THE POWER OF PUSHING THROUGH W/ TAMIKA
Note: This story was originally published on February 22, 2022 for The Roots & The Vines and has been republished with the original content with the permission of the interviewee.
Where do we find our power, our strength and resilience when we need it? What is the source that we pull from to get us through the hardest time, and on the other side of difficult situations, experiences and outcomes? How do we access the courage to push through? I spoke with Tamika Hall recently about the source of her power.
When Tamika and I first crossed paths it was circa 2015 and she was overseeing the blog for Rocawear, one of the brands I’d been managing e-commerce operations for at the time and until meeting her I’d never met anyone who’d made a living as a writer, especially one creating content in a lane that was authentic to her. Then, surrounded by more black female creatives than ever before in my career, I found myself within a group rooted in a love for our culture, and we established a bond that grew over numerous conversations about current events, our children (we both have daughter’s named Kennedy 😌), work life, home life and life in general. Whenever she stopped by the office, we had a kee-kee so in 2017, when my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer it was nothing for me to open up to her. Then less than six months after my mother’s passing, Tamika called me.
Mother. Author. Marketer. Photographer. Dope Daughter.
Since meeting her, I’ve had the honor of experiencing the quiet storm that is Tamika Hall. She’s a talented and genuine fellow Cancerian with a love for hip-hop culture, music and street wear that has allowed her the honor of creating a career that fully embraces it. A mother of six, Tamika is a marketer, freelance writer, educator, native New Yorker (repping the LES!), a lover and a fighter and the author of “Black Mixcellence: A Comprehensive Guide To Black Mixology” Dropping this summer (6/7), it’s currently available for pre-order on all platforms and is a drink guide with recipes from Black and Brown mixologists along with the contributions, impact and history of Mixology within the culture. Tamika is the definition of down-to-earth and a go-getter, and if you’re lucky to get her in deep conversation, you’ll know her opinions, sense of humor and fiery clap-backs don’t hide far behind her poise.
Tamika Hall, Instagram/@LadyBlogga
“Black Mixcellence: A Comprehensive Guide to Mixology”, Available for preorder on all platforms, drops June 7, 2022
The phone call.
When my phone rang, I was taking the elevator down from the top floor of Old Navy on 34th Street and answered to hear Tamika voice on the other line. After the usual, “hey girl!” she unwillingly shared the news of her father’s terminal diagnosis which she said she held off on tell me sooner, like a true Cancer I remember her saying “I really didn’t want to take you back to that place.” but me, matching her Cancerian energy, before I made it to the next floor, I was already numb.
That was in 2018. Now, living on the other side of my grief and witnessing Tamika’s journey after losing her father in 2020 on the other side of hers, the strength I felt I had mustered to get here was fading and true to the genesis of R&V I used my observation as a source of inspiration and saw Tamika, still pushing through and wondered how.
Can we talk?
As with all interviews on R&V begin, out of my selfish (✨) desire to navigate my own journey and a curious mind, in a season of stagnancy I wondered how she managed to keep pushing forward and growing. Tamika told me “We're programmed to be strong and not feel.. or feel like we're failing because we feel these things but in reality we have to in order to progress into the next place.” When I was honest about the fact I didn’t feel like I was doing enough and instead in a perpetual state of feeling she spoke to me about her own struggle and shared that her partner, Elgin had recently lost a friend to suicide and wasn’t sure how he should feel or handle it. “He too is stuck in a stigma of how to process grief.” she told me. I’m not the only one, or the only one observing her stride.
The truth is whether or not we expect to receive the exact answer we need to make everything right, when we’re open about where we are we embrace moments to not feel alone in those specific instances when we are. Because let’s keep it real, no matter how much support you receive in difficult times, there’s still an emptiness that you have to process alone. Prepared from unwanted experience to offer advice, through a process I like to refer to here as #GoodGrief, she let him know that she couldn’t tell him how to feel but whatever it was that he did indeed feel “…feeling those feelings are necessary…”
Sometimes we need permission to acknowledge what we need to she continued “…because if you don’t they’ll hit you”, and a friendly reminder that feeling is inevitable, one way or another.
