Native Lamppod is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with Reezon Choice Media.
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, welcome, welcome, Welcome, all.
Right, welcome, welcome, Welcome to your Native lamp Pod family. We are here with this week's mini pod. Where we ended this week's episode, we were doing our calls to action as we typically do at the end of our show, and we got over to our sister Angela's call to action and notice that something has been stirring in her
soul a little bit. And so as we thought about what topic to platform for this week's mini pod, we thought that maybe Angela, you might be able to toss the topic out as you as you deal with what was stirring in you, that might stir in us as well.
Well. Thank you, guys.
I want to apologize as I did not expect to be as overcome by emotion. Y'all know I can cry about anything and will, but it was to the point where I couldn't really.
Get it out.
And I think the convergence of the personal with the professional, with the societal and all that makes that psychological just you know, it hits walls. And then there's a point where, like there's some little microscopic leaks in the dam, and then those leaks become bigger and then there's the floodgates open. And so I spent probably I had three like therapy appointments within a twenty four hour period this week and really just trying to wrap my mind around that everything
that's happening. But I had, like I don't know if you guys have ever done like tapping or therapy where they encourage you to like scream into a pillow. And I didn't scream into a pillow. I was in the mirror in the bathroom and just like was feeling like I was breaking. And then I was mad at myself because I immediately knew. I was like, goddamn it, now you hurt yourself, you know, like I knew, like it was so like the thing that's supposed to provide relief also caused harm.
And so where you're in this environment where.
The things that you typically would go to, the places that you would go, the people you would speak to, the programs that you would watch, the spots lives in DC, the spots where you would normally go that are safe, all of that is ruptured. All of that is in upheaval and so having the control issues that I have not being able to provide safety there, you know, again, like we're taking some small steps with my mom's chemo where she's taking a break from chemo for a couple of weeks.
She fail.
I hope, Mommy, I'm sorry, I'm telling your business, but she fail. We were walking in the house the week before last getting as I E.
Bowls, and I was like, oh, I should have been walking with her.
But there are these things we do around control where we think that that control role is the same as safety, and really that form of safety is illusory. And then does that mean that the type of peace that we lean up up against is also illusory? And so then the question becomes what really is safety and what really
is peace? And how can you really, you know, from the biblical concept, guard your mind when all of the people and the things and the places and every other type of nown you lean up against is compromised or.
Destroyed or whatever.
And I think there's just something about that that is really deeply unsettling for me, and I think from a psychological standpoint, this week it just came to a head, like it's like like I'm supposed to be able to count on you, you know, or like how betrayal feels it. I just feel like we're being betrayed on every side, and that of course conflicts with my with what I think safety in peace.
Yeah, you know, the enemy Angela's I know, you know, you know, the warfare is in the spirit and in the mind, right if if if, if, if we can be if we if our mind can be overcome, which obviously I find sort of fine sibling to the spirit. Right, I do have thoughtful mind by which you know things have vetted through. We all do. But also my mind
is very much so connected to my spirit. Right, what I'm thinking about manifests itself, you know, then in a spiritual form and then this metaphysical and then the physical form it shows up, right, and the way we stop eating, and the way in which we present, and you know, throughout our best efforts still gets sort of dragged into the place where we don't want to portray ourselves as right, especially Angela, as you are so often and the lead in so many plays, So your comportment and how you
present often becomes what others then adopt. Right, It gives them courage, It stiffens their spine. And the truth is is like that's a weight too heavy for any one person to be three sixty five twenty four seven period. I know I felt it in my own life. I know on the listener side, because they give us feedback, I know that they feel it, and I I don't know. I don't know about how you cope with it, Tiff
and you Angela. But a practice that at least I've come into more regular interaction with is grace, like the backing off the judgment of myself what I did, How this could have been managed? How d da da da da dad? To read the constant replaying and replaying and rewinding that you know, spin rent cycle, you know that we're often on around these incidences is just robbing us of so much. And if some you know, wouldn't we all love if somebody gave us the secret route around?
