Trauma Queen
"The Trauma Within" is a weekly podcast hosted by Jimanekia, a Trauma and Sexual Assault expert, queer media consultant, and comprehensive sex educator. Join us as we normalize conversations about life's most challenging experiences, from sexual assault to mental health and beyond. Discover stories of resilience, expert insights, and a safe space for discussing some of life's most complex topics. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/traumaqueen/support
Trauma Queen
The Trauma Within Balancing Academia and Personal Growth W/ Dr. Tykeia Nicole
Do you have any questions, any comments about the episode? Jimanekia would love to hear from you!
What happens when a scholar, storyteller, and believer navigates the multifaceted challenges of life and academia? This week, we sit down with the inspiring Dr. Tykeia Nicole, co-host of the Get and Grown podcast, to uncover her extraordinary journey. As a daughter, sister, and Black woman, Dr. Tykeia shares her heartfelt experiences and insights on balancing personal growth with professional demands. From early influences that sparked her curiosity to the invaluable lessons learned from navigating academia as a Black woman, this episode is a treasure trove of wisdom and resilience.
Dr. Tykeia opens up about the profound impact of grief, sharing her deeply personal experience of losing her brother just days before a major milestone. Her story highlights the unpredictable nature of grief and the essential role of community support during such tumultuous times. We explore how grief intertwines with other life events, leading to a broader discussion on mental health, emotional well-being, and the importance of giving oneself grace. This conversation serves as a poignant reminder that amidst life's chaos, prioritizing self-care and emotional expression is not just beneficial, but necessary for healing and growth.
In our final segment, Dr. Tykeia delves into the journey of unlearning societal expectations and reclaiming personal identity. She provides candid anecdotes about the challenges of shedding ingrained roles and the liberating experience of embracing one's true self. From unlearning the need for external validation to discovering the joy of self-acceptance and self-soothing strategies, this episode offers practical advice for anyone looking to transform their life. Tune in for a deeply moving and insightful conversation with Dr. Tykeia, filled with actionable takeaways on navigating life's twists and turns with grace and authenticity.
Thank you all for listening. Set a boundary with yourself this week, set a boundary with someone else. If someone else does not respect that boundary. LET THEM LOOSE YOU! Stay hydrated internally and externally. We do not have an ashy family.
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Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thetraumawithin
Jimanekia Ig: @Jimanekia
The conversation today is something that I am super excited that I got to have. It is the start of half of a podcast that we all love, so let me introduce you to Takiyah N Robinson, phd baby, aka Dr Kiyah, co-host of the Get and Grown podcast on the Loudspeakers Network, a show by for and about Black women and men who are negotiating the changes and challenges of the worst hood adulthood. Dr Kia and her co-host, chef Jade Jade of all, jades Ferretti have grown the Get Grown community of listeners to include over 28 million people since 2017. As a scholar of change and transformation and a storyteller, ta'kia brings her personal experience and professional expertise to conversations about the transitions, triumphs, trials, twists and turns of adulting. Practical tools that illuminate the processes of how organizations and the people that they are compromised of learn, function, change and transform to serve all priorities and stakeholders with excellence and equity.
Speaker 1:Y'all buckle up. We talked, we laughed, we cried, we did it. So, y'all, we got Dr Kia Fabulous. I'm excited for this conversation. I love having this podcast because I think that we learn from conversations. I think we learn from other people's stories, and this leads me to my first question, which makes people cringe, which makes me happy who are you?
Speaker 2:Oh, that is a very cringe worthy question, um, but uh, I would try my best to answer it. Um, my name is T'Kia, my friends call me Kia, and I see myself in a lot of different ways, but, first and foremost, I am a daughter, I am a sister, I'm a Black woman, I am a believer, I am a scholar, I am a storyteller and I live in the pursuit of all things fabulous, but I see myself as a lifelong learner who is committed to sharing lessons that we learn and translating scholarship into practice. What are the things that help us to be better and to operate in purpose? I want to be fruitful and I want to live a life that will make my mother and my brother proud.
Speaker 1:I love that. That was so deep. How do we meet? Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2:We met through when you graced us at the kitchen table on my podcast, which was Getting Grown, and we talked to you about your work as a trauma specialist. So I was introduced to you through Jade and XD and a lot of other people that I care about a great deal.
Speaker 1:I love that. Talk about me behind my back if it's good. Oh, it was good.
Speaker 2:What does trauma mean to you that interrupts our state of homeostasis and that could sort of range in sort of size and the degree of intensity, but anything that disturbs sort of our state of equilibrium and normativity and our peace in appreciable and substantial ways. So for a long time I thought of trauma, as you know, just major major events or drastic changes. But I'm coming to realize that there are smaller jabs that accumulate over time that also can have a traumatic impact on who we are for sure.
Speaker 1:They add up, they add up. So I always like to ask my guests, like what do they want to talk about? And all the things. And everyone was like we already know what you need to talk to her about. Education and grief is about to go down and I said okay, you know what?
Speaker 1:That's what I like to talk about. So this is fabulous. I'm a roots girl and so when I say that is, I think it's really important to know where we come from and how we got here, cause we didn't just show up at these magical ladies. We were little girls and you know we went through things, so who were you before we got that doctor in?
Speaker 2:front of you.
Speaker 1:What did you want to be when you grew up? Who were you?
Speaker 2:Well, oddly enough, um, I'm working very hard to be who I wanted to be when I was a little girl. But little Takiyah was curious and recognized pretty early that she is able to adapt to her conditions when she has some sense of understanding. And so she's always asked a lot of questions. She's always wanted to gain understanding, to get clarity. What's happening, why is it happening, where are we going, how are we going to get there? Like these are the kind, that's the kind of little girl I've always been, and my mom characterized that as nosy. But in my, you know, constant evolution, you know, at my great big age, I have come to reframe that as a genuine, earnest curiosity. I am at peace when I have understanding, and so when I can process and gain understanding by any means, I feel most like myself. And so little Takiyah always knew and I was talking to one of my friends about this recently as we sort of process in different phases of our lives and who we are, and I was never the little girl that dreamed about, you know, prince Charming or, you know, a big church wedding. You know, I kind of thought that those things sort of would happen, because in my mind they just happened naturally or automatically for most adults.
