The Therapy for Black Girls Podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed Psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, about all things mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves.
As part of our programming efforts for Minority Mental Health Awareness Month we’re closing out this July with a special episode featuring author and theologian Candice Benbow. Candice is a multi-genre theologian reimagining how faith can be a tool of liberation and transformation for Black women and girls. In her work Candice challenges Black women to think critically about how they see God, themselves, and the world around them. Our conversation explores processing church hurt, finding your identity within a church community, and Candice’s new book Red Lip Theology: For Church Girls Who've Considered Tithing to the Beauty Supply Store When Sunday Morning Isn't Enough.
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Grab a copy of Red Lip Theology
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Executive Producers: Dennison Bradford & Maya Cole Howard
Producers: Fredia Lucas, Ellice Ellis & Cindy Okereke
Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Dr Joy hard and Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or to find a therapist in your area, visit our website at Therapy for Black Girls dot com. While I hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is not meant to be a substitute for a relationship with a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much for joining me for session to sixty eight of the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast. We'll get right into the conversation after a word from our sponsors. As part of our programming efforts from Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, We're closing out this July with a special episode featuring author and theologian Candice Binbo. Candice is a multi genre theologian imagining how faith can be a tool of liberation and transformation for Black women and girls. In her work, Candice challenges black women to think critically about how they see God, themselves, and the world around them. Our conversation explores processing church hurt, finding your identity within a church community, and Candice's new book Red Lip Theology for church girls who consider tithing to the beauty supply Store when Sunday morning isn't enough. If something resonates with you while enjoying our conversation, please share with us on social media using the hashtag TVG in Session or join us over in the Sister Circle to talk more in depth about the episode. You can join us at Community that Therapy for Black Girls dot com. Here's our conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Candice, thank you. I'm so excited, very excited to chat with you. So you do so many things, but among them, you are both a writer and a theologian. Can you tell me a little bit about what drew you to studying theology. So I am a bona fire church girl, and I mean going to raise in the church. God is meaning whoopings in church as I got at home, and I have always been fascinated with what it means to know God, to discover who God is, what faith means personally to you. But at the same time, there were growing up as the child of a single parent. I heard sermons that really disparaged my mom, and not just disparaged her, but other single mothers. And I really came to this conclusion about the church and its disdain for black women and black women's sexuality, and that really was the catalyst those questions, the inquiry, the desire to study. That's really what pushed me to say, I want to study theology much more formally, but also being a church girl, being formed, also in hip hop culture, being a student of culture at large. I wanted to find a way to seamlessly weave all of these parts of me to do this kind of work, which I really think it is as much a passion as it is a calling. So let us talk about the book for a moment. So the name of the book is really The Theology, which I feel like it's such a brilliant and beautiful title. So I want to one to hear about the origin story for the title. But also have you talked about like what called you to write this book at this time? Yeah? So I was in my last year at Duke Divinity School. So the funny thing about Duke is that Duke requires one Black Church Studies course to graduate with you're in did, and a lot of my white classmates did not feel like they needed to sit and hear about black church and black religiosity to graduate. So I had one particular classmate who you know, I want and people we know this when wife at get caught out, they want to invite you to lunch or the coffee, so to make sure that you know that they're not racing. So like he every time he saw me would ask me to go to coffee, and I'm like, I don't drink coffee, so we can't go. He would't want to go eat. I just ate like I was flying all of these the reasons not to talk to him. So this particular day he catches me in the library when he sat down, had I immediately gotten up, it would have been clear that I was doing it to avoid him. And I really wish trying to be more like Jesus that day. So I was like, let me just sit down and just endure what he on sat So he looks at me and he's like, so can't this do you consider yourself a black theologian or are you a regular theologian? As if to say that what we do is Niche like that this is not theology proper, and I was