9: Speak Up, Shake the World! ft. EbonyJanice

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Unruly with Shelah Marie" Episode 9: "Speak Up, Shake the World! ft. Ebony Janice"

Host: Shelah Marie
Guest: Ebony Janice
Release Date: December 3, 2024
Duration: Approximately 66 minutes
Podcast Description: UNRULY is a weekly culture and wellness podcast hosted by Shelah Marie, focusing on transformative conversations around self-love, acceptance, and holistic wellness. This episode features Ebony Janice, a scholar, activist, and spiritual leader, discussing the intersection of activism, self-empowerment, and the unique experiences of Black women.

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1. Introduction and Icebreaker (01:41 - 04:25)

Shelah Marie opens the episode by introducing Ebony Janice, highlighting her roles as a scholar, activist, and spiritual leader who is redefining Black women's voices for change. To set a light-hearted tone, Shelah engages Ebony in an icebreaker question about recent moments of pure joy.

• Notable Quote:
  • Ebony Janice [03:08]: "I just popped up and went to France a couple weeks ago just because... I want to be dramatic in Paris, and that was a good choice."

2. Exploring "All the Black Girls Are Activists" (04:25 - 06:56)

Shelah delves into Ebony's book, All the Black Girls Are Activists, focusing on the concept that Black women's mere existence is a form of resistance. Ebony shares the revelation that led her to this understanding, emphasizing how Black women continuously create and innovate out of necessity and resistance.

• Notable Quote:
  • Ebony Janice [04:51]: "Our entire existence is creating from resistance... I feel like, for the sake of my wellness, I have to create these additional things to just breathe a little bit."

3. Defining "Womanism" (06:56 - 09:48)

The conversation shifts to the term "womanist," coined by Alice Walker. Ebony breaks down Walker's four-part definition, distinguishing womanism from mainstream feminism by highlighting its roots in Black women's experiences and its deeper connection to culture, spirit, and tradition.

• Notable Quotes:
  • Ebony Janice [07:22]: "Womanism is to feminism as purple is to lavender... it's black women's deeper feminist work."
  • Shelah Marie [09:15]: "She says, 'I always knew that my feminism would be different from white women...' and I love her."

4. Integrating Spiritual Practices into Activism (09:48 - 13:17)

Shelah explores how Ebony merges spirituality with activism, viewing Blackness as a form of technology that encodes generational and eternal wisdom. Ebony explains that her spiritual practices are inherently activist, asserting her authentic Black identity as a means of resistance and empowerment.

• Notable Quotes:
  • Ebony Janice [13:27]: "Blackness is a technology... my blackness isn't just the color of my skin... it is historical."
  • Ebony Janice [13:29]: "Being my actual self, Blackity Black in the fullness of my womanhood... that is my activism."

5. The Power of Dreaming and Daydreaming (30:08 - 40:24)

Ebony emphasizes the importance of dreaming as a transformative tool for Black women, contrasting it with life built solely on resistance. She shares personal anecdotes illustrating how dreams guide her actions and lead to tangible successes, such as her million-dollar project inspired by a dream.

• Notable Quotes:
  • Ebony Janice [31:53]: "Dreaming is the thing that we should be doing... there's actual deep information in dreaming that we never have access to."
  • Ebony Janice [38:12]: "Dreaming has allowed me to attract a million dollars into my life because I followed the guidance from my dreams."

6. Becoming Your Authentic Self (51:32 - 55:28)

The discussion focuses on the challenging yet essential process of becoming one's authentic self. Ebony articulates that true self-actualization requires significant inner work and the courage to defy societal norms. She underscores that embracing one's true identity is both a personal and collective act of resistance.

• Notable Quotes:
  • Ebony Janice [49:58]: "The only hard work I want you to do for the rest of your life is the hard work of becoming yourself."
  • Ebony Janice [54:56]: "Becoming actual yourself is the labor you will do. You will wake up every morning and ask, 'Is this true for me?'"

7. Community and Tools for Empowerment (55:28 - 59:37)

Shelah introduces the "toolkit" segment, where Ebony shares practical steps for listeners to begin their journey towards activism and self-empowerment. Ebony recommends starting small with mindfulness practices, such as setting short meditation intervals to build inner strength and self-awareness.

• Notable Quotes:
  • Ebony Janice [56:45]: "Start by sitting down somewhere with yourself for 60 seconds and give yourself that permission."
  • Ebony Janice [59:37]: "Building your muscle through small, consistent practices can lead to profound personal transformation."

8. Conclusion and Resources (60:10 - End)

As the episode concludes, Shelah and Ebony reiterate the importance of self-empowerment and authenticity. Ebony provides her contact information for listeners to connect and engage further with her work.

• Notable Quotes:
  • Ebony Janice [60:10]: "I am Ebony Janice everywhere. Visit Ebonyjanice.com, I'm Ebonyjanice."
  • Shelah Marie [60:37]: "Keep up with Ebony Janice and continue learning from her transformative work."

Key Takeaways:

• Existential Resistance: Black women's existence and daily actions serve as forms of resistance against systemic oppression.
• Womanism vs. Feminism: Womanism offers a more nuanced and culturally grounded framework tailored to Black women's experiences.
• Spiritual Activism: Integrating spirituality with activism empowers individuals to enact change from within.
• Dreaming as Strategy: Dreaming and daydreaming are powerful tools for envisioning and manifesting personal and collective liberation.
• Authenticity Requires Effort: Embracing one's true self is a deliberate and challenging process that demands self-awareness and resilience.
• Practical Empowerment: Small, consistent practices like mindfulness can build the foundation for deeper personal transformation and activism.

Resources:

• Ebony Janice:

  • Website: Ebonyjanice.com
  • Social Media: Search for "@EbonyJanice" across platforms.

• Shelah Marie:

  • Website: ShelahMarie.com
  • Books: All the Black Girls Are Activists and Positive You.

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Note: This summary omits advertisement segments and focuses solely on the substantive content of the conversation between Shelah Marie and Ebony Janice. Notable quotes are attributed with approximate timestamps for reference.

Transcript

[Ebony Janice]

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[Sheila Marie]

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Welcome to Unruly. I'm your host, Sheila Marie. I'm an author, a fierce advocate for black women, and the founder of the curvy curly conscious movement. In this space, I'm sharing what I've learned on my own journey while sitting down with some amazing women who are all navigating their own paths to healing because there's no better time than now to get a little unruly. All right, so welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Unruly, where we dive into the art of self love, self reclamation, and all the ways we can live fully and in our truth. I'm your host, Sheila Marie, and today I am thrilled to sit down with the remarkable Ebony Janisse. And yes, that's her name, Ebony Janiece. One word, ladies and gentlemen. She's a scholar, she's an activist, she's a spiritual leader who is redefining what it means for black women to use their voices for change. In today's episode, we're diving into the powerful connection between activism and self empowerment and how using our voices, whether loudly or quietly, can create real change. We'll talk about her amazing book, all the Black Girls Are Activists, and explore ways that black women can define Activism on their own terms. I am so excited for this conversation. So let's get into it. Without further ado, welcome to the stage. Ebony. Janiece. Hey, girl.

[Ebony Janice]

Hey. Hey, girl.

