For The Wild - Earthly Reads： Tricia Hersey on WE WILL REST! The Art of Escape S1_2

00:00:00.000 hello for the wild community ayana here welcome to the second episode of our new book study series

00:00:15.300 earthly reads where we'll learn alongside some of our most beloved authors after listening to

00:00:21.800 the shorter conversation head over to for the wild dot world slash book study to learn more

00:00:27.580 and to purchase access to the full course.

00:00:30.240 We'll be offering significantly more content

00:00:32.500 and access to live, recorded conversations

00:00:35.500 with the authors on our website.

00:00:38.180 We hope to see you there.

00:00:46.740 I love the idea of attempt.

00:00:48.760 So this is my attempt for people to come with me

00:00:52.200 on this journey to just attempt some things,

00:00:54.520 you know, just to say, I'm going to try.

00:00:56.840 I know this isn't right. I know the way my body is being used by this system feels

00:01:01.800 unsustainable. I feel unhealthy. This feels wrong.

00:01:15.260 Hello, welcome to For the Wild. I'm Ayanna Young. Today we're speaking with Trisha Hersey,

00:01:21.160 author of We Will Rest, The Art of Escape. Oh, Tricia, I am so happy to be here with you.

00:01:28.940 You're making my day. So thanks for joining. I woke up this morning. So looking forward to it.

00:01:34.260 I'm going to get to speak with my buddy here. We're going to rant about some things and try

00:01:39.380 to deepen into the softness of things. But I'm very excited. Thank you for having me on as always.

00:01:45.020 the energy that i feel from you is so enlivening and it's a really lovely day to speak it is

00:01:55.500 pouring outside you may hear the rain drops i do i was like it's raining good there yeah

00:02:00.460 it's sideways rain it's um it's coming down it's very cleansing so uh we're in good company

00:02:07.600 with the water here. Well, there's so much to talk about, but I really want to focus on your

00:02:16.640 new book, which I deeply loved, which is We Will Rest. And so I'm eager to spend some time slowly

00:02:24.360 savoring the meaning of this book with you today. And it's always hard to know where to start with

00:02:30.680 so many questions on my mind. I want to begin with thinking about how this book has been

00:02:37.260 described as a sacred object. And I'd love if you could open us up with talking about the process

00:02:45.180 of creating it and the intention and ritual involved. That's such a great question because

00:02:53.480 that's literally all I want to talk about. So it's like, how did you know? Like, I only want

00:02:58.280 to talk about how this book came to be because it literally is the book that I've always wanted to

00:03:04.600 make. Rest is Resistance, a manifesto. My first book was such a popular book. It's still a popular

00:03:10.320 book. And it had a very deep intention around that. I knew what that book was to be before I

00:03:15.540 even began writing. I knew it had to lay the framework that I have been experimenting with

00:03:21.300 all these years. I know we needed a framework. But when it came to this book and when it was

00:03:26.100 time to start dreaming it up, I really was not really clear about what it would be. I just knew

00:03:33.040 I wanted to close my eyes and feel like I had something that I could like cuddle you know I

00:03:40.160 really I literally wanted it to feel like an intimate object I wanted to lean into the idea

00:03:44.860 of art and so that was the first thing I knew I wanted it to have art in it I was like I don't

00:03:49.880 know what I'm gonna say you know I don't know what my text will be I know what I wanted to feel like

00:03:55.180 but I know I needs art and so I immediately reached out to an artist that I love George

00:04:00.560 McCallman. I met him through a friend. I was in a cookbook called The Black Food Book by Bryant

00:04:06.980 Terry. It's this beautiful book of recipes and stories and photos of Black culture and history.

00:04:13.140 And I wrote a piece in a book about being a young girl and watching people catch the Holy Ghost and

00:04:19.100 how much I love this performative theater, spiritual act as a young girl. And so the book

00:04:24.920 is so beautiful. It won so many awards and how it's designed, the illustration, the typography,

00:04:29.780 the photography everything in it so I found out that the person who designed it was George and so

00:04:35.800 I started following him on Instagram and I just love he draws he illustrates everything is by hand

00:04:43.040 he does painting he also is into digital design photography he's just this renaissance art man

00:04:50.320 I literally did not know him I just went into his dm and was literally I said this I said hi

00:04:56.320 hi, I'm Tricia. I'm very obsessed with you. And I hope that it is mutual. Can we talk?

