This author talk featuring author, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, Rachel Cargle in conversation with Well-Read Black Girl founder, Glory Edim, was everything we'd hoped it would be. Each lady brought warmth and wisdom, discussing how African American literature serves not just as a mirror reflecting personal growth but also as a beacon calling for societal change. Their experiences, alongside the revelations shared from Rachel's memoir, A Renaissance of Our Own, shed light on the essential nature of storytelling in advocacy and the holistic approach to defining success that transcends material wealth.
Our conversation turned to the struggle and beauty of remaining true to oneself amidst the demands of public life. We pondered the legacies of powerhouse figures like Oprah and Beyoncé, delving into how their examples of ambition and self-realization have influenced our personal and professional endeavors. This discussion was a reminder that our brightest potential lies within, waiting to be unlocked by embracing every facet of our identity.
We wrapped up our heartfelt exchange by contemplating the balance between personal well-being and the fight for collective liberation, a conversation sparked by the poignant insights of Tony Kate Bombard and the impact of the Loveland Foundation. Acknowledging the complex dance with financial freedom, we recognized the power of investing in our communities and the infinite potential when we fuse entrepreneurship with activism. As we honored the contributions of black playwrights like Angelina Weld Grimke, we found ourselves not just recounting history but paving the way for future generations to discover the richness and diversity of African-American literature.
Thanks for listening! Show support by reviewing our podcast and sharing it with a friend. You can also follow us on Instagram, @MahoganyBooks, for information about our next author event and attend live.
This author talk featuring author, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, Rachel Cargle in conversation with Well-Read Black Girl founder, Glory Edim, was everything we'd hoped it would be. Each lady brought warmth and wisdom, discussing how African American literature serves not just as a mirror reflecting personal growth but also as a beacon calling for societal change. Their experiences, alongside the revelations shared from Rachel's memoir, A Renaissance of Our Own, shed light on the essential nature of storytelling in advocacy and the holistic approach to defining success that transcends material wealth.
Our conversation turned to the struggle and beauty of remaining true to oneself amidst the demands of public life. We pondered the legacies of powerhouse figures like Oprah and Beyoncé, delving into how their examples of ambition and self-realization have influenced our personal and professional endeavors. This discussion was a reminder that our brightest potential lies within, waiting to be unlocked by embracing every facet of our identity.
We wrapped up our heartfelt exchange by contemplating the balance between personal well-being and the fight for collective liberation, a conversation sparked by the poignant insights of Tony Kate Bombard and the impact of the Loveland Foundation. Acknowledging the complex dance with financial freedom, we recognized the power of investing in our communities and the infinite potential when we fuse entrepreneurship with activism. As we honored the contributions of black playwrights like Angelina Weld Grimke, we found ourselves not just recounting history but paving the way for future generations to discover the richness and diversity of African-American literature.
Thanks for listening! Show support by reviewing our podcast and sharing it with a friend. You can also follow us on Instagram, @MahoganyBooks, for information about our next author event and attend live.
Welcome to the Mahogany Books Podcast Network, your gateway to the world of African American literature. We're proud to present a collection of podcasts dedicated to exploring the depth and richness of African American literature. Immerse yourself in podcasts like Black Books Matter, the podcast where we learn about the books and major life moments that influence today's top writers. Or tune into a real baller's read, where brothers Jan and Miles invite amazing people to talk about the meaningful books in their lives. So whether you're a literature enthusiast, an advocate for social justice or simply curious about the untold stories that shape our world, subscribe to the Mahogany Books Podcast Network on your favorite platform and let African American literature ignite your passion.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, okay, I need to get it together. Woo, okay, okay. So let's get into it. Still processing.
Speaker 2:So we are here also to see two dynamic authors, as I mentioned before, and please help me welcome Gloria in just a second. I'm gonna read her bio because I don't. I never want to miss some of the accolades that people worked hard for, went through a lot of things for, so I want to honor that when I read this. So Gloria Edum is an author, activist and the founder of Well-Red Black Girl. How many have heard of Well-Red? Everybody, everybody. It's a nationwide book club turned literacy nonprofit that celebrates the life-changing power of literature. Well-red Black Girl's mission is to use storytelling as a tool for advocacy and collective empowerment. Gloria has won numerous awards for her work supporting and sustaining literature, including the 2017 Innovators Award from the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Madame CJ Walker Award from the Hurston Wright Foundation. She also serves on the board of Baldwin for the Arts. Her best-selling anthology, well-red Black Girl Finding Our Stories, discovering Ourselves, was published in 2018.
Speaker 2:Let me see by snaps, or hear by snaps, how many of you have that book just yet? I know everybody. Yeah, she is currently working on a memoir that explores the intimate relationship between reading and self-healing. Please help me. Y'all gotta stand up. We're gonna stand up for Rachel, too, but please stand up for Gloria Edum. Yes, whoo-hoo. So keep standing. Y'all just get it together. Get it together so we all know why we're here. Right, you guys have our amazing book. This book has been out in the world for about 48 hours. Can y'all believe it? So y'all are some of the first people that have it and get to see Rachel in person. So that's a big just a big joy as well.
