Reframeables
Do you feel alone in your own head when it comes to navigating life’s big and small problems? Do you find self-care language a little too self-focused but know you still need to do the work? Join us on Reframeables and eavesdrop your way into some new perspectives — we promise you'll feel less alone as you listen. We are Nat and Bec, two very different sisters who come together each week to reframe some of life's big and small stuff. Nat's a PhD whose favourite phrase is “let’s reframe that!” Bec's an artist who tends more toward “why me?” Through candid, vulnerable yet entertaining conversations with each other, as well as guests, we find a way to meet in the middle each week and offer you, our listeners, new perspectives along the way. From a painful divorce that still needs processing, to grief that sticks around, to the simple day-to-day problems of managing a grumpy teenager, to a dynamic interview with Giller winner Ian Williams or radio personality and co-star of the Jann Arden podcast Caitlin Green sharing her vulnerable story of loss: Join our intimate conversations with authors, actors, activists, and voices from the crowd — those who inspire us to think differently about the world so we can reframe living in it.
Reframeables
Reframing Mental Health in Times of Crisis with Niomi Cherney
We often have conversations with folks who have written books. In this episode of Reframeables, Nat has a thoughtful conversation with child therapist Niomi Cherney, who’s in the midst of drafting her very own book on how to talk to loved ones with opposing viewpoints — think Trump supporter at one end of the table, and leftist liberal at the other. Essentially, this episode is their attempt to reframe mental health in times of crisis — or what it means to survive and thrive in difficult times. I actually know Niomi from my early mom days, walking to and from school with Niomi, who was at that time a childcare provider for a child who was the same age as Violet. I knew even then how special she was, so caring and creative with her kids. When she reached out to join us on Reframeables, I was excited to pick up where we left off.
Nat and Niomi talk about socially conscious self-care, how Niomi finds the strength to show up for her young clients who have lived through traumas at very young ages, and what we can all learn from her self-care strategies as a therapist. They go on to talk about conflicts with loved ones whose values bump with our own, how the term ‘crisis’ has been flattened, and what it might mean to reclaim it. Finally, Niomi shares about her activist work with Independent Jewish Voices to support the ongoing crisis in Palestine. This is a smart and honest reflective conversation that you won’t want to miss — whether you are a parent of a young one navigating their own challenges, or simply someone working to balance their own mental health in these challenging times.
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Natalie
Hey, it’s Nat.
Rebecca
And Bec — two very different sisters who come together to reframe some of life’s big and small problems. We’re moms, writers.
Natalie
We have soft boundaries. We see the world differently, but we both lean into vulnerability together and with our guests, because we like deep dives. So come with us — let’s reframe something.
Rebecca
We often have conversations with folks who have written books. In this episode of Reframeables, Nat has a thoughtful conversation with child therapist Niomi Cherney, who’s in the midst of drafting her very own book on how to talk to loved ones with opposing viewpoints — think Trump supporter at one end of the table, and leftist liberal at the other. Essentially, this episode is their attempt to reframe mental health in times of crisis — or what it means to survive and thrive in difficult times. I actually know Niomi from my early mom days, walking to and from school with Niomi, who was at that time a childcare provider for a child who was the same age as Violet. I knew even then how special she was, so caring and creative with her kids. When she reached out to join us on Reframeables, I was excited to pick up where we left off.
Nat and Niomi talk about socially conscious self-care, how Niomi finds the strength to show up for her young clients who have lived through traumas at very young ages, and what we can all learn from her self-care strategies as a therapist. They go on to talk about conflicts with loved ones whose values bump with our own, how the term ‘crisis’ has been flattened, and what it might mean to reclaim it. Finally, Niomi shares about her activist work with Jews for Peace to support the ongoing crisis in Palestine. This is a smart and honest reflective conversation that you won’t want to miss — whether you are a parent of a young one navigating their own challenges, or simply someone working to balance their own mental health in these challenging times. So let’s get to it: reframing mental health in times of crisis with Niomi Cherney.
