Tricia Hersey
Appearances
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
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We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Exactly. Oh, my God. I love her. Like, yes. You get it. Like, thank God. Yes. People keep saying that to me. And I really have so much empathy and compassion for them because I understand that the systems have socialized us since birth. Even sometimes before birth, when I talk about my son in the book, about my birth story with him, like the systems socialize and brainwash us from birth.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Everything is in collaboration, teaching us these things. And so when I see people who like they desperate, like there's that sound good, but I can't do it. And then I think about the people who are like typing me long messages. four paragraph emails telling me why they can't rest. And I'm like, wow, that was five minutes of daydreaming right there. You're going to have to make choices.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
You're going to have to see your way out and have perspective around. There's always time to rest. And I believe that the true resistance part of rest is resistance is what we really got to start to uncover a little more. This is not going to be easy work. We are trying to disrupt and push back against very violent systems. Grind culture is violence. White supremacy is violent.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
All these things are violent systems that are raging on us. And so to think that it is going to be easy, to think that there isn't going to have to be some type of subversion, some type of inventive, imaginative. I think about my ancestors, I call it the trickster energy, the being able to exist in two different worlds, being able to build community within a culture that was so toxic and violent.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
My grandmother working two jobs, raising eight children, healing from post-traumatic stress because she left Mississippi after seeing a lynching during Jim Crow terrorism. She came to Chicago. I say my ancestors floated on a spaceship that they built out of uncertainty and hope. They floated up north, away from the south, hoping for a new world.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And they built new worlds within a world that didn't want them free, that didn't see them as human beings. And so that's the resistance I pulled to. And no one can tell me that something is impossible. Like, I don't believe it. I know a lot of people are in a place of feeling like there is impossibility. But manifestos in this work provoke impossibility.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
That's the whole purpose of them is for us to imagine something that's impossible. And so I think about my grandmother, Ora, who's taking a nap, who's resting her eyes 30 minutes to an hour every single day in between going to her two jobs. She had on her uniform from working at the hospital as a nursing assistant, still got her whites on. She'd be sitting on the couch with her eyes closed.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Eight children, dozens of grandchildren. I'm one of her wild grandchildren running in and out of her house, screaming, jumping on couch. She didn't move. That woman sat on that couch and held court for her own healing. And we began to watch that and we began to respect that. Grandma's resting. She's sleeping. We'd be like, Grandma's sleeping. Chill out. You know, be quiet.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
She'd say, I'm not sleeping. I'm resting my eyes, you know, every shut eye ain't sleep. I'm listening. She would say, I'm listening to God. I'm listening to the universe. I'm simply listening. And I wonder what was that listening giving her, you know, to be a black woman in Chicago, you know, poverty all around her, raising all these children and,
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
trying to have a way and have a new life outside of the South and the terror of that. What was she listening to? What was she hearing? What was the silence? What was that evoking for her? What was this resting moment giving her? And so she becomes the muse because I watched her... I watched her make space for her own rest every single day. I watched her slow down. I watched her uplift leisure.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And so we're going to have to reimagine rest. The reimagination, you're going to have to look at rest as not just being what you think it is.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
a full nap away from the kids with the pillow up closed eyes eye mask on closed door nobody that's beautiful like give me more of that but in this culture that's not going to be possible for all people it's going to have to be reimagined ways of my grandmother resting on the couch with her eyes closed for 30 minutes centering her own body and her own self while all of the world was still happening around her she didn't care she was going to sit on that couch and
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And do that. And so I love that about her. I love about my dad waking up early before his job to sit and pray and read the paper. And I was like, why do you get up so early? He's like, because I want to have a moment where I can be human and not be on someone's clock and I can just be. So this idea of just being.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And so I want people to take a deep breath, take a little breather, slow down and understand that this rest work and this rest time
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
idea is a meticulous love practice that will happen to us for the rest of our day there is no rush to get it right right now there's grace there's mercy there's imagination there's taking a walk there's having a cup of tea in the morning that's taking a longer shower all of these things are rests all of these things are opportunities for us to connect with our body and mind and so
