Seasons (of Change)
Seasons is a podcast about change — the big shifts and the everyday moments that shape who we’re becoming.
Hosted by longtime friends Ndoni Khanyile and Mazuba Haanyama, each episode is a real, honest conversation about navigating life with courage, curiosity, and lots of laughter. Along the way, we talk to remarkable women who have weathered change - and the experts who help us make sense of it all.
Join us as we explore the lessons our seasons bring — in identity, career, love, creativity, friendship, and everything in between.
For anyone who’s ever asked: What now? What’s next?
Seasons (of Change)
Nurture your courage
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When the world shut down, poet and performer Staceyann Chin found herself returning home to Jamaica with her daughter — a move filled with both uncertainty and unexpected grace. In this episode of Seasons (of Change), we talk about what it means to go back to your roots, the fears that come with starting over, and the gifts that only courage can reveal.
Staceyann shares how motherhood, art, and place continue to shape her sense of freedom — and reminds us that courage isn’t the absence of fear, but what happens when we nurture it anyway.
I'm Doni, a storyteller and seeker.
SPEAKER_03Always curious about what makes us who we are. And I'm a zoom, a dreamer, a strategist, learning to find meaning in life's in-between moments.
SPEAKER_01From Cape Town to Dubai, we're two friends in conversation about life, growth, and everything that moves us. Each season we explore a different theme. This one's about change, how it stretches us, surprises us, and teaches us to begin again. You're listening to Seasons of Change.
SPEAKER_03Today's guest is Stacey Anchin, the author of the memoir The Other Side of Paradise, which chronicles her experiences growing up in Jamaica, coming out as a lesbian there, and the consequences which led to her fleeing the island in 1997. Motherstruck, Stacey Ann's most critically acclaimed solo theater piece, was directed by Cynthia Nixon and produced by Rosie O'Donnell. It chronicles her incredible experiences about motherhood. It opened in New York in December of 2015. Stacianne unapologetically identifies this Caribbean and black, Asian and lesbian and woman. She is the founder of Kendrick on the Rock, a 70-acre farm and community ground. She's also one of my dearest friends. The transition I'm most aware of, or that is like most glaring for me, is you're moving from New York after 24 years in the same apartment block back to Jamaica. And also after you bought a house.
SPEAKER_04And when I say root, I think of the mulch and the ick and the dirt and the water and all the minerals that help us to grow or hinder our growth. But I think the biggest change for me, my life, all that to say that our lives have been one snowballing change. You know, there's not been any period that we can say, oh, we were like very, you know, quietly sitting in this corner and living the same lives for many, many years. I think you and I, Mazuba, have had lives that have tumbled with change and been pulled and yanked and planted and really unearthed and all of that. So I think my life was pretty much the same after I left Jamaica at 24 and lived in the US until I was maybe, I don't know, 48 or 47 or something like that. As you said, I lived on the same block in New York City, in Brooklyn, in Crown Heights with my people, Jamaican Americans. Um and uh then I thought to myself, you know, um, you know, and I had a kid, that was a very big change. And then I had a I had a struggle with figuring out how to find home for that child. And I lived in um a one-bedroom apartment for five years, and uh then I jumped into a two-bedroom apartment in the same building for another three years, and then I realized that my life needed to expand more to make room for this child that was stretching and growing and moving and doing all of these things. Um, I realized that the world could not remain stagnant for her, whereas my childhood was so full of change and trauma and sorrow and you know, instability that I needed to give myself almost two decades of stability to kind of um even out. And then uh when I bought that, I realized she needed a room, so I bought a house. And that house process was crazy and beautiful, but it made me feel as if I was settling in, like my roots were sitting down in New York. You know, when you own a house, I mean a house is not a small thing, you know, not in you know, a consequence