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Dear Mama,

What if I told you I didn’t think I had the words for the intro of this episode because we recorded it before the election, and after November 5th, joy was THE LAST THING I wanted to talk about?  I wish I could say thinking of our ancestors pulled me through, but the truth is reaching forward in time helped me more than reaching back, and now more than ever, we are going to need joy not to feel happy but because, as Thea Monyee, one of the cohost of this podcast, who will be guiding us through the Joy Assessment, says “Joy makes things clear,” and we, particularly Black mothers, need to get REAL CLEAR RIGHT NOW and being committed to joy, being centered on joy requires us to tell the truth to ourselves, about our relationships, about what is real and what is not, what is serving us and most importantly how we are not serving ourselves and that allows us to get really, really clear about what we are supposed to be doing, how to mind our business and what business we should be minding, and focused on in the time that we are about to enter.

In this episode we delve into the social-political barriers of joy and how accountability intersects with the pursuit of personal joy. Thea Monyee introduces the groundbreaking Joy Assessment (link in the bio) created with the Blacker The Brain cohort, as a tool for Black folx to reclaim joy as a means for liberation.  In this episode we talk:

✨What is the Joy Assessment

✨The difference between joy and happiness

✨Radical honesty and spiritual bypassing

✨Joy as tool of parenting from a place of liberation and not fear

SYLLABUS

A word from the Ancestors:  “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” -Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light: Living With Cancer, Epilogue

Church Announcements:

• Responsive Reading: Black Mama Magic Card #10 Lay your burdens down on the altar of love.
• Praise Report:  Crystal’s Nonprofit Creators Well
• Prayer List Request:  Help Fanta Hairston Fight Cancer
• Patreon Bonus Content:  Pre-show Shenanigans

Mac & Cheese

Thea, aka The Secretary of Joy, guides NeKisha and Crystal through the groundbreaking Joy Assessment, created by Thea Monyee and The Blacker The Brain.   The Blacker the Brain is an ongoing campaign, conversation and cohort created by Thea to make mental health inclusive and expansive for Black bodies by teaching practitioners to unlearn harmful ideas, practices, and policies, and empowering potential clients with language, a full understanding of their rights, and a joy centered framework for their healing within in an oppressive society. In other words Thea is not new to this she’s be true this joy work since 2017.

Take the Joy Assessment

Connect with The Blacker the Brain: Instagram | Website

Mentioned in this episode:

• A Burst of Life and Other Essays by Audre Lorde 
• Eastern Body Western Mind by Anodea Judith 
• Ecowomanism: African American Women and Earth-Honoring Faiths by Melanie L. Harris 
• Reasonable Doubt

Episodes Mentioned/Relevant to this episode:

• DBM Ep 59: Black Motherhood, Myths & Matrescence w/ Stepha LaFond

Engage: This is a conversation so we love it when yall talk back!   Share your thoughts about the episode using the hashtag #DemBlackMamas, DM us or email us at [email protected].

FULL TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Crystal Tennille Irby: Okay. We just finished our first pre show. Yeah. Oh, let me welcome everybody. Um, Hey, Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the ride. You’re on the mothership inside the black woman bedroom with the greatest podcast on earth. He

[00:00:15] Thea Monyee: po.

[00:00:16] Crystal Tennille Irby: we just wrapped up our first pre show in our Patreon and it was a lot of fun.

[00:00:21] Crystal Tennille Irby: It was a

[00:00:21] Crystal Tennille Irby: lot of fun.

[00:00:22] Thea Monyee: It’s good. It was

[00:00:23] Crystal Tennille Irby: we’re going to have that up.

[00:00:31] NeKisha Killings: forgot that we were

[00:00:32] Crystal Tennille Irby: It was good.

[00:00:33] NeKisha Killings: I had forgot. I got, um, we’re gonna get this together eventually, but I’ll be forgetting me

[00:00:37] Thea Monyee: They’re very

[00:00:37] Thea Monyee: private people, very, you

[00:00:39] NeKisha Killings: So patrons, just,

[00:00:39] Crystal Tennille Irby: you can head over, um, to our Patreon. And if you want to check it out, you know, you can become a patron. But I think it’s a lot of fun.

[00:00:46] Crystal Tennille Irby: That’s something that we’ll be doing now before every show we’ll be going live in patron, uh, Patrion for our, um, pre show, um, uh, with our patrons. So you can like ask us questions, you know, about our topic, um, about [00:01:00] anything really, um, yeah, cause it’s, one of the reasons that we created our Patreon was because of course we want people to invest in our show and to, um, Um, invest in this platform and we want to be black mama built.

[00:01:16] Crystal Tennille Irby: Um, so that we’re not dependent on sponsors. That’s one of the reasons that we built it. But the other reason we built it is because we want to connect with our listeners. We want, um, this to be truly a conversation. Like we do like to talk to each other. Well, we like to talk to y’all too. So, yeah, so we felt like, um, Patreon was another way, um, that we could do that.

[00:01:40] Crystal Tennille Irby: So if you want to connect more with us, hop on over there and become a patron. Okay. So this is a regular show today. Our topic today. Is joy. And so, um, Fia is going to be leading our Mac and cheese. She’s [00:02:00] going to lead, uh, Nikisha and I through the joy assessment, which is a tool and y’all know, I love, love, love live tangible tools.

[00:02:10] Crystal Tennille Irby: Um, if you’re on YouTube, you can see it. Um, it’s a tool that she created, um, to, uh, with a black to the brain, uh, cohort to, um, help. Um, I don’t, well, I’m just gonna say to help black people use joy as a tool for liberation. Now, other people use it, but I’m gonna say

[00:02:30] Thea Monyee: Yeah. Asha.

[00:02:31] Crystal Tennille Irby: And so today we’re going to talk about, um, Black motherhood and joy, because in our episode with Steffa, which was I think two episodes back, um, one of the things we talked about was how we don’t separate Black motherhood from suffering.

[00:02:44] Thea Monyee: Mm-Hmm.

[00:02:45] Crystal Tennille Irby: And it is vital to our liberation. That we those two and shift that narrative. So today we’re going to be talking about, um, black motherhood and joy. Our [00:03:00] mindfulness quote for this episode, this is a word from the ancestors. I should have like some music, like right here, like a word from the ancestors.

[00:03:07] Crystal Tennille Irby: You know

[00:03:09] Crystal Tennille Irby: what I’m saying? Something like that. Oh, I like that. You know, like the um, the 45th. What movie was that? I love the 45th. Is it the 45th?

[00:03:19] NeKisha Killings: mm-Hmm.

[00:03:20] Crystal Tennille Irby: What movie was that? Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I love the 45th. Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington.

[00:03:30] Thea Monyee: Oh. Oh. Glory. Not glory. Glory. Jesus. Jesus,

[00:03:38] Thea Monyee: I only resurrect that movie

[00:03:40] NeKisha Killings: that sound like a chain gang song. Was it a chain gang? That is hilarious.

[00:03:45] Crystal Tennille Irby: no, that wasn’t, that was when it was near the end of the movie where they were all coming up and they were just, they were about to go, they were going into battle the next day and they were coming up and they were saying like, you know, what the, was it, were they the [00:04:00] 45th? Was it the 45th? But

[00:04:02] Thea Monyee: 40s, I don’t think I could

[00:04:05] Thea Monyee: watch the shit I was watching. They had us watching that shit as children. And I’m thinking like, now I would be like, goddamn, turn this shit was my point

[00:04:15] Thea Monyee: Game of Thrones. much. was like Game of

[00:04:18] Crystal Tennille Irby: well, let me say the new Roots is really good. The updated

[00:04:22] Thea Monyee: very and everything very good. Okay, but what I’m saying is.

[00:04:25] Thea Monyee: just making me realize I don’t know if a bitch could do it.

[00:04:28] Crystal Tennille Irby: What I’m saying is the song,

[00:04:30] Crystal Tennille Irby: I think that may

[00:04:33] Thea Monyee: Now I’m thinking about when Dizzio whipped off the thing, was like, what bitch?

[00:04:36] Crystal Tennille Irby: the one, the one tier, the one tier, the

[00:04:40] Thea Monyee: I just think, my God, what, you know, these kids don’t know

[00:04:42] Thea Monyee: nothing about that. You know, nothing

[00:04:44] Thea Monyee: about that. They don’t forgot about that. They don’t they

[00:04:49] Crystal Tennille Irby: We need those films though. We do

[00:04:51] Thea Monyee: do need

[00:04:52] NeKisha Killings: know nothing about traumatic movie watching. saying like, I I think at this point in my life, Mm hmm. I couldn’t [00:05:00] watch the same shit that they would have me watch that.

[00:05:02] Thea Monyee: I mean, we have to watch the first Roots.

[00:05:05] Crystal Tennille Irby: I didn’t. I.

[00:05:06] Thea Monyee: In school.

[00:05:08] Crystal Tennille Irby: That’s in California, and that must be California, Florida.

[00:05:11] Thea Monyee: You should’ve watched it.

[00:05:12] Crystal Tennille Irby: No, no, no. That was California and Florida when it was blue. When, it’s out too! when we were, when it was blue.

[00:05:20] Thea Monyee: They would never show you

[00:05:21] Thea Monyee: niggas roots. They would never show you niggas South Carolina roots. They would

[00:05:24] Crystal Tennille Irby: because Yeah, because when the Keisha for those of you don’t know a little history when the Keisha and I were in college, the governor of Florida was a That makes he died when we were in college. He was like on the treadmill and had a heart attack, but he was a Democrat. Was it Lawton Charles? I can’t remember. But Florida has not always

[00:05:44] Crystal Tennille Irby: been

[00:05:45] Crystal Tennille Irby: What it is now. And I mean, when we talk, when we talk about history, like 20 years ago, it’s considered recent history. And so, like, recent history, it has not always been, you know, what it is, um, right now. We can thank the Bush family [00:06:00] for that. But, um, so they may have shown that in California and Florida, but

[00:06:04] Crystal Tennille Irby: in the state of South Kakalake, we was not

[00:06:08] NeKisha Killings: Oh, no. saw Queen. We saw roots.

[00:06:11] Crystal Tennille Irby: they for sure wasn’t

[00:06:12] Thea Monyee: saw eyes on the prize.

[00:06:14] NeKisha Killings: won’t. No. on the Prize, I watched it

[00:06:16] Crystal Tennille Irby: on my own. We didn’t, we didn’t watch Eyes on the Prize. Uh

[00:06:20] Thea Monyee: is crazy. This is like apartheid. This is like apartheid. This is not Oh, that’s really unfortunate. This reminds me that it’s not

[00:06:33] NeKisha Killings: okay. This reminds me, though, that I, I saw a British person say in the the hell? were watching Five. were watching Boys in the Pause for the

[00:06:41] NeKisha Killings: that’s how they learned Doughboy? Not

[00:06:43] Crystal Tennille Irby: Pause for the in class. Real

[00:06:47] NeKisha Killings: story. I’m just saying that’s how they learned about Black Cause there are black people who are like, Oh, I want to leave the country. And they go to Europe. Or the UK and I just wanna [00:07:00] and after you said it, I just want to just pause for the cause because I can understand watching roots in the in school.

[00:07:06] Crystal Tennille Irby: I can understand watching good that is based on history. Okay, boys in the hood. I mean, it’s something that was socially happening, but it’s not a historical film. It’s a socially conscious film about a specific week. area of the United States about a specific time in the United States. Like, enslavement is like, that’s how black folks got here

[00:07:31] Thea Monyee: mm.

[00:07:31] Crystal Tennille Irby: most part.

[00:07:32] Crystal Tennille Irby: So for them to use that as historical and cultural context is

[00:07:38] Crystal Tennille Irby: highly problematic. So to all y’all who want to, Exit the United States. I don’t have a problem with it. Do what you,

[00:07:45] Crystal Tennille Irby: you

[00:07:45] Thea Monyee: Just don’t go there.

[00:07:46] Crystal Tennille Irby: you don’t so would never go to the colonizer I would never settle in a colonizer country. I just I

[00:07:52] Thea Monyee: I can’t do you’re like, go there.

[00:07:54] NeKisha Killings:

[00:07:54] Crystal Tennille Irby: Really? You think they should

[00:07:56] Crystal Tennille Irby: go there?

[00:07:58] NeKisha Killings: Go. If you want to [00:08:00] go, go.

[00:08:02] Crystal Tennille Irby: You know what? That’s like,

[00:08:04] NeKisha Killings: I mean, I think that they

[00:08:06] Crystal Tennille Irby: you know what this tells me? This tells me this is where Nikisha is in her motherhood

[00:08:09] Crystal Tennille Irby: journey. Cause she’s like, Oh, that’s what you want to

[00:08:11] NeKisha Killings: But if that’s where your heart is

[00:08:12] Crystal Tennille Irby: You know, that is,

[00:08:15] Crystal Tennille Irby: that is. my

[00:08:16] Thea Monyee: Crystal

[00:08:17] Thea Monyee: always says.

[00:08:18] Crystal Tennille Irby: is about choices.

[00:08:19] NeKisha Killings: Life is all about choices. Life is all

[00:08:21] Crystal Tennille Irby: around in his English class and say

[00:08:22] Crystal Tennille Irby: something that your parents always say to you.

[00:08:24] NeKisha Killings: It is. It is.

[00:08:26] Crystal Tennille Irby: his was life is about choices. And everybody, he said, everybody in the classroom was like, your mom says that? Your mom, like everybody else had like something inspirational. Life

[00:08:37] Thea Monyee: like, like, and I’m not even one of her kids, but I’ll be like, but Crystal, she be like, life is about choices, bitch. Buckle up. Buckle up.

[00:08:44] Thea Monyee: It’s true. It’s drag, that phrase has dragged me out of many a

[00:08:49] Thea Monyee: situation.

[00:08:50] Crystal Tennille Irby: is about choices. So, but yeah, now,

[00:08:54] NeKisha Killings: Yeah. Yeah. [00:09:00] We, we, the other way we say in this

[00:09:01] NeKisha Killings: house is, um, gosh,

[00:09:04] Thea Monyee: Choose your, choose your own

[00:09:05] NeKisha Killings: There’s doors. Some doors are two

[00:09:07] NeKisha Killings: way. Some

[00:09:07] Thea Monyee:

[00:09:07] Crystal Tennille Irby: I think I have heard my mom say that. I think my mom

[00:09:10] Crystal Tennille Irby: has said that.

