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One of the exercises in CLP is about identifying and clarifying our personal values. We each identify our top five values, writing one each on five index cards. Then we have to drop one, and another… until we are left holding the card with our number one, top value. What is your current One right now and why?
I’d say, in this season of my life it’s joy. This feels particularly important. If I had to put down my other four cards, this would probably be the one that stayed after all the rounds.
Because there’s so little of it growing naturally in the world right now, pursuing and prioritizing and seeking joy isn’t just a value, but a task. It forces me to interrogate both the spaces I’m opting into, and how I’m choosing to show up in community.
Also in the mundane things, I’ve been reminding myself lately to keep romanticizing life.
As a Black woman in the United States, joy is a radical act. I have a banner in my entryway to my home, made by Brooklyn-based artist Rayo & Honey, that says “Joy is an act of resistance.”
For me, it really is. As a Black woman in America, I can choose to opt into so many versions of identity, and they all would be justified. Joy, sadness, stress, beauty — all of them would be valid. And yet joy feels like the one that I most need to keep my eye on, and the one I need to contribute the most.
Do you want to share some of the ways you pursue joy?
Pursuing it is one of those active, mindful choices. Last night, I was sitting in the living room with my husband. We’ve been married now for four years, we’ve been together for seven. I actually met Michell the year I started CLP.
We started implementing these money meetings in our family, when our daughter’s not in school — we like for her to join us. She just turned three.
We’ve been making conscious decisions to sit down and talk about money. Because for both of us, there’s significant financial trauma that we have to process, while subsequently trying to be a couple, and run a house and do all the things.
I was talking about an expense. It was not embarrassing at all, it was a very justifiable expense. It wasn’t a lot, maybe a hundred dollars, not consequential. But it was personal, no one else in the family benefitted from it. Typically, it’s hard for me to name that — so it’s the money that I spend and don’t talk about.
I ended up swallowing fear and showing bravery in that moment, and just naming it: ‘hey, I’m going to spend the hundred dollars on this thing.’
I said to him a couple minutes later, that I am so grateful I get to talk to him about things that feel uncomfortable for me, like how I want to spend our money. Both my husband and I contribute to the finances of our household, so it’s our money.
A couple minutes after that, I said to him, “I want you to know that I’m actively choosing to reframe how I said that. What I really wanted to say is, ‘It was really hard for me to say out loud to you that I wanted to spend a hundred dollars on this thing.’ Instead I said, ‘I’m really grateful that I get to talk to you about how I want to spend our money.’”
So it’s one example in our lives where I chose joy in that moment, and I chose not to go down the deep hole of why it’s difficult for me. It’s not avoidance by any stretch of the imagination — I’m very present to the fact that this is still hard. But it is making a secondary choice to say I’m going to reframe how I’m thinking about this experience.
Because it could go 40 ways. We could trigger each other, I could’ve said something that triggered another conversation, and I’m just not choosing that in that moment. I’m going to actively say, ‘yes this is hard, and I am choosing to be grateful in a partnership where I can discuss even the hard things.’
It’s a subtle, mundane opportunity to choose joy, in a time where we are all hyper-aware, with a lot of access to information. Whether consciously or subconsciously, we’re processing it in ways that I think sometimes hurts or harms us. It forces us to choose the direction we want to take our day, our moment, our lives.
Life is really hard right now. I’m caring for a toddler, my husband is disabled, my father had a stroke last year and I’m one of his caregivers, work is not easy. There’s just so many things that at the surface level — if I can’t choose joy, it is the difference between my life falling apart and absolutely not.
And so right now joy is my greatest act of resistance. Because it is the only thing that is going to preserve me in this season of my life.
Thank you for sharing. I want to honor and send respect and love for all that you’re carrying right now, and your self-awareness and intention internally and externally as you’re going through it.
Thank you so much.
And thank you for taking the time to talk today.
I’m happy that I can co-exist and still do things and contribute in ways that bring me joy. I’m so grateful you reached out. CLP was a transformative experience in my life. I can’t understate that. I still don’t have the words for what that experience did for me, and how it shaped me. And so, to me this is also being in community, and that’s really, really important, so thank you.
You’re so welcome, and I totally agree — this is about us alums connecting because we all need it to stay healthy and fight against the cultural, social isolation that is so prevalent right now.
Absolutely. It’s so necessary. The types of connections that CLP bridges and the ways that post-pandemic people are really needing that space to process and be heard. It’s so amazing.
And having left Connecticut in 2018 and then come back to New Haven last summer, has presented such an interesting level of awareness for me. The absence of community when I left, and feeling so acutely how so much of community is shaped by proximity to or distance from particular circles.
What did you mean by wanting to continue to romanticize life?
I think we stray away from this idea of rose-colored glasses. They’ve been looked at as something that we should pull back and away from, something that we should resist.
I actually reject that. I think rose-colored glasses are a necessary means for survival, particularly for people who, like me, have experienced complex traumas and need a different way to experience and look at the world.
And so, my rose-colored glasses about life are: sometimes I need my day to be a rom-com, sometimes I need to be in one of those corny Adam Sandler movies for the day. I need to do the things that are going to allow me to build a different perspective on how I’m processing the world.