and not in you know cost and not in effort and not in size. And so I planted my butt down in this house and made this house very much our own with my own hands. I, you know, did doors and backyards and fences and walls and roofs. Um and then COVID happened. And I think I had a series of changes that were, you know, the house, the baby, the house, you know, the small movements that pushed me towards this moment of COVID. And COVID changed the whole world. It changed how we operate in the airport, it changed how we operate in the in our lives, in our, you know, it it forced us to say, who are my people? Who's in my pod? Whose breath can I risk today? And um, we came upon that as a reality. And I found myself um very much um in uh searching for community in the summertime when I was doing my house, and then the winter came and uh the winter closed in on us, and it was just me and my kid in my house in New York City, and every day she would wake up and she would say, Who's coming today, Mama? Do you think so-and-so, do you think Auntie this one would come? Do you think Auntie Lexley would come? Do you think Auntie this one would come? Do you think Auntie So-and-so would come? And um, no one came because it was winter and because everyone was afraid, and some people were sick, and some people had moved away, and we didn't have anybody in New York, and uh um I made the decision to go home to Jamaica for two weeks, and I went to Jamaica, landed in Jamaica at my friend's house, had uh a plethora of mangoes, face, hands, zuri, t-shirt filled with mango juice and uh conversations with friends, and everyone visited because we had verandas, we had porches, we had places outside to sit, we had yards, we had rocks, we had somewhere to just, you know, squat your bum and uh visit with a friend, even if the law said you couldn't be inside and with each other. And everyone came in and out for the hours that we were allowed to be outside. People would pass by and drop off this and drop off that. And I thought to myself, there is something in this community process that speaks to me, that something in me is answering to that. We are in a deep, deep conversation about that. I want to be in this place that had people willing to risk their life to drop off a piece of mango or a piece of bread pudding or a piece of yam or you know, something bought from the store. And I the two weeks stretched to four weeks and the four weeks stretched to six weeks, and then we said, Zuri and I said, let's stay a year. And after six months, I was like, I can't be a whole year in my friend's house. I should rent a house. And so I rented a house, and then I was this is a good life. This is a really, really good life, driving up to the door of my house and getting out of the car with the groceries, not having to park two blocks away and drag them, not there's you know, and then the the the winter came and it was warm, and uh there were black people around all the time, and uh you know, there were black pilots and black thieves and black garbage men and lecturers and black activists and black artists and black children and black adolescents, and um, I just said to myself, um maybe we can do two years five, and somewhere in that first year or two, I thought to myself, I need my own place. What kind of place would I need? And I was like, Oh, I need something big because I like community and I like people around me, and I like having a place where anyone can call me from anywhere as near as the airport to say, I'm coming, Stacey Ann. I'm here with child, with my partner. Can I come be with you? And my answer should be always yes.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so it's been five years now. I can't even believe that. Like, I don't even know what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_04In January, it'll be exactly five years since I got on a plane in the middle of COVID and left New York City.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so like I remember talking to you during this time, and there was just so much you were weighing up, right? About like what will Jamaica feel like now? How will you be able to live in your fullness in Jamaica? What what's um what might be missing, you know, by not being in the US? Like, I think the hardships and the softness and the softness that like home and just black folk can provide is so wonderful. But maybe I don't know what what was like top of mind? What what were you scared of? What what did you think might be at risk by making this move?
