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Hey, human. How's it
going? Susan Ruth here.

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Thanks for listening to another
episode of Hey Human Podcast.

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This is episode 380, and I had a
conversation with Jessica Hairston.

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Jessica is a former foster kid,

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an adult adoptee who reunited with
her birth family at the age of 19.

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She's a survivor, an exceptional
writer. Her poetry collection,

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power of our wounds is a moving
look at childhood, racial trauma,

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sexual trauma, mental health,
creativity and belonging.

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Uh, even if you are not really into
poetry, which I am very much into poetry,

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and I loved her collection,

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I dogeared the book and put
sticky notes all over it.

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It's so, so well done. Uh, but
even if you're not into poetry,

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her story is really an incredible one,

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and I think that you will find
something in there that you enjoy. Uh,

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just f y I though there is a trigger
warning on this episode for sexual assault

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and abuse. Check out, hey
human podcast.com for links.

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And to learn more about
my guests in the show,

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check out susan ruth.com to learn about
me and my other artistic endeavors.

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Follow Susan Ruths and hey,
human podcast on social media.

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Find my albums on Spotify,
apple Music, Amazon music,

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or wherever you get your music.
There's lots of records out there.

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Great review and subscribe to, Hey,

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human Podcast on iTunes or
wherever you get your podcasts.

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It's super helpful and I really
appreciate those rates and reviews.

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Alright, thank you for listening.
Be well, be kind, be love.

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And here we go. Jessica Harrison,

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welcome to Hey, human.

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Thank you for having me.

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Shout out to Tony, who I adore
and always send amazing humans to,

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to talk with me. So thank
you to Tony too. <laugh>,

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were you a student of his?

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I was, yeah. Uh, yeah, I
graduated Oow in 2016. Bishop Oow,

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um, had him freshman and I believe junior
year took African American studies.

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I wish I'd had a teacher like
him when I went to school.

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Yeah.

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You wrote this book that you sent to
me. Thank you. Power of our Wombs.

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And it is so, so,

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so like a thousand sos. Good.
It's so good. Thank you,

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<laugh>. It's, uh,

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there's so many feelings I've
been feeling while reading it.

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I talked to my dad this
morning and I, he said, oh,

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who are you interviewing
today? And I, and I said,

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you and I said the title of
the, the book, and he said, oh,

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she must be a feminist. And I said,
what does that mean to you, dad? And it,

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it actually triggered this hour long
conversation about his understanding

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from his generation of what
it means. And my generation,

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which is I'm probably, I
think, older than you, so,

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and your generation of
what that word means.

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But I thought it was so interesting
that he hears the word womb and

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he just puts it on mother
or a woman instead of

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the idea that he too grew in a womb,

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that it's also a part of
him and his experience.

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Yeah.

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Anyway. Fascinating.

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Yeah, no, exactly. Agreed. And
you know, I think also, you know,

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we're in this age where we have these
conversations about us as human beings

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possessing both feminine and, you know,
masculine energy. And I think, um,

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the same goes, you know,

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I'm reading a book or I'm listening
to an audio book about trauma and, um,

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specifically looking at like,
avoiding attachment styles.

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And I was just kind of talking about, um,

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I like the language that they use about
systems. You have your sexual system,

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you have your caretaker,
parental, you know,

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system and et cetera,
et cetera. Um, but I,

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I think that human beings,

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we both have like a maternal aspect
and a paternal aspect in us. So, no,

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agreed that it,

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there is this instinct to sort of place
it on the female experience only, um,

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which is not the case.

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Tell me about your childhood
and how that shaped you.

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So I'm 25. I was born in Oakland.

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I was born to two drug addicted parents.

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Um, I was born addicted to crack.

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I think it's really interesting because
as a child, um, or maybe more, I,

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I can't exactly remember
the first time my mother,

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I think it might've been
actually high school,

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that she allowed me to sort
of look through like our,

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my adoption documentation and things of
that nature. But it, you know, it does,

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it's interesting to actually
sit and look at, um, you know,

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sort of written in like medical
jargon of like, okay, baby,

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it's gonna have to go through withdrawal
first, test, run. You know, my,

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my birth father, um,
was some piece to him.

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He passed away from AIDS the
last 10 years of his life.

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He kind of was afflicted with a lot
of complication related things due to,

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you know, immunocompromised,
um, situation.

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So just immediately coming into
the world, there's these, you know,

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I'm another one of those children
that has all these, you know,

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tubes connected to them, taking
medications, being checked for h I v.

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You know what else I learned
in the documentation was, um,

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that I actually had a, or at the
time when I was around like 14, um,

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this is when I did for sure realize
that I had at least one sibling. Um,

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because the paperwork was kind
of talking about like, you know,

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the courts found another child by
the birth mom, um, 12 years older,

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had been living with her for like two
or three years in the beginning and then

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was placed into foster care
as a result of the drug abuse.

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And so in that first poem, ours Minds
in the book, I talk about, um, having,

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so once I re reunited with
my birth, my birth siblings,

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my parents have both passed. But when
I reunited my birth siblings, um,

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twenty, twenty nineteen, uh, or 2018,

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and I was like 19 or so,
something like that, I reunited.

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And that's when in talking to my mother's
first daughter, that's when I learned,

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and she's actually the first sibling I
met, um, surprisingly. 'cause I was like,

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I don't know how I'm gonna
meet this, this child. Like,

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it's just referred to as minor and
her identity was protected. Um,

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it's a 12 year gap, and I want, she kind
of be anywhere at this point. So in,

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in speaking with her, she's like, you
know, you know, my mother, you know, she

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was already fairly addicted.

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She probably started her
addiction in her teen years.

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And then by the time my sister was
born around, she was about 20 or 21,

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she had her, she, you
know, sold her, you know,

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she needed drugs and straight gave her
to the, the drug dealer, um, as payment.

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And she, we don't exactly know
how long my sister was with him,

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but over at least a week,
maybe longer. And no one,

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no one came looking for her until
family members came over and like,

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so where's <laugh>? Where's, where's
your daughter? What's going on?

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And even within that, you know,

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my sister was like cooking
for herself at two years old,

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trying to move around the kitchen
and boil water by herself. Um,

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and so she even has this massive
burn on her hand, she said,

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and it wasn't until she was about 18 or
19 going to get her first job having to

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go up to like Sacramento, I think, um,

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and get her official birth
record outside of her,

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like foster care paperwork and all
these things. And that's where she, the,

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the foster worker was like,
I can't really tell you this,

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but I'm gonna just tell you now. Or I'm
gonna just kind of slip it in like I do.

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I think we do know what happened to your
hand and kind of do know why you ended

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up in foster care.

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So that was her first time learning
about her own story as well.

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But it was just this really
profound experience of like, Hey,

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can I ask you about this?
Like, I, I have this,

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it's interesting how it's
kind of written sort of, uh,

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very formal, um,

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technical language. Like,

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is there a way that I kind of
wanted the story to be humanized?

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And I wanted to hear it from my sister's
point of view instead of just what's

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real, basically written
up in this paperwork.

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It was just so interesting to hear
that, get that filled in from my sister,

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and then she was like, can you please
send me the paperwork? I know it's yours,

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but, um, you know, it's something, it's
a form of healing for her as well. Uh,

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I think I went to like a sort of private
preschool kindergarten, um, that was,

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I don't know if you know
much about Oakland. Um,

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so this would've been maybe 2002 th

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2001 maybe to 2003 or four,

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I don't know, just given context
of the urban area. We, we,

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this school was located, um,
on the water kind of by, um,

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before Jack London. Like once you get
off eight 80 under the freeway, um,

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kind of on the water. Um,
it's interesting, I'm reading
a book right now called,

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um, you might have heard about it or
not, the writers come out at night.

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It's about like police
corruption, cover ups in Oakland.

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00:09:03,950 --> 00:09:07,520
There's this restaurant that I used
to eat at during that time, um,

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called Buttercup. And we, it was very,

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it was right like right across
the street from my school,

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but it pops up in his book as a place
where, um, O P D goes to often. And,

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um, you know, they'll go do
something really, you know,

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horrific and then go meet as a group and
like eat lunch at the Buttercup during

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the early 2000, 2000, 2004.

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So it was very interesting to sort of
see that pop up buttercup such a random

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place. It's mostly just warehouses over
there, or at least it was at the time.

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So it was, it honestly just made
sense because of, um, you know,

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um, O p D loves like many of
these type of police departments.

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They love finding, uh,

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abandoned areas and taking people over
there and abusing people and things like

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that. So it's just
interesting that way, um,

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how urban urban development
plays a part in kind of

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empowering militarization and,
uh, police conduct misconduct.

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And then I went to a public,

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public elementary school up on 98
past the zoo called Grass Valley

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Elementary School. Grass Valley, um,
has been in the news kind of lately. Uh,

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as of maybe like 2018, the mayor,
I think it was Libby at the time,

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Schaff, uh, kind of in
city council of Oakland,

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had all of these directives
with the school board. Two, um,

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closed like up to about 11 schools
or more, um, throughout Oakland.

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And it's kind of been litigating
and going forward since 2018. Um,

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but I remember in 2018,

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a lot of students kind of left this
left school doing a lot of walkouts,

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doing a lot of protests,

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and a lot of other schools in Oakland
were just like slated to close,

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which are mostly schools in West Oakland
and maybe downtown or West Oakland.

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00:10:48,860 --> 00:10:51,960
But, you know, strategically missing
areas that are serving white,

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white students. Literally like
this spring or the end of 2022,

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they announced that they weren't
going to close the schools. Like we,

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all of the protesting, all of the,
they occupied Parker Elementary, um,

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00:11:04,180 --> 00:11:06,480
to try to prevent the closure
of all of these schools.

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00:11:06,540 --> 00:11:10,920
And so it's been like six or six or so
years of, um, hard work to prevent that.

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00:11:10,980 --> 00:11:15,560
And so it's really interesting to actually
see that come through. Currently I'm,

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00:11:15,580 --> 00:11:18,240
I'm a student creative
writing major, or, well,

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00:11:19,160 --> 00:11:20,400
I may be dropping out at the moment,

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00:11:20,580 --> 00:11:24,360
but I was studying at Mills
College in Oakland, uh,

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00:11:24,360 --> 00:11:29,280
which is now known as Northeastern
University starting July, 2022.

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00:11:30,180 --> 00:11:34,840
And the, the campus actually has a
middle school and a elementary school.

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00:11:34,980 --> 00:11:38,560
So my middle school is on the campus,
it's called Julie Morgan School for Girls.

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So, you know,

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00:11:40,240 --> 00:11:45,200
in my class you probably had about three
or three or four black students total.

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Um, and in the beginning, you know,
things were great. They like the,

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having a diverse background of
students, so to speak. I mean,

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it's not that diverse, but it was
diverse for a school like that.

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And then I kind of was
just like, you know,

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but if your daughter has any
troubles, any social troubles,

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any academic troubles, any troubles
outside of school that trickle in, um,

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unfortunately, or, you know,
you know, it's hard, you know,

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'cause I remember when I was going there,
one thing they used to always say was,

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you come to school, you know, you have
to leave your problems at the door. Like,

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your problems are not allowed to come
in the classroom. This is, you know, we,

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we want a distraction-free environment.
Um, like they would say this to us.

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So I was like, well, I don't think
that's how that works, but we'll,

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00:12:26,160 --> 00:12:29,040
we'll see <laugh>, you
know, it ended, it ended,

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it ended pretty painfully for me.
Um, and I was like, honestly, I,

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I wouldn't do it again. I wouldn't
send my children there. Um,

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just because of how horribly the,
the administration handled issues.

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Um, and, you know, the equity in
supporting students was just not there.

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There was a ton of support for the, the,

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the white kids that come from the Oakland
Hills and the Berkeley Hills and like,

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nothing really for anyone else.

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Were you going in and out of
foster care this whole time?

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Did you get adopted early on?

216
00:12:59,560 --> 00:13:04,200
I was in foster care for about
10 months and I first start,

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00:13:04,290 --> 00:13:09,240
first started my placement at 10
months with my mom and would go home

218
00:13:09,240 --> 00:13:13,440
with her frequently for about three
months and then have full-time placement.

219
00:13:13,440 --> 00:13:16,720
And then it takes about another two
years for the adoption to be finalized.

220
00:13:18,200 --> 00:13:23,080
I think my biggest experience take,
or my biggest takeaway from that is,

221
00:13:23,420 --> 00:13:26,160
you know, you know, as we were just
talking about like avoiding attachment,

222
00:13:26,330 --> 00:13:27,800
there is definitely, um,

223
00:13:27,880 --> 00:13:30,160
I just learned about this term
called relinquishment trauma,

224
00:13:30,490 --> 00:13:34,520
which is something that adopted children
feel is you sort of have to, um,

225
00:13:34,700 --> 00:13:36,960
you know, in, in matriculating
into your new family,

226
00:13:36,960 --> 00:13:40,800
there's this relinquish period that you
go through where your adopt family kind

227
00:13:40,800 --> 00:13:45,600
of asks you to focus just on them and
kind of let go of the past that you've

228
00:13:45,600 --> 00:13:50,000
just come from. Um, and so
I can definitely say that
it's something that I, um,

229
00:13:50,000 --> 00:13:52,960
experienced in our relationship
with my mom. And um,

230
00:13:52,990 --> 00:13:57,320
it's something that definitely
eroded. 'cause there was, especially,

231
00:13:57,320 --> 00:14:00,960
particularly with my mom, who also I would
say has an avoidant attachment style.

232
00:14:01,590 --> 00:14:06,120
There's just this need to sort of
avoid anything that is unsettling and

233
00:14:06,120 --> 00:14:09,120
uncomfortable. And so, um, you know,

234
00:14:09,120 --> 00:14:11,800
that's part of wrapped up in my, um,

235
00:14:12,720 --> 00:14:14,800
identity issues with my
names and stuff like that.

236
00:14:14,800 --> 00:14:19,480
Because even though Jessica is
the person that I have the longest

237
00:14:19,700 --> 00:14:20,533
in my life,

238
00:14:21,150 --> 00:14:25,400
Kani is someone very early on that
I had did the original trauma of my,

239
00:14:25,420 --> 00:14:26,760
the way that I came into the world.

240
00:14:26,820 --> 00:14:31,040
And then the second trauma of having a
family that asked me to sort of leave

241
00:14:31,040 --> 00:14:35,640
that part of myself behind and not let
that be someone that I can continue to

242
00:14:36,040 --> 00:14:36,873
identify as.

243
00:14:37,020 --> 00:14:38,680
Um, that's your birth, your birth name?

