Aisha Bain:
... we go to a meal. And this meal is so good. And what happens when you have a good meal? You want a food dance. You're like, "Ah, ah, ah." And internalized oppression means, "This is delightful. Thank you." Now, what if you had just let it out of your body, and you'd been like, "Ah, yah, yah." You look a little crazy, who cares? You got the joy out of your body. And the person with you was like, "She's crazy. That's so much fun. And she has some joy." And the server from a distance was like, "That table crazy, but that's hilarious." And the server goes in the kitchen and was like, "Kitchen, they're doing a food dance from what they just ate." And the chef is like, "Damn, I work crazy hours, and that is why I do this." How small was that joy that you kept in your body, and how many connections did it create to just get it out? To say what we just want to say and feel how we want to feel?

Alec Patton:
This is High Tech High Unboxed. I'm Alec Patton, and you just heard the voice of Resistance Communication co-founder, Aisha Bain. She sat down with Stanford d.school design lecturer Manasa Yeturu to talk about how we care for ourselves and live in community with each other. The conversation is moderated by Michelle Pledger, so you'll hear her voice too. Let's get right into it.

Aisha Bain:
So one of the things we want to talk about today and that we talk about all the time is decolonizing ourselves. And so when I think of decolonizing ourselves, I think about what disconnects us. I think about power and being our fullest selves. I think about what we are letting go. I think about the wholeness of who we would be if we weren't fighting all the time, and what would be possible in that fullest potential of ourselves. I think about the things that we don't say. I think about joy, and celebrating joy. I think about being unapologetic. I think about love. I think about rage. I think about pleasure. I think about the fact that I am not trying to get by, I am trying to get free.
Manasa, what do you think about?

Manasa Yeturu:
One of my favorite poets, you know this, we've talked about this, Nayyirah Waheed, she has this book called Salt. And one of the poems in there that blazes through my brain every time when I think about this is, "Some people, upon hearing your story, contract. Others expand. And that is how you know." You're one of those people that allow me to expand. And when I think about decolonizing ourselves, it's like what does it mean to be free? What does it mean to expand, but expand in a way that is not based on productivity, not based on who we are and how we show up, but that we are enough just as we are. Period. Right? That part. And I think of friendship, that joy, that connection. When I see you, it's just like I am. You know what I mean? And inviting more of those that allow us to expand in all the multitudes that we are. We are multitudes, yet the world is constantly putting us in boxes. So I think of multitudes.

Aisha Bain:
Also, that makes me think about the fact that independence is a fallacy. Independence is a fallacy. The way that we are thought up and brought up and all the things up in terms of we are supposed to be independent, and then that makes us successful, and it's our bootstraps, and it's all this nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. We are so connected and we need each other. And the interdependence is beautiful.
So part of the journey I've had, honestly in the last two years of working through this myself, I grew up with a single mom, she's the only blood family I know on the planet. So you do things by yourself and you just get it done. And you're proud of that. And when it's survival, it's survival. That's real. But then it becomes this kind of crutch, that, "If I can't do it by myself, something's wrong." And I keep doing it by myself and by myself and by myself.

And so to be really real, you all, I know everybody went through a lot during the pandemic. Everybody did. And I did too. So I got COVID. Technically I coded, right? It's because I was in the hospital and they couldn't quite find a heartbeat thing. They ran all these tests and that's how they found my thyroid cancer. And it took a year to recover from all of that. Just health wise, physically wise, not mentally wise.
And then I went on vacation with these beautiful friends of mine. It was like summer of 2001 and things had just opened up and we were going to go travel. And they were like, "Come to the Caribbean." And I was like, "Yes, I'm going to celebrate being alive and living." And my first night at the hotel, I was assaulted. You can't make this stuff up, right? And I fell apart. True story. I fell apart. And it was such an evolution for me to, one, tell people. Tell people. I might have in the past told one or two people, just out of shame or blame or anything else, and just asked them to hold that with me. And I knew that that wasn't going to make it this time, in the pandemic and in life. Life is lifeing. Everyone is going through something. And so anybody who happened to have contacted me at that time, I told. And if I trusted them and I loved them, I was like, "You can tell anybody else in our circle," because I didn't have the energy to tell everybody.

