr Yana is clear about how important self care is, how in order for us to do better for the world, we have to do better for ourselves. We discussed Audrey Lord's famous declaration caring for myself is not self indulgence. It is self preservation, and that is an act of political warfare. And that's from our grey Lord. I'm snapping over the place, absolutely positive. UM. Oftentimes self care gets confused and kind of mixed in with selfishness, and it's it's a problem that a lot of people struggle with taking care of themselves because I should be taking care of other people, are focusing on other people, or should be embracing things and doing things for other There's a value that's set in that UM and what gets in the ways that people don't take enough time for themselves, which means that that sleep, that is nutrition, that's work, stuff, that's getting to their values and their goals. If so much attention is focused on other people, you can't figure out who you are and what you need. And as a society, particular when it comes to people of color, we've gotten so used to focusing on other people that we're so disconnected from ourselves. So it makes it really impossible to know ourselves and to take the best care of ourselves. So it's a matter of self president ration. Um. The only way that we can exist in this world is knowing more about ourselves. I love that quote. And when we learn to sit with ourselves, then we can extend that peace to our communities. In my own meditation and yoga practices, the time that I've spen listening to and learning about myself and my body, it's tough. It's not all just saying m sitting in lotus and doing weird balancing poses. It's work. Sometimes it's the work of rejecting the labels that society places on me and the things that tells me I can't do. Sometimes it's me acknowledging or confronting my fears. Sometimes it's letting all those gut wrenching emotions come up, observing them and then letting them pass. And sometimes it's the work of me just taking the time to sit quietly for five minutes when I least want to, and all that inner work that I do turns into things that other people see two more thoughtfulness, more compassion, less judgment. We have been filled up with so much other people's stuff, other people's need of us, other people's desires for us, other people's violations, trauma. Right Oftentimes, sitting in that stillness, all these things that are rushing in is not just a person or kind of individualized trauma and discomfort. We're talking about years of stuff that particularly black women carry in our bodies and in our bones. Right, So stillness requires you to reconcile all of those things, all this trauma that we hold in our bodies. Right, we have not historically been allowed to be still and to sit still. We've always had work to do. Right, So, the the concept of stillness is still very remarkably new when we work on addressing the ways that navigating blackness, marginalization, and generational trauma has affected our health and learned to love our blackness. We all level up. The more that we do focus on blackness and the wellness of black women, black man, black families in particular, the whole country gets better. The nation can rise right from that foundation because we're so much a part of of everything right. And what's happened is that the nation has has tried to ignore, pin down, compartmentalized, kind of ostracized black and blackness. Um, but we see it belieds everywhere, It belieds in very so it's actually impossible to do that. Dr Ayana says she's seeing more Black people speak up and take action around their mental health. When Bridget and I talked to Black Lives Matter co founder Portrit Colors for the episode on activism, she told us that she spends time and nature to distress and turns her phone off at night, and just weeks ago, singer and mental health advocate Michelle Williams publicly says she was taking her own advice and getting help from mental health professionals. And it's empowering to see black folks taking back our power in this way. It shakes up the entire system right, The system has been so used to um, Black women being quiet and being silence and then being able to use the angry black women trope right against us to silence us in all the spaces. So not only self care, but us being loud and kind of loud and proud about self care. Hey, no, I'm taking time to do this. I'm gonna say no to this. I am gonna be angry about this. It does. It shakes people up. They don't expect that. So when we begin speaking up for ourselves again, it makes everybody take a pause. And I'm I support that pause because we've been pausing for everybody right our entire lives. So creating space for our healing and transformation is important work. But it's not easy or pretty work all the time. I do think that there's been a trend I think that's been further by social media that says that self care looks super super positive and like I said, it's getting your nails on its spaus a kind of all these things that are connected to being care free and not thinking about anything else, not thinking about our stressors. Um, and those things are all well and good and fine, right, those those breaks, those kind of shifts can be really really important. But when I view self care also viewed as more accountability and responsibility for yourself. Right, I view self care as you know, making sure you are physically taking care of yourself. So self care looks like getting more sleep. And now I have clients who will come in and say, like, yeah, I get about five hours of sleep, and that's that's always been the case. That's not why I'm here, And I'm just like, you get five hours of sleep a night, like for years, Like, do you know what that is doing to your body? That is literally taking years off of your life. Right, That's what I'm talking about in terms of self care. I'm talking about responsibility in terms of your financial health, right, paying that bill that's now got you know third notice. Right, those are things that allow you to maintain your homeostasis. That's what I'm talking about. Take care of your body. UM, eat more nutritiously kind of again, figure out kind of where your finances are, being good to people like those things are, and