I’m a singer-songwriter, I'm a performer, I'm an actress. And when I graduated Brown, I went on to do work in that field, and it went really great. And I got on a soap opera, and I got an Emmy nomination. And I met and married my husband, and everything was really good. And I was really happy. Until things weren't good. And then I wasn't happy. And all of a sudden, the Emmy went to somebody else, the soap opera I was on was canceled, my husband and I were... we were physically separated... I went into really one of the darkest times of my life. And I started blaming my circumstances. The agents, you know, all the things, all the circumstances in my life. And because none of those were under my control, I felt victimized, and I felt stuck and I felt like, you know, the world was against me.

And after weeks and months of really being in my darkest place, I recognized that I couldn't stay there. I started to study and read and come to find out there's all of this information about the power of thought and this idea that between our circumstances and the way we feel about our circumstances, live our thoughts, what I call our soundtrack that's on loop in our mind, and our inner voice. And it's what's coming out of that space that determines how we feel, not the circumstances. But we spend so much time blaming the circumstances... When the truth is, the power to feel better, to feel optimistic and at peace and empowered and all of those things, is actually within ourselves. And that's what I call emotional sovereignty.

DAJ: One day, I was walking down in the Lower East Side... I said I was going to go say, "Hey, Miss Vinie." And she came up to me, grabbed me by the hand, shook me... and she said, "Life is motion. Life is motion! Life is motion!" And she walked away.

RR: I’m so glad you mentioned Vinie... I was having a miscarriage. And I had just found out that I was having a miscarriage. And so I went to rehearsal... Vinie was watching me... And when I came in, she said, "What is it?"... And I said, "I'm having a miscarriage." And she said, "No! It's the end of the world." And I said, "Yes." And she said, "But it isn't."... It's perspective, it's reframing, it's taking these circumstances and looking at them in all the different ways. I had another friend of mine say -- during my third miscarriage -- say to me, "Your body's getting ready for the one." And I remember taking that. Instead of giving up and all of that, I said, "Oh I'm getting ready for the one." This work is about recognizing the agency that we have. We have so much more power than we give ourselves credit for, because life is going to life, right? Things are going to happen... So how can you take that and use it to empower you, to lift you up instead of letting it knock you down?

The program, the process that I have, I called it "tune your inner voice." Step one, I call it the crucial first step, is to acknowledge that there's this space and acknowledge that you have agency in this space, and acknowledge that it's your thoughts that determine how we feel and you are the thinker of your thoughts. The next one... is to really investigate what you're feeling... sit with it, name it. There's science behind naming a feeling and how already the feeling starts to kind of dissipate when you can name it.

Step three is to find the thought that is really triggering that feeling, right? Not the circumstance, the thought. And I call it an automatic screwy thought or an automatic sabotaging thought, an AST. And then we shift the thought into what I call an INT, an intentionally nourishing thought. And that is like an affirmation... it's your customized affirmation. And then, because I come from music... we then take that INT and attach it to a melody, make it a song. So I call it a songtra. Songtra is now your personalized affirmation, your personalized mantra, to a melody that can stick in your head... whether you use that songtra in advance... you could also use them in the middle of crisis.

I do want to just take time to acknowledge that you belong to tradition, right? And of course, your incredible parents, Diana Ross and Berry Gordy, who were way makers... And also your years of study with Abbey Lincoln... I think of this all as a relay race. That we get from our ancestors something that we should not set down, but we must carry forward, but in our way.

RR: I do come out of jazz... Abbey Lincoln [taught me] about making your own music. That Duke Ellington made Duke Ellington’s music, and Thelonious Monk made his music. So to that idea, yes, I'm making my own continuation. And what I want to say is, this is personal work... Eric Liu said this morning... "Sovereignty is not just 'get off my lawn.' Sovereignty is also 'I'm responsible for my lawn.'" And so I say that to say when we are responsible for our own lawns and our own selves and our own mindset and our own feelings, that reverberates. We're no longer victimized by what other people do... but we also don't become the victimizers. I think at scale, it's big. I think when we look at all the unkindness, all the inequities, all the violence, all the cruelty, all the genocide, it is because somebody has decided that somebody else has to do something for them to feel better. And the minute we stop that, it ends.