In Part 2 of our conversation with Nisha Tracy, the Clinical Director of Clean & Sober Streets, we discuss the challenges inherent in developing a healthy, joyful life as well as some of the ideas and concept undergirding the organization’s approach.

Elizabeth: So I wanna ask, one of the things that strikes me is this whole term “in recovery.” I think that’s just such an extraordinarily powerful concept. That a person is in this continuous state of recovery, that there’s this kind of dynamic state that they’re in that brings with it, on the one hand, a kind of humility that you’re not [00:33:00] done yet. You’re in process, as we are all in process. But it’s also a deeply self-knowing concept. And you’ve talked a lot about self-knowledge in this methodology, in this program that you have, and all of the dimensions of mindfulness and reflection. And you’ve really beautifully elaborated on the dissonance between, as you say, the reality and the suffering mind. Can you speak a little bit about how that term in recovery or just the consciousness of being in this continuous process relates to the whole larger process of regaining equilibrium and an interior piece with that new journey that someone is on?

Nisha: If you don’t feed the better, if you don’t continue to work on yourself, for lack of better terms, the natural predisposition is to go back to old habits. And so, it is a [00:34:00] constant process of working on yourself. But I also think in terms of myself, I’m also in a constant process of trying to keep my spiritual mind intact. Because the worldly mind of trying to deal with this thing and that thing and solve these problems and not get too caught up in the world, that’s just a constant process. And so, when we talk about being in recovery, there is a level of humility, but humility is an interesting word because humility is really being clear on what you know and what you don’t know. It’s not that you constantly are thinking lowly of yourself. It’s really just being clear on here’s where, here’s what I know and here’s all the things I don’t know.

And if you think about—and again, I’m probably going off in a different direction—but if you think about the amount of information, you could possibly know you know about your life and this situation, and then you think about all the other situations and all the different lives that people lead, the amount I know is just so infinitely small compared to the breadth of knowledge. And so, it’s really approaching life [00:35:00] that way. In that I don’t need to, I don’t need to solve the world’s problems or figure this thing out or figure—I just need to deal with the day in front of me. This one day at a time thing, which is really key to, just, health and wholeness.

And in recovery we have, again, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of having a recovery community, of going to meetings, of having a sponsor, of having someone who isn’t going to cosign everything you say just because they’re—even therapists do this sometimes where they’re just so busy supporting the person that they’re not informing them that they’re running in towards a brick wall. But a sponsor really is a different type of relationship where it’s like, “Here’s what you’re working on, here’s what you’re doing, and here’s where here’s where you might be going off course.”

And what you’ll find is—because again, moment to moment things change—what you’ll find is as you go through life, things will come up, and you need to continue to work on those things as they come up. “My niece was murdered last week. I need to be able to go talk about that in a meeting, and I can’t.” And I need to be [00:36:00] able to have a community to lean back on if that happened, right? It’s really having all these things, it’s really a lifestyle change. And being able to live in a way where you’ve set yourself up for success and that really looks like not allowing the little me or the baser self control. And the only way to stay out of that is to really have community have the, lean on the wisdom of the group, lean on the wisdom of someone else.

Michael: So you mentioned in the previous question this whole notion of the larger culture. And I when I think of the larger culture, I think of the larger culture is really messed up in a lot of ways. And in fact, I would say the larger culture is addictive. It breeds addiction.

Nisha: Absolutely.

Michael: It breeds addiction. Then you mentioned the importance of the community that you develop here [00:37:00] for the client. It’s not just the client. It’s the client within this community. And I would assume that the community you’re creating here would be a healthy community.

Nisha: The community is the client.

Michael: Right, or are the clients, you mean.

Nisha: Yeah, so what I mean to say is that the individual needs are important, but the community is the client in so much that community is healthy is how much the client is healthy. If that makes any sense.

Michael: Somewhat. But so you’re obviously, you’re dealing with the individual and that individual is existing with 34 other individuals within this residential—and that the 34 together make up a community of people.

Nisha: Yes.

Michael: And so you’re trying to make sure that the individual client is responding to the larger community and the larger community is responding to the individual. And so you’re working on both together to keep that whole group and the individuals within that group thinking in a healthy manner.

