brb crying

024: a short stay in hell, golde's trinity mouzon wofford, & hope as an act of resistance

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0:00 | 54:06

This week, Nins and Arns explore two stories that unexpectedly arrive at the same question: how do we keep hoping when the world feels impossible?

Nins dives into A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck, the cult-favorite existential novella about a man trapped in an infinite library searching for the book of his life. What begins as a story about hell, eternity, and impossible odds becomes a meditation on hope, love, grief, and the human refusal to give up.

Then Arns reflects on entrepreneur, writer, and Golde co-founder Trinity Mouzon Wofford, whose thoughtful writing on motherhood, community, creativity, and everyday beauty offers a different kind of answer. Through stories of family, home, partnership, and small miracles, Trinity reminds us that a meaningful life is often built one intentional choice at a time.

Together, these stories spark a conversation about hope as resistance, finding purpose during uncertain times, creating joy in a capitalist world, love that changes us forever, and the courage to keep believing in something better.

Content warning: death, terminal illness, existential themes, infertility, pregnancy loss discussions, grief, maternal mortality, and mental health struggles.

0:00 - Intro
6:16 - Nins: A Short Stay in Hell
27:53 - Arns: Trinity Mouzon from Golde
51:27 - Outro

Referenced in this episode:

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brb crying—hosted by longtime best friends Nins & Arns—is a podcast where we explore the songs, books, TV shows, films, pop culture moments, and personal stories that help us laugh, cry, heal, and feel a little less alone. Crying is our superpower, and by sharing what makes us cry in a way that makes us laugh, we show how crying helps us connect with ourselves and each other.

Intro

SPEAKER_01

Hi, I'm Angela Nan. I'm Ariana Kempis. And this is BRB Crying.

SPEAKER_00

Hello everyone. Welcome back to BRB Crying. I'm Ariana, also known as Arnes. And I'm Angela, also known as Ninz.

SPEAKER_01

And we are back. We're back with another round of Cry Chronicles. You like that one? You thought about that one before. That one was in the shower, yeah. I thought about that one in the shower. Um, but yeah, we are here today to discuss once again something that has made us cry. And we're gonna keep doing this over and over and over again. Yep.

SPEAKER_00

Until we finally convince you that crying is pretty great. I thought you were gonna say we're gonna keep doing this over and over and over again until our next break. Like after until like we hit 10 episodes and then we're gonna stop and then we're gonna take a break and then we're gonna go back. You know?

SPEAKER_01

I didn't want to get into like the particulars logistics. Because we will be back after the break over and over and over again. Yeah. Because we still got some convincing to do for other people. You're right, you're right. Until every last fucking soul on earth is like crying. Honestly, yeah, that's you know I think that's the goal. Realistic. Realistic, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah. What's up? Um, I'm a little sick. Sick. Sick. Yeah. Yeah. It's not been good.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. Just like don't breathe near me. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Should I wear a mask while we record? Oh my god. I could, I could. Um, yeah, I'm a little sick, but I'm on the mend. That's good.

SPEAKER_01

Aren't we all in some way or form?

SPEAKER_00

That's again, that's the goal. You know what I mean? Healing in many ways. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you for taking it literally.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. You know, I just want to be an example for everyone.

SPEAKER_01

That's why I'm here. Um, how are you? I am good. I feel like my schedule has been nonstop. Yeah. I'm just so busy. Like I'm just it must be so hard. I'm in high demand. So um I'm really looking forward to this weekend because I feel like I'll finally have a day where I can not do shit. It's been a long time since I've been able to not do shit. So we're looking forward to it, but you know, we're energized. We're here, ready to talk your ear off.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. Um, I just have like one little announcement, and then I guess we can fucking get into it. What's your announcement? Well, if this is your first time listening, welcome. Hello. And we're doing a giveaway. So leave us a review on Apple. We were just informed you can't really leave a review on Spotify. You can rate us five stars. You should rate us five stars. Actually, if you rate us five stars on Spotify and you give us a five-star rating on Apple with a written review, you will be entered twice into our giveaway to win a Beer B crying hat.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my god, the Beer B crying hat? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Oh my god, that really cute hat that like should I pull- should I fucking pull it out? I mean, maybe I will, you know. Like give the people what they want. Yeah. Never mind. I don't have it. But it's really cute. It's so fucking cute.

SPEAKER_01

It is I haven't seen it look bad on anyone. It looks so good on everyone. It's kind of like, imagine the jeans and the sisterhood of the trapping pants. I knew you were going there, and I'm so glad you did. It's a hat. It's a hat. It looks good on everyone.