like, I could go there with him, but you know when you realize, like it is futile to go back and forth with people who have committed themselves to a certain ideology. And I was like, I'm not gonna waste my breath. So I said I'm a real look theologian. And he looked at me and he was like like, you know how even looking like okay, did I miss that in the reading? Like what is she talking about? And he was like who who? Who? Who's his that? And I was like mine, I just come up with it just now. And then I got my stuff together and I left. But as soon as I said it, it made so much sense for me, because when I talked about it in the book, I started my seminary career making a promise to my best friend that I was going to take more care in my appearance and myself after this breakup, like I had let myself go and be your best friend can come to you and be like you really out here looking like what you've been through and that's not us, right, And so she was like I need you to do better. And then I couldn't tell her that I didn't know how right, Like I couldn't imagine that I was here again nursing a broken heart again, like believing that this was going to work and it didn't work again and internalizing it as if it was my fault and that there's something wrong with me. I didn't know how to piece myself together, and so she took me her and my line sister. They took me to Sephora. She made me like a promise that I was gonna take a couple of minutes every day to put myself together and put my best face forward. And so at the same time that I was in seminary Arry, I was honoring this commitment to my best friend. So red lif theology made so much sense because that's how I encounter and engage theological study. They were not separated from me, right, So like the beauty industry participation and theological inquiry, we're dead fellows. And I needed them both because at the same time, both were working to heal parts of me that I didn't think could be healed, right, And that was really the impetus behind writing this book. And I think Tony Morrison had said it once, like you need to write the book that you need to read, you know, and rever Dr Katie Cannon said that we got to do the work that our souls must have and so I knew that in my younger years, and now I needed the book that spoke to me as a millennial black woman who was born and raised in the church, but whose thoughts about church we're much different than her mother's than her grandmother's, and that I needed space to think through that, and I need it rain to be okay with the fact that it looked different, right, And so part of writing this book was like, I'm not by myself, like there are other sisters. Now we might diverge right on certain aspects, but the fact that we're journeying right makes us so journals that we are saying we need to have conversations about faith that honor the totality of our experiences, the honor that our faith and our personal relationships get to be our own. And so I wanted and felt very cold to speak into that space and that moment for sisters like me. And that's how you get real theology. Yeah, I think when I first heard the title, I thought, and I feel like this is something where you were coming from, Like Red lips. I think, you know, for a lot of us as black girls, like real lipstick is like the worst thing that you could ever do, right, Like it spoke to some kind of like sinful kind of thing. Right, this is the ideas I don't know the first Sunday and they probably is the only Sunday. I intentionally we're real lipstick because I was taking my grandmother church and I pulled up to pick her up, came in the house to get her. She said, what we're going? And I said, she said, not that on your mouth. We're not going there. So so what what do you think you're gonna do? And I was like, grandmine, it's just and I knew Nicholas and my grandma sat on her bed perch like this. She wasn't moving until I took it off. And it was the funniest thing because my grandmother, I tell people, she's the first theologian that I knew, Like my desire for theological inquiry and biblical study comes from her. And so she was looking like, girl, have you lost your mind? In years passed from that she and I have had that been able to have much more liberative, interesting discussions about sex and sexuality about womanhood and the ways that she was raised in church right, and when she was raised to think, and the ways that her thought patterns converged, but she didn't have the room to to challenge those right And so like, I think that part of the red lip for me was what does it look like for black women to be transgressive as they are still honoring a holiness? Like the theology is the part of us that is like, there is God, right, This God sustains us right, This God is who and what we lean on in times of good and in times of plenty, and we get to through this God. And because of this God pushed back against the systems and the ideologies that harm us, because this God wants us to flourish and be well. Yeah mm hmmm. I love that. So thinking back now, you know the book has been out for a little bit of time, thinking back now and reflecting on your writing, is there anything that you would have included that you didn't include? Now? I love that question. I will say this, and I thought about it. No. And the reason why is because I wrote this book and this is going back to church stuff. I was really trying to find a way of