We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - 34. UNBOUND with Tarana Burke—Part 1

Episode Date: October 12, 2021

Please join us in the first part of our joyful, energizing, and hopeful conversation with activist, advocate, and our personal hero,Tarana Burke. We talk about: 1. How the spoken and unspoken rules for girls led Tarana to constantly perform the role of “good girl” so that “her secret” would never be revealed.   2. The impossible double bind so many survivors live through: that the protection of our community is what saves us, but the need to protect our community is what silences us. 3. Why Maya Angelou’s work changed everything for Tarana—and how, in her early twenties, she began documenting everything joyful in her life.  4. How dancing with Rob was the one place Tarana could safely explore her sexuality with no demands on her body—and how meaningful that was for her.    CW: We reference sexual abuse and trauma. About Tarana:  For more than 25 years, activist and advocate Tarana J. Burke has worked at the intersection of sexual violence and racial justice. Fueled by commitments to interrupt sexual violence and other systemic inequalities disproportionately impacting marginalized people, particularly Black women and girls, Tarana has created and led various campaigns focused on increasing access to resources and support for impacted communities, including the ‘me too.’ movement, which to date has galvanized millions of survivors and allies around the world. Book: Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement Instagram: @taranajaneen Twitter: @TaranaBurke To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I walked through fire, I came out the other side. Hi everybody, thank you for coming back to We Can Do Hard Things. Today is a very special day. You are going to be happy you joined us for this one because today we are talking with our dear friend and hero, Tarana Burke. You should know that we talk in this episode about sexual abuse and trauma and some heavy things. And so if you need to protect yourself from that, please do. But also please know that this conversation is one of the most joyful, energizing, and hopeful conversations you'll hear. It's like the paradox of the prophets, right?

It's the flip side of carrying pain is this extraordinary gift of holding and spreading joy. And there is nobody who shows us that gorgeous paradox more beautifully than Tarana Burke. So you can do hard things. You can share in this hard, joyful, soul-witnessing, heart-expanding conversation. For more than 25 years, activist and advocate Tarana J. Burke has worked at the intersection of sexual violence and racial justice, fueled by commitments to interrupt sexual violence and other systemic inequalities disproportionately impacting marginalized people, particularly Black women and girls. Tarana has created and led various campaigns focused on increasing access to resources and support for impacted communities,

including the Me Too movement, which to date has galvanized millions of survivors and allies around the world. Tarana is my personal hero. Her new book, Unbound, is out now. And I'll tell you that after this conversation, my sister texted me and she said, does the J in Tarana J. Burke stand for joy? It has to. I said, no, it doesn't.

But in our heart, it does. Let's jump right into our conversation with Tarana Burke. Okay, everybody, welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. I need to tell you first off that your small little loving team of Abby, Amanda, and I have been losing our damn minds about the interview we're doing today. If we do interviews for the next 20 years, there will never be a more important interview. There will never be anyone whose work is more important to us and to the world than the person we're interviewing today.

I know that with every bone in my body. And so that's why we were and are freaking out. That's why I'm wearing a very small tank top because I'm already sweating. There's this idea that what you do is you look at the world and there's this like power in the center. And then if you keep going out, you go towards the people that are the least protected and you stand with those people. Because if you stand with those people, then you, by definition, catch everybody else. Tarana Burke spends her life standing with black girls in America who are some of the least protected people in our culture. And she has been doing it for 25 years

and she does it with grace and power like I've never seen before. And I just think she's the most important effing person on earth. So Tarana Burke, thank you. You can do hard things, Tarana. Man, listen, Glennon, I need to carry you around with me so that you can, I can have a little drum roll and then Glennon comes out. As a matter of fact, I'll just tape it because I know you're busy.

That's what I can do. She can be your high five. I am. She can be your high five. I am. That's what I'm doing. I love it so much. I love it.

That's what I'm doing. I love it so much. I love it. Before we get into this brilliant freaking book, Unbound, which, I mean, we all knew who read it before it came out that it was going to be a huge success. It's already broken into the top number three on the New York Times list, right? Yeah. Oprah's crying over it over and over and over again. People are comparing it to I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which I'm sure is just no big deal for you at all right Tarana good god I'm like guys you know

how are you how are you I am have you um I don't know if you've seen many Spike Lee movies but he has this thing that he does and a lot of his movies where the characters just sort of float like this. I feel like I'm floating in a Spike Lee movie. It's a very strange, I think you described it when we were talking the other day about like almost out of body experience. Like I'm watching it happen, but I'm also over here like, oh, that's happening. It's very strange. It's hard to explain. And then I have these moments where I look over and I see my name really big on the book and I'm like, oh my God, I wrote that. Exactly. Oh my God. You wrote the hell out of it is what you did. You wrote the hell out of it.