Speaker 2:But I was the little girl that dreamed about being a doctor. I always wanted to be really smart and when I was a young girl my parents divorced and I took that very hard, and so my mom. Actually, I spoke to a child psychologist I was probably nine or 10, but I remember him. It was a Black man in Harlem and he drove a green Lexus and his license plate was Dr Reese and I just thought that was the coolest thing. I just was so enamored with that and so in my mind I was going to be a doctor and my license plate would one day say Dr Kia. And so that's what I dreamed about.
Speaker 2:And I sort of found my way through schooling, still thinking that, you know, not really fully understanding all the different ways that I could be a doctor. So I sort of tried a lot of different things, ended up studying psychology through undergrad and sort of tried my hand at a lot of different types of psychology worked with adolescents, worked with young kids, found that those things weren't really my ministry but found a sweet spot in the space of higher education Because I felt like working with college age individuals was sort of like a happy medium of, like you know, burgeoning adulthood, that I felt safe and so I sort of found my way into the field of higher education. I sort of found my way into the field of higher education and that's where I've been ever since trying to understand, you know, college is. I went to college in the year 2000 and I have not left. I'm still there. I'm still there digging around and and causing trouble.
Speaker 1:So they don't get a hold on you, though, as someone that is a lifetime student, like in the pandemic, when everyone was panicking, I was, like I'm going to go to school.
Speaker 2:I'm just going to read.
Speaker 1:I was like I'm going to learn about medicine because we might need it, because I need to go with the ancestry to learn about all the herbs and things. So I got another damn certificate. Because problems Oftentimes people are in my face like you should go be a doctor and get a doctorate in psychology and do all these things. I don't think I want to, but why did you do it? Did you feel like you had to? I feel like sometimes in certain spaces people don't respect me as much because I don't have the little, little name.
Speaker 2:Yeah, awesome question and I'm glad you asked because you know, from that little girl who wanted to be Dr Kia, I got into the work of higher education and realized that I'm much more practical in terms of like I felt like academics can sometimes, you know, in that research space it's really easy to sort of get in the world of where you're only talking to other academics and I wanted I knew very, very quickly that I wanted what I was learning to translate into practice. So I mean, I love research and I love scholarship, but you know, the so what of it was was kind of my bottom line and in that vein, in higher ed since that's like a practice you know field, so to speak I kind of got a master's and then I got another master's and it was like well, I am out here, you know, I'm working on campuses, I am working in administration, I'm contributing to sort of how things get done in this space and I felt like I was doing all right and I had a really bad ass white woman from the UK as a supervisor. She was the only woman in the civil engineering and engineering mechanics department, in the civil engineering and engineering mechanics department, and I was her department administrator and she was just like. It was like 60 white men on the faculty and her and she was very, but I loved because she handled those men. She did not sit quietly in the room, she did not allow them to talk over her, she just was real and I loved working with her.
Speaker 2:I learned a lot from her and she had a very candid conversation with me one day after a department meeting and she was like Takiyah, you have excellent ideas and you're very bright, but nobody's going to listen to you. And I said, excuse me, you're like what now? I'm sorry. What she was like no one's going to listen to you, they're going to steal your ideas. And I was like please explain. She said in the academy, you know, credentials are currency and if you want people to take you seriously, you have to have what they have when you enter the room. So if you want people, if you want to have the influence in this field that I know you want to have, I would admonish you to go back to school. And she was like thankfully, we work at a school and you can do it for free, so you know. I was like okay, so I started the process of of.
Speaker 2:You know, I was working then, then thinking I was just going to stay in the administrative lens, but I got into the um a program at Teachers College, columbia University. That's where I was working at Columbia in the engineering school. So I got into the Teachers College at Columbia University and there I felt like my research. The seeds were of my interest in research really started to germinate and take bloom and I started to understand that, uh, as a researcher I could still love research and I could take charge of sort of how I wanted to show up in the scholarly space. And so, you know, things just worked out where I ended up transitioning out of that program where I was going to school full-time and working still full-time as a department administrator in the School of Engineering, and I was able to get into a fully funded doctoral program at the University of Maryland where I ended up finishing and getting my PhD in higher education.
Speaker 2:And so to you I will say, and to anyone who asked me, you know it's all about what you want to do with the information, that you, that you have the learning, you know what you learn, what the kind of influence, the impact you want to I was very intentional and strategic and you know Dr Culligan's advice, it's always sort of been what pushed me in that direction.
Speaker 2:But I don't think anyone should get a PhD or any sort of terminal doctoral situation unless they are very clear about how they want to show up in their field. And yeah, I say, if you are being impactful and doing having the kind of impact that you want to have, without that then I don't know if it's necessary. But if there are certain things, I will say that the, that doctoral study affords you with a realm of options and you can sort of write your own ticket and create the ways that you want to be influential or impactful in your field. Then you know I recommend it, but it is not easy, especially for people who look like us. That was my next question. You know I recommend it, but it is not easy, especially for people who look like us.
Speaker 1:That was my next question. You know, you know it was black ladies, and not talk about how hard it is. My God you not even, not, not even at the door. Get into the parking lot sometimes is a journey, even at the door. Getting to the parking lot sometimes is a journey.
Speaker 2:So how have you kept afloat, looking healthy and blessed? I would say truth and transparency and community have been sort of my saving graces in these spaces. So I was very intentional about well after certain experiences. So, like, my time at Teachers College was equal parts traumatizing and inspiring. So I feel like Columbia University in and of itself is an awesome place to learn. So I feel like Columbia University in and of itself is an awesome place to learn and I was always very excited to learn there and it fueled my motivation and sustained my energy for the long haul that is graduate study, also exposed to the terrors of the academy in in in.
Speaker 2:You know how those spaces can lack humanity, uh, particularly for people of marginalized identities like like me, and so I did not have the best time there.
