Handle with Care: Empathy at Work

- Tara VanderWoude

That has been so supportive of me, is just knowing that I'm not in it alone, not alone individually, but then not even alone as as a Korean American, as an Asian-American, but that there are others cross ethnic, cross racial who who care about this and who want to learn, grow and who want to take action when necessary toward toward the this hatred and this anti Asian sentiment of this past year plus.

INTRO

Anti-Asian hate crimes have skyrocketed over the last year. There have been disturbing stories of violent attacks on California street corners, accusation from the highest levels of government, and, last week, a devastating slaughter in Atlanta, Georgia.

How do we talk about the painful experience of Asian Americans living in the United States? Does their story even get told? What does it mean to create space to hear from your Asian friends or coworkers? What are ways that you are subtly discounting their experience and creating a forced culture of silence? It is vital that we make space to listen, grieve, and create meaningful societal change in partnership with Asian Americans.

My guest today is Tara VanderWoude. Tara is a Korean-American. She is a social worker, advocate, and educator. As an adoptee, she writes and speaks often about the complexity of adoption as well as the Asian American experience. She is married to a Dutch man who was her high school sweetheart and they have adopted two children from South Korea. She is also a founding board member of Korean-Focus Indiana. She speaks with power, insight, and eloquence about her experiences as an Asian American woman.

As always, I like for you to know my guests as people as well. Tara is an educator who is really excited about the coming break.

- Liesel Mertes

What are some of your favorite things to do in central Indiana? You will not be going anywhere for spring break. What will you do to enjoy the time there?

- Tara VanderWoude

So my favorite time of day are the mornings. And so for me, I work full time outside of the home on a schedule, a school schedule. So you can imagine I have to be out the door decently early. So in central Indiana, in my own home, I will just be thrilled to wake up and to be able to stay at home during my favorite part of the day. Whether that means a slow morning, whether that means just being in my home and being able to cook and clean and do my dishes, connect with my kids, one of whom will be on spring break next week, I will just be really, really pleased to do that.

- Tara VanderWoude

As simple as it sounds, I love being home. And, you know, we do a lot of walking and a lot of running and a lot of outside backyard front porch. So during covid times, that's kind of where we find ourselves, you know.

- Liesel Mertes

Do you have a favorite breakfast that accompany your favorite time of day? Like, is it wrapped with food at all or a cup of coffee?

- Liesel Mertes

Because I'm also a morning lover and if I'm talking about mornings, breakfast has to be woven somewhere in is my favorite meal.

- Tara VanderWoude

Yes, it's funny you ask, that is an important part of my life. So coffee and I am very fortunate. My husband does not drink coffee, but every single morning he brings me coffee in bed. I know every day of the week, of the month of the year. So definitely starting with some coffee and then I eat a little bit later. But when I'm at school, I can not have this. But when I am home, I do have this breakfast I wake and it is sauteed brussel sprouts with a couple of eggs and some pickled onions.

- Tara VanderWoude

And this this dip that I get at Costco, it sounds very eclectic, but I just really like it. And I eat it many days of the week.

- Liesel Mertes

That sounds actually very tasty. I like the pickled onions as well being thrown in with that.

- Liesel Mertes

I have read some of your bio, but would you give me just like a ten thousand foot view of your vocational trajectory, some of the things you've done and been involved with?

- Tara VanderWoude

Sure, sure. So after college, I spent a very short time as a medical social worker and I worked at a large hospital in Michigan. Did that just for a little bit before my husband and I moved.

- Tara VanderWoude

I then went and worked for Healthy Families of Indiana. And so I did a home based services and actually worked in three quite rural counties, which was a very new experience for me. Working in the rural world did that for a bit and then I moved into some gerontology work.

- Tara VanderWoude

It was also home based and we just really aimed to keep individuals safe at home. And then from there, I found myself in the world of adoption and worked as an adoption social worker for several years. Did that help families throughout the process of adopting?

- Tara VanderWoude

And then from there, let's see, what did I do? I started some independent consulting and some education on post adoption issues as it relates to race, adoption and identity.

- Tara VanderWoude

And then I also found myself working for the school to make my kids attend and currently am working as an assistant dean of students at a at a lower school and elementary school.

- Liesel Mertes

I have so many questions that we could delve into, but with limited four by the time of one episode. And so we've had some some prior episodes where people have talked as adoptive parents. We've got that perspective. But I would love to hear more. And there's so much in our current events, like in this immediate week in March of twenty twenty one, where with this horrible killing in Atlanta and just frankly, the rhetoric of the last year under the Trump administration with covid that I imagine it has been particularly difficult to be an Asian-American woman.

- Liesel Mertes

Could you tell me a little bit about what the events of just even the the Atlanta shooting, what that how you received that in your person, in your body? What was that like for you to be

- Tara VanderWoude

Sure. Sure. You are absolutely right. It's it's been an interesting ride both this past week and a half since since the shooting in Atlanta and then really this last year, like you mentioned, of just some anti Asian sentiment and some hatred that has really been highlighted this past year during the pandemic, a lot of scapegoating and blaming and violence toward toward Asian-Americans, toward people who look like me.

- Tara VanderWoude

And then I think as an adopted person who was raised by two white parents, you can only imagine that that adds an entirely other level of complexity and of missed connections, so to speak, because I am living this experience that my that my adoptive parents, that my greater extended family and community are not are not experiencing.

- Tara VanderWoude

When I think about Atlanta, you know, I actually had a friend, a friend who lives in D.C., someone who's very invested in racial justice and equity work, and she's an African-American female. And we talk about these topics regularly. She sent me a text on Tuesday night, the evening of the shooting in Atlanta. I already had put my phone to bed, so to speak, and I had not seen it.

- Tara VanderWoude

But I woke up

- Tara VanderWoude

and I saw that text and I clicked on the link to the news coverage. And then I was up. Right. You can imagine it's 2:00 in the morning. And I saw that. And I just thought, oh, no, I had already been reading about some physical violence and even murders of Asian Americans that really has been happening throughout the pandemic.

- Tara VanderWoude

And then to read about this, the shooting at three different locations that this that this man that he thought to these three different businesses, I was up for a few hours and just fell asleep for a very short time before I had to be at school.

- Tara VanderWoude

And I just I just felt a heaviness. And when I woke up, I, I didn't exactly know what what to expect, but I checked the news again and throughout that day, checked in on a lot of my Asian friends.

- Tara VanderWoude

And likewise, I had some Asian friends reaching out to me just, hey, whoa, how are you? And kind of taking in that news that that was the first kind of twenty four hours, so to speak, for for me and really before I left for school to mentioning it to both of my kids who are currently 12 and 14.

- Tara VanderWoude

Obviously my older my older child has more access at school, at high school, to the Internet throughout the day and news sources. So I knew that it would come up and I wanted to be the person that told them about this. And because we have been building in on this conversation of race and racial matters and racism toward Asian-Americans and others, it was just another conversation and really made me grateful for for the previous conversations and work that we had done really within our family just to create this atmosphere where we can talk about such topics.

- Liesel Mertes

There's a lot that for white members of majority culture that we are just beginning to read and discuss more about, about the lived experience of Asian-Americans, our news cycle is highlighting some of those things. I think it's a really important conversation to engage in. If you were making generalizations and saying, I wish that the majority culture could understand this aspect about what it is to be Asian-American right now, what are some of the things that come to mind?

- Tara VanderWoude

OK, ok, sure. Yeah. When I when I think about that, you know, I feel like so often the Asian-American experience gets lost. Like I said, you know, in this in this racialized society that we that we all enjoy. And so I I think that there's a number of things, a number of things come come to mind. But it's almost as if we're invisible on one hand. Right. Because when we have conversations about race relations, it is a black white conversation often.

- Tara VanderWoude

And, you know, my own daughter once just said, are we black? Like, I just wear black, right. Because she very, very seldom would hear anyone mention Asian or would hear anyone mention Latino. So she's trying to figure this out. We're not even in the room when you don't even say that we're here. And so what? What does that do? And it's almost I don't want to say it's neglect that's too strong of a word, but it does do something to your psyche.

- Tara VanderWoude

And in some ways, it's like, all right, keep your head down more. Don't say anything. Don't rock the boat. This isn't about us. So that kind of comes comes to mind.

- Tara VanderWoude

And then another thing that comes to mind is you've probably maybe read that people just assume that Asians are very white adjacent, so to speak, that we're closer to white and so other perhaps racial groups, they perceive us perhaps in that way. And what's interesting is that I feel like we're never quite white enough, so to speak, whatever that means, and then we're never black enough or of color enough, so to speak, as well.

- Tara VanderWoude

And so I think perhaps different groups perceive us differently based on perhaps what is what is comfortable for them or maybe what is you know, they point out the differences in us, so to speak. So.

- Tara VanderWoude

You know, the Asian American history is rich and complex and nuanced, and I have not even done enough work and reading in that area, but just the little that I've started to just self teach myself. That's another another point is in our US history, we don't talk a lot about the Asian American experience, so to speak.

- Tara VanderWoude

We don't talk a lot about, you know, that the eighteen hundreds and we don't talk a lot about the different legislation. We don't talk a lot about the exclusion of of different people groups when it comes to some of the different ethnic groups of of Asia. So hopefully that's helpful.

- Tara VanderWoude

When when you think of our experiences, it's that of for me speaking for myself, it's of where do I fit in when I'm not even mentioned? And then it is can I even speak out? Because I've been told often that how dare you speak about your hardships or your your racialized experiences because so-and-so has it worse.

- Tara VanderWoude

I very much remember a conversation with an extended family member and I was just sharing some really hurtful things. We saw that happen to me because of my skin color and, you know, you know what empathy is. And a person just looked at me and it's like, well, you're not black, so you should be thankful.

- Tara VanderWoude

And I just that's very I remember where I was sitting when this conversation happened, and here I am pouring out something very hateful that happened to me. And to have it completely like it doesn't matter because someone else has it worse. Yeah. And that, I think is a is a regular occurrence as well for for Asian-Americans. Certainly the model minority stereotype doesn't help that in which Asians perhaps are perceived as these hardworking individuals that achieve and everything comes well to them and their income is higher, et cetera.

- Tara VanderWoude

So I hope that's helpful. So that kind of comes to mind when you when you ask that very much.

- Liesel Mertes

How have you experienced some of that silencing or needing to go underground or just slights based on being Asian-American within your work in social spheres?

- Tara VanderWoude

Yeah, you know, I think some of the silencing simply comes from the fact that are we even in the room if we're not being mentioned? I trained it to be a CASA, a court appointed special guardian for kids who are in foster care. And I just remember being in that training room and one of the judges came in and it was a room of individuals who had identify as black, African-American or white. And then there was me and I just remember him saying, we're all gathered here together.

- Tara VanderWoude

Isn't it so great, black and white. And he just went on and it's again, one of those moments like, am I in the room? Does my experience matter? And so that comes to mind. And I think every time that that happens, it does in some way kind of chip away at the entitlement to be part of the conversation when it comes to our racialized society.

- Tara VanderWoude

And I, I do I hear the sleights about being smart and being good at math and playing the violin, and it's just not funny. And I think people think they're being humorous. But there is this deep seated, there's some deep seated beliefs about who we are as Asian-Americans.

- Tara VanderWoude

And of course, you know, you've heard of the term micro aggressions. And so as those daily slights and insults come out, that that kind of treat me as if I'm inferior or that I'm other. If it happened once, that's one thing. Right. But when you continue, like they say, to get a papercut after papercut in the same place, that cumulative effect, what does it do?

- Tara VanderWoude

And I think all of that kind of contributes to me perhaps not wanting to raise my hand and put my own experience out there. And I think I've learned with whom I can do that and with whom I cannot, based perhaps on their previous previous ways of receiving me or dismissing me. I yeah, we all have that felt safety with certain people. And when it comes to racial matters, time and experiences have have informed who I go to when when I'm hurting about something related to to race.

- Liesel Mertes

Yes. I want to want to press more into that.

- Liesel Mertes

I you know, as you were sharing a gave me a moment of reflection, even two sessions that I have led where I will talk about the experiences of black and brown Americans and how they're being highlighted right now. And I realize the implicit exclusion there.

- Liesel Mertes

And I I think, at least in my own mind, as I consider it, I think, well, I feel like yellow is a very offensive sort of a term, you know, and not descriptive. What sort of language when people are talking about the the Asian experience, you know, is it is is to say the experience of Asian-American like, do do we want to steer away from any sort of descriptor about skin color? Because I imagine there's a lot of offensive baggage.

- Liesel Mertes

How how have conversations about color felt toward you when they felt best? Like how have people referenced the Asian experience? Sure, sure.

- Tara VanderWoude

I think one of it is just when they mentioned that we are a part of the human population, when it's not simply a black white conversation and they're willing to talk about those who might be indigenous or who are Latino or who are Asian, it is OK to name those things because actually, yes, we do exist. And I know on one hand people are thinking, well, we can't possibly mention every group and we'll exclude someone. And I have grace for people.

- Tara VanderWoude

So it's not that I'm watching and policing every word, it's more that it's this cumulative norm of way of talking about our racialized society. So. Yeah, yellow, you know, I don't I don't know many Asians who like to be called yellow and and really, like you mentioned to me before this call, the continent of Asia is quite vast and it has upwards of 50 different countries and ethnicities. And so we think of we think of just the vast array of the hue of one's skin.

- Tara VanderWoude

And that's just I think that kind of goes into this social construction of race in which, you know, White became legalized, so to speak.

- Tara VanderWoude

So conversations about color, about race, so, so complicated. I feel like, because I know, too, that when we come to the table to talk about it, that different people at the table are using words and descriptors and language and operating with different definitions of such so much that we don't have the shared vocabulary or understanding even among families sometimes or even among colleagues.

- Tara VanderWoude

So it's it's it's it's complicated.

- Liesel Mertes

Well, but exactly what you said, I mean, just when to take that away, the acknowledgement that our story needs space in the room, the proverbial room and exactly what you said.

- Liesel Mertes

I mean, Asia is huge. You know, even the term Asian-American is reducing a very complex reality of your lumping together someone from the Philippines with someone from China. And those are very different lived experiences.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

We will return, in just a moment, to Tara and her insights. Which have been so, so good. But I want to take a moment to acknowledge our sponsor, Handle with Care Consulting. Employee care is essential to every area of your business, and it is really complex this year. Are you doing what you can to keep your people engaged? Are you helping them build the skills to navigate tough conversations, avoid offense, and build a more equitable culture of care for all people? If you don't know, let Handle with Care Consulting help. With keynote offerings, certificate programs, and executive coaching, we help you live out empathy and care when it matters most.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, you mentioned friends or colleagues that, you know, they're safe people to be able to go to and express. What are some of the things that they are doing? Well, they let you know that they are safe people.

- Tara VanderWoude

Sure. So, you know, I could start this in a number of different ways. But throughout my life, I have had experiences of hatred, discrimination, verbal assaults. I've had those experiences as it relates to me being Asian, being Korean, American. And so, you know, when you're close friends with someone, you want to share those things that hurt you or those things that stop you in your tracks. And so I think you quickly learn that when you share something, the way that that person responds, it tells you a lot.

- Tara VanderWoude

And so there are some people who want to quickly dismiss and make it all better because it's uncomfortable for them. Perhaps it could be uncomfortable for them because they don't know how to respond. And I get that a lot of us struggle with how to respond to people who are in crisis or people who are hurting. Some people are uncomfortable with it because maybe they don't think that I should be as upset about it as I am. And they think, you know, we've come a long ways.

- Tara VanderWoude

Would you rather live in the 1900s, you know, so be thankful. I think some people are uncomfortable with it because they maybe have thought some of those very things that I'm now bringing to their attention as being hurtful to me so I can I can kind of read the level of someone's comfort and entering into my pain with me or staying with me and being curious to ask questions that help me understand, help them understand.

- Tara VanderWoude

And then I know that when I bring things to some people, they just laugh because they don't know what else to say or do.

- Tara VanderWoude

And then there are people that I tell them these things and they say, well, that must really hurt or that sounds really hard. Or they say, you know what, I don't even know what to say, but I know that that was wrong and I love you and they just name it, validate my experience. They don't make an excuse for the person or the incident that's happened and they go there with me. And so I think that's just very it's just the skills of having empathy and being really being willing to be with someone in their pain or to bear witness to someone's experiences, even if it's uncomfortable for you as a friend or as the here.

- Tara VanderWoude

And so even now, this past week, different friends have extended themselves so beautifully. And, you know, there's a friend that comes to mind and she just said, I don't know how exactly to be the friend that you need right now, but I want to and I want to learn more. And I love you. And that's meaningful because she's not afraid to name that some of this is her internal. I don't even know and. Yeah, I just that's kind of what comes to mind when I think of when I think of those those friends,

- Tara VanderWoude

You know, this past week there was one colleague who just she had known I had had some great sleep. And some of it is just due to this heaviness. And some of my Asian friends that were in contact quite a bit more this week checking in on each other. And I've had some friends who've experienced some some racial hatred. And so as I carry that with them, it obviously affects me emotionally. And one colleague, I think, just heard me say I haven't gotten much sleep and I found a Starbucks card in my inbox the next morning. And it was just like, you know what, when you need your next caffeine, it's on me.

- Tara VanderWoude

That was extremely meaningful to me. A five dollar gift card. Wow. It's just that you thought of me last week. Friday, I came home and it was it turned out to be an interesting evening. And I came home. I was so excited to be home from the week. And there were flowers on my table that had been delivered and it just said to a beautiful family. And that's that's all it said. And again, that was really that was really meaningful.

- Tara VanderWoude

And just people even texting. I know that it can be on one hand, it can be exhausting because you feel like you have to respond to all of them. And I think some of that's on me. I just need to let myself off the hook because I know they don't all expect a response. Right. But just people just saying, hey, I'm thinking of you. I imagine it might have been a hard week for you and that the news is quite much.

- Tara VanderWoude

And so I'm thinking about you and I care about you. That's that's that's really meaningful to me.

- Liesel Mertes

Those are beautiful expressions and thank you for the time and reflection, you know, even as you as you described some of the ways that people miss you. I was reminded of some of the language that I use in some of my my trainings, you know, like, oh, that's that's a Buck-Up Bobby.

- Liesel Mertes

Sort of a response floating through or that's a that's a Cheer-Up Cheryl who just so ready for you to look on the bright side or the Joking Julie who just wants to make, you know, a joke or try to get through that uncomfortable moment. And it sounds like you have had encounters with many of those types and probably more as you've gone through this.

- Liesel Mertes

And, you know, I hear I hear also the the beauty of intention when it comes to empathy, you know, even even if you don't know exactly what to say.

- Liesel Mertes

There are always, you know, gestures of things you can do. Also, you know, a note to Starbucks card flowers. They're so meaningful. Yeah. Yeah.

- Liesel Mertes

What are some of the most hurtful things that have come your way, either in work settings or social circles?

- Tara VanderWoude

Sure. So, you know, being an Asian and predominantly white and or black majority areas, I feel like I'm often seen as the other. And people are just not used to seeing my face. They're just not used to seeing Asians were a small sample size, so to speak.

- Tara VanderWoude

And so I, I receive I receive comments from people of various races and various ethnic groups. Some of the most hurtful things I think have to do with the erasure that I talked of, the just the dismissal and the erasure of of our experience.

- Tara VanderWoude

And then I talked about I talk about this sometimes on my some of the consulting and education I do for for adoption, race and identity. But when you're raising an Asian female in particular, there is this objectification and exotic vacation of Asians, females, and at least I know it's uncomfortable to talk about, but I feel like it's vital, especially in light of the events of last week in Atlanta, but that it happened early on for me in high school, just starting to receive comments from men regarding who I am as as a female, but more importantly, as an Asian female.

- Tara VanderWoude

And so different comments about that are very uncomfortable from strangers and then also from from people that might be in my in my neighborhood or in my circle, a community. I remember some uncomfortable conversations with with someone that I would see regularly and he would comment on my body. And I'm sure that's why you would decided to adopt so you could just keep that body and then not wanting ever to be in his presence. I remember being in a social setting and someone saying, hey, you know, a guy saying to me, hey, can you bring all your sisters along with you?

- Tara VanderWoude

We want all of your sisters to be here, too, because he assumed I had I had many, many Korean beauties. Right. To take with me to offer to him. So comments like that. And then there have been some situations I've been followed out of places before. Men follow me and ask me if I work at a massage parlor, ask me if I do nails, tell me that I have a body as they use a description.

- Tara VanderWoude

Men, a man, I should say. Told me I look like someone in his porn magazines. That was my actually my awakening back when I was a teenager, a man coming up to me and saying that to me. And you can imagine even back then, the Internet was not what it is now. Right. So he's talking about his his paper magazines.

- Tara VanderWoude

And then there have been a few times in which some men have exposed themselves to me and have and I was with my kids when that happened.

- Tara VanderWoude

And so a lot of them really would have to do with without being particularly in Asian female, I think about safety because of the comments and even such actions that that I've experienced. And it's so interesting because you're just going about your day like you're just going about your day. And just like that, it's like it's hijacked from you.

- Tara VanderWoude

You know, I remember going for a run with my daughter and she was on her scooter. We're having so much fun together and a man starts screaming things out at me.

- Tara VanderWoude

And then he had to stop at the stoplight. And I knew that if we kept running that we would be there right next to him. And so taking my daughter and hiding behind a building with her downtown just so he could not see us and her knowing that something was up and her just hugging me and just saying it's going to be OK, you know? And I I said to her that man, just what he said to us and how he's looking at us, it's just not OK.

- Tara VanderWoude

And she and I had already started this conversation, but her kind of comforting me in that moment, you know, as a mother, that's that's both a beautiful thing and really a tragic thing, too, when our kids are confronted with with some of the ugliness, like I said, a beautiful thing and something that she was empowered to do, I think. But also this tragic loss of of that that say safety in that moment.

- Tara VanderWoude

So that's what comes to mind when I think of the really harmful and hurtful experiences that I've that I've had.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah. Thank you for giving voice to that. It's so it's so ugly and angering.

- Tara VanderWoude

Yeah, it it is. And, you know, my kids have experienced it now and they've been called covid and coronavirus and they've been screamed at to go back to China. My son had an experience in which it was a whole group of people screaming at him and he thought it could get physical and just trying to talk with him and process with him how he should respond, what he wants to say versus what he should say if he's thinking about his personal safety. It's a lot to kind of.

- Tara VanderWoude

To talk through, because there's so many different scenarios and then just that that feeling of, wow, we shouldn't have to do this, we shouldn't have to walk through all of these scenarios in order to come out emotionally intact and physically intact. But that is the experience that we have.

- Tara VanderWoude

And most recently, right before the shooting, my son was spit at by a stranger. And I, I that was really and it still is a really hard one for me. Obviously, he's had those verbal experiences. But just for him to to explain to me what I got off my bike, I had to make sure that I didn't have any spit on me. And he had just bought, like, a can of soda or something with a buddy somewhere. And I had to make sure it wasn't on my drink. And that's just awful to experience as a mother. Yes, I know that physically he came home in one piece, but the degrading nature of such an act and then to know that your kid got that a million times over, I would rather that person spit at me.