It isn’t to say that struggles don’t come and aren’t necessary and won’t help me grow and evolve, but I don’t need that all the time. I don’t.
So being able to romanticize my life sometimes literally looks like sitting with my daughter and being present with her in the moment. The beauty of having a toddler. I remember I had a moment where I was thinking wow, I have to explain the world through a child’s eyes right now, because she’s new here.
Something I often say to her when she’s hard on herself ‘cause she’s made a mistake or she’s done a thing is: you know Ada, you get to be new here. And that’s ok, you’re new.
It is deeply worthwhile. Deeply worthwhile.
That is such a beautifully supportive frame. What is one big, burning leadership question you are wrestling with these days?
That’s a big one. The thing that immediately came into my mind is how much of myself is left at the end of the day — and as a result, how much do I have left to give.
Motherhood really changed me. I think in part because I was not banking on motherhood; I wasn’t sure if I wanted children. That was a deep reality for me and my husband.
And so, the idea that we would end up in the pandemic having a baby, really shook everything that I knew about myself. How I have pursued life, how I have pursued leadership, what I wanted to model.
Ultimately, in choosing to move forward with becoming a mother, how that then shaped how I would spend my time and what was important. So as my daughter is turning three, I’m always super-intentional and conscious about the fact that I am raising a Black woman. And understanding what I model for her, how significant and influential what I say to her is.
What she watches me do, how she watches me show up — it’s forced me to reckon with how much do I have to give to “leadership,” and if I still define leadership as an output of my relationship to work, or my relationship to capitalism. What that all means.
That’s the central question right now that I’m still framing thoughts and answers about. How much of myself do I have left to give at the end of each day, and how much do I want to be giving at any given time to anything that is not the preservation of self or the development of my family.
What inspires you, gives you hope these days?
My daughter for sure. She is full of joy and life and is beautifully boundaried, she knows what she wants. The other day she asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I told her I want to be Ada’s mom.
I am inspired by her. And just so motivated by who she is and how she allows me and her dad to coexist in the world that she will inherit.
I’m very motivated by my ancestors. I think why that is, is because it’s super clear to me in this moment of history there’s something to be said about how they chose to live their lives. And how we can refer to that as a way to survive this particular period of time.
My great-grandmother has been coming to mind. I was blessed that she was in my life for 19 years. Being raised by her, knowing her, channeling her, has always been a very present thing.
I think the fear and sadness for me is really in that she doesn’t know my husband, she doesn’t know my daughter, she didn’t get to see me grow into the adult that I wanted her to be proud of. I do think she was always proud of me, but it’s different when you’ve got a little career, some letters behind your name.
My great-grandma was a Jamaican immigrant who came to the United States in the 1950s. She left the life she had in Jamaica to come to Harlem to clean homes.
The world as she left it is not the world that we have today. She certainly could not have dreamed of her great-granddaughter being who she is today. I also know that she was revolutionary for her time. I’m so inspired by that. That keeps me going.
This work of transformational change is hard. Stepping in, stepping up, over time, can be draining – physically, intellectually, emotionally, psychically, spiritually. How do you recharge, restore, take care of yourself, rekindle your fire?
Yeah. I don’t; that is the greatest area of growth in my life right now.
I’m grateful for the other Black women that know the difference between self-maintenance and self-care. There’s a version of me that can say, ‘oh, I’m going to do my hair, or do my nails.’ At this stage in my life, those are the things that I have to do to perform the work that I do. It’s not necessarily self-care.
Being in community, mainly with other Black women, has brought very cathartic experiences that affirm motherhood, executive leadership, community building, organizing, and just my place in space as a 30-something year-old Black woman, wife, and mother.
That is the closest that I have to engaging in self-care. I don’t have much time for it, I’m not very good at it, I’ve never been very good at it. My joy has come in my work, and in my ability to produce. There’s so much un-learning in that.
I’m also the daughter of a very fearless, strong but very hurt teenage mother, who ingrained as much as she could and did her very best to develop someone who then sought as her mission to take the baton I got passed really, really far.
In that package deal was not self-care. It was not prioritizing joy. It was prioritizing output and achievement. And so I’m un-learning that now.
The birth of my daughter was the difference maker. I was working a job with a leader who I really loved, but an organization that I had grown so deeply apart from. I might have been four months pregnant with my daughter at the time, and I was like, ‘listen – this is not the life I want to model for her or for me.’
And so I quit that job while I was pregnant, in the middle of the pandemic. It was crazy. Everybody thought I was crazy. But it was one of those subtle examples of moments in my life where self-care was a priority. I was making active, radical decisions to live my life differently so that I can get to a life that I want.
What I have to get better at understanding, is how to find intermediate joy and intermediate self-preservation, and not work really, really hard in just these big moments.
I appreciate that framing and naming of the difference between self-maintenance or self-preservation and self-care, as well as the difference between epic moments and shorter-term, intermediate self-care. Do you want to name any of your intentions for that intermediate self-care?
Even the space to process it and think about it is so much joy and love, so thank you.
