Kitchen Table Sessions: The Grip

Selena Tatum: Welcome back. Hey y'all. Back at the kitchen table. Actually, I'm not sitting at the kitchen table right now. I'm sitting in my bedroom. Because it's that type of day. Thank you for joining me Sunday, August 2nd. Already in August. Already in August. I feel like I was just in July. Well, I was just in July. We're just in July. A couple of days ago. Anyway. Here we are together. And two weeks ago, I sat here and I walked through the survival script of Abivinacea. So four questions about clinging to life answered from inside, like literally maybe a day or two after I had my surgery. Last week's episode 18, I read The Room, the Culture Vulture edit, and basically showing everybody where Klaishas show up in like our pop culture. So I looked at everything from the World Cup, hamster wheels when we're in relationships, and the music that holds it all together. This week I'm back in the diagnostic. One Kalacia, four questions, my answers from inside the thing. And this week of August, the Klacha is raga. And raga is grip. Raga is the attachment, the wanting that doesn't stop when the thing arrives. So for those of you that heard our episode last week and was talking about what do in relationships, myself included, and how we get caught up in things that we want and then we get the thing that we want and then the wanting doesn't stop because we got the thing, you know, so it could be work, people's perceptions, you know, anything and then we get the thing and the want doesn't go away. And I'm gonna say to y'all that have been here with me over the last almost year that I'm inside the raga right now. And I wouldn't be a very good researcher if I didn't literally take apart myself for y'all and for myself and look at the world as well. I'm inside, as I said, Raga right now. I am five days from surgery, so the second one is coming up, and I spent this entire week At work clearing every deck, finishing assessments, recording project videos, making myself indispensable before I became unavailable. And nobody anywhere asked me to deliver at that level. My nervous system needed me to do that. And every time I put my list down, I immediately had it up again in my head. I also I think I wrote about this too for y'all that follow Substack or just on my website. I also had a do word list. So some of you and I don't want to keep saying so because I said it's a filler word and I keep doing it and yes, I'm working out of my own stuff. A do word list came out of a practice that I do pretty much every year in January on my birthday. Like around that time. I do a a fire of time practice, right? Is that the name if you go on Google it right now that you'll find? I don't know. That's what the individual that taught me, shout out to Tracy Stanley, called it and it might have been called something else, some Times I call it a death practice. and what it is, is it's a practice that's written inside post-the meditation. What I would do if I had one year, one month, one week, one day, one hour, one minute. So you like you go into the meditation, you come out, you're at a year. We go back into it, we come out, and I'm Saying it to you theoretically, I do not prescribe this for everybody. Okay? If you want to have that conversation and you want to know what that practice is, you can reach out to me. It's not hard and we can have a discussion around it. So for me, what I had written when I did this was garden, write, dance, make love. Play unrelentlessly with my son, kiss my husband, and rest. And I planned, everybody, to run this list or run that list as a daily practice this week that went by. Little bit of pause I take a sip of my coffee. I didn't do it once. I didn't do anything on that list at all. I mean, I kiss my husband every day. I play relentlessly with my son every day. You know, I I'm in the garden every day. I'm lying down on the floor on the couch on the grass every day. And what happened to me is that work consumed everything from the lab to the podcast to my own regular pay the mortgage work. That I love to do because I feel I'm very privileged to do something I love to do. And in all of that, I judged myself for it. Yesterday morning, y'all, when I was in my morning pages, I wet blanketed, eviscerated myself for not doing anything on that list that I wrote down. And then, you know, I was just like an heavily evisceration, like heavily taking oneself apart. And then in the midst of it, I saw it. I was like, holy fuck balls. The judgment is Raga too. This grip around the identity of the woman who does all the practices, the attachment to being the person who meditates and journals and runs the experiments and never misses. That image is what Raga was gripping around and is gripping around. Still today, Sunday. Not the outcome, the identity of the whole