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
People get really desperate and really panicked about this idea because it's a paradigm shift. It's a mind shift. It's a full on shifting of your mind to understand that your rest is not a luxury. It is not something that you will add on once you're burnt out. It really is the center of your life. It has to be the North Star in a culture like this without a pause button.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
if you aren't centering rest and snatching rest and getting rest any way you can and making space for others to rest and looking at the ways in which you participate in grind culture, that you participate in white supremacy, that you participate in all these things, like, this is a full-on looking at yourself in a mirror and a full-on healing modality.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
It's not just take a nap and get up and keep being racist, you know? Naps ain't gonna save you. You know, if you... You haven't done that internal work to really... Go back to sleep. You're not ready yet. That's not going to save you if you're looking at them as just that. You're not looking at this as a full-on political social justice deprogramming.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Yes. So we can resist. So we can give a pushback and a disruption. To take a nap and to resist and to say, no, I'm not going to be on the clock right now to intentionally rest even for 10 minutes a day. That is a disruption to this beast of a machine. I know people don't see themselves as being their one person being part of something that can change. But it is like you doing that.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
My grandmother doing that was a disruption. That system wanted her on the clock. 24 hours a day running from Jim Crow, running from the Ku Klux Klan down in Mississippi, getting away during a great migration. And then she's centering her rest. That is a disruption. So I want people to, like you said, get deeper into the idea that this idea of productivity, forget about it.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
The idea of productivity has been taught to you by a capitalist system. We don't want that curriculum anymore. We need new curriculum. All of that that you learned, that's done. I know you might have got an A in that class, but the curriculum is not that no more. What we are learning and trying to take on is the idea that productivity is not what you think it is.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
That resting is a generative state. You generate ideas. You are connecting with your body. You are participating in the spiritual practice. Resting is a spiritual practice. It connects you. I believe dreams and napping allows you to have a portal. There's a portal that opens you.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
When you go into a rested state that allows you to see things different, that allows you to have a moment outside of grind culture, that allows you to connect with something deeper outside of yourself, connect with your ancestors, connect with... what you want to be, connect with the dreams.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And so this dreamscape, this portal idea is really centered in Afrofuturism and my idea of understanding that we can dream ourselves free, that I've watched people dream themselves free. You know, I've watched my family dream themselves free and pray themselves free and leap to freedom in ways that still to this day surprise me. And so to tap into that I believe so much in human beings.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Yes, you got it. I'm so glad you... Thank you, sister. Yes, it is. Thank you. Because it is deep work. It is. And it also... When I think about the work and me being a performance artist and theater artist, I really did play up the idea of a nap ministry. And like it is in a lot of ways, it's ironic. And I did try to play with the idea of a persona. Like I call myself the nap bishop.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
I have so much hope. I believe in the deepest parts of ourselves that we are all divine, that a miracle that we're here on earth, it is a miracle to be born. And so if that's the starting point, anything that's trying to degrade that and steal that from us, I'm not with.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Capitalism, exhaustion, white supremacy, work culture, racism, ableism, anything that's degrading us from the true divine beings we are, we don't want that. We want something different. And so people are always like, yeah, I want to rest so I can, you know, get ready to do more tomorrow. I got to... Rest to get myself boosted up so I can go hard tomorrow. No, there is no more hard.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Like we don't need toughness and going hard no more. We need softness. We need care. We need community. We need collective healing.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Absolutely. One of the many, yes.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
You preached with that question. Yes. All of that. The question is so good. Like, yes, because humanness, people always try to distill the information. And I say, simply, this work is just bringing us back to our natural state. This work is about making us more human. taking away this robotic zombie machine-like thing that they've placed on us.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
When I was reading and researching all of the slave information and the narratives and what was happening on plantations, they were literally building human machines. They were trying to see how far they could push a human body. Could it be automated? Can they work 20 hours straight? Could we do 23 straight? How much could we feed them where they won't pass out in the fields?