SPEAKER_00

Except we're not sharing it.

SPEAKER_01

We're not passing it around. If you write us a review and you win, then you can see it. And you win. And you win.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Um God, it's such a good hat. It's a great hat. I wear it all the time. I do too. I do too.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. A lot of people are always like, oh my gosh, people always stop me and ask me about You know what? I hear that all the time too.

SPEAKER_01

That people will come up to them and say, Oh my God, where'd you get your hat? It's never happened to me. That's how you think. Every time I walk into Trader Joe's, I'm like, who's gonna be?

SPEAKER_00

It hasn't happened yet.

SPEAKER_01

That's funny because it did happen to me at Trader Joe's. I'm sure it does like of all the places where it would happen to me, it would be a Trader Joe's. And yet my RBF, I think, is just a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00

I was just gonna say, maybe, which isn't a bad thing. But by the way, can we like, no, can we like talk about this? Because I was thinking about this on the car on the way here. People used to give me shit my entire childhood for just having an RBF, but I'm like, sorry, I'm not a fake fucking smiler. What? That's just me. Yeah. And so I felt like bad about it. Uh-huh. But maybe we just need to rebrand RBF. Yeah, I think you're right. The terminology itself. Yeah, the phrase itself is a little bit. You don't know what it means. It's a resting bitch face. It means you have this flat affect and you don't smile. Which is like, again, why are we demonizing that? Sorry, just the term affect.

SPEAKER_01

People are like, uh let's make it. Okay, okay, okay. It's when you don't smile. You look unfriendly. Unfriendly when your face is at its neutral position.

SPEAKER_00

Which is like, why should my resting face be smiling? That is so much energy. Yeah. That makes me so mad. No, I don't like that. I don't like that. So great that you have an RBF, but yeah, maybe when you wear the hat, you can just like smile.

SPEAKER_01

I think that's the complete antithesis of what you were trying to say. But sure. I meant if you want to be approached. Yeah. Here's the thing. You know what I mean? You gotta chisel a little bit to get into my heart. Sorry.

SPEAKER_00

And that's fine. God. Okay. Anyway, anyway. Anyway. Giveaway. Um Enter to win by giving us a review on Apple. Yeah. Okay. Bye. Bye. See you later.

Nins: A Short Stay in Hell

SPEAKER_01

Do you want to start? Hell yeah. Ooh, that's interesting that I started it off by saying hell yeah. What? So I'm gonna start us off with just a quick question. Love it. Off the top of your head, what is one thing that you would find in your own personal hell? Which I know is hard, so I can start off and then can get your the juices. Yeah, the juices flowing. One thing in my own personal hell would be my feet constantly cold and there are no socks or slippers. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00

Oh my gosh. The possibilities are endless. I know.

SPEAKER_01

I also put it would be me perpetually running on a treadmill. Okay. And then every time I look down at the time, it shows that I've only been running for two minutes. Oh interesting.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My own personal hell. It would be really cold. The AC would be running. Okay. And it would be like cold outside and cold inside, and I'm wearing like a fucking tank top. Like I hate. I hate being cold.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

All right. Well, today I'm going to be talking about a book called A Short Stay in Hell by Stephen L. Peck. Okay. It's actually more like a novella. It's like a hundred pages. You can literally get through it in a day. Okay. But yeah, today I'm going to be talking about this book. But I think you'll gather pretty quickly that I'm really talking about something else. You'll see. But A Short Stay in Hell by Stephen L. Peck was published in 2009 and is categorized as a fantasy fiction. I feel like fantasy is the entirely wrong word. Okay. Hellish fiction. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

It's very existential and is one of those books that you finish it and you kind of just stare at the ceiling a little bit, a little fucked up. Yeah. You know what I mean? I know it. So obviously, spoiler warning for the book, but even if you get a gist of what I'm gonna say about the plot here, I still think it's really, really good. Lou read it first, actually. And he finished it in a day, and like that whole day, I was like, hey Lou, like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, I'm trying to, I really want to finish this book. Like it's really good. He's been reading a lot. He's been reading a lot. I noticed it. He's an academic. So anyway, this is the story about a man named Sorin Johansson. And he is this faithful Mormon who tragically dies in his 40s from some terminal illness. And as a Mormon, he thinks he's heading through the pearly white gates of your classic Christian version of heaven. And much to his chagrin, he realizes that he's actually headed for hell because he is not a practicing follower of the one true faith, Zoroastrianism. Apparently, this is like a real religion that originated in like Central Asia. I didn't look too much into this, but for the sake of the story, everyone who is not a Zoroastrianist is automatically casted into hell. Okay. See you there. But unlike the traditional Christian version of hell, depicting everlasting darkness and perpetual suffering, hell is a place we only stay in temporarily. And getting assigned to a hell is almost like going through the DMV. So you have this demon like going over your paperwork, and then depending on your interests or what kind of life you led, you are assigned to a different type of hell. And in Soren's case, our main character who enjoyed reading, his hell is actually a vast library.