Speaker 2:So, for our talented featured author of the evening, I am thrilled to introduce my friend, activist entrepreneur Whoo I got caught up Activist, entrepreneur and philanthropic innovator, rachel Cargill. She is the founder of the Love Land Group, a family of companies including Elizabeth Bookshop Please give a hand for Bookstores. She's got her own Bookshop and it's a literacy space that celebrates marginalized voices and the great unlearn, an adult learning platform that centers the teaching of BIPOC thinkers. In 2018, she founded the Love Land Foundation, offering free access to mental health care for black women and girls. Rachel is a regular contributor to Cultured Magazine, atmos and the Cut, and her work has been featured in the Washington Post. Yeah, yeah, the New Yorker. Her debut memoir that you all have a Renaissance of her own has been out in the world again for 48 hours. Please help me welcome Rachel Cargill. Woo-hoo, woo-hoo.
Speaker 3:Woo-hoo, woo-hoo, woo-hoo.
Speaker 4:Woo-hoo, hey, woo-hoo. Thank you, ma'am, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for being here.
Speaker 3:I'm so happy. Thank you, glory, oh my goodness. So let me make sure this is on, I bet.
Speaker 5:Look, I was coming off the price right there. Can you hear me? Is this working? I think you're good. Okay, rachel, congratulations. How are you feeling? I'm good. I feel good. I feel grateful. I feel relieved. I feel grateful, I feel relieved.
Speaker 3:I feel grateful, I feel relieved. I feel relieved, I feel joyful. I'm so happy to be in DC. I love it here.
Speaker 5:Woo-hoo we are happy to have you. Yes, we love you. This book, I have so many thoughts I have I'm just like really excited because you're so dynamic and your story, how you share it with us, it feels like a map. Oh, I like that, thank you, yes. And of course, I was like when I finished reading I was like this book, this book, it reminds me of something, it reminds me of someone. What is it? I'm so happy to be in DC. I love it here. Woo-hoo, woo-hoo, woo-hoo, we are happy to have you. Yes, we love you. This book, this book, it reminds me of something. It reminds me of someone. What is it? What am I feeling?
Speaker 5:And I had to pull out my original. All About Love. Oh, thank you, thank you. And it made me think of Belle Hooks and how her visioning is just so expansive, so loving, and it just you fall into the space of a match. So, before we start our discussion, I'm going to quote some Belle. Yes, please. And of course, because that's something that we always have to start with, belle Definitions are vital starting points for the imagination. What we cannot imagine cannot come into being. A good definition marks our starting point and lets us know where we want to end up. As we move toward our desired destination, we chart the journey, creating a map. We need a map to guide us on our journey to love, starting with a place where we know what we mean when we speak of love, and so this is my OG book.
Speaker 2:I have it so highlighted.
Speaker 5:And so I feel like your memoir, your work feels like a map for all of us, and I just want to thank you for creating that map. Thank you so much for that. So, to start off, like, tell us how you did it right. What has this process been like for you to create this space where you can put your story and your manifesto in a book?
Speaker 3:Well, I think the work was the living. The work was the day to day, waking up, making decisions, figuring out myself and you know, this book didn't start out as a memoir we talked about. I signed this book in 2018, this book deal, and it started out as what everyone would have expected from me, which was an anti-racism book, a book speaking to racism within the feminist movement. And as 2020 came around and we were all doing so much work, I just literally called up my publisher and I said I'm not doing it. This isn't the work that I want to do. It feels exhausting. I will not be if I continue to do work in this way.
Speaker 3:And so I renegotiated and I told them that the same work can be done with a ways that will nourish me and the people who are reading it, particularly black women, who I wanted to be reading it mostly and so it was a lot of intention. It was a lot of me deciding exactly what I wanted to talk about and how I wanted to talk about it, and it was a lot of outpouring a lot of effort. You know it's work to write, it's work to remember, it's work to be honest with yourself. Writing a memoir. You have to get to some grainy parts of yourself and decide whether you're going to be true or you're going to try to forget it, and I was really committed to the healing work that happened for me in this book and the healing work that it could be for those who would read it.
Speaker 5:I'm just so proud of you for renegotiating because that's the whole thing Like we can go into the whole publishing process of you know how you feel when you have a deadline and there's all these expectations and all these projections placed upon you. But throughout this book, the takeaway is you have the choice. You have the choice to decide what your principles are and how you act upon them, and I was really taken by just your desire to have a fuller life and to create your own magic. I think the opening with Nicole was perfect.
Speaker 3:Yes, I'm so happy to have her. Thank you.
Speaker 5:Nicole, because everything that you have really touched has been about creating your own magic and being true to yourself, and one of the three principles is really about ease, and that ease really comes out not only in the book, but how you show up online and offline. So, for those who may, I know everyone's familiar, but let's pretend they're not right. So how did you come up with these principles of your highest self and I know you said it's in the living but exactly what were the questions that you had to ponder to get there?
Speaker 3:You know, I came up with the action of coming up with my highest values and I speak about it in the book a book I was reading called Grit, which is a wonderful book by Angela Duckworth and I was a nanny at the time and I remember, sitting on the couch of the woman's home that I was nannying for, waiting for the kids to get home, and I felt kind of this stuckness and I was like, wait, what am I doing? I knew I had an idea of how I wanted to move and what I wanted to do, but I felt like I was calibrated to something that wasn't mine and what highest values offered is a personal calibration. I talk a lot about this life escalator. We get put on it when we're born and you go to school. You go to college, you get married, you find joy in this spot, in this spot and you rest in this place, and I just was uninterested in that and I think that I felt very grateful that very early when I got divorced, I kind of hopped off of that life escalator and I kind of imagined me building this mosaic staircase of my own that looks and feels how I want. I can rest on a step for a while. I can run up if I'm feeling a lot of energy and motivation. I can step back if I realize there's some things I have to learn and having my highest values back at that time, when I was sitting on that couch and trying to figure out exactly, not even what I wanted to do or who I wanted to be, but how I wanted to live, that there was a difference in that question and it really was all in dreaming, in fantasizing and thinking about what was possible, and I had a lot of fun with that.