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
How much water could we give them? So they were really automating us and creating this idea of a machine level pace for a human body. So the disrespect of a human body is evident and key. This work brings you back to your natural state, the slowing down, the resting.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
It's such a magical moment spiritually, but it's also the neurology of it, the biology, the physiology of what's happening in our bodies when we rest. This book that I love called Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. He's a neuroscientist. And in it, he talks about sleep and dreams.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
It's very scientific, but then it's also very beautiful in the way that he speaks about dreaming and the idea of when we sleep, what's happening in our brain. I love it. I'm like nerd out on neurology and neuroscience. When we sleep, there's a chemical that coats our brains that allows us to heal from trauma, that allows us to tap into our memory, that allows us to be more creative.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And so this idea of not doing that, of not allowing our bodies to be the full human, brilliant thing that it is, is where the violence of it all comes in at. And so to me, to be human is to know that you are divine.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
is to know that the person next to you is a divine being chosen to be on earth that you don't belong to any of these systems this all this external world is all here to be in this world but not of it is to understand that everything you need is already in you that the power of your body i say one of the tenets of the nap ministry is this the body is a site of liberation To think of it as a site.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
So it does have this irreverent. playfulness, in your face, guerrilla art, performance ritual vibe to it. And so I lead people in to be like, oh, this is about the nap. This is about naps. Everybody wants to sleep. And this is beautiful, soft nap. And then they get there and I'm ranting about white supremacy and capitalism and trying to burn down both systems. So I'm like, yeah.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
The idea of the word site. It is a site of liberation. All bodies. It doesn't matter what your body looks like, what color it is, the size. Every single body is a site of liberation. So that means wherever our bodies are, we can find rest. We can find liberation. That this body that we are placed in at birth allows us to always be in tune with liberation. Yeah.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
to always be in tune with the divine, to always have a direct connect to the divine. And the disconnect comes when we aren't understanding that, when we don't see ourselves, that people don't think they deserve rest. What this culture has done to us is ripped our self-esteem and self-worth.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
That is a great question. It is very scary. Let's just put that on tape right now. This work will not be easy. To shift a paradigm and to go up against violent systems that we're trying to disrupt against, that is a very scary proposition. It won't be easy. Not probably everyone will get this.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
You know, there is a place within the culture that the beast of this culture has eaten so many of us alive that will we get to that liberation? No. I believe, yes, I believe that there is always hope. If you're alive, I learned this when I was doing pastoral care, studying in seminary, trained as a chaplain. Where there is life, there is hope. Where there is breath, there is hope.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Where you're breathing, there is hope. Even I would say from my tradition, understanding that the end is just the beginning. Even in the other world, when you leave this earth, there's still hope. You know, there's still moments that you can tap into because the end is just the beginning. This is healing work. This is not work that's going to be just like, just go lay down, girl. You good?
