In this episode, you’ll get in touch with the story of who you really are, moving beyond the constructed narrative you present in institutional spaces. Nicole rewrites her biography, sharing how her story of external success in academia kept her separated from deeper truths. Nicole’s playlist: “Mad” by Solange (2016)
Download the workbook to follow along: https://www.bbqplus.org/rage-to-heal. You can also use a pen and paper or your computer to complete the exercises in the series.
CREDITS:
Written, created and hosted by Dr. Nicole Truesdell with the support of the Pedagogy Lab at the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies (BBQ+).
Produced by Ronald Young Jr. of ohitsBigRon studios.
Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.
[0:01: Relaxing synthesizer music plays]
[00:15] Nicole: Hello everyone, and welcome back to “Rage to Heal: Finding Our Humanity Through Our Emotions.”
This limited series is produced in partnership with the support of the Pedagogy Lab at the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies.
[00:29] My name is Dr. Nicole Truesdell, and I am a trained anthropologist focused on the project of liberatory humanity through what I call a Black decolonial lens.
[00:41] Now before we go any further, this is Episode 3 of this series, and in order for you to get the most out of these talks, you’ll be best served going in order. So if you haven’t yet, go back and start with Episode 1 and then meet me back here when you’re done.
[0:56] For those staying, welcome back! This is Episode 3, Our Stories.
[1:01] In this episode, we’ll focus on how we construct the stories we tell about and to ourselves.
[Relaxing synthesizer music continues]
[1:17] Please grab whatever you’re using to take notes. Hopefully you still have it close by – if not, go ahead and pause this episode and grab it. And as always, go at your own pace and take whatever time you need to record your thoughts. You can pause me at any time, I’ll be here.
[Relaxing synthesizer music fades in more loudly and then fades back out]
[1:40] When you’re ready, take your time and complete the following sentences. Write down the first thing that comes to mind.
[1:52] When I was young, I dreamed of being... [Nicole repeats the prompt]
When I am angry, I feel… [Nicole repeats the prompt]
When I was young, I also dreamed of being… [Nicole repeats the prompt]
Security to me means… [Nicole repeats the prompt]
When I was young, I also dreamed of being… [Nicole repeats the prompt]
I feel afraid when… [Nicole repeats the prompt]
When I was young, I also dreamed of being… [Nicole repeats the prompt]
[3:04] Now, please put that to the side, and we’ll come back to it at the end of the episode.
[3:12] Now as I’ve said before, my name is Dr. Nicole Truesdell. And when someone would ask more about me, I would immediately jump into an academic biography mode without even realizing it. So then in response, if someone said who I was, I would say,
[3:26] “Dr. Nicole Truesdell is a writer, speaker, educator and facilitator who founded her own consulting and speaking business in 2020. Prior to that, Dr. Truesdell was an administrator and faculty member at Brown University and Beloit College, working with students who are underserved and underrepresented in higher education. At Brown, she founded the Institute for Transformative Practice, which housed seven student-focused identity centers, and worked to create collaborative, cooperative, and coalition-based programming and research around collective liberation. Previously, at Beloit College, she created the Office of Academic Diversity and Inclusiveness that housed all programs that worked with underserved and underrepresented…”
[Spoken biography fades into background]
[4:07] Now, all of that sounds good, but really it’s just a running list of what I had done. It’s not actually who I am. But can we separate the two – the what we do from the who we are?
[4:22] In the past, when people asked for more about me, I would always tell a story similar to that bio that is just a running list of things I had done, titles I held, theoretical positions in my research and life that I felt somehow defined me.
[4:38] Then in 2018 I found myself in a supposed dream job others had encouraged me to apply for: a high-level administrator for an Ivy League university. But instead of excitement or joy at this new move and opportunity, I found myself in a constant state of underlying anxiety, anger, and frustration as I tried to settle more into the job.
[5:05] I was realizing that those titles and accomplishments I had been chasing didn’t really reflect who I am. They didn’t even tap the surface of the depths of what I knew my mind, body and soul can do and be, what they truly long for.