And I think part of the secret route around is like those things are insignificant to the bigger and that if we could, if we could stay our mind and our spirit on this bigger thing and remove all of these obstructions that are really designed to keep us from the promise, how much better it would In the long run be and that's a hard thing to accomplish when you're in the in the flow of it. So experiencing the flow as a good person and a good friend of both of us once said Angela that it doesn't
mean that we don't get impacted by those things. Those things will still impact us. What we're hopeful for is that, through our earned wisdom and lived experience, that our recovery time will be quicker. So the thing that used to put me out for a week now puts me out for an hour, and then I'm recovered, and I'm now putting into place the practices that get me back on mine rather than off kilter. I'm now back on kilter. So it's not the promise isn't that you won't get
off kilter. The promise is that you hope that the next time you're off, your ability to respond and to get back on becomes that much more quicker than it was before, ultimately to the point where the stuff that used to move you in those ways that used to
throw you off don't even didn't pierce you anymore. That's what I'm practicing and experimenting with is just the idea of how do I put the things that I know that I know that I know can work when practiced, and practice cansistently when that becomes part of my default, rather than me having to reach for it and find it every time, when it's becomes part of my natural default such to the point that I can't get thrown
the way that I was throw before. A different thing is happening in me now, and therefore my ability to put it all back together is going to be that much quicker than it was before, and so on and so forth.
Well, thank you Angela for sharing that, because I think it's such an example that it makes me feel less alone on the island, and I hope it makes our viewers, our our our audience feel less alone. I talked a bit last week about this immersive therapy that I did, and I'm sharing that because I don't want people to think. You know, sometimes you hear people where they're like, I've achieved this nirvana and you know, I've gotten here, and
I would wonder like, but how like what specifically? And it's like, oh, I did daily meditation, and you know, yes, I have tried those things, but this was a chemically immersive therapy session. I won't say too much about it because I don't want to encourage or discourage anything.
But it is.
In trials places and if you all follow, like Sonzi gup Or, I've been reading about things, there are different things that people have tried to almost rewire your brain. So I did that level of immersive therapy. And the reason I did is because I felt anxious. I felt a sadness that was in the depths of my spirit. It wasn't in this human body. It was like in my spirit that I still feel it, and I wanted
to try to go inward and pierce that. And so when I hear you talk Angela about any one of the things that I personally know that you're dealing with, would command all my attention and my energy. I could not, you know, juggle some of those things. And you know how I feel about just mothers and navigating all of that. And I've dealt with my mother, you know, battling cancer, and it just it stills you in such a way. It's just hard to explain if people haven't gone through that.
To see your mother in pain or see your mother going through things, I mean, it is just something that changes the fabric of who you are as a woman between mother and daughter, so I know what you feel. Even the memory of that just breaks my heart. So I'll say that and I think about the days will come that my mom is not with me. That thought breaks me and I won't be right for a while. I'm just telling y'all, I will not be right at all. And so when I think about that, it just consumes
my spirit, like really, everything in me. Send at her bedside broke me. It changed me forever. My mom and I have a challenging relationship, as I've talked about, but we after that, I just felt like there's not going to come a time where I don't speak to my mom, you know, like it's just this time here is too brief. What I took away in this immersive therapy, and that will I will tell you about offline because if you want to try it, I'm happy to have it.
It makes life.
See, this is what I'm talking about, Like politics seems so little to me. It just doesn't. It can't command my attention in the same way. Whatever is happening here right now can't command my attention in the same way because it's like this brief life expirit it's so quick, you know, it's so fleeting, and I can't I can't connect with things the same way it is. I saw
my spirit inhabit this human body. And so if you take you Angela, and it's like you lose your limbs, you lose your all, your all, your limbs, you lose your hair, you lose your eyelashes. Are you any less Angela? So then what is the thing that makes Angela Angela? It's that spirit and that is the most present thing that we have to protect. And so for me, I have made the decision to walk away from things, to walk away from people, to walk away from situations and
feelings with a lightness. And even now this sadness, it's a heaviness.
But I don't know.
I just feel like, oh, it's time for sadness. Now, Okay, sadness, I welcome you. I will feel this, I will let these tears flow, and then sadness will leave and I can say I'll see you again soon, and it's okay. So I can't explain how navigating that is, but I just want you to know I understand.
Yeah, I'm grateful for your share, Tiff. I think there are a lot of therapies now that people do. Some are more welcomed and received in like different parts of the country or different parts of the world, including like in South America that people go and especially from here, fly to do ayahuasca journeys. In South America. There's something called bouffo, which is toad medicine. There's and then there's something where they think it's like the traditional toad medicine.