[Sheila Marie]

Hey. So I actually want to start with a little icebreaker. Ebony, what is the last thing that you did that just really brought you, like, full, unadulterated, childlike joy?

[Ebony Janice]

Okay, I. This is miscellaneous, but I just popped up and went to France a couple weeks ago just because.

[Sheila Marie]

Really?

[Ebony Janice]

Yeah. I was in my feelings about something, and I feel like if you're going to be dramatic, you should just get you a new destination to be dramatic. So I want to be dramatic in Paris, and that was a good choice. And I rode the bike everywhere and just ate too much and had dessert with every single meal, and it was a good time.

[Sheila Marie]

Did you get your. Did you get the. Everybody got to get that pick in front of the Eiffel Tower. Did you get that?

[Ebony Janice]

I've been to Paris several times, actually.

[Sheila Marie]

Oh, so you're not new to this. You true to this, actually.

[Ebony Janice]

Excuse me. Pardon me. It's what I do.

[Sheila Marie]

Excuse me. That was bad. I'm sorry. To everybody who's from France. That was terrible. I'll never do that again, but shout out to you. I love it. It's giving me Amelie energy. I love it. Okay. Okay. So I need to book a trip, is what you're saying.

[Ebony Janice]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you need a little bit of drama, I feel like, honestly, I mean it with all my heart.

[Sheila Marie]

I love it. Okay.

[Ebony Janice]

You know what?

[Sheila Marie]

I want to start by talking about your book, which I have right here, and it is called all the Black Girls Are Activists and Listeners. If you have not ordered this book yet, what are you doing? Add it to cart. Click right now, wherever books are sold. Because it is a phenomenal book. You describe in the book how black women's existence is resistance. Can you explain a little bit about what that means and why it's so important right now?

[Ebony Janice]

Yeah. Several years ago, I had that revelation. I actually was helping to care for. Well, between helping to care for my three nephews. And something was going on at one of their schools in this predominantly white town in North Carolina. And I started thinking about building this curriculum to really support, you know, him in being safe in this space. And I'm walking. I actually was in Harlem at the time while I was thinking about this, and I'm walking down the street. I'm on, like, 133rd and 5th or something, and I stop in the middle of the road and I say out loud, I don't have time for that. I don't have time to build another curriculum, another program, another supplemental anything for something that he should just have access to just by the fact that his, you know, he is alive, right like that. This little boy should be safe, he should be well in this school, in this experience. And the more I started to really interrogate that which is really one of my favorite forms of, like, self care is really just deep interrogation. The more I started to interrogate that, the more I realized, like, oh my gosh, how many for myself and how many of my friends, how many of my, you know, people in that are my colleagues or, you know, my contemporaries are creating everything from resistance? Our entire existence is creating from resistance. Or what Fannie Lou Hamer said, sick and tired of being sick and tired, Right? How much of what you have even created in your own life, Sheila, Sheila Marie has been from a place of. Of just like this doesn't exist. I'll have to create this as supplemental because for my body, for my, you know, for my. The sake of my relationships, for the sake of my family, for the sake of my wellness, I will have to create this additional thing. And so I did. I feel like, you know, having more conversations with the homies, it was really like, yeah, so much of what we have created and who we are, even those of us have. I'm doing quote fingers who have deemed ourselves as successful even in our success. That success has come from this huge place of resistance. If I could create from my dreams instead of from my resistance, I think I would have been on a drastically different path. But no, I had to. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. Create all these things to make sure that I could just breathe, maybe breathe a little bit.

[Sheila Marie]

Wow, I love that answer. And I actually want to. I want to talk about. In your foreword of your book, you cite Alice Walker, who coined the term womanist. And I want to know what. Because the subtitle of your book is A Fourth Wave Womanist Pursuit of Dreams as Radical Resistance. I want to. First, can you define for us what is womanist? What does that mean, that term? And why is it so central to your work?

[Ebony Janice]

Womanism is a term that Alice Walker coined in a book of prose that she wrote many years ago. And there's a four part definition. And in this four part definition, it starts off saying a womanist is a grownish, willful, seeming to know too much. A young. She's talking about a young black girl. That's the first part of the definition, she goes on to talk about how a womanist is not a separatist, except periodically for times of health. And she goes on to describe a womanist as someone who. She gives this example, this intergenerational example. A young woman says to her mother, mama, I'm going to Canada, and I'm taking you and several other slaves with me. To which the mother replies, you wouldn't be the first. So there's this intergenerational, generational aspect of womanism where we realize when we have conversations with our elders and they have conversations with us, we are. We think we're saying something profound, and we find out the elders have already been thinking about that or moving in that direction in some way. But the fourth part of the definition is one of my favorite parts of the definition, where she says, womanism is to feminism as purple is to lavender. And so ultimately, the way that I understand that is Alice Walker saying that womanism is black women's deeper shade of feminism. Womanism is black women's deeper feminist work. The reason why I have identified specifically as a womanist, as opposed to calling myself a black feminist, even though I believe that black feminists have helped to shape and change our world, is because womanism makes it crystal clear that I'm not talking about whatever you have previously understood about feminism that I'm not talking about. You know, the white feminism that usually is centered. When you first start talking about feminism, you really end up having to break down that you're talking about something other. And so even Joan Morgan says in her book When Chicken Heads Come Home to Roost, I always knew my feminine. I love her.

[Sheila Marie]

I think I quoted her in my book, too.

[Ebony Janice]

Okay, you very likely did. She says, I always knew that my feminism would be different from white women because white women don't call their men brother. And so understanding that identifying as a black feminist but really claiming the name of womanism makes it crystal clear when I walk in the door that I may be talking about gender equity, I may be talking about some of the very similar things as black feminists, but I'm talking about spirit, and I'm talking about, you know, a tradition. I'm talking about culture, and I'm talking about something very specific to black women.

[Sheila Marie]

Wow, this is so interesting. And this is not on. This was not something I was going to bring up, but I'm going to bring it up now. It's here. It's in the room. It's so funny because I literally fired a therapist once. It was A couple's therapist. So me and my husband were in a couple session, and I said, well, I was just quoting something. I was basically talking about equal labor distribution in the household and how it's bigger than just us, like, what we're going through as a couple. And me advocating for myself an equal labor distribution does not happen in a vacuum. And I'm telling the therapist that. I'm like, it's like, well, sometimes black men are the white women of black people. And she was like, what? Don't. I'm like, but I'm a womanist. And she was like. She just could not understand it at all. And was like, that is. Don't do that. Love our black men and this and that. And I was like, yeah, that's the last time I'm gonna be with you. Because I'm like, baby, if we deconstruct, then we gotta deconstruct. And so I love the term walk in the room.

[Ebony Janice]

Understanding that there's something very specific that black women who are talking about gender equity. There is a very specific thing that we're talking about. And it's not always the same. It's just not.

[Sheila Marie]

No, it's not. And not everybody has that shared understanding. And I just feel like a lot of us are in our own individual bubbles, all trying to work on something that is very much affected by these outside systems. And so I was just like, in that moment, like, oh, my God, like, this is as far as I can go here. Like, no. So, yeah, I love her. I love her down. She's amazing. But that was the last session I had there. And speaking of healing, I want to talk about a little bit of, like, how do you incorporate your spiritual practices into your activism work? Because, like, on. On their face, those seem. Those things could seem very different. Like, when you hear activism, I feel like people just think marching. They just think, like, these classical signifiers, like, of 1960s activism. So how do you incorporate spiritual practices into your activism?