[5:21] But for a long time, I was tied to that story – that constructed version of a self I thought I was “supposed” to be. A “successful” self, made in and by the image of others.
[5:33] Yet I’m a complex human being like you all are, but I found I had reduced myself to a career that valued lists of titles, awards, and positions over what I actually really valued, which is creativity, true innovation, and reciprocal versus extractive human interaction.
[5:56] But fear kept me there because I had tied my sense of safety and security to a job that required me to give up parts of myself for it. The embedded subconscious mantra of production over everything else had been instilled in me, starting with the institutionalization we all go through that the state calls K through 12 education. And by the time I was in undergrad and then in grad school, I was an excellent student, soaking that shit all up in me.
[6:29] I had been in the academy for such a long time that it began to infiltrate my everyday understanding of who I was at my core essence. And that institutionalizing heavily impacted the things I had once held most dear and sacred to me: my family, my creativity, my time, and most of all, my freedom.
[6:54] But I had to redefine what family, creativity, time and freedom actually meant to me. I needed a new compass to guide me in the direction right for me.
See, in order to fit into a space I had always been weary of, I had not realized how much I had given up on my own dreams and personhood. How much I had turned over my own self-determination. How much I had actually learned to dehumanize myself.
[7:27] Solange told us that,
“You got the right to be mad.
Now tell 'em why you mad, son,
'Cause doing it all ain't enough.”
[7:35] It was my anger that helped me not only see but fully feel what my truth was actually saying. Anger made me see what that dehumanization had done to my sense of self. My sense of self-worth and value – a reduction to production for institutions who made it clear they didn’t give a good goddamn about my Black ass – never had and never would. But it was fine taking as much from me as it could.
[8:04] It was in believing my anger that I was then able to start to feel my body again, and once that happened, I was not prepared for what my body had to say back to me. Because when I started to heavily edit and revise my self story bio, my anger guided me into a space and place I did not know I would ever go. I found out my real essence, my sense of self.
[8:31] So in that vein, I would like to reintroduce myself.
[Gentle modern piano song starts playing and fades to background]
[8:40] “I am Dr. Nicole Truesdell to folks who just met me, AKA Dr. T to folks who know me, AKA Nicole to my people, AKA Niki to my kinfolk, AKA Mama to my child only – ‘cause only one kid’s comin’ out of this body now.
Many names for one person, because one person can be many things to many people. I’m an aspiring eccentric bohemian who drinks and knows things, as I aim to remake foundations for the betterment of all. So I am a practitioner of humanity looking for the humane to make a comeback from its hibernation due to this dis-ease we call colonization. And even further still, I’m a lover of life, as seen through my writing, teachings, love of music and dance, and mothering.
[9:38] "I love to consume knowledge as a reader of great and not-so-great works, as well as being a lover of entertaining and fine bourbon and tequila tasting.
"Finally, I am an Orisha devotee and burgeoning gardener, learning to not kill the things I plant so I can connect even more to and with the land around me. This is me, a public intellectual learning to do this thing called life my way.”
[Gentle modern piano song continues and then fades out]
[Music of gentle chimes starts playing and then fades to background]
[10:39] Let's take a moment to check in with your body. How do you feel now, listening to this episode? Write that down.
[10:50] What is a song that embodies that feeling? Write that down too. This is Song 4.
[10:59] And that brings us to the end of Episode 3. And if you’ve been recording along from Episode 1, your playlist now should have four songs.
[11:09] Join us in Episode 4 – we will return to the body and how working with anger via your body is the first step in reclaiming your humanity.
‘Til next time.
[Music of gentle chimes fades back in]
[11:28] Rage to Heal was written, created and hosted by me, Dr. Nicole Truesdell, with the support of the Pedagogy Lab at the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies. It was produced by Ronald Young, Jr. of ohitsBigRon studios. Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.
[Music of gentle chimes fades back out]