- Tara VanderWoude

But that that's been a hard one. And then also then for people, on the other hand, to be saying Asians have everything great crazy rich Asians, you know, you don't have it as bad as this group. So those experiences of having them and then people maybe not believing you, that's tough.

- Liesel Mertes

Mhm. Yeah. Well and I imagine that the toll that that can take in your body and your psyche when you feel like there's this mountain, you know, stress and horror and especially embodying it, you know, as a mother and then, and then feeling like I don't I don't even have a socially, you know, sanctioned outlet to give voice to this. I imagine I could feel very disempowering.

- Tara VanderWoude

Yeah, and you know what's interesting is, you know, I hadn't shared verbally with many people that most recent experience with my son because when you speak it into existence, it's just it's going through it all over again.

- Tara VanderWoude

And what's so fascinating, too, and I'm sure you know this, but there's so much embarrassment and shame that has even come from that experience. For me, even though I did nothing wrong, my son did nothing wrong. But just having to even share that you were the recipient of something like that, for whatever reason, it's it's just really hard. I know it doesn't mean that we are weak or that we did something wrong. But I think to kind of what we've been talking about throughout this conversation is when we do need to share it with someone, because I did share it with some of his parents, his friends, parents, as an FYI, because I know they'll be spending time together riding bikes.

- Tara VanderWoude

I know that I'll have to also, so to speak, manage other people's responses to me sharing that, and so that can also feel like another task, so to speak. And I'll say that all of his friends, parents were great. And I've learned to kind of how to share things and to even say, you know what, I'm not in a place where I can talk about this much more. But I did want you to know this particular incident happens.

- Tara VanderWoude

And I wanted to provide that context since our kids are buddies. And that's what I did in this this incident just over over a text because sharing it, speaking it it's it's been it's tough.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah. That makes me think of something that. Some some of my black colleagues have given voice to, which is to say it's hard enough to live the experience, then I'm asked to interpret it and educate people who are well-meaning. You know, I have to, like, go deeply into it. And I'm struck, you know, in a sideways way. That is part of what you're even doing and being a guest on this podcast. So I am grateful for that.

- Liesel Mertes

How have you do you feel that pressure sometimes socially, to to not only live through the experience, but then have to educate and inform people and contextualize the experience on their behalf?

- Tara VanderWoude

Sure. You know, it's interesting what you said, that the the interpreting that you have to do. Yes. When I share, you know, sometimes I get this pushback. Are you sure that's what they meant or what was he wearing or how old was he or this or that? And I understand so much that people want to create a framework for their own understanding. At the same time. The impact of that can be, I don't believe you or you have to prove yourself or you really have to give me every detail so I can say, yep, that was a bad thing that they didn't.

- Tara VanderWoude

You and I want to be real clear and knowing I know that that might not be people's intention, but just seeing the difference between the impact of their questions and maybe what their intention was.

- Tara VanderWoude

So there is that piece and then there is this piece of I get requests all the time of what should I read or where should I go or what would be my next book that I should read. And on one hand, I totally get it. I've devoted some of my life to this, to this education and consulting.

- Tara VanderWoude

And so when we're in a relationship and we're friends, I don't mind doing that at all because that's what friends do. We share our gifts. We share. You know, when you're my safe person and we have this relationship, we share with one another when it's a situation in which maybe we don't have that intimate of a relationship or you're just looking to me for for that knowledge and for me to do the work for you. Yes, it can feel it can feel like pressure.

- Tara VanderWoude

And, you know, I joke around at some of the education sessions I do about really making sure that you you don't expect that people of color are your learning libraries, that you can just check in and out as you wish for your for your good. And is is it at all a reciprocal relationship or are you just just expecting that person to do the work for you? And, you know, you've probably heard this and said this maybe yourself, but we do live in 2021 and we have Google and we have an extensive there are resources.

- Tara VanderWoude

Now, you have really no reason that you can't perhaps find yourself a book to read,

- Liesel Mertes

Maybe an article or a podcast or video simply they've been curated with whatever medium of choice, you know,

- Tara VanderWoude

So many curated lists that I my head's even spinning because there so much out there.

- Tara VanderWoude

So on one hand, I get it. And again, I don't want to attribute wrong intention. And I am glad whenever someone wants to learn and reaches out and I will help. But yes, if you can also maybe be mindful of that when we do this. Yes, it takes our time. And then sometimes when we're sharing situations, it might also be an emotional toll on us to relive the experience that we are sharing with you, to relive it, to answer the questions.

- Tara VanderWoude

And again, I want to be talking about some of these things. But let's let's make sure that we check the relationship that we have with that person. Do we have the right, even, so to speak, to ask such personal, intimate questions? Or are we expecting that simply because we expect that person to be the educator without without that intimate friendship already in place?

- Liesel Mertes

Well, and what I hear throughout, you know, throughout those reflections is just the importance of paying attention to the humanity of the person that you're interacting with in a social context. You know, I talk about just radical attention to someone who's gone through something hard and even just concentrating on the social cues and actually thinking like what what impact could my words have? You were describing some of the the questions and the barrage. That's a type I talk about Interrogating Edward, who, you know, at their best, they they like getting to the bottom of things and they're great at research and understanding, and that's a high value.

- Liesel Mertes

But when that's deployed in a social situation where you're just tone deaf to the emotion of the person in front of you and you're just focused on learning or getting to the bottom of things like. Rarely feels good to the person on the receiving end of it, you know, they feel like they're being dissected by that person instead of paid attention to in that moment and how it feels.

- Tara VanderWoude

Yeah, I love that Interrogating Edward. I'm afraid that, you know of any of those Cheer-Up Cheryls and all of those that you just just shared throughout our conversation.

- Tara VanderWoude

I might lean toward being an Interrogating Edward myself. So I'm glad I have a name for that.

- Liesel Mertes

And, frankly, the more I teach the stuff, like when, you know, over the course of now, almost three years, I began and I was like, I'm just a few of these types. Like, I tend to be a Fix-It Frank or a Commiserating Candace, but the more I teach it, I'm like, oh, I can go to all of these trouble when under stress I can speak in multiple tongues of empathy misses, especially when I'm under my own stress.

- Liesel Mertes

So it's just the importance of attention.

- Liesel Mertes

Wow. I don't care if I want to be cognizant of your time.

- Liesel Mertes

Is there anything that you would like to add that I didn't ask you?

- Tara VanderWoude

I don't know that there is anything that that I that I want to add other than, you know, knowing that we have the support of other people who are not Asian during this time, that is really, really meaningful as well. That other people will talk about it will call out the hate depending on if you're a social media user or if you're someone who uses it regularly.

- Tara VanderWoude

Is this going to be part of what you're talking about online? Obviously, there are some people who don't step foot online. And so we would I wouldn't expect that of that person. But if you're an avid social media user and you use that to talk about the things that matter to you, are you willing to incorporate this?

- Tara VanderWoude

Are you willing to send that text to your friends, to the to the people that you know, to say, hey, I imagine it could have been a hard week that has been that has been so supportive of me, is just knowing that I'm not in it alone, not alone individually, but then not even alone as as a Korean American, as an Asian-American, but that there are others cross ethnic, cross racial who who care about this and who want to learn, grow and who want to take action when necessary toward toward the this hatred and this anti Asian sentiment of this past year plus.

- Liesel Mertes

Thank you. That's really good.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

Here are three key take-aways from my conversation with Tara.

• The Asian American experience is all too often overlooked and underacknowledged.How is your language compounding this sense of exclusion? As you talk about equity in the workplace and in culture, are you remembering to include the marginalization of Asian Americans? This was a personal take-away for me and I am going to be adjusting my language, moving forwards, to incorporate the Asian experience when I talk about excluded groups.
• It really is THAT bad.If you are a member of a majority White culture, you have probably had the privilege of not thinking about the Asian American experience. As I listened to Tara, to the MANY stories she had of sexual predation and harassment, to the stories of threat and humiliation that her children have experienced, I realize there is so much going on that I have no idea about…and that is in addition to the awful violence populating our news page. Tara encouraged us, if you have a social media presence where you talk about things you care about, give voice to this reality. Help build awareness that Anti-Asian hate is not OK. I have linked resources in the show notes because remember, the Internet has a TON of helpful resources and you should not make your Asian friend the equivalent of a good Google search.
• As a friend or coworker, work to pay radical attention to your Asian friend or colleague as they express feelings of pain.Allow them to express their feelings without forcing them to justify them (like an Interrogating Edward). Send a text, or a Starbucks card. And if you don't know what to say, that is OK too. You can say something like, "I don't even know what to say, but I want you to know that I hate this for you and I am here with you."

OUTRO

Resources

Stop AAPI Hate: The center tracks and responds to incident of hate, violence, harassment, discrimination, shunning, and child bullying against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States. https://stopaapihate.org/about/

Anti-Asian Violence Resources: https://anti-asianviolenceresources.carrd.co

Jon Tesser

Do I have value? Do I have skills? Am I ever going to get a job again? Is am I worthy? Am I worthy? I mean, it gets down to this idea of shame and worthiness. It gets really deep, right? This idea that I'm not worthy because I don't have a job.

INTRO

In today's episode, we are talking about the trauma of lay-offs. And this is a rich conversation. We are going to talk about how to fire someone with empathy, what it looks (and sounds like) when employers pile on the shame, and the emotional PTSD that can occur when you lose your job. We are talking male expectations, class differences, and how lay-offs can actually make us better, more empathetic people.

My guest is Jon Tesser. Jon is a husband, the father of two boys, and he doesn't have much time for hobbies these days.

- Jon Tesser

I'm a dad with two kids home during the pandemic. I watch them all the time. So hobbies don't really come by. Most of the stuff that I do for mastery is just ways to relax. So I'll play like an online video game on my iPod and try and master that. But is that something that I care to talk too much about or that I think is interesting?

- Jon Tesser

Not necessarily. It's something that I do so that I can maintain a sense of sanity in a world where I'm constantly bombarded by people. Stimuli is the way that I put it. So, I mean, mastery for me is is is this it's this idea of human to human interaction and how can I how can I handle that? And what does it mean? And what is my place in the world? That's actually what I do for fun.

Jon is a student and translator of human interaction. His LinkedIn account has thousands of followers and his daily posts generate lots and lots of likes and comments. - Liesel Mertes

You you share on LinkedIn, you share on Medium. How would you define the content that you share?

- Jon Tesser

Oh, it's a I have a great way of describing it, it's my crazy thoughts vomited onto a piece of paper essentially is what I say it is. I'm like, I'm thinking something and I have to write it down. And for some crazy reason, I also have to share it with the public, which includes my one hundred seven thousand followers on LinkedIn and on my blog.

- Jon Tesser

And depending on what the content is and how I describe what it is, is it's just my thoughts and subjective opinions about the world and how I feel within my place, within that world.

- Jon Tesser

So, for instance, I just put out a post that said, you know what, being in the spotlight in social media and interacting with people has made me paranoid because I believe that no matter that, that who's the next person who's going to trash me?

- Jon Tesser

Right. I literally just put a post out about that. And I said very candidly, I'm actually quite paranoid that if I talk to somebody, they're going to be the next one who's going to spew some hate. Right. And this is actually coloring the way that I chat with people and has put me on guard.

- Jon Tesser

It's content like that you don't see very often on on on social media where I'm putting it out there about how I feel. And you may or may not respond well to it, but I'm not putting a sheen of code over it. Right. It is. It's purely how I feel. And there's that's that's what I think people connect to.

Jon is also a career whisperer for early processionals, helping them grow in self-awareness and clarify next steps in their vocational journey. This capacity for insight and care is borne out of living through some really hard stuff. In the language that I use in my consulting, Jon has lived through disruptive life events.

- Jon Tesser

I think the biggest disruptive life event was getting laid off three times within a period of five years while having children daycare to pay for a mortgage to pay for. That was a real sort of critical moment where I needed to essentially redefine my identity.

- Jon Tesser

Life had been fairly easy up until that point. I'd done all the right things. I got my MBA, I bought a house, I got married, I had the right careers.

- Jon Tesser

I was making a lot of money and everything was very easy and very upper middle class. And I never really had major adversity in my life. When you get an MBA, you go to MBA school, you are trained to believe that your career is your life, that your identity is wrapped up in what you do and how much money you make and the things that you buy.

- Jon Tesser

And this was this was my my idea, right, Liesel? That that life was about, you know, career and finding meaning in work and treating that as what you're supposed to do in life and the disruptive major event where all of that could be taken away and it's literally a snap of fingers and say, nope, that's that's your livelihood taken away and not just your livelihood, but your identity and your self-esteem that really that forced me to become the person that I am today, which is someone who has sort of decided that careers and companies are temporary and are not something to get wrapped up in.

- Jon Tesser

That's a lot of where my content on LinkedIn was forged because of these. I don't want to call it PTSD, but in some ways it is. There is some traumatic stress disorder that comes from losing your livelihood so often in such a short period of time.

- Liesel Mertes

Can I can I ask you a little bit more about that? What what surprised you about the emotional journey in the path of getting off?

- Liesel Mertes

I think the shows like that, there's a lot of emotions that underpin, like the receiving of the news, all of the logistics. So I'd love to hear more about that.

- Jon Tesser

I think it's the shock that I could actually lose my job, that I was considered to not be valuable enough to stay at a company. I mean, you're talking to someone in me who's always been a star performer. It's always outperformed at every job I had. And then all of a sudden I'm being told by a company that you're not a star performer. In fact, you're not even useful here. You're not like this is this is the self-esteem hit, right?

- Jon Tesser

When you think of yourself as one way as the person who's needed. Right. As the person who's always succeeded because they're so smart and they're so ambitious and they're so hard working that they make things happen.

- Jon Tesser

And all of a sudden, when you are told that you don't matter, that you don't exist here, that the work you do isn't needed and that your livelihood is now taken away, you're not making money, you're forced to reassess. This idea is like, am I valuable?

Right. These are the you talk about the emotional process. What am I do I have value? Do I have skills? Am I ever going to get a job again? Is am I worthy? Am I worthy? I mean, it gets down to this idea of shame and worthiness. It gets really deep, right? This idea that I'm not worthy because I don't have a job. And we're told in America that if you don't have a job, you're a loser, you're you're a pariah.

- Jon Tesser

You're not you're not a good person. Right. And we we the unemployed in this country, they they they internalize this. And a lot of ways because our culture says that you are where you work. And so, again, a lot of great things came out of this, which for me was to reject the societal understanding that we are where we work. To me, that is literally no longer the case. I am not tied into my identity at work.

- Jon Tesser

Work is a place where I do something that I am quite capable of doing and I get paid money to do it. Otherwise I'm living my life. And if they take away like if I get if I get laid off right, then my identity is not wrapped up in my job. So it's not that big a deal. Right. I'm going to get laid off and that just means that I'm just not making money now. So all I need to do now that I've been laid off is go find a way to make money.

- Jon Tesser

It becomes much more of a practical thing when. You when you use you disorient yourself away from your identity, being your job and your title and the number of people who report to you and your place in the hierarchy to a job is a place I earn money, which is essentially my mantra right now, and something that I try and teach to the younger generation as well.

- Liesel Mertes

As you as you say that, you know, until the arc of that story I'm struck, that there was, as you noted, some of this loss of.

- Liesel Mertes

Identity, in some ways, the questioning of who am I? I'm struck that in many companies, especially Pre-COVID, we're spending more time with our co-workers of our waking hours than we are at home. What was it like? Did you feel like you had lost a significant community of people in getting laid off? Like was that part of some of the sense of loss?

- Jon Tesser

It's interesting you say that because ever since I started getting laid off so often, I would become friendly with people at work. But it was never I. Maybe there it's really interesting that you mention this. There might have been a guardedness for me to get too close to people because I didn't want to create that community because I knew that it was is temporary. Right. So I never really felt too much like I lost that sense of community because I put the guard off and didn't allow it to be created.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, I can I can think of a friend and colleague of mine, and I was listening to her speak recently and she had gotten laid off and hired back into a much larger company. And she said, you know, for me in the past, I've always been like the community builder. You know, I want to talk. I want to hear from people. And she said, I don't know if I'll ever be that way again. I'm just so happy to walk in and clock out.

- Liesel Mertes

And I'm just tired and I don't even know. It's not even a question of right or wrong. As much as I hear how that could happen for her. And I hear dynamics of that in your story,

- Jon Tesser

It's literally the same for me to me, even at my job. Now, I've created a bit of separation between myself and my coworkers, not on purpose just because for me, work is work. It's not a place where I meet people to be friends with and to get to know them outside of work. It's a place for me to work with them as colleagues to clock out and then live my life outside of that with my friends, family and others.

- Jon Tesser

So I absolutely identify with that idea that creating this community at work is is not worth it for me. And it's not something that I seek out because again, then you're tying more of your identity into your job. So there's there's a sense of defensiveness and protection that happens when you when you are in this situation so often where you just start to think that this is going to be temporary and there's no there's no real reason to build up these sort of more intimate bonds with the people that you're surrounded by.

- Liesel Mertes

I am. That sounds so understandable, and I can imagine a number of listeners are relating to that, I'd like to I'd like to just kind of like peer under the edges of that statement a little bit more, because on the one hand, I really like the emphasis of you're much more than your job clocking in and clocking out. I think there is something that, you know, I and others are trying to build right now in talking about things like empathy at work to say we want work actually to be a more human place where people could expect that they could have some level of support, a resonance that we're not just the jobs that we do.

- Liesel Mertes

How does a statement like that sit with you if you as you think about, you know, how you're kind of poised to engage with work right now, saying you get less?

- Jon Tesser

Yeah, where I come when you make a statement like that is this is not going to surprise you at all, it sounds to me a bit Pollyanna ish that we can create a workplace of empathy. To me, there's workplaces. Our God is going to sound so awful, but it does feel this way. They're their war zones and a lot of ways because the goal of the goal of the workplace isn't to excel. The goal of the workplace is to make sure that you wake up every day and you have a paycheck so that your kids don't go hungry or you have a roof over your head.

- Jon Tesser

When you think of it in that stripped down manner, it becomes like if you think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, work can even fulfill safety. You don't feel safe in that way. And this could just be me and my PTSD speaking. But if you don't feel safe in an environment, then how are you going to use a job to self actualize? You have to be safe before you can come to before you can use mature human emotions such as wisdom, empathy and compassion.

- Jon Tesser

There's and it's almost impossible to feel safe knowing that your head is on the chopping block every day. The wrong move means you're gone. Right. And so then if you think that way, how are you going to be able to empathize, empathize with people and create a nurturing environment in a workplace that's literally like, I win, you lose and you get cut out and I get the promotion. How do you bring in mature human emotions when most workplaces operate in this fashion?

- Liesel Mertes

Right. Well, and, you know, it's never about judging someone else's experience, I hear how that perspective is really congruent with what you've experienced, you know, and that uncertainty and that feeling of being disposable and not being safe. And I agree with that. If there is not a sense of safety, it's it's difficult to bring more than just survival instincts to the workplace. And it's interesting for that, because that is something that oftentimes I hear people from less privileged communities at work talking about, like women in the workplace can feel that way because of marginalization or people from racialized communities, especially saying, you know, I'm not safe.

- Liesel Mertes

So, yeah, that's that's in line with what I think a number of people are articulating and definitely what I'm wanting to help do and help skill people up to say, from the top down, what does it mean to actually prioritize safety and care and not just have that be things on your website or a cheap catchphrases, but actually things that you embed in your policies and your procedures and your daily interactions?

- Jon Tesser

It's tough, right? Because at the end of the day, the employer and your boss can fire you. And that is a sector that's always sitting over your head. Right. And so, again, like it's it's a philosophical debate. But knowing that, is it really possible to bring those really those true emotions to a place where you are disposable at will? It's in your contract. It's called at will employment. Right. The employer can do whatever they want.

- Jon Tesser

And there are very few protections in the US for workers in the private sphere. You know, it's not like you have tenure at a university or that you're working in a government job where you have certain levels of safety. Or my wife, for instance, who works for the Board of Education and has a union, these people are protected. So you can bring in some of those work environments, more things like empathy. But when you're in the private sphere and it's it's all about, you know, am I being seen as somebody who's productive?

- Jon Tesser

And if I'm not being seen as somebody who's productive, I'm basically on the chopping block. It's really hard to get out of that survival mechanism.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

We will return to Jon's interview in just a moment. But first, I want to take a moment to recognize our sponsor: Handle with Care Consulting. Employee engagement matters. And especially in the midst of COVID, disruptive life events and compassion fatigue are taking their toll. We can help you create a culture of not only safety but care. Through keynotes, coaching, and certificate programs, let's build empathy at work, together.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

- Liesel Mertes

I talk with employers about even to the point of when you let someone go, there is a more or less empathetic way of engaging in that process. Does that statement, as you reflect on being let go three different times? Do you think this company did it better? This one was worse.

- Jon Tesser

Like, ah, there there was definitely there is definitely better and worse. Well, we wish them well.

- Jon Tesser

Two of them were absolute nightmares. One and one of them I actually talked about on LinkedIn. And it was probably the most terrifying post I ever put out. And it was one of the most awful experiences one could go through. The person who laid me off from one of the companies told me specifically to my face that I was the wrong person for the job and that when they asked everybody around my company whether I was worth keeping on board or added any value, no one stood up for me.

- Jon Tesser

And he told me this as I was getting laid off to my face. And it was first of

- Liesel Mertes

Talk about the shame and judgment.

- Jon Tesser

Yeah. So he's bringing the she's bringing the shame and judgment to the forefront and saying you should be ashamed and judged and you are you are useless and you are worthless and you don't belong here. And I'm going to make sure you know that and I'm going to make sure that you leave here. You're done. Yeah. And it was and all for no reason.

- Jon Tesser

And that was handled absolutely terribly. The first time I got laid off was very similar. The person sat me down and said, you haven't been performing here. You're you're gone, essentially. And I was shocked by that. But, yeah, those situations were absolutely horrible. Third time was at a larger company and it was handled fairly well. This is a company that lays people all the time and it's in media entertainment.

- Jon Tesser

They had a clear process in mind. They made it. It was very I didn't feel alone. I think that day there, like 30 percent of the workforce was laid off. So I felt like I was part of a people who were getting laid off. The the the severance package was extremely generous. And so I wasn't too upset by it. I kind of saw it coming. Right. Like, when you're getting laid off so often, you're always see it coming. But this one, I actually kind of saw it coming.

- Jon Tesser

So it wasn't it wasn't so it was bad, but it was it was actually the third one was the moment where I was like I literally said to myself, I am done working because any job I'm going to get is just a ticking time bomb for when they're going to. Right. And yet it was at that moment where I was really pursuing my own business and doing getting my own independent consulting so that if I lost something, it was going to be on me, it wasn't going to be on a company.

- Jon Tesser

And so I went through that process after the third layoffs.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, I hear that one you you you've used the phrase a few times, but just some of that PTSD of thinking. Yeah, what's the impending sense of danger that is now feels implicit in what I do? I, I imagine, you know, it's hard it's hard for anyone to be laid off. There are still like prevailing social narratives about what a man needs to be a man with a family, a man as a breadwinner.