Speaker 3:As adults, we kind of get pulled out of this space of daydreaming, we get pulled out of this space of fantasy, and sometimes fantasy is relegated to something sexual perhaps, or something grandiose.
Speaker 3:But I think that there is fantasy in me, thinking about what I might eat for lunch tomorrow, that I can make this full, delicious decision for myself, and so it really ignited my own relationship to dreaming, and dreaming was a big part of it. I'll also say that being in relationship with my younger self and my older self was a part of me figuring out my highest values. I often speak that when I get out of the shower and I'm lotioning my body, I recognize that it's the skin my older self will live in and I'm caring for her in that way. And so me making constant, me being in constant conversation with caring for my younger self, tending to her wounds and honoring my older self and considering what she might need and want these are all ways that I came to these decisions, and ease was one of the ones that I recognized I wish my younger self had. I knew it would fulfill me in this moment and it's something that absolutely I'm looking forward to presenting as I move into my older self.
Speaker 5:And I think what is also so brilliant about the way that you look at your childhood and then your future self is it's a beautiful continuation. You don't have these separate distinctions of just. This is who I was then and this is who I'm going to become. It's all in becoming, and I love the idea of daydreaming and being playful and all these things that seem like. Can this seem silly or a little bit woo-woo or a waste of our time Waste of our time but it's really about the cultivation of a self and the joy and the love and the pain, all of it. That's what you need to become a fuller person.
Speaker 5:So my question for you is just I just want to be like how did you do it? In one part of the book, you really talk about what it means for a black woman to exist in this space and to be an activist, and I'm going to quote from an article that you did in Culture Magazine who would we be if our genius didn't have to be applied to surviving white supremacy? I'm hoping that black women and black people in general can continue to explore how to use their skills, their joys, their passions in ways that have nothing to do with surviving whiteness. So from that, I'm just really curious to hear how you decided to articulate your boundaries, especially separate from the white gaze.
Speaker 3:That quote is from that Culture Magazine piece and that's a conversation that my friend, ebony Jenise often brings into our peer space. We'll be sitting at lunch and she'll be like y'all, what would we really be doing if this isn't what we were using our creativity, our energy, our talents on? And I really appreciated every time she would ask me that question and every time we would dream up the types of things we would be doing with our time and our energy.
Speaker 3:Yes, I would. I mean, I feel like I'm doing a lot of it. I know I'm doing a lot of it. For me, it was never a question of how do I stop doing this work. It was how can I do this work in a way that fortifies me, in a way that moves us towards liberation that isn't rooted in deep struggle or just the white gaze? And so I had to do a reimagining of my own work and of the career that I was kind of climbing into. And no one's going to choose me like I choose me. The publishing industry isn't, the media isn't, social media isn't. And so I had to kind of dig my claws in pretty early with my own desires, because I know the ways that it could completely unravel.
Speaker 3:And I think that while I was making this decision, I said you know there are other. What is my work? Making the decision, what is my work first, and then saying how does that work look when my values are applied? And anyone's values could be anything. So it's not that there was one way to do it. I think there's infinite ways to do it.
Speaker 3:So I was inspired by the expansion of what my work as someone who's working for the tending and care of black girls towards our collective liberation, towards this justice that I believe in. What way could it look? It could look like a bookstore. It could look like a foundation that cares for our mental health. It really was. It became this like creative playground for me, this creative landscape for me to plant seeds and till ground that looks different than what whiteness expected us to be in this struggle.
Speaker 3:And you know, on social media there's so much sensation around the anti-racism work that I was doing, in particular, the conversations, the arguments, the struggles that were happening, and I want my sensation to be sensual. In other spaces, I wasn't interested in that sensation and so I really wanted to be honest with myself, and the answer to that honesty is I want to do this work. This is the work that I feel was handed to me, and it's my job to find ways for it to be sustainable and for it to be nourishing. And if I was to only do this work in a way that weathered me or in a way that completely tore me apart, that actually isn't moving towards the work. That's white supremacy getting us out of the way, and I don't want to be out of the way, yep, I am so gosh, I have so many questions.
Speaker 5:One thing that you know you brought up social media and we know that's a space where it's been a tool.
Speaker 5:It's been a tool to grow your platform and to reach so many people.
Speaker 5:But there is something about it where, if I did not know you, I would think Rachel was just by herself in this world, like she just was one individual person, creating all of this magic.
Speaker 5:But the reality is you have before Love Land, before you had so many followers. You were a daughter, you're a sister, you're a person, you were a wife. You had all these identities before, and the way you write about them in such a clear and just vulnerable way made me just relate to you even further and understand your humanity and showing all the aspects of your life that made you this person sitting in front of me. Right, and it's so odd to have social media almost make you a flat person because people see just like, oh, this is just like this little square on Instagram, but no, like, there's so much more to you. How do you find ways to kind of push against the things that people want to project upon you and stay true to your highest values, stay true to what your organization is continuously doing, and even when you make changes. How do you like pivot from that too, because it's hard.
Speaker 3:It's hard when they're looking at you and deciding who they want you to be Right.
