CIIS Public Programs Podcast

transcript

[Cheerful theme music begins] 
 
This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. Through our programming, we strive to amplify the voices of those who have historically been under-represented. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.  
 
[Theme Music Concludes]  
 

Bree: Hi Breeshia. It's a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for being with us today. How are you?  

Breeshia: Good, good. I'm glad to be here and I'm excited to be in conversation with you. 

Bree: Me as well. I really enjoyed reading your book. It really resonated with me. There was so that landed and mirrored my lived experience, and I guess I wanted to thank you for writing so many Black women’s truths down. I thought I would start by asking, since the book is about grief, if you could define for us how, what grief looks like to you, especially since so many Black women's grief is misunderstood as rage and anger. 

Breeshia: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing your experience and your reactions to the book because writing is a solitary process like thinking and feeling. You know, it's a gift to hear how someone else, especially another Black woman, received the work. So, thank you for that. I feel like being able to write the book and put it out into the world has allowed me to feel in community with other Black women who I otherwise wouldn't, you know, have that direct or intimate relationship with.  

For me, the way I define grief- well, let me start by talking about the way that you know grief is typically defined. Usually when we talk about grief, we think of a past and concrete loss. And we're talking about Black women, Black people, Black LGBTQ folks, grief in particular, there's a lot of past and current loss that we want to look to and think of as grief. And the way that I explored grief in the book is much larger than a past and current context. I talk about the ways in which grief is also prevalent in the way that we think about the future. Through our relationship to fear of loss because we are all born into the world with a finite amount of time. We all know that we have a relationship to mortality and impermanence.  

So even if we're in a situation where we think hey, you know, my life's been pretty great. My family was great. My friends are great. I have a great job, you know, there's still that fear of loss that tends to plague people and it often shows up in the form of anxiety. It could be anxiety about losing the great job you have; it could be anxiety about losing the respect of your co-workers. It could be anxiety, especially for women, of walking down the street by yourself. Even if you’ve walked down the street a thousand times and gotten to wherever it is you wanna go and gotten there safely, there's still that awareness of what you have to lose, and that awareness is also associated with grief. And that's the type of grief that I really wanted to break open and explore.  

And in terms of Black women, related to our rage and our anger. Rage and anger are forms of grief and they are legitimate forms of grief. But because Black women are so dehumanized within our culture, our legitimate anger and legitimate rage when we experience it is used to further dehumanize us and further ostracize us. When, you know, if I don't believe that grief necessarily has stages. I believe that grief has expressions and it's well documented that rage and anger are a part of grief, but that's not something that, you know, readily comes to mind when you think of the “Angry Black Woman”. Because, you know, to put us in relationship to grief would further humanize us and the point is to make us seem unsympathetic.  

Bree: Thank you. That makes so much sense and I'm just thinking about what you mentioned about the five stages of grief and that it's not so much about stages but expressions of grief. I really like that. I have not heard that before, I really like that. There's so much imagery in the book. And I want to just read a sentence that I saw in the preface that really spoke to me and ask you a question about it. So, you noted, “tragedies kept alive by silence, haunting generations, memories recorded in bodies, restless and weary, all waiting to be spoken. When I heard these ghosts knocking in the closets of my unconscious, I was afraid to answer for fear of what the questions may bring.” I'm curious. What made you finally open the door?  

Breeshia: Yeah. Choosing my own survival and my own humanity. As Black people collectively and from my own experiences as a LGBTQ Black woman, so much has been taken from us and so much is constantly under threat of being taken. We've lost so much non-consensually that we are so driven and afraid of what else we have to lose because we aren't left with much besides what we protect and those defense mechanisms of, you know, guarding ourselves from experiencing grief and pain by being defensive and not being vulnerable closes us further off from our humanity because being human as a Black person in the United States, pretty much, pretty much puts you at risk, you know, like our humanity and our vulnerability are the very things that have been perverted and taken advantage of and that has to be, in my opinion, one of the biggest tragedies of what we've endured. So, for me, the journey and the decision to open that door and to listen was to choose myself, choose my humanity in a culture and society that's constantly trying to deny that.  

Bree: Yeah, that makes so much sense. So again, the book is full of imagery and I kind of chuckled to myself when you were discussing learning how to swim. [Breeshia: Mhm.] I also, I don't know how to swim. And so, there's a point where you, in this really beautiful and eloquent way, you talk about, you're talking about power and helplessness and learning how to harness power when you're speaking about a friend of yours and that she was able to float because she could harness, she's learned how to harness the power of the waves. Could you speak a little bit about helplessness and powerlessness and harnessing power?  
 
