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MAKING SPACE TO CREATE A MINDFUL LIFE
Tara Rook grew up immersed in Tibetan Buddhist practice, surrounded by teachings that emphasized compassion, awareness, and the art of being present. Over the years, she has continued to learn from a wide range of teachers, traditions, and life experiences. She began sharing her practice through leading guided mediations, hosting & participating community wellness events & retreats around the world, creating immersive visual art and ambient music as engaging tools for your meditative journeys.
Love Land, Tara’s virtual mediation studio, was born from her wish to create a space where all of that wisdom could meet—a sanctuary not tied to any single religion or philosophy, but open to everyone. A place where mindfulness, creativity, and community come together to nurture peace, alignment, and connection. Love Land is both personal and collective: it’s the sanctuary Tara longed for on her own journey, and now it’s here for you too.
This is a full transcript from a live interview for The Sweet Spot. It has been edited and condensed for clarity by interviewer + community healer, HIERO. Watch a part of our interview.
H = HIERO
T = Tara Rook
H: Tell us your name, preferred pronouns, and what your calling is.
T: My name is Tara Rook, and my pronouns are she/her/hers. My calling in life is to help as many people as possible, whether that's through meditation or the arts, different types of forms of healing like body work, energy work, and to help people be in the present moment. I hope to guide them out of their daily suffering. Whatever that means in their life, to bring them to a moment of peace and calm and presence.
My meditation studio, Love Land, is a place to create a mindful life. My music, Just Milk, is an electronic music project where I produce and compose electronic music. I sing over both ambient and experimental beats. I curate DJ sets and curate gatherings as well.
And then finally, I have my artwork, which I either use for the different elements I have, like the meditation studio, meditation offerings, designing things to help my mission. And I also sell art prints and have commission-based work.
Tara at COMMUNE, where she hosts a monthly Meditation Club
H: What were your family’s views on healing practices outside of the Western context and specifically plant medicines?
T: That's such a good question. This is something I've been thinking about a lot in terms of healing. I wasn't raised to think of meditation as healing. I was raised to think of it as a practical tool in your daily life; as practical as brushing your teeth or drinking water. It’s something that you just do–every day. However, there are definitely healing benefits to meditating and different styles of meditating. But growing up was never seen as a healing element.
As for my family, we didn't really practice a lot of alternative medicine growing up. I would say we had a lot of very nourishing food in my home. We weren't really allowed to drink a lot of soda or eat really unhealthy foods. I had a diet of vegetarianism, which was my own calling as well. Influenced by my two older sisters, I started at age nine. But I would say just being exposed to alternative modalities of, maybe it's healing, or practical practices like meditation already just naturally expanded me. Growing up Tibetan Buddhist, I was always around it.
It's really hard to even think of any sort of difference that my life would have been if I hadn't. It just exposed me to this different world in general, this different alternate reality than we have in Western society. That it's really hard to even see a separation sometimes of how body and mind work together.
H: What advice do you give to people who say they “can’t meditate”?
T: When someone says they “can't” or “don't” meditate. Yeah, I feel like I “can't” is more of the word that I hear. I really try to encourage them to practice for like two to three minutes because a lot of times meditation is not what people think it is. It's not even what you might think it is after doing it a couple of times.
The act of meditating is the time you choose to sit and train your mind to be present. Sometimes you get these moments of clarity or bodhicitta, an enlightened mind, which is essentially a flash of stillness or a flash of being completely awake. You might start to enter the state of samadhi, or bliss, but the actual meditation is the time you spend training your mind to be present in whatever way you choose to train that in. Whether it's focusing on the breath or focusing on a part of the body while doing a body scan or focusing on a sound.
So if you can just sit for two minutes and focus on your breath, even if you have a thought that comes up during those two minutes, that's okay. Just come back, focus on the breath. There, you meditated.
H: Why do you think so many people feel that meditation is inaccessible to them?
T: I think a lot of people are just scared to sit with themselves.
I think a lot of people are used to being distracted. You know, this isn't something that's new. It's not because we have more technology now. No, this is why meditation has been around for thousands of years, because humans have always been distracted by something. This isn't like a new phenomenon. This is a practical tool for any state of where our society is, whether we have phones to distract us or not. But I think ultimately, we are really scared of being able to sit with ourselves, to sit with the thoughts that come up, the feelings, to not react to things. Even an itch on your body, to choose to sit through that and sit through the discomfort is such a big challenge that people don't want to face.