00:05:03.840 Then he emails me, texts me, DMs me back. He's like, oh my God, I am obsessed with you.

00:05:09.540 And the first thing he said was, I'll do anything for you, of course. And let's spend time getting

00:05:15.260 to know each other. And I want you to start explaining to me what the psychology of this

00:05:19.560 book is. And that's when I was like, I picked the right person. And so we spend months and

00:05:24.220 months and months, just talking with each other about what's the psychology of the book. And I

00:05:28.880 never had anyone come to me when I thought about bookmaking like that. But as an artist, it felt

00:05:33.600 right. And so we created a mood board with visual images. I began to really lean into history. I was

00:05:39.560 reading a lot about Henry Box Brown, his escape artist life. And I knew I wanted to lean into

00:05:45.440 some history and I wanted to feel vintage. I was heavily influenced by abolitionist pamphlets. I

00:05:51.680 I was reading about the history of what abolitionist pamphlets were, this idea of writing a document that is so powerful that people don't want to read it, that it's like shedding light on something that's happening.

00:06:03.220 It becomes its own art piece. And then I also was deeply influenced as a person who grew up in the black church by vintage hymnals, prayer books, my grandmother's devotionals, her books that she would have in her purse.

00:06:15.880 And she would pull out at any moment if there was something happening in the family.

00:06:19.880 My grandmother had this devotional, her bag, this small little book she put out and just do a devotional prayer with you.

00:06:25.940 And these illuminated manuscripts, all these like really beautiful religious texts.

00:06:31.580 I really felt like this is what I wanted to feel like.

00:06:34.080 I wanted to feel like a document that someone would find on the side of the road while they were like trying to escape on the Underground Railroad.

00:06:41.180 I just felt very deep into the idea of freedom and history.

00:06:45.360 And I wanted to feel like an art object and something that someone would really open and it would feel like a portal.

00:06:52.220 And so that's how it began. It began with me wanting to know it had to have art in it and knowing that it would definitely feel like something historic and it would feel like something intimate.

00:07:02.700 It would have a lot of history in it. So that's how I began.

00:07:05.680 I really resonate with that feeling of holding a book as a sacred object, as an art object where you're, you know, you feel it in your hands and it's something special.

00:07:20.020 And I think in this culture of this moment, we really lost so much of what it feels like to have sacredness in our hands and something to reach to, to hold, to cuddle with, to be with.

00:07:37.040 I feel you there.

00:07:38.080 And you just mentioned about this escape artist.

00:07:41.760 I want to understand more about the structure of the book.

00:07:46.040 You structure it through the lessons of how to be an escape artist.

00:07:48.560 And why were you drawn to this as a primary guide for the book?

00:07:53.660 Well, you know, in the first book, In Restless Resistance, I actually named myself as an escape artist.

00:07:58.760 I say I am an escape artist like my ancestors before me.

00:08:02.940 What made me start thinking about that was when I started my studies with Harriet Tubman,

00:08:06.740 thinking about her life and her trickster energy in the Underground Railroad and the Maroons.

00:08:13.400 I talk a lot about the Maroons in the first book.

00:08:15.240 And so I feel like the first book had like these little lights of things that I was speaking about.

00:08:21.560 But in this book, I wanted to just lean in and like dig in deeper with a shovel on one of those.

00:08:26.360 And the main thing is I really wanted to lean into the idea of Maroonage, an escape artist, Harriet Tubman, my grandmother, and all the ways that we're going to have to be subversive.

00:08:37.160 I talk about the idea of subversion so much in the book.

00:08:39.900 And I think that's what makes the rest is resistance framework unique.

00:08:44.680 what people really clung to is that it isn't this step-by-step self-help, self-care, fix-it type

00:08:52.780 thing. It's literally pushing people to peep the scam that is happening. It's really pushing people

00:08:59.780 to disrupt the systems that are already happening. My work hopes to just be a disruption. And I

00:09:04.980 couldn't think of a better disruptor than a person who is a literal escape artist. And so I really

00:09:09.960 began to think I want to talk about what I've done because I claim myself as an escape artist

00:09:15.560 when people say what have you done like you literally this black woman who came from poverty

00:09:20.480 a legacy of it you were in school studying you had no idea that this idea would work but you

00:09:26.560 literally just started experimenting with your body this work came out of my performance art

00:09:30.940 theater ritualist background and so I really began to experiment on my own body like this work was

00:09:37.360 never just theories online or IG pages or memes. It was literally me as a Black woman trying to

00:09:43.800 save my own life. And I talk about that in the first book, what it felt like for me to begin

00:09:48.500 to lay on couches and find places all over campus to sleep and what it felt like to steal time and

00:09:55.120 to bend time and to daydream and to find these ways to like begin to reclaim my own body.