SPEAKER_00

Oh.

SPEAKER_01

And you're like, wait, but I love books. Yeah, bitch, hold on. Let me tell you a little bit more about this fucking library. So this is actually the library of Babel, which is based on another story written by Jorge Luis Borges. And this library contains every single book that could ever be written with the English alphabet. Quote: Imagine a library that contains not just every book that has been written, but every book that could be written. So each book is 410 pages long with 40 lines of 80 characters on each page, and 95 possible characters based on the standard keyboard. So alphabet, uppercase, lowercase, numbers zero through nine, all the symbols. Quote: So somewhere in here is a book of all A's, a book of all periods, or a book of semicolons, or B's, any letter. There's a book that alternates A's and B's for its entire length, but most books are just a random collection of symbols. So it's a bit of a math game to figure out how many books are in this library, but let's just say it's it's a fuck ton. Okay. Don't want to pull up the exact number of books. Yeah. The number of possible books is 95 to the power of 1,312,000. Oh my god. So a fuck ton. So a fuck ton. Okay. So what does Soren have to do to get out of this temporary hell? He has to find the book that contains the story of his life. And Soren isn't the only one wandering through this library. There are thousands of people who are kind of scattered throughout these endless rows and floors of this library containing book after book after book. Also trying to find the Also trying to find their book. I don't want to get too hung up on the logistics of the library and all of its rules. All you need to know is that basically every book they open is essentially nonsense. As if someone had just smashed the keyboard for 400 plus pages. It doesn't really make any sense. There's barely words. It'll take them years to just find a book that even contains a sentence of stress. So pretty soon Soren realizes that finding a book that contains real words, let alone the story of his life, is not going to be easy. It will seem almost impossible. Soren ambles through this library for years, and then those years turn into decades. And then those decades turn to centuries, centuries into millenniums. I thought this was a short stay, a quote, short stay in hell. Okay. Time becomes an abstract thought. He describes he there's a point where he and a bunch of people are so adamant on trying to just find the limit of this library. So he walks down just one row of the library for 10 years in one direction, never gets to the end of it. That's crazy. I don't want to read this. And then there's another group of people who spend 20 years walking up the stairs to all of the floors. They never reach the top. At the 20-year mark, they were like, all right, I guess we gotta go back down. The people in this hell also do very normal human things. They start off really, really motivated to find their book. You know, they're excited, they're flipping through every day. They want to hit a quote of, oh, I checked this many books. That lasts for a few years, and then some people start to form communities and band together. Some people will actually resort to anarchy and violence. It's an infinity of possibility of what you would do in a situation like that. And one day, 102 years into Soren's stay in hell, he meets another person named Rachel. I will cut to the chase and I will just share this quote. Have you ever loved someone for a thousand years? I would have bet it impossible, but that's how long we were together. A thousand years we traveled the halls of hell together. I don't remember fighting. She was magic. Nights were wondrous, days full of laughter and long, slow conversations. We were a team, Rachel and I. Oh, I miss her so much. I think our love could have lasted forever. I'm sure it would have. She was so No. I won't cheapen it by trying to express it in words and short sentences. I loved her. That is enough. A thousand years Soren spends with Rachel. Happy in love. It doesn't even sound like he's in hell anymore when he's with her. There are very few pages the author spends describing this time, and as Soren says, he doesn't want to cheapen it. That's pretty much all we get is just a few pages of them meeting and then this paragraph. But tragically, Soren and Rachel, they get separated. Basically, there's like antics. There's this violent group of anarchists that take control of this section of the library that they're in. And in order to escape, Rachel essentially jumps over the ledge of one of the rows, and Soren gets like knocked out by one of the people. So he wakes up after a few days. Rachel has fallen. He doesn't know where she is. Wait, I have a really quick question. Yeah. Can you die? You can die, but then you wake up the next day. Like a video game. Yeah. Okay, okay. So he gets knocked out, he wakes up a few days later, and he's like, oh my god, I have to fucking find her. Where is she? So he too jumps over the railing and he ends up falling for days. He's literally just falling. Days turns into weeks of him just falling, traveling at over 120 miles per hour. And after a while, he kind of finds some way to like get back onto one of the floors. And still, he never reaches the bottom of this library. And yeah, he he never finds Rachel again. She's lost to this infinity, and it becomes yet another thing that Soren spends this endless eternity searching for. So that's exactly what he does. He never stops looking. Billions and billions of years he continues the search in this library. So when I first read this book last summer, I thought to myself, oh I get it. Hell is hoping. You literally have no chance in hell to find what it is you're looking for, but yet you keep looking. It's when the odds are stacked against you so fervently, but you physically cannot give up. I was like, yeah, that sounds right. That's fucking hell. Living in a world where you feel powerless, where your hopes and your dreams and your freedoms are taken away from you, and you're just waiting for that day for something to happen. Hoping to be saved, hoping to escape. I know what it feels like to hold on to hope in times of such deep, deep darkness. It makes me feel crazy. Full-blown Dululu. Because I cannot stop listening to this feeling in my gut that things will turn around. And it's hell that I cannot stop. But I reread this book very recently, and this time around well, when I first read the book, I didn't actually cry. Still, there wasn't like a particular section where I was like sobbing. It was really after I had finished it the second time where I thought about it a little bit more. And I thought to myself, what if instead of focusing on the absolute despair of the circumstances, the near impossibility that Soren may never find what he's looking for, what if we changed the narrative? What if instead of hope feeling like hell? Hope is our defiance against hell. That no matter how bleak it gets, no matter how fruitless Zorin's efforts are, he never ever stops searching for his book, for his Rachel. Hope and love. Hope and love. Not even Hell could take that from him. So maybe there is something to learn from Zorin's quote short stay in hell. In a time that for so many feels like our own personal hell. When every day we're bombarded with more terrifying news, more autonomy lost, more rights endangered. Let us resist this hell that tries to consume us and dare to hope and dare to love. Be a revolution.

