We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - 35. UNBOUND with Tarana Burke—Part 2

Episode Date: October 14, 2021

We’re continuing our conversation with activist, founder of the me too movement, and our personal friend and hero,Tarana Burke. We talk about:  1. What Tarana would say to her twelve-year-old self that might have changed the trajectory of her life. 2. Tarana’s life-shifting realization that her relationship struggles with her mother were not due to her mother’s lack of desire to love her well, but her lack of capacity—and how Tarana built more capacity for her own child.    3. The one thing Tarana said to her child that changed everything—and why Amanda now says the same thing to her children.   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

Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. We are not going to waste any time today. We're going to jump right back in with our friend and author of Unbound, Tarana Burke. We ended Tuesday's episode with an emotional story about Rob, about how Tarana found dance as a place to safely explore her sexuality with no demands on her body. And we also talk about the double bind that so many survivors of sexual trauma have, which is that these same bodies, which are the portals through which we access our pleasure and sexuality, are the same bodies that have been poisoned by assaulters with shame. So let's pick back up.

Let's hear from Tarana. Tarana, have you heard from other survivors who find dancing to be a place where they can feel free and not feel afraid? Is that a thing? It is. Kaya, my kid, they write about it in the You Are Your Best Thing, the book I did with Brene. Their essay. Oh, that's right.

Yeah. Oh, my God. They talk about discovering pole dancing. Yes. Which was a whole thing for mama. I invested a lot of time and money in being a dance mom. We were, you know, ballet, tap, jazz, modern African. Where did polls come from?

They added their own category that you didn't have it in the original plan. And I was I went through I cycled through all the emotions that a lot of parents would first like what? through I cycled through all the emotions that a lot of parents would at first like what but I remember we were in I had to go to Barcelona for an event uh in 2018 or 2019 and just playing around a kaya is an amazing dance generally just beautiful dance I thought that's the direction we were going to Alvin Ailey, but apparently not. And they, they were playing around and they jumped up on a pole in, in Spain. And I watched them contort on this pole. And I was like, oh, I get it now. This is a talent. This is a skill skill unlike anything that most of us have. And I had to relent.

And they said, you know, I just feel it makes me feel powerful. It makes me feel alive and connected to my own body. And I said, spin around, baby. Do what you got to do. God, they know. Tarana, do they know how to get us or what? They do. It just makes me feel alive. Yes, yes, they know. Tarana, do they know how to get us or what? They do. It just makes me feel alive.

Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, like my daughter, I had a thought about her. A nice feminist thought about one of her outfits as she was leaving school, her school the other day. Tarana, I said a thing, but I said it kindly. She walked into her room. She came back out. She said, Mom, I'm comfortable and confident

in this outfit. And what did I have to say, Abby? I had to say, go with God. She's lucky I was dropping the other one off at school. She was lucky. I was like, go before Abby gets home. Go. Okay, so my favorite college moment for you,

Sisters was on the dance floor. I just love seeing like ferocious Tarana, like the sparks in high school. Well, first of all, the phenomenal woman part that we won't discuss on this pod, but every single person who's listening to this will be getting the book and reading it so they will know um is when the white teacher tells you that the poem was about whiteness yes and then you're just gonna have to read the book to see tarana's self who rejected that notion very clearly and beautifully. Okay.

So you can see there, like your grandfather's teachings, just like it ran up against you in that classroom and you stood up and said the thing and put your truth outside of you. Then in college, oh my God, your first organization, your first organizing, your first rally. Well, I actually had the first rally in high school around Central Park Five. But this was my first sort of big, well, I organized it from beginning to end. So it was the first one I did. And, you know, I'm taking off my head wrap.

I'm so dramatic. I'm like cutting up my head wrap and handing out black armbands. And it's so, so dramatic. But I was so hyped, you know? I was just like, we have to do something. Why aren't y'all mad? It was just so dramatic. And then I ended up, I honestly, though, always wanted to be the organizer, not the speaker.