Nisha: Absolutely.

Michael: So it’s a recovery, to be in [00:38:00] recovery—t is an odd term, I mean, recovering from what—but obviously you’re trying to in a sense have the person reimagine what healthy is.

Nisha: Absolutely, and not even reimagine, reconnect with what healthy is, right? Because a lot of times people know. They know it’s not healthy what they’re doing. It’s not like I’m giving them brand new information that smoking crack is bad. It’s—sorry, I’m not trying to be indelicate—I’m not giving them brand new information. It’s reconnecting with the internal knowing.

Michael: Yeah, but when I guess I was—whatever is driving them to do the crack is the unhealthy, sort of, the root cause.

Nisha: The root cause, but they know the root cause is bad too, right? So if my, I’m not trying to get weird, but it’s, I know that my father molesting me was not okay. And I know that screwed me up. I know that. You don’t, you don’t need to go to school to figure that out. But it’s reconnecting with my sense, my internal, because what happens is like trauma will disconnect you from your sense of [00:39:00] intuition. And will disconnect you from, your kind of your basic sense of values and your sense of self and everything else. And so, it’s not just reteaching people some basics. It’s like, they know the basics. It’s really getting into reconnecting with what they know internally. Again, getting reconnected with the innate wisdom. That is, when I eat this food, I don’t feel well, so I’m going to stop eating this food, right? No one needs to tell you to not eat bad food, right? Because it makes you sick. It’s more like connecting with that in a real way.

Michael: Yeah, but like with, I don’t want to just be devil’s advocate.

Nisha: Of course.

Michael: But like with food, most people don’t even realize that they’re eating toxic food. It’s just mass produced and they’re eating all of this bad food, but they think it’s good food and then, or they don’t even think that it’s bad food.

Nisha: Oh yeah. Or they’re addicted to the—yeah, and there’s actually some real evidence behind like the [00:40:00] addictive qualities of certain kinds of food. Absolutely.

What I guess I’m saying here is that you have to develop some—they’re developing distance from the last use. Which actually, just time is a big deal. Time from the last use is a big deal. And they’re developing a sense of, yes, what healthy community looks like. Yes, we are teaching, we do teach drug education. Of course we do all the basics. Of course we teach about triggers. Of course we teach about coping skills in their traditional sense. And we’ve integrated all of that with—but again, never getting away from that sense of internal wisdom. Because who are you when no one else is looking? Because the unfortunate reality of addiction is addiction will have you manipulating and doing all these other things to try to get your fix and all this other stuff. And so those behavioral habits tend to follow you even into sobriety. And it’s really breaking that stuff up as well. And connecting yourself with a higher spiritual understanding and again, not religiosity but really your [00:41:00] sense of spirit.

So getting away from—one of the other big things I work on with clients or teach in a very literal way is, like, you’re not your body. You’re not your thinking. And you’re not your behavior. You’re not a culmination of every bad thing that ever happened to you. You’re not your experiences, actually. Because you can sit here and recount your experiences but who had those experiences? Well, you did. Who are you? It’s really playing with that sense of spirit which is beyond—because again, our population gets so caught up in shame and guilt and all these other things—because they do know. And they know that it wasn’t okay that they weren’t there for their kids. They don’t need to be told that. It’s, but it’s connecting with, there’s a part of them in there that knows. And there’s a part of them in there that can do better for themselves. And it’s not about pleasing, your P.O. or pleasing your mother or pleasing whoever. It’s about loving yourself, essentially.

Elizabeth: Yeah, you talked earlier, Nisha, about inherent worthiness, which [00:42:00] is a beautiful term, of just deeply reconnecting, as you say, to this kind of spiritual dimension of one’s own worthiness. I want to ask you a little bit about how the actual art therapy process gets to that… makes that manifest, is a conduit, is a sort of channel through which an individual can really go deep into this more creative zone and have that integration of self and integration of internal and foundational worthiness find a path forward.

Nisha: Absolutely. So, art therapy can be used in a lot of different ways. The first thing I always tell people is that art therapy is not about making good art. “Good art”—and I always use quotation marks because who the heck knows what that means. Exactly. And it’s, again, it’s about expression.