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
No, this is literally like a full collaboration. It may look like therapy. I'm in therapy. I have the privilege of being able to have a therapist. They may look like some other modalities of healing, you know, Reiki, journaling, art, walking, prayer. dismantling your mind around your being accomplished to white supremacy.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
You know, as a white person in this culture, you're going to have to go deep into the wells to begin to unravel the legacy that you come from of being a white person in a culture like this. There's a beautiful book called The Hidden Wound by Wendell Berry. He's a white poet and artist. And he talks about this idea of how white people have not had the opportunity to heal from the wound.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Have a pillow and then here's your flamethrower to like burn these systems down so we can all live and be free, you know? So I love that it is surprising, the mystery of that. That's what makes it really centered in an art practice.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Not even heal, but even to understand that there is a wound. Acknowledge. Acknowledge. There is a wound on you. I know you think when you hear white supremacy and racism and slavery, you think, wow, the shit that was done to black people is horrible. But to understand that it was actually also killing you as well.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
It is spiritually killing you, a white person, to believe that they're superior in some way to another divine human being. That is a spiritual deficiency. That is a disconnection to your power and to who you are. So that has robbed you of your own humanity as well. And so people never feel that. They're always just like, oh, damn, I never thought about it like this.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And that's why this work is global. It's not just for Black people. They're like, is this work just for Black people? Absolutely not. It's for anyone involved. Who needs to disrupt and push back and heal from white supremacy and capitalism. Now, the ways in which you're going to have to do that are different. Like my history is a total different thing.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Everybody has their own origin story, historic stories of how they're placed in this sick situation. That was created, you know, not by us. And so we have to land in it. We have to feel it. And I will tell you that you will have to just feel that energy. You're going to have to just sit with the discomfort of that. And I say sleep your way through it. Rest your way through it.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Make small, small, small ways to start. Start with the 10 minutes a day of just sitting and resting. Closing your eyes, not responding to an email, making space in your calendar to not be doing nothing. If I have it in my calendar, rest days, chill days, Sabbath days, I have very clear boundaries around how I work. I don't do meetings over 30 minutes.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
If you want to do a meeting over 30 minutes, we probably can't work together. It only is set in my calendar. It's only a 30 minute. We're going to be concise. We're going to say it and we're going to move on. and we're going to go lay down and telepathically communicate that way.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
It is. Yes, it is the opposite. It is a new idea. It is a new paradigm. The idea of perfectionism has been placed on us from birth. And when you think about white feminism, absolutely. You are literally trying to be a part of a system that hates you. Yes. It hates you. Fuck! It hates your guts. And you're uplifting it and making it richer and making it more...
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Viable and making it worse for everybody else.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And we're like, what else can we do for you? How can we make it richer? Yes. Yeah.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Can you explain that? Absolutely. Yeah, I think a lot of this work, all of this work is really from a historical lens. You know, I was an archivist in seminary. So when I was in seminary, I was working in the archives on campus at Emory University and
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
You're doing it for you. Absolutely. We're doing the work for them. I have a quote in my book that says something like, we do the work for them, When we don't see ourselves as divine and perfect already, we're already helping them along. We're already like creating and being a part of this system and helping them to oppress us even more.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And so I say the buck stops with me, that the chips fall where they're made. I will never donate my body to a system by grinding that still owes my ancestors reparations. That hates me. It's built upon the backs of people that is so violent. It took years to get here also.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
So I want people to understand that this is 10 to 15 years of study and research and experimentation and therapy and personal sleeping and resting. I experimented with my own body to be able to see how could I make a way. I did it to save my own life.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
rest saved my life and I don't need nobody else to verify that it saved my life and I did it for me and from that understanding that I was saving my own life because I'm a womanist and I understand that the holistic view like that for me to be truly free everyone around me also has to be free I'm also a community activist for 20-30 years I was raised as a community activist. My dad was one.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
I understood that there was a moment to be able to make this a collective and to share this information in a praxis. So the first thing that I did was not get online and start lecturing. The first thing that I did is borrow yoga mats, blankets, and pillows from everybody I knew, wash them, and curated space for people to lay down. So our first event was 40 people who I did not know
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
sleeping for two hours in this nap little space that we created at an art studio and people waking up crying and being like, I haven't took a nap in two years. I dreamt about my grandmother. Thank you for making the space for me. People at every event, we've done hundreds. They wake up and they're in tears. There's always so much emotion.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
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.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
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.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And so I'm really always been a student of history, a student of culture and trying to figure out and look at things from the lens that it should be looked at, which is a lens of pulling back the veils and moving things back and seeing what's happening. And a lot of people don't know. That capitalism was created on plantations, that it comes right out of the chattel slave system.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
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.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
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.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
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.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
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?