Speaker 5:Especially when you were so young too. Yeah, you started this in a space where you're relatively new and you can have like a odd impression of what that means.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I agree, and I think, well, there's two answers to that. The first thing that's coming to mind is I allow myself, I really think my work is learning out loud. I think it's growing out loud, healing out loud. I have no need to have the answers. I feel like my work is to bring the questions. My work is to invite us to ask more questions that lead us to our individual answers, that lead us to our collective answers, that invite us to be curious about what some solutions could be to these issues that we have.
Speaker 3:But on a human level, on an individual level, maybe even on a level of being a woman and a black woman, we are taught that the only way to grow is to hate who we were Like, to say that wasn't good enough. I have to be better, or I don't like that version of myself. I have to be better, and I really don't feel that way. I loved who I was as a wife. I loved who I was while I was learning. I love who I'm becoming as I continue to grow, and I think that giving ourselves the grace to not feel like we have to hate ourselves to new levels invites us to bring a gentleness that will encourage other people to approach us with a gentleness, because the fact that I have so many followers who have followed me from doing the type of anti-racism work I was doing to speaking about the grief of my mother's death, to coming out with this book, I think that my own practice of being gentle with myself, even in the times where it was so, so hard and there continues to be times that are so, so hard the way you treat yourself, it tells people how to treat you as well, and so I think that this knowing it all goes back to this self-knowing making decisions about yourself.
Speaker 3:I kind of have turned away from the language of our best selves, because that also insists on this hierarchy, a bit of what we might aspire to, and we don't always feel like our best selves, and so I use the language of my chosen self who I want to be. In this moment, what I want to do, and sometimes what I want to do is lay on the kitchen floor and cry for five days, and that self is just as good as the self who's out on a book tour, and so I think that finding these ways to just not hate ourselves every chance we get has been really meaningful in me being able to show up messy me, being able to show up on shore me, being able to show up and say I don't know the answer, but I'm so excited to figure it out with you. Gives me this expansiveness to show up in whatever way I happen to be, at whatever time.
Speaker 5:I love that, and it's so true because you've been able to write this beautiful book and just develop this loving, honest, transparent community without feeling like you have to shrink yourself or be someone else or apologize or apologize Like it's just like you are being truly, truly yourself. One of my favorite chapters was the idea of reimagining education and reimagining work those two things, I think, especially right now coming out of the pandemic, let's put that in quotes. But there's so much space for just reimagining how we're going to make our livelihoods and measuring success not only in financial gains. Like what does success look like in your mental space, in your emotional space, your spiritual space? It's not only about money. And there's a part in the book where you really talk about you're going to all these workshops and the idea was like perhaps you have to sell something, make a course, and you're like, no, actually this is going to be public service and I'm going to do it my own way.
Speaker 5:Can you talk about the two women that inspired you? Are two favorite women, I think. Does anyone want to take a guess? Who the two women in the book starts with the letter O.
Speaker 3:It starts our whole name is O at this point. Right right, that's one of them. The other one starts with a letter B. That her whole name at this point.
Speaker 5:Right right, so let's just talk about the influence of Oprah Beyoncé.
Speaker 3:Yes, the influence of Oprah Beyoncé. So I was living in DC. I was living in DC at the time, I had just gotten divorced and I was like I'm so interested to see what I'm capable of. I was like seduced by the possibility of who I might be in the world outside of being a wife, outside of being in Ohio. And I moved to DC and I was working at a taxi cab company in Alexandria and I was just sitting at the desk using the computer for not work and I was so interested because during my marriage I didn't.
Speaker 3:I was like literally a stay-at-home wife, no kids, and so I didn't really have the opportunity to understand who I was in finances, understand who I was in ambition in a lot of ways. And so I was just really intrigued and I was like, well, what is I was so well the thing about Oprah. I was like how on earth does she have a network and a pizza? She'd just be doing whatever she wants and I was so inspired by. I was like I wanna do whatever I want within this space. So I went and I studied. I was more.
Speaker 3:I wasn't so much interested in the Oprah that we understand, because there's so many things that I'm critical of her too, and I was more interested in her, in the structure of her, in the shape of her, and so I recognized what type of business her business shape.
Speaker 3:And she had a what's called an umbrella company and Loveland that I have now as an umbrella company where I can come up with ideas that speak to my values and create a bookstore and a learning platform and a laundry mat whatever I decide to make that fit into the values that I have.
Speaker 3:And so I was very inspired by the fact that she had created well, she didn't create it, everyone umbrella companies existed before, but she had used this as a vehicle to create the businesses that she had, and I was very inspired by that. And then, with Beyonce yes, first of all, beyonce was my first entrepreneurial crush. Like I wasn't really in the beehive until like maybe 2016-ish, and it was when she dropped that midnight video. I was like, oh, this bitch is the T-Dick, and I was so inspired by her creativity in that, her decision to do it. She was the first one to do it. Now it's like a thing, but she was the first one to drop that midnight album and I just thought that was so sexy for her to come up with something as innovative as that.
Speaker 5:I think we're both crushing because I didn't realize you could have an entrepreneurial crush.
Speaker 3:But I think I would.
Speaker 5:yes, she's very much a entrepreneurial crush Like, just like quiet and strategic and just like bam.
