episode 4: risking joy with tracey michae’l lewis-giggetts
Chichi Agorom
Hi Tracey welcome to the show.
Tracey Michae'l
Hello. Thank you so much for having me.
Chichi Agorom
I've been looking forward to this and counting down to our conversation and first of all congratulations on your big win from when we scheduled this call. Your book and you are the recipient of an NAACP award. That's amazing. That's so incredible I'm going to come back to that because we're talking about joy today.
Tracey Michae'l
Thank you. Yes, it's been wild.
Chichi Agorom
And I watched that video that you posted of you and your family you know watching waiting for the name to be called. A live reaction of the moment where it happened and I mean it was so joyful. But it also felt so intimate which is you know part of what we're talking about today and just especially I think watching your daughter and that response of just, oh my gosh like...
Tracey Michae'l
Right? She's my biggest fan.
Chichi Agorom
Her expression of joy also was like–if you had it muted and didn't know it was happening, maybe you would think she was like upset about something or you know. It's like just that visceral wailing because her heart is so full watching her mom win. It was so beautiful to watch.
Tracey Michae'l
Yes, that was totally a moment and actually after I got back from the award ceremony, she had been walking around with this sticker she made that says: daughter of award winning..."
Chichi Agorom
Yes I love that. I am the daughter of.
Tracey Michae'l
She's like, to be clear everyone, right?
Chichi Agorom
I loved it. It's like it's your win but it's her win too. You know? That's amazing.
Tracey Michae'l
Yeah, it absolutely is. Without my husband and my daughter supporting me and dealing with my moody writer self, that couldn't have happened so I'm grateful.
Chichi Agorom
Yeah, well congratulations and I have lots of questions for you today around the topic of joy and blackness and intersections of that and intimacy but usually my first question for people is what identities do you hold that are important for us to know in this conversation?
Tracey Michae'l
I think the first thing that comes to mind is I'm a black woman. I mean that intersection is incredibly important and has increasingly become more important to me as I think about what it has required to survive and live in that intersection of my blackness and my womanness and so that's probably the first. You know when anyone asked me that, I would say that's my first identity. But I think also I'm a mother and so we just were talking about my daughter and so as I embark on adolescence, because she's eleven, the intensity of that identity has increased significantly. As we're navigating all kinds of things that young girls navigate at 11 and 12 and 13 and so definitely you know my being a mother is definitely an identity that I hold. And a person of faith, and all the evolution of that. All the ways that has been transformed since I knew what faith could be or had any kind of working definition of it, all the ways that has evolved. It's still very much a foundational grounding piece of who I am and why I am and why I do what I do. So those are the buckets. I think there's a lot of other ones of course, but those are the the biggest buckets.
Chichi Agorom
Yeah, those are beautiful identities. Thank you for sharing them with us. So this season of the podcast we're exploring intimacy and I am curious for you, how do you understand, define, describe intimacy. What does that word mean for you?
Tracey Michae'l
When I think about what intimacy means today I think about the ability to be completely and fully myself, authentically myself with another person who is also allowed to be authentically and fully themselves. So I feel like it's created when two individuals in particular are able to hold space for all of the complexity we were just talking about, like the nuances and the complexity of who I am right? And so what that does I think is it creates intimacy, creates a space for vulnerability, creates a space for safety. So when I think about intimacy I think about safety. And some of that is definitely connected to my story. But I think it's also connected to the places where I've seen intimacy expressed. What I've noticed above and beyond anything is that they were also spaces where the individuals felt the most safe with each other and even with themselves, that sort of internal intimacy right? Or even if you're talking about like a spiritual practice. The safety. And maybe this will evolve, I don't know, but like it seems very much connected to how safe one feels to be the totality of who they are. It's not always been my understanding but I would say today that's where I land.
Chichi Agorom
Yeah, and in spaces where maybe you're not being or you're not bringing the fullness of who you are, is it possible to experience intimacy?
Tracey Michae'l
I Don't know that I can. Safety is such a key component to how I define intimacy that if it's not there, if I can't show up in a space as my full self, if I'm holding back even if I'm holding back because I choose to hold back, even if it's a situation where I've not not necessarily been told that you have to show up in a particular way or whatever. But even if I've made the choice to do that because there are parts of me that I cannot give–and if there exist any part of me that I can't give to a space, a person, whatever that is, I am personally going to be hard pressed to define that as intimacy for me because, again safety, authenticity, the ability to be vulnerable, all of those things inform how I see intimacy. And so of course as a black woman then...