[Ebony Janice]

All right, we're all set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe, and paired all those weird shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheeses. And I plugged in the Partisan.

[Sheila Marie]

Partisan.

[Ebony Janice]

It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails, plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites, too. I just got it for 50 off, so how about a Cosmopolitan or a mistletoe margarita?

[Sheila Marie]

I'm thirsty.

[Ebony Janice]

Watch. I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength, and wow, it's beginning to.

[Sheila Marie]

Feel more seasonal in here already.

[Ebony Janice]

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[Sheila Marie]

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[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Ebony Janice]

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[Sheila Marie]

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Work my spiritual practices are my activism. In fact, I believe that blackness is a technology. And. Wait, wait, wait.

[Sheila Marie]

What does that mean?

[Ebony Janice]

Blackness is a technology. So technology. Think. Think about technology like there's information, it's encoded. It's inside there. You can program it, you can reprogram it, you can understand from it. So blackness in itself, me and myself, there's something encoded in me that is both generational and eternal. And it is a part both of my spiritual practice and my sociopolitical practice. So my blackness isn't just, you know, the color of my skin. There is something deeper than just the color of my skin that is historical. And so being an activist, you know, my spiritual practice, being my actual activism, is me believing that just the very nature of being alive as my actual self, not the watered down version of me, not the assimilated version of me, not the code switch version of me. Actual Ebony Janice, Blackity Black in the fullness of my womanhood and the fullness of all the things that make me who I am. That is, if I don't do anything else. That's the purpose of the title of the book. All the black girls are activists that if the black girls could just show up and actually be themselves, you, if you didn't do anything else in this world that wants you to not do that, that wants you to water down, to code switch, to not look like yourself, to not talk like yourself, to not walk like yourself, Right? That if you just showed up as actual you, that is profound in a cishetero, patriarchal, white supremacist society that wants you to literally not be anything of the sort. So my spiritual. My spirituality. My spiritual practices are my activism. I believe that in showing up, you know, and doing the deep work of spirit and understanding myself and knowing what I believe. Spirit and the divinities and my ancestors really called me to in this moment, in this time, that. That is radical, and that's changing the world. I want to tell you something. You don't know this. You are actually. Yeah, you don't know this. You're actually a major influence in my spiritual journey. So, Sheila, okay, so years ago, I. I. You were, like, first starting to kind of go viral, and you would pop up on my timeline. Let me. Let me work through this story, because this is about to be a. You'll pop up on my timeline. I'll be like, okay, here she is again. And I felt a way about it. Now, I am a womanist, meaning I love black women, literally. So self interrogation immediately came up for me, and I was like, why am I triggered by this woman in my timeline? Like, you weren't even doing nothing, just minding your business. But you'll be in my timeline. I'm like, why am I triggered by this woman being in my timeline? And I had this revelation that I envied you because you were happy and I was not. I did not. I did not know that I wasn't happy until a black woman being happy triggered me. And so I started following you on Snapchat. So that tell you how long ago this was?

[Sheila Marie]

Oh, yeah, girl.

[Ebony Janice]

This is at the very beginning, the beginning of time. It's like 2017, 2018.

[Sheila Marie]

Wow.

[Ebony Janice]

I started following you on Snapchat because I was like, she obviously knows something that I don't know, because I didn't know that even someone who thought that they were experiencing joy and pleasure, the fact that I'm triggered by someone's joy, by someone showing up as their authentic self, is that it's prob. That it's, you know, becoming a problem for me. Just to see her in my timeline is a thing. So I start following you, and you're meditating, and you're doing all these things, and I'm like, well, I'm gonna meditate too. So I would set an alarm on my phone. I'm in grad school at the time still. I would set an alarm on my phone for 60 seconds, and just for 60 seconds to sit there and just Try to be still with my thoughts. Be quiet. And so literally, like, I brought this up in this moment where we're talking about activism and talking about how spirit really is activism. Because your journey, you just minded your business. You don't know nothing about Ebony. Janese Moore, you over there, minding your business, being happy, loving your man. You know, you're in New York still at the beginning of this time, I think, just talking about play, which is how I brought you into this book, because you were talking about play a lot at the time, talking about play. And you changed the world, Sheila, just being your actual self. And I feel like if that isn't the proof, right, you don't even have to know the people that you're changing. Here's this person just in the ether, right in the social media world, watching you just become, watching you evolve, watching you grow. And something about that, I think, because I was willing to interrogate what was happening for me, something about that said, I want to experience whatever that joy, whatever that pleasure is, I want to play. I want to, you know, I want to be giggling on my timeline, right? Like, I want those things. And it was literally starting with this very tiny, like, she's meditating. I'm going to see if meditation is a part of it. She's considering plant medicine or, you know, whatever things were happening at the time. I want to see if that will be helpful for me. And so literally showing up as your actual self is radical and revolutionary in the world that doesn't want you to do that. The proof that the world doesn't want you to do that is someone who loves black girls, loves Black women, is like, wait a minute. We happy now? That's what we doing now, right? My spirit spiritual journey has been the radical, revolutionary contribution that I feel like I can bring to the earth. And you are certainly a major inspiration in that.

[Sheila Marie]

Wow. Who knew? Like, and this is why I advocate for women. Our books are literally talking about the same thing. And this is why we both advocate for women living, Black women especially, living in their whole truth. The cringy parts, the parts that bring you shame, the parts that you want to squish down, the parts that don't fit into a box. Because you. You cannot be your full self without those parts. You're leaving parts of yourself behind. And when you reincorporate them, like I imagine, like a crown, you put them on as adornments to your crown, it shines on other women and that and other women who may need that light to guide their way not to put myself on some ped. So, like, yeah, I'm the one, like, guy in the way. No, not like that. But everybody can do this.

[Ebony Janice]

We all can do this Information. I think you know exactly what you're saying. It's. Excuse me. It's all information. It's all, like, there's something coming up for me. And Because I'm willing to sit with it and not just reject it or live in shame about it. Because I'm willing to sit with it. And that's.

[Sheila Marie]

Right. You didn't get the gift if you didn't sit with that.

[Ebony Janice]

Right, right, right.

[Sheila Marie]

If you would have rejected that experience, that emotional experience and just buried it. Oh, f. Sheila, I'm not falling from a blocker. Like, you would have never got to that next part.

[Ebony Janice]

I would have never known. And it's. And it's. We're talking about this in passing, but I really do want to say that it really was a major moment for me. It really was, like, a major moment of, like, I didn't. Because that thing was triggering me. Whatever, you know, I didn't know what it was to continue to, like I said, interrogate it and ask questions like, what is this? What is my issue? What is going on with me? I would not have been able to pursue happiness. You know, as cliche as that sounds, because the thing that came up for me as I journaled through it, you know, ongoing. The thing that came up for me is, oh, she is happy. I think that I didn't know that I wasn't experiencing happiness, and I want to experience that. So it literally was. If I wasn't willing to take this kind of embarrassing thing and say, ooh, there's something here, girl, you should.