It's like they scrape the top layer of toad. People smoke it. It's called boo. There's mushrooms people, do you know there's some some states. Yeah, there's of states that are there are states that are now approving the use of psychedelic mushrooms or psilocybin to help aid people in overcoming depression.
It works.
And so the other thing I would say is there's also a more chemical form of those treatments called ketamine, and people are also using those therapies as well as guided by psychologists. And what I would tell you guys is sometimes in order to protect your peace, you first have to find it. You might have got lost along the way, the foundation may have been disrupted, whatever it is. But I think this week what I realized what I
cried about. What I screamed about is I was like, how did I let myself get so far outside of my piece? Why did I allow that detachment to ever take place? And so then there's this guilt that you go through, and then you have to like, well, hopefully we can get to the place where we say, Okay, you did the best you could.
I'm just going you where we are.
But when I tell y'all, I have never I can't think of a time why I've ever felt so far outside of my body. I was like, I got we gotta reconnect, Like I don't know what happened. So that's why I was saying when we were talking about the shooting last week, there was a grief for me.
But the grief for me was like, how.
Could our people have poured so much into this country to still be so violently attacked, to still be called everything but a child of God, to still be trying
to find ways to disqualify our humanity. And I just there's something about it that's maddening to me in this moment, because of course we always know that there are people that think that way, but I just didn't think it was going to take such a foothold, and then I'm mad at myself that I didn't think it was going to take such a foothold, so there would be these I was just in these psychological loops where I'm like, well.
Of course it's that, but well, why did you not think that was gonna happen?
Well, of course, you know, So it was like that, and I think I just got to a point where I was like, ah, and I literally I am embarrassed that this is not a could or laryngitis.
This bitch was screaming.
I screamed my whole asshah, to the point where it sounds like this you scrumped, and I just I scrumpled. But it's can I ask, though, because I when I get to a breaking point, it is rarely what is happening in like Charlie Kirk is not going to be the thing that gets me to my breaking point.
You know.
It is it is like my mom, you know, it is family, It is my personal relationships, It is my career, It is my own self worth and value, like it
is the compression of all those things. And I'm just thinking about what so many black women are going through right now, being jobless without an income, raising kids without an income, trying to figure out not even retirement, trying to figure out next week, and especially who they're targeting, like you were the one who made it right, and so you still have family coming and you saying I want,
I need, can you would you mind? And you are depleting your own savings trying to make sure other people are okay, while everyone around you, not everyone, but everyone in this ruling class around you is somehow communicating to you that you don't belong, that you're not about them,
that you are in fact unworthy. So the innermost trauma that you spent your whole life trying to unlearn by getting the highest degree possible, by earning the six and seven figures, by wearing the Sergio Hudson, by taking the international trips, doing all those things, and then the world comes along and disrupts that at that moment, like that is a breaking point, And I wonder, are we breaking this earthly shell and letting our spirits float, or are
we letting them break our spirits? And sometimes for me it is my spirit is breaking, because even my own when it comes to issues. I'm writing about this as you all know, when it comes to issues of my value and my self worth. It's not like what white women talk about like, it's very different. It is different when a black woman questions her value and her self worth because there actually are people telling us our entire
lives that we have no value. When I question if I'm welcome somewhere, it's not what other people go through. It's like, no, yes, I have questioned in my childhood if I were welcome different places in home and schools. Yes, but this country has told me I am not welcome. And black kids every day walk through neighborhood where they're told they're not welcome. They're told they're not welcome by the dilapidated school they go to, they're told they're not
valued by the red lines and wrote down community. And then when white people move in and things start to change, and they think, oh, but white people came and the goodness came. What does that doing to the psyche of that child? And I just think about all these things that we carry as adults through childhood, generational trauma. ANDELI You've talked about that. I just I just feel like
that is the breaking point. Can you outside of Charlie Kirk, whatever you feel comfortable sharing what are the things that lead to your breaking point?
Yeah, And I'm so sorry if it sounded like I was saying Charlie Kirk. What I was saying is the people's response to us as if we had caused any of the harm, which it was just I felt it took me right back into black history. There was a brother I met last week, a Muslim brother who was found dead shortly after our meeting.
That shook me.
The number of people that needed some type of crisis support or response based on things they didn't do when they were just trying to do the right thing.