And so what happened was, by doing that, I widened the safety net. I widened my safety net. And so people called me and they checked on me and they texted me and whatever else. And then one of those people, they dropped, because their father died, and someone else came in and came to visit me. And then she dropped, because she had to rebuild her home after another hurricane in New Orleans, and someone else came in. I widened my safety net. And I swear to you, it saved my life. We are interdependent symbiotic ... symbiosis is one of the most beautiful things in nature. And yet somehow we've decided it's not between us.
When I spend time with you, it's like I see myself. And it's this belonging. It's this love that you're allowed to not only give out, because I know how to give it, and I didn't know how to receive it in the same way.

Manasa Yeturu:
Mm-hmm. So we talked about that, and I think when you told me, I remember in that last part you just said, Aisha, "I don't know how to receive it," the question that keeps coming to mind to me recently is who takes care of the caretakers? And I look into all your eyes, you're here because you care about the babies. But who's taking care of the educators? Who's taking care of the healthcare workers? We've gone through so much, collectively and individually. And I remember as a little kid, I'm first gen, and my mom would always say, "Take the best of both worlds, Nana." And I was like, "Mom, best of India and the US? One that values interdependence and the other that highlights and upholds independence? How might I do that?"

And I think that's the contrast, right? We're in this world, like you were saying, that just pushes this autonomy, yet we're meant to be with each other. We need each other, fundamentally and humanly. And we are all flawed. We're deeply, deeply flawed. And that's the perfection. That's the perfection. And so I think that rawness and that realness is so needed. And like you said, it expands the safety net. And when I think about the women in my life and how much you all hold and how important it is for us to hold each other.

Aisha Bain:
I'm not sure exactly what just happened in my body and why I was on a roller coaster. I was like, "I'm angry. I love you. I'm angry. I'm happy. I'm angry." That literally what was just happening, these swells in my body. I was just trying to stay still for a minute so I wasn't distracting, but I was like, "God."

Honestly, you all, we talk about this all the time as well, I have been angry for so long. Justifiably, righteously, unapologetically. I'm not apologizing for it now, but I have been angry for so long, and there's so much around us that makes us angry. And I knew what to do with that, right? Anger is a fuel, and it has fueled my leadership and my work and my decisions for so long. And I would keep going.
I remember being as young as five years old, I was a very, very large five-year old, and I'm on the playground of PS-87 in New York City. And I remember, there was this boy, and you know the big red balls? You all might not remember these bouncy balls, the kind of pinkish red ones. And this boy walked up to this girl and he took the ball. And I remember seeing from a distance and being like, "That is wrong. That is unjust." Everything in me was like, "Ah." And so I went over, I took the ball back, and because, again, I was tall for the average five-year-old, I was like, "Hmm," and he was like, "Ah." And I took the ball back to her. And I probably didn't exactly say this, but in my spirit I was like, "Here you go. Do you require further assistance?" That was my journey with justice and injustice. I remember from the first point, when things are unjust, it is wrong, and it makes me angry and I'm doing something about it.

And then I started working in different human rights, and women's rights in India, and environmental rights in Mongolia, with emergency education when wars and disaster breaks out. And then violence against women and girls, anti-human trafficking, the genocide in Darfur. I was like, "I will find injustice and I will stamp the shit out." Guess what? I didn't do that. But I did the damn best I could.
But there was something about the rage, and I just kept operating from that place. And here's what was happening, you all. I was exhausted. And I kept going because I was so angry, and I was exhausted. And I was alienating people around me, and I was exhausted, and I kept going. And the thing about rage, the thing about the fire of rage was that I couldn't control it. And so it began burning other parts of me, and other parts of me that I wanted and that I needed and I deserved and that were mine and that were precious. I deserved to have them.