Speaker 2:Um, so when it was time for me to move forward from that place, I was very clear that I needed to have a model and an exemplar.
Speaker 2:I needed somebody to show me how to be a Black woman in this field, someone who was doing similar work and who shared certain identity groups with me, so that I can really have a model for how to negotiate some of these spaces.
Speaker 2:And that really was a game changer, and so she was very truthful and she told me the good, the bad, the ugly of the academy, and so I felt prepared for when things started to happen to me, and so building community was also a way that helped me keep moving forward. So, as I was learning and, as my colleagues, as we were learning from the women of color that we had proximity to, of color that we had proximity to, we tried to share that in a variety of ways. So building community digitally, you know in person, you know just sort of creating spaces where we can have honest conversation about the highs, the lows, the difficulties, the challenges, the difficulties, the challenges, the triumphs of negotiating grad school, you know. So getting that, people pouring into me and me being intentional about pouring back into others were the things that sort of sustained me and kept me moving through the madness.
Speaker 1:Do you think you're on the other side of the madness?
Speaker 2:No, I think the madness evolves because, like you know, right now I am an academic but I'm not working in the academy in ways that I used to. So, you know, you transition from working. I transitioned from working like at a university, then I was working at an association for academics, so like a professional development organization, and now I'm working at a philanthropic organization that wants to have influence in the academy, and so I'm in the academy working in sort of a corporate space now, and so I find myself sort of living in two different worlds and having to translate across those worlds. So my madness has not. I've not left the madness, but I'm sort of renegotiating it. I'm engaging it in ways that I never have before, which has been equal parts. I mean, it's been illuminating, but it has also been exhausting.
Speaker 1:As hell, probably as hell as again. As a lifetime student myself, I was bored one day and I said you should do another something, so I started researching rape investigation just to again put that little paper to make it seem a little more.
Speaker 1:So I was doing rape investigation and two masters, a master's in law with a focus in criminal justice. So it would have been all the things with a focus in criminal justice. So it would have been all the things. And so I was going through the motions. C's don't get degrees in grad school, baby, they don't. And so they don't. So I had gotten two C's, but I was also navigating my ailing parents. So I was raised by grandparents, as you know, and my grandfather was dying. He had cancer and eventually he did pass away last year. And so the grief of it all and navigating life, paying bills and functioning, is something we all go through. Because I could see your face, I see you, you have, you have navigated a thing or two. How, what happened? How did you do the things?
Speaker 2:The thing that I feel like people will. I won't say people, I'll say myself. Like you know, sometimes we assume that because we are so focused on meeting this goal that life will wait for us to finish. Before you know it starts to life. And so one of the things that I have learned through my own experience and by watching the experience of others yourself included, like you know, a lot of times life starts to life upside our heads, especially when we are sort of in grad school or in this learning space, and nothing is off limits. Nothing is off limits Birth death, sickness, loss, loss of jobs, anything and everything happens, you know, while you're in school, and so you know. It's about knowing that and giving yourself the space and the grace to do both to the best of your ability, to the best of your ability, and recognizing that you know there is really no balance. People used to ask me all the time how do you balance it all? It's like I don't.
Speaker 2:So, like in the times when I was hyper-focused and dissertating and trying to finish, I missed a lot of family things. I missed a lot of, you know. I had to stop doing the things that were sort of normal to me and then, once I finished, I was able to pick things back up. But you know how? I don't know. I think for me that's a question I'm still learning to answer. I don't know if I share with you, but you know, just four days before I was to defend my dissertation, my brother passed very suddenly, very traumatically. He was on vacation with his friends and there was some sort of accident the details are still very hazy and unclear, they have not been defined or clarified to my family to this day but drowned and my whole entire world as I knew it just about ended. And I then had to learn how to be Takiyah without Brian, and my brother and I were only 18 months apart, and so I had no memory of life without him and no expectation that I would have to live without him.
Speaker 1:And so.
Speaker 2:I was at the very end of this journey and we were making plans to go on a cruise and go on a cruise and do things. You know, since I had been so under my program. You know we were making plans for me to graduate and reconnect and us to start to spend time and do things together again. And all of that went away and nobody asked me, I was not given any notice, and the weight of that loss still still to this day takes my breath. Yeah, because I still don't understand it. But I share that so that people know that you don't really always get to know how you do it, but over time, the things that help you to continue to show up and keep trying reveal themselves in you and around you and you just keep going, one day at a time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, grief feels like for me depends on the day and you just keep going one day at a time. Yeah, Grief feels like, for me depends on the day. Some days I'm like oh yeah and it.
Speaker 1:You know, this year was the first full year of the things and like I woke up on my birthday this year and I was sitting and talking to my partner and he was doing something and I was like, yeah, and then I just started bawling and he turned around. He was like, did I say something? And I was just like, oh, I won't get a phone call today. I get emotional because it is a thing and it's like, oh, I don't have these things, oh, shit, fuck. And it goes through the cycle of it. It and it's grief is one of those things that like touches all of us and none of us are ever prepared for, like I wish somebody would be like, thank you for coming to grieve how your reality does not align with your expectation, and so, as I am negotiating different phases of my life, when my brother died, I was 33.
Speaker 2:And now I'll be 42 in December and I never anticipate. You know, my mom just turned 70 and my grandfather just turned 91. My mom just turned 70 and my grandfather just turned 91. And so all of the things that come with us transitioning through different I have to support my mom in different ways. My grandfather requires a different level of care and support, but you know, there are people in my family that are negotiating various diagnoses of, you know, illness or you know all kinds of things, and you never think.
Speaker 2:When I was a kid, I would never anticipated that I would have to do any of this by myself, because I always had a brother, like I always had a process partner, someone who shared the experience, and we can figure it out together. And so, as things continue to arise, mommy turns 70 and you know I have to plan her 70th and it's like I don't have nobody to help me think that through, like I have to shoulder that and uh, you know. So all of these things, um, you know, when we, when I lost my grandma in 2022 and so all of these things, you just everything and it compounds so to your point. Um, my belief is that, since, like you said, my belief is that since, like you said, grief is something that connects all of us and it is, to me, not a steady we are negotiating that that would be super helpful and that, oddly enough, is sort of what is, I'm feeling, a call to that idea, like I think it's the marriage of my work and my curiosity, the person who is trained to ask and answer questions. I want to understand what is grief designed to teach us.