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
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.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
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.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
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.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
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.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
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.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And they're like, you say down with capitalism and capitalism is trying to kill us. And this economic system that we're living under that's killing all of us and the planet itself. Also, the planet is suffering because of it. They don't trace the roots back to the history of this idea of looking at a body.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
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.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
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.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
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.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
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.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
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.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
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.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
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.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
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.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
As a machine, as looking at a human body as not being divine, as seeing us all as a tool for the production of wealth, for profit over people. And so when you bring that back and you start to begin to really study the history of what happened on plantations, the history of the Middle Passage, transatlantic slave trade. The way this entire culture was built on the backs of black and native people.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Yes. Liberation is a process. It's ongoing. It's always happening. Give thanks for that. Give thanks for not having to have it perfect right now and not having to always have it right. And I also feel like The idea of this being an experimentation and this being work that is going to be expanded upon. These are the tenets of, I believe, that will help get us free. But expand on this work.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
This is your work to expand on. This is your work to experiment with. This work isn't static.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
it's gonna move it's gonna flow as things happen you are the best teacher of what you know is right for your own body your body is this beautiful temple that has all this information but it can't share that information with you if you're in an exhausted state i have a meme where i talk about go like create a conference for your body you know like all these conferences that everybody wants to help
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
about you do a conference and that conference is a snap. You just do an agenda. The conference call that I'm going to be on is one of sleeping and resting because in that state, I will be able to gain information that I can't get in an awake world. And so the more people can understand that this is not a waste of time, that this is, there's information waiting for you in your dreams.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
There's information your body wants to share with you. There's information I believe my ancestors want to give me, but they're like, she won't stop. She won't slow down enough for us to be able to transmit that. to download, to be able to grab and hold that information because you're always spinning on this wheel.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And so to slow down is to allow the portal to open, the antenna to open, the antenna to link in, to allow you to get some information, to allow you to see your way out, to heal your way out, to create a new world, really. It's creating new worlds.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Yes, it is. It's imagination work. It's dream work. It's bending time. I believe when we rest, we bend time. We queer time. We allow for a new way to be made. And I love this idea when I think about reparations and I have a poem where I talk about this and I say, I will recapture the dream space that was stolen from you. We'll be resurrected in our dreams.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And so for me to be able to recapture the dream space that was stolen from my ancestors in this dimension in the now is, to say rest was stolen from you, your whole autonomy as a human was stolen from you, what could they have figured out if they were more rested? I believe that my answer just probably could have had really detailed and more unique ways of escaping if they were rested.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
I think about Harriet Tubman and her Underground Railroad and her prophecy of saying, my people are free. You know, she was screaming, my people are free. She woke up from a dream one day and it's documented. She was like, my people are free. She said it in this tense. It wasn't, they're going to be free. They're free now. So this prophecy, the prophetic idea that we are free now, that
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
The now is this is now. We don't have to wait for anyone to tell us that, to give us that. And I think about her stopping on the Underground Railroad, walking to freedom and not having a map, not having a written map. But she did have a map. She had her internal spiritual map and she had the stars. So she was a beautiful astronomer and she could track stars and track the sky.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Then people are like, hmm, OK, that does sound super violent and super horrible. But we are all a part of it because we're all living in a system that moves like that. And so the system that I look at when I think about grind culture, I say. It's the same energy, the same ideology that was on those plantations. Work all the time. Have four or five jobs, plus a side hustle.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