thing. Like who am I in the world without these titles? Or these things. So now what we're gonna do together is we're gonna go through four questions. Remember, I got I promised y'all the repair in this season. I promised y'all the diagnostic. I really hope people read the last newsletter and the note and maybe have been quietly diagnostic. Diagnosticing themselves in this work. That's not fun. Okay, guys? It's not fun. It's not like, hey, I figured out what Klacia I'm in today, and this is gonna be like super duper Alice Cooper. No, it's not, because you are constantly being aware or having to be aware of okay, that's where this is coming from, and that's this feeling, and I am making lists and feeling making myself available to people that I don't really want to be available for. Like these are all things that we fall into and becoming aware of those things is is uncomfortable. It can be scary. It can open places in our mind and in our consciousness and ourselves that we put away. And that's why I'm like, I hope y'all do the diagnostic or just take a little piece of it or one. And I hope somebody writes me back. Although I do get a lot of text messages. I do get a lot of WhatsApp and text messages. So keep those coming. I'm enjoying those. So we're gonna do four questions, as per ush, and my answers from inside the grip of this thing. Because I feel like and I truly believe that if I can use myself as the research, then somebody somewhere is gonna be like, man, I am going to that too. Whoa. Okay, I'm really not alone here 'cause this person that I listen to way off from wherever she is is openly talking about it on a podcast. So here we go. Question one. What is the thing you keep reaching for even though you know in your body, not your mind, it will not give you what you need? Okay, so my answer from inside the raga. This week the thing I kept reaching for was the feeling of being in de fucking dispensable. Okay, got me all twisted up in my medulla being indispensable. Every assessment I finished, every video I recorded, every report I re prepared, I almost said repaired, prepared. I knew in my body that no one had asked me for this level of thoughtfulness, no one does ask me for that, or this level of thoroughness. My direct report to People Leader is on vacation. My leave, so my I took my vacation and then they called me to let me know, hey, can you come to the hospital for your surgery on August 7th? I was like, Mm, I'm on vacation that we and yeah, my leave. Has officially started. I could have, in all honesty, y'all, have done the minimum of what I did this week, and it would have been enough. It for Reels Neels, it would have been enough. Instead, what did Tatum do? Tatum did the maximum. And I can tell you from inside this raga grip that I know that this is partially hereditary. It is partially cultural. I'm also the first daughter. So I'm the eldest girl, okay? In my family group. And that I'm not even gonna go into that. I will bring on guests to talk about the eldest daughter and why we are always doing the fucking most. I reached this week all week for the feeling of being the person who leaves zero gaps. Like Like literally, like I love Issa Rae. I I think I was Issa Ray. Like, hooray this week. Cause she's also a Capricorn. And this woman, wow, put my god. I felt you know, I could have been Zendaya, just not with I did get a haircut. But like she's been on tour for the Odyssey that people are losing their minds about. And Spider Man comes home, returns home, new way home. What I guess he's home, Spider-Man at home. Like she's just On those carpets and okay, side note Zendaya with the bangs. You know how many folks have had to talk me out of that? Okay, thank you. I Can sit here and say that I, in my mind, was the person whose absence will be felt because the presence was so complete. Do you know I had to breathe? Pause this recording, breathe again before I said that out loud to y'all. That I needed to be the person whose absence will be felt because the presence was so complete. I fucked up a little bit? Yeah. Total self embodiment for sure. I'm not out here hiding it. All I'm doing is making it easier for someone else to see this in themselves as well. Eldest daughters stand the fuck up right now. I'm talking to you all in the back. Now, y'all, I know in my body, not my mind, that the over-delivering will not and would not give me what I needed. On Friday at I think five or six or seven, something when I closed my computer and I was complaining to my husband again. About, my gosh, I have so much stuff, and I have so much stuff. In in that moment on Friday, and my husband is amazing. Cause he was like, Okay, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna bring you a glass of wine because you need to close that, you're done. I realized all of this that I did