Interrogate Your Feelings

relationships that we have is just foolish. And so I say all that to say that what woke AF is and what I'm hoping woke F becomes and expands into, is a conversation about how we live more consciously, how we love more consciously, both ourselves and in the relationships that we have with the people around us, whether they

be platonic or intimate relationships or romantically intimate relationships. Because, as you will see in my conversation with our returning guest and friend, doctor Jen M. Jackson, who is the co host of the podcast of That Black Couple and a writer and abolitionist and a columnist with That Teen Vogue, we will discuss that all relationships are intimate, and that we really need to understand our relationship to attachment right

and our relationship to ourselves. If we are to have healthy, happy, whole relationships, they only start from being healthy, happy and whole with ourselves. So we get in to really great, juicy conversation about love, what it means to love in the midst of a pandemic, what it means to have different relationship styles exist within one or multiple relationships, and how we navigate our truth and how we come to

the table with that truth. So I hope, folks, that you will take this entire episode as a woke moment of wellness, as a check in right with yourself. We will talk about that as well. Are we checking in? Are we interrogating our feelings? Are we checking in with the partners that we have the relationships that we have on a regular basis. Right relationships, regardless of again how they stand in your life, require regular check in, regular conversation.

We're not the same person that we were at the beginning, the middle, or at the end, and so it's important to have those moments of solo reflection and group reflection so that we're creating the type of dynamic that allows us to be our most authentic, true, and vulnerable selves. So I hope, dear friends, on this Valentine's Day, that you can get into and enjoy the conversation with our friend, doctor Jen M. Jackson. Folks, I am very happy to welcome back to woke a f which doctor Jen Jackson.

I think that this is your third time. Oh, I'm so excited. Third time is a charm our, friend, abolitionist, writer, columnists at teen Vogue, and the co host of That Black That Black Couple podcast. Folks, doctor at Jen M. Jackson, thank you for making time to join us on this day, which is Valentine's Day, right where people have a lot of people have a complicated relationship to this very much manufactured Hallmark holiday that tells us that this is the

day for love. So apparently the other three hundred and sixty four days. I guess we don't have to really care. Nobody's expecting cards, candy or date nights. But I think that it's important for us, particularly in this time, still living in this global health pandemic, still living in this time of I don't know, racial reckoning, white supremacists on crack.

I have no idea but to marinate on love, on something different for a change, And so I want to open up our conversation today with you know, what are some of the challenges I guess that you have seen over the last two years, right of cohabitating? Uh, you know everyone, well not everyone, those of us that are privileged enough to work from home are working from home, UM, cohabitating and trying to keep our sanity but keep our love relationships intact. What has what have you seen? What

have you heard? UM as you navigate this this crazy space that we're in. Yeah, I mean it's really excuse me, it's really complex, right. I think that UM, at the beginning of the pandemic, toward the kind of in twenty we saw a lot of news stories and a lot of accounts from people who were saying that they felt

really strained because they were forced to cohabitate. So there was this narrative around UM being stuck in the house with one's partner UM, and a lot of relationships started to end in that moment where people were like, oh, wait, this is not a person I actually can see myself with UM long term. And frankly, I've actually seen a lot more of that, right, I've seen a lot of people who have not felt like you know, they have

they chose the right person. And I think that's actually this is going to sound really bad, and I feel bad already, but I think it's actually a good thing. Oh yeah, because yeah, I think people are choosing themselves, right. I think that the I think that the pandemic and being in quarantine and being isolated in certain ways has forced us to kind of sit with ourselves and to reflect on what we need as individuals so that we can make more thoughtful and intentional decisions about how we

want a couple and if we want a couple. I've had a lot of friends of mine, a lot of folks I interact with in the poly community, who are saying, you know, I think I'm done right now with dating. I don't want to do anything serious at all right now because I'm so focused on my own health and my own healing, my own work. So, you know, I think that love in this in this moment in particular,

