Give Up the Grind

founders for Black Sisters Magic. We have a conversation today about wellness, about what it means to detach ourselves from grind and hustle culture and sing right and reading ourselves from the guilt of needing to and wanting to rest. I know that I've talked about this with you all many a times where I feel guilty. I feel guilty

taking time off. I feel guilty being in my home and not doing something, whether it is picking up something or folding something or putting things away like just laying down. I feel like I should be doing something. And that is because of the lie that we have been told, particularly as black and brown people, that our only, our only worth is through what it is that we produce, and when you think about why we were brought here and for what function it was to serve, it was

to be human machines. And so you continue to grow mind, and then we create an entire society of bullshit that tells us that if we seek rest, that we're being self indulgent or we're being lazy, and that if you are not booked and busy, if you are not telling everybody like, oh my god, I'm so exhausted. And this is something that I learned in twenty twenty, which is

that exhaustion is not a badge of fucking honor. Right, And Risci Cat will talk to us about a phrase that I had never heard of until she mentioned it in our conversation, which is weathering. You know, there is always this joke in the black community about how black doesn't crack, about how you can look at a black woman who may in fact be sixty years old, but look damn near twenty five, And that's always the joke.

But the term weathering that she will tell us about happens on the inside from the stress, from the anxiety, from the grief, from the trauma that wears us down, and now our life expectancy is becoming less not more so. While we may be holding things together on the outside, we are literally crumbling on the inside. And so when we start to think and reprogram ourselves from the desire to just keep grinding ourselves into the ground into pulp.

You know, I had a conversation with another friend of mine who said, you spend sixty five years right roughly right, You not from birth, you're not working from birth, but you know you start going to school. But from the age of let's say twenty eighteen right to sixty five, you are working, right, because that is the arbitrary age that America has decided that you can not work. And then we will give you some of the money that

you've put into the system back to you. And if your life expectancy, think about this is at what maybe maybe it's seventy five, maybe it's eighty. By the time that you have the ability to rest, you are either sick right, exhausted, can't move, broken down because you've given everything, every bit of yourself to capitalism, right to the grind,

to somebody else's company, organization, and nothing to yourself. And so if we don't begin to reprogram ourselves, to strip away the guilt, to find ways to rest and to restore and to recharge. Then we are going to see not only is everything around us crumbling, but we will crumble as well. So I hope that you enjoy this conversation with my friend Risci Cat. Tell me in the comments section if you've heard of the term weathering, because I had not, and I'd love to hear where you

heard it and what that definition was. So coming up is that conversation, and I hope you all enjoy. Friends. I am so excited to welcome back to willke af Daily after far too long. Frankly, my friend, the brilliant Risci Cat Okaday, who is a professor cultural architect, co founder strobe Apothecary, which, by the way, if you're not following on Instagram you absolutely should be um, as well as the co founder of Black Magic Sisters, also on Instagram,

UM that you should be following as well. Rissy. Um. You know, we are living in some god awful, precarious, some end of days type shit, and so before we jump in, I just want to ask you, you know, as my friend you know and and fellow sister in Black girl Magic, How are you doing? How are you feeling these days? So today is a good day. Um, I made soup. So I was really excited about that. I was like, you know what, the day is the day that I stopped letting the butternut squash and my friends,

you know, die and to make it into sup. So I did that. Um, it's been rough. It's been really rough. Um, you know, we it's a dumpster fire that we're living in. And I feel like what I suspect those artists and those intellectuals when Ancient Rome was coming to an end, Like I feel like we're watching that happen with this country. It's this existential crisis almost like well shit, what the hell is this gonna look like? You know? Um? So, yeah,

it's been a bit rough. You know. I just released I started the podcast back up, and I knew I couldn't start the new season without talking about the loss of my friend Simone Briziando, And so I was such a nervous rut getting that thing together and putting it out into the world because I was just like, I don't even remember what I said. I just knew I had to do it. And so that has kind of opened up some things, and it's just been you know, it's just it's been a lot of sleep. I've been

sleeping a lot and making soup. So it's it's funny that you say that because I, you know, all the time on woke AF I've been talking, you know, to the listeners about the importance of rest, the importance of recharging, the importance of grounding. And you know, I always think about you, Riscie. I have to say, because I can remember fifteen some odd years ago you telling me about grounding, you telling me that rest, and me really rolling my eyes that you talking about I don't have really, I

