The In-Between Place

taking hold. And by taking hold, I mean taking a stranglehold over half the country while the other half is elated at their ability to cause pain and subject others to levels of cruelty not experienced in modern times. The rest of us are trying to figure out what a path forward looks like. And I don't even mean a path forward in terms of our politics. I mean a path forward in terms of our day to day lives.

What does it mean to try and rebuild community, create hopefulness when you are in the midst of despair, when you find yourself breaking down into tears multiple times a day, when you are experiencing a type of grief that takes your breath away. And so today's conversation is with Stephen BlackBerry, who I will tell you I needed this conversation so very much, and the reason being is that we are in the need, in need of radical healing and a

of where we think our lives are going. And Stephan is the founder of the Clearing DC powered by Life Well and it is a unique ecosystem around wellness and community care, and he offers just so much depth and perspective around how we need to see ourselves in this moment, or I should say, an offering on how we should

see ourselves and our communities in this moment. And so I hope as we close out the week here and try and prepare ourselves for the weeks ahead, that this offers a bit of solace, a safe space to sit in for the duration of this interview. So coming up next my conversation with Stefan BlackBerry. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to Okay f Daily Stefan Bradberry, who is the founder of the Clearing DC powered by Life

Well and Stephan. I want you to give us a fifty thousand foot view, tell us a bit about the Clearing DC powered by Life Well and the work it is that you are doing.

the black books. You know, it starts off when more and more there came Baby Sokes Holy, followed by every Black man, woman and child made their great heart to the Clearing, which was this place that Baby Sokes told them that they weren't the glory bound pure of the earth, and they weren't the meek and mild of the earth, but they were people who deserve to be loved in all of their fullness. That she told them to love

this here flesh of theirs. And I thought about what it meant for the enslaved to love their flesh, or the formerly enslaver, for people who, by Hoko krok have found ways to survive and in some cases thrive, and so life well really came from this idea that all people, in all places, at all times should be free, healed, and whole. And at the Clearing. What we've done is we have a built up an amazing yoga community. So we're the home of Flowel Yoga, one of DC's only

black owned yoga studios. We're not the only, but we are one of the only. Inside of here, we have to create well art collective because the artists are the ones who screamed the calls of revolution. Artists are the ones that help us look inwards to do outwards. And so inside of our center we have a community gallery where we're constantly up lifting the works of particularly Galus of Color, but people who believe that their art should stir the soul and should shake us towards being free.

We also have Advocate Well, which is our politics and policy group, because I understand as someone who used to work inside the United States Congress that it's an arena and battlefield that some people have to be in. And so we lead a team that's constantly thinking about how do we put our ideals into action and into practice and into policy and into law. And then we have

work Well, which is our well being consultancy. So whether you own a yoga studio or you are the CEO of a fortune five hundred company, what we do is we help you see the limits to your systems that prevent people from being well and help you strategize toward environments and toward communities and spaces where individual wellness can be tended to and communal well being can be uplifted.

bring our divided states back together. There is a sense right now of dread, of impending dread and doom and hopelessness, particularly as many see the announcements day by day of who is going to be leading some of our most

important agencies and departments in this country. And I want to talk to you about a lot of folks are saying they desperately need community, They desperately need to figure out what it means to care for yourself in a country that not only is saying that we don't care about you, but that we're going to make targets of you. Cruelty is going to be our new compass. Talk to us about how we find stuff on grounding and healing at a time when there is so much pain, and frankly,

we're not even really in the pain part. We're in the between space right right.

who America is. This is exactly what we do when

multiracial democracy begins to show its head. You know, before I owned a yoga studio, you know, I was a scholar I am a scholl It and you know, I was writing my master's thesis a while ago, quite a few years ago, and I was in the archive, and I learned about these moments post Civil War when multi racial city governments were coming up all across the East Coast and down into the South, and for what they could do, they were thriving and all people were benefiting.

But the white majority in these places refuse to seed their space. They refused to allow the city or their town, and let's say, the country to grow beyond this need to be white. That there is a history of black folks being at the forefront and other folks of color being a part of these progressive movements and pushes forward, but always with this violent, let's say, hand tapping of white supremacy constantly coming through.

And I was in the archive and I was seeing that here are all these black people, these black folks through time who, using this saying by Zoroloherson, by hook a crook, found ways to survive and, like I said, in some places thrive. And they did it because they saw themselves in each other. And it kind of is this thing of you could never believe in the veil or the midst lies and illusions of what the country was,

because we bear the brunt of them. Yep. And that's how we were able to forge community, not in response to this visceral force of white supremacy, but in a response in life affirming ways to say that, hey, actually,

whether or not the United States survived, we will. And I've been thinking a lot lot about that over the last week or so because in the immediate after, I mean, I don't know about you, but Tuesday, you know, around ten o'clock, my partner had gone to bed and I started to see I said, oh my god, this is not going to go the way that we wanted to. Yeah, let me see a girl. I tried to go to bed. I was tossing and turning. I couldn't figure it out.