[00:09:18] Thea Monyee: Mm-Hmm.

[00:09:19] NeKisha Killings: who is totally our parents. Like, he had the

[00:09:22] Crystal Tennille Irby: was raised by old

[00:09:23] NeKisha Killings: had. He was raised

[00:09:25] NeKisha Killings: in that same years as we were, but had the lived experience

[00:09:28] Thea Monyee: Mm-Hmm.

[00:09:29] NeKisha Killings: He’s, yeah, he’s, he’s, he’s a generation, and just in the country where they have a few

[00:09:33] Thea Monyee: And you went to school with kids with ringworm.

[00:09:35] NeKisha Killings: the experience our

[00:09:36] Crystal Tennille Irby: That’s on our pre

[00:09:36] NeKisha Killings: That tells you a lot about us.

[00:09:38] Crystal Tennille Irby: on our pre show.

[00:09:39] Thea Monyee: Then you went to school. Nikisha.

[00:09:41] Crystal Tennille Irby: Were kids allowed to come to school with

[00:09:44] NeKisha Killings: I was not on the

[00:09:44] Crystal Tennille Irby: they were Oh, I was delayed. I was delayed, but No. You said they went to school. It

[00:09:51] Crystal Tennille Irby: kids being in school with

[00:09:52] Crystal Tennille Irby: ringworm. [00:10:00] a boy. She have never thought about this directly, but apparently so, because I know what they look like. I know what they look like on a boy’s head, and I don’t have no brothers. I don’t have no brothers is head. This is awful.

[00:10:14] NeKisha Killings: No, I don’t, I, I have too, I have too many recollections to, must have show, go listen to our pre show discussion on this. And I did some research, I did some research, and so, based on my research.

[00:10:30] Thea Monyee: All I gotta say is fuck.

[00:10:36] NeKisha Killings: sorry.

[00:10:38] Thea Monyee: That’s all I got.

[00:10:40] Crystal Tennille Irby: No way.

[00:10:40] Thea Monyee: Bitch, you ain’t motherfucking lying. I be like, I missed out on a few The South ain’t for everybody, okay? It ain’t. They kept Queen from you.

[00:10:49] Crystal Tennille Irby: mm. Mm

[00:10:50] Thea Monyee: Crystal said, no, we didn’t get that.

[00:10:52] Crystal Tennille Irby: uh. We didn’t get that.

[00:10:54] Thea Monyee: We were reading Alex Haley. This is why we be so crunked up and y’all be like[00:11:00]

[00:11:00] Crystal Tennille Irby: Remember?

[00:11:01] Thea Monyee: problem? We

[00:11:01] Crystal Tennille Irby: You know, that’s the thing. People are

[00:11:03] Crystal Tennille Irby: like, Project 2025. I was like,

[00:11:05] NeKisha Killings: because we were living it. We were seeing it in real life.

[00:11:07] Thea Monyee: that’s just sounds like, Oh, they put it in writing. That just sounds like, Oh, they put it in writing.

[00:11:12] Crystal Tennille Irby: Yes. Which is, which is why we need the federal

[00:11:15] Thea Monyee: need. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

[00:11:17] Crystal Tennille Irby: we, that’s why we vote like that. Cause we like, we, we are fighting for our lives down

[00:11:21] Thea Monyee: that.

[00:11:22] Crystal Tennille Irby: We are fighting for our lives down here.

[00:11:25] Thea Monyee: Lord.

[00:11:26] Crystal Tennille Irby: we got, we got to suit, like, like I want people to realize, like,

[00:11:30] Thea Monyee: we had to sue to go to school.sue to go to school.

[00:11:40] Crystal Tennille Irby: Okay. I think my original point was our mindfulness

[00:11:45] NeKisha Killings: Uh huh.

[00:11:46] Crystal Tennille Irby: that how we got here?

[00:11:47] Thea Monyee: I, I don’t know if he

[00:11:48] NeKisha Killings: Um. Um.

[00:11:49] Thea Monyee: no, I don’t think that’s how it is. I’m

[00:11:56] Crystal Tennille Irby: from this episode, which is usually a word [00:12:00] from the ancestors, uh, comes from Audre Lorde. And because we’re talking about Uh, Black Motherhood and Joy, uh, our mindfulness quote is, Caring for myself is not self indulgence. It is self preservation. And that is an act of political warfare.

[00:12:17] Crystal Tennille Irby: Caring for myself is not self indulgence. It is self preservation. And that is an act of political warfare. That is from

[00:12:27] Thea Monyee: so excited about what

[00:12:28] Crystal Tennille Irby: to find out What’s feature essay that’s from so I can link the whole essay because, um, I love for us. I, um, reading the context in, in, in, in which someone said something I think can expand our minds even more.

[00:12:46] Crystal Tennille Irby: So I’ll include that, um, as well. So, um, we’re going to jump in. We have a regular, um, show today. So we’ll start with our, um, church announcements, praise reports, and prayer list request. And then we’ll [00:13:00] move into our mac and cheese, which is going to be about, um, Black motherhood and joy. And then we’ll move into our Black Mamas Say.

[00:13:07] Crystal Tennille Irby: And this episode’s

[00:13:09] Thea Monyee: does our black mama say?

[00:13:11] Crystal Tennille Irby: episode’s Black Mamas Say is

[00:13:12] Crystal Tennille Irby: Couldn’t Be Me. Couldn’t be me.

[00:13:15] Thea Monyee: me. I feel like we did that one

[00:13:18] Crystal Tennille Irby: we were supposed to do that when the last time, but

[00:13:21] Thea Monyee: traded it

[00:13:22] NeKisha Killings: thought we

[00:13:22] Thea Monyee: my

[00:13:23] NeKisha Killings: We

[00:13:23] Crystal Tennille Irby: my God today,

[00:13:25] Crystal Tennille Irby: Oh, I got one. I got one.

[00:13:27] Crystal Tennille Irby: or that’s also couldn’t be me. It’s also code for you’re a better woman than me.

[00:13:33] Thea Monyee: That one.

[00:13:36] Thea Monyee: I think I got it.

[00:13:42] Thea Monyee: I’ve been using that one a lot. If you like it, I I can’t stand when my mama say that. I

[00:13:46] Crystal Tennille Irby: cannot stop and say, if You like it, I love it.

[00:13:50] Thea Monyee: Yeah, I don’t like it and I don’t love it. I don’t like

[00:13:56] Crystal Tennille Irby: She

[00:13:56] NeKisha Killings: know what She means like it. I don’t You know what she

[00:13:58] Crystal Tennille Irby: So let’s roll [00:14:00] into our, uh, responsive reading church announcements and, uh, praise the force and prayer. Cause so do we have a card number?

[00:14:11] Thea Monyee:

[00:14:11] NeKisha Killings: because I just realized that’s my, like, that’s my number. It’s what my

[00:14:14] NeKisha Killings:

[00:14:15] Crystal Tennille Irby: Okay, so number 10. Oh, this is good. Number So Aries of Car number 10. Aries of Car number 10.

[00:14:22] Thea Monyee: Ooh, Leia burns

[00:14:25] Thea Monyee: at the altar.

[00:14:28] NeKisha Killings: come. Cartoon says, lay your burdens on the altar of love.

[00:14:34] NeKisha Killings: No. Keisha, I think you wrote this. Dear mama, this next part of the journey is going to require all of you. Your fullest self. Ooh

[00:14:44] Thea Monyee: Don’t roll your eyes at yourself, Nakisha. I need you

[00:14:46] Thea Monyee: to look forward and focus. Do it again. Cause take it from the top.

[00:14:50] Crystal Tennille Irby: chah,

[00:14:51] Thea Monyee: take it to the top. Take

[00:14:53] Crystal Tennille Irby: chah,

[00:14:53] Thea Monyee: from the top. Run that back, run that

[00:14:55] Crystal Tennille Irby: down. Is this what I want to say to me for my mama, this next part of the [00:15:00] journey is going to require all of you.

[00:15:03] Crystal Tennille Irby: Your fullest self, take the time you need to unburden, to shed the weight of yesterdays that has been holding you back, slowing you down. Rest in love, be rejuvenated in joy. Look at that! Look at the ancestors!

[00:15:23] Crystal Tennille Irby: Girl

[00:15:24] Thea Monyee: good. You is more ready than you knew.

[00:15:26] Crystal Tennille Irby: girl up in peace. Go mama, go. That’s car 10 for my

[00:15:30] Thea Monyee: Go mama, go. I

[00:15:33] Crystal Tennille Irby: mama.

[00:15:34] Crystal Tennille Irby: Yeah, that’s good. I’m mad at that.

[00:15:38] Thea Monyee: that’s nice.

[00:15:39] Crystal Tennille Irby: I’m not mad at That’s lovely. I love that not mad at that for my next year, to launch we’re ready, year. I’m not a prayer list request. Um, and,

[00:15:48] NeKisha Killings: this joy popping. Let’s get church announcements. So I, my church announcements is I will be doing. Nothing I am going to be focused on [00:16:00] writing and this podcast.

[00:16:01] Crystal Tennille Irby: In fact, I have let some stuff go. Um, I was the co chair of the South Carolina doula staring committee, and I am releasing that, um, at the, uh, end of the year. I’m going into next year because I want to focus on this podcast. I want to focus on my writing and building, um, create as well, which is my nonprofit for black girls, 12 ages, 12 to 21 in South Carolina, interested in writing and performance.

[00:16:33] Crystal Tennille Irby: So that’s what I’ll be doing and anything that does not relate to that. I will not be doing so I don’t have no church announcements. That’s my announcements.

[00:16:50] NeKisha Killings: I love that. Oh, goodness. No, no. This is where I start to slow down. And so, [00:17:00] um, I pray my

[00:17:02] Thea Monyee: Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm.

[00:17:04] NeKisha Killings: I’ll be in Chicago and Baltimore in November, and I don’t do cold. So I just want y’all just, you know.

[00:17:10] Thea Monyee: Mm-Hmm.

[00:17:10] NeKisha Killings: Say one for, say one for me, because that’s going to be a lot, but I, I’m

[00:17:13] Thea Monyee: That’s exciting.

[00:17:14] NeKisha Killings: I’ll be doing the opening plenary there. So, um Highlight your girl and then

[00:17:20] Crystal Tennille Irby: report.

[00:17:21] Thea Monyee: Mm.

[00:17:22] Crystal Tennille Irby: I have a praise report. So I held my first, uh, board meeting for creators.

[00:17:28] Crystal Tennille Irby: Well, so, um, I officially have a board now. Very excited about that.

[00:17:35] Crystal Tennille Irby: So I officially have a board.

[00:17:37] Thea Monyee: Yes.

[00:17:38] Crystal Tennille Irby: Um, so I’m

[00:17:39] Thea Monyee: a great meeting too. Everything

[00:17:41] Crystal Tennille Irby: yeah, and I’m really proud of myself because I did not see myself, um,

[00:17:47] Crystal Tennille Irby: Having a nonprofit. This is completely spirit led. Like it came up in my devonation, um, about this work.

[00:17:56] Crystal Tennille Irby: So this is completely spirit led. And, [00:18:00] um, I had a lot of fear around having a nonprofit, so I’m just really proud of myself that I pushed through that and I’ve had my first official

[00:18:06] Crystal Tennille Irby: board meeting, so yeah, praise report.

[00:18:08] Thea Monyee: Yes. That was good.

[00:18:11] Crystal Tennille Irby: Yeah. Excited. Yeah.

[00:18:12] Crystal Tennille Irby: Yes. This

[00:18:15] Thea Monyee: My turn.

[00:18:16] NeKisha Killings: I’m getting clear about work. Um, I talk about joy. That’s work. That’s, that’s what I do. I do get to that. No matter where I go, so, um, the opportunities to do that are, are, are available and are, I’m enjoying them.

[00:18:35] Thea Monyee: Um, what I’m excited about is I started taking swim lessons.

[00:18:39] Crystal Tennille Irby: was going to say, that’s a price report. Your

[00:18:41] Thea Monyee: That’s the crazy part. I’m really excited. I have a really great teacher. the first session I met with him and he watched me swim and he’s like, okay, so you can swim.

[00:18:52] Thea Monyee: And he’s like, I think we’re just healing like the little girl in you that,

[00:18:56] Thea Monyee: you know, lost confidence about this. And that was really like [00:19:00] really on point.

[00:19:00] Thea Monyee: And I feel like I’m ready to put on my big girl fins and keep moving towards my big goal, which is free diving and free diving, you know, with marine life, free diving with whales and dolphins and manta rays and sharks.

[00:19:14] Thea Monyee: I’m just really having a more intimate. deep relationship with the water. Um, I feel really excited about that. So I’m actually signed up for the Black and Marine Science Conference,

[00:19:25] Thea Monyee: So excited about the people I’m going to meet, hoping that it’s like really amazing. Um, I connected with a dive center out here, Zenco Dive. They have their first dive. I’ve never dived in Catalina, even though I live here, and there’s like an amazing kelp, kelp forest in Catalina, the Black and Marine Science, they’re doing a dive while we’re down there, so maybe I’ll get a couple of dives in, and I’m like excited to be moving towards these water goals that do include free diving, Surfing with other Black folks, sailing, um, the Moana, like, I have some pretty lofty water goals.

[00:19:59] Thea Monyee: [00:20:00] I just feel very, like, I feel like I’m not a therapist anymore, officially. Like, I can feel that, yeah, I feel like it’s gone. I feel like it’s gone, you know, and like this path, this water is leading me on. I have no idea where it’s going to go. I have no idea what’s going to happen, but it feels like, Oh, this is what you actually came here to be doing.

[00:20:25] Thea Monyee: And it’s clean. Like there’s no, like, There’s no family stuff. There’s no social stuff on it at all. It’s just like my pure soul journey. So that’s exciting. I must also add this podcast. I would love if we were sponsored by Pattern. And here, let me tell you why real quick. As a woman with the locks, I think we’re sometimes discouraged about water. I mean, there’s like swim caps that have come out for locks and things like that, but often we’re told like how bad. This [00:21:00] is for our hair. And there’s just been a, you know, and even figuring out for me, it was like, it’s not an option, whether or not, like it has to work for my hair.