being good to yourself actually, um, even before you are good to other people. Those things that are the things that I'm looking at in terms of self care. Doctor Hayana kind of mentions a lot of the little things that we can do to take care of ourselves that I think a lot of the time we don't think about, like eating more nutritionally, cleaning, you know, taking care of your hygiene are all things that I think can also help us create space for ourselves and really help us get ourselves in the right mental state. Yeah. I often get a little bit annoyed with the whole self care conversation because I think that we've transformed it to be about bath bombs and getting your hair done and getting a pedicure, and those things can be self care too. But you know, self care doesn't always look glamorous on Instagram. Sometimes self care is going to therapy. Sometimes self care is you know, taking your med. Sometimes self care looks like taking a shower when you haven't had the energy to shower for a week because you've been depressed. Um. I like conversations that remind folks that self care looks different for everybody, and taking care of yourself looks different for everybody. It doesn't have to be something that looks very chic and glamorous, right. I like that you bring that up, because I think a lot of time people feel like self care is something that's forced upon them, which is counterintuitive. Like self care is for yourself. It's not like it's what somebody else is doing to you or what somebody else is doing for you. Also, I think a lot of the time self care doesn't have to involve anything material. It doesn't have to involve some kind of outside for us. It can be things as simple as like journaling. Um. Yeah, if anyone is listening to this podcast right now and you're at work, have you had a glass of water? Have you eaten? Have you stood up? Have you walked around? You know, like those little things that take five minutes that don't cost a thing, remember to do them to take care of yourself. Do you have any personal self care practices that you really like to turn to? Bridget I'm a bit of a self care hypocrite, I am. I mean I talk a big game about self care, but the reality is, for some folks sometimes you can't take time away. You can't you don't have that option. So mine are always things that are quick and cheap, you know, taking a walk with headphones. Um. You know, maybe I don't have the bandwidth to take two days off from email and from work, but I can take five minutes and listen to a song that comes me down and take a walk around the block and come back and finish my work. I love that Black people claiming our rightful place in our societies and communities is an assertion of our existence and our power. It means lifting up all our identity, ease, and not alienating any saying that they should all be valued, cared for, and loved. After the break, we talked about cultivating self love and spaces that tell us we shouldn't. Yes, we are all sluts. You're a slut. All these dudes behind you with sluts. Your cameraman is a slut, your pa is a slut, and your mike's a slut. And what made you a slut? Because I owned my body. My body is not a political playground. It's not a place for legislation. It's mine. It's my future. And how old are you grown? In this video, taken at a seventeen slot walk, Samiraheim is declaring ownership of her own existence and expression and claiming her space. Don't you sleep around with a lot of men? Now? Actually I'm a virgin virgin. Yeah, you're not a slut. Yes you can be a slut because the slut is not what you made, and Jesse, a slut is what I may boss getting money, taking the mic, turning life around. But let's be real, for black folks, sometimes existing in this world is triggering and traumatic. It's hard to say I matter, I'm here and I deserve to be when the world screams to opposite bully. Taking up space can be scary, difficult territory. Would your parents be happy to know? My parents will be happy to know that I'm a free woman on the billboard in time Square and soho for every real because we take back the woman more and we ain't lame doing like Jessie words striped shirts. So to to even try to create space for ourselves within these systems becomes really really hard. Um So understanding the bind that any person of color faces when we are entrenched in systems that were not designed for us, and that as a result of us being in them, we are forced to try to create spaces for ourselves within these systems. Right, So the work there in terms of our healing is getting together right with others to create space for us. I was talking to my clients about I need you to take up our space, take up space in the bed, take up space in the house, take up space and meetings, say things that you want to say. Create space for yourself because nobody will create it for you. The other thing we can do, she says, is to get uncomfortable. What I always try to share with people is that anytime you're going to do something different, it's risk right now. And we're in a culture who's who is very, very risk averse, which is why I think we don't sit in the stillness it feels uncomfortable. We try to avoid tolerating a certain level of distress. Right. So, my my practice in the community UM as well as in my practice with clients, is to give yourself the opportunity to tolerate distress. Oftentimes we're stronger than we think, so we don't give ourselves room to try something different because we don't know what will happen next, Right, So it's more rooted in kind of control and anxiety that, hey, this is too uncomfortable for me to talk about. UM. What I usually noticed on the other side of people talking about stuff and kind of sharing their narrative is that they can feel a sense of relief, They can feel a sense of empowerment. UM, they're able to kind of connect with people in a way that they weren't able to before because again, the way in which humans connect is at the deepest level of emotion, your powers into your discomfort you. Have you ever seen that? Um, it's like a Venn diagram that has like you and your comfort zone and like growth, growth is outside of your comfort zone. And there are difference I forgot there's different zones. There's um comfort zone, there's your growth