And so then people started talking about not just leading from a place of rage, but leading from a place of love. And I was like, "What the hell are they talking about?" I didn't grow up with saying, "I love you," all the time. That was not in my household. You showed love by actions, you assumed some love, but you didn't just say it all the time. I would say, "I wuv you." I would say, "I lurv you," to friends. I couldn't even say, "I love you." And with this pandemic, you all, I will never not say what needs to be said. Something shifted so hard in me.

I had a conversation with a friend in this room around all the things that go unsaid. I think a lot. I'm a big ass nerd and I'm a big over-analyzer of myself, unapologetically. It's just who I am. And I think a lot. And I think about all the things that go unsaid and all the things I've never said in my life, and what might have been possible if I had just said them. And then I think about all the things that go unsaid in the entire world. And then I think about all the things that go unsaid in the entire world throughout the entire history of mankind. The immensity of what goes unsaid and what might have been, could have been possible if we had said them. Maybe some of it shouldn't all be said, and we have different ways of communicating other than words, but we don't say what we mean. We keep things inside of us. And I decided, after this pandemic, I was going to say them, come hell or high water. Because one of the things about decolonizing, it makes me think of what am I afraid of? And why am I afraid of it? And is that fear even mine?

So I think there's another part of this, and that's around ego, or again, this internalized, racialized oppression that's like, "Oh, don't share that with someone and have a big ego, and don't share this thing and that thing." Celebrate the joys. Share the joys. Share even the smallest thing.

Think about it. We go to a meal, and this meal is so good. And what happens when you have a good meal? You want a food dance, right? You're like, "Ah. Ah." Right? And internalized oppression means, "This is delightful. Thank you." Now, what if you had just let it out of your body? And you'd been like, "Ah, yah, yah." You'd look a little crazy. Who cares? You got the joy out of your body. And the person with you was like, "Huh, she crazy. That's so much fun. And she has some joy." And the server from a distance was like, "That table crazy, but that's hilarious." And the server goes in the kitchen, was like, "Kitchen, they're doing a food dance from what they just ate." And the chef is like, "Damn, I work crazy hours, and that is why I do this." How small was that joy that you kept in your body? And how many connections did it create to just get it out? To say what we just want to say and feel how you we want to feel?

Manasa Yeturu:
I wasn't planning to do this, but I'm pulling up the text that I sent to you.

Aisha Bain:
Whoa.

Manasa Yeturu:
And I think that piece that we just said, how much do we keep in us, when we come into this earth, again, we're enough just as we are. And then the whole world, at all times, starting from chosen or born family are telling us that we're not enough. And we start to compress and compress and compress. As a baby, I used to just stand and dance all the time. That's all I did. I didn't need toys. I'd just dance all the time. And I used to write love letters to all the people around me. And then the world starts to tell you, "That's not how you express. That's too much. You're too much."

Aisha Bain:
Yes.

Manasa Yeturu:
But when you allow yourself to be all that is, and when you're moving from a place of love ... because I hear you, Aisha, assaulted when I was 16. That pain and then that rage and moving into gender equity work, hearing stories of what thousands of women ... we've talked about this. It boils and then it burns you. And I got to the place where my vocal nodules burnt out. So my body was like, "You can't handle this anger anymore, because it is burning you." And today I was talking to Lisa about this. When you move from a place of compassion, both for yourself and for others, it still moves you, but it lands softly. And so I've been thinking about for myself, "How can I be softer? How can I move with that love?"

And so the other day, it just came to me in the evening, and I messaged Aisha this; "Took some time this evening to just be and reflect, and I wanted to tell you this. My heart just expanded in gratitude to be able to share this journey, in all its vicissitudes, with those that hold integrity, care, love, and joy in their hearts and core. Wherever and however far this life road takes us, just know how deeply grateful I am to have you in mine. I'm so proud of you and I want the best for you. I know I never got to hear those words often, and I want you and those I love to hear them more."

Aisha Bain:
I love you too. Come on now.

Michelle Pledger:
I feel guilty stopping that, but I'd also feel guilty not turning to your questions. So either way, I'm going to feel bad about myself, but it's about you. So what questions do you have for these brilliant, beautiful women?

Alec Patton:
The audience didn't ask questions with a mic, so I'm filling in here. The first question was, "What has allowed you to be in a space where you feel free to do a food dance?"