is very very dynamic. Rights It's there's there's romantic love, there's platonic love, and then there's this inner self actualization self love that's happening that I'm really happy about as a person who I think last time I was on your show, I was with a partner who I'm not even with anymore, yes, right, yeah, yeah, And that relationship crashed and burned, and I'm fine with that, Like I

learned from it. Um, I went through a whole process of healing with that, and I'm in a new relationship right And I think that, Um, you know what I think people are taking from this momentum for those of us who've been in long term relationships who have stayed with the same partner through all all this, and those of us who have entered and exited and entered and exited, and some people who are agnostic about all of it, I think what the general know you is is that

you know, we have choices, and um, we are not hampered by the conditions of the world. We don't have to be in a relationship, we don't have to be coupling, we don't have to be dating. And so everyone I think that is thinking about this right now. People are overwhelmingly thinking about doing this whole love thing on their

own terms. And I like that. I'm really excited about what this looks like going forward so that people don't feel like they're obligated to show up, you know, and do the whole chocolates and flowers and this kind of date. And you know, like people are showing up on their own terms. And I think that's a good thing, you know. I love. I mean, there's so many things that you just said, so i'll you know, we'll unpack some of them, one of it being that love is very dynamic now

and and I really love that, right. I like that love is not something that happens to you. It is something that requires And I've been saying this a bit on Woke a F two similarly around joy, which is

that there needs to be an intentionality around it. Right. Um. You know, Hollywood and society has fed us a either one size fits all model, right, which is which is out, which is you know, very heteronormative, um, very very monogamous, right in terms of there's one person out there for you know, for you, and if you don't find that person by the time that you're thirty, you're some type of failure, right, And that the goal is for everybody

to walk down an aisle and exchange your ring. Um, And that there is a son, can we Yeah, let's dig into the to the the fact that love is dynamic, that there isn't just one prescribed way to love. And I think, you know, we had so many jen the last time that you were on, We had so many comments and questions from from listeners about you know, and and I was surprised because I thought that maybe there would be like a lot of judgment, and there was none.

It was more so questions about well, how does this work? And more and and and in the way. Even my own dad, who listens to the show, My dad was just like, so, how does this work? Like, you know, I get it. I get why two women want to be Obviously his daughter is a lesbian, so he's like, I get why two women want to be together, But like, why all the other people, you know, isn't she aren't they tired? Like that was my That was literally my dad. So talk to us about about about love being uh,

dynamic and not and not static. Yeah, you know that's always people are so explaining to me how does it work? That's always the question. So I never I'm never upset when that's the question, Um, you know, my tired. Yes, I'm exhausted. But it's not because my relationshous you know, Here's how I explain it is that you know, I'm a polyamorous person, and I've always been a polyamorous person. I've never been a monogamous because I've never understood monogamy.

So you know, I think because you know, I first fell in love with a girl when I was eight years old, and she was my best friend, and all I knew was that I wanted to go over her house and like do crafts with her and hug her

all the time and kiss her on the cheek. And you know, to me, that was the most innocent and most clear form of my expression of love for this person that I had I had experienced at that point, and so as I grew up, for me, these demarcations between like platonic love and romantic love, they weren't there because I felt romantic feelings at times. I felt platonic feelings at times for people. I was sometimes attracted to

people and other times not. And for me, that was my body telling me, you know, what I wanted for myself and how I wanted to relate to others. And I was lucky in that even though my mother was always very traditional. She was just very heteronormative, very Christian. She never enforced those types of boundaries on me and how I moved through the world. I think she always

kind of knew. She was like, I think you're queer, so I'm just gonna let you figure that out, right, Like she did what she could with what she had, But when it came to how I moved through the world, she would always tell me, you know, you're just very different from me, and I don't ever want to try and shape you, know how you make choices for yourself.