Chichi Agorom
Yeah, that was gonna be my next question.
Tracey Michae'l
Yeah, you know that very first identity that I called out, that intersection in which I live means that I am forgoing intimacy in a lot of spaces. Which is sad. It grieves me but because I require safety you know, maybe other people don't but I require that a level of safety in a space. Which means that if I don't have it I'm only gonna give so much which means that I'm only going to get so much which means that the intimacy is probably not...if there is any kind of closeness then it's going to be surface level at best because I cannot allow myself to show up as one minute with red hair next minute with braids, you know what I'm saying? I can't show up as however I speak, however I look, however I move if that is not a space where I feel safe to be, period. Right? Then I as a black woman find that a lot of spaces are like that for us and so.
in essence we don't get the benefit of intimacy in a lot of those same spaces that maybe other groups or other people do.
Chichi Agorom
Yeah, that's so true and I'm curious too, how do you define safety? What constitutes a safe space for you?
Tracey Michae'l
I would say that safe space or safe people are spaces and people that can hold the best of me and the worst of me simultaneously. And again I say that with the understanding that accountability is a thing, right? Like I'm not saying I show up any old kind of way that are harmful. Because I feel like the safest places are the ones who can hold me accountable. The safest places are the one who won't allow me to show up any old kind of way because that's not truly underneath who I am. That too is a mask that I'm wearing. So yeah I think places and people who can hold the best of me and the worst of me and all the little mes in between, all the parts of me. I'm a big fan of internal family systems and parts work. I've been studying it for a good while now and so I would say that safety to me is a place where all my parts including that baby exile of mine underneath it all can be. And in many ways it's a place where my protector parts my manager parts can rest.
Chichi Agorom
Because they don't have to be on duty. Yeah.
Tracey Michae'l
They don't have to protect and manage. Yeah, they can rest. They don't have to be on guard and if I'm honest with you I don't know of a lot of spaces. It's probably you know my closest relationships where I feel that, and even then I'm bringing a lot of my stuff into those things where I feel like I have to put up walls where I may not have to and intimacy is possible in those spaces but I haven't always allowed myself to explore that.
Chichi Agorom
Yeah, and it's hard to when what is reinforced most often is the lack of safety in the world especially as a Black woman. So it's like you either go based off of evidence, which is how I tend to operate. Well evidence shows that 9 times out of 10, this is not a safe space for me but to extend the...it's not even grace, but to allow myself to be open enough to see if this new space could be the 1%, could be the 1 out of 10 requires the risk that I might be wrong and this ends up with me being harmed.
Tracey Michae'l
Yeah, harmed and hurt. I always say that being a Black woman or an indigenous woman or living in that intersection is an act of daily risk assessment. We are constantly assessing risk. Is it worth it for me to go into my boss's office and say this thing? What will I lose and what will I gain if I tell this man or this woman you know blah Blah Blah blah. You know, if we walk up this street, my life...and those who read the book they hear a lot about my story, but you know my life says that if I go in this grocery store will I be able to survive and come out? Because my elder cousin did not, right? And so that is constant and regular risk assessment, which is exhausting, which does something to your ability to even want to explore intimacy, to want those moments in those spaces of pure authenticity, right? Because you are entering everything doing that and now ok do I this do I do that? If I do that then this will happen. Okay I can handle that but I can't handle this. You know, most recently for me, it's just become so basic. Like grocery store is basic. If I gotta analyze whether I go in this grocery store and not be killed or sit in the park with my daughter or go to teach on campus or...it's becoming to the point where it's basic things. I don't believe that we were designed to hold that much, and as a result I think the damage that's being done not just to our psyches but to our souls as we try to navigate a world in this way means that some of those things... I think the reason why I've been kind of given the mission of joy is because I literally have to work every day to hold my joy with my grief, to hold my joy with my rage, to hold my joy with whatever else in tension constantly. And sometimes I assess risk and I choose joy anyway because I gotta break out of this exhausting pattern.
Chichi Agorom
Exhausting is the word, and draining. I had somebody ask me one time on a podcast when I feel my safest and I was like when I'm completely by myself. When there isn't this risk assessment like you said, is it worth it to say this. My life before I moved to LA was in a lot of predominantly white spaces. So even with people who I had relationships with, there is still the constant: okay, you just said that thing, is it worth it for me to bring this up right now because I know the emotional reaction you're going to have to it. I know the tears I will have to sit with. I know the awkwardness and weirdness this is going to bring for the next couple of weeks until you process it and then come back around and say okay, you were right.