SPEAKER_04I think um I think I was very aware that there was much to gain, but but there was also a lot to lose. I worried that if it was the right move for my kid, you know, she had lived in such an expansive world around um identity and uh you know uh you know understandings about who she might become as a you know as a a being who identified in any sexual mode. Um so she lived in a world where being queer was you know as important as being straight. Um and so it in in in in I don't want to say it didn't matter because it does matter, but you were celebrated for making the choice or for living in whatever choice felt right to you. Um so I worried that she would be in a world that didn't celebrate that. Um I also worried um how she would live in a world that the roles of men and women were so stark, starkly you know defined for you. Um I also worried what would become about what would become of me. Would I become the person who would now hesitate to say I'm a lesbian every other word like I do in my regular life and be more hesitant about claiming it, saying it, presenting it for all to pay attention to, um, because I wanted to keep my kids safe or my own body safe. I worried about how I would make my living. I worried about um how I would still continue to do work that was radical when the publications that you would have to do that work inside of would be um would be traditionally expectedly homophobic and in many ways violently homophobic. Um I also worried that you know I was too American to transition to a normal life of being Jamaican. Uh you know, I I worried about who I would date, you know, in a place where it wasn't open. Um I worried about what it would be like to be a woman in her 50s, you know, or just on the cusp of 50, attempting to start over. You know, um and in many ways, you know, starting over in a place that had so much like trauma, you know, this is the place where I was um assaulted in my early 20s. It's you know, the experience here is why I left here in the first place, and why I, in many ways, became who I was, which is this fierce voice for, you know, um, you know, for w women's power or women's rights or women's voice. Um yeah, I mean, I worried about a lot of things. I mean, I I if I'm to be honest, um, the only reason I came, it's because I believe deeply in putting your money where you say your politics lie. I believe in in doing something even when you are frightened.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And what has come of those things five years in?
SPEAKER_04I mean, I would love to tell you that everything is like rosy and fabulous and amazing. And I suppose in many ways, I mean, perspective is everything, right?
SPEAKER_03100%. I think um let me just reflect on this and join anything that you can come in. I I do think there's something special about movement of place. Like when you have to like get into a mode of transportation and go somewhere else. Also, just what it takes, like who you have to be, how you have to gather yourself to find yourself, right? I I like just finding milk in a in a new place, finding the things that feel special, you know, finding the place where you buy bread, finding the faces where you can look to them and they recognize and you change your hair, or they're like, oh, you've been gone for a bit. Like finding that and what that takes, it's a special, special gift that I can really understand why we do less of it the older we get, because it's it's hard, it's really hard, but it's so beautiful when you welcome it into your life because it will it will do something to yourselves that is just really special.
SPEAKER_04Every immigrant in the world is saying hallelujah to your words. Every immigrant is saying, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Every Jamaican is saying, Where is the good Jamaican restaurant that I can go to and get some patty, get some Akian saltfish? Every South African is saying, where in God's name can I get some sampan beans? Like we every person, every person knows this, you know, you yourself half the way, uh halfway across the world from me, you know, you're asking for the things that are yours. Um what make you you? You know, what you know, I mean the smell of good food, the you know.
SPEAKER_03And and what is the you that you've become? You know what I mean? Like the you that is now. Listen, I'm sitting out here in Pristy Middle East. I went to London a month ago, and you know, I was like, you know, like, you know, catch a train to go from Bryson to London. I was like, okay, sure, I'm gonna do that. And then you know, I've got my little bags on trying to get to like uh the station, and I was like, oh no, this is no fun. We don't do this in Dubai. Somebody picks you up from the door, it was so sexy when we were 20. Oh my gosh, it was so ease of transport, so beautiful. I don't want it. Subway, fun, make it subway. I make no apologies for wanting soft and easy. As a black woman who is trying to figure out how to stay fruitful and vibrant in this life, today, I want soft. And your point about change, it is so ever present. And like when you get on the bandwagon of it, you do yourself a huge service because when you push against it, that's that's hard. But because I'm already inside of so much change, wherever I can lean into anything soft, oh my gosh, I lean. I don't do that thing anymore that says I'm gonna do it on my own. No, you want to help me? Sure. Please.
SPEAKER_04I think I um I think you you hit the nail on the head when you say I lean into, you know, it's not that we all just want soft, it's those of us who who who push at the at the boundaries of what is required all the time. Because you're a black queer mom from South Africa with, you know, um a transitioned mom. Like, there ain't no way you should be like, you know, where you are in the world and and and being who you are in the world. But because it has been such a hard road for you, you lean into the soft, which is a movement towards change. So that's what I'm saying. So it's not like you're like, oh, it, you know, people think soft and easy isn't change. It's change if you've had like rough and going and if you've been in that saddle moving up and down, then that's easy. And in fact, that may be hard for you because you're like, I don't do that anymore. But how much did it cost you to be to learn that journey that you should just shut up and be like, yes, thank you. I would like some help. How much journey did you make to get there?
