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 Jeanies. And yes, that's her name, Ebony Jeanies. 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 Jeanies. Hey, you're hey. Hey, you're 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 joy? Like full, unadulterated, childlike joy.

Okay. This is Ms. I'm not a miscellaneous, but I just popped up and went to France a couple of weeks ago. Really? 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 went to be dramatic in Paris, and that was a good choice. And I And rode the bike everywhere and just ate too much and had dessert with every single meal. And it was a good time.

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

I've been to Paris several times, actually.

So you're not new to this. You're true to this.

Actually, excuse me. Pardon me. It's what I do.

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 to you. I love it. It's giving me Amélie energy. I love it. Okay, so I need to book a trip is what you're saying.

Oh, yeah, if you need a little bit of drama, I feel like Paris is the place for drama. Honestly, I mean it with all my heart. I love it.

Okay, You know what? 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 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? 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 him in being safe in this space. 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 fifth or something. 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 he is alive, 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 self-care, is really just deep interrogation. The more I started to interrogate that, the more I realized, Oh, my gosh, for myself and how many of my friends, how many of my people that are my colleagues or my contemporaries, are creating everything from resistance.

Our entire existence is creating from resistance, or what Fannie Lou Hammer said, sick and tired of being sick and tired. How much of what you have even created in your own life, Sheila Marie, has I've been from a place of just like, this doesn't exist. I'll have to create this as supplemental because for my body, for 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 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 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'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.

Wow. I love that answer. And I actually 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?

Womanism is a term that Alice Walker coined in a book of prose that she wrote it many years ago. And there's a four-part definition. And in this four-part definition, it starts off saying, A womanist is a grown-ish, willful, seeming to know too much, a 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. 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 aspect of womanism feminism, where we realize when we have conversations with our elders and they have conversations with us, 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 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 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. Even Joan Morgan says in her book, When Chicken Head has Come Home to Roos, I always knew my feminism- Oh, I love her. I think I quote her in my book, too. 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 understanding that identifying as a Black feminist, but really claiming the name of womanist, 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 feminist, but I'm talking about spirit, and I'm talking about a tradition, and I'm talking about culture, and I'm talking about something very specific to Black women.

Wow. This is so interesting, and 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 couples therapist. So me and my husband were in a couples 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, 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, I'm like, well, sometimes Black men are the White women of Black people. And she was like, what? But I'm a womanist. And she was like, she just could not understand it at all. It was like, don't do that. We love our Black men and this and that. And I was like, yeah, that's the last time I'm going to be with you because I'm like, Baby, if we deconstruct, then we got to deconstruct. And so I love the term- Walk in the room 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.

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 in that moment like, oh, my God, God, this is as far as I can go here. No. 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 how do you incorporate your spiritual practices into your activism work? Because on their face, those things could seem very different. When you hear activism, I feel like people just think marching. They just think these classical signifiers fires of 1960s activism. So how do you incorporate spiritual practices into your activism work?

My spiritual practices are my activism, in fact. I believe that Blackness is a technology, and Wait, wait, wait.

What does that mean?

Blackness is a technology. So think about technology. 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, 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 socio-political practice. So my blackness isn't just the color of my skin. There is something deeper than just the color of my skin that is historical. So being an activist, 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, blackety-black in the fullness of my womanhood, in 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, if you didn't do anything else in this world that wants you to not 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.

That if you just showed up as actual you, that is profound in a cis-hetero-patriarchal, white supremacist society that wants you to literally not be anything of the sort. So my spirituality, my spiritual practices are my activism. I believe that in showing up and doing the deep work of spirit and understanding myself and knowing what I 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. Me? Sheila. Okay. So years ago, you were first starting to go viral, and you would pop up on my timeline. Let me work through this story because this is about to be it. 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? 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 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.

Oh, yeah, girl. This is at the It's your beginning.

This was at the beginning of the time. It was like 2017, 2018. 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 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 going to 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, just sit there and just try I got to be still with my thoughts, be quiet. And so literally, 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 mind of your business. You don't know nothing about Ebony Jeanies-Maur. You're over there mind of your business, being happy, love of your man.