SPEAKER_00

It can feel so crazy to hope. Crazy to the point of irresponsible. But if I can't hope, then what do I even have? Why am I even here? What's the point?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I think you and I, and so many people in this country, in this world, are doing so much mind gymnastics where we want to cling on to this hope. And then immediately we feel guilty for not wanting to dwell on the negativity, for refusing to accept reality, not acting in whatever way we should be acting. That's like part of the hell of all of it, right? I just feel like hope is that one thing that is that light in all of this darkness. So I cannot let this go. Nor should you. I also think like the fact that Zorin spends so much time in hell, like just the possibility that he found love in it. Like it's almost even better than finding the book, you know? Yeah. And there's a passage where he talks about how he was with her for a thousand years, and that compared to his entire duration in hell, just looks like a small little blimp. And yet it changed him for eternity. Those few years that they spent together.

SPEAKER_00

Um spoiler alert, can you tell me, like, does it end with just him still being in hell? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

It ends with him basically falling until he reaches the bottom. And it's literally like thousands and thousands of years of him just falling, and he finally gets to the bottom of this hell, and uh just continues his search of looking for the book and looking for Rachel. But it feels less bleak because he alludes to this time, like yes, billions and billions of years to us, that just seems unfathomable. But the concept of eternity compared to a billion years, he says that at some point he will look back at his time in hell and will consider that a short stay. Because of just how endless eternity really is. About like finding your book and finding your purpose in life, and yada yada yada. But I I genuinely feel it's one of those books that where you are in your life, you'll look at it differently. It'll make you think about things differently. I just felt like yeah, like when I read it over the summer, I had this takeaway of Ella's hope, and then I read it again and decided that it was a different message that resonated with me this time.

SPEAKER_00

That's beautiful though. To see how much you've changed in even that short span of time to be taking something different away. Yeah. And it's funny because it sounds crazy that he's just going to keep looking and he's going to keep hoping. And I'm sure that's how people feel when we are seemingly delusional with our hope. But it's unshakeable.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And I think that all I can really do is help spark that in other people. Exactly. Oh, I feel like I read the book. That was fucking heavy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

It feels heavy, but it is so engaging. Like, again, it's only a hundred pages.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, every how is that book? No, I know. Oh, you just spoke to me for a hundred pages.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my god. It's so, it's like every page is so intentional about what it's trying to tell you. It's there's not a lot of BS. Not once was I bored. And even though it sounds heavy, like I was like, oh my god, I gotta keep reading this. Yeah. This is just so interesting. 100 pages, but then it just kind of fucks you for a hundred years. You know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So I think it's almost perfect that it ends that way. It doesn't end with him finding his book. Yeah, no. Because this is what it feels like. It's not always that happy ending. Like this is what it feels like to be suspended in that hope. Yeah. Sick, dude. Right? That was good. Love hell. Love hell. That was hella good. What the hell?