honoring the line of telling my story and honoring that my grandmother is still alive because there were some things that did not make the book, and they only did not make the book because she is still with it. And the truth is that I believe you get to stand on that truth and get to tell what people have done to us and how we have found resilience and hope in those times. I believe that, and I also believe that there is a holy responsibility to find ways to care for the people who care for us. Right. My grandmother comes from a very different time, like it was enough for the sex chapter to go in there. Like I remember when we talked about it, she was like, do you have to tell people to check? You know? And then I didn't even tell her about the amazing grace Societ checks. I just let her read that, and she said, Lord, you then told these people that you didn't had enough fair She's us. I remember the turns and two she took sitting in that chair, like she said, you know what I'm told, And here's the thing. She knew that that was my truth to tell. She knew that even and telling it, I was owning up to ways that I had not lived in the light of who I am and that it was me helping sister see that we gotta make better decisions that prioritize, And for me, I realized that it was not about telling everything, but it was what kind of book can I write that can help women people, but black women, especially on their own faith journeys, right, what polls, what marking, what sign posts can be stories from my life tale that ten months from now from when the book comes out, ten yance from now when the book comes out, I can still hold to those And also what does it mean for me to think about that in relationship to how I write? And so the next book that I've begun to think through and trying through, those are some of the same questions that I asked, like how can I even tell these stories in a way that leads to more truth and freedom but also honors and I'm similar relationship with people, And I try very hard, and I believe that I hate that mark, but I'm always working as a writer to be better at it. But I try not to be a selacious writer, like I don't want you to I don't. I don't want you to read for what happened next girl, but to be like, Okay, dang, I want my words to be a mirror like that. You may not have to be this transparent with everybody, but be this transparent with yourself. You know what I'm saying. And so I've learned and I made the decisions to include what I did based on my relationship with her and what it looks like to honor her. And it was a larger lesson from me of like, what is it me two honor that you've been called right in this way, which is awesome. Then you get the blessing to walk and do life with people in specific ways that you never want to take advantage of. More from my conversation with Candice after the break, you know something that I love from your work and also the work of the Systems of Truth Table, is that I really feel like your work gives sisters the foundation to kind of really explore like how they may have been harmed by the church. And I think that that's really difficult for people to wrestle with because I think we play such an important role, especially in the historically like black church, right, But to your earlier point around the ways that we are often dehumanized and denigrated in these spaces. I mean even as recent as last week, like we see all of these like mega church pastors come up with all of these sermons that just feel so like so crushing to me in a lot of ways. So, can you talk a little bit about the church hurt and like how maybe you have experienced it, but how also your work hopes to give sisters a chance to kind of heal from some of that hurts. Yeah. I think the first thing that I tell people about church hurt is that church hurt is anything that happened to you in church or at the hands of a religious leader thought, word, or deed that does not reflect God's heart full stop. That is everything from physical and sexual violence that we know, unfortunately it's prevalent in our church faces. That's everything from verbal and emotional violence that we hear in certamon that we find out our happening as pastors are these tyrants as employers and bosses. And that also includes the ways that we are manipulated into giving our time and our resources because we are told that in doing so, we are giving to God and we are proving our commitment to a certain level of faith. And the danger of church hurts is that in these spaces, it will cause you to question your very relationship with God. Right Like, if I'm hearing these things from people who say that they're hearing from God and that God told them, then when I internalize these things as I would, right like, I think that I'm hearing that this is me hearing from God, and it puts such a damper, It puts such a foul perception of myself. And right it took a lot of courage for me to first began to write in a way that said, cass let's think about this a little more. For all of the reasons that you just made like one church for black folks and family becomes sounonymous. So the moment that you really began to like push back against the church, people think you're pushing back on your family. They think you're pushing back on them. And I mean, I talked about in my book my fiercest arguments with my mother where around faith and my and like the ways that I was evolving and pushing