Well, let's start at the start. Let's start at the beginning of Unbound and parts of the beginning of your life, which is, you know, sort of where the origin of all of your work begins, which is when you were sexually assaulted as a child. Yeah. Abby, can you read that passage for us? I had no real grasp of the gravity of what was happening, but I knew it wasn't right. It made me feel nasty and dirty and wrong, not realizing that he was wrong and that he was the culprit. I thought we were wrong. And later you say,

the only clear memory I have is running through the litany of rules I had broken. Never go off without permission. Never be out of sight when you're playing outside. Never come upstairs late. Stay away from the grown-up boys. Never ever let anyone touch your private parts. What I know for certain was that I was in big trouble. I hardly ever broke rules and certainly never this many. You later write, I began to put away the memory of what the boy had done to me because of what I thought it said about me. My inside strained to accommodate this new information, but they couldn't. And so they

split. In the place I'd tucked away from Mr. West and my mom was the real me, the bad me. On the outside, I would pretend I was good. Now, Tarana, I need to know, what was that like as a kid for you to be abused and then to believe it was your own fault? I try my best to explain it in those kind of details because I'm a worrier by nature, right? Like my, I'm always thinking ahead, something good happens, I'm thinking about the next thing, what can go wrong, right? That's been since I was a kid. And it probably stems from this. I just felt like I was constantly, it's like baggage. I was constantly living with a secret and I was so, so, so afraid that somebody would find out. And on a small scale would be like, if you got like a stain on your dress or, you know, a mark on the wall or something like that, that you were trying to hide. I've done that, too, where I've like rearranged the furniture in my room so my mom couldn't see that I got a big skid mark on the wall.

And then you're like afraid every time she walks past that part of the room, like I'm going to get caught. That's that's what it felt like. It felt like I was constantly in fear of being found out. And so it made me anxious and it made me learn to perform really, really early. Right. I could, I could, and who knows where I pulled that from, but I just learned to, I showed up and I was just everything I thought good girls would be like. And the funny thing is, is it's who I was, right. It's who I was prior to this. And I was like, I'm just going to pretend to be that person again. Cause apparently I must be this bad person, but I'm gonna keep pretending to be who I had already

been being. If that makes sense. Right. It was just the fear of constantly being found out until, you know, I found some coping mechanisms. Even that wasn't really helpful, but. What do you think? How do we, because so much of what I read about in that part is the rules about you never doing things, the rules about girls never doing things leads them little girls to when they get abused thinking, oh, it's because I broke the rules. It's not because they did something wrong. How do you switch that? That is, I, you know, I used to talk to parents about this when I did these workshops that I understand particularly communities of color, but I think all little girls have this. It's a, it's a thing that we do to look to children, particularly little girl children,

that adults don't realize you're setting the child that we take rules seriously as kids. You know, you don't run with scissors. You don't cuss. You don't you know, like those things are reinforced over and over and over again. And we also know as children, there are the spoken rules and then there are the unspoken rules. So you may have been told to say please and thank you and not to run with scissors. But there's something about that room that, you know, you don't go in that room when the door is closed. about that room that you know you don't go in that room when the door is closed, right? Nobody's ever said that's a rule, but there are messages that we get from adults that kind of sit with us as children. And so I had that little litany of rules, but I also had, there were other sort of unspoken messages that you got. And what adults neglect to do is they neglect to say if one of these rules are broken, meaning those like don't let anybody touch your private parts or don't go off with boys, older people or anything like that, they neglect to say, but if that rule is broken, it's not your fault.

If somebody breaks that rule, it's always the adult's fault. Yes. Right? You get these messages that you get ingrained in your brain that says, Oh God, I did something wrong. I shouldn't, nobody told me about who else was wrong in that equation. And so I think that's the problem with a lot of what happens to a lot of little girls that they, girls are just riddled with rules and, and, and protocols and priests, you know, I can think of so many times when I've been told or

I've seen other little girls be told who are fully dressed, go put some clothes on because a man comes in the house, right? I could have a short set on, a tank top. I'm a child, right? With a short set and a tank top on. And it's like, I'll never forget, this is a little bit of a hood story, but I'll never forget going to visit my uncle in jail when I was a preteen, I must've been like, I don't know, maybe nine or 10 or something like that. And we got to the prison and they made my grandfather turn around. I couldn't go in. I'm a kid, a little kid, but because I had a spaghetti strap tank top on, they said it would be a distraction to the other prisoners, the other inmates. Yeah. And I, and I like, you just get those kinds of messages

from different places, right? The school dress codes, you know, all of these different places, girls get these messages that we are the guardians of our bodies. And if somebody is attracted to us, it's our fault because we didn't do enough to protect ourselves. That's right. So that's where that stuff came from. And that they can't control themselves. Yeah. The course of true love doesn't always run smooth.

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I thought about this when I was reading. You know, there are so many parts where if things had been different, you may, in a certain situation, you may have been able to share the truth. But the way things were set up for you and for so many girls, there's nowhere safe to share. You know, I was thinking about your parents, the amazing Mr. West, who just, oh my God, I'm going to wait till you guys read this man.