zone, and there's like your panic zone. You don't want to do too much to where you're getting into your state of panic, but you want to feel uncomfortable. It's a difference between like pain and injury. Right, So when you're working out, you want to experience some kind of pain and kind of soreness, but there's a gap between pain and soreness versus when you're about to break something and then connecting with others, we have to have empathy. I would love people to practice empathy skills. A lot of people assume that empathy is something that we like come with in these ways, but it's it's literally kind of just practicing allowing people to be in whatever space they are in UM and just being much more responsive to people and really focusing on not controlling people, but continuing to be kind, continuing to be compassionate u to yourself, to other people. And if you don't know what that is or kind of what that means, there are books, they're resources on how to be compassionate, how to be empathic. But I think again, as as we treat ourselves better and treat other people better, we will see less likelihood of mental illness and mental distress. But don't be apologetic about finding spaces that suits you and that value you and that embrace you. Don't be apologetic about spaces where you feel good about yourself. We have to proclaim our space in this world unapologetically. In your silence, people get to make your narrative essentially right in your silence. People get to then say that this is what you experience, this is what you like, this is what you didn't like. So in these spaces that weren't designed for us, UM, the options are to forcibly create space for yourself or to accept that those spaces aren't designed for you and create other spaces for yourself. That's why, in terms of the wellness retreats and kind of things that are very exclusive to black women and black people and black conferences. Create a space for yourself where you know that you will be well taken care of, where you know that you will be valued. You know that you can be around like minded people who are all here focused on our growth, our wellness and embracing all the different kind of facets of blackness. Begin creating your own spaces. For me, part of my radical self love practice is to be nuanced like that is what radical self love is is to stop having these one sided, all or nothing relationships with ourselves and to like embrace the multiplicity of who we are. That's Sonya and a Taylor, founder of the movement The Body Is Not an apology and author of a book of the same name. On the cover of the book, Sania lives nude in a bed of flowers, energetic lines radiating from her body. Before she started her group discussion that Cares Books in Atlanta in early Sonya took a moment to honor indigenous folks in the history of the space, so she's no stranger to being in conversation with spaces she inhabits. After her talk, I spoke with her about practicing radical self care. So the thing that I was thinking about in the talk tonight UM personally was the feeling of being wanted and unwanted at the same time. I was wondering if you have any thoughts on that, UM, specifically as being a black person in America as well UM being spectacle in the positive way and also in a negative way. And that's something that goes back through history as well. Absolutely no display for various reasons. Can you tell me how radical self love maybe relates to that idea of feeling wanted and unwanted at the same time. Yeah, So when you ask me that question, it makes me think of sort of the function of being both hyper visible and invisible at the same time. And I think what radical self love does for me in that space is it situates that experience as outside of me. And it makes it very clear that the ways in which the world will either um take bits and pieces of me and either magnify them for its own purpose or try to erase parts of me is not a function of some failure of mine, That it's not some function of a lack of my own personal value or worth in the world. That it is a function of a system that profits off of making me hyper visible when it serves them, and also profits off of erasing me when it serves them. And so it really is about like just not taking on the blame for that, but also at the same time advocating for myself in the ways that I need to. If one way we reclaim our space is by not being silent, then Sonia is doing just that. She's a queer black author, poet, and spoken word artists advocating for bodies that look like hers, and she shared her work with me an excerpt from a piece called Bodies of Resistance. Even as they attempted to gavel our silence, nevertheless we persisted, each of us a link in the human chain. Your shame has not slain even the lowliest of beasts, but are collective transformation has delivered us intrepid to Capital City streets, three million grains of sand, forged under the heat of oppression until we were fine as keen edged glass, a beatrice of bodies, unafraid to ask why black lives would not matter. As we saw no they and we knew solidarity was a word that must spring forever, like water beside a standing rock. The clock of justice will not terry while you question whether you are worthy of the fight. Regardless of all you've been told. Resistance is an everyday act, the work of excavating each tiny artifact of the oppressor that lives in you. Your call to be a balm to every self inflicted wound is the way movements are birthed, and the land content to bid you endless slumber. Waking unrepentant in your own skin is a hero's journey and the only way we collectively prevail. And only then can we say, in the words of the famous poet Lucille Clifton, won't you celebrate with me that every day something has tried to kill us and has failed, and has failed and will fail. Say it with me? All we are here. So what's the solution? Bridget practice self care and self love? What else is the solution? Bridget take up space unapologetically. What's another solution? Bridget find power in your discomfort? Any other solutions? Bridget embrace blackness fully and always. Afropunk Solution Sessions is a co production between Afro Punk and How Stuff Works. Your hosts are Bridget Todd and Eve Jeff Cope, Executive Co producers are Julie Douglas, Jocelyn Cooper, and Kuan latif Hill. Dylan Fagin is supervising producer, and Kathleen Cuillian is audio engineer. Chandler Maze was our audio editor this week. Many many thanks to Casey Pegram and Antie Reese for their production and editorial oversight, and many thanks to Are on the Ground Atlanta crew, Ben Bowling, Corey Oliver and Noel Brown. The Underside of Power is performed by Algiers. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at apro punk