Tracey Michae'l
Absolutely. The fragility.
Chichi Agorom
Is it worth it or do I just sit here and pretend that didn't happen even though it's stored now in my body, right? And it's this constant, is it safe enough for me to be as honest and true about who I am, where I am, what I'm feeling, what I need, or do I have to keep those things hidden in order to be okay?
Tracey Michae'l
Yeah, and the hard part of all of that is like you said, you know, you feel the most safe by yourself. But the trick of that is if you're like me and you live with generalized anxiety disorder, then even by yourself, the brain is doing what it does, right? And you don't even feel [pauses and tears up]...you don't even feel as safe there and so it's cyclical, right? You seek out these safe spaces. You realize they don't exist in wherever you are right? So you navigate them the best you can and you exhaust yourself. But then when you go home, you now have all the residual stuff. I'm a somatic person, so the stuff that's living in your body which then activates your central nervous system and so now your brain and your body is out of whack and then you have to take that and go right back into those spaces again.
And I think generation after generation, when we talk about the mothers and the grandmothers and the great grandmothers. That's what's being carried over and over in their bodies, in our bodies. And so yeah I'm gonna take the win if my daughter's a little bit more free, a little bit more vocal than I am. I'm gonna take that because that's hard to come by in light of what I hold in my body, what my mother holds in her body, what my grandmother held in her body and so on and so on.
Chichi Agorom
That was so tender. And I think that in my personal work when I'm working with other people and in these conversations I'm having on the show, I think that that's like the biggest part for me–the ways in which when we show up with our armor and our masks outside in the world...you know how we do one thing is how we do everything and so we often forget or don't realize how we're doing the same thing with ourselves internally. So if the world outside is unsafe and I have to show up a certain way there when I'm by myself, if I don't know what safety feels like in my body if I'm not able to come back to a place internally that says, "you're okay here. Yes, the world might still be shit outside, in this moment I've got you, you're okay," then I'm doing the same. You know if it's like I have to be seen as exceptional, I have to be seen as you know good enough, knowledgeable enough, whatever out there in the world. If I don't make space to say Okay, that's my armor in those spaces then when I'm by myself I still hold myself to those same stories. I still berate myself for not being enough even when there's nobody else around me when in this space I'm actually safe. But my body is so tense and tight and armored that I don't know how to access that feeling, that felt sense of safety even when it's just me and I think that's really where the work is because the world is still going to be doing what it does. And so then am I saying I don't get to experience joy or ease or safety or pleasure or play until the world is the way it should be?
Tracey Michae'l
Right? That is... bingo, because I write in Then They Came For Mine that the work of Black and brown and indigenous folks is to heal whether or not we solve the issue of white supremacy and racism or not. That was the one reason even in Black Joy where resistance is only one piece of the conversation. Black joy as resistance is because if we are only resistance, if our Black joy is only expressed as a form of resistance, that we're still centering the thing that we're resisting right? And I think like yes, that's necessary. That's a part of the journey but it's not the entirety and if anything the bulk of it is our resilience. The bulk of it is our healing, our restoration. Like, that to me is the bulk of what our joy does and what's necessary. And so yeah I think my life's work as far as what I need for myself and then what I amplify and share my work is that identifying what joy feels like in your body is this starting point and then we can talk about ease. We can talk about peace. We can put anything in the place of joy. But for me, it was figuring out what joy felt like in my body because then I can access it and only then when I'm alone like you said. And my inclination, my history, you know the narrative that lives in my body tells me that I have to beat myself up or I'm not enough, or those voices, those parts of me that learn to be safe by performing, right? Or you know all of those kinds of things–I know how to quiet them right? But you know sometimes they loud. You know? And so that is I think my life's work but also the work for me to amplify for my people.
Chichi Agorom
And we are grateful for it. It is very necessary work. In connection to the conversation about intimacy, I know you're familiar with the enneagram and so this is sort of like based from this idea that that we have these masks, these stories about who we believe we have to be to be okay to be loved to be safe to be worthy and those things are necessary. It's like necessary armor in the world that we live in just as we're talking about, and also those things can keep us from the love, the joy, the ease, all of the things that we are so desperately desiring. So for you who do you believe you have to be to receive love, to experience intimacy.