don't have time for that. You know, I'm politicking and I'm doing the things I don't have time for that. And now recognizing that, oh big sister was correct in the fact that, oh, these tools and tactics, then I'm telling you, dear young Danielle that you need to implement are important like they you know, they are life saving. Um,

how do you? How have you? You know? And to be fair to wait and to be fair I have to do mean to cut you off, but to be fair in a true Nigerian fashion, I give unsolicited advice all the time that I myself to be taken, but I don't always take so while when I'm telling you, I'm telling me too, just I just want to be fair. No that I mean that is true. I give it

wonderful advice to be bold. Man, I do not take myself namely rest right like, namely actually trying these days when I tell people to take time for themselves, when I tell people to figure out what tactics, and this is what I want to talk about right now, is that you know, because everything is such a dumpster fire, because it doesn't look like regardless of if you're a person that readily follows politics or not, everything everything seems

to be up for grabs and up in smoke. Right now, I want to talk to you about how one develops these tactics and principles of living that where that allows you to both recognize what's transpiring but not become consumed by it. So how how did you, you know, just begin to begin that begin these practices, you know, as a way to kind of help guide other people that are just like I don't know what to do. I just want to pull my hair out or I just

want to drink myself into a stupor. I just want to do these things that at the end of the day have negative impacts right on us. And so, you know, it's all good and fine. My mother had been telling me to meditate for you know, for for fifteen twenty years, and I just started a practice in twenty twenty. So

what does that look like for you? So I think part of what we have to do, I think it looks like so I am on a I'm on a constant journey of you know, stay, watch, dry, repeat, you know, just trying to figure out what's gonna say, what's gonna go In terms of my daily practice, I'm you know, it's it's inner miss depends on the day. I do think though, part of what particularly black and brown folks were actually members of the global majority, who are you know,

part of a working class situation? Rest has been weaponized against us. It has been made to feel like if you sleep too much, if you rest too much, if you weep in that you're lazy. Like I had to tell a niece, a friend, a cousin of mine recently, She's like, yeah, I've just been really tired and I just feel really lazy. I was like, You're not allowed to use that word anymore. We're not going to use lazy as a word to describe who you are, because

you're anything but that. And what happens is that is a particularly an African household, that is a word that is weaponized at all times. The wing you never want to be considered is lazy. But you know, most of us then don't really rest until we're sick or dying as a result, I don't remember sleeping in as a kid. My first sleeping in experience happened while I was away at college. I'd never actually slept in. I didn't know what that meant to stay in bed longer than you

know the rising time. And so part of what I've had to do is I've had to understand how my relationship with rest is really a big part of like a larger conditioning that is big, that is anti black in a lot of ways, colonial in a lot of ways, and dangerous across the board. My body is a barometer, and what I've learned in these pasts, and particularly in this pandemic madness, is that I don't know what my body looks like unstressed. I've been stressed most of my life.

Even as a kid, I had stress because I was a latchkey kid. And so when I do get sleep, it shows up in my body a bit differently. Now I've been conditioned to believe that I don't need much sleep, Like I I will run for you know, for weeks on three four hours a night. You know. Science says that shit is insane. You're not supposed to be able to do that, but I've learned how to do that because of this mentality around, you know, struggle and hustle and all of these things like you know, sleep when

I'm dead. I used to say shit like that, and that's not dumb, but what it is I supposed to be the grind culture, you know, And when you think about what a grind is, you're literally pulverizing yourself into dusty bits. That's not cute. And so what I've had to do, and I started doing this probably about ten or fifteen years ago, not so much resting, but understanding language first. So I stopped saying grind. I stopped saying multiple jobs, like I tell people multiple streams of income,

not multiple jobs. You know. I say, I don't grind, I don't hustle. I just do and when you change the language, I think that's how you open the door to understand that staying still resting, because it's something I struggle with all the time, is really necessary. It's actually part of the growth process to rest and really and sort of you know, think about what did you do, how well did you do it? What could you change? Like if there's never if there's never rest, if you

don't rest, there's no time for reflection. So if you're only sleeping because your body absolutely you need to do, then you're not actually reflecting on what you've actually accomplished. And one of the things the pandemic has brought into very harsh light for me is how my tendency towards multiple things at the same time, which gives me joy.