But there was one moment where you were walking down the stairs of a, of a building and you ran into a woman that you. Miss Davis. Miss Davis, right. Who you loved. And you had a moment where you thought about telling her something that had just happened to you with the boy. And she said,

these little boys can't keep their damn hands to themselves. My baby, you got a daddy who will go to his grave to protect you. So be careful because we need big Wes around here. And, and that, I mean, I think that is, that was a very important part for me to include because it was important for when it happened to me, cause it just brought me, and I was 12 when it happened to me because it just brought me and I was 12 when it happened it brought me back to being seven and it's like right that's what I knew

that's what I knew I do not want anything to happen to Mr. West I'm just gonna I'm gonna leave this alone and I think a lot in a lot of instances there are people who experience some sexual violence and don't tell because they don't have a support system. They think they won't be believed. That happens a lot. I actually had the opposite problem where I did have a support system. There was no question that Mr. West and my mother or my grandfather, whoever would believe me, it was just what would happen if they did, which brings me to another thing that adults do and we don't realize it. You see this every year, it drives me crazy. During prom, you have the girls who get ready for

prom and the father or brother or uncle with the shotgun or the big bullying pose and saying, you do something to this girl and I'm going to kill you, whatever. A lot of us grew up with parents who said things like, who did say, if somebody touches you, it's not your fault. But the way they said it was, if somebody touches you, I'll kill them. Something happens to you, you come to me, I will bury them. I heard that over and over again. I'm a mother. I don't play about my child. I've done it, right? What that did was now make me responsible for them. Yes. Yes. Not only am I responsible for my own protection of my body, but now I'm responsible for the adults.

Oh, my God. I want to tell because I know something is not right here. But if I do, my dad is going to jail and it will be my fault for something that I did. I broke the rules and I made my father go to jail. And it just be my fault for something that I did. I broke the rules and I made my father go to jail. And it just, this is me at seven. These are the, like, we underestimate how human children are. We are watching all these things. You're taking it in like a sponge. We are a little human. Those are little human beings. And one of the things I knew because I did live in a, in an urban community that was over-policed and under-resourced is that I knew what consequences were. I knew what jail was.

I knew what the police did and how they operated in our community. And I knew it was never good news when they came around. So I didn't want to, no, not for me. no, not for me. So it's just, it's just, we have to be super careful about the messages that we give that we pass on to our kids because little kids are little worry warts. They don't want mommy and daddy to be hurt. You know, just, it's just, it gets complicated for us, for us, meaning children as my small Toronto self. And that was really your reality. I mean, it wasn't a perception of yours. It was a real responsibility that you bore because one of the things you do so beautifully in this book over and over is that you portray impeccably these kind of double binds

that you're in. And I feel like so many girls and women go through this, particularly black and brown girls and most suffocatingly black and brown survivors, is that it's like the protection provided by your community is what saves you. But the need to protect your community is what silences you. Exactly. At the very same time. At the very same time. It's a, it's a, ooh, that's a very succinct way to put that. And it's exactly what it is. And you are just caught in the middle. We did a PSA once for, I was just talking about this last night, but this, this Honduran

woman was talking about being assaulted by her uncle when she was 16 and didn't say anything because the uncle was the citizen and her family was undocumented. And she did not want to involve any law enforcement in their lives. She didn't want any police to come around at all because it put her whole family at risk. And the uncle, knowing that he had the privilege of being a citizen and could change their lives anytime, held that over their head. And so a lot of times in Black and brown communities, there is a whole set of other things that are being thought of on top of the shame that you're carrying, on top of the guilt and all of the things that come almost automatically when you experience sexual violence. It's compounded. And then, Tarana, for that message,

especially because you work so closely, you work with little Black girls. But for a little girl to hear that from Miss Davis, so her message was the little boys can't control themselves. Your dad won't be able to control himself. So you have to control your truth. So you, you at this young age is all on you, you know? And, and I took that very seriously.

Okay. But our little, our little bodies only can hold and deal with so much. And so that starts coming out in other ways because it's got to. Yeah. And then we have the church and I can will never, ever stop laughing about reading about little Tarana in Catholic church because, you know, we have a different background. I was a little white girl, but I also lied in confessional over and over again or made up sins to cover up my true badness. up sins to cover up my true badness. Tarana says, I would go to confession regularly to confess a cover sin, lying, swearing, or something else instead of what I really held inside. I'd quietly ask God for forgiveness for lying, and then I'd redeem myself by doubling whatever

penance the priest gave. But what I need to tell you, my favorite part is that when little Tarana would go outside to say her double penance, she would only say the first couple because you have to understand that when you're a Catholic kid, other kids are watching. That's right. And so if you're sitting your ass in the pew for a long time, they will know you did something really bad. Tarana's doing three rosaries. We know what's up. Because in school, in Catholic school, most kids, I loved confession, but most kids want to just get through it. So you come out and you do your rosary, your 10 Hail Marys, four fathers, whatever.