- Liesel Mertes

Did you feel like you're suddenly thrown on like reckoning with those narratives internally in ways that felt hard or even from external people? Did you have people in your community who kind of amped up the pressure with some of those narratives?

- Jon Tesser

Yeah, I mean, it's a good question, those those prevailing narratives of the man as the breadwinner, the man who earns the money, the man takes care of the house, are still ingrained in me, even though as much as I want to deny them, they're still there.

- Jon Tesser

It's still my responsibility to have a job that makes enough money so that everybody can eat. Right. And so I've always put that pressure on myself. Now that you mention it, it's more explicit that it exists. And so when you lose the job, you lose that role and you lose the value that you think you have in society. I think it's a very accurate statement to say that men are expected to be, quote unquote, breadwinners. And when they are not breadwinners, what is their value?

- Jon Tesser

This is a huge societal problem in the US, particularly among lower class and lower middle class men who are finding themselves out of work more and more. But it's still prevalent with folks like myself.

- Jon Tesser

Now, what makes it harder and I'm not saying I feel bad for myself, but what makes it harder for the sort of upper middle class, well educated folks like myself is that you're expected to be working right, that you're expected and you're surrounded by everybody in your community who is working and who does have a job and who is successful and is who is supporting their family.

- Jon Tesser

And when you're laid off and you're one of me, you don't feel like you fit into that community. So there's a lot of dynamics here. And you can probably have an entire conversation just about societal expectations around this. But, yeah, for sure it does. It does wear on you. Yeah,

- Liesel Mertes

What were what were some of the most helpful things, whether it was within your professional network or your personal network that people did to come alongside you in the aftermath of these layoffs?

- Jon Tesser

Oh, that's a great question. It was really the individual people. I have a very close friend from college who was really there for me the first time I got laid off. And I would just go over and hang out at her house with her baby at the time and just feel connected to people, really get out and be around people and talk and interact like a normal person. Obviously, this was not during the pandemic. So you could do things like that.

- Jon Tesser

Having those people who supported you through that and who were made sure that they were there and set up the time to listen to you and talk to those people. Well, I'll keep around for life. As I said in a post recently, when you go through stuff, you find out who your real friends are. And each time I was laid off, I definitely found out who my real friends are, the ones who are going to be there when the chips are down.

- Jon Tesser

It's one of the positive things about getting laid off is really knowing that you have to rely on people. You can't be doing it yourself and finding those people you can rely on and realize that they're there for you is very it's one of the triumphs of the human spirit. Honestly.

- Liesel Mertes

It sounds like there were those people who showed up. Were there any people that you would have expected to show up and be supportive? That faded into the background?

- Jon Tesser

It was always the bosses that were surprising. The people who I had reported to just were not there universally across all three jobs. People that I have reported into kind of shirked away from their responsibility to help out. And I think that gets back to this idea of empathy, empathetic layoffs. Right. I believe that it's your duty as a manager to make sure that if somebody is laid off, you do your damnedest to help them land back on their feet.

- Jon Tesser

That's the least that you can do to help them, because they're a human being, deserves dignity and deserve support. Those people who did not have my back during those situations, I hate to say it, but I haven't forgotten that. And it's not something that you raise because you expect a boss to be there for you to make sure that you're going to land on your feet. And in none of my situations where they there.

- Jon Tesser

So is there a sense of bitterness? No, I think there's more of a sense of a little bit of sadness around that truth that people who you would expect to be there for you aren't. But it's definitely was the case that I did expect some sort of help or put me in touch with their network, this that they just didn't want to do it.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, as you as you look back, you know, and not that it's the person who has not been supported their responsibility, but as you reflect on it, you did a couple of times what what would have really meant something to you from those bosses? Like what would you have hoped for?

- Jon Tesser

John, here's a group of people I'd like you to talk to, I'm going to make some introductions. I think that that would be really well fit for for talking to them, getting to know them. I know how good you are, John, and your job, your super valuable. And I think that by talking to these people, you'll show your value. Do you see what's done there? Do you see what happens there?

- Jon Tesser

That's what I did for my analysts when she was laid off and this post went viral. I don't show off much on LinkedIn, but this was kind of a show off post where I had a laid off analyst and I got her a job right away. And I introduced her to my network and I made sure that it happened and I made sure to introduce her as the best analyst that ever worked for me. Right.

- Jon Tesser

So I took the lessons that I learned from my bosses and said, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to support my employees, how they need to be supported. It comes back to the idea of an empathetic workplace. Right. So just being just knowing that they that your boss can say can vouch for what you do and repair your dignity would mean a lot.

- Jon Tesser

It's not a very big thing that you're asking for a little bit of recognition as a human who's worthy and somebody who needs a little bit of help.

- Liesel Mertes

Well, and what you're saying has alignment with what I've experienced, as I have done as I've gone in and done communication coaching for downsizing with companies, which is that the people who are doing the reduction in force or the layoffs, that the whole event is its own workplace trauma for everyone involved.

- Liesel Mertes

And that doesn't mean that it affects people with the same degree of like force all the way through. But for the people who are doing it, I, I sense this like very prevailing sentiment. Oftentimes they just want to get past it like they hate they don't want to have to fire people. They don't want to have to have this and they just want to like put it, you know, in the rearview mirror and be thinking about the next thing, the next way they can reduce, you know, the next strategic goal and how that disconnect.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, it can really be painful both for those who are laid off and also for their coworkers who might be fearful for their own job loss or missing their coworkers. And when the posture of management and leadership is just like we just want to move on and pretend like this never happened, it really does widespread damage.

- Jon Tesser

Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

- Liesel Mertes

Did did anyone say or do anything that was immensely unhelpful that you would say like when somebody who's gotten laid off like this is just dumb?Don't do or say this.

- Jon Tesser

I mean, I think I walked you through an example earlier come to mind. No, it really is.

- Jon Tesser

It is this idea that you don't add fuel to the fire, that it's already a shameful enough activity, that you don't have to then say and you suck to there. You don't have to remind somebody of that. I think that this idea of empathy and understanding that somebody's going through a traumatic life, events such as this doesn't need to be piled on in any way.

- Jon Tesser

And it's not something that you'll ever forget. Right. Like these are indelible moments that are imprinted in my mind that I recall them so clearly because they are trauma events. And you don't want to add to that. You're probably not thinking of that as you're laying somebody off, that you're creating an indelible trauma moment. It's not like your thought process, but you are healing and you're handling of that is is is crucial and critical to this person being able to recover.

- Liesel Mertes

Hmm, yeah. Is there anything else, John, that you would like to say about? The disruption of getting laid off that I didn't get a chance to you, yeah,

- Jon Tesser

I mean, I do want to talk. You know, we've talked mostly about the negatives, and I don't want everybody here to, like, run away because it's such a negative conversation. But I think the positives out of this is the incredible adversity and the ability to deal with adversity.

- Jon Tesser

And resilience, and that leads to the cultivation of mature human traits, right? If I hadn't been laid off three times in five years and been treated so poorly, would I have had the wherewithal to treat my employees so well when she got laid off? Probably not. Right, I would not have thought of it that way, I would have been like, well, she's gone like whatever she's got to deal with it, right? It would have been very like like it's on her very unsympathetic and very non emotional intelligence derives.

- Jon Tesser

but I think because of this experience, I have a preternatural empathy to understand the experience of the jobless rate. And so the positive that's come out of it is this.

- Jon Tesser

I've created an entire community on LinkedIn around being supportive of people who are scared and anxious and insecure in their job situation. And I'm that person who offers them a bright, optimistic support mechanism. That's an incredible positive thing that's come out of it, that's come out of the adversity of this.

- Jon Tesser

You know what I'm saying? Where, like, I wouldn't have had that if I hadn't dealt with these traumatic events. And if you hear the way that I'm talking about it, I was forced to come to a reckoning on my identity and who I am as a person. And I've come out as a better person because of it.

- Jon Tesser

And I think a lot of people who've been laid off would agree with that statement that as you get over the hump, as you deal with the adversity and as you become more resilient, you become a better person because of it.

- Jon Tesser

And I would definitely agree with that statement. I like who I am now more than I was, more than I like who I was prior to getting laid off.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate that, and I think that that's true, it's not that it's not that hard things always lead to resiliency or an increased capacity, but they can be that invitation. If you go through the work to getting to that point, I, I recognize that there is an element of choosing and work to bring that spirit of positivity and not just trauma.

- Liesel Mertes

What are some of the things that were important for you to do or engage in in the aftermath of your third firing?

- Jon Tesser

Yeah, it's a it's the best question you can ask. The coping mechanisms are to allow yourself to feel what you feel as one thing and then to also say to yourself, you know, how much of this unhealthy feeling can I deal with? So I'm going to get real. I'm going to get real vulnerable here for a second. I've been I'm not I don't have clinical depression, but I did have situational depression for obvious reasons. So each time I would get laid off, I'd be like, OK, you know what?

- Jon Tesser

I don't want to feel so anxious and sad and not able to deal with my situation. I'm going to go on antidepressants, right. To deal with the temporary situation I'm on here so that I can have a clear head for interviews and get a job. Right. It's these kinds of coping mechanisms that that you learn about and that help you get through through the situations. Right.

- Liesel Mertes

Well, thank you for sharing that, because, yeah, it's it is it's own trauma and to be able to take the steps to purposefully rebuild, sometimes feeling your feelings feels really crappy. What did you do when those moments of feeling, your feelings just felt overwhelming?

- Jon Tesser

I had drugs and I'm not talking about opiate or cocaine. I'm talking about antianxiety antidepressants. If things got to be too overwhelming, I dealt with it and I said, you know what? I'm not strong enough to deal with this. This is too traumatic. This has happened too much. I need to take things to help me physically deal with this because I life what life just dealt me too much and life wins, right? It's like you that is not a sign of weakness is actually a sign of strength to say I need something to help me.

- Jon Tesser

I'm going to I'm not going to be ashamed to do it, do it because I need it, because this is a situation way too much for my humans, for me as a human being to to deal with. So I'm going to take those things that can help and realize that it's temporary. Yeah.

- Liesel Mertes

I know that you are a man who also makes space for meditation and contemplation, was that part of some of that recent train journey as well at that time?

- Jon Tesser

Yeah, absolutely. You know, taking walks to clear your head, being outside, seeing people, like I mentioned, a very an intense meditation practice was also very important. I believe at those times that I was laid off, I would do one half hour in the morning and one half hour at night of of breath meditation to really, really center and just try and deal with the fact that the emotions and the thoughts are coming at you in ways that are hard to deal with.

- Liesel Mertes

Right. Well, John, thank you for sharing with listeners today and today's podcast. I know that you also share regularly on some of your channels of influence if people want to hear more from you, where the best places to find you.

- Jon Tesser

Sure. Search for me on LinkedIn. I'm under https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-tesser- even though I call myself Jon here. And if you want to read a little bit more of the content, that's probably closer to the stuff that we talked about here on the podcast. I do have a blog as well. It's mahler101.medium.com Möller, and they are one to one medium dot com. And that's where I offer sort of more of my or deeper meditations on things and on life. Those are the two areas where you can really learn a lot about me if you're so inclined.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

Here are three key take-aways from my conversation with Jon

• Lay-offs are a life trauma for the men and women that are being let go.As an employer, consider how you can have these conversations with care, eliminating unnecessary shame on top of the transition. Do you have a clear plan? A severance package? As a boss, can you use your network to help someone find their next role? And, consider this a point 1b. There is an emotional toll to how you do layoffs. Jon is a man who wants to be empathetic, but he has found himself less and less willing to give of himself, in a deep way, to his working environment. Are your policies and practices towards lay-off contributing to this workplace disconnect? Because it will affect both those that leave as well as those that stay. And creativity and collaboration can suffer when people are more guarded and less connected at work. The cost of the trauma is high.
• Medications can help in the process of coping with loss.Jon tells how going on anti-depressants was an essential part of navigating his job loss. You can get more information and resources from your doctor.
• "When you go through stuff, you find out who your real friends are."Jon found great comfort in relying on those around him. The friends that invited him over to play with their baby, the friends that were just available to talk. If you know someone who has been laid off, make that call, send that text or email. Your support matters.
• And finally, as a bonus take-away.Remember, you are not your work. You are who you are and work is what you do. This is deep wisdom for all of us.

OUTRO

Jill Harding

Whenever I share those stories, people like you look so, so optimistic and you're so bubbly on life with what you've been through. And I said because at the end of the day, my kiddos fortunate, they have taught me a lot about life in ways that I don't know if we didn't go through those experiences, one, I could have taught them as a parent. And secondly, I learned a lot by their endurance, resilience and what they all went through.

INTRO

Sometimes in life, one disruptive life event falls fast on the heels of another. This can be hard in your personal life…but it can feel especially devastating when the pain affects your children. And that is what we are going to be talking about today. My guest is Jill Harding. She is many things, which I will tell you more about in a second, but she has parented two children through some really hard stuff. Her oldest child, Grant, was diagnosed with leukemia and her middle child, Berkley, had a life-threatening bout of E.coli. You will get a behind the scenes look at the challenges and even joy along the journey and learn how to be a better manager, coworker, or friend to people living through similar situations.

Jill lives with her husband and three children in small-town Indiana, in Morgantown. She has known her husband since the mid-90s and they always said that they would never live in Morgantown or own minivan or live in a log cabin. But things change.

Jill Harding

We live in a little town which we love and adore Morgantown. But I laugh when people ask that question because my husband and I have known each other since the late 90s and we always said no log cabin, no minivan and no Morgantown. And guess what?

Jill Harding

We have a minivan and we live in Morgantown and we pass a log cabin to get to our house every day just on the irony of those early and that we don't even think of at our place like it's perfect.

Liesel Mertes

All of the cup holders, the door is right, minivan, they're great.

Jill Harding

And I love it. You go out and you're grabbing food on the go and they ask you if you need a cup holder. I'm like, Are you kidding me? I got a million in here.

Jill is a marketer, a high school basketball coach, an entrepreneur, and a small business owner. She is raising three children with her husband. And when it snows, Jill and her family love to ski and would do it all day, every day if she had the chance.

Liesel Mertes

When you and I realize at this stage of life, it can be a precious commodity, especially with COVID. But when you have time to yourself, do you have any hobbies or like ways that you really like to fill your discretionary time?

Jill Harding

And we do and I actually my husband and I, we like to just chill out and we have a pretty heavily wooded area that we live in. So we just like to take hikes. And and I like to do them by myself or my husband or even the kiddos. But I really feel like that just rejuvenates all of us.

Jill is also an avid reader; she loves books on leadership and entrepreneurship, but she also makes time for other genres.

Jill Harding

And then I also my son is a huge, huge, avid reader, breaking school records, even with his reading accounts while he was in elementary. So he and I kind of share books, too, with his love for reading. In The Land of Stories is a new book series that we started getting into. So reading is another obsession of ours.

Liesel Mertes

Ada, my eldest, loves Land of Stories and I know what that is like. It's its own kind of distinct pleasure.

Liesel Mertes

I also love to read but a track with one's children. And so Ada and I are just reading together right now.

Liesel Mertes

Oh, it's it's a keeper of the Lost Cities, which is a fantasy sort of romp into the land of elves, ogres, et cetera, et cetera, that it's like they're big like 350 page books and there's like eight in the series.

Liesel Mertes

So I was reading far too much heavy non-fiction and I took a divergence over the last month and a half. And now just reading elves now at see that.

Jill Harding

But I fact that you can talk about it like my sons always like where are you at in the book? And, you know, I asked him the same thing and it's cool to kind of chit chat back and forth on where we're at and live that dream happy together for sure.

Liesel Mertes

Well, and I also resonate with I, I feel like I say often that our family is everybody's at their best when we're like outside in the woods.

Liesel Mertes

Sometimes it can be a battle to get there with fussing, but it's always so I don't have any gloves or, you know, what have you. What an amazing. But once we get out there, it's so amazing.

Jill Harding

We're fortunate to we have a little creek that runs in the bottom of our woods. And just to sit there, I mean, obviously right now it's kind of cold and frozen, but it's still cool just to watch it because, you know, natural beauty for sure.

Liesel Mertes

There's something about the just the movement of water and what it brings also, which is its own goodness.

Liesel Mertes

Well, you know, children and life with children. That's some of what brings us to this conversation. And I know that you have familiarity with the good people and staff at Riley Hospital, much like I do within my own story.

Liesel Mertes

What brought you to Riley when you were pregnant with your second child?

Jill Harding

So basically our journey with our son, Grant, he I was telling you before he actually was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of two and a half, and originally our pediatrician was, you know, just running bloodwork, doing this on the other.

Jill Harding

And at one point, I guess that that motherly instinct just kicked in and like, no, this isn't good enough. I feel like I know my son. Yes, Grant was our first child, but I feel like I know that this son well enough to know something's just not right.

Jill Harding

So I push back to the pediatrician probably more aggressively than they were expecting and just said we get a fine results today because I can't see my son in suffering any longer and they won't ask him,

Liesel Mertes

What were you in, what sorts of symptoms was he manifesting?

Jill Harding

Yeah, so it was shortly after Christmas and he would not even he got a train table. And if anyone's been around toddlers, two year old toddlers, once they start walking, they don't stop. They run in the raster and they're crazier than ever. And he got to a point where he got a train table for Christmas and he wouldn't even stand up to play at the train table at a little over two. And I was like, someone just doesn't make sense.

Grant continued to languish. He got strep throat. There were misdiagnoses by the team of pediatricians. No meaningful answers. Which was when the doctors send Grant to Riley Children's Hospital in the state capitol, Indianapolis. This was mid-January in 2013. Grant was put on the 7th floor for infectious disease.

Jill Harding

They said we're going to not let you guys leave until we figure out what it is. And we were OK with that because as you mentioned, I was pregnant with our second child.

Jill Harding

So we're like, OK, we're going to figure this out because. Obviously, our son means the world to us, and so we stayed there for a couple of days. This was the twenty second, twenty fifth they finally figured out what was going on. And we were so fortunate at the time because the chief of basically the leukemia society are basically our doctor.

Jill Harding

He was actually the one that was there doing rounds that day that was diagnosed, which is really mind blowing if you think about it, because Dr. Thallon was actually there and he's the chief and he was one doing rounds.

Jill Harding

And he's the one that came in such a compassionate, humble doctor. I mean, more so than I think I've ever been around in my entire life. But he just came in, let us have our moments. He did a spinal tap right in the room with us just to confirm that we were dealing with leukemia, because then once you determine it's leukemia, there's various different types of leukemia that you can have.

Jill Harding

And in this case, Grant had what they call HLL, which is if you're going to have the leukemia at two and a half, it was best that he had the HLL as opposed to the AML. So we were fortunate there in that regards. You see a silver lining. It was hard at the time, of course, but once we found that out, then we basically, you know, had a moment. They moved us to the fifth floor and treatment started.

Jill Harding

And it was, again, pretty amazing that we had the chief there within the hospital setting that new leukemia very well and was able to walk us through the steps and such a truly compassionate individual. And he had grandchildren himself. So he had kids, my and David's age, which was nice because he knew how to talk to us and help cope with the situation.

Liesel Mertes

Well, and as I hear you say in those parts of the story, I feel like it's helpful just to to color around the edges, because there are a couple of things that are going on, right. Like you're seven months pregnant. Also, you guys are not from Indianapolis, but you're in Indianapolis, you know, doing tests at Riley. Are you guys staying at the Ronald McDonald House? Are you in a nearby hotel? Because there's this painful thing that happens with your young child that they're suddenly in the hospital and you're having to recalibrate life to be able to be present. What was that stress like for you guys?

Jill Harding

Yeah, that's actually a great question, because we are so fortunate to have family and friends that just basically helped us, people that just came out the woodworks really just to really help be a support system. We actually have a daycare and we our youngest still goes to that daycare today that we have a daycare where they just were showered us with love and ways to support us, to help us with our other just home and just things at home that we need to help with.

Jill Harding

And my parents and David's parents both live close by to so grandparents, two sets of grandparents living close by. But thankfully, it's about a forty five minute drive for us. We basically, again, being very pregnant, it was uncomfortable, I'll forget that.

Jill Harding

But it still was worth every moment to stay there with great Dave and I. Basically, I was considered basically I was a freelancer at the time and so I had my own business. So flexibility and that I mean, if I had a computer, I could pretty much do my work anywhere.

Jill Harding

So that was nice. And then David worked for Indiana Farm Bureau insurance and they were extremely flexible with him working remote. So Dave and I kind of know how to work remote before our even what we're going to do current day is we were able to basically just be there.

Jill Harding

We had our computers and thankfully I was still pregnant with our middle child. So it was just Dave and myself and Grant. So we basically just lived in that hospital. They kept us just in the actual in his floor on the fifth floor.

Jill Harding

We didn't have to access the Ronald McDonald House other than like sometimes we would go just to get a break from the hospital room itself, take turns and so forth, and utilize the services that they do provide, like meals and so forth that they do provide through that service. And we also have since then paid it back a little, too, just because we know the importance of families who are driving in much more than what we are.

Liesel Mertes

Yeah, I remember as as we have gotten care at Riley, just even sitting close by to a Check-In desk and, you know, like, where are you coming from today?

Liesel Mertes

And people being like Louisville, all of which is a regional hub of people coming from all over.

Jill Harding

Yeah. And we were actually I mean. Forty five minutes. It was it's not a big deal to us, honestly, because we were so fortunate that we had in the care and we would drive farther if we had to. But we're used to driving a half hour really pretty much anywhere. So ready for that we do so.

Liesel Mertes

And it was so treatment begins for leukemia. How long was he in the hospital? And then when you coming back for continued treatment beyond that initial hospitalization time?

Jill Harding

Yeah. So leukemia is one of those. The cure rate is high. Last I knew when we were looking at the numbers, it's ninety four percent. But the same token, it's a pretty long process.

Grant was placed into a trial program where he would come in for chemotherapy treatments over a course of three years.

Jill Harding

So Grant was diagnosed at the age of two and a half. So January of 2013, he was diagnosed. So basically from that January 2013, he basically had three and a half years that we were in and out of Riley during that course of time, and we still actually go to Riley.

Jill Harding

We're coming up on so through to have your process pretty aggressive. Aggressive in regards to the chemotherapy. I don't know if you've ever been around anyone that's had it, but to see a young child,

Jill Harding

we would laugh because we can laugh about it now because I was very pregnant, right, with my Berkely, my middle child, and I was always hungry.

Jill Harding

And then Grant had to be on steroids for 30 days. So he was always really hungry. So we're eating at ungodly hours like 2:00 a.m. He wants chili all of a sudden. But the challenging thing would be on chemotherapy. It kills the good and bad cells. So his body, basically his ANC, which is your ability to fight off infection, was oftentimes next to zero or zero. And so he couldn't need stuff that was leftovers from the night before that we put in refrigerator.

