Tricia Hersey: On Rest as Resistance

Our transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human editors. We do our best to achieve accuracy, but they may contain errors. If it is an option for you, we strongly encourage you to listen to the podcast audio, which includes additional emotion and emphasis not conveyed through transcription.

Damali Robertson: Tricia, it is my great honor and privilege to talk to you tonight. I feel like I'm talking to you on behalf of all of my Black women, all the Black women who are here in community with me now, but all of those that came before me, my grandmothers and their mothers. So, thank you, Tricia, for this work and congratulations on becoming a New York Times best seller. How are you feeling tonight?

Tricia Hersey: I'm feeling good. You know, I've been really keeping my energy together and grounded as much as I can. I'm so excited to be doing this virtual talk with you because it's a nice time to have a nice conversation, now that the book has been out for a little bit, only a week. So, it's been out for like maybe seven, eight days. I don't even know, I'm on the road.

I’m in LA right now, but I was just in Chicago. So, I'm feeling good. I'm just overwhelmed with gratitude. I can't even think of a word to say thank you, thank you a million times, my ancestors and the creator wouldn’t be enough. So, yeah.

Damali: That's amazing. I do want to start our conversation in that place in the ancestral realm. I read your book, cover to cover and one thing that struck me was the way that you lift up your ancestors in the book and so I wanted to start with your father, Willie, Percy, and your grandmother, Aura, and the thing that I thought that I would ask first is how they inspired this work and how you think they're feeling in this moment?

Tricia: Yeah. I know that they are there, I know my ancestors love me. You know, like I don't have a doubt. I love them so much. So, there's this mutual deep connection in love. I was raised in the Black church, the Pentecostal denomination, my dad was a minister in the Black church. So, we believe that death is not the end. It's just a beginning actually and we don't even call funerals, funerals, they're called home goings. You're going home. You're still here. So, in the realm with us, you never leave. It's always present. So, I do feel their presence around me, especially when I was in Chicago, where they're both buried and so I was there with my whole family, and I always pick up a good deep energy whenever I get on that land in Chicago near the lake south side. So, I am so grateful for both of them and for all of my ancestors. I know for sure they love me. I know for sure that they are resting because of the rest that I'm doing in this dimension, so it's reparations work and I know that they are very open and overjoyed to know that they haven't been forgotten, that we're still being connected and resurrected together in the dream space and reclaiming the space that was stolen from them. I'm reclaiming it for them so they can rest, and we can rest now.

So, the whole work really started from a deep place of ancestor reverence and uplifting what has happened and what has been done to you know, my ancestors' bodies, their spirits, to their energy, everything. The examination started with me, you know, in a Black woman's body, who was experimenting with deep, a legacy of deep exhaustion and so I'm filled with connection deeply. I know they are happy. I dedicated the book to my dad. I won't stop talking about Aura, my grandmother, the muse of this work and so many- from my great grandmother to my aunt and you know, all the people who are in the different realm now still with us. I know that they’re happy.

Damali: Thank you. I mean, you go into detail about your father, his work, and as an activist, but also just his daily work, the grind that he was in, and you also talk about your grandmother.

It felt like she was pioneering this rest as resistance with her daily, like her eyes resting, those moments. How did that inform what you've created, both the Nap Ministry, but also this book?

Tricia: Yeah, I'll talk about, you know, this entire ministry is a historical examination, like people saw it pop up online and just on social media. Its ways and its very toxic ways doesn't allow for things that we really have a deep understanding of. So, the work really came out of me being an archivist and working in the archives at Emory University and there in manuscript collection with African American papers and really being able to touch and hold and study and cultural trauma in the Jim Crow South and Jim Crow Terrorism and slavery. So, the work really, you can't enter into the work without getting into the history because it is the work. It is the work, you know, that's what the work is and so I think that they inform my work so much because it was for them who I was resting for. I began to rest my body to connect with them. I will get dreams. I talk about the dreams I had in the book that I would have when I was asleep, I would have all these dreams with my grandmother and how I felt like this work really came to me in the dream. So, this work is the creation of a woman who was exhausted but very curious. But her freedom came through not being exhausted. So, this work couldn't have come out of an exhausted mind and so the more I rested, the more I connected the ideas, and my ancestors gave me kind of a guide to be able to see this work as a real commitment to their reparations.