But I'm here if you have questions, you know. And when we think about love being dynamic, what I say about this is that we love all the time, right. We love of people. We love children, niece's nephews, we love best friends, we love our coworkers. You know. We fall in love with people all the time. We'll meet someone and they'll be an amazing singer or a fantastic painter, and we're like, oh my gosh, and we feel this deep connection and we're like, oh my gosh, I love

this person. Right, And for me, I embrace those feelings as directive, right, I say, oh, it's okay for me to love this person and if I feel romantic feelings for them, that's okay. It's monogamy culture that teaches us to feel bad about that, like we can only reserve those special feelings for one person, and typically like one person is someone who's a different gender from us and that we want to have babies with and go on

the relationship escalator and blah blah blah blah blah. So for me, you know, being a black feminist and being an abolitionist, I don't care about it any of that, right, I'm like, you know, I don't understand how I can espouse a liberation is politic and create these encapsulations and these barriers for myself in my own personal life. And so love has to be for me, it has to

be freeing. It has to be expansive. It can't be a place where I feel imprisoned to a set of standards and social norms that I don't even subscribe to or that I didn't even identify for myself. And to me, it feels like another way of thinking about this is, you know, white supremacy and to blackness, massage, no noir, like all these systems that I don't personally have an investment in right. I also don't have an investment in monogamy culture. I don't need to live that way. It

doesn't serve me, right. So what I'm hoping and I honestly I will say, I feel like during quarantine a lot more people have been thinking about polymory and I love that too. People like on top of the conversation about you know, when we started, there are more articles and more conversations around you know this outside of monogamy, the belief that you know, I polyamory, which you tell

me a couple of years ago, it was not. I don't want to say that it's mainstream now, but there were more people who know what polyamory is, who have like a basic understanding of it. We see it on some television shows. What is it about this time in our society outside both in the pandemic and outside of it, that you think is kind of leading this new charge? You know, there's obviously like the answer of the information age,

and there's more people who have social media. There's like prominent polyamorousts on like Instagram who are sharing their experiences. And there was a red table talk talk and all of that, right, But I think the nitty gritty and the nuts and bolt of it is that people are realizing that monogamy doesn't really serve them, and you know, you go back to the drawing board over and over and over again in monogamous relationships that don't do well.

And then so people are looking for options, they're looking for solutions to what their problems are. So a lot of a lot of people have meant, unfortunately, come to polyamory through unethical non monogamy, so cheating, right, They're like, Okay, I spent years and years and years cheating on my partner, and I realize it's because I'm actually polyamorous, and I'm like, yeah, I just wish that wasn't so much of the narrative, right, Like in nets life, you know, people discover things about

themselves in the ways that they do. That's just that's the journey. But I do think that that is a important way for us to think about what monogamy teaches us. Right, It socializes us even into relationships and into a culture where even as it's not serving us, we will stay trapped in it, right, We will stay in it because we're supposed to we're afraid of the stigma. We feel a lot of shame. There are people around us who will say, how dare you not be appreciative of that

one part you have when I have no one? Right, That's the refrain I've gotten for years. For years, there was a time where I was relationship with about three people, and I had a friend who was single, and they would constantly say to me, you know, do not talk to me about your relationships because I don't have any and you have three. And I was like, yeah, that's

so problematic, right. And I think that we are in a moment now where I think for folks who are discovering polyamory and the popularization of polyamory, there's an intersection there where folks who are realizing that they actually don't care about the stigma or the shame associated with it,

because they'd rather be happy, right, you know. Being in this particular political moment, in the post Trump moment, in this COVID moment, it's like we have dealt with so much grief, were dealt with so much anguish and pain, in the constant state of mourning, and I think that overwhelmingly people are like, I just want to feel loved and held and cared for on terms that reflect who I am and what I want for myself. And that may not be monogamy. It may not be heteronormative, it

may not be traditional. I may not want children, I may not even want to move through the world in the ways that I did be a post pre pandemic, right, And I think that those are all valid, explorative moments that people need to have in their lives. And I'm happy for people. Like when folks are like, yeah, I'm

ending this long term relationships. I realized this wasn't happy, and I'm like, well, I'm sorry, but that's great, right, Like you weren't happy, and you're freeing yourself from something you're not happy happy with, Like that's a really good thing. So I think that you know, it's not just cultural. It's not just like you know movies and TV shows. We've seen a lot of it's on television. They always do it. They do an awful job talking about polyamory.