Breeshia: For sure. I wanna start by saying you can never be better than that which you imitate and when we are trying to build paths of healing and possibilities for a new future and a culture that has you know, demeaned and denigrated so many people, we can't look to that same culture as an example for how we understand power and how we understand grief and how we understand relationships. So, for me, I mentioned in the book that I took swimming lessons, like four or five times, right? I can finally float now, but let me tell you, that was hard earned. [laughs] It was- and you know, due to COVID I haven't been able to continue which has really been a loss, but I remember just being in tears and over the moon when my body was finally able to float.  

But in the story that I shared in the book, I was in Cuba with a couple of my girlfriends and we're playing in the ocean, obviously where I could stand up, and you know, this friend was you know, she was trying to show me how to, to float and every time I've learned, attempted to learn how to swim, there's so many lessons that I learned about myself like one lesson...I think this is like my second or third time, was noticing how I sink much more quickly and I have trouble treading water if I get into the water and I'm angry because of the way that I'm holding my body and the way that I'm tensing. So, there is a lot of mindfulness that went into the practice and went into each attempt when I was taking lessons. But with this friend, I remember she, she leaned back into the water and she was showing me like, hey, like, you know, you can jump with the waves. You don't try to, to fight and go against them and that really stuck with me for, for months and I think in that same passage, I talk about, you know meeting Miss McDaniel, I think, is a name I gave to her and I think you know, the whole swimming thing really, broke open my relationship to power when I met her and had that interaction.  

But ultimately, we have been taught, we have been fooled into thinking that power is something that we can have and that we can own and that we manipulate instead of understanding that power is something that has us and it is our job as human beings to be a vessel for power and to ensure that when power operates through us or flows through us and when we come into relationship with other sources that have power that we are as clean of a vessel as we can be so that it doesn't get misused. And by that, I mean we are constantly aware and attending to our own relationship to grief, our own relationship to trauma and anger and whatever it might be such that when we are coming into contact with our relationship with power and we're encountering other sources of power whether it be the ocean or power that's going through other people. We don't attempt to misuse that.  

So really, when I was learning to swim and the way I start to think about power instead of like something that A) I own and I have and B) looking at other sources like the ocean and those waves as you know, an entity of power. Instead of looking at that as something I needed to conquer and overcome, I looked at it as something that I needed to lean into and give in to. As you know something I could influence, like I can influence or have an impact on the waves by treading the water and moving my hands. But ultimately, you know, when I insert into the water, when I establish a relationship with the ocean or another person, I come into an understanding that I can't control it. Which means I can't control the outcomes, you know, there are so many powerful swimmers or there have been powerful swimmers still get overcome by the waves and the ocean. And accepting and giving myself over to that process has helped me understand the difference between being, you know, powerless and helpless like I'm powerless because I do not own power, power is not mine to have, I am not powerful. I can't take or give power because power is not of me or from me to take or give, but I am not helpless. And that I still have agency and how I choose to be in relationship to power and how I choose to allow power to flow through me by doing my own work.  

Bree: You know, this actually makes me think about another question that I had had earlier around outcomes, you just mentioned outcomes and I was just thinking about how there's so much hyper focus on outcome [Breeshia: Yes.] and I think it keeps us stuck and I guess, I just was curious if you had thoughts about that just like the stuckness or like the hyper focus on, on outcome, which we have no, we don't have any control over it. 

Breeshia: Yeah, I mean and that's the culture we live in and those are the- I'm Buddhist, so those are the delusions that we have been, that we bought into. But ultimately, also it's unfortunate that so many people move through the world in that superficial relationship to power, you know being able to say I did the thing that I said I was going to do or being able to control the situation or being able to bring about a certain outcome, is the only relationship to power they come to understand when power is so much deeper and more, more profound than that.  

But yeah, the emphasis on outcomes and being able to control things is something that we buy into all the time and I want to draw, you know, establish a difference between controlling something and having influence because if we could truly control outcomes, that impermanence would be something that we would never have to fear or experience. You know, if we could, if we actually had as much power and control as we would like to imagine, you know, due to the delusions and the false confidence that we’re given in our day-to-day life, you know, we wouldn't have to fear losing the people we love. We wouldn’t have to fear, you know, the, the outcome of whether or not we have our job or the consequences of certain behavior. There would just be much less fear of loss because we could control it, you know, we wouldn't die. But the fact of the matter is, you know, we can influence circumstances. I can influence whether or not I lose my job by choosing to show up or maybe not telling my boss how I feel about him today, right? Or I can influence my health by choosing to, I guess, eat this kale right now instead of that Wendy's burger for the, the sixth day in a row with a milkshake. Right? Like there, there’s like things that you can do to influence certain outcomes, but, you know at the end of the day, none of us have full control or ultimate say over what does and does not happen and I think that coming to terms with that reality is so terrifying for most people and it's just safer or feels safer on the surface to focus on the power that only results in feeling like you can control the outcomes.  