[00:21:11] Thea Monyee: Water has to work for my hair, because if I’m a water being, and we are historically ancestrally, Water beings like Africans are water like West Africans in particular who abide the water Were the first divers and the first use semen and all these different things So that that hair barrier is still very very real when it comes to black people exploring water And so I just want to say that I was determined I was like fuck this I want long beautiful locks and I want to be And I don’t feel like I should have to choose.

[00:21:45] Thea Monyee: I just assumed 4C lock people like me, the product wouldn’t work for it. I picked up your products,

[00:21:52] Thea Monyee: it became a whole ritual and the way the products smell and the way that they fell just went right into the ritual. My locks have never looked so [00:22:00] great after swimming and so conditioned. And so like. Healthy. So I’m really excited. I did go online and buy more products, including this new steamer that looks the bomb.com.

[00:22:13] Thea Monyee: The Palo Santo leave-in conditioner, the intensive hair conditioner, and what really threw me out, what really, I touched the shit and I was like, bitch,

[00:22:22] Thea Monyee: which is a sign of endearment. I want you to know that Ms. Ellis Ross, it means that I love you very deeply from my soul. Was the, uh, like the breakage

[00:22:30] Thea Monyee: barrier mask.

[00:22:32] NeKisha Killings: huh. It is. Uh huh.

[00:22:34] Thea Monyee: I said, Oh, they know what they fucking doing over there, a pattern. So if you want somebody to talk about how it works before seed locks, we

[00:22:42] Thea Monyee: are here for you, we got different heritage.

[00:22:43] Thea Monyee: We got things going on up here. She got babies with locks in the kitchen. Got babies with locks.

[00:22:47] Thea Monyee: I really feel like this is

[00:22:49] Thea Monyee: important. I do.

[00:22:51] Thea Monyee: my goal is to document both the swim journey and the hair journey kind of together and weave that story together because I think it’s important. Um, [00:23:00] but yeah, I’m so thrilled about all this and we’ll see where it leads and, and you’ll see pictures of Remy really soon.

[00:23:07] Thea Monyee: prayer request is for a fellow mother. Um, her name is Fanta Hairston. you can go to my Instagram. I’m sharing information on her, um, journey. She’s a mother who’s had several. She heard her son battle cancer together. They both beat cancer, but hers returned. Um, she also had to have a partial femur removal surgery earlier this year that maxed out her health care.

[00:23:33] Thea Monyee: So the cancer has come back. Her health care is maxed out. And to get from now to the 70 to February, she’s raising funds. And I mean, I don’t I don’t have to say I don’t even know how black women do what they do. On a regular basis, she has these beautiful kids that she’s just a strong for.

[00:23:52] Thea Monyee: They live in Dubai now, um, as a family, but they’re from L. A. So yeah, I just want to put her on the prayer list [00:24:00] that she gets all the resources that she needs. But even more importantly, that her family can finally heal completely from all these, um, ongoing health issues.

[00:24:10] Crystal Tennille Irby: yeah. Yeah. And we’ll have the link, um, to contribute, um, in our show notes. So, um,

[00:24:17] Crystal Tennille Irby: That means that means the world. Yeah. so thank you for that. I’m really proud of you with your, um, swimming journeyI know that that was a real journey for you. And I’m, I know about your fear of water. And so, um, and I love that because what I really want moms to hear in that is like, um, Cause I, I know a lot of black people and swimming, black moms swimming, like, um, your kids can swim, but you can’t swim.

[00:24:41] Crystal Tennille Irby: Like, I really want us to hear, like, it’s never too late.

[00:24:44] Thea Monyee: Right.

[00:24:45] Thea Monyee: Um, you can go swim, you can take swim lessons. Um, and there’s so many, like every community has adult swim classes. I think

[00:24:55] Crystal Tennille Irby: to learn, to learn and to heal.

[00:24:58] Thea Monyee: those wounds. Yes.

[00:24:59] Crystal Tennille Irby: [00:25:00] something from your child, something from your

[00:25:02] Thea Monyee: And those, that water relationship is so important when you think about elementally. Um, and I, the last thing I just want to say really quickly is that, um, also know when you need to break out of your comfort zone because I did spend the first three years being very nurtured and, and charmed by the people there about my swimming and about my scuba diving and they were, they’re so nurturing and so supportive.

[00:25:29] Thea Monyee: And,

[00:25:30] Thea Monyee: I

[00:25:31] Thea Monyee: know that, In order to take my stuff to the next level, I needed new teachers because I think, you know, it’s normal for them every day. So at this point for them, it’s not the challenge of it or the pushing of this.

[00:25:49] Thea Monyee: They’re pushing, they don’t do a lot of pushing. so just also know when you’re teaching seasons, you’ve had teacher for a great season and they’ve gotten you this far, but you know, not being afraid to, [00:26:00] um, reach out for new teachers when that comes up, especially in goals like this, like your creative goals.

[00:26:07] Thea Monyee: And this for me is a bit of a creative goal. Um, moving forward. So

[00:26:10] Crystal Tennille Irby: Yeah. I think that’s true with a lot of things. Like never be afraid to, like, you know, if you’re in therapy and your time with your therapist

[00:26:18] Crystal Tennille Irby: is gone, your doctor, um, your life coach, um.

[00:26:23] Thea Monyee: All of it. Yeah. You have to know that.

[00:26:25] Crystal Tennille Irby: have to know, and that doesn’t mean, you know, that they didn’t serve you. And it doesn’t have to be like, well, I’m past this shit.

[00:26:30] Crystal Tennille Irby: Like it don’t have to be that, you know what I’m saying? It’s just like, I’ve gotten what I needed. You have served me. I’m grateful for it. And it’s time for me to, you know,

[00:26:40] Thea Monyee: Yeah.

[00:26:40] Thea Monyee: Yeah.

[00:26:41] Thea Monyee: Yeah.

[00:26:43] Crystal Tennille Irby: Yeah.

[00:26:45] Thea Monyee: And new doors will open, so, yeah.

[00:26:47] NeKisha Killings:

[00:26:47] Crystal Tennille Irby: So,

[00:26:49] Thea Monyee: Yeah.

[00:26:49] Crystal Tennille Irby: it. It for our, uh, church announcements, praise reports, and prayer lists requests. Please make sure that you’re following us on all social media platforms [00:27:00] at Tim Black, mommas podcast. Don’t just listen, make sure you’re subscribed.

[00:27:04] Crystal Tennille Irby: And, um, if you want to see all the facial hand movements, all of that stuff, check us out, um, on YouTube, um, as well. Um, and leave us a review. Um, we love when you all talk back to us. Our inbox is always open magic at DemBlackMamas. com. You can, uh, comment, um, as well. Um, On Instagram, on YouTube, or you can also, um, DMS and your comments or your questions may end up on the show, but it’s also inspiring for us.

[00:27:37] Crystal Tennille Irby: Um, we always say that, um, do black mamas is not just a presentation, but it is a conversation. So you all talking back to us really inspires us. It gives us ideas for the show and it just also, you know, makes us think, you know, um, so we really, really appreciate your feedback. Um, And like I said, please leave a review for us on Apple [00:28:00] podcasts, Spotify.

[00:28:00] Crystal Tennille Irby: Um, and I think you can leave reviews on YouTube as well. I don’t know, but if you can. Leave a

[00:28:07] Thea Monyee: Yeah. Do it. Yeah. Leave review everywhere.

[00:28:09] Crystal Tennille Irby: we love it. We love love everybody, you know, everybody likes to hear um, Affirming words. So we love

[00:28:15] Thea Monyee: Mm-Hmm.

[00:28:17] Crystal Tennille Irby: All right, so Now we’re going to slide into our mac and cheese, which is about black

[00:28:24] Crystal Tennille Irby: motherhood and joy

[00:28:27] Thea Monyee: Give it to me, baby.

[00:28:30] Crystal Tennille Irby: Okay. So this is our Mac and cheese segments. And, uh, this is the juiciest part of our show. This is the topic. And, um, we are going to be talking about black motherhood and joy. So y’all know, I love tangible tools. And I think sometimes when we talk about liberation, we talk about freedom. We talk about elevation.

[00:28:53] Crystal Tennille Irby: We talk about, um, improving your life and all this stuff. Sometimes when people talk about it, it can seem really.[00:29:00]

[00:29:00] Thea Monyee: hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

[00:29:02] NeKisha Killings: Mm hmm.

[00:29:05] Crystal Tennille Irby: So I love, love, love tangible tools when someone can give something and say, okay, well here, like in my hand, this is like how you can get here. So I say this to say that Thea has created a tangible tool.

[00:29:22] Thea Monyee: And the black or the brain?

[00:29:23] Crystal Tennille Irby: the black of the brain in 2023, Fia and the black of the brain, which is an ongoing campaign conversation cohort created to decolonize mental health, co created and curated the joy assessment, which is a living document designed to accomplish the following. So before I say what is designed to accomplish like Did not just jump on, jump on the joy train

[00:29:47] Crystal Tennille Irby: I just want to say. This is not news to this. She treated us like she been, she’s been, um, talking about joy. So this work, so this, [00:30:00] uh, she’s been talking about joy. So this work, um, has been a long time in the making. It didn’t just come about as a response to, um, the 2024 presidential, um, election. So the joy assessment, which is a living document.

[00:30:18] Crystal Tennille Irby: Designed to accomplish the following to center joy centered approaches within the social services, humans, human service fields, including, but not limited to mental health, medical, educational, wellness, nutrition, and social workto the center colonized approaches to data data collection and treatment planning.

[00:30:40] Crystal Tennille Irby: To humanize both clients, patients, students, and practitioners, educators, et cetera, by amplifying the purpose of joy in their interactions and choices, is it et cetera, or et cetera?

[00:30:55] Thea Monyee: Oh, I do both. I, you know.

[00:30:57] Crystal Tennille Irby: I feel like Black people say it one

[00:30:59] Thea Monyee: I think black [00:31:00] people say et cetera.

[00:31:01] Crystal Tennille Irby: think Black people do

[00:31:02] Thea Monyee: I think other people say et cetera. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I feel black people say et cetera. Mm hmm.

[00:31:10] Crystal Tennille Irby: To disrupt pain and or blame focus assessment and treatment planning that promotes and supports the mythology of white supremacy and capitalism by shifting responsibility for wellness solely to the individual as opposed to acknowledging the society, the behavior it exhibits, and and policies it supports and the systemic environment that is created as a result of these misaligned structural political values and practices.

[00:31:37] Crystal Tennille Irby: Now, that is a well written

[00:31:39] Thea Monyee: Thank you, bitch. Thank you. I worked hard on that one.

[00:31:45] Crystal Tennille Irby: that is, somebody’s a poet,

[00:31:47] Thea Monyee: I worked hard on that one.

[00:31:49] Crystal Tennille Irby: somebody’s a poet, that’s what that is, and to shift culture and systems towards interconnected, effective, and sustainable practices rooted in decolonized practices and away from [00:32:00] violent white supremacist, uh, capitalist policies and values that harm all forms of life within our society, and I also want to say, um, Thea is not just out here willy nilly.

[00:32:10] Thea Monyee: Mm hmm.

[00:32:11] Crystal Tennille Irby: Just out here willy nilly. she was a licensed marriage and family therapist and decided to give up her license. What does it mean? Two years,

[00:32:20] Thea Monyee: Yeah, I think so. Golly. Wow.

[00:32:23] Crystal Tennille Irby: she has worked in the system. She was licensed by the system. So she has a thorough understanding of its shortcomings and its Um, failures and has also done a lot of work around racial and social, um, justice and also, um, provided therapy for activists, um, in movement.

[00:32:46] Crystal Tennille Irby: So, um, we are going to turn it over to

[00:32:50] Thea Monyee: Oh, thank you so much, Crystal, for that.

[00:32:54] Crystal Tennille Irby: um, the Keisha and I through the joy assessment, or, you know, tell us a little bit [00:33:00] about the joy assessment. Um,

[00:33:05] Thea Monyee: because, for example, I think how the Joy Assessment is structured and how we recommend people engage the Joy Assessment is modeled in how the black of the brain developed. When we got together in 2020, there was like chaos everywhere. It was George Floyd.

[00:33:23] Thea Monyee: It was COVID. There was so much happening. I think Brianna Taylor, it was everything. And everything was so reactive and action oriented. And, um, I made a conscious choice that that cohort could not be reactive, could not react. We spent that first year together. Sitting in our bodies and witnessing our own reactivity, witnessing what was happening within ourselves as a result of these external factors without giving ourselves permission to act because we knew from that witnessing that we weren’t yet healed enough to act on anyone’s behalf. [00:34:00] We weren’t healed enough, just the wanting to react the way we wanted to react was evidence of the, we were not healed enough. We first had to learn to build a tolerance for witnessing.

[00:34:14] Thea Monyee: And I remember struggling within myself, like, did I call all these people together and I don’t have a plan for them, but spirit was like, this is the plan. This is what you’re doing.the second year, I still wouldn’t let them create or build nothing.

[00:34:29] Thea Monyee: The second year they had to turn. and be in relationship with each other and they had to be mirrors for each other. we did some group work, but it wasn’t like for, and then for the intention of something, it was just to be able to build a tolerance for looking across at each other and developing More intimacy.

[00:34:47] Thea Monyee: Um, it wasn’t until the third year, which is 2022, that we even began, um, thinking actively about what would we look like [00:35:00] in the world? What would we look like if people wouldn’t know we existed? What would we, what would that look like? How would we want that to feel? How do we protect what we’ve built without also, you know, Creating, um, gatekeeping, you know, so we began to conceptualize and it was 2023 when we finally got together and I said now we can create something that we can offer the world.

[00:35:20] Thea Monyee: Um, the tool is very similar to me, the tool, even the process, there were five what we call fire stewards are fire stewards. Um, are the ones who are about like active engagement, but we have different types of stewards within the black or the brain. There are just elders who were there from the very beginning who like when new people come in, they help pass on the wisdom and the information and fire stewards tend to be a little bit more, um, involved.

[00:35:45] Thea Monyee: And so we have five fire stewards who we met. We did not have a timeline or a deadline. We just would meet together and just sit and say. what do we want this tool to do in the world? [00:36:00] How would we know it was successful? Um, what are the pros and cons to adding a payment to it? Um, to gatekeeping it?