In my mind, I had to do like 20 of them. So I'm just like, our father who are in heaven everybody look at me and then and then I'd be like in the lunch line like here my full of grace love it was it's a it's a it's such a bananas way to live though I'd be like confession time I liked it but also it was so weird because it would take me like two days to get through what I thought I had to. Sometimes I'd write it. You know how you have to write in detention, I will not talk, I will not. I would just like write out Hail Mary's or Our Father or the Apostles Creed or whatever.

Because I'm just like, I got to get through it. You remember, right? I was like, in choosing to do wrong and failing to do good. And then, and then also I was like, I was like one of the pips when we got to that part, I'd be like, I have sinned against you and your church. You're like, you don't even know how bad I have sinned against you and your church. And it would be like, whew, I get to say that out loud, right? I was, I was, I talk about in the book, I mean, Catholicism both saved and ruined me in some ways, you know, but in that moment, I do, I, I really wanted to talk about that because

it was such a saving grace for me because that speaking about what you're saying that duality that I was holding felt like it's like putting on a fur coat and jumping in a pool you know and you get it's just this heaviness that you always have and so when I what I had with confession in this relationship that I wanted with God was, I know you know who I am. I'm just going to keep apologizing. Like, I know that you are merciful and I know that you are generous with your mercy and abundant in grace. And I just, can I please, please, please, if I keep praying, will you just keep giving it to me? That was, it was a real savior for me as a child, because if not, then I would have been buried in just the guilt and the shame with no release for it. So there's a lot of criticism about Catholicism, I know, but that, I don't know that I would have made it through that time period without it.

So there was something liberating for you. Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of Catholicism, it was while you were preparing for the sacrament of confirmation, your grandfather prioritized passing down to you the racial theory and black liberation texts, which seemed to me as I was reading your story,

a sacred sacrament sort of in your life as well. Up its own. Yes, exactly. It allowed you, it equipped you that even you say, even when you were a young girl, you could smell white supremacy from a mile away because of that framework that you had been reading and internalizing. How vital was having that consciousness that was so subversive to everything that you were being told in all the schools and all around you to the person that you'd become and the work that you would do?

I think it was critical. And I think both of those things were critical. I'm so glad that I was grounded in my faith really, really early. I've really, really enjoyed being Catholic. Like I did. I just, all the things I did my, you know, I was baptized at like seven or eight months, but I did my communion and my confirmation and I did all the things. But I did my communion and my confirmation and I did all the things. But I'm also really glad that my grandfather came in at the point that he did because because of how much I enjoyed being Catholic and because of the release that I got from confession and that kind of thing. I probably was very close to slipping into being obsessive probably, right? And so what bringing this consciousness did was help me balance some of that out

and see a broader view of the world. So it's not, I don't, this is not the only thing that's liberating. It began to feel liberating to me to understand who I was in the world and like have something else to think about besides my sins right because the flip side of the liberation is that Catholicism makes you think about your sins all the time right just all the time you sin sin sinny sin sinner and just you

know and everything's a mistake I would I would like I don't know if y'all do this but you know how you walk in front of a church you're supposed to make the sign of the cross I have ran back a block oh okay yes we do to be like wait did I yeah and so now I'm in front of the church just doing this like I mean just stuff like that I know and then you're like wait is this faith or superstition because it feels a lot like superstition. I'm like, why did Jesus kick over the tables in the temple for me to run a block back to make sure that I make the sign of the cross? Just in case. But also, right. But also, I'm going to do it just in case.

That's right. case. And so I think that I would have gone down a rabbit hole with Catholicism if I didn't have this thing to interrupt that and balance it out. The grounding doesn't go anywhere. And it gave me, being Catholic early gave me, set me up for my faith later, right? I'm Christian, but I don't identify, I'm not Catholic anymore. I was able to pull the things that I needed, the good stuff and figure that out later on. But at the point my grandfather came in and I started understanding, it helped me shift and like sort of focus on something else. It's a bigger thing in life than like sins I might've, you know, done and things like that. And so I'm really glad. And I don't, he didn't know what was going on, like in behind closed doors,

but I think he was looking at me like, this ain't, no. And I found out just as a small tidbit, I found out later. So my grandfather, I found out later, so I put in a book that he went to a he was in a Catholic boys home when he was growing up. And so he had a really sour view of Catholicism, but he believed in letting his children choose their own path. And my mother chose to be Catholic, much to his chagrin. And then I did. So I guess he was like, I'm about to put it, I have to intervene somewhere. Well, thank God he did though, Tarana,

because you just kind of, you took what you wanted from the Catholicism, but his framework became part of your faith too, right? I mean, I feel like your faith is so social justice, so, you know, it's like those two got smushed together and you left behind what you didn't want of Catholicism and it became who you are now. It's so beautiful. Somebody said this to me, but it made so much sense. And now I'm sorry if that person's listening that I'm not crediting you. But somebody said something to me about, do I think that my love of confession, do I ever think about how my love of confession ties to the movement and the work and how that is sort of grounded in confession to some degree? And I said, oh, that's really profound. I had not thought of it, but I've been thinking about it ever since they said it.