Every day black people are told that this world isn't a place for us. My advice to you if you don't like it here in America, brains leave every hour from Tampa Airport, hold back to Africa. Go back to Africa. That we're not welcome because of the color of our skin, the shape of our bodies, the kink of our hair. Charles Craddick was supposed to spend the summer working at Cedar Point, a job he's been looking forward to four months, but after a skype interview, orientation, and moving into the dorms over the weekend, the twenty year old was told at his training session that he had to cut his dreadlocks off or go. We're constantly told we're unintelligent and different, that our blackness somehow makes us inferior. A prosecutor in the state of California is wondering why Maxine Waters hasn't been shot yet. And I'm not kidding. This was literally something he publicly posted on his own Facebook page. I'm going to read you the exact quote. And by the way, this is the deputy District Attorney in San Bernard Dino County, California. He wrote, being a loudmouthed expletive in the ghetto. You would think someone would have shot this bitch by now. And that's the C word. Yeah. From the big things like laws that keep us disadvantage, to the small ones like sidways, glances White folks give Black faults when they're uncomfortable. The world has to tell us that we don't belong. A CBS manager coming under fire captured on cell phone video calling on a black customer trying to use a coupon. You can tell them her name is Camilla Hudson. I have I D and we'll share it. The manager visibly shaking while making the call. But we do belong. We don't need to defend our blackness, and we don't need to earn any oppressors approval or respect. We know that this land is as much ours as it is anybody else's, and that we have the right to exist here. That's why we're reclaiming our space. I'm each deaf Coat and I'm bridget Todd. You're listening to afro Punk Solution Sessions. Afro punk is a safe place, a blank space to freak out in, to construct a new reality, to live our lives as we see fit while making sense of the world around us. Here at afro Punk, we have the conversations that matter to us, conversations that lead to solutions. If you've ever been to an afro punk festival, you know that it's all about black folks living our truths, no holds barred. It's a celebration of our creativity, our intelligence, our determination, our joy, a place where we feel free to be ourselves and speak our minds. Our correspondent Corey Oliver acts attendee Ashley Augustine about the space the afro punk creates at Carnival of Consciousness in Atlanta. Your sens on earlier that real stood out said that there's like a level of consciousness your ap How important do you think it is to have a space like that for black folks? Um. I think it's super important, UM, because I think sometimes there's a a level of isolation you can feel, um having certain thoughts that are are pro black or UM just even being conscious of things going on in our community, because it's normally like generally frowned upon as like polite conversation. I work like a nine to five office job. I t we do like third party work with law enforcement it's a very like even if you see it in the news, it's not the place to bring it up. So it's always nice to have weekends like this where I can come and avide with people who think the same thoughts, want to go the same places, want to do the same things, are interested in the same initiatives, UM, have the same goals in mind for our community. UM that you can bounce ideas off of and and talk to and just feel safe expressing those ideas in a single space with so many different people from so many different places. Festival attendees. Shadran Smith also feels the conflict of sticking to her values on black issues but also being part of America's capitalists and corporate structures. I like to be very conscious of black history and being black and walking in that truth is very important to me. You want to have a space to take all your ideas and all your feelings right and and just let it out and have someone say, I understand, I see what you're trying to say, I see how you feel. I empathize, I sympathize. Let's work on making it better. UM. And you can't always write in your in your nine to five and your persona that pays the bills. Right, I can't go into my my job and be like, I'm really ticked off about all this stuff going on, you know, politics, X Y Z there and be like this is not the place, and um, I completely understand that. That's you know, the businesses you work for, the places you go to work at, they have their own platforms, they have their own agendas. It's a business, and that's the reality. Many of us wake up every day to work jobs that either directly or indirectly benefit anti black systems. We do it to survive. I've stood at old slave auction sites now marked by ornate fountains, driven through land where Cherokee Natives were interned and forcibly removed. I see reminders of marginalized death constantly. Yeah, the places we live, as tainted and corrupted as they may be, are still our homes. And in those places we cultivate spaces where we can express ourselves fully, where we can interrogate the effects of that trauma and envision liberation. We expand our horizons and imagine new possibilities in the tradition of our ancestors, like Sister Song executive director Monica Simpson told Corey at the festival, we live in a system where white supremacity tells us that we can't live, that we shouldn't live, that we shouldn't have a future. To have these conversations, you know, in our own communities with folks that look like us, that share our same experiences, it's say right, it's a way for us to like put our guard down. It's a way for