And there are two basic ideas around art therapy. One is like art is therapy, which is just the idea of the making of [00:43:00] the art is therapeutic in and of itself. Just making it, right? It doesn’t matter what the product is, just the making. There’s this sort of psychodynamic perspective where it’s you give somebody a directive, you see how they do the directive, they put together this thing in a certain way, you’re using this as a metaphor for psychological processes. I do both. We do both. Because they both have their roles.

I think that the physical experience of art making so the physical experience of putting a brush to paper, the physical experience of drawing, even scribbling, can have a really kinesthetic effect. It’s taking that emotion and it’s moving it through. Have you ever tried to think your way out of a feeling? It doesn’t work, generally speaking. I can tell myself that I shouldn’t be angry all day long, but it doesn’t really change the emotion. If I paint my anger, that has a completely different energy to it, because by the time I’m done doing it, which usually has a lot of energy to it—I’m speaking from experience—it’s like it’s [00:44:00] moved, it’s transmuted into something else. And so it’s not non-acceptance. It’s accepting the anger exactly as it is, to paint it. And so again, it’s facing everything I’m doing with acceptance.  I’ve had people paint their grief. What does that look like? How does it feel? “What do you mean paint my grief?” What are some of the emotions? “I feel rage.” Or, maybe, “I feel sadness.” What is it? What color is the sadness? And then you paint that again.

We’ve also used the psychodynamic perspective where you’re going to say, “Draw yourself on a bridge and going from some place to some place else.” Most people do you know from their addiction to their sobriety. Where are you on the bridge? And there’s value in that too. But again, it’s not to get into, you know, reading what the picture means, you know, it’s really a collaborative process between yourself and the client.

Another thing that makes art therapy kind of special is that that there’s an internal process that happens between the client and their artwork that I’m not even really involved in. And so, that [00:45:00] lessens the reliance of the client on the therapist to be the therapist. That I’m really not trying to create a dependence here. I’m really trying to give you tools so you can do your own processing. Also, the artwork itself, let’s say we did an art therapy session, you created this painting, we bring the art into the room, and the art is, it’s almost like the third person in the room, and we can, maybe you don’t feel comfortable talking about yourself, and like all the stuff you’re going through, but we can talk about it in the artwork, and that feels a little safer.

The last thing that’s really special about art therapy is you can track your work, right? So you can have a painting on day one, and day two, day three, whatever. Session one, session two, session three, whatever. And start looking at it that way.

That’s with the art therapy, but we’ve also done, Clean & Sober Streets, we’ve also integrated, we have a poetry group. We have music therapy. We have a music therapist on staff. I’m not going to pretend I know about music therapy, but I do know that music has an incredibly healing quality.

Michael: Do you do drama therapy?

Nisha: I don’t have a drama [00:46:00] therapist, but I’d love to get somebody. But even like Gestalt therapy, there’s a lot of overlap between drama and Gestalt therapy. And like the empty chair technique, have you ever heard of that?

Michael: No.

Nisha: Where you, basically it’s where—we use it in grief a lot—it’s like where you imagine that whoever is in this chair, in the empty chair, and you say what you need to say to them. And so you play that out. And you can also even do it where you maybe use another person, right? And I’m going to, for this moment, I’m going to be your father and you’re going to say what you need to say to me. And so that, those connections, those types of activities can be incredibly healing.

We can also do a journaling group, expressive writing group, but it’s really, because again, just like in school, different people learn different ways. I’m not expecting that art therapy is going to work for everybody, but I’m giving, I’m expanding the toolbox. I’m giving people more than just this one way of healing and. And again, increasing engagement. People feel excited to make something. There’s something inherently beautiful about making anything. And again, [00:47:00] whether it’s visual arts, any of the creative expressions.

Michael: So you’re very invested in the process of making art itself. And that’s at the center of it.

Nisha: Yes.