Damali: Thank you and you know; I have a confession and I'm sure you've heard this before. But a friend of mine, a dear friend of mine, attended a Nap Ministry event in Oakland, probably like three, four, it's been a while and I remember when she described what was, you know, what she had entered and like the freedom that she felt. I just felt like, well, I don't know if that's possible for me. --Tricia: Mhm, mhm.** Like, I don't think, I hear you. I hear that you feel that it was wonderful. But listen, I'm too busy. You know, I was in that place. I ain't got the time. Then, you know, lately, I've really decided. I think your book supported me. But before I decided, I really need to do this, I need to invest in this rest, joy, pleasure. --Tricia: Yes.** But I didn't start there. So, I want to just ask about the folks who are like me, who feel like me.

Tricia: You're in good company. You're in company with most of the world you know, so there's a lot of people. I mean, this is an outlier movement. This movement is not in any way, shape or form like mainstream and I'm so grateful for that. I give thanks every day for that. This is a real underground outlier community care, you know, art intervention that is really on the ground and hands on. So, I think that the book, I'm so happy for it to be published, so that people can have a field guide, they can have this care manual that they can carry with them as they're experimenting in their communities and if they're trying to unravel from the grips of capitalism. So, I'm not surprised that anyone would listen to this idea and be like, oh, that sounds great because if you've been bamboozled and brainwashed since birth and socialized into this idea of capitalism and white supremacy, of course.

Of course, you would not see your rest as something valuable or see your rest as something that is your divine and human right because we've been trained since birth, sometimes even before birth, I talk about that in a book about my son on this rush, this white supremacy cult of urgency, of rushing, of perfection, of always doing, of connecting our divine human work to how much we get done. I think we need to sit in how violent and destructive and toxic that idea is. That we look at a divine human body, a miracle, and we see it as only something that is a tool to do things, to accomplish the tool of production for a system, doesn't deserve or need rest or care, or joy or pleasure. Like the fact that we feel guilt and shame when it comes to rest it tells us that the crisis that we are in, we're past crisis. We're really in deep dark waters when it comes to our ideas of who we are and what the systems have done to us on such a spiritual level when it comes to our own self-worth, it's robbed us of that. So, this work really is an invitation to be more human. If I can put it in the concise, you know, the still way, that's really what the work is.

Damali: Thank you. I mean, in the book, you say that grind culture is violent.

Tricia: Yes, it is.

Damali: I would love to hear you unpack that some more because so many people kind of resist that word, violent. Like there’s something that comes up like, but I agree with you, and I would just love to hear you say more about why you think it's violent.

Tricia: Well, violence comes in many forms and so this culture, this whole culture was founded on violence. So, this is a culture of violence. I mean, that’s where you live and so to be uncomfortable about me calling something within a culture of violence violence, just is something that we're going to have to meditate and sit with and start to begin to heal from this toxic curriculum of white supremacy and capitalism it’s toxic and also talk about the history of this whole work. It goes back to, you know, the American South and where my ancestors were enslaved on plantations, capitalism was created on plantations. I think people got to sit with that and understand what a plantation was and what was happening in these sites of terror.

You know, what was going on for centuries and centuries, America’s slavery is something that we still haven't reckoned with and to know what was going on and happening to the bodies there, I’m talking about Indigenous people as well, African people, like what was happening in those places to be able to experiment with a system that could automate a human being, that could see profit over people, that could try to become an economic engine.

You know, the amount of money that was being made on people in the South, picking cotton, agricultural money, cotton was such a rich agriculture that they called it white gold. So, if you were a grower in the South of cotton, they were saying, oh, you got that white gold. You know, it was that valuable and so much money. So, when I think about the engine that drove that, the engine that drove, you know, enslaving human beings and killing them and just like the evils of slavery, it's the same energy that's happening today.