You're in New York still at the beginning of this time, I think. Just talk 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 Change the world, Sheila. Just being your actual self. And I feel like if that isn't the proof, you don't even have to know the people that you're changing. Here's this person just in the ether, 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 be giddling on my timeline. I want those things. Things. And it was literally starting with this very tiny, she's meditating. I'm going to see if meditation is a part of it. She's considering plant medicine or 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? My spirit, My 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 there. Wow.

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

We all can do this. It's information. I think exactly what you're saying. Excuse 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 ask for a seat.

And that's right. You didn't get the gift if you didn't sit with that. If you would have rejected that experience, that emotional experience, and just buried it, or just, Oh, F, Sheila. I'm not falling from a blocker. You would have never got to that next part.

I would have never known. We're talking about this in passing, but I really do I want to say that it really was a major moment for me. It really was a major moment of like, I didn't... Because that thing was triggering me, whatever, 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, as cliché as that sounds, because the thing that came up for me as I journaled through it 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 embarrassing thing and say, There's something here, girl. You How do you deal with this.

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

I turned it off. 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? Yes. 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 it. You know the quote I'm about to read. It's so great. I have been approaching this topic in that voice for 20 plus years. Then there is the version that you're getting, where I start the chapter by ripping the bandaid off shame and saying, your elders have sucked a dick or two, or licked a coochy 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.

Years ago, Procledge, 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 it's in the room with her that she can't tell this truth. I can't say this. 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. It was like, Oh, the only way I'm going to actually be able to just get into this is if I start off with, Your mama probably suck dick. And if you could get that out the way for yourself, if you could get over the fear and the shame of saying that out loud, saying it internally, acknowledging it for yourself, My mama's probably sucked dick before. If you could get through that- Wow, thank you for this mental picture. It's such a thing.

If you could get through it and realize that there really is nothing to be ashamed of. It's a very natural thing to do when you're in a 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. Let's just get this out of the way. And it was definitely inspired by that. 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 side letter, 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, oh, let me just let me say this so we can get to the thing I'm trying to say.

Oh, well, speaking of sucking dick and looking koochy, why do you think that pleasure is so important for Black women?

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 animals, like you would use them to both 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, 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 woman, it's been 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 micro and macrocosmic example of the fact that pleasure is still such a touchy subject for Black women in particular.

Because if you think about in the '90s when Lil Kim first started coming out and rapping, really very grotesque in a lot of ways and talking about sucking dick and talking about 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. It was controversial for her, but it was not controversial for her male counterparts. Now, here we are, four score and 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, the stallion cannot just talk about the things that she wants to talk about. Lotto, right? 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 listened to the album. I was talking about other things. Wake it up. You were willing to be in conversation with me about how the industry literally created this space for me, that that was the only space that I had access to.

It's still hip hop, like I said, it's such a micro and macrocosmic example of the fact that we can't talk about enjoying sex. We can't talk about having sex. Who are the men having sex with? If we can talk about having sex? We can't talk about our pleasure. 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... 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. Your church community, your religious community is in charge of your sexuality. How dare you think that you have some say so over what pleasure you're experiencing and or when you'll experience pleasure. So, yeah, it feels very important in a book about activism or the Black Girls Being Activists. It feels important to be talking about pleasure because it's not a thing that we have 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.

Yeah. I love that the rest of the world will have to catch up because, as you said, we are creating a future, 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. 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 in a 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, 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 Jeanies? Then I can use the clues that free Ebony Janice offers me and create an action plan for myself towards freedom. When I read that, I was like, This is so This has so much synergy with serious daydreaming. 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?

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. 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. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying that 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 part of the work that we You've been trying to get to, sit down somewhere, actually take a nap, actually be still, actually sit with your sofa a while. 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 Marini, Mississippi, my dad really struggles with seeing people just sitting down somewhere.

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, What are you doing today? What you got going on today? I'm doing nothing, dad. I'm actually on vacation.

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

Honestly, truly. Or my dad would FaceTime me sometimes. 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 the same time every day. 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. I'm just like, Okay, dad. So the Really, 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 it means to- It astounds me that we can't make that connection.