And it does make sense that that nugget stayed. There is something liberating about getting that, getting truth out of your body, right? Getting it out of your system and confessing not to the world, even if it's to God, if it's to yourself, it's, if it's in, I tell people, if it's in your journal, whatever, there is something, the part that felt liberating. I also feel like I held onto that and it helped me be a truth teller. Like I really do enjoy telling the truth. You just enjoy it.

It's really, really feels good. You know? But when you say that, it reminds me of the first time you sat in front of the mirror and you said it was after heaven, right? And you said said I was raped. They molested me. I didn't want it. I didn't like it. I'm sorry. Confessional there. Mm hmm. And then you said it was out of my body for the first time and I was still alive. I was still standing with my truth on the outside. my truth on the outside. Yeah. I mean, I think we all know this feeling of a thing that we're holding, it could be anything, but the thing that we're holding, if you articulate it, it makes it true. And we're more scared of that thing being true out in the

world. And I had, that thing had balled up inside of my body, and, and, you know, I talk about it being in the pit of my stomach for so long that I was just scared, like, it would come up, and I could think it, but I couldn't say it, like, out loud, and I think some part of me thought, if I say this out loud, I'll die, right, it's over, I'm just, this or I don't I don't know just whatever dramatic thing might happen and I forced myself to say it to look at myself when I said it and I was like oh look at me I'm still here and then you know I have that other thing that happens later on in the book um which Oprah calls you had a dark night of the soul. Yes.

Yes. That's what I said. Yes. Did y'all say the same thing? Absolutely. I had to go look. I've heard that term so many times in my life, but I had to actually go look it up when she said it.

And I was like, oh, oh yeah. Okay. That seems dead on. It's incredible. What an incredible part of the book. I loved the way you talked about yourself as a teenager so much, Tarana. I thought the parts where you really talked about what it was like to be a teenage girl, kind of protecting your hurt with this ferocity, right, was so amazing.

And those are some of my favorite parts but after sort of a few incredible passages about your teenage years and about some violence and fighting um that happened you say it's the trap in which so many black girls find themselves either performing our pain or performing through it. I couldn't quite, this is a little bit later, I couldn't quite grasp the shame, grief, vulnerability, and emotional pain. I didn't understand anxiety, so I had no way to explain the fluttering in my chest and rock-hard feeling in my stomach that paralyzed me at any given moment. I didn't understand why I had to keep these things to myself. I just knew I had to. I had to keep performing. And there was no air for me, a dark-skinned black girl who had been damaged and used. There was no air for me to be anything but what they said I was. Girls like me didn't get the air to cry, the air to release our shame, the air to say,

I don't want to fight you. I don't even know why I'm so mad at you, except for that you look like me and who the fuck am I? We didn't get the air to be reborn and handled warmly. so that last line is from into zaki shange book for color girls um and and i wanted to kind of bring it full circle because i'm i'm talking about that line i used to say there was no air and that's the best way i can think about when I would see other people, when I would see other girls who were prettier than me or more popular, or just what from, from my estimation seemed free. It just felt like the air was rare for them. Right. It was just, they had, they like, they breathe a different air.

They lived a different life and girls like me just didn't have it. We couldn't. And it also spoke to like this feeling, I get it, I'm having it, not having it now, but recalling it now, like this feeling of just not being able to have a full breath before it. It was always something,

whether it was a thought or an action or a thing, there was just always something and it didn't allow you to breathe in and breathe out and just like live and anger and rage felt really really good after performing good girl for so long. It just felt like, fuck it. I'm just going, I'm just going, I don't know what to do next. And I think this is how we cycle through coping mechanisms, right? I tried the good girl thing. It's not, it's not helping. I still feel this way. Let me try this other thing, you know? other thing, you know? And, and I was fortunate because that could have been, I tried drugs, you know, to cope and, or I tried alcohol and let me try drugs now. Let me try that, you know, like there's so people don't realize what brings people to those coping mechanisms. We just look at the end result. So, oh, that's an alcoholic. That's a drug addict.

That's a bad girl. So I'm a teenager who will bite your head off, who will fight anybody who steps to me and says anything crazy, but not a single adult says, what happened to your heart? How did you get here? I'm still a child, but we don't get seen as children. You just go from whatever small person to this now adult, mini adult. And I'm only held accountable for the consequences of the things that happened to me, but not the root cause of them. Nobody is digging into the root cause. And so you get what you get. And I was giving out, I was dishing it out as quick, early and often. For years, you thought that the assault on you wasn't something that someone did to you or even something that happened to anyone else. And then one day you snuck Maya Angelou's I Know Where the Caged Bird Sings from your mother's collection. And you wrote, when I read about what happened to a young Maya Angelou, I was able to read her as

innocent in a way I didn't allow for myself. Maya was decent and nice, and it seemed egregious that God would have allowed something so horrible to happen to her. It was the first time I ever realized a little girl like her could have gone through what I went through. I finished the book and kept what was now in my mind or secret. To my 12-year-old self, Maya Angelou was just another name on my mother's bookshelf. She wasn't Dr. Maya Angelou, the esteemed poet, author, activist, and all-around legend. She was a lady who wrote a book that shared my secrets. She was my confidant. I no longer felt alone. I no longer felt alone.