SPEAKER_03Uh uh look, I've got two children. That's that's that's that's one part of the journey. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_01And also you've never seen it, right? Like, how many women in your life and your family that came before you had that help, had that? So it's like it know you it was never shown to you as well, which is well, this is also really interesting.
SPEAKER_03And I'm sorry to cut you off. Like this, I mean, I am I said this to you, Indoni, I say it's all the time. I am obsessed right now at what our generation, particularly of mothers, is doing to themselves and the hardship that we are under to try to do all of this alone. It is just stupid. Because my listen, my my grandmother, my aunties, they're like, this is not something you you can't child rear independently, it's not an independent endeavor. Like you bring the people together that you need. The women are around. There are young women who are making food for you, like we just gather. So my grandmother tilled the earth and she still does, and and and it's hard labor that she does. But every time she had a child, there were there were women around her to receive these children, you know. The thing we're doing now, it's for the birds, like you know, the village the village in Jamaica.
SPEAKER_04I mean, you ask me what I've gained, and I mean so seamless has been this gift of the community of women that it's almost like I'm almost at risk of not acknowledging it because it seemed so seamless, so easy, so wordless, so without the need to ask for it. You know, like all of the big things I think I've learned that that I've I've I've I've I've got from being here, the biggest of which is a community of folks who just show up. You know, I move back and forth between the farm and the house in Kingston, and I'm not always able to pick up Zuri. I'm not always able to do what I need to do for her. But there's always a bunch of like three, four, five women who I can call and say, I can't get there. And you know, they'll say, Oh, well, I have a court, I have to be in court at two, but I guess you know, court will have to wait because Zuri has to be paid.
unknownExactly.
SPEAKER_04You know, in New York, I tell the story of being in New York where um I asked uh, you know, I had made plans with a friend for a friend to come over and watch my kid. And uh I got a phone call from that friend, pretty good friend, who said, you know, Stacey Ann, I I can't come to sit Zuri for you because, you know, um my friends called and we're gonna go out and have a drink, and I have to go and have this drink because like for my own sanity, for my own health. And I I tell that story, and people go, Oh my god, that's so terrible. What a what an awful friend. And I think to myself, I want to say to them, not really, because when you live in those brutal global north, predominantly white, fast moving, in you know, isolated cities with millions and millions of people, sometimes seeing your friends for a drink is a lifesaver. Oh, yes, the brutality of the life you lead, being out with them for people who love you and you love them for two hours when they can only be available those two hours and they make a plan. Sometimes it's life-saving for you in the world in which you live. But the rippling, the kind of like repercussions of that, it means that I can't go to work because my kid doesn't have a sitter. And that person has to make a choice between their sanity and sitting my kid. And in Jamaica, I think my friend can still make that choice, but it doesn't mean that she's the only choice I have.
SPEAKER_03100%.
SPEAKER_04It means if I call her and she's like, I really can't, I have to go do this thing, then I'm like, okay, cool. And then I call Sandro or I call Vivette or I call Simone or I call there's always somebody else to call who someone who's gonna not have your kid be sitting at school for five hours while you make a trip from wherever you're coming from. And that that community, that that, that, that I think that that's something that you know, when when life is not so expensive, when we live in more community, when there's more distance between, when there's more distance between ourselves and our jobs, where people can do something with you or for you after work. When when my friend can make, when I can make smoothies and my friends can drive by my house and pick it up on their way to work. That doesn't really happen in London so much because every trip in New York, in London, in they take hours or an hour or 45 minutes. So you don't really have 45 minutes to go collect a smoothie. Whereas if you're in if you're in Jamaica and you live in the kind of setup I live where people can just kind of like zip by. It takes two minutes and you get a hug and you get a smoothie, and they're like, oh yeah, I made this, uh, you know, I brought you a sandwich as well. Like it's it's a very different kind of life. Um, and I think also the the societal norms are different. Like I find that here, work isn't everything.