244
00:14:39,510 --> 00:14:44,400
Yeah, my birth name, uh,
Kimani, you know, when I was,

245
00:14:44,420 --> 00:14:49,320
so then when I was seven, um, the
wound was additionally reopened, um,

246
00:14:49,500 --> 00:14:54,320
in us adopting a child or trying
to adopt a child again. Um,

247
00:14:54,380 --> 00:14:57,080
she was about two and I was about
seven. Quick side note, you know,

248
00:14:57,080 --> 00:15:00,200
it's really interesting because I actually
remember my mom kind of sitting me

249
00:15:00,200 --> 00:15:04,520
down. I was like, what do you think
about having a sibling? And it kind of,

250
00:15:04,520 --> 00:15:05,960
the conversation was
followed up with her. Like,

251
00:15:05,960 --> 00:15:07,880
she pulled out a whole
folder and like, you know,

252
00:15:07,900 --> 00:15:12,320
it really was sort of like you have these
pictures of children printed out. Um,

253
00:15:12,620 --> 00:15:14,160
or at least she did. I don't, I dunno.

254
00:15:14,630 --> 00:15:17,040
It's like a serious catalog
of children, <laugh>.

255
00:15:17,230 --> 00:15:20,400
Yeah. And, you know, because I think
this something similar happens,

256
00:15:20,400 --> 00:15:23,120
like with surrogacy and with an open,

257
00:15:23,430 --> 00:15:26,960
open adoptions where you kind
of can be presented with the,

258
00:15:27,300 --> 00:15:31,000
the family that you want
to adopt a child from, um,

259
00:15:31,000 --> 00:15:34,800
where you can kind of like look through
and meet the family. Um, I know that's,

260
00:15:34,800 --> 00:15:36,240
um, a story that happens as well.

261
00:15:37,270 --> 00:15:39,080
Well, I think adoption is big business.

262
00:15:39,240 --> 00:15:44,080
I don't know that people understand that
there's a lot of money to be made in

263
00:15:44,080 --> 00:15:45,560
the baby getting market.

264
00:15:45,980 --> 00:15:50,640
And so when I see things like
abortion rights being taken away,

265
00:15:50,890 --> 00:15:55,360
which will more impact
lesser advantage economic

266
00:15:55,590 --> 00:16:00,400
peoples, then all these babies
that will be born as a result.

267
00:16:00,590 --> 00:16:01,423
Well, yeah,

268
00:16:01,660 --> 00:16:06,040
it make sense that the people who make
money off of babies wanna make sure the

269
00:16:06,040 --> 00:16:09,000
people that don't have money, so that
when they have babies, they give them up.

270
00:16:09,670 --> 00:16:11,280
That that process keeps going.

271
00:16:12,820 --> 00:16:16,390
Agreed again about the
economics. You know, um, they,

272
00:16:16,390 --> 00:16:21,350
they tried a similar thing in the
eighties and nineties where, um,

273
00:16:21,930 --> 00:16:26,350
you know, there was this real
push in hospitals to, and,

274
00:16:26,370 --> 00:16:28,550
and I kind of state this in
the book, but it was really,

275
00:16:28,570 --> 00:16:32,950
it really was this of really
targeting black mothers in labor and

276
00:16:33,310 --> 00:16:37,350
forcibly testing them to make sure
that they could find something on you,

277
00:16:37,350 --> 00:16:42,350
that you are addicted or anything
that stands out to white mothers as

278
00:16:42,350 --> 00:16:42,930
much drugs,

279
00:16:42,930 --> 00:16:45,350
but they were never tested and their
children were not taken from them.

280
00:16:46,130 --> 00:16:47,630
So there really was, um,

281
00:16:47,870 --> 00:16:52,430
a push to keep a system going
and keep making money off of

282
00:16:53,060 --> 00:16:57,510
newborn children. And there's a world
that foster children essentially as they,

283
00:16:58,170 --> 00:17:02,550
you know, if they age in the system
that they play in the workforce in,

284
00:17:03,170 --> 00:17:08,150
um, the, you know, incarceration
force, um, and all of that.

285
00:17:08,450 --> 00:17:12,910
So we have this sure force
of stu kids, people who, um,

286
00:17:13,220 --> 00:17:17,310
will, will always be in
that world keeping, keeping
cots open. Um, you adopted.

287
00:17:17,460 --> 00:17:19,310
Into a white family or a black family?

288
00:17:20,050 --> 00:17:21,550
My mom is black. Um,

289
00:17:21,900 --> 00:17:26,070
it's a black family and I just actually
started learning about the Hairstons.

290
00:17:26,070 --> 00:17:29,870
It's just their father side of the family.
Um, so it was a book written on them,

291
00:17:30,050 --> 00:17:34,790
the hairstons, Scottish, you know, made
their money off of, off of slavery.

292
00:17:36,090 --> 00:17:39,870
So I would say that they're, you know,
I'm still learning, but like, you know,

293
00:17:39,870 --> 00:17:42,830
having a parent that's fairly
avoid and attachment attached,

294
00:17:42,940 --> 00:17:47,710
it's hard to learn about
their, their life, um, and the,

295
00:17:47,850 --> 00:17:49,880
the where they come from. Um,

296
00:17:49,890 --> 00:17:53,360
which is also something that kind of
made it difficult for me to fully, um,

297
00:17:54,180 --> 00:17:58,360
you know, settle in the family,
um, as a kid and, uh, um,

298
00:17:58,360 --> 00:18:03,040
understand who I'm quote unquote
related to or living with and being, uh,

299
00:18:03,040 --> 00:18:05,000
reared by the hairstons.

300
00:18:05,000 --> 00:18:09,480
Like my father or my mother's
father's family were pretty, um.

301
00:18:11,700 --> 00:18:12,340
Bougie.

302
00:18:12,340 --> 00:18:16,800
Bougie, I would say, um, in, in
the historical context. Um, they,

303
00:18:17,260 --> 00:18:21,680
you know, were definitely some of
the first to be able to go to, um,

304
00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:22,840
historically black college.

305
00:18:23,140 --> 00:18:27,400
And so there was sort of a little bit of
an elitist mindset that sort of divided

306
00:18:27,580 --> 00:18:31,560
the family. Um, after, once
they got a little bit older, um,

307
00:18:31,560 --> 00:18:33,360
the father had become
estranged from the family,

308
00:18:33,970 --> 00:18:37,740
moved to a whole different state. And so,
you know, even within the book, right,

309
00:18:37,770 --> 00:18:42,580
like there's, I talk about mother
wounds and I talk about, um, you know,

310
00:18:42,580 --> 00:18:46,460
the history of mother and mother figures
that I've had, like even as far as, um,

311
00:18:46,510 --> 00:18:51,260
dance teachers and stuff like that. But
I don't talk much about my adoptive mom,

312
00:18:51,260 --> 00:18:54,500
mostly because, um, particularly because,

313
00:18:54,560 --> 00:18:57,620
and I feel kind of like I did
a little bit of a disservice.

314
00:18:57,620 --> 00:19:00,380
Like I talked all this stuff about what
they're about and blah, blah, blah,

315
00:19:00,440 --> 00:19:04,780
but it's missing a large element of
the person who actually raised me.

316
00:19:05,400 --> 00:19:05,680
Um,

317
00:19:05,680 --> 00:19:10,580
and it's just because we are
strategically at odds about being open and

318
00:19:10,580 --> 00:19:14,740
vocal about, um, my life as
it pertains to her and, um,

319
00:19:14,840 --> 00:19:18,780
her life and just any kind of lineage
that just connects her at all. Um,

320
00:19:19,120 --> 00:19:23,100
so the last book, the last poem of the
book is a sort of dedicated to my mom.

321
00:19:23,100 --> 00:19:24,780
It's more of a love poem. I, you know,

322
00:19:24,860 --> 00:19:26,740
I actually gave it as a Mother's Day gift.

323
00:19:27,620 --> 00:19:29,700
Communicating is a struggle between us.

324
00:19:29,720 --> 00:19:33,380
And so sometimes that's one way that I
use writing where I'm like, you know,

325
00:19:33,380 --> 00:19:34,090
it's hard for me.

326
00:19:34,090 --> 00:19:36,860
It's hard to talk about hard things and
it's hard to express intimacy as well

327
00:19:36,920 --> 00:19:39,260
and feelings of love.
So I wrote it to her,

328
00:19:39,980 --> 00:19:43,500
I wrote love to her and it
through a poem. This is, um,

329
00:19:43,520 --> 00:19:48,260
the thing about mothers at the
very end, towards the end. But I,

330
00:19:48,720 --> 00:19:52,900
um, hope in the second version of my
book, I'm probably gonna make it longer.

331
00:19:52,910 --> 00:19:56,260
It'll have essays and prose
writing, things of that nature. Um,

332
00:19:56,270 --> 00:20:01,020
maybe even a little bit more research.
It'll be probably twice a length, um,

333
00:20:01,110 --> 00:20:03,540
maybe come out sometime next year. Um.

334
00:20:04,170 --> 00:20:07,340
Have you reunited with your other
siblings besides the eldest?

335
00:20:08,880 --> 00:20:12,540
Yes. Um, my father has, my, my
father's first two kids, um,

336
00:20:12,600 --> 00:20:16,140
are in the early thirties. My sister's
in her late thirties, my mother's side.

337
00:20:16,320 --> 00:20:20,900
So my father's two kids. Um, they all
basically, like my sister lives in Pinola,

338
00:20:20,900 --> 00:20:25,060
which is Marin County. It's about
35, 40 minutes from, oh, um,

339
00:20:26,160 --> 00:20:30,380
the heart of the bay. My father's
kids live. My sister lives in, uh,

340
00:20:30,380 --> 00:20:34,100
just moved to Las Vegas. She was living
up in Roseville past Sacramento. Um,

341
00:20:34,120 --> 00:20:38,500
my brother was living in Stockton,
and I have two younger siblings.

342
00:20:38,960 --> 00:20:42,420
Uh, so I have a younger sister
who's will be 21 in October.

343
00:20:43,530 --> 00:20:48,200
When you have a trauma from
the get go, we could all,

344
00:20:48,260 --> 00:20:51,080
we could argue that being
born is traumatic enough,

345
00:20:51,140 --> 00:20:53,720
but then you've got this other
stuff compiled on top of that,

346
00:20:54,420 --> 00:20:59,200
and then you get into the foster
and then you get adopted every,

347
00:20:59,460 --> 00:21:02,040
at every turn. You're told an identity.

348
00:21:02,490 --> 00:21:06,640
Right now you are a crack addicted
baby. That's your first identity.

349
00:21:06,900 --> 00:21:11,320
Now you're a foster kid, now
you're a a survivor of abuse.

350
00:21:11,580 --> 00:21:15,280
Now you're an adopted person.
Now here's your records.

351
00:21:16,100 --> 00:21:18,040
And they tell you this whole other story.

352
00:21:18,220 --> 00:21:21,400
And now you are going to a school that
says you're not allowed to have feelings

353
00:21:21,400 --> 00:21:23,720
about anything. I mean,

354
00:21:23,780 --> 00:21:27,760
and then you meet siblings who are then
giving you this whole other identity.

355
00:21:28,740 --> 00:21:31,960
How, like, I personally
for me named Susan,

356
00:21:32,280 --> 00:21:35,040
I don't think my parents got my name
right. I don't know what my name is,

357
00:21:35,300 --> 00:21:38,840
but I know it's not that I don't know
what it is. I know it's not that. Yeah.

358
00:21:38,840 --> 00:21:40,560
But how do all those

359
00:21:42,220 --> 00:21:44,520
hugely defining moments in your life,

360
00:21:44,780 --> 00:21:48,640
how do you find who you
are when you're a soul?

361
00:21:48,780 --> 00:21:53,640
If you believe in a soul, in a
whatever, this is <laugh>. Yeah.

362
00:21:54,300 --> 00:21:57,840
And, and that operates in
its own existence too. Yeah.

363
00:22:00,350 --> 00:22:00,640
It's.

364
00:22:00,640 --> 00:22:03,040
A big question. It's a big
question, but I am curious.

365
00:22:03,040 --> 00:22:04,960
Yeah. You know, um,

366
00:22:06,970 --> 00:22:11,620
childhood was definitely hard. It was
hard for me, um, to figure out who I am,

367
00:22:11,920 --> 00:22:16,860
um, and, um, work with all of these
stories and these narratives in my life,

368
00:22:17,370 --> 00:22:21,140
like you said, just because
of, especially with, um,

369
00:22:21,480 --> 00:22:25,820
not having space and real freedom
or support to do that. You know,

370
00:22:25,820 --> 00:22:28,660
it's hard to grow up when you're
like three or four, right?

371
00:22:28,840 --> 00:22:31,220
You still barely have
a conscious memory. Um,

372
00:22:31,220 --> 00:22:34,580
but you have an overload of feelings and
emotions already sitting in your body,

373
00:22:35,120 --> 00:22:35,340
um,

374
00:22:35,340 --> 00:22:40,340
particularly around like inconsistency
and attachment and trust.

375
00:22:41,120 --> 00:22:45,780
And you then you become this adopted
child. And, you know, I seen a poem,

376
00:22:45,850 --> 00:22:50,220
there's this, this, this urge of
this. And I mean, I'm so young,

377
00:22:50,220 --> 00:22:52,700
it's hard to say that. I was like,
someone sat me down and was like,

378
00:22:52,700 --> 00:22:57,060
you have to be this and that as an
adopted child. This is a woman who is,

379
00:22:57,520 --> 00:22:59,180
or, you know, yearning from it for,

380
00:22:59,280 --> 00:23:02,580
for a daughter to do the
maternal experience, um,

381
00:23:02,680 --> 00:23:05,860
is there's something here that needs
to be fulfilled. Because, you know,

382
00:23:05,900 --> 00:23:07,780
I think also within the,
the placement system,

383
00:23:07,780 --> 00:23:10,940
there's this divide between how we
understand foster kids and adopted kids.

384
00:23:11,120 --> 00:23:15,140
And so foster kids is like, just give
them a home. Just give them supervision,

385
00:23:15,480 --> 00:23:19,220
you know, won't worry about the
rest. Just get 'em, you know, um,

386
00:23:19,290 --> 00:23:22,540
with adopted children, it's like, okay,
life is great. Now you've been adopted.

387
00:23:22,690 --> 00:23:26,340
Like, yay, you are, you're
normal again. Like, that is not,

388
00:23:26,690 --> 00:23:30,980
neither of those narratives are true
and or fully, you know, uh, correct.

389
00:23:31,160 --> 00:23:34,980
And really leave kids. And, and
the, the families, foster families,

390
00:23:34,980 --> 00:23:39,900
adopted families without a
real understanding of reality
and of the support need

391
00:23:39,900 --> 00:23:44,020
for those realities. And so to be three
or four, and you have these things,

392
00:23:44,440 --> 00:23:48,240
you know, swirling around in your,
in your body, memories, feelings,

393
00:23:48,260 --> 00:23:49,920
all of these things. Um, you,

394
00:23:49,950 --> 00:23:53,800
there's this desire on my part to be
able to better communicate with my mom,

395
00:23:53,800 --> 00:23:56,560
because I could see that
Bonnie was a struggle.