One I saw something and I said, I said, they needed they needed y'all um to come on as like advice, No seriously, like as advisors, because I think that there is this made up version of polyamory. And then there is like the actual real, you know, conversation. There's a book that I actually i'd started reading, um, following one of our conversations poly Secure, Um, I had started reading.

I had started reading that book to understand like that all of us have a different attachment styles, yes, and that and recognizing those attachment styles, recognizing ways in which our attachments have been disrupted, right, um, And and then how we come into relationship and what is that there is an opportunity to create secure attachment with multiple people? Yeah right, um? Yeah, And so I feel like when I watch these shows, though, I'm like, nobody read that book.

I'm like, nobody, nobody read the book. Nobody, nobody's reading, nobody's reading. And you know, like, I'm so glad you brought that up too, because really, over these years, I think a lot of people have been digging into their own helium journeys and reading books like My Grandmother's Hands and The Body Keeps the Score and Polly's Secure and

you know this book called Attached. Right, I've been really hearing folks talking more about these or the set Boundaries workbook, right, all these books that are really about understanding what you want for yourself and your own body and your own desire, and then going out and setting a standard for others

to meet you there. And I think you know, part of what's coming out of that, right is this when we talk about secure attachment, and you know, people can read the books or whatever, discovering how you attached to others based on the traumas you've experienced, based on the past relationships you've been in. Right, that is a major point of self discovery, Like that is a major access point for you to decide how you want to move

forward in future relationships. And for a lot of people they found, oh my gosh, the way that I've been connecting with people on here, I'll just talk about not a lot of people talk about myself. Right. I discovered for me that, you know, my past relationship, my most immediate past relationship was a trauma bond associated with my parental relationship, and that it didn't work because I was trying to recapture a love for my mother in my relationship.

And I was like, damn therapy, right, Like it hit me in my gut as it was ending, I was like, why am I dating my mother? Right? And I was reading these books and I was like, oh my gosh, that's what I'm doing. That's what's happening here, you know. And I think that's also what's happening in this moment, is that people are being forced to face the forms of grief and pain that a lot of in a

lot of respects, we could walk away from before. We could leave the house, we could go on trips, we could go a movie, we could get ourselves distract, distraction of a hobby, right, we could do all types of things. Right.

We can't socialize in those ways anymore. We can't go out and keep ourselves distracted from our inner cells, our inner knowing, and so having to face those things I think has also made people realize, hey, wait, I'm actually wired differently than I thought I was, and that might be in their loving relationships, that might or some people have said, actually I'm very monogamous, right, Like my spouse he said, listen, I'm actually still a heck of any

and he like, he hasn't budged, and he's gotten happier and happier every day in his monogamy, and I'm happy for him. Right. So this isn't to say that you know, that's the direction that everyone is going to take, or that that's the option that folks discover when they start to investigate who they are. But it is to say that it's a great thing that in this moment people are doing that work. And if it just affirms where

you are, that's good too. But what's important is centering one's happiness, one's joy, and one's authenticity right moving in one's authenticity. And if we're not doing that, we have to get to the work of doing that. How do you in you know, if you don't, if you don't mind me asking, because you and your nesting partner, your spouse have different uh, I guess different relationship orientations, right, um,

how did you come about having those conversations? So, for instance, like I'm thinking to myself, somebody you know, the WOKAP audience listening to this, and they're saying, you know, maybe maybe I do need to tap more into how I attach to people, what I consider to be important for me at the foundation of relationship and what relationship looks like. But I think that the person that I'm with this is going to be a really difficult conversation to broach.

