Transcribing interviews for my new doc ‘The Injured Body’
Tonya Noel Stevens, co-founder of Flower City Noire Collective and Director of Cause and Effect Greenspace, talks about processing racist micro-aggressions:
That’s really something I’ve been working on, like not harboring those feelings or the negative things people give me, and it’s not even just microaggressions, it’s any negative energies fed my way. If it’s not something that I can process and turn into light, and that I could share back with that person… then you can keep it, it’s all yours, and I try not to take it in.
Because then I end up with it… And I’m really about taking ownership – ownership of one’s body, and what’s mine and what’s not mine. When you hit me with that negative energy and add those negative vibes, and then that negative talk, that’s not mine, none of that is my language, none of that is how I’m moving in the world. So you just have to keep that. And I’m good for saying I don’t accept that. You keep it, I’m just not even gonna take that in, because when I do, then I have to find space for it.
So gardening is a big thing for me. And that’s really what I try to harness and tell people like, we’re in a garden, this is your place to bury all that, put it into an affirmation and put it into a seed, put it into the ground and like let it grow into something else because if not, it’s still growing inside of you.
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