Tillontiptoldyou.com, the podcast about pop culture, black history, and spirituality. It's about to be a great vibe. Doctor Tum, gonna take it away. Tillontiptoldyou.
Hey y'all, hey, thank you for joining me for another edition of Tillontip Told You. We're almost at Thanksgiving, so I wanna start off by thanking you, those of you who follow me on social media, who thought enough of me to give me birthday greetings on the 14th, I appreciate you. It really meant a lot. I turned 45, which is a big deal to me.
So I appreciate all of the love and support I received on that day. And Thanksgiving is the time of year where we should be thankful. Let me tell you what I wanna talk about, then I'll jump in. So today I wanna talk a little bit about giving thanks.
And then I want to talk about something that happened to me this week that made me realize that, not gonna, some to John Gray video that's going around. And then we'll talk about some things I've got going on in the coaching side of things. So let's jump right in. Let me tell you one of my pet peeves.
I can't stand to see Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving. I just can't stand it. It makes my teeth itch. Mostly because Christmas is one of those things that has become so heavily commercialized.
People go into debt, trying to give these large and extravagant gifts to their children, to their loved ones, people bragging on social media about what they got and what they received. Overly zealous Christians trying to browbeat the rest of us about what the reason for the season is. It's just, you know, for me Christmas is a beautiful time of the year because it's all about family. It's the time of the year where my family comes together.
My family comes together often, but it's the time of the year that is about family for us. And so I appreciate Christmas. I don't want anybody think I'm screwed. I love Christmas, but I also think it's important that before we jump into all that capitalism, can we give thanks for the things that we've received?
Right? I, in my own lived experiences, understand that you can't receive more until you're grateful for what you got. Right? So for me Thanksgiving is equally as beautiful as Christmas because it's also a family time of the year.
Y'all know I like food, so it's a time to eat. Can we enjoy Thanksgiving before y'all, you know, in the attic trying to get the tree down? I just, I really don't understand why we want to skip over such a beautiful holiday. Beautiful holiday.
Here's my challenge to you. Before Thanksgiving Day, now depending on when you listen to this, it may be difficult because maybe Thanksgiving is going, but if you are hearing this before Thanksgiving Day, I challenge you to write down as many things as you can think of to be grateful for. I think you'll be surprised because that list should grow and grow and grow and grow. And if you need a head start, let me tell you that you got ears to hear this, you got some kind of electronic device to plug into it.
That probably means that you have a place to sleep at night. We have to start being grateful for all of what we have, not just that if I was driving a Tesla problem, we give thanks every time I stepped foot in the car, but I need to give thanks for my own, what I got. We need to be thankful for the things that we have, so that we have room to receive something else. We got to show that we're good stewards of these things that we have so that the universe, spirit, God, whatever you want to call it, can give you more.
But you got to first show you great with what you got. So let's not run past Thanksgiving. Let's not use Thanksgiving to get to Black Friday. Those of us who are entrepreneurs, Black Friday is a big deal because it's an opportunity to make a lot of money.
For those of us who like to shop, Black Friday is a big deal because it's an opportunity for us to spend money and save at the same time, kind of. But let's not rush past the gratitude. Let's spend some time and gratitude. And let's not wait until Thanksgiving to be grateful.
That's what I'm telling you now. Start now and make it that list. Get in the habit of every night before you go to bed, giving thanks for the things that you have received. Let's get in the habit.
I think you'll see that it will change how you think about some things. It'll change how you think about some things. So in terms of what I'm grateful for, I'm grateful for the last few months, and this week had put me in a position where, y'all, I'm on a real, let me produce as much quality scholarship as I can while I got breath to do it. And I'm thankful for that.
A lot of it came from being angry at different situations. I frustrated with different things in my life and realizing that I had gotten away from the thing that gives me joy, which is research and scholarship. I'm a nerd, y'all. If you didn't already know that, I might be slightly ratcheted, but I am a nerd and I enjoy learning and teaching.
And I realized that because I was in an environment that did not fully support that joy of mine, that I had surrendered my joy to my circumstances. That is so dangerous to surrender your joy to your circumstances means that you are no longer in control of those things that give you joy. And it's a dangerous situation because it usually happens so gradually that we don't realize it happened. Now, when I first entered into my present environment, I knew that there wasn't the kind of money for research that I was accustomed to.
They weren't the kind of resources. I was coming from an R1 private school highly endowed to a small HBCU that was a teaching college. And so I knew that there were going to be some adjustments in terms of the resources I had. But I did think that there would be commitments to research because of my own experiences at HBCUs.
Y'all know I'm an HBCU legacy. W.E.B. Du Bois, when he was at FISQ, he used to talk about, and if you go to the National Museum of African American History, you can hear him say it. They have a recording of his voice say.