Speaker 2:How is grief designed? What is its purpose? What is its utility? It has to have some sort of something. What is this utility? It has to. It has to have and sort of purpose or how we figure out what it is that we're supposed to be doing. What about your loss? Is informing how you show up in the world and what does that mean for all of us? And if there is a way to write that down so that maybe one day we can hand somebody a book and say this is coming and this is how you know, this is how she got through it and this is how they got through it and this is how you know, not saying that there's one answer, but maybe there's a collection of stories that helps you figure it out.
Speaker 1:I hope so. I hope so, and I want it to be called something wild like check it out, bitch, like you gonna need me, or something that you're like I hate to say I told you, but I told you this day, yeah. You brought up community and I think, as someone that has had her head down and like just done the things and not taken time to like experience the things that I've done, it takes my friends to be like hold on, bitch. We're about to celebrate you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because this is wild. Same Bigly, bigly.
Speaker 1:What is that? Because I feel like we're very much here, agreed, agreed. How do you allow? Okay, here's the thing how do you allow community to support you?
Speaker 2:Because we can have community, but it doesn't mean we always allow them to answering that question, because I don't know that I do it well, but I will say that, um, I'm grateful that I have been connected to people who don't allow me to miss it, miss those opportunities, Um, and I can't take credit for that. Like you know, I feel like God has put people in my life to help me in this regard, because I feel like a lot of my programming. You know, like a lot of Black women and a lot of eldest daughters out there. You know, keeping your head down and doing what you're supposed to do, child, and you don't get a parade for doing what you're supposed to do. That's what my mom used to say you don't get a parade.
Speaker 2:You're supposed to do it what you want A dollar, like you don't get a parade. So but you know I have awesome friends and family members who is like we're not going to let you skirt past this, okay, and and they are cultivating or helping me to cultivate that skillset and that awareness and so like, like you said, it is not feel natural to my body at all.
Speaker 2:My body be like no it does not feel natural to my body at all, but my therapist and the people who love me are very intentional about helping me to grow that muscle and develop that muscle. And just like training in the gym, like we was talking about, training is not enjoyable and it often hurts, but it does.
Speaker 1:It does, yeah, it does make.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it makes all the difference and it hurts before it helps. So you know I have to do it. I did not plan a birthday anything for myself until my 40th, because my birthday is also five days before Christmas, and so as a child it was always like everybody's with their families, people are otherwise, you know, predisposed. People are busy, it's the time, and so over time I just sort of conditioned myself not to expect to do anything for my birthday. And then, after I lost my brother, I felt guilty Like what am I having a party for? Like yeah.
Speaker 2:And so I was very intentional about doing something for myself for my 40th birthday, doing something I've never done before. So I planned a birthday trip and I was scared to death because I fully anticipated everybody to say girl, you want to go out of town before Christmas, are you dumb? But to my surprise, 14 people showed up in Antigua to celebrate me, and it was a lesson. It was such a lesson and it humbled me. So, and even though it was awkward and I was scared to death to invite and ask people to do this, the fact that they showed up helped me to see that there is some value in allowing yourself to celebrate yourself and to be celebrated by other people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, even if it's hard.
Speaker 2:Especially when it's hard.
Speaker 1:We can teach people how to show up for us. I'm all about teaching somebody how to show up for me. I'm like here's a list.
Speaker 2:I'm learning that.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:I'm learning that it's okay for me to have that, because that also doesn't feel natural to my body.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, I've been trying to get out of the comfort zones which feel they make me itch, but I do know that I am bigger than where I am, and so the only way we can get out of that is to say all right, bitch.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Damn, here we go. It's a lot of talking to myself.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:And you know you mentioned balance earlier, because that was one of my words that I was going to ask you is what does the word balance mean to you? And you were like I don't know.
Speaker 2:Nothing. It don't mean nothing to me. It's a lie, it's a myth. It's a myth. It's a nice idea.
Speaker 1:I think balance looks different for everyone. Right looks different than for everyone. If we just look at how I look at how Beyonce balances her schedule, we're not on the same kind of schedule. I need to look into me. Who's a little broker? We got different bank accounts, taxes and stuff, just like a little bit I have to look at. I don't have people to do these things, so what can I do to like exist?
Speaker 1:right um, and something that, uh, another guest that I've had on the show, thea Monnier, talked about was joy, and like how important joy is and how healing it is for us to be able to find ourselves, to find that balance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, music has been one of the things that's always brought that joy to me, and I remember somewhere, I was at an event somewhere and I heard somebody say it's less about balance, and reframed it and was like harmony. Harmony feels like a better word, right, and so there will be. You know there will, because balance suggests that there's some sort of equilibrium, but harmony allows there to be sort of discord, and sometimes things don't go together, but they go together, especially when we're thinking about sound, you know, whether that's in terms of tone or amplification, harmony is what feels good, what feels good even though it may not make sense mathematically. And so I love that idea of joy, because I feel like that reconnects the practical back to a feeling, and so it's.
Speaker 2:What are the ways? You know, how do I get back to that state of management? It may not be like ideal, like or balanced, but how can I manage where I am right now, understanding that, like you said, that's going to look different for me every day, depending upon the circumstances, and that's not, that's going to be the same across person, across time, across everything yeah, there's the idea of like fake it till you make it.
Speaker 1:But the like psychological way to look at it if people like language is like behavioral activation, and so it's like the ways that we just force ourselves to do the things that normally bring us joy and eventually we do go okay, I can exist here. That's something I've been doing for myself, especially after this kind of grief. It's like no, I actually would like to stay on my sofa and ignore all y'all, but I will go to this event, I will go to this party or whatever. Do you ever find yourself having to navigate some behavioral activation?