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[Sheila Marie]

I'm thirsty.

[Ebony Janice]

Watch. I just pop in a capsule. Choose my strength and wow, it's beginning.

[Sheila Marie]

To feel more seasonal in here already.

[Ebony Janice]

If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender. Unless you've got a bar. Because Bartesian crafts every cocktail perfectly in as little as 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off.

[Sheila Marie]

Tis the season to be jollier.

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[Ebony Janice]

Deal with this.

[Sheila Marie]

Well, shout out to you for being able to confront that, that part of yourself. And I had such a cringy period during that time. I love that that period was able to, you know, inspire somebody. But I want to go back to your book. There's a section of. Hold on one second, Producers. Is the pinging.

[Ebony Janice]

Yeah, I turned it off. Yeah, I just muted it.

[Sheila Marie]

Yeah, I felt that coming. Thank you. So in your book you have a section called In Pursuit of Unashamedness. Am I saying that right? I did, right?

[Ebony Janice]

Yes.

[Sheila Marie]

Okay. And this just feels so unruly to me. The whole thing about embracing all the aspects of who you are, just like we've been talking about. And I have to read this quote because this is how she starts this section. Okay. This is a quote directly from the book. I love that you know the quote I'm about to read. It's so great. I have been approaching this topic in the. In that voice for 20 plus years. Then there was the version that you're getting where I start the chapter by ripping the band aid off shame and saying your elders have sucked a dick or two or licked a coochie or two or both. The only way we're going to heal shame is to come from behind the idea that they didn't like giving or receiving the orals or the penetrations too, then we'll be able to get to the true truth. Why did you start the chapter with that quote and tell me where you were going there? Because I thought it was such a bomb quote to start with.

[Ebony Janice]

I. Years ago, Pearl Kledge, who's one of my favorite authors, was at a book fair and she was talking about how when she has writer's block, she'll usually write a letter to whoever she feels like is in the room with her that she can't tell this truth. Like, I can't say this. And so when it came time for me to start talking about black women and black girls and black femmes in our bodies and our pleasure and how much shame is around that for those of us, particularly those of us who grew up in the US in this crystal centric society, that we are not allowed to access that or even let alone talk about it. And it was like, ooh, the only way I'm going to actually be able to, like, just get into this if I. Is if I start off with your mama probably suck dick. And if you could get that out the way for yourself, right? If you could get over the fear and the shame of saying that out loud, saying it internally, like, acknowledging it for yourself, like, my mom has probably sucked dick before. You know, if you could get. If you could get through that.

[Sheila Marie]

Wow, thank you for this mental picture.

[Ebony Janice]

It's such a thing. Like you. If you could get through it and realize that, you know, there really is no nothing to be ashamed of. It's a very natural thing to do. You know, when you're in relationship with someone and you're experiencing intimacy, Right? And so once I got through that, I was like, if I could get this out the way at the beginning of this chapter, we could talk about some things. Like, let's just get this way. And it was definitely inspired by that. Like, who's in the room with me right now as I'm writing this that I can't tell the truth to? And once I started writing this kind of like, side letter, you know, I realized that it was my mom and my grandmother and my aunties and some elders from a church I used to go to. And I'm like, ooh, let me just. Let me say this so we can get to the thing I'm trying to say.

[Sheila Marie]

Oh, well, speaking of sucking dick and look at coochie, why do you think that pleasure is so important for black women?

[Ebony Janice]

Because we've not historically had access to it. In such a way that we got to always choose it. Black women in the US Particularly, who is the predominant audience that I'm talking to here? As a result of chattel slavery, we are the only living human beings that have been used for both labor and reproduction. Which means that from our time here in this country, on this continent, we have been used like you would use the earth, like you would use, you know, animals, like you would use them to both do perform the labor and also to produce more laborers. And so we haven't been able to be seen fully from our onset here on this continent as full human beings. So if you've not been seen as a full human being, of course your joy, your happiness, your pleasure, you know, those things are not a priority. Here we are generations later since the so called ending of slavery, and we're still having conversations. As someone who actually call myself a hip hop womanist, and I love hip hop very much and I don't necessarily know that I want to go fully there, but hip hop is such a perfect, you know, micro and macro cosmic example of the fact that pleasure is still such a touchy subject for black women in particular. Right? Because if you think about in the 90s when Lil Kim first started coming out and rapping, really very, you know, grotesque in a lot of ways and talking about sucking dick and talking about, you know, what she, what she was doing in the bed and how she got down, but talking about it in the exact same way that her male counterparts were talking about it. And it was controversial for her, but it was not controversial for her male counterparts. Now here we are four score many years later and you still have the same exact conversation when it comes to women in hip hop that Cardi B can't just talk about the things that she wants to talk about. Meg thee stallion cannot just talk about the things that she wants to talk about. Latto right. Like all these female rappers, they cannot talk about the things that they want to talk about without being stigmatized or pushed into a singular box saying, that's the only thing you talk about. Actually, that's the only thing you heard if you listen to the album Wake It Up, Other things, and you are willing to be in conversation with me about how the industry literally created this space for me, right? That that was the only space that I had access to. So it's still hip hop, like I said, is such a micro and macrocosmic example of the fact that we can't talk about enjoying sex, we can't talk about having sex. Like who Are the men having sex with. If we can't talk about having sex and we can't talk about our pleasure. So I started by talking about not being considered human because that means that someone else was always responsible for saying when we would have sex or when we would be touched or when we would experience any kind of. I don't know that there was pleasure in it. Right. If you couldn't consent. Now the same thing is happening when black women start talking about it. It's a problem because you're not supposed to be in charge of your sexuality. The patriarchy is in charge of your sexuality.

[Sheila Marie]

The.

[Ebony Janice]

Your church community, right. Your. Your religious community is in charge of your sexuality. How dare you think that you have some. You know, some say so over when. What pleasure you're experiencing and. Or when you'll experience pleasure. So, yeah, it feels very important in a book about, you know, activism or, you know, the black girls being activists, it feels important to be talking about pleasure because it's not a thing that we have had historically had access to. So, of course, it's radical and revolutionary when we say, I know I haven't had access to that or permission to talk about that or to deal in that, but that's what I'm doing. So the rest of the world will have to catch up and deal with it at some point.

[Sheila Marie]

Yeah, I love that the rest of the world will have to catch up because as you said, we are creating a future or creating a world that doesn't always exist right now. Which is why I want to talk about dreaming. I know that dreaming is central to your work, and I just. There's so much synergy between you and I and the things that we talk about. It's just we were supposed to meet because you have a section of your book called In Pursuit of Dreaming, which I really resonate with because I also have a section of my book that's all about serious daydreaming. And serious daydreaming is where you go and you go into meditation and you meet alternate versions of yourself, parallel versions of yourself, aspirational versions of yourself. You ask her for advice. You ask her to solve a problem. You get good feelings. You, whatever, get guidance, whatever you need. And I just firmly believe in the power of daydreaming and dreaming, especially for black bodies. Your book is so good that I don't even like paraphrasing. I really like direct quotes. So I want to read this quote right here. And then I have a question for you. This is a direct quote from all the black girls are activists. Dreaming allows us to travel forward, backward, state to state and continent to continent, but always upward in progression toward a higher knowing of freedom than before. I can use my dreams to go to the highest imagination of myself as a free woman and ask, how did you get here? Free Ebony Janiece. Then I can use the clues that Free Ebony Janiece offers me and create an action plan for myself towards freedom. When I read that, I was like, this has so much synergy with serious daydreaming. So tell me, why is daydreaming so central to what you're doing? And how can black women use dreaming to move towards their own liberation?