There was a period of time when he wanted, if you were going to write about black families, you were going to have to quote research coming out of FISQ. If you're going to talk about our people, you need to be quoting us, right? That kind of mentality was at HBCUs. And it was there when I was at an HBCU as an undergrad.
Both of them I went to, shout out to Florida A&M University, the greatest university in the land, my heart bleeds orange and green, but also to Fort Valley State University that gave me my second chance, so go Wildcats. But I was in places, I was blessed enough to be an HBCUs, that privileged research and scholarship and academic excellence. And so when I entered into the university where I am now, and there weren't resources in place to support research, and the entire culture and community of the university says that things support research, but what they're producing, you know, come on y'all. It's not innovative, it's of convenience, et cetera.
And when I was looking at my CV a couple of weeks ago, I realized that I have fallen into that of just not producing, right? And I can continue to use the excuse that I don't have access to the resources that I once had. I'm not going to brag on myself, but a top tier journal gave me best new research of the year award, the year I graduated from Emory. So I could have, right?
I could have been innovative in my approach to research so that I could continue without access to the kinds of resources Emory afforded me. But instead I felt trapped to my circumstances. I fell into my circumstances, and if I didn't have access the way I wanted or was accustomed to, I decided not to do. And I can't blame anybody else for me.
I'm trying to be careful in this. I'm trying to talk about what has happened to me without laying blame on anybody other than myself. The problem was not my present environment. The problem was I did not overcome the circumstances of my present environment, rather than, and I have friends who are in our ones now.
So instead of saying, hey, I need this article, can you shoot me this article right quick? I don't have access. Or hey, can I come sleep on your couch for a couple of days because I need to be in archives in your city? I wasn't doing that because I was too accustomed to Emory giving me travel funds, walking over to Marble, which is our archive library on campus, things like that.
I didn't have my hunger. I wasn't hungry enough. But here's the thing about realizing that you're following victim to your circumstances. Once you realize that that's the case, here's my gratitude.
I'm thankful that I now realize that that's the case because it has reignited my hunger. And so if you are one of those friends that are, I need you to shoot me an email saying, yeah, R1. So that what I mean, some citations and some resources, I can hit you up, right? I am, I'm not gonna settle anymore.
And I'm getting ahead of myself, but I'm not gonna settle anymore. So sometimes, I don't even know what to say. I'm just not going to allow myself to silence myself. I said something about that in the last episode that it amazes me that so many scholars of color that I know personally are all about advocacy and making sure that no one is silenced.
And at the same time, we silence significant parts of who we are because we wanna play whatever game that Academy has set up for us to play, or we wanna play whatever game professionalism, somebody else's definition of professionalism has set for us. And we don't have to do that, right? I'm all for, I am brand new. I'm all for me being exactly who I am.
So that whole, I'm gonna shy away from conjure because people in education don't seem to get it, right? And I'm in the educational field. I'm not doing it anymore. I'll try to make more clear and more plain.
The connections I see between root work and conjure and et cetera, but I'm not gonna shy away from my real research agenda anymore, right? Because I wanna be like W.E.B. the boys, I want to say, if people are gonna talk about culturally relevant instruction, if they're gonna talk about culturally responsive teaching, we can talk about all cultures, not just those that make people feel safe, right? So yeah, yeah.
So I just wanted to say that in case someone else is in that situation, and again, I'm using Academy because that's where I am, but you may be in a job where when you got there, you had dreams of just excelling and being the top of your field and pushing and being innovative and creative, and now you find yourself in the day-to-day grind, and it's just, you feel like it's grunt work, you know, but I appreciate you. I'm gonna go ahead and be the tough guy to say, that's your fault, that's your fault. You gotta find a way, if we are creative enough, and black folk, oh my God, history should prove to us that we're creative enough to create the environment that we want, to create the environment that we need. And so I'm gonna push us to do that, especially as we're coming up to the end of the year.
I'm, listen, I'm not telling you to wait until January. I'm not saying do this in 2019. I'm saying right here today, right now, as soon as you, this goes off, finish listening. But right now, as soon as this goes off, create your environment.
The old black people I know say, take what you have to make what you want. We gotta stop being victim to our circumstances and go ahead and step out and create the world we know that can't exist without effort, without no how, without ingenuity, without brilliance. Can't keep sitting on it when we sit on it forward. Rest in peace, can't put that chick was not even 50.
Tomorrow is not promised to any of us. We have to go ahead and do the work now. All right, so now that I've talked about us not settling and becoming victims of our circumstances, can we talk about John Griffith just a moment? I don't know if you guys have seen the video that's going around, and I am amazed at how many women are applauding this foolishness that his woman had to cover him and she's too big for him.