Arns: Trinity Mouzon from Golde

SPEAKER_01

All right. Get me out of this hell. Okay. Bit of a pivot. Sick.

SPEAKER_00

I don't want to be here.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

If you recall, last week, she feels like an eternity ago. Uh, I talked about Haley Hendricks, the songwriter, and how she wants us to throw away our phones and like all that anti-capitalist stuff. Which I love. But I also acknowledge I'm not quite there yet. I want to be, but sometimes I'm a dumb bitch, you know? Can't relate. Yeah, I know. It's lonely over here. But today I wanted to talk about someone who I really admire because she has one foot planted in this capitalist reality that we're all drowning in. Okay. And then this other foot planted in this idyllic life that kind of feels like a dream. So this person is Trinity Muzon Waffred. You know her? Mm-mm. Mmm. Okay. Well, you will. So I don't know if you recall, one of my favorite Christmas gifts to give. I love the brand Gold. Okay, it is my favorite superfood wellness brand. They make ceremonial grade matcha and collagen and turmeric latte blends. I know I've been, I know I've gifted it to you at least once or twice in the past. Yes, yes, yes, yeah. And like superfood masks and stuff. Okay. My personal favorites: the cacao turmeric latte blend and the shroom shield. Gold with an E, right? Gold with an E. Okay, yes. Yeah, okay. So I usually just like add it to the frother with some oat milk. And that's it. It's so good. This is not sponsored, by the way.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, you can.

SPEAKER_00

It could be. Um, but since, you know, I want to refresh your memory a little bit. So I thought I'd kick us off with a little, a little taste test. Oh my god. Yeah, so today I've brought for you a little shroom shield. Hell yeah. Some soy milk. Since I know that's your preferred milk alternative. And my my frother. Hell yeah. So taste hold listeners. This is a cooking demo. This is a cooking demo. Everyone, Nespresso Frother. Jilomar wanted me to say. Oh my god. No. He wanted me to say that his students got him this when he was a preceptor teaching nursing clinicals. And they like had like a bunch of them like had a crush on him. Oh my god. Is this necessary to the story, Jomar? It's not. But you know what? I love this thing. It's served us well for like six years now. Got it. So I got the frother and got the soy milk. Bought this for you. It was so hard to find it. It was like, you don't usually but I did it for you. Thanks. So I'm I'm doing a little pouring right now. Wowzas. Got my shrewd Gold Stream Shield, everyone. Again, not sponsored, but could be. Um so let me press this button. Which you can't see on the camera, but here. I'll show everyone. I'm about to press this button right here. Okay. It's going. It's twirling. Um, okay. You have your choice of mugs. We have this beautiful ceramic one. Don't know where it's from. This is an Intel inside mug. Oh, you know what's cool though? When you when it heats up, there are words that like show up. Live, laugh, love. Um, no, just intel. I'm gonna not take that one. I'm gonna take the cuter one. Okay. All right, all right. Well, while that's going. This is crazy. That'd be interesting, you know.

SPEAKER_01

You know? Yeah. Um we just we do it all.

SPEAKER_00

We listen. We really do it all. Fucking do it all. So we do it all and we do the most, you know. I guess I could tell you about my sources. All right, so my sources for today. I hope this this frother in the back is not going to distract. Um, most of my background is from a mother magazine feature that was published in April 2023. It was written by Katie Hinz Zambrano and photographed by Amy Sanusi. And I also have a couple other references, but I'll just talk about them when I come across them. All right, so slowing down. You hear it? All right, that's good, that's good, that's good, that's good. Thank you for your service, little frother. Okay, try try a little. Tell me if it needs more. Mmm, delicious. Is it good? Yeah, do I need okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01

Which one is this one again?

SPEAKER_00

It's called a shroom shield. Let me read the packaging, actually. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

We're taking shrooms, everyone.

SPEAKER_00

It's um mushroom cocoa for immunity and mood. And the ingredients are coconut milk powder, organic cacao bean powder, organic cinnamon, salt, luhan gu fruit, which is monk fruit, and yeah, that's it. Love it. Yeah. How comforting. I know. It's uh yeah, support your body's defenses with a boost of reishi and turkey tail mushrooms. So yeah, it is shrooms. On a rainy day like this one. I know.

unknown

Perfect.