Like, I just want to like pull it together, give you the talking points, get the people there, rally them. I might hype up the crowd and then bring in some like eloquent speaker. And then Ms. Sanders is like, no, it's you. Yeah. Oh, I can't do it. But, but that, that's why I know I'm hardwired in a particular way because my heart is saying I can't do it really my brain is like oh yes you can I already got the words you know and I'm gonna push them out your mouth if you don't hurry up and get in front of a mic so that's that's how when I by the time I'm ready to say something it's I'm ready to say something and it's just and the first words you said into that mic were telling and super emotional because it was a lot about, it was right around the Rodney King, everything that happened with Rodney King. And so everyone at the rally was talking about Rodney King.

And then your first words were. What about Latasha Harlan? Yeah. I've heard a lot of things today. But one thing I haven't heard is the name Latasha Harlan? Yeah. I've heard a lot of things today. But one thing I haven't heard is the name Latasha Harlan's. And so there you go. Your first thing was like, what about the women? What about the black women?

And I just, and then, and then after you spoke, you wrote this. I had set out to reinvent myself, but it turned out that I didn't have to start from scratch. I just had to dust myself off because the best parts were already there. Glenna, your face. It's so damn good. This book is so good. It's so damn good. This book is so good.

Talk to us about, you know, your early organizing self and what it felt like to put that flyer up and say, if you're pissed off, meet me. Come meet me. Bring this armband. It felt good. It felt, you know, when I started organizing in high school, I realized a thing like, oh, one, I can speak, when I speak, other people will listen, which was fascinating. I was like, huh? You know, it's so funny right now, people in high school, like right on my Instagram post, I remember in high school, you was the same way. Nobody's surprised. No, people are like, yeah,

because anyway, so I learned that early in high school and I was like really kind of addicted to that you know it's like for for the social justice reasons of course but I think beyond that it was like another thing to kind of pour my energy into right and and I got to I know now I wasn't faking it, but I got to add like another layer that another layer to separate me from this other person. And so I was all in, I was all in. And when I got to college, I thought I went to Alabama State University initially, and I thought it was going to be like my camps, leadership camps, because I had been going to leadership camp in Alabama for several years. And it was like, no, what is that? We had a party. We had to listen to this bass music, you know? And I was like, what's wrong with you kids? This is a land of Martin Luther King. Why aren't you all? And they were not, they were not feeling me in that way. And they were not feeling me in that way. But again, my brain, when I am really, really, really pissed off about something, when there's a big injustice, it feels like my whole body has to, I'm not going to be, you know, I said it's the young people all the time who want to be ordered. It doesn't have to be a huge rally. You don't have to get a million people to march on Washington. But there is some a sense of relief or accomplishment or I'm not sure what the right word is here. But every bit counts. And so for me, it was like, we're all on this college campus.

This campus is a small little example of the rest of the world, right? You got a president and vice president. You have a council. You have a little government. You have authority, like police authority. It's like a little small microcosm of the rest of the world. So we get to, and we get to be citizens, essentially. And we get to respond like citizens. And as citizens, we got to do something. You have to want to do something, right? It was also a big lesson in

everybody doesn't want to do something. You may feel like that, Tarana. We don't. And it was a lesson in like, cause I was around more like like-minded people before. And now I was in a different situation. But it also tested what organizing is about. So, no, you don't come automatically just because I said like a Pied Piper. But let me wrap a taste with you. Let me talk to you about this and how it affects you in small groups. And then when you see me in the big group, you know, it was that way in high school. People knew, people knew. I remember I organized the Black girls to try out for cheerleading in high school. Not necessarily a social justice issue directly, but our high school cheerleading,