Tracey Michae'l
So first, can I just thank you for writing that book behind you because I honestly, I think I gravitated toward the Enneagram and a lot of these kind of personality typing types of things because I was trying to find something that told me you know who I was and how I navigate it, and your book was the first one that really kind of lived in that intersection for me. None of the other books, you know, grateful for them. Whatever. But your book really helped me see it as armor and helped me to see the different...like how in one instance it is a necessary like you said a necessary way of moving through the world by understanding what the stories in my body have told me and all of those kind of things. But also showing me how locking myself into that typology has also hindered me from being that free authentic free self. And so I'm so so grateful and I tell anybody who is interested in enneagram, I was like listen yes, there's a lot of people, I follow a lot of people online but if you are a Black person and even if you're not but, definitely if you're a Black person or from a marginalized group, you need to read this book. So I just wanted to throw that out there. No, she didn't pay me but I just, I've been so grateful which is the reason why when you reached out I was like yes, please.
Chichi Agorom
Thank you.
Tracey Michae'l
So the question is who do I have to be... So the journey for me has been that I have up until recently, meaning through therapy, believed myself to have to perform for love. I come from a background where I experienced childhood sexual abuse and a lot of the scenarios around that somehow gave 9 and 10, 11 year old Tracey the inclination or the understanding that in order to be protected (safety, right?), in order to be protected, in order to be loved, in order to be cared for, I had to perform. There was nothing innate about me that was lovable. There was nothing innate about me that was worthy of protection.
And so I learned to be the first to raise my hand in Sunday school, to know all the answers, to be the know it all, to be the one in relationships and in romantic relationships that bent over backwards and forward to accommodate, to people please. I learned those things and up until probably my late 30s, early 40s, that was how I moved through the world. I performed to get love. If I wanted to get attention, if I wanted to get affection, if I wanted to get love, I had to be something else, do something grand. That's why I drove my body into the ground by hustling and grinding and doing all the things because I had to be viewed and seen as–and I was very conscious of being seen. Like I needed to be seen, I hunger to be seen, but the ironic thing is that I didn't believe that who I was was good enough even though I wanted to be seen. So that's the story. Today, I am learning still that who I am is enough, that I don't have to be anything other than 47 year old Tracey in New Jersey doing her thing and living her life. That I am worthy and innately enough. And so that has been my work. I can easily slip back into performance mode. You mentioned the NAACP award, and you know I'm excited. It's been wonderful. I've had to hold that in tension with, it's been twenty years and all I've ever wanted was somebody to just say, "you are a good writer." [pauses as tears come]. That you that your work means something in the world. And now I have this little statue here you know, but I I have to be careful because that's a slippery slope for me and I have to remember that I've always been a good writer and I've always been enough. It doesn't matter that folks just now see it, I've been here and I've been working and developing my craft for twenty plus years you know and I've been telling stories for longer. And that is who I need to be, right? Not the NAACP Image Award winner although I ain't mad at it, please all that give me all my things, right? but if that was to go away tomorrow–and that's the language I have to tell the parts of me, right? I have to tell the parts of me that if I never accomplished another thing, if I never write another book, if I never...am I good? Am I Okay? Am I enough? Am I worthy? Am I still a Black woman? Am I still a mother?
You know performing for my worth, that is the old story. My therapist tells me that's one of the stories that are in our graveyard. We have this visualization where there's this graveyard of stories that I tell and every single time I get to a point where I kind of have a breakthrough, we take the story that has been attached and we put it there. She's like, "So you know you got this award. You're getting opportunities. Is it enough now? Are you good? Can we put the story away?" And no, we don't necessarily want to hinge it on this award. But at some point we have to put this...let's bury this story, right? And tell that part of you that has lived this story that she can rest now. So that's I guess my present day, is just the constant tension of believing that I am enough and worthy and that I don't have to do actually anything else to be, and all of the other parts of me that was like "girl, whatever" knows like well what are what we know. Based on what we've experienced that was with the other part other Traceys are saying is like you got to do a whole lot because nobody's gonna pay attention to you. Nobody's gonna protect you if you don't and so I live in that tension every day.