Natalie
I’m here today with Niomi Cherney, who I’m really excited to have this conversation with because A, it’s on my own — so Bec’s not here, we’re missing her voice, and at the same time, it kind of allows for a different sort of intimacy. So this is a Nat-Niomi. It’s the Ns — the double Ns kind of combo. And Niomi’s going to walk us through a little bit about herself as a therapist and an activist and a social worker, but I’m going to let her do that intro herself. So, Niomi, please tell us about you.
Niomi
Oh — well thanks so much, Nat. It’s such a pleasure to be here with you this morning. My name is Niomi Cherney and I am a therapist in private practice. And I work and live in Kitchener-Waterloo, a traditional territory of Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and neutral peoples. And I work mostly with kids and adolescents. And my training and focus is kind of around dealing with complex trauma and presentations of complex trauma. I also work a lot with neurodivergence in school-aged kids and adolescents. And I’m trained as a social worker. And that kind of brings a different orientation to my work because I really focus a lot on kind of structural barriers and systems and looking at lenses — like, kind of the -ism lenses. So sort of ableism, colonialism, these kind of systems that shape people’s lived realities, and how the wonderful kids who show up in my office are experiencing some of these systemic barriers that create challenges for them. And I try to work with parents and kids to resolve those challenges.
Natalie
Your work has got to take a lot out of you. I mean, I certainly know that in my time as an educator over the years, just navigating people’s stories, right? I mean, like, there’s a way to pour into folks, but then there’s also a lot taken from. I just think that that’s worth sort of just checking in with you — like, how are you? Like, how does it feel to be doing that work? What are the ways that you navigate, you know, through for your own mental health? Because we’re going to be reframing today mental health sort of in light of crisis — and we are definitely in times of crisis. Maybe perhaps some people would say we’ve always been in times of crisis, but I think that there are some definitive crises sitting right in front of us in lots of ways that you see day-to-day with kids who speak truths. So what’s a way that you mitigate? Before we jump into all the crisis stuff, let’s start with some hope. What’s a way that you kind of interrupt some of that hurt in you?
Niomi
Wow, that’s a really great question. I love that question because therapists never get asked to talk about themselves, you know? And I love to talk about myself. It’s ironic that I chose a profession where communication is front and centre. I mean, I think you’re really right when you say, like, kids speak truths. And so sometimes I think in my experience as a clinician, as a clinical social worker, it’s been a kind of, like, very harsh reality check about what is going on in the day-to-day in a larger sense.
Personal anecdote — one of my first jobs, I worked in the public sector and I worked in a day treatment program for kids under 12. And the day treatment program was attached, it was a partnership with the local school board and it was for kids who were having so many challenges that they couldn’t remain in the mainstream classroom. And the reason I’m bringing this up is because the start of that program was also 2020 — so the first year of the pandemic. And we were providing in-person service for the most complex cases probably in the region. And they were all kind of like in one little Petri dish together.
And so I had to learn pretty quick because social work is always intense. Therapists, as you said, you know, we have an intense relationship to people’s emotional lives — so it kind of vibrates, like, around here. And then at that time, it went from here to, like, just off the charts, just because of the complexity — like, the pandemic intensified a lot of those intersections of structural barriers for folks. So poverty, race, all those things came into a kind of collision in that at that time. So it took me a while and I got very, very burnt out. And I think the way that I found my way through that was just by kind of, like, shifting the dialogue. I think oftentimes when people are asking us, like, “How are we managing? What are we doing to care for ourselves?” It also can become kind of, like, an imperative — like, “You self-care. Do your self-care.”
Natalie
Yes.
Niomi
You’re nodding like…
Natalie
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Niomi
You know, 100%. And if you don’t do your self-care, you’re going to get burnt out, and that is your fault.
Natalie
I know, and then you end up taking it on — like, now the onus is so much on you that it’s, like, re-traumatizing in a different way.