us to like connect with each other without having to like worry about what could potentially happen because I'm opening myself up and becoming vulnerable. We need those safe spaces to be able to have those conversations. We needed a safe space that was outside in the United States to hold certain conversations. And I don't think that we can do that in the United States. I think that we're suffering and suffocating and just dyeing every single day trying to survive there. But I think that it's important for people in the United States, black and POC people to start forming their own spaces there so Black people aren't trying to squeeze ourselves into spaces that weren't made for us. We're making room for each other so that we see and hear those who are often invisible and silenced. So often decisions are made for black people rather than with black people. How can an official address the needs of the community they've never even visited. How can someone who's never experienced racism understand it completely? Metaphorically and literally. Oppressors have tried to force black people into certain spaces think prison cells, ghettos, caskets the like, and as writer Handed Drake points out with her do not Move off the sidewalk challenge, white people use the simple act of walking down the street as an opportunity to claim space and entitlement. After all, conquests is a pillar of white history. But on the other hand, Black people have long tipped away at the racism in America to carve out a place for our freedom. Think Greenwood, Oklahoma, famously known as Black Wall Street, where a black business is boomed in the nineteen hundreds and HBCUs and ball culture in Black Twitter. Who's up the thing is, even though we've come so far in advancing our rights and learning to embrace our history and blackness, we're still suffering. When we get back from this break, we'll talk to a clinical psychologist who seen firsthands the way that black folks are struggling with our mental health. So what happens oftentimes, particularly for black women, is that we've cut off so many parts of ourselves in order to kind of be in this world and in this space, a workspace, a relationship, a family member, um, just in the world. To make other people comfortable with us, We've had to do all these things, whether it be about our hair, our complexion, what we are wearing, our tone of voice, all these ways. We have compartmentalized all these aspects of ourselves so that other people, UM can accept us, can love us, can treat us better. All the while that fragments us. Right. So I work with tons of black women and there's main themes where they have felt they need to fragment themselves literally cut off parts of themselves in order to be in this world and to be regarded and accepted right. But the the irony of that, UM is that you're only giving the world a piece of you, right, which makes everyone else comfortab and makes you know, everyone else feel catered to all the while we're not getting our knees met right because we're not able to be our whole selves. That's dr Iyana Abrams. She goes by Dr Iyana. She's a licensed clinical psychologist based in Atlanta. And those stigmas, stereotypes, and discrimination surrounding blackness very tangibly affect black health. We are holding the weight of again, all the isms, we're holding the weight of all the transgressions right that the nation in the world holes. And we've also been taught that we're not allowed to require things of other people, right, So it leads to this dynamic where we're doing all the work, we're doing literally all of the heavy lifting, and there's nothing replenishing us. Right. So that's why I'm fine with women requiring other people to pause to listen to here, or that we will leave these relationships, we will leave these dynamics that don't serve us and don't allow us to replenish ourselves. Black Americans have a higher rate of death than our white counterparts. In fact, report from the America Sociological Association showed that half of black youth surveyed weren't even optimistic about living past, and Black people are more likely to have serious mental health problems like major depression and PTSD and the general population. Mental health is clearly not just a white issue, but there's still shame around black mental health issues in America, so these problems often go unaddressed. We have to make room for reckoning, recovery, and healing, and we have to stick a claim to our personal space as much as we do with our public space. I think Black people are becoming better at acknowledging ourselves, valuing ourselves, loving ourselves, modeling what self love looks like. And we've had to do a lot of untraining and relearning of what the nation has taught us. But the nation has a very, very long way to go UM in terms of responding to respecting, valuing, and embracing not just tolerating, but embracing blackness and the fullness that it comes with, and how rich it is and how vibrant it is and how resilient the culture is. That won't happen until the nation takes full responsibility for the role that's played UM and trying to erase blackness. So until this nation is willing to recognize the privilege that it holds UM and not be as defensive around it, then that level of healing won't be able to take place, which is why I think it's been very, very extremely important imperative for Black people to take healing into our own hands and to not depend on the majority for our healing. That's why you're seeing many more spaces that are filled with blackness and black self care and black love and having to be exclusive to us. I think we've we've recognized over time, and I think we're finally UM sitting in that and basking in that that we can't depend on the majority to take care of us. Dr Yana is clear about how important self care is, how in order for us to do better for the world, we have to do better for ourselves. We discussed Audrey Lord's famous declaration caring for myself is not self indulgence. It is self preservation, and that is an act of political warfare. And that's from our grey Lord. I'm snapping over the place, absolutely positive. UM. Oftentimes self care gets confused and kind of mixed in with selfishness, and it's it's a problem that a lot of