[00:36:08] Thea Monyee: Is that white? Is that white supremacy? Are we experiencing joy as we create it? Um, if we stopped experiencing joy in the creation process, we pull back and. Figure out what we took a left. We’d pause the whole process to figure out when did we stop experience joy in creating it? It’s a very important to us that, that if we’re creating something about joy, we have to be experiencing joy.

[00:36:30] Thea Monyee: And if we’re not, that to us is a measurement of. Being misaligned, right? So that has to be true while building it. That has to be true while taking it. And that’s true in life. Joy really is a tool to figure out, am I aligned right now? If I’m not, it doesn’t mean I abandon everything, but it does mean I have to stop, look at the data differently and make new decisions, right.

[00:36:54] Thea Monyee: And make new choices. over time doing this joy work. I’ve come to [00:37:00] realize that. I know the social political barrier to using joy is it creates free people, right? And we can’t control free people in a capitalist society. But the individual barrier to tapping into your joy is accountability. The reason people will not do joy work on an individual basis is because they know on some intrinsic level that will lead to having to make decisions that they’re avoiding making. The joy work. Isn’t going to reveal to you something that’s necessarily a big surprise. You know, it’s not working, you know, the job is not working, you know, the marriage is not working, you know, this is not working, but, but, but it isn’t painfully obvious to you that it is.

[00:37:48] Thea Monyee: Not just not working, but it is actually prohibiting you from expanding into the next version of yourself that you wanna be. And you, and what we’ll tell ourselves is there. There’s no other [00:38:00] way to do it, This is where Haveta comes up. I have to. I have to, I must. And we say all these words because the truth is.

[00:38:08] Thea Monyee: Saying the truth about what we want, which is what our joy demands of us. The question of joy demands will require making new decisions, setting boundaries, having tough conversations. So on an individual basis, that’s the barrier that ends up being the barrier. We want to believe that the things we’re doing, we have to do to be a good person.

[00:38:34] Thea Monyee: We have to do to be a good wife. We have to do to be a good mother, good child, blah, blah, blah, blah. We have to, but we don’t have to. We literally never have to ever, ever, ever do anything, anything. We don’t have to. Our ancestors proved that when they jump off a boat. So we, we don’t have to, but we want to believe we have to so that we don’t have to make new [00:39:00] decisions.

[00:39:00] NeKisha Killings: So I’m going to back up a little bit because I wanted to interject a couple of things. Y’all know I did a talk recently called, um, Watching DEI Die

[00:39:09] NeKisha Killings: before I was going to do that talk, I was talking to some sisters in the lobby and saying, Hey, I want to talk about this thing today about how DEI is dead. And they were like, what do you mean?

[00:39:20] NeKisha Killings: Almost as if I was, okay. Um, saying that we should dead it, which is a whole nother conversation, but I don’t know that folks were really in tuned enough to see this, uh, what I ultimately called death by a thousand cuts, how it was just chipped

[00:39:35] Thea Monyee: Mm hmm. Absolutely.

[00:39:36] NeKisha Killings: You know what I mean? And it could have happened without folks noticing.

[00:39:40] NeKisha Killings: It did happen without a lot of folks noticing. And so I think even bringing that up, even speaking that in this conversation, somebody is going to be like, wait, what? Yeah, think back on how differently things look today than they did four years ago. It is a market difference. The other piece I wanted to raise was, uh, Thea, I love the way you have talked about the conversations that you all [00:40:00] had.

[00:40:00] NeKisha Killings: Everything about this work is decolonized every single thing. No, no deadlines, no timeline. No, we got together to talk about how are we still feeling? Are we enjoying this process? And so I just want to make sure that we highlight the intentional decolonization of every. Single piece of this work and how that will benefit us in the end.

[00:40:21] NeKisha Killings: Crystal is, Hey, it’s right. It’s tight, but it’s right.

[00:40:26] Thea Monyee: Mm

[00:40:26] NeKisha Killings: a message to crystal.

[00:40:28] Crystal Tennille Irby: I

[00:40:28] NeKisha Killings: tight, but it’s right.

[00:40:29] Crystal Tennille Irby: say, I don’t know why preachers say that. I just don’t like it. I

[00:40:32] NeKisha Killings: They say a lot of questionable stuff. They say a lot of questionable stuff. They do. They do.

[00:40:36] Crystal Tennille Irby: don’t

[00:40:36] Thea Monyee: not a question of

[00:40:38] Crystal Tennille Irby: I just don’t like it.

[00:40:39] NeKisha Killings: But the last thing, the last thing I wanted to ask you to go back to Theo was you used a phrase I’ve never heard before. And I think you said to build our tolerance for witness.

[00:40:49] Thea Monyee: tolerance, for being the observer. Our tolerance for being the witness. So.

[00:40:55] Crystal Tennille Irby: Wait, before you get into that, I just want, just, A slight caveat [00:41:00] here

[00:41:00] Crystal Tennille Irby: when you say you don’t have to do anything, you don’t want to do, you know, as someone who is newly initiated.

[00:41:10] Thea Monyee: Mm-Hmm.

[00:41:11] Crystal Tennille Irby: Into Oshun. I guess I just want to point

[00:41:16] Thea Monyee: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I get this question a lot. I get this question a lot.

[00:41:19] NeKisha Killings: What’s the question? What is the question? Who

[00:41:22] Crystal Tennille Irby: Cause here’s the thing, like, people think, like, when they think about Afro spirituality or Af, uh, African traditional, traditional religions that it’s going to be like, oh, everything’s gonna be like, um, rainbows and roses. And everything you hear is gonna be rainbows and roses and

[00:41:38] NeKisha Killings: is thinking that who is

[00:41:40] Crystal Tennille Irby: A lot of people, a lot of people think

[00:41:42] NeKisha Killings: they ain’t been paying attention?

[00:41:44] Crystal Tennille Irby: because, because they think of the oppression that, that they

[00:41:49] Thea Monyee: that separated them from Mm-Hmm.

[00:41:51] Crystal Tennille Irby: and, and this separation. they get free, maybe freedom and accountability mix up. And so I, I’m wondering like[00:42:00]

[00:42:00] Thea Monyee: Navigating that.

[00:42:01] Crystal Tennille Irby: navigating that

[00:42:03] Crystal Tennille Irby: Cause I, I know, I know folks can be, folks can, can, can take things like,

[00:42:07] Thea Monyee: for sure. No.

[00:42:09] Crystal Tennille Irby: and I know, and I know that’s not the way you’re intending it. You know what I’m

[00:42:12] Thea Monyee: Yeah, for sure. No. So let me do both. So let me go to, uh, Nikesha said, I’m gonna go to your point. So Nikesha, the building, the tolerance to be a witness, the building, the tolerance to be an observer, particularly in a femme body and in a body of color and in a black body, our bodies. have been on demand to intervene and do and serve.

[00:42:39] Thea Monyee: it’s very trained to intervene. Um, and typically for the comfort of others, right? So that this person doesn’t have this. So we got to turn lemons into lemonade, water into wine. We got to make a way out of no way. We have a zillion sayings for this. Um, we’re

[00:42:56] Crystal Tennille Irby: of the community.

[00:42:58] Thea Monyee: we’re interveners.

[00:42:59] Thea Monyee: We’re [00:43:00] interveners. We don’t imagine a time when our ancestors We’re not intervening or interrupting

[00:43:09] NeKisha Killings: Mm hmm.

[00:43:10] Thea Monyee: what was happening around them. They were actually flowing with it. And so building a tolerance to witness is going back to life is about choices is learning to let those choices play out.

[00:43:23] NeKisha Killings: Ooh.

[00:43:25] Thea Monyee: and watching it and not assuming and absorbing the responsibility for.

[00:43:32] Thea Monyee: Those choices. So if life is about choices and people are making them, why are we intervening?

[00:43:38] NeKisha Killings: Yeah.

[00:43:39] Thea Monyee: Right? What we really need to do is build a tolerance for what it looks like to witness it and witnessing can look like reflection that look, that’s really hard. That really sucks.

[00:43:52] NeKisha Killings: I love that. Thank you for

[00:43:54] Thea Monyee: it doesn’t mean what can I do, right? Cause the next thing is like, how can I help? [00:44:00] What can I do? What if we didn’t say that? And we just learned to build a tolerance for the fact that. Suffering isn’t like our, our, uh, mandate for living, but it is an experience that we are going to encounter throughout our life.

[00:44:15] Thea Monyee: And, and it’s a teacher, right? It’s a teacher. And so for me, I know by not choosing my joy historically, and by choosing to intervene for others so that they could have peace and joy at my own expense, I would prevented their growth.

[00:44:31] NeKisha Killings: Mm.

[00:44:32] Thea Monyee: them. I stunted them. And that goes on my accountability card, not theirs. I intervened, not spirit led, socially led. I intervened, I disrupted a natural process that was occurring. I stunted a growth lesson that they’re still going to have to learn.

[00:44:54] Thea Monyee: Now it may just be harder for them to learn. And that goes on my accountability tab.[00:45:00]

[00:45:00] NeKisha Killings: That’s

[00:45:00] Thea Monyee: I think joy work helps us to build that tolerance because it, when that person calls that has called a million times and we’ve always shown up and this time they call and we don’t want to. And we say, I can’t do it.

[00:45:14] Thea Monyee: And we set a boundary. What we’re building in that moment is our tolerance for witnessing. And we’re also noticing and seeing. Are they showing up for us or because we do for them? These are the sticky, icky revelations and data that joy reveals. That what I say as individuals, we are avoiding these things.

[00:45:32] Thea Monyee: We are, we don’t want to know that the people who are showing up the most are showing up because they’re getting something out of the deal. We don’t want to know that we want to believe that they’re here because they love us.

[00:45:43] NeKisha Killings: Yeah.

[00:45:43] Thea Monyee: We want, we don’t want to know the difference between being loved for who we are and being loved for what we do.

[00:45:48] Thea Monyee: We say we do, but we don’t necessarily want to pick up that

[00:45:52] Crystal Tennille Irby: we are nurtured like that.

[00:45:54] Thea Monyee: Yeah.

[00:45:55] Crystal Tennille Irby: like it’s what we do. Like we’re the backbone of the community. Like it’s, [00:46:00] it’s what we do. We can’t just show up and be, we have to be the backbone.

[00:46:05] Thea Monyee: Yeah. And all of that makes joy feel like a luxury, like something we earn through the saying yes to all these things, which is why our joy ends up being like third party, right? Like, Oh, my kids are happy or my mother’s happy and everybody’s happy. So I’m happy. I’m just at peace temporarily because everybody’s not asking for something in this moment, but that’s different than actual joy.

[00:46:27] Crystal Tennille Irby: And that, that piece that, that you said about witnessing really spoke to me in terms of my, my journey through conscious parenting.

[00:46:36] Crystal Tennille Irby: I don’t call it gentle parenting because it’s not to me, to me as conscious parenting, it’s being completely

[00:46:42] Thea Monyee: aware. Yeah, I’m

[00:46:43] Crystal Tennille Irby: with yourself and your children.

[00:46:46] Crystal Tennille Irby: And so when you are completely present. You realize they aren’t triggering me. I’m triggered, but they’re not, they’re not, they’re not the cause of that. And so sometimes like that jumping in [00:47:00] is that it’s like, I don’t want them to make the mistake that I made. I don’t want them to have to experience this.

[00:47:06] Crystal Tennille Irby: And so I think this is so critical in parenting because it’s like, when do I witness?

[00:47:13] Thea Monyee: Right.

[00:47:14] Crystal Tennille Irby: And when do I,

[00:47:17] NeKisha Killings: Intervene.

[00:47:18] Crystal Tennille Irby: support, especially, especially with adult children. Cause with adult children, it’s like, okay, is there something that I missed that I, that they didn’t get parented on, so they’re missing a skill or is this just

[00:47:31] Thea Monyee: Is it just

[00:47:32] Crystal Tennille Irby: journey? Like,

[00:47:33] Thea Monyee: just messy humaning?

[00:47:35] Crystal Tennille Irby: yeah,

[00:47:36] Thea Monyee: just something Black people are not allowed to be?

[00:47:39] Crystal Tennille Irby: I, and,

[00:47:40] NeKisha Killings: Mmm.

[00:47:40] Thea Monyee: who experiment and explore and make mistakes.

[00:47:43] Crystal Tennille Irby: right. Because historically. It could have cost of cost us our life, but are, but, but are we still there?

[00:47:52] Thea Monyee: And do we need anyone’s permission to live that way? I am a I Just because I’m Black doesn’t mean I’m not a messy human who came to have this [00:48:00] experience of exploring and trying and tasting and making mistakes. That is what this whole shit is. One big experiential experience

[00:48:09] Crystal Tennille Irby: And that, and I just want to say as a mother, especially because, you know, I mean, I’m gonna be real about it. Like, you know, when the kids fucked up, nobody says shit about the dad. Well, I don’t even say when the kids fucked up or when the, or when the kid does something, nobody says shit about the dad.

[00:48:25] Crystal Tennille Irby: Right? Nobody says shit about the dad. It’s all, it’s, it’s always the

[00:48:29] Thea Monyee: We’re your mama.

[00:48:31] Crystal Tennille Irby: your

[00:48:31] NeKisha Killings: Ooh! Mmm. Yeah.

[00:48:35] Crystal Tennille Irby:  and then that means that if my child is successful, I’m successful. If my, if my, if, if my child has failed, then I’m, and then you’re triggered because you’ve attached your being and your worthiness to how your child performs.

[00:48:51] Crystal Tennille Irby: I think one of the hardest lessons I learned. Early in parenting, early, early in parenting was like my [00:49:00] worthiness as a parent or my success or whatever, as a parent is not rooted in whether my child succeeds or fail. That’s not, I have no attachment to that. My job is to show up success or failure  because when the child succeeds, it’s like, that’s my baby.

[00:49:20] Thea Monyee: Yeah. It sneaks, it sneaks up on us because it’s so ingrained.

[00:49:24] Crystal Tennille Irby: But when they quote unquote fail, it’s like, I don’t know where they got that from. I don’t know where they came from.

[00:49:30] Thea Monyee: but going back to that other piece you said though about like if they’re successful, I’m so that’s my success it That’s what we’re teaching them.

[00:49:38] NeKisha Killings: Mmm.

[00:49:39] NeKisha Killings: That’s what we’re

[00:49:40] Thea Monyee: actually Teaching them. We’re actually actively teaching them to continue the cycle of performing for love of performing for validation, of performing for acceptance.