And then I go to bed and spirit wakes me up at three o'clock to see that Pennsylvania and Georgia had gone to him, and I said, oh, it's over. And I woke up on Wednesday and I was devastated. I was devastated because for a moment I allowed myself to maybe not forget, but to disremember what the country is.

But by the time that Thursday and Friday had come around and I was here in the center, and I was with people who had been nervous for weeks and had constantly been asking me about what did I feel and how did I think about things? And I said, well, on this side or that side, we're going to have to take care of each other. This is a long way to say, like what is community. Community is more than people of shared identity together. People would say that

pocs this tart, that we're community. Obviously, after last week, we see that we are not right right that part. And what community is is a vested interest in the success, the health, the wellness and the well being of the people that we are around. It is a commitment to not abandon or disregard. It's a commitment to say that I will step up when you have to step back.

It's a commitment to say that I don't have to experience life for way that you do to see that you deserve to live a just life, that you deserve to live in the fullness of whoever it is that you decide to be and in community is something that

requires a lot of us. And I think right now in this moment, for people who are listening and for people who are thinking a lot about what do we do, I would say start with that small seat community, the few people that you let intimately into your life, and to start really really sitting there considering that when the going gets tough, well the people that you around sell

you off, that they maybe have some hope and something better. Right, because we're seeing a lot of people talk about, well, I voted for the economy, or I did this, or I did that, and now they're starting to see, wait a minute, when they get done with y'all, they're coming to us next.

that is what has been lifted. And when we recognize now what America has been who America actually is, what does it look like to forge community when half of the country hates the other half of the country. Right, Like you say, to invite those that you care that have a vested interest in your thriving into your intimate space. But we now recognize that people that we have had in our intimate space, whether they be our colleagues, whether they be our family members, whether they be our friends,

looked at us and put themselves first. Our grandparents voted against their grandchildren. Yeah yeah, Husbands voted against their wives.

that doesn't make sense to me. So I started thinking about what it means to me to exist in my black life, from my black livelihood, and I started thinking about what Tony Morrison and word workers of her tradition we're trying to do. Was essentially sit us all down by a camp fire, and we sat around this fire that is in let's say this village, and it's an open door village. There are boundaries around it, but there's one door coming through the front, and you could come

in and out of it as you please. But in order to make sense of what's happening, you got to release some stuff. You got to release this desire to make them understand. You have to release this desire of constantly responding. You know, they tell you that you don't have a language. So you spend thirty years proving that

we have a language, the language. Yep, come on, they tell us that we don't have you know, that our communities aren't strong, and then you spend all this time creating quote unquote traditional family you know what I'm saying, ripping away the vestiges of who we are and who

we have been. And I started just thinking a lot about this return to the village, and and and then I started thinking about, well, this essay isn't about white people, but but they they find themselves, and not just whites, but let's just say non black people that they find themselves with their hands cupped over their ears at the village door. They want to study us, They want to they want to see how do y'all how does the

fire stay lit? How do y'all stay so the worst of humanity throwing your way, and yet you still create the jazz and blues. It's like you still find a way to dance and to celebrate. I mean, I think one of the things about Kamala is that that was at least inspiring to me is that you know that she knows what half the country thought about her. Mm hmm. I don't think that she, by any means was off about what the nation thought about not just her but

the people like her. And yet she found ways to get a nation to laugh and dance, or to people in fiber Nation to laugh and dance for a sec and to just for a moment see that, Hey, life is still worth living, even though it doesn't book the way that we fully wanted to. So going back to this point of people who voted against us, people, I really, let me tell you ding they are at the furthest edge of my mind. They will have to be dealt with. Let me be clear, but I know that the final

assignment of white supremacy is to destroy whiteness itself. And what my God says is that the last will be first and the first shall be last. I'm actually less concerned about them being dealt with and more concerned about have I created the conditions and being inside of the spaces that I'm with people who aren't constantly trying to

respond to them. You know, in the commentary on my I'm like or like the people on the news right now, black folks going on the news, and I'm like, y'all can just say that the nation is racist as hell. Let's let's let's actually get to THEO.

order to advance the rights of other people. Yeah, and to witness America's forceful return to its origin story is wild, right. And then to think like, did we come this far to only get this far to be pulled all the way back. And I feel like that is where people are struggling right now, which is where there are some particularly you know, black women who you are seeing on social media since the election, say I'm done. I've tapped out.