so the way my high school was is it was predominantly white because we were in a predominantly white section of the Bronx but right at the end of that section it's called Throds Neck was a projects and so the projects was mostly black and latina latinx and so that's where most of the kids I wasn't from those projects I was from another one but my my great grandmother lived there so I used her address to go to this school. Statute of limitations have passed and they can't arrest me. But that's how I got into the school because my mother was trying to get me out of this other terrible school. So the school was used to catering to their white students. The football team was mostly white, except of course, the black guys who they,

who were really good football players. And then the cheerleading squad was all white. We had a Black History Month program and I organized the Black History Month program. And one of the performances was a step routine, like from the HBCUs. And we had, we were replicating school days and they did a step routine. And the white cheerleaders who thought I was a troublemaker went and complained and said that my step routine was to tease them. That we did a step routine to mock them. Just like Phenomenal Woman was about. Right. I'm a Swedish white woman like that.

How the fuck do you sense yourself in our cultural display? This is a Black History Month program. You think we're going to spend this time to tease the white cheerleaders? To see what they did that was wrong is now you got me paying attention to the white cheerleaders. I wasn't even thinking about y'all. I wasn't thinking about y'all. And I sat in that office and I watched her. And this was the 80s.

You know, she had big hair, like Van Halen hair and all of this stuff. And this was the 80s. You know, she had big hair, like Van Halen hair and all of this stuff. And so she was just going off about how disrespected she felt. And I think there were tears. And anyway, I was formulating a plan in my mind because I'm looking at all these chillities and every single one of them was white. And I'm petty in this way because Chilling in Trials was months later. And I got all the Black girls who I knew danced their asses off.

And there's a girl named Delisha right now. She's still a friend of mine. Delisha could do a falling split, y'all. If you don't know what that is, it's when you throw your leg up and hold it and then fall into a split. No. Yes. Delisha could do a falling split.

She could do walking splits. She was amazing. I got about 15 girls. Held my own tryouts. No. I did. This is God's honest truth. Held my own tryouts. I took the best of those girls and I organized them to try out for the cheerleading squad. And they made it. No. And that's how we integrated our cheerleading squad. And if you hadn't have fucked with me, you could have kept your Lily White squad. God, that is amazing.

Yeah, but I'm saying like, that's the way my brain is wired. Like, we're going to organize something and change the situation because this is not right. And the college, what happened in college around that Rodney King rally was a similar thing. It was like, why aren't we moving? Why aren't we saying anything? It's just, I don't know.

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Oh, my God. Okay, so you graduate from college. Kind of. Your work-ish. Well, so do we all, the rest of us. You left college. I still haven't graduated. Abby and I always say we left college.

They asked us to leave. Or I finished. Great. I am done. I am done. So you were done with college. And then you went and your work in the world started. Okay.

Yes. And this began with these, you started these amazing programs. Yes. And this began with these. You started these amazing programs were part of programs that were about creating space for girls to share their stories and lives. Can you just tell us about heaven? I wonder if I should have used her real name so she would know exactly who I'm talking about. Because I've been using the alias for so many years. Even before Me Too, I was using the alias. But Havin is a little girl who I met doing this work who came to one of our leadership camps. In 21st century, our leadership camps are the core of our work, right? I went to them. Young people come three times a year and get leadership

development training. And she was a part of a chapter, but not, she came with a chapter, but wasn't a part of that chapter. And she came off the bus. I mean, you read in the book, she came off the bus wildest. And you can spot them. You know, this one is going to be a hell this is getting ready to be a handful for me all week and I I did with her what I what was done with me and what was done with other people it's like in 21st century we wrapped young people in love right that was our that was our the adults we had discipline but our even our discipline was like is a disciplinary committee made up of your peers, your young people, and they decide and everything was like fair and equitable and blah, blah, blah. And so I wanted to give that to heaven. What's really important, though, is that I'm 22.

There's a couple of things. I'm 22 at this time. I have not really started doing this work. Like not just the work around sexual violence, but even on myself, I had not really dug into like healing. I don't even, I don't even know if I had that language yet. Right. I was just still trying to figure it all out. And, and I meet this baby and I'm giving her what was given to me. I love you. I care for you. You can trust me. And this moment comes where she says, puts me to the test, essentially. She's like, oh, you love me?