I don't have rest built into those spaces. So it hit me a couple weeks ago it's like, Yo, I've been doing this really dope shit and I haven't really had a chance to actually stop and be like, Yo, you're doing really dope shit. So there's no place for reflection. It's just on to the next because that's part of my conditioning. So language is language shift is important because

if you don't shift your language. If you don't under stand that rest doesn't mean stop, it just means reflect, then rest feels like, oh, you're trying to hold me down, you're not trying to let me be great. And I'm like, no, really, can you just take a minute to think about all the dope shit you did and kind of basking that

for a little bit. It's okay to you know, to celebrate that win by you know, taking a week off to just sleep, And it's okay if you sleep through a whole bunch of stuff, you know, it's absolutely fine.

So really kind of thinking about how racism and all the other isms, particularly for black women, how it is it's keeping a sleep deprived because Black women especially are made to feel like if they're not doing this that in third and you know, still and still looking cute on top of all of that, that they're somehow failing. And the reality is that there's a term called weathering that is a medical term for what happens to our bodies on the inside as a result of of stress.

And while black does not crack on the outside, somebody can be like, you know, fifteen, it looked like twenty five on the inside. They're now starting to see that black women are aging fashion than everyone else on the inside, which is why people are dropping dead. A heart attacks at like forty five. You know, may look good right the inside your body is, Oh, this is a bullshit, And you know what we're done? You know you said so.

I mean so many things, and I want to backtrack to one of them, which is about unpacking racism around rest for black and brown people in particular, and I, you know, I want to speak to that for a moment because even though this is still a new practice to me, it's twenty twenty one, and this is something, you know, resting, reflecting, recharging is something that I have only been really doing over the last like year plus. Right before that, if I wasn't hustling, if I wasn't grinding,

then I wasn't making shit happen, right. I am still struggling a year plus into this new sense of this new sense of rest as a way to kind of delve into my creativity. I'm still struggling with the guilt

around it. Received Like I cannot tell you that even you know, even over the over the you know, the recent holiday of you know, taking time off of taking time off of the show, taking time off of writing, and you know, but then record like jam packing and all of this recording and all of this stuff ahead of the rest time, so that I could leave the audience knowing that no, no, no no, I got you. You're taken care of, even after having done four days of

work in two days. Right, and I'm sitting getting ready to put my feet up on my parents couch. I'm like, you know, you really should be using this time more efficiently.

And whether like you are a person that was brought up in the church or not, you were taught that like idle hands are what like the devil's playground, So if you're sitting around the devil's play thing, so you're sitting around putting your feet up, And so I want to know, like, even even on the way to recognizing that we are conditioned, how do you unpack the guilt so that you can get to a place of rest. So that is hard. Um. I am a professor at

two schools. Um. I teach at Prince Church's Community College, and I was teach a boy state And I love teaching, but teaching takes up a lot of space in my head. Um, I am not particularly efficient when it comes to grading, because it requires me to sit still and that is just not one of my favorite things to do. It also requires me to because I'm I'm I'm an emotional and I'm an empathetic grader. So I remember what it was like being in classes with particularly white teachers who

made you feel like shit because of your writing. So when I grade, I'm grading from a place of let me grade with love, and so that takes me a lot longer, and it actually takes a lot out of me to grade like it's a it's a thing for me. And what happens is I had said on Thursday, I am going to dedicate that entire day to writing, because

That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to get all of my grading that I want to get done on Wednesday by Wednesday, and on Thursday, I am going to dedicate my entire day to writing because I have this essay that I just got to get out of me. Girl, when I tell you, Tuesday night, I was knocked out. I slept halfway through Friday though, slept halfway through Wednesday, slept all of Thursday, woke up just to eat something, slept most of Friday, so much so that I missed

one of my coaching sessions. That's how out of it I was. Slept on Saturday, did not grade a single damn thing. And there is a there is a guilt monster. One of my members, as I refer to them, is she's she's very much about keeping your word and setting deadlines. I'm a Sagittarius, but there is a little Virgo trying to get out of me that's driving me. She wants to do things on time and she wants to be linear. I was like, look, man, we can't do that. That's

not where we are. So that fact that fight is real, and I stress out all the time about what I'm not doing. It takes up a great deal of space. So I haven't I haven't figured out how to quell the noise. As much as I've said, okay, consequences be damned. If that means that I'm gonna give up two days on the other side of this to catch up for grading, and that's what I'm gonna do. But what I'm not