Speaker 2:every day, every day, every single day. Um, yeah, I think, uh, it goes back to like we were talking about building the muscle. Um, because you know, if, unfortunately, in in training, I'm learning that and if I want a muscle to grow, that means I have to break down what was there and that hurts, um and so, but, but what grows back is stronger. So, um, going back to you know, thinking about my brother, like you know, on the anniversary my brother's passing in june, for the first five years, I would sit in a dark room and just be miserable because I felt like I did not have the strength or the capacity to try to do anything else. Because you relive the conditions every year. You think about where you were, what you were doing, and all of it just comes back and, whether you wanted to or not, it's like the mind involuntarily takes you through this torturous deja vu where you have to relive this horrible, treacherous thing that happened to you. Yeah, you feel it, like you feel it in your body, like I feel my heart beating fast. I feel I feel every, everything that I felt in 2016 when it happened, and so, to your point around behavior activation. I had that time and I needed that time to just let my body do what it needed to do. But I would say about three years ago I really wanted to try.
Speaker 2:I heard my brother. You know sometimes I hear his voice and not that he's actively talking to me, but, like you know, I think about how I'm reminded of sort of like what he would say in a, in a situation tangent. But just let me, I was at a, I was at a wedding. Shortly after he passed, I was at a wedding and, um, the bride had a dance with her siblings. I had to go. I couldn't hang, I couldn't hang, I. So I went out in the hallway and was trying to keep myself from having an emotional breakdown at these people wedding and I heard my brother say I wasn't going to dance with you, no way. And it made me laugh. It made me laugh right.
Speaker 2:And so, similarly, I'm thinking about the anniversary of his passing and I heard him, I felt him say like you doing this and I know this is hard, but I'm not asking you to do this. I don't want you to do this. I don't want you to feel like you have to be in this dark and heavy place every year. I'm not asking you to do that. And so it was like okay, and something in me said that I need to try to honor my brother's life by trying to live mine. He wouldn't want me to stop living. I don't feel like he would have that expectation of me.
Speaker 2:And so since then I've been trying, regardless of how it felt in my body, I've been trying to honor his life by living my and doing something that he will want me to do. So I will go on a trip, I will, if I'm going to grieve, I'm going to try to, you know, at least grieve in a beautiful place with wonderful weather and good food and drinks. And so, and so I now have, you know, I honor, I think, about the anniversary of my brother's passing by having and I call it like my little grief retreat, because that's the day, that's the time where I give myself the space to have my feelings, and that doesn't mean that I'm not sad and miserable, but I try. And so to your point about behavior activation, like I need to try to do this until it feels like the right thing to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean, I trick myself all the time. I'd be like, if you go, do this thing, it might be fun.
Speaker 2:There might be a check.
Speaker 1:I don't know, it might be fun there might be a check. Yeah, I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1:find the motivation that feels good for you um, I would miss a spot in this conversation if we didn't talk about mental health, as two queens, goddesses everyone is welcome for our existence that have studied psychology. Um, I am a child of trauma, as everyone that knows, and, if you heard, my mother was killed in front of me when I was one, so all I've known is trauma. I am the birthing of this thing and I didn't realize. I knew how important mental health was because I'd been doing the things to like help myself.
Speaker 1:But it really hits when you get older and you're like, oh no, I need to take care of my mental health for sure so how do you, when did you realize? Was it before? Psychology after your brother's life?
Speaker 2:I don't know. It was definitely so. I psychology, got degrees in psychology but never had a therapist. It was definitely losing my brother. That sort of prompted my sort of commitment to my own mental health, mental health. So I had a grief counselor, sort of just to help me sort of wrap my brain Because, again, like I was saying before, I am not okay if I don't understand. I need somebody to talk me through this, like just what in the hell is going on? You have to explain, I need tools, I need information. So I started to see a grief counselor and it was like, okay, this person is going to help me understand my grief so that I can manage it.
Speaker 2:But I got into the grief counseling and she was like you know, I think you're through, and I was like excuse me, through what she was trying to, like graduate me, and I was just no, no, no, no, no. You said I don't accept, try, I'm not. No, no, no, excuse me you. You trying to leave me. I don't understand what you're saying, like breaking up. So I don't whoa, like what? Like it was, it was very um. So that's when I realized that, like you know, this, this, this time, this practice of sitting down and talking through my feelings and getting tools and language and framing for helping me to. You know what's good for my health, because I started to sort of see how it helped me to feel better and it was connected to other things, and so I transitioned from grief counseling to regular therapy counseling and you know sort of have been there ever since and now, of course, that I've been doing that work, I'm, like you know, my dumb. My dumb ass should have been doing this years and years ago, years, many years ago, years and years ago, years, many years ago. But yeah, that has been, and I want to say this because I don't know, it just feels pertinent.
Speaker 2:I grew up in church. My grandfather is a minister, he was a pastor and he passed in one of the larger churches in my city for almost for all of my life, but you know he was a career pastor. He passed it for over 40 years, and so I grew up in the church and I'm a church baby and a baby of faith, and so for a long time there was this, there was this like pray your way through sort of framing and faith. Faith was the answer to all things and it still is. But I feel like in my journey and what became clear to me as I was sort of you know, identifying, you know my counselor and what that was going to look like in my life, I understood that these things can and should coexist and should coexist, yeah. And so I say that for the other church babies who may be listening, or people who sort of raised up in that tradition or framing, that it is both prayer and therapy, it is both, and not either or, and that sort of has.
Speaker 2:That was a very key aha for me because it was like one does not cancel out the other, but they can and should coexist. And you know it has been awesome and so, um, my faith, my, you know who I am, who I believe God is and who I believe I am through God, is really interwoven into my mental health. My therapist sort of specializes in sort of that spiritual counseling and it's been awesome because it really has given new life and new framing and new perspective around things that I have sort of been hearing all my life in church. I now have new understanding and it's sort of it's made both better, like it's not so, so it's just enhanced it for me in in a number of ways. So I just can't talk about my mental health without adding that in Cause it's a, it's a big piece.
