Phyllis "Sweet Potato"  Jeffers-Coly aka Ta Ta Phyllis is the co-founder and co-owner of DIASPORIC SOUL, which she and her husband, Eddy "Professor Onion Sauce" Coly, established in 2016. DIASPORIC SOUL offers heritage and healing experiences that integrate both culture (SOUL) and contemplative practices.  DIASPORIC SOUL Heritage & Healing Experiences hold space for Black people to deepen their capacity to practice self-care and for healing and restoration, resilience and resistance.  

Phyllis is the author of We Got Soul; We Can Heal: Overcoming Racial Trauma Through Leadership, Community and Resilience.  She is also the author of “When Grandma Comes to Visit: Exploring How Communion with Our Ancestors & Nature Deepens Our Capacity for Healing, Restoration, Resilience, and Resistance” that was recently published in Transcendent Wisdom and Transformative Action: Reflections from Black Contemplatives  Journal of Contemplative Inquiry (19 April 2022). Phyllis is also co-author of "They Are Coming to Get Something”: A Qualitative Study of African American Male Community College Students’ Education Abroad Experience in Senegal, West Africa" in Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad (August 2022).

As celebrated in Chapter XI|#LoveHeals of We Got Soul; We Can Heal, she is a proud North Carolina native and graduate of North Carolina Central University where she majored in English Language & Literature and served as the Shut Em Down SGA President and Editor of Ex Umbra literary magazine.  Jeffers-Coly's love for HBCUs is reflected in her six year tenure as Dean of Enrollment Management at Central State University where she held space for primarily first-generation, Pell-eligible Black students who lovingly referred to her as Ma Dean   She completed her M.A. in English Language & Literature at the University of Maryland.

Phyllis is a certified yoga instructor (600-hour) and continues to explore ways that culture (SOUL) and contemplative practices can allow us to experience healing and restoration. 

In this special episode, we discuss:

Collective Care
Showing Up For Each Other
Ancestors
Prayer
Grief
Visioning
Dreaming
Creating a Space For Belonging
Who Do You Belong to?
We Belong To Each Other
Affirming Black People
The Resonance of Slavery and Liberation Held Within Geography
Falling Apart and Piecing Oneself Back Together
The Importance of a Practice 

You can connect with Phyllis Jeffers-Coly on her website or on Instagram @diasporicsoul

Podcast music by Charles Kurtz

+ Read transcript