Manasa Yeturu:
Unscripting yourself. Even as you're asking that question, I think when we hear something in our bodies, it comes up like, "How do I react to this? How do I react to this?" And you can feel it, right? "What if I say this? They're going to think this." You can hear those thoughts. For me, it's just been looking more deeply into somebody's eyes and just trying to still that inner voice, and just be like, "You are here." Like what we started with, right? "You're just enough in this moment." I'm talking to Michelle, that's where I am. I can't be anywhere else.

And I think the other thing that has really helped me is that when I have shown up in that depth of vulnerability, what you receive, you can never quantify that, you can never expect that. It's just so real every time. And it's so unexpected. And so my name means soul, and I think seeing that soul in somebody else and just saying, "Hey, I'm here, we're here, and that's enough for now." I think that's really allowed me to just be like, "I can't be anywhere else. We're here."

Aisha Bain:
Mm-hmm. You're a beautiful exemplar of that for me every day, because I won't front, I still struggle with it. I do. I am Haitian-Israeli. I started my first part of my life in New York City. I keep saying third. It's not a third anymore. It's a quarter. You all couldn't tell though, could you?

Manasa Yeturu:
Hell yeah.

Aisha Bain:
But listen, listen, listen. So most importantly, after that quarter, I moved to all-white spaces and places. I was in all-white Georgia and all-white Connecticut in an all-white Irish Jesuit Catholic institution for college. So let me be very clear how much every single part of me became wrong in every environment that I was in. And I'm an only child with a single mom, so there is nobody else. So you better figure out how to do it. People are like, "Have you ever acted?" I'm like, "Every day of my life," because everything we do is for love and belonging. And so I would change my body posture, I'd change my language, I'd change my words, to the point where if you had three rooms here, and this was all white people, all black people, and a mixed room of color, I know exactly how to switch myself with every single room in a second. And every single place, I'm going to be somebody different. I knew how to do that. It is exhausting. One of the ways I got to it is because I was exhausted. And the times where I was exhausted and I had to put it all down because I couldn't do it anymore. And I was like, "God damn it, I'm just here."

And the way people would respond to me, I was shocked. I was like, "Wait, I didn't put on a show today, but people responded. Maybe those are the only people I actually need." And the more I did that, and the more I experienced that, the more joyful that became. And you're feeling other people, other people are feeling you, and the rest, you're like, "I'm good."
And I love this feeling now of being older, because I think when we were younger, we were trying to belong in such a way. And we're always doing that. You want this, "Ah, my students love my class, and they tell me all the time." And, "You liked my lesson plan, right?" We're always looking for love and belonging in everything that we say and we do, but we don't need to love and belong to everyone, and everyone does not love and belong to us. And that was freeing for me. That was freeing for me. I was like, "Oh." And you feel it. It was such a trust of a feeling to be like, "I just met you, but I know you. Oh, you're mine. We're people." And isn't that the best feeling?

Manasa Yeturu:
Mm-hmm.

Aisha Bain:
Isn't that the best feeling, you all? You're like, "Ah, my people." So I wanted more of that, and I needed to take it off, let it go, put it down. Let it go. I don't always know the way. How do any of us always know the way or the answer? But sometimes I know what I don't want or don't need. And I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up, but I'm like, "It ain't that. I'm done with that job." That's still beautiful, powerful information and direction and light and illumination. So I was like, "Oh, okay, okay, okay."

So yeah, I'll be honest, you all, I'm in a ... because we're friends, right? We're family? We're fam? I was in a place, and I'm in it right now, I had moved myself across the country a couple of months ago. Last year, anyway. And I was like, "I'm putting myself in the Bay, and I'm going to double down on my business, and I'm going to find myself where the money is and I'm going to stabilize everything, and that's going to grow and be bigger and badder and badder and bigger and capitalistic and shit, and it's going to be great. Cool, cool, cool."