Michael: Because you said you didn’t, it’s not about interpreting the art. It’s not about—I guess the client might start talking about why the art is, and then you could obviously interact with the client and they could maybe come to understand something through that interpretation of the art. To me, it sounds similar—and I guess maybe just because I’m I’ve read a lot of Jungian psychology and a lot of the things you’re talking about in terms of spirit and all—that sort of approach sounds, that psychology is what you’re engaged in a lot, is that correct? Or is there another methodology behind the art therapy in particular that you’re involved in?

Nisha: Different, again, I can’t speak for all of art therapy, because again, there’s like a bunch of different people who use it in a lot of different ways.

Michael: Oh, here at the—?

Nisha: No, not here at the facility, just in, as the art therapy association in the field, so I would be remiss in saying, oh, this is [00:48:00] the only way to do it. This is the way I do it. And I might use things that are more existential, more Jungian, more in that vein. Other people might use other methodologies. Honestly, the art is the tool. It’s not always the exact thinking process that goes behind it. But you can use it, yeah.  

Michael: It sounds like they might keep a portfolio, because you talked about it—

Nisha: Yeah, you could! Yeah, people do. Or people hang up their work, or they make something, and then we’ll hang something up as a reminder for themselves. And I’ll just also talk about how images are sometimes easier to recall than words, right? Let’s say we’re working on gratitude affirmations—I actually do this—we’re working on gratitude affirmations that day. If you can come up with an image to correlate with that affirmation, that image might come to you a lot faster than remembering the, “What was the exact words of that affirmation?” But I can come up with the image of, maybe it’s the sun, right? And then and then that kind of that feeling I [00:49:00] experience when I’m doing that gratitude affirmation is much more easy to recall. I also talk a lot about what happens in my mind is real. If I can create it in my mind, it physically manifests in my body. So if I can use the art or use the drama or use the writing to create a different reality in my mind, then I can actually experience that physically.

Elizabeth: Yeah. We’re all artists here, and we’re all educators, and I don’t, I’m sure we would all speak passionately about the healing and renewing power of being, quote, “in the zone” when you’re creating something, to just go deep into that kind of creative space that is in itself deeply healing, and for clients to experience that kind of equilibrium and just the sort of deep concentration and what, what really emits from that. I’m wondering if you could give us a little just a summation of—you’ve talked about the different forms and the different modalities [00:50:00] of Clean & Sober Streets use of the arts. Creative writing and visual art. You talked about music. Is there an innovative aspect to all of that integration? What is it about Clean & Sober Streets’ this sort of integration of everything that is truly innovative?

Nisha: I’m not entirely sure how to answer that question. I’m going to be honest with you.

Elizabeth: I’m talking about the sort of holistic approach that the organization has.

Nisha: Yeah, I think, I’m not going to sit here and say, oh, we’re the first organization who’s used this. No, of course there’s other organizations that use holistic techniques. I think that it’s unusual in this space—

Michael: And with this particular client.

Nisha: In this particular client population. And I would say there’s no other residential treatment in DC that functions quite the way we function. I’ve never—and what I’ll also say is, I also know what I don’t know. And it’s I know this client population, I know this location, I know the way we work, I know a little bit about what other [00:51:00] people are doing, but I just know that we are just deeply committed to our clients and finding what works and adjusting when it doesn’t.

Michael: Yeah something that, as an educator, and I will admit that I’ve studied education a little bit, but I’ve been an educator, I was an educator for 40-plus years, and I’ve read stuff on education, but I will admit that most of the stuff I’ve learned from education is from having to actually work with students. And observing students, interacting with students, seeing what works, what doesn’t work. And in terms of the, the academic knowledge of art therapy versus your own direct experience of being in this environment for, what, ten years?

Nisha: Yeah, ten years.

Michael: Ten years and learning on a daily basis, can you just talk about, how much you’ve learned just from the actual reality of practice versus academic study and academic research? Because for me, as an educator, I will admit, I’ve learned most [00:52:00] from just doing it and being aware of what’s working, what’s not working, and how different minds interact with different approaches, et cetera.

Nisha: Absolutely. It’s you have to go to school to know what, to realize that you didn’t need it totally. I think that education is really important. Don’t get me wrong. It is absolutely important. It’s important that we have licensure and all of those things. And at the same time, there’s nothing that replaces, like you said, the real-world reality of who’s in front of you.