Speaker 2:As I was saying before, processing is sort of the way that I find my way back, and I'm learning now that prayer is often sort of how I steady myself. Prayer is the way that I process things with myself and with God and that is what sort of gets me out of that panic oh my God, what's going on place? And you know it's not always in the conventional ways that we've been trained to pray, but I talk to God very candidly, just like I'm talking to you, like do you see, what's going on here, hello, what you?
Speaker 1:feel I'd be like so are we playing a game?
Speaker 2:It'd be like so what you finna do about it. Okay, cause finna do about it? Okay, because I just feel like I have questions and you're not anytime you want to step on in here and do your god, I'm down with that. Yeah, you're best as you tell me I'm gonna get right on out the way. So yeah, I feel like my answers are very long. I apologize, I'm rambling apologize.
Speaker 1:I think they're very full and that's what we like here fullness. Um, I do believe, like when I was, when I was raped because, you know, I like to say raped instead of sexually assaulted I've been sexually assaulted more times than I can account for, but I've been raped once that I truly count um, and when I was navigating fuck school, fuck death, but it just consumed, yes, and I say all that. I say that because I went spiritual before I went to a therapist, right, like I felt like I needed to get right with me and understand me and get back into my body and, like you said, define the words, find the language and then go and be like all right, my therapy. Shout out to Betty we still together, girl. Betty was like okay, but I showed up. Like I learned how to meditate, I learned how to hear myself, I learned how to question the things so important.
Speaker 2:Very, and it's a step that we yeah, we run.
Speaker 2:We run right past that, oftentimes, right Cause, I think in a lot of our original conceptualizations of like religion, religious practice, god, people wrap that up in like what you can't do or what you're not supposed to do.
Speaker 2:Or at least my understanding or my my I won't say my understanding but a lot of my original default programming was you know, more about god's expectations of who we are, who we weren't supposed to be, how we weren't supposed to show up, and so it felt very, um, legalistic, but it was through sort of, you know, through these, through the marriage of sort of mental health and and, um, my relationship with God. It helped me to sort of see and understand that God is so much bigger than this list of things that are forbidden or what people expect or don't expect, and it's cultivated a relationship, and so that takes the legalism away, because if I love you, I want to do the things that make you happy. I want to do the things that bring you joy. I want, and you know, same like reciprocal, reciprocal. So it is um it.
Speaker 2:Those are the things that have been sort of new perspective that I've been able to glean. That has been that I treasure, that I cherish so much because it personalizes. It personalizes that relationship. It's like, you know, everyone says I love God, but it's like no, I love God, I spend time with him, we are close, he talks to me, I talk to him, like we go together, real baby.
Speaker 1:I love this for us. Have you while navigating, you know? You know we talk about there's trauma within everything we meet. Uh, I also talk in third person. Sometimes I blame it because I'm a Gemini and so we talk about within grief and within school and all of these things. There's traumatic things everywhere. I have had to unlearn a lot of things to exist in this world. Now how have you navigated? Unlearning to exist, to be the person person you are not the person necessarily that people consumed or the people that to be the person you are, but not necessarily the way that people might imagine you to be awesome question, I think.
Speaker 2:um, so I study transformation. I study how individuals and organizations transform to sort of to to embody the values that they espouse. A lot of times we say you know, or I'll do. This organization say you know, we, we are equitable, and it's like, ok, how, like you know? And so then, when you start to dig into that, we start to see the dissonance between who you say you want to be and who you are. And so my work is about understanding what people need to know and what skills and practices and competencies and what are the things that help to close that gap.
Speaker 2:And so I say that, to say I believe that our lives uh, you know who we are is sort of a journey in like manner, right, um, we all have, well, I have those who are the kind of person that I want to be. Uh, and when you know, speaking of of sort of prayer, one of the things I pray and and and say often when I'm talking to God is Lord, make me. I want to be who you had in mind when you said I'm going to make me a Kia one day, when you are thinking about I'm going to make me a Takiyah, and she will do this. I want to be that, because when we enter the world, we start to learn who we are by virtue of what other people tell us, who you know we, who we are, what we're supposed to be doing, and if we're not careful, we'll keep our head down and sort of just keep operating in that, in those roles never, giving ourselves the opportunity to sort of allow our original programming to manifest, to bloom, our original programming to manifest to bloom.
Speaker 2:And so I was, I want to say, a victim of that, but I guess that's the word that came to my mind, because I was so beholden to being a good daughter, a good student, a good friend, a good partner, a good employee, a good Christian, a good I was so, so bogged down with what other people said I was supposed to be, that I stopped giving myself permission to say I'm Takiyah and I like yellow nail polish and big earrings and fried chicken, like I never allowed myself to make my own choices and decide what I want. And so I had to learn that. And it is an ongoing process of me still learning that, because I'll tell you how I knew that I had it real bad Every time it was time to make a decision. I needed a committee of people to help me to decide what to do For me in my house.
Speaker 2:What color do you think I should paint the walls? What kind of nail polish do you think I should get? I'm getting my nails done today. Here are some options. Let me know what you think I would let other people make decisions for me. Let other people make decisions for me you just spoke to somebody and I realized that I was like girl what do you want?
Speaker 1:What do?
Speaker 2:you want my therapist, one of my therapists? She would ask me okay, what do you like to do for fun? And I would just start riddling off all of the things that I did for other people, or all the things you know. Well, that's work, okay. Well, I uh, I like to uh, you know, I like to. You know, call my mom and she was like no, no, no, what do you like to do? It's to show me like, show me that you know girl you're not talking about yourself.
Speaker 2:You're talking about other things that you do for other people, and she started challenging me Do you do that because you want to, or do you do that because you're supposed to? How was that Horrendous? It was terrible. I felt exposed. I felt stupid Because I'm not talking that this was happening when I was 22. Jimenica, this was happening like two years ago, yeah.