SPEAKER_02I can say so much about this. I'm just gonna keep quiet right now. I could like literally the Middle East is yeah, go ahead.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but it's funny that we were just talking about this the other day of just feeling like a human, because so many times like the systems that we move in just deplete us of that feeling of just being able to feel like a human being on a day-to-day basis. Um, but I'm just going back to what you were saying and how beautifully you were describing change before when I really felt that about the fact that we're we're always sort of taking off and leaving behind things that no longer fit and moving towards new other things that are like constantly calling to us. But it feels to me, and this is also where I am very much right now, it feels to me like a heart of that as well as like learning to listen to ourselves or just deepening that trust of listening to yourself and being guided by yourself. So I'm curious if in this process that you've been describing, like have you had to learn how to listen to yourself more deeply or learn how to listen to yourself differently?
SPEAKER_04Yes. Yes. I think growing up, um many of us as black girls, um as queer people, as you know, maybe artists or activists, we are we are told that how we think, what we believe, what we know to be true for ourselves, what we want for ourselves, is a kind of like strange and or fantasy or wild idea, you know, or you know, at best it's not um it's not suited for the world we are constructing. And I think um, I think my whole life I've been told that. And you know, I I'd say that it is it was in New York that I found the compass to be comfortable listening to my own voice. Um, you know, it takes the understanding, it takes, you know, you have to have the concept, you have to have a dream, an idea that you want to move towards. And then you have to have the courage to follow it, and then you have to have the community that supports it, and you have to have another community, you know, you have to have some kind of celebration of it. And so those four C's kind of what I look for in like completing uh any task. You know, you you have your you have the idea in your head or a feeling. Sometimes it's it's just a a small desire that everything in you is saying no, no, no. So I think um I think in my life I have been encouraged, you know, to leave school, go get a job, and stay in that job. And I think um I said no to that because I didn't want to leave high school and go straight to a job. And even though there was no money for me for tertiary education, I fought tooth and nail and kind of did all kinds of you know, interesting kind of uh, you know, financial backflips to afford college and university and learned so much in those spaces and found so much more of myself, and that affirmed me. And then I had to migrate and all of those big ideas where uh when I migrated, someone said, Oh, you know, why don't you just find a you know a nice job and sit there? And I'm like, no, but I like this poetry thing, I like this being on stage telling stories thing, I like this theater thing, I like this, you know, challenging people's ideas of who they are and who I am, and then I did that and I was affirmed. I think you have to nurture your courage. You have to make space for the idea that is, you have to, just like you when you when you you know when you get pregnant, you can't just like drink all the alcohol in the world and like you know, do all the things that are not, you know, that are not nurturing to the growth of a human being if you want to hold on to that, you know, tiny concept inside of your room. You have to do all the things, you have to make sure, even when it's tiny, tiny, tiny, especially when it's time, you have to do the things that are important to keep it growing and keep it safe. And then when it gets to the place as it grows, you eat all the right foods. You don't, you know, you're not climbing any mountains and jumping off a bunch of jumping when you're pregnant or whatever, the things that you need to do to be safe. And then just before it becomes, it comes into like full fruition, just before birth, you have to be extra careful and you have to say, No, I'm not gonna eat what you give me, I'm not gonna sit around here, I'm not gonna have anybody stress me and have my blood pressure grow up. And next thing I know I have precampsia. I have to do all the things that I need to do at the various stages of this thing that I say that I'm nurturing. So if you want to leave something, if you want to go after something, if something is important to you and it's just a small idea, just like a small fire, you have to cover it from this wind that might not mean it any ill wind, but might have an ill effect on it. And so you have to protect it. And as it grows, you have to give it what it needs. You have to figure out what are the things that need my ideas. So when you're talking about listening to yourself, that's a lifelong process for any idea, any feeling, any desire that you have. If it you want to have a kid, if you want to have a relationship, if you want to follow a particular kind of job, if you want to move from one place to the next, you have to find a way to cover your courage initially. And then you have to find a way