00:10:01.160 What I was actually doing was actually escaping the clutches of grind culture. Like I say in the

00:10:06.600 book, you know, grind culture can't have me. Like I refuse to donate my body to the system. And so

00:10:11.960 my experimentation, which is an ongoing durational experimentation, I'm still experimenting with

00:10:17.180 that now is me being a woman of my background, a woman who comes from the legacy of enslavement,

00:10:23.800 great grandparents with sharecroppers and come from this legacy of deep, you know, Jim Crow

00:10:29.140 terrorism, my grandmother escaped that. The current state now to say to myself, you know what,

00:10:33.860 I see everything that is happening. I understand what you've done and you really literally can't

00:10:39.680 have me. I refuse to be the mule. I refuse to be the black woman who's overworked. I'm going to

00:10:44.960 gain reparations for my ancestors in this time. And I'm going to do that by laying myself down,

00:10:50.640 by stopping. And so I think that trickster energy in me that began just saying, I don't know what's

00:10:57.300 going to happen, but I'm not going to go with this unsustainable pace anymore. I can't. And so I

00:11:01.520 started resting and laying down and I was starting to become obsessed I've always been obsessed with

00:11:05.860 Henry Box Brown and so the escape artist idea started with my research with Henry Box Brown so

00:11:11.280 for a year I was reading anything I could find about Henry I was studying what he did and just

00:11:18.080 really leaning into the idea of this person using their own body to be free you know like pushing

00:11:26.020 and deciding that I don't know what this is going to look like but I'm going to mail myself in a

00:11:31.220 box to freedom. Then I learned he came out of the box singing, you know, songs of songs. He was like

00:11:37.100 really into religious texts. And so he arrived at an abolitionist office in Philadelphia. I became

00:11:43.240 obsessed with him, literally. I wanted to know everything I could about it. I couldn't understand

00:11:47.560 if a person hadn't heard of him. If they heard of Henry, they would be like, wow, I want to do that

00:11:53.780 in this time. And so I just began to deepen into the idea of letting people know that your point

00:11:59.380 of trying to heal from this.

00:12:01.140 Everyone always wants to know,

00:12:02.160 Trisha, you're the Nat Bishop.

00:12:03.240 Teach me how to do this.

00:12:04.360 I don't rest.

00:12:05.180 I need to rest.

00:12:05.920 I'm exhausted.

00:12:06.580 We're all so sleep deprived.

00:12:07.860 And I just thought that this could be some medicine.

00:12:11.200 I don't know if capitalism will fall in our lifetime,

00:12:14.100 but in the meantime, we can find ways to escape.

00:12:16.860 So why don't I give you this trickster manifesto manual

00:12:20.420 on like ways to do it?

00:12:22.160 Why don't I give you the inspiration

00:12:24.160 of Henry Box Brown, my grandmother,

00:12:26.860 of Harriet Tubman, of myself,

00:12:28.920 of all the things that I did and what I used and bring it to you in a way that feels spiritual,

00:12:34.240 that you can begin to try it for yourself, you know, taste and see for yourself, experiment

00:12:39.620 for yourself.

00:12:40.300 That's really what I want people ultimately to do is to begin to just peep what is happening.

00:12:45.380 I say that in the book, I am the trickster.

00:12:47.560 I peep the scam.

00:12:48.820 I saw what was happening.

00:12:50.100 I cocked my head to the side and was like, hmm, so this is what's going on.

00:12:55.480 This is what these systems are trying to do to us.

00:12:57.640 And I just simply refuse. And even that refusal feels like enough.

00:13:02.480 And I think people don't think that they think that they have to have it all figured out.

00:13:06.080 But I love the idea of a try of an attempt.

00:13:09.360 So this is my attempt for people to come with me on this journey to just attempt some things, you know, just to say, I'm going to try.

00:13:17.620 I know this isn't right. I know the way my body is being used by the system feels unsustainable.