I don't know why it's just morphed and changed. It's got contemporary, but the way capitalism abuses and exploits bodies and it uses the labor of Black and brown women and men in this culture, the way capitalism is collaboration between white supremacy is what grind culture is. So, grind culture wants us all working 24 hours a day, seven days, well, it doesn't see you as human and so that is the ultimate form of violence to me for someone to not see you as a human being.

Damali: Mhm. Thank you and I mean; your book does such a job. I mean, it's done an amazing job of representing the voices by bringing in testimonies and stories.

Tricia: Yeah.

Damali: I mean, I was just enamored and feel like I have a lot more research that I want to do, but you unearthed something for me that I haven't been aware of. I am Jamaican, and American. As a Jamaican, I've heard about the Jamaican Maroon, always.

Tricia: Yes.

Damali: Right. Jamaican Maroon.

Tricia: Oh, right.

Damali: I didn't know about American Maroons. --Tricia: Mhm.** So, I want you to talk about American Maroons!

Tricia: Absolutely. They are named in the book as one of the greatest inspirations for this type of liberation work for me. I found out about them very late in my life, too. I talk about that in the book that I was an organizer and a lot of, you know, major organizing campaigns all over the country. I was raised in organizing, I’m a historian. I'm an archivist and I had not heard about the American Maroons. It's such a history that has been erased. Like they erase so much of Black and Indigenous history in this culture.

So, that I found out when I was at a Black land and liberation organization, the woman came and presented this book to us. It's one of the organizing strategies when it comes to really creating these alternative and spiritual and physical places of freedom via land. And so, these were Black farmers. I was working with people who were growing food and really into the land, reclaiming the land so they can grow on it in families and communities.

So yeah, the Maroons are, I don't even want to give it away because I want people to read about them. I want them to read the book of Slavery's Exiles. --Damali: Yes.** These were Black folks jumping off slave ships before they got to shore, they was already planning to jump off, subversive, inventive people, leaving plantations and never once looking back and never going back like, not fugitives, but literally they just decided they weren't going to be a part of the system and they lived in caves and in trees and in the bush, in all these places in Virginia and Georgia and Mississippi. And so, the African, the North American Maroons are one of my greatest inspirations.

So, in the back of the book, there's a Nap Ministry library and it names the books, some of the books. I can't name them all because it would be pages and pages, but some of the books that have been particularly focused on grounding this experimentation in rest because it is an experimentation. The whole idea the framework the praxis has been me experimenting on my own body, but also working with the community in collaboration and deepening into the eye of community care and using the organizing principles I was raised doing and knowing, adding theology into it, adding performance art, installation, adding community organizing and spirit work. So, it has the potential to be something you could study forever, and I've been reading a book for seven years.

This book is called Womanist Theological Ethics. I've been in it for seven years taking my time, tabbing it, writing, so I think slow research, slowing down, not being in a book competition where you're reading a book a month. Just really becoming a curious researcher and witness to your own life and doing that by carrying around a notebook, handwriting things, going into books and taking your time. So, I want people to write in my book, underline, highlight, read it in community with other people and book groups, just people in their family, like really see it as a feel-good movement.

Damali: Yeah, I mean, your book, we have it on a reading list that we have from my office, but I keep talking about it in every possible space because of the history, like the fact that you have told us some things that I think like you said has been wiped away by mainstream dominant culture. So, I just, as many people can read the book, I'm like, please. Read this book.

Tricia: Thank you.

Damali: I also want to talk about some of the other luminaries that you mentioned in your book and Harriet Tubman being like, really, first among them, but bell hooks, Dr. King, right and in the mention of Harriet Tubman, it's in the spirit of freedom and the ability to follow your intuitive guidance.

Tricia: Yes.

Damali: So, do you think intuition is a portal to freedom, and if so, why?

Tricia: Yes, absolutely. I think sleep is a portal to freedom and I think your intuition deepens when you are well rested, when you sleep, when you dream, when you slow down, when you have silence, like our body is this side of liberation that's just, this teacher that wants to share so many things with us, but we're so noisy and so like disconnected, call ourselves being connected, we're connected on technology, but disconnected from the technology of our own bodies. So, the disconnection is deep in our own, in our bodies, because our body has its own technology and so people really understanding that this work is a slow unraveling. I call it a meticulous love practice. So, I say, this is a meticulous love practice that will be a lifelong shift that will be happening for the rest of your days and for that, I give so much thanks for that.