SPEAKER_00

Let me put this fucking shit away.

SPEAKER_01

And I'll just slurp up all this goodness on my mic like really loud.

SPEAKER_00

All right, my cuckoo-ka context. So Trinity Musan Waffred launched Gold in 2017 with her now husband, Isei Kobori, in their apartment in Brooklyn. They were a super tiny brand, but they're super like you can see how bright and colorful their packaging is. It attracted a lot of attention across different lifestyle stores in like Manhattan and Brooklyn. And so they kind of just blew up. And in 2019, at 25 years old. Ancient. Yeah. Um what the fuck was I doing? I was like, what was I doing at unemployment again? You know? Truly, truly. Check my LinkedIn. Um so in 2019, at 25 years old, Trinity became the youngest black woman to launch a line at Sephora. And then 2020 came. What's 2020? Pandemic. Hell. Hell. Yeah, yeah, hell. And with the pandemic, there were, of course, a ton of people who wanted to engage in self-care and do things while they were at home. So at this point, gold was already growing 25 to 75 percent month over month. But then with the murder of George Floyd in the summer, there was this collective shift towards supporting black-owned businesses. So gold sales increased 300%. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And in June 2020, Trinity wrote a Huffington Post article titled, This is a Very Strange Time to be a Black-owned business. And she talks about the struggle of distinguishing the profound versus the performative. All of these investors and all these people who didn't give a shit about gold, suddenly they're like, Oh, we love gold. And like, you know. Which fucking sucks. And of course, she talks about in that Mother Magazine feature, struggling with imposter syndrome because of it. Because it was like overnight. And so she says, I wondered if every good thing that had ever happened to me was just because someone wanted to do a good thing for black people. Yeah. This was such a painful sentiment to me to be at the height of your career in this moment, which should be just pure celebration, and yet you're grappling with the question of whether this reality happened because of you or to you. So it was a really dark time for her when she found out she was pregnant, but then through her pregnancy, she was finally able to show herself some grace. All right, in 2021, still in the pandemic, Trinity and her partner Issei left the city and moved to upstate New York, where they both grew up, actually. They also met in I think like kindergarten. Like me and Jomar. But yeah, so they ended up finding a home an hour outside of their hometown of Saratoga Springs. And again, really idyllic life, reminiscent of little European towns, like less than 2,000 people. Everyone knows everyone. They have their local cafe and their local bookstore, and they walk to the farmer's market, and you can see on her feed on Instagram how much love and care they put into their space. They spend all this time like tending to their garden, and they've slowly worked on restoring this beautiful home, and they have like all this vintage furniture, and it's just like this ever-evolving entity in their lives. Side note, they actually got married on a farm in upstate New York when she was five weeks postpartum. Whoa. Yeah. And Vogue did a feature on her, which I will link in the show notes. And she wore a $200 vintage yellow lace dress, and her husband sourced his own fabric, got his suit, specially tailored. She didn't wear an ounce of makeup. Let me guess, radiant. Fucking radiant. But anyway, so after the ceremony, like she and her husband and her daughter kind of stole away to this quiet corner of the barn, and she was just like breastfeeding her daughter. Um, and yeah, she's just like, I just want to be her. Like, you know. So this entire life that she's built is fucking wild when you remember that she's like the co-founder, she and her husband, like of this brand that's so successful. And in the feature on Mother Magazine, she says, for the most part, I love running a business away from the city. It's nice to just be a person, to be more than your work. Most of my neighbors have no idea what I do and honestly don't care. We're too busy trading home garden tips. Alright. So now that I've painted this picture of her life, I want to talk a little bit about her Instagram. You can imagine how dreamy her feed is. But my favorite part about Trinity is that she's an incredible writer.

SPEAKER_01

She had to like have it all. She had to have it all. She couldn't just be like all of this, and like maybe doesn't know the difference between you are and you are. No, no, no. Okay. Sick.

unknown

God.