Jill Harding

He couldn't eat stuff out in restaurants because it is speck of germ that he could potentially good could cause him to get really sick and can't afford to get sick because his body would have a hard time hearing being sick on top of what he was going through. So I would be out and I tell that story because it makes me laugh now so I could think I was pregnant. I said I would be making chili like two a.m. in the morning and I had to make it from scratch because he could eat with food.

Liesel Mertes

Was it was that was that your reality for the duration of the three and a half years of needing to have a certain level of hyper vigilance?

Jill Harding

Yes, it definitely was. And I think that we got told and I kudos to our support system and my husband, too, that they were really surprised, the social worker that we dealt with and then obviously his nurses and doctors, that we weren't more hospitalized with Grant, that he was had the fewest hospitalizations with what he was going through because of just our diligence and just awareness when someone we had so many people that wanted to bring us groceries, for instance, and when they would bring us groceries, David and I would be wiping them down with bleach wipes before we even brought it up in the house.

Jill Harding

I mean, we were. To a degree, we got such a pretty Cold War, you did, we did, and we always laughed, too, because it was cold, right? It was about this time of year when we were in the thick of it and we laughed because we have we have a big picture window in our dining room. And so we would have all the blinds open and people would come visit Grant through the actual and talk back and forth with walkie talkies to the glass on one side outside.

Jill Harding

We'd be on the inside and they so speak to some people would bring over toys and they would bring double the toys again. We'd walk them down with bleach, Grant play with the ones inside and they would be playing the same ones outside. So it was kind of cool. Just some of those things, like you said, we we did just out of we had to get super creative because obviously this is a child. We don't want to take away his childhood.

Jill Harding

We have good memories. But this is challenging to go through for him and for us to see him go through it. And I think the beginning to his once we had Berkeley, it was nice because obviously, you know, given the new baby from getting sick was a little easier, too, because she was always in the house with us doing the routine we have with grandma.

Liesel Mertes

So you really think as a child, as a baby baby, anyway, I not just the just the innovative kindness of people, you know, coming over with with double the toys and playing, you know, some time has passed as you go back and think about that time I'm struck that you're doing so many things like you're a business person, you are mothering an infant, you're managing the elevated health risks of a child with leukemia.

Liesel Mertes

What were some of the what did like a dark day look like for you? What did your feelings of overwhelm like? When would they come up with they catch you off guard?

Jill Harding

Yeah, because, again, Grant was our first child, right, so we didn't know, we still don't know where does parenting right. You just kind of learn as you go along. This is the knack of being a parent. But I think the moment when it was challenging the most is, you know, having Berkeley, having a brand new baby, baby infant, trying to nurse her and do all the right things that, you know, the pressures of just raising a child and then making sure that I give her the attention needed, even though she's she still has needs and attention that she needs.

Jill Harding

Right. From a mother and father, but not letting that distract from even our care from Grant. I feel like sometimes it was kind of that emotional head game that we played because we know Grant needs extra special attention. We had to make sure we got medicines a certain time. We had doctors appointments on a regular basis, balancing those elements that we know him well, but yet not neglecting or not giving the attention that Berkely needed as a young baby.

Jill Harding

I think those things then obviously sleep deprived from it all.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

Back to Jill's story in a moment, because there is still so much more ahead. But I want to take a moment to thank our sponsor, Handle with Care Consulting. We know that this year is full of all kinds of stress, and it is hard to know if you are giving your people what they need to survive, stabilize, and thrive in this constantly changing environment. In all of the confusion, empathy is the skill that your leaders and your team need to build a thriving culture. And Handle with Care Consulting can help. With keynotes, workshops, and executive coaching options, we give you the tools to put empathy to work.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

Liesel Mertes

I know within my own story, there's our daughter Mercy died and then it was.

Liesel Mertes

Maybe three years later for where we got the news that our son, Moses, had a really profound heart condition, that he was going to need lots of open heart surgeries, all that to say going through one hard thing with your children is not a guarantee that you won't go through other hard things later on down the path. I know that that has congruence with your own story. What happened with E. coli and your family?

Jill Harding

When you hit the nail on the head, it's hard and I'm sorry you had to go through that, too, but I know in the end it all happens in places that much stronger when you come out on the other side, whatever that result may be. But so Berkely birthdays is our we call our spitfire. She's always been she's a lot like personality wise. And I tell her sorry a the time like me. So but this same time I think I know it helped her just that.

Jill Harding

That sassiness, that determination, that that drive she has even at a young age, so I remember vividly because my husband actually went back to nursing school through everything we've been through with Grandma. And he actually became a nurse roughly three years ago. Just everything that we've been through with our son every time he go to hospital because we were there a lot, as you probably could imagine. My husband is just like, I need to be here. I need to be helping people.

Jill Harding

And so my husband, kudos to him getting a nursing degree while having three kids at the time. And now he works at the medical ICU in downtown Indy at University Hospital. Kudos to you as well. To partner.

Jill Harding

Oh, yeah. I was the bad guy, so supercooled to see him do that, but with that hope man. So he was working at the hospital. It was crazy because it was Sunday and I was not any Sunday. It was the Indy 500. The biggest tackler in the world was happening on this Sunday in May.

Jill Harding

And I, I just tell these details because you got to kind of laugh about it, because if you don't laugh about it, then you cry about it and you don't.

Jill Harding

But my son, I was so I was home with three kids by myself, right, and Berkley was five when all this happened and my son comes running into I think I was in the kitchen and he said, Mom, I was like, yes, he's like Berkley just pooped.

Jill Harding

I'm like, OK, good for like, did you wash your hands? Right. And he's like, no, you don't understand. I'm like, what are you trying to tell me? Then he goes, There's blood in.

Jill Harding

And I think I'm like, no, there's probably not blood in his pocket or something. Right. So I'd let it just go. And I just played it off like that because I was like, you know, Grea does not know that there's blood in there because it would have been the same.

Jill Harding

He would have been a, Berkeley's by just being kids. Right. Right.

Jill Harding

So I just kind of blew it off and she pooped again. And it's like, Mom, no, I'm not kidding. She's got poop in her blood, our blood in her poop. I'm like, are you sure? So me as a mom, like, OK, I'm going to humor them and go look. And I did. And I was just like, well, Grant, thanks for telling me. And this is the eight a little boy telling me this.

Jill Harding

Right. And I was like, thank you, buddy, for telling me. He's like, what does it mean? I'm like, I don't know. So I'm basically trying to get a hold of my husband again. I told you, he is a nurse. So very tough to get a hold of him, especially in a medical ICU.

Jill is finally able to get a hold of David, who is working his shift. Thankfully, a coworker offers to cover his shift so he can rush to Riley to meet Jill. Jill's brother came over to be with Grant. And they arrive, back at Riley, which is familiar but surreal.

Jill Harding

We actually went to the E.R. and they immediately didn't mess around. They did bloodwork, urine samples, stool samples, everything you can imagine to run tests on her little body. And they they couldn't figure out what was going on. So lo and behold, they it was so deja vu. They put us on the seventh floor infectious disease floor again.

Jill Harding

And still, we have no idea what's going on other than we know there's blood in her stool

Liesel Mertes

And are you finding yourself, like, completely emotionally flooded right now, like, oh, I did like some some people kind of like detach almost from the situation. Some people are right in it. Like what's going on for you as a mom?

Jill Harding

As a mom, I was Dave and I were like we were so distraught because we have a good friend who's an E.R. doc. And as a dissertation, she actually did a full report. And like leukemia and how leukemia, is it hereditary? If you have multiple children, siblings, would they get it? And so we're like just went through this and there's no way. So we're thinking maybe it's leukemia again because of what we were experiencing. Right.

Jill Harding

Similar types of experiences. So, I mean, we were just like almost so surreal that I was it wasn't really even overwhelming. It was just like. OK, we got this we've been here before, we got this we're going to be OK. What a good place. Let's just keep asking the right questions. David the nurse now so he knows more questions to ask. At the time I was back at Cook Medical, so I was in the medical device realm.

Jill Harding

So I knew there's products to help from a device perspective. So we just need more questions to ask in this scenario than what we did before, because we obviously have been through life a little bit different than what we were expecting.

Jill Harding

So anyways, fast forward, we talk to the doctors. They finally said we don't know what's going on. Too much test. They kept us another night like they did with grea type thing. And they finally figured out, OK, she's dealing with E. coli.

Jill Harding

So E. coli, there is a 50 percent chance at her age and being female that she can get something called at us, which is hemolytic uremic syndrome. And in layman's terms, that basically means her renals can go into renal failure. Renals are what feed your kidneys, basically. It started making sense because her urine output started going down, so she had no urine for at least 24 hours at this point and she was drinking.

Jill Harding

So we know she's got the fluids coming in, but the fluids aren't going out. And her stomach was getting real distended where it just stuck out, you know, just looked at her. She's a really petite, small little lady. So we knew something just wasn't right. And then they finally figured out that,

Jill Harding

OK, she's got E. coli. The strain of E. coli she has could potentially cause her to have HUS. So they monitor, monitor and unfortunately, unfortunately, see how you will. They put us on the fifth floor again.

Jill Harding

So we're like, wait a second. The floor is leukemia. We know that floor all too well. We've lived for so many days and hours and they're like, well, we put you on that floor because that's also our transplant floor and it's also our floor that we do dialysis if we need to do dialysis.

Jill Harding

And then at this point, two more challenges, because we have two children back home. We have an older and a younger siblings of Berkeley at home. I mean, I know they're in good care, but still I mean, they're scared because I don't know what's going on. They got a lot of questions. And if my brother does, too, because he wants to be able to give them answers when they become available.

So there's well, and I'm free.

Liesel Mertes

But that sense of like the limited resources of yourself as a parent to like you physically can't be in two places at once. Yeah, definitely.

Jill Harding

And I know, Grant, I mean, obviously, with what he's been through, his heart is pure gold. And, you know, he's cutting my warrior of the three kids. And so he just wanted to be there with us. And it's hard to understand that we got to be here. We'll be there when we can together. Just give us some time.

Berkley is retaining fluid, getting puffier and puffier so the doctors decide to start hemodialysis.

Jill Harding

But hemodialysis is basically where they take out. And it's phenomenally crazy to me. If you just think about what I'm about to tell you, the machine is huge. It's about the size of it, like a refrigerator. Basically, the machines are big and they take 10 percent of your blood out and cycle it, filter it through this machine.

Liesel Mertes

Wow.

Jill Harding

And so they filter it through the machine. So 10 percent of your blood at any given moment in time is in this machine being filtered and then cycled back into your system. So while the things that we learned along the way, she had to have ended up having six different hemodialysis treatments and it just I mean, it was exhausting for her to go through that and.

Liesel Mertes

I just want to ask you about, like I can imagine that scene, you're like these are these are not easy procedures.

Liesel Mertes

You know, they're involving needles, they're involving discomfort. They're involving multiple checks by nurses. Was there a sense of, like, overwhelm or powerlessness, like just as you're watching your child go through unnecessary pain?

Jill Harding

Well, I will say it probably helps in our scenario, David, one being a nurse and then me having a background in medical devices because we knew that these there's great products that the companies that we worked for offered. And then obviously David knew more what was going on than I did.

Jill Harding

So he was able to kind of walk me through it. But there's still something we hit the nail on the head to be said about seeing your own child. Right. It's not to dismiss it if it's someone else lying there or if it's even me right there. But to see your own physical child and someone feeling helpless in regards to pain, I will say with Berkely in particular and Grant to adjust their personalities are really different.

Jill Harding

Berkley was pretty much she would tell the nurses what to do and she was not messing around. She even during her painful moments, she has grit. We called her tough as nails because she just has this, I don't know, something embedded in her personality that she's a fighter.

Jill Harding

She uses a lot of humor to get her through tough times right now at the nurses, she would ask them for things that she knew she can have, like Skittles. But just to keep them on their toes, they'd be like, wait a sec.

Jill Harding

You can't have that.

Liesel Mertes

A sense of agency. Yep.

Jill Harding

And again, she's a little petite, five year old little girl. She's real small. I think she weighed maybe thirty eight pounds at the most during all this. And so she would be on they would weigh her before and after each treatment. And sometimes she lost five, six pounds and hemodialysis treatment because of the fluid that her body was keeping.

Jill Harding

Well but during all this she actually got C. diff too. I'm not sure you're familiar with this, but yeah. See that during it all.

Liesel Mertes

As you think about those times in the hospital for those who are listening who have not had to be with a child long term in the hospital. What are some things that you wish people knew about what that reality is like?

Jill Harding

Hmmm, that's a really tough question. I think that. It gives you a lot of humility, I mean, regards to humble, because David and I have always been very independent individuals, we don't really ask for help.

Jill Harding

We just kind of just make it happen because we're strong willed individuals and we'll just find a way.

Jill Harding

But I think I know from our experience personally that it's OK. People want to genuinely help others. I mean, that's just human nature. And I think once we put our pride aside and our guard down, it helped us as parents to really do what we needed to do.

Jill Harding

And it took away from the challenges of us not being 100 percent present for at the time, Grant. And then that time later, Berkeley.

Jill Harding

So I think with those scenarios and in and of itself, it's just. Be compassionate. Ask for help, but if someone doesn't immediately want your help, it's OK because they've got to do it in their own way, right. Because everything is unique to that family, that circumstance, that situation.

Liesel Mertes

Yeah, I talked in my trainings that it's not about you as the person who is offering help, like almost never. Is it about, like, judgment on your relationship.

Liesel Mertes

It's just even stuff like is messy and so often help. And if the person says, yes, be willing to follow through and if they say no, they don't take it personally yet.

Jill Harding

And exactly, because I think what we're going through right now in our world. Right. I mean, like in our situation, we never been through that. And many of our friends have never been to that. Right. So you just got to go with what your instincts. And we rely heavily on our faith because we are people of faith. But at the same token, you know, we never been through that. So, you know, maybe grace to those folks and like you said, get to meet them where they're at because at the same time, we didn't know what we needed or didn't need.

Right.

Liesel Mertes

Yeah, that's another thing I say that that the let me know how I can help. Question isn't as helpful as you would think.

Liesel Mertes

It would be like finding clean underwear.

Liesel Mertes

But I don't know what were some of the best ways that people helped your family?

Jill Harding

I think it's just the, um. Just to know that we had the support, right, just a phone call, just even if it's just listen to me cry or David cry or just listen to us in silence, if you will. I think just knowing we had people behind the scenes, I also know that I have since he's passed on. So it hurts my heart to even say this.

Jill Harding

But my best buddy and Andrea, we've been best buddies since third grade. Her father wanted to help so bad he's retired. So he had the abilities and means to help them. At the same token, like he would bring us groceries, like unexpectedly. And he kept on like what we liked at Kroger and he would just randomly draw stuff off because he knew he'd done it before. So he kept he was so sweet. He kept a list of our favorite bars or snacks or what have you.

Jill Harding

And we just make sure he kept us knocked up that and it's just simple because it wasn't anything like, you know, they put him out too much. It was just kind. Bars are David's favorite potato chips, what have you. Just simple things. But it's still so just like what people are thinking about us.

Jill Harding

So just randomly dropping those off our

Liesel Mertes

And what beautiful intention also, like, you take time and ask what you liked. And then he wanted to remember it and he didn't have to. It sounds like hassle. You do this, you just realize like these are staples they're always going to enjoy receiving. I'm just going to bring them. I love that.

Jill Harding

I was really cool. And and I think that.

Jill Harding

Just the the window time we call it window time, where I would actually sit on his window and look out and play with folks, I think just being mindful, even though people have to be guarded in those scenarios that we were in and have to be more inside in their own space and not exposed to other germs outside of their home, just putting that like being creative, I think how we communicated and still played, but yet did it through a different means.

Liesel Mertes

Well, I'm thinking about I mean, there's support of you, right, as the parent. There's also the support of your child who has had their world turned upside down. And I imagine it felt meaningful to receive support.

Jill Harding

Well and the cool thing about the window, time was allowed to play, like with his his papi. We call David's dad Papi, with his papi outside the window while Grant was inside the window, but allowed David to kick our feet up for a minute and let that Grant was entertained and happy. And we did that for a little while, too, when she came home because she was still her ability to fight off. Infection was still pretty low at some point, too.

Jill Harding

So we did the same thing with her as well. But I think just showing folks that you're you've got that support system, whether you tap into it. Again, like you said, you get to meet those individuals where they're at and let them. Like you said, I don't know what I need right now, I just need right. I just need like I don't have one iota of extra creative energy right now.

Liesel Mertes

OK, so on the other side, was there anything you don't have to name names, but was there anything that you were on the receiving end of that you would say this is this is just not helpful? Don't do these things.

Jill Harding

I think so, yes. The constant like. What's around I'm looking for the constant sharing of, like, knickknack little things like that, either we can only have so much in the hospital and I say this because people just don't know, like birthday was on the transplant floor.

Jill Harding

So she couldn't have anything in life. So people would try to send her flowers. Well, she never got to enjoy those because she wasn't able to have those in her room because the thing was soil on it, for instance, anything like breathing, she can I could plants. You can actually have those in her room. So. Yeah, and people didn't know that.

Jill Harding

But I think I almost wonder if sometimes that that's the staff at the hospital too.

Jill Harding

But I think it's just maybe doing a little bit of homework before you do that kind gesture, because I hated that for the individuals that sent her stuff like that because. You know, that they spent now. Now, great, we said make sure it gets to a nurse's station or it gets to someplace where someone can enjoy it but still going to enjoy it.

Jill Harding

And then she saw it from the window and she's like, oh, good. Then we had to talk her off a cliff for a little bit because she thought that she could have was in her room. Right. And I think just if someone says, I don't know what I need right now, don't cry, because they will come and you'll know, but don't force it. Let it be.

Liesel Mertes

Yeah, that's a great point.

Liesel Mertes

Jill, is there anything that you would like to add that I didn't ask you in our time together?

Jill Harding

Um, yeah, I think so.

Jill Harding

I think just when we go throughout our days, just know regardless big or small or whatever it is, we all have a story and we just got to be mindful we're all human. Right. And there's no like rulebook on how to be the best human ever. Technically speaking. Right.

Jill Harding

So just have compassion for other people and just be realistic in that everyone's got a story. Everyone's weathering something, whether it's big or small, and just realize that, you know, words do hurt more than people realize.

Jill Harding

And I think also, too, like back to my kiddos specifically both Grant and Berkeley, they've been Tindley because she's been through all this with us as well. With regards to Berkeley, just let those moments happen. Do the best you can to weather through those moments that make sure you come out on the other end as strong as you can by what you've learned through that moment. And what I mean by that is like

Jill Harding

Grant and Berkeley both, like I think that they have learned some things and their characters have been shaped in ways that I feel like would have been really tough for David and I to have instilled in them if they didn't go through the experiences they went through.

Jill Harding

Right now, both of them have scars from their great how to put a catheter in Berkeley, had some catheters in her jugular area. So they both have scars. And I tell them all the time and they tell me now to because I've told them so many times. But those are like, that's part of you and that's OK. That's what makes you grant unique. That's what makes you unique. Like everybody else as well. We all have something that's unique to us, kind of like a snowflake in that regard dry.

Jill Harding

We're all unique in our own way and don't be ashamed of that. In fact, be proud of that, because those scars have shown that you're still here with us today.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

Here are three key takeaways from my conversation with Jill…

• There are many restrictions for an individual living with cancer.Hearing all of the challenges with just eating (the concerns about leftovers, the need to clean food etc) gave me a deeper appreciation of how tenuous life and infection can be. With that in mind, learning a little more before giving gifts (like flowers) is important.
• Consider what creative engagement with a child who is immuno-compromised (or battling COVID) looks like.I loved the story of play dates through a window with walkie talkies (plus there was the added benefit of giving parents a chance to rest).
• Remember that "Tell me how I can help" oftentimes is an unhelpful question to people who are already living through something hard.Many times, people don't know in the moment what they need and they might feel tentative following up with a request afterwards. Instead, know what you can offer (perhaps a grocery drop-off, a Door Dash certificate, or doing some yard work) and extend a specific offer of help.

OUTRO

- Mike Thibideau

But it's been. A really meaningful way to to change a lot of things about myself that were the underlying cause of like kind of what I went back to before, like I didn't I I didn't know why people would like to be sober and the reality is, is because they don't hate themselves. If you don't if you don't hate who you are, then just existing in your own skin isn't a miserable state of existence and finally learning to come to peace with those things. Is what really navigating recovery has been all about.

INTRO Today, we are talking about addiction: its roots, the challenge of staying sober, and how workplaces can support their people as they struggle to manage their addictions. My guest in Mike Thibideau, he is the Director of Indiana Workforce Recovery.

Indiana Workforce Recovery is a partnership of the Indiana Wellness Council and the Indiana Chamber and I will let Mike tell you a little bit more about it in his own words

- Mike Thibideau

Indiana Workforce Recovery is a program of the Wellness Council, operated in partnership with the chamber and the administration of Governor Holcomb here in Indiana that really works to mitigate the impact of addiction on employer environments by equipping them to support recovery.

- Mike Thibideau

And I think that that's an important distinction. There are not a lot of initiatives. Well, there are a lot more now than when I started. Not a lot of initiatives out there really focused on recovery in the workplace.

But Mike doesn't just work in Recovery. He is also a man in recovery himself. He has been sober for five years. Yet, you know that I want my guests to be more than just their story of hardship, so let me introduce you a little more fully to Mike.

Mike is the father of a little girl, Hazel, and he and his wife have another little one on the way.

- Mike Thibideau

And we're we're just really excited to have her kind of join our team, as it were. It's all healthy. All good. I don't know. Unfortunately, I don't know too much about her yet. That's kind of, I think, a good thing at this point. But we're yeah, we're just really excited to have that addition to the family.

Mike has lived in Indy for the last eight years, he considers himself a Hoosier and roots for the Colts but he was born in metro Detroit. He and his wife met through a mutual friend, post-college.

- Liesel Mertes

But this story, you know, did you know, like right off the bat that you guys would be a good fit? Was it a chemistry from the start or did you have to both come to that realization, kind of like in your own time manner?

- Mike Thibideau

We definitely had some chemistry kind of to kick things off. And we actually started hanging out the year that in the last time Indianapolis was hosting the Final Four and we were watching. Those those basketball games, and coincidentally enough, that first month together was the time that Michigan State and Duke faced off in that Final Four game.

- Liesel Mertes

Wow, you're going to have to confront that one early.

- Mike Thibideau

But but we definitely knew there was some. Some chemistry early on, and I think that that actually fully manifested itself when she became aware of of the struggles I was having in life and still kind of stuck it out because she hasn't only been around for the. The good parts of the last few years, she she saw. When we got together, slowly but surely, she got to the veil, became lifted and she got to see some of me at my worst.

- Mike Thibideau

So I think that that chemistry kind of spoke to. Her ability to be resilient in those times and. Support an individual who clearly was in need of some help.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, you know, that's a that's a very appropriate segue into, you know, some of what we want to discuss in today's podcast. You talk about yourself.

- Liesel Mertes

You know, when you sent me your bio as a person in long term recovery, you unpack that a little bit for me. What does that mean to you? And then I'd love to go deeper into some of your story.