I don't want to be rushed. I don't want to be quick trying to be quick on this. That's part of the issue now is that we're always so rushed, so quick, so consuming, always consuming, can't stop. That's just part of the beast of white supremacy and capitalism that has trained us to be in this like, numbed, quick, overworked zombie place, because when you're like that, you're easier to manipulate, I think.

I think the more we can tap into our intuition, our dreams, I call this work freedom dreaming, like to dream yourself free. Sleep and intuition are very closely tied to each other. I think that part of that is the listening. When I talk about my grandmother Aura, and she’s similar to Harriet Tubman. Harriet Tubman was stopping along the underground railroad to pray. I mean, she got the, can you imagine like the bouncing on her head and all the dogs? She was never caught once, but she was stopped at moments by trees and around different nature areas, rivers and just stopped to pray to get a word on go left or right, so her deep intuition of the stars in the sky and the bird sounds. She was also a birder and knew, was very particular about bird sounds and could identify birds all throughout her journey. She was deeply into sky gazing and astrology so she could follow the North Star, to be in tune with things that are outside of these phones, that are outside of that noise, to go into the internal intuition, and also the intuition that the Earth wants to provide to us. I think all of that is going to come when we go into a slowdown state.

Damali: Thank you. In the book you also talk about radical community care and, you know, this society in particular is very individualist. It's about the individual. I’d love to hear you talk about what radical community care looks like. --Tricia: Yeah.** Why is it so important?

Tricia: It looks like, it looks really like, accepting. Like, it's going to be a grief moment. I like to talk about grief a lot in the book, but I always like to uplift grief and rest, kind of being collaborators with each other. It's going to be a grieving moment that this society and this culture is going to have to go through before they can jump to the next step. We always want to rush everything and tell me how to get to the next step. Like, you’re really going to have to sit in this for a little bit, that you've been manipulated since birth by a system that does not see you as a human being, by a system that has its alignment in terror, violence, you know, the transatlantic slave trade and killing Indigenous people. Like, the history of the system that we were born into and what it has done to our beings, as human beings, as divine humans. It's really something that people need to sit with a little bit. That's part, I think, of the resting practice.

I talk about in the book, how to curate a rest practice, how to begin to slowly unravel, and uncover, and accept, and de-program and just take your slow time and have mercy and grace to yourself. It's understanding that this is going to be a lifelong experience and that you have to give grace because the engine continues to go. You've got to be like the Maroons, you've got to be subversive, and flexible, and inventive and imagine you've got to just make it happen, you know, you have to snatch rest and really begin to work with each other. We won't be able to do this work alone.

The community care piece is deep for this work, I don't mention self-care one time in the book. It’s 55,000 words and I did that intentionally because I want to uplift community care, communal care, the self has been lifted up enough, the individual has been lifted up enough. We are not gonna survive without each other. That's just where our interconnectedness is so deeply tied that this rest work has to be done in collection and community with each other. Start it that way. It's the way liberation work is always done. Healing can't be done alone. Healing justice can't be done alone. The deepening of that is that you have to make space for yourself to rest, but you also have to look at this work. It's not just an invitation to lay down. It's not just about laying down. If you're a racist, if you're homophobic, you're deeply into patriarchy, upholding that. If you're all the- anti-Black, all these- rests and naps aren’t going to save you.

You know, this work is about decolonizing your alignment with these systems, beginning to see straight, beginning to wake up from the numbing out that has happened as being part of a culture that is 24/7, never pause, overworked, burnt out bodies. This is a slow connection to decolonize and come back to your humanness. The community care pieces, we're going to have to do this together because we all are going to be connected, whether we want to or not. Martin Luther King Jr says we’re in this fabric, we’re tied together, whether we want to or not. He talks about this deep interconnectedness of our culture.