Bree: Yeah, which is delusional as I think you said or at least I read. [Breeshia: Yeah.] Since we're talking about power, I'll stay on this line, so I'm thinking about the ways in which people use power to oppress others and I'm just curious when thinking about power and privilege. Do you think there's motivation of what do you think the motivation would be to give up unearned privileges which you speak to or reference in the book? 

Breeshia: Yeah, the motivation would be getting in touch with one's own humanity and also letting go of fear, you know, I, it's kind of cyclical? Circular? I'm not sure what word I'm looking for. It’s kind of circular in that a lot of oppressive actions and systems come from fear, you know, I mentioned earlier in the book that I believe that systemic oppression of all types, even though I focus on a systemic racism and, and sex of- or misogynoir, misogynoir in particular come from the realization from you know, the oppressor, the person who is misusing power the most, that fear of loss and impermanence are a thing. So, time is a finite resource, money, finite resource, which you know in our culture in the way it sets up gives you time, you know the time we spend with people we love, finite resource, like everything is finite. And in order to buy or to give ourselves more opportunities to experience that joy, whether it’s to explore a hobby with our children and wife in my case, or relaxing, whatever it is that we want to experience more of I think that humans in general but in the context of systemic racism, white supremacy, the idea is that somebody else needs to pay for my ability to have more access to time. Like somebody else needs to not be able to rest, not be able to have time with their family, not be able to have money so that I can have these things, so that, to not be able to have as many opportunities for jobs, you know, because if Breeshia comes across a desk with a spectacular resume, and it's compared to Drew. I don't know, you know, you know, the system is set up such that Drew has more opportunities than Breeshia is given from the get-go by virtue of who we are and who the world imagines us to be so that Drew then has more money, then has more time to relax, then has more of an ability to build the life that he wants to build so that he can make the most of his time and that is coming at a direct cost to me. 

And I think the misuse of power comes from that fear, you know, and then it perpetuates that fear because then you have a lot more that you gained and a lot more to protect. And you can't control the fact that the very people that you want to oppress, the only way that you can oppress them is by putting them in, keeping them in proximity to you and when somebody or something has proximity to you then they have the ability to harm you, right? They have the ability to take away the very things that you have taken. So, then there is an added fear of having experienced, you know, what it's like to have those extra resources that have been stolen from lives that did not consent to give those things up and then there's more, there's like a tightening on that power that didn't belong to an oppressor to begin with. And I believe leaning into the basic fear, that the basic fear of impermanence and grief and fear of loss, allows all of us to make the most of our time and to experience life wholly and equitably. Just acknowledging that, yeah, hey, you know impermanence is real, grief is real, fear of loss is real. This is the amount of time that I'm given, and I understand that I actually can't control outcomes. But with the time that I've been given, at least I have greater access to the humanity that's been gifted to me because I'm not living under all of this fear that I have created by constantly taking, taking from and oppressing the people around me. Does that make sense? 

Bree: It does make sense. [Breeshia: Okay.] Yeah. Thank you. This makes me think about a couple of different points in the book. It makes me think about grief, but it also makes me think about, there's a passage where you speak about white people having a 500-year advantage and you share, you said something like, Black folks can't stop but we can't slow down because then we won't be able to pass the baton on to the next generation. There’s like, there's no time, like time is of the essence and running out. And so my mind was going there when you were when you were talking about time, but then I was also thinking about how there's a part where you reference…I was thinking about anticipatory grief and there's a point where you say, I'll read it, “the first death Black parents talk to their children about is their children's own. Parents of marginalized children live intimately with the reality of embodied time. Time is not a given.” And of course, no Black parent is wanting their child to die and is not hoping for that, like the hope is that they won't have to bury their child. But unfortunately, this is really common in our community. Our communities. Can you share a little bit about that or speak to that?  

Breeshia: Yeah, I mention how the book talks about fear of loss and fear of impermanence being a primary driver for creating systems of oppression, sexism, racism, homophobia, all of them and I think this is a prime example if we're going to talk about time, you know, and fear of loss of time. So that white people can have more comfort and more time and more access, we pay the cost down to our children. Like they're, they don't worry about their lives to the same degree. This is not an equal. We're not walking down the street. We're not going into job interviews, we're not walking through the store with the same level of hyper-vigilance in our bodies. Even in meditation retreats, like when I'm the only Black person just sitting quietly minding my peaceful ass business. Can I curse in this, by the way? 