people struggle with taking care of themselves because I should be taking care of other people, are focusing on other people, or should be embracing things and doing things for other There's a value that's set in that UM and what gets in the ways that people don't take enough time for themselves, which means that that sleep, that is nutrition, that's work, stuff, that's getting to their values and their goals. If so much attention is focused on other people, you can't figure out who you are and what you need. And as a society, particular when it comes to people of color, we've gotten so used to focusing on other people that we're so disconnected from ourselves. So it makes it really impossible to know ourselves and to take the best care of ourselves. So it's a matter of self president ration. Um. The only way that we can exist in this world is knowing more about ourselves. I love that quote. And when we learn to sit with ourselves, then we can extend that peace to our communities. In my own meditation and yoga practices, the time that I've spen listening to and learning about myself and my body, it's tough. It's not all just saying m sitting in lotus and doing weird balancing poses. It's work. Sometimes it's the work of rejecting the labels that society places on me and the things that tells me I can't do. Sometimes it's me acknowledging or confronting my fears. Sometimes it's letting all those gut wrenching emotions come up, observing them and then letting them pass. And sometimes it's the work of me just taking the time to sit quietly for five minutes when I least want to, and all that inner work that I do turns into things that other people see two more thoughtfulness, more compassion, less judgment. We have been filled up with so much other people's stuff, other people's need of us, other people's desires for us, other people's violations, trauma. Right Oftentimes, sitting in that stillness, all these things that are rushing in is not just a person or kind of individualized trauma and discomfort. We're talking about years of stuff that particularly black women carry in our bodies and in our bones. Right, So stillness requires you to reconcile all of those things, all this trauma that we hold in our bodies. Right, we have not historically been allowed to be still and to sit still. We've always had work to do. Right, So, the the concept of stillness is still very remarkably new when we work on addressing the ways that navigating blackness, marginalization, and generational trauma has affected our health and learned to love our blackness. We all level up. The more that we do focus on blackness and the wellness of black women, black man, black families in particular, the whole country gets better. The nation can rise right from that foundation because we're so much a part of of everything right. And what's happened is that the nation has has tried to ignore, pin down, compartmentalized, kind of ostracized black and blackness. Um, but we see it belieds everywhere, It belieds in very so it's actually impossible to do that. Dr Ayana says she's seeing more Black people speak up and take action around their mental health. When Bridget and I talked to Black Lives Matter co founder Portrit Colors for the episode on activism, she told us that she spends time and nature to distress and turns her phone off at night, and just weeks ago, singer and mental health advocate Michelle Williams publicly says she was taking her own advice and getting help from mental health professionals. And it's empowering to see black folks taking back our power in this way. It shakes up the entire system right, The system has been so used to um, Black women being quiet and being silence and then being able to use the angry black women trope right against us to silence us in all the spaces. So not only self care, but us being loud and kind of loud and proud about self care. Hey, no, I'm taking time to do this. I'm gonna say no to this. I am gonna be angry about this. It does. It shakes people up. They don't expect that. So when we begin speaking up for ourselves again, it makes everybody take a pause. And I'm I support that pause because we've been pausing for everybody right our entire lives. So creating space for our healing and transformation is important work. But it's not easy or pretty work all the time. I do think that there's been a trend I think that's been further by social media that says that self care looks super super positive and like I said, it's getting your nails on its spaus a kind of all these things that are connected to being care free and not thinking about anything else, not thinking about our stressors. Um, and those things are all well and good and fine, right, those those breaks, those kind of shifts can be really really important. But when I view self care also viewed as more accountability and responsibility for yourself. Right, I view self care as you know, making sure you are physically taking care of yourself. So self care looks like getting more sleep. And now I have clients who will come in and say, like, yeah, I get about five hours of sleep, and that's that's always been the case. That's not why I'm here, And I'm just like, you get five hours of sleep a night, like for years, Like, do you know what that is doing to your body? That is literally taking years off of your life. Right, That's what I'm talking about in terms of self care. I'm talking about responsibility in terms of your financial health, right, paying that bill that's now got you know third notice. Right, those are things that allow you to maintain your homeostasis. That's what I'm talking about. Take care of your body. UM, eat more nutritiously kind of again, figure out kind of where your finances are, being good to people like those things are, and being good to yourself actually, um, even before you are good to other people. Those things that are the things that I'm looking at in terms of self care. Doctor Hayana kind of mentions a lot of the little things that we can do to take care of ourselves that I think a lot of the time we don't think about, like eating more nutritionally, cleaning, you know, taking care of your hygiene are all things that I think can also help us create space for ourselves and really help us get ourselves