back against the church. But I needed to be honest about the fact that the first place that I begin to feel and develop and cultivate inferiority and myself as the church full stop. You know what I'm saying, Like I needed to be honest and say that I learned from the Church that the only thing that mattered about me was that I was smart. I learned through church that I was always gonna be a step below because my parents were not married, and that my father could be exalted because he was this man, he song, he whatever. But my mother, who stayed and took care of me, was is not who I should be, who I should aspire to be, because if she would have just cut her legs post. You know what I'm saying, like I have to be very honest about that, and saying all of that messed with me, All of that shape and charted a journey of doubt and insecurity that just was not fair. And if we take a moment and challenge theologies and ideologies that are harmful and deaf feelings, we will not continue to have generations of girls generate that sit and wonder if God loves them because they don't check these boxes. Writing in that way, you then it's almost like this podcast, right, like what we know about the work that we do is that the moment that we step out and do it bravely other sisters come and be like, oh my god, I needed it. And that's what happened, was that sisters are like thank you. And it's heartbreaking, right because you don't celebrate a sister saying that she needed to read your words so that she could find a way to name what happened to her. Because what she realizes that that's another sister that literally is trying to overcome trauma and abuse and neglect, and like, you don't celebrate that. So you get it and you're like like can we not get this right? You know what I'm saying. But you're grateful because that's one last sister who stays in the cycle. Like you're grateful because that means that she doesn't feel like she's alone. It means that she realized that there are people that she can come to, you know, And I think part of why it matters to step out and to take the hits because they come still, right we were talking about the earlier, it's for those sisters. I remember I had gone somewhere and a very prominent Christian preacher came up to me and I didn't even think that me and they were like, I appreciate your work because It forces me to remember that there are sisters out there who are deeply wounded, and it makes me think about what I say, and it makes me think about what I'm preaching, and it makes me think about what I'm teaching. So thank you. And I remember I walked the way and was like, this is why I do it. I gotta keep doing it because that ensued. But there's not gonna be a little girl like I was trying, like really asking the questions of this God loved me all because my daddy isn't here, because I'm hearing sermons that don't call him to account, but call my mom into account. And she's the one that's taken care right, right, right, given this work right that you do where you take so many like public shots and doughts and backlash to your work, what kinds of things have you put in place to support yourself? Like, what does support look like for you as you continue to do this work? Support from me looks like a spiritual care squad that I talked about in the book. They are these folks that I come to to help me navigate any decision I have to make that become refuge from me when I get those hits and it hurts. I have friends who support me that they can recognize when I've been reading comment and they'll tell me, so we need you to like long off and I don't need to see your posts for another day. I'm like, okay, um. I have a therapist that I started working with in twos sixteen after my mom passed, and we went from three times a week to meeting every three weeks. Hey, you know what's crazy. I did not realize until I thought about that the other day, just how much growth that is, right, Like, I don't think that we stopped sometimes, or we stop enough to celebrate the growth because you can think about all the shadow or you still got love to doing. Here's the truth. It's a lifelong journey to be your best self and I have learned that. Part of it from me is what is it mean to show up as my best self for whatever season I'm in? And part of that put particularly as a creative of like those seasons evan flow. So those seasons that may be an intense season where I am writing right, there may be an intense season where I'm reading and I'm feeling like thinking through what the next project is gonna be and I'm reading a lot. Care for me at that time means having people around me and a schedule around me that does not allow for me to get lost in that work. So like what does it mean to take breathers? Right? Then there are times where I get lost. There's a season of writing where that gets heavy, where like there were days writing certain essays and really theology where so we meet every three weeks. Now I had to do a check in, right, Like I just wrote about my daddy. I don't know, we probably just met a week ago. We're not supposed to maybe two only we need to talk today because I really want to drive to his house and asking while he drives me, like you know, those of those mean it. And then then at times where it's out in the world, and this was my first book. When it's out in the world, you can't control how people receive it, you can't control what people do with it. And