Bree: I think so?  

Breeshia: Okay. All right. Maybe I'll turn it down, just in case. [both laugh] Minding my business...oh, I can. Alright so, you know, even when I’m minding my own damn business, being in my body is like a constant reminder or awareness in the ways in which I can die, but not just the physical death or not just police violence which comes to mind immediately when you’re talking about Blackness and death but you know, the death of self and the way that I know myself and who I imagine myself to be as someone who is capable, who is intelligent and articulate, and then coming into contact with a white person who immediately demeans my intelligence because of who I am. So that like there’s that death of self in that moment and that constant renegotiation, that constant work to bring myself back to life, to be who I know myself to be. But when it comes to Black children, this is something like, they are experiencing those types of deaths from an early age. You know, A) the type of death that their parent is talking to them about, that concrete physical death of like hey, don’t- be careful how you point that toy gun when you’re in a park because a grown, grown ass white guy might think that you are a menace. Or be careful walking through the store with your hands in your pockets because you know, some white woman might be afraid and think that you are a terrorist. And then there are the moments of death that Black children experience being in the classroom, you know. Hey, yeah, you can be smart, but not too smart. You're smart for a Black kid, i.e., the implication is Black kids aren't supposed to be smart, even though the child, like, the child didn’t come into the world with this awareness. The child is intelligent and is leaning into their intelligence, but they're, they're experiencing that death of self when in a classroom talking to teachers and classmates who can't see them as an actual human being, and it starts projecting things onto them. That is a death to their spirit. So, so these are, those conversations Black parents have as well. But I really wanted to highlight the other ways in which Black parents have to talk to their children in a way that is grounded and death with a small D is what I'm going to, going to call it because these children don't get to just come into the world and live into themselves. They come into a world that is telling them who they are and who they are not. More often, who they are not and it's a constant stripping of their humanity and there, there is never ending death in that.  

Bree: Yeah, it's really heartbreaking. This is reminding me of something my wife was sharing with me earlier today about a friend of hers who has a friend with a 13-year-old Black male child who was saying if he saves up his money for the next five years, he'll be able to afford a bulletproof vest by the time he's 18. And just like how heartbreaking that is, that that's where his mind, that's what he's planning for because he already knows at 13. [Breeshia: Yeah.] Yeah. [sighs and pauses] As you were speaking, I was just thinking about our humanity as Black people and in particular, Black women and thinking about the ways in which we constantly have our boundaries crossed on a daily basis. And there's this passage where you speak about your experience of officiating a wedding and these two drag queens show up and are sort of quote-unquote in Blackface just in how they're acting or interacting and you, you talk about how as Black women, we can't even embody our full selves yet here you have these I guess, two white males, two white male drag queens. And acting you know, what they think Blackness is or Black femaleness is. Would you mind speaking to that a bit?  

Breeshia: Yeah. It's just an additional layer of tragedy and perversion in this entire system. Like not only are Black people, and Black women in particular because that's who we are speaking about, not only are we denied the right to exist as we are like as we are born to be in flesh, actual human beings, not only are we denied that right and constantly having our lights snuffed out, whether it's the Black hairstyles that are, or Black, Black girl hairstyles that are banned in schools or you know, whether it's being punished or disciplined at an exceedingly high rate compared to you know, our white female counterparts. But people who aren't us get to exist in like a show, a show of what we represent, and they get to don that when they're ready and celebrate what we are constantly told that we should feel ashamed of and get to celebrate the very things that make us feel, that we're told, make us unworthy, like our sexuality, you know. 

These things get to be a source of pride and celebration by the very people who ultimately have disdain for the life that produces it, and we see that so much in our culture. I mean that's essentially cultural appropriation is, you know, and cultural appropriation and I'm queer. I have a wife and as a member of the LGBTQ community consistently observing the trends in the LGBT community and what gets labeled as strong and admirable is just a rip-off and a poor caricature of Black womanhood and in these same communities, like anti-Blackness is as prevalent as ever, pervasive as ever, and you know saying just in the world at large, Miley Cyrus gets, you know, she gets kudos or she gets to build a career off of, twerking a dance that has been a part of African-American culture, at just Black culture, for God knows how long. I don’t know, twerking has been around since I was, I've always known what twerking was, right, where this white girl gets to take it and make it into a thing and then put on this caricature of Black womanhood, build an entire career off of it, be praised for, you know, which she has ripped and stolen from my culture. Meanwhile, Black women are denigrated. And told that you know, we are hypersexual yada, yada, yada for the same things and told that we are less worthy for the same things that are actually from our culture.  