Speaker 3:Yes, and both of you know Beyonce has a whole portfolio of companies outside of who. We understand her as a performer and I loved that she had a self that she didn't feel the need to talk about all the time, that she didn't. She was like y'all can define me however you wanted to find me, but I'm still gonna be doing what I wanna do in the background. And so I was really inspired by both of them and their intention with that and their ability to do that, and I kind of sat there and said, well, what do I want it to look like? What would I want it to be? And I still have the little notebook that I bought to kind of draw out and I draw an actual umbrella and I kind of considered what the companies could be. And I always say, you know, when you like want a red corvette, and then when you're out on the street you see that everywhere it's the only car you see on the highway. I had this dream of a company that was expansive, that held all of me, that had possibility, and I thought about who might. I even studied who Oprah hired like, how was her team built? And I saw the shape of it. And so as I continued to build my career and decide what that intersection because I was bringing my values of justice into it and how I wanted that to look, you know, my team kind of came to me. I recognized them. I saw them in the people Sula's here today, the people who work for me now full time. They were people who worked with me in small ways.
Speaker 3:I used to have I'm gonna be embarrassed, I used to have these team Rachel meetings and it was literally just a meeting of everyone who had believed in me. You know, every Sula is someone who works for me now and she, it's true, and it was, you know, the lawyer who gave me a few free hours, the PR agent who was willing to offer me a few of her contacts, sula who DMed me and was like I can help you in whatever way you need. And I was like, okay, great, I need this support. And the second I was able to, everyone came on to my team full time and they're still my team today and it was kind of like that red corvette, like I had been thinking about, like I want this to be. I could see how it could be. I could see how my values could fit into it and I saw my people and I invited them in and I was so inspired by Elvira and Beyonce.
Speaker 5:It's so encouraging to see you manifest that and it comes alive. And I think another thing that's really great about the book is like you give us these prompts and I was like really curious, because usually with a memoir you don't necessarily have to pose questions, but you do that. You give this really brilliant takeaways. You even create space in the back of the books for you to write your own manifesto. Why was that essential for you to include in the book, Like these questions, for you to think about the space for you to write out your own manifesto? It's brilliant.
Speaker 3:I wanted people to remember that they have the answers. There isn't anything in this book that's going to tell you what to do. It's not gonna tell you how to think, it's not gonna tell you who to become, but it's going to invite you into asking some of the questions that might allow you to find the answers within you. I do in one of my workshops.
Speaker 3:I do this visualization where I guide people through having conversations with their older selves and their mind and after that during I ask them to ask their older selves a question and then journal it out after, and people are often shocked that they have these answers to a question that they had in themselves but it really came from their own mind, Like it didn't come from anywhere else except for you were in this meditative space, being in conversation with your older self, and so I kind of wanted that feel with this book, for people to remember that we really do have all of the answers within us. We can get some context, perhaps we can get some resources of things we might read to give us language. We can remember some things about ourselves or dream together, but really I hope that the book, my reading through my story, offers some sparks for consideration, and then that the real work of this book is people coming out with some answers that they hadn't explored yet.
Speaker 5:I also was very appreciative. You just mentioned your team and there's just like a great level of what I would call sisterhood coalition building, just like these key people that came into your life and taught you something. So you share a story about Dina, you share a story about Sula, about Joey, about Vanessa, like all these people, as I was like reading I've again, I felt like I was getting to know you even more through the individuals in your life. You know you're sharing about your ex-husband Manny. All these people have left this like an imprint on you and you don't seem to shy away from the challenging parts of it. You really come away with these beautiful lessons of how that connection just like really built you up. You know how did you decide who to include? And this is gonna be a little awkward, but like who did you like leave on the cutting room floor, like who are you like?
Speaker 4:I'm gonna leave like that that part out.
Speaker 5:You don't gotta name names, but there's, like you know, a memoir can be so much you're gonna include. So, like, what were the parts that maybe you were like? This doesn't enhance or develop the story and these people, you know, really kind of help shape the arc.
Speaker 3:That's so funny. Yes, so many. Well, I'm gonna say two things. The first thing I'll say is that you know I finished this book I turned in the final, final, final, final In just a few weeks before my mother passed away, and I can't express to you how much you grow through a loss like that. Questions, you have answers, you have grief that you didn't even know lived inside of you, and so you know a lot that's not in.
Speaker 3:There are things that I just hadn't figured out yet. I couldn't find a way to say it, I couldn't find the language. They often talk about the phenomenon of like someone being able to get out a memoir like this once the important person passes away, and I think that's true, because there are criticisms of my mother in this book and I don't think I could have stomached her reading them in the way that she might have when she was alive. So that was one of it. Like there was a lot of stuff that wasn't there, because I literally just did not have the language for how I was feeling or what I understood to be true. And even in the midst of that, you know, as I was caring for my mother and asking her, you know, asking final questions, trying to get some answers.
Speaker 3:There were things that I had already written that I found out later were not true. Think stories I had made up in my head about my childhood and, speaking to my mom, I was like, oh, is that what happened? Had I dissociated, had I made up this narrative as a survival technique? And I really I actually had to make some major edits because of stories that I thought were true that revealed to me that they weren't but so did you like back check yourself? Yes, I did.
Speaker 3:I did fact check myself and it was wild because things that were true to me, things I understood about myself, that when I asked one simple question, it unraveled everything. And then I'm like the whole book has to change at this point. So there were some things that I certainly was working through in the midst of writing the book that I just didn't have the heart to put in yet, and so I'm looking forward to, as I continue to heal through and work through those, to write another piece of who. I am there. But the people I really didn't want to put in the book, because it was gonna boost their ego, were men, men, men that I had dated, who really did mean a lot to me or changed me in ways, but I just refused.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I didn't always. You know I am. Yes, we can refuse that. Yes, yes, yes. There's a few sentences about some of the dates that you went on DC. Oh yes, let me open up my date in that, Like I was like, let me get back to him.