- Mike Thibideau

Yeah, sure.

- Mike Thibideau

So, yeah, I, I, I now publicly before privately identify myself as a person in long term recovery from substance use disorder. And that means that I have not used a drink or mind altering drug aside from those prescribed by a doctor as prescribed in what for me is now over five years. And so I also I think within that is the dedication to living my life in a certain way that betters the world around me and consistently endeavours to be better.

- Mike Thibideau

I wouldn't say I am better, but I you know, we all we all fail. But I think the difference is as a person in recovery for me, I can identify those moments of failure or recognize them as such. Name them and use them to grow and try to be better.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, I feel like in the public eye and consciousness, there's almost like these two polarities in which we see substance abuse and addiction. It's either like we see representations of the addict, you know, someone who is just their whole life has been wrecked by, you know, their relationship with this substance or, you know, someone who's doing well in recovery. And it's a triumphant story.

- Liesel Mertes

And I'm struck that, you know, for for many people, it's much more of a spectrum of their relationship with, you know, whatever substance that is beginning to take up more and more space in their life and in their consciousness. I imagine that there are elements of that within your own story.

- Liesel Mertes

You know, you don't just start drinking like, you know, tons of hard liquor as a 15 year old, as you chart, you know, kind of your progression.

- Liesel Mertes

What is your origin story of your relationship with substances that would later become really damaging in your life?

- Mike Thibideau

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. So for me, it all goes back to really grade school, even where I experienced a lot of trauma related to bullying and insecurity. I I was a very I was a very small kid until about eighth grade when suddenly I grew like a foot or more in a short very short period.

- Mike Thibideau

But I remember distinctly, you know, being in sixth grade and getting picked on by fourth grade girls who were also bigger than me, you know, kids calling me Simon Birch and which in hindsight as adults, should have been a compliment because that dude ended up being a hero in that movie.

- Mike Thibideau

But but as a as a kid, you know, hurt and a lot of just kind of traumatic bullying experiences as a younger individual. The that kind of led to me having a self narrative of I'm not cool, I'm not good enough.

- Mike Thibideau

And I think that was also reinforced to an extent academically as well by my ADHD and the presence of that in my life. I never got bad grades, but I had to do a decent amount of work to get decent grades and really, what I found was when I started doing drugs and using using drugs and alcohol, it felt like a hole had been filled and suddenly I felt accepted by others like I wasn't some square kid who followed all the rules and did everything right.

- Mike Thibideau

I was able to be a little bit more than that. And it's really funny because, you know, in hindsight and as an adult, I'm the kind of guy who, like, loves clear expectations and rules. And I think that that same thing was true for me as an adolescent.

- Mike Thibideau

But it wasn't cool to be a kid who followed all the rules and did and did those things right that that you think is expected of you. And so there was kind of that like that always that pull on me as somebody who, like I think really in the end wanted to follow the rules and be a good kid, but also saw felt that that identity was one of social isolation and outcast.

- Mike Thibideau

And so really, I mean, at in high school, my identity was a lot of things. But one of that and among at least certain social circles was a kid who, you know, smoked a lot of pot and and would drink. And I don't know how much others perceived that as being my identity, but it definitely, for me, was a key part of my identity. And I think that that's. What a lot of people who struggle with addiction have in their lives is the.

- Mike Thibideau

The inability to accurately assess how others view us and have a really false internal narrative of our own identity. And at a point that became what it meant to feel normal.

- Mike Thibideau

I remember as early as college saying to friends, why are people sober? Like, why would you ever just choose to be sober? Like, who likes that? And that's not a normal thing, apparently, for people to think about life. So it took.

- Mike Thibideau

College was a very tumultuous time where I would kind of my horse, my old tale of the least adult addiction is one of being able to successfully navigate crises. And in doing so, enable my own continued use,

- Liesel Mertes

Tell me tell me a little bit more about that like crises that are brought about by, like forgetting important tests or dropping the ball or what did that look like for you?

- Mike Thibideau

Well, for me, like a whole semester at a time in college back then, I would I'd get like a one point six and then I'd have to buckle down. In the next semester, I'd get a 4.0. I even had at one point, I think my junior year, I had a 4.0 and a three point nine five, and then the following year I followed that up with like a two point one and a and like a two point three.

- Mike Thibideau

And none of it related to, like, how hard my classes were or anything like that. I just couldn't. My disease psychologist would kind of become more active and less active based on systems and supports that I would put in my life, which at least at that time were able to temporarily help me navigate things.

- Liesel Mertes

Could you unpack that for me? Because I'm struck that that's an evocative term that listeners might not understand. Tell me a little bit about your particular disease cycle and how it was affected by the presence or absence of the supports that you're talking about.

- Mike Thibideau

So for me, a lot of what it looked like was just habits and ritual that I used specifically with the conscious thought of managing my drinking. And by managing my drinking, I mean, not drinking less, but managing the impact that drinking was having on my life.

- Mike Thibideau

when I would be at school and I would be drinking really hard, but it's still doing well at school, what I would basically do is I would get a paper assigned to me and like I would write it that day. Knowing that if I do this work now, I can party harder later.

- Mike Thibideau

I would do all my studying for tests well in advance and I would do everything I could to kind of build in a. Immediate sense of accomplishment that I would then follow up with. You know, reckless behavior, frankly, and what would really happen is that that would only be sustainable for a certain amount of time before the the rails would come off and I'd spend a whole semester.

- Mike Thibideau

Hardly doing anything or at least doing the bare minimum. And once you get in kind of both of those cycles, I think that that's a thing that is often the case with both individuals. I know and it was especially the case for myself, is that at a certain point you become like the boulder from Raiders of the Lost Ark, where you're just like you're just going down a path and it's going to end somewhere. And that's going to be really the time when you can make a choice and arrest the behavior, at least temporarily and survive or not.

- Mike Thibideau

For some people, that ends in death. And fortunately, it didn't. And there were just kind of a lot of those periods in my life where I was just rolling down that hill and.

- Mike Thibideau

There would have to be something there that would stop me, and it really was never a person or, you know, it wasn't a place where somebody could just say, like, you know, we love you, right? And then be like, oh, OK, cool.

- Mike Thibideau

Like, I'll just stop drinking. It would have to be running out of money, becoming homeless. Changing jobs, moving to a new city.

- Liesel Mertes

So during this time, you know, you talk about it wasn't enough just for someone to have, like, the verbal affirmation, we love you, we want you to stop.

- Liesel Mertes

I'm struck. Did you have people in your life that were seeing this decline and were trying to intervene? And a follow up to that, if it.

- Liesel Mertes

Yes. Is were they doing like what were some good things they were doing? Did it even matter? What were some things that were terrible? I'd love to hear more about what people were trying to do to come alongside you.

- Mike Thibideau

So as a disclaimer, my use during that time and really through most of my really hard addiction for about 18 through twenty five, I can't really remember very much. I was drinking somewhere between a fifth and a half gallon of hard liquor a day for most of that, and that along with doing drugs. And so to an extent that just really damages your ability to remember things. So I really can't tell you on my own perspective a story of somebody.

- Mike Thibideau

Yeah. Trying to do something. I do know I heard years later that some of my fraternity brothers at some point did come out to me and say, like, hey, like, don't you think you're you're kind of drinking a little hard and. I thought that was one that was during, unfortunately, kind of for them, I think a little bit for me that was during one of the good times. And I just pulled up my transcripts and showed them all that I had a 4.0.

- Mike Thibideau

And they were like, all right. You know, like it's look, it's Goutman. You know, like if you're if what you're doing isn't causing problems, then it's probably not a problem, you know, like live your life. And I think there were.

- Mike Thibideau

My family, actually, I will say I was the one who kind of initiated that conversation as an adult during high school and things like that, they would have we would have conversations and consequences about my use.

- Mike Thibideau

But as an adult, I remember about two years or three years before I got sober, even I told my I told my parents that I was an alcoholic and that I was going to eventually need to just stop drinking. And fortunately for me, that's what led to them eventually having an intervention for me years later, but. There were a lot of people like both them, I think, to an extent, and then also, you know, my then girlfriend, now wife, where I would tell them things like that and they'd be like, no, you're not like me.

- Mike Thibideau

You know, that's and they wouldn't say that as much as they would vocalize to me later on in life that they were thinking it. And a lot of that was because I still had a job until the end, had a car and, you know, while I wasn't, I would say navigating life, well, I wasn't the stereotype of. What an addict or an alcoholic is, and so. And we just didn't know we as a family didn't have very much of it in our genetics and weren't exposed to it in that way.

- Mike Thibideau

So it's a long way of saying that.

- Mike Thibideau

I really don't have a whole lot of examples in my life of people who said, like, let's try to get you help or because. Because in general. I was able to hold it together enough that. The signs weren't there unless I let them be seen or unless you caught me in a specific moment.

- Mike Thibideau

I also, you know, I moved I moved here eight years ago, so and I and before I lived in Indianapolis, I spent over two years living in, I think it was seven different cities around the country.

- Mike Thibideau

So I wasn't really around family in a way that they saw much of my life.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah. I'd like to just ask a question about something that you mentioned. You talked about. I don't fit the stereotype of how we picture an addict, especially in the work that you do. You know, you. You go deep into probably as you build awareness, as you help recovering addicts, tell me what that stereotype looks like and how it can be damaging and how it steers us wrong. Yeah, in realizing the scope of how many people actually struggle with addiction issues.

- Mike Thibideau

So I think definitely one part of it is I'm a straight white man that definitely doesn't hurt me as far as perception, obviously bias is real, but I also, you know, dressed fairly well and am a fairly eloquent individual and have been for really as long as I can really remember, that's only increased.

- Mike Thibideau

So I was always a person who was able to clearly and clearly and concisely put together my thoughts and express myself in a very effective manner and even professionally, I.

- Mike Thibideau

I think the best way to say it was I was always somebody who excelled until I was almost failing, meaning that I would be able to get a job or do something new in life and be very successful at it. Until my addiction would catch up with me, the routines would fall apart, the wheels would come off the wagon, and suddenly I was barely meeting expectations.

- Mike Thibideau

And that's something I tell employers to look for all the time, is really that change in behavior, because I know that my boss, who I was working on, the the organization I was working for when I got into recovery and when I went through treatment, he told me he thought that I just didn't care anymore. He didn't. He knew something was going on.

- Mike Thibideau

But he thought really it was just that I didn't give a crap and. That couldn't get any further from the truth, I love that job, but but at the same time, I was I was in crisis and my life was kind of starting to fall apart around me.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

- Mike Thibideau

When I actually realized that I had a problem, I was in a training for something called the Alcohol Skills Training Program back when I worked for my fraternity. And it's a workshop to teach young people how to responsibly navigate. Drinking and social behaviors. And they went through a little mini assessment of like how to talk to somebody about potentially having a problem with drugs or alcohol. And they were like, oh, yeah, if you like, checked like five of these 30 boxes, you might have a problem.

- Mike Thibideau

And I checked like twenty nine of the 30. And it was just like, oh, OK. So this, this might be real. I kind of put it off for a little while after that.

- Mike Thibideau

But but then really what I think started to make it strike home was when my memory loss started to interfere with my ability to remember things that I was doing sober. So I wouldn't I wouldn't be able to remember whether like so I wouldn't at that time I wasn't you know, I wasn't using or intoxicated at work or anything like that.

- Mike Thibideau

But I was having trouble remembering things that I'd done the last day, even if I had been sober while doing them. And that was really having ramifications on my life where, like, I wouldn't be able to remember people that I met. I wouldn't be able to remember tasks that I had accomplished cause that I'd had or things that I checked in with my boss on. And so. Kind of that led to me realizing that, like something is happening here.

- Mike Thibideau

That I have to be concerned about before I go insane. And that was very striking at the time.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, and where where did you go from that realization?

- Mike Thibideau

Well, I went right back to drinking, but that was that was a problem for Mike to deal with when the the ball finally hit the end.

Mike was drinking more and more. He began in the morning and was even getting behind the wheel. So his family staged an intervention.

- Liesel Mertes

When when you say that, you know, they had an intervention, they directed me to services, you know, that's it's not like a quick flyover, but I imagine that there's like a pretty emotional scene, potentially, like, do you remember feeling angry? Were you ready to go when they told you you needed to go? Like, unpack that a little bit for me?

- Mike Thibideau

I would say scared and excited was how I felt. I didn't realize how ready for it I was until the moment it was put in front of me. The moment they and I will say I'm like, I'm so I've I have done a number of these and been part of. Helping people get into treatment, and it does not often go as smooth as my we all kind of I guess luck got lucky, I don't know what it was. We were blessed by the fact that at that moment I was I was ready for it and able to engage.

- Mike Thibideau

And it wasn't a hesitation or anything. It was just, yes, let's go.

- Mike Thibideau

And we went. And it was it was a jarring experience. You know, going through detox and and then I did for forty five days of residential treatment and a couple of months of outpatient, and I've really especially that early period in detox and early residential was a very emotional time in my life. And one that. Was among the more difficult things I've been through.

- Mike Thibideau

So. When people are struggling with addiction and in my own experience, when I was struggling with addiction, like I was pretty severe, you know, use. I was not a mentally like, well, person, so. Especially when you took away my crutch. It was a very emotional time, and part of that is the emotion centers in my brain that have been numbed for years were just starting to kind of open back up.

- Mike Thibideau

And my brain was even early on starting the process of healing. There was a lot of crying and a lot of. Just trying to figure out what to do, and I remember even early on, one of my biggest barriers was, you know, people would be telling me about 12 step recovery, Alcoholics Anonymous or other such programs. And everybody was talking about God all the time. And I was a hardcore atheist at that point, you know.

- Mike Thibideau

And that was a big barrier for me, was that people kept talking in that way. Fortunately, I got through my counselors and professional help is exposed to some parts of of that 12 step program, but then also just other cognitive behavioral therapy and supports that didn't rely on that narrative quite so much and really talked about how to build that into your own narrative and allowed me to successfully navigate that system.

- Mike Thibideau

But I think one of the things that's really hard to do is, you know, when we when we put people into detox, you know, I I had pretty severe alcohol use disorder and I had done and I was doing some drugs here and there, but I had never even met anyone who had done meth or heroin prior to engaging in treatment.

- Mike Thibideau

And suddenly I'm surrounded by individuals who have been using meth and heroin. And, you know, we can while ah, what's going on in our brains is very similar culturally, that's a very different type of individual than I had previously been engaged with. And so I kind of had to learn to. Have this new peer group, almost of people who have had very different life experiences than I did for the most part, and it was definitely like a culture shock going in there and seeing that and being around that for the first time.

- Mike Thibideau

But I luckily I got really plugged in to some really great supports and. Found some good examples in my life of people who were doing the right things and followed that example for myself. That's 12 step recovery.

- Mike Thibideau

But it's been. A really meaningful way to to change a lot of things about myself that were the underlying cause of like kind of what I went back to before, like I didn't I I didn't know why people would like to be sober and the reality is, is because they don't hate themselves. If you don't if you don't hate who you are, then just existing in your own skin isn't a miserable state of existence and finally learning to come to peace with those things. Is what really navigating recovery has been all about.

- Liesel Mertes

Hmm, what did you and what do you continue to discover that you really like about the shober version of yourself?

- Mike Thibideau

So. I like remembering things that's that's pretty cool, being able to know what you did yesterday. It might sound like a strange thing to take for granted, but to not take for granted.

- Mike Thibideau

But I really don't. I would also say my ability to be present for those around me is a constant blessing and the relationships I have in my life are so deep and have so much meaning, and the vulnerability I'm able to possess on a constant basis is a is a huge, huge blessing.

- Mike Thibideau

I know professionally, even one of the things that's been so great about being a person in long term recovery and really learning to navigate this life, I will say I fall short of this ideal all the time myself. But when you really work.

- Mike Thibideau

When you really work on yourself and you learn to embrace serenity in your life, meaning knowing what you can control and what you can't, a lot of the most common workplace struggles kind of go out the door.

- Mike Thibideau

If you live your life professionally, not obsessing about other people's actions, behaviors and thoughts, it frees up a lot of space to really do some pretty amazing things yourself.

- Mike Thibideau

And it's something I didn't realize until I had been in recovery for a number of years and really. Practicing those principles is how much of people's workplace stress comes from what they can't control about others behaviors. And so that's been a beautiful thing for me, is just being able to be a little bit more in the moment, but then also just present to.

- Mike Thibideau

Plan and and do the good work, I fall short of that all the time and still have problems, but I'm at least able to name them and process through it and and move on rather than obsess.

- Liesel Mertes

What kinds of supports did you find that you needed in that immediate year or even in an ongoing way, like just the. For someone who has not gone through the process of moving towards sobriety?

- Liesel Mertes

Give me give me more of like a perspective and what that journey has looked like for you post interventional treatment.

- Mike Thibideau

So. I think that a lot of it for me has come down to really just leaning on my networks and my supports, so when I when I started off, I, I kind of just you have to accept I do accept that there was no such thing in early recovery as balance.

- Mike Thibideau

You're not going to, like, spend an equal amount of time with your family and your work and your recovery and all these things. Kind of like recovery has to come first because it's the if without it, none of this other stuff is going to continue to exist.

- Mike Thibideau

And I, I know my my workplace was really great about making sure that I was participating in treatment at the recommended amount by my medical professionals and really encouraging me to do that. They paid for me my salary through part of my medical leave to help with the bills. They helped me with reduced hours and slowing down my travel when I was engaged in outpatient programming and kind of took that stress away from me in the interim.

- Mike Thibideau

But I leaned I leaned hard on my supports, I went to 12 step meetings pretty much every day for. Six, eight months, something like that, and and that meant I wasn't home to be with my girlfriend and invest time in that relationship quite as much.

- Mike Thibideau

There were times at work where I would be really struggling and I would just kind of over lunch, go to a meeting and and take some time for myself. And I really worked hard to just stay engaged in systems and do the work.

- Mike Thibideau

A big thing for me was recognizing. I'll be frank, I've been very blessed in that I haven't had very many times in recovery where I have had serious thoughts of drinking, I was ready for this change and I was doing the work. There have been limited times where that was not where that was present in my life. But I've been able to kind of.

- Mike Thibideau

Get that in check real quick and a big reason for that is I've worked really hard on myself to recognize the symptoms of behavioral change that are getting me back to an emotional state where I would think about drinking.

- Mike Thibideau

So me in my current state, as I'm sitting here today, is not going to have a thought today about alcohol, at least not in an unhealthy manner. I might literally think about alcohol as a concept or something like that because of my job, but the thought of drinking is not something that I'm worried about is a danger today.

- Mike Thibideau

But my manipulation, my control issues, my insecurities, all of these things that are part of the me that would have that thought might come back into my life today in some form or fashion. And so my ability to recognize those in that moment and arrest that thought as unhealthy and process it is what leads me to be in a place where I don't have those thoughts and behaviors on a regular basis.

- Mike Thibideau

The most helpful thing for me also, I will say, if anybody wants to figure out how to if you're working a 12 step program and you want to figure out how to translate that to work, I recommend to everybody that you read the Carnegie book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

- Mike Thibideau

I remember being in addiction and reading it and thinking this book isn't teaching me how to control anybody and make them my friend and not liking it, but in recovery, man, there are some principles in that book that have been jewels for me in navigating the workplace, most notably the futility of criticism, something I have to remind myself of all the time.

- Mike Thibideau

But that that principle is a. Is a wonderful thing for learning how to think a little bit less about what you deserve and a little bit more about what to be grateful for.

- Liesel Mertes

Hmm. Thank you for that recommendation. I found myself mentally cataloging and being like, I know I have a copy of that somewhere. Where is it? So that's a good resource.

- Liesel Mertes

You have this depth of personal experience, which I'm sure you know, feeds daily into what you get to do professionally, which is thinking a lot about how you structurally equip workplaces to look at, you know, addiction issues that their people are going through.

- Liesel Mertes

Individual stories are powerful, also, like high level data has its own impact, what is some of the scope of the challenge that is facing just at the statewide level, like if someone's thinking like her addiction and recovery in the workplace, I don't know, is that a problem here in Indiana?

- Liesel Mertes

What are some data points that help illuminate that?

- Mike Thibideau

The most important data set behind what we do. Is that employers being equipped to help individuals in the workplace can directly save lives, people who are referred to care via their employer have the highest levels of outcomes at one year and five year recovery measures.

- Mike Thibideau

They have the strongest length of engagement with the treatment system, which is across multiple papers and studies shown as the primary indicator of success. And they have the most pressure to enter treatment, despite being the group that has the lowest self perceived need for care.

- Mike Thibideau

And so what that means, as many people who are referred to treatment or to some type of education by their employer would not have gone if referred by friends, family or a doctor. And yet, despite that, they have the highest levels of outcomes.

- Mike Thibideau

And a big part of that is what we know of as recovery capital. Social, which is social capital, is a very common concept. But when people get care while employed, they're more likely to have adequate insurance. They're more likely to have housing, transportation, healthier social networks and community supports that an unemployed individual just generally does not because employment is a key social determinants of health. So we know that by us equipping employers to intervene and assist, we can help individuals get help earlier in their disease cycle and in doing so, directly save lives and that.

- Liesel Mertes

And what does well-equipped place of employment, what does that look like? How are individuals equipped like that, the management or high level? What what does what you're looking to build look like?

- Mike Thibideau

So the most basic foundation is a sound second chance system, and that means that when an individual fails their first drug screen, they're not terminated. And that's at its most basic at its most basic level. That being with that being the defining characteristic, we've actually helped lower that number of employers in Indiana by twenty five percent in two years, which is remarkable that we've seen so swift behavioral change that a lowering of twenty five percent of the number of employers that terminate after a first failed drug test, correct?

- Mike Thibideau

Yep. And then kind of on top of that very basic foundation, what we look for is the ability to support, refer individuals to appropriate treatment or care and have a basic system that allows you to retain them or at least the framework for attention. Relapse management is a key component of that. And what that really looks like from a best practice policy is that you're set up to where any time that an employee asks you for help, they are directly referred to care.

- Mike Thibideau

Whether that's that could be their second time asking for help, their third time asking about their fourth time asking for help.

- Mike Thibideau

You send them to help. But if they fail a second drug test, they're gone. And there's and there's no ifs, ands or buts kind of around that. Or if they if they have a workplace incident that you take appropriate disciplinary action based on that incident or behavior.

- Mike Thibideau

But really leave the door open for and actively encourage individuals to still come forward and ask for help. So it's kind of one of those one of those mechanisms where the first time that you need help, whether it's through a request or a drug test or an incident, whatever it may be, certain certain types of things notwithstanding, if you're in your view, the employees still need to be held accountable for their behaviors and your environment.

- Mike Thibideau

If somebody is violent in the workplace, it doesn't really matter whether they're intoxicated or not. They have to be held accountable for their violent behavior. But if they are an employee in good standing and they and they fail a drug screen or have an accident or something like that, you help them get well and get directed towards recovery. And then as things go on, you help mitigate the severity of relapse by encouraging by building systems that encourage them to come forward and ask for help any time that they need assistance.