I’ve learned more than I learned in school by a long shot being here. And it’s not from reading more—I actually, no, that’s not true. I do a lot of reading. I read a lot of books. But it’s taking that book knowledge and really, again, integrating it into reality. I’ll read about this thing, and then what does that look like if we were to play that out on the floor? Or, what does it look like to bring this kind of knowledge to the [00:53:00] clients? I don’t know—I have a whole library of books that I offer to clients too, and filled with books like Dopamine Nation, I don’t know if you’ve ever read that, but it’s really good. It’s, there’s all sorts of literature out there.

I’m getting really off topic because I got lost in my own thinking. But that’s another thing I’ve learned. It’s like, being present with yourself. And yeah, people think I’m nerdy and weird, which is just an accurate assessment. But I oftentimes, even with the clients, speak out what’s going through my mind so that they know that I’m not somebody over here who’s just got all the answers and knows exactly what needs to be done and this is how we do it. And I mean, I don’t sell them on that because it’s just not real.

The reality is that we’re dealing with a very dynamic disease. We’re dealing with dynamic people and so sometimes I don’t know, and I’m just trying to think through this or I’m considering that. And I will let people in on my internal dialogue having to do with what’s going on in my brain. Because I think it’s just so important to let people know that we’re all [00:54:00] just human trying to do our human thing. And really, recovery is about life. About living. And about, how do I live? How do I engage with life in a way that brings me joy?

And that’s something that anybody can relate to. That’s something I can relate to. I’ve learned a lot through some of my own work. I never meditated before coming here and working. That’s not something I do. But I spend a lot of time meditating. I spend a lot of time working on the way I perceive things and think about myself and think about myself in relationship to others. And think about what are all the labels that I spend putting on myself or spend putting on other people?

And again, I’m getting off a bit on a tangent, but it’s like one of the themes—I told you we do themes of the week—and one of the themes of the week that we do is, who am I? And that one’s such a profound one, because I really break it down to being beyond form. Who am I beyond form? Because you can have two people you label with the same exact labels, you could be twins [00:55:00], living in the same household, but you’re fundamentally different spirits. Who are you? You’re not, you’re not your race, you’re not your gender, you’re not your body, you’re not your thoughts.

Michael: Do you have some clients that just don’t—

Nisha: Resonate with that?

Michael: Don’t know how to interact with this word “spirit?”

Nisha: I use the word—

Michael: ‘Cause I always, part of me just cringes and goes, “spirit?” What the hell are you talking about?

Nisha: So we can use the word—

Michael: ‘Cause it’s not very existential if you talk about spirit.

Nisha: It’s not. So, you can use the word “soul,” you can use the word, honestly with this group, there’s very little resistance having to do with the sense of soul or a sense of some kind of spiritual path. I’ve only in the entirety, 10 years of me being here, I’ve only had one person have a real trouble with that. Most people believe that the only reason they’re here is because God got them here some kind of way.

Michael: So spirit for them is some kind of religious connotation?

Nisha: It usually comes out of a religious connotation, but I really expand it because, again, people have been [00:56:00] traumatized by their religious institutions, too. And so it’s really expanding what does it mean when I say God? God is just a word. God is a signpost. What do we mean when you talk about that? What is, what is the power of creation? You take it out. We’re a little, I’m not, I’m actually stealing the words from Michael Singer, but we’re, little beings on this tiny little dirt ball flying around in the middle of nowhere, and what does that mean? It’s just really going out with it, but the idea there is to just really get into… is to really get into what’s important. What’s important for me. If this is my only life—and again, I’m open to the possibility that there’s other options out there—if this is my, if this is the only life I’m aware of—

Michael: Right.

Nisha: Then what am I doing?

Michael: Then, let me just—and Elizabeth, you can jump in. Going back to the existentialism. Ultimately, they’re the ones who are gonna create their spirit. And a part of this podcast is built on this notion that we are endlessly [00:57:00] creating ourselves. But we are engaged, each individual is in the process of creating who they are. So who I am today is not what I’ll be tomorrow. And so this notion of who I am, who am I now, and who will I be tomorrow? Because I’m in the process of creating myself. Does that run afoul of what you’re saying or is that a part of what you’re, cause that comes from Fanon, his notion of just endlessly creating.