Speaker 3:I do talk about all my DC events that I was dating.
Speaker 5:What am I doing? So I'm nearly single. Let me get you definitely fired me for a second. I opened up, hinge, like wait a second, where they at? Where they at, I'm like I don't want to be. Go to take me to the Be go. Yes, I was like I was just cute, he was cute. So, oh, I went on a tangent. But I also want to think about. There's so many different things I want to talk about.
Speaker 5:Cause, back to this idea and concept of reimagining, and there's a part where you are bringing, like your scholarship really centers community and centers collective liberation. And you're not only bringing theory, you're really thinking about practice, like how do we actually put this into like our daily lives? You're thinking about black feminism. You're thinking about joy. You're bringing rich auntie, supreme right being, you know, by being child free, by choice. All of these things are really big ideas that you're dreaming about and considering. I don't know if I'm even phrasing this right, but how do they fit into, like the political moment Right? So, like, are you reimagining abolition? In the same way, are you thinking about reimagining how we how we like build and cultivate future leaders? Because I can also imagine a young person who's in college and high school reading this work and being inspired and making their own umbrella company and having love land at the top and doing the same. So tell me about just like these. Let's elaborate on these takeaways and how you were considering the reader, especially future, you know.
Speaker 3:This really sits in. I'm quoting Tony Kate Bombard and her insistence that the revolution starts individually within ourselves. And I did a lot of intensive collective work when I was doing a lot of my pinpointed anti-racism within the feminist movement and part of my exhaustion for me personally was feeling like this was I didn't feel hopeful in it. I really did not feel hopeful in it, and I would always get be in interviews and they'd say Rachel, do you feel hopeful about where this is going? And I'd be like, no, I don't. I don't feel hopeful about what white women can or will do in our collective liberation. I just didn't. And so I needed to find a space where I felt hopeful, and what Tony Kate Bombard offered was the reality that there is work in our individual efforts and that can lead us towards liberation as well. And that pours into the work that I'm doing with the Love Land Foundation, going to black women in themselves and saying how can you continue to heal? Because I know when black women heal their homes, heal their relationships, heal the neighborhoods, the community, the organizations, and so for me that felt like a really potent spark to the type of work that I wanted to do, and I think that I had to. That was one of the big pivots I made to focus on something more individual and feeling like I was able to spark those individual revolutions within black women in particular, and hopefully my grander work it will fold into it, but that was really the truth of how I wanted to move through it.
Speaker 3:And going through each of these chapters our work, our love, our education, figuring out how to decolonize those things, how to take away the white gaze from those things I hope that this is some material towards our collective ability and I think there's so many lanes to this work. The people who were marching, the black panthers who had their rifles, were doing the same work as the women who were making breakfast for the babies before school. I see those equally on the same ground. And so, as I shape, shift into doing work in ways that fortify me as an individual and that offer me a creative opportunity to serve my community, I don't feel like one is less than the other.
Speaker 3:I feel like I am in this lane right now of pouring into individuals, insisting that they get critical with themselves so that they can come to the community meeting and say, hey, I just dreamt of this. Or come into the community meeting and say we can be a little critical about this. I feel that's just as meaningful work. And who knows what my work will look like in five years? I'm open to the ways that it will shift. But that quote by Tony Kade Bambara gave me permission to really scale in and say, okay, this feels safe for me right now, this feels meaningful for me and I'm looking forward to the ways that my work continues to shape, shift.
Speaker 5:It's so like getting distilling all of that and coming back to the self and understanding where your values lie. That is how like you're able to do this.
Speaker 3:Yes and I want us to be well. Ebony Janisse often says we are so in the midst of the struggle that we wouldn't know what liberation was if it came tomorrow. Because all we understand about ourselves is this struggle is looking around and figuring out what's wrong, and so I want to remind, I want to give some glimpses of what the joy looks like, what the liberation looks like, so we know it when it comes. Yeah, and you can like feel, it.
Speaker 5:You know it's like very instinctual and you just feel like this collective relief.
Speaker 3:Yes and we get it. We know what it feels when you and I are sitting over dinner. We know when we're in a group of black women who are finding joy in ourselves and our understandings and our learning, and I hope that part of my work is to hold up a mirror to remind us we'll know exactly what it is when it comes, because we're feeling it.
Speaker 5:Yes, you know, one of my favorite things to do, especially like wearing a book club and you read something and like, or someone says something out loud and you like, you know, you give a sister a look and they just know you're like, are you just in a room?
Speaker 6:And you're like, do you see what?
Speaker 5:just happened. Like how do you? You know you can't put that in a metric right just like that instinctual, like, oh, you get it I get it and we're like we're speaking the same language.
Speaker 5:And I love that feeling and there were so many moments where I was reading I'm like, oh, she just spoke my language and to create more spaces like that where we can really be free, we can think about our healing in a really expansive way. I just want to continue to thank you for just like modeling that for us, you know. So now it's Oprah, beyonce and Rachel. You know, all together.
