Podcast Episode 95: Oneika Mays

Alison: Hello.

Jean: Hi. It’s great to have you down in my office.

Alison: Yes. Not in your closet.

Jean: Exactly.

Alison: That’s right. Because it’s no air up there, right? No air conditioning.

Jean: And it is super hot out today.

Alison: That’s right, that’s right. But this is perfect. This is a new fresh space. Yeah. For us doing our intro. So it will be very exciting for today. Right.

Jean: It will be because we are interviewing “Sit With Me” by Oneika Mays. And her subtitle is a no BS Journey to Mindfulness and Meditation. I love her title. It’s so simple and, and so powerful.

Alison: And I like that. It’s just an invitation,

Jean: Right.

Alison: Read this book, sit with me, hang out for a bit. And what where she was working on Rikers Island in New York, which is, um.

Jean: Near LaGuardia airport.

Alison: Yeah. It’s like really, it’s just hard. Yeah. And so it was fascinating to see how meditation, mindfulness and meta was melded onto this landscape that really was so yeah, hard and treacherous and had so many emotions that you don’t equate with meditation.

Jean: Right? I mean, what a courageous soul to go in to say yes and to experience everything she does. And she writes it, writes about it so beautifully, her memoir, her experiences at Rikers Island. And, um, and as I shared with you before, Allison, I’m reading this book very slow. Like it’s, it, it really speaks to me at a deep level.

Alison: So I really, I enjoyed it and meta is a type of meditation and you’re more familiar with it than me. That is like you, you repeat a little mantra to yourself, May I be safe. May I be happy,

Jean: May I be at peace.

Alison: May I be healthy, and may I be of peace. And so it’s and then you can do it for yourself, for a loved one, for a familiar stranger, and then for a difficult person, right. And for the world. So it’s really just a, you know, with many steps. So I can’t wait to see.

Jean: I mean, and I have listened to, to some of her other interviews and she’s, they are just super joyful and full of life. And this will be great.

Alison: It’ll be great. I can’t wait. Well, here she is. Here is Onika.

Alison: Oh my goodness. Hi.

Oneika: Hi.

Alison: She popped up right there.

Oneika: Hi Jean, Hi Alison. How are you?

Alison: I’m so good.  We’re so happy to meet you.

Oneika: I’m so happy to meet you both, too. I’ve really been looking forward to this.

Jean: Thank you.

Alison: You are some sort of special human.

Oneika: What do you mean?

Alison: Come on. Come on. This book is so good. And what you did. And we just did the intro, and we’re. And she was like, what a courageous soul.

Oneika: Thanks.

Jean: You know, to say yes to that. But seeing you on our screen now, this is this is so great.

Oneika: And thanks so much. I really appreciate that.

Jean: Yes. And, and I, we know you’re a busy person and, and I, I do feel so full of joy that you’re with us.

Oneika: I can’t, I can’t wait, I really I’m really looking forward to this. I know this is going to be a lot of fun. I’m really. Yeah.

Alison: All right. So I’m just going to dig right in.

Oneika: Oh, let’s do it.

Alison: Okay. So for our listeners, you are, um, a meditation, uh, teacher, a yoga teacher, um, a calming presence in the world. Um, I also think oddly, you’re an activist.

Oneika: Yeah. Um, and I like to advocate advocate. Yeah,

Alison: Could you just describe a little bit for our listeners what Metta is and what that practice is for you?

Oneika: I would love to. So Metta is really, it’s a way to say love. And it’s a Buddhist principle. And it’s one of the four qualities of the heart. And the other qualities are compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. But metta or loving kindness is, is not just kind of like any kind of love. It’s an Unconditional love. It’s a love without any exception. And the thing about it is it like starts with us, but then it expands. So we start with ourselves, and then we include people that we love, and then we include people that we don’t know really well or we don’t think much about, right? Like neutral people. And then we include difficult people or what in Buddhism we call it the enemy. Then we include everybody. So like all sentient beings. And that’s so powerful, right? Because it includes and the more that we engage in this kind of love, the more that’s there. So it’s infinite and it never runs out. So it’s incredibly powerful. And you can also just think about it as connection, because if you say like love, sometimes that can turn people off or make people like really uncomfortable. So you can think of it as just being connected or tied to something.

Alison: Which is easy, much easier. Because sometimes when even if you say the word God.

Oneika: Right.

Alison: A lot of, uh, feelings about that, And and when , jean knows about Metta much more than I do, but I have to say that, um, the difficult person.

Alison: I the first three I can do, I can probably do the world, but that difficult person one is hard for me. It’s challenging.

Oneika: It is. And it’s hard for a lot of people because we think of, well, this person hurt me. Right. Or I hurt somebody. So then there’s shame, right? I hurt somebody, so there’s shame or someone hurt me. And it’s not about excusing people. When we think about offering unconditional love to somebody who’s difficult, it’s it’s not saying we’re okay with what they did. It’s allowing ourselves to disconnect from the pain of what happened. And that frees us. I think it’s really freeing, you know, and oddly enough, the difficult person wasn’t the hardest for me. Because when I think of the difficult when I’ve had difficult people in my life and still have difficult people, right? Like, you know, that that’s very real for me. Very real.

Jean: Yeah.

Oneika: I am a work in progress. I am a work in progress. I found this practice for a reason.

