Good morning, peeps, and welcome to Okay f Daily with Meet your Girl Danielle Moody, recording live from the Brooklyn Bunker. Once again, Friends, it has been an extraordinarily devastating week in America. We have witnessed historic storms, and I wish to God that we would stop using the word historic when they seem to become more consistent than ever and more of the norm. We have witnessed a gutting of voting rights acts, a gutting of Roe v. Wade at
the hands of white male politicians in Texas. We have witnessed what happens when we lose sight of what is truly important in our country, which are the courts. For far too long, I think that we have been kidding ourselves. That we have lulled ourselves into a place of complacency where we believe that elections alone will save us. That we believe that the people that we elect to represent our voices are doing so because they share the same
values in morals and beliefs that we do. We believe that, for too long, that those people had the best interests of the country in mind, and that they would come together and work as a unit, work in collaboration across party lines in order to better the country. A couple of weeks ago, Nancy Pelosi found herself saying that the country needs a strong Republican party, right, they need a strong two party system. I wonder how she feels today. Millions of women in Texas no longer have access to
an abortion. Millions of women in Texas, namely low income black and brown women, who cannot afford to pay doctors off in private institutions in order to get the abortions that they need, will now begin to perish at alarming rates because they're no longer going to be able to have the autonomy to decide when and where and how
they begin a family. If you are raped, if you are a victim of incest, you will not have a reprieve from this jury of white male politicians who have decided that they own you, and they own your body, and they own your future as well as your present. If you believe that because you live in a blue state,
for the moment, that you are safe. I had a friend tell me, thank god, we're in New York, and I said, we're only as safe as who is sitting in the White House is and I mean that because the Trump presidency gave us a very clear glimpse into what happens when you have a partisan, racist, misogynistic, egomaniac sociopath that is at the house home of this country. Remember that Trump was using the federal government and weaponizing it to punish blue states as we were trying to
figure out how to deal with COVID. You remember that Mitch McConnell called COVID a blue state issue because at the time it was ravaging New York City, La San Francisco and hadn't yet reached Kentucky, Arkansas, Alabama in the ways that it has reached them now. So what the new law in Texas shows us, and what the five four decision by the Supreme Court shows us, is that no one is safe from white Evangelical Christians and their
crusade of cruelty. It doesn't matter because their rage and their vindictiveness and their viciousness doesn't stop at blue state borders. It is far reaching and everlasting. White Evangelical Christians have been on a mission since the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four. Since Roe v. Wade nineteen seventy four, they have been on a mission to return the United
States to its fundamentalist religious founding. Remember that the pilgrims that fled the king in England came here because they were fundamentalists, They were religious zealots, and they wanted the freedom to be able to practice their religion how they
wanted to. And so the basis of our religious freedom doctrines that we see in policies all across the country initially began as the freedom to be able to practice how you wanted to, and has morphed into the belief that Christianity, and a particular type of Christianity, one that white right wing zealots practice, is the only and the dominant religion whose values should be the determinant for how
we exercise our rights in this country. And so because they don't believe in abortion, we no longer will have access to one. Because they don't want black and brown people to vote, because they believe that they are second class citizens, we will no longer have access to the ballot.
Coming up next, folks, is my conversation with Camillie Bell Hill, who is the creative behind plant Blurred on Instagram, which has a wonderful following, as well as the co founder and the voice behind the Plant Key Key podcast and Black People with Plants. And now you may be saying to yourself, Danielle, this seems just so out of whack. And I'm telling you, I feel so fucking out of
whack today. This week has truly truly knocked me on my ass, and I need to both get out the anger that I have, the frustration that I have, and also the recognition that this is heading into Labor Day weekend, which is supposed to be a time when we honor
our workers, honor ourselves. And I really want folks to take this time to take this long weekend, if you are privileged enough to have it off to ground, to rest, to recharge, to refocus, to think about the ways in which every single day you are going to fight to rest so that we can figure out how in the days and weeks ahead that we are going to resist together. Folks. I am very excited I did to welcome to Woke f Daily for the first time, hopefully not the last time.