in the right mental state. Yeah. I often get a little bit annoyed with the whole self care conversation because I think that we've transformed it to be about bath bombs and getting your hair done and getting a pedicure, and those things can be self care too. But you know, self care doesn't always look glamorous on Instagram. Sometimes self care is going to therapy. Sometimes self care is you know, taking your med. Sometimes self care looks like taking a shower when you haven't had the energy to shower for a week because you've been depressed. Um. I like conversations that remind folks that self care looks different for everybody, and taking care of yourself looks different for everybody. It doesn't have to be something that looks very chic and glamorous, right. I like that you bring that up, because I think a lot of time people feel like self care is something that's forced upon them, which is counterintuitive. Like self care is for yourself. It's not like it's what somebody else is doing to you or what somebody else is doing for you. Also, I think a lot of the time self care doesn't have to involve anything material. It doesn't have to involve some kind of outside for us. It can be things as simple as like journaling. Um. Yeah, if anyone is listening to this podcast right now and you're at work, have you had a glass of water? Have you eaten? Have you stood up? Have you walked around? You know, like those little things that take five minutes that don't cost a thing, remember to do them to take care of yourself. Do you have any personal self care practices that you really like to turn to? Bridget I'm a bit of a self care hypocrite, I am. I mean I talk a big game about self care, but the reality is, for some folks sometimes you can't take time away. You can't you don't have that option. So mine are always things that are quick and cheap, you know, taking a walk with headphones. Um. You know, maybe I don't have the bandwidth to take two days off from email and from work, but I can take five minutes and listen to a song that comes me down and take a walk around the block and come back and finish my work. I love that Black people claiming our rightful place in our societies and communities is an assertion of our existence and our power. It means lifting up all our identity, ease, and not alienating any saying that they should all be valued, cared for, and loved. After the break, we talked about cultivating self love and spaces that tell us we shouldn't. Yes, we are all sluts. You're a slut. All these dudes behind you with sluts. Your cameraman is a slut, your pa is a slut, and your mike's a slut. And what made you a slut? Because I owned my body. My body is not a political playground. It's not a place for legislation. It's mine. It's my future. And how old are you grown? In this video, taken at a seventeen slot walk, Samiraheim is declaring ownership of her own existence and expression and claiming her space. Don't you sleep around with a lot of men? Now? Actually I'm a virgin virgin. Yeah, you're not a slut. Yes you can be a slut because the slut is not what you made, and Jesse, a slut is what I may boss getting money, taking the mic, turning life around. But let's be real, for black folks, sometimes existing in this world is triggering and traumatic. It's hard to say I matter, I'm here and I deserve to be when the world screams to opposite bully. Taking up space can be scary, difficult territory. Would your parents be happy to know? My parents will be happy to know that I'm a free woman on the billboard in time Square and soho for every real because we take back the woman more and we ain't lame doing like Jessie words striped shirts. So to to even try to create space for ourselves within these systems becomes really really hard. Um So understanding the bind that any person of color faces when we are entrenched in systems that were not designed for us, and that as a result of us being in them, we are forced to try to create spaces for ourselves within these systems. Right, So the work there in terms of our healing is getting together right with others to create space for us. I was talking to my clients about I need you to take up our space, take up space in the bed, take up space in the house, take up space and meetings, say things that you want to say. Create space for yourself because nobody will create it for you. The other thing we can do, she says, is to get uncomfortable. What I always try to share with people is that anytime you're going to do something different, it's risk right now. And we're in a culture who's who is very, very risk averse, which is why I think we don't sit in the stillness it feels uncomfortable. We try to avoid tolerating a certain level of distress. Right. So, my my practice in the community UM as well as in my practice with clients, is to give yourself the opportunity to tolerate distress. Oftentimes we're stronger than we think, so we don't give ourselves room to try something different because we don't know what will happen next, Right, So it's more rooted in kind of control and anxiety that, hey, this is too uncomfortable for me to talk about. UM. What I usually noticed on the other side of people talking about stuff and kind of sharing their narrative is that they can feel a sense of relief, They can feel a sense of empowerment. UM, they're able to kind of connect with people in a way that they weren't able to before because again, the way in which humans connect is at the deepest level of emotion, your powers into your discomfort you. Have you ever seen that? Um, it's like a Venn diagram that has like you and your comfort zone and like growth, growth is outside of your comfort zone. And there are difference I forgot there's different zones. There's um comfort zone, there's your growth zone, and there's like your panic zone. You don't want to do too much to where you're getting into your state of panic, but you want to feel uncomfortable. It's a difference between like pain and injury. Right, So when you're working out, you want to experience some kind of pain and kind of soreness, but there's a gap between pain and soreness versus when you're about to break something and then connecting with others, we have to have empathy. I would love people to practice empathy