Nisha: Yeah, absolutely. It runs slightly differently than the way I would perceive it. It’s like the consciousness that was there when you were 5 is the consciousness that’s there when you’re 45, is the consciousness that’s there— now the experiences have completely changed and your understanding, your beliefs about yourself, but there is a continuity of consciousness. And so I just play with that. I just play with that a little bit. And again, it’s not like I do—

Michael: Are you thinking of the self like a Jungian self? This acorn, that sort of that we were born with [00:58:00] this innate thing within us that is—

Nisha: Yeah, playing with that and also, again, I think it’s more important to ask the question rather than to have the answer. I think it’s a lot more info. I don’t really care—I’m not saying I don’t care about the answer, but I’m saying that it’s much more of a value to ask the question than it is to—

Michael: I agree with you.

Nisha: —than to get an exact answer. Because, you ask me who I am, I’m not going to give you an exact answer because I don’t really even have one. I just want to play with the question for a while. And I want to break down these notions that we have about ourselves, about who we are.

Because, again, a lot of folks who come in, they believe that they’re just they’re dirt on the floor. It’s just because of all the different things that have happened to them, all the different things they’ve done, they just think that’s who they are. And it’s just so misguided. And again, I play with that.

Other things that we play with, like, next week, I think we’re going to, we’re going to do the hero’s journey is our theme that week. And looking at how to flip the narrative, the narrative that I’ve been telling myself about myself. I always tell people, be careful what you [00:59:00] tell yourself about yourself. It’s because I can actually reframe my own entire story, and my story’s not even done yet.

Or another theme that we go through is—oh, I’m trying to think—commitment to change. What does commitment to change look like? Healing old wounds. What does healing look like? These really broad concepts that encompass all these traditional ideas. They’re not brand spanking new, but it’s taking it and making it a center point.

We just did grief and loss. Lost and found. Things I’ve lost, things I’ve found. And playing with that idea. But a lot of it is just exploration, I’m giving you an umbrella under which to explore. Grief and loss. Even the idea of grief and loss is a theme. But it’s not restricted to, death and bereavement. We’re looking at grief and loss. How does it feel to lose who I thought I was? What does it feel like to lose what I thought I was going to be? What can, how does saying goodbye to drugs and alcohol, how does that feel like a grief to me? Because that can feel like losing a [01:00:00] friend in some ways.

Elizabeth: A companion.

Nisha: A companion. So, it’s really another one of the, “if not self,”—in the program, in 12-steps—it’s, “if not self-will, God’s will,” right? And so we play with if not self-will, what’s the alternative, right? Self-will being the little me, the thing that wants what it wants when it wants it. And my alternative being greater will. And greater will can, and I talk about it, it’s like greater will can be science. Greater will can be the universe, nature. It doesn’t have to be restricted to this kind of limited view of God. It can be being, right? Again, playing with these ideas so that we have some sense of purpose and guidance and clarity. But not from me telling them what it is, but from asking the question. And again, it’s respecting people’s knowledge and understanding. I don’t think that—other programs, it’s like, we gotta teach them this. It’s, yeah, I am teaching, but I’m teaching you to be engaged in your own life. That’s really what I’m teaching.

Michael: Very Socratic.

Nisha: Yes.

Elizabeth: [01:01:00] Mmm. Socratic.

I wanted to just roll the camera lens back to you, Nisha, as a young child. I didn’t know you as a young child. I’ve known you for 10 plus years as a young person, but one of the things that I do know about you is that you were raised in part of your childhood in a small community in far northern Alaska where your mom was a teacher. And I remember you talking about walking around the town and being pretty fearless. Maybe you told the story or maybe it was your mom, Janet, an adventurous soul herself, talked about young Nisha, just standing in the middle of the street, staring down this gigantic moose. Moose are huge. They’re humongous animals. So, I wonder if you can just tell our listeners a little bit about this. About your own personal experience, either that experience or others, but things that in your life [01:02:00] shaped both your creativity and your inclination toward innovation and reinvention and all of the work that you have been doing.