Maybe we've been together for several years already in one form or understanding, or I'm now venturing out on my own right having left said partner, and now I'm in a news space. How do I open myself up for these varied formations of relationship? How do I engage in those conversations? Yeah? So, I mean the first step I would say is truth telling. You know, shout out to Bell Hooks and all the black feminists who start there.

We if we are not in community with people who if we can't tell people our truths, our inner sanctum, our inner communities or inner circles, so we can't tell them our truths, then we have to analyze why that's the case. You know, with my partner, I've been lucky enough to We were just talking about this yesterday. I've been with this man for twenty years. Um, you know, I've known him since I was seventeen years old. So when I met him, and when I met him, I

was not interested in him romantically. So let's talk about that, right. Part of the issue with meeting folks with the intention of romance, or navigating our early interactions with the intention of romance, is that we are also conditioned to perform. Right. We're conditioned to put out our representative to say, here's why you should pick me. Look I can cook, I love football, and look how I beat my face and like, we're conditioned to do those things right when we meet

folk platonically, right, we are conditioned to be ourselves. Right. We are conditioned to say, here's who I am. You know, please take me as I am. I want to be friends with you, Like I would love to go and just have a I want to be like you know, the Golden Girls, right, Like, like that is a different

type of orientation. And for me, because I'm a person who identifies a relationship anarchists, all of my relationships are are that, right, So when I meet someone I'm very friendly, I'm like, hey, this is awesome, you seem cool, what we have in common? Blah blah blah. Right, and even if there is a romantic potential there, I still am very committed to you know, what type of friendship are

we building? Where is there where is there a connection here beyond something sexual, beyond something romantic, you know, beyond whether or not you are attractive or I am attractive? Like, what do we actually have going for us here? And I think that a lot of us get caught up because we are searching for that one. We are searching for that person. We are searching and searching and searching, and we're not really searching for reflections of ourselves and others.

We're not searching for healing and helpful and supportive and proactive connections with others. And so it's hard when you're already in one of those relationships to then try to go back and be like, Okay, so let's have this tough conversation that we're not prepared for. Right. So I would say, you know, it's get the books, right. You have to do a lot of priming, you know, get those books that we talk about. Send some links. Hey, I saw this thing online, and you know, I think

it might pertain to us. What you think you know, and and tease it out as long as you can to see where where this person's head is at, right, Like, if you are on the same page, that's fantastic. But there may be instances when this person is like absolutely not, never, no way, ever, And I would say that's not an

equitable relationship, right. I would personally say I don't want to be in community or relationship with someone who erects walls um where we should have a dynamic and fruitful conversation about how we want to move because if we want to be life partners, if we want to be in each other's lives forever, we're gonna change. Like twenty years I've been with this person, I am, right, very

similar to myself, but I'm very different, right. And if we're not agreeing right now, right, yeah, right, And if we're not agreeing to if we're not agreeing to explore and discover and to continue to fall in love with each other at every point of this journey, then I don't want it. I don't want it. And so I think, you know, it starts. It always starts for me at telling the truth, telling ourselves the truth, like hey, this is who I am, and dealing with the shame right

Like it took me a long time. I was like, oh god, girl, not only are you gay, but you polyamorous? Who let's let's roll this out right. It's like you gotta tell people in ways because they're stressed out, you know. So I told people I was queer way before. It's like, y'all can handle the gay stuff, but I don't know how y'all feel about the stuff, right, and like it takes first starting with yourself to say, like what am I comfortable with sharing? What am I comfortable with being

in public? Like how do I reconcile all of that? Right? And then how do I navigate this with a trusted set of folks who make me feel affirmed, who make me feel confident in this so that I can go out until the rest of the world. Because a lot of people will push back and say, this is the worst thing you've ever done in your life. There will

be people to this day. I've been with this man for twenty years, and I explain we are in a platonic marriage, we have three children, we're gonna be together forever, don't plan on ever leaving this man. And there are still people who would be like, oh my god, I cannot believe you're poly poor Darren every time, poor daring, Oh my god, you are literally yeah, like and he's Meanwhile, I'm sitting there like I'm good, I'm fine, everything's good,