[00:49:52] Thea Monyee: And we are telling them that they don’t have to do that, but we are doing it! Which is actually the teaching. That’s the [00:50:00] actual teaching. So unless we decolonize, and we joy center, they will not learn. When my kids were getting close to, you know, getting older and I knew I needed to get a life and I started to travel and I didn’t say, let me wait for my kids to be able to travel with me or make everything a family trip.

[00:50:17] Thea Monyee: I started going on my own. if you talk to my kids right now, the excitement they get when their friends are like, Oh, they’re like, where’s your mom now? Like, where’s your mom traveling? Like your mom’s doing all this, you know? And I look at my kids and I was on the trajectory of teaching them.

[00:50:34] Thea Monyee: And I still make the mistake at times for sure of teaching themthat giving people what they want is the safest, happiest route through life for a black person, a black woman. But I’m grateful that I got it enough time to turn the corner and show them that. You know, honoring yourself is the, this is the best thing I can teach you as my black [00:51:00] child is you are a messy human who chose to come to explore the world.

[00:51:04] Thea Monyee: And that is a beautiful thing that has been happening since the beginning of time that every species came here, not perfect, figuring it out, adapting. I watched this documentary about an octopus and it was like learning how to hunt different types of. Animals, and it would have to study this animal for like two weeks and it would fail and it would fail and it would fail and then finally it would come up with a method.

[00:51:27] Thea Monyee: So even an octopus has to figure these things out. Why don’t we think we do too? black people don’t get that liberty and that permission, but joy work,

[00:51:37] Crystal Tennille Irby: black women.

[00:51:38] Thea Monyee: especially back home, but joy work. Demands that of us and we’re scared of that because will they still love us? Will they still love me?

[00:51:48] Thea Monyee: I did this with my mom. there’s a question that we’ll, we’ll probably get to that’s about, you know, when I think about my ideal day that I’ve chosen [00:52:00] from my joy, I feel, and my mom said fear. And I thought that was one of the truest responses we do. We fear that if I brainstorm my highest, best day, that there’s a good percentage of the people around me who may not be in agreement with that

[00:52:19] NeKisha Killings: Oh. Or be in

[00:52:22] Thea Monyee: Or be,

[00:52:23] NeKisha Killings: That’s

[00:52:23] Thea Monyee: be in that day, be in that day, be a part of that day or agree with it. They may say, that’s selfish.

[00:52:30] Thea Monyee: Where are your kids? Where’s your husband? Where’s your dad? They may say a million things. That is what’s on in our minds, right? So going back to what you said, Crystal. Using the example, for example, of like Afro spirituality, and here’s how joy does not absolve you from challenges. Joy does not absolve you from actions that are accountable.

[00:52:54] Thea Monyee: Like intangible is your choice was to practice Afro spirituality. [00:53:00] You chose that from your joy. You felt like this would be exciting. Now you have to do what that dictates in order to follow that choice, right? Like to commit to

[00:53:12] NeKisha Killings: Mm-Hmm.

[00:53:13] Thea Monyee: So. So if I choose, if I say it will bring me joy to be a famous writer, okay.

[00:53:20] Thea Monyee: I’m making the choice with my joy to be a famous writer. I got to do the things I got to do in that to become a famous writer. Now, part of that is there’s still some wiggle room there. Right? So for example, um, in our practice, we have O’Shea and O’Shea father’s like several divinities that we honor. I could be like, I’m going to do all this.

[00:53:45] Thea Monyee: I stretch it out for the day. I’ve decided that I’m my most joyful, which is what I want to bring to them when I can stretch it through the day and I can spend as much time with them as possible because I’m not cramming it into something. Same thing with chores and responsibilities. If I, if it doesn’t bring me joy to answer all of them.[00:54:00]

[00:54:00] Thea Monyee: All these emails today, then I got to really think about how to structure my day so that I have the most joy, which will lead me to the most productivity. Do you still make choices in the choices, but you still use joy to make those choices

[00:54:12] Thea Monyee: and joy is different than winning, being right, proving a point, proving point. Wait, she said, she said, okay, did you

[00:54:30] NeKisha Killings: Cause she’s getting, she’s getting her rebuttal ready.

[00:54:32] Crystal Tennille Irby: listen, I’m not the only one. What if being right brings you joy? I’m not the only one who feels that way. I am not the only one who feels that way.

[00:54:40] Thea Monyee: being right. Being right brings us a sense of control and validation.

[00:54:46] NeKisha Killings: Which is not the same, same thing.

[00:54:48] NeKisha Killings: who knew Joy was going to take us through all of it? Like, I don’t think people even conce I know I didn’t conceptualize

[00:54:54] Thea Monyee: what I love about, talk about it.

[00:54:56] Crystal Tennille Irby: But I do want to, that’s, that’s really cute. I do want to point out though, [00:55:00] the reason I brought up that question, like real talk is because I, it’s not, it’s not a bypass to accountability.

[00:55:07] Thea Monyee: is, it’s actually a, it’s a speedway directly to accountability.

[00:55:11] Crystal Tennille Irby: so when people hear, I don’t, I’m not going to do it if it doesn’t bring it.

[00:55:14] Crystal Tennille Irby: people will use spirituality that way. Like, they’ll spiritual bypass, like, something to, yeah,

[00:55:22] Thea Monyee: Joy is not a bypass. That’s what I’m saying. People avoid joy on an individual basis because it’s not a bypass. Because joy is a, joy is actually confrontational and transformational. Joy makes things clear and it makes it like right in front of you.

[00:55:36] Thea Monyee: I can tell you right now. Does doing such and such bring you joy, and you can feel in your such and such, and you know immediately if it does or doesn’t,

[00:55:48] Crystal Tennille Irby: hmm. Mm hmm.

[00:55:49] Thea Monyee: you know, immediately if it doesn’t,

[00:55:52] Crystal Tennille Irby: hmm.

[00:55:53] Thea Monyee: don’t ask because we feel like, well, I’m gonna have to do it anyway. What if you don’t, you don’t, and it may [00:56:00] make some people upset and it may rock the boat, but you actually don’t have to.

[00:56:07] Thea Monyee: Do anything,

[00:56:08] Crystal Tennille Irby: And it

[00:56:09] Thea Monyee: but stay black and die. You know, that’s what we used to say.

[00:56:13] Crystal Tennille Irby: and it may, it may, it may cost you something.

[00:56:19] Thea Monyee: It makes, let me tell you this. It may, let me, let me tell you, let me tell you what to do. People may say you bad, you

[00:56:25] Crystal Tennille Irby: money and, and, and also costs in a, in a, in an intangible way in other

[00:56:31] Thea Monyee: If people may say you’re bad, you’re selfish, I always do this exercise with people.I have people imagine being on their deathbed. They have 24 hours to live, 24 hours to live. You’re on your deathbed. And everybody that you’ve done things for is coming in and thanking you and they’re, they’re so grateful.

[00:56:51] Thea Monyee: Thank you for the times that you came and you got me when I didn’t have any gas money. Thank you for the times when you stopped everything you were doing and you came and did this. [00:57:00] Thank you for the times you, thank you for letting me move into your house. Thank you for all the things. And every single one of these people has more than 24 hours to live.

[00:57:10] Thea Monyee: And with your 24 hours, all you can think of, with everything they bring to you, is the decision you didn’t make for yourself. The thing you didn’t do. Oh, I remember that time I was working on a project that I was really enjoying and you called with another crisis and I stopped what I was doing and I came and I ended up not finishing the project. that was the by product of me saying yes to you and no to me. And it, Every single person that’s going to come thank you for that sacrifice has more time than you now. They’re not offering you their life. They can’t if they wanted to.

[00:57:50] Crystal Tennille Irby: How do you, how do you explain that to your children?

[00:57:54] NeKisha Killings: Ooh.

[00:57:55] Thea Monyee: You know, one thing they always say is even before I knew I was joy centered, I was joy centered. [00:58:00] They, they feel like they were raised in a joy centered home, which makes me happy. But with my kids. One, I didn’t force them to, to, to move that way.

[00:58:11] Thea Monyee: Like there was a stuff between my dad and my kids recently. And one of the things my kids said to my dad is my mother never tells us, no, rarely tells us no. And he was like, you know, why, you know, when I was growing up and that kind of thing, and they were like, well, shows, even if initially she’s like, I don’t know about that.

[00:58:30] Thea Monyee: Yeah. She’ll ask, well, why do we want to do that? And what is, what is it we want to get out of that? And what’s important. So we, we talk about it and I’m like, Oh, so if you could do this, but also do this, because this is my concern. I’m concerned about your safety. I’m concerned about, you know, we have five people here.

[00:58:44] Thea Monyee: We’re trying to get things done for these are my concerns. And these are your concerns. But if we can meet this concern and do this with that, be with that work for everybody. And that’s what we did. they said that by doing that. When I said, no, they really trusted the, no, [00:59:00] they understood it, right?

[00:59:01] Thea Monyee: It wasn’t just me imposing the, no, I think that’s one way. The other way is I have to continuously check in with myself about whether I am working against my own joy to offer my kids something that would maybe make their life a little easier, a little bit more comfortable, but not necessarily. But it would cost me joy.

[00:59:25] Thea Monyee: So I have to think about that, right? I’m the provider for my children. I have been for a long time. I don’t want them to feel discomfort. However, they’re adulting and I need them at this point in time to feel discomfort, which is why I have to learn to do the witnessing. And. I can look at their little account and I can see that shit is low.

[00:59:46] Thea Monyee: I get little alerts, but I have to wait until they come talk to me, ask me, maybe I tell them I need this work done. Can you do this work for me? and also my prayers had to change. I would pray for, you know, money to resource to take care of my family. [01:00:00] Now I’m praying for my family to be able to resource itself.

[01:00:02] Thea Monyee: I want my children to attract their own abundance. I want my children to attract good people. I want my children to attract their next level of teachers. I don’t want to hold all of that. So that they can feel what it feels like to hold that and be the center of their own universe and not mom, right?

[01:00:20] Thea Monyee: Because I’m not, I’m not the center of the universe. The God in them is as strong as the God in me. And I have to prove that by letting the God in them, Stand and show up and by feeding the God in me through my joy, you know, so it’s not easy work. I always tell people joy work is not for the faint of heart.

[01:00:40] Thea Monyee: this is my working definition of joy that I use as the secretary of joy for the entire world. is every living thing’s innate and inextricable right to choose at any and all moments. What brings them the highest experience of aliveness that they desire?[01:01:00]

[01:01:00] Thea Monyee: So I’m going to say it again. Joy is every living thing’s innate and inextricable right to choose at any and all moments. What brings them the highest experience of aliveness that they desire? In a nutshell, joy is my right to choose my own experience according to how I feel and what I want to desire. I may be wrong, whatever that means, but it’s mine.

[01:01:35] Thea Monyee: It’s my journey. It’s my experience. How do I know what I like, what my favorite food is? By tasting a bunch of food. How do I know what my favorite smells are? By smelling a bunch of things. How do I know I like some things and don’t like others? It’s all experimental. The joy is birthed through the sacral chakra.

[01:01:53] Thea Monyee: The sacral chakra, we’re at six months. It’s the first time we sit up for the first time. What happens when a baby sits up? They’re like, oh shit, you’ve been [01:02:00] keeping some shit from me. This world is bigger than I thought. Y’all told me I could only have this or that, but I see like five different options now, right?

[01:02:08] Thea Monyee: They start reaching, they start getting into things. Choice. And that brings exhilaration, and it’s also water. That is the water chakra, right? So fluidity, and like, expansiveness. These are the things, in my opinion, that oppression wants to keep us from you. Knowing oppression thinks of it linear though.

[01:02:31] Thea Monyee: They think of if we cut off what they need in the root, if we dismember the family, if we attack their money, if we, if we red line their housing, they will not see themselves as beings that have choice.

[01:02:46] NeKisha Killings: Hmm.

[01:02:48] Thea Monyee: But what this work does, it says, well, fuck all that. I’m going to activate my right to choose. And in doing so, I end up with the bag and the house and the family.

[01:02:59] Thea Monyee: Anyway, [01:03:00] you don’t have to move linear through the chakra. if I activate chakra two, it’s going to, it’s going to reach chakra one and three. You know what I’m saying? It’s also going to reach chakra five because the chakra two and chakra five are connected. So your throat. It’s going to be just by healing to just by activating joy, you heal one, three, and five. white supremacy, oppression, sees things as linear. it don’t have to be linear.There is no system that can tell me I’m free. There’s no system that can tell me I’m not free.

[01:03:36] NeKisha Killings: Hmm.

[01:03:39] Thea Monyee: My joy says I have accessibility to all things at all time. And I have all the choices because I am here. Period. Full stop. Period. [01:04:00] Period. That’s why this work is so important. So, I mean, we haven’t even asked the question. Should

[01:04:04] NeKisha Killings: We gotta get to it. We gotta get to it.

[01:04:05] Thea Monyee: So I’m going to choose a question from these sections the way it is, and it wasn’t intentional.

[01:04:11] Thea Monyee: Remember I told you guys, we just flowed. It wasn’t until after we did the flow that we realized Kind of how the thing flows, it starts with embodiment. I gave the definition of joy that I gave, so I’m gonna skip the first question, but the second few questions focus on embodiment, right?

[01:04:27] Thea Monyee: Because we’ve been disembodied and we’ve been taught to prioritize the mental over the physical. And the physical is. An excellent barometer for joy, right? How your body feels is an excellent barometer for joy. And you ain’t never seen nobody with a backache talking about they joyful. You ain’t never seen it.

[01:04:47] Thea Monyee: You ain’t never seen somebody’s feet hurt talking about, Ooh, a girl got so much joy, my feet hurt. It don’t work that way.

[01:04:52] Crystal Tennille Irby: I’m blending my makeup as I see that it’s not blended.

[01:04:54] NeKisha Killings: That brings you joy, baby. If it brings you joy, go

[01:04:56] Thea Monyee: it brings you joy. So, this question is an [01:05:00] embodiment question. It’s one of the questions from the, one of my favorites. So, currently, my friends, Karissa Tenelle

[01:05:08] NeKisha Killings: Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm.

[01:05:09] Thea Monyee: Nakeisha Gailings, Where does joy live in your body?