isn't gonna give me that sense of security that I need within myself. It's it's not gonna do that. I'm gonna be exhausted and frazzled. What I needed to do. And what I am doing right now is that I need to and am of the full belief, Of a form of control before a surgery I can't control. Here's the thing, folks. I can't control what's gonna happen to me next Friday. I can't even control what's gonna what, if who or what where I'm gonna be after I come out of that. So I was like, let me control every fucking thing I can this week through an illusion. The Maya. Right? Those of you who have been in the yogi things and the yoga worlds. Right? You understand you know what Maya is yogic philosophy, the Maya. This is what I was in all week. My raga dressed itself up as professionalism, showed the fuck up everywhere, and my grip was a mask of diligence. So here I am dressed up as professionalism. I'm gripping because I feel like it's diligent, and that's what I'm supposed to do. So there you go. Question one, in and out the door for you. I know this will probably hit some of y'all hard eldest daughters. If you need a moment, holler at your girl. I'm here for it. Okay? Question number two. When you imagine letting go of something you love, not losing it, releasing your grip on it, what does your body do? I just see, sense, or feel that anywhere inside of you. And you can answer that question. Hashtag for me. I love the Empathy Lab. The acronym is T T E L or TELS. My name is Selena Tatum. And I've rebranded. Well, no, I'm actually walking into being Tatum all the time. And I love the Empathy Lab. I built it from nothing. I've actually built it from rage. Because someone told me that they were taking something from me, and there's a whole story behind it. We'll get into it one day. And it was from nothing. It was literally. I'm I'm gonna write about conflict. And I'm gonna write about how we get in the way of our own happiness. I'm gonna write about how we just fuck ourselves up. And not in not in a way to put anyone down from inside of my own experience. Every field note, every episode, every framework, every late night writing in the margins while my son slept and my husband is and I are sitting in the garage looking out at things or I'm sitting on the balcony. scribbling say saying things into my voice notes like this and it is the most serious intellectual work I have ever produced. And I'm forty seven. When I imagine releasing my grip on it, not closing it, not losing it, releasing the white knuckle hold on every metric. I don't even look at subscriber counts. I do look at responses, every validation. My solar plexus tightens. Just like right in between like where our ribcage ends, like there's a tiny little spot there. Mine goes immediately. My breath gets a bit short. My eyebrows go up. And something in me says, if you stop. Gripping this and holding onto it, it's going to disappear. So hold it tighter. And I was having a conversation with my really good friend, my muse, my mentor. And I was saying to her, like, can we grip gracefully or learn learn how to do that? And she and I broke out into the most like key, key, key of giggles, because one, humor is my like default programming. And two, framing the thing in such a way, and I thought to myself, I we gotta make cups, like gripping with grace and like all these different things. Inside of me with that grip, I often feel if you stop watching this thing, it will stop growing. If you release the hold you have on it, the whole thing collapses. Now I'm from Trinidad and I know my mom used to say something, you know, a watch pot won't boil. So don't look at the fucking pot if you're trying to make rice. Leave it, put yourself, walk away, wash your rice. Come back, put it in, the water will be boiling. And that's an adage for everything. I need to be able to put stuff down and know that it will keep growing. I don't come on the podcast thinking I've got like a hundred thousand followers. I am out here dealing with my own make myself small, self-sabotage, stress-induced self-sabotage all the time. And I often am like, you know what? I'm just gonna sit here and talk into the airwaves because I can. What I have to say has value, and even if no one listens to it, I'll know that I did it. Now this is one I tell myself this on one hand, and on the other hand I grip around the whole thing, right? So researchers become the research and vice versa. In all honesty, that's Raga, the white knuckle grip. Raga is the grip. It's one way that Raga shows up. And it's the grip that tells me that my work only exists because I'm holding it. And that's not true. That's not true for anybody, right? The work exists because I made it. The making is done. The gripping adds nothing to this except exhaustion dressed up as devotion. I just want to call out Raga and say