Speaker 1:I was 39.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have to be big age I was 39 and the girls was like, well, what you want to do? And I was like, well, what y'all want to do. So you know, ms Sharon would be like no girl, what do you want to do? So Ms Sharon would be like no girl, what do you want to do? And she would not let us leave that conversation until I answered the question. So in all of that, I feel like I am unlearning that programming and realizing that it was connected to so many other things. I like the confidence in my own decision-making. I have been disappointed by so many things in my life that I no longer trusted my own decisions and that was a painful place to realize that I was. But I've been working myself out of that and allowing myself to unlearn those habits. You know, going to the club. I went to the club for 10 years.
Speaker 1:Hated it, hated it every time Don't invite me to the club. I don't want to go, but I felt like everybody else was going.
Speaker 2:I needed to be where the people were. They wanted to go. They keep inviting me, I guess.
Speaker 1:I got the show up, my mom used to tell me you know you don't have to go everywhere, that you're invited, and I was like I think I do. I feel like I should. They want me there.
Speaker 2:I mean, and what if they don't want me there? That would be terrible. So I have to go. They don't have to invite me, yeah, so I've been giving myself permission to say no, like really checking in and making sure, and I'm still doing it, and me and Jay were talking on the show a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 2:One of the things I'm doing right now is I'm older and my body is changing and I'm also cleaning and purging and sort of getting my house together. And I'm going through old clothes and realizing, like girl, what was you on when you bought this Girl? What was you doing? Like who is what is happening? Judging myself, it's like so harshly right. It's like, why did you do this? And I'm giving away things that had tags on it and again realizing that all of this connects back to, and I was dressing, trying to look like somebody else or look like how people expected me to look.
Speaker 2:And so even now I'm working on defining my personal style. How do I want to show up like Takiyah? I don't care what the trends is doing, I don't care what the girls is on. How do I embrace, learn to love the body that I have, celebrate that body by making it look as good as I can. And you know what does that look like for me? I'm not watching nobody's Pinterest boards, I'm not following no influencers to tell me how to dress my body, but I am making decisions on what I want my personal style to be. So all of that again, super long answer. I'm just all over the place. But that is sort of that unlearning. That is sort of exactly where I am right now, because you don't realize how deep that programming is down in you. And still somebody starts to ask you well, why? Well, why are you doing it like that? Well, why? I was like why are you in my business? Why are you asking me these questions?
Speaker 1:But yeah, no, I think it is so real though, Like the process of unlearning is always going to be a thing right, it's how we become who we are.
Speaker 2:It's how we become who we are. I'm starting to really dig it and I think it's because I am, for the first time in my life, allowing myself to really like myself Now, pick her apart, not compare her to anybody else, to be OK by myself, to spend time with myself and not worrying about what other people are thinking about me, and I'm learning to dig that. It's like it's kind of lit over here.
Speaker 1:What my house. I mean, I love it here. Who wouldn't want to be here? I love it here. Yeah, we're, we come into the end of of this. But there's a word that you brought up that also really resonates with me, and it was permission, like giving yourself permission to do things, because I say it to my clients. There's also. There's also we say these things to people all day. You're like girl, why you? That's crazy, didn't that's crazy. And you'd be like I'm fine over here.
Speaker 1:I don't even need permission. But like we do need to have these talks. Like I was talking to a client before this and we were talking about some stuff and I was like you know, when that voice comes, do you talk back to it? And she was like what I said do you talk back to it? Because it's not expecting you to fight back, it's just expecting to consume you.
Speaker 1:So I'm we about to tussle and I want that permission and for me it's like power. You're like power me up. Like no, you're not about to get me today. I'm about to get out this bed.
Speaker 2:Yes yes, you don't call the shots, I do girl.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you, you're allowed to be here. Okay. Two questions left. Okay, self-care and self-soothing. How do you care for yourself on a daily? Because you're busy. You're out here, you are navigating work. You got podcasts, got relationships, you got existence. You got to maintain that blonde. Here's the thing. How are we doing all? I've been blonde, I know it's a maintenance uh, yes, girls, a labor of love yes. What does self-care look like for you? What does soothing things look like for you? I'm challenging. Here we are.
Speaker 2:Here we are. You see me folding in because I'm like girl, I am awful at this Self-care, self-care. I need to rely on routines because I'm the kind of person that if it's not built in I'm not going to do it, and so I try to be very regular in my self-care in terms of sort of also the maintenance of the things that I do that make me feel good. Like I like to get my toes done and I like to keep my nails done. I like to get my hair done. Like I like to get my toes done and I like to keep my nails done. I like to get my hair done. So, uh, I have people, I have a team and I have standing appointments that are, you know. So, like every Friday at nine 45, I get a haircut. Um, you know, when I get I have my color, like every six to eight weeks. You know I have a standing, you know I just call Tania. It's like I'm coming. I bet I see when you get here, same for nails, same, you know, standing it's like it's got to be built in, like this is happening every week and I'm blessed that. You know, my life is set up in a way where I can keep that up. But also, I'm very intentional.
Speaker 2:When I was in grad school, I was very much in school in all ways. I didn't have no money, I didn't have no life, I was in school. And so when I graduated, it was like, well, what you going to do now with all this time and all these resources? And my therapist called me out again because that's what she loved to do. She loved to be in my business in that way and she was like you know, you've been in school for 10 years, let's say, let's say, all these years, you never took a vacation. And I'm just like I, that's true, but like so. And she was like so you, you owe yourself vacation, like you got back vacations that you need, like you know, you and I also had a postdoc.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I had a postdoc after my my doc program, where I really didn't have the the funds to be vacationing, so I wasn't.
Speaker 2:So she was like you owe yourself a vacation for every year you was in grad school, every year you was in your, your um, um, your postdoc, and so, like you know, she makes me tell her when I'm gonna take time off. And I have accountability partners. It's one of my friends that also works with me at the Gates Foundation, you know, and we're blessed at the Gates Foundation to have unlimited PTO. So she we have a reminder every every quarter she will ping me and be like when are you utilizing your benefits? And that means tell me the dates that you're taking off this quarter. And it's like, so you know, having people to hold me accountable my therapist, tiffany, other people that asking me like are you doing this? That is sort of what helps me to sort of maintain that self-care. Have you gotten a massage this month? No, okay, we'll schedule it and then send me back. Send me back the confirmation. So I know you did it and because people know how I'm set up right.