Oneika: Um, But it was really hard for me with the neutral person, or what I call the familiar stranger, because it was hard for me to, like, cultivate feelings of love for people I didn’t know. So that was actually the toughest one for me. Um, when I had difficult people, there was a feeling there so I could work with a feeling that I had and work, you know, work on transforming that just like I did. If I hate, like, if I had that feeling of hate for somebody that meant that I was invested so that that meant there was a feeling there that I could, you know, hold on to. But with somebody I didn’t know, it’s like, what am I holding on to there? So that was the challenging thing for me. But the great thing about that is once I realized I could work with people I didn’t know, that meant that the entire world became like my family.

Alison: That’s right. Right? That’s right, that’s great.

Jean: I think for me, though, the the self-love one is I glaze over that. And, and actually, I was thinking to myself, that’s so interesting that, you know, in reading your book and I have heard of the Metta Loving kindness meditation, it’s like when I’m doing it for myself, it’s like really quick.

Jean: Like, just get through it and, and, uh, you know,

Alison: but I Gotta do the laundry. So it’s kind a ..

Jean:  but when it was with, with a difficult person, I guess I was like, okay with that a little bit more the neutral person It was too abstract, so I couldn’t really, you know. I would have to like, uh. So I love that this practice reflects more of our internal beliefs.

Oneika: Yeah. It’s for. Yeah. It’s so it’s for us, right? We, we work with other people, but it is for us. And if we notice that we’re, it’s hard to, to think about loving kindness for ourselves. Sharon Salzberg, who, you know, is known for this practice. Um, she, she suggests that if it’s difficult to think about loving kindness for ourselves, we think about a loved one offering us loving kindness. And then that can be a way in for us to start loving ourselves more. Or if we notice that we’re glazing over, you know, the neutral person, we think of a phrase like just like me. And that’s, that’s the way in. And I love that. Like just like me there people are trying to do the best that they can. Or just like me. People screw up, you know, just like me. People celebrate things and then that’s. And that’s the way in. But we have parts of ourselves that we love. We have parts of ourselves that we’re neutral about. We have parts of ourselves that are difficult. So it is really about us. And then once we recognize that all of that exists inside us, we can start to recognize that in other people. So again, the more that we can love ourselves completely, um, we start to love the world around us. And it’s not about accepting. Right? It doesn’t mean that we can’t have boundaries. It doesn’t mean that we can say like, I can love you, but over there, right? Because you’re causing harm, right? It doesn’t mean that we don’t have strong firm boundaries, right? Sometimes I think we think that unconditional love means being a doormat or being okay with things. And it’s I want to make it really clear that that’s not what that’s about, but it’s a sense of connection and ease around things.

Jean: Yeah, I love that you pointed that out because one of my questions was about boundaries taken from the theme, the central theme in your book is loving everyone is essential, but liking everyone is not.

Alison: Yeah.

Jean: And, and so, you know, you tap on that all throughout your book. And I was thinking like, how do, how do boundaries come into play? But you know, you shared, you can love them over there,

Oneika: Over there.  I learned that teaching at Rikers Island. And for folks who may be unfamiliar, Rikers Island is a jail in New York City. A lot of people know it through watching “Law and order” that jail that they always show on the TV show , Law and Order. Um.  But I ended up, you know, sitting with people as the mindfulness coach with a lot of people who I loved and a lot of people that I didn’t like. I worked with a lot of people that I didn’t like, but, but by loving them allowed me to not have to like them. Loving myself allowed me not to like parts of myself. There’s a freedom there. If you go in loving people unconditionally, it doesn’t matter if you like them so much. And there’s a freedom in that. And you know, you think about social media, how we’re like always chasing this idea of, of being liked or being accepted or, or just being liked by everybody and being accepted. And that’s caught up in this idea of judgment. Like, if I like you, that means like, you’re okay if I don’t like you, there’s something about you that’s not okay. But if we, if we, we operate from this place of honoring your humanity right off the bat. If we disagree about certain things, that doesn’t really matter because I’m seeing your humanity just right away. And there’s power in that.

Jean: Yeah.

Oneika: You don’t have to like me because of it.

Alison: Right, right. Although we do like you. Um, so just I got to get that out. Um, um, uh, the Rikers Island. I just couldn’t believe some of that. Some of your writing just kind of, like, blew my mind because it seemed like you had. And maybe I, maybe I just read into it. Um, a challenge. Challenging moments where,  is supporting the people in the institution supporting the institution.

Oneika: Yeah.

Alison: And I, I thought that was so profound. Could you talk about that a little bit?

Oneika: No, you read that absolutely correctly. You know, working at Rikers was working inside, you know, the system of mass incarceration. And as a person who wants to do this all differently, I realized, you know, I worked there as a volunteer, so I should make that clear. I was a volunteer for about six years, and then I worked there full time as an employee for almost five. So that was a very different feeling going in there once or twice a week for a few hours versus being there eight hours a day, every day, five days a week. And so I felt like when I was there as an employee, collecting a check, having a pension, getting insurance, all of those things that I was a part of the system and I was. And so there was a part of me that wanted to resist that for a very long time and push back against that. But I was part of the system, and I felt like I was making the system more palatable because I was a part of this program that a lot of people were like, well, isn’t that so great that there’s this person who’s offering meditation and yoga to people who are incarcerated. So how bad could Rikers be? And I never wanted that to be part of the conversation. And that ultimately is what led me to leave. Um, and it doesn’t mean that other people shouldn’t be doing that work. Like there’s a person now who’s the mindfulness coach and she is unbelievable. We had worked together before, um, as volunteers teaching yoga. And so she does that work now. So other people need to do it. I just felt like I couldn’t be a part of that anymore.