That shook me.
Just some personal conflict that came up that felt really, you know, awful.
And like, you know, what did I do to deserve this? Shook me and hurt.
And I think that there are things where, you know, I have an expectation that the people who loved me and who are closest to me and friends, family, et cetera, have some type of grace for what I'm trying to do right now, which is like I'm just trying to be obedient to the call, and I'm not quite sure all of the what the pillars are of that call. But when I feel misunderstood or misrepresented by those closest to me. That really hurts and feels like betrayal. And
I hate being lied too, in lied on. So I think it's, you know, the convergence of all those things that once for me is never the one thing either. Netta, my best friendly Nea always says like, you know, you don't have to wait till all of it hits the fan to come tell us, And I'm like, yeah, I don't, but I don't really even realize that stuff is hitting the fan and tell us nineteen things in there, and
I'm like, wait, you know, in complete overwhelm. It takes me to complete overwhelm before I have to say anything about help, you know, So hopefully that makes some sense. But yeah, I mean there's economic pressures, there's psychological pressures. There's the gas lighting that is on a micro and
a macro level. There is you know, I mean, all of my former bosses who are getting challenged their seats getting challenged in Congress so they can say this might have been the largest congressional Black caucus ever, but we about to make as small as was and when y'all founded it, Like, I don't under they're just things that I don't understand. So it's like, oh, we're just gonna wait till the midterms, Well do you know who gonna represent you when the midterms are over? You know, like
do you really even understand who's gonna be there. So there are things that, yes, they are political, but they're also an assault on black people that I just am holding like how dare y'all?
And I feel enraged.
I feel like, you know, maybe there's some way about the fight that I didn't go right, go go about it right, and I you know, want.
To study, like how do we get better? How do we sharpen?
You know, the conversations that we have even about the podcast, like what can we do differently? I'm like, tell us, let's grow, let's get better, because I think that there are people we could save lives, you know, we can we can provide an opportunity for somebody to have more hope, to realize it's gonna be okay or not, and figure out how we survive it even when it's horrible. I just I feel a lot of pressure and I think that the you know, maybe the Damns broke.
I don't know where are you?
Andrew because sometimes you come in very professorial, and you know, it's almost like you're giving you know, like like you've achieved your given advice. And I just wonder because I feel disconnected from a lot.
Of experimental Yeah, yeah, experimenting with I I completely relate to warring on every side right now. I don't do well. I don't do well in the sort of individual instances, and I also don't do well with the damn breaking of the dam bridging, the breaking, you know, so they are the individual things that just add up. It's the sum total of it all, like my breaking. I was thinking about when you asked Angela, what is that thing that sort of you know, where you find yourself just exploding?
And for me, that explosion often comes in the smallest, most insignificant thing that ever was. It's my kid forgetting to put the backpack on the ring and now it's on the kitchen floor underneath the stool, and I'm I just jamm my toe and I'm angry about it. But I'm not really angry about that. I'm angry about all the others. Yeah, you know that's going on. So the point that it reaches a culmination is rarely ever, in the moment of the of the of the break, that's
that's not that that's the thing I'm leeing. I wish that were my worry. It's all the other stuff that's that's the worry. But I don't mean to come off professorial about why I think sh.
Wise.
I think I'm experimenting with some things that keep me inside myself while I'm going through rather than vacating my body and everything I know, vacating the person I am to just to deal with this thing, to deal with the culbination of these things. I just think we can't eat an elephant hole. I gotta take this thing bite by bite. I can only do what I can do, which is a whole different level of grace I'm giving to myself that I didn't afford myself and most of
my lived you know, experienced on this earth. I've always been my harshest critic. I've always been the principle that I never wanted to be in the office of because I know how tough I am on myself and how judgmental I am on myself, much more than I am on the people around me, much more than I am than with the people greats comes to me very easily for a lot of other people, it's for myself that I deprive understanding. It's for myself that I lodge the
greatest judgment. It's toward myself that I hate the most when things aren't going right. It's me that I judge the worst. When two plus two ain't equal and four but it's two. How does that math work?
Right?
So I think, now, you know, I think Arjie probably thinks I'm just I'd like to become an antisocial person with everything in our lives, and I have to balance that in some ways. But more than anything, it is I don't want to be in a place anymore where I've got to compromise any one side of myself to fit. So I'm not going where I'm also not giving people the power to grant me permission for an invitation. I'm not giving people power to grant you know, validation on anything.