Is a Camilli Bell Hill, who is the creative behind at Plant Blurred, which I love, I love, I love the name, founder of Black People with Plants and the co host of the Plant Kiki podcast Camilli in your Bio on Instagram. In the you Know in Your Bio it says that you made a move from traded lawyer hat for plants and that sounds so appealing to me, particularly as half of the country is under water, the other half is on fire, and our rights are being
taken away each and every moment of the day. Talk to me about that journey that you took and why. What was your tipping point into saying I'm hanging up this hat and I'm picking up another one that is seemingly completely from ye It's an about face, right, It's like, you know, the first hat, the lawyer hat. Law school was all about you know, doing the right thing, doing
what I was being told to do. This was this was safe, This was going to guarantee, you know, a successful life and kind of just like feeding into that hole um myth of what successment and what it would look like and also being raised it. It has something to do I think also with generationally. My mom is the child of Jim Crow, so they got the you know where they were able to go to school and achieve those successes and get the professional degrees they wanted.
Their children to do that same thing and continue on the past. And because our opportunities had been so limited in this country, I think that the generations that raised people in my age group, they didn't just they didn't really have like this imagination to see that there was something else that, you know, we could do, that there were other paths that we could follow that would be creative and feel more like it was both passionate and purposeful.
Who cares whether or not it is monetarily successful, you know, capitalism. I just you know, I did that. I went to law school and I don't have any regrets. I have the degree. Who knows about I doubt that I'll ever use it again, but I got it right. And after I had my first daughter, I kind of just fell into being a stay at home parent. Not by plan.
It just ended up where I was, and it just made me really like reevaluate things like It's like, I don't want to do something and spend my very precious time, which is you know, you can't get that back doing something that I'm miserable in. You know that I that brought me no joy, that was completely unfulfilling, and so I just dabbled. I dabbled until I figured it out
and I landed in interior design. I love it. It's always been something that I felt, you know, it felt like it was a hobby, didn't feel like something that I could do professionally, until one day I was like, well why not? Though you know, people are always asking me to help and come in and redesign and make their face beautiful. Why why can't it be something professional?
So I landed in this whole plant world when I just started thinking about things like in a bigger way, you know, like just beyond like that little box that we're told that we have to fit in and the things that we have to do. So one day I bought a fiddle leaf big for a client. And that's
just like flipped the switch. It's always the fiddle ly fig which is not in which is not in my home right now, because I it is the It is the plant I want the most and the one that I am most terrible, the one that you're most terrified of, right because you get the one that I am most m And you know, I think that what's interesting to me as I talk to folks like yourself who are in their second, third fourth iterations of their careers, of their lives black people, black women in particular, is you
know when you talk about your family, your your mother being a child of Jim Crow, and I think about, you know, living at a time where I kind of feel like we're moving towards right now where you don't have the space and ability to reinvent yourself right right that that you're just you would be lucky to get to a status quo let alone, trying to let alone,
trying to reverse it, let alone, trying to bucket. And so what you know, what pushback did you receive when you decided to make this transition when you decided, like you know, because for me, it's it's almost thinking of there is so much anger, hate, nastiness in the world that I am so drawn to beauty and slowness and real genuine connectivity and expressions of love and of spirit. And I wonder for you, like when you were was it a conscious like I want to move towards beauty.
I want to move towards something that is that puts smiles on people's faces, that is of peace, and one that isn't of like just churning through. Well, absolutely, it was like a quest for beauty and kind of like creating this sanctuary in your home. That's kind of where it all started. Like with the design, it was just like creating this beautiful space that you want to be in and that makes you feel comforted and really just like sparking joy, right, And part of um to me,
design is literally bringing life into the room. And when you have these things and they're growing from your care, I don't know, it just makes me. It makes me feel like I have a superpower, right because these are tropical plants that I mean, like the fiddlely fig that it's literally a tree that grows to you know, heights of like sixty feet and it's usually and full sun with high amidity. But here I am making this plant grow in my dry, cold house in New York. You
know who has a grow lamp. So it just feels like, you know, it just feels powerful and peaceful, and it really cuts out some of all the chatter and noise in the background because you really have to pay attention to the plants and it helps you. I find that it just really helps you kind of like ground yourself and what they bring is just so much more than just like a design element. It's it's just it sounds corny, but they're real like life lessons to learn from these plants.
You know, everybody truly grows at their own pace. No matter how much you can, you know, try to manipulate or control, they're going to do what they do. So it also teaches you that there's only but so much control that you can have. Period you can do your best and hope for the best. But there's also a part of the lesson is like learning to also let go. So there's just like layers to these plans. There's just a lot of layers. That is it for Today's Woke
App Daily podcast. To hear more from today's show, including my full interview with Camillie bell Hill of Plant Blurred. Support me on Patreon at patreon dot com. Slash Woke a app Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.