396
00:23:57,100 --> 00:24:00,040
And I think it's interesting because
some of my later paperwork, um,

397
00:24:00,260 --> 00:24:03,920
say things like, um, child is
progressing well, she's smiling,

398
00:24:04,460 --> 00:24:07,320
she appears to be happy. But, um,

399
00:24:07,470 --> 00:24:10,720
that is not really the narrative.
That's, that's fully true.

400
00:24:10,820 --> 00:24:14,840
And even if you can catch my mom
in a moment where she's, you might,

401
00:24:14,840 --> 00:24:17,080
she might slip up and say
something that is not, um,

402
00:24:17,430 --> 00:24:21,960
what she really wants to come out, you
know, doesn't, you know, so, you know,

403
00:24:21,960 --> 00:24:25,960
know's. Just say things like, um,
you know, you never, you, you just,

404
00:24:25,960 --> 00:24:28,800
you cried a lot. You
cried a lot. You know,

405
00:24:28,800 --> 00:24:32,640
you didn't have your first smile until
you were like, almost two and a half. Um,

406
00:24:32,920 --> 00:24:35,120
'cause smiling is one of those things
that I've learned as far as child

407
00:24:35,120 --> 00:24:36,600
development has something
that you get from imitation.

408
00:24:36,600 --> 00:24:41,320
And when you don't have
consistent, um, adult in your life,

409
00:24:41,660 --> 00:24:45,800
it takes a long time to gain, gain those
things. And so even when I was a kid,

410
00:24:45,800 --> 00:24:48,960
my mom would, would say things like,
um, you were fine. You were fine. Like,

411
00:24:48,960 --> 00:24:51,440
you were not abused. You were not
abused. But then we'll say things like,

412
00:24:51,900 --> 00:24:55,720
but you know, when I got you, like,
you were clearly underdeveloped.

413
00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:59,680
Like you couldn't speak, you weren't
babbling, you weren't crawling,

414
00:24:59,740 --> 00:25:03,440
you couldn't lift your own
neck, you know, or, um, lighter,

415
00:25:03,620 --> 00:25:07,240
you had the ball patch in the back,
which is not unusual for babies, right?

416
00:25:07,370 --> 00:25:11,280
Right. But some people do say that
it could be an indication of someone,

417
00:25:11,480 --> 00:25:16,480
a child that's just been laying in a,
a, a crib, um, without much uptime.

418
00:25:17,020 --> 00:25:20,040
And so I think it's interesting because
then as I got a little older and I was

419
00:25:20,040 --> 00:25:22,560
with my mom and I was starting
to be socializing in daycares,

420
00:25:23,340 --> 00:25:27,360
and then I was like, would not
sleep. And I've essentially been in,

421
00:25:27,780 --> 00:25:32,360
had insomnia, most of my, like, it just,
I've never really been a good sleeper.

422
00:25:33,150 --> 00:25:35,040
Well, with all that,
that childhood trauma,

423
00:25:35,200 --> 00:25:38,720
I would imagine it would develop a sense
of sleeping with one eye open. Yes.

424
00:25:38,720 --> 00:25:40,560
So you never really get fully rested.

425
00:25:41,130 --> 00:25:42,440
Right. And so I had this,

426
00:25:42,440 --> 00:25:46,680
this nickname as a child of
being observant and being
an observer. And so like,

427
00:25:46,700 --> 00:25:49,880
I'd be at daycare and the guy be like,
lay down, lay on, go to sleep. Just,

428
00:25:49,880 --> 00:25:54,600
just five minutes, go to sleep. And I'd
go, oh, <laugh>, I'm up. I'm watching.

429
00:25:54,940 --> 00:25:55,920
I'm not going to sleep.

430
00:25:56,580 --> 00:25:59,880
And so I think it's interesting
that my mom is unable to see the,

431
00:25:59,980 --> 00:26:02,680
the connection there.
But in your first year,

432
00:26:02,920 --> 00:26:07,000
I think it's scary to even
get the idea that, you know,

433
00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:08,240
because my mom was definitely, like,

434
00:26:08,240 --> 00:26:11,520
there was probably at least 10 kids in
the group home that you were in. Like,

435
00:26:11,520 --> 00:26:14,480
it was very busy. It's not
so much judgment. I mean,

436
00:26:14,620 --> 00:26:16,480
I'm not trying to take care
of 10 kids. It's a lot,

437
00:26:16,730 --> 00:26:19,520
especially if you don't know them
very well and in and out, in and out,

438
00:26:19,800 --> 00:26:23,760
whatever. But it goes in line
with the feelings I have of

439
00:26:25,100 --> 00:26:29,080
not, just not, yeah. Not, there's a lack
of trust. And it's so deeply innate. I,

440
00:26:29,460 --> 00:26:32,040
I'm having a hard time
even fighting it. Um,

441
00:26:32,040 --> 00:26:35,280
and it's something that I've had to
go and do research on for adopt kids.

442
00:26:35,310 --> 00:26:37,800
It's like, you know, I've
talked to adoptees who are like,

443
00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:42,760
I was basically placed with a family in
three days and was never really able to

444
00:26:43,030 --> 00:26:46,080
emotionally recover. I was
addicted very young. Um,

445
00:26:46,140 --> 00:26:48,640
and not the house never really bonded
well with the adoptive parents.

446
00:26:48,660 --> 00:26:51,600
And they take that very personally. I
mean, it's hard after you think, okay,

447
00:26:51,600 --> 00:26:54,080
well, it's just a phase. It'll
by middle school, by high school,

448
00:26:54,080 --> 00:26:56,720
maybe by the beginning of college they'll
start finding themselves and they'll,

449
00:26:56,720 --> 00:27:00,880
they'll come back and it, it
doesn't usually, um, work that way.

450
00:27:00,940 --> 00:27:02,360
Us a lot of times, if nothing else,

451
00:27:02,460 --> 00:27:06,960
it tends to heal itself
possibly when that adopted child

452
00:27:07,340 --> 00:27:09,720
starts to have kids themselves. Um,

453
00:27:09,740 --> 00:27:13,040
that's what I see most like in blogs and
people talking about their own personal

454
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:14,160
experience. Um,

455
00:27:14,220 --> 00:27:18,240
but I didn't know that there were so many
adopted adoptees who are like in their

456
00:27:18,480 --> 00:27:21,520
thirties and they're like, I don't know
when I'm gonna be able to try, you know,

457
00:27:21,550 --> 00:27:23,280
connect with my adopted parents and these,

458
00:27:23,280 --> 00:27:27,480
the people I've been with for 30 years
or whatever. It's, um, validating.

459
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:31,800
But it's scary because it's not a place
that you wanna be when you're like,

460
00:27:31,800 --> 00:27:35,000
people are telling you, well, this is
like, you've got a beautiful family. Look.

461
00:27:35,000 --> 00:27:39,400
Lucky you, like, you know, chip on your
shoulder about blah, blah. I'm like,

462
00:27:39,510 --> 00:27:39,870
I've,

463
00:27:39,870 --> 00:27:44,640
I've been working really hard to solve
intimacy and attachment issues in my

464
00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:49,000
relationship with my mom because she
was so insistent on, you are not abused,

465
00:27:49,050 --> 00:27:51,240
let's not talk about this. You've
got a new family, let's move forward.

466
00:27:51,240 --> 00:27:53,120
Your name is Jessica. Everything's
fine. We're great, we're good.

467
00:27:53,460 --> 00:27:58,440
And now you put me in therapy at six years
old and now I'm 25 and we still don't

468
00:27:58,440 --> 00:28:03,120
have a relationship. And if we just
allowed me to be me in the beginning,

469
00:28:03,500 --> 00:28:08,440
we really, maybe, maybe we wouldn't be
here as much to the degree we are as,

470
00:28:08,500 --> 00:28:12,560
um, almost estranged. Um, and it's
really heartbreaking. It really is. Um,

471
00:28:13,660 --> 00:28:14,493
uh.

472
00:28:14,820 --> 00:28:19,520
That's a lot of expectation on a child,
first of all. And secondly, it's,

473
00:28:20,470 --> 00:28:24,200
it's not about the adoptive
parents. It should be about,

474
00:28:24,500 --> 00:28:27,840
in my humble opinion, it
should be about the children.

475
00:28:28,180 --> 00:28:32,800
So them pro any adoptive parent providing

476
00:28:33,080 --> 00:28:38,080
a stable, that's the baseline. Yes. A
healthy, nurturing, loving baseline.

477
00:28:38,500 --> 00:28:43,440
That's the fucking baseline. So
it's, it's not a superhero thing.

478
00:28:43,540 --> 00:28:47,560
You're not saving the world. That's the,

479
00:28:47,580 --> 00:28:49,720
the least you can do, honestly.

480
00:28:50,110 --> 00:28:53,280
It's providing warmth and
love and shelter and food.

481
00:28:54,540 --> 00:28:57,840
And really, in my humble opinion, again,

482
00:28:58,120 --> 00:28:59,560
I don't know 'cause I'm not adopted,

483
00:28:59,820 --> 00:29:03,560
but it's to expect a child to somehow

484
00:29:04,270 --> 00:29:08,640
magically be like, oh, here we
are. This, everything's great. Now,

485
00:29:09,830 --> 00:29:10,960
even at a young age,

486
00:29:11,070 --> 00:29:15,440
I've heard a lot about adoptive and I
v f kids who grow up with this innate

487
00:29:15,570 --> 00:29:19,920
sense, deep sense of I am, I, I,

488
00:29:20,470 --> 00:29:23,400
there's something missing.
It's, it's either or.

489
00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:27,200
There's an abandonment
that is so deep. Yeah.

490
00:29:27,700 --> 00:29:31,640
And you talk a lot about
generational trauma as well in,

491
00:29:31,740 --> 00:29:36,640
in your book and the idea
of how far back have we been

492
00:29:36,640 --> 00:29:41,240
abandoned? How far back
does it go? There's this,

493
00:29:41,420 --> 00:29:45,480
I'm right here. This really from
the beginning, uh, of the book, it,

494
00:29:45,500 --> 00:29:47,720
it grabbed me and this line, you say,

495
00:29:48,420 --> 00:29:52,560
and I still keep my hands up to shield
my face to prevent any new loving that

496
00:29:52,610 --> 00:29:53,443
won't stay,

497
00:29:53,870 --> 00:29:57,720
that I don't have the power
to keep to so powerful,

498
00:29:58,010 --> 00:29:59,480
which gives me shivers.

499
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:03,800
<Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah,
yeah. Uh, you know, um,

500
00:30:03,870 --> 00:30:06,440
it's interesting you picked
that out. Um, that, that's,

501
00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:09,280
I don't mean that lightly. Um, yeah,

502
00:30:09,350 --> 00:30:12,720
that is another one of the trauma
responses that I had as a kid,

503
00:30:12,780 --> 00:30:16,920
was to be highly defensive. Um, and I'd
have these defensive postures that, um,

504
00:30:17,140 --> 00:30:21,640
became, um, habits or normal.
So like when I say like,

505
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:25,760
I would rub my, like it was when you spend
this much time in the crib like this,

506
00:30:26,060 --> 00:30:27,560
and then eventually you just start,

507
00:30:27,740 --> 00:30:31,480
and then I would just kind of keep my
face and it's kind of like a stem in a way

508
00:30:31,480 --> 00:30:34,120
where it's like a thing that I do to
comfort myself. And so I had this,

509
00:30:34,550 --> 00:30:38,160
it's weird, I'm being honest, but,
um, I have this <crosstalk> No.

510
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:40,880
But really quick, I just
wanna say for those that,

511
00:30:40,880 --> 00:30:45,880
because this is a listening show, uh,
she put her hands up over her, her face.

512
00:30:45,980 --> 00:30:47,520
So this just say, yeah.

513
00:30:47,550 --> 00:30:52,040
Yeah. Um, and, and, um,
so I have this sort of,

514
00:30:52,340 --> 00:30:56,520
one of my, one way that I kind of
regulate myself is by rubbing fabric.

515
00:30:57,340 --> 00:31:01,840
Um, so that's blankets, pillows,
comforters and clothing. Um,

516
00:31:01,860 --> 00:31:04,080
and so my, my thing wasn't
really sucking my thumb,

517
00:31:04,100 --> 00:31:07,600
but it was kind of holding
these, these items to myself, um,

518
00:31:07,600 --> 00:31:10,480
that I considered mine. And that's, you
know, people say, you know, kids are,

519
00:31:10,480 --> 00:31:15,040
are very, um, stingy, but it's
not protective of your space,

520
00:31:15,040 --> 00:31:19,280
protective of your belongings. Um, you
know, that's, it's an only child thing,

521
00:31:19,280 --> 00:31:21,800
but I think mine's even
started before that, you know?

522
00:31:21,820 --> 00:31:24,000
And so I kind of make
that parallel. And, um,

523
00:31:24,020 --> 00:31:27,000
in another poem about
the girl that we adopted,

524
00:31:27,280 --> 00:31:30,880
I wish I could remember her birth name,
but I'll just refer to her as Ricky.

525
00:31:31,520 --> 00:31:35,840
I do remember her being like, it was very
difficult, you know, to, oh, you know,

526
00:31:35,890 --> 00:31:39,080
let's, we're gonna grab her bag,
her backpack, put something in, it,

527
00:31:39,080 --> 00:31:41,880
takes something out. And that would be
a meltdown. Like, don't touch my stuff.

528
00:31:41,880 --> 00:31:46,160
Don't touch my clothes, don't touch me.
Yeah. Very, very deep abandonment. And,

529
00:31:46,340 --> 00:31:50,680
um, you know, as far as how
far back does the trauma go?

530
00:31:51,700 --> 00:31:55,960
Uh, and also to sort of answer your other
question, um, I think that, you know,

531
00:31:56,200 --> 00:32:00,080
reuniting my birth siblings, my,
particularly my sister, uh, Kenisha,

532
00:32:00,580 --> 00:32:03,480
she lives in Las Vegas, I
believe we're nine years apart.

533
00:32:03,480 --> 00:32:07,240
She has a 10 year old son, Micah. She,
she has been one of the, the biggest,

534
00:32:07,800 --> 00:32:12,320
strongest, um, reconnecting, uh, uh, uh,

535
00:32:12,910 --> 00:32:16,280
sort of filling, filling
a void, um, within me,

536
00:32:16,580 --> 00:32:20,720
not to use her sort of as like a void
filler. That's not, that's not the goal.

537
00:32:20,820 --> 00:32:24,320
But it has definitely, like, you know,
people kind of warn you often as a,

538
00:32:24,320 --> 00:32:29,120
as a young child in a place in the
system of like, you, you could meet them,

539
00:32:29,140 --> 00:32:31,200
you can meet your family
all you want, and they,

540
00:32:31,200 --> 00:32:34,120
they probably won't be the people.
They, they won't be anything for you.