Speaker 3:I don't think I ever shared this story out loud, but I actually got a chance to meet Oprah. Oh, here we go. Please tell us, tell us who you are. She was wonderful. She was wonderful. I got a chance to meet her. I was invited to her home and I got to have drinks with her. Oh my God what. And it was really, it was really, it was really, it was really, it was really and it was really wonderful. But what I said to her was you know, I modeled so much of what I understand about myself as an entrepreneur off of your work. And what did she say? She goes and now look at you in my house and I was like, I know, bitch, like I'm sitting in her house, like I can't believe I'm here at your house, but what was really?
Speaker 3:what was really wonderful? I'm sorry.
Speaker 5:This is too good. He was like yeah, I know.
Speaker 3:What was really wonderful about that experience? You know, I had studied her and I had thought about her and I had wondered what she was like and she was really it was. It was a really we were all in like. We were all in like sweatpants sitting there. This is so funny and it really it really moved me in the moment because I realized I get a chance to dream again. I reached something Like I came to a point and she like ushered me into my next level of dreaming.
Speaker 5:Yeah, he's like let me start dreaming about Oprah Right now. Girl, that is amazing. And back when you were in sweats and just like it was yeah, it was wonderful, it was wonderful.
Speaker 5:It was like my yeah, yeah, I'm all for that. Okay, let me get to my next question. What, yes? So, and I know we're gonna take audience questions too, so if you have a question, get ready for that. Ramonda has the mic. I really want to talk about discontinue ease. You know, like everything you're doing, I feel soft, sustainable, like accessible, and I was really one of the things I highlighted quote it lengths and hues. I do not need my freedom when I'm dead, and I was like yes, yes, it's that same idea of like, you know I'll sleep. You know, when I'm dead, it's like no, I'm gonna sleep right now. So, like, let's talk about rest, let's talk about how you're reimagining rest and how you're modeling that for our community.
Speaker 3:That quote I do not need my freedom when I'm dead is hanging on a big banner in my living room, and it is insistent One that I deserve to be well now, like I deserve to be well right now. I don't know what is on the other side of all of this, so I'm gonna go ahead and get my receipts today, but also this idea, that kind of what I said before, like liberation and this freedom and joy, is not just gonna come out of thin air. We gotta create some material for it, some material to remember and to bring into the moment where we continue to make space for it.
Speaker 3:And I think that my rest has been a critical part of my work, and that is where you can dream, that is where you can take some time to exhale, to know yourself, to ask yourself some questions, and also for those who are in this activist work in the way that we are.
Speaker 3:You know, I know that in the time that I'm resting there's other people doing the work. I trust you that when I'm gone for a while, when you're gone having your baby for a while, you knew that we were all out there doing the same work. There was not a deficit because you were resting, and we've been taught that our rest is a deficit to ourselves, to our families, to our community. And I think that I'm so intrigued to change that narrative, not only because we need it, but because rest is like Sexy, like I want a well rested, well Rounded experience in the world and to to move through the world with, with a lack of sleep or a lack of rest, but right, for me, rest also means like resting my brain, resting my mind, allowing myself, like because I really I always think about people, like what were people doing when they didn't have to go To work all day, every day?
Speaker 5:They were. It was like Bridgetton. Yes, they were like read.
Speaker 3:They were oh my gosh, oh, okay. Okay, did you guys watch Charlotte and she she? Yes, yeah, I do watch Charlotte and I was. This was such a part of my thought process because, you know, those days after she first got married and she had nothing to do because he didn't come over and she was like sitting and playing chess with herself and that, and there was a time where she was like just sitting and looking out the window and I was like I'm gonna do that next Weekend. I'm gonna just sit and look out the window and watch something. Watch some birds.
Speaker 5:You know, when you have like that really like good night sleep and you wake up like oh, like your brick at least for me, because I, I definitely I feel like in the high functioning mind, always racing, always trying to do you know a million things like, when I do feel rested. It's like my cycle. I don't know. There's such joy you're, you can show up better.
Speaker 3:I always say our best selves are our highest service. Yeah, your best self, your most rested self, your most creative self, your most loved on self, your most, the self of you that feels clean and whole, and there, that is your highest service, because when you are those things, you can wake up and move through the world with that feeling, yeah, like I'm ready.
Speaker 5:Yes, yes, yes. So we're gonna take a moment for questions. Yes, I'm gonna first pray soul.
Speaker 2:I know we'll take three questions. Okay, if you'd like a question to ask a question, join me right here, come on down, do it, come on out. Just tell us your name and I'm holding the mic.
Speaker 5:Hi, I'm Christina. Can you talk about your relationship to money and financial?
Speaker 3:freedom, especially like when you were like just getting started before your entrepreneurial pursuit. Oh, yeah, yeah, my. The question was my relationship to money and financial freedom before I became an entrepreneur. You know, money is a tool. It's not my friends on your. Renee Taylor often says it's kind of like a bottle of water. It's something that you can drink and it can nourish you, or you can freeze it and hit somebody over the head with it, like it's not. There's nothing inherently good or bad about it and there is a relationship you have to build with it, especially as a black girl who grew up fairly poor, who saw my mom I'm stressing about the money day in and day out.
Speaker 3:I really had to build my own Relationship with it and I think that it takes a lot of studying, studying other people, studying what can be true For other people about money, but also I will say that no one uses money better than black women. When we get money, we spend it in our communities in really meaningful ways, and so one thing that, as again Sony Renee Taylor said, is who am I to limit how much money I get to help the world? Who am I to limit how much I get to be abundant in order to use it in meaningful ways, and so that was a big shift in my feeling that I don't feel guilty for what comes to me. I just get intentional about how I use it, because that's a lot of energy Trying to decide about whether you get it, what you do with it, and in deciding instead how I, how I use it, and I think that it's you know, there's so many structures in the world that limit us, and I don't think that it's about the amounts, it's about how our relationship and what we do with it.