Niomi
Absolutely, you know? And, like, in the mental health field, we just get that vibe, like, intensified so much because we’re supposed to be modelling all the time for our clients. What really eventually ended up happening was I kind of shifted that narrative a bit, and it became about: what do I need to show up? Because it’s very important for me to show up for my clients. Because I care about them deeply and, you know, I often know more about their lives than anyone else. And I care about them so deeply. And so it became about how do I show up for people in a way that is meaningful and in a way that makes me feel like I’m doing my job well. Like anybody’s job — but just, you know,part of my job. It’s not self-care as an extra add-on that I have to do, or otherwise get chastised for not doing.
You know, one of the ways in which I can make it possible to show up the way I want, just the way we do for all of our loved ones and all our relationships, and that’s the thing about therapy is it’s entirely relational. So you need to do everything you can to show up for that relationship in a way that feels good for you, feels sustainable.
Natalie
Yeah — and the feeling sustainable piece is a really interesting one. I mean, like, when we say that our definition, this emerging definition of what it means to reframe on the Reframables podcast has been about socially conscious self-care. And we kind of made that term up, right? I mean, like, we’re sort of like, “Ok, how do we frame this?” And, I mean, it really is about sort of an awareness of the self, because… what is it, that thing about being on airplanes, that you have to put your own mask on first before you can put your mask on someone else?
Niomi
Oxygen mask on first.
Natalie
Right? Like, that is real. If you are burnt out in your own space, how can you care for those around you? There has to be some of that work being done with the lens turned on me, not just outward on everyone else. And at the same time, how do we keep our gaze forward and outward so that we are engaged in the world in crisis? You know, what can end up happening, right, with that kind of myopic me-ness of a lot of self-care messaging is counter to what Bec and I feel like we want to be putting out to the world. So it was very exciting when you reached out, because I know that that vision makes a lot of sense to you. I want to get then from you, if we could move from how you’ve been trying to care for yourself in that sort of balanced way, what was it about the notion of crisis that for you really said, you know, “I’m going to reach out to Nat and Bec and I think this is the time for me to have this conversation”?
Niomi
Yeah, 100%. I’ll share another anecdote about the self-care conversation that I think just underscores what we’ve been saying. So I transitioned from the public sector into private practice, and when I was making that transition, I interviewed with a lot of private practices. So I had a wide scope of the understanding of kind of private mental health services (which is a separate conversation, the division between public and private mental health services, separate conversation). And one of the questions that came up over and over again in these interviews was, “How do you care for yourself?” And I think it was that kind of myopic, you know, “You are an individual, so when you’re done with your clients for the day, how do you go home and care for yourself?”
And what was interesting about that for me, and what I think was one of the reasons why initially you reached out to have this conversation was it was quite a contrast because at that time it was just kind of following October 7th and the beginning of the really heated escalation between Israel and Palestine and, you know, basically the world was on fire. And I was having this experience where on the one hand people are asking me how I self-care and on the other hand, you know, there was this terrifying state of the world — absolutely terrifying. I was really struggling to reconcile those two pieces, and so I started thinking more and more about, “Wow, this must be a thing that a lot of people struggle with.” That’s why the notion of, like, socially conscious self-care makes so much sense, because this extreme division between individual self-care is very, like, steeped in neoliberal ideology — like, we are responsible for our own fate.
Natalie
Yes, as if we aren’t all connected.
Niomi
Yeah, exactly. We are responsible for our own success or failure — you know, in contrast to a collective feeling that there is a crisis. There are so many crises. The word ‘crisis’ is being deployed right, left, and centre. The housing crisis, the opioid crisis, the food security crisis, the climate crisis. And if we have this kind of division between what we’re responsible for as individuals, then it seems completely daunting to engage with these things that are bigger. Does that make sense?
Natalie
Yes, absolutely — and the word also becomes a bit flattened in its enormity, perhaps, because how do you address something that feels so beyond the self at some level? And so then there can be potentially a temptation to just turn off. I’m very keen to hear sort of your thoughts on how we can make the turn towards the collective in different ways, because we have so many different listeners who, you know, come from different walks of life and who are navigating different realities in their day-to-day, and how can we at some level come together? That’s a really important question that I think a lot of people are asking.