That's not a larger conversation. Every time you bring it up, it's like, Everything got to be about slay. Oh, you all... And it's astounding. The brainwashing has worked so well that we literally believe we are isolated from chattel slavery and all of its effects on our psyche.

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, 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 really a thing that we're still trying to interrogate, whether or not we should have... We're 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 fantasy or imagination. But then I go back to my childhood and Ebony Janice, who was a dreamer and who had imaginary friends who had imaginary friends and who just was this playful little girl, she was experiencing pleasure. She was experiencing joy. She was experiencing so much more softness than this version of me 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.

I don't want to just say that as some idea. I will give a perfect example of this. Years ago, 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 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 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 my accountant. 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 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 million dollars to be stuck in the house.

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 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 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 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 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 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. She puts a million dollars to 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 the... I'm living in New Orleans- Girl, let me go take a nap.

I'll be right back.

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 I've done a lot of work to get to the point where I can literally play around in the dream world and be like, okay, this is something that I can make happen. So I'm not trying to suggest that today, if you lay down and take a nap and you have a dream that you can be a millionaire, you can 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 creating being 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. To 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. I 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 like, What do you mean you can do that? But it happened. And that was the first million dollars that I called into the programming that I've done. 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 what I know for myself in ease, then sitting at my desk for 10 hours, trying to just scratch and survive and hanging in a child line, just putting all those things. Provide inspiration. Hanging in a child line. What 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 a supplement.

That dreaming My dream 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.

Wow. Every time I hear that one line, I always think of that Dave Schiappa skit. Have you seen it? He did a fake Black Jeopardy, and he was asking people, What are the lyrics? And they're like, Hanging in a jury. I could have had to say that. But what I want to latch on to is I really tried to stay away from using the word feminine energy because I feel like that's really been weaponized lately 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 forward, punching the air. Think of phallus. A phallus goes out. I'm going to create things. I'm going to make an Excel sheet. I'm going to nail it to the T. I got a five-year plan. I got a 10-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 there's no balance, and there's not enough honor of that feminine energy, which is the... You need them both. I know you all.

I know. It's cheesy. I'm going there. I'm going there. You need them both, creating a baby. 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 I'm really told is interesting. I 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 so depressing. And I had really started to try to unravel this thing within me that says, I'm not lovable. I'm not worthy of love. I don't have any models for our 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. In our 20s, we go through the thing, I don't need no man. 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 always do my thing, period. But I got a balance now. At the time, I didn't, right? So 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 doing them. So I was meditating twice a day, 45 minutes a day. And somebody be like, oh, wow, that's impressive. Girl, I was falling apart.

So I was 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. I was sleeping next to a guy. I'm like, oh, okay, 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 dream, it's a meditation, but I called it a daydream. I noticed in the meditation that we didn't 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 a breakfast or something for us, and he got up and I was like, oh, my God, he is so fig, girl. 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 got out of my daydream and my meditation, my serious daydream.

I wrote it down. I still have this in my notepad to this day on my phone, and I just kept reading it and scared to even read it because I couldn't imagine how this possibility could be for my life. There's no way. And then 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. I wake up to an alarm sometimes But we work for ourselves, make our own schedule. And 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 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 Black women for not wanting to sit down. In the past, laziness has She's 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? 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.

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. It goes back to everything we do is from resistance. I got to do this. If I don't do it, then it won't happen. If I got to create this, I got to build this, I got to create this supplemental program. I'm not even trained in equity and inclusion, but I got to be DEI die 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 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 working hard, if grinding, if all that was going to work, you don't think that black women would be the most wealthy? We would be everybody.

We would all be billionaires.

Honestly, if that was going to work, We would be the most wealthy people on the planet, actually. Of course. 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 seat itself, to think it through from your rest itself, to think it through from your well self is a drastically different inspiration than trying to do it on an hour of sleep or running around doing 10 things for 10 other people. That to center yourself and to prioritize yourself is profound and it will be transformational. The evidence of that is in... Look at Sheila's hair sitting over there, looking all luxurious and moisturize the well.

Just some berries.

She will be able to be that moisturized if she wants to sit down somewhere, moisturized in her situation. So it's right there.