[01:05:13] Thea Monyee: And nowhere is actually also an answer. Where does joy currently live in your body? And if it ain’t, if you don’t, if you can’t feel it anywhere, that’s fine too. That’s a, that’s data.

[01:05:33] NeKisha Killings: I’m scared to hear Crystal’s answer ’cause she laughs so hard at that

[01:05:36] Thea Monyee: I think I know it because of how hard she answered that. I, I think I know it because of how hard she laughed at that.

[01:05:44] NeKisha Killings: same.

[01:05:45] Thea Monyee: Motherfucker.

[01:05:46] Crystal Tennille Irby: I mean, it is what it is. So Joy lives in New York. Um, in my body, like, I guess it would be like my throat or my mouth.

[01:05:59] Thea Monyee: [01:06:00] Mm hmm.

[01:06:01] Crystal Tennille Irby: and also in

[01:06:04] Thea Monyee: Spit it out. We already know what it is. There we go. There we go. There it is. There it is. We was waiting

[01:06:08] NeKisha Killings: knew that.

[01:06:11] Thea Monyee: Mm hmm.

[01:06:11] NeKisha Killings: hmm.

[01:06:12] Thea Monyee: Nakish,

[01:06:13] Crystal Tennille Irby: for me.

[01:06:14] Thea Monyee: it’s a joyful place. I, I’m, I concur.

[01:06:18] Crystal Tennille Irby: when it comes to my throat though, like, um, I think I associate that with my creativity because of my creativity, like as a writer is about speaking. I find a lot of joy in speaking. that’s why I chose my throat.

[01:06:34] Thea Monyee: But would it make sense? Cause it’s the second and the fifth chakra. Those are connected. So the sexual organs and stuff are the second and the fifth is the throat. And if you close them together like this, Like if you were to look at the chakras like this and then the heart’s in the middle and then 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 5, 6, 7, 5, and 2.

[01:06:51] Crystal Tennille Irby: I have a book that has a picture of that, but yeah.

[01:06:53] Thea Monyee: they, they, they work together. So that makes sense. Nikisha, we’re, [01:07:00] we’re just joy currently living in your body.

[01:07:03] NeKisha Killings: think the answer’s in my gut. I think

[01:07:06] Thea Monyee: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

[01:07:12] NeKisha Killings: And it’s hard for me to answer this. I’m not 100 percent convinced of that answer, but I’ll tell you what I think it is. I actually have a much more certainty about where, uh, fear

[01:07:24] Thea Monyee: Mm hmm, of course.

[01:07:24] NeKisha Killings: Where those things live, um, in my body and exactly, I can go right there, but I, I want to say my gut for, uh, a few reasons.

[01:07:33] NeKisha Killings: I think, um,

[01:07:38] NeKisha Killings: sort of a lightness that I can feel when, when I am happiest. Um, I think in our, in my, um, family, uh, we show love through food, through sharing meals, through, um, full bellies. Um, um,

[01:07:53] Thea Monyee: Yeah

[01:07:54] NeKisha Killings: and. It’s, you know, where my womb is and where my babies were. [01:08:00] It feels like the place where joy, um, could and should reside.

[01:08:05] Thea Monyee: should be that’s what I was thinking. That’s where it should be So these i’m asking two follow up questions That are related to this question that may help you get more clear about that because I’m hearing I’m picking up on this is where my joy should be, but I’m not sure if it’s there. This is where it would normally hide or be because there’s no crystal.

[01:08:26] Crystal Tennille Irby: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Um, what color is it? Is that for both of us

[01:08:33] Thea Monyee: Mm hmm. For both of you. Mm hmm. What color is

[01:08:35] Crystal Tennille Irby: Oh, I can’t even believe I’m about to say this. Yellow and red,

[01:08:45] Thea Monyee: Mm hmm.

[01:08:46] NeKisha Killings: that. I was gonna say that. Yes. And I was like, that’s cool. Cause my favorite color is orange. It’s in the middle. I like it. I like it.

[01:08:53] Thea Monyee: Mm hmm.

[01:08:53] NeKisha Killings: Yeah. That’s what I was. Yeah. Those are the exact two colors that came up for me.

[01:08:58] Crystal Tennille Irby: You know, purple is my favorite color, [01:09:00] but when I think about like, what does my joy look like? It’s yellow and red.

[01:09:04] Thea Monyee: Yellow and red. Okay. So, and can you describe the texture of it? Like think temperature, think feel, think sensory, like is it, is it prickly? Is it, is it soft? Is it smooth? Is it warm? Is it hot? Like think touch. what does it feel like? What’s the texture?

[01:09:23] Crystal Tennille Irby: It is warm and it’s, um, absorb it. Like, um, you can, like, if I, if I push my hand in it, like it would absorb my, like

[01:09:34] Thea Monyee: Your hand.

[01:09:36] Crystal Tennille Irby: things.

[01:09:37] Crystal Tennille Irby: when I experienced joy, I feel, I feel absorbed. I feel like I’m

[01:09:46] Thea Monyee: swallowed. Like

[01:09:56] NeKisha Killings: but not smooth like satin or silk. It is, [01:10:00] um, cozy. It is. Yeah. Really soft

[01:10:05] Thea Monyee: a little like cushy, like cushy.

[01:10:07] NeKisha Killings: Yeah. That’s what came

[01:10:09] Crystal Tennille Irby: Cozy is good. Yeah.

[01:10:11] Thea Monyee: Cozy is good

[01:10:12] Crystal Tennille Irby: like, um, I don’t want to leave it. I

[01:10:15] Thea Monyee: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:10:17] Crystal Tennille Irby: why it’s like, I’m absorbed by like, I don’t want to, I want, I want to push more into it. Yeah.

[01:10:23] Thea Monyee: I like the embodiment questions because they take us deeper, deeper, into it being not like a mental state, but into it being like an actual sensory place within us. Um, and so I think even if we don’t feel it at all, that’s data. If we feel like this is what it should feel like, that’s data.

[01:10:45] Thea Monyee: the thing I love about how these questions came to us is they, Don’t have wrong answers. No matter how you answer them, there’s data, right? If somebody says it’s not, I don’t have any in my body. That’s data. If somebody says, I [01:11:00] feel like it should be there, but it’s not quite there. That’s data.

[01:11:02] Thea Monyee: If somebody says it’s there and feels like this, all of it is information and joy thrives on data. Joy outputs a lot of data and joy inputs a lot of data. So it’s, it’s like there’s a relationship there. the next set of questions really are looking at cultural context and it’s really looking at, okay, sure, sure.

[01:11:23] Crystal Tennille Irby: What, what do the colors tell you? Cause colors mean a

[01:11:26] Thea Monyee: I think I get do now this depends on how you’re doing the assessment. If I’m doing it for myself, the colors are really just another step in the embodiment process for me to just be in deeper relationship with it. so now maybe I wear those colors more, or maybe I noticed them more outside of my body, but it’s really a part of the embodiment.

[01:11:44] Thea Monyee: As a practitioner, the colors. Can also give different clues, right? If they’re bolder colors, that’s interesting, right? Like if there’s softer pastel colors, if the texture is like prickly, you know, you can, and you don’t have to be like a licensed anything. Think about if [01:12:00] somebody’s joy feels prickly, that tells you something about how they feel about accessing that joy, right?

[01:12:05] Thea Monyee: If their joy is smooth, if their joy has an opening, if their joy has closed, like there’s just all these different things and really you’re getting a sense of. their relationship with it, right? And so like, like yellow is bright, red is bright. So that to me means you associate joy with being something strong, something that is supposed to be like seen and visible.

[01:12:26] Thea Monyee: It’s not like muted. Um, and then the warmth obviously means like, it’s something you’ve had a positive relationship with, right? So some people though, um, through religious trauma, um, find joy to be dangerous. find joy to be like a path towards sin to fight, you know, so they may find it to be prickly or cold.

[01:12:48] Thea Monyee: I’ve had people give those kinds of descriptions of joy or like a gate around it or a fence around it, you know, kind of thing. So,

[01:12:56] Crystal Tennille Irby: Hmm.

[01:12:56] Thea Monyee: Thank you for asking that. Um, so the [01:13:00] next questions, are really designed to look at cultural contexting. And we do have questions that are like, you know, historically, what has been your definition of joy or, and what are some of the cultural factors that have influenced that?

[01:13:11] NeKisha Killings: But this question to me, that I’m about to ask, is my favorite when it comes to cultural contexting. And this question says, and I’m asking you all now, in the last 30 days, I have been asked about my joy blank times.Zero.

[01:13:30] Thea Monyee: Crystal?

[01:13:34] Crystal Tennille Irby: mean, 15 to 20.

[01:13:37] Thea Monyee: Who asked you about your joy 15 to 20 times about your joy?

[01:13:42] NeKisha Killings: I don’t want to tell you because I don’t want to be judged.

[01:13:50] Thea Monyee: They said some RJ says, how was your joy, mom?

[01:13:53] Crystal Tennille Irby: He’ll say, how was your day today? if I’m like, uh, It was okay. He’ll say nothing made you happy. [01:14:00] Nothing was fun for you today.

[01:14:04] Thea Monyee: that is in the ballpark. I am literally though

[01:14:08] Crystal Tennille Irby: Oh joy. No.

[01:14:10] Thea Monyee: the reason why is because I think asking about a person’s joy is asking about an aspect of their being and not a state of emotion.

[01:14:17] Thea Monyee: Right? So happiness is like a state of emotion. But to me, joy, you know, we ask, what do you do for work? We identify work. Yeah. As a part of your being. I want people to identify joy as a part of your being. So they’re asking about a part of you, but I do think it’s cute.

[01:14:33] Thea Monyee: And, um, it par for the course that RJ is asking you about your way after this,

[01:14:37] Crystal Tennille Irby:

[01:14:37] Thea Monyee: let me tell you, the point of this question is to highlight and the answer, the average is obviously less than zero, to be honest. Like if I added up all the zeros on occasion, I’ve gotten, I think one is the most, um, that,

[01:14:52] Crystal Tennille Irby: think I asked other people that

[01:14:54] Thea Monyee: well, so this is what I was about to say to what this question brings up is way [01:15:00] nobody’s asked me, but then you also realize, Oh, and I ain’t asked nobody

[01:15:03] Crystal Tennille Irby: I asked anybody that. I will ask, how was your day? I will ask, what do you want to do?

[01:15:10] Thea Monyee: one of my points is, this is a cultural question for me because it shows that this culture that we’re living in does not value or joy at all. It’s not asked about at all. So this question is so important because it, it helps the individual understand the reason your joy is not centered, is not on you.

[01:15:28] Thea Monyee: You are in an environment and a social culture that does not. Ask about this at all. Right. Very, very, very, very rarely to the point where it could be like ignored and dismissed, it’s nominal. Right. And so one of the things that you’re pointing out is by me being a person who talks about it and use it, the people close to me have started to use it in their own life.

[01:15:49] Thea Monyee: So my daughter would be like, it’s not bringing me joy.

[01:15:52] Crystal Tennille Irby: I feel like I got a little bit of paranoid because it was like, do I want my kids[01:16:00]

[01:16:00] Thea Monyee: We’ll be, it opens a conversation, right? So when she says that it’s not bringing me joy and I’m like, okay, tell me more about

[01:16:06] Crystal Tennille Irby: Help me, Thea. Help me because I,

[01:16:10] Thea Monyee: that. What’s the barrier? Like, you know, it helps you to identify

[01:16:14] Crystal Tennille Irby: you know, I have boys.

[01:16:15] Thea Monyee: what I know, but you still got an even more reason. Them niggas need to know how to have some joy

[01:16:20] Crystal Tennille Irby: right. No, I get it. But my point is like, right, okay, you know, did you take out, well, I didn’t do it right there ’cause it just didn’t, it didn’t bring me joy.

[01:16:29] Thea Monyee: that goes back to our other point, right? Joy is not an escape from accountability. So now I’m

[01:16:34] Crystal Tennille Irby: I just needed some.

[01:16:36] Thea Monyee: it does not escape from accountability. what about it doesn’t bring you joy? And you know, let’s discuss what that looks like.

[01:16:43] Crystal Tennille Irby: that’s gonna take a lot. Oh, I just, I’m just being just a real moment here. Just a real moment as a parent. Just a real moment as a parent. And I make, and I am practicing conscious parenting, but I’m just a real.

[01:16:54] Thea Monyee: you know what, this is a, this is a point, let me tell you why. Let’s insert the roach story. This is important.I had [01:17:00] clients a while ago when I was an intern. And you know, you could send a little report and say, your kid’s having trouble.

[01:17:07] Thea Monyee: He’s fighting his sibling, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we would come see what’s going on. So I come. And, um, the mom says, yeah, they’re fighting at breakfast. They’re fighting at dinner. I don’t know what’s going on. And I’m like, okay, I go check with the school. Are there having any problems? No. They’re like, the kid is great.

[01:17:20] Thea Monyee: We have no problem with him. I go home. I see them. There’s no problems. I don’t understand what’s happening. I talked to the mom again. She insisted this is what’s happening. So I go finally last, last place I talked to is the kid. They were like eight or nine and I’m like, so check it out. I’ve gone to school.

[01:17:38] Thea Monyee: I’ve talked to your mom and this isn’t adding up what, what is going on? You seem like great kids to me. What is going on that your mom was saying you guys are like fighting and being aggressive with each other. And they look at each other and I’m like, there’s something I don’t know. I’m missing some data.

[01:17:52] Thea Monyee: And they said, we don’t want to sit in a roach chair. And I said, what is the roach chair? [01:18:00] And they said, well, there was a roach crawling on that chair. but we only got three chairs, this mom and two boys. So they fight over who will have to sit in the roach chair. Instead of a report, a therapist visits to the school, all I had to do was Clorox wipe that chair down, switch them around with their eyes closed.

[01:18:20] Thea Monyee: And nobody knew which one was the roach chair problem solved. I say that because as parents, we think. The solutions are so complicated or like their answers are going to be something that we don’t want to deal with.

[01:18:35] Thea Monyee: for example, I say, take up the rest, you don’t want to get the rest.