00:13:24.500 I feel unhealthy. This feels wrong. We don't take enough time to sit in that field and we always

00:13:30.120 want to move to, okay, how do I solve it? But I think the real healing and the power is in the

00:13:35.300 mystery of the attempt of just saying, hmm, wait a minute. And so that's what I hope this book to

00:13:41.300 be by breaking it down into these 10 steps of how to be an escape artist. And I named that it's an

00:13:46.900 incomplete list. And knowing that we can never do it all in 10 steps, the steps aren't going to be

00:13:52.480 the way, but this is an incomplete list because there are infinite ways to freedom because our

00:13:57.840 body allows us to be able to tap into the things that we haven't even known are possible.

00:14:03.820 So I love the idea of attempt. So this is my attempt for people to come with me on this

00:14:09.260 journey to just attempt some things, you know, just to say, I'm going to try. I know this isn't

00:14:15.100 right. I know the way my body is being used by this system feels unsustainable. I feel unhealthy.

00:14:20.960 This feels wrong.

00:14:50.960 As you spoke to the attempt, my body relaxed because I was like, OK, I don't have to have

00:15:17.280 it all figured out at the beginning. And the try itself is the medicine. And that really just

00:15:27.280 helped me feel like I could do that. I can attempt. I think that day by day or step by step

00:15:34.000 allowance is something that can help us open up to the possibility because it does feel huge.

00:15:41.200 It's like, how are we going to change capitalism? How are we going to change our neighborhood? How

00:15:44.940 are we going to change ourselves? It feels so overwhelming that it's like, sometimes we can't

00:15:49.060 even take a bite of that. And I think something you bring up in the book a lot too, which feels

00:15:54.860 like a foundational belief system is the idea that we're all sacred. And I feel like you have

00:16:05.060 so many reminders in this book for the readers to remember that. And there's a quote I'd like

00:16:12.160 to read, which is, quote, develop clear boundaries that feel like fresh clay, flexible, strong,

00:16:18.920 and soothing to your body. Develop the ability to ignore anyone and anything that stands in the way

00:16:24.700 of your goal of liberation. Every system in the culture doesn't see your divinity. They were not

00:16:30.620 created to connect. They were not created to have vision. They were created for you to internalize

00:16:36.700 the lies about labor and a capitalist culture stay clear stay connected end quote and i'm

00:16:45.600 wondering how do you reckon within a world that does not recognize your divinity and how are the

00:16:52.640 boundaries we need to set deeply material and temporal that's so good so many people have told

00:17:01.620 me about my work it just feels like something new that they have never heard before when I first

00:17:07.260 started the work people would tell me they was like wow at these collective rest events that I

00:17:11.780 came to and I'm laying down and you open them up by saying you are enough thank you for living

00:17:18.520 so many people I mean hundreds have told me no one's ever told me thank you for living

00:17:22.800 no no one's ever said you are enough to me and I just thought that's something as a person

00:17:29.040 who's creating this framework, who's experimenting as an artist. I pay attention to things when I

00:17:36.240 see patterns and that's something I was not expecting. You know, all of my training as a

00:17:41.580 liberationist, as a community activist, since I've been a young girl, trained as a theologian

00:17:46.420 in seminary. You know, you can get into the books, you can get into the theory, but to really look

00:17:52.680 someone in the eyes and they're in tears and they're saying to me, no one's ever said to me

00:17:57.820 my entire life, I'm 35 years old, that thank you for living. No one's thanked me for being alive.

00:18:03.560 No one's told me that I'm ever enough. I've always thought I have never been enough since

00:18:08.200 I've been a young child. I've always had to do more. And so this grounding idea of this humanity

00:18:15.540 in us, this sacredness of this idea of being divine, I don't think people understand that.

00:18:21.660 And I think the culture would never want us to believe that. I think people can go their whole

00:18:26.960 lives not understanding how divine they are not understanding what the idea of being a sacred

00:18:32.280 human being really means and i think that's i mean you can ask that of people who are you know

00:18:37.560 religious leaders or people who are looking at spirituality i mean this is something that has

00:18:42.060 been studied for thousands of years idea of what it means to be divine to be human and what that

00:18:47.880 connection means to god or to a higher power whatever you name that creator and i'm always

00:18:54.420 It's going back to the idea of being a miracle, of the idea of being alive, because I love health and science and study the idea of just what it means to be born.