Alison: I think that’s an interesting thing though, because the world we’re living in right now is a very different world, I think, than what I know I grew up with, and it just is very challenging. So did you ever feel that loving kindness was a drop in the bucket? Like trying? You know what I mean?  how do you how do we get how do we get out of that feeling to continue to do it in the world we’re living in?

Oneika: You just have to do it. And yes, I felt like especially working at Rikers. So there’s two parts. I think working at Rikers often felt like standing at a tidal wave and trying to hold back a tidal wave with my hand. Right, Like that. It did feel like that a lot of times. Um, it felt very solitary. I, I worked with two incredible women, a wellness coach and also an acupuncturist who are unbelievable. But it felt like we were just trying to hold back all of that pain by ourselves. So, you know, that felt like really Sisyphean often. Um, but, and I think in the world that we’re living in, it can feel really lonely. But, you know, in Buddhism, we talk about this idea of non-attachment. So you do the work, you know, you put the love out there and you have to know that it It’s got to be enough. And there’s a ripple effect. And maybe it doesn’t happen when I’m still here in my body, but it will ripple out. And I believe that when I’m not in my body anymore, I’m going to go back to this source of consciousness and it will make an impact. And, you know, for my niece and nephew, you know, it will be enough for them and for all of the, the little people that we’re doing this for and for the earth, that that’s a, that’s enough. And, and that’s kind of what we do it for.

Alison: I love that.

Jean: Yeah. It’s beautiful.

Alison: That’s encouraging to me. It is.

Oneika: That’s the hope, right? Like we have to have hope. And I think hope is really important. And, you know, things do feel dark and they feel scary. But I think on the other side of that, we can also think about, well, isn’t there some excitement there because there’s something coming and shouldn’t we be thinking about what the new world can look like on the other side of this? And I think that’s that’s what we also have to think about, that there’s going to be something on the other side. So shouldn’t we prepare for that?

Jean: Mhm.

Alison: Wow.

Jean: Right. Yeah.

Alison: Okay. Well that’s it. Thank you. No, that’s pretty great.

Jean: Love is the answer.

Alison: That’s right.

Oneika: No, but it is the answer – transcends space and time. Yeah. You know, and it’s so powerful. We know that it keeps us going. We  think about the people who aren’t here anymore and how much we still love them and how much they keep us going. And I think that’s the thing that we hold on to. We know that it’s stronger than hate.

Jean: Absolutely.

Alison: Yeah.

Jean: Yeah. You know, um, okay, so Onika  in your book, you write,  “the far enemy of love isn’t always swinging a sword. It’s adversion. It’s the thing that turns us away from our heart.” I thought that was so eloquently put. Because it doesn’t have to be this in-your-face thing. It’s it’s sort of like turning away from something and, and, and, and a lot of people, including myself, use that way to kind of not really look at things deeper things. You know, it’s like, what are you, what’s really going on in here? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Oneika: Yeah.

Jean: And when you wrote that and…

Oneika: There’s, you know, we think about hate and anger and all of us, you know, I, I think we can safely say like we know about like the big expressions of hate and anger. And that makes sense. And we we don’t want to engage in that. But it’s the little things that we skip over where we turn away from, you know, someone who’s homeless or someone who’s, who’s bought what we find distasteful. Right. And we have nice ways of saying that someone who’s distasteful or someone we find maybe repulsive or, you know, we don’t want to deal with somebody. And so we turn our head away metaphorically or, or even physically, we turn our eyes away. And, and that can be angry or we become passive aggressive or sarcasm, those kinds of things. Um, they are quiet, but they can be even more harmful than big explosions of rage or hate because they’re acceptable, societally. They’re acceptable socially, you know, um, among our partners, among our friends. And then they become really insidious because they happen over and over and over again. And they, they, they deepen this groove and, and then before we know it, we are completely separated from segments of society and we have become completely separated from people.

Oneika: And, and that’s how we end up in situations that we’re in now where there’s groups of people who are deeply suffering and we are completely ignoring it because we have just gently turned away. And that’s where love and compassion become really important. And where we, we recognize when we turn away from ourselves gently, you know, that the moments that we want to turn away from ourselves when we, we say like, oh, I don’t like that about myself. So I’m just going to turn away. So we need to start here first. When we notice that we’re doing that with ourselves, we turn away from ourselves and say, oh, I don’t like this about myself. So I’m going to I’m going to turn away. It’s not even so much even with other people, but we, it starts here. Um, and then we, we start to recognize that in other people. So we turn away from other people because we, we’ve started it with ourselves.

Alison: You talk about that incident on a subway.

Oneika: Yeah.

Alison: And I found that I found that, um, upsetting because I could relate to what you said, but then you said, what, what if I had recognized that person? Or what if I knew that person and that, like, took my breath away because I know it would be a totally different experience. And then why would it be a totally different experience and why? That, that, that makes me very uncomfortable to say that it would be a totally different experience. And that brought up so much for me. Can you talk a little bit about how you got How you gave yourself self love for… You know, like that whole thing was just kind of upsetting.