that Raga does come to the party as a klecher with some of the. best outfits. Okay. If you can learn to really befriend the Clacius and understand that they're just what's gonna happen in your experience of life, then who said it? Like treat everybody as though is God dressed up in drag? I can see the book in my mind's eye. I can see him in my mind's eye. I can't bring his name to the forefront of this podcast. Thank you, Parametopause. Okay. If you know who I've just quoted, quoted, quoted, please leave me some comments. Because I know that you know who I'm talking about, right? I it's on t-shirts, like, and the crazy thing is I've been to this man's ash room and I still can't bring his name to the forefront. I just want to say that this particular Klecia has some of the best outfits at the party and will dress up exhaustion as devotion. will make you feel that what did I say prior to give you illusions of control, illusions of grandeur, make the thing smell really nice. Like how you know when you watch cartoons and you see the cartoon like floating away, that that's how Ratin shows up. Devotion and attachment, guys, are different things. And depending on how we dress them up to ourselves, it it can get us kinda kinda strung out, kinda how the hell did I end up in this timeline? I know a lot of us are asking us that this very question every day. I ask that to my husband every day. Like, do we time jump like the last couple of years and we didn't know? Question three. What is the version of yourself that you keep rehearsing in your head? The one where everything works out. That prevents you from being present to what's actually happening 'cause you're working out in your head all the time. So you're not actually there. And all this daughter, stand up again. Yeah, I'm asking else always stand up. Even if you're in your bed like me, stand up 'cause we're just gonna lay it all out. My unabashed answers is from the journal. The version of my life I keep rehearsing is the one where I do everything. Like everything. It's the version where I finish the assessments at work and do the death practice and write the field note and record the podcast and prepare for surgery and be the best mama in the world and be the wife and the researcher and the contemplative. And never drops a single ball. That was one, two, three, four. It was like seven or eight and b third and I was tired. I don't know about y'all listening to me, but by the third and I was tired. I'm was like, this is fucking me up in my medulla. Shout out to our best to one of our best 21st century street philosophers, Cardi B. Okay. She said the Medulla. That and version, okay, does not exist. She has never existed. I keep rehearsing her anyway, okay, because I like to play dress up. I used to do it really well when I was a young girl. Because Raga has convinced me that she is the real me. And this version, okay, that I'm looking at in the mirror, the one sitting in bed at 8:33 in the morning journaling about how she failed the do-word list, is the draft. So Ragga will convince you that the and version is you, which is what it's done with me, which I can say this to all right now. And the other version is the draft version of me. So the one who like got her haircut, like T Boz. Well, like the nineties RB singer, but T Boz or Monica. And on Wednesday and was like, Okay, me, I'm super fly, and then it rained and my hair got wet, and I was like, Okay, well, where that goes. This morning and yesterday morning I wrote in my journal when I that I was upset with myself. And then I looked at what I actually did this week, like my whole week as I've been going through it with you guys. I completed every assessment. I I live an hour and a half from The city, so if I'm using public transportation, I often am. so to get to the head office of where I work takes a long time. Ninety minutes when I recorded the project video, ran upstairs and gave a bunch of people hugs, talked to a bunch of strangers in the park while recording it. I prepared my handover. I showed up fully at a job. And in a team with folks in an area that just went through layoffs, I made sure my team was covered before I left for or leaving or I'm now off for my medical procedure. So literally wrote an email to my crewmates like, Hey, don't talk about myself very much. First week is vacation, two weeks after that is recovery, and this is why. I did all of that. The version that I'm rehearsing says that everything they did doesn't count because you know what? You didn't meditate, girl. You didn't get that meditation in. You didn't you didn't get your jappas in. Okay. Like the Debbie's gonna be super pissed with you because you you didn't get the jappa in. You didn't get your meditation in. Girl, you didn't even let your Dia. Okay? You haven't levitated. This is Raga's most sophisticated