Niomi
I think a lot of people are asking it right now because at the same time as people are turning away, you can only turn away when you know there’s something to turn away from. So people also live with this kind of dread — like, “I don’t fully understand this particular crisis, but I know it’s really bad.” I see it a lot in kids and adolescents. I’m sure anyone who has school-aged children is well familiar with what they’re being educated about now and how they’re engaging with the world in, like, different ways than, you know, us millennials and our education systems. You know, now they have education about residential schools. They do projects about different arenas of climate crisis-focused subjects.
I do this often, like, when I’m intaking a kid into my practice, or seeing them for the first few times, we often do, like, a ‘get to know you’ kind of questionnaire thing. And there’s a section on it that has, like, “The three things that are on my mind,” — that, you know, aren’t, like, here and now. But, like, “There’s three things that are on my mind.” And sometimes, you know, things that come up are kind of like, “Oh, my grandparent is sick.” Or, you know, stuff that’s kind of percolating for them. And almost always, climate crisis is on that list.
Natalie
Wow. That makes me want to cry. Wow.
Niomi
I know, I know. And I think as adults, we have a lot of trouble modelling. So, you know, kids are not learning how to stay engaged in a healthy way. They’re just kind of saturated with a lot of information that maybe their parents don’t even have. You know, it’s sort of a generational divide and it’s moving a lot faster now too because their consumption of media is very, very different than ours. And so there’s a kind of dissonance between, you know, what they’re bringing home in their backpack at the end of the day and what their parents are able to support or talk about. You know, and the other thing is that a lot of adults don’t have tools. Most adults don’t have tools for talking to their kids about tough stuff.
Natalie
Yes. Yeah, we’ve had another counsellor on here who would say a very similar thing. Her whole practice is as much about the working with the families for them to find each other in their conversations as it is with the young people themselves because of exactly that — like, not having the tools to be able to do the work.
Niomi
Absolutely, and so much as I’m sure was reflected in that conversation is creating a shared language and a shared understanding. And in terms of practical things — like, we’re kind of talking abstractly about, you know, staying engaged, and I kind of even wonder what that means. And if it becomes a kind of imperative like self-care — like, “Stay engaged!” You know, “Be socially conscious!” And that’s a big burden to carry. And it’s also in families — like, if we’re on the subject of families and children, it’s often the female-identifying member of the family, the adults, who is carrying a lot of the burden and emotional labour. Even little things like, “Who’s washing all those disposable lunch bags? Who’s planning, you know, a fuel-efficient trip to wherever?” You know, it’s an interesting dimension to also just think about how this time of universal crisis is also extremely gendered in our perception of it, and that oftentimes female-identifying people are asked to carry the burden or sort out our relationship to crisis, or sort out our family’s or family pod’s relationship to crisis.
Natalie
So how do you bring in your own activism into… not necessarily, I mean, it could be your practice, but I mean just your way of being? Because I mean, for those of you who now go to choose and follow Niomi Cherney online, you’re going to see lots of really wonderful, thoughtful posts about the way that you live the world out in not just, like… I don’t know, like, I mean, I don’t see much about, you know, you and your partner. What I see are your thoughts, you know, playing out on the state of the world. So I think that that says a lot about you. So yeah, talk to us a little bit about how your activism plays out in your day-to-day, how it informs who you are or your practice. Make all the links, please.
Niomi
Wow. Ok, first of all, my partner would be very sad to hear that he’s not featured on my social media.
Natalie
Oh, are you kidding? My husband is like, “Do not put my face out there. Maybe, like, once every two months.” That’s what he’s like. So…
Niomi
Yeah — I mean, I love that question too, because, like, I’m so busy doing the work that so rarely do I get asked to just stop and think about how it is all integrated. I mean, I think because I am a social worker, and that is my training and education, you know, my orientation is kind of always going to be anti-oppression, anti-colonization, anti-ableism — all those kinds of -isms. So that’s always going to be my orientation. But I think what the level of activism that I’m doing now is new-ish. I’ve always been kind of vaguely involved with different activist movements — disability activism, et cetera. But it mostly took the form of a lot of writing of ideas.