I'm happy actually doing great things. And they're like, oh no, because for them, right, their standard of how a man should be treated by a woman, right, These kind of very binary logics is not this right, And so for a long time I had to navigate the shame and the hurt of hearing people I love say poor him because of you, right, and people very close to me, my own mother right, would say these things to me, And I had to really work on making sure that I felt safe in my own body and then my

own relationship so that when those things were said to me, or when those those ideas were communicated to me, it didn't rip me up the pieces. I didn't break up and fall out because you know, what people think about your relationship in the end, actually doesn't it matter? Like it really I know that do matter? It really doesn't. What really matters is how you and the folks that you are in relationships with feel in that relationship, right, how you does it make you feel better when you

talk to this person? Do you feel better afterwards when you interact with this do you feel better? Do you feel worse? Like? How do you feel? Right? Our bodies tell us. Our bodies do all the work of telling us what we should be doing and should not be doing, but we are conditioned to ignore it. And I just don't do that anymore. Jen I you know, I have to tell you that every single time that you come on Woke a f it's like it's not even I don't even know what I call it, because it's not

even light bulbs that go off. It's like fireworks that go off in my mind. Because there are so many things that are said. I no seriously, because I believe that we are conditioned to ignore our intuition. We're conditioned to be disconnected from ourselves and for society's judgment and ideas to be louder than our own internal voices. And I think that it is radical. It is a radical place to be in to say your outside noise does not have effect on my internal compass, like does not

have does not get to direct me? Right? And to say that in an audacious way is it's just so radical. But yet I'm listening to you and I'm like, who who is allowed society to dictate how we show up and who we show up with? Right? Like I get you know, parents and loved ones wanting folks to you know, to be their best, to connect with somebody that will

you know, care for them and love them. But I'm like, if I have done that and it falls outside of the the the construct that you have been participating in. Does that mean like, what what does that mean for you? That doesn't mean that your judgment should reign louder. Again, I'm gonna say it than my own intuition, than what my body my mind is saying. And I feel like, if we were to all ask ourselves, do I feel good? Does this person make me feel safe? Have these regular

check ins? Because that's the other thing too. We don't regularly check in with ourselves. We don't regularly check in with the people that we're with. M that's so weird. So you know, right, because I'm a check but I'm a check in person, Yes, and I think I think that it's so important. Go ahead, no please. I was laughing about this with my current partner, Um she was

she was making fun of me. Recently. We were over here, she was over here with her wife and Darren was in the kitchen and he was doing something and we were on We were like joking, joking, joking, and she was like, I just want everyone in the room to know that tomorrow Jen is gonna check in on this. We're gonna have a debrief. And I was like, what are you talking about She was like, so I know that tomorrow you're gonna wake up and say, okay, so

how are you feeling about last night? Anything anything standing out for you? Any lingering feelings? And I was like, first of all, I am gonna do that, and second of all, I don't know why you don't know my life, but literally you do. It's like, first of all, because I do want to know how do you feel about that? And it hit me because it made me really I do these checkens with myself like, hey, how did that feel? Self? Like,

how how did you feel in this? A first sexual interaction, at first kiss, first time holding hands, first time talking to someone on the phone, first video chat, like all these things. I'm like, hey, self, hey girl, how do you feel about that? I go to my altars, I talk to my hay spirits. How y'all feeling about this person? Do you like her? I don't know, right, Like, I am in a point now I think where I don't actually understand not doing that right. I check in with