SPEAKER_00

So I try not to scroll on Instagram. But whenever I see her post, I'm like, near the fucking afternoon, you know, like I'm in this nearly afternoon. No, you know why I say that? Because once I click on that one post and I read it, then I start just scrolling all the way, and I just like I read all her stuff. Uh yeah, I eat that shit up. And she does this thing where she, like all these artists and creatives, conveys these big feelings with just the simplest sentiments. So I cry a lot. So I want to share one of those captions today. Some context within the context. In July of 2022, Trinity gave birth to her daughter, Ruby Natsuko. And Natsuko means summer child in Japanese. And her husband, Isei, is half Japanese, half Jewish. He grew up in Japan. So I was like eight months deep into trying to get pregnant when I came across this post. She announced her pregnancy pretty late. It was kind of like a, oh, I'm pregnant, and like we got married at the courthouse kind of thing. But since I saw that moment, like I was obsessively following, you know, her pregnancy. And so one morning at the end of July, right around when I was supposed to get my period, I started bleeding. And I cried, as I did every time my period came during this really honestly really dark time for me. And I opened up Instagram, and the first thing I saw was Trinity's post about her daughter being born. And the caption was, She's here and she's perfect. And I remember crying so hard. Like, I mean, I would cry every month, but like crying really, really hard, thinking like just that's that's all I want. That's all I want in this moment. I just want to feel that love and just carry it inside me. And it was this really strange juxtaposition of feeling the love that she has for her daughter and seeing it on the page, or I guess seeing it through the screen, and then being overwhelmed in my own body for this longing. And it was like wading through the darkness and like seeing this light, like kind of some hope, like maybe this is for me. But little did I know I was actually pregnant. I found it a few days later. I got my first ever positive pregnancy test. So sorry, that was misleading. That's not the capture that I was gonna talk about, but it's built up. So come January 2023, I'm on the cusp of my third trimester, very pregnant, and the reality of my daughter's impending birth is like starting to settle in. And I saw this post from Trinity. And in this post, she talks about her home birthing experience. That's kind of the context of why she was posting and navigating that decision to do that as a black woman, given the starkly higher black maternal mortality rates, which double that of white women. But yeah, in this carousel of posts, she's sharing the story of giving birth to Ruby. And it's it's beautiful. So I'm just gonna read the whole thing. Ruby came to us in high summer, the time of humming cicadas and tender stone fruits. As her due date approached, we saw the red buck moon and thought it was a sign she would be there any day. I asked our midwife if a full moon could help a baby come. She said no, but a good storm had been known to knock a baby loose. With the supermoon came an unrelenting heat wave. Our due date came and went. Isei kept playing the song, Always and Forever, by Heat Wave. As we sang along, it became an unspoken lullaby and a prayer to her to please come soon to meet us. Exactly one week after her due date, the heat wave broke with a series of rumbling storms. Labor started that evening. I was told to sleep through the contractions which came every 10 to 20 minutes through the night. In the early morning, we sat in our garden and waited. Things picked up by 10 a.m. Through the entire pregnancy, I had been extremely eager for the challenge of labor. I expected it to be something like a cross of a shroom trip and a marathon, and I'd say that pretty much holds. In between contractions, I kept asking if she would be here by dinner time. I don't really remember this. I worried that I might start to run out of energy to keep up, so I leaned into the waves as hard as I could. Before I saw her face, I looked up at Isai's, streaked with happy tears. And that's how I knew she. Was here. Could hardly get through that. This is her Instagram people. Like, but yeah, so these images that she conjures, it just feels like the slower time. Like, I feel like that could have been in like the 1800s or something, just you know, in her home with her little family, and she talks about these rumbling storms and these heat waves and communing with nature as she's waiting for this miracle. And what I love most is when she says before she saw her own daughter's face, she saw her partner's face. This euphoric reflection of love and awe. That's how she knew her daughter had arrived. And this affected me so deeply because there are some moments that happen in the blink of an eye, and you don't have time to capture it with a photograph. So it just lives on in your memory, in your heart. And this is one of those moments that look of that pure unadulterated joy flitting across your partner's face. In this moment, we pay no matter to the hardship that has come, the hardship that will follow. We just exist in this moment, in this miracle that when strung together with all the other small miracles of our day-to-day, just make up the whole story of our lives. And it's, you know, it's easy to be enamored by Trinity's whole life in upstate New York and the way she devotes herself to leaning into community and living slowly in the face of capitalism. On the surface, she's pretty much living the dream. But we have to remember, you know, she didn't just fall into that life. Shaping her reality was and is an act of co-creation. You know, it's a series of choices that she makes every single day. Maybe from the outside it looks like supporting local farmers and mornings in the garden and homemade jam. But on the inside, it probably just looks like choosing joy every day and relishing these small moments as they unfold. Most of us probably aren't going to start what I'm guessing is a multi-million dollar superfood wellness brand. But we all have the capacity to create our reality to some degree. And it starts with the one that we create in our minds. The one we build every time we choose to love and hope, even when it seems bleak. So Trinity, if you're listening, thank you for using your platform in a way that just kind of cuts through all the noise and stirs something inside of us. And, you know, we're not asking for a sponsorship. But we're also not not asking. That was gorgeous. And that was just one, you know, like I her whole her whole feed is just like What's the last line of her caption again? Sorry, I'm gonna make you reread it. Um before I saw her face, I looked up at Isei streaked with happy tears. That's how I knew she was here.