Despite her having the will to continue to show up in her life, despite what she’s been through which to me is only a part of Tamika’s story, the strength she’s learned and earned is admirable. Still she shared, “There are days where it takes longer and I don’t want to but I have to show up and so that's another thing, I give myself some grace because I know I'm gonna get up and kill it but I just know that if I don't take those moments to order myself mentally then I'm not going to show up the way I need to.” Which is a relief from the outside looking in, where questioning is normal, but grace and perspective is everything. Even though I couldn’t see it, it was happening to her too and we’d never know that if we don’t lean on each other. Knowing that she was allowing herself space to mourn her father and still finding the will to be everything she’s always been let’s me know it can happen, but first she had to let it all out to stay balanced.
Avoiding The Emotional Sh*t Storm
Regardless of what you’re going through I think this lesson applies to all of us. “If right now you feel like crying cool, cry. Because now you can take a deep breath and move forward. If you don't you're gonna tuck it and keep going but it lingers and it bothers you, it's still there… then something else happens and it's gonna be something that is not gonna allow you to tuck it and it's all going to come out and that's the emotional shit storm you don’t want.”
Tell me about it. Being strong has it’s consequences, avoiding how we truly feel does as well, and admitting she did throw herself into work to stay busy and had to pull back to release, giving too much in the other direction isn’t always the best move. It’s all balance for her. She’s adding to what she’s learned about pushing through, even when it’s absolutely necessary to break down into tears. The key is having the moment and not allowing yourself to stay there and take up residence in a hole that it’s hard to climb back out of. Tamika told me she wanted to avoid that at all cost.
A Lesson in Resilience.
In sharing Tamika’s story I knew we’d talk about her father, the late Vivian Charles Wesley, most popularly know as Wesley Hall, however I didn’t want the details of his passing to encompass his life, Tamika’s strength or represent at all (even though traumatic) the only opportunity we get to bear witness to it. No. I really believe it’s a moment in a story that still continues. But, yeah. For the record… our girl held it all the way down. From his initial diagnosis where she described her reaction to the news as “stoic” on our video chat she reenacted pushing down the lump that built in her throat when she heard the news. IMO, Tamika’s strength goes beyond jumping right into a “course of action”, and becoming his sole caretaker until he took his last breath. Being close physically and emotionally to someone moving in between this life and the next is heartbreaking and on the other side of it all Tamika acknowledges that she no longer has to push the lump down from her throat or suppress her feelings. Strong. And knows that her father’s guidance throughout her life prepared her. She told me, “Even in how he transitioned I feel like he was still teaching me a lesson in resilience. Because I had to still show up, still keep it moving, still do all the things that I knew were expected of me. At any given moment I could not crumble…” and so the story begins, with a lesson in resilience.
The Story Is Was Written…
Tamika’s father, Vivian Charles Wesley was an artist, and an art director so she grew up with creativity and expression running through her veins. When she invited me to attend her father’s first and only artist showcase one she lovingly curated for him during his illness I was excited and humbled to attend. His artwork was everywhere, propped up on tripods and stands, they leaned against windowsills, and filled the room drenched in hues of purple from the center on out.
Canvas after canvas of all sizes, pictures, posters, and digital versions on a large screen. Black icons like Malcolm X, James Baldwin and Jimi Hendrix, were painted or drawn and on display everywhere. Bright colors and vivid portraits resembling exactly who meant for them to commemorate showed off a man with talent, who’s effort, time and dedication filled up an entire room, forever seeping into pieces of paper that were once blank. You can see Black culture, music, an era of activism and progression are his muse. That night he took in the appreciation for his art and worked the crowd, a room filled with people who loved him and Tamika, the gallery curator. I was really proud. With everything in perspective it was a beautiful celebration of an artist, and an icon. At some point, I spoke to the man of the night, and shared with him how often I felt artwork I’d started was undone and showed him something I’d been working on in my phone. It looked somewhat finished but I didn’t feel like I did enough, it could use some work. Listen. I looked around. I observed… why not get a tip or two? Mr Hall told me simply “… add to it. Go home and keep adding to it, add some diamonds and add some pearls.” reassuring me that night that my work of art deserves the final touch, the oomph I felt it deserved and the unexpected. I never thought about adding anything but a few more brushstrokes. I did add the extra brushstrokes, no diamonds, no pearls but I did finish it and hung it up on the wall. Don’t lock into the specific details of our conversation and miss your message. Surrounded by a room full of original paintings this story was already being written. Before speaking to Tamika I felt I understood where her Divinity originated from and know now that I had gotten water directly from the source in the purple drenched gallery years ago. For Tamika, she’s been receiving these gems for a lifetime.