Bree: Yeah, it's enraging to say the least. [Breeshia: Mhm.] I'm also thinking so, thank you for that, there's a part where you talk about grief being used to avoid accountability, like you were specifically speaking about within the Black community itself and social justice spaces, and I was wondering if you could share more about what you mean by avoiding accountability.  

Breeshia: For sure. So, I talk about, in the book I couldn’t write about everything I wanted to. So, I have to be very targeted. And what I focused on specifically, was what I felt was most pressing in our culture and for me as a LGBTQ Black woman and the various types of systemic trauma that I experienced and that was the consequence of white supremacy, white patriarchy, whatever you want to call it and how the fear of impermanence experienced by people who are wielding white privilege, male privilege straight privilege, whatever it might be, how their relationships to grief actually means that me and people like me experience significantly more suffering and grief because they won't deal with their shit.  

But I also wanted to elucidate that this isn't particular just to people who we see who have social power in this moment. This is a human thing to do and yeah, like we can point to the white patriarchy and clearly there are a shit ton of issues there and at the same time, we see the remnants of that same pattern, that same human pattern to avoid grief and fear of loss, even if one has experienced tremendous amounts of grief and fear of loss to no fault of one's own. So, in addition to that inherent loss that were born with, having additional trauma inflicted on to you because of who you are. That can still be used to cause harm to people within the community.  

And an example of this is, you know, Black cis men who cling to their patriarchal privilege or feel that because they've experienced racial trauma, there's no way they could be held accountable or you know, or called in, called out, whatever you want to call it, for the damage that they inflict upon Black women as a result of their patriarchal privilege. And in social justice circles, or you know LGBT communities, it's like, other examples would be you know, or I think that the example I used in the book was being in a Facebook group and watching someone say something hurtful to someone who was struggling with mental illness and instead of the person who said something hurtful, let's call them person A, simply apologizing to person B, you know, the trauma and grief that person A had experienced as an LGBTQ person was basically used to deflect responsibility for the fucked-up thing that they said. When…just say I'm sorry and own it, you know, just because you have XYZ social identity and you've experienced harm in XYZ ways, does that mean that you then have a pardon or a pass for the harm that you also perpetuate against someone else? You know, it means that there is perhaps greater empathy, it means that there can perhaps, you know, if you find ways, provide greater support, but ultimately the harm, originator or was caused by person A. Therefore, it was on person A…and that is not what happened in that situation. So that's an example of what I was talking about.  

Bree: Thank you. It just seems like it's really hard for people to take accountability at times.  

Breeshia: Yeah, it is. 

Bree:  Whether it's pride or shame or, [Breeshia: Yeah.] who knows? There's a couple of other passages that I'm thinking about and as you were just speaking about Black women and Black men. I wanted to read a passage that really struck me and get your thoughts on it. So, you say “dominance is often shaped by what it isn't, so in a society in which dominance is synonymous with whiteness and masculinity, Black female bodies are often used as the ruler against which everyone else measures their superiority, with which Black women track their failure to measure up”. Can you share more about that?  

Breeshia: Yeah. Oh, and also can we come back to after I answer this question, you made a statement that actually got my mind thinking about what it is that keeps people from just taking accountability and I want to circle back to that because I had a thought, but the quote was about Black women being the measuring stick? [Bree: Right. Exactly.] Okay, so I didn't, I mention that identities are formed by who they are and what they, what they are. So presumably, if I am rich in money, then I'm not poor. If I am not intelligent or if I, you know, I do not like this term. I can't, I want to say ‘stupid’ because that is what comes to mind and that's something that's thrown around but that, I wish I could, off the top of my head, think of a better term and that would mean that I am not, I guess intelligent, by whatever standards are being set. Right. So how I see myself is based on what I'm told and what I believe I am and what I'm not.  

And if you look at social hierarchies in the, the US and how they're defined like white womanhood is defined in its relationship to Black womanhood and part of that comes with the protections that white women have by virtue of being white that Black women do not have by virtue of being Black. Black manhood, Black mascu- you know, I'm going to go with manhood because there's a difference between manhood and masculinity and I get more in depth on that in the book, that's a separate topic; is also defined by Black womanhood, you know, you are Black but you are not a woman and there are certain things that you expect by virtue of being a man, there are certain privileges that you should at the very least get, you know, even though you're Black, because you're a man, there are privileges that white women should get even though they’re women.  