Why would we face that? Because ultimately, when you are able to sit through the pain and suffering, you can cultivate a life of more joy. You can cultivate a life of more love and kindness, which are not things that don't magically appear. They're always there. You just have to get through the gunk to let them shine out.
H: Although oftentimes, our biggest inspirations and realizations come from a place of boredom, how do you engage people enough to get them to see the value in sitting through a 30-minute meditation session?
T: It's really important to guide someone through things like how to sit correctly, and how to land into their body. Having that somatic relationship is so important. Integrating things like more mindful-based practices like walking, meditation, or yoga, or movement, or even a little bit of dance can help. It's a huge somatic bridge to get someone to settle their body into meditation. Art is like a key because there is a lot of visceral and somatic reaction to artwork and music. Whether you're super tapped into that or not, it's already there. And I think healing modalities like Thai body work or energy work are really on that bridge.
Having a guide or a teacher is so important in that sense of being able to remind people you can stay here, you got this, you can settle your body right now. Accessibility is one of the things that I hope to grow in the space with my virtual studio. I know that the people who show up regularly to practice don't have that community around them where they are. You don't even need a computer. You can use a phone and, like, put on the meditation and settle in.
H: What is your relationship with cannabis? Has it evolved?
T: I've gone through phases in my life where I use it more, whether it's for specific intentional purposes or just consuming it more for fun or leisure. And I've used it topically a lot as well, especially for like physical ailments. I have found that as I get older, I tend to lean away from cannabis in my day-to-day.
Other plant medicines are something that I'm exploring more and more every day. Like right now, I'm cutting caffeine out. I love using what I already know with plant medicine and my relationship with it in the past, which is learning from trying different plants that something might energize me more.
A lot of it is understanding where I'm at in my life and if I know it's going to help or hurt whatever my situation is. So yeah, I would say my relationship with plant medicines is always developing and always growing where I can integrate them more into my life for different purposes. With cannabis, it's the same.
H: Does consuming cannabis hurt or aid in your meditation practice?
T: I find that, not that it hurts, but that it's not necessary. I think that this also goes back to my childhood roots with meditation where I was taught to not combine any substances with meditation. So for a very long time, for I guess it would be like 16 years of my life before I first started using cannabis, that my meditation practice never incorporated that. Since that time I was starting to use cannabis socially as a younger person into my adulthood and also not getting the best quality of cannabis at that time, maybe not really knowing much about what I was using. It just never was something that I weaved together.
However, I have found there have been times where I've used cannabis and have gone into amazing, deep relaxation states that have been so transformative. While that's not like a sitting meditation practice, it is a time where I have found really, really transformative experiences by using cannabis, being still, focusing on my breath, doing body scans, and just going really deep.
H: What other plant medicines do you reach for to go deep? What is your favorite way to consume plant medicines for daily practical use?
Similarly to cannabis, with mushrooms, whether that's psychedelic or not psychedelic, I’ve had experiences that do really help me to drop in. I've explored tea ceremonies or like cacao ceremonies where you're really able to sit with the plants and feel that shift. Plants can help with that bridge and that integration as well.
But, yeah, I love brewed stuff like cacao, tea… Oh, capsules and tinctures I like a lot too.
H: Who would be in your dream elevated meditation sesh? People who are living, deceased, whoever.
T: Georgia O'Keeffe, David Lynch, Jeff Buckley, Bjork, David Bowie, Frank Ocean. Mm-hmm. Honestly, my family, I would love them, like my parents and my sisters. Debussy would be cool too, like Claude Debussy, like what's his mind like? You know, being able to sit with someone like that.
H: So you’re an ambient sound DJ, a meditation guide, a visual artist, a community leader, and so much more! What is the thread that you believe ties all of these paths together?
T: The thread is connection. Let me just say, if I could only do one thing, it would be to teach meditation. So, that is the thread. Helping people to connect to themselves, to let go, to be present, to grow, to expand.