Hearing and writing her story is sharing the wisdom, power and strength we’re able to claim when we not only accept the lessons we learn about being our best - elevating our work/worth, but we activate them. Hearing and doing is a next level push.
Gallery, Vivian Charles Wesley
Gallery, Vivian Charles Wesley
Gallery, Vivian Charles Wesley
The Pancake and The Muse.
All I could do was sit back and smile when Tamika held up a picture of herself to show me. In the photo she looks quite perturbed in between two large round pieces of oaktag with her father bent over at eye in front of her and another man, standing behind them looks steadily their way. With the picture filling up our Zoom screen she peeks out from behind it occasionally as she recalls the day, it’s the day of her 2nd grade school play and she’s a pancake.
The assignment was for the kids in the play to draw the breakfast item on paper and hang it over their heads with a string of yarn. Tamika didn’t even have a speaking part, but she was in a full costume courtesy of her father the ever creative art director. Even though Tamika didn’t want to stand out he used the moment to change the way she was thinking and the decisions she’d make about showing up for herself and in life “You want to be seen. You want to be seen if you aren’t going to be heard” he told her and that pep-talk would be followed by many more reminded her to be her best and to shine no matter what. “He gave me no choice and he would always talk to me about how [I] should handle situations. He gave me all those pep talks and I’d never forget” “Being a woman in an industry and navigating certain jobs and being freelance, he would always give me those pep talks. He made me step way outside of my comfort zone and made me address showing up despite whatever the fuck is going on.”
Now what.
If we are careful enough about understanding ourselves we have the power to translate someone’s very specific journey into wisdom for our own and then we can “add to it” I truly believe that even if Tamika didn’t chose a creative path, the lesson she received would have still been the same and would have been the right advice for any child to receive, to never play small, don’t hide, do your best whenever you get an opportunity to. You start with the things that make sense to you and build from there and for those of us who didn’t receive constant reminders and guidance on how to navigate through the hard times, balanced there are ways to learn along the way.
Even if we don’t have parents who’s lives or transparency gave us the pep-talks we can still learn it through observation and conversation and by being in community with one another. Greater than that is understanding the value of these moments as we parent our own children.
If I’d never spoken to Tamika speaking to her dad was confirmation that we are constantly receiving pep-talks every day even when we aren’t paying attention to see them clearly for what they are in the moment and being open to transferring them wherever they may apply again and again. It’s also pretty amazing to note that even if I never made it to the gallery that night, I would still have had Tamika on my path to share her journey with me as she did for this interview and share the same message, in her own way as she received it and remembers it most. We are all in the process of mastering our Divinity in spite of the fact that the world has changed, in spite of not knowing, in spite our feelings. We are still in the process of changing our own narrative every day that we can acknowledge how we feel and STILL show up fully ready to shine, pushing through like a pancake!
The power of our imagination and thought process isn’t reserved for just the creative types, perspective belongs to all of us and some victories take longer than others but there are always small victories in between. Knowing that all of the work amounts to doing what you love every day and choosing to be all you can be despite and through that is powerful, is our root and our vine, Tamika.
Tamika story reminds us that we are blessed to cross path, our journeys are divinely timed, and our connections when we allow them, allow us to intersect as an extended family, as humans sharing human experiences, giving support, sharing gifts and perspectives, inspiring one another to observe and see ourselves. We’re parallel pathing, meeting when it matters the most to offer lessons, share tears when needed and share our power to push through. Regardless of how you feel, and even while you’re feeling there’s no need to dim our light because we never know who we inspire by simply being who we are called to be and using all of who we are without keeping anything in reserve.
Diamonds. Pearls. Pancakes. You feel me?
Tamika. Thank for staying present with your gifts so you can still see and capture the right light and angle of the skyline in a city that I know looks and feels different now. Thank you for staying powerful enough to keep moving, loving, traveling, creating and building a legacy of your own. Thank you for sharing your story with me, and continuing to live out the lessons you’ve learned. Witnessing your journey is confirmation of the strength and greatness in you and I’m glad that through you I was able to share in your father’s legacy and I’m honored to witness the energy of yours.
Xtra love,
Kimmy.