But it's written that she stopped to pray so many times that there was no rush anymore. Even trying to run to freedom. It was freedom of death. If they were caught, they would be killed.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And so to understand that she wasn't even a Russian trying to walk to freedom, to walk from Virginia to Philadelphia, walk from here to Canada, taking hundreds of people with her and stopping and never once being caught.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
never once being called and she's stopping to pray but we can't but then people tell me they don't have a moment to take 10 minutes of a little daydreaming session like you got a cell phone you got this you got that and they're stopping on the running for their lives stopping to pray to get she would say she would get um a word from god on which way to go should we go left at the river or right
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Let me stop. And she would feel that energy and she would go the other way. She never was caught. To be that in tune with spirit and your body and the idea of slowing down. Those are the people who I model. Those are the ones I say I gain access from. I know that this is not impossible. People would have thought a woman like that would have never stopped to pray. We got to get our bags.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
We got to run. The dogs are on us. But it wasn't that. She was understanding that we're in tune with our freedom, that our freedom is waiting for us, that our body wants to be well, that our body wants to be healthy, that our wellness is our way of life, that this is a natural state to be more human.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
To be more human is to be well, is to be connected, is to understand that you don't have to rush, is to be a counter narrative, to say no to all that was taught to you. Everything taught to you was a lie and it's not trying to benefit your divine body. So to begin to reimagine and bring new language and new ideas into that space, that's what rest can provide.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
That is wellness.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Yeah, I love it.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Exactly. That's right. One of my favorites. I love Audre Lorde so much.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Yes. Enoughness. Yes. You are enough now. Yes. That's what we're trying to do.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
I'm never worried. Aren't you scared of running out? No. I trust the divine timing of my life. I trust my gifts and talents that were given to me by God. to make a way for me. I've always trusted that. I never have to worry about that. I just don't. My faith, when you talk about a faith walk, a leaping, a faith leap, it is deep, radical, radical faith to understand and to
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
be courageous enough to push back against the system and say, I've had enough. And I trust the divine and I trust myself and my gifts to make space for what is possible. I really do. And so this is radical faith work. It's radical trusting work. And I know that that work will not happen overnight. I know that that is a slow, ongoing, lifelong process that we want to have for ourselves.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
We want to pass on to our children, to our families, to our cultures, to our communities. And so we can't do this work alone. This work is for the collective. It is for the community. I have written 55,000 words for my new book, and I don't mention self-care once in it.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Have your hobbies as a way to make money. Never rest. Never... It's the same energy that looked at human beings, my ancestors, as human machines who worked 20 hours a day on plantations, who saw this unsustainable pace of machine-level production. It's still happening here in our corporations and in our world right now.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And it was on purpose. It's community care. It's communal care. It's community. How we make it along. Community care will save us. We can't do this without each other. And toxic individualism has taught us that we don't need nobody else's help. That's the lie. That's what's killing us. That's the lie of it all. And so Martin Luther King Jr.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
has been saying that we are mutually tied in this inescapable interconnectedness, whether we want to or not. And because of that, We have to see the collective as where the spirit lies and where our healing lies and making space for others to rest, for ourselves to rest, being a model for that and going slow. I tell people, go slow. This is 10 years and I'm still just unraveling from it.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
This unraveling Will be a lifetime. My son is 15 years old. And since he's been little, a baby, I've taught him this idea of slowing down, of like chilling. He made up a word, chillaxing, chilling and relaxing. So he's like, I'm going to go chillax. So even now that he's 15 and he's in high school and there's things like the speed of high school life, he's a musician and an artist and everything.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Some days he'll wake up and be like, I just am tired. I don't want to go to school today. Can I just take a break? You want to go for a walk? You know, chill out. If you can't finish your homework in time, you'll be okay. You're brilliant. You're brilliant.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