Y'all take it from here, because we've been on the front lines doing the work, being the warriors for justice, only to look behind us and recognize nobody has our.

are turning away from us. I don't hear that. And so when people are like, well, black, you know, they're saying that they're done, they're done with y'all trying to save you correct, but with me, And what I'm thinking about as a black queer person is how how am I getting in the ring? You know what I'm saying, like, how how do how do okay? You know what y'all have, It's time for all of us to step up and how do I how do I confront where I can the massage andoi of people in community who don't want

to see the space for black women to lead. Because I started thinking about, you know, in my environments and stuff that I've been in, you know, there have been ample of moments where I have had to say, like where we were in the room together and I wasn't gonna let nobody play her. I didn't care right or wrong. I got her in the same way that she has me. And I think that there is something so holy to say,

you know what, nurse your own baby this time. Come on, and I I, you don't have access to my flesh no more. I think we should hold that for some time now. I also think that it doesn't mean and I'm telling no one how to feel about anything. I don't think that what I'm hearing is that we're done forever. I don't hear that as an y'all, I don't hear that. What I hear is is time for y'all to get your houses in order, because we're already here. Our house

is already in order. And when you you know, when you get into it with us, you know, and I think there's also something about like that Jewish women, Jewish women and black women are the people who showed up the most. Yep, I just I think that that's that's saying something, and I don't know if we fully know what it means. But all I know is all of us who are not black or Jewish women, we got some work to do.

can only be your guide to a certain extent. But like I said at the beginning, we're in uncharted territory. And so my last question for you is in knowing that we are in uncharted territory, in knowing that you may practice ways to find grounding to build community, but that there still may be a bulldozer yeah, that waits for you. There may still be flames that wait for

what it is that you're building. What do you say to people that are really in the spiral of hopelessness right now, knowing that safety, knowing that their idea of safety right and we know that people have said for centuries say is an illusion, But now that illusion is it's very clear that it was true. It wasn't just as saying, So what do you say to people that are grappling with that reality right now?

were only a few options available to him. And I know that when he came back, he went to bars and he wasn't able to be served even in his military uniform. I know that when Barack Obama ran from president of the United States that my grandfather brimmed with pride. I know that also because at the time I was living in Texas, he refused to send me any of

the swag that he had made for the family. I couldn't get a Barack Obama sweatshirt, a hat, a stick that I can get nothing because he understood what the country was, and he understood that even in the glimmers, even in the glimmers, who we are. I think what he says to me and what I would say to everybody, it's time to be a witness. And to be a witness means to stare it out into the world and name exactly what you see, not what you want to see, but what's there and what that allows us to do.

It allows us to become embodied, and only and embodied people can be free. I think about those people who stole themselves a way to freedom, people who maybe never ever ever saw their reflection in a mirror, but knew exactly what they looked like. They knew what they felt like, they knew what they tasted like, they knew what it would sound like for their feet to run on grass. They knew what they smelled like and what the hounds would smell, and yet they stole themselves away. And it

gets to this thing that it disembodied. People can never be free, and we can't get free, healed or whole disembodied or by ourselves. It means that we start seeing that my wellness is my responsibility. At life all we believed that wellness is the daily, moment by moment endeavor of providing care to one's individual mental, physical, emotional, and

spiritual needs. Right, so it's tending to you that while being is the responsibility and obligation of communities, institutions, and more broadly, the state, we live in a time where the nation doesn't believe it is their responsibility to provide for our well being. So let's go to the next tier. Our institututions, the places that we're working, that they have vested interest in ensuring that we can provide for our

own individual wellness, and we should. We all ought to gather and organize, you know, in whatever ways that we can to push that forward, and then go the tier under that community. You start to say, hey, actually we're going to start putting together a bi weekly dinner and

you'll host it at your house this week. And we'll also launch our book club together, and we'll go on our walks here and we'll go and do this together, or we'll just sit and be and become together, because you start again to see that when we have each other. And I'm not saying that this makes this is a quick fix to everything, but I will say that every day I come in here to this center, I see what's happening in the world that I see what's happening in people's lives, and I see the way that they

still laugh and they find hope and hopelessness. I see that, like so long as life is choosing us, we choose it, and there is for all the people who are listening to this, it does. It does seem dreary, but let me tell you. We may be an uncharted territory, but this is not unfamiliar. Mm hmm. This is not unfamiliar. And you think about it, Not all of us will survive, but those of us that do, we demand witness. We say that we're going to tell the truth. Because here's

the last thing. I know. I'm long winded. I'm sorry The last thing I'll say is that we always think about the New world, and we think about this world. Right, we want to leave this one and we want to go to the next one. What if we accepted that those of us here probably won't make it to the New world. But what can we leave for the rebble that when this world is destroyed and they start cleaning through the ashes, when they start lifting up the bricks

and the foundation, what did we leave them? Maybe not all of it will be useful, but some of it should be. And that's what I am living for. Because when I was trying to live for the New World, I was depressed all the time because I thought it would never come. But I am. I am living for the rubble, for the place in the in between, that

wilderness that people will have to map out. And my hope is what we're doing here at the clearing, what I am doing in my own individual life is something that people can pick up hundreds of years from now and find some use in it to talk about how we relate to ourselves and to other people.

erase all of that. Right. If you are in the DC area, I invite you to the Union Market area. I invite you to our clearing because from what I hear, it is a place like none other. It's a place where people feel sustained and fortified. Though the road may be rough and weary, we know that we have each other and we know that you know, so long as life is choosing us, we'll keep choosing it.