So, if you're like looking at the history of identity construction in the US from when Black people are brought over as slaves and then you look at how relationships between white men and native women and Black women and white women and white and Black men had to change by virtue of bringing in you know, these new people within the master-slave relationship, Black women are the standard in which other people build their identity, you know, in terms of what they can expect, what privileges they can expect in relationship to Black women and what privileges they don't expect because of whatever is a given, by whatever system of oppression is relevant to them and that could be you know patriarchy for white women or racism for Black men, whatever, whatever the system might be. And ultimately it supports white patriarchy, you know, people, you know, people want to dismantle the whole system and theory and so that theory requires actual action. That means that folks are losing something in the moment and it's that loss, like that grip on the little bit of power that one has that ultimately allows the system to stay in place because people are afraid of losing the little bit that they have because ultimately, privileges, systemic oppression is built to ensure that certain privileges give you access to more time so that the reality of impermanence is not a direct threat to you.  

Bree: Every time you mention impermanence, I keep thinking the only constant is change and I have to tell myself that all the time because it's hard, you know, like everything is impermanent. Nothing stays the same, but you wanted to circle back to the, what I was mentioning about accountability. You had a thought about that.  
 

Breeshia: Yeah. It's interesting, when you were talking about- and this is- I haven't like sat with this and toyed with it a lot. So, this is just off the cuff. So, work with me, but you were talking about shame and what it is that prevents people from really leaning into accountability and I believe that it extends from grief as well. Because one of the things I mentioned in the book is that you know, if you aren't aware of how grief is functioning in your life, if you aren’t aware of your relationships, of fear of impermanence and fear of loss, then grief drives you and it's driving you because you don't know that it's in the backseat, right? And I believe that cultures have found ways to manipulate that to some degree.  

I mean capitalism manipulates our relationship to grief all the time whether or not you know, it's an ad we’re watching that's telling us, that's implicitly telling us if there's something that we lack, it could be like a beauty commercial or something. So, then you feel compelled to buy something, like buy this makeup or wear this push-up bra, whatever it is that’s supposed to make us feel more beautiful because having access to that then gives us access to relationships and other types of cultural capital which leads to other types of capital and resources. So, we're constantly having our grief manipulated in capitalism in general, you know working at a job you don't like and that is stressful and that is toxic as fuck. But you need your health insurance because without health insurance, your health isn't taken care of and what is closer to you know, what other reminder is there of the reality of impermanence and death than not being able to see a doctor when you need one.  

But in the same way, fear of loss and being ostracized and being disconnected from people has been something that's been used to control or like, guide society in general, like you don't behave in certain ways because you know, that or we, all of us know that certain types of behaviors mean that are unacceptable and that means that we lose access to relationships and community, you know. We, people, know or I just asked, I'm going to use myself as an example, if cursing was okay, right, because I am aware that there are contexts in which cursing is not okay, and if I curse in those contexts then I lose access to that space, those relationships and whatever else that might mean. So, I think like in the case of the social justice example, specifically, for person A to have had their ableism called into question, you know, the association with ableism, you alluded to shame. It's shameful. And also, you're not supposed to be, to be ableist, right. Like we have, you’re not supposed to do certain things that make you a bad person. If you do things that make you a bad person, then you risk losing the communities and the people you want to be in connection with and I think that that can be particularly poignant for communities that have been marginalized where we don't have access to the same people. Like we have a smaller pool of people to pull from to begin with so then, that fear can be amplified.  

But that fear of, you know, loss of community and ostracization is something that humans experience across the board. So, when you know, racist ass white guy hears, you know, he's racist. Ooh, I got an example! Papa John. This guy! [laughs] I was watching on YouTube, homeboy legit said “I am not racist”. Had been caught using the n-word and then said that in the same “I am not racist” sentence said that he'd been working for 20 months to remove the n-word from his, from his dialogue. [Bree: Wow.] Now sir. [laughs] That sounds mighty racist to me! Like your actions sound like the epitome of racism. However, you know that being called racist or being associated with racism means that you lose access to certain things, to certain people, certain relationships, you don't have, you know, even if your actions had this, to say, the actual the impact of racism, you’re calling people the n-word, bruh. So, so yeah, I think it's that fear of loss and that you know, unattended grief that makes people respond viscerally because they immediately think, oh shit, what can I lose or what's at stake if I am this person and then other people don't want to have the same type of relationship with me.  

Bree: That makes so much sense. Yeah, fear of loss. I’m thinking about sort of connections, fear of loss, like, of tangible things too, like money, you know losing, losing one's job, capital, income. There's like a whole spectrum, but that, I mean, that just makes a lot of sense. Thank you for that.  