Oneika: Yeah. So I was on the subway going to work, and it was early in the morning and there was a man who was experiencing homelessness on the subway, and there is an awful smell, and there was vomit on the subway, and the subway car full of commuters was clearly disgusted. And I was disgusted. And I, I thought that I was doing a good job containing myself. And when I looked up, I made eye contact with the woman and she looked at me and she looked like she was confirming like, yeah, isn’t this really, you know, really awful. And then I felt so shameful. Yeah. I was full of shame because I was disgusted and I felt so ashamed of myself because here I am, this person who teaches about compassion and loving kindness. And I didn’t have any compassion for this man who was clearly suffering. And this woman thought that we were, you know, allies in in feeling disgusted about this guy. And I really had to sit with myself because what what if he was somebody who I knew I would have acted very differently. And in that moment, I had to check myself and remember that people are suffering.

Oneika: And I needed to remember that everybody is suffering. And while there isn’t anything that I could do in that moment, I needed to acknowledge his humanity. And the problem is the system that we don’t have resources to take care of people. And that’s what I should have really been raging about. If I was going to be raging and disgusted with anything, it should have been with that. But I needed to offer myself some compassion for at least recognizing the shame in the moment, because at least I recognized it in that moment. And it didn’t take me a week, a month, a year to get to that place that it happened in that moment, which is a lot sooner than it would have happened a long time, you know, before. So but that’s what being a human is about. We make mistakes, things happen. And because I had a loving kindness practice, I could offer myself some some gentleness in that moment and say, hey, you know what, Oneika? You screwed up. You caught it. You acknowledged it and you move forward.

Jean: Mhm.

Alison: So does that mean, um, do you live in New York still?

Oneika: I’m in Jersey city

Alison:  so does that mean then what does that mean moving forward for you if a similar thing happened on the subway again. How what would be different for you?

Oneika: That it’s I acknowledge that people are struggling and people are suffering. Um, and if somebody needs something, I can offer it. If nobody. And sometimes you just have to just offer loving kindness. And that’s what I do now too. I just offer like, may you be safe, you know, May. May you find some comfort. May you find a home. May you get something to eat. May you find somebody to take care of you. Um. Yeah.

Alison: You do that. I’ve seen you in cars do that. Like. Yeah, I’ve seen that. Like, I’ll be driving and Jean will just, you’ll just say, bless you.

Oneika: Yeah.

Alison: Bless you. Do you know.

Jean: Because I think that our thoughts.. Well I know our thoughts are so powerful.

Oneika: Powerful.

Jean: Right. Or if I see a person on the that lives on the streets, I go, wow, what a strong man. May you be blessed. But honestly, Onika, after reading your book, I do a little bit of that metta,  if I’m aware of someone and, um also, what also came to me in your book was like a, a quote from Jesus, or I’m not a huge Bible person, but to pray for your neighbor, to pray for your enemies. Yeah. Your neighbors, you pray for yourself. You pray for your enemies. It’s so powerful because that energy of separation, that’s where the hurt resides.

Oneika: Yeah.

Jean: You know, um, and I like you, I’ll notice, oh, Jean, you are really judgmental on that one.

Oneika: Yeah.

Jean: And I, I can feel it. My whole system goes just goes…ewwwwww…. It just goes yuck!!~

Oneika: Yeah. I’m I’m like an Olympic level judger, like it was really like, very good at it. Like, really I have medals, you know?

Jean: haha…you are i are in the same competition.

Oneika: I’m So good. And and I recognize it. And, and the wonderful thing about having a practice is that I recognize that, you know, this is a, it’s a practice and, and it arises, you know, shame. I still get a lot of shame and guilt and judgment, but I recognize it. And I can be tender with myself, like, especially on my yoga mat, like my yoga mat is a microcosm of my life. So I can notice all kinds of things that come up when I’m doing a yoga practice. Like if I fall out of a pose and, you know, I start judging myself or falling out of a pose, or if I’m in a studio and I talk about that in the book, and I notice if I start judging other people, like, what are you doing? Onika. That hurt your her practice is none of your business.

Oneika: Yeah, like her tree pose is none of your business. Like  why? What? What are you doing?  and I, like, have to check myself, like. Or, you know, the teacher calls a pose and I start getting mad at her like, I don’t want to do chair. Like, why are you having an argument in your head with the teacher about chair pose? She is not attacking you like this is all you. And you know, I can laugh at it because I know I’m having a conversation with myself. But all of this becomes, you know, an internal conversation. So you can start saying, like, this is happening because that happened earlier and you’re mad at this and that’s why you’re having this conversation.

Alison: Right. Exactly. That’s exactly it. Um, uh, when you talk about compassion or loving kindness, is, is there a line between that and enabling?

Oneika: Yeah. I think, you know, compassion is a wish for the ending of suffering for people. Like in Buddhism, it’s, it’s and loving kindness is a wish for happiness and joy and health for people. That’s how we define it in Buddhism. So, um, yeah, so, so that so that helps, right? Like.

Alison: Right. Very much. because then I see that I think, uh, a lot of people talk this like metta stuff ,but like, like they mix up compassion and love and forgiveness, like in this big ball that sometimes feels unmanageable.

Oneika: So and yes, and Buddhism, we have something that’s called the far enemy, which is the opposite of, you know, the thing that we’re talking about. So with loving kindness, the opposite is hate or ill will or fear, right? But then there’s something that’s called the near enemy. So that’s like the shadow side of the thing that you’re trying to, you know, Embody. So the shadow side or the near enemy of loving kindness is conditional love. So when you were talking about things get balled up. Conditional love is like that thing. If you do this, I’ll love you. And then if you stop doing this, I don’t love you anymore. Right. And so the shadow side of compassion, for example, is pity.  so if we start pitying people, that’s the shadow side. Um. Bless her heart. Um.