I can trust you? Well, here, I need you to hold this for me. And she begins to privately tell me about being molested by her mother's boyfriend. And the thing that it just so by this point, you have to know, I don't talk about my stuff at all. People in the camp when I was younger had talked about theirs and had come forward. None of it compelled me to be like, oh, me too. Nope. I was just like, wow, that's really messed up. You know, and I would just be quiet.

And so now I had this little child who was. Who was as courageous as people accuse me of being in real life, she was. She did what you're supposed to do, right? She believed I told her the innocence of believing because I said so. And when she tried to get me to hold this for her or just be in community with her, just to hold it with her, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. It was just too much. And, you know, is there a few things worse than disappointing a child? I mean, as parents, we do it all the time, right? Yeah.

Let's just be honest, right? We do it all the time. But I mean, that kind of deep disappointment, not like, no, you can't go on a school trip, but like, just really this deep disappointment that I read in her eyes and whatever little progress we had made in a few days in the week that we had known each other just kind of all I just knew it was all over she's like you just like everybody else but even in that even when I saw the disappointment it it didn't move me enough to be like wait wait wait because this thing I had been holding was much bigger than this 12 year old and but but what it did tell me after the moment had passed, but it did tell me it was a,

it was a chin check for me that said like, if you want to do this, you have to do this. You, you, I was really also kind of intrigued and curious to how did she so freely just say, Hey, this happened to me and blah, blah, blah, blah. I thought I had been safe in other places and I probably was safe enough to say it, but there was something else that needed to happen because I had not told myself. I had not. I could not talk about it to other people because I just, I didn't even want to talk about it to myself. And so the heaven situation forced me. I think that's, oh, we talked about it earlier.

I was like standing in the bathroom, in the mirror, talking to myself, shaking in my boots, like I was talking to some stranger, but having to push through that. And she gave me the courage to do it. Cause I'm like, if this baby can do it, I can at least tell myself. And it really, the other part was like, I watched these little girls tell each other these stories. We would have sister to sister sessions and they would be talking about what happened to them.

I had made the choice that I wanted to work with little black girls. So I'm like, if this is what you want to do, this is what you're up against. You're going to run from everybody. You're not going to be able to do this work well. So yeah, I had to, I had to get my, you know, balls out my purse as, as they say. And then when did that turn? When did, because the scene, the scene was actually your life,

the scene where you look in the mirror and you tell yourself the truth. How do we get from that moment where you're finally letting the truth stand outside of your body and you don't die yeah how do we get there to me too oh where how do we when does the me too so so that the year literally that happened was 96 so there was still 10 years between that and the founding of, you know, solidifying of Me Too. What did happen in the, quite like a few years later, maybe two years after that, I did the work of Me Too without a name for many years. Exactly. That's what I'm trying to get at. Yes.

Oh, yes. Not Twitter Me Too. I mean. No, no, no. And not even Twitter Me Too. I mean, your Me Too work. And not even my Me Too. Like, I mean, I started doing work with girls and survivors before I had the name Me Too or before we had Just Be even. It was just, I wanted to shift focus.

So like one of my, I did an interview the other day and they go really deep. And so they asked, could they interview somebody from my past? And they interviewed this, she's a young woman now, but I still call her my little muff. Oh, I mentioned her in the book, my little muff. And so they interviewed her and she talked about how, so I met her in 98. So somewhere around 98 and 99, she talks about how I was the second or third person in her life that she ever told what happened to her. But I was the first person to believe her. responsible in the sister to sisters. So we created space for her and talked her through, you know, what she had experienced and told her all the things you're not alone. So I'd started doing that kind of work, but for me, it was still part of the leadership development, right? It was still part of being responsible and doing the leadership development. Fast forward, maybe it's about 2002, 2002, 2003, we started Just Be Inc.,

which was the organization that started for Black girls, Black and Brown girls. It was not all Black girls in it. And that was amazing. And it worked so well. And we started with high school girls and we took them through rites of passage and it was wonderful, but we still kept running into sexual violence all the time. And the truth is whenever we gathered a group of girls or a group of women together, it reared its head some kind of way. And a lot of times with my girls, it wasn't confession. It wasn't disclosure. It was just stories. It was just happenstance. And that's why my very first workshops were about giving them language. I had a situation with one of my seventh graders who, you know, my program was middle school.