I'm just having different things, there are images pop into my head from the book and I was thinking about towards the end of the book you talk about liberation. And when I think about liberation, I really think about showing up as my full self and as a Black human being, that's oftentimes quite difficult for me to bring my full self, like whether it's you know, to this interview, to work, to, to different settings. And there's a, there's a point in the book where there's a young man whose father has recently passed away, and he's in his grief and the hospital calls either security or police on him and you come back, I believe you had stepped away to tend to another family and I just found myself- Oh and also his aunt admonishes him for how he's dressed and I just found myself enraged and in tears because he- you know, every- his humanity was really stripped away in that moment and all people saw was like this terrorist or this, I don't know what, like this, this monster, if you will, as opposed to this young man who's grieving. Do you have thoughts about that?  

Breeshia: Yeah, as Black people, as women, we are constantly made responsible for shit that has nothing to do with us and that's you know, and it starts with our relationship to grief and impermanence. Like the whole system of oppression pushes off the grief or the fear of loss experienced by our oppressor on to us such that we become responsible for it. And in that situation, in the example that you gave, that young man became responsible for this white woman's, you know, own grief and own anxiety and discomfort such that he couldn't grieve the loss, I believe it was, of his grandfather. I don't recall the story fully.  

I do recall also feeling a loss of time because I'm with another family and I can't support that family who had been there for an hour, that woman who waited for an hour before I could even get there, because of what was going on with the white nurses and the young Black man, and then I had to leave her prematurely. I only had 20 minutes to see her. So even she, you know, as a downstream effect, is losing time and suffering because of this white woman’s relationship or avoidance of her own anxiety and grief and I think systemic, I know systemic oppression does this in a variety of ways, so in this example, this young Black man was made responsible for shit that wasn't his responsibility. Somebody was uncomfortable with the fact that his pants were hanging, hanging off the way that they were. That ain't got nothing to do with him. Those his pants. In the same way, that a woman walking down the street in shorts, however short they are, revealing however much she wants to reveal, and like that other people's discomfort about how she dresses, and her body is not her responsibility. Like their anger, their lust, their desire, their, their violence, that is not on her, but we live in a culture that is constantly going to push other people, displace other people's grief and their anger, and their shit on to people who have been marginalized within the system and that is what he experienced.  

And I- and as Black people, we have been taught that our key to salvation, which we associate with freedom, comes from adopting those standards and those rules. But again, we can never be better than that which we imitate and adopting those rules can keep us alive from moment to moment, maybe. Maybe. Because- and there’s plenty of examples where it don't make no difference. Sandra Bland, for example, minding her own damn business, right, so, or Elijah, like it's- maybe, you know, we hope that it can buy us more time. But in constantly being invested in our salvation moment-to-moment and taking on the anxieties and fears of other people, which, you know, and in a lot of cases we have to for our survival or for hopes for survival. We are not able to focus on what it actually takes to be liberated because of the cost. Because you know, the people were given power that does not belong to them in our system, as a result of their fear of loss, have the ability to reap irreparable havoc on our lives, to cause even greater loss than the losses we experience.  

Bree: That was really powerful. Thank you for that. In thinking about liberation, I'm also thinking about something that you reference sort of throughout the book or speak to, you talk about mindfulness and meditation and your meditation practice and I guess, I'm curious, has that led to- you said that you've said in the book also that liberation is not like a destination. It's a process. So, I was going to say, has that led to your own liberation, but it's not a- there's not a destination. So, has it helped you and your process, in your liberation process? 

Breeshia: I, I mean, I guess. I'm here. I…I...don't know. I...I believe so and I say I don't know because I'm not- I think without context and the book the way that the listener might be imagining or defining liberation might be different than how I'm describing it. But if we're talking about liberation that just feels good and feels powerful all the time, no. Like I don't believe that that's a real thing and it's not something that I aspire towards. If we're talking about the type of liberation that comes from showing up authentically and vulnerably and living into my own humanity moment to moment and choosing myself, like choosing myself and my humanity and the humanity of my people and the communities I've served, then yes. That I do believe that that's the type of liberation I'm experiencing, and it is a process. 

Bree: A lot of the work that I do is about helping people find their own personal freedom. And I really just like the sort of both the latter definition that you gave because I think for a lot of Black folks, we’re not free, you know, we’re not liberated for all the reasons that you said you've illustrated in the, in this conversation today. I guess something else I'm curious about, as I'm just looking- noticing time, is are there things that you really want your reader to take away from the book or anything that you kind of want folks to walk away with or Black women or the Black community in particular to walk away with in reading the book?  

Breeshia: Not that I could, not that I could think of. So, I find the question funny. Can I share something with you?  

Bree: Please. 