so that was a completely different season of letting go, releasing during rituals around that, around my own care of like what it means to celebrate that and to to shield myself from certain things, and so like part of care for me has been recognizing that it looks different each season, there's some consistent parts. Right, As somebody who navigates major depression and severe levels of anxiety, it has meant a lot from me to realize what it means to be very intentional with care around like the attacks of my work. So this is something that like in the last year and a half, I've had to think through and my therapist has really helped me with this. There are certain times of the year that are really difficult for me because of Mama's passing, like her birthday, Mother's Day and the Thanksgiving holiday season. What we had to do is say that those might not be the best times for me to do heavy work that may elicit a strong reaction negatively from people who want to push back one, because I'm not gonna be in the best space to deal with that kind of critique. And I don't want to do anything one that were like negatively on the work that I do. And too, I don't want to respond to somebody out of some other stuff. So when it's time for me to plot work, I put and think through all right, I can't write about that at that time. There have been sometimes where some stuff has hit in the news and in cycles, and there's been an expectation that because it's the kind of work that I do, that i'll speak to it. I've been asked to speak to some stuff and I had to say no, not because I don't have an opinion, but because it might be right before Mother's Day. It's gonna take enough for me to make it through that day versus logging on and seeing somebody respond to something that I said and they disagree and it may take me to another place. So that last piece has been so so crucial, and I'm so grateful that she even suggested that to me, to say it is absolutely okay to not do heavy lifting around the times where your heart is the most vulnerable. M what a beautiful gift to have given you. I will always keep that, and I think that too often, particularly as creatives and creators, we don't give ourselves the space to think through that because our life and what we do is always around content and creation and getting out. And it's okay to be like, no, I can take a beat here, and if I can't take a beat, then I need to reevaluate what I've been doing, because this work should be able to sustain beyond that Yeah, what are you hoping that readers will take away from real live theology? The biggest prayer and hope that I have is that readers know that it is okay two questions, and that it is okay to journey, that God is big enough for the questions, that God is big enough for the frustrations, and that you are gonna be okay if you start the journey and the quest right, and even beyond that, that a life that has had pain and unconsionable darkness at times can still be a beautiful life to live. Those would be what I hope and what I am grateful for is that that prayers me answered. When I like get on socials and I see I get a d M or I get a post or I get an email, I'm like, Okay, this is being answered in the way that I needed. Mm hmmm. More from my conversation with Candice after the break, I feel like you started this, But what advice would you give to other writers or other creatives who are kind of bringing new projects into the world, but they're also trying to like heal and understand their own emotions and what they've been through. What advice would you share? Yeah, so i'mna saying the first piece of advice. And I learned this in my four forty three days when I wrote this piece for forty three right after jay Z released for forty four, and it went viral. And this is another lesson of that, once you put something into the world like you have no control over how it was received. The majority of it was received very very well, and people were women were responding positively to it. From that lesson, I learned to never write something that you're not healed from. I was not over their relationship right like he could have been, I'm gonna saying right now and everyone last night. He could have came back in the next and then the thing would have been deleted up the internet, and I y'all could have all talked about me, and I would not have cared like like I I learned from that, you do a disservice to yourself when you put something into the world and you're not healed from it, Particularly when you do this kind of work right, like when you are called in a certain way to be deeply transparent so that transformation can take place. You gotta be very careful with how you tell your stories, how you deliver those stories. Deliver that content because it's still also part of you. So the biggest piece of advice that I give writers who are still trying to heal and tell the story, it's to find ways to ensure that you are doing that healing work, so that as you tell these particular pieces of the story, you are so far removed from the direct impact that you will be able to speak to it. I'll give you an example. My mother used to tell me as a kid, and are a kid being high school and college in my twenties and thirties, she said, my biggest fear for you is that you are gonna be on a national stage somewhere and somebody's gonna ask you about your father, and you're gonna follow wart. And he doesn't deserve