going to do is give up the sleep. So I don't think that it's an easy The guilt is gonna be there because it's a lot of conditioning that you gotta get through coming into that understanding a year or two years into it, when you're like plus thirty, that's a lot to go, that's a lot to shift. But what you can make a decision of is Okay, that little voice in your head is like, oh, we should

we do this, we should be doing that. All right, you can keep talking, but I'm gonna get this sleep, I'm gonna eat this pie, I'm gonna watch this Netflix because the rest of me needs the rest. And over time, what has happened for me is the voice is there, but it's not as loud as it used to be. So before I would be resting or hanging out and it'd be this constant worrying, like, oh, you should be home, you're not using this time. Wisi da da da da dah rah rah rah. Now what happens it's like, Hey,

are we gonna grade papers today? Nope? Okay, I'll try back a few hours. Hey, you know this might be a good time to do this. You want to do that? Nope? Okay. So it's a bit different. It's it's not the worrying that it used to be. And what happens really is that I've made a conscious decision that if that means if I'm sleeping on my couch for two days, then that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna trust that my body needs it, because what I have realized is that

our disconnection to rest. I'm very disconnected for my physical self. I live in my head and I live my higher self. I don't live in my body. So that's one of the reasons I'm able to function the way I do is because I don't really live in my body the way I should. I'm now the pandemic has forced me to live in my body, and it's like, what the hell is going on in here? This is a bit much like, oh my god, what have we done? What

if we allowed to happen? So living in my body now has become sort of the main focus, which means then that I'm aware of all of the swellings and the aches and the pains and the weight that wasn't there or that I've never felt before that I'm feeling now because I'm actually living in my body, and it's like, Okay, this is a mess and we need to we need to clear it up. And what I noticed is that when I don't sleep. That's when I feel heaviest. When I get rest, when I eat really good food, you know,

I don't feel as heavy. I feel lighter. So even the difference between you know, when I trained, I have a trainer that we do yoga when I when I that whole weekend, when I just slept from like Thursday on, when I sat in my meditative post on Monday, I actually felt like overall smaller pop. It was just different, like I was like, did I shrink? What is going on? And it's because I got rest. My my movements were a lot more fluid. I wasn't getting hemmed up in

certain poses. And it was really because my body's like, can we just please, I beg. We've we've done, We've done a lot, so let's just can we just sit? And so that this because my body speaks to me in a Nigi accent um. You know, it wants it wants to rest, it wants to sit. It's like, yo, I have been there for you this whole time, Like I've shown up, I've healed fast when you've torn through things, I have you know, accommodated for your love of cereal.

Even though your lactose intolerant, like I put up with a lot of stuff. I need you to do this for me. And so being in my body more has been, um, it's been traumatic. I'm not gonna lie. There have been some moments where it's been really traumatic. But what it what it is, what it is doing for me. It is helping me deal with that understanding that that guilt is conditioning, it's not truth. My body is truth. The

physicality of my body is truth. So my goal is to light in my body at all times and that means that whatever I need to do, that's what I'm

gonna do. Hopefully that answers your question. You know, it's Oh, it does, and it's and it's really interesting because you know, want what I have realized right over the past or over these where it headed into two years, it's been nineteen months that we've been living in this health pandemic that in this you know, in this close to two year time period, I too have felt more in my body and have wanted to be more in my body, whereas everything else prior was a place of this escape.

I don't have time to sit and meditate. I don't have time, you know, to be even even the exercises that I would do were in fact those that were pounding and of everything came from a place of aggression. And I realize now that that is a great point. It did that, it did, And I said, and it's just like the questions that I've been asking myself now is why, right whereas before I wouldn't even pause to ask the why. But it's like, why is everything so aggressive?

Why do you feel like you're running out of time? Why do you feel the need to beat yourself into submission instead of loving yourself into into that space of lightness?

And I think that for me, one of my most reflective moments over the past you know, almost two years has coming has really like coming to the stark realization that this world wants to kill people that like us, that they will do it in every single conceivable way and unimaginable way possible, and that I cannot, like, I cannot look at myself with the same aggression and forcefulness that the rest of the world sees me if I'm to survive it, and not just survive it, but get

to a place of genuine thriving, you know. And I say that to people because it's good, and I mean, go ahead, finish thought. No, he's gonna say I say that people, because you know what you said, we have an overlap ahead. I think it's a lag, so it is yeah, okay, okay, So when I tell you that that that thing just should What you just said shook

me to the core. I was because of how we look at our bodies, um and because of how black women's bodies I think absorb stress in particular, and the judgments that come with black women's bodies that go to the gym and run really hard and do all these things. My trainer and I we worked for a while and I was busting my ass in these sessions and I was like, I'm not seeing any results. This is like I'm tired, Like why am I doing bear claws for what freaking reason? Why am I doing this to myself?