my friends. And this is something my therapist has said to me too. She said, you know, and this is something I will say about my last relationship that helped me to realize that I shouldn't have been in it. Right. Is that often when we're not checking in, it's because deep down we know the thing is not good for us. Right, So we're not checking in because we don't want to say, yeah, that didn't feel good. We don't want to tell our friends, yeah,

this relationship actually feels abusive. We don't want to tell others, or we don't want to share outlet don't say out loud. We want to write in our journals, you know, oh god, it felt really uncomfortable when my partner embarrassed to me and didn't show up and didn't keep her word. Right. We learn to hide the things that make us feel bad because we self shame. We shame ourselves before we can get it to somebody else. Right. And I started writing in my journal. I do this thing in my

journal where I introduced myself. Every new journal that I get, I introduced myself to my journal. I say, this is who I am. Here are the things that I've lied about previously to myself. Here are the things that I'm working on. Blah blah blah blah blah. And in one of my journals, I realized that I was not telling the truth to myself. And I was like, oh girl, you're lying down, like you're lying about this relationship because you want to You want this relationship so badly, right,

you want the optics of this relationship. You want the good parts. Right. These good parts over here feel so so good, they feel so so good, but the bad parts feel so bad. And you're scared right about losing the good parts because of the bad parts. And maybe if you just ignore them for a little while, you can fix them and then you don't have to talk

about them. Right. So part of this check in process, right, which my spouse will tell you, I do with him every morning he wakes up and he's half awake, he has one eye open, and I'm like, so, how are you feeling? He's like, why are you awake? You know?

Part of that is, you know, I want us to be telling the truth, and I want us to have an open dialogue so that it always feels safe to do so, for him to tell the truth to himself, for him to tell the truth to me, for me to tell the truth to myself, for me to tell the truth to him. Right, and as long as people are in relation to me, my best friends, right, we've

had difficult moments. I have a really, really, really close friend and she's a platonic life partner of mine, and we both have disabilities that we navigate all the time. And you know, I'm kind of one of her for her medical providers, I'm one of her her the people that gets called from the hospital and things like that, and so when I don't show up, you know, it can cause a lot of anxiety. Right. This is a loving partnership I have with her, and she knows that

she has a habit of when these things happen. She can spin out writing narrative boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. But because I'm a securely attached person, I say, hey, listen, girl, Hey hey, those emotions are yours and I love you and I love you through it. But you're gonna go on that roller coaster by yourself. So you go on that roller coaster and when you get off, we can

talk about it. Right. But she always knows that once she's done right, she has a safe place to come and say I'm sorry, Hey, I was spinning out, I was on my thing. Were you upset with me? Did anything happen no, girl, everything was fine. Here's what was happening in my life, Here's what we're going on over here. I'm sorry I didn't check in with you as I usually do. That is out of a character for me, and it's not a thing with you, I promise. Blah

blah blah. You know that's what That's what we should be doing with people we love. To me, that's a baseline, right if I say I love you, it takes nothing for me to say, hey, I love you so much that I want to be transparent. Right. That seems very obvious, right, No, yeah, you know I will say that. I hope, UM that folks take from this conversation today, so so many, so

many gems gen that you that you always drop. But the truth of the matter is is that your first loving relationship that you should be in is the one with yourself, and that we should not feel yeah, with yourself, um, which your own personal Valentine's today should be every goddamn day. If we're not showing ourselves love every each and every day, UM, and affection and grace, I don't I don't know how we expect to show that up for other people. Um.

And then two to consistently. I say, interrogate your feelings, check in with yourself, and check in with those that you are in relationship with, that you are in loving relationships with, whether they be platonic or romantic, all of those relationships are intimate. And ask yourself if you're not checking in, why is that right? And then get to your granular truth. Jen as always my goodness, such a pleasure, always,

such a good time. Folks, make sure to check out that Black Couple podcast um, follow Jen on social media, and make sure to keep up to date with their writing. I appreciate you, says so much. Thanks for having me for us here. Absolutely pleasure. That is it for me today. Friends on Woke f as always, power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.