Tricia Hersey
speaker
156 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Tricia Hersey’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
It's so emotional to understand that you've been lied to, that you've been manipulated. By a system that a system is oppressing you like to be able to start to see that is it's a grief moment. And we do have to sit in that grief. And I think resting supports our grief and to be able to rest into the grief and to understand what's really happening in a praxis, in experimentation, actually doing it.
I would prefer that people not even talk about they want to rest and retweet all our memes. Go lay your ass down like that. Like use that moment to go and be like my grandmother and close your eyes and sleep. This is a practice. This is like practice and theory put together. We have to rest.
You won't be able to get to this message without experimenting with it, without daydreaming, without having a moment of imagination, of sky gazing, of slowing down and asking. for the divine, the connection that you have with your own body, for making space for others to rest.
You brought that up, the idea that I understand that women of color have been historically, even to this day now, on the front lines of making it easier for white women to have leisure. To have the nannies, they're the cleaning staff, they're doing things to make it so that you have a more leisurely life and that you have a life that seems like it's allowed to be able to slow down and just be.
And so to begin to understand and see the connections between that and to begin to say, I don't want to be a part of that. I want to slowly find ways that I can push back and I can disrupt and I can make space for others to rest, that I cannot be an agent of grind culture.
Are you an agent of grind culture? Are you rushing people all the time? Do you have all these expectations around people? Are you pushing? Do you have boundaries? Are you upholding your own boundaries? And so people have to begin to do some internal work and to begin to look at themselves in a mirror and to say, This is something that we're all in. It's a collective journey. What can I do?
And the main thing that you can do is begin to heal yourself, is to begin to make space so that you are in a space where you can feel like you're connected to the divine and that you're helping and you're seeing yourself as simply someone who will no longer be a part of the oppression. Like, I'm done. You have to say, I'm done with it. It stops with me.
And I think people have to get to that on their own time. Like, it takes time. Some people will hear my message and it might be two years before they get it. Some people email me all the time, like, I love what you're doing, but when I first heard it, I was like, I don't know. I don't see how it can happen. And now I've sat with it longer. I've started to take some more time off work.
You know, I've been reading more about the slave narratives you told me to read. I've been reading bell hooks. I've been Trying to slow down. I've just been trying to like sit and deepen into the word. Two years later, they'll be like, I get it now. I know. I'm resting. My life is changing. I'm being able to see better. I can feel better. My health feels better.
I'm able to make better connections. I'm living. You're more human. I'm more human. I'm more human. I'm a human being now. I'm a human being now. Take so much courage, though. It's very courageous.
I think this goes back to my upbringing in the black church and the idea of black liberation theology and how I was raised by a black liberationist, you know, activist black man in Chicago who would look at me and tell me. You're perfect because God created you. God is on your side. You're a Black woman in this culture. You're a Black girl in this culture.
And there is nothing else that you need to do but stay true to that. And just... So I was never really... taught in a lot of ways that I had to be perfect. I understood that there is no such thing as perfectionism. And I was boosted up and held up in a way that allowed me to just explore what it has meant to be able to say, let the chips fall where they may professionally.
I say no to 90% of things asked of me. It's a joke now that when people ask Trisha and that bitch would do something, she usually will say, thank you, but no. I really don't overbook my calendar. Mm-hmm. I feel like if I do that, that it would not allow space for mystery, curiosity, and for the sacredness of what could happen in those spaces.
I want to say yes to things that I only feel like really a yes about. It's meant I've lost money. I've lost projects that I haven't been able to get on because they wanted to rush me and micromanage me and I had to return a call in two minutes. That's not the pace that I'm living on. I'm not working on the unsustainable pace that white supremacy work culture wants me to. I just am not.
Blessings on your day, but I'm not going to do it. And so I've lost money. I've lost opportunities. I really also feel like I'm an outlier in a lot of ways because the deeper I get into this, it can be lonely. To be really frank about it, there isn't a lot of people around me who have got to the point where I'm at. And so grind culture has its grips.
It just has these grips on people so tightly, even people in my own family, my own partner, my own brother, everybody. I'm like, let's go hang out and take a walk. Let's go look at some ducks by the lake. And they're like. I got to go to work. I got my second job is coming. I got to do this.
I mean, the way that our entire lives are built around labor and what we got to do next, that there's never a moment to just be specifically with black people. We don't even understand what the word leisure means. What is a leisure? What's a hobby? You know, everything has to be monetized. Everything has to be. A part of our life to be able to eat and live and make it.
And so in a lot of ways, this is an outlier movement. And I feel like an outlier in a lot of ways and that people are beginning to see that grind culture does not have your best interest at heart. And so it's a slow, meticulous thing for people to get to. that point. It's going to take years. And I'm also grateful for that. I'm grateful for the slowness.
I say in the book, give thanks for the idea that this doesn't have to be rushed, that this doesn't have to be urgent. Like, why would we use the same tools that have been taught to us to be urgent, to be rushed, to try to heal? It just doesn't make sense.
Five minutes.
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