And now, I think following the extreme actions of Israel against Palestine after October 7th — so my orientation to that is I’m Jewish. I was raised in a family that is very Zionist — so in support of the state of Israel. And my kind of social justice background led me to begin criticizing the state of Israel — its actions against the Palestinian people. And so that had been evolving for me from some time. And then really what compelled me to become kind of much more active — so currently, I work with a group called Independent Jewish Voices here in Kitchener-Waterloo. It’s a national organization. And we do lots of different things. Rallies — I do a lot of public speaking at rallies, a lot of letter campaigns, events, organizing, those kinds of things.
But what I think is the throughline is that I found my way to this work because of my value set. And, you know, when people fall into this trope, or we criticize other people for kind of, like, token activism, it’s because their actions are not really connected to their value set. And I don’t think we all have to be, like, activists for everything — you know, the same way we have different skill sets for our jobs and different values. You know, and hopefully at some point our values are reflected in what we do on a day-to-day basis. Also, I see the issues of colossal trauma and violence and war — I see those things as just being so connected to our everyday experience here in ways that people are not able to process, so I see all that activism work also as a striation or a leg of my mental health practice, and how I view mental health.
Rebecca
Sometimes people ask us if we make money doing this podcast. The answer is we don’t. In fact, every hour we spend on Reframables is time not spent at a paying gig. And the steps to making a podcast are actually many. Finding the guests, booking the guests, reading the books, planning the questions, editing the interview, uploading it into the podcast world, making the artwork. So if you value this podcast, please consider supporting it with a financial contribution. Memberships start at $6 a month on Patreon and include a monthly extra where we record our five things in a week. In this world we have to support what we love, and with that support an energy comes back to us — so thanks for going to patreon.com/reframables and becoming a supporter. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense to be making a podcast, but here we are, three years later, still doing it with your help. So go to patreon.com/reframables — now, on to the show.
Natalie
So can I ask… because I have, and I feel like there are some listeners who will really resonate with your sharing of, like, where it came from — your sort of activist work as it sort of maybe looks right now, as it presents right now. I’ve had friends who have experienced growing up in households where they then find themselves at odds with their loved ones — like, literally their worldview is just: they don’t match. And is that an ongoing process of reconciling for you? Yeah. How are you with that kind of work? I mean, like, in terms of in your own circle — like, I don’t know. Do you engage with your family much? Do you have to sort of put boundaries up in terms of how one can kind of be in conversation? And I ask this because I actually think there are some people who will be listening who would find this really helpful. And it’s ok if you can’t talk about it.
Niomi
Oh — yeah, no, I absolutely can. You know, recently I was speaking on a panel and someone asked me, “How do you have conversations with people who have a different viewpoint than you?” And this particular question was about, like: how do you engage with people who are deep believers in Zionism, in the state of Israel and the right to return, and people who are critical of the actions, the violence of the state of Israel? So how do you have those conversations? And I joked, I was like, “Well, you know, my retirement plan is going to be writing a book on how to talk to Zionists.”
Natalie
Ok, there you go.
Niomi
That’s my retirement plan. But, you know, in all seriousness, what I said was, “Yes, there are divisions in my family, absolutely.” This is the age. Like we were talking about earlier with, you know, our school-age children who are coming home with very different packages of ideas than their parents — this is the age. Like, we are at a turning point in history where so much development has happened. Even if you just think about how much learning has been done on gender, and gender in the curriculum of school-aged children now. You know, just think of that. And that is a turning over point for, you know, the Gen Zs and their parents. And similarly, Israel-Palestine is a cross point for many Jews of my generation. I’m 40, so I was born in 1984. So many, many educated liberal left Jews at this time. And our parents — likely baby boomers, so kind of 70, 80. And it’s a divisive time. And it’s also hard because at the same time our parents are aging. You know, and it’s not like having a division in your family when you’re 20 and there’s a lot of time to repair it. And it is a value set division, and it is epic.
Natalie
No, I think that what you’re sharing though is that people listening who experience it in their own lives, they’re not alone.
Niomi
You are not alone.