Yeah, that was, it's like having a, what do they call those? Like your ghost pal or your secret pal. What do kids call that? Imaginary friend. Yeah, it's like, it's like having that. And I don't know, I don't know that I didn't think it only happened to just the two of us, but I was just, I didn't know anybody in real life. Nobody ever talked about it or said anything like that until I was much older. So it was like, Oh my God, this is, but it was the feeling that she talked about. Right.

And it's always the, it's not the details ever. It's the feeling like it was her fault and not wanting to speak words because what happened to him now was her fault. And all of those things kind of sat with me and I was like, this is amazing. I have a friend, even though my friend is in the book, but I mean, I thought, you know, I read Judy Blume, you know, and Tiger Eyes and I thought those are my friends too. So I was just that kind of kid.

Same. Same. And then she became not so imaginary friend when you first, when you first heard her, but that was so amazing to Ronna because I just, that part just, I mean, just knowing you, right. Because you have this heartbreak and pain that started your work in your life. And then you have this ferocious joy that is why the whole world falls in love with you. And so to see you experience Maya Angelou first as somebody who was hurt like you, and then to read in your book later, you experiencing her in high school, right? Your high school honors English class where your white man teacher put on Dr. Maya Angelou reading Phenomenal Woman, performing it. And you had the most beautiful experience where you saw her power and her joy and you say,

as I sat tuning out my teacher, my mind returned to what I had just seen. How had a woman who had been through what I'd been through been able to claim such confidence and pride? While I was finding newfound comfort and anger, she was smiling. While I was lashing out, she was laughing and reciting beautiful poetry. And then later you say, more than anything, I contemplated the question that eventually became central to my healing. If what I saw was real, how could a body that holds that kind of pain also hold joy? body that holds that kind of pain also hold joy. Can you talk to us about what that meant to see her in all her glory, knowing that she was your friend who experienced what you experienced? It was, oh, it was life-changing, but it was also like, wait a minute. You know, you know, sometimes you have like little kid notions in your mind and then you find out the adult real thing.

And it was it was that moment of like, I thought, OK, I thought that I thought I thought that what we were doing, Maya, Angelo and I, we were faking it until we make it. Essentially, I didn't have that terminology, but it was like like, sure, she writes books. I'd never seen her. I'd never saw her on television, anything. I'd only read her books. So in my mind, it's just like, I don't know what I thought in my mind, but I didn't think that. And when I saw, and she had this eloquent way that she spoke and was so confident and it all felt real. And I was like, oh my God, I am not real. I am not a real person. I am, I am a shell of a person. Like I, everything I'm doing is performance. I'm not, I don't even know. I mean, this, I don't know that I had this deep of a thought like this at 15, but essentially I am just piecing together what I can to live.

I'm just trying to survive. Right. I'm just trying to get through these days and hope nobody finds out who I am. But she's like, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Look at all of this joy. My name is Maya Angelou. I was just like, yo, how do you do that? And what I know, what I knew for myself was that this person, this body that I had was constantly felt like it was in pain. When I calmed down, when I wasn't running track or in the honors bowl or doing something to impress some people in my quiet time, I felt pain all the time. I felt sadness, a really, really deep sadness. And so I was searching for that sadness in her face. I was searching for it in her voice, in her something. I thought I'll be able to see it. And I just couldn't. And I'm like, okay, does the sadness go away? Does the pain go away?

Does the joy and pain? I have the journal at the top. I just wrote joy, pain question. Like this is, how does this work? But what it did because, and I thank God for curiosity because I was also just very curious, honestly. Like there was the, I want to feel better thing, but it was also like, yo, how does this work?

Let me, maybe I've been thinking about this wrong. And I just became very curious about the coexistence of those two things. And I would do, I mean, do I write about the joy journal in my book? I so crazy that I don't even remember it. I don't write about it. So I'm the person who about the joy journal in my book? That's so crazy that I don't even remember it. I don't write about it. So I'm the person who kept the joy journal at some point in my life when I was in my early 20s because I wanted to document what joy looked like in my life.

