Many of us are trained to value the mind over the body and soul. Nicole shares how her body, tired of being ignored, finally forced her to acknowledge her feelings about her “dream” job. You’ll start to access your embodied wisdom and explore how your body can guide you through change. Nicole’s playlist: “Praying to a God” by Mr. Probz (2018)
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.
[0:39] Now before we go any further, this is Episode 4 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 meet me back here when you’re done.
For those staying, welcome back! Again, this is Episode 4, The Body.
[Relaxing synthesizer music continues]
[1:11] 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]
[1:32]
When you’re ready, take your time and complete each of the following sentences. Write down the first thing that comes to mind.
1. When I look in the mirror, I see... [Nicole repeats the prompt]
2. My body feels most alive when... [Nicole repeats the prompt]
3. I feel most rested when... [Nicole repeats the prompt]
4. I know I am afraid when... [Nicole repeats the prompt]
5. I stay where I am because... [Nicole repeats the prompt]
6. I am... [Nicole repeats the prompt]
[Music stops]
[3:07] Please put that to the side as we will come back to it at the end of the episode.
[3:14] As I walked down the stairs of the building after leaving another intense meeting with staff, I could feel my chest getting tighter and tighter as water began to form in my eyes.
“Not here, dear God, not here,” was all I could remember telling myself. It was a mantra on repeat in my head as I tried to walk across the quad and make it back to my office.
[3:41] I walked up the flight of stairs, and just as I was about to get to my doorknob of my office, I collapsed into the door next to mine. The admin, a lovely woman, comes running out of her office and finds me hunched over and struggling to breathe.
After the initial shock, she calls EMS, and I find myself at a table surrounded by three people asking me all kinds of questions.
[4:07] Y’all, I was having a fuckin’ panic attack and instead of just acknowledging that, I was tryin’ to make sure that all they saw was an allergic reaction.
[4:17] I went home that day… and came right back to work the next like nothing happened.
[4:27] But every damn day, I woke up to tears in my eyes and a heaviness in my chest. I was tired in my bones and I dreaded the act of getting out of bed to complete a morning routine that just reminded me constantly of how goddamn miserable I was.
[4:45] Once I was forced to acknowledge those feelings, they didn’t let up. Each day getting ready for work, these emotions would present themselves, getting stronger as the months went by until I could no longer ignore them, push them down, drink them away, or bury them.
[5:03] I knew I could not just think or strategize away these emotions the day I left the meeting and had that panic attack. Feeling the weight of the job, I had to sit in the harsh reality that the people I was supposed to be in “community” with were the main ones I did not trust. And my body literally had had enough of the pretending, and so that day it had to put me down physically.
[5:30] The problem was, my body was tired of not being heard. I woke up each morning to stiff joints and a screaming back. A reminder that my body remembered what was really happening around me. My body was trying to guide me to just do something, anything differently.
I just didn’t know what.
[5:53] Reminds me of the lyrics from Mr. Probz’s “Praying to a God”:
She's praying to a god that won't talk back,
Her faith is dying, tears are a sign she's going off track.
Keep praying to a god that won't talk back, won't talk back,
Down on her knees, praying to a god who won't talk back.
[6:12] I had inadvertently made my work my god, and production the offering I gave at the altar of the institution.
[Relaxing synthesizer music begins playing and continues to play in the background]
[6:28] I had made myself a “fixer” of other people’s problems. It was why I had been hired. I liked to fix other people’s broken shit because it was what I was good at. My “fix-it” mentality had made me successful in previous positions. So it led me blazing into another institution with another problem area that I believed was my calling to “fix” once again for the betterment of those pushed to the margins.
[6:54] My need to “fix” would help me be both highly successful in my first year of working at Brown, and it was the location where I would be most demonized by those who felt like I did not know my place (and I think most of us know what that means when those words are said to us).
[7:11] For me, it would be the wake-up call I needed to shake me out of the spell the academy had casted so long ago, forcing me to take a hard look at myself and the decisions behind the choices I had made. Forcing me to see the ways my ego needed the fix of “fixing” other people’s things so I could avoid facing my own feelings. Avoid feeling my own body. Avoid sitting in my own humanity.
[7:35] It was time to face myself, reflect with and to myself the assumptions I held about what my life should be and look like and my attachments to those assumptions.
[7:48] On one of those morning commutes to work, a question I had been avoiding made its way to the surface for me to contemplate in my mind: Why do I really stay?
[8:00] This was a familiar question, as I had asked myself it often when jobs were starting to be too much. And most times I had an answer that was satisfactory enough for me to keep pushing along. But this time the quick easy answer did not come. Instead, my body responded with a deep pain in my stomach, and my mind jumped to how I had gotten here – to this place so far from my home, my family, my people, and my roots. If this was “making it,” I thought, then this shit was for the birds.
[8:33] I was in a battle with myself on whether or not the job I was in, the line of work I had moved my family across state lines for, the profession I had tied my own sense of self up into was what I really wanted to do anymore. If the industry I had been in since I was 18 really was the place I could continue growing in.
[8:59] It had been a long time since I had been able to really hear my own inner voice clearly. For so long, I played other people’s opinions of me in my head and had disguised them in my voice so I made myself believe those were my dreams. That this was my ambition. I believed that my mind was the most important asset I had, and it mattered more than my body or my soul. That my mind would lead my body and soul somewhere quote-unquote “important.” Y’all, ego really will have you fucked up – especially when that ego has been disciplined by institutions who only see you for your labor. Only see your body as a commodity.
So over time, you start to see yourself the same.
[Relaxing synthesizer music stops]
[9:52] But, when I let all that go, when those emotions came out of me, I found my real inner voice was just below that noise, and I let her speak this time without interruption. And she was ready to unleash a number of truths that I had run from for far too long. My soul was opening up, and this time it would not retreat into the shadows. This time, she was ready to roar.
[Relaxing synthesizer music plays for 15 seconds]
[Music of gentle chimes starts playing and then fades to background]
[10:54] Take a moment to check in with your body. How do you feel now after listening to this episode? Write that down.
[11:05] Now, what’s a song that embodies that feeling? Write that down too. This is your Song 5. And that brings us to the end of Episode 4. And if you’ve been recording along from Episode 1, your playlist should now have five songs.
[11:27] Join us in Episode 5, where we turn to the soul and take a deeper dive on what it means to come back to it.
‘Til next time.
[Music of gentle chimes fades back in]
[11:43] 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]