It's partly why some of what I deal with around sort of external comments and people's reactions to things is that it's like I can't I can't then hold myself because I'm holding everything everybody else and their thing, And then what does that do? It leaves me empty. It leaves me filling the abandonment and so okay, if nobody else can tend to it, I'm gonna tend to me.
You know.
It's like the past is saying when he's given the preach word, if you can't say you know, I will amen myself on this if the world isn't giving it to me. And now it's like increasingly whatever the world is going to do is going to do yeah, And I've got to hold me.
Yeah.
And if something else comes along to hold then it's icing on the cake. But I gotta be for me. If ain't nobody else gonna be it. If I don't feel it for anybody else, I gotta feel it for myself. And I guess getting to that level of depravity if you will, a feeling so empty of that thing for so long from every side, rather than saying this life isn't worth it, it's like I'm worth it. Yeah, I do deserve that. And if I'm tired, go take a nap. Yeah, I can have that and release the judgment. But I
don't want to go to the party. It ain't because I don't like people, because I don't really want to be around that. Yes, yeah, so no, I haven't figured any of it out. There's a lot of experimenting and daring to experiment and being blessed by space and maybe a little bit of time to experiment. But no, all the stuff that's raining down on everybody else is raining down on me too. But I want to master a better technique for how to how to make it to the other side.
Well, you definitely given me when I've come to you with things you do. It is somewhat like of a professorial statement that rings very true to me. I remember we were eating at our spot in New York at Serafina.
Since wells.
Well, but you were telling me like basically, do what feels good to you, you know, and so to hear you say like yeah, like sometimes our value can be so caught up into how we are living in service to others, and so I that I think that's the challenge for me right now because I feel so disconnected.
That's why I wanted to know any of your specific examples, like what are the things that bregett I think you were saying, Charlie Kirk, but everything that happened around that, you know, the response and everything or I felt so disconnected from it, you know, I was looking at it like, stay so dumb, you know it hurts, But it was the thing that was like, the things that are breaking
me are just a piercing heartbreak of so much. But heartbreak is the only term I can think, nothing about our politics, not you know that I kind of anticipate, but just this heartbreak and that there's nobody who can kind of help you through that heartbreak, but navigating heartbreak and isolation and the only way out is through. So you just have to keep getting pierced over and over, walking through memory and letting time do what it does.
And it is just the hardest feeling while navigating other things. So I really think that this conversation, what you guys share, what we're all going through, is so reflective of what so many other people are going through. And so I feel privileged to day to be a part of this conversation. And I hope that our authenticity around what we're sharing
resonates with people. And I hope beyond resonating with you as an individual, but I hope that you all will have your own cells of safe spaces where you can talk about this and when you can't because sometimes I don't have that cell. And it's not because people aren't available to me, it's because I want to. I don't feel good about putting this in someone else's hands when I haven't worked through it myself. And so that's what that immersive therapy helped me do. Create a safe space
within myself or I got to push myself out. Sometimes it's like, no, you are going to go to dinner tonight with your girlfriends because that's just what it is, you know. So I hope that this has created some sort of safe space for other people to just listen to it. And if that safe space is within yourself, I hope we tapped into something. I still feel heartbroken, I still feel sad, but it's like it feels lighter,
a little lighter. It's like when you shake a bottle up and all the bubbles and you open it all I once it explodes, I feel like today we loosen the bottle a little bit, let some of the era and what we're all navigating different things and challenges and roads. But it let a little bit of the air out of the bottle.
Well.
The Great Professor Cardi b this week also helped me I want to say, but yes, you know it just I just think she's the greatest human. I can't wait for the conversation. Yeah, yeah, I mean it is.
We're gonna try to get her on soon. Y'all go watch that, and we know we got to wrap up our mini. Yeah, it's been a mega but thank you.
All the things, Thank y'all for joining us. As always, as we say all the time, we know that your time is precious and how you spend it, especially when you choose us, means a lot. So we'll catch you on this other side of this heartbreaking pain. Push through, everybody, and we'll see you. Welcome home. Native Lampard is a
production of iHeartRadio in partnership with reisent Choice Media. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.