[Ebony Janice]

Yeah, the revelation, When I had the revelation that we were creating our lives from resistance, I started to think then, what is the alternative? And it is the life of our dreams. Have we really spent time really dreaming? And so I really wanted to just continue asking questions, which I did for several years, like, is it dreaming? Is dreaming the thing that we're supposed to be doing? I'm not saying that our activism doesn't still include forcing our policymakers to change policy or that there isn't petitions to be handed out and getting signatures and that we shouldn't march. And I'm not saying that, but I'm saying that dreaming is not supplemental to that. Dreaming is the thing that we should be doing. That there is actual deep information in dreaming that we never have access to because historically we have not had access to rest. And you need to rest in order to be able to dream. So if resting is a major, you know, part of the work that we've been trying to get to sit down somewhere, actually take a nap, right? Actually be still, actually sit with yourself for a while. If that's not. Let me just slide off for a second just to say, when I was growing up, when I was a grown woman still and I would go to visit my parents, my dad actually, who's a 60 something year old black man from Meridian, Mississippi, my dad really struggles with seeing people just sitting down somewhere. Like, I could be like, it's a Saturday morning. I'm a grown woman just visiting my parents. And my dad will come to the door and be like, same. What you doing today? What you got going on today? I'm doing nothing, dad. I'm actually on vacation.

[Sheila Marie]

I'm like, dad, leave me alone, please.

[Ebony Janice]

Honestly, truly. Or my dad would FaceTime me sometimes and he, you know, old people, they got the camera right in their face and my dad would FaceTime me sometimes and I'd be laying in the bed and it would be like the same time every day. So, like, I just woke up from a nap and my dad would FaceTime me and be like, every time I call you you in the bed, I don't know how you pay that rent. And I'm just like, okay, dad. So literally there is actually something historical. There's something deep for our elders and for our ancestors around being still for too long, right? The answer is slavery. You can't be still. You got to keep moving because you may die, you may get murdered, right? You may get lynched. Right? So here we are, generations later, still trying to process what.

[Sheila Marie]

It astounds me that we can't make that connection. That that's not a larger conversation every time you bring it up. It's like, everything got to be about Slayer, oh, yada. And it's like, it's astounding. The brainwashing has worked so well that we literally believe we are isolated from. From chattel slavery and all of its effects on our psyche.

[Ebony Janice]

Here we are scientifically knowing that at the very least, 14 generations later, encoded in our DNA is trauma that we're still trying to recover from. So if trauma around sitting down somewhere does it. If there's not an easeful connection to that, then I don't really know what to do. But it's sitting right there. Slavery is the reason. And so here we are, generations later, if we have not been able to process rest, if rest is like really a thing that we're still trying to interrogate our. Whether or not we should have. Are worthy of it or should have access to it or what it means for us, then of course, we've not talked about dreaming or daydreaming or, you know, fantasy or imagination. But then I go back to my childhood and Ebony Janiece, who was a dreamer and who had imaginary friends, who had imaginary friends and who, you know, just was this playful little girl. She was experiencing pleasure, she was experiencing joy, she was experiencing so, so much more softness than this version of me who's. Who has to be serious, so serious in order to be taken serious. And so dreaming, then it feels essential because I know that there's information that I get from dreaming. And I don't want to just say that as some, you know, idea. I will give a perfect example of this. Years ago, I. I wanted to call in a million dollars for this project that I was working on. I never called in a million dollars before. I never called in that anything close to a million dollars before. But I'm really practicing this dream work. And so I have this dream. It wasn't something that I actively went and sat down and said, I'm about to, you know, go into this place. I just had a dream. And in this dream, I was living in New Orleans. I had this beautiful gold couch, and I'm seeing the background, what's going on in the room. And I'm sitting on my couch, and I get a phone call from. I didn't have an accountant at the time. I get a phone call from my accountant, and she says, it's official. You're a millionaire. So I wake up from that dream, and I giggle, and I'm like, oh, I love this. I'm living in Harlem at the time, and it's chaotic, so nothing close to what this dream is, this kind of soft experience. Then Covid happens, and my lease is coming to an end, and there's no way that I'm resigning a lease in 2020 in Harlem, paying a trillion dollars to be stuck in the house. So I moved to New Orleans because there was information in my dream that I became a millionaire in New Orleans. I moved to New Orleans, and I. When I first moved there, I start looking for this couch because it's another thing. I can't dictate the time. I can't dictate any of the specifics, but I know there are some specifics. I can do what's in this dream, what I can do what's in this dream. So I start looking for this couch. Can't find the couch, so I have to get the couch made. So I wait like. Like six months for the couch to get delivered to me because it's Covid. Everything's shut down. Nothing is actually arriving in time. Six months later, the couch comes. About four months later, I am. I took a call from someone who's one of my patrons, actually, and I'm having a conversation with her, and I'm talking about the fact that I'm in this transition in my work, and what I really want to be focused on is this project that I had called Black Girl Mixtape. And so I'm talking da da da da, whatever. And she says, well, what would you need to make that happen? And I say, I need a million dollars. And she says, okay. And she puts a million dollars into my bank account. Three days later, a million dollars as a gift. So a million dollars tax free. So a million dollars came into my life because I was dreaming and I pursued that. I'm living in New Orleans, girl.

[Sheila Marie]

Let me Go take a nap. I'll be right back.

[Ebony Janice]

So I'm living in New Orleans. I'm sitting on my gold couch at the time of this call. All the things that I saw in the dream. And so it seems like a. Right. Like I've done a lot of work to get to the point where my. I can like, literally play around in the dream world and be like, okay, this is something that I can make happen, right? So I'm not trying to suggest that today if you lay down and take a nap and you have a dream that you became a millionaire, you go become a millionaire tomorrow. I'm not saying that. But what I am saying is that when you do the work to pay attention, you need to be resting, you need to be, you know, creating a reality for ease. You need to literally create your environment that you can go into the dream state or go into your imagination or play around with fantasy. And I believe that that information came to me about what would make it even more possible, what would open up the doors for me to even be in a position to have that conversation, ask for it. The bravery when someone says to me, what would you need to make that happen? I didn't minimize it. I didn't say, oh, $10,000, you know, I need a million dollars. And literally that's how the conversation went. What do you need? I need a million dollars. I can do that. Now, was I startled when she said it? I thought it was. I was like, what? You mean you can do that? But it happened. And so, and that was the first million dollars that I called into the programming that I've done. There's, in my dreaming, I've seen, okay, this is what I need to do. This is where I need to be. This is the conversations I need to be having. And I have found that I have created a much more easeful work life, work balance by getting the inspiration from my dreaming, from my imagination, from that, from, you know, what I know for myself and ease, then sitting at my desk for 10 hours trying to just scratch and survive, and hanging in a child line, you know, just putting all this divine inspiration, good times. Honestly, there has been so much more crystal clarity that has come for me because I'm so deeply invested in the actual dream. So again, dreaming as the work, not as the supplement that dreaming is information. There's so much information in the dream. And my willingness to commit to trying it out and playing around with it has opened up profound doors for me and for the work that I've been able to do over the last several years.