H: What are some challenges you’ve faced in bringing your offerings to life? What are some ways that you've circumvented this to be able to sustainably and consistently give to your community, as you do?
T: Some obstacles and challenges, definitely financial. Money, that's always a big, big challenge in community work. It’s kind of getting out of that trapped mindset of I don't have enough money to do that. There's money out there and it's there for you. You just have to be open to receiving it and trusting that you're going to use it for something that's good and to make an impact. Another thing is focus. Holding a vision for what you want is super important and to be able to come back to that, but knowing as well that you can rest in between it and you don't always have to go, go, go.
I love flyering and in-person networking and physical marketing tactics. I have a whole list of community boards all around New York. Doing pop-ups is also really great. Obviously you can make sales there too but you're also networking and marketing yourself and building brand awareness which has helped a lot is overcoming the obstacles that i mentioned.
H: What’s next for Love Land and your personal offerings through Tara Rook Studios? Is there anything else you would like to emphasize?
T: Next for Love Land is continuing to develop this virtual platform where meditation can feel really accessible and you can connect in community and with the teachers. Something that I would love to really start building is more of the arts element, like building a music program for meditation music and ambient music that is directly aligned with Love Land. Then, eventually, finding a brick and mortar place to be able to fold everything together in a physical realm. So hopefully that's in a couple years, location TBD. Right now, I'm really pushing for more like pop-up sanctuaries, which I'm calling them where people can come listen to ambient music and be in connection. So those are things, and just continuing to keep building in my mission of Love Land being a place to create a mindful life.
Stay in touch: Follow Tara on Instagram | Join Love Land | Explore Upcoming Events
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Harsh Babe (aka Ariel Friedlander) is the Jewish American Pillow Princess of Brooklyn, New York. As a drag queen, organizer, and arts educator, she combines cultural work and whimsy with Many Hands Workshop, Hot Girls Organize and her political home of Jewish Voices for Peace New York.
A proud divacratic socialist, she helps throw drag show fundraisers to elect socialists into office and mobilize the femmes to fight fascism!
You can find Harsh Babe performing on various all star sapphic stages across Brooklyn, including her very own party Dyke Darty every month at The Rosemont. Upcoming shows:
Follow her on Instagram
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity by Solonje Burnett, Weed Auntie. Watch the teaser.
WA = Solonje Burnett, Weed Auntie
HB = Harsh Babe
WA: Can you tell us your name, preferred pronouns, and what you do for work/passion?
HB: My name is Ariel, and I use she/her pronouns. I also use she/her pronouns in my other name, which is Harsh Babe. I am a drag queen and artist and organizer and educator. I kind of have a beautiful constellation of different occupations and passion projects that make up what I do on a day-to-day basis.
WA: Yaaas, we love a multi-hyphenate! So can you tell us a little bit about your upbringing? Did your environment help to shape how you show up in the world?
HB: I grew up in Delaware, me and Aubrey Plaza and Joe Biden. I went to an art school and I also grew up with type 1 diabetes. I feel like those two things really informed who I am today.
I was diagnosed with my chronic illness at just two and a half years old and that kind of launched me into this accidental activist role from very young because my mom got really involved with fundraising for juvenile diabetes research. Then when I got access to the internet and discovered Tumblr and the glitter feminist movement.
As I look back on it, I got really passionate about social justice, especially through the lens of my life with chronic illness. That's when I started the first feminist club in Delaware, which came out of my art school. From there, I became very political, but it wasn't until I went to college that I learned the difference between an activist and an organizer. I very much see myself more as an informed, educated, and politically conscious organizer now.
WA: What is your relationship to plant medicines? May it be cannabis, hemp, fungi? How do you use them in your day to day?
HB: That's a great question. So like I said, I grew up with chronic illness, type one diabetes, pretty much my entire life. I went to college at the University of Michigan and in the 2010s, you were actually able to get a medical marijuana card. That became really instrumental to my success in college. I was able to get a medical card my sophomore or junior year and that really helped me be able to unwind or sometimes if I had a bad day of high blood sugars, just to literally like physically feel better at the end of the night. So it not only helped me mentally, but physically. I was so grateful that I was able to have that access in the state of Michigan to these medicines, because if I had gone to another college, I might not have been able to access such help and resources.