And all this drivel that is coming out of his mouth, listen, I am sick of him telling women how to be a wife and I ain't never seen him be a man. Y'all can run and tell him I said it too. I've never seen him be a man. You sit next to 45.
If you don't get out of here, and even like, okay, let's go back to that. So he meets with these other cool preachers in 45. And then after he realizes there was going to be a backlash about it, he says that his wife told him not to go. But what did he do?
He says why? He went anyway, right? But now you want us to believe that you love her so much because she's raising you, she's birthing you, she's doing all of these things. You don't ask them, you don't appreciate it because you're not even listening to her.
I don't even want to make this personal anymore. I want you to really critically think about him if you're still supporting that foolishness. I need you to turn away from his foolishness and ask yourself how often he tells a man how to be a husband. Once that's equal, then maybe I'll give him a second chance.
But right now, I'm sick of telling women what to be. You must want to be one. Anyway, I don't know if I should have said that. So let me apologize if anybody can.
But we do have to deal with this idea that Black women in particular have been conditioned to believe that the subtle is sanctified, that it proves that you're virtuous, to take a man and bring him up, right? You don't deserve that sense. Listen, let me tell you my own personal, right? My own personal, I'm not talking about what I think or what I theorize.
I am telling you I was in love with an alcoholic in a relationship with him for over six years. I thought I could fix him. And I did everything I could. I fed him because he wasn't, he was that much of alcoholic.
He wasn't eating regularly, he wasn't taking care of himself. I used to be on him to make appointments with a VA, put him out so he would go to rehab. I took him back in once he got clean. I helped him, you know, he wasn't, he was lit, we lived together for those six years, but guess who was paying all the bills?
Guess who was my autogross? She's cooking all the meals. Guess who's doing all that stuff, right? Because there was a part of me that had been conditioned to believe if you love a man, that your responsibility is to take care of him.
And what I didn't understand is that if I love myself, my responsibility is to take care of myself. And I can't do that when I'm taking care of another grown-ass person who's taking advantage of me. I'm telling you what I know, now what I think. This man, I'm telling you my experience now, this man as soon as he was financially secure.
Cause I'm telling you, I walked him from not having shit to a job that was paying very, very, very well. And what did he do? He left me. Well, he would say he didn't leave me, he cheated and so the relationship fell apart.
Your sacrificing yourself for somebody else who does not appreciate it, does not make you virtuous. See, here's one of the things, I think so often, parts of the Bible become so cliche that we don't unpack them when we hear them. So we know in the Bible we're told to love our neighbor as we love ourself, right? You hear that and then your mind instantly goes that I'm supposed to love other people.
But the premise of the whole statement, when you unpack it is that you have got to love yourself before you can love anybody else. And part of loving yourself is saying to other people, this is how you will meet me. Here are my boundaries, here are my expectations of excellence. Here is my love for myself.
And if you can't match that, then you begin to interfere with my ability to love myself. And I can't have that. What would it be like? If not only little girls, but little boys begin to demand that people treat them the way that they should be treated.
I think we'll have a whole lot more healthy relationships. What we saw in that interview this week was not a healthy relationship. That was a narcissist who doesn't want to grow up, who wants his mate to be accountable for his behavior. It doesn't work like that, y'all.
It shouldn't work like that. It does work like that for some people. It shouldn't work like that. That's not what it's supposed to be like.
It's not supposed to be about that kind of stuff. I just, I really want, I'm being moved, I'm being called, I don't know what else to say, to start some sister circles, where there is intergenerational communication about issues related to self-love, voice, sexuality. Because I'm also, I said, and I don't know if it was last episode or the episode before that, I feel like I hadn't been fully myself. I am a very sexually liberated person.
And when I read my old social media posts, I realized that I was a lot more sexual in those commentaries than I am now. And that's me silencing parts of myself, right? I think we have to, I want to create spaces where women can come together, and occasionally with the brothers, to talk through some of these things. And really shed some stuff, right?
We got stuff to share so that we can be in community together, the best kind of community together, community that pushes us. And so in thinking about establishing these sister circles and retreats and things like that, I've also been pushed about, so let me just, so I'm gonna tell you my truth. My truth is, I want a business coach. But my truth is also that the coaches that I want, because I don't want somebody who just says they're a business coach, I need some different straight excellence.
And not just no screenshots that can belong to anybody else. I'm talking about people that I know are moving and shaking. And I can't right now in my budget justify some of this, right? And I wondered, as I was saying that about me pursuing business coaching, I wonder how many people have wanted to hire me as their life coach or life purpose coach, or dream do it, because you know I do it all.
And feel like they can't afford my rates. And so one of the things that I'll be opening up is the opportunity to do group coaching. And I think that through group coaching, a couple of things can start to happen. One, if you've been wanting life coaching or life purpose coaching or dream do it services.