Chichi Agorom
Yeah, and both things can be true. Like you've always been enough. The imagery that I think of is like a cake, how you have all the different elements. You have the flour, you have the sugar, you have all of the things that go into making a cake but you have them in their individual forms. And I think that maybe you and I have similar armor when it comes to the enneagram. And so what I would do historically is look for somebody else to give my bowl of all of the ingredients and say, "if you help me make this cake then it's real, then it's good, then it's something worthy of being seen and enjoyed," right? I was divorced from my own power. I already have within me all the ingredients for this cake and I have the power to make it. So if I put my energy and effort and attention into making my own cake, then every beautiful thing you offer me is a delicious layer of icing on the top. So even if the icing is gone, I still got my cake. You can't ever take my cake away from me because it's mine. You didn't make the cake. But I spent so long thinking everybody else needed to make my cake for me so that it was good enough and worthy enough and it's like, wait. What if I could make it myself? What if I actually have what it takes inside of me to make this delicious cake and that every beautiful thing you give me is an addition to, which means you can't take away the original cake.
Tracey Michae'l
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. That's right.
Chichi Agorom
So it's like that award behind you is icing. It's just confirming what's already been there. It's not the cake. If it were to go away tomorrow, you still have the cake because the cake is a part of you.
Tracey Michae'l
Exactly, and you know I had a friend of mine who I knew in college and in high school who, when the news came out said, "Well we've been knowing that something like this would happen." And I'm like but back in high school ya'll didn't tell me! Y'all didn't inform me of what y'all already knew! I didn't know. And so to hear those kinds of things is like you said, this is just icing on a cake that I have already crafted and made. Oh, I love the cake analogy. I'mma borrow it and I'mma cite you because I cite Black women.
Chichi Agorom
And speaking of citing Black women also makes me think about...and this is I think tied to our conversation around joy. Although I'mma pause and go back because when you explained what your story has always been about performing for love, and then now as 47 year old Tracey you are really leaning into this other story of I am enough already, I don't need to do any work to prove that I am deserving of love. I'm just curious, how does that feel in your body?
Tracey Michae'l
Ah, if I'm honest, it is both exhilarating and also scary. And so I think what people often need to know when you heal, they think that when they get over the hump or they have this breakthrough of this realization that somehow the body's gonna be like yes finally. But your body has been used to-your mind, your soul has been used to a particular, and so when everything stops it's like, wait a minute, what? And also if I'm honest with you, there is a fear of well who am I now because if the person I was that was performing–that's all I've known and all I've been since I was 7 or eight years old, then who am I when I don't have that? Actually I've been talking to my therapist a lot about this and I don't think I've ever said this in any interview or any podcast but I'll say it here. Even in my writing, I started writing because it was my safe place and so I've been talking to my therapist about what happens when I don't need writing to support me in that way. Who am I when the thing that I have defined myself by because it has been the thing that has supported me and helped me become and stay safe...you know, I was writing because I think I couldn't have a voice. Now I have my voice, what do I do with this thing that's been part of my life? And so yeah, that's hard.
Chichi Agorom
Yeah, can I offer something? When I think about our stories, of the armor that we have to navigate the world with, I think of it as more of about our grip on the story than the story itself being bad. So it's like the armor is tightly held, I'm tightfisting around "I have to be this person, I have to be this way, I have to be seen a certain way in order to be okay." We know that some of those things are already true. The way our personalities work is like, oh you were noticed for being smart and competent and good with words? Those things were already naturally there, but then the armor tight fists around that and says, "oh this is what we get love for? Okay, this is all I have to be now. I Can't be anything else." So I don't think it's about getting rid of the thing. It's about loosening our grip on it to allow it to become something that is a part of us, not all of us. Which is really all it should have been all along, but it's about how I hold the thing. Am I tight fisting and saying this is my only safety or this is my only way that I'm okay or can I open my my hands a bit? Because in this stance there is receptivity. I get to experience what else is true. And that could be true too of then the things that I have used over the course of my life. It's like, what's the new relationship that you get to develop with writing from this new place where it's not your only way to express your voice? Maybe more play and joy and pleasure comes comes through that medium without having to give the medium up. It's more just like loosening the tight fist around it.
Tracey Michae'l
That resonates, that resonates so much. What I hear when you say that is like oh no I get to be more expansive. I get to be in my soul a bigger version because yes I have that piece and because I am a Black woman I still may need a little bit of that story you know and that's what my journal is for. Like I have a microaggression at the mall and I come home and journal about it. So it's still necessary but like you said, I don't have to grip it so hard now as I'm doing this healing work. Yes, yes, thank you I receive that.