to take that moment from you, Like as clearly as you are not talking right now. I can remember the first time she said that to me, and I remember thinking, like, she right, he doesn't, he doesn't deserve that. Apply that to every painful experience that we've had, right, Yeah, there are lessons, right, yeah, other people can learn from them, and yes, they don't deserve to rob us from the moments that we get to stand in the truth and the power of our own resilience. So that's why we got to do that healing work. You also have to find ways to care for your soul doing this work. I believe in bubble Beast, like it is that It's so funny, how like that became like my thing, Like after writing something, I got a whole like stand in my bathroom of just all of the different moods that I want to create with like candles and bath bombs and powders now and it is just oh right, like I wrote this, it is out in the world. Let me soak, you know what I'm saying, Like it has been that for me to find ways to care for myself, taking better care of my health and my physical health of like working out and eating healthier, Like you underestimate how much that fused you to do this work. I think as writers, one of the things that I underestimated was just how much my mind and my creativity needed a healthier body, right like holistically, like that my physical health and my emotional health when they are optimal, my creativity and my productivity optimally, and if I feel called to do this work and I want to honor it. And I really believe that we overcome by the word of our testimony. And my mom would always say that scripture says the word of our testimony, it don't mean it. It got to be your direct custimony, right. That's why I told my grandma I put Amazing graceicide checks in the book because ten years from now, like if a sister may be thinking about it and she gets that book, she gonna read this one. Ain't nowhere in the world I want to go through where she what Candice went through. So let me cut this off at the knees right now, because I believe that we've been called to do that kind of work. I need to ensure that I'm taking care of myself, and I need to ensure that people around me one can hold me accountable to that, and too can't find ways to let me like not take everything so seriously, Like there's joy in this, Like it's not just writing about trauma, Like it's not just writing about pain and discussing pain. Like there's joy, Like there is a beauty and a happiness in life. And I ain't that. I tell people who are writers, if you can't get those things down figuring out like what it means to care for you and heal as you want to tell these stories and give them to the world. The nuts and boats of this I can help you with those, Like you could go to the workshops and they're gonna help you with the nuts and boats of writing. What they can't help you with in these workshops is how to take care of you as you writing, because you'll be sitting there as I have. Like I tell the joke of the first draft of Real Theology may bend leading all over it like it what like it's an essays in that that was in that first draft. Then my editor was like, so this is creative and it's a lot of information. What are we discussing and wanting to And that was our west and like you bled all over this, get it out. It's out. We're not gonna use it though, but I'm glad it is out right. So like it is that space. And so I think if we can find ways it's creative to recognize that our creativity or thrives and our work with flourish when we really really take and as vested an interest in ourselves as possible. What's so were what were m so Canada's so many beautiful things where we cannot talk all day. Um, and that's so much good stuff, so many beautiful ways we can go back. We have to come back so that we can kind of continue to talk about some of these other things. But tell us where we can stay connected to you. So, what is your website as well as any social media channels you want to share? Yeah, so my website is www. I can't just member dot com and and I'm on Twitter and Instagram at Candice Bembo. So that's C A N D I C E b E N b o W. I am on Facebook and I'm on TikTok only because my cousin told me that I'm not old enough to say that I can't do TikTok's. But if you really want to see me and talk to me, Instagram and Twitter is what you'll find me. We'll be sure to include all of those in the show notes. Thank you so much for your word, Candice, and for joining us today. Thank you so much, thank you. I'm so glad Candic was able to share her expertise with us today. To learn more about her or to grab a copy of her book, visit the show notes at Therapy for Black Girls dot Com slash session to and be sure to text two of your girls and tell them to check out the episode right now. If you're looking for a therapist in your area, check out our therapist directory at Therapy for Black Girls dot com slash directory. And if you want to continue digging into this topic or just be in community with other sisters, come on over and join us in the Sister Circle. It's our cozy corner of the Internet design just for black women. You can join us at community dot Therapy for Black Girls dot com. This episode was produced by Freda Lucas and Alice Ellis and editing was done by Dennison Bradford. Thank you all so much for joining me again this week. I look forward to continuing this conversation with you all real soon. Take it care