Breeshia: Okay. Cool. [laughs] So, funny thing, when I wrote this book, I know it's called Grieving While Black but I did not know who would read it. So, backtrack, I had started a project or business a few years ago that you know, produced e-books and kits and meditation specifically for Black women to address our anger and subsequent grief from experiencing misogynoir and girl, I wrote everything myself. Used nothing but pictures of Black women, hired Black marketers, have my Black female friends looking at it and just giving me honest feedback and the only people who were drawn to this were white women and I really thought- well, wait, and I remember being in this group of Black, you know, women who were starting their businesses and other Black women gave me the feedback of: your audience is whoever shows up so this who you thought your audience was but apparently this not your audience so go with it. Right?  

So, when I was writing Grieving While Black, I honestly started the project about four years ago, but I didn’t realize I was starting the project and I signed the contract for the book at the end of 2019 and finished it in like February 2020. But initially, for me, typically when people are thinking about grief and, and Blackness or in relationship to racism they are specifically thinking about grief that Black people are feeling as a result of systemic racism. And of course, that comes out very strongly in my book because I am a Black woman experiencing the consequences of these various systems at the same time when I was writing the book, I wanted to point the finger back at the people who were responsible for perpetuating that grief because of their own relationships with fear of loss.  

So, when I was writing, you know, my interest was telling- don't worry- showing those people how they can be more present for you know, their experience and get their shit together so we aren’t experiencing down, downstream effects of their relationship to their own grief and fear of loss and it's all interconnected or it's all tied together. But yeah, I just wanted to share that like that was my intention and like that was my audience when writing the book but like, you know, I take on these projects and I will have a goal in mind and the way that it is interpreted and who picks it up like it's, it's out of my hands. Like once it's in a store or you know, once it's like available to the public in general, I don't have any more say in what becomes of it which is both terrifying and exciting. So yeah, like your question made me think about that, that whole experience of that no one- who, who's going to read this or who would actually, you know, find it most helpful and what people would take from it based on their social location and lived experience.  

Bree: That makes a lot of sense. And as you were describing this product, I was thinking, do you still offer this because I would like, I would personally love, love to get a copy. But I think that's so interesting that white women were particularly drawn to it. 

Breeshia: I was, I mean, I went with it. I was, I was like, I don't know how this came to be. [laughs] But I don’t-...I mean I had meditations to trap beats, [Bree laughs] everything but I don’t...I had no idea but whatever, it was what it was. Unfortunately, I discontinued it due to COVID because I wasn’t able to go to fairs and sell it and there were stock in a local store but then that store closed down so yeah, COVID has kind of impacted my ability to continue that project. Thank you for asking.  

Bree: Yeah, of course. Sort of a half, half formed question I have as I was again, as I'm just sitting and listening to you, is again the book really resonated with me and I had to stop just to cry oftentimes throughout the book. Or just like breathe deeply, there was just so much that hit so deeply and at the end or towards the end you talk about love. And I remember writing in the margin, margins do, is Breeshia saying we need to redefine love? But I can't remember like the exact passage. But you were speaking about love and I just was thinking you know, what is, what is love? How are we defining love? And as Black people, do we need to redefine love to again, to sort of be on this process towards liberation. I don't know if that's resonant for you, but-  

Breeshia: Oh yeah, thank you for that question. I think that's something really powerful to end on. We absolutely need to redefine love. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's a ongoing process, you know a lot of folks in the community wouldn't recognize my relationship. You know, me with my wife as a representation of love but ultimately or even like the way we talk about Black love and what that means, you know, ultimately, I believe that anything that adds to the fullness, the wholeness and the healing of a Black person is Black love, right? Assuming it's not causing harm to someone else. But you know with consenting adult relationships. Yeah, I mean, that's how I would, you know define Black romantic love but like love is just so, we sell love short in the same way that we often sell God short and making God out to be this being in the sky. He's omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, you know, and when we're constantly selling. Oh, and we sell power short and we're constantly selling these profound experiences short, we limit our ability to experience them and to access them. So, I would invite all of us myself included. I'm inviting myself on this journey to be willing to constantly redefine and explore what love is and what it represents on a day-to-day basis.  

Bree: That's so beautifully stated. Thank you.  

Breeshia: Thank you.  

Bree: Yeah, so I'm aware that we're at time. I just want to thank you again…time, in terms of our conversation. [laughs] I just want to thank you again so much. It's just, this has really been a true pleasure and honor.  

Breeshia: No, I wanted to thank you, I really enjoyed this conversation. So, thank you for reading the book, for sharing your thoughts and reactions. I appreciate it. 

Bree: Absolutely. Absolutely.  

 
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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live. 
 
Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS Public Programs. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Jason McArthur, and Patty Pforte. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 
 
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