Chichi Agorom
Yeah, ok, there's ok I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to ask you about joy because you know that's that's where we're working towards in this conversation but we've already talked about a little bit I'm just curious how you describe joy. Whether that's like your working definition of it or what it feels like in your body. How how do you describe joy?
Tracey Michae'l
As I said before I'm a somatic person. So I define joy as a physiological response to pleasure. It is what happens when all those hormones kick in because I am feeling pleasure, I am feeling that undercurrent of something that joy gives me and my body responds in kind. Black joy is all of that that has to live within the context of this melanin and this skin and this history and this narrative and this story, right? So culturally, Black joy looks different than just joy. Because it lives in a different context. So I try to make that distinction–especially when the book came out I got a lot of you're creating division, joy is just joy. And I'm like yeah but it wasn't just joy that was being stolen, right? People weren't just coming after joy in general. They were coming after the joy that lives in this body and so joy in and of itself, I see it as a physiological response to pleasure.
So for me, as I was grieving the loss of my elder cousin and I was doing a lot of DEI work on the campus where I was teaching and being met with a lot of hostility and threats, my body shut down. I was basically assigned to my bed for six months and I had to get real still. And so I've started digging into contemplation and contemplatives and reading a lot. And that stillness also led me back to my therapist chair and my therapist asked me the question: what does joy feel like in your body? And that was a pivotal moment for me, it was like I don't know. I could call up anger, I could call up grief. I knew those were visceral, those were big and so–I write about this in Black joy–happened to be watching an episode of This Is Us and as a storyteller, I'm just blown away and love all the things that are happening. And I just happen to be self-aware I think in the moment where I was like [gasp] this is what joy feels like. Because I felt in my body a warmth and a tingling in my hands and an excitement. And I would just cheese. I would just laugh so hard and my husband would be like, "What's really going on here?" He just backs out the room and be like "okay you going through something here, I'm here if you need me."
But it helped me to locate joy, and I was able to locate it in my body. And what I began to do is if I was raging because another unarmed black person was killed or whatever was going on, I decided to visualize myself watching This Is Us and tap into that feeling. And, you know, it didn't make my rage go away, didn't make my grief go away, but it did rightsize me a little bit. It took the edge off. It was a way of finding ease. And so for me that is and has always been my starting point for what joy is in my body, and then I go about the work of trying to recreate it.
Chichi Agorom
Yeah. I Love that. I was thinking about in preparation for this conversation what joy feels like in my body and distinctly for me, joy has a weightiness in my body that I didn't realize for a long time. I do feel the tingles and warmth in my heart and I tend to be a clapper when I'm experiencing joy. But there's this sense of... maybe you'll get this because I know in the book you write about being a quintessential spa person. After I get a massage like a really good deep tissue massage where they really work out all of the knots that forever exist in my back, when I get up from the table I'm so relaxed and at peace but my body feels heavy. But not in a bad way. You know what I mean? It's like I'm very connected to and I can feel everything. I can feel my arms, I can feel my fingertips. I am aware of my thighs and my calves and my feet on the ground. It's just this sense of full body, like I'm here. I'm here in this moment. It feels very grounded and very embodied. Where sometimes happiness for me is more fleeting, kind of the I'm floating on clouds feeling. But joy in my body is like this steady, sturdy, grounding presence that's like: I'm here. And it shows up different ways, right? Sometimes it's tears. But then I noticed that a lot of the things that recall that experience for me include my body. So if I'm having a terrible day like–without fail if I turn on Afrobeats or particularly like the reggae I listened to as a kid and just dance around for 30 minutes, I'm in a different...my body is immediately connected to that sense. And again it's the things that engage my full body. Because with grief, I feel trapped with this heaviness in my heart. And with anger, all these other things, it's located in a part of my body and I feel like joy gives me access to my full body in a way that's like, we're here in this moment.
Tracey Michae'l
That is utterly beautiful. It really is. I don't even know, now you gon' have me reevaluating joy for myself because I know specifically the feeling that you're talking about after a spa treatment or something like that. There is a weight, there is a groundedness. That is beautiful.
Chichi Agorom
Thank you.
Tracey Michae'l
I love to hear, and I hear a lot that people tell me what joy how joy feels in their body because I talk about it so much, but I love to hear the various ways that people experience joy and I'm like wow, you know? That to me is a Godly creation.