Natalie
Like, I mean, I think that that’s the key thing here, right, is that you’re not alone. There are other people doing that work with you. I know that my mom, for example, she remained an American for a long time — a long time on purpose. I don’t know if she would even sum it up as having known exactly why she was doing it, but she has joked a little bit with Bec and me about how she stayed an American long enough to be able to vote for Obama to counter some of the other votes that were coming through south of the border, even within our own family. And that reality was something for her at the time — like, this was her way forward in the world, right? Like, “This is the only way that I can fight back with this little piece of power that I have, which is that I can still vote.”
Niomi
Yeah.
Natalie
And yet you still go and visit your family and love your family and find your ways forward through conversation about things, not about things. But I think that that is a hard one for some folks — is it’s like, “Yeah, but how do I not talk about all the things that are me with people who so inherently sit on another side of who I am?” And I guess it really does come down to just knowing that maybe places like this, like a podcast, where you can just hear somebody else saying in real time, “You’re not alone, it’s really hard.”
Niomi
It’s really, really, really hard. And, you know, connecting with other people, but you’re not so much problem solving, but just sharing that it’s really, really hard — sometimes that’s all people do in my therapy. I mean, I do a lot of interventions, but sometimes people just want someone to share that it’s really hard and to be with them in that experience, and that’s really important. I don’t think that when you have a value divide that’s that big with people that you love, it’s not necessarily not repairable the way a relationship rupture is repairable, necessarily — because, you know, it’s not about a restorative process of understanding the other person’s perspective and coming around to it. And especially when we’re talking about things of the magnitude that we’re talking about, there’s no reparation for that.
Natalie
And naming that, what would you say as a therapist… is part of the process? Is sort of your part of what we were talking about at the very beginning in terms of kind of finding some of the socially conscious self-care components to it — like, owning that one can’t fix it.
Niomi
That’s right, and owning that every time it will be a rupture and a value rub every time you are spending time. It’s kind of the dissonance that I was mentioning earlier between being asked about my own self-care in the face of, you know, violence and genocide. It’s acknowledging that you’re going to have these brushes in the world where your own values and your own internal things that are important are just not going to be reflected in the world. A friend of mine wrote this poem shortly after October 7th. She’s Palestinian. It was kind of about her experience of still having to do the laundry, even though…
Natalie
Wow, oh my goodness, yeah.
Niomi
You know, and kind of having to carry on these mundane tasks, even though something is affecting you that much. I think that’s really hard. Like you said, we don’t have to bear that alone. And it’s, like, acknowledging that that’s a really hard thing to do — like, to hold something that’s very hard, challenging, huge, colossally life-altering. You know, and then it’s pretty hard to be expected to continue about your day-to-day life. You know, and that’s true when you have value ruptures with people that you love, too. You know, people are like, “Oh, how was your visit with your family? How was Rosh Hashanah? How was Christmas?” Whatever. And then you’re sort of just supposed to say, “Oh, it was fine.”
Natalie
Now that’s interesting because I guess I do wonder at some level if actually part of the self-care process in there, the socially conscious self-care process, might be to say, “It was fine,” and leave it at that, because of the fact that it’s not all going to be fixable as we’ve just named here. And I think as a teacher type, that really rubs for me, because I really like to be able to problem solve — like, that has been just my go-to for a long career in teaching, but then now in producing. I mean, like, this morning before I got on with you, I am problem solving right now — and that’s ok because that’s literally my job. So to take that part of my brain and kind of put it off to the side and go, “This is not problem solvable,” which is something that my partner, my husband is constantly saying to me because that is so my temptation. And he’s like, “This isn’t yours to solve, Nat.” And whether it’s to do with family, whether it’s to do with, you know, a friend, whatever it is, having to remove myself from that problem solving lane and just be like, “I’m here and it hurts, but it’s fine.” And whatever fine could mean in that moment. Maybe there’s something in that, I don’t know.
Niomi
Yeah, I mean, I think there’s a lot in just acknowledging one’s feelings. It’s actually a lot — like, what I teach adults is just acknowledging, you know, feelings. And I totally hear you. Like, one of my biggest challenges, my personal challenges in my practice, is trying to step back and let my client lead — whether or not we’re solving a problem or sitting with the problem.