[01:18:37] Thea Monyee: Them bags always break. That’s data. That’s shitty. Let’s get some better bags. Let’s go to the store together, pick some better bags. Or I don’t want to take the trash out because I always have to do it right before dinner and that shit stink. Okay, great. Let’s take it out. Right after dinner, whatever. It’s, it’s usually a quick, easy fix, but if we think it’s going to be hard, we won’t ask the necessary question to get the

[01:18:59] Crystal Tennille Irby: [01:19:00] It’s facts. I will say there are times when I’d be willing to ask the question, but just real moment of transparency here. Like if I’m like, take out the trash and you’re like, well, you know, that’s just not gonna bring me joy right now. I would be like,

[01:19:14] Thea Monyee: And no, I know. So here’s what I would

[01:19:18] NeKisha Killings: not to be weaponized. This is not

[01:19:20] Thea Monyee: Is that

[01:19:21] Crystal Tennille Irby: thank you.

[01:19:22] Thea Monyee: But I will also say, I don’t know that we should teach the kids something that we, we got until we have cooked it and learned it.

[01:19:29] Crystal Tennille Irby: See, I asked that question for the parents. So did y’all, did y’all get that? Did y’all

[01:19:32] Thea Monyee: let’s, let’s live

[01:19:34] NeKisha Killings: Good looking out, Fran. Good

[01:19:35] Crystal Tennille Irby: There

[01:19:35] Thea Monyee: me tell you this.

[01:19:36] Thea Monyee: I don’t remember having like direct conversations with my kids. Like, you know, what brings you joy? I think they saw me living joy

[01:19:44] Crystal Tennille Irby: Okay.

[01:19:45] Thea Monyee: and they heard me using joy centered language and they adopted it. Kids learn more by us modeling than telling

[01:19:52] Crystal Tennille Irby: Okay. I just wanted to put that out there. Cause you know, we’re in an age where parents hear stuff and then it’s like, you want to

[01:19:57] Thea Monyee: going to run and tell dad.

[01:19:58] Crystal Tennille Irby: kids, and then they’re weaponizing it [01:20:00] against you. That has happened with other things.

[01:20:02] Thea Monyee: I think that’s absolutely true. And that’s why that’s a cultural question for me. so our goal, our metric is, if we can get that number up, that means we’re doing our job as a global joy department. That means I’m doing my job as joy secretary because I need to get joy so permeated. So not in a t shirt way, but in a way that’s like, I’m I’m thinking about it.

[01:20:26] Thea Monyee: It’s in the consciousness. That’s kind of our metric of if we are seeing an uptick in that. And that also just takes the weight off the individual and says, Oh, I’m not in an environment that fosters me thinking this way. So what I’m doing right now is pretty revolutionary. it’s pretty against the current,

[01:20:41] Thea Monyee: I ask it so much more now because It’s my way of staying as the observer, but giving somebody a metric to measure for themselves. So I’ll say, well, is it bringing you joy? And then now there’s now they can be with that information. You know, it keeps me in the observer’s seat

[01:20:57] Thea Monyee: I can be such a [01:21:00] hardcore intervener. It takes a lot for me to unlearn that behavior. Um, the next part to the questions, I’m giving you like little chunks. I really like because this is where it gets tender, I think. I mean, there’s been some tender moments already, but I think this is where it gets tender because this is where the hard truths and the hard realities.

[01:21:25] Thea Monyee: Meet us, right? So this question says, sometimes I catch myself muting or hiding my joy when I am in the presence of, sometimes I catch myself muting or hiding, or even I would say protecting my joy when I’m in the presence.

[01:21:53] Thea Monyee: It could be a person. It could be a place that you like every time you pull up there, you’re like, [01:22:00] it could be something you come into contact with on a regular basis.

[01:22:04] Crystal Tennille Irby: I have a petty answer and then I have a real answer, a real, a deep one. So. My

[01:22:09] Thea Monyee: And there’s, I have follow ups to these two.

[01:22:11] NeKisha Killings: Oh, Lord, Lord.

[01:22:12] Crystal Tennille Irby: But I do want to think about that.

[01:22:14] NeKisha Killings: is when you’re, when I’m in, and my, my partner does this too, we’re in a little bit of a tiff and we can’t really stand each other in that moment.

[01:22:22] NeKisha Killings: And, um, you know, we’re scrolling social media and something just gives us the cackles and we are cracking up, just look at our phone. We walk in the room with the other person and you just put the phone down, like, nevermind. Like, you don’t want them to see you in this, in this

[01:22:39] Crystal Tennille Irby: Louder,

[01:22:41] NeKisha Killings: it, you go,

[01:22:42] Thea Monyee: yes.

[01:22:43] NeKisha Killings: knowing you’ll be talking to him, you ain’t right for that.

[01:22:46] Thea Monyee: she does. Yes, she

[01:22:47] Crystal Tennille Irby: So I could be happy no matter what.

[01:22:50] Thea Monyee: Yes, she does. Guaranteed.

[01:22:54] NeKisha Killings: So we’ll both be like laughing, we’ll look up and see the other person and be like, oh, you know, we go back to quietly [01:23:00] scrolling because we’re having a real good time with this outside world and not engaging with one another and we know that ain’t right. Um, but, okay, Crystal, I can see the other side of that.

[01:23:09] NeKisha Killings: Um, the, I think the deeper one for me was probably. Um, growing up, kind of shrinking and trying to look, trying to, um, muffle my joy, kind of in a household where, um, the children in the home, the home were having different experiences, different realities, and so not wanting to be

[01:23:31] Thea Monyee: hmm.

[01:23:32] NeKisha Killings: a little too overly excited and happy and enjoying life when I knew the other part of my siblings experience was, was rough in that time.

[01:23:40] NeKisha Killings: Um, and so there was a lot of intentionally. I think doing that throughout my life. So, yeah,

[01:23:46] Thea Monyee: But do you find that currently, too?

[01:23:50] NeKisha Killings: I don’t have a marker to compare it against. So no, I

[01:23:56] Thea Monyee: So currently you don’t have a joy marker. You’re saying

[01:23:59] NeKisha Killings: I [01:24:00] don’t have a

[01:24:00] Thea Monyee: don’t catch yourself.

[01:24:02] NeKisha Killings: who is living kind of a parallel life with mine, um, that they can see my, see my joy and feel badly. About their own space, and so I have to tamper it. I don’t have that person, you know what I mean?

[01:24:18] Crystal Tennille Irby: That, that made me think of something for real. Like I do, um, shrink my joy in, um, activists or political times. thinking about like, um, what’s going on in Gaza and Palestine, and then posting fam posting pictures of my family Are feeling like, um, are feeling conflicted about like, yes, I want Kamala Harris [01:25:00] to win.

[01:25:00] Crystal Tennille Irby: and knowing that she’s the commander in chief of, um, a. country that is, genocide. And so like shrinking that the joy that I have for

[01:25:16] Thea Monyee: Instead of allowing it to coexist with these other realities.

[01:25:19] Crystal Tennille Irby: and even like when I went to the summit recently,hearing the struggles of some, um, Um, organizations when it came to funding and right now funding is not a problem for my, um, nonprofit.

[01:25:33] Crystal Tennille Irby: And so, yeah, like shrinking,

[01:25:38] Thea Monyee: Yeah.

[01:25:39] Crystal Tennille Irby: shrinking, shrinking in,

[01:25:41] Thea Monyee: are shrinking.

[01:25:42] Crystal Tennille Irby: in, in, in those spaces. Yeah. Right. Right.

[01:25:46] Crystal Tennille Irby: It’s made me like, question myself. Like, am I who I really say I am?

[01:25:58] Thea Monyee: It made you question your authenticity.[01:26:00]

[01:26:00] Crystal Tennille Irby: question my authenticity. Am I who I really say I

[01:26:02] Thea Monyee: So one of the things about joy work is I think it promotes coexistence. Which is the fact of the matter. Joy work is rooted in eco womanism, it’s rooted in nature. Things coexist at the same time. Predator and prey coexist night and day. It’s night here, it’s day somewhere else.

[01:26:20] Thea Monyee: These things coexist all the time. In our world, we don’t believe in or allow things to coexist. So my joy coexists with somebody else’s suffering. They don’t necessarily, they’re not cause and effect, but they do coexist. And that will always. always be the case, even if the suffering is not visible to me.

[01:26:39] Thea Monyee: I can, I can, I know somewhere someone’s suffering as I’m experiencing joy and somewhere I’m suffering when someone else is experiencing joy. It is what it is and they coexist. And so muting my joy does not make that less so. Right. However, I do think there are, Occasions when [01:27:00] like an octopus that can shape shift and things like that.

[01:27:03] Thea Monyee: I have learned knowing how to mute. My joy is an important tool for me to navigate and protect it in a hostile environment. And so when there are people who are hostile towards my joy, I don’t think they deserve to witness it. I don’t feel like I should put my sacred joy. In the presence of people who cannot hold it with me.

[01:27:33] Thea Monyee: times when I catch myself muted my joys, when I don’t feel like I’ll be understood, that happens to me a lot because of my spiritual work and a lot, because I love nature and I love diving. And I do things that like white people do like that. So like, when I come back to black people, they’ll be like, Oh girl.

[01:27:47] Thea Monyee: Like, you know, that’s crazy. I like talking to them about it because they get like. Sometimes I get excited, but sometimes I get judgmental about where I traveled and how often I travel. And, you know, for me, the moment I detect [01:28:00] that that’s what, that’s where they’re going with it. And there’s not a mutual benefit to sharing my joy in the space.

[01:28:04] Thea Monyee: then I’m like, Oh, then you don’t get access to this information anymore. Now I’m not muting it, but I definitely won’t be sharing it in this space anymore, because I only want my joy to be shared with people who can hold it and who can feed it. so there’s no right or wrong. This question helps you to realize. And it’s not, like you said, it’s not, it’s not even a question of authenticity. It helps you to realize where your joy feels safe. And where it doesn’t,

[01:28:30] Crystal Tennille Irby: okay. Mm,

[01:28:31] Thea Monyee: you know, where do you feel safe being joyful? Where do you feel safe sharing your joy? And where don’t you, you know? Um, so some of the questions that we follow up with are when I mute my joy, it feels like this in my body.

[01:28:45] Thea Monyee: So we bring back that embodiment piece. When I mute my joy, when I shrink it. How does that feel in my body? For me, it feels heavy. It becomes more like concrete, more like a rock you feels tense. And so then we have to ask, Oh, wow. Now [01:29:00] you’re coming into awareness. This is what I put my body through. Every time I mute my joy, right?

[01:29:05] Thea Monyee: When I mute my joy, the color shifts. How does the color change? How does the texture change? And you can really see in real time. The harm you are doing yourself when you are putting yourself in spaces and around people who do not hold your joy as sacred or safe. It makes it very tangible. It gets really tender.

[01:29:30] Crystal Tennille Irby: also that makes me think like in activist spaces, organizing spaces, and also culturally, like we’re going to have to have like some serious conversations about, um, holding each other. Yeah.

[01:29:49] Thea Monyee: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And a lot of things. And in families, to be honest, in families, families have a real hard time [01:30:00] holding each other’s joy. Listen, in situations where you’re the caretaker. You are never asked about your joy. You are expected to give, give, give, and never asked about your joy.

[01:30:15] Thea Monyee: That ain’t okay. That’s not okay. If I’m giving to you, you should be asking me about my joy. You should give a fuck. About my joy. You should give a fuck. Listen, I don’t want anybody in my life who doesn’t give a fuck about my joy.

[01:30:33] NeKisha Killings: Mm.

[01:30:36] Thea Monyee: I don’t, I don’t. That is the red flag.

[01:30:42] NeKisha Killings: Mm. That’s good.

[01:30:44] Thea Monyee: don’t give a fuck about my joy or you feel like my joy should come be sacrificed for your comfort. not aligned

[01:30:54] NeKisha Killings: Mm.

[01:30:55] Thea Monyee: because where I am is I am a divine being who came into [01:31:00] a human form to have a messy, incredible experience. And some of that is going to, you know, involve experimentation.

[01:31:12] Thea Monyee: if you can hold that with me, we’re not supposed to do that journeying together. It’s billions of people on this planet. It’s all

[01:31:21] Crystal Tennille Irby: even when I’m suffering, I’m not,

[01:31:27] Thea Monyee: Expecting. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm

[01:31:33] Crystal Tennille Irby: and I don’t, and I don’t assume that their experience of joy means they don’t care about my suffering,

[01:31:41] Thea Monyee: hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Right. And I think that, I think women can hold that coexistence a little better, but I think what we do in the flip is sometimes when we are sad, we are afraid of infecting other people’s joy with our sadness. That’s sometimes what we, we’re, we’re more concerned with that, like, you know, and [01:32:00] expressing form of joy work because you’re not harboring it.

[01:32:07] Thea Monyee: So expressing grief, expressing sadness, expressing anger is tied to joy work because it’s keeping those things from preventing joy from existing, right? there’s questions in here that are, that specifically help people to come into awareness of the coexistence of this, that joy coexists.

[01:32:24] Thea Monyee: I think I’m gonna leave it with that question but I do want to say that the next sets of questions go into that coexistence

[01:32:31] Thea Monyee: So just how that one kind of reveals where the barriers could be the next ones like amplify. Where are you experiencing that joy safety and what does that look like and is it a place and is it a person is it so it amplifies that and then they go into like the fact that these things coexist so that we don’t think of joy as something that we’re either in or out of, right?

[01:32:52] Thea Monyee: it’s not like a faucet. it’s always accessible. It’s just about how much we’re allowing ourselves to access it. then [01:33:00] it gets into like the dreaming, imagining. So now we take that and we allow people to like, begin to use their imagination to actually concretely think about what they want to build with this joy.

[01:33:12] Thea Monyee: And then the questions about how can they be supported in that? And so all of that is in the joy assessment. There’s also guidelines for how to take your time with it, how to move through it.

[01:33:23] Crystal Tennille Irby: we’ll have a link for the joy assessment, um, in our show notes. it’s absolutely free. It’s a free tool. Um, so you can get it for yourself and, Again, talk back to us. Let us know how you’re moving through it. If you have questions about it, please let us know if you have questions about it.

[01:33:38] NeKisha Killings: it can take a lot longer to work through these questions like the, and I worked on two questions for months for me, um, just defining what joy looked like and felt like, um, for me, and it’s a lot of deep

[01:33:51] Thea Monyee: There’s no timeline or deadline. There’s no timeline or deadline, like you said.