Alison: Right.

Oneika: Right. That that’s the shadow side. So when you start thinking about like enabling, that starts to be the shadow side of what we’re trying to embody. So that can also be another way to check in with yourself. If you’re, if you’re really embodying that, that quality that you’re trying to, you know, to live.

Jean: Mhm.

Alison: I love that, I love that the, that the shadow side is pity. Yeah.

Jean: Mhm.

Alison: And that and the loving kindness was what?

Oneika: Conditional love.

Alison: Conditional love.   My  eldest child, um, is non-binary and, um, a lot of people have now a conditional acceptance of my child.

Oneika: Yeah.

Alison: And so  it’s quite a lesson, uh, that it’s been a big, big,….. I’ve learned so much about myself and my kid and what really love is.

Oneika: Yeah.

Alison: You know, it’s not this sort of outside story that has meaning.

Oneika: Yeah.

Alison:  And, and it’s interesting that that some of the people that I know that I never realized they don’t like it.

Oneika: Mhm.

Alison: And who the hell are you?

Oneika: Yeah.

Alison: Yeah. Like, don’t like it? I mean, you know, like, you know, it’s it’s interesting. It’s been a very…. So that’s interesting conditional love, but I don’t even know that love. That’s kind of like, um, a transaction.

Oneika: Absolutely. No, absolutely. And that’s how I write about it. It is a transaction. If you do this, I love you. Or if you stop doing this, I won’t love you. That’s exactly what conditional love is. And that’s why it’s so problematic. And, and the problem isn’t in our society, conditional love is just it’s everywhere. And we talk about it so much that it’s, it’s actually just accepted as a regular form of love. I mean, transactions are all over the place.

Alison: Yeah. Well, look, you know, I mean, just look, look at, look at, look at I don’t want to go there. But there are lots of people that are sort of our leadership that that’s, that’s their whole thing is based on that.

Oneika: So oh, the wellness world does a lot of transactional stuff. Like it happens all of the time, which is why it’s so important to have definitions for what love is. You know, um, somebody who really influenced me, Bell Hooks, um, talks about about love and her book was really influential and she, she says it’s so critical she wrote that it was so critical to have a definition for love, a universal definition, because if we did, you know, it, it would be important that we could all have this working definition and it needed to have components of recognition, respect, accountability, open and honest communication. Um, so we were, we’re all operating from the same place.

Alison: That’s great. Yeah.

Jean: I think the Greek language has, you know, different definitions of love like Agape…

Oneika: Agape.

Jean: And eros or what, you know. Yes, it kind of, but I, I, I do love, you know, sort of what you said throughout your book about- sometimes I like you, but I always love you.

Oneika: Yes.

Jean: You know.

Oneika: It’s it’s so important I, you know, I gave a talk in, in D.C. a few weeks ago, and I was talking about this and a woman just couldn’t believe it. She like, she was like, like, there’s really –  I mean, there’s no one that you don’t love. Like she could…

Alison:  what about Bob?

Oneika: What about?? She was like, but there’s some people who just aren’t worthy. I said, no, no. And I said, I can see from your face you don’t believe me. She’s like, I, I don’t I don’t believe you.

Jean: Mhm.

Oneika: And I said, there’s people who we need to hold accountable because they’ve caused harm in the world. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t love them.

Jean: Mhm.  it’s a more far way reaching.

Oneika: Like I could I could see that she just wasn’t buying it.

Alison: That’s right. She wants her money back, you know. Um, well, you also talk about being comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Oneika: Mhm.

Alison: And I want to talk about that because I don’t like being uncomfortable. And, um, and if I sometimes feel if I’m comfortable with being uncomfortable, in an uncomfortable situation, my way is to immediately speak up, say, because I’m not comfortable with being uncomfortable. Can you help me?

Oneika: Yes. And the, and the chapter that I talked about that in, that was such a difficult chapter to write because there were so many things going on. Because when I was talking about that chapter, right, i was talking about the women who were incarcerated at Rikers and this idea of discomfort, who gets to be comfortable and who gets to be uncomfortable. Because if you’re in jail, you’re already uncomfortable. So should you be comfortable being uncomfortable if you’re always uncomfortable? So it’s it’s recognizing what level of discomfort should you, you know, should you tolerate and what are your circumstances and, and what’s your location in the world and what’s your identity? So I think that’s, that’s the conversation I wanted people to think about like, are you a woman who’s tolerating something all of the time and, you know, you’re engaged in something. And so you’re, you’re suffering all of the time. So we’re already engaged in a level of discomfort because of who we are and what we’re tolerating with sexism. So we already have some discomfort. So maybe we need to be more comfortable and we need to relax a little bit. But if you’re somebody else who’s not used to being uncomfortable because of who you are, you might have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. So it’s this understanding of both who you are and where you are when it comes to discomfort. Does that make sense?

Alison: Yes. So then, so then yes, that really does make sense. So, um, does that mean that, if you’re uncomfortable that, is it true then that uncomfortability is a part of the human experience?

Oneika: Mhm.  Absolutely.

Alison: There’s levels of uncomfortability that we that, that we face because of our society. And then when I’m feeling that I have to be comfortable with that. Why do I have to be comfortable with it? Like, why can’t I be angry about it? Why can’t I rage? Do you know what I mean?