[Sheila Marie]

Wow. Every time I hear that one line, I always think of that Dave Chappelle skit. Have you seen it? Where he did like a fake, like, Black Jeopardy. And he was asking people, like, like, what are the lyrics? And they're like, hanging in a Jerry. I could have had to say that. But what I want to latch onto is I really tried to stay away from using the word like, oh, feminine energy. Because I feel like that's really been weaponized lately, like, you know, in pop culture. However, energetic principles, spiritually. I do think that a lot of women operate a lot in their masculine energy. Energetically meaning. Masculine energy is like forward, right? Punching the air. Think of phallus. A phallus goes out. I'm gonna create things. I'm gonna make an Excel sheet. I'm gonna nail it to the T. I got a five year plan. I got a ten year plan. Look at me. I'm on it every day. I'm in the front of the laptop. Look at me. I could work 12 hours. I could work 10 hours. And it's great. But like, there's no balance. And there's not enough honor of that feminine energy, which is the. Like, you need them both. It's like, I know y'all, I know it's cheesy. I'm going there, I'm going there. You need them both. Like creating a baby. Like, yes, you need that male energy, but you also need that feminine energy, which is the receptive energy energy. It's the house of creation. It's where you lay back, where you receive it's pleasure. Right? And so to me, I feel like I've reached a place in my life where I have a really nice balance. And I honor it is a way to honor yourself as a woman, to honor your feminine energy. And so what I've done is I've done so much just like you. So much less of that pushing and making and forcing and doing and a lot more of that dream work. And funny enough, the story you told is interesting. I really, really quickly just want to share. This was before I met my husband now. And I had just got out of a very abusive, toxic relationship, so I had no romantic prospects in sight. For real, I was dating in New York. I was living in Brooklyn. I was living in Crown Heights. Shout out to that. And it was like, dating was just a mess. I was trying dating apps. It was just like, so depressing. And I had really started to try to, like, unravel this thing within me that says, I'm not lovable. I'm not worthy of love. I don't have any models for relationship and marriage. I don't think anybody would want to marry me. That's literally what I was thinking at the time. And because of that, I had said, I don't want to be married. I don't want it. I'm independent. I'm a woman. You know, in our 20s, we go through the thing. I don't need no man. Da, da, da, da. I can do everything for myself. A lot of masculine, masculine, masculine, masculine, right? Which is good because I still got it. Because, baby, hey, I always got me, baby. I'm gonna always do my thing, period. But I got a balance now. At the time, I didn't, right? So I. Somebody introduced me to the idea of this, which I call serious daydreaming now. But I got it from quantum jumping, if you want to look it up. And I was going into these med. I was doing them. So I was like meditating twice a day, 45 minutes a day. And somebody be like, oh, wow, that's impressive, girl. I was trying. I was falling apart. So I was like going into a meditation if I wanted to stay alive and be here. I was having very dark thoughts. I went into this meditation and I woke up in this house. It was like white sheets. We were. I was sleeping next to a guy. I'm like, oh, okay, that's my. Oh, I'm married. I'm married. That's a husband there. Our house is white. Lots of windows, lots of natural light. I noticed in the. In the dream, it's a meditation, but I called it a daydream. I noticed in the meditation that we didn't like, wake up from an alarm. It wasn't a jarring wake up. It was like we woke up on our time. I see. So that gave me clues, like, all right, we don't go to work for somebody. We're self employed. I could tell later I was making like a breakfast or something for us, and he got up and I was like, oh, my God, he is so fit, girl. Oh, who is that? I'm like, okay, he's athletic. He could be a professional athlete. But that's not what he does. He does something creative. I don't know what it is. And that's all I got at the time. And I remember I wrote, I got out of my daydream and my meditation, my serious daydreaming. I wrote it down. I still have this in my notepad to this day on my phone. And I just kept reading it and like, scared to even read it because I couldn't imagine how this possibility could be for my life. There's no way. And then like literally a few months later, I met Ace. And when I met Ace, that feeling that I had gotten from the serious daydreaming was so familiar in my body because I had done it so much that I was like, I don't know how. We live in two separate states. I'm not moving to Florida, I'm not going back home. He lives in Florida, I live in New York. But I knew the feeling and I trusted that feeling enough to follow it. And it led me to where I am now. I have a bright house, we have a lot of windows. So many things that are in the dream, we don't wake up to. I wake up to an alarm sometimes. But we work for ourselves, make our own schedule. And so, so I say this to say there's so much information, there's so much freedom, there's so much liberation, there's so much joy, pleasure, goodness in daydreaming. And I feel like I have to really hold. I have to hold black women hand when I say this. And like, baby, you can sit down. The title of that section of my book is Rest, please sit your ass down somewhere. Because there's so much to be said. But we are so. I don't blame. I don't blame black women for not wanting to sit down, right in the. In the past past, you know, laziness has been even shout out to the nap ministry. Got to mention her again. But she was chronicling how black women being lazy and sitting down was in news articles, was actually criminalized before. So there's a whole history of black women feeling like, I can't sit down. Who's going to hold all this shit together? I'm the only one keeping this together. Who's going to make the lunches, who's going to make the dinners, who's going to do all the things right? And sometimes we got to let the chips fall as they may, because you have to live your dream. Your dream has to become out of your head and into your life. And that's why you're here. And I personally think we live in the lineage of all women who could not do that. And so we have to. Okay, sorry, I'm off my soapbox now.

[Ebony Janice]

No, I appreciate that so much. I just want to say 27 seconds of that, that is the thesis statement. In fact, that's where this whole idea of dreaming comes from. Goes back to everything we do is from resistance. I gotta do this. If I don't do it, then it won't happen. If I got. I gotta create this. I gotta build this. I gotta, you know, create this supplemental program. I've got a. I don't. I'm not even trained in equity and inclusion, but I got to be DEI at my work, and I got to do. In order for me to be okay, I got to create this. I got to do this for my nephews. And I don't actually have time for this. I really. I can't make one more program. I can't do one more thing because of how sick and tired I actually am of being sick and tired. And so to take a step back and say, well, if that was. If working hard, if being. If grinding, if all that was going to work, you don't think that black women would be the most.

[Sheila Marie]

We would be everybody. We would all be billionaires, honestly, if.

[Ebony Janice]

That was going to work. We would be the most wealthy people on the planet. Of course, actually. And so that isn't to say that we don't still have strategy and still think things through, but to think it through from your seated self, to think it through from your rest itself, to think it through from your, well, self, is a drastically different inspiration than. And trying to do it on an hour of sleep or trying to do it, you know, running around doing 10 things for 10 other people. Right. That. To center yourself and to prioritize yourself is profound and. And it will be transformational. The evidence of that is in, you know, look at Sheila's hair sitting over there, looking all luxurious and. And moisturized as well.

[Sheila Marie]

Juicy berries.

[Ebony Janice]

She would be able to be that moisturized if she wasn't sitting down somewhere moisturizing her situation. So it's right there.