It was high school and then we moved to middle school. And I happened to stay late at the school one day. And one of my middle school kids, seventh graders are standing outside. I'm standing, I said, who are you waiting for? And she's like, oh, I'm waiting for my ride home. We're just chit-chatting like normal. She said, I'm waiting for my boyfriend. And I'm thinking it's some little kid going to ride up on a bike, some scrawny little seventh grader, you know, is going to come rolling up. And a car pulls up. And what I am clear is a grown man is in this front seat, some 20 something year old grown man. This is a 12 or 13 year old kid. And so I'm like, this better be your uncle or your brother. And she's like,

you know, it turned into a whole thing. Cause I had to send him off and like threaten him within an inch of his life, stay away from these children. It was a whole thing. But do you know what? The next day when we were back in school, she was hot fire burning mad at me. You in my business, that's my boyfriend, blah, blah, blah. And nobody had ever said just in a very clear way, this is statutory rape. had ever said just in a very clear way, this is statutory rape. This is the definition of it. This is the definition of molesting. Like nobody had ever given them language. And I often talk about like the importance of language. We cannot underestimate that. You know, when, when Kaya was a baby, I tell the story about how when Kaya was a baby, I rushed them to the hospital once because they had like a 102 fever and I was, you know, a young mom and I was like, oh my God. And they were fine. But Kaya being the inquisitive child, they were like three years old, was like, why are we at the doctor at the nighttime? You know, like, what's the matter? And I said, you were sick.

You had a fever. And, you know, I tried to explain it. For like months after that, every time something happened, Kaya would stub their toe and say, oh, mommy, I have a fever in my toe. Or they would get a scratch and say, I have a fever on my arm, right? And it was so adorable. But the reason why I think about about is that because they didn't have the language to describe the actual pain, what was actually happening to them. So they use whatever

language was available. And that's what my girls did. They, they didn't have the words. I don't know that this 12, this, this 12 year old was comfortable in whatever position she was being put in by this boy, but does she have the language to explain to me that I'm uncomfortable? I don't like it. Or I think that this is, I have to do something like this. So that work started off trying to fill in the gaps.

Yes. You talk about that so much and so beautifully in the book that nobody was saying the thing to you. Everybody is this open secret talking around him. Is he messing with you? Is someone messing with you? Is someone bothering you? Is he, but never like this, this might happen and this is wrong. And this is. And if it does just say it. And if it's already happened to you, you're okay. You're going to be okay. Healing is possible. You are not the sum total of the things that happen to you.

These things don't define you. All the things, honestly, I did not. I was so scared starting this work because I'm like, I'm not a therapist. I'm not a social worker. I don't want to mess up. But what I had was my experience. Yeah. Right. What would I, what wouldyear-olds, what could somebody have said

to me at 12 that would have changed the trajectory of my life? Any of those things. You are not a bad girl. It's not your fault. Those things sound so simple when you hear them now, because we kind of see them on like Lifetime movies and, you know, we hear it all the time. But it really is as simple as hearing for a 12-year-old. It's not your fault. You didn't do anything wrong. You're not a bad girl. And this thing hurts and it's okay that it hurts, but it's not going to always hurt.