Speaker 3:But it took a lot of studying and a lot of deciding how I'm going to do this work and then being creative, because I do feel like I'm Just as much of an entrepreneur as I am an activist as I am anything else in the world, and so really for me, business is an art, it's fun, it's a canvas. What can I do? How can I do it? Who can it serve? Who can? Who can I hire? I have many friends in here who I have brought into my company in one way or another. I said let's do this together, let's figure out how we can Bring some abundance to ourselves and to our community. Awesome.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes. Anybody else question, question, don't be shy don't be scared.
Speaker 3:You can ask Lori some questions too. I know y'all been waiting to see her Awesome.
Speaker 4:Hi there, I'm Jules Jones. Hi, my question for you is when we think about the idea of shifting narratives and the power of storytelling and what you're doing, I always think about how, especially when you consider people like Tony came to Barra she was in community with so many other brilliant artists and thinkers and truth tellers. What artists or truth teller of another medium most inspires you right now?
Speaker 3:I think I Talk in the book a lot about my intellectual Ancestors. I'm one person that I'm really interested in right now. That doesn't get a lot of shine. Her name was Angelina Weld Grimke, okay.
Speaker 5:Who's good. Well, I want to know who you're gonna say I thought you know what she has a lot of shine. That you're gonna say Anna Cooper Cooper.
Speaker 3:Oh, and Julie Cooper for sure. Yes, I actually just picked up her whole like I walked past her house all the time.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay, okay, yeah, and Julia Cooper is absolutely someone to really study, but Angelina Weld Grimke was a black woman, queer, a poet, she was a playwright and I I'm so inspired by, actually, the way that I found her. During 2020, when everybody cared about black people, they had they had this thing in the New York Times like black playwrights, and they talked about Angelina Weld Grimke and what would like drew me to it was that she had a play called Rachel and I was like, oh, let me see what this is about. And so the play called Rachel was about a like Anti-racist activist who had decided not to have children. And I was so. I was like, oh, my goodness, this is so wild. I know, don't, I'm working on it, I'm talking to my agent about it.
Speaker 3:So I, I was, so I was so moved by by this work. And then I went into her queer poetry and it was very like sultry for the time and you know I'm a little lusty so I was like so ready to read all of this and I was, I was just so, I was just so inspired. So I'm really inspired by the voices who haven't gotten shined, because it's a reminder that being heard is not the only way to do Work. I'm really inspired by finding these people who were doing real work in their communities. And social media makes you think that unless you have a platform, unless you have millions of people reading something, that that's the only way your work is powerful. But I am finding great joy in finding powerful people who had small audiences and did great work.
Speaker 5:You know about to be googling all over our last question over here I'm coming to you. My question is as you've labored through grief, is there anything that surprised you about yourself?
Speaker 3:Yes, every day I'm surprised by the way that grief shows up for me. You know, grief can show up in so many ways, and so I really want to acknowledge that. One of the first feelings I felt when my mother passed away was like immense relief, and I feel like oftentimes there is a small container for what our grief can look like and feel like, and especially for those who had complicated relationships with our mothers or whose mothers were complicated in their in themselves. You know my I was born to a mother with a disability. I was born into this caregiver role a bit, and so I have spent my entire entire life worried that my mom was okay at one point or another. And I remember after she passed she passed in November, so, and she lived in Ohio, and I remember the first snowstorm that came into Akron I was like I don't have to worry about mom, like I was just so happy, I was so thrilled that I didn't have to worry about her, and so I think I've been.
Speaker 3:I've been really surprised by Some of the joys of grief that I have dug into. I've been thinking about things. Like you know, my mother had never traveled outside of the US Except for just a few months, in May. In May of that year, she came to visit me in Jamaica and that was the only stamp in her passport. And and one of the things that it makes me think about is, you know, my mom was so scared to travel, like she couldn't even get out of the US. Can you imagine how terrified she must have been to know she was dying. And I'm like, wow, you did. That girl like you, you had to have been terrified, you had to have been terrified. And she passed away from cancer. So it was weeks and weeks of excruciation, like excruciating pain and decision she had to make and In as with many cases, I had, you know, left. I decided I'd slept on the hospice floor for many, many days and I was like I have to go sleep in a bed tonight and that was the night she passed away.
Speaker 3:And so I know that she was, you know, holding on to all of these things, and so I am so proud of her, I'm so proud of her for dying. I'm so proud of her for doing this thing that I know was so scary and like she couldn't even get out of the US. I can imagine how terrified she was thinking about what might be on this other side and I'm so inspired by her like that's so badass for her to say it is my time and I will go. And I love this new, this new Relationship that I have with my mother through this.
Speaker 3:A quick story a few weeks before she passed, I went and read her a few pages of my book and she goes wow, that was way better than I thought it would be. And I go cool. But it makes me think that you know, our moms don't always know what our work is. She, she, had no real concept of what I was Doing in the world and I feel so lucky that she is my work now. I'm writing about grief. My mom is in my work. This is our first time being in my work together. So I feel I feel I'm really surprised by some of the joys I've found in grief.
Speaker 2:Wow, wow, wow, wow yes.
Speaker 3:And we have a chair for my mom right here in the front with her name and a candle on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, miss Gwendolyn. So let's please give it up again for Rachel and glory.
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