Overwhelmed by setbacks as she pursues her academic ambitions, Tricia Hersey discovers an unexpected solution to her stress.

Tricia Hersey is a Chicago native living in Atlanta with over 20 years experience working with communities as a teaching artist, poet, performance artist and community activist. She believes impromptu spectacles and site specific installations can bring awareness to social justice issues that paralyze our communities. Tricia has research interests that include black liberation theology, womanism and somatics. Her work has been seen with Chicago Public Schools, Chicago Park District, Columbia College Chicago, Steppenwolf Theatre, United States Peace Corps and Google Chicago. Tricia has a Bachelor of Science in Public Health from Eastern Illinois University and a Master of Divinity from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. Her current project is The Nap Ministry, a community installation that examines that liberating power of rest by curating safe spaces for community to nap together.

This story originally aired on April 5, 2019 in an episode titled “Peace."

Story Transcript

So I landed in Atlanta from Chicago in 2010.  My husband’s job transferred us and I didn’t know a soul.  I was a new mom of a three-year-old little boy and I had all these big dreams of continuing my art career and also going to graduate school.  I always wanted my masters degree.

See, I’m the first person in my entire family to go to college.  Both sets of my grandparents barely finishing elementary school as refugees from white terrorism in the Jim Crow segregated south of Mississippi and Louisiana.  My parents further instilled this love of education in me even though they were both high school graduates.

My father always wanted to go to college.  He wanted to study film. But his dreams were deferred at 19 when he took a job at Union Pacific Railroad so that he could care for his wife and his child on the way.  

So education for my family was really a tool for liberation so I always wanted to go to get my masters degree.  It was a pull to fulfill my ancestors’ dream and also this love of curiosity of learning that I had so it stayed on my yearly list of goals.  

It was a huge accomplishment for my entire family when I graduated at 22 with my Bachelor of Science in Public Health.  At my graduation, my dad squashed me so tight that I thought that I will crack open. Going to graduate school remained even though money and time and opportunity got in the way.

So I was here in Atlanta so I decided to just apply and look at all the schools here.  I did research, I thought about writing, education programs, theater. I went to all of the big open houses, I went and I felt okay but not really excited.  

I landed one day on the website of Emory University.  I was there specifically to research their Creative Writing Program but instead I landed on the home page of the Candler School of Theology.  I know. And I couldn’t leave. I read very tab, clicked every link, looked at every picture and I just kept falling deeper into this rabbit hole.  It was as if there was this divine intervention pulling me to apply for a Master of Divinity when I really didn’t know what theology was.

See, I’m a poet, performance artist, community activist but I was raised in a church my entire life.  My father was a Pentecostal, Holy Ghost-preaching, fire-and-brimstone, Holy Ghost-catch-them-falling-out pastor and elder of the Church of God in Christ.  I remember watching people in my father’s congregation fall out and catch the Holy Ghost and truly embody worship as a way to liberation. And my mother went to labor with me in Sunday school.  She stayed for the lesson then went to the hospital.

So I know about church but I went to church because my parents took me, so at 18 when I went away to undergrad, I was done.  I never looked back. And here I am, 20 years later, about to apply to one of the top seminaries in the country because it just felt like the right thing to do.  I felt like it was some spiritual longing.

So I clicked the link on the online application and I applied and I waited.  While I waited, I took part-time jobs in retail to kind of make ends meet. I was working at this really fancy, high-end chocolate boutique in Buckhead and I was bored out of my mind.  I remember being in front of the counter arranging all the delicate chocolates and then my cell phone rang and I ran to it.

On the other end was a voice I had never heard.  “Hi, this is Mary Boice and I’m the Admission Director of the Candler School of Theology,” and I held the phone tighter.  “The admissions committee has been sitting with your application for a week and we are so moved by your work as an artist and we really want to make space for an artist like you to study here.  You are accepted.”

My knees felt weak and the tears began to silently flow.  I felt like I wanted to dance so I danced. And all I could muster up in that moment was, “Thank you.”  

I was finally going to graduate school and I felt like I was floating on air.  And I continued floating through the weeks, I floated myself all the way to the Candler’s New Student Orientation and I was so hyped and I was so ready.  Then I floated into the first week of classes and then the pace felt so rigorous. The writing style was foreign to me and I felt unseen and I felt unheard and inadequate.  

And I felt unseen in the sea of white classmates who would stay very silent whenever we began to talk about slavery and racism in the church.  And I would listen to lectures and I wondered why we were centering European history when I knew that the ancient foundation of Christianity was in North Africa.  And one day I got the nerve to raise my hand in my History of Christian Thought class and I wanted to ask the teacher why we were using inaccurate maps of Egypt, and he didn’t even look up.  