00:19:04.760 I'm really in awe of the birthing process, of us being here, of you being chosen, of you coming through the womb, you know, of the sperm and egg meeting and creating you, this unique person who has no one has your same DNA.

00:19:21.440 You made it through.

00:19:22.700 You're here.

00:19:23.380 You're breathing.

00:19:24.040 you have lungs. To me, I can never get off of the fact of how special that is. I don't want to ever

00:19:30.280 stop understanding that. And I think that's part of what my entire life as an artist has been,

00:19:36.000 is trying to examine it and to study that and to experiment with it and to sit with that and to

00:19:44.720 try to find out what that means. And maybe that's why I went to seminary. I was not a person who

00:19:50.480 was really in church or any type of like religious faith at the time. I grew up and was raised in a

00:19:56.160 black church. But by the time I went back to seminary, almost 40 years old, I had been unchurched

00:20:01.920 for years. I hadn't stepped foot in a church. But something about the idea of wanting to study

00:20:07.120 the divine and study spirituality. And I was longing for something richer and deeper to

00:20:13.180 understand my place in the world against what the world of creation means. And so I think that

00:20:18.860 the work in a way helps people to start to ask these questions, to have this inquiry. I love

00:20:26.280 the idea of an inquiry, something that will never actually probably be answered. I've been sitting

00:20:30.680 with some questions to things about what is the soul and what does it take to feed the soul for

00:20:36.620 seven, eight, nine, 10 years. I've been reading the same theology book about womanist ethics for

00:20:42.520 probably 10 years. And I just love this idea. Maybe that's my place. People think that's me

00:20:47.000 as an artist, maybe that's my art practice. I love the idea of mystery and idea of not having

00:20:51.960 it figured out. It really is what has kept me alive. I love to not know things. I love to

00:20:58.200 sit in the understanding of maybe I don't know this and maybe that's okay. And the mystery of

00:21:03.420 not knowing, of I don't know what's happening or where I'm going. I just know I have breath.

00:21:09.960 I have lungs that are collaborating with me. I'm breathing. I'm here. I came through the

00:21:16.620 birth canal and I'm here. I'm new to the world. I'm trying to figure it all out. But then I

00:21:22.040 understand I don't have to figure it out. And so I think this book is going to allow people to start

00:21:27.780 to take a deep breath and to just understand the idea of not knowing it. In this culture, which is,

00:21:36.480 as me and you talk about all the time, this toxic white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal,

00:21:42.020 this ableist culture does not teach you the idea of experimentation. It does not teach you the idea

00:21:47.280 of failure. It does not teach you the idea of not knowing. You have to come out ready to go,

00:21:52.840 knowing everything, what you want to do, what you want to be, how to get it done. All this idea of

00:21:58.000 problem solving, this individualistic society of figuring it out and doing what you got to do

00:22:04.020 and pushing. And so no one has really been given the space. That's why I love artists. And I love

00:22:10.840 people who are looking at the idea of you know what who knows if I can pull this off who knew

00:22:16.900 if Harriet Tubman when she took that step was like I'm just walking to freedom what did she

00:22:21.280 know if it would ever work if she would get caught if it would if it would pan out hearing

00:22:26.580 box brown mailing himself in a box and being in the box almost 27 hours how did he know what would

00:22:33.360 happen when the box opened but this idea of leaping without a net this faith building walk is really

00:22:39.720 what I want people to begin to massage into themselves. You know, I want them to just feel

00:22:45.860 that. And I think by resting, daydreaming, by imagining, by reading stories of other people

00:22:53.860 who have done it can inspire people. And so I think that's why this work, I want it to feel

00:23:00.400 like an intimate object. I want it to feel sacred. I want people to be able to read just one page

00:23:05.620 and that one page could do something to them that they can just go through the book in one

00:23:11.000 seating and just go through the entire thing and read it and just feel something that felt

00:23:16.660 a little light. So I really want this book to feel like light. And so the tagline of the book

00:23:22.060 has been like, follow the light. I dedicate the book to my son, Sahin the dream, and then Harriet

00:23:27.280 Tubman and other dreamers, you know, follow the light and whatever that light is, that little

00:23:32.740 spark oh gosh there is so much you shared that was sparking light for me I was really sitting with

00:23:43.440 the idea of the mystery and not knowing and connecting that with that feeling of just

00:23:50.140 jumping off the cliff and not knowing where you're going to land but that desire just to go