You're brilliant. You'll figure it out. If you don't get that one quiz in today, believe me, hon, you'll be fine. Look at how brilliant you are. And so trust the divine energy and understand that the systems really are working in collaboration for you not to rest. Public schools. churches, hospitals, every system in our culture is in collaboration for us not to rest.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And so when you know that, it kind of gives you a boosted sense of energy to know they don't want this. They're all in collaboration for this not to happen. That's why it's a resistance. And that's why I see it as so important. And that's why I give myself grace. I do. You can get pulled and caught up in this grind. One day you might have to stay up to two in the morning to finish a deadline.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And you're like, what is going on with me? But understand it's a balance and it's going to be a full on slow, slow go. Take time with yourself. Be careful with yourself. Be soft with each other. Be intuitive about what's necessary. I say you are enough so many times in the book. I repeat so much in the book and I do that for a reason. People were like, there's a lot of repetition in the book.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Yes, ma'am, it is because I believe our brainwashing calls for that. I believe our deprogramming calls for repetition and the message will keep repeating. The downloads will keep repeating and it will become almost like a lullaby, this incantation over you to be like, What can we provoke in a spell cast over you to understand I am enough now.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
I don't have to do another thing that was already given to me by birth. So I'm going to rest.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And then you look at white supremacy, this ideology, this systematic idea of a hierarchy on race. When you look at white supremacy being so violent and using bodies for centuries as tools of evil, like that's all white supremacy is looking at. It's devaluing our divinity. It's making... Everyone look at each other as not the divine miracles that we are.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
I love a highlight. I love underline. Write in the books. That's my favorite thing. Yes.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
That's it. That's the imagination word. Yes, ma'am. That's the question.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
We'll talk soon. Bye. Okay.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
It's really caused a true brainwashing and spiritual deficiency in all of us to be under a system like white supremacy. So you blend those things together and you get grind coach. You get this idea of a body not being able to be owned by ourselves. Like I say a lot. I don't belong to capitalism. I don't belong to grind culture and I don't belong to white supremacy. You can't have me.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
I'm not going to be the one you're going to get. And so because of that, I'm resting. I'm using rest as a vehicle to disrupt it, to disturb that idea, to push back. And so it really centers itself in history. I speak so much about
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
the historical lens of Harriet Tubman, of the maroons of North America, my ancestors who were jumping off slave ships and leaving plantations and hiding out in caves for 15 years, not fugitives, not runaways. They never were part of the system. They just never were. They were like in the system, what's happening around them, but they marooned and said, I'm not a part of it.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
To be in a world, but not of it. And so when I think about that, those are the deep, between what capitalism was doing. And when you do more research around slavery, plantation labor, read slave narratives, learn about what was happening. I mean, it's unimaginable brutality. It's unimaginable violence. ideas that you would look at a divine body like that.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And so that's where the idea of reclaiming our bodies as our own, reclaiming our spirits to not be connected to a system that sees us like that. And so I refuse to donate my body to the system any longer. So I'm resting.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Like it is a direct line. Absolutely. We just need to make the connections. And I believe we can't make the connections for a lot of reasons. But one of the reasons is that we're exhausted out of our minds because And when you're exhausted and when you're on the grind and when you're trying to keep up with this unsustainable pace, there is no time to sit and make connections.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
So when I started resting, when I first started the organization, I just started personally experimenting with rest. Like I would go to school on campus and I would just sleep on the quad all day. It became a moment where it was like, let the chips fall where they may. And I'm just going to come to school, get the attendance credit. But I'm dying from exhaustion right now.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And the more I started to do that, the more things made sense with my research. Things made sense with my life. I've started getting better grades. I can make connections between what I was seeing and what I was feeling, what I was doing, like this disembodied experience. disconnection that happens in our bodies. People think not resting is just, oh, I'll get to it later.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
But what is really doing to us is disconnecting us from our bodies. We don't have no connection between what's going on in our bodies, in our hearts, in our minds, in our spirits. We can't connect with each other or ourselves. And so when we begin to rest, when we begin to take root and connect with ourselves and dream and imagine, things begin to make sense, connections begin to happen.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And so, yes, I'm so glad you raised that about reproductive justice and what's happening. I see it all the time when I think about all the labor unions right now that are protesting. I am so excited about it. My father was a union organizer growing up, and so I grew up under that idea of power to the people, power to the workers. And I'm glad that people are now...
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Coming up out of the veil and being the great resignation and seeing connections between, oh my goodness, I'm working five jobs and I still can't afford rent. Why is that? You know, like, why is that? And so, yeah, the capitalism and white supremacy.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Yes, exactly. The connections are rich. And so I talk about that in the book and I encourage people to take a slow deprogramming. It's no rush to this. Like, be grateful for the time that we have left. to begin to gain ourselves back, to begin to step into the miracle of our bodies, to slow down. There are no quick tips. There are no quick answers. There are no, what do I do to rest?