- Liesel Mertes

Right. I love what you do and what you're building, it's it's obviously there's a lot of alignment with empathy in the workplace and coming alongside people.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

We will return to my conversation with Mike in just a moment. First, I want to thank our sponsor, Handle with Care Consulting. With all of the stress and chaos of the year, promoting mental health and building cultures of care has never been more important. Let Handle with Care help. With keynotes, certificiate sessions, and executive coaching, we have offerings to fit your needs.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

- Mike Thibideau

I mean, so before I did this role, I was the executive director of a construction association doing workforce development work on behalf of the state's construction industry. I had no professional background in addiction at all. I was I was doing workforce development work, largely an employer education. So. Even in that work, I would constantly see employers who would have 50 percent retention in three months, and those are the exact same kinds of employers that have engaged with us to try to increase those metrics and increase the amount of support that they're providing to get more people involved, because it costs employers a lot of money to train new talent.

- Mike Thibideau

And for them to lose that talent so swiftly is is expensive. And so let alone the impact that it has on culture and people. But so far, so good, I guess. Right.

- Liesel Mertes

Well, I'm glad to hear it. And I think that it's true what you said, that the people who are coming are people who realize.

- Liesel Mertes

At least the beginning scope of the problem and are wanting to make those changes, we we talk on, you know, each episode of the Handle with Care podcast about like some really practical these are some these are some important things to do if you know someone who is going through something like this. And here are some things not to do as you think about.

- Liesel Mertes

Let's start with the, you know, avoid these behaviors sort of thing,

- Liesel Mertes

whether it's within your own story or just as you've worked with people who are in recovery, what are some of the least helpful things that whether it's a workplace community or a family or social context can do that, you know, inhibit someone's journey towards becoming healthier?

- Mike Thibideau

So I think. My parameters that I try to set with people is. To both have the attitude of never give up while also setting clear boundaries, No. Individuals who are struggling with this are not mentally well, they're not easy to be around, they're not going to be largely cooperative with what you want them to do or make the immediate changes on first act that you think they should. And that's because they are sick. This is a disease, these are sick people, but they also, in many cases don't have a lot of trust in their lives and they're very suspicious and they believe that everybody's out to get them and that nothing is going to go well.

- Mike Thibideau

So when you think about how to provide support. The best way is to just be there and be ready to help them do the right thing at any time.

- Mike Thibideau

There's a lot of nuance involved in that and the the conversation of whether you're enabling or assisting or is a very complicated one that we could probably spend a whole podcast on. But I think that never losing the compassion is an important part of staying engaged and involved. And aside from that. It's also important to make sure that, you know. Especially as a workplace, at what point and having having it be clearly defined and not amorphous, when is enough enough?

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, there's clear boundaries that are there. You touched on this, but just to give you a chance to say it more fully.

- Liesel Mertes

What are some of the the best things that people, whether as your wife or that you first employer or just best practices of people you work with, what comes to mind when you think these are some of the best things you can do to support someone who is dealing with severe steps?

- Liesel Mertes

Well, not even severe with substance abuse issues, so.

- Mike Thibideau

My wife, to her great credit, gives me the ability to self identify a need for self care in my life and to take care of those needs, whether it's you going out and playing golf with buddies in recovery, taking time to go to a 12 step meeting, working with as a working as a volunteer to stay engaged in the community. And that meeting that she has to stay home with our daughter or whatever it may be. She's very good about recognizing that.

- Mike Thibideau

That's an important part of me being able to take care of myself so I can then be present for others. And I think that within the workplace, that can look very different.

- Mike Thibideau

So this current job is the only one I've ever had outside of the one where I got treatment at where I've ever been public about the fact that I like. And in recovery and struggled with addiction in my past roles, I would just tell people things like I don't drink, it cause problems for me in the past and that would be enough.

- Mike Thibideau

Nobody ever cared. Nobody ever really questioned it. I would be at networking events that had alcohol, most of which I put together.

- Mike Thibideau

And I never really had a problem with that because God knows those things were terrible for me when I was actually drinking.

- Liesel Mertes

There are a lot easier when you're not to be drunk and remember the person that you made that great contact with.

- Mike Thibideau

Oh, my gosh. Talk about gratitude. That was like one of the weirdest things I know. And it's I should not be too flippant about this. I know a lot of people really struggle with being around alcohol in those professional settings. But I know for me that was a source of gratitude because, boy, I, I was miserable at those when I was actually drinking because I never could drink how I wanted to.

- Mike Thibideau

And all I could think about was how soon I could leave to get to go somewhere and really Taiwan or do it. How I really wanted to. But yeah, now those are huge moments of gratitude, but so the other thing is, just so I like to think of.

- Mike Thibideau

All of my employers have always been very good about giving me the ability to be vulnerable, about the need for self care, and that's, I will say, even outside of the environment of like reasonable accommodation and disclosure of an actual, like, disability, like, I've never I don't think needed to say, like, you know, I'm starting my recovery.

- Mike Thibideau

I need to go do X, Y or Z. I've just said things like, you know, like, hey, I'm having a really tough day and I need to go take some time for myself over like a longer lunch. And people are like, yeah, go. Do you I think that that's how people should treat everybody. If you're if you allow your employees to be vulnerable, you allow them to take care of themselves and stay at their best.

- Mike Thibideau

And while the old school mentality may be that people would quote unquote, take advantage of that, for the most part, people have so much gratitude for it that they end up working harder and doing better work.

- Mike Thibideau

And I think on the whole, that that's like a really key thing to do is just to believe in people, be vulnerable about your struggles and put in an appropriate manner.

- Mike Thibideau

I I am very vocal about the fact that I do not believe that everybody needs to be open about their recovery and their addiction story within their workplace. For me here, it makes sense and it's something that is very powerful for me to insert into my professional role because my professional role deals with addiction.

- Mike Thibideau

But. Your employer does not need to know that in the same way that your employer doesn't need to know if you have diabetes, if you have depression, if you have sleep issues, if you have any other chronic disease that you're successfully managing,

- Mike Thibideau

it's when you're not successfully managing it and you require accommodation that people should feel safe coming forward and requesting it to help take care of themselves prior to needing an intervention or a relapse or being failing a drug test or any of those things.

- Liesel Mertes

I'd like that turn of phrase. Going to ponder that, yeah, just even framing what it means to have the space, but also to have, you know. Protections in place for a successful management of that, I appreciate that. Is there anything else that you feel like would be important for people to know that I didn't ask you or that you didn't get a chance to say?

- Mike Thibideau

I think that one place where I I don't think get into as fully as I would love is especially as it relates to empathy, is just the the effect that this has on our own family members of those who are struggling and how different it's handled within especially the workplace from like adult caregiving and other types of health based issues that our employees encounter with those that they love.

- Mike Thibideau

I mean, I remember very distinctly, and I tell this story a lot about my my my mom's mother and her struggle with cancer and aging as she got further on in years. And I know that my mom talked about that stuff at work. I see people in my own workplace talking about their what they have to do to take care of their parents as they age and being very vocal and vulnerable with others about that struggle. And I can guarantee that none of that same kind of support existed for my mom when I was dealing with my addiction or that people feel comfortable coming forward about when their loved ones are struggling.

- Mike Thibideau

And this is an area where I think leadership has an ability to lead through vulnerability. And if you are a person who is in a company and you know somebody yourself who's struggling with addiction and it's affecting your life, I encourage you to be very vocal about that with your employees and then through that, discuss the support mechanisms that the workplace has to offer and just let them know that you're available for them to talk to if they ever just need a shoulder.

- Mike Thibideau

Because. I mean, I know people who drop their son or son or daughter off in treatment and then went back to work like that day or the next hour and. That would be so hard and I would also venture to say would be something that if they actually talk to their boss about their boss would be like, no, like take care of yourself. You know, take the take the rest of the day off at least,

- Liesel Mertes

and I imagine, you know, you've you've thought more on this, but I can imagine that is because there's there's a lot of levels of perhaps shame and protection built in that if people knew that I had a loved one who is going through this, like, how would they view me?

- Liesel Mertes

And also, you know, a sense. You know, with whatever judgment of whether it's right or wrong, of wanting to protect that individual, like I don't want to expose my adult son to people knowing that he's struggling with this, what would they think is, is that. I don't know if accurate is the right term, do you find that those levels of kind of perception and protective impulses are like baked into why people feel uncomfortable talking about these things?

- Mike Thibideau

Yeah, I think that that's that's a huge part of it, is that sense of stigma and shame and wanting to protect their loved ones. I know the probably a big part of it is they they they're worried to an extent about how it reflect on them. I know my own mom and early on especially would constantly say things like what could we have done differently? What could I have done differently? And the answer was like, nothing like your you were great.

- Mike Thibideau

Like you killed it, you know, and that was totally outside of their control. But I don't know that it would have been viewed that way by other people if she had been more public about that. And that might. And I think that's fair.

- Mike Thibideau

But I also know that that narrative has evolved in the last five years. I've seen just how this narrative has evolved just even in the last two or three and. Even in my own workplace, I can say, granted, I had been vulnerable even during my interview about my personal recovery, and I introduced myself as a person in recovery, my first day and my first staff meeting.

- Mike Thibideau

But even along with that, within a day of that disclosure, I think I had maybe was five people within my own workplace come forward to me and talk to me about the struggles and loved ones of theirs that had. Which is kind of really a showcase to me, the power that that vulnerability can have,

- Liesel Mertes

Absolutely I I resonate with that in my own in my own areas of loss. You know, it is the power of, like, giving voice to that. And it's amazing exactly what you said, whether, you know, from the leadership level on down, how that gives other people the space to think. I can give voice to this to.

- Liesel Mertes

Mike, I'm going to link information about workforce recovery in the show notes is the best way for people to be in touch with you via your website or via the phone that, you know, if there's an H.R. director or, you know, company leader who says, I really want to avail myself of these resources, how should they be in touch with you?

- Mike Thibideau

So right on the front page, the program page of our website, if you go to Wellness Indiana Douglas Recovery and you scroll down just a little bit below the slider, I think the first button you see says schedule a free conversation today or like start a conversation today. If you click on that, that my email pops up and I'm happy to talk with anybody about anything, and I can pretty much say fairly reliably, if I can't direct you, if I can't help you, I can direct you to somebody who can.

- Mike Thibideau

And I am happy to do so for any business or really anyone who just wants to talk. And do what do at least do what we can for them?

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, well, thank you, Mike. Thank you for sharing not only about your work, but out of your own story today. Appreciate it. I'm I'm going to get ready to click stop recording unless. Is there anything else that you'd like to add before we officially stop recording?

- Mike Thibideau

I'm just really grateful for the ability to tell my story, I'm grateful for the life that I'm able to have and grateful that my daughter and soon to be daughters, you know, God willing, never have to know that old me.

- Mike Thibideau

And only get to have a dad that gets to be around and present for them. So thank you for the opportunity. And I'm I just want people to know that this is a great life to live if you let it be.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

Here are three key take-aways from my conversation with Mike

• Supportive workplaces matter.Mike talked about the impact of a boss and workplace that let him take the time he needed as he dealt with his addiction. And I am so glad to learn more about the supports that are available through Indiana Workforce Recovery. Check out their resources in the show notes.
• Providing support for caregivers and family members is also important.Mike talked about how his mom felt unable to share, like her struggle was cloaked in shame and judgment. Leaders, you are part of creating a safe space where people can talk and receive support, without fear of judgment.
• If you are someone that is struggling with addiction, or love someone that is, I want to remind you of the Mike's closing words.There is a great life available to live and resources to help you get there. And as point 3b, you might want to pick up a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People

OUTRO

Learn more about Indiana Workforce Recovery here: https://www.wellnessindiana.org/recovery/

Miscarriage and Meaning: an Interview with Danielle Ireland

- Danielle Ireland

It was four or five different nurses came in one at a time and just held my hand and looked me in the eye and told me her story of loss was a miscarriage. And and I don't remember I don't remember their faces. I don't remember their names. But I just remember each each time it was like this wave of relief. And I'm still feeling it now talking about it like hearing I lost two and then I had to. I had to and I lost one and I had two more. I lost three and I had just. It was just a different expression of you're not alone. You're not alone, you're not alone. And I couldn't have been more grateful and I didn't know that I needed that at the time. I just had no idea how much I needed that.

INTRO

My guest today is Danielle Ireland. She is a speaker, actress, ballroom dancer, licensed therapist, recovering perfectionist, a wife and a soon-to-be-mother with her second child, a little girl. And we spend time in this episode talking about her work, her pregnancy, and the miscarriage of her first child, a son, who would have turned one at the close of 2020. Danielle shares on the importance of empathy, how partners can grieve differently, and why it really bugged her when people kept telling her, "I'm sorry".

Danielle and I began our time together reminiscing about the toys of our childhood.

- Liesel Mertes

We are both children of the 80s, what was one of your favorite toys from that era?

- Danielle Ireland

Oh, this is a great question. Oh, my gosh. One of my favorite toys from that era. Well. Let's see, I was really big into my little ponies and I was really big into Care Bears and Jem and the holograms and also Barbie, I had the my favorite Barbie. There were two that were my favorites. One was the nineteen fifties Barbie. So she had like the Lucille Ball, like hair cut and bangs and have like this like old school 50 styles, black and white bathing suit.

- Danielle Ireland

I just loved her. And then there was also gymnastics Barbie and yes. So she had like bending working joints so I could make her do backflips and front flips and she was flipping everywhere. But actually a funny story about my Barbies. I loved playing with them, but I hate addressing them because I didn't have the patience for all of the little snaps. But I really loved all the shoes. So Barbies were always naked in high heels. And so that was my mom said she got some fun looks with me holding my naked Barbies with her.

As a Barbie-loving child, Danielle thought she might want to be a marine biologist. Then an archeologist.

- Danielle Ireland

And so it was either like swimming with dolphins every day, digging up dinosaur bones. And then of course, once I got the first full length movie I ever watched, this is all through. My mom's telling of it, I don't actually remember was Cinderella. And so but I remember when I started getting into live action movies and when I started to understand the concept of, oh, like, those people are pretending, especially when things were really intense, I would get nervous.

- Danielle Ireland

My parents are really good about explaining. You know, this is a make believe world. These are the characters in this world and this is what the performers do. And I was like, that's a job. And so I, I that's I think when my obsession with film and performance started and because I realized, oh, I can pretend to do all the things I want to do, I don't even have to pick one thing. And so that kind of got me on the, I think the performing arts track at the young age potentially.

Danielle studied theater in college and then worked teaching dance. She auditioned in places like Chicago and Louisville and Cincinnati.

- Danielle Ireland

But it it felt like a gamble. And I'm not a gambler at heart. I think that that's a large part why that wasn't you. I think you have to have that willingness to accept the risk when you when you pursue a career like that.

- Danielle Ireland

And I never fully took the plunge, but yeah, I still got some paid acting work up until I was, I think, twenty nine.

When Danielle started dating the man that is now her husband, she began to think about what she really wanted in life.

- Danielle Ireland

And it was the first time that I started to think about future, my future beyond what what instantly gratified me, like I the the nature of the in order to to be a dance instructor and performer and the way that I like to do it, you had to rehearse before and after your teaching hours and your teaching hours were from one to ten.

- Danielle Ireland

And so my whole world there was I mean, it was just I don't want to say small and that I wasn't enjoying it. And then I didn't love the people I was with. But it it was a very insular.

She began to ask herself different questions: what are my values? What do I really care about?

- Danielle Ireland

looking back, I think I spent a lot of time hiding as a dance instructor because it fulfilled a lot of ego. It took a lot of those boxes like I was still performing. So I didn't feel like I was wasting my college degree in the performing arts.

- Danielle Ireland

And it was fun to tell people that's what I did. It was fun. It was fun to wear costumes like it filled it. It was fulfilling in some respects, but it didn't force me to ask myself deeper questions is kind of like living your life on a cruise ship. It's like it was like living in a party atmosphere, which was it served a purpose.

- Danielle Ireland

But it wasn't until I started asking those harder hitting questions that I realized that, oh, if this part of my life wasn't here, I would have a lot of serious gaps, like a lot of big gaping holes in my identity, my purpose, how fulfilled I really was.

So she began to ask herself what environments felt best? And moved throughout a series of jobs. She worked at a cosmetics counter, selling organic skin care, then was a store manager for a fashion brand. Then there was a day spa. Each stop made her wonder if she would ever find a place to land and led her to want to work for herself, which she started to do as a beauty consultant and blogger, helping women find clothes and cosmetics.

- Danielle Ireland

But what I realized really quickly was that after working with a woman, maybe twice, she found her, matched her foundation and she knew how to curl her hair. She started talking to me about much more intimate things, like we've had three kids and my husband and I are having sex anymore. I have gained weight over the last few years and they just don't feel right in my skin like that. It was those moments that I started to feel what I call just like electricity.

- Danielle Ireland

It just was like tingling in my body. And it was it was it may have hit me all in one moment. It certainly would make for a better story if it did, I don't honestly remember, but I just felt so struck each time some woman would open up her heart to me, share some vulnerability with me and just expose something deeper and richer. And I just wanted to dive into that question with everything that I had. But I felt kind of stunted by what I felt like was a lack of of training.

- Danielle Ireland

And so I felt like I had to keep censoring myself with all this. Has been my experience with this or my opinion would be this, but I wanted to offer more with that type of conversation.

- Danielle Ireland

And that was really the first time that I thought, oh, is that is this what therapy is? This is what counseling is, because I hadn't even received therapy or counseling up until that point in my life. And so the year my husband and I got married, I decided I wanted to go to graduate school and pursue this.

Danielle began graduate school in counseling.

- Danielle Ireland

And so that's started around thirty, thirty years old.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah. And I met you like. Right as you were officially finishing up your degree. I think you. Just had a turning and a final paper.

- Danielle Ireland

That sounds right. Yeah, and what was that close at now that we're in pandemic time prior to it seems like a blur.

- Liesel Mertes

When did you finish up your degree?

- Danielle Ireland

So let me think. I graduated in May 2017. And I, I remember graduation was Mother's Day, so I think it was like, may I say something. But I remember graduation was on a Sunday and I began working in a private practice the very next day like I took no time off. I felt like once I understood and had a vision and what felt like not a track, but like a breadcrumb trail of, oh, this is going to get me where I want to be and I think I'm on the right path for myself.

- Danielle Ireland

And I felt that certainty and for the first time, probably who knows how long. I also felt and this is I think now insert the trigger for uprooting my anxiety and all my fears and self doubts and insecurities.

- Danielle Ireland

But it was I realized what I wanted to do at a time where I felt like, oh, my gosh, if I just wasted however many years trying to find this life, that's what I felt at the time. And so I attacked pursuing my degree and then jumping into work with such intensity because I felt like I was trying to catch up and and prove myself and also try to beat my biological clock because I you know, having children wasn't at the top of my mind at that time of my life, but I knew it was coming up in a couple of years.

- Danielle Ireland

It's funny being six months pregnant now. I have no idea how quickly that would how quickly those those things would come together. But I really felt like I was constantly racing the clock. And so when I met you. If it was right around the time I was finishing my degree, I, I felt like I was always trying to stay a couple of months ahead of where I really was. And yeah. So I that time feels like a blur to me too, because I think I was just living in my head for such a long time.

- Liesel Mertes

I am I have my own particular resonance within my own story of that. It's and I hear a little bit in you, but for me it was not even necessarily external voices telling me, like, you haven't achieved enough or you've wasted time or you need to be somewhere different. It was very much an inner voice that was just driving me of exactly. The anxious is the right sort of a word, like I thought I would have been somewhere different, but now I'm here.

- Liesel Mertes

But now I wish I was further along. And it's it's a mental game to be constantly churning within.

- Danielle Ireland

Oh, no, you're you're you're absolutely right, and you're you couldn't have I mean, because I could not have been more supported and encouraged by the people around me. There was no one in my life, no one in my corner looking over my shoulder saying, why didn't you figure this out sooner? Are you sure you shouldn't be further along?

- Danielle Ireland

That was one hundred thousand percent. My own internal critic and yeah, that that had chatter because I remember I remember the first day being an orientation for the graduate program and it was like it would pick new things to make me feel small about that voice, would pick new things to make me feel small about on a daily basis. But I remember the big one when I was in the program was I was probably one of two hundred and fifty graduate students in the program I was in.

- Danielle Ireland

I think 10 were over the age of twenty three that because they most people went directly from undergraduate school to graduate school. And so there were a handful of people like me who realized at some point later in their life that they wanted to go back to school. But I just felt so out of place.

- Danielle Ireland

And I remember this kind of orientation exercise where like, let's have everyone go around and say what your undergraduate degree was. And it was political science and social work, social work and psychology, sociology and psychology, family health and wellness and sociology.

- Danielle Ireland

And I was like theater. I just felt so oh God, I felt so out of place.

- Liesel Mertes

You also talked about, you know, the sense of like your biological clock and a built in and the sense of time horizons that also was at play when we first met. Would you tell me a little bit about your pregnancy that preceded this one?

- Danielle Ireland

Oh, of course. Of course. Yeah. So that was two years ago now, I think. Oh goodness. Yeah. So I have right around 2018, so about a year into my work at my first practice. My husband and I decided we wanted to start trying and trying to conceive a baby, and it's that that and I haven't revisited this in a while, but spending my entire adult sexual life trying to prevent pregnancy and then thinking that we're just going to lift the barrier and it's going to happen the first time, it even though logically I understood that, I think emotionally I thought, like, sure, we'll try it.

- Danielle Ireland

We'll have sex a couple of times, bing, bang, boom, we'll get pregnant. Easy peasy. And that just wasn't our journey. It took us about a year to get pregnant the first time. And I was about I was just like three days shy of entering my second trimester when I miscarried our first pregnancy. Our son and. Yeah, it was a crushing, crushing blow, and that's when Julie Kratz, I think was the one who suggested I meet with you and.

- Danielle Ireland

I'm so glad I did, but, yeah, we we met for coffee, and I didn't even know what we were going to meet about. I just I just said yes. Well, I'm really glad that I did. Yeah.

- Liesel Mertes

And I'm you know, even to hear you say that, I'm shocked that two months into your not two months into your second trimester, I mean, that's also like there's never an easy time to have a baby die. But that's also like you've you've spent, you know, a number of months at that point, like anticipating and thinking about it, not even to count, you know, the whole year of I imagine like you said, I think your term was easy peasy. Lemon, Sweezy, I'm thinking how did that year unfold prior to conceiving? And as I said, now it's just as the years go by and the more I get to hold stories of people with their journey towards building a family, the more I realize, like there's not just one on ramp and off ramp like people.

- Liesel Mertes

Stories are way more complex than we often get a chance to give voice to an emotional journey.

- Liesel Mertes

How did that year like how is that feeling for you in the midst of all of these new professional stresses as well?

- Danielle Ireland

Yeah, I was the first time in my life I was disappointed by my period, which was so strange because I have thought of I can remember more times in my life where I got my period and it was like, oh, thank God. You know, I guess we would kind of high five each other. Like, we're good, we're good. And it was such a different sensation. And I think that it. Over time, what I didn't realize was happening and I wasn't letting myself acknowledge that I was starting to feel disappointed by my body.