Natalie
Wow — yeah, yeah. That’s, like, a life lesson right there. Huh. In terms of what it means to be a listener, right? Like, no doubt.
Niomi
And it’s not something I’m, like, the best at in my personal life.
Natalie
Right. I don’t know, maybe there are a few out there, but it’s hard to name and own.
Niomi
Yeah, it’s really hard.
Natalie
Yeah.
Niomi
Yeah — and, like, we don’t need to wrap up this conversation with, you know, a way to solve the problem that we’ve just been talking about.
Natalie
No — yeah, yeah, yeah.
Niomi
But I did want to go back to just what you were saying about your own mom, who, you know, retained her right to vote as the only source of power. And so that’s kind of, like, what I would leave listeners with today: is this idea that if you can identify just one source of power over a situation that is overwhelming, or that you don’t have very much information about — if you can identify one source of power and control, that will help you be ok. So acknowledging you’re having the feelings you have, it’s hard and it’s unsolvable, and maybe there’s some tiny thing that you can have control over.
Natalie
And that that control is healthy — like, it’s not what I’m describing of myself in terms of being, you know, micromanagerial teacherly control over all things. Which, you know, I keep working on — or producer control, or whatever we’re going to call it. But your description here of that control in the face of crisis is I think a little bit different.
Niomi
Yeah. I think what I mean is that you can have control over one factor that probably has to do with you. So you can’t control the behaviour and actions of others, you can’t control the state of the world. And whatever an example would be… maybe this sounds, like, kind of mundane, but maybe if you’re going into a conversation where you know there’s going to be a value set rub, maybe you wear a specific pair of shoes that makes you feel equipped for that. For me, it would be Doc Martens.
Natalie
Ok, that’s so interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Niomi
Just one thing that reminds you of who you are and why you hold the values that you do.
Natalie
Cool.
Niomi
And with that piece of control, you’re accepting that you cannot control the situation.
Natalie
Yeah. Oh, I really like that — the tangible nature of that. Especially because I think that, I mean, as a show that really does focus a lot on art, and I mean, like, clothing as art, the way that we wear ourselves in the world — I mean, a lot of that speaks to who we want to be. But I do think sometimes people dress for the other, right? Like, for the situation, you know what I mean? So like, “I’m going to this event, so therefore I must look this way.” What could it look like to own the truest part of myself, whether it’s my outfit or my makeup or my shoe set, you know what I mean? Like, whatever it is. And then now have that mindset to go in with and feel strong and capable — but, as you say, not necessarily going in with the thinking that you’re going to change somebody.
Niomi
Exactly. Exactly. You know, you can’t control other people’s actions or external events in the world. You can settle into your own way of being and your own value set and the things that are most important to you — and that’s basically it.
Natalie
Yeah. Oh, Niomi, thank you so much for this. I really feel like… my hope is that somebody listening could feel empowered in a surprising way. Because I think that sometimes we do attach words like ‘crisis’ or ‘power’ or any of these really large, loaded terms with, like, a lot of meaning that maybe the meaning should be something that we are deconstructing so that we can do something new with those terms. And I’m really hearing that from you, and I’m grateful that you can help us to sort of consider that, and maybe we’ll reconnect again at a time when we’re seeing even newer, more wonderful ways forward in terms of like some of the crises changing paths. Certainly, I’m seeing it with the work you’re doing online, so thank you for sharing those stories as you do that work.
Niomi
Thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure. Like I said, it’s just such a rare opportunity — because a lot of my work is actually kind of depersonalized, which is interesting because it’s very public-facing. So a lot of it is very depersonalized, so it’s just so wonderful to have an opportunity like… I got to say what I think.
Natalie
Yeah — yeah, yeah, yeah. And that that’s actually a really powerful way forward in a healthy way. Well, thank you. I feel healthier for this conversation.
Niomi
Great.
Natalie
Thanks a lot, Niomi.
Niomi
Ok, thanks so much.