Damali: Mhm. Thank you. I mean, another thing you say is that we can't wait for permission, for the systems to give us permission. And so many of us are, there are people waiting, ‘oh when my job does this’. Well, that's the thing. --Tricia: They're not going to, that's the thing.** And that's the thing, right? They're not going to. So, you're saying, do it now.

Tricia: Right. Regardless, the time of rest is now. The time to get your freedom is now. The time to disrupt and push back against these ancient toxic systems, it’s time to do it now. That's where it kind of lies in this activist work, and this work around spirit work and the idea that this is a spiritual practice. Why are we waiting for anything external to tell us about anything that's in us? You know, we don't need to listen to the- wait on the system to tell us anything. We already know the way; our bodies know better. Our bodies know, they keep the score. They know what's happening. They have, our bodies are this connection to the divine. The more we can care for it, slow down with it, love on it, bring it back to its human state and get it away from the machine level pace, the more we'll be able to deepen into this work in a slow way.

Damali: Thank you. I think you're also like, so honest in this book that, you know, it's always of risk to go against dominant culture. --Tricia: Absolutely, like you better believe it.** You're going to be at risk. My thing is, I think I've learned that myself and there's a lot of fear. I feel like there's a lot of fear, survival mode is up for a lot of folks. Do you have any wisdom for someone who's working to find that courage to rock the boat a little bit.

Tricia: I do. I think, slow down and rest more. Like, I know how this sounds but literally, even if it's 10 minutes a day, even if you don't jump on your phone as soon as you wake up and you do some detoxing of technology, we are the master teachers. Our body knows. I want people to understand that the more you can get in touch and slow down enough, that you can connect with your body and mind. That's what resting is. It's slowing you down enough so that you connect, that slowly and surely, you'll come back to your humanness. You'll begin to feel human because this body is divine. It's a site of liberation which is like the second tenant of the ministry, to really deepen into the idea that the work is to rest. There is no extra. The work is to rest, and anything that you want that is talking about liberation. We have to have rest as the center of it. We won't get to liberation from exhausted bodies and mind. Nothing. Nothing generative can come from exhaustion, and rest is a generative state of freedom, and so my answer is always, when can you slow down more? How can you slow down to the wisdom that your body already holds inside? How can you connect more with what already has happened, you know, connecting to history. I think those are the ways that you will begin to lessen the fear, you know, and begin to even leap when you're still scared.

I talk about my family, they leap without a net all the time, you know that radical faith. To them, it felt like dancing to do that, to leap without a net. That's what they did. They always make their way out of nowhere. Dig deep and go into the cracks of your own understanding and your own origin story, and the beauty and power of us working together, of your own community. Build community with each other.

Damali: You do talk about radical faith in the book. What is the distinction, in your mind, between faith and radical faith?

Tricia: I think faith alone is just a full-on leaping. I think the word radical comes from the root. The word radical means, at the root, I think radical to me means sustained faith. A faith that’s kind of unmovable, unshakable. It's not the type of faith that is attached to things that have happened and make you believe, it’s literally just ‘I have faith that this is going to be good.’

You have this deeper spiritual connection to someone outside of you to the Earth, to whatever your path is to your own heart, to your own breathing, to your own body. I think the radical nature is that it gets deep and deep into the root. It stays there. It reminds me of Alice Walker's quote about womanism when she said, irregardless of what, I’m going to get free.

Harriet Tubman said freedom or death, like when she was walking all those roads, trying to walk to freedom with all of her comrades. It was freedom or death. I think that radical faith can be something that feels like a soft blanket that you surrender to. That this rest movement is really about the softening. It's about softening. It's about the softening. It's not about tough, hard, rush, rigid. It's flexible, it's intuitive, it's slow, it’s soft. It's pervasive in a way that is unmovable. I think the more we can deepen into that, what resting is, the deeper this freedom will come for us.

Damali: I love that idea of softening. The other thing that you explore in the book, and you really share about is Afrofuturism. You mentioned a lot of the folks like Octavia Butler and all of that, that work. It really did cause me to think about what will be possible for us if we took away the barriers and really imagined what was possible. The change is possible. Can you say more about how Afrofuturism has inspired this work and your work generally?