- Danielle Ireland

Each month I would get my period. I felt like I was letting us down and I was letting myself down and my body was letting me down in. What's interesting, even expressing it that way, is I have recently just been catching up with the girlfriend and I she asked me what my intention was for twenty, twenty one. And last year my intention was, was trust and just in everything, just how could I trust myself more deeply? How could I listen to myself more, how can I honor that that more.

- Danielle Ireland

But I think this year my word is pleasure because I think about my body and there's to kind of bring it back to this to the what you asked and my story a little bit. I think when I left dance and these other these other jobs that I did like once I stepped into. Kind of committing to graduate school. I didn't realize it, but I think I really splintered off from my body because I was so consumed with my mind and my own thoughts, like my anxiety, my fear, my insecurity became all consuming.

- Danielle Ireland

And I just I voted my body off the island and I lived in my head, which was so unlike what my experience has been basically performing and dance, it's a very kinetic it's a very connected mind body experience, and I lived in that world my entire life and I didn't know any different. And so I didn't even realize I wasn't self-aware enough to know, like, oh, what you're experiencing is anxiety or oh, what you're experiencing is depression, like in your depression is manifesting itself as anxiety.

- Danielle Ireland

I just didn't have the tools or the language or the any way of knowing that. And so with the miscarriage, the if it's. If I can be. Maybe bold enough to say it this way, I think the gift or the lesson. In. In light of that loss was that the pain was so acute and it was so it took such a hold of everything that it was the first time in however many years I'd been in that state where the head trash was gone, like the the chatter, like the silence.

- Danielle Ireland

And the grief was there was just there was silence in my head for the first time. And I just sat in the suck of all of that. And I don't know if I can't. No, that's not the case for me now, like the head trader, like it's returns, she's she's she's come back. So I didn't hold on to that forever, but I experienced it and I I felt like I recognized it. And I think that that helped me start to return to my body and return to myself.

- Danielle Ireland

And I just. Again, I'm really hesitant to say that I'm grateful because I don't want I don't mean in any way, so I'm grateful for the loss of that life, but I am grateful that I took a lesson from it that can inform my life forward, because otherwise, I think for me, if if there wasn't some meaning in it, it would have just felt like a terrible, awful, awful. Indescribable waste and giving that experience some purpose is helpful for me and my healing, but I just if anyone's listening that's going through an experience like that, I in no way, I don't think that's necessary or required.

- Danielle Ireland

It just that was what was helpful for me.

- Danielle Ireland

But as far as the conception journey leading up to that, I was so focused on my plan and my timeline that sex wasn't as fun. Yeah, it was more pressured. I know that my husband felt that, too, in his own ways.

- Danielle Ireland

And and it was hard. I was playing the comparison game a lot. It was really hard to not compare myself to friends who got pregnant by surprise or friends who said, yeah, I just tracked my period on an app for a couple of months and it happened on month three, like each month that ticked by that it wasn't happening.

- Danielle Ireland

I was feeling more and more lost and I ended up finding out that I was pregnant after I had scheduled an appointment to meet a fertility specialist. We were going to schedule a time to do some blood work. And my period was late. And I was I was already, I think, two weeks pregnant when I went to.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

We will return to Danielle's story in a moment. I want to let you know about one of our sponsors, Handle with Care Consulting. 2021 meets us with new challenges. A new administration, the same epidemic, the same division, and the relentless winter. Maintaining mental health is challenging and it is hard to keep people engaged. Let Handle with Care help. With keynotes, certificate programs, and executive coaching options, our empathy training will help you create a culture of caring where people survive, stabilize, and thrive.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

- Liesel Mertes

Again, as we noted, miscarriage, it's actually way more common than our public discourse would indicate, where the assumption is that, you know, every pregnancy is a healthy baby. And, you know, as soon as you get that test, you should start decorating the nursery and plan, which I think can oftentimes mean for people that go through miscarriage is that you end up giving the news to lots of people who have no idea like what do or say?

- Liesel Mertes

What were some of like the most tone deaf or hard responses that you absorbed after a miscarriage?

- Danielle Ireland

Yeah, what a great question. Well, I'll say that. I think part of the reason why I'm so open and willing to talk about this in general is that I was given the again, I don't even know if this is the right language for what this experience was, but I can't think of a different way to describe it. So the experience my husband and I had at the emergency room because I ended up delivering my son at home and we took him with us to the emergency room because I was hemorrhaging pretty bad and it was just really physically taxing experience.

- Danielle Ireland

And I think I probably also went into shock and just lots of those things. But I remember I'll just I'll never forget the grace and the kindness and the warmth and also, I mean, it's bringing tears to my eyes, thinking about it, too, because had this happen during COVID having to be there by myself, I just can't imagine. I thought about that when I thought about women who undoubtedly have experienced this during shutdown and have had to be separated during that time because my husband was with me every second and laid in the bed with me most of the time, but.

- Danielle Ireland

But the the hospital staff, in particular, the nurses that were working on that shift because it was around three o'clock in the morning, so it was third shift. Oh, my God, these women were like angels on Earth. And we were probably in the hospital, I think somewhere between seven and nine hours. And as I said, it was probably when there was like a shift change going on. I don't know when it was exactly, but it was towards the end of our stay, about four I can't remember.

- Danielle Ireland

It was four or five different nurses came in one at a time and just held my hand and looked me in the eye and told me her story of loss was a miscarriage. And and I don't remember I don't remember their faces. I don't remember their names. But I just remember each each time it was like this wave of relief. And I'm still feeling it now talking about it like hearing I lost two and then I had to. I had to and I lost one and I had two more.

- Danielle Ireland

I lost three and I had just. It was just a different expression of you're not alone. You're not alone, you're not alone. And I couldn't have been more grateful and I didn't know that I needed that at the time. I just had no idea how much I needed that.

- Danielle Ireland

But the gift of that experience for me. It just made it so clear that for me, my healing would it it didn't require silence that you really needed to come through my expression of that.

- Danielle Ireland

And so. And thankfully, thankfully, I didn't keep the news of finding out I was pregnant to myself, but my husband and I, we were told we were preparing to do like a photo shoot with the sonogram and we were going to do a gender reveal. We were in that planning stage. And so thankfully, and I know that this is such a personal thing for everyone to handle in their own way, but I'm grateful that I. That because people understood the joy and the excitement.

- Danielle Ireland

And the pregnancy, I didn't have to explain as much about the pain of loss. I didn't feel like I needed to play catch up with two different conversations at the same time.

- Danielle Ireland

And so when we got pregnant this current time, we got pregnant a second time. I remember my husband initially felt very differently than I did. I wanted to tell everybody, not announce it on social media, obviously, but I wanted to let all of our friends and family know because for me it was like, I need them to know that I'm in this experience because I just it's what I need to feel safe and secure.

- Danielle Ireland

And he he wasn't so sure. He was like, well, but what if what if we experienced the same thing again? And I just. My my perspective on it was that. Keeping my joy, like, stifled or trying to cut my joy back wouldn't prevent or protect me from the loss if it happened. So I needed to let myself fully feel the joy because. That was the only way forward from for me. And so he you know, but I also wanted to honor and respect his needs.

- Danielle Ireland

And so we started telling a few people at a time, a little at a time. But I would probably say for him, his stress level probably really didn't go down until the 20 week ultrasound. Yeah, he probably didn't feel I would say he didn't feel that confident until then, but. But yeah.

- Liesel Mertes

Well, and what you say there highlights something that is resonant with my own experience, which is that grief is such a profoundly isolating journey, like two people's two people's grief, even if they're even if it's like you and your partner and you both lost a child, can just manifest itself so differently in different moments. And those those conversations can feel hard when when both people are saying, like, I need or I want something different in the midst of that.

- Danielle Ireland

Well, and I don't even know if I can give us full credit for that. We we scheduled a session with so we have a therapist that we see individually, but have also seen maybe three or four times and four couples work and we just can't see eye to eye. And we scheduled an appointment the week. That following week after it happened, I don't remember the exact timeline, and it wasn't because there was a rift between us, but we both just we just somehow knew and or felt like we needed to check in with Brian.

- Danielle Ireland

And he said something that I am so grateful for. How can you give each other the permission to to need to walk through your grief differently,? And I didn't fully understand what that meant, but that, putting that conversation at our minds, like how can because, for example, I could handle one social interaction a day. So what would happen? So the first maybe eight days after it happened, I have one friend at a time. I don't remember managing it either.

- Danielle Ireland

It just seemed to happen that way. But like one girlfriend would reach out and she would want to come over and she'd either bring food or wine or whatever, and we would just sit around and talk or she would listen for a couple of hours. And that was it. That was all the energy I had.

- Danielle Ireland

And at the time, we had two weddings coming up. I think one was the weekend after it happened and another was the following weekend. And I needed to really withdraw and kind of cocoon up.

- Danielle Ireland

And my husband, he's actually more of an extrovert than I am. And and so. We were able to, I think, process in a healthier way with that supportive of our therapy session and also looking at what does it really mean for me to need to be by myself or to not want to show up at a wedding and not I couldn't I just couldn't handle the stimulation of being around people.

- Danielle Ireland

And I didn't want to see their faces and I didn't want to see the like. So I don't want to handle I just couldn't handle that. But I think my husband needed to be out and about and needed to be with people. But he was caught between not wanting to feel like he was abandoning me. Right. Or wanting to honor himself. And I was caught between not wanting to put him in a position where he felt trapped, but also needing to honor my own needs.

- Danielle Ireland

But I don't know if we would have had the language for that. Without, I think, the support of our therapist at the time and

- Liesel Mertes

And so what ended up happening?

- Danielle Ireland

You know, was that like. I couldn't commit I basically I just wasn't willing to commit to any plans until moments before because I was like the waves can hit at different moments and they're like, I may I suck. I just don't know how I'm going to feel. And so I went to one of the wedding receptions and I stayed until they served cake.

- Danielle Ireland

And then I was done and and it was OK, like we were we were able to to get through it. And I think that that lesson has been such a. It's really helped, I think, just transform the way we support one another and how we're able to hold space for the fact that our needs are different, which is so much easier said than done. But when when you're when you're knee deep in grief, it's it's hard not to want to hold other people responsible for your pain.

- Danielle Ireland

But in truth, I think what we both realized is like. It's a shared experience and we're supporting each other, but even in that we're not responsible for each other, which is. It's hard, but it was it was really helpful. And I find sometimes hand-in-hand with that is.

- Liesel Mertes

I don't know, there's kind of the romantic myth that your partner should be able to fulfill, like physical, emotional self actualization needs, which is, you know, kind of a bogus premise, even when things are completely stable, let alone when you're both deeply compromised.

- Liesel Mertes

And to be able to say, like I can, I can give you something and I don't want to pull back entirely. But really, like I, I find in my own story and in those that I've worked with, like you, you need people outside of your partner to be able to kind of hold some of that emotional ballast because it's a big ask, you know, to say to the other person, like, please be my everything in this time where so many important aspects of my world seem really unstable.

- Danielle Ireland

And it's just you're asking someone to fulfill an order that they just can't. It's kind of like emotional arrest. It's I want you to be responsible for fulfilling all of my sexual needs and fantasies. Know what I know what my needs are and something that I hear a lot in sessions and I'm sure with couples and I'm sure has come out of my mouth, too. But that sense of well, you know, I've told you this before or you know this about me.

- Danielle Ireland

So that that idea that like if I've told you something about myself once, you're now forever held accountable to not disappointing me in that way. And that's I think that's a really that's a fine line. And it's a tricky space because I think. And this is, I think, a big part of my own journey for the last couple of years, like I'm still in, I'm not far enough away from it to feel like I've got a really clear grasp on this.

- Danielle Ireland

But where when I become more when I take more ownership for my own experiences, my just the experiences of my life and the less accountable I make David to that happiness. It's more like I feel more of a freedom in a permission, like we're bearing witness to each other's lives and we're. Which is really what I think I want more than anything is to feel seen and heard, which is what validation really means.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

- Liesel Mertes

As you think about your journey with miscarriage, what do you wish if you could just, like, plant a knowingness in like the general consciousness? What do you wish that people knew about the pain of. Yeah, and, you know, it sounds like very visceral and embodied your particular manifestation of miscarriage.

- Liesel Mertes

What would you say, gosh, what would I want someone to know?

- Danielle Ireland

Oh, when I realized I never answered the question of my tone deaf comments, but I would say.

And I don't and you could probably navigate the how how this would actually look in action better than I can, because this is more, I think, your expertise.

- Danielle Ireland

But I would say that one of the things I felt. Often, which is probably why we're so selective of who I chose to see in those early stages was that I had to manage the other person's pain on my back. And so I went from it. So but I think thankfully, I either was self aware enough at the time or understood enough about that through other experiences of grief or my training, like I was able to kind of maybe shield myself a little bit.

- Danielle Ireland

But there were a handful of times even with close family. Where I felt like I had to continue to nurture them through their disappointment in my loss. And so it was more so than any one particular comment,

- Danielle Ireland

I think the one I probably heard a lot was, which makes sense. I mean, it would be very instinctive, which is like, I'm so sorry. But it was it was that was a tough one for me to receive because they they did nothing wrong.

- Danielle Ireland

And so I think there could be a difference between. I'm so sorry that this is your experience. I'm so sorry that this is what you and David are going through. I'm so sorry that you're in this pain. But I think what it felt like people were apologizing to me a lot and. That's. That was. Tricky and I think also probably the most tone deaf, which in the grand scheme of things really wasn't that bad.

- Danielle Ireland

But I remember my general practitioner saw her for a physical maybe six months after it happened.

- Danielle Ireland

I don't remember exactly. And she, having never been pregnant herself, in her own words, she she was very matter of fact, I think probably from like she's an expert in the body, therefore an expert in what happened with my body. But she said. You know, because I actually never blamed myself for the miscarriage, I'm grateful for that that wasn't that wasn't a manifestation of that particular grief for me. I didn't I didn't think that I had done anything wrong.

- Danielle Ireland

I mean, I felt like my body had let me down, but I didn't think like, oh, I shouldn't have jumped up and down that hard or I shouldn't have. I didn't I didn't, thankfully, have that part of it. But she said, you know what, I'm sure this is so tough, Danielle. And I'm sure no matter what I say, you're going to blame yourself anyway. But I just need you to know it's not your fault.

- Danielle Ireland

And it was just so I felt so brash and I felt like she was speaking on an assumption of what my experience was rather than ask me about it now. And that I remember kind of ruffled my feathers and rubs me the wrong way. But but thankfully, I don't think I experienced too too much in the other way. Yeah. I don't remember feeling disappointed by people very often, thankfully.

- Liesel Mertes

What has do you feel like there has been or what has been the carryover into this next pregnancy as you are now six months long? Have you? You know, it's you can't you can only live your own experience like you can't imagine, like, well, what would have been like to have a second pregnancy without that. But can you pull a thread through to say it has felt different because of this?

- Danielle Ireland

Oh, it has to. Without, without a doubt, I, I remember in the first couple of days, it may have been the second day after the miscarriage.

- Danielle Ireland

I remember thinking how remembering how caught up I was in my body changing and the bloating and my belly and my swollen boobs and like all of this, all of the stuff. And I remember sitting outside with a friend feeling just empty and saying I. God, just in a day like I would trade all of that for all of that discomfort, I would take it all back like I want all of that back. And but I couldn't have known I couldn't have known that without the loss.

- Danielle Ireland

Like, I. I don't know. And it's not to blame my myself prior to that miscarriage, because that was what I was experiencing at the time and that was what was true for me at the time. But I was. I think I was. Feeling caught up in the physical changes and feeling like home less attractive and this and this and then the loss just kind of snapped my focus after my priorities back.

- Danielle Ireland

And to be perfectly honest, I don't think I even knew how much I wanted to be a mother until I lost my first baby.

- Danielle Ireland

And not to say that I wouldn't. Love that boy, if he were here, has his first birthday would have been on December twenty third, so assuming he would have been born on his due date, but. I I've walked through the experiences of this pregnancy, still feeling them, I still have my moments where I've complained. It's not to say this is I don't I don't want to say like I have been an angel in this whole pregnancy.

- Danielle Ireland

It's been like a gift from the mother. And I was like, no, no, no. Like, I've still had plenty of, like, moments to kvetch and and and wine. But this ring of appreciation and this sort of Tuzer were like this thread that's pulled through is just massive, massive amounts of gratitude.

- Danielle Ireland

Like I can feel her kick right now. Every time I feel her move, it's just so exciting. And I know I have no doubt that being able to see her and hold her and touch her and smell her will be enriched because of what was informed from from the first experience.

- Danielle Ireland

Like, I think I was so focused on how my life was changing, what it might cost me and what I might be losing, that actually the whole experience, losing the whole experience, like losing the whole pregnancy, it just flipped the priorities.

- Danielle Ireland

And like this pregnancy because I didn't slow down. I didn't slow down on my production. My like the amount of clients I was scheduling, my expectations for myself. I didn't stop to rest. I just felt like I had to keep trucking along like life was normal.

- Danielle Ireland

And and so I needed to keep producing and doing and doing all the things I'm like I'm just going to do, like with a baby. It's no big deal. Like that's why they have baby born until just like the baby on and you get right back to life. And I think again, it was that old anxiety of I can't slow down, I can't stop because it'll all slip away.

- Danielle Ireland

But this this first trimester actually was a lot more uncomfortable than the first pregnancy. I was a lot more sick. What we're tired and knowing what I knew from before it was, I just gave myself a lot more grace, took a lot more naps, I reduced my my client schedule. I had breaks between clients, which I never did before. It was just I would just kind of knock out client, client, client, client, maybe get a little bit of time to eat client, client and then onto the next thing.

- Danielle Ireland

And I scaled way, way back. And what's incredible, too, I mean, my little daughter has already been such a powerful teacher for me and she's not even born yet.

- Danielle Ireland

But I've actually been able to do more by pushing less in specifically in my professional career. Like this has been a really, really remarkable year for me professionally in terms of what I've been able to put out and I've cut. At least my expectations and my schedule way, way back, way, way back.

- Liesel Mertes

Danielle, thank you for sharing so many aspects of that wisdom. I also want to be cognizant of your time. Is there anything else that you would really like to share that I didn't ask a question that led you into?

Danielle Ireland

Such a good question, I'm going to borrow some of these questions in my office because they're so good. Gosh, no, I can't think I can't think of anything. Other than.

- Danielle Ireland

I'm grateful to have this time to get to share with you and and your listeners and the people that you connect your material with.

- Danielle Ireland

And I'm just incredibly grateful that I was introduced to you at a time where I didn't even realize how much I needed to know you.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, I am so glad to continue to watch both of our paths unfurl and I celebrate this new little one, I celebrate not only the birthing of a physical child, but you did. You gave birth to lots of things and initiatives in a pretty barren year. That is 2020.

- Liesel Mertes

So if people want to know more about you and your work, is your website the best place to go?

- Danielle Ireland

Yes. So danielleireland.com will show links to a guided journal called Treasured that I created this year. I'm also leading a workshop called the Unleashing New Relationship Workshop. And the link to participate or learn more about that is there. And then there's more information about me and blog content and my social media links are all housed there. So that's a nice, easy space for people. Or my podcast, if they want to read more.

MUSICIAL TRANSITION

Here are three helpful takeaways from my conversation with Danielle:

• There is power in sharing your story of loss.Miscarriage is often a private burden, unseen to a wider world unless the parent chooses to share. Danielle shared how meaningful it was to have multiple nurses come up to her in the recovery room to share that they too had lost a child in miscarriage. They spoke words of hope and camaraderie to her in the midst of a very dark time…and gave her confidence to know that her healing journey did not have to be silent.
• Partners grieve differently.As her therapist asked her, "Can you allow your partner to experience grief differently than you?" What does it look like to give the other person space and allowance? This is deeply resonant with my own experience of walking with my husband through our seasons of parental loss.
• "I'm sorry" can sometimes sound redundant or abstract to a person suffering.I often tell people that saying "I'm sorry that is happening to you" can be a really good go-to phrase, but this take-away is a good reminder that there is no one-size fits all approach to comfort. For Danielle, the "I'm sorry" felt hollow. Which brings me to the point 3b. Pay attention to the person you are communicating with. If they seem like they aren't responding to your phrase, whether it is "I'm sorry" or something else, file that information away and try something different the next time you interact with them, like "I was thinking of you and how hard this must be." The best comforters are those that pay attention and are consistently adapting to the person in front of them.

OUTRO

You can learn more about Danielle at https://danielleireland.com/

- Cari Hahn

And I and I remember being on my hands and my knees rocking back and forth, screaming at the top of my lungs. I just was so devastated. And I think I was breathing all of it. I was breathing the fact that I had had cancer. I was grieving the fact that I had worked so hard and that I had left so little for myself

INTRO

My guest today is Cari Hahn, a breast-cancer survivor and the founder of Karma Candles. Cari talks about the challenges or breast cancer, the stupid things people say (like telling you all about their friends/relatives that died from cancer, losing her job after treatment, and the journey through darkness that has led her to create literal and figurative light for others.

Cari and I recorded this conversation last fall, in the midst of breast cancer awareness week. Cari is warm and engaging, she talks with her whole person, leaning forward with the intensity of the story. And you will notice that there was a small problem with the recording, a bit of a hum in the background. I didn't realize the hum until it was too late but decided that the content was so good and helpful that I wanted to run it anyways.

Cari is married to Matt, a firefighter, and they have twin high school girls.

- Liesel Mertes

Well, here you are, married to a firefighter with firefighter when you met him. How did you guys meet?

- Cari Hahn

So he was he was a volunteer firefighter when I got home. So I was I was a senior in college. And I actually met him in Florida, of all places, at a wedding. And he came back from the wedding and our friends got married, sent him a postcard to call me.

- Cari Hahn

So he proceeds to start calling me and he has my phone number. And I'm like, why is he calling?

But their relationship grew from that postcard and phone call…and Matt has been with the Indianapolis Fire Department for twenty plus years.

- Cari Hahn

Oh, so we have two identical twin girls that are seventeen years old. So they are doing years at Carmel High School this year. We have Carly and Grace. They are they are delayed drivers. So they will actually they will be driving in about a week thankfully. So they waited for that.

- Cari Hahn

And then we have a Great Dane named Ellie who was a rescue, and then we have a little dog that we had for oh gosh about Peekapoo. He he he's a little guy. It's hilarious to see the two of them next to each other and he's got a really bad underbite. And then we have Monkey, the cat that I referred to as my chemo cat because I got Monkey when I was going through cancer treatment.

- Liesel Mertes

Well, that's a great segue, Monkey.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah. And so it was 2016 at your initial diagnosis. Had you and you had a lump that you found or what led you to your. Diagnosis?

- Cari Hahn

My dad, so I I have the order, I have turned 40 that year, I have the order safely placed in a kitchen cabinet where I was going to where I kept forgetting about it. And but I just so happened to be sitting at the computer and my husband and I owned a business at that point.