I think that in an ideal state, I would have some type of physical space, some type of writer’s retreat, where I could go away on the water for a couple of days and truly focus in on myself. And focus in on the level of care and craft I would be able to create.
I’m a masterful graphic designer, and over the years, sadly, I’ve decided to monetize that gift. So I don’t feel it like art in the same way. But also, there’s the necessity of income. [laughing]
I would be able to do what I want to do or what I get to do, and not simply what I have to do. Right now in my life I’m doing a lot of what I have to do. Most of what I do is because I have to do it.
So self-care, self-preservation looks like more opportunities than not to do something simply because I want to do it, and not because I have to do it as a means to an end.
I hear you; especially being a parent of a toddler, that really makes sense. I’m curious, do you have a sense of what might be in that ‘want to,’ the more extravagant space?
You know, it’s really, really simple. It’s going to sit in front of a body of water without having to curfew my time because I have to be to the next thing. It is getting to show up for my friends, and send birthday cards, and be at their events without the worry of needing to be somewhere else, or not going burnt out and tired.
It is allowing myself to think freely and fully about how I want to spend my days on a regular basis. And not have them be so structured and calculated that I don’t have the capacity to just dream a little bit.
There’s a kind of chasing. I am a first-generation college graduate who came from what we would describe as poverty. I don’t think of poverty in the same way, but that’s the most accessible term.
To have come from that, sometimes it feels like I’m always running away from not having my basic needs met. It causes me to make decisions and over-commit. So I’m sort of chasing stability — while having it, so I’m not even sure why I’m doing it!
It’s a trust in stability.
Right, right, right. And if I could have the space to truly and fully trust myself and the security that I’ve built and the world that I’ve worked really, really hard to exist in? I think I would have peace and joy. That is what the self-care for me would look like.
Would you please introduce us to someone you are/were close with personally (e.g., family, teacher, friend, mentor), who shaped (or shapes) you and how you view leadership and possibility for a better community/world?
Yeah, that’s a good one. And I haven’t talked to her in some time, so this is interesting timing, she might be calling herself to light, she does that a lot.
Beryl is my great-grandmother. As I said, she came to the United States in the ‘50s. And just to give some place and space context, is the reason why my family still lives in the apartment building in Harlem it does today. She was the first family member in the building, and over 60 of us have been in this place through time.
She is warm and welcoming, she will always ask you if you have had toast and tea, or if you’ve eaten. If you have not, you should grab a plate; there’s always food on the stove, and she has cooked it herself. If you don’t like sugar in your tea, you should let her know, because she will put a lot of it. [laughing]
She is rooted in family. Once she loves you, you are a part of it forever. She has kindness and grace, but she is also a do-no-harm and take-no-shit kind of lady.
She offers silent guidance; so much of her perspective is in her eyes. She provides a wise love that allows you to know at any given time where you stand with her and why — while also giving you the tools and the guidance you need to make stronger decisions for yourself.
As a Jamaican, and particularly as a Jamaican in the United States, there was no alternative but community. It’s just how things were, just the way of functioning. I think she’d be pretty confused by people viewing community as a sort of container or commodity today. She sent barrels — like most Jamaicans or immigrants do — to her family in Jamaica every month, with supplies, food, clothing.
She was delicate, she was a lady, she brushed her hair every morning and every night, and she started her day with two pieces of toast and a hot cup of tea.
I think you would love her, and I hope you can get to know each other. She is the world, and anyone who knows her is blessed to have her in it.
I think my leadership shows up in a very, very similar way. My executive director right now one time gave me the best piece of feedback I’ve ever received in my life. She said, “Duanecia, when someone works with you, or is loved by you, they’re gonna receive the hardest feedback they’ve ever received, but the best support they’ll ever get.”
I know I learned that from my great-grandma. And so there’s a way of being that I think she instilled in me. I know that I have absorbed so many of her traits. My relatives now reflect to me how much I remind them of her. And I feel that for myself.
Her fierceness, her wisdom, her perspective, I think are the things that shape my leadership the most and how I show up in the world.
She was ten toes down about her family. And I know for a fact that having children, shaping my perspective is also rooted so much in how she would show up or advise me to show up in this moment.
What do you recommend to us, in each of these categories:
- Reading – Eyes on the Road by Michell Clark — my husband’s latest book. It is a book of affirmations. He has channeled navigating the difficulties of life and talked himself and other people into better spaces.
- Listening – to Black women.
- Eating – from our local farmers. We go to Edge of the Woods often, that’s our substitute for going to a good farmer’s market, until we can find one.
- Watching – Re-watch Scandal, all the seasons — it’s just playing out right now.
- Laughing – Go spend time with some toddlers.
- Wildcard – your choice – I recommend that everyone check their voter registration status, and register to vote. I hate being that person, but this is truly not the election to sit out if you care about anything else in the world.
Interview with The Circle’s Creative Director & Editor, Lara Herscovitch (Cohort 10). To reach Lara directly: thecircle@clpnewhaven.org or Lara@LaraHerscovitch.com
Learn more about and get in touch with Duanecia at LinkedIn or Instagram