541
00:32:34,120 --> 00:32:38,040
They're just gonna let you down. You
know, you get your heart broken, get used,

542
00:32:38,360 --> 00:32:43,120
whatever. Um, and it's been
quite opposite. Um, um,

543
00:32:43,380 --> 00:32:44,213
in fact, I,

544
00:32:44,310 --> 00:32:49,160
I've felt stronger and I've received
stronger support and sense of fa

545
00:32:49,280 --> 00:32:53,080
familial support than I have in most
of my life in my adopted family.

546
00:32:53,080 --> 00:32:56,560
And that is not to say that they are, um,
horrible people or anything like that,

547
00:32:56,860 --> 00:33:00,040
but there's a sense of activeness
that comes with being in,

548
00:33:00,420 --> 00:33:05,040
in your community that they were not
in a lot of ways, I would say. And,

549
00:33:05,220 --> 00:33:09,600
um, um, you know, just
immediately, like my, my sisters,

550
00:33:10,220 --> 00:33:14,560
my sister's like, okay, first of all,
if you ever need living, living, like,

551
00:33:14,560 --> 00:33:17,840
living space, and you need to get
out of your home, like, just come.

552
00:33:18,070 --> 00:33:20,560
I'll give you a car, uh, couch,

553
00:33:21,670 --> 00:33:25,640
half a bed floor, whatever you need,
you can stay as long as you want. Um,

554
00:33:25,640 --> 00:33:27,120
and this is someone who's, you know,

555
00:33:27,380 --> 00:33:30,880
had her struggles with employment and
just same things as most of us in this

556
00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:33,320
world, but there's, there's
no question about it.

557
00:33:33,320 --> 00:33:37,240
And she would still be supportive of
me and, um, allow me to be myself.

558
00:33:37,280 --> 00:33:39,440
I would not have to treat
myself. Um, then my,

559
00:33:39,460 --> 00:33:42,560
my sister lives in Las Vegas is
already immediately, like, you know,

560
00:33:43,230 --> 00:33:47,400
soon as you graduate, come
down, stay with us, stay here,

561
00:33:47,460 --> 00:33:50,560
get yourself off the ground, do whatever
you need. We're here to support you.

562
00:33:51,260 --> 00:33:55,200
Um, of course we want to see you and
have me around. Um, the distance is far.

563
00:33:55,380 --> 00:33:59,000
So it just, in 60 years, um, it's,

564
00:33:59,030 --> 00:34:02,280
it's really been the most healing thing.
And I spent a lot of time as a child,

565
00:34:02,280 --> 00:34:05,560
like literally praying. Like, I
would just get to the end of my bed.

566
00:34:05,640 --> 00:34:09,120
I would open my blinds, the starts. I'm,
I don't know if this is doing anything,

567
00:34:09,140 --> 00:34:11,480
and I'm not very religious,
but I'm gonna give a go.

568
00:34:11,480 --> 00:34:14,600
This is the thing that I'm
want most of my life. You know,

569
00:34:14,700 --> 00:34:16,920
at that time I didn't even know
if I had any siblings. I'm like,

570
00:34:17,080 --> 00:34:18,640
everyone could be dead.
There could be no one left,

571
00:34:18,940 --> 00:34:23,480
but I'm just gonna pray anyway, sidebar.
But I think it's special that, um,

572
00:34:23,600 --> 00:34:25,240
I met them through ancestry.com.

573
00:34:25,980 --> 00:34:30,320
I'm just going to search
for my own d n a, um, uh,

574
00:34:30,960 --> 00:34:33,600
countries and things of
that nature. And, you know,

575
00:34:33,750 --> 00:34:38,040
contacted by Cousins Ancestry, you see
a lot of, um, you know, a long list of,

576
00:34:38,040 --> 00:34:39,800
oh, this could be a cousin,
this woman, whatever. Yeah.

577
00:34:39,860 --> 00:34:43,120
And so this specific woman was like,
no, I'm gonna talk to you <laugh>.

578
00:34:43,260 --> 00:34:47,120
And you know, my last name, um, my
father's last name was not in my profile.

579
00:34:47,340 --> 00:34:50,400
So I'm like, out of all the people
on hers, I mean, how does she know?

580
00:34:50,920 --> 00:34:54,120
I think she might've actually just
been reaching out to everyone. But, uh,

581
00:34:54,150 --> 00:34:57,720
very quickly she was like, you know,
your father and me are first cousins,

582
00:34:58,020 --> 00:35:02,640
his mom and my mom, our sisters
that your father is my cousin. We,

583
00:35:02,700 --> 00:35:05,760
we grew up together. And
I was like, whoa, okay,

584
00:35:06,310 --> 00:35:10,040
well look at that <laugh>. Uh, you know,
and it, it was hard because, you know,

585
00:35:10,040 --> 00:35:12,800
when I, at, so my mom told me about my,

586
00:35:12,900 --> 00:35:15,400
my parents' situation
and the age specifically,

587
00:35:15,400 --> 00:35:19,640
and all of this when I was about 14, um,
which opened up a real wound of like,

588
00:35:19,670 --> 00:35:22,120
time, you know? And so that's
another thing. Um, and I,

589
00:35:22,200 --> 00:35:25,600
I learned about this term
called Queer Time, which in,

590
00:35:25,620 --> 00:35:29,440
in queer studies is kind of talking about
with the AIDS epidemic and how it puts

591
00:35:29,440 --> 00:35:31,920
an entire population of
people in this place of,

592
00:35:32,040 --> 00:35:35,680
I need to live my life right now because
of I'm not gonna have it very soon.

593
00:35:36,580 --> 00:35:41,320
And so, um, I think that that sort
of did, did the same kind lip,

594
00:35:41,320 --> 00:35:42,920
same kind of fire within me of like,

595
00:35:43,400 --> 00:35:46,680
I went crazy enough to researching
everything about aids, aids treatment,

596
00:35:46,990 --> 00:35:50,880
medical neglect, and what, what are
the odds if you've got, if you're poor,

597
00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:54,160
if you're on the streets, if you're
on drugs, it's been 20 years of doing,

598
00:35:54,160 --> 00:35:55,840
living this, this way. Like,

599
00:35:55,840 --> 00:35:58,080
what are the chances that these
people would still be alive?

600
00:35:58,660 --> 00:36:01,440
And I got very committed
to the journey of like,

601
00:36:01,950 --> 00:36:05,720
putting my name in Facebook and putting
it in different orders and things of

602
00:36:05,720 --> 00:36:08,720
that, putting in goals, just
seeing if anything pops up. Um,

603
00:36:08,900 --> 00:36:10,840
got nothing <laugh>, but my, my,

604
00:36:11,060 --> 00:36:15,960
my late teenage years into going
into college were heavily, um,

605
00:36:15,960 --> 00:36:19,800
focused on how can I get to meet them
as soon as possible. But I knew that,

606
00:36:20,240 --> 00:36:22,280
I didn't know how that would make
that work. I mean, technically,

607
00:36:22,340 --> 00:36:26,600
I'm gonna close adoption by law,
they're protected from me as well. Um,

608
00:36:26,660 --> 00:36:30,200
and they're allowed to, you know,
hold that protection if they wanted,

609
00:36:30,220 --> 00:36:34,560
if they were still around. And so my
senior year, my birth mother passed, um,

610
00:36:34,620 --> 00:36:39,400
in February. Um, and then
I turned 18 in, in June.

611
00:36:40,100 --> 00:36:43,000
Um, and then my, my birth father
passed when I was 10 though.

612
00:36:44,340 --> 00:36:46,120
And then what about a year later,

613
00:36:46,240 --> 00:36:49,320
I was able to start connecting with
my birth siblings from Ancestry.

614
00:36:49,340 --> 00:36:52,840
But I remember at 18, I asked my
mom again, said, okay, can you try?

615
00:36:53,020 --> 00:36:56,840
And she was like, no, you need to just
focus on, on school. You're not ready.

616
00:36:57,260 --> 00:36:59,000
You know, this is gonna
be a distraction for you.

617
00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:03,520
This is gonna take you off your path.
You know? Um, it definitely Brooks,

618
00:37:03,780 --> 00:37:04,360
you know, it,

619
00:37:04,360 --> 00:37:09,120
that's just another complex trauma
on top of within our relationship,

620
00:37:10,120 --> 00:37:11,960
um, there. But there's
just this sort of like,

621
00:37:11,960 --> 00:37:16,200
need to sort of protect me from
harsh realities, which was like,

622
00:37:16,220 --> 00:37:19,600
not really for my protection,
it was mostly for hers. Um,

623
00:37:19,900 --> 00:37:22,600
and so it's been hard being
reconnected with my birth students,

624
00:37:22,750 --> 00:37:27,560
with our relationship because there's
this like inability to sort of do

625
00:37:27,560 --> 00:37:31,800
much with, with the information. I say,
Hey, I've met so and so, or I want to,

626
00:37:31,800 --> 00:37:35,360
after a year or two of knowing them,
I'm like, oh, it's her birthday,

627
00:37:35,500 --> 00:37:39,360
or she invited me to do this, or, you
know, um, my niece and nephew back.

628
00:37:39,820 --> 00:37:42,320
And you know, like, we can't
have a conversation about it.

629
00:37:42,340 --> 00:37:46,440
My mom emotionally shuts down anytime we
try to really talk much about my birth

630
00:37:46,640 --> 00:37:48,520
siblings, um, or my birth family.

631
00:37:49,260 --> 00:37:51,920
And so it's like the best thing
that's ever happened to me,

632
00:37:51,920 --> 00:37:53,280
one of the best things
that ever happened to me.

633
00:37:53,280 --> 00:37:57,640
And I can barely share it with
her. And so that's hard as well.

634
00:37:57,660 --> 00:37:59,480
And so I know that there is this, um,

635
00:38:00,660 --> 00:38:03,960
the reality that the narrative she keeps
trying to sell me on from childhood,

636
00:38:04,150 --> 00:38:07,120
it's, it's not substantive.

637
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:12,080
I hope y'all find your way back to each
other, but you may not in this lifetime.

638
00:38:12,180 --> 00:38:16,080
And you know, you have to, for,

639
00:38:16,340 --> 00:38:20,880
it has to be for you. You know
what I mean? That's, that's,

640
00:38:20,880 --> 00:38:21,760
that's the thing.

641
00:38:23,460 --> 00:38:28,040
It has to be for you because the
truth of the matter is we are all

642
00:38:28,370 --> 00:38:33,330
alone. And it's sad to say that.

643
00:38:33,710 --> 00:38:36,920
And I think a lot of people are like,
no, I've got plenty of people. But do,

644
00:38:37,060 --> 00:38:37,840
do you.

645
00:38:37,840 --> 00:38:38,673
<Laugh>. Yeah.

646
00:38:38,990 --> 00:38:42,480
None of us really do that thing.
And we come into the world alone.

647
00:38:42,580 --> 00:38:44,440
We leave the world alone. Yeah.

648
00:38:45,180 --> 00:38:48,320
And I think sometimes in life,

649
00:38:49,290 --> 00:38:54,080
there are moments we give
so much of ourselves up

650
00:38:54,100 --> 00:38:58,120
to another, the dominion of ourselves,
our mind, our heart, our soul. Yeah.

651
00:38:58,700 --> 00:39:03,480
All our bodies, whether we
wanted to or not. Yeah. And it's,

652
00:39:03,590 --> 00:39:04,480
it's, it's weird.

653
00:39:04,670 --> 00:39:09,320
It's to be a whole
person on this planet is

654
00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:12,080
probably close to insurmountable

655
00:39:13,820 --> 00:39:17,630
because we spend our whole life digging
at little pieces of ourselves and

656
00:39:17,630 --> 00:39:19,150
handing them off, or we,

657
00:39:19,330 --> 00:39:23,510
or people have spoons and they're
carving at our very nature.

658
00:39:24,050 --> 00:39:24,510
Mm-hmm.

659
00:39:24,510 --> 00:39:29,150
<Affirmative>. I love that. Yeah.

660
00:39:30,300 --> 00:39:34,670
Yeah. Well, uh, uh, it is, I may
I read another little section.

661
00:39:34,830 --> 00:39:37,190
I want you to read one of your comments
here. I'm gonna read another section.

662
00:39:37,490 --> 00:39:41,950
Um, I, this one really hit me too.
Some say the mark between my eyes,

663
00:39:42,290 --> 00:39:46,910
the only one I was born with. But
what about these new marks, moles,

664
00:39:47,370 --> 00:39:50,870
random scars, I wonder, stare them down,

665
00:39:51,490 --> 00:39:55,550
run my fingers over them. Maybe they
aren't beauty marks, but in fact,

666
00:39:56,190 --> 00:40:00,430
entrance sites from others,
demons, low frequency spirits,

667
00:40:00,780 --> 00:40:04,830
traveling trauma. Fuck. So good.

668
00:40:05,620 --> 00:40:09,070
It's so good. And when I read
that, I was like, oh my God,

669
00:40:09,150 --> 00:40:12,750
I feel that so much. I feel it so much.

670
00:40:12,890 --> 00:40:16,670
And it's so beautifully
and tragically said,

671
00:40:17,030 --> 00:40:18,710
entrance sites from others demons.

672
00:40:19,250 --> 00:40:22,830
But that's that thing of little
carvings, little by little.

673
00:40:23,930 --> 00:40:26,950
Yes. Oh, yes. That's a great connection.

674
00:40:27,690 --> 00:40:28,523
You know? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.

675
00:40:28,810 --> 00:40:30,390
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.
And I think, you know,

676
00:40:30,390 --> 00:40:34,190
that's the one thing I love about poetry
is that I could be so literal and, uh,

677
00:40:34,630 --> 00:40:38,950
metaphorical and it's both
the same. Um, pain as pain,

678
00:40:39,690 --> 00:40:43,390
um, vi violations, violation,
um, the sort of, um,

679
00:40:45,390 --> 00:40:47,830
relinquishing your part of yourself,
whether it's like you said,

680
00:40:47,830 --> 00:40:49,990
something you wanna do or not. Um,

681
00:40:49,990 --> 00:40:53,230
there is this sort of carving
of ourselves over time. Um,

682
00:40:54,210 --> 00:40:58,910
and I think that it's, you know, it's
even interesting, um, as we sort of, um,

683
00:40:58,970 --> 00:41:01,030
the more that I understand
about the universe,

684
00:41:01,250 --> 00:41:04,350
at least from a scientific point of
view, I've been watching a lot of stuff.