- Cari Hahn

So I was doing some selling for him. And I just I had to get under my arm. And when I ate, like, I felt then something in my to outside of my breast. And I thought that that's very strange. So I proceeded to then go upstairs and I still felt it. I then thought I took my shirt off and to see what was happening. And as I did that, I saw something there. It looked like it looked like a grape.

- Cari Hahn

It was the size of a grape.

And with this lump, Cari's journey with breast cancer began. I

- Liesel Mertes

And for someone who has not walked through that sudden emergence into the world of tests and things like that, I mean, was what was the most overwhelming part of all of that?

- Cari Hahn

You know, I I think in the beginning it's extremely the amount of appointments. You couldn't you can't believe how many appointments. And I actually tried to total it the other day from the time I was frightened for my diagnosis when the diagnosis process started.

- Cari Hahn

So mid-March until the end of December, when I was done with treatment that year, I probably went to the hospital at least seventy five to one hundred times for tests, for treatment, for whatever, if a lot.

- Cari Hahn

So I think in the beginning, though, it is it's the weirdest feeling to know that you might have cancer in your body and you're just waiting for tests and schedules and but it's also life is going on around us too. So it's it's extremely overwhelming.

- Cari Hahn

And when you when you when you get the diagnosis, then you learn this whole new language. And if it is, it's it's very overwhelming. And the diagnosis part, I think, is one of the really hard part because there's so much waiting involved with it.

- Liesel Mertes

Tell me more about that.

- Cari Hahn

So initially I, I felt the cancer. So this is mid March. I then call after I felt it. I called the schedule, the mammogram the next day. And at that point they said, oh, no, we can't be. You need to go see your doctor, which you're like. And they're like, well, we're going to get you in actually sooner. And I was able to see my doctor right away.

- Cari Hahn

What's weird about this is I had had a breast exam, so not a mammogram.

- Cari Hahn

But she, she said she, she felt in December there was nothing sealable in December. So this is now mid March. And she basically is like that was not there when you were here in December. And it wasn't there was nothing there. And when when my breast cancer came out, when that when that particular cancer, my cancer ended up to the breast cancer, it was safe to do so. In six months. It grew from nothing available to phase two, which is mind blowing to me.

- Cari Hahn

But I you there are so many times to go on. And so then I go for the mammogram. I had an ultrasound at the ultrasound. They said if there's a problem biopsy. And so sure enough, the radiologist came in and he's like he referred to it as a lesion and he said, you're going to need a biopsy.

- Cari Hahn

And he said, you need questions.

- Cari Hahn

And I said, know? And I just really I didn't know what a lesion was, but I knew I didn't want to be in that room anymore. And I knew I could do it.

- Cari Hahn

So so I left very promptly and then I Googled. And as I got to my heart, what is the lesion in the tumor then that leads to the biopsy. And then, of course, that was when I got my diagnosis from that. But there's even more testing or more pathology then that goes on with the tumor.

- Cari Hahn

So at first I went to when I went and met with an on. He told me the probability of me meeting was very good, that I probably wouldn't need to know what they are doing, pathology on my team for the next month is how long the pathology took. So I thought of April 15th. My cancer did not come out until mid-June.

- Liesel Mertes

So you have this just when I imagine could be a very anxious in between waiting time. Yeah, that is dragging on.

- Cari Hahn

It's very anxious and also are very scared because I don't really trust my body either because I have cancer in it. And then so I have the main cancer which was which was the state stage two in my right. Well then during an MRI, which I ended up using three MRI during the diagnosis and having the biopsy on the other side and then come to find out, I had it looked like a stage zero breast cancer, which is ductal carcinoma in situ.

- Cari Hahn

It was then I have to wait here for on that side.

- Cari Hahn

But during the time you're waiting and you're scared and you're thinking rolling in and it's it's a really it's a really hard place to find peace during that time.

- Liesel Mertes

What sorts of things were you doing for yourself that were helpful and what sorts of other things were people doing for you that were helpful?

You can take other questions we have now.

- Cari Hahn

So I just met with I have a lot of my clients now tend to be, gee, I went to deliver some things for the other day into a huge stack of cards and books and. You name it, gift cards and the response from people when you are diagnosed with cancer, I kind of would say it was almost kind of like a 10 year old in some ways. And I have I am from here. So I I have a lot of I know a lot of people.

- Cari Hahn

My husband is from from here. So we're we're pretty connected with the community.

- Cari Hahn

But the outpouring of love and support and and gift cards and cards and notes and all kinds of things, that the weekend that I was diagnosed, if it was at a party, you have people through the house the entire weekend. And it was actually it was a really fun weekend because I remember sitting on my porch for the weekend and drinking wine with friends and some of them I hadn't seen in a few years.

- Cari Hahn

And the outpouring of support that I got during this time was really, really helpful as far as things that I was trying to do for myself. At that point.

I was I was trying to find books that maybe made less anxious for a long walk or just to kind of distract myself during that time, because it is it's a long way. And if it's just it feels like it goes on forever and ever and ever.

Cari felt well-supported in the immediate aftermath and even throughout her initial treatments.

- Cari Hahn

So actually, during chemo, my work was actually my work was supportive during chemo, my my workplace. I actually I was by my employer during treatment. I was very supportive.

- Liesel Mertes

They what kinds of things were they doing that were particularly good?

- Cari Hahn

If I was at my coworkers ended up giving me six months of donated time, which was incredible. So they took their vacation days and donated them to me if I knew them, if I needed to take the time off, which was absolutely phenomenal.

- Cari Hahn

And then there was a firefighter that was retiring.

- Cari Hahn

And one of the conditions when he retired is, OK, I want to have my time and my vacation time lapse because I want her to have this during treatment. So my co-workers say they want to function with what we do in that time.

- Cari Hahn

So I was very loved and cared for by my co-workers during that time.

- Liesel Mertes

And when did things start to change? Well, let me let me take that back, because I forgot about this and I remember this today as I was kind of prepping, so as I was getting ready to go into surgery, they covered for me for about a week.

- Cari Hahn

And I remember sitting down with the person who covered for me and she said something that she was giving herself props for the fact that she was going to be covering for me to be gone. And I thought, this is a weird statement I have. Like, I'm not going to Aruba. I'm getting ready to have breast cancer removed from my body. So that that was a little strange. And I just took that away. But, you know, they were I got a bonus at the end of that year.

- Cari Hahn

So, again, they were still very supportive of me. The shift for me really started to happen as I was just a few months out of treatment is when I started to feel this shift from my employer. And in it it happened pretty quickly.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, tell me tell me more.

- Cari Hahn

So I was this was now marked, so I'm done with active treatment, but breast cancer is this lifelong illness that 30 percent of us go on to be diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer after we've had early stage cancer.

- Cari Hahn

So for me. I was getting ready to start a new cancer drug regimen. I'm exhausted and I've only met three weeks of work for everything. So that was for surgery, chemo and radiation that lasted for six and a half weeks. So I was very, very, very tired and I was struggling.

- Cari Hahn

And I essentially, I went to my oncologist and I said, I'm really having a hard time. And I and I said, I need you to give me permission to do that, because I just I wanted someone to tell me it was OK, that I was tired and that I am the kind of person that if you tell me I'm doing a good job, I'm like, OK, I want to do the job.

- Cari Hahn

So my medical treatment people are like, you're so brave, so strong. And I wanted to be all of those things and I didn't want to disappoint anyone or inconvenience anyone. And but really at this point, I just I couldn't hold it together anymore because I was so exhausted. So I went to my employer and I said, this is the beginning of March. And I said, listen, I just I need to cut off just a couple of these.

- Cari Hahn

So for about three weeks, I worked 30 hours. And but it was interesting because at this time I am starting to feel a little bit about your chest and my my third week, essentially, I sat me down and they put their focus on unpaid leave or you need to go back to working full time, actually, to add to your your job, to actually add to the duties in another department. So with my job.

- Cari Hahn

And. I mean, I was floored and I am like, this is really this is I was really floored during the conversation and then you could start that leaves today.

- Cari Hahn

And I said, well, I said to him, I said, can I use any of any of my my from my coworkers? And at that point, it this was someone that I believe was my friend. And he looked at me and she said, no, I'm sorry, you don't have cancer anymore. You don't have donated time. And I said, oh, at least today your supervisor, your job role and your function. And I said, OK.

- Cari Hahn

And I went back down to my desk and I remember being super grateful that I had a really big purse that day. But I also wish that maybe I brought it with me because I knew I knew I was never going to walk out that door. And I started throwing all the things that I could that belonged to me and my birth. And I picked up the phone and I and I called H.R. She was up on on the second level and I said, you know, I want to talk about it today.

- Cari Hahn

And she said, OK. She said, I need you to bring your laptop and your cell phone. And I went upstairs and I took her my laptop and my cell phone. And I went ahead and gave her my my work credit card to never forget. And it was really it was hard. It was shocking. I'm walking out the door with the weirdest experience of my life. But what broke my heart even more was when I got in my car.

- Cari Hahn

I knew at this point I had to call my doctor to get the paperwork started for again, I'm trying to figure out now I'm never walking back in the door, but I had to figure out health insurance and those things. So when I called my oncologist.

- Cari Hahn

What, what really crushed me that day was I apologize to tell you this is unique or special, but we see this happen in probably 50 percent of our patients and that say it really crushed me.

- Cari Hahn

And I remember coming home and I cried probably the hardest I've ever played in my entire life that night. It was like a grieving. It was like it was like it was like a death when I was freezing.

- Cari Hahn

And I and I remember being on my hands and my knees rocking back and forth, screaming at the top of my lungs. I just was so devastated. And I think I was breathing all of it. I was breathing the fact that I had had cancer.

I was grieving the fact that I had worked so hard and that I had left so little for myself and that I could have been on unpaid leave or unpaid leave from my for my co-workers. And and I was grieving if I had used it earlier and would have been fine. And I was also I was grieving the fact that I knew at that point I was going to have to spend the rest of my life fighting.

- Liesel Mertes

You know, your, your story has resonance with what I hear from a number of people who have gone through different disruptive life events, but it's this connection of like I go to work, I didn't go into this encounter thinking that I would quit, but it just became more that I would take whatever was offered. But it became so crystal clear to me in that moment, if you think back to like you stepping into that room, how I mean, there are many ways that the interaction could have been better, but like, what would you have hoped for in that's it?

- Liesel Mertes

Like what would have been you coming out and going, oh, man, I'm so glad I work to capture that sentiment that you had earlier on in your diagnosis.

- Cari Hahn

You know, you obviously at this point, I'll never know what really what really happened. My fears, my beliefs, my beliefs, because they talked a lot about insurance and how expensive the insurance was and how much their employee cost them and insurance. I was on their insurance if that wasn't my choice. My husband has felt so horrible I have to pay for insurance. Here's the thing about me. I am such a I. You can take the gloves off and I'll have any conversations with you if I would have sex.

- Cari Hahn

You cost us a lot on insurance. Can you can you work part time and work here and then we just don't have I mean, I have been like, that's great. I would love to work part time.

- Cari Hahn

Now, I don't know if that role if I could have done that, but I wish that whatever it was that caused that. But there had just been an honest conversation because I've spent the past three and a half years in my house.

- Cari Hahn

What was it me? Was I just. Is it because I'm defective now? Because I have cancer? Like you said, people just not like me anymore because like cancer. I mean, it's all these things are replayed in my head that, you know, I don't really know what caused that. And again, even if it hasn't been a conversation I like, I just wish the conversation would have occurred.

- Cari Hahn

The other thing is that I think if I'm being really honest, when you're going to reflect, you look like someone going through cancer. That's this where when I started, I, I have this long blonde hair. I have a fabulous personality. I'm happy I'm on these things and I love all of those things when I was going through cancer, because that's who I am. I, I, I like people. I have an outgoing personalities, but I also look fat because a lot of times I didn't wear a wig, I wore my hat.

- Cari Hahn

So, you know, if if cancer is scary to look at and I don't know if that played a role, I don't know if they were like, oh, just get her out of there. We don't we don't want to see that. I mean, like, I was Shrek or something, I, I don't know. But but cancer, it's not sparkly. It's not pretty. It's cancer and it's hard. And and I gained weight when I was in cancer treatment because I eat potatoes because that's all.

- Cari Hahn

But thank God I have this metallic taste in my mouth and you're tired and you're fatigued.

- Cari Hahn

And you know, like I said, I'll never know what, what caused it, but so all I can do is show and and make up things in my head. And sometimes probably the things that I make up are probably pretty harsh and I'm sure not accurate.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, well, is that the challenge of those unanswered questions and even to just have in mind if if you're an organization who's dealing with someone who is in the midst of a lot of physical and emotional and mental upheaval, to think we've got a lot going on in their body and in their headspace, I want to communicate really like I want to over communicate.

- Liesel Mertes

I want to overcome it. That's a good message, too. Yeah.

- Cari Hahn

And when I was on this leave, as I'm trying to get my ducks in a row, I probably ended up being on leave for a couple of weeks. It was probably maybe a month or so.

- Cari Hahn

And part of it too, I didn't quite want to play golf because I also thought I want to keep on coming back because you don't want me back. And that was the only power I think I have at that time. And I remember call me, I think, walking out the oncologist office and into the you're so overwhelmed already. I mean, like badgering again to make sure that I'm not going to come back. And that was really hard. And when I finally I finally started to get insurance, I got all the ducks in a row and I made the decision that the notice I wasn't coming back.

- Cari Hahn

I went to pick up my things and that person met me down in the lobby. I had all my stuff. I mean, my brother said dumpster. I mean, just like they put me out there. But I remember her. She cried as if this is happening. And she's like, there's just some things that are not right and they're not fair. And she's crying. And I looked at her and I said, I'm going to do something about that.

Cari Hahn

That doesn't make her any less guilty because at some point she did the right thing would have been to stand with me. And, and that wasn't her choice. So here she is crying to me.

- Liesel Mertes

Right, which is the added pressure of then you needing to respond to the emotional need in the midst of your own sadness, right?

- Cari Hahn

So. Big mess in this season and a lot of pain from the work,

- Liesel Mertes

I'm sorry for that. It just sounds awful.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

We will return to Cari's story in just a moment. 2021 finds us immersed in challenges. And it is hard to know if you are supporting the mental health of your people. This is where my company (and the podcast sponsor) Handle with Care Consulting can help. We offer workshops, coaching, and keyontes to help you build a culture of care. Because empathy isn't a personality trait, it is a set of skills that can be learned. Let us help.

MUSCIAL TRANSITON

- Liesel Mertes

As you think back on things that people said or did, and there are other things that you would say to people who are watching someone who has breast cancer like this is just dumb. Don't ever do this.

- Cari Hahn

Yeah, I mean, people tend to you know, it's funny because when you have cancer, you know, it's obviously opens up this communication and it never fails.

- Cari Hahn

How many people tell you that someone I know had cancer and they died? If it always goes to that? And it's almost comical because I like to say that. But people say that a lot. A lot more than you think they'll say. Oh, well, she be that the first. And then I came back and she died. So there's a lot of it, really. And you have to laugh about I mean, that's what I do.

- Cari Hahn

I have to laugh sometimes painful things, because that's how I get through them and deal with them. But a lot of people, surprisingly, will tell you about that.

- Cari Hahn

And actually, not long ago, my daughter was at the farmer's market with me for my business. And someone came up and she's like, oh, well, oh, well, my friend had cancer, but hers was back and it's Terminal four and she walked away. I looked at Grace, my daughter, and we both just felt we both were laughing because.

- Cari Hahn

Grace, why does everyone telling you about everyone who died? I don't know. And I said it's a really great thing for people to talk about.

- Cari Hahn

The other thing that I think that I think it's really insensitive when people talk about their loss not being a very big deal with hair loss. And, you know, at the time it was fine because I knew it was in an effort to save my life. When I lost my hair, but I just think sometimes that's a really good thing to bring up with people who are going through cancer.

- Cari Hahn

I think you can talk to them and say, how are you doing all of that? Like a person going through cancer talked about it. But I think when people minimize it and say it's just hair grow back. It is just hair and it will grow back, and I was taking my life, but unless you are me sitting in my shoes, you really don't deserve to have that conversation. Right.

- Liesel Mertes

Well, and would potentially forces you to have to stuff any unpleasant feelings that you might be having about your hand? I guess I can't mention that because.

- Cari Hahn

Yeah, it is just there now. Yeah. I mean, it's like I mean, I would say those two things are probably the things that I think a lot of people. Right. And I think sometimes too. And again, you probably realize this was what I think people in general don't like to talk about unpleasant things and they don't like to be uncomfortable.

- Cari Hahn

And so you can tell the people that come in the room that it's just it's so uncomfortable for them. It's not uncomfortable for me. I mean, I have a plane going off my car. I mean, that's just that's what it was. But there are people that it's so uncomfortable they don't know what to say or do. So they just kind of they kind of avoid, if you like, the play.

- Liesel Mertes

Right. Well, and I imagine there are very physical markers in some ways in a journey with cancer like surgery, there's chemo, then there is the landscape of like continuing monitoring appointments. What has this like? It's not the immediate stage of constant intervention, but some of the pervasive uncertainty of wait and see.

I asked Cari about the on-going journey with cancer, the yearly scans to make sure that the cancer has not returned. She talked about the uncertainty and the waiting, and I wondered what has been helping her.

- Cari Hahn

If it's hard, if I do, I do a lot of yoga. And that has been a huge source of just helping you through this life that I have of uncertainty and waiting. And when I first it was shortly after the job when I reached out to my friend John, I called them and I'm like, Don, I'm I'm struggling with everything right now. And at that point, he said they say that women who try to do yoga really, really well in front of survivorship.

- Cari Hahn

And I have done a couple of years before that and it was hot yoga. And I remember I was miserable. My eyeballs were sweating. I'm like, this is terrible. I absolutely hated it. OK, so he's like, try yoga. And I am willing to try. So that day I now I want to yoga. I was not hot yoga practice one hundred plus degrees and it was an hour and a half. That's what I am not enough that I packed up because I really couldn't.

- Cari Hahn

But I loved every minute of it for me.

- Cari Hahn

I enjoy the last six of the toxins, all of it leaving my body with all that sweat and all of that I love because just to be able to be in a quiet room for me, do that.

Cari Hahn

And I recommend that for a lot of breast cancer patients that they would try this.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, that's a great recommendation. Well, it's here in that I think sometimes there's an outpouring of support in the immediacy after diagnosis treatment, and it sounds like that was congruent with your story. But I'm reminded, even as you talk like it's I don't know if lifelong is the right word, but it's it's like a long game getting a lot of these inflection points of uncertainty and waiting and second guessing like the landscape has changed for you now and again, you know, people who are young that are destined to be more aggressive.

- Cari Hahn

So, know, I have I have a few friends right now that are that have stage four. They have metastatic breast cancer.

- Cari Hahn

And that's heartbreaking to have to see that and to know that every day they still are getting help and they are fighting and they are knowing that there is no cure for them and they're going to be in treatment the rest of the rest of their lives. And a lot of times they will get a metastatic diagnosis and typically live about two to three years.

- Cari Hahn

What I will say is that the advancements in breast cancer with metastatic, you're seeing that longer now, which is which is incredible.

- Liesel Mertes

Can I jump in? Because I realize I have heard that word. What does metastatic mean? Does it mean many locations?

- Cari Hahn

So metastatic basically means that it came back it came back in an area like so if it was breast, it then traveled to the lungs and maybe traveled to the brain itself, to the bone, the liver. So it basically it's a location away from the breast. But when that happens, there is no cure for stage four metastatic breast cancer there. It's not a cure. So, again, typically, they say say you usually live for two to three years, which are diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer.

- Cari Hahn

So and that that is the diagnosis that with early stage breast cancer, 30 percent of us are diagnosed with metastatic within a decade or two or three times.

- Liesel Mertes

That's sobering.

- Cari Hahn

It is. So what? For me, these animals are scary. But then there's also what I'll say is there's also the guilt that someone has to do the one in three. Right. And, you know, there when my scans come back clean, I I'm so relieved and I'm so I'm so grateful.

- Cari Hahn

But then I have friends that walk alongside me as cancer survivors and they're doing that. And that batho battle is really hard because there is survivor guilt is hard. And I have a very deep level of empathy from being a survivor.

- Cari Hahn

And so when that happens, I mean, it can I can cry for days because I'm just so heartbroken that it's not me, but it's.

- Cari Hahn

Then why? Why is why? Because, again, I haven't gotten used to this stuff, but I have to go through those scans and I know how scary those things are that.

- Liesel Mertes

Well, I I imagine that so much of these feelings in this connection with empathy and also, as you mentioned, your, your degree work as an undergraduate in some creative arts like you to Karma Candles. I would love for you to tell listeners about the work that you do.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah. Tell me about Karma candles.

- Cari Hahn

So when I when I finished my treatment, obviously, and then I, I didn't have a job and I'm like, what do I do? So I laid around in my bed and I cried for a few months and it was that didn't really serve me for obvious reasons. So I remember, you know, I finally learned that one day, look at me like Cari is like you're either going to be a victim of this or you're going to be a victor.

- Cari Hahn

And I know you're not a victim, is not you've never been who you are. And it's like, I cannot wait to get out of that bed, but I really I really strongly enough. And when I was getting up, I would get up on the floor, get home, and I would ask with things are fine, but I love you. But I would say gift for them. And then I get up again and it's all over.

- Cari Hahn

And so this is about four months, probably three months. And I I took the girls to the mall one day, and they really love the Anthropology candle and I bought him a candle.

- Cari Hahn

And then I thought to myself that I can make a candle because I've always been a creative person. So my my degree was in art therapy. My mother is an interior design assistant, interior design. And I come from a family of people that to like to create.

- Cari Hahn

And I started eating and Googling how to how to make candles.

- Cari Hahn

And I also want to create products around me, too. And when I started realizing what was in a lot of products that you buy from the store, I was trying to reduce the toxins that I use in my house and on my body. And so I started making the candles with the friends and it was just a hobby. And it was all so I, I then for a period of time, work for a hospital foundation, raising money for an infusion center.

- Cari Hahn

And I thought, well, that maybe would be really helpful and maybe that would be healing. And then I did it for almost a year, but it really wasn't because it was a hospital foundation. So I'm still in the hospital. I'm from the hospital is still kind of a scary place and overwhelming place.

- Cari Hahn

So it was last May the night that Matt and I decided that I had much help with the candles. And he's like, you know, why don't you make it full time? And so we decided to make it full time. And then all that I do like candles and candles when I when I make them that I am lighting up the dark, the dark places of life. And I and I do believe that.

- Cari Hahn

And then when I when I hear feedback from people, especially people who are going through a hard time and they tell me what happened to them during our time, I ever denied that I would be.

- Cari Hahn

And then I ended up designing some jewelry and certainly jewelry, because again, when I was in my battle, I never really found anything that I felt that I was going through. So there's a couple of words. I have I have warrior and I have faith and I have hope and I have that. And for me, I have worn my bad ass necklace this entire month of October of I fundraise because October