SPEAKER_01

It reminds me of that Beyoncé song, Protector. There's a line in that song where Beyoncé says she's singing to her children, and she says, I first saw your face in your father's gaze. Why would these women write these? Like, why are you saying that? It's so simple. It's interesting that with Instagram it's so easy to like create and curate this lifestyle that you are living the dream. But the dream is not accolades. Or I think the journey that I'm on is unraveling what a dream is for me. Yeah. And it's no longer relishing in material wealth or lavish lifestyles. It's feeling so rich in moments where you are just surrounded by love and peace. And hope. And hope. Like that is the dream. Yeah. Like I am genuinely, genuinely seeking that now. You were a dumb bitch at 25, I was a dumb bitch at 25. Like, I was chasing so many wrong things. And I'm so glad that I'm not anymore.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I have so much gratitude for being at this place in my life. I mean, it took us a while to get here, but it feels like I can breathe and exist.

SPEAKER_01

It's like life feels so much fuller. Oh, yeah. Not only because we are purposely seeking out the things that are more meaningful, but because once we have them, it's like your heart explodes in a way that visiting 10 countries and posting about them all day long and racking up Instagram likes will never do.

SPEAKER_00

I'm probably gonna get so much shit for this, but you know, like the story highlight of every country that you've been on. You know, like there was a point where that was kind of what I thought meant a rich and full life. That along with all the conventional successes.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, don't take them down. I'll still look at them if I'm planning a trip in the same country and I need tips. Don't take them down. But I know what you mean though. Yeah. That was what I was chasing.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

That and a bunch of other bullshit.

SPEAKER_00

But but now it's like I mean it's I don't think it's that I've completely let go of wanting to succeed, but what I pour my heart into now is just how I decide to like spend my energy, like being able to sit here and like just talk to you like every week. Like that's I don't know, like that's so that's so beautiful. I love to I love doing this with you. Bitch, shut it up. It's just like it's it's such a wonderful thing. And it's like, but again, it's like it's not that I want to not be successful in it. Like I'm so proud of us. I'm so proud of like we did something that we wanted to do, but in the moment, like right now, like right here, like all of that kind of just falls away, and and it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01

I know what you mean, where it's like, how many tallos did we get? Yeah, you know, yeah, how many sponsor us? Yeah. But when we really think about it, this right here is why we do it. It's magical. Funny how we found that in this hell. Well, that was fun.

SPEAKER_00

What a treat. This was really fun. I feel like this is a good one. Yeah.

Outro

SPEAKER_00

Alright, well, thank you everyone for tuning in. Cried a lot. Cried a lot. Yeah. Did you guys cry? It's okay if you didn't. But yeah, thank you everyone for tuning in. We really appreciate you being here and giving us this space. We love hearing from you. So if you have a sob story and you want to share a time that made you cry, or you have a recommendation for us, you know, for content for us to look into, we would love to hear from you. So you can DM us on Instagram, we're on Instagram and TikTok at BeerB Crying. And you can email us at hello at beer be cryingpodcast.com. You can submit a form on our website at beer be cryingpodcast.com. And yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I know that's our typical spiel, but I guess in light of what we had just talked about, I guess I just want to close with I know we do ask for rates and reviews and basically tell us how great we are. But I think if at the minimum you are listening to our show and you are allowing the words and the messages to resonate with you, that is more than enough for us. And we're just so appreciative that you are opening your hearts and your ears to our BS. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

All right. Okay, that's it. That's it. See ya. We're a comedy podcast again.

SPEAKER_01

You just gotta really look for it, you know. But yeah, sometimes. Sometimes. Okay, fine. I'll go away. You'll go away. I'll spend the next week writing a bunch of jokes. It's gonna be so fucking funny next week. All right, next week, no tears. No tears. Nah nah nah nah nah, because then our whole thesis is uh overthrow puts. Okay, well, we'll see what we pull up our sleeve next week. We'll see. But until then, beer bee crying.