685
00:41:04,390 --> 00:41:08,150
I need to just sort of understand
space and things. But, um,

686
00:41:09,510 --> 00:41:14,110
I, you know, there's, yeah, we come
in this world, uh, alone, and we,

687
00:41:14,130 --> 00:41:17,990
and we leave alone. Um, but I
think that there's the, the,

688
00:41:18,050 --> 00:41:22,870
the part of life where we actually
get to have this very beautiful, um,

689
00:41:25,670 --> 00:41:30,310
unparalleled experience that as just
matters, just atoms in the universe.

690
00:41:31,500 --> 00:41:35,600
It's really, um, a blessing that you,
here were made this way, you know,

691
00:41:35,620 --> 00:41:38,680
at this time to spend it with
these people on this earth.

692
00:41:38,740 --> 00:41:41,880
We get the opportunity to be in
community with each other, um,

693
00:41:41,880 --> 00:41:45,840
to experience something other
than, um, many atoms and, and, and,

694
00:41:46,020 --> 00:41:50,800
and time and space, and have
such complex language that,

695
00:41:51,060 --> 00:41:56,040
um, is, uh, not able to be
disconnected from, um, emotions.

696
00:41:56,060 --> 00:42:00,560
And that's even down to dance and music,
other types of language. I feel like,

697
00:42:00,620 --> 00:42:04,120
um, our human experience is so, um,

698
00:42:05,660 --> 00:42:07,480
it is just the beauty of
the soul and the body.

699
00:42:07,500 --> 00:42:10,720
We have what the human experience
and the spiritual experience as well.

700
00:42:11,510 --> 00:42:14,640
Even when we're alone, we're all
having a very spiritual experience,

701
00:42:15,320 --> 00:42:16,920
albeit painful or, um,

702
00:42:17,620 --> 00:42:21,360
and liberating and sort of
like nirvana or not. Um,

703
00:42:21,390 --> 00:42:24,200
there's a connectivity
that we all get to, to,

704
00:42:24,380 --> 00:42:28,750
to be aware of or to accept about
that. And even on the flip side,

705
00:42:28,750 --> 00:42:31,190
on the beautiful side, um, you know,

706
00:42:31,190 --> 00:42:35,030
when you have these traumatic experiences
in some ways, you think, or you,

707
00:42:35,030 --> 00:42:38,230
you're in a period of your grieving or
a period of your mourning of your past

708
00:42:38,260 --> 00:42:42,350
self and a new self after this trauma
where you're sitting and you're like,

709
00:42:42,450 --> 00:42:45,750
how long do I have to be connected to
this person that I share this experience

710
00:42:45,750 --> 00:42:46,583
with? You know,

711
00:42:46,780 --> 00:42:49,710
with something that my friends and I
talk about a lot with their trauma,

712
00:42:49,710 --> 00:42:53,510
particularly with sexual trauma.
It's like, how can I settle this,

713
00:42:53,540 --> 00:42:56,630
this connection between me and the
person that abused me, or you know,

714
00:42:56,630 --> 00:43:01,150
me and the person that betrayed me.
And I appreciate that this poem, um,

715
00:43:02,010 --> 00:43:05,550
for the opportunity to
sort of focus on, um,

716
00:43:07,010 --> 00:43:11,110
you know, all parties involved in this
experience as well. And talk about like,

717
00:43:11,970 --> 00:43:15,310
you know, like with my mom's
relationship, uh, or relationship, my mom,

718
00:43:15,410 --> 00:43:20,110
you know, she, to be sort of a single
mom raising me. So I have no father,

719
00:43:20,130 --> 00:43:24,350
my mother is, um, single or you know,
hasn't, um, had a relationship mostly,

720
00:43:25,290 --> 00:43:26,910
mostly, um, my life.

721
00:43:27,030 --> 00:43:30,470
I think she was in a relationship
with a man when I was about,

722
00:43:31,160 --> 00:43:32,790
until I was about two or three.

723
00:43:32,810 --> 00:43:37,470
And then he decided to go back to
his wife supposed to be separated and

724
00:43:37,580 --> 00:43:42,070
getting a divorce from, but he changed
his mind. And so I think sidebar of,

725
00:43:42,070 --> 00:43:45,350
there's some heartbreak there from my
mom that has something that she wasn't

726
00:43:45,350 --> 00:43:48,830
able to let go of. Um,
and I also wonder, um,

727
00:43:48,950 --> 00:43:53,870
a bit about like, um, my mom's
mom and like hoarding and consent,

728
00:43:53,870 --> 00:43:56,830
compulsive keeping compulsive
shopping and things of that nature.

729
00:43:57,210 --> 00:44:01,710
So there's this like need
to like control reality, um,

730
00:44:01,850 --> 00:44:06,390
or control the past, control
the future. And, um, but anyway,

731
00:44:06,410 --> 00:44:11,310
so my mom is raising me. I'm in going
to school, and we, she works late.

732
00:44:12,130 --> 00:44:16,390
Um, we live far like I'm going to
school. This is, so in this story, this,

733
00:44:16,450 --> 00:44:20,510
the context is that I'm at Beacon, which
is the school in the waterfront. Um,

734
00:44:20,570 --> 00:44:21,590
and towards the end of it,

735
00:44:21,590 --> 00:44:24,710
we moved all the way back to
East Oakland to hundred fifth.

736
00:44:25,250 --> 00:44:29,710
So it's a far distance. And so I
needed, we needed help with like, um,

737
00:44:29,980 --> 00:44:34,800
someone to look after me
after school. And so, um, we,

738
00:44:35,100 --> 00:44:39,320
she would just go and seek out parents
that she felt like she would be

739
00:44:39,320 --> 00:44:40,400
comfortable with me being with,

740
00:44:41,070 --> 00:44:45,400
even if we didn't have much of a
friendship as like kids that go to school

741
00:44:45,560 --> 00:44:48,080
together. But, you know, that's,
that's not necessarily a normal. Um,

742
00:44:48,140 --> 00:44:52,440
but I think with this scenario, not
to explain the poem, but you know,

743
00:44:53,490 --> 00:44:57,080
there was this sort of
need to override like

744
00:44:57,870 --> 00:45:01,560
unfavorable experiences for the sake
of, well, we just need child placement.

745
00:45:01,620 --> 00:45:04,240
So you kind of need to figure things out.

746
00:45:04,300 --> 00:45:09,080
And that was a good reoccurring theme
in my life where if I was spending a lot

747
00:45:09,080 --> 00:45:12,680
of time with friends because I didn't
have anyone else to stay with at the time,

748
00:45:13,870 --> 00:45:17,800
something would happen and I would open
up to her, open up to her about it,

749
00:45:17,800 --> 00:45:19,800
and kind of be like, I don't
know what you want me to do.

750
00:45:20,020 --> 00:45:24,840
You just need to be somewhere with
someone. And, um, which was, um,

751
00:45:25,120 --> 00:45:27,760
a let down. And a lot of times she
would make friends with the families,

752
00:45:27,760 --> 00:45:29,000
and I would have these sort of,

753
00:45:30,890 --> 00:45:33,600
we're friendly because you're
nice and I'm nice, and I,

754
00:45:33,960 --> 00:45:37,920
I was raised to sort of respect your space
and be thankful that someone welcomed

755
00:45:37,980 --> 00:45:39,440
me into you, welcomed me into your home.

756
00:45:39,440 --> 00:45:41,000
So I would always come
with that sort of energy.

757
00:45:41,020 --> 00:45:44,600
But as soon as I felt disrespected, um,

758
00:45:44,600 --> 00:45:48,480
things that I think would be disrespectful
to my mom, she would like not

759
00:45:50,540 --> 00:45:54,160
handle in a way that protected me
or her in my opinion. You know,

760
00:45:54,160 --> 00:45:58,280
I had this experience where I was with
this girl. We spent afternoons together,

761
00:45:58,900 --> 00:45:59,733
um, into the evening,

762
00:45:59,780 --> 00:46:03,520
and I don't a hundred percent
know what was going on with her,

763
00:46:03,860 --> 00:46:05,680
but she's also an adopted child as well.

764
00:46:06,340 --> 00:46:09,080
And so she had her own
experiences at play here,

765
00:46:09,080 --> 00:46:13,920
and she was being raised
by a white family. So I can
imagine there might be, uh,

766
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:15,960
a lot of missing of details as well,

767
00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:19,360
possibly in her needs and her
requirements for, you know,

768
00:46:20,630 --> 00:46:25,440
emotional support even with this, this
book about trauma and avoid attachment,

769
00:46:25,720 --> 00:46:29,400
I think is really interesting. My mom
does the same things of, you know,

770
00:46:29,590 --> 00:46:32,240
when you're, when you have an experience,
right? Because people say, you know,

771
00:46:32,260 --> 00:46:35,560
you go through life and you experience
life in your body and your mind makes

772
00:46:35,560 --> 00:46:36,640
sense of it, right? Like, let's,

773
00:46:37,140 --> 00:46:41,840
in this sort of move to get people
to be in their bodies again.

774
00:46:41,940 --> 00:46:45,120
So, so many of us live in
a dissociated state. Um,

775
00:46:45,980 --> 00:46:50,280
and so just in general, I spent most of
my time, you know, that's another com,

776
00:46:50,340 --> 00:46:54,560
you know, aspect of being
born in the state of survival,

777
00:46:54,900 --> 00:46:59,000
or you already learn how to sort
of leave your own body. And so, um,

778
00:46:59,580 --> 00:47:04,560
it was easy for me to sort of block
out stimuli that changed the narrative

779
00:47:04,560 --> 00:47:06,880
of my reality that wasn't
ready to to handle,

780
00:47:06,980 --> 00:47:11,970
but that's kind of something you hope
your parents can guide you with. But I,

781
00:47:12,230 --> 00:47:14,690
um, you know,

782
00:47:14,690 --> 00:47:17,570
my mom spent a lot of time my
childhood kind telling people like, no,

783
00:47:17,570 --> 00:47:21,370
things were great. Things were
great. She was, she loves me, we're,

784
00:47:21,370 --> 00:47:24,170
we have a happy, loving family. There's
no problems. We have no problems,

785
00:47:24,170 --> 00:47:27,450
everything's fine. And that's
how she likes to remember it. Um,

786
00:47:28,310 --> 00:47:30,560
and so in some way, I,

787
00:47:30,600 --> 00:47:34,120
I processed this experience
starting around four, uh,

788
00:47:34,120 --> 00:47:38,280
since gonna be one of my first experiences
where I have a conscious memory. And,

789
00:47:38,540 --> 00:47:40,040
um, this, this went on for a while,

790
00:47:40,040 --> 00:47:43,160
like maybe six months to a year I
had this experiences with this girl.

791
00:47:43,420 --> 00:47:48,360
We spent so much of our free time being
sexual with each other in like very

792
00:47:48,640 --> 00:47:52,960
advanced ways when, you
know, she, the girl already,

793
00:47:54,700 --> 00:47:56,840
she, you know,

794
00:47:57,380 --> 00:48:00,920
she was doing a lot of role play and
kind of acting out things that she's seen

795
00:48:00,940 --> 00:48:02,800
or had acted out on her. And so it was,

796
00:48:02,900 --> 00:48:06,640
it was very advanced and it wasn't like
this kind of cute curiosity of like

797
00:48:06,640 --> 00:48:10,440
before. And, but I mean, human beings
are sexual beings. We have that, um,

798
00:48:10,450 --> 00:48:11,840
start very early anyway,

799
00:48:11,940 --> 00:48:15,640
but it was this sort of shame
that came over me of like,

800
00:48:15,700 --> 00:48:19,560
my mother found out how much we are
doing it, it would be disgraceful.

801
00:48:19,820 --> 00:48:21,680
And on top of that, I'm going to this,

802
00:48:22,220 --> 00:48:25,160
I'm in this home with a
child who has white parents.

803
00:48:25,880 --> 00:48:29,920
I could be seen as someone
of, uh, enabling, empowering,

804
00:48:29,920 --> 00:48:32,440
like quote unquote inappropriate behavior.

805
00:48:32,620 --> 00:48:36,280
And so there was this fear that came
over me for a long time of this dread of

806
00:48:36,280 --> 00:48:38,480
like, come to her house having
to continue being her friend,

807
00:48:39,100 --> 00:48:42,960
not feeling like I could say anything
about, um, this because it would not,

808
00:48:43,150 --> 00:48:47,840
like my mother would only hear
my participation, you know? Um,

809
00:48:48,860 --> 00:48:49,720
and, um,

810
00:48:49,780 --> 00:48:53,200
but I definitely think
that that contributed to my
intimacy problems probably

811
00:48:53,200 --> 00:48:56,560
around like five and six, I started
laying to bed again. I couldn't, like,

812
00:48:56,690 --> 00:49:00,800
there was this added level of like,
rejecting my mother, just don't touch me.

813
00:49:01,280 --> 00:49:04,480
I can't sleep in the dark anymore.
I can't like being like, you know,

814
00:49:04,550 --> 00:49:09,200
undercovers, um, uh, you know,
feelings of entrapment. So,

815
00:49:09,740 --> 00:49:12,440
um, this is part of what
sent me to therapy at six.

816
00:49:12,860 --> 00:49:15,920
But by that point I had
kind of like, you know,

817
00:49:16,060 --> 00:49:20,240
gotten rid of the memory or suppressants
so deep. My therapist was like, well,

818
00:49:20,830 --> 00:49:23,080
it's gonna be a while before we know
what's, what's up with your child.

819
00:49:23,180 --> 00:49:27,000
So good luck, <laugh>. We,
we really didn't get much
from the, from the therapy.

820
00:49:27,460 --> 00:49:29,680
Um, even with my mental health,

821
00:49:29,680 --> 00:49:33,360
there's this sort of recurring
thing in my life where like, yes,

822
00:49:33,360 --> 00:49:38,080
there is trauma, and yes, there's this,
but I thoroughly believe that, uh,

823
00:49:38,080 --> 00:49:41,360
with being able to speak about the
things that you've been through, there's,

824
00:49:42,390 --> 00:49:44,150
I mean, I definitely, you know, there's,

825
00:49:44,270 --> 00:49:47,510
I was reading this
conversation online about, um,

826
00:49:47,570 --> 00:49:50,550
how many parents work so hard to
get their children, you know, uh,

827
00:49:50,660 --> 00:49:52,710
diagnosed with, uh,

828
00:49:55,220 --> 00:49:57,790
different kinds of disorders
and things of that nature,

829
00:49:58,130 --> 00:50:02,510
as long as it proves that the parent is
not at fault for some kind of neglect.