[Sheila Marie]

And one final thing I want to say about dreaming is that I love how it allows you to release control. Like when you're in a dream, like when you're sleeping, when you're actually sleeping in a dream, you just go with it. You're riding on a banana into the moon, and then you came back down. And I don't know if Freddy Krueger's there, but he's nice. And then it's Sesame street and you just, like, go with it and you allow. Allow. I feel that a lot of us have that as children. And then for whatever reason, we get in trouble for daydreaming or you're off task or that's socialized out of us. But really, when we get back to that openness that receptiveness. I find that you. That spirit gives you helpers. It sends you help. Like the way that lady just was, had the access to the Capitol and was able to give it to you. Me, in my life now, I do less work, but I have more community that helps me do a thing so that we can divorce ourselves from this idea that a thing will only happen and manifest if I do it all by myself. Because I believe that's actually a trauma response.

[Ebony Janice]

1,000%. Absolutely. I had a plan for my million. And in the year 2021, I had a plan. I was like, I'm going to make 100,000 doing this, 100,000 doing this. I had a plan. Meanwhile, spirit was like, just get in place. Just be where you're supposed to be and watch this. So, yeah, 1000% to. You know how even our dreaming calls in our helpers. I love that information, that language.

[Sheila Marie]

Yes. And it just calls in the fancy and the whimsy and magic. And I think magic happens every day. Like, FaceTime is magic. Like, if our great great grandparents could see us right now on this Zoom on Riverside, they think we're witches. So, I mean, I just think we normalize the magic, but magic is so many things are happening all the time around us. So I just love that reminder that we don't have to do everything on our own. On Instagram, I saw a post that you made, and you said, the only hard work I want you to do for the rest of your life is the hard work of becoming yourself. Can you speak a little bit more to that?

[Ebony Janice]

Yeah, I don't. I don't think that. That I should work hard ever. I think I go back to the beginning of creation, and I don't think that the divine spirit, however we came to be, I know historically that folk was not running around trying to, you know, build stuff all day long with their hands and going to sleep exhausted. That's not the. That can't be it. And then I also think about what my purpose is. You know, why am I here? Because this life is so. It's so long, but it's brief at the same time. And I remember, even though I wasn't a huge Kobe Bryant fan, I really was very impacted when Kobe Bryant passed because he just fell out of the sky. And my sister. I'm a trained theologian. My sister was like, you should stay off social media for a while because you're starting to sound like an atheist. Because the question that I was kind of asking every day is, what are we doing like, what are we even doing? We just out here. And so I spent some time. After Kobe Bryant died, I spent some time thinking about, what is the point of this life? Like, what are we actually. Like, what is the actual purpose of this life if you could just be headed somewhere, you've been headed every single day for years and just fall out of the sky? And I came back to myself with the revelation that the only purpose for my life is to actually become myself, is to actually just return to whatever God said about me. Like, that is the work that I'm actually supposed to be doing. There is no other point. There's the only point. Like, you don't live your entire life not being actual Sheila. That would be wild to come to the end of your time.

[Sheila Marie]

What a loss.

[Ebony Janice]

A loss to not be actual Sheila. The other thing is a part of my own theological truth system is I believe that I am one portion of God's personality. So as a result of showing up as actual Ebony Janiece, you get to learn something about God that you will never know. If I don't be actual Ebony Janiece, you will never know this thing about God unless I show up as actual me. So my only point, my only purpose is to be actual Ebony Janiece. Therefore, all this hard work that I've been used to doing, and I'm a Capricorn, so please be clear that this is not somebody who work, work, work, work, work, work. I had to actually have three coaches and a therapist and a. I put in work to be able to sit down somewhere. Baby, I honestly didn't. I used to say that I am the CEO and the janitor of this corporation. If I don't go to work, who gonna work? Because I don't know any. That is my life is like, I got the strategy. I know what's next. I'm. You know, I want to be successful. That is what I've been doing. So for me to be sitting here saying, I don't want to work hard at anything but being Ebony Janiece, it is. It is both a miracle and also a lot of really deep, deep, you know, deep work, deep pursuing of myself. And so all those words to say when I say the only hard work that you should be doing is the hard work of becoming yourself is that I fully recognize that in a society that wants you to not even have a clue who you actually are, being actual you is work. It is the labor that you will do. You will wake up in the morning and your mother will text you something and you will have to ask the question, is that true for me or am I just used to my mom for the last almost 42 years telling me that was true for me. And so that's hard work because that's my mom. I want to listen to what my mom is saying. I want to, you know, trust in her wisdom. I want to think. But I have. I have the responsibility to actual Ebony Janice to interrogate. Is that true for me or am I just going to go along with that? Because I'm so used to being a part of doing whatever my mom says and or whatever this institution that is, you know, the religious institution that I'm a part of said or whatever society is saying to me about what's beautiful today, right? We went from super skinny being cute to, you know, being super thick being cute. We was on the verge of going back to skinny, but with a big booty for a minute. Now we back the other way. So if we are to pay attention to what society is telling us about ourselves, it's changing every two to three business days. So actual me then does have to put in work. I do have to have tools and things in place and strategies and boundaries for myself. That's hard work work. So I don't ever want to tell somebody, just become yourself and not tell me upfront. That is going to be the hardest work that you'll ever do. And the only way that you'll have the energy to move forward in that hard work is if you divest from all this other hard work, right? But here's the good news. That the hard work of becoming yourself, that when you become actual you, you are able to call in a more beautiful experience, a more beautiful existence. And that's not just about money, right? That's not just about definitely money is, you know, a part of the way that we create a beautiful life. But it's not the only way that we create a beautiful life. We create a beautiful life in having a healthy body, which I only learn about myself as I pursue actual Ebony Janiece. We create a beautiful life and having healthy relationships, which I only learn about by pursuing healthy relationships and healing through Ebony Janiece. Creating boundaries, right? So there's. There is a lot of work to do. And in only being focused on this struggle, and again, the credit ripoff saying, we look, we got a good times, the hard work, the scratching and surviving, if that's the only thing that we're focused on, then we'll never be able to actually even pay attention to, like, oh, that's never brought me pleasure in the first place. That never brought me joy in the first place. I didn't know that. I didn't even like that. I didn't even know that wasn't the direction that I wanted to go in. I just was allowing society to really create that narrative for me.

[Sheila Marie]

So, speaking of tools, because. Because definitely, you know, I thank you for acknowledging, which I want to make a moment to acknowledge, too. None of this is easy. We're not saying that you just do this overnight or we're not just. We're saying it's your birthright and it is important for you to live who you are. But I'm definitely not saying it's easy. And so some women might be listening to this and say, yeah, Ebony, Janiece, and Sheila, this sounds nice, but I don't even know where to start. I don't even have time in my life. I'm busy. I'm strapped. And so this brings me to our toolkit section because. Because when it comes to being unruly, the best way to do it is to practice it in your life right after we've thought about it and talked about it. So in each episode, we have guests give a practical and actionable thing that the audience can do to integrate that into their lives. So, Ebony, Janiece, do you have anything that you can share with our listeners? Maybe they can get started on something small, how they can develop activism within their own life.