00:23:55.580 and the confidence to take that leap and there were times where I really had the confidence to

00:24:02.160 leap. And there were times where I felt the confidence to sit in the mystery and the not

00:24:08.340 knowingness. But then when trauma arrives, I think that really can hinder. And this isn't something

00:24:19.600 I've shared before. I gave birth over a year ago and I went in having the confidence in the mystery

00:24:26.660 and having the confidence in taking that leap and it was a really traumatic event and I came

00:24:34.440 out of that with questions but not the questions I think that you're speaking to but those questions

00:24:42.120 of can I even continue to attempt or maybe it's like the trauma created a fear totally that really

00:24:49.340 stopped me from being able to give myself to that mystery to the attempt to the to the leap I think

00:24:56.140 all of us listening there have been things in our life that have created that block the fear block

00:25:03.100 yeah I don't know if people come to you and they're like but but what if I feel like I just

00:25:07.600 can't get there or even like I don't know but I'm scared that I don't know and then all of the

00:25:12.440 anxiety that one can go into the spirals in the not knowing rather than seeing the mystery as this

00:25:18.400 beautiful surrender it can also be like a obsessive scary you know spiral so there's a lot

00:25:25.500 that I just put out there but if we could talk to kind of when you're in the grime and how do you

00:25:31.620 find that again that's such a good question I think that's the ultimate understanding of the

00:25:38.600 human spirit and what we're trying to do is just being alive it's not easy it's very difficult

00:25:44.300 for me I understand what you mean about you feel that confidence and then the trauma happens and

00:25:51.060 then you're like I don't know about that and so how scary that could be and how do you put one

00:25:55.240 foot in front of the other you know how do you even begin and I don't know I'm really been deep

00:26:01.660 into the idea over the last year or so dealing with my own traumas have been happening in my

00:26:06.080 life this idea of one second at a time people like just take it one day at a time and a day

00:26:12.440 at a time is too much for me like a day is 24 hours like I don't even know what's happening

00:26:17.380 right now and so I've been really leaning a lot into like meditation and just doing breathing

00:26:23.120 every morning I've been doing intentional deep breathing every morning every single morning I'm

00:26:28.040 bawling like it's just like I'll sit and I'll start to meditate and I ask my meditation teacher

00:26:32.720 should I be crying like this every morning she was do you supposed to cry when you meditate because

00:26:37.320 when I see people meditate they're just so calm and she's like no just let it come let it be what

00:26:42.040 has helped is like just really listening and trying to find ways to be in collaboration and

00:26:47.940 conversation with my body and I think that leans itself right into my work you know the idea that

00:26:53.560 we are so disconnected from our bodies the culture wants us that way it's easier when we're

00:26:58.720 disconnected from our bodies we're disembodied we don't even know what it means if we feel a

00:27:02.820 little something our body okay I'll just ignore that and keep going we've been trained so violently

00:27:07.820 to just ignore any cue from our body any thing that our body wants to share with us we just

00:27:14.120 ignore it and act like it hasn't said that so what I've been leaning into is just like

00:27:17.720 really trying to find small little ways to just hear what my body is saying even if that's just

00:27:24.080 a breath if I can just get up enough in the morning to take a shower and while I'm in the

00:27:27.520 shower I'm just like let me focus on breathing in four times in a row let me focus on the breath

00:27:33.840 and I just have been so inspired by that like listening a lot to like improvisational jazz

00:27:38.900 and studying a little bit of what's happening right now in Palestine.

00:27:42.780 And just, I saw this teacher there who was still teaching classes.

00:27:47.380 Like all the schools are bombed out, the children.

00:27:50.640 She's had this one room classroom that she's teaching.

00:27:53.540 She's getting up every morning and putting on her clothes.

00:27:56.400 And she's like, I'm doing this because it's all I know how to do.

00:28:00.800 I have to attempt something.

00:28:02.500 And so it goes back to the attempt.

00:28:04.360 The attempt doesn't have to be this miraculous, full on produced thing.

00:28:09.880 I think to me, the attempt is your eyes are open.

00:28:12.560 I would ask my grandmother that when she would wake up in the morning.

00:28:15.380 How are you doing, Granny?

00:28:16.220 She was like, I'm here.

00:28:17.420 Everything else is going to be cake.

00:28:19.220 You know, everything else is going to come.

00:28:21.100 And that's on top of that.