830
00:50:03,120 --> 00:50:06,590
Right? I definitely think that, uh,

831
00:50:06,950 --> 00:50:11,670
I think that sums it up, <laugh>,
unfortunately. So there's,

832
00:50:11,670 --> 00:50:13,590
there's this overhaul in
my head to sort of like,

833
00:50:13,740 --> 00:50:18,350
I've gotta get my stuff out of my head
and on page and then transmute that back

834
00:50:18,350 --> 00:50:22,710
into my body where I've now reintegrated
my experiences as not being something

835
00:50:22,710 --> 00:50:24,470
that's third party or separated from me,

836
00:50:24,490 --> 00:50:28,040
or I have to leave my body and go look
at myself to just see what it was or

837
00:50:28,240 --> 00:50:32,160
whatever. Um, there's this desire to
reintegrate my experiences and not, um,

838
00:50:32,350 --> 00:50:36,240
have all of this, this
separation and dissociation.

839
00:50:37,220 --> 00:50:41,960
But, but yeah, there I spent a long
time of my, my, my later years, um,

840
00:50:42,570 --> 00:50:47,120
being like, no, no. Like, I, I wanted
that and I, I enjoyed it. And it's,

841
00:50:47,120 --> 00:50:50,480
this is no, I, I was just, I was
just one of those fast children.

842
00:50:50,700 --> 00:50:53,880
I'm just a fast child. Like I, I,
I just was, I was on top of it.

843
00:50:53,960 --> 00:50:58,640
I was into it so young, like, yay me or
whatever, but I always knew deep down,

844
00:50:58,640 --> 00:51:02,720
like that's not really what was going
on. And it was a lot more, um, um,

845
00:51:08,670 --> 00:51:12,730
you know, painful and
overwhelming and, um, you know,

846
00:51:12,850 --> 00:51:16,850
I had to be this child that doesn't
make mistakes. And so, you know,

847
00:51:16,850 --> 00:51:20,770
making this mistake, her mother
found out, ended the friendship like,

848
00:51:20,830 --> 00:51:24,690
you have to go. And then I
got home, my mom's like, um,

849
00:51:25,470 --> 00:51:28,410
you're disgusting <laugh>. Like,
you're nasty. You're disgusting.

850
00:51:28,730 --> 00:51:32,890
I dunno why you would do that. Um, you
know, she just had a lot of things and I,

851
00:51:33,010 --> 00:51:35,770
I barely remember that. I
remember a lot of words being,

852
00:51:35,780 --> 00:51:37,410
being hurled hurled at me.

853
00:51:37,410 --> 00:51:41,930
She didn't ask me once how we ended
up in this situation or anything. Um,

854
00:51:41,950 --> 00:51:43,970
how I really felt about it. Um,

855
00:51:45,510 --> 00:51:49,970
and that definitely seeped into our
relationship as well. And there's a theme,

856
00:51:50,470 --> 00:51:55,050
um, throughout where I do anything that
doesn't align with her, her reality.

857
00:51:55,150 --> 00:52:00,090
And I'm like, it's a character flaw
within me, which is really overwhelming.

858
00:52:00,370 --> 00:52:03,370
<laugh> versus it being like an
opportunity to just grow and learn and,

859
00:52:03,910 --> 00:52:07,090
you know, uh, things of that
nature. There's this, um.

860
00:52:09,070 --> 00:52:13,450
You know, or to even protect
you from it. <inaudible>,

861
00:52:13,580 --> 00:52:15,210
would you like to read one of your poems?

862
00:52:16,280 --> 00:52:20,130
Sure. Do you have a, a vibe or a.

863
00:52:20,650 --> 00:52:24,490
I mean, I, I've highlighted
and, and I just, it's real good.

864
00:52:24,810 --> 00:52:28,410
<laugh> the whole thing, so
freaking good. And it's one of,

865
00:52:28,600 --> 00:52:30,170
it's funny 'cause in
the beginning, you know,

866
00:52:30,170 --> 00:52:34,810
there's a comment about read it in any
direction, in any way, and, you know,

867
00:52:34,810 --> 00:52:39,570
however you feel moved and yeah,
I mean, as I'm reading it, I,

868
00:52:39,890 --> 00:52:44,330
I have mother wounds for sure as I
read it, or I just have life wounds.

869
00:52:44,330 --> 00:52:48,650
Like every one of us, I'm,
I find myself rereading and,

870
00:52:48,790 --> 00:52:52,730
and replaying it and then feeling it
where it is in my body that I feel the

871
00:52:52,730 --> 00:52:56,930
words. Mm-hmm. You know?
Yeah. Uh, it's very powerful.

872
00:52:57,480 --> 00:53:01,290
It's, um, it's very, very
powerful. But yeah, please.

873
00:53:02,670 --> 00:53:05,650
Um, I'll read, um, stack of
Papers. Are you okay with that?

874
00:53:07,070 --> 00:53:10,490
And just to, to let everyone know
again, it's called Power of Our Wombs,

875
00:53:11,170 --> 00:53:12,370
W O M B Ss.

876
00:53:13,500 --> 00:53:16,770
Stack of Papers. That was really
one of my favorite ones to write. I,

877
00:53:16,930 --> 00:53:21,250
I actually, so I wanna say it
was either fall 2021 or like,

878
00:53:21,250 --> 00:53:25,050
like December or maybe
January, 2022, right before,

879
00:53:25,140 --> 00:53:29,160
before I turned the book into Nomadic
Press Publishing to have them read it and,

880
00:53:29,160 --> 00:53:31,960
you know, let me know if they
would accept it. And, um, I had,

881
00:53:32,120 --> 00:53:34,600
I had gone to a virtual, like
shout out to the pandemic,

882
00:53:34,660 --> 00:53:38,880
but I went to a virtual, like wound
healing, um, workshop class with,

883
00:53:38,880 --> 00:53:41,080
with a doula from Oakland.
And with, um, I was like,

884
00:53:41,180 --> 00:53:43,600
I'm just gonna give this a
shot. I found so many, um,

885
00:53:43,600 --> 00:53:46,840
things on Eventbrite <laugh> of
like, related to wound healing.

886
00:53:46,900 --> 00:53:50,920
And I wanted to just see like in community
talking about anything related to

887
00:53:50,920 --> 00:53:54,640
these topics, like what might come
from it and my writing and all of that.

888
00:53:55,420 --> 00:53:58,840
And so, um, she gave us a prompt,
quite literally. And I just, I,

889
00:53:59,060 --> 00:54:03,640
I'm always loved the way that things just
kind of come outta my head. You know,

890
00:54:03,640 --> 00:54:06,240
people ask me that a lot are like,
how did you come from this prompt?

891
00:54:06,300 --> 00:54:09,520
And then it turned into this whole
thing. And I'm like, I don't know.

892
00:54:09,520 --> 00:54:11,440
I'm still trying to figure
that out myself. But, um,

893
00:54:11,550 --> 00:54:12,600
it's a pretty amazing process.

894
00:54:12,700 --> 00:54:16,000
So just even the process of my writing
is like one of my favorite things. Um,

895
00:54:16,000 --> 00:54:19,160
and just a shout out, like, I love
that the book was able to take, um,

896
00:54:19,430 --> 00:54:24,320
like graphics. So one of my favorite
things is the womb word dump,

897
00:54:24,320 --> 00:54:28,240
which I actually made on,
uh, Canva or something. Um,

898
00:54:28,240 --> 00:54:30,320
so I give you the words
and then I give you, um,

899
00:54:30,320 --> 00:54:34,800
background and then I give you the poem.
And I just love that. Um, but Juju,

900
00:54:34,800 --> 00:54:38,040
the doula hosted me in some
other black women in her heel,

901
00:54:38,060 --> 00:54:40,080
the womb virtual poetry class,

902
00:54:40,310 --> 00:54:43,360
because we're two years isn't
changed until a world pandemic.

903
00:54:43,980 --> 00:54:45,600
It was 6:00 PM on a Friday night.

904
00:54:45,770 --> 00:54:48,640
There were several of us from
the Bay Area because Juju,

905
00:54:48,640 --> 00:54:49,680
the doula is from Oakland.

906
00:54:50,180 --> 00:54:54,640
And we're tuned in on time as she asked
of us some even matriculated in as far

907
00:54:54,660 --> 00:54:56,720
as Georgia, Kentucky and Virginia.

908
00:54:57,500 --> 00:55:00,360
We started the wo we started
with a womb word dump.

909
00:55:00,580 --> 00:55:03,680
And she posed us these two questions.
What are your wounds? Like?

910
00:55:03,980 --> 00:55:06,080
If you could say it was an
object, what would it be?

911
00:55:06,900 --> 00:55:10,880
To which I say stack of
papers. Stack of papers.

912
00:55:11,460 --> 00:55:13,400
My womb is a stack of
papers from the state.

913
00:55:13,840 --> 00:55:16,880
I only know my myself in the
words I read on these pages,

914
00:55:16,880 --> 00:55:21,360
printed and published in 2003 when
the social worker ceased visits

915
00:55:21,830 --> 00:55:23,840
last report saying I hit the basics.

916
00:55:24,100 --> 00:55:27,560
She no longer needed to think
of me till as early as 1998.

917
00:55:27,910 --> 00:55:32,280
Like how one is conditioned to learn
oneself early on in report cards based on

918
00:55:32,280 --> 00:55:36,760
prison records. The things white people
say or say or were saying about you,

919
00:55:38,460 --> 00:55:42,000
my understanding literally jumped
up and walked right off the pay.

920
00:55:42,880 --> 00:55:47,120
I envy people who can raise their hands
in class because their hands deserve to

921
00:55:47,120 --> 00:55:50,760
be up. I worry, I don't speak. I
look like I don't deserve a seat.

922
00:55:51,460 --> 00:55:53,480
Pat themselves on the
back and feel surrounded.

923
00:55:54,090 --> 00:55:57,440
Seems like the things my hands are
best at is gripping my hip bones,

924
00:55:57,590 --> 00:56:00,640
needing nap of my spine and
then diagnosing my wound.

925
00:56:00,640 --> 00:56:03,480
Pain is having traveled from
my pelvis to my lower back,

926
00:56:03,750 --> 00:56:07,840
leaving a permanent ache. People have
been telling me long as I can remember,

927
00:56:08,000 --> 00:56:11,800
I got the arch of a young mom, like
I've been carrying myself since birth.

928
00:56:12,790 --> 00:56:16,160
Once we tested positive, and
they called my mother in fifth,

929
00:56:16,550 --> 00:56:19,800
sent me on my lonesome way
away from source, from mother,

930
00:56:19,870 --> 00:56:23,920
from wo mama and mama's womb, from
her bosoms, from her, her inner elbow,

931
00:56:23,920 --> 00:56:26,560
where my head meant to
lay from my birth name.

932
00:56:27,380 --> 00:56:30,920
I'm always searching for my other homes,
always thinking I'm missing someone.

933
00:56:31,410 --> 00:56:34,520
Every so often I crack open
my papers to jog my memory,

934
00:56:34,700 --> 00:56:38,600
to hear my mother's voice, to recognize
the sound of my cries, my loneliness,

935
00:56:39,520 --> 00:56:42,600
recognize my mother's eyes peeking
back at me from between the lines.

936
00:56:43,920 --> 00:56:46,280
I wonder if I apologize
for her indiscretions,

937
00:56:46,390 --> 00:56:48,520
will they reveal the rest of myself to me.

938
00:56:49,100 --> 00:56:52,360
But I also cursed her father
for breaking lines. His son,

939
00:56:52,500 --> 00:56:56,280
his touch sent her to the streets, late
teens trying to snatch her kneeing back,

940
00:56:56,510 --> 00:56:59,440
bending her spine, pushing
her hips out and back,

941
00:56:59,780 --> 00:57:03,400
hoping sex by way of the block
might ground her into a happy home.

942
00:57:03,900 --> 00:57:07,800
And I must also curse the state for
pretending like they don't know.

943
00:57:08,050 --> 00:57:10,120
Crack was her way of holding on a gamble.

944
00:57:11,080 --> 00:57:14,120
Resilience to which car she
pulls first, freedom or death.

945
00:57:14,860 --> 00:57:19,400
And black girl call home Jasmine
man wrote mortality and magic

946
00:57:19,960 --> 00:57:22,560
occupied the same space,
and she pulled death.

947
00:57:23,920 --> 00:57:25,480
I sometimes wish I hadn't,

948
00:57:25,500 --> 00:57:29,680
we hadn't cremated my mother so I could
visit her in the yard so we could have

949
00:57:29,680 --> 00:57:31,600
our own conversations by cloak of privacy.

950
00:57:32,380 --> 00:57:36,680
But she's amongst her scoring memories,
regrets, and stakes in my sister's home.

951
00:57:36,740 --> 00:57:40,600
At the behest of all of those ears,
they feel mostly judgment for her.

952
00:57:40,700 --> 00:57:41,880
Understandably so.

953
00:57:42,940 --> 00:57:47,240
My womb has a moderately thick file
of papers on her from clinics tested

954
00:57:47,640 --> 00:57:52,480
positive for cocaine, tested twice,
six months apart. H i v morbid cramps,

955
00:57:52,480 --> 00:57:55,720
collapsed in shower, low blood
pressure needs birth control,

956
00:57:55,770 --> 00:57:59,920
never used too scared and even
thicker. File post assault,

957
00:58:00,140 --> 00:58:03,760
police ride and leave offering
nothing after another.

958
00:58:03,760 --> 00:58:08,040
Assault needs pregnancy tests, needs
a U T i tests and sleeping pills.

959
00:58:09,180 --> 00:58:13,480
My womb with every interaction
and non-interaction becomes
more of a mystery to

960
00:58:13,480 --> 00:58:17,240
me. I guess she's love, I've
discovered her to be potent power.

961
00:58:17,900 --> 00:58:21,200
She got me wet, a fear hour to
ease the pain. And I'm grateful.

962
00:58:21,900 --> 00:58:24,440
The most feminine part of
me must have some hair.

963
00:58:24,660 --> 00:58:26,800
The masculine in me wants to keep it long.

964
00:58:27,340 --> 00:58:30,800
If my body could rise up and out like
dough to make space for all this trauma,

965
00:58:31,190 --> 00:58:34,440
then I can believe my womb
and my girl will in fact,

966
00:58:34,540 --> 00:58:37,920
one day be able to stretch
wide again. Welcome, love,

967
00:58:38,380 --> 00:58:41,480
endure the trauma of birth, A
beauty that will not be denied.

968
00:58:41,750 --> 00:58:43,120
This is a story that matters.

969
00:58:45,140 --> 00:58:50,080
That's so powerful, that's exceptional.
Thank you. Thank you for sharing.

970
00:58:51,100 --> 00:58:55,000
That's so beautiful and
so tragic. And it's,

971
00:58:55,210 --> 00:58:58,720
which is as human as it
gets. Yeah. You know,

972
00:59:00,910 --> 00:59:05,360
there's a, there's another one in Mama's
Boy that, that you have here that, um,

973
00:59:06,590 --> 00:59:10,240
it's funny. I I it's a,
it's again beautiful and,

974
00:59:10,300 --> 00:59:13,800
and horrible and in the
best way, obviously.