And one final thing I want to say about dreaming is that I love how it allows you to release control. When you're in a dream, when you're sleeping, when you're actually sleeping in a dream, you just go You're riding on a banana into the moon, and then you came back down. And I don't know, Freddy Kruger's there, but he's nice. And then it's Sesame Street. And you just 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 spirit gives you helpers. It sends you help. Like the way that lady just had the access to the capital 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.

1,000 %. Absolutely. I had a plan for my million in the year 2021. I had a plan. I was like, I'm going to make 100,000 doing this, 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, 1,000 % to how even our dreaming calls in our helpers.

I love that information. Yes. And it just calls in the fancy and the whimsy and magic. And I think magic happens every day. Facetime is magic. If our great, great grandparents could see us right now on this Zoom on Riverside, they think we're witches. So I just think we normalize the magic, but magic is so many things are happening all the time around us. So I 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 Have you heard of that?

Yeah, I don't think 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 build stuff all day long with their hands and go on to sleep exhausted. That can't be it. And then I also think about what my purpose is. Why am I here? Because this life is so long, but it's brief at the same time. 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. My 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 asking every day is, What are we doing? What are we even doing? We're just out here. I spent some time after Kobe Bryant died. I spent some time thinking about what is the point of this life? 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.

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. That is the work that I'm actually supposed to be doing. There is no other point. The only point, you're going to live your entire life not being actual Sheila. That would be wild to come to the end of your time.

What a loss.

What 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 Jeanies, you get to learn something about God that you will never know if I don't be actual Ebony Jeanies. 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 Janice. 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. I had to actually I actually have three coaches and a therapist. I'm putting on 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 going to work? Because I don't know. And that is my life. It's like, I got the strategy. I know what's next. 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 Jeanies, it is both a miracle and also a lot of really deep deep, 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 trust in her wisdom. I want to think. But I have the responsibility to actual Ebony Jeanies 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, the religious institution that I'm a part of says, or whatever society is saying to me what's beautiful today.

We went from super skinny being cute to 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 2-3 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. So I don't ever want to tell somebody, just become yourself and not tell me to use up front that. 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. 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 a part of the way that we create a beautiful life.

But it's We're 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 Jeanies. We create a beautiful life in having healthy relationships, which I only learn about by pursuing healthy relationships and healing through Ebony Jeanies. It's creating boundaries. There's a lot of work to do and only being focused on this struggle. And again, the rip-off saying, We got a good time, 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 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.

So speaking of tools, because definitely, 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. We're not just... We're saying it's your birthright, and 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, Janice 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 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, Janice, 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.

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 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. Sixty 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 is 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 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 was Can you just be with your sofa 60 seconds, Ebony Jeanies? And it was a struggle, baby boys and girls. But that was transformative for me because, again, like I said, I started to build my muscle, build my capacity and my desire. I, at some point, really loved being there with myself for those 60 seconds.

Me too.

I looked forward to it. I looked forward to it, and that was very transformative.

Wow. Ebony Jeanies, your 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 dialog, 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?

Yeah, I am Ebony Janice everywhere. Everywhere. Ebony Janice 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, it seems like two names, one name, is there's a chapter in the book called In Pursuit of My Name. I really break down 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 Jeanies everywhere. Ebony Jeanies. Com. I'm Ebony Jeanies.

I love that. I love that you gently correct anybody who says your name. To me, the first time I did it, I said, Oh, it's Ebony. You're like, By the way, it's Ebony Jeanies. I love it. As you should, sister. As you should. All right. Thank you so much, Ebony Jeanies, 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. 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 creating a schedule, the boundaries are not set. Sometimes 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 saying no to her. So the way I feel, I want to say something. I want to really tell him how I feel, but that's his child. So I feel like I have no voice. 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.

Hi, Tanya. So Tanya is in a long-distance relationship relationship. Her man co-parents a child that he has in a previous situation, and Tanya 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. Tanya, Absolutely feel you being a step mom or a bonus mom is absolutely not for the week. And in many ways, it's hard because you're 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 like, I don't 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 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. 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. However it makes you feel. Express that to your partner and also make clear what you'd like to happen. 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, Tanya. Big hugs. Thank you so much for sending that in. And For 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 note at speakpipe. Com/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 Unruly.