Podcast: Life, I Swear
Uncovering the nuances of the Black experience with guests like Deun Ivory and Elaine Welteroth, this podcast urges us to let our guards down — in the comfort of true sisterhood.
Written by: Chloe Louvouezo
How’s your heart, sis? Nowadays we can’t rush through the question. The convergence of self-isolating with the hurt and frustration in response to racism in our country threatens our individual mental health in unique ways. In the confines of our homes we’re forced to get still, and for many of us that means we’re now in company with waves of self-reflection that can either serve or master our isolation. Check-ins are essential.
We are all processing something that is distinct to our personal experiences. Whatever we’re grappling with internally, whether related to today’s or yesterday’s trauma, it’s important for us to lean into unpacking it. That can be harder to do when the world has never offered us a space for acceptance and validation. Black women are told to not be too much, need too much or overindulge in our feelings. The expectation of strength and grace being antonymous to ongoing processing forces us to bottle in, self-doubt in silos, and makes deep fellowship nearly impossible.
This Spring I launched a new podcast titled Life, I Swear to create such a space. In one-on-one conversations with Black female creatives, we unpack under-discussed topics around mental health and identity. The show is a stop on listeners’ personal journeys toward healing and meant to catalyze our collective heart work.
Art by Deun Ivory
The first episode featured creative director and photographer Deun Ivory, who is also the founder of the body: a home for love. Her work with the organization is shifting culture around how Black women heal through sexual trauma. In our conversation, we talk about our experiences of sexual assault within our own families. It is explicit and takes the listener to places often stigmatized in open conversation. But it is real. Sharing our stories of sexual trauma is an authentic offering of who we are and how we came to be. We talk about shame, healing and resilience, unpacking lingering insecurities and celebrating the processing of it all.
I chose to launch with this episode because it exemplifies everything the show stands for. I wanted to be very clear that the conversations I planned to share on the show, and that I hope we all have more of, go places where we often don’t. When I released the episode, a flood of calls, texts and emails from friends — some who I’ve known for a decade — echoed similar stories of trauma. I had had sleepovers with these women, laying in bed for hours talking about life; the joys and the growing pains. Never did we bring it up. I had shared tears with them over heartbreaks and heartaches — the kinds about men and broken dreams. Never did we bring it up. What this tells me is that too few of us are having conversations with our sisters that really open us up; that really reveal the things that plague us and the things that drive us. We keep our secrets in dusty corners and it keeps our souls in hiding. If we cannot fully share ourselves, we cannot fully be ourselves.
Since that first episode, the show has featured HANNAH Magazine founder Qimmah Saafir, New York Times bestseller Elaine Welteroth, authors Alex Elle, Wayetu Moore, and Yrsa Daley-Ward and storyteller Nneka Julia. We’ve covered topics around losing and discovering ourselves through the fourth trimester of motherhood, the nuances of the global Black diasporic experience, the feeling of otherness within biraciality and multiculturalism and the importance of naming our needs and taking control of our own narratives. I look forward to the continued conversations ahead. We’ll talk about being intentional to overcome worry with Julee Wilson, Beauty Director of Cosmopolitan Magazine. We’ll talk about pregnancy loss with poet Josefina Sanders. Balancing OCD and entrepreneurship with mompreneur Shay Jiles. And much, much more.
The topics cast a wide net on the human experience within the Black female experience. We end each episode with one question: How do you give yourself grace? The transparency of the guests invites us all to be good to ourselves. While the nuances of our stories of pain and uncertainty are as diverse as the curls of our hair, the faith we have, the resilience we foster and the ways in which we continue to believe in our manifestation of inside-out beauty is reassurance that we’ll continue to rise. That’s the power of storytelling. It’s a vessel to the vulnerability we are fully entitled to have. It’s a pathway to deeper connection through deeper understanding. Unearthing personal stories that require authenticity to both share and receive is how I hope more of us forge intimacy with ourselves and those we love, and find affinity with kindred strangers.
Learn more about the Life, I Swear podcast and see the full lineup of guests and topics at www.lifeiswear.com and on Instagram.
Life, I Swear is sponsored by Black female-owned wellness brands Canviiy and Hanahana Beauty. Receive 10% with code LIFEISWEAR.
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