Okay, so, Roxane, what is on your scroll?
My scroll says, "Tell us about your experiences with colorism,
texturism, or featurism throughout your life."
With colorism?
So really I think it's a question about
what are your experiences with being Black
and dealing with different skin tones,
dealing with different hair textures,
- to relax or not to relax. - Ah.
To weave or not to weave,
and having certain kinds of features,
and do you feel like you need to do things
like have plastic surgery
to change your features that might be labeled as Black?
- Absolutely not. - Amen.
- I'm from the South. - Same.
So, growing up, you was either light-skinned or dark-skinned.
- There was no in-between. There was no in-between. - Yeah. Mm-hmm.
My mom and my sister was high yellow, as they called it.
- Redbone. - Redbone.
- Got a couple of those in my family, too. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then when I got into Hollywood and entertainment,
and I went to a little workshop when you meet
the casting director and you do scenes.
And they said, "Well, you know, for your complexion,
'cause you're a darker complexion,
you need to straighten your hair."
'Cause at that time I had my hair, it was natural.
"You won't work well with your complexion." And I thought, "Oh."
"Darker complexion needs straight hair to be on television."
- What year is that? - That was '04.
- Wow. - Yeah, 20 years ago, it was bad.
- All: Yeah. - It was really bad for actresses.
- Yeah, absolutely. - The things that we still deal with,
especially in the industry of entertainment, is colorism.
- Yes. - And we don't want to admit it sometimes.
And colorism, especially when you're doing film,
lighting is so important.
I can remember I was on a sitcom,
and I was the only Black and everybody else was white.
And I looked like a dot, 'cause you could not-- there was no lighting.
'Cause there are only certain lighting,
and it was all for the Caucasian people.
And I'm sitting there, and this is problem when you don't have the lighting.
- They can't see your face. - That's right.
You ever notice-- you ever go to a club--
this was when I was young. I used to go clubbing, right?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And the lights be off, right?
And you wonder, why all the light-skinned girls get spoken to?
- 'Cause you can see them. - 'Cause you can see their face!
Seriously!
It's so crazy. My daughter's twelve,
and she just had her friend over to go swimming.
And her hair was-- we had flat-ironed it.
Her friends had only seen her hair in braids
and she's never seen her natural texture.
She's like, "Mommy, can I go swimming?" "Sure, whatever."
She just got her hair flat-ironed,
so the fact that I was letting her get in the pool was, like, the Holy Ghost.
"Okay." I was like, "Whatever. You can go swimming."
So she goes outside and then she comes running back inside.
And she's like, "Mom, when I get my hair wet she's gonna see my hair."
And so I realized that she had this embedded fear
that her friend wasn't going to see her the same way.
So I went outside, and I was like, "Listen, Sunday,
you about to get a lesson about Black girl hair,
and I'm gonna quiz you when the sleepover is over.
Okay, but our hair does all types of special things."
And Kenzie jumps in the pool, of course, her hair changes.
And the girl-- the little girl just kept swimming.
I think that we are so afraid of showing up as ourselves
that we may be discrediting other people's ability,
especially for maybe this next generation to handle our truth.
And that was such a liberating moment for my daughter,
because she realized no matter how I show up,
I can still have connection and friendship.
So I'm just praying that she keeps that.
All right, Lynn, what's on your scroll?
So, ladies.
"What has your experience been
when it comes to mental health support?
Mine has been positive. I started therapy about four years ago,
and I'm sad that I didn't start earlier.
I think therapy has definitely helped with my mental space.
That used to be a stigma in sports, honestly.
- Speak about it. - If you had mental health issues,
they'd be like, "Oh, you're not mentally tough. You're not cut for the job."
- Wow. - I think when you think
about mental health, it's like a whole shift.
You see people now opting out of things
- for their mental health. - Shout-out to Naomi Osaka!
Shout-out to Naomi Osaka,
shout-out to Kayla McBride of the WNBA,
people actually speaking about it out loud.
That's right.
I think for so long we're taught to suck it up.
- Yeah. - And with that mentality,
we oftentimes put our true emotions and feelings to the side.
- Yeah. - And those moments when the world kind of stops
and you're left alone by yourself,
and it's like, am I happy?
Am I making myself happy?
Are the things around me making me happy?
Is what I'm-- so I'm 23 years old,
- and I'm just now learning-- - Aww.
I know I'm very young. I'm a baby.
- No. It's wonderful. - You're a young woman.
Yeah, but I'm like, it's okay to put myself first.
- True. - Because at the end of the day,
what's left alone is you and God.
Yeah.
In the fourth quarter of last year,
I'd be journaling, I'd be meditating.
I'm trying to figure out what my balance is.
I realized that we all need the three B's.
It's balance, breaks, and boundaries.
- Mm. - Balance.
Not only do we work hard,
but we need that love, that girl time, that support.
Breaks. I always tell the young entrepreneurs,
"Team No Sleep? No, that's not cute."
- Yeah. - No, please get your rest. Drink your water.
- Replenish yourself. And then boundaries. - Yeah.
Set your boundaries, whether if it's showing up, doing a favor.
"Just know that I love you, I respect you,
- but I can't do it." - Yeah.