And I moved myself across the country. It'd been the pandemic, I was in downtown Baltimore, and I was just like, "I need nature. I need greenery. I need to look at something beautiful, and it's going to be beautiful, and the light is going to be beautiful." And so I moved myself to this place, and I looked out at trees. And in the distance, I could see the fog roll in from the Bay. And I was like, "This is gorgeous. I'm supposed to be here. It's all going to work out." And I'm there day after day and week after week and month after month, and I'm still unhappy and unwell. It just turns out, in a different zip code. You all, I wish I had made a less expensive realization. You know what I'm saying? But that was the truth. And I was like, "I don't know what's next for me, but I know it's not this. And I have to let it go, because there's no space for anything else. There's no space for me to figure out and discover what that is."

So I'm an extremist, you don't got to all do it this way, but I was like, "That's it. It's all going." I sold all my furniture. I let go of my lease. I'm closing my company. I'm letting go of people that no longer serve me. I think that one of the biggest things is letting go of whatever idea I thought I had to be, at this moment, in this time, in this thing. But I just had to burn it all down. I was like, "If I let it go, I have space for something else," and I'm still trying to figure out what that is. If you all got a couch, let me know. But letting go was a massive thing that has allowed me to also make space to expand into something else and into this next evolution of self.

Manasa Yeturu:
Snap to that. It makes me think of the word, there's a [inaudible 00:26:18] word, it's just a dead language, but it's called [foreign language 00:26:23]. And it essentially means that, second by second, we're changing. We're constantly changing, yet we hold on to these identities and these things because they help us navigate this world. But what might it look like, when you meet someone, to know that they're constantly evolving? And that's okay. Meet each other where we are and let go of what doesn't serve us. Let go of what doesn't serve us. And so I think that that allowance and that acceptance is both hard and also freeing as hell.

Aisha Bain:
Mm-hmm. Anybody else?

Alec Patton:
This question was, "When you slip into coming from a place of rage, how do you recenter yourself so you're coming from a place of joy."

Aisha Bain:
I slip all the time. We are human beings. We have emotions. Emotions are energy. It took me until yesterday, or recently, to understand that we just put good and bad labels on everything. We put black and white labels on everything. "This energy is good. That energy is bad. This emotion is good. This emotion is bad. This way of being is good." What if it's all us? And what if it's all good? If you never got mad, I'd be like, "I don't trust you." Also, if you don't eat chocolate, we can't be friends.But we are evolving full beings. We are a spectrum of color. When you asked the question, all I saw were colors. The colors keep moving through us. Every single color is beautiful. It's yours. It's righteously yours. Be angry when you need to be angry.

I think one of the things, and I want to hear from you, Manasa, one of the things that just makes me think about is being honest in that journey. That's one of the things. Everything that we're doing, we get to embody and live the life and future that we want now. We get to embody and live the future now. And so for me, I'm an example to myself by just what I'm doing, but also to clearly everyone around me, especially our young people. So you have rage, and you get to talk about it and be like, "This is why I'm angry today. This is why I'm struggling today. And this is what I'm just holding." Maybe you're not even doing something about it. We don't have to do everything all the time. We don't have to fix everything all the time. "I'm just angry today." But we get to share what's with us and why. Just the sharing. And you never know, you sharing, what that allows for somebody else. Who else needed to hear that, just as it is, the raw simple truth?

There's a quote from somebody that says, "Share the story of the mountain you climbed. Your words might become the pages in somebody else's survival guide." We just never know, when we're sharing, what someone else needed to hear. And it's not just the mountain as a struggle, but again, of joy. I've finally just bought this little ass apartment for myself, and it may not seem like much, but it's my little apartment. And someone else is like, "I can do that too."

So I still get mad, and I think I'm less ashamed about it. I'm not trying to judge it. I judge it less. I'm trying to judge it less, or not judge at all. And also move it through my body. Because when we do this and you can feel it, we are harming ourselves. I'm harming myself.
What does that make you think of?

Manasa Yeturu:
Oh, rage comes up all the time. I'm small as hell. I'm five foot one. My personality's bigger than that. But yeah, I assume people-

Aisha Bain:
You're larger than life, girl. You're larger than life.