skills. A lot of people assume that empathy is something that we like come with in these ways, but it's it's literally kind of just practicing allowing people to be in whatever space they are in UM and just being much more responsive to people and really focusing on not controlling people, but continuing to be kind, continuing to be compassionate u to yourself, to other people. And if you don't know what that is or kind of what that means, there are books, they're resources on how to be compassionate, how to be empathic. But I think again, as as we treat ourselves better and treat other people better, we will see less likelihood of mental illness and mental distress. But don't be apologetic about finding spaces that suits you and that value you and that embrace you. Don't be apologetic about spaces where you feel good about yourself. We have to proclaim our space in this world unapologetically. In your silence, people get to make your narrative essentially right in your silence. People get to then say that this is what you experience, this is what you like, this is what you didn't like. So in these spaces that weren't designed for us, UM, the options are to forcibly create space for yourself or to accept that those spaces aren't designed for you and create other spaces for yourself. That's why, in terms of the wellness retreats and kind of things that are very exclusive to black women and black people and black conferences. Create a space for yourself where you know that you will be well taken care of, where you know that you will be valued. You know that you can be around like minded people who are all here focused on our growth, our wellness and embracing all the different kind of facets of blackness. Begin creating your own spaces. For me, part of my radical self love practice is to be nuanced like that is what radical self love is is to stop having these one sided, all or nothing relationships with ourselves and to like embrace the multiplicity of who we are. That's Sonya and a Taylor, founder of the movement The Body Is Not an apology and author of a book of the same name. On the cover of the book, Sania lives nude in a bed of flowers, energetic lines radiating from her body. Before she started her group discussion that Cares Books in Atlanta in early Sonya took a moment to honor indigenous folks in the history of the space, so she's no stranger to being in conversation with spaces she inhabits. After her talk, I spoke with her about practicing radical self care. So the thing that I was thinking about in the talk tonight UM personally was the feeling of being wanted and unwanted at the same time. I was wondering if you have any thoughts on that, UM, specifically as being a black person in America as well UM being spectacle in the positive way and also in a negative way. And that's something that goes back through history as well. Absolutely no display for various reasons. Can you tell me how radical self love maybe relates to that idea of feeling wanted and unwanted at the same time. Yeah, So when you ask me that question, it makes me think of sort of the function of being both hyper visible and invisible at the same time. And I think what radical self love does for me in that space is it situates that experience as outside of me. And it makes it very clear that the ways in which the world will either um take bits and pieces of me and either magnify them for its own purpose or try to erase parts of me is not a function of some failure of mine, That it's not some function of a lack of my own personal value or worth in the world. That it is a function of a system that profits off of making me hyper visible when it serves them, and also profits off of erasing me when it serves them. And so it really is about like just not taking on the blame for that, but also at the same time advocating for myself in the ways that I need to. If one way we reclaim our space is by not being silent, then Sonia is doing just that. She's a queer black author, poet, and spoken word artists advocating for bodies that look like hers, and she shared her work with me an excerpt from a piece called Bodies of Resistance. Even as they attempted to gavel our silence, nevertheless we persisted, each of us a link in the human chain. Your shame has not slain even the lowliest of beasts, but are collective transformation has delivered us intrepid to Capital City streets, three million grains of sand, forged under the heat of oppression until we were fine as keen edged glass, a beatrice of bodies, unafraid to ask why black lives would not matter. As we saw no they and we knew solidarity was a word that must spring forever, like water beside a standing rock. The clock of justice will not terry while you question whether you are worthy of the fight. Regardless of all you've been told. Resistance is an everyday act, the work of excavating each tiny artifact of the oppressor that lives in you. Your call to be a balm to every self inflicted wound is the way movements are birthed, and the land content to bid you endless slumber. Waking unrepentant in your own skin is a hero's journey and the only way we collectively prevail. And only then can we say, in the words of the famous poet Lucille Clifton, won't you celebrate with me that every day something has tried to kill us and has failed, and has failed and will fail. Say it with me? All we are here. So what's the solution? Bridget practice self care and self love? What else is the solution? Bridget take up space unapologetically. What's another solution? Bridget find power in your discomfort? Any other solutions? Bridget embrace blackness fully and always. Afropunk Solution Sessions is a co production between Afro Punk and How Stuff Works. Your hosts are Bridget Todd and Eve Jeff Cope, Executive Co producers are Julie Douglas, Jocelyn Cooper, and Kuan latif Hill. Dylan Fagin is supervising producer, and Kathleen Cuillian is audio engineer. Chandler Maze was our audio editor this week. Many many thanks to Casey Pegram and Antie Reese for their production and editorial oversight, and many thanks to Are on the Ground Atlanta crew, Ben Bowling, Corey Oliver and Noel Brown. The Underside of Power is performed by Algiers. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at apro punk