He said, “I don't know.  I didn’t write the book. Next question?”  

My heart sank.  I felt humiliated in the sea of 200 people in the lecture hall.  

Then there were the outside forces went on me daily also.  Eric Garner was just murdered by the police. The Black Lives Matter Movement was heating up and there was a constant loop of police brutality on videos and online and everywhere I looked and I was scared.  And two of my really close family members died suddenly and I continued to feel unseen.

This floating turned into a serious crash as I found myself sitting on the stairs of the Science Building sobbing to my husband in the phone, “What have I done?  I can’t do this. I hate school.”

Months later, I was walking home from school in the parking lot with my son, we were walking through the parking lot of a gas station near my house around 4:00 p.m. and I felt a tug on my shoulder.  I looked and I saw a young man running with my book bag with the strength of an Olympic track star.

In my bag were three expensive textbooks on Liberation Theology, my jump drive that contained every single lecture note from every single class, twelve classes, all my research projects over 100 documents.  And also a journal with my handwritten sermon, my first sermon ever that I was scheduled to preach in two days.

And in this shock I dropped my son’s hand and ran after the thief.  I had no way of really catching him and I was screaming, “Hey, someone help me.  That’s my bag.”

My son looked up at me and he said, “Mommy, mommy, that was a bad man.  Why would someone do that?”

I cried all night and I was numb and disgusted.  I wanted to quit school that day and in this moment of clarity, I decided to pray to get some peace.  After I prayed I just kept repeating, “Tricia, do not stop school. Keep going. Keep going.” And so I kept going.  

That’s actually all I really did.  I physically just kept going. I totally had mentally checked out.  I did nothing in class. I literally would get to school, get to class, get the attendance credit and then go take a nap.  

And it felt so good.  It felt so good to rest and nap and I napped all over that campus.  I napped under a tree in the quad and I napped in this atrium. They had this comfy little chair.  It was perfect. I also napped in the new Psychology Building. They had couches set up. I napped on the dance floor after a ballet class, I napped at the library, upstairs in the library, I napped downstairs in the library, in the archives of the library.  

And my favorite place to nap was in Cannon Chapel.  I knew the worship schedules so I will go on the off days when no one was there and I would climb all the way up to the balcony.  It was my favorite place to nap, right up top. They had these long pews that were actually upholstered so I could stretch my long body out and I can go deep into a sleep.  I could get it and I went down.

And it just felt so healing.  It just felt like the right thing to do.  So I would set my alarm on my phone for thirty minutes and I will stretch and I will go deep into this healing portal.  And one day, while I was just getting right into that moment, I hear the loud noise of this beautiful pipe organ playing.  As soon as the first chord played, I jumped up and screamed.

There was someone there, a musician who was actually rehearsing for a recital.  He didn’t know I was there. I didn’t know he was there so I was so embarrassed.  I picked up my book bag and I scurried away.

And during this season of napping, I was enrolled in the class called Cultural Trauma.  In it we learnt about all these groups all over the world who were experiencing trauma and how they could ultimately heal from it.  And I had the pleasure of doing a research project on Jim Crow survivors and I interviewed them and many talked about how trauma was held in their bodies.  

This led me on to research articles about sleep deprivation actually affects our bodies.  And I found this beautiful article about how, when we sleep, our bodies and mind actually help us heal.  And I just was obsessed. I just kept researching and I kept napping.

And I read this beautiful article that said when we sleep, our brain is actually bathed in a chemical that helps us to forget trauma.  And I was empowered to sleep more. I was now sleeping from an empowered state.

And I just kept resting and sleeping and then I kept getting better grades and I started to be inspired.  I actually started to make connections between faith and spirituality and the science of sleep and I just kept going deeper.  

I wanted to spread this good news.  I was actually watching myself being transformed by resting, being transformed by naps, so I just kept thinking, “I’m an artist, I’m a community activist.  What can I brainstorm on to help others rest via sleep?”

So I started a community organization called The Nap Ministry and we examined the liberating power of naps.  We installed and curate safe spaces for the community to nap together all over Atlanta and all over Chicago, and we rest together and we nap.  

I've been to these events and I watched people wake up from a nap with tears in their eyes and they're like, “I never sleep.  I never rest. That was the best nap I've ever had.”

And I kept sleeping, of course.  I kept napping and I was inspired.  The naps saved me. Thank you.