And I did. I was doing some research and I'm a woman of a certain age. So what's happening is that you know the stress hormones. I'm just saying, I know what I look like, but I know if you if you slice me open, you count the rings, it's a completely different number. But what happens is that as we as we stress out, we build these stress hormones called us all. A lot of people are familiar with that. So, like,

I have a stress body. And so one of the things that you learn is that aggressive exercise is actually not good for people who produce too much cortisol. Like what you're supposed to do, what I should be doing is walking three miles a day. Like if I just walked three miles a day for a month, my body composition would would shift. And so I told him, I was like, yo, I don't want to do these aggressive

exercises anymore. Like we had started doing yoga one of the three sessions, and I really liked how I felt in my body when I did the yoga sessions versus the other two. And I had to really build up the confidence to say, you know what, I don't want to do those exercises anymore because I didn't want him to think that I was like copying out because the conditioning is telling me that, oh, woa, you're lazy. You're not you're not trying to do this, You're not serious.

But it's like no, my body's like, well, I don't want to do this. We like yoga. Can't we just do yoga. So that's what I've been doing, and it's like the best love letter to yourself, you know, gentle movement, you know, because everything that I've done it's been aggressive, Like I wake up and it's like, let's go. Because my mother when I was a kid, she would never

let us sleep in. When you wake up, She's like, don't you know, move You don't sit in bed, you don't think about it, just get up, you get dressed, you move when your day starts. The day starts almost like it was almost military in a way that she that the way she raised this. And so when I do get up, it's like, let's go. But now what I'm learning to do is like stay in bed a

little bit longer. You know, I've created a life where I don't necessarily have to get up at the crack of dawn because as an African, we assume crack of dawn means that's when the day starts, you know what I'm saying. So even the way we associate our time with how much light we have, you know, some of that is DNA. Like you know, if I was a farmer, if I come from a family of farmers, daybreak, you you gotta be up. There's things that need to be done. But I'm like, I'm not a farmer. I don't have

a farm. I actually am a suburban dweller, actually a suburban dweller who was a teacher and who was an artist. I am not planting yams in the back. I don't need to get up at four o'clock in the morning unless I absolutely fine and getting up at four o'clock in the morning helpful. So some of it is the word the languages that we use, but some of it is also just even making that decision to shift to a different way of moving and not every like somebody

made a good point. I was researching um traditional yoga as it was done in India. In terms of the way it was practiced, it's very different from this capitalistic Lulu lemon esque approach that we have in the States, and it has kind of changed the way yoga is like yoga and now the way that yoga has become sort of monetized, it doesn't it's it's it's it's turned been turned into like an aggressive workout, which is not

what it that's not what it's supposed to do. So working with people who understand the real foundation of what yoga is supposed to look like, and understand that like real yogis don't look like finally tone you know, you know fitness models that they look like regular human beings, you know, who have a lot of longevity because they're not weathering on the end inside. So that's the focus, that's the goal. And I think what you know, when you said that point about moving away from us like

pounding and running and all of that. I like to run. I actually enjoy running now because I've learned how to do it. But just me jumping up and down in my house, you know, doing craziness, I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. And so when I've

made the decision, I shifted like a whole mindset. And even my trainer was like, yo, this three times a week is he's actually because he does it with me, he's actually found it much more beneficial because he has to create whatever the rounds we're going to do, he creates that. So he's like, you know, one of we

give thanks at the end of a session. He's like, I'm just thankful because if you I'm doing yoga three times a week and That's something I never would have you know, outside of a teaching space, I wouldn't have got to do that for myself. So yeah, I do think it's important for us to think about how we how we use our bodies, and when you're in your body, you know, letting it be the barometer that it's meant to be. It will tell you what it likes and

what it doesn't like. You know. You know, after now this time of you reconnecting with your body and being in your body and feeling this lightness, how has that helped you with your creativity? How has that helped you delve further into your art? It's actually asking me to do to think about myself a little bit more expansively. My art traditionally is in bringing people together. It's experiences like that's the first place that I think my creativity.