move. All right. She's not gripping around the future. And if you're like, what? Just go back a couple of minutes when we started this question. Raga is gripping around an identity. Wanting. Gripping around wanting an identity. It's so attached to being attached to an identity, to something. She's gripping around the identity of the woman who does all the practices. When the week doesn't match the image, like my week did, my judgment arrived before I could actually see, and I mean together we're actually before I could see. Yo, you didn't dropper and all this. Debbie's not mad at you. No, like Sino, what the hell? Judgment that arises before seeing is rather an asmita or ashmita, the I amness, the ego. Working together. The grip around the identity, so the wanting, the attachment around the identity, and the defend itself that it built. Right, and this and yo, okay, because I write notes about the show and what I want to say, and I got my little teleprompter going. And even as I speak it out to you, I am having like, my fucking guard moments. Wild. And we just at We just add question three. This question three was personal. This this was the last two mornings, last couple days. This is fresh. This ain't like this happened to me two weeks ago, three weeks ago, and now I'm coming to podcast with it. This was fucking yesterday, y'all. This was Friday. This was Thursday. This was Wednesday. And now we come to the wisdom question. Cause we got we have four questions, but it's in and it's three and then we have the wisdom question. And so here we go. When have you experienced wanting something and having it at the same time? And noticed that the wanting did not stop. Five second pause for dramatic effects and shuffling my papers around. So this question. wanting something and happening at the same time and noticing the wanting didn't stop. I think all of us are in this. Pr I'm pretty sure all of us have been in this since twenty twenty six began. Maybe my American counterparts have been in this since Trumpy Dumpty took over and we don't want all look like thicky thicky dum dums because we're trying to figure out what he's doing because it's affecting the rest of us all day, every day, and we're bombarded. Let me walk you through mine. Cause it's razzle dazzle. On Wednesday I did a couple of things simultaneously. I cut my hair off. Well, short. And while I was at the salon, I was scrolling to my phone 'cause I'm always not I've tried to not be checking all the time, but and also with pushing a lot of work out into the world, I want to see if I've gotten responses right a much attachment. And while I was there, I opened my phone. I think I wanted to show my stylist something or something ridiculous on Instagram. And I noticed I got an email from Nest Labs. Now, so for those of you that have been in the podcast for a while or in the empathy lab universe, right, or multiverse, you know that some of the experiments and things that we do here together on the podcast and that I write about On Substack and on LinkedIn, I actually run a human experiment inside of Nest Labs. And I haven't run any experiments in there since April. Like when I last episode of our of season one ended, I took a break and then I was like, I need to think about what is my intent here. Like, I heard a quote this week or last week. Trevor Noah said it, but he I can't remember who we said said it. Show me The incentive and I'll show you the intent. I don't know if it's show me the intent and I'll show you incentive or vice versa. However, I happened to see this email coming from NAS Labs and it wasn't telling me about a workshop. I got the email asking me to if I was interested in hosting a talk, a speech easy, a a workshop. I'm not gonna lie, I have wanted this. Okay. the woman who coined tiny experiments and founded Nest Labs. and Law Le Cuneuf, I think I'm saying her last name properly. Is such a force in the world and to just have that invitation and they're in Europe and they're in France and it's whole thing, okay, to have the invitation. Like I can't tell you how much I wanted this. And I have been showing up in that community, as I said, for months, you know, putting out real work in there into the packed experiments, writing posts that were not throwaway contributions, interacting with people, met really cool fucking people. If you guys really wanna, if you're looking for community on tiny experiments on the self, go check out Nest Labs. I'm telling you, tiny experiments. A way go. And I wanted this recognition. Like I wanted to be seen as a thought leader in that space. Like I could taste it like I taste lemering pie. The noise you're hearing in the background is because my famous cat, David Bowie, has decided to eat the notes for the show. So if I lose track of what I'm talking about, it's because he's