And then he was like, and next up, Natalie, and I was like, ah, this I missed up, I missed up. I made a mistake, right? So I cry and die in that moment, and I go up there and I have my paper in my hands and I attempt to read my poem.

What happened with my body is like first of all as if this was this body did not belong to me I

felt utterly betrayed because I have never I was shaking in places I didn't know

you could shake, okay?

My knees were shaking in directions, knees don't go in.

I could not catch my breath in the middle of the palm.

I was like, I don't even know why I wrote this

poem these are too many words who cares about the stop like I just had abandoned the

passion that I had when I was furiously writing the poem I no longer was attached to, did not care about, thought it was the

dumbest poem in the world, and then suddenly was like questioning my existence.

So I'm like begging the universe to just open up a hole in the floor at this point because I'm like oh my God I have so much more on this paper to go and I finish and I

teleport back to my seat because I cannot even tell you how I got back to my seat.

When we're talking about

when we're talking about diversity, it's not a box to check. It is a reality that should be deeply felt and held and valued by all of us.

So that was an Ava Duverney quote that was featured on the side of a vegan cafe in Los Angeles

by the A Love Language Project, which was co-founded by today's guest, a spoken word artist

and educator named Natalie Patterson. My name is Light Watkins and I am the

host of at the end of the tunnel and funny enough I happen to be at that cafe with Ava duverne, who's a friend, and we saw that quote of hers painted on the

side of the cafe and we took a photo in front of it, not knowing that Natalie, who's also a friend of mine was one of the

creators of that mural so when I found all of that out during our interview it was a

really nice small world moment for me so Natalie and I crossed paths for the first time at one of my

shine events back in, I believe it was 2017, where she opened the show with a spoken word

...