But you felt like you couldn't afford it. It's a way to not pay as much as the one on one coaching. But it is a way for you to get the support from a coach that you may want. At the same time, I also ideologically believe that we grow better in community.
We grow better in community. And I think group coaching allows for that dynamic to be ignited, right? So you have more people to be accountable to, not just need your coach, but then you're accountable to your sister girl who heard you say that by Tuesday you would have to do XYZ. Now it's not just me asking you, if you did it, you're crippled asking you.
I think that that dynamic will work a lot better for a lot of us. So if you are interested in something like that, you can send me an email at doctor tip at telemptoldg.com. Hit up the website at www.telemptoldg.com. Or just make sure you're following on social media because I'll be making some announcements and providing some more information on the group coaching.
But let me go back to why I think we do some of our best healing in community. This past week, and I'll be blogging about it this weekend, but this past week I had the opportunity to go to NASA for the International Conference on Urban Education. And I have a group of friends, they are friends that have become family because the friend is not a word strong enough to describe who they are. But I have some friends who at conferences like that, it becomes like a mini reunion.
And not only is it a mini reunion, it's an opportunity for us to sit down and talk about what's been going on with ourselves, professionally, scholarly. And we talk about collaborations, research collaborations, grant writing, et cetera, et cetera. We do the professional stuff. But I realize that in doing that work with them, I feel more like myself.
Like I have people who are so excellent that they push me towards greater excellence, right? One of my friends just won a national award. And she was on her way to give a keynote about her award. And she's not brag-adocious.
She would never open with that. But we all knew it. So that's what I mean by when I'm around them. I'm like, well, if they can do this because we're all the same kind of people, then I can do it too.
And then we push each other. Here's the thing about having a group. When you are developing these kind of collaborative partnerships, these kind of friendships, these kind of, and this is how I'll put together the groups, I'm not putting everybody in the same group. I gotta figure out the personalities to figure out who I wanna match you with because one of the things that is important is that support, group support is not always positive.
I don't know if I wanna use that word. It is always positive. It may not always feel positive. Let me say that.
There are going to be times, just like there sometimes when the crew and I that I'm talking about, we may be talking about a research project and all of a sudden everybody get real quiet. And we realize that that means the person who was just gonna talk and probably says, I'm really stupid. And we will attack you, but somebody will start asking you hard questions to push the thinking. And then after we all have come to an agreement, somebody will say, because you know you talk so crazy as shit just being right.
So you want people around you or not gonna be yes people. You want people around you. And they're not gonna jump on you when you're wrong, but they will push you in your thinking. They will challenge some ideas, not because they wanna seem smarter than you, but because we are pursuing a similar truth.
That's the other part about how groups get put together. It can't just be, it's the commitment that holds the people to the group. If you don't share a commitment, a single woman with no children who wants no children, I don't know that I would put them in a group with all mothers who are, where mothering is a priority in their life. Because I don't know if your commitment levels, the things you're committed to, your commitment levels may be the same, but the things you're committed to may be different.
And because of that, you may not share commitments to the group. So when I tell you I'm doing group coaching, I'm not doing the traditional just, whoever pays this round is in this group. No, it's, you might say you want the group coaching and I'm gonna hold your packet for a few days to see who else matches with you. I'm not just throwing you out to the rules.
I really want to be strategic about who I put together and why I put together because in my own, I see that happen in my scholarly circle. Like I see the fact that all of us are committed to providing quality education to black children, then when someone corrects me on something, I know you're not correcting me because you want to feel smarter than me. You're correcting me because ultimately, we need to think about what's best for these black children. That's what I mean about shared commitments.
If the commitment is shared, then some of this stuff, it becomes easier not to take it so personally. You know that someone is pushing you towards being better. And so that was a long-ass commercial, I didn't mean for it to be that, but I hope you were able to pull some things out of it, that you need to be surrounding yourself with people who are going to be honest with you about your foolishness. My partner said, sometimes if I ask him, do you love me?
He'll say, yeah, I love all three of y'all. Right? I can't get mad at that. I know that sometimes I'll be flipping in and out, but you know, I'm not mad at him because I know we have shared commitments.
He's not telling me that to try to hurt my feelings. He's telling me that because he knows I have said to him, I'm working on my temper and being more consistent and XYZ. Right? So you want people in your corner who are going to tell you the ugliness about yourselves in love, that's what you want.
That's what pushes you towards greatness. So I think I have covered everything I wanted to cover today. I thank you for tuning in. I ask that you go out here and you fucks it up.
I think that's going to be my new tagline for this podcast. Just go out there and fucks it up. The boxes that people have for you, the boxes you created for yourself, unnatural, unhealthy environments. Fucks that shit up, create what you need.
All right? And if anybody asks you, tell them to tell you. Bye.