eating the show notes. And now he's lying on them. I wanted the invitation to be able to do something in that community. And it arrived. It arrived. I was sitting in the salon chair talking to my stylist. Hair was getting cut. Goosebumps ran up and down my arms when I read it. And I wanted to cry. It was so beautiful. I think I even turned and showed it to my stylist, like, my god, I go, look at this. Like, and she was like, What? What? Who? Nestlubs? Okay. Like within 15 fucking minutes of that email, I was already gripping around the details. What will the title be? What if the timing conflicts with my surgery? What if I'm not recovered enough? What if the session doesn't land? my god, y'all, the wanting did not stop. It shape shifted. It moved from wanting the invitation to wanting the outcome of the invitation to every other thing I could have put in there. And what I wanna underline here is the grip released the old object and immediately found a new one. Broop, you got the invitation. They think you're super fucking cool. And the that grip left. And then there was a new one of what if and what if and what if and what if. The grip released the old one and then found a new one. It's like I don't it's like, you know, you if you are a parent or you've been around small children and they're I want that, I want they like between the age of like eighteen months and like three, four, and they want the thing, they want the thing, they want the thing, and then you give them the thing and they're like, or like you buy your cat toys, which I do for Mr. David Bowie. And what does he do? He comes in and rips my notes for this podcast apart. Like And I'm gonna say that that right there, that's Radha's wisdom. Not that my wanting or anybody's wanting is wrong. Wanting things is human. Just plays and say anybody tells you different is a fucking liar. Okay. The wisdom in it is seeing that the grip is not about the thing. The attachment that we have is not about the thing we're attached to. It's about attaching everything we are. Gripping. The invitation arrives for me. The grip did not release. It relocated somewhere else. The practice here, my friends, is not to stop wanting. Don't do that. Because wanting will have probably if you think right now things you wanted and where you are right now, the the the desire and the thing of wanting got you where you were. That's why I say the practice is not to stop the wanting. The practice is to notice the relocation. As soon as you get that thing, the shoes. And calm myself out here. I think in the month of July. I might have acquired Two pairs of shoes that I was pretty sure I wanted. I got one, right? And then the second pair popped up in my algorithm. And because I got the one, Fisherman's sandal, of course I wanted the Mary Jane sambas that I'd been looking at for months, but convinced myself I wanted something else because is that really practical? Do I have anything to go with it? It's crazy. And I know it's the relocation. As soon as I got the thing, it relocated to want something else. Similar in style, but just a little bit different. So here is where we are. We want to see the grip, reach for the next handle while the thing you just received is still warm in your hands. I'm gonna say that again. The practice is not to stop wanting. The practice is to notice where that relocation is and what that is. I want us all to see the grip. That we have on something and want us all to feel when we release our hands on that thing that we so desirably wanted. Because now blah ow there's the next thing. And the cup of coffee we just wanted is still warm, but now we want a nice coffee. Okay. So is one family. Four questions. My answers from inside the white knuckle grip. The full Klacia diagnostic, which is 20 questions across the five Klacia families, is on SubSec. If you sat inside of Abhivanatia with me in episode 17 and the Raga with me today, you have now walked through eight of those 20 questions from the inside. So the other 12 are waiting for you. I have a workshop coming to Nest Labs and it will only be there. It's called The Exhaustion That Won't Rest. The Exhaustion That Won't Rest. That could be one. The exhaustion that rest won't fix. I'm gonna share more details when they are set. If you're in that community, I'll see you over there. Next week we continue at the table 'cause the glaciers aren't going anywhere. They haven't gone anywhere since the beginning of time. Neither am I. I mean I have probably gone many places since the beginning of time, but I'm not going anywhere. I'll I'll be doing my thing and then be reporting back to you from inside another glacia. This has been the Empathy Lab. It's been the kitchen table session season two. I'm Tatum. Stay hydrated. Kind to yourself, be kind to each other, stay anchored. See you next week. Peace.