[Ebony Janice]

All right, we're all set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe, and paired all those weird shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheeses. And I plugged in the Bartesian Bartesian. It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails, plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites, too. I just got it for 50 off, so how about a Cosmopolitan or a mistletoe margarita?

[Sheila Marie]

I'm thirsty.

[Ebony Janice]

Watch. I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength and wow, it's beginning to.

[Sheila Marie]

Feel more seasonal in here already.

[Ebony Janice]

If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender. Unless you've got a Bartesian, because Bartesian crafts every cocktail perfectly in as little as 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off.

[Sheila Marie]

Tis the season to be jollier.

[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Sheila Marie]

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[Ebony Janice]

Absolutely. I actually have mentioned several things in this conversation and I'll go back to the first thing that I said when I talked about how you were triggering me. Your joy was triggering me. That I, I was, I was so astonished to see your meditation journey. And I didn't have that capacity at the time. I could not sit with myself, just sit with myself for longer than 60 seconds. But I believe in an alarm. And I would just set an alarm for 60 seconds. And that seems so insignificant, maybe in this moment because Sheila has acknowledged the fact that there's a period where she was meditating two times a day for 45 minutes. 60 seconds seems so insignificant. But it's the way that you build your muscle, that 60 seconds eventually turned into 90 seconds, eventually turned into two minutes, eventually turned into three minutes, eventually turned into five minutes, eventually turned into 10 minutes. And so that 60 seconds, it's such a small thing. It seems so small, but it's so huge because you're building your muscle. So that's definitely the one thing that, because that was really the beginning of my own really mindfulness journey, my real healing journey was just sitting down somewhere with myself for 60 seconds and giving myself that just that permission. And I didn't have a deep, profound. I wasn't doing a recapitulation meditation. I didn't have all the language for it. It just. Can you just be with yourself for 60 seconds? Ebony, Janiece. And it was a struggle, baby, boys and girls. But that, that was transformative for me because again, like I said, I started to build my muscle, build my capacity and my desire. Like, I at some point really loved being there with myself for those six seconds. Me too.

[Sheila Marie]

Me too. I look forward to it.

[Ebony Janice]

Yeah, I look forward to it. And that was very transformative.

[Sheila Marie]

Wow, Ebony, Janiece, you're a gift to the world, to black women, to anybody that gets to listen to you. I feel so reinvigorated and inspired. This just Happens to be a Monday. I feel like I'm taking all of this into my week now. Thank you for reminding us how we can empower ourselves, how we can use our voice for change, primarily of our own inner dialogue of our own lives, which can ripple to our communities. So for everybody listening, because I know everybody listening is wanting to connect with you, keep up with you, continue learning from you. Where can people find you?

[Ebony Janice]

Yeah. I am Ebony Janiece everywhere. Ebony Janiece is E, B, O, N, Y, J, A, N, I, C, E. And the funny thing about Sheila starting the conversation by saying that's her real name. You know, it seems like two names. One name is there's a chapter in the book called In Pursuit of My Name. And so I really break down, like the power of really owning your name and how historically black women in particular haven't had access even to our names. So, yeah, ebony janiece everywhere. Ebonyjanise.com, i'm Ebonyjanise.

[Sheila Marie]

I love that. And I love that you correct, you gently correct anybody who says your name. Like, to me, the first time I did it, I said, oh, it's Ebony. You're like, by the way, it's Ebony Janiece. I love it. As you should, sister. As we should. All right. Thank you so much, Ebony Janiece, for being with us today. You are, as I said, such a gift. I'm so honored that you were able to be a part of Unruly here today. And thank you for listening, for tuning into another episode of Unruly. I hope that you leave feeling empowered, uplifted, and ready to become more of who you already are. All right. That was such a powerful conversation, wasn't it? I know. So let's dive into one of my favorite parts of the show. This is the Unruly community call in section. And I love this part because I love hearing from you. So let's dive right into today's question.

[Tanya]

Hey, Sheila, my name is Tanya. Hope all is well. So I'm in a long distance relationship. I'm in Miami, my man's in Atlanta. He co parents with the mother of his child with their seven year old. And I feel like I have no voice because the way they co parent, the lack of, you know, creating a schedule, the boundaries are not set. Sometimes, you know, she's very manipulative. She's a narcissist. And it doesn't help that my man cannot set boundaries and he has an issue with saying no to things. I think it's guilt of just, you Know, saying no to her. So the way I feel like I want to say something, I want to really like, you know, tell him how I feel, but that's his child. So I feel like I have no voice. Like I say things, but I'm tiptoeing around certain things and I know I shouldn't. So this is where I feel like I have no voice in my relationship.

[Sheila Marie]

Hi, Tanya. So Tanya is in a long distance relationship. Her man, co parents a child that he has in a previous situation. And Tonya just feels like she doesn't have a voice and her man is not setting proper boundaries in order to keep her safe in the dynamic. And Tonya, absolutely feel you being a stepmom or a bonus mom is absolutely not for the week. And in many ways it's hard because you're kind of coming in between a dynamic that was created before you got there. I would say this 100%, speak up. I know in your message you were kind of like, I don't know, you know, if I should speak up. I feel like it's not your place. And I hear you because you may not have a direct voice in how they parent their child, but everywhere you go, there you are. So the issues that you're seeing with your man and his co parenting relationship, more likely than not, are also showing up in your relationship as well. And so if he's having trouble setting boundaries there, he might also have trouble setting boundaries with your relationship. And at the end of the day, that can come back and make you feel unsafe or make you feel like you're out of control of your own circumstances. So I would say you have. It's your duty to express how you feel. I would say this. When I feel a lack of boundaries with your co parenting relationship, it makes me feel blank. Right? It makes me feel like I don't matter. It makes me feel unsafe. It makes me feel scattered. I can't really sort myself out. Whatever. However it makes you feel, express that to your partner and also make clear what you'd like to happen. Like, I think it's good to express what's not working and also articulate what you would like to happen and then see how he reacts. Because at this point, it's not about co parenting. It's about respecting you and the things that are important to you. Okay, best of luck, Tonya. Big hugs. Thank you so much for sending that in. And to the rest of the unruly community, if you have something on your mind, a question or something you want me to answer, just Send in a voice [e-mail] unruly I can't wait to hear from you. Thank you so much for listening. Be sure to follow or subscribe so you never, ever, ever, ever miss an episode of Un.

[Ebony Janice]

All right, we're all set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe, and paired all those weird shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheeses. And I plugged in the Partisan Partisan. It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails, plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites too. I just got it for 50 off, so how about a Cosmopolitan or a Mistletoe Margarita?

[Sheila Marie]

I'm thirsty.

[Ebony Janice]

Watch. I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength and wow, it's beginning to.

[Sheila Marie]

Feel more seasonal in here already.

[Ebony Janice]

If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender. Unless you've got a Bartesian, because Bartesian crafts every cocktail perfectly in as little as 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off.

[Sheila Marie]

Tis the season to be jollier.

[Ryan Seacrest]

Add some holiday flavor to every celebration with the sleek, sophisticated home cocktail maker Bartesian. Pick up your phone and shake it to get $50 off any cocktail maker. Yes, you heard me. Shake your phone and get $50 off. Don't delay.

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