Also during the lockdown, during the pandemic in the beginning of 2020, I was part of this mutual aid group because I was very high risk for COVID complications. This mutual aid group that helped me get medical marijuana even during lockdown and that was really beautiful and important to me. I'm really grateful for how I was able to access plant medicine at such a young time in my life.
WA: Thank you so much for sharing that. So I've had the pleasure of working with you at SASS as well as watching you work both in the streets and on stage. The first time was at a Mamdani fundraiser at Xanadu. I was like, okay, girl, go off. I didn't even know that you were a drag queen! How did you get into it as a femme?
HB: I was such a big fan of Drag Race. I got into it through my mom and Project Runway at a very young age and then RuPaul’s Drag Race when I was in college. I remember following this one artist, Femme Fatale, who's an incredible drag queen. I pretty much thought if I wanted to be a drag queen myself, I had to be a burlesque dancer and that women couldn't actually be drag queens. Then I found out that Creme Fatale, my favorite drag queen, was literally a woman, a cis woman. And I was like, oh, I can do it too!
Through a protest that I helped organize with this group called Rad Fun at University of Michigan - It was like radical, anti-capitalist, deviance, something, something fun. We put on this protest through campus around graduation where basically it was like a pride parade, say what you want, let's make a ruckus! I invited a couple of drag queens to join me, including Ariana Grindr who would later become my drag mom. And she cannot stop having kids. I was very close to her and all my other sisters in Michigan. Then when I moved here to New York City, I felt like because of the internet, I already had this huge community of really diverse drag performers from kings to queens of all genders and sexualities.
And I also met my second drag mom, Briar Blush, who is recently on RuPaul's Drag Race, who's non-binary and also has a variety of drag children. And it's so funny because I still even today see this discourse go around about how drag is just cis men and dresses and how that's inherently misogynistic or transphobic. And literally off the top of my head, I can maybe only name like three cis gay men in at least my scene here in Brooklyn who do drag. And for the most part, it's like all women, trans people, non-binary people who I know that do drag.
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WA: I think for me it's just like exactly the stereotype that you mentioned and like the exposure of you're somebody who's like a drag race aficionado or somebody who's deeply embedded in the culture you know but I think for most people in the mainstream they have no idea.
HB: Yeah, no idea. Well ask my two non-binary drag moms what they think about that (laughs).
WA: I gotta look up Ariana Grindr.
HB: She's a fungi queen.
WA: I'm here for it. What sparked the transition from Daya Bee-Dee to the artist now known as Harsh Babe?
HB: I did start under the name Daya Bee-Dee and like I said growing up with chronic illness was like a huge part of not only just my day-to-day life and still is, but also really formative to my politics and greater understanding of the world. When I first started drag, I definitely had a very identity, social justice kind of approach to my drag. And now I'm kind of more of a show, not tell girl and I realized I didn't want my chronic illness to literally define and name me. And it helped that a drag queen named Daya Betty was on RuPaul's Drag Race to finally be the thing that really made me change it.
I chose Harsh Babe originally, it was just supposed to be like a transitory, like temporary name. Like I said, I went to the University of Michigan and it was at that time that I made that name change later in my college years. My biological mother also went to University of Michigan and she was in a girl group called the Harsh Babes and so i thought it'd be really cute if i took on her name but she told me, “um you're not a harsh babe, harsh babes don't wear that much highlighter. Harsh babes are matte and wear red lipstick. You're too shiny to be a harsh babe.” And she's not even a drag queen, so.
WA: Speaking of your moms, how did Briar Blush become your drag mother here in New York?
HB: When I moved to New York, it was literally in 2020 during lockdown. I grew up only a couple hours away. I was an art school kid. I was very publicly out at a young age. It was never if I moved to New York, it was when. I moved here peak lockdown 2020, and obviously I was in this amazing city, but I was mainly online.
Briar Blush was living in Boston at the time. I had done a summer there. I knew a lot of girls in the scene. We became really, really close via FaceTime. She would come and visit as the world started opening up again. She would take me shopping and give me advice and teach me how to do my hair, how to do my makeup. And she called me a Blush, one of her daughters. And I was like, “I already have a drag mom, Dr. Ariana Grindr,” who then moved to Chicago. I love her but we don't see each other every day like we used to and so Briar said, “I give you more drag advice and help you with your drag more than Dr. Ariana Grindr does.”