I'm always like, yo, let's get together, let's grab people. I'm always gathering folk, and so the pandemic forced me to really reconsider, like what what that could possibly look like. I don't like zoom get Together. I absolutely hate them. And you know, I'll do things through Zoom because I have to, But you know, I get invited to really sweet zoom parties all the time, and I just decline because I don't That's not how I want to enjoy people.

And I'm willing to wait until we can all be together. Um, the zoom just feels like for me, it just doesn't. It doesn't feel good in my body to be sitting here having an animated conversation with someone I love via zoom just feels like I need to be on a couch with some cocoa, you know, prograp you know, feed on top of each other, talking and like, you know,

all of that. So, um, my art has you know, what has happened is some of the things that I've been doing digitally or things that I play around with, things that I used to to do as as because I needed to create something for whatever I was doing. I'm now re examining as art and I'm sharing a little bit of the things that I'm doing, and it's you know, I'm getting some really great feedback. I think artists, you know, especially visual artists, because I work with fine

arts artists. I'm loath to refer to myself as such because these people have put in years and years of practice. But that's the condition, you know, what I'm saying, that's part of the conditioning that I have to fight. And so being in my body has really helped me see myself differently, Like I actually like this training this week this morning, and I actually positioned to have a mirror

that's like a carousel. I never look at myself in the mirror, Like that's something I've never actually been a fan of, Like I would, you know, one of the biggest complaints my friends always have, like you have no mirrors in the house, Like, you know, how do you know if your clothes look right? I was like, I just go by field. So I now have this full length mirror, and I've been forcing myself to look at myself. And so I was watching myself pull out a tiger pose.

It was called tiger pose, and I was like, oh my god, you're such a badass. Like I had a moment while I was looking at my body. My body was like see and I was like, you're right, and it was this really beautiful moment. And so being in my body is helping me see myself more expansively. And it's also while I've never felt like I had limitations, it's making me more courageous to like put stuff out there. I'm somebody who will create a whole bunch of stuff

and nobody will ever see it. And now I'm feeling like, yo, I'm going to throw it out there and see what people, you know, whether they like it or not, because I'm doing it for me, you know, it's a win regardless. So I am trying more things, and you know, ideas that I've been sitting in my head, I'm actually pulling them out and like sketching, and it's just being in your body. It changes how you see the world because now you're you're processing things temporarily, You're not just processing

them in terms of how you see it. Like I'm literally energetically, you know, taking it all in, and I'm looking at my body and how it reacts and saying, Okay, this is why I like, this is why I don't. And it's just like it's like it's like discovering like you have like a seventh sense or something like an extra sense, or like all of a sudden you have an antenna that you didn't know that you had. So it's it's deep, like it's powerful because for me, it's

not based. It doesn't matter what my outside looks like like I'm not concerned with that. I'm really concerned with with what's going on inside because I want to be here for as long as I possibly can. Yeah, and I also want to be here in a way where I can move, Like I don't want to be like I want to be the seventy year old woman who rocks a heel high, you know what I'm saying, Like that's one of my goals. I don't necessarily want to

be here. And my body's not working, so doing yoga, paying attention, like I'm catching things that I normally wouldn't catch, you know, so I'm able to like, oh, okay, I need to drink more water. Things are feeling a little tight here. What's going on there? You know? I need to do this. So it's it's a good thing, you know, And in a lot of ways, it's like a silver

lining in terms of what the pandemic has brought. Like there's a lot of terribleness that has come with the pandemic, but there are so many silver linings in terms of self evaluation, um just you know, emotional intelligence, how you engage with you, with the people around you. It's it's been really it's been it's been a lot, but it's been that kind of good, like, Okay, by the time we are fully done with this, I will actually be a better person, you know, And that's that's the part

that I'm excited about. I think that that, to me, has been one of the most beautiful I say that this has been a beautiful mess, right. That has been a beautiful part of this, of the entirety of this journey is recognizing that I feel more like myself now than I did in twenty nineteen than I did in twenty eighteen. And yet you know, if you look back, there wasn't There was a different type of angst and a different type of anxiety. But I feel more in

my skin than I do now. Before I let you go, Rissie, please, you know, what is your advice to people who are listening to this conversation and they are thinking to themselves, yeah, that sounds nice, but like it's way too hard and I can't do that. What advice do you have to that person who you know they're listening to this and they're saying, you know what, I want to get into this journey. I want to continue on this journey that I'm fearful of. But this nagging voice is telling them,