Oneika: Yes. And so in Buddhism, we talk about suffering and then the suffering of suffering, right? The mental anguish we cause ourselves because of the suffering, right. So you can choose to suffer. It’s called the second arrow, right? So something happens to us and we suffer. And then the suffering we cause ourselves because of, of what’s happened to us. So it’s the way that we choose to deal with the suffering that we, that we that happens. And, and there’s nothing wrong with anger. Anger is a natural part of the human experience. And it’s something that can catalyze us to, to do lots of things. But I think when the suffering takes over, right, and the suffering starts to cause us harm, we start to ruminate. You know, we start to hurt ourselves because of because of the anger, then that that’s something to look at. But when the anger, you know, helps us build a community to stop harm that’s happening to us, then that’s a great thing, right? So it’s really looking what we do with that, that second arrow, that that mental suffering that happens.

Alison: Well, that’s interesting because the second one feels like you’re taking your anger and being positively putting it outside of yourself and the first one sounds like you’re taking that anger and beating yourself up internally.

Oneika: Right. The first arrow is what happens to us. The second arrow is the mental anguish that happens because of that and what we do with it.

Alison: Wow. That’s really interesting to me.

Jean: It reminds me of. So when you have a judgment and then just to be aware of that, rather than judge the judge, then, oh, I feel so bad. I did that. And then it’s like, you’re.

Oneika: Those are all, those are all of the things that we end up doing-  right –  to cause ourselves more suffering. And there’s all of these things that we can do to ease that, whether it’s mindfulness, whether it’s loving kindness, whether it’s, you know, meditation, all kinds of things that we can do to ease that suffering. Um, so, so we aren’t suffering so much from whatever is happening externally.

Alison: And that’s so great because right now, uh, so many people are, are really suffering.

Oneika: Mhm.

Oneika: They are, there is so much suffering that’s happening in the world. And there’s so much that we can’t do anything about. Right. Um, but there are things that we can do for ourselves and that in turn can change the world. And I, I say that all the time. And I always sound like I feel like I sound so corny when I say that, but it is truly powerful because when we do something about who we are and how we act and how we can respond to the world, rather than reacting to the world, that creates great change.

Alison: Mhm. You’re so right. We have we have friends ourselves that are so invested in being miserable that, um, that you go, wow. Like if you took a little bit of that energy and channeled it in a different way, you’d really be making a difference. But they’re, they’re, they’re really in their head about really in being a victim.

Oneika: And you can be in it. Like you can be even an example for somebody just by living your life, right? You become a teacher for someone just by being self-aware, by practicing whatever your practice is, whether it’s, you know, a walk, whether it’s just listening to a song that gives you joy, whether it’s just by being a good neighbor like other people see that and they see that example, like our teachers are, are everywhere, you know, being kind to, you know, your pet or you know your family, like you are being witnessed by other people. And I, and I think that can really have an impact.

Jean: I think that’s, that’s beautiful.

Jean: So, Oneika, when you were writing this book, so so you wrote this book and you have left Rikers, right?

Oneika: Mhm. Yep.

Jean: So did you see how you changed from when you first showed up on Rikers Island to when you said goodbye? And can you talk about the change you noticed in yourself?

Oneika: Yeah. And I, yeah, there were so many changes when I started on the island, i think I was, um, I think it was a little Pollyanna thinking about what I was going to do, which is funny because I volunteered for six years. So it’s not like I was a it’s not like I didn’t know what I was walking into, but I think I thought I was going to do a lot more than I did. And I quickly adjusted and, and then I, and then I got a lot of vicarious trauma working there. Yeah. And, um, I still think, you know, I made some wonderful connections and I’m, I’m proud of the program that, you know, I helped to spearhead and I’m glad that I did it, but it took a real toll on me, not just emotionally, but physically. Um, it, it really made an impact on me. And so then when I left, um, I was really exhausted and even my family could see physically the difference that it, that it had on me. And I left in 2023. And when I left, I said I was going to try to get a book deal to write about it. And, and then I did.

Alison: That’s cool. Yeah.

Oneika: A year it was a year later I got a book deal. I was very determined. Yeah.

Alison: And exciting.

Oneika: Yeah. And in that year after I left, I, um, I got healthier. I, I really like, I, I got healthier, um, and I was always, I was already practicing yoga and I had a peloton and I was very physical, but I, it’s like energetically so much fell away and I was so much of the island I think was in me that I was able to shed not just the vicarious trauma, but that island has a, a life of its own that that left me. Um, and so I felt like I got myself back after about a year. Um, but I still, I still sometimes like feel it, um, in me, like sometimes even what I talk about it and I feel it on like the left side of my body, actually. Um, it’s like a a a a twinge in my left shoulder. Um, I feel it. And when I was writing the book, I would feel things leave as I was writing certain chapters, especially the chapter about working  in solitary was, was really challenging and pouring stuff out, like pouring it out. Um, and I feel now, um, I’m more like myself, like before I started working there. Um, but I will always, I think, be tethered to the island in a way. I don’t think it will ever, ever leave me.

Alison: But you just said you just started off by saying, I thought I would do more than I did or something like that, but how do you even know the impact you truly had? Because it sounds like you had a big impact.