Chichi Agorom
Yeah. Do you have practices that help you connect to and recall joy in your body?
Tracey Michae'l
Yeah I do. I have three year old Tracey who my mother used to push around the grocery store and I used to sing at the top of my lungs, just free, right? You know, you talk about the last moment where I remember being truly free and just [sings] "Jesus loves me!" and everybody came, "Oh, she's so cute, here's a quarter." My mother was like girl you used to rack up at the grocery store. And so I often recall her to remind myself that there was a time. Because I think that sometimes part of holding those stories so tight
is that I somehow believe this is how it's always been. There was a time when I felt less afraid and I was free and so I try to recall that. In terms of an actual practice, one of the things that I do and it sounds really crazy. But I swing.
Chichi Agorom
Oh that does not sound...what?
Tracey Michae'l
So I love to swing. When things were really kind of messed up in my head I would as a young child go to the park and swing, and it was just something about swinging that made me feel like I was flying and I was free. And I didn't need to be in control, right? And I jump out the swing and land. I don't do that now cause I ain't got Megan's knees but jumping out and just feeling like I'm flying, ponytails going everywhere. And so what I'll do–actually day before we went to the park up the street, my husband and my daughter and I. And I got on the swing and I was feeling a way, you know, I'd been in pain and I was just like ugh but I'm gonna walk with y'all. And I went and I got on the swing and I had my husband push me. He's just looking at me smiling cause I'm just laughing and I'm smiling and I'm like weeeee, and I'm like big grown almost fifty year old woman. But I'm like yes! And I felt like again, all permeating through my body I felt joy just present. And so we have a couple of acres and so there's these big tall trees and so I had him do like one of those disc swings and sometimes he'll go out and he'll push me on that and like push me so high in the air. And it really just is the equivalent of any kind of deep breathing I might do. It just sends me to a place of ease and posibility and joy. And it is just everything. So that is the one thing that I try to do for myself and then of course there are smaller things but that has been part of my practice.
Chichi Agorom
I love that so much I just really feel like childlike play is like one of the quickest you know, access points to experiencing joy.
Tracey Michae'l
Oh yeah, for sure. My therapist actually prescribed for me to play with my daughter as part of the joy work.
So she's like the games, she rides her bike go ride your bike with her. You know, get on the scooter, go roller skate and like whatever you need to do to reclaim that part of yourself. Because it is the 10 year old that was experiencing all of that. It is the 11 year old, right? And so if you go and play with her and let her know that as you're playing with her, and this is kind of inner child stuff but let her know that you got her. That we actually are okay. Yeah, and I know you don't feel that 10 year old Tracey, but know that I got you, that we're okay and that I'm gonna drive. You're not gonna drive anymore I'm gonna drive and I'm gonna keep you safe.
Chichi Agorom
Thank you so much for being here. I could talk to you for another hour. I Just appreciate the vulnerability and the honesty with which you showed up and and the way that you invite us into thinking about joy as something that we hold in tension with the realities of existing in this world, in this country, as Black folks. And that reminder that it's not, like in your book you talk about joy as resilience but also as restoration and not just...that's my hope for myself and for all of us is that we remember on a daily basis that we're not just here to resist. My entire body, my entire existence is not just supposed to be in resistance to oppressive systems. That I get to be a full, whole, divine, worthy of love and peace and joy person outside of the resistance or in addition to, like that's not the entirety of who I am. And so I'm grateful for the ways that you invite us into that, in the way that you write and the way that you shared with us today. So thank you for being here.
Tracey Michae'l
Thank you so much for having me. This has been truly a blessing to me. I'mma have to sit and breathe because it's been such a blessing to talk to you and thank you.
Chichi Agorom
Thank you. Any way that our listeners can stay connected with you? Obviously if you have not read Black Joy, please go purchase the book available everywhere. But how else can our listeners find you and anything else that you want them to know?
Tracey Michae'l
Yeah, Black Joy of course. Then They Came For Mine: Healing From the Trauma of Racial Violence which is the second book that came out last year. And I'm at traceymlewis.com. That's sort of the portal for all the things that have to do with me. My newsletter and social media and all that good stuff. So if you go to traceymlewis.com you get to all the things and you can also get to me. You can reach out to me there.
Chichi Agorom
Perfect, and all those links will be in the show notes as always. Thank you again, Tracey.
Tracey Michae'l
Thank you.