Like, I thought it was unfair. This is the part of me that's, like, wired, like I said,, to respond to injustice. I was on this like quest, right? This was around the time of like Deepak Chopra and, you know, what's the other guy's name? Eckhart Tolle. Oh yeah. and all of the, the, the, the, the help. Remember the help? Not the help. The secret. The secret. The secret. The help. You're trying to manifest shit. Right. Right. Yeah. Right. I was, I was like, okay, I don't know. I didn't have quite the language yet, but what I did have was a job that didn't pay me shit and a child to take care of by myself. And the secret costs like

$119. I will never forget watching that whole infomercial and getting to the end and being like seven CDs for a hundred. I can't afford that. That was the secret. That was the secret. Exactly. You know, you can, you can buy the book. You know, I just, everything, every message that I got during that time, and I'm not trying to disparage any of those people or things, but for me as a single woman, single mother, every message I got said, joy is right out there somewhere. You can just get your coins together to put, you know, to get it. It's just right beyond your reach. It was always outside of you. And I was like, so what about people who can't afford it? We just don't, we just don't your reach. It was always outside of you. And I was like, so what about

people who can't afford it? We just don't get joy? I was like, that can't be right. There's no way that God set us up in a world that joy is for the rich or the privileged. I just don't believe it. It ran up against what I believe, speaking of what you were saying, Amanda, about how those things mesh together. It ran up against everything I believed about who we are and what we deserve and how power and privilege work. I bought a book from the dollar store. Go to the goddamn dollar store and buy a journal. Go in your house and dust off one of them 17,000 journals that you got that you fall in love with because it's pretty and that you don't use. And you fill out the first page. use and you fill out the first page right you fill out the first page right rip out that first page or fold it in fold it to the back and write joy

at the top and you got a joy journal but my point is saying that is that I am the person who wrote down I wanted to document what felt like joy because I felt like if I can quantify it, then I don't have to afford what they're selling. Cause I got it. And so the book had things in it, like I've told this story before, but I can't believe I didn't put this in the book. I just, whatever next book. But, but I used to pick up Kaya from daycare and you know I wear my bracelets everybody just like my signal I've always wanted my mother gave them to me and so Kaya would hear my bracelets as soon as I hit the door in the daycare and Kaya every single day when I got over work and I get Kaya say, my mommy's here. And then you hear, you know, running down a thing and I'd be waiting at the end of the hallway and Kaya would, and I would write that down because that was my joy.

That was the most joyous part of the day. I felt, even if it was for 10 minutes, I felt so good. I felt nothing bad. Right. It was stuff like I would get on the phone with my girls and I would laugh until my stomach hurts. And I had tears coming out my eyes. You can't pay for that. It didn't stop me from being triggered. It didn't stop me from feeling sad, but it existed in the same body. And once I started to document that and I was like, okay, And once I started to document that and I was like, OK, you can't sell me shit no more. I'm not buying anything. I might buy your book and read it, but I'm not buying them CDs. I'm not taking saving up my money to go and I'm not doing that.

I can't afford to. And it almost became like a part of my ministry to talk to my personal sort of ministry, not like religious, to spread that as a word, like, yo, we have joy. We have to name it. The problem is that other people tell us what we find joyous doesn't qualify. Right? So a bunch of Black girls sitting together laughing, or white girls, even if you, I'm sure you all, because I can tell from your personalities, have had people tell you y'all are too loud. You laugh too loud. Y'all are too silly. You know, women are always too something. You get a group of women together

laughing, cackling, and somebody's like, oh my God, it's so unladylike. You know, you get a group of Black girls together talking, why are you all so loud? It's so ghetto. I like to be fucking loud and it brings me joy. Yes. I like to be fucking loud and it brings me joy. Yes.

Yes. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm getting off topic. None of that is off topic. No.

That's the most on topic thing. It's the most on topic thing. The fact that you can have both of those exist in your body at the same time and you don't have to be all pain and you don't have to be all joy all the time. No. No. It's not possible. No, it's not even possible. You know, it's just, it's just, yeah.

But it started for me with that Maya Angelou clip and watching it and that question. And it took me a long time to get to like answer that question, but it planted a seed of like, huh, something else is possible. Yeah. Then you went off to college and sister is dying to talk to you about this one part that you wrote, this one sentence that you wrote, which maybe we've talked about for 13 hours. There's no way you thought about this sentence as much as we've thought about this sentence. Well, it goes back to what you were just talking about in the same body. Okay. about it in the same body. Okay. So this is, I have to, to me, it might just seem like a, you know, sexy as hell, little interlude, but to me it blew my mind. Okay. So you're talking about

you and Rob. They never, oh, oh, is right. Oh, they never played the music for long, maybe two songs, but whenever they did, we found each other and let our whatever pen up sexual energy we were both trying to ignore. We danced like no one else was there, like it was a mating ritual and we had fire in our bellies. I loved every minute of it. It was the first time in my life that I got to safely explore my sexuality with no demands on my body. Can you talk about this? Because I feel like it's another double bind that you talk about, which is that for so many survivors, it's the very same bodies that are the portals through which we access this pleasure and sexuality are the same portals that were poisoned by our assaulters with shame and

hypervigilance. And it's like being told to run and have fun on a playground full of landmines. How does that, how do we explore safely in the midst of trauma? Like when do women ever get to do that? Just how? Let me say this first, this part, first for you, the first person in the thousands of interviews I've done to bring up this part and to bring up Rob, whose name is actually Sio, because I had to change it in the book. I'm bringing him up because he just recently passed away. Oh, I know. And it is, I'm still really raw behind it because he was one of my first loves.