Oneika: I yeah, I think so, and I don’t yeah. And I probably shouldn’t even get caught up in measurement, but I think, I don’t know what I was thinking that I would do. I think maybe I hadn’t, I, I thought, I don’t know what I thought, I thought maybe it would be bigger than it was, or I had some dream of what I thought would happen. And because it didn’t come to fruition, maybe I think maybe it failed a little bit. Mhm. And just because it felt so grim at the end and and even the book wasn’t what I thought it was going to be, I thought my book was going to feel a lot more upbeat and hopeful than what I ended up writing. And I think there is hope, more hope in it than…. But there is a lot more sadness that that came out, and I didn’t resist it. Once it started to happen, there were things that, um, I think just came out and started to channel itself, and I didn’t resist a lot of it. And I allowed it just to sort of happen because I was like, this is what needs to come out. And I need to say this, and I don’t want to sort of censor it. Um, I don’t want to make it like lighter and I don’t want to make it heavier because there were a lot more heavier things I probably could have written, but I didn’t want to make it like trauma porn.

Alison: Right. Exactly. Sure.

Oneika: Right. Um, but I didn’t want to make it light either.

Alison: But your book is is just for me… You describe small moments. Mhm. Like not being able to open a window. Mhm. For someone that just wants to… I’m like, I think I’m going to cry. Someone wants to be outdoors and, um, that small moment I thought was so powerful.  You know…

Oneika: You’re going to make me cry.

Alison:  just that that chapter with that, I forget the woman’s name and she just wanted to go outside. That was in the in the window.

Jean: In the beginning.

Alison: Yeah, i just felt so-  I could feel your frustration. And you. Yeah. And the lavender cotton balls and…. Yeah, it became such a thing.

Oneika: Yeah. Yeah.  I loved those women. I mean, yeah, I did, and it was, there were so much that I think I did do, but there were so much that you couldn’t do.

Alison: Right.

Oneika: And that was always the push pull.  and that level of frustration to live with was, was maddening. Like, and to take that home every single day and then to feel guilt about feeling that kind of frustration because you got to go home and then to feel frustrated and then feel guilty about feeling frustrated like it was, that it was a lot to hold to, to that push pull was just yeah, it was so much. And then it’s like, well, I’m starting to drive myself mad about all of this. And at what point am I, am I sacrificing myself? Jean, going back to your point about loving kindness, when do am I putting myself below the women that I’m serving? And then I realized that I was and I couldn’t do that. And that loving kindness means that I matter just as much as the women that I’m serving, and that if I’m sinking because I was, I was really sinking. And that’s when I had to leave.

Alison: And you speak about that. Did you call it compassion fatigue?

Oneika: Compassion fatigue?

Alison: Yeah, that was very intense too, because I could see that.

Oneika: Yeah.

Oneika: Caregivers. It happens to caregivers as well. Um, it happens to healthcare workers, doctors, nurses. It happens. It’s, it’s a real thing and it’s deeper than burnout. And it can really, it can really affect you and it can really impact your life because, um, you, it can bring on depression. I started to feel myself, you know, um, getting depression, which scared me as somebody, you know, who struggled with mental illness. I was like, I can’t make myself sick. And when I started to even feel that, I was like, this is getting way too scary. I don’t want to sacrifice my mental health, which is, you know what? The system thrives on people who care so much that they will do anything to, to keep showing up.

Alison: Right, right. You know, I think about my father. My father was a newspaper reporter for the Daily News for many, many years. And I think he suffered from it when he retired. Compassion fatigue.

Oneika: Yeah.

Alison: That was the first time I ever when you when I read the book, that was the first time I ever connected that because you write these stories about the downtrodden and people that needed help, and it was just a constant thing in our house. And there was always people around in our house that like these people just there was a lot of people in our house. And I thought to myself, I wonder if he went through that, because I think it I think it’s such a subtle thing because you think I should be getting energized from the thing I’m doing?

Oneika: Yes.

Alison: Do you know?

Oneika: And you are for a while. Yeah. Until you aren’t. Right. Because you like. I had practices too, right? Like I had all of these practices. You know, I had people that I could talk to. I went back into therapy. Like I was doing all of the things I should have been doing to take care of myself. And yet that still wasn’t enough to sustain myself, which should tell you everything that you need to know about the system of mass incarceration. If I couldn’t, if I couldn’t keep it together with a therapist, with people who were doing this work, with a meditation practice with yoga, practice with a serious workout. Like it’s just not sustainable. Yeah. Um, yeah.

Jean: Well, I know for sure that whoever came into your beautiful presence.

Alison: I agree

Jean: Was blessed. And the rippling effect you have there is eternal.

Alison: And your book is not sad.

Jean: No, your book is not.

Oneika: Really. You don’t think so?

Alison: No.

Jean: It had some very strong experiences. And vulnerability is is stunning. Um, but you and you had some very relatable things that I could relate to. Yeah. Um, and I do think there was a lot of hope in your book.

Alison: I do too.

Oneika: Oh.  wow. That’s interesting to hear.

Alison: I felt like…

Jean: But It wasn’t like, go Rikers. Yeah.

Alison: Like we’re not printing up t shirts and say that.

Jean: No, we don’t mean that.

Alison: I agree. I agree with you. I felt very much like, oh, oh, we’re all in this, are all in this. And we, I, I’m responsible for myself and the people there and the people I love and the people I don’t know and the people that I don’t love yet I’m responsible. And I have.

Oneika: oh  People you don’t love yet. That’s cool.