Tricia: I think what I will say about that is not a lot of people have studied Afrofuturism, so I will offer that to people, they’re on YouTube. YouTube has such an amazing collection of Sun Ra, the grandfather of Afrofuturism, filmmaker, a beautiful jazz musician, like brilliant, he's an ancestor now, but his orchestra still plays. So really deepen into Sun Ra and his films, his movies, his music, his writings, there’s so many documentaries out about him, Space is the Place, A Black Planet, like this idea of imagining.

So, there is a part of the book that is called Imagine, so the book is broken up into four parts. Imagination and imagining is so important for this work that I gave it its own part. So, I have a whole section where I just deepen into the idea of imagination and how bell hooks will call it the tool, one of the greatest tools of oppressed people is to have imagination. To be able to imagine your way to freedom, to be able to sit and dream up and imagine a world that you want to see and so I love that quote from her. I love people deepening slowly into research, like I've been researching this work for over 10 years, but really at the end of the day is the collaboration of 25 years of being an artist, of being a poet or writer, of being raised by a Black preacher who's also, you know, deeply into the Black Panther Party, a union organizer, my dad and really the Black church as one of the centers, you know, studying theology, studying somatics and really just slowly not rushing the ideas and understanding that this work is just beginning. That it will be expanded upon. That people will use this document and also begin to experiment more with their bodies about what rest can do for you because by the end of the day, we could talk about it for three hundred more hours and then they just gonna have to lay down. Like you're going to have to have the praxis and the practice of seeing what rest can do for your body and closing your eyes and really embodying this work. So, it's embodied work.

Damali: Thank you. And you mentioned our addiction to social media in the book and the fact that you step away from it, you detox and I'm like, I'm going to take a note and work on that myself. But one of the things that I thought after I was reading some of what you shared in the book about social media is that we, if folks can create a metaverse, if, you know, there can be all these things that we do with technology, there can be more done toward our well-being, toward ending racism and I feel like there's an opening to imagine on the side of social media.

Do you see any possibilities like that, especially if you look at it through an Afrofuturist lens?

Tricia: Oh, I don't. I mean, many people would disagree with me, but I am a purist when it comes to that. --Damali: Okay.** I believe in ancient communication; I believe in the civil rights movement being done in basements of churches by word of mouth and look what they did. You know, I feel like technology is just driving us deeper and deeper into exhaustion. I talk about that in the book. It was created as a function of capitalism as an institution of capitalism. So I myself don't think capitalism is redeemable in anyway and so, no, I think that we're going to have to, I say that: put our laptops down, put our cell phones down, go back to the ancient technology of our bodies, connecting one on one with people, vintage communication, writing, calling on the landline phone and analog, you know, visiting, building communities with each other. Now, I know that social media in itself is, I talk about this being, there's two different things nuanced. They have brought a lot of people together. Technology has its pluses, it's been able to remix and allow a lot of communities to connect deeply with each other, which is so important. But for this rest message, for this idea, I am a purist, and I am going back to, if you read what I'm influenced by, you will say, I get why she's not into that. So, you have to go read the book and get the library in the back and kind of take your time and deepen it to my ideas. They are um, in a lot of ways, actions to imagine a new world. That includes not metaverse, all of that is a world now, we can have something that's outside of that. So, it has to be a new world that doesn’t include any of that because that's there and so that's what this work ultimately is. It's a work that's really actually for the impossible and that's what a good manifesto does. It kind of calls for the impossible.

Damali: Calls for the impossible. I love that you say you're a purist and that resonates. I want to ask you something about boundaries though, because you know, you detail in the book about the ways that you've set boundaries like even your Sabbaths and your times away and folks still seem to find a way to say, ‘well, can you do this?’ When you know this thing and it's connected to me to this notion of urgency that everybody has. So where do you think like two questions really is like, why do you think we should do away with this idea of urgency and why do you think it's so hard for people to respect boundaries?