And we remained friends up until his death. He died in June, on June 1st. And he will never know. I wanted him to read this, right? I really wanted, I wish I had given him, anyway, it doesn't matter. But I really wanted him to read this because I wanted him to know how important that relationship had been to me and had remained for so long. He and I, you know, later on we dated and actually for real dated, but he was my friend. He was so respectful and everything I knew about relationships, including the boyfriend that I had at the time, there was always pressure and it was always tenuous, right? Either there was the forced situation, which obviously was

terrible, but even after that, and I think this also happens to a lot of survivors, is what you're talking about. You experience some kind of sexual assault in college, in high school, before then in elementary school. And then you're trying to live your life the way people say you're supposed to live. You're supposed to get a boyfriend. You're supposed to date. You're supposed to do whatever. And there's the regular world of like, maybe not rapists, but harassers and people who think it's okay to touch you without consent

or these really like situations that we get entangled in where consent is on a sliding scale, it seems like. And I had all of these other things that had happened too. It was so important to me. And I think people listening will understand this. I never stopped. I developed like a normal child, right? I went through puberty, which meant I had the hormones, which meant I felt sexual and I wanted to explore. I could not explore in the way that everybody else could. I actually thought, and this was part of my downfall. I thought the first person I have sex with is who I got to be with for the rest of my life.

This is it. And it happened to be my daughter's father. So that's it. I'm stuck with him. If he turns out to be a bad guy, I just have to put up with it because you put out, you know, so that's some of the Catholic stuff, but it's also some of the, like, this is the only way you can be a good girl. You're already bad enough, right? Don't be out here. Now you're going to be a whore. I mean,

that's just really, do you want God to literally come down himself and just tap you on the shoulder? Right. And so I thought that's the way to deal with it. And then I met him and I'm Caribbean. We love, I love reggae. I love to move my body. I love to, you know, to be that way. And I would do it at home in my room, you know, you'd be, I'd be practicing and doing all of that. But with an actual boy, I couldn't go to the places that he allowed me to go to those places. We'd finish dancing and that would be it. And it was, it was just like, and then there was a part of me that was kind of like, don't I owe you something? And then there was a part of me that was kind of like, don't I owe you something? You know, it's the other message that girls are given and what all the trauma does to you as well. I'd be like, I thought you were supposed to know. You know, I had to cycle through that.

We went through our whole freshman year. I mean, I had a boyfriend at home, even though he was cheating on me and having a baby by somebody else. But I was trying to be loyal. And yeah, we went through our whole freshman year. We did not kiss. We did not date. We didn't touch outside of the way that we danced on that dance floor. And it allowed me to understand my body as a sexual being, as a person who can feel pleasure. And that pleasure does not have to be

balanced with trauma of some sort. And it was just another form of liberation. It was so beautiful. And that's how he was. Even when we dated, he was super sensitive to the things that had happened and super sensitive to my needs in those ways. He's just a, he's a wonderful person. It just, you know, it didn't work out that we would be together, but

he was still a wonderful person. I'm sorry that you lost him. May he rest. Yeah. Okay. Listeners, this is going to be sad. Okay. We're going to have to pause this beautiful conversation right there, but we're going to pick it back up on Thursday. So in the meantime, pick up Tarana's book, Unbound. It's out now, and the book needs to be in your hands and on your shelves. And then come back here in two days and we'll hear more from Tarana. You're not going to want to miss part two of our conversation. In the meantime, until then, when life gets hard, we're going to remember that we can do hard things. And we're also going to remember to rest. Okay. See you soon.

I give you Tish Melton and Brandi Carlile. Walked through fire, I came out the other side I chased desire, I made sure I got what's mine And I continue to believe that I'm the one for me. And because I'm mine, I walk the line. Because we're adventurers and heartbreaks on a map. A final destination we lack We've stopped asking directions To places they've never been

And to be loved we need to be known We'll finally find our way back home And through the joy and pain That our lives bring We can do our way I hit rock bottom, it felt like a brand new start I'm not the problem, sometimes things fall apart And I continue to believe The best people are free

And it took some time But I'm finally fine Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on a map A final destination we lack We've stopped asking directions To places they've never been And to be loved we need to be known We'll finally find our way back home And through the joy and pain that our lives bring, we can do hard things.

We might get lost, but we're okay with that We've stopped asking directions To places they've never been. And to be loved, we need to be known. We'll finally find our way back home. And through the joy and pain that our lives bring, we can do hard things. Yeah, we can do hard things. Yeah, we can do hard things. We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios.

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