Alison: Do you know, and like, I like I, that’s really what it made me feel. I really liked this book. I really, really liked it. And just those little moments. Look at all my look at I don’t know if you can see them, but all the pages are dog eared and this pencil, like everything is everywhere. So it really I thought there was hope. I agree with you, Jean. I thought there was hope.

Oneika: That’s really cool.

Jean: In in such a place where, where you would think no hope is going on in there.

Oneika: And there was a lot. There was laughter too, though, like, you know, there, there was darkness, but there was plenty. I mean,

Jean: There was cucumber salad.

Oneika: There was cucumber salad, I made cucumber salad yesterday as a matter of fact.

Alison: I love that.

Oneika: That cucumber salad was so good. I loved that cucumber salad. Oh my gosh, that is the lentil soup too. There was lentil soup there. That was pretty good as well. Um you know it’s it you know it’s so funny because you wouldn’t expect it. Yeah. That it was so fresh, um, that it was so tasty and people cracked up the way that I danced and tap my feet when I hit that cucumber salad. But,  It’s so good because there was so little to like, hold on to. So when you found it, I was just like celebrating it. Oh my gosh, if people would just run into my office and say, hey girl, there’s cucumber salad today. It was just and I was like, I would like high tail it down to the cafeteria to go get it. It was just the best. Oh my gosh.

Alison: And that totally came across. You’re you’re a very talented writer. Will you write more things, do you think?

Oneika: I you know what I will I have an idea for for my next book where I think I want to write about trying and how I think that we just need to try. There’s a concept in Buddhism called Right Effort. Um, so yeah, I think I want to write a book maybe called, um, try with me.

Alison: Oh, great. Okay. Yeah. Let’s get that on the calendar. Let’s do that so we can talk to you again. I love that.

Jean: That’s great.

Alison: I love that. Great. Oh my God, this one’s so fast.

Jean: Yes. Our time, it really flew by.

Alison: And oh my gosh.

Jean: We’re going to have to wrap up Oneika. But we have two wrap up questions for you.

Oneika: Okay.

Jean: Okay.

Alison: What do you think. Insidewink means that’s the name of our podcast. What do you think it means?

Oneika: I think it means listening to your intuition. I think it’s a flicker. Like when you get like a a tickle and you listen to that little tickle inside yourself.

Alison: We have not. I love that we’ve never heard that. So that’s beautiful. And it’s perfect. Thank you. That’s perfect.

Jean: Very nice. Okay. In our last question is – do you prefer cake pie or ice cream?

Oneika: Ice cream. Hands down.

Jean: Okay, great.

Alison: cucumber ice cream. What are you going to say That?

Oneika: And my favorite ice cream is coffee ice cream, which I hated as a kid. Right. Like coffee ice cream is not. But as an adult, it is just my favorite with a little whipped cream. Mhm.

Alison: Yeah. We have a friend who’s addicted to Haagen-Dazs coffee ice cream.

Oneika: Oh, it’s the it’s the best.

Alison:  yeah. You are a spark of joy and light and your smile. We’re so grateful to you. Thank you.

Oneika: Thank you. This was real. I knew this was going to be fun, I knew it.

Jean: Oh, well, you’re you’re just wonderful. And we will share this podcast and let you know. And thank you so much for being a huge, powerful love vibe in this world.

Oneika: Thank you, thank you.

Alison: And I can’t wait till you write your next book so we can talk to you again.

Jean: Yeah.

Oneika: Okay.

Alison: All right. That sounds good.

Jean: Okay.

Alison: Have a great day.

Oneika: Mwah. Sending you lots of love.

Alison: Thank you. Bye.

Oneika: Bye.

Alison: She was just. Oh, gosh, her energy. And what what what she had been through, and it just was. It was a great talk. Yeah. Right.

Jean: She, you know, you, she has, um, just so much effervescence.

Alison: Yes.

Jean: And wisdom.

Alison: And the best smile,

Jean: a Gorgeous smile.

Alison: Yeah. Just. And you told me she has a podcast.

Jean: She does. It’s called – you good?

Alison: I love that.

Jean: Uh, and then she sits on the board of One Love Prison meditation project, which is… I wanted to ask her about that, but I, I was thinking, okay, we gotta close, close, wrap up. But it sounds wonderful. What I read about it is that, you know, it’s it’s keeping meditation practices alive in prisons.

Alison: Wow.

Jean: Yeah.

Alison: That’s an amazing, an amazing, wonderful idea. And her book, Sit With Me is just a really great read. Yes. Because it reads almost like sometimes like a novel,

Jean: A memoir. Yeah.

Alison: You know, it’s like, it’s like, really? And I just, you get you get so much from her and her experiences and it just, it has made me feel more connected. Yeah. You know? Which is so great.

Jean: And that whole, um, the whole practice of metta.  If you’ve, if you’ve never tried it, um, it’s really beautiful.

Alison: Right. May I be safe? May I be happy? May I be healthy. May I be at peace.

Jean: Exactly.

Alison: Yes. Wonderful. Are you okay? You’re coughing.

Jean: Yeah. I got a little cough, but I’m good.

Alison: May you be healthy. Thank you. Well, have a great day and thank you for sharing this interview with us. And yeah, I think that’s it.

Jean: This was wonderful.

Alison: It was wonderful.

Jean: It’s great to see you, Allison.

Oneika: Great to see you, Jeanie. Bye, everybody.

Jean: Bye.