to make it grow. And then as it grows, you have to like figure out how to push all the other things out of the way so that it can have the room to grow. And as it's about to burst forward and become something else, you have to be like, all right, what does this thing need? All right, everybody back up. Okay, I need you to bring this thing over here. No, it needs a little support under here. You have to do that kind of work to make the idea grow. And the thing that begins as the tiniest idea, then it becomes like this huge tree or this huge farm or this big growth or this two children that you are half the way a world or half the world away, like holding. Like you, you have to figure out, you have to have like some understanding of, you know, you have to be connected to something that even though you don't know exactly what it's gonna be, because when the baby's, you know, just the pea size, and you don't know if it's gonna be, you know, loud or quiet, or if it's gonna be, you know, full of anxiety, or if it's going to like punch you in the nose if you should chat, you know, charge at it with any kind of, but you you have to give it the same kind of protection and you have to be connected to the desire for it. And that's a thing that black women don't have a lot of. We know what we're supposed to go after, we know what we're supposed to be doing, we know what the world wants us to do, but we have very little concept of what it is that I want to do when I am covered up in my bed, when I am under the sheets and no one is watching, and when I am so safe with myself, what is that tiny desire that needs just a little hand cupped over it for it to catch and grow? What is that? And it's for you to figure it out, and it's for you to give yourself the space to figure it out, and it's for you to like have conversations with your friends from South Africa and from you know, fucking like you have to be everywhere, you have to be every you have to be in conversation with all of your people, you have to get all of your like cheering squad on the on on up on deck to be like, girl, of course you can. Oh, hey, nothing, oh yeah, listen, you need five dollars, I got two of it, you know. Like you need your people, and that's why community is important for everything that you do. Community is important. It might be that the community might not be all on board. It might be that the community that you're in is not the right community, but you have got to figure out how it is that you do not go it alone, and I can tell you that in my 50s, I'm all about going far. You know, I'm about going good, I'm about going with my friends, you know. Um, you know, I'm talking to both of you, and I'm thinking like, how the hell am I gonna get these two to come to Jamaica and be on this farm with me for a week?
SPEAKER_01At this point in your life now, what do you feel like you cannot live without? What do you have to have in your life, in your day, in your world?
SPEAKER_04I have to have uh a home where my chosen community can come to rest with me. Whatever that means, a night, two nights a week, I have to have uh a community to come. I have to have uh books stories that matter to me that I can visit and revisit. Um I have to have an openness to welcome the next chapter. I have to be able to let my kid go if she wants to go. I have to be able to and I you know, and and I guess maybe the list is growing, but I need people around me who can tell me when I'm off course, people I trust, people who believe in the larger dream of who I want to be. Who can say to me, I think you're a little off course today. Can we talk about that? And I can feel good about it and say, okay, don't like being off course, but love, you know, love being able to be called out. Um and good food, good food. Oh my god, the farm has really changed my life. I need good food, I need food that looks like it came from somewhere it was growing, either off a tree, on a ground. I need to, the the the animals I'm eating, I want to know what lives they lived. You know, I want to be held accountable, you know, for eating animal meat in that if I don't know where they're from, if I have to be so removed from their death, then I don't earn the right to eat that meat. So I want to have a closer relationship with the origin of my food. And I want to see my friends more. Can you please come? Can you please come to Jamaica?
SPEAKER_03Oh, it's so beautiful. I think we got our homework, Ndoni. Nurture your courage, you know. I think I think all of that felt like what we're doing here, what we're trying to do here.
SPEAKER_04For sure, because no one can tell you what it's gonna be like. And not even you know what it's gonna be like. It's gonna be one thing you can you can you can you can bet your all your money on, it's gonna be unexpected. It's gonna be not what you expect. So you need to figure out how to you know face the wind, even when it's like not what you were expecting.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for listening to this episode of seasons.
SPEAKER_03If something in this conversation resonated with you, share it with someone you think might be interested too.
SPEAKER_01And if you enjoyed listening, please rate or review the show. It really helps people find us. Until next time, take care and keep growing through your season.