You know, like those things are important. You said something to Kaya that my sister is now saying to Alice at night. Can you, sister, can you talk about that for a second? Let's, we have second? We're going to have to let Tarana go in a little bit, but I want to end by talking about Kaya and you and mothering and how we are mothered by our parents and everybody does the best they can. And I am utterly obsessed with this one thing you talk about when it comes to motherhood, which is capacity versus desire. You say, there is no question that self-hate severely limits one's capacity to love fully and wholeheartedly.

Capacity and desire are not the same thing, especially in discussions of love. I was an adult with a child of my own and a trail of mistakes behind me before I could say with certainty that my mother loved me. The clarity came from being faced with my own limited capacity. No matter how deep my desire was to love my child, I was still encumbered by the ghosts I had tried to bury. Can you talk to us, Abby and I have talked this to death now. Can you talk about how we can have the desire, but not the capacity and how those are two things that can exist at once? Absolutely. I think they often exist at once, right? And I think what happens is that either people conflate them or they don't acknowledge that

they're both existing at the same time. And we set our expectations based on desire, not on capacity. And it often leads to deep disappointment. It's expected as a child, right? And the reason why I added that part in is because I didn't want to just spill about what my 12-year-old mind understood about my mother and our relationship and the decisions she made. I may never understand the decision she made or why the posture she took, but I do understand that that had to come from a place of limited capacity.

She gave what she could in that moment. I've been in that position where I'm even clear that my child needs more than what I was determined with Kaya to expand my capacity, to figure out what I need to do, what therapy I need to go to, who I need to talk to, what I need to change in my life to give me more capacity. But the reality is some people just don't have it. No matter what you try to do, it's like trying to, if you have two people and one is an eight ounce cup and one is a 12 ounce cup, it does not matter how many times you pour over and over again, you can't fill that cup. You just can't.

So I think it was so helpful to me. And I think other people have said this too, it's been helpful to them to frame this, to reframe my understanding of my mother. My mother did everything she could for me. Everything. I don't know the traumas that she went through. I have some idea. I don't know how those things impacted her.

And I also know that generation was not privileged to have what we have. So I'm laughing and joking about the secret and the y'all and all the rest of that. But we are the self-aware generation. We're the generation that grew up with those things that know that we have to. I should probably take a step back here. Let me take a beat.

Am I being this? We ask ourselves these questions as almost second nature. My mom's 71. That's not second nature to her. 71. That's not second nature to her. And so she was using what she was given to do the best that she kept, she could. And I just, I think it would, I think it would help a lot of people to think about the people in their lives because it feels to love them, right? Cause it feels weird. It feels like, I think you love me, but you keep doing this. Yes, it does. You say you love me and I'm not talking about abuse, right? I'm not talking, I think there's some real clear lines

that we can see the difference in. But in some of these relationships that feel complicated. And the other part is when you find out that somebody has limited capacity, it doesn't mean you have to stay and just put up with the capacity they have. It just helps to settle your spirit, right? To be like, oh, I get it now. I still got to separate myself from you because you just, you just cannot meet this capacity. But I understand, I get why.

For me and my mom, it was what allowed me to build on our relationship and approach and like engage her from a different place and, and, and re level set my expectations. Um, it was life-changing once I, I kind of got that realization. And then allowed you to not take it personally. Yeah. It's not about you sister. Let's end with you telling Toronto what we decided that you, all of our little ones need to hear forever. Well, I just thought it was life changing for me to hear what you said to Kaya when you were reaching out to them to share with you. And when you said, you know, baby, there is nothing that you can ever say to me that will separate you from my love. Sorry, I just think that that is.

That's just so beautiful and so important. that's just so beautiful and so important. And, um, now I say it to both my kids like every night and they're like, yeah, I got it. Like, can we just go brush our fucking teeth? But God, but I just, to me, God, it's the whole ball game. Cause it's like you needing to separate from yourself so early because you thought that that made you not worthy of love and of living and our kids to just know that there's nothing that can separate us, them from our love. I'm going to tell you, and I feel like I can have this conversation with y'all because sometimes I feel like when I talk about being Christian or about God, people are like, okay. I was like, I'm not, I want to be like, I'm not one of those Christians, but, um, but two things about that moment. One, I really do believe God put that in my heart.