Because if I'm drained, I won't be able to serve you.
And I love serving people.
This is what I think is so dope about y'all's generation.
- Y'all talk. - We do.
And y'all making everybody else talk, too.
- Yup. - But how y'all find the way to talk is really dope.
Because it just burns down everything else, you know what I mean?
It cuts through. It's extremely relatable.
Like, I would give anything to be able to have had that kind of freedom
where you don't have to be politically correct.
Like, y'all can just say shit that needs to be said.
- Mm-hmm. - It's so dope.
It was such a relief
to be able to have someone
who understands exactly
how to guide me through that experience.
How to make sense of things that don't make sense.
'cause we have to recalibrate everything
- so that we're okay. - Mm-hmm.
For a long time, I think,
especially Black women,
we weren't allowed to seek help.
First of all, I'm not going to no white person telling my problems.
- You know, just like-- my mama was like-- - Your business.
Airing your dirty laundry in the streets.
"Wait. What y'all talk about?" You know?
- Right. - But now times have changed.
We have Black therapists, you know?
And there are a bunch of apps that you can actually go to
to find a Black therapist, especially for Black women.
I'm really concerned more about our brothers,
because a lot of them, they've been told
that they can't go out and seek help.
That they're not a man, you know?
And that affects their children,
that affects their relationship with their woman.
I think I've been really lucky.
I've been going to therapy off and on since I was 14.
You know, I had a traumatic childhood, the way lots of people do,
and therapy was one of the things that helped me survive.
That and reading and writing.
I go to therapy twice a week now and I love it.
I mean, I'm just like, that is the check I love writing every month.
I'm like, "Yes, you charge a ( bleep ) ton, but let me--
let me just write you this little check."
And I'm so thankful, and I talk about it openly
because I've dealt with depression for also most of my life.
- Mm-hmm. - And I don't think that in the Black community
- sometimes we can talk about that. - Right.
It makes me think about Cheslie Kryst
who has been sitting heavy on my heart.
- I didn't hear about the news. - Cheslie Kryst?
- I didn't hear about it. - Okay, so, there's a young,
30-year-old Black woman.
Gorgeous, accomplished, successful.
- She won Miss USA in 2019. - Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes.
And then she became an "Extra" correspondent.
But before that she was lawyer,
and she's been doing a lot of work
in the community around social justice,
So she's just this dynamic woman.
And she committed suicide.
She jumped off of the 29th floor, I believe, of her building.
And everybody who knows her is saying that there were no signs.
Including her mother who was her best friend, and she said she didn't know.
She knew she struggled with high-functioning depression,
- which we need to talk about that-- - Definitely. Oh, my--
I feel like all Black women have high-functioning depression.
Just being able to name it, I think is so important.
- The vocabulary. - So much of what we carry is invisible.
- Yeah. - Ironically, I feel like
a lot of my Black female friends,
they're all in therapy.
- They've found therapists. - Yeah.
And I feel like I'm getting free therapy from them.
Not gonna lie. Thanks guys.
'Cause they will pop in, and be like, "Mm. Is that invisible labor though?"
And I'm like, "What's that mean?"
- "Invisible labor?" - Yo, those terms.
- Right. - "Tell me!"
It's the language.
When you don't have the language--
Yeah, when you don't have it,
you can't verbalize how you feel.
And it's just like, oh, that was invisible labor.
Okay. Let me work on that.
- Spiritual bypassing. - Baby! Yes!
What does that mean?
Spiritual bypassing is basically using spirituality
to ignore the very real struggles
that folks are going with.
- So say for instance... - God gonna pray it away.
...there are a lot of Black people who are going
through divinity school and theology and what have you,
and have to deal with white institutions that are teaching,
and who are talking from a framework of spirituality,
but don't know how to contextualize people's challenges.
They say that you weren't practicing hard enough or praying hard enough
or focusing well enough to be able to rise above
those things that are very real issues
- that we should be talking about. - Yeah.
So many people are beginning to understand this,
but I just want to reiterate it.
It is not a betrayal to your relationship with God
- to go to therapy. - Isn't it the truth?
It is a benefit to your relationship with God to go to therapy.
At the end of the day, I believe that God wants
to meet you where you are.
But if we're honest, because of our trauma,
because of our experiences,
we don't always know where we are.
We don't know that there's a broken little girl on the inside of us,
we don't know that we're still wounded from that divorce,
because we're so busy surviving that we haven't unpacked.
And through therapy, we have an opportunity to unpack.
And with our relationship with God,
- we have an opportunity to be comforted. - Yes.
And if we don't learn to marry the two,
then I think we are gonna find so many people who are frustrated because,
"I'm going to church every Sunday, I'm praying,
I'm listening to the worship songs, and it's not working."
But you haven't done that emotional work to really undergird...
God helps those who help themselves.
Absolutely, and sometimes God is helping people through medicine.
God's helping people through therapy.
It is not a betrayal to your relationship with God
to take care of your mind and your heart and your soul.
I think that all the time. That's God giving you the message.
"Here it is! I'm trying to help you."
- But you not listening! - You're so stubborn, you won't get no help.