I kind of couldn't deny that she was, in fact, my mother, even though she's also technically younger than me. I'm so grateful to be a Blush. It's really – and Harsh Babe Blush sounds good. I think so. And I'm literally wearing, like, four blushes right now, so I think it makes sense.
WA: A little Fuck Mary Kill. MAGA Drag Edition. J.D. Vance, George Santos, Rudy Giuliani.
HB: I'm not sleeping with any of those divas. Girl, hand me the gun.
WA: (Laughing hysterically)
HB: No. You want me to go on record and say what MAGA politician I want to marry and fuck?!
WA: Well, as their drag entity, because they've all...
HB Wait they’ve all done drag?
WA: Yes, they've all done drag!
HB: Okay, well, J.D. Vance was chopped… I honestly am not familiar with Rudy Juliana’s.
WA: Juliana!
HB: Juliana!
WA: I wonder if that was her drag name?
HB: Rudy Tootie Giuliani. So I guess I'd fuck her, just for the experience of getting to know her. And then, you know, George Santos' drag is pretty fierce, so... I guess I'm marrying, if you hold a gun to my head.
WA: You have no choice. You would marry George Santos?
HB: No, not on record. Hahaha! Or off. You're crazy for that.
WA: I know I had to. Hahaha! I had to put a spicy one in there for you girl. Oh my god. But when you look at these Republican politicians that are just stripping rights left and right, and then you dig into their past and see so many of them are literally just obsessed.
HB: Gender is a construct, tear it apart.
Well, I'm sure really the thing is they just, these things get unearthed, and I bet they didn't even remember that they too had expressed different genders and, you know, played with sexuality and femininity before, because it was just like a fun activity to do, it was something natural like in their whatever environment they were in at the time to like throw on a wig and have fun.
And then, you know, when they other all of these LGBTQ people and trans people, they're able to say that's not me. I've never done anything that would ever threaten my alpha masculinity I've constructed for myself. When in reality, we're surrounded by gender everywhere, and it's always been fluid, and it's always been just fun to play with, even for the biggest, bigots of them all.
WA: Not as stressful as MAGA drag. So you're such a community queen and who or what inspired your activism beyond, I know you mentioned your diabetes, but and your direct action community organizing, like what keeps you going and how do you find joy in an increasingly compounded grief state?
HB: Yeah, I think something I've always been a really strong believer in is that you're not going to be able to build a movement and get people to fight for the utopia that you dream of, unless you actually create those moments of queer liberation within the struggle.
So in the work that I do, I'm always trying to center the vision and to actually build the future we want to live in while we're still fighting the fascism, bigotry and hate all over the country. It's a lot of organizing behind the scenes isn't very glamorous. It's a lot of meetings and group chats.
And when we do have our moments of coming together and making a very public statement, I think it's really important that we bring people in with joy and not only trying to just say our values, but to make space for who we want in the fight. And for me, everything I do is for the dykes, the dolls, and the divas. And I am going to show up for my community in any space I am in.
I'm never going to compromise who I am to be in a political space. And I think that can shock a lot of people from the outside because we're shown that we have these ideas that certain communities in the struggle have bigoted ideas or closed-minded or the sense of rigidity, but in reality the socialists, the anti-fascists, the anti-Zionists have a lot of diverse community and are very welcoming because they understand that all of us, including queer people, trans people, women, are in the fight too.
So when I do have the chance to make my own community spaces, you may call it, whether it's like a drag show fundraiser or even a direct action, if I can make it really centered to welcoming those dyke, dolls and divas, I will do it because not only do they deserve rights in the future, but they deserve to be heard now.
WA: Ari for President! So this is a question we ask everyone and I would love to know who would be in your dream SASS sweet sash and they could be icons, drag queens, activists, living or deceased.
HB: Wow. OK! If I were to get my dream sweet spot rotation going, I will say I am a Lady Gaga stan. I'm a little monster and Lady Gaga, despite all of her problems and maybe neoliberalism, is invited to the session.
And I'm also going to bring in my girls, let's say, I'm going to bring Chelsea Manning to the session. I'm gonna bring Chrissy Tripecca, a fabulous lesbian pop star. Oh, my gosh.