Because sometimes we don't have the words and they come to us what feels like magically and you're like, oh, thank you. Because I knew, I knew when I tell you I knew in my bones from the time Kaya was five that something had happened. And I had asked over and over and over and over. And I kept asking the wrong way. Did somebody bother you? Did somebody mess with you? Are you, you know, and not even recalling my own experience that I didn't feel like that. I felt like I had done a thing and that's exactly what Kaya was holding and kind of, I guess, pulling on like what I would love to hear at that time myself, that came to me. And when I tell you, you talk about spreading the gospel, I have emails still of when I was emailing my other friends, like, hey y'all, I discovered something. Say it this way, you know, like let's stop right now saying, you know, interrogating our children in

this way. It really is about creating all the love and safety around them that's possible so that they feel the kind of comfort they need to come forward. And that was it. That was it. That was it. And if you ask Kaya now, again, to your point, Glenn, and when the kids use it against you Kaya will sometimes be like I thought you said there was nothing I was like Kaya but it is our thing it is it is our thing and I'm so I'm so happy to share that with other people and I it is really like one of the things I'm like yes please say this to your children. Please let them know that there's, because those other people, the people who mean to harm them get, burrow in their brain and will, will like, that's what grooming is, right? Systematically separating you from your parents and the people who love you and making you feel like that's not a real thing.

And I needed Kaya to know without a shadow of a doubt, there is nothing, there's nothing that will ever separate you from my love. And that's how God is for me, right? That's where that comes from. It will, there's nothing, what could separate me from the love of God? What's going to make God stop loving me? And that's sort of what we replicate in our, or try to replicate in our relationships. Oh Amanda, you're making me emotional now. But yeah, I just, I'm so glad that part resonates and you share that with your children. And I'm going to tell Kai, Kai's going to get a kick out of that. And I need to just say, because of your gospel is so generous, you're suggesting to write it down that Alice was able to disclose something to me that she was not able to say.

It is outside of this particular thing we're talking about, but a traumatic thing for her that she couldn't say because of your writing down, inviting your kids to write it down if they can't say it out loud with the words. I mean, those two things are going to save a lot of people, give a lot of people life. So thank you for that. Tarana, you are a fucking miracle. Yeah. Seriously, like you have changed, not to center myself or my two beautiful,

beautiful, beautiful hosts on this show you are a fucking miracle and you have changed us like these last couple weeks just like digging into your book and you deserve every little bit of success and it just is going to keep coming back to you because you're doing god's work i don't care what kind of faith they're talking about. I love you so much. And I just like, you've opened up so much of my eyes and just sharing your story is giving us language to talk to our daughters and, and by the way, our son about some of this. You are just a fucking miracle. Thank you so much for existing. And we want to say to all of our beautiful, we can do hard things. Your next right thing is to get this goddamn book.

Okay. I don't know what else I can. It has to be on your shelf. It has to be. And also you need to have it on hand when someone comes to you who shares with you and you don't know what the next right thing is, the next right thing is to have unbound. The next right thing is to put it in people's hands. Tarana, I've said this to you, but I imagine all of the little girls, little black girls who I know you wrote this book for,

who are, they're Maya Angelou now. They're seeing you as, and they're seeing your pain, but they're seeing your joy. I hope so. We love you so much. I love you all. I do. I can't tell you how much I appreciate just the kind of support

and even just the freedom to have this conversation because I can't have quite this conversation with everybody. So I appreciate it so much. I really do. Go rest. And please give Kaya a big hug for us. I will. I will. I love y'all. Love you. I love you. Unbound people. Unbound. Get it. Get it. Bye y'all. Bye. Bye everybody. We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Especially be sure to rate and review the podcast if you really liked it. If you didn't, don't worry about it. It's fine.