Nisha: Let me start by saying it was incredibly dumb what I did, like just dumb. But at the end of the day, I was running down the street, Moose is running this way. And then we get into the stare down. And I don’t know. It was just, again, divine intervention, whatever you want to call it. Moose walks away, I see the calf going behind her and I’m thinking, oh I just averted death. That’s lovely. Again, it’s like, when you’re a kid, you don’t question things, right? I think in that village that you were referring to, it’s like we didn’t have indoor plumbing. And you’re using an outhouse at 40 below and you’re thinking that’s normal. Or not normal, but fine, acceptable. And I just remember, if you didn’t have it, you just made it. Or you made do. Or you figured it out. Or you put it together.

So, the example I would use is I remember one time, [01:03:00] all these kids are fishing. I wanna go fishing. I don’t have a fishing pole. And so I find a good stick. And I find some string and I get a hook. And I catch some grayling that day. And I actually had it for dinner. But it’s just this sense of making things work. And figuring it out. I’m not sure that it’s so different from anybody else in Alaska. I just think that’s a normal thing. Again, rural versus city life and all of that. But it’s just a sense of toughness, but not hardness.

Elizabeth: Yeah, that’s a good distinction. Tough, but not hard.

Nisha: Yes. And so in that sense, I think that being here can require a level of toughness. Being in this work environment can require a level of toughness, but it’s not, I’m never hard. I’m firm. But it’s like also a sense of just being okay with any given set of circumstances. It’s oh, okay, and here’s the [01:04:00] circumstances I’m with today, and I’m just going to work with that and see what happens. And, I can’t pinpoint it to one thing or one type of thing in my childhood, except having a single parent and kind of limited resources. And my mom was like you said, an adventurer, so it’s, “Here’s what we’re doing today, and we’re just going to roll with that, because anything else is insanity.”

Elizabeth: Yeah. One of the very last questions that we ask everyone that we interview is to give our interviewees some advice. So let me ask you, Nisha, you have given us a tremendous amount of advice in your very eloquent responses, but is there anything else you’d like to tell our listeners and advise them, any kind of hard practical advice on how they can continue to create and innovate in their own lives, or their organizations, or their endeavors. Any final parting words?

Nisha: I really believe in imagining it [01:05:00] as if it were already. I’m creating an environment where people have the space and support to awaken and transform. And I’m open to the different ways that can manifest. And then it’s allowing myself to be guided on doing the work to make that happen in a very concrete daily basis. But it’s not setting a definitive goal and I’m going to reach that goal. It’s here’s loosely where I’d like to go. And let’s see where, let’s see which direction will get me there.

Elizabeth: Move in that direction.

Nisha: Yeah, move in that general trajectory.

Elizabeth: Yeah. You’ve been moving in a really remarkable trajectory all this time, I’m just so happy to have this chance to talk with you in depth and just to applaud and commend you and your colleagues and all the community here for this remarkable organization and community you’ve created. This has been fabulous. Other thoughts, Michael?

Michael: No, it’s been wonderful, I’ve enjoyed it, obviously I’ve gotten very involved in it. No, it’s a part of my life’s work is understanding [01:06:00] the nature of how we develop as people, as individuals. That sort of question is of who we are and how that relates to our habits, whatever those habits might be.

Elizabeth: This has been fantastic. We’ve been talking with Nisha Tracy from DC’s innovative organization Clean & Sober Streets. Thanks so much.

Nisha: Thank you.

Tremendous thanks to all our listeners. To those of you who are free subscribers, please consider becoming paid subscribers so that Creativists in Dialogue can continue bringing you insightful conversations about creativity from Washington, DC, and beyond. Thanks.

Special shout out to Creativists in Dialogue’s production team: Audio engineer Elliot Lanes, social media manager Erin Dumas of Dumas83, and transcription editor Morgan Musselman. Thank you all.

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The Creativists in Dialogue podcast is supported in part by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and subscribers like you. The Theatre in Community podcast series is supported in part by Humanities DC. Thanks.