975
00:59:14,020 --> 00:59:17,080
You know what I mean by
that as a word person. Um,

976
00:59:18,830 --> 00:59:19,663
what I,

977
00:59:19,710 --> 00:59:24,520
what struck me in that
poem was the idea that the

978
00:59:24,660 --> 00:59:25,493
abuser,

979
00:59:25,500 --> 00:59:30,360
the male abuser who both is
desperately trying to get back

980
00:59:30,460 --> 00:59:33,240
to the womb all the while
ripping it to shreds.

981
00:59:34,560 --> 00:59:38,360
Hmm mm-hmm. <affirmative>.
Yes. Yes. You know,

982
00:59:38,420 --> 00:59:43,080
and it's interesting because,
um, so my, my sophomore year, oh,

983
00:59:43,670 --> 00:59:48,320
Riverside, I, I went to uc,
Riverside, and, um, you know, I,

984
00:59:48,470 --> 00:59:51,600
this whole, that whole, that
whole time, two years there,

985
00:59:53,120 --> 00:59:57,960
I like the, the Greek life on that campus
was insane. Look, most Greek life, um,

986
00:59:58,040 --> 01:00:02,160
in most campuses. Um, but there it
was frustrating to go somewhere like,

987
01:00:02,160 --> 01:00:06,840
especially after, right? Like being a
part of B Ss U at Odo, having Mr. Green,

988
01:00:06,840 --> 01:00:11,360
like that's a very, um, special
community that we even most bsu,

989
01:00:11,740 --> 01:00:12,960
um, things of that nature don't have.

990
01:00:12,960 --> 01:00:16,560
And so I got to Riverside and was
like super amped up. I just, you know,

991
01:00:16,760 --> 01:00:20,520
just really enjoyed my senior year being
able to be involved with P S U and act,

992
01:00:20,620 --> 01:00:23,520
you know, uh, just really
coming to love Mr. Green.

993
01:00:24,220 --> 01:00:28,080
And then I got to Riverside and was
like, okay, I at least have the, the,

994
01:00:28,180 --> 01:00:31,160
the wherewithal to find
who is best for me.

995
01:00:31,200 --> 01:00:34,080
I can't expect everyone here
to be good for me, but I can,

996
01:00:34,470 --> 01:00:38,640
I've now got better tools after high
school to be able to like navigate B S C

997
01:00:38,740 --> 01:00:41,440
and figure out who I want to, um,

998
01:00:41,900 --> 01:00:45,120
who can I trust and who can I collaborate
with and things of that nature.

999
01:00:45,140 --> 01:00:46,680
And so it was very, um,

1000
01:00:46,750 --> 01:00:51,720
it's very much a let down to sort of see
how unchecked Greek life on campus and

1001
01:00:51,720 --> 01:00:53,800
the black community was. So, you know,

1002
01:00:54,000 --> 01:00:57,120
I would definitely define my
first year as being, um, heavily

1003
01:00:58,630 --> 01:01:03,080
just a lot of stalking and a lot of
harassment, um, from these different, um,

1004
01:01:03,440 --> 01:01:07,240
frats. And it was just in
similar way of like, you,

1005
01:01:07,260 --> 01:01:10,360
you go to these black events
where it's like black excellence,

1006
01:01:10,360 --> 01:01:12,240
and this is like 20 17, 20 18.

1007
01:01:12,340 --> 01:01:16,640
So it's like we're the height of black
excellence in this whole concept. And,

1008
01:01:16,940 --> 01:01:18,760
uh, they're, you know,

1009
01:01:18,760 --> 01:01:22,760
these are the guys that are like president
of B S C and their student employees,

1010
01:01:22,860 --> 01:01:26,920
and they have these positions of power
in B S C as well as being in these frats

1011
01:01:26,920 --> 01:01:28,520
and holding all these
parties and all this.

1012
01:01:29,100 --> 01:01:33,960
And so it's like after 7:00
PM there are these demons.

1013
01:01:34,100 --> 01:01:36,680
And then during the daytime,
there's supposed to be
people that are leading you.

1014
01:01:36,940 --> 01:01:40,040
And you go into B S C, which is an
incredibly small space on campus,

1015
01:01:40,660 --> 01:01:43,360
and you can look around the room
and be like, okay, you're an abuser.

1016
01:01:43,360 --> 01:01:46,720
You beat your girlfriend, you raped
so-and-so, you did this. My first,

1017
01:01:46,940 --> 01:01:49,600
my first year there was like a, um,

1018
01:01:50,590 --> 01:01:54,440
more of a molestation sort of sexual
assault experience that I had with one of

1019
01:01:54,440 --> 01:01:59,360
these guys. And I went into
the clinic and I asked for, um,

1020
01:01:59,670 --> 01:02:01,000
just sleeping pills. And I was like,

1021
01:02:01,020 --> 01:02:04,200
I'm not here to make a report or
anything like that. I just want to, like,

1022
01:02:04,300 --> 01:02:06,560
th two, maybe about three weeks later,

1023
01:02:06,780 --> 01:02:10,600
I'm just seeing that I can't sleep and
I need some sort of assistance with bed.

1024
01:02:10,820 --> 01:02:15,680
And she'd like, stop. No, I'm gonna
call the police. They're gonna come.

1025
01:02:16,020 --> 01:02:19,880
You have to tell them now. It's not,
it's not an option. I, I don't care.

1026
01:02:20,340 --> 01:02:23,960
And I was like, okay. So then, um,
that's not really what I wanted,

1027
01:02:23,960 --> 01:02:25,200
but I was like, it's something to do now.

1028
01:02:25,200 --> 01:02:27,240
And I guess I didn't fully
understand how, like,

1029
01:02:27,380 --> 01:02:29,680
it doesn't matter the moment
you even put the word out there,

1030
01:02:29,870 --> 01:02:34,840
they just gotta call the people. So I'm
telling this guy, this is a black man,

1031
01:02:34,870 --> 01:02:35,880
he's with, um,

1032
01:02:37,840 --> 01:02:42,640
Riverside Police over U C P D, I
think. And he's like, but as soon as I,

1033
01:02:42,680 --> 01:02:45,640
I mentioned one guy and he's like, oh,
I know all of them. I know them all.

1034
01:02:45,920 --> 01:02:49,080
I know them all by first name. Don't
even worry about it. I know them all. Um,

1035
01:02:49,080 --> 01:02:52,240
they all have at least six or seven
allegations against them individually.

1036
01:02:52,580 --> 01:02:55,600
And he like, this guy, that guy,
this guy named 'em all by first name.

1037
01:02:55,700 --> 01:02:59,600
And I was like, yeah, uh,

1038
01:02:59,840 --> 01:03:02,760
I was here to talk about one guy,
but I've had issues with all of them,

1039
01:03:02,780 --> 01:03:05,200
but you know, I'm glad you know
about them, you know, that's great.

1040
01:03:05,460 --> 01:03:07,640
And I was like, so what? He was
like, well, there's no evidence,

1041
01:03:07,640 --> 01:03:11,680
there's no witnesses. And, um, this
wasn't quite a while ago, so, you know,

1042
01:03:11,740 --> 01:03:14,520
the most I can do is go down there
and give them good talking to,

1043
01:03:15,120 --> 01:03:18,960
I was like a good talking to you
think that's going to help. Like,

1044
01:03:18,960 --> 01:03:20,480
these guys have positions of power.

1045
01:03:20,630 --> 01:03:25,160
It's being enabled from within
the organization. Like, okay,

1046
01:03:25,880 --> 01:03:28,960
<laugh>. And then my, in my second
year, I ended up dating these two guys,

1047
01:03:29,180 --> 01:03:32,320
and the first guy, which is partly
talked about mom's boy, he, um,

1048
01:03:33,570 --> 01:03:38,120
after the assault, he, uh, you
know, he, he literally ran, like,

1049
01:03:38,140 --> 01:03:42,760
ran to my bathroom, starts trying
to like, throw up actually. Um,

1050
01:03:43,500 --> 01:03:47,400
and then he gets back in,
uh, the, the bed essentially,

1051
01:03:47,460 --> 01:03:50,800
and he we're talk, or he's talking
to me. I'm not really saying much,

1052
01:03:50,860 --> 01:03:55,160
but he's just telling me. But, you know,
I was, I was molested as a kid and,

1053
01:03:55,820 --> 01:03:56,400
you know, I,

1054
01:03:56,400 --> 01:03:59,440
I assaulted someone when I was in
high school and I went to found God,

1055
01:03:59,440 --> 01:04:03,000
and I tried to, tried to fix this out of
me, and I tried to cure myself. And I,

1056
01:04:03,120 --> 01:04:06,400
I, I, you know, it kind of turned
into the situation of now we're,

1057
01:04:06,400 --> 01:04:09,600
we're back focusing on you again and
like, what's happened to you? And that's,

1058
01:04:09,600 --> 01:04:13,000
those, those things are true,
and that's very sad to hear. Um,

1059
01:04:13,460 --> 01:04:16,680
but I like this, this
isn't really about you now.

1060
01:04:16,910 --> 01:04:18,720
I've now been victimized by you as well,

1061
01:04:18,720 --> 01:04:21,160
and this is actually
intimate partner situation.

1062
01:04:21,160 --> 01:04:26,080
It's a guy that I'm truly am dating. We
are boyfriend and girlfriend. And so,

1063
01:04:26,300 --> 01:04:31,240
um, you know, there's like you said,
there's this like, you know, he's like, I,

1064
01:04:31,280 --> 01:04:32,760
I, I never really meant
to hurt you though.

1065
01:04:32,760 --> 01:04:35,480
You're definitely one of the best
people I've ever been with, right?

1066
01:04:35,580 --> 01:04:39,280
And they still need you and this.
And then when I didn't go for that,

1067
01:04:39,420 --> 01:04:43,680
he starts turning it into the, well,
well, well, you owed me and you know, I'm,

1068
01:04:43,700 --> 01:04:47,600
I'm your boyfriend so you can't just
deny me of my right to sex and all this

1069
01:04:47,600 --> 01:04:52,520
stuff. Um, and so there's this like, I
swear, I love you. I swear I love you,

1070
01:04:53,100 --> 01:04:54,840
um, and, and I love women.

1071
01:04:54,980 --> 01:04:59,720
And then you abuse me and then you blame
me for it. And you're just really, um,

1072
01:05:00,120 --> 01:05:01,480
unhealed really. Um,

1073
01:05:01,480 --> 01:05:04,000
there's a boy in there that is like
freaking out and doesn't know what to do

1074
01:05:04,070 --> 01:05:06,080
that didn't learn anything about consent,

1075
01:05:06,100 --> 01:05:09,520
but also was molested as a
child as well. And so, uh,

1076
01:05:09,520 --> 01:05:12,480
there's this actually very
negative, you know, uh,

1077
01:05:12,480 --> 01:05:16,360
connection and experience
with, with consent. And it
was hard because, you know,

1078
01:05:16,400 --> 01:05:20,040
a me Meg, Megan Stallion and all these
kind of situations in the public,

1079
01:05:20,180 --> 01:05:22,520
but with many women and many black women,

1080
01:05:22,830 --> 01:05:26,760
there's this desire to protect
from the police. You know,

1081
01:05:27,030 --> 01:05:29,240
that was another thing when,
when she brought the police in,

1082
01:05:29,240 --> 01:05:30,240
it wasn't just that, it was like, oh,

1083
01:05:30,240 --> 01:05:33,760
I've gotta government count this to
police officers don't already have a good

1084
01:05:34,090 --> 01:05:37,640
reputation in this country. But
on top of it, I was like, well,

1085
01:05:37,640 --> 01:05:38,760
I didn't say I was ready to like,

1086
01:05:38,760 --> 01:05:40,600
give his name out and
this is a young black man,

1087
01:05:40,660 --> 01:05:43,440
I'm just not sure what I wanna do yet.
I just wanna know that I wanna go sleep.

1088
01:05:43,960 --> 01:05:47,600
I go sleep and do my homework. That's
all I really want at the moment. Um, but,

1089
01:05:47,600 --> 01:05:51,880
you know, with the situation,
um, you know, I was, I was this,

1090
01:05:52,060 --> 01:05:55,800
now I'm in this position of like, what
do I do? You know, his father, uh,

1091
01:05:56,150 --> 01:05:58,520
went to jail for multiple murders. Um,

1092
01:05:58,860 --> 01:06:01,000
his mother was in jail for
gang banging most of his life,

1093
01:06:01,000 --> 01:06:05,480
his brother's serving life in prison
for murder. Um, you know, there's like,

1094
01:06:05,580 --> 01:06:06,150
I'm like,

1095
01:06:06,150 --> 01:06:10,320
feel responsible to protect him from
ending up in the same kind of cycle.

1096
01:06:11,220 --> 01:06:16,040
And, um, but there's this
lack of support for me, uh,

1097
01:06:16,100 --> 01:06:20,720
at the same time. And then the second guy
that's also mentioned in name was boy,

1098
01:06:20,860 --> 01:06:24,920
he, um, you know, this is
someone I had a slightly, nah,

1099
01:06:25,720 --> 01:06:28,360
I wouldn't call it that, but,
you know, the one thing was like,

1100
01:06:28,620 --> 01:06:32,240
he had a lot of trauma himself with like
the police and being arrested. I mean,

1101
01:06:32,240 --> 01:06:35,560
I think he even arrested like in the
double digits by the time he was like 18,

1102
01:06:36,150 --> 01:06:41,040
just from stop and Frisking growing
up in South Central LA in Crenshaw.

1103
01:06:41,040 --> 01:06:43,240
Like kids are just, you know what I mean,

1104
01:06:43,240 --> 01:06:47,400
picked off and targeted even when you're
not doing anything. And so, you know,

1105
01:06:47,430 --> 01:06:52,280
growing up while black <laugh> growing
up while black, yeah. <laugh>, you know,

1106
01:06:52,680 --> 01:06:57,400
<laugh>, there was this like consistent,
like a violation and just sort of,

1107
01:06:58,060 --> 01:07:01,640
um, you know, um, I was
very much like a fix.

1108
01:07:01,730 --> 01:07:06,120
There was this need to like
constantly be separated from like

1109
01:07:06,140 --> 01:07:07,720
responsibility and just like,

1110
01:07:07,960 --> 01:07:11,240
anytime any sort of feeling that came
over him that he didn't wanna have.

1111
01:07:11,380 --> 01:07:15,280
And granted, I was very young, so
it isn't an older woman myself. Now,

1112
01:07:16,320 --> 01:07:18,960
I totally approached dating and
relationships and, and, you know,

1113
01:07:19,450 --> 01:07:22,560
connection very differently. But
at the time I was like, okay, wow.