Speaker 2:I'll be like yeah, girl, I'll do it and then don't do it, Right.
Speaker 1:So they said that's cute, I want to receive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, real quick Self-soothing, I think I let myself. I let my emotions emote however they need to, for I've always been, all my life, I've been a crier. I've always been, all my life, I've been a crier and I would try to suppress that, because people think you weak and they can beat you up when you cry.
Speaker 1:I wasn't allowed to cry. I cried too much for a while, as I heard, and I learned how to cry again.
Speaker 2:I didn't be crying, I just let myself, cry, cry and I learned my therapist helped me. So see, crying is the body's outlet. Outlet is how it gets back to homeostasis. So you're not crying because you're a punk. You're crying because you worked up and your body trying to get you back down here with the rest of us, and so I let myself cry.
Speaker 2:I cry on planes, I cry in the target. I sit here and cry, I will cry, and even if I'm about to beat your behind, it's going to be a crying, like me and Jay was saying I'm finna cry, but you, finna, get this work. So I let myself emote freely. I've been sobbing through the Olympics. I mean, it's just been a thing. So that is how I self-soothe. Crying and prayer, prayer is how I steady myself. So I got a prayer journal. It's nothing for me to open up a document at work. Then people get on my nerves. I'm going to open up a doc and be like all right, lord, let me look like I'm working, but I'm really telling Lord, I'm finna, go upside her head. So praying and crying is how I self-soothe. And shopping I love to buy myself beautiful things, but that's another conversation for another day.
Speaker 1:I'm not a shopper, thank God.
Speaker 2:I love all things fabulous. If I could show you all of the ways that I have been purging. I'm just embarrassed about how much, and especially during Covisha I was just in here swiping my card with reckless abandon it was very I was like we might die Might as well be happy. I'm going to just get these shoes and bags because that's what will make me happy.
Speaker 1:Yes, this has been so fun for me and it also. Listen, I was just I'm gonna tell you, I was just in an email looking at going back to this grad school program that I got kicked out of, and I was just talking to these people and first off, they didn't change the program. They were like, oh, we don't have this, we don't have this, but you can transfer four classes, that's already. I was like, well, give me more information, cause that's crazy, cause, I think, about eight to 12. It was like one most crazy. What that was crazy. But I think this conversation is going to be so helpful to a lot of people because we've been here and side note because we love a side note.
Speaker 1:the first college I ever spoke at was the one you were at.
Speaker 2:I spoke in uh, in a classroom for Erica Hart, oh wow.
Speaker 1:And that was the first at Columbia. That was the first, yeah, and I was like, okay, yes, that's so funny. Um, okay, well, we, we've touched and tapped and zibbled around. And my last question of the show everybody that listens knows it's because I'm nosy and because we talk about wild things that go all over. So what is the wildest thing that someone has texted dm or emailed you in the last two weeks? Uh, relative, for wild it could be whatever okay.
Speaker 2:So this is hard, because I have a few relationships in my life that are maintained slowly through sending memes back and forth on instagram, because I think this is how we sort of process, uh, and just sort of keep up with things, and we love to sort of share in in that kind of mess. So I see all kinds of things every day. I don't know if it's wild uh, it's probably not gonna be wild to most, but um, I felt seen by it, so I will say I will say this this is the thing that came to mind.
Speaker 2:Um, so there is this gift, there's this meme of this. Like this woman she's probably an evangelist of some sort she's in church and she's at the podium and she's saying the yoke of the devil is destroyed, right, and then somebody has overlaid that with jadakiss, we gonna make it. So it's like she says the yoke of the devil is destroyed, and then it says fuck the frail shit. And so it's like. This is so me who put this together for me.
Speaker 2:I will send it to you. I'm like somebody was thinking about me, because this is me, because both these are the two things that can be true at the same time for me, every time. Right, I'm going to go there, and you know, in prayer, but we can also go there In any other kind of way. So that's probably corny, but no, I liked it.
Speaker 1:There's nothing corny about that.
Speaker 2:I'm going to send it to you. I'm going to send it to you so that you can see. Maybe you can insert it for the people so that they can have a reference. But it was one of the craziest things. I actually posted it to my stories Like wow, I've just never felt more seen by a meme. It's like going into August like fuck the frail shit, but also going into the August like the yoke of the devil is destroyed Because he doesn't have any business around me. Get out of here with your messy self.
Speaker 1:So, yes, this was great, this was fantabulous. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2:I am always honored when people will open their platforms up to me and I pray that I've said something that has been useful to someone, somebody, somebody.
Speaker 1:Okay, Well, where can he, they, she, they, they, everybody, all the pronouns where can they find you and get your business?
Speaker 2:Everyone, y'all can get in my business. I'm on Instagram at Takiyah Nicole T-Y-K-E-I-A-N-I-C-O-L-E. That's the national middle name of black girls born in 1982. If you did not know that, takiyah Nicole at Takiyah Nicole on Instagram, I'm also a co-host on the Getting Grown podcast with my sister Jade, where we talk about all things adulting the good, the bad, the ugly, the tester trials, the twists, the turns, the temptations and the taxes of being an adult in the year of 2024.
Speaker 2:We're always down there kicking and carrying on and keeping up some mess. Um, yeah, I mean it's called uh x now, but I'll never stop calling it twitter because, girl, what not doing that? You stupid. It's very dumb, very, very dumb. Um, I need to change my Twitter name. I wanted to make it the same as my Instagram name. It's still the same Twitter name that I had back in 2009,. But all the girls over there and we have a good time it's nothing but treble. N-o-t-h-i-n-b-u-t-t-r-e-b-l-e Nothing but treble on Twitter. I'm going to try to change that, but you know that's what you can find me in the meantime, in between time, and you know, yeah, otherwise I'll be sitting right here in this black chair at this desk typing real fast Managing your black business, that's right With your black job.
Speaker 2:That's right. That's right, that's right, but thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Of course, you know what to do, do the things, and until next time.