don't do it. It's too much. Right, So I cuts at that little voice when she starts to get a little crazy, I'm like, look, you're gonna shut your ass up. Not doing this with you today. You can talk back, you know what I'm saying. When the voices are trying to get at you like, oh it's too hard, it is too much, you can be like, nah, man, I'm doing this. And I think for me, the biggest what I would say to someone what I well, there's two things. Part one is if you believe that you can't, then

you're right. Like if you're if you've listened to all of this and you walk away saying, oh I don't I don't know if I could do that, then you're right and it stops there. If you want to do different, like, it's not about better, it's about different. If you want to do different, pick one thing. The way I started

was I realized how dehydrated I was. I didn't realize how dehydrated I was until I saw you know, I went and saw a friend and she was like, you just look like you aren't drinking enough water to just start by drinking water. Like it sounds crazy, but like if you can start with just committing to like I wake up in the morning, I do oil pulling with sessame oil. It's an aguvatic thing. It's a great way to kind of pull all the taxins out of your mouth before you brush. And then I have a really

big glass of water and water in the morning. I don't think we realize how important water is, but water in the morning, it just that's the day. Like it's just like, okay, it's like an evolution. It's like a blessing to be able to have that water in the morning. And when I do that. The next thing I'm learning to do is I kind of sit and I say, Okay, what do I want my data look like? And there's no shame or harm if you don't get everything done.

But I think about what I want my data look like, and I think about how I want to feel at the end of the day. And so if it's like I just want to be productive, what productive looks like. It could be that I cleaned out my closet. It could be that you know, I, you know, cleared some old, you know, expired food out of my fridge, whatever productive

feels like. So what I would say to anyone who wants to try something different is understand that everything that we're thinking about what we can't do is part of the conditioning. There's a great conditioning that we have to we have to pull out of, you know, we have to we have to kind of pull away from. So when you say, oh, I can't do it, what does that actually mean? Because physically you can unless you can't, and if there's a physical limitation, then find something else.

But a lot of what we say we can't do is conditioning. And the mind is a powerful thing. So if your brain says if you say I can't do it, and your brain accepts it, then it's true you can't. And I know that kind of that might sound flippant to someone who's like, what the hell's all about, but

it really does boil down to that. You know, I teach students all the time, and they I spend a lot of time trying to decondition my students from thinking they're terrible writers because they had that one bad experience with a teacher. Yeah, it's like, no, you can write. Everybody can write. You know what I'm saying you just have to figure out how to make sure you're saying what you want to say in your voice. So I

would say to anyone, just start with morning. Just start with morning water, because I don't know what it is about that first drink in the morning. It literally kind of it's like this cool sort of wash of everything, and it really says to me, new day, new opportunities, Let's go. And then I just go and I celebrate. Yeah, and I celebrate. I sell it. I mean, I made soup. I feel really good about the fact that I made soup.

I'm so proud of myself because I do, because I mean, that's that's one less thing that's spoiled in the fridge. You know, I'm picking up my nephew soon and so he'll have something to eat. But I actually spent time and I cooked for myself. I get I'm gonna give my body food that I'm made, and so that is that's a powerful symbol of love to one's self, is to cook for oneself. And so yeah, it all started with that drink of water. I had the drink of water, and I thought about what I wanted the day to

look like. I knew it was on my calendar, but I thought about how did I want to feel? And I'm telling you today has been a really good day. It really apps and not always gonna be this great. But that water, that water makes a huge It's just a beautiful reset to try it. Try the water and tell us what, tell us what happens when you drink the water in the morning. I love it so much. Riscie got okay day. Thank you so much for making

the time to join Willkate app daily. Folks, if you're not following Strobe Apothecary on Instagram as well as a Black Sister Magic, please do follow them. Riscie is creating just beautiful energy and beauty and art into the world and and and you should all connect with it. Thank you, my dear friend. I appreciate you. Thank you for having me. It's always an honor. I'm so proud of you. You seem to have been you're you're being like the water, and I can hear it in your podcast, like you're

you're you're you're managing things a lot better. So I'm excited because I was worried child, you know, I was worried for you, Like what is some baby? Do it? It's just true. It's true. That is it for me today here on Woke f As always, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.