[01:33:55] Crystal Tennille Irby: um, can you tell people in case they’re interested about [01:34:00] TBT and if you will be accepting new members

[01:34:03] Thea Monyee: Yeah. Yeah. Um, so the black or the brain, um, currently like we’re in like kind of a work mode. We have one of our members is working on, um, a dissertation called, um, the black or the brain joy assessment, exploring implementation and experiences with a liberatory black eco womenist approach to healing.

[01:34:24] Thea Monyee: So we are, um, Helping her with this dissertation to hopefully create like a published work. And we are also doing presentations on the joy assessment. we haven’t currently opened up to new members, but if we have enough people interested, I do have people within the cohort that would take on new membership.

[01:34:41] Thea Monyee: Um, and so you can always email me at the, uh, at the ammonia. com. Or connect at the MOUA. com. Um, any of those would help me to get you in contact with people within the black or the brain. The joy assessment you can, um, I think it’s in my IG stories. It’s going to be [01:35:00] available through my website and shortly within the couple, like a month or so.

[01:35:03] Thea Monyee: you’ll be able to go on there and take the assessment. so if you have any questions about this, if you want us to do presentations on it, our goal is to raise that cultural awareness and make joy more permeated in the culture and, um, and then do so set some folks free.

[01:35:17] Thea Monyee: Yeah.

[01:35:19] Crystal Tennille Irby: have like a followup, like give people like, Three months. And maybe, I mean, February is black history month. We celebrate back his healing during that month. So maybe we can just like do a follow up. If you’ve taken the joy assessment and we just have like an event where you come and

[01:35:33] NeKisha Killings: that’d be fun.

[01:35:34] Crystal Tennille Irby: um, what you’ve done for black mamas.

[01:35:37] Crystal Tennille Irby: Cause I, I think this is so important for black moms for a number of

[01:35:40] Thea Monyee: I do too.

[01:35:41] Crystal Tennille Irby: we are taught that we have to root our motherhood and suffering and sacrifice. And so. I think it’s so important that we undo that so that we can live out our dreams and that really live out the mantra that motherhood is not the graveyard

[01:35:57] Thea Monyee: Not the graveyard of our dreams.

[01:35:58] Crystal Tennille Irby: you know, when you have [01:36:00] children, you don’t die and your, your dreams don’t die, you know?

[01:36:03] Thea Monyee: And your kids watching you fulfill those dreams is like such an amazing thing to give

[01:36:08] Crystal Tennille Irby: it teaches them so much about motherhood because a lot of people don’t want to be compared because they’re like, well, I watched my mom and she didn’t look like she was enjoying that shit at all. You know what I’m saying? So I think that it’s really, really just important that we have tools like this, um, along our journey.

[01:36:23] Crystal Tennille Irby: So maybe we’ll, we’ll, we’ll do something like that in February. So get the joy assessment and you don’t have to finish by February, even if you just did one question and you come and you share. So, so we’ll find, we’ll have a date for that.

[01:36:36] Thea Monyee: That’s awesome. I love that

[01:36:38] Crystal Tennille Irby: as well, cause I, I want, I want to hear from black mamas. I want to hear from black mamas.

[01:36:43] Crystal Tennille Irby: Yeah. About how, how this worked for them, what they learned, you know, and I think that could be informative for you as well. So,

[01:36:49] Thea Monyee: of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. We’d love that.

[01:36:52] Crystal Tennille Irby: So thank

[01:36:52] NeKisha Killings: More data.

[01:36:53] Thea Monyee: My pleasure. Thank you y’all more data

[01:36:57] NeKisha Killings: May we all find more joy. All right. [01:37:00] Now it’s time for our final segment, which is Black Mamas Say, where we put our own twist on sayings from Black Mamas. Today’s is Couldn’t Be Me. Crystal Thea,

[01:37:10] Thea Monyee: Can I start

[01:37:11] NeKisha Killings: Yes.

[01:37:12] Crystal Tennille Irby: start. I gotta, I gotta pull mine up.

[01:37:14] NeKisha Killings: Oh, oh shoot. Okay.

[01:37:17] Crystal Tennille Irby: Go ahead

[01:37:17] Thea Monyee: couldn’t be me going to school with kids with ringworm?

[01:37:22] NeKisha Killings: Oh, hell.

[01:37:24] Thea Monyee: Let me tell you

[01:37:25] NeKisha Killings: Full circle y’all. That’s full circle.

[01:37:28] Thea Monyee: If you work with me if you like just I can’t I feel like that’s so offensive You know, this is happening and I get it life don’t stop but publicly it do until that shit is gone Okay, it’s just contagious and it’s not fair.

[01:37:46] Thea Monyee: So it could not be me Because guess who would be absent then you won’t be absent then i’ll be absent i’m not going

[01:37:55] Crystal Tennille Irby: case now, Thea.

[01:37:57] Thea Monyee: call me. It’s not but i’m still this still [01:38:00] You guys fucked me up with that and i’m not over it.

[01:38:03] NeKisha Killings: Did you live through COVID? It’s still the case. It’s definitely the case. There’s, there’s definitely

[01:38:08] Crystal Tennille Irby: ringworm are different. COVID

[01:38:10] NeKisha Killings: there’s still, there’s,

[01:38:12] Crystal Tennille Irby: People were dying from COVID. Ringworm, nobody died. We

[01:38:16] NeKisha Killings: so all the more reason there’s active ring wearing in the school right now, right now. Active ring wearing all around.

[01:38:23] Thea Monyee: As we speak because somebody mama like well, I had to go to school

[01:38:27] NeKisha Killings: me.

[01:38:27] Crystal Tennille Irby: I would like, thank you, Thea. Thank you, Thea for that riveting example. Krista, I’m going to jump in right quick because mine is a fictional example, hypothetical example for anybody else watching reasonable doubt. Um, what, why your face changed Crystal?

[01:38:45] Crystal Tennille Irby: Cause cause the girl I’m perking up. I want to know what you got to say. And by now, like you should have watched it. This is not a spoiler alert. You should have seen it. If you ain’t seen it by now, that’s on you. You if you ain’t seen it by now. Okay, go

[01:38:58] NeKisha Killings: There are so many, there’s so [01:39:00] many couldn’t be

[01:39:00] Crystal Tennille Irby: many. Couldn’t be, couldn’t be used.

[01:39:03] NeKisha Killings: and yes, there are so, so

[01:39:05] Crystal Tennille Irby: just jump in on your, couldn’t be me right quick. Couldn’t be me. the lead female character on a show and only get one love scene with Morris Chestnut. Couldn’t be me. Y’all got to rewrite this shit. Couldn’t be me.

[01:39:20] Thea Monyee: couldn’t be me because

[01:39:21] NeKisha Killings: For the sake of my marriage, I will not speak on that one. One.

[01:39:26] Crystal Tennille Irby: actress. So I’m speaking as an actress. It would have, it was good for the, I think that’s, I think it’s important to have more than one love scene with Morris for any storyline. It’s not, it’s not about my own desires. It’s about the storyline.

[01:39:42] Thea Monyee: It’s about, it is about my own desires. And if Morris ain’t coming back next season, neither

[01:39:49] Crystal Tennille Irby: Q baby. If you’re listening, that’s the end. Nikisha.

[01:39:55] NeKisha Killings: to just say from the standpoint of the part of the [01:40:00] plot where. Louis has a break baby and Jack steps forward like this. Our baby, we, we, we

[01:40:13] Crystal Tennille Irby: Couldn’t be me.

[01:40:13] NeKisha Killings: support the mama now. Couldn’t be, hell no. Couldn’t be me. No ma’am.

[01:40:18] Thea Monyee: Could it

[01:40:18] NeKisha Killings: That’s, that’s gone forever and always be yo, yo break baby.

[01:40:21] Crystal Tennille Irby: she stepped forward, like, like from the chest, like stepping forward in ways that Louis should have been stepping forward. Like, why are you confront, why are you confronting her?

[01:40:33] Thea Monyee: Louis gon track down this woman.

[01:40:36] NeKisha Killings: He already was doing too

[01:40:37] Thea Monyee: your, make your, make your do a pregnancy test. Only to say he’s relieved when the baby die.

[01:40:46] NeKisha Killings: I don’t know if Lewis, if that would have gone that way in real life. Morris pressing up like that and Lewis fucking up like that.

[01:40:56] Crystal Tennille Irby: Girl.

[01:40:57] NeKisha Killings: I just don’t know.

[01:40:58] Thea Monyee: you something. If [01:41:00] Duis could have been the best man ever.

[01:41:02] Crystal Tennille Irby: we

[01:41:04] Thea Monyee: up that way, I’d have been like, but what the, what, what would bring me joy?

[01:41:14] NeKisha Killings: But you said it. I didn’t say it. I didn’t say it. They said it.

[01:41:19] Thea Monyee: of, you know, that’s an example of is money.

[01:41:23] NeKisha Killings: Mmm. Mmm.

[01:41:24] Thea Monyee: And cause then you got, we should have counted up the cause. It isn’t when the joy work comes in because you can’t just think about the joy of that moment. You got to think about, I should have counted up the cost. You got to be thorough

[01:41:37] NeKisha Killings: Mmm.

[01:41:37] Thea Monyee: work. And I would have to count the cost and figure out how I was going to tell Louis the next day.

[01:41:42] NeKisha Killings: I went to y’all watch reasonable doubt. If you haven’t seen this on Hulu, there are two full seasons. I promise you will not be disappointed.

[01:41:48] Crystal Tennille Irby: Crystal, tell us your couldn’t be me.

[01:41:50] Crystal Tennille Irby: Couldn’t be me. Rudy Giuliani must turn over sports memorabilia and other prize possessions to two [01:42:00] Georgia election workers who won a 148 million defamation judgment against him, including his New York city apartment, more than two dozen luxury watches and a 1980. Mercedes once owned by movie star Lauren Bacall, a judge ruled on Tuesday.

[01:42:22] Crystal Tennille Irby: Let me say something. Couldn’t be me. The

[01:42:26] NeKisha Killings: part?

[01:42:28] Crystal Tennille Irby: that I would act a fucking fool.

[01:42:31] Thea Monyee: As the

[01:42:31] Crystal Tennille Irby: as the recipient, as the recipient, uh, because what,

[01:42:38] Thea Monyee: my, I’d be on my highest Rick James shit.

[01:42:41] Crystal Tennille Irby: so what, what they have to do is They have to turn it over to someone to sell it. Right? So then they could get the money. Couldn’t be me. I would be like, turn it over to me.

[01:42:55] Crystal Tennille Irby: And I would have 12 watches on one arm, 12 watches on,

[01:42:59] Thea Monyee: [01:43:00] to

[01:43:00] Crystal Tennille Irby: on another, another arm.

[01:43:03] NeKisha Killings: What you what you doing in a penthouse apartment what you doing the penthouse apartment crystal

[01:43:06] Crystal Tennille Irby: I’m throwing black as fuck parties. Not only am I throwing black as fuck parties, but I’m going live. On all the social media platforms and I’m tagging Rudy Giuliani and be like, remember when this was, remember when this was your room? And then I’ll put the watch in the shot. The way that I cut the fuck up.

[01:43:29] Crystal Tennille Irby: Do you hear me? That Mercedes, I would hire a photographer to do a photo shoot and post the pictures and then tag him.

[01:43:38] Thea Monyee: First of all, here’s what we would do before they sell it. We get to do a full photo shoot with everything.

[01:43:43] Crystal Tennille Irby: girl.

[01:43:44] Thea Monyee: we would do. And

[01:43:45] NeKisha Killings: these are stipulations.

[01:43:46] Thea Monyee: be some stipulation. There’ll

[01:43:47] Thea Monyee: I be like, your honor, I would like to request a party in the penthouse first.

[01:43:52] Crystal Tennille Irby: like, Rudy,

[01:43:53] Thea Monyee: in the car. And I also would like to request that Rudy has to be in the background of

[01:43:57] Crystal Tennille Irby: like these black [01:44:00] women suffered and they were, they were black women who just wanted to help to do a civic duty that they don’t have to do. Like when you are a poll where you are there all day as a poll worker, it is a thankless job, but they are so needed because we can’t have elections without poll workers and the way that they harassed the, that these women were harassed, their lives were

[01:44:28] NeKisha Killings: right hand.

[01:44:29] Crystal Tennille Irby: what I’m saying? The way that I would cut the fuck up

[01:44:35] Thea Monyee: I think that’s fair. I think that’s a good one. That’s

[01:44:37] NeKisha Killings: I don’t, I, I concur.

[01:44:39] Crystal Tennille Irby: if I got all of that

[01:44:41] NeKisha Killings: up in those lives.

[01:44:43] Crystal Tennille Irby: Girl,

[01:44:43] Thea Monyee: Well, you know,

[01:44:44] Crystal Tennille Irby: be like, you get a watch, you get a watch, you get a watch, you get a watch!

[01:44:48] Thea Monyee: if you have a ringworm, you cannot come to the photo shoot.

[01:44:55] Crystal Tennille Irby: Thea, we know better now, Thea, we know better!

[01:44:58] Thea Monyee: Apparently we don’t.[01:45:00]

[01:45:00] Crystal Tennille Irby: We do!

[01:45:01] NeKisha Killings: us on Instagram,

[01:45:03] Thea Monyee: thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Hold, I’m, I’m, I’m

[01:45:06] NeKisha Killings: follow us on Instagram at dim black mama’s podcast. And if you don’t want to miss a minute of the magic sign up for our recently revamped newsletter, the mothership, which includes reflections on the conversations we’ve been having and hearing.

[01:45:20] NeKisha Killings: we’ll also share our collection plate cause where we’ll spotlight causes and initiatives that resonate within our community. Namaste.

[01:45:28] Thea Monyee: And don’t forget to check out our website at www.demblackmamas.com. Dem Black Mamas is a conversation, so our inbox is always open. Send us your thoughts about the show, show us some love and ask us some questions at [email protected].

[01:45:44] Crystal Tennille Irby: be sure to listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, including YouTube, rate and review us. And don’t forget to, um, check out our Patreon where we had our first, uh, pre show. Um, yeah. And if you [01:46:00] want to, um, what do I want to say here? That’s it. That’s all we got.

[01:46:07] Thea Monyee: We got

[01:46:07] Crystal Tennille Irby: We ain’t gots no more. Namaste, namaste,

[01:46:10] Thea Monyee: the mastering