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Man, we got to come together and see this as a full-on experience.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
decolonizing movement a movement of reclaiming ourselves and each other because the systems want us all dead in many different ways the systems want us all working 24 hours a day in different ways so this work comes from a black liberation lens i'm a black woman i am a womanist i am a person who understands that no one is free until we're all free and i see the interconnectedness
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Trisha, welcome. Oh my goodness. Thank you. I love that good bio read. It's very much like black church, you know, in the black church when the visiting reverend comes and they sit and they read his amazing bio or her bio and the person sits there and they just kind of like take it in. I did that. You did that. Yeah. You're like, OK, thank you. That's beautiful. Thank you.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
But this work sits rooted in a human rights global ideal. Everyone is suffering, including the planet. The planet itself is suffering from the way that we are working it and not taking care of it. Climate change is so real. The planet is tired. It's exhausted. It's abused. It won't stop. And so there needs to be a pause. There needs to be a pause. And we're going to have to take it.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
No one is going to give it to us, though.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
It's very dangerous.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
Very dangerous. We're easier to manipulate when you're like exhausted and don't have time to think. If we rested, I think the systems know that it will be over for them. Yeah. That so many people will wake up and be like, wait a minute. You know, so to me, this work is really about awareness and pulling back veils. I see prayer to be a veil buster. Just saying where I see rest to be a veil buster.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
It bust up a veil. It pulls back one from that eye and maybe you can see a little. And if you can see a little and understand who you are and whose you are and what your right is as a human being, none of this terror of being capitalism, white supremacy of racism, ableism, transphobia, all the things that are like gripping and degrading our divinity would not take place.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And so Bell Hooks, who was one of my favorites, speaks about imagination being the greatest tool for oppressed people. It is one of the greatest tools for oppressed people, for marginalized people is imagination. And so when I think about a manifesto, that's why I wrote this to be a manifesto, the history of a manifesto,
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
They're written from the point of view of being disillusioned, but bringing us back to hope. They're written to be almost like to challenge and provoke us to say to us, there is a new way. And these are what I'm saying. The new ways is what I believe. And it's not that. And so that's really the history and beauty of a manifesto is it asks the question, what do you believe? What do you feel?
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
What can be real? What can we imagine? And I believe we can freedom dream. We can imagine ourselves free. Imagination is our greatest tool because the world that we live in now was imagined and thought up by people. Some folks sat down, mostly white men, sat down and was like, What are we going to do? You know, what are we going to make? How are we going to create it? What could it look like?
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
What would it be? They sat down and invented and created this. And so we can imagine a new way. We can imagine a way, a new world and a new opportunity for us to be rooted in that liberation. It is a political tool. It is a social justice tool. People think imagination is just frivolous. It's a thing of children and you're daydreaming, you're wasting time. They want us to always be free.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
locked up and focused on work, focused on production, focused on labor, but to be able to imagine and wonder, that's where the ideas for liberation come. And I keep telling people that we'll never be able to get to this world that we all want to see. A lot of people are now wanting to see a world filled with justice, wanting to see a world that's liberating.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
How will we get there from an exhausted state? How will we get there from our minds being exhausted? Because the neurology and the biology of that tells me Our brains aren't even thinking in full capacity. Our brains aren't able to download new information. And what happens when we are exhausted? Sleep deprivation is a public health issue. We are not working in a way that our bodies could work.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
And so to be exhausted is not going to be generative. It's not going to allow us to get to these imaginative, inventive, subversive, true things that we will need to move this culture towards one of freedom for all people. Mm-hmm. We just can't get there. You're not going to get there from being exhausted.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
So to continue to be on the grind and to be working yourself like this and not giving space to rest will get us just more of the same.
We Can Do Hard Things
No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey (Best Of)
I'm excited to talk with you guys.