It's always hard for me to find a therapist who is a black woman or even a woman of color. It's something that we've always been told is not for us. It's top down.

I don't think that there are as many black women or women of color becoming psychiatrists, so we can't find them and then we feel looked at and studied and that's part of what is damaging to us. It's hard to find therapy that is actually a tool for your own liberation. I think we can be really distrustful.

It's hard for black women to ask for help. We think we don't need it. We're used to being in pain and living with it.

There was something about Beyoncé that felt like a vessel, I guess, that I could kind of impose all of these feelings and thoughts onto. I was drawn to a little bit of a dichotomy between the glamour and celebrity and the very deep and complex legacy of black women, and what that means in terms of performance.

In my experience when I do try to avoid something, it makes its way into the work anyway. To be in front of it and just make friends with it is easier for me.

I try to convey what it feels like and sounds like and smells like and looks like inside of my particular skin, to move through the world as a black American woman in her mid-twenties.

Language from songs and TV shows feel integral because it helps to create the environment and describe the full picture.