00:28:22.200 But I'm alive.

00:28:24.060 My eyes are open.

00:28:25.500 My lungs are collaborating with me.

00:28:27.580 Thank you, lungs.

00:28:28.620 I'm breathing.

00:28:30.040 I'm here in whatever state that I'm showing up in.

00:28:33.160 in whatever grotesque, painful, toxic state that I'm in, I'm here, you know, my eyes are

00:28:39.160 open.

00:28:39.620 I've really been leaning into that, Ayanna, over the next last year.

00:28:42.820 It's just all I have right now is that my eyes are open and I'm upright, you know, and

00:28:47.780 I'm breathing and I'm just focusing on the breath, like the breath is happening even

00:28:51.960 without me even trying.

00:28:53.300 So the aliveness in that and just the simpleness of that, like I've been wanting people to

00:28:59.400 get down to the simplest, barest form, you know, the root, the radical, like pulling something up

00:29:06.460 from the root, that the radical nature of it all is we are here. We are alive. And no, we need to

00:29:12.400 celebrate more of that. We need to celebrate the idea of our lungs are working. We're breathing.

00:29:18.920 Our body is here. We're still in this form. We're here on earth. What else is there that we can try

00:29:25.140 to tap into but just staying there and I don't think people don't stay there enough for me at

00:29:29.760 all they rush through everything urgency is that a high-pitched frenzy the chaos of that and we

00:29:36.720 always happen to get to the next thing but what if we could just even spend 10 minutes a day just

00:29:41.560 saying thank you for breathing I say that so much thank you for living thank you for breathing thank

00:29:47.460 you for attempting I have a poem that I read over people every time I do a collective rest event

00:29:53.460 where I say that I've done thousands and I always lay people down on the mats and we start with the

00:30:00.300 music and someone starts with some either a sound bowl or some other music and it's just

00:30:05.180 thank you for living thank you for existing thank you for trying thank you for resisting thank you

00:30:14.920 for resting you know thank you for trying I think we need to celebrate the tries more the attempts

00:30:20.920 the moves that make us feel like I'm here and I'm ready to just be in the attempt place.

00:30:28.300 And so that's really how this work really started for me. I was at a very low point in my life. I

00:30:33.460 was really mentally not well. Health wise, I wasn't well. And I just like, all I can really do right

00:30:38.920 now is lay on this couch. And from that, things started to happen. I started to have dreams. I

00:30:44.640 started to have connections. And I'm like, I'm just going to lay. I'm going to see what my brain

00:30:49.360 has to offer me today i'm just gonna lay here in between my three other jobs going to school can i

00:30:55.240 get five minutes to just breathe and listen and hear so i think we have to simple it down to the

00:31:03.240 the most lowest on the ground when i say on the ground i mean my eyes are open today and i think

00:31:09.200 that's where people are a lot of places right now with so much happening in the world is that the

00:31:13.960 The temp doesn't have to look like a self-produced, altogether in a bowl, wrapped up, organized, clean.

00:31:21.140 It's going to look messy.

00:31:22.300 It's going to look like what it is.

00:31:25.080 And I think we have to just begin to accept that more.

00:31:43.960 Thank you for listening to the second episode of For the Wild's slow study series,

00:32:03.400 Earthly Reads with Tricia Hersey. This was the first 30 minutes of an over-hour-long

00:32:08.820 conversation between Ayana and Trisha. To hear the full episode, join our book study, where we

00:32:15.080 will gather with authors like Trisha, Adrienne Marie Brown, Prentice Hemphill, Alexis Pauline

00:32:20.880 Gumbs, Celine Simon, and Marsha Bjornrud for an even deeper dive into their recent writings.

00:32:28.020 To learn more, please visit forthewild.world slash bookstudy or join us on Patreon.

00:32:34.900 The music for this series is from the compilation Staying, leaving records aid to artists impacted

00:32:42.260 by the Los Angeles wildfires.

00:32:44.820 The musicians featured in this episode are Nyla Hunter, Ayesha Mars, and VCR.

00:32:51.360 For the Wild is made by Ayanna Young, Erica Ekrem, Julia Jackson, and Jackson Kruve.

00:32:57.700 Thanks for listening.

00:33:04.900 Thank you.

00:33:34.900 You

For The Wild - January 31, 2025

Earthly Reads： Tricia Hersey on WE WILL REST! The Art of Escape S1_2

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