And I also want to bring Candy Darling. I would love to witness her fabulousness and party together. Oh, my God.
That's such a good question. Living, deceased. Like, I know I'm missing some icons.
And I'm going to bring Machine Dazzle, who is a fabulous artist. I think I'm really curating a visual experience. I can see it. I want everything from like the cunty suits to like the crazy space rocket glitter glamour outfits. And pink. Lots of pink.
WA: Call it in. I was waiting for you to say our Mayor as well.
HB: Oh, you know. Yeah. Wait. Wait. Okay.
WA: She is like a political baddie. None of them were named but that's okay.
HB: Wait. Okay. I'm visioning everyone literally like on my bed behind me. We're just enjoying. We're femme-afesting. And having a little tree. I don't manifest. I femme-afest!
I'm calling in Candy Darling. I'm calling in Chelsea Manning, the dolls of the past, present, future.
And then I'm also calling in Chrissy Chapeca for the pink and the pop glamour. I'm calling in. I'm going to bring in Darializa (Avila Chevalier), who's running for Congress.
I'm dyke for Darializa. And I feel like, you know, she deserves it. After all, she's been through with the primary. And I'm also going to bring, yeah, I'm going to bring Lady Gaga. Sorry. And I'm going to bring Machine Dazzle. And I feel like, like low key, I'm scared to say this, but I want to bring RuPaul. I'm a RuPaulogist. I'm bringing RuPaul.
WA: Since you're such a diva in the organizing movement, could you name a few groups and orgs that people should be aware of and show up for to start to be movement makers themselves?
HB: Yeah. I, I love this question and what I've been telling people recently, especially since, um, the primaries here in New York is that, all around the country, and I'm thinking specifically of the Briar Blush Fan Club who reached out to me about how they can get more involved in politics, I said “look up your local DSA chapter (the Democratic Socialists of America) and just get involved. Go to 101 session. Become a card carrying member.” I talked to the founder of the Briar Blush Fan Club just a few weeks ago. She had no idea how to get her start. I said, "Follow Hot Girls Organize on Instagram," I'm a proud Hot Girls board member. And little did I know, literally two to three weeks later, she is now organizing a mutual aid drag show with her local DSA chapter in South Carolina.
It's a great place to start and there's chapters all over the country but I'd also really recommend if you're passionate about getting involved with the fight for Palestinian liberation to plug into Jewish Voice for Peace, whether you're Jewish or not you can get involved in the movement and there's also chapters everywhere.
There's tons of groups out there. I think it can be really intimidating to try to find your political home and you might think when you're first entering the political activist organizing sphere that you have to have all the answers, but the reality is you just need to show up. Even if you're just there listening, maybe helping put away the chairs or take out the trash after, you will work your way up into leadership and any good organization will empower you into leadership.
So even just showing up to your local LGBTQ center, seeing what's on their monthly calendars and figuring out how to show up. But a really great place to start is the Democratic Socialists of America. (beeping) Oh, that's my insulin pump. Sorry.
WA: Okay last question. We talked about orgs we could show up for. How can we show up for you? What parties, protests, or performances does Harsh Babe have coming up?
Yeah, so you can follow the @dykedarty Instagram for updates on a monthly dyke, doll, diva drag show I put on at The Rosemont in the summertime. You can also just follow me on my personal Instagram @harshbabe.nyc to find any upcoming shows and also ways to get involved politically. I'd really just encourage people, if they wanna go find not just drag shows that I'm performing in but all of the best sapphic and trans-inclusive events around the city, go to the Dykes & Dolls calendar zine. They have an incredible Instagram and Substack, and they also distribute zines all around the city. We've partnered many, many a time. That's my rec for how to plug into my little world.
WA: Love it. I actually am gonna ask one more bonus question because you are such a super star, ... remiss to not ask you, do you have a favorite SASS product?
HB: Do I have a favorite SASS product? Oh my gosh. This is so vanilla of me, but (laughs) I, I really like the chocolates, but I'm not an edible girly, I'm a flower girly, so I just like the straight-up chocolate. (laughs) I also love the lip balms.
WA: She needs lickable lips. Thank you Ariel!