Manasa Yeturu:
I remember, I was in first grade, and this boy pushed me off the swing. I can still taste the gravel. And it hurt, and I got scratched up, but the thing that hurt the most was the words, "You're too brown to be on that swing." And I remember, I still feel the hot tears coming down my face, and I ran, and I ran straight into my first grade teacher's arms, Mrs. Shelton, and she let me cry. She was this judgment-free space. She let me cry. And then she pulled out the color box. The little crayola boxes. I don't know if we still use those anymore. But yeah, pulled out the box and she was like, "Look at this, honey. Look at all these different colors. We need all of them."

The reason I say that is that was a moment of rage that got transformed into love. And then she canceled the lessons for that day and we talked about colors. And when I think about that question, it comes up all the time. I can't imagine a day I go by that this is not ... like when we talk about justice, we've all experienced just that innate sense of, "This isn't right, and I'm going to move with integrity and be my most authentic self, because everybody else is damn taken." And I think that self-acceptance and love is just such a lifelong journey. And I think, again, that gentle acceptance, and knowing that rage will come up, but how can I reach out and hold Aisha's hand, or give Michelle a hug, or talk to Ali and just feel that sense of, "We're in this shit together"? I think that allows for me to be like, "I'm not in it alone. I know I'm angry right now, and I can call some folks and be full angry, get it out. And they'll also remind me of the love I have and the love we have."

And I think self-care today, being an Indian-American mom, I'm finally integrating both, I do think we pull a lot of self-care today that's like yoga, spa days, whatever it is. But real self-care is being in community. It's being in community. So that's where I remind myself of love, because it's more there, despite these capitalistic systems, despite everything going around the world. That hug from a teacher, I will never ever forget that.

Aisha Bain:
Is there one last question?

Alec Patton:
This audience member shared a Maori proverb. I'll just say the English translation, which is, "With your food basket and my food basket, the people will thrive."

Aisha Bain:
Thank you. What was your name?

Claire:
Claire.

Manasa Yeturu:
Claire?

Aisha Bain:
Claire, with your full basket and my full basket, people will thrive. And I love the emotion. Thank you for sharing that. It really matters. I was flippant about my letting go, right, and was saying it casually, but I don't know why what you just said just made me think of this. Obviously doing something like that, deciding that it's just time for a total complete change; "This evolution's happening. I don't even know what I'm doing. I know I've got to try and take some other risks in the process." And there were two things that happened. One was I kept asking myself the question, "What am I willing to risk for joy?" Because I knew what I was willing to risk for what I believe in. That was very, very, very clear to me. I can do that in a second. But what am I willing to risk for joy? And I stopped. And I kept asking myself the question every day, because my comfort with the question would change and how I answered the question would change.

The other thing that was really critical for me was, for the first time in my life, don't ask me why it took this long, but for all of us, we have different journeys, for the first time in my life, I knew that I had enough skills and abilities to make a living. And if I could make a living, I could take the risk. It may not always be who I want to be doing it with or where I want to be doing it, but I can make a living, so I can take the risk. And maybe most importantly out of everything else is I will never, ever know all of the people who came before me that made my choices and chances possible. And so how can I not take them? The choices and chances that are possible for you to be you. For your love, for your acceptance, for your belonging, for your connection. Everything we're doing, in my mind, is for love and belonging. Sometimes what we wear, what we say, what we don't say, how loud we sing, all these other things, we're like, "Love me, I belong. I belong." But we love and belong to ourselves first.

Manasa Yeturu:
Yes.

Aisha Bain:
First, first, first. And when you come from there, everything else is clearer, lighter, and you will find those that see your light and want the light that you share. Those are the only ones we need. And that doing that within ourselves is our own way we start to get free. And we create that possibility of freedom for others, just by what we do, by what we say, how loud we sing, how loud we eat, how loud we laugh, how loud we love. It's endless possibility when we do that.

Alec Patton:
High Tech High Unboxed is hosted and edited by me, Alec Patton. Our theme music is by Brother Herschel. Huge thanks to Aisha Bain, Manasa Yeturu, and Michelle Pledger for sharing this conversation with us. Thanks for listening.