Tricia: Because the entire culture has never taught us or modeled boundaries or consent. So, it goes back to knowing where you live and knowing the history of what white supremacy as ideology is. I think we, for whatever reason, maybe it's too painful, ignore that and really don't just sit with that for a little bit and really research and deepen into that. The curriculum of white supremacy, the ideology of it is what we've been taught since birth, but this is why we've been colonized because we have been colonized to think all of these things that are false about our bodies, ourselves. Urgency is one of the main tenants of white supremacy work culture along with perfectionism along with the written word being more important than verbal, you know, communication like all these ideas that are on a binary, you know, this binary is going to kill us. The idea of this, either this or that when there's so much flow and fluidity and imagination that exists in our bodies and our communities that this rigid idea of what we should be doing, this rigid idea of this system. It's not in any way sustainable, it's not caring, it does not care.

So that goes back to the idea of really deepening into understanding where you live and what this is and what it means for your life and so that you're not surprised and can't understand why they wouldn't want me to rest because they want you on the because they don't that's not what capitalism calls for, capitalism calls for you to be a machine. So, you as a human want to rest and that's why it'll never give you a moment to rest and so deepen into the idea of what, how violent and pervasive this is and understand everything you learn about things around care, labor, your body. Everything really has been influenced by a toxic system and influenced by a lot of brainwashing that's not true about who you are and so the truth about who you are is that you are enough now. That the systems can't have you, that you don't ultimately belong to them from a spiritual sense, you don't belong to them at all. But you can imagine a new way and you can have the divine power and energy, your body is this beautiful site of liberation wherever it's at you can find it you can tap into that and to just know and settle into the thing of someone saying to you thank you for living, you know thank you for being here for resting for resisting for you know speaking truth to power you know. Thank you for wanting to find care and love, wanting to find rest. You know wanting to like know that I don't know exactly what the end going look like but I know it ain’t this and so this prophetic hope of imagination is an idea of what could be true. If you can imagine it. I think that the more we can sit in that and understand that that is totally counter intuitive to what's happening now to begin to integrate. We've been you know brainwashed and so I started the Nap Ministry social media part because I particularly wanted to be a tool to help people to begin to de-program so I was very intentional about how I was going to work with social media and use it as like a propaganda machine that I can be able to put out these beautiful messages that you are enough, go lay down, the system can’t have you, you are beautiful, go rest. All of these propaganda messages I'm using to help one of the many things I'm using to help de-program people and to get them back centered to again being human.

Damali: Thank you. You know in the book you do talk about how you started this on faith like it was a lot of ways radical faith and that intuitive knowing and that you're in the midst of school and so many things that could have distracted you from this. Could you just share how faith informed this walk and the work that you're doing?

Tricia: It was rest or death; you know I was killing myself from being exhausted. Sleep deprivation is a real thing, it affects our health, our health, our mental health, our actual body health. Everything about us is like off kilter and not supported when we are sleep deprived exhausted and so it wasn't a thing where I'm going to choose this, it was more like, there is no other way. I want freedom, I'm connected to freedom. I don't want death. I don't want exhaustion. I know that there's something else and so it simply was me just taking the day by day. I did not have any idea that it would be what it is. I did not know if it would work. It was basically just doing what all Black women do before they may see an issue and they try to solve a problem within their own realm of their understanding, and they may experiment and they make things happen. So, I just kept experimenting and I kept trusting my body, trusting the creator, trusting my ancestors more than I trusted the systems.

Damali: Thank you. I feel like that's so valuable for so many of us to hear. Thank you so much and I know that this book will cover everything from end to end, the process, including the grief that might come up as you go through it and the joy that you find. Tricia, this conversation has been so illuminating. It has been so warm and heartfelt, and I know that I learned so much and so many of our viewers, the people are tuning in, have learned from you. So, thank you for your time. Thank you for your work.

Tricia: Thank you so much for this amazing conversation. It's been a joy. So, keep resting, keep trying to make it happen. Keep being inventive around your time, your bodies, yours to invent and experiment with.

Damali: Yes, thank you.

Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live. Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Izzy Angus, Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Patty Pforte, and Nikki Roda. CIIS Public Programs commits to use our in-person and online platforms to uplift the stories and teachings of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; those in the LGBTQIA+ community; and all those whose lives emerge from the intersections of multiple identities.