1114
01:07:22,560 --> 01:07:26,240
Like there's time he feels
anything good or bad,

1115
01:07:26,390 --> 01:07:29,680
like it's time to take my clothes
off <laugh>. You know, like the, the,

1116
01:07:29,780 --> 01:07:33,160
the addiction was extreme. It was
just, it was difficult. You know,

1117
01:07:33,160 --> 01:07:36,440
he wanted me to have so much compassion
and understanding for that and how

1118
01:07:36,440 --> 01:07:38,440
overwhelming and blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah. And, you know,

1119
01:07:38,440 --> 01:07:40,000
my grandma died and all of that.

1120
01:07:40,020 --> 01:07:43,480
You know how sometimes young men try
to find all these reasons why their

1121
01:07:43,720 --> 01:07:48,640
behaviors okay when it's, that's still
not okay. Um, but then it was like,

1122
01:07:48,640 --> 01:07:51,160
you know, we would be out and
he would be afraid of something.

1123
01:07:51,160 --> 01:07:53,560
We want the police or like, okay,
so who's over there or whatever,

1124
01:07:53,560 --> 01:07:57,080
you gotta get outta here, whatever.
And I was like, like it would,

1125
01:07:57,080 --> 01:08:00,040
it would be long. And I know that it is
trauma, but there was like, it was like,

1126
01:08:00,260 --> 01:08:01,093
nah, like,

1127
01:08:01,550 --> 01:08:04,760
like I was an enemy all of a sudden
just because I was trying to like,

1128
01:08:05,080 --> 01:08:07,520
I was like, you still have to
calm down. Like you're still,

1129
01:08:07,520 --> 01:08:10,520
you're just going to bring more
attention by like opening the car.

1130
01:08:10,550 --> 01:08:15,320
Like it was like his trauma was
like not well managed at all, um,

1131
01:08:15,620 --> 01:08:19,000
as far as like trauma responses go. And
it's like you can have trauma responses,

1132
01:08:19,000 --> 01:08:23,080
but they can put you in more danger as
well. So it is a responsibility to, um,

1133
01:08:23,870 --> 01:08:24,520
work on that.

1134
01:08:24,520 --> 01:08:27,800
But ultimately when you're
in a relationship where
you're spending time with

1135
01:08:27,800 --> 01:08:30,280
someone, as much as we were spending
time in this, more of a situationship,

1136
01:08:30,420 --> 01:08:34,560
but I was like, um, this is something
that obviously you need support with,

1137
01:08:34,740 --> 01:08:36,360
but I'm like, uh,

1138
01:08:36,390 --> 01:08:39,840
it's hard for me to support you when
I don't receive the same support.

1139
01:08:40,760 --> 01:08:44,800
I expend so much of my energy taking
care of you and like you doing this thing

1140
01:08:44,800 --> 01:08:46,480
where it's like you're
crawling back into my womb.

1141
01:08:46,480 --> 01:08:51,200
Like you literally need a mommy figure,
um, out of me. And then there's, um,

1142
01:08:51,710 --> 01:08:56,480
very just very little
compassionate to take care of

1143
01:08:56,640 --> 01:09:00,000
yourself for the sake of the people,
for you and the people in your life.

1144
01:09:00,710 --> 01:09:05,320
Yeah. And you don't need to be
someone's proxy for pain. It's,

1145
01:09:05,820 --> 01:09:09,720
that's not fair either. It
is tricky because though,

1146
01:09:09,870 --> 01:09:12,400
hurt people hurt people,
right? We all know that.

1147
01:09:13,060 --> 01:09:15,480
But there's also choices to be made.

1148
01:09:16,700 --> 01:09:20,680
You get to choose how you take
that pain and what you do with it.

1149
01:09:21,540 --> 01:09:25,440
My friends and I, we, my black female
friends and I, we talk a lot about like,

1150
01:09:25,500 --> 01:09:28,920
um, you know, you know,

1151
01:09:29,120 --> 01:09:33,800
I look at a lot of my friends that
have black brothers and it's, uh,

1152
01:09:36,580 --> 01:09:38,240
nah, I like, I'm, you know, it's,

1153
01:09:38,240 --> 01:09:42,880
it's hard to see so many of my young
black women who's like their main enemies.

1154
01:09:42,880 --> 01:09:44,840
There's like their fathers
and their, and their brothers,

1155
01:09:44,840 --> 01:09:47,240
and these people are
consistently their downfall,

1156
01:09:47,400 --> 01:09:51,440
like setting them up to be in
very dangerous situations. Um,

1157
01:09:51,950 --> 01:09:54,360
whether it's like intentional
or just like, you know,

1158
01:09:54,440 --> 01:09:56,800
I have a friend that's like,
a lot of times I wake up,

1159
01:09:57,260 --> 01:10:00,000
my brothers are coming in of the house
at like 4:00 AM 'cause they're smoking,

1160
01:10:00,030 --> 01:10:02,600
they're just coming back from so-and-so,
and they're leaving the door unlocked.

1161
01:10:03,180 --> 01:10:06,720
Um, and people can just come
in and out of our home. Um,

1162
01:10:06,860 --> 01:10:08,400
and there's just this like, um,

1163
01:10:10,030 --> 01:10:14,000
obliviousness to the needs
of women in their life. Um,

1164
01:10:14,500 --> 01:10:18,360
and it's, again, it's like, you know,
catch up sometimes just trying, well,

1165
01:10:18,360 --> 01:10:21,320
you know, but they can do this and they
do that and, you know, blah, blah, blah.

1166
01:10:21,320 --> 01:10:22,020
And it's like, yeah.

1167
01:10:22,020 --> 01:10:26,720
But they're also relying on you to carry
the family emotionally, financially,

1168
01:10:26,720 --> 01:10:29,680
physically, like you're
doing everything. Um,

1169
01:10:29,780 --> 01:10:32,520
and they get to lay around in
their depression, not do anything,

1170
01:10:32,520 --> 01:10:35,040
get to lay around in their
post-traumatic stress, um,

1171
01:10:35,040 --> 01:10:38,360
and not take care of themselves
and put everyone else in, uh,

1172
01:10:38,360 --> 01:10:42,560
compromising positions. And so it's, it's,
and it's not, it's, it's less of, um,

1173
01:10:43,060 --> 01:10:45,920
trying to get out of my, my
place of anger, my place of rage,

1174
01:10:45,920 --> 01:10:47,280
and feeling betrayed by black men.

1175
01:10:47,280 --> 01:10:52,080
And that's like a tra gen generational
take on for black women, you know,

1176
01:10:52,080 --> 01:10:54,640
from the beginning, especially, um,

1177
01:10:55,050 --> 01:10:58,000
after reconstruction and civil
rights and stuff, or you know,

1178
01:10:58,020 --> 01:11:02,680
Jim Crow era where black men we're finding
ways to have more privilege and more,

1179
01:11:02,740 --> 01:11:07,600
um, going out in the world and
we were still being fairly,

1180
01:11:07,820 --> 01:11:11,920
you know, neglecting or like
kept within the home and,

1181
01:11:11,920 --> 01:11:16,760
and then suffering a lot of abuse
there. Um, and like not real,

1182
01:11:16,780 --> 01:11:21,040
any real systematic community-wide
like, acknowledgement of that.

1183
01:11:21,340 --> 01:11:24,440
And I know that we're moving into this
air now of young men, they're like, well,

1184
01:11:24,450 --> 01:11:27,360
y'all abuse us and y'all are toxic
as well too. And it's like, okay,

1185
01:11:27,380 --> 01:11:31,320
but you've got an entire
society that is, you know,

1186
01:11:31,440 --> 01:11:35,560
protecting the needs and wants of men
even when it at the cost of everyone else.

1187
01:11:35,700 --> 01:11:40,680
And so it's, it's very, um,
it's, it's, that's, that's,

1188
01:11:40,680 --> 01:11:42,040
that's very a avoidant to view.

1189
01:11:42,470 --> 01:11:45,960
It's very privileged of waiting of you
to be able to think that we can just move

1190
01:11:45,960 --> 01:11:47,400
on after. I mean,

1191
01:11:47,400 --> 01:11:51,040
black liberation is gonna take everyone's
input and everyone's, you know,

1192
01:11:51,190 --> 01:11:55,000
pulling their weight. And
so to not acknowledge the,

1193
01:11:55,140 --> 01:11:59,240
the impact of slavery on black
women, um, and everything after that

1194
01:12:01,920 --> 01:12:05,440
<laugh>. Um, so I, and I
know that's not, you know,

1195
01:12:05,440 --> 01:12:07,560
when we have these people
experiences, it can be make,

1196
01:12:07,580 --> 01:12:12,200
it can make it hard to pull things
apart and, um, separate, you know,

1197
01:12:13,140 --> 01:12:13,973
uh,

1198
01:12:14,090 --> 01:12:18,840
grief and rage and anger and have
sort of like logical kind of dip,

1199
01:12:19,070 --> 01:12:23,160
dipping your toes into sort
of logical, um, you know,

1200
01:12:23,160 --> 01:12:27,800
processes of, uh, restoration. Um,

1201
01:12:27,800 --> 01:12:32,120
because we're maybe a little bit too,
um, swallowed by anger and by grief.

1202
01:12:32,620 --> 01:12:33,560
But nonetheless,

1203
01:12:33,720 --> 01:12:37,400
I think just writing the poems
themselves is an opportunity to sort of,

1204
01:12:39,590 --> 01:12:42,250
you know, I shared that
Mama's boy at a, um,

1205
01:12:43,670 --> 01:12:47,010
poetry reading competition is
like prize money involved. And I,

1206
01:12:47,130 --> 01:12:51,770
I know I would say that the, the
experience was, um, it was interesting,

1207
01:12:51,770 --> 01:12:54,450
you know, you're like, okay, you know,
it was a raffle sort of situation.

1208
01:12:54,530 --> 01:12:57,250
I couldn't decide who, like, it
wasn't up to me who I was behind,

1209
01:12:57,250 --> 01:13:00,890
like on the proceeding end of and who
I was going, who would be after me.

1210
01:13:01,190 --> 01:13:04,130
So it was like we had this
massive concert thing.

1211
01:13:04,130 --> 01:13:06,450
These people brought their instrument
song singing and killing it,

1212
01:13:06,550 --> 01:13:08,770
and then I went on, like,
I read it, mama's Boy,

1213
01:13:08,770 --> 01:13:10,410
and there were a lot
of men in the audience.

1214
01:13:10,430 --> 01:13:14,490
And so it had an interesting reaction
in moment. Um, and I think people,

1215
01:13:14,490 --> 01:13:17,530
like you said, they could see the
power of my words and my skill there,

1216
01:13:17,590 --> 01:13:22,450
but it was, um, a bit much to hear the
content. That's for a lot of reasons.

1217
01:13:22,480 --> 01:13:26,130
Like even the, the book I start with the
content warning because a lot of times,

1218
01:13:26,260 --> 01:13:27,450
especially, you know, you,

1219
01:13:27,450 --> 01:13:30,130
you hear these kind of poems and you
don't even realize that this is something

1220
01:13:30,130 --> 01:13:33,530
you've been through. Um, so, um, I,

1221
01:13:33,690 --> 01:13:35,570
I really look forward to the
second version of the book.

1222
01:13:35,570 --> 01:13:38,050
There's an opportunity to expand the
thoughts that are already in the one that

1223
01:13:38,390 --> 01:13:41,450
exists as is and to add more, um,

1224
01:13:41,640 --> 01:13:44,650
into the narrative mural
and early separation is, um,

1225
01:13:45,860 --> 01:13:50,290
needs way more, uh, uh,
research and way more, um,

1226
01:13:51,090 --> 01:13:54,810
programs of support around is not
something to be taken lightly at all.

1227
01:13:56,630 --> 01:14:00,730
Uh, tell people how they might
find you in the book and keep,

1228
01:14:00,880 --> 01:14:02,050
keep up with your progress.

1229
01:14:02,790 --> 01:14:07,370
For now, you can find me
on Instagram at keani j,

1230
01:14:07,750 --> 01:14:12,280
that's k e n a n three i iii

1231
01:14:12,920 --> 01:14:16,600
j, lowercase J or J.
Um, so I'm on Instagram.

1232
01:14:16,840 --> 01:14:19,680
I have a link in my bio that
will take you to Link Tree.

1233
01:14:20,140 --> 01:14:24,120
It has a listing for the book
on the distributor's website,

1234
01:14:24,620 --> 01:14:28,080
SPD books.org, small
press distribution. Um,

1235
01:14:28,900 --> 01:14:30,400
and also on Amazon,

1236
01:14:30,400 --> 01:14:35,240
you can just open Amazon normally type
in Jessica Ton or Power of our wos and

1237
01:14:35,240 --> 01:14:37,920
it'll come up. Um, it might
take an extra day or two,

1238
01:14:37,920 --> 01:14:42,240
they'll just be having it mailed from
the distributor for you. But, um,

1239
01:14:42,750 --> 01:14:46,880
it's definitely findable on Amazon.
And then, um, on my Instagram page,

1240
01:14:47,070 --> 01:14:49,720
I'll make announcements
about poetry readings. Um,

1241
01:14:49,790 --> 01:14:53,040
I'll make announcements about virtual
readings. Um, if you're outta state,

1242
01:14:53,260 --> 01:14:56,680
I'm currently located in California,
in the Bay Area, so if you're local,

1243
01:14:57,220 --> 01:14:59,560
do keep up with me, your
on Instagram, and you know,

1244
01:14:59,830 --> 01:15:03,080
come find me out in the world
reading and doing things like that.

1245
01:15:03,700 --> 01:15:08,280
The second edition of the book comes
out, um, it'll be out on Amazon though.

1246
01:15:08,400 --> 01:15:11,520
I won't have a publisher for
this, um, outside of Amazon.

1247
01:15:12,140 --> 01:15:13,920
My website will be under the, um,

1248
01:15:14,260 --> 01:15:17,600
the name j hairston writes.com.

1249
01:15:18,470 --> 01:15:21,480
I'll put links for everything
on Hey, human Podcast too.

1250
01:15:21,620 --> 01:15:24,040
And please keep me updated on everything.

1251
01:15:24,160 --> 01:15:27,200
I think you're an incredible
talent and just really,

1252
01:15:27,230 --> 01:15:30,720
your poetry spoke to me so deeply, uh, uh,

1253
01:15:30,720 --> 01:15:34,160
generationally it spoke to me. Absolutely.

1254
01:15:34,420 --> 01:15:39,240
So I really appreciate your time
and your honesty and openness,

1255
01:15:39,500 --> 01:15:44,000
and thank you. Thank you for
listening everybody. Bye.

1256
01:15:45,020 --> 01:15:45,853
Bye.

1257
01:15:51,890 --> 01:15:54,080
Great review and subscribe to, Hey,

1258
01:15:54,080 --> 01:15:58,600
human Podcast on iTunes or wherever
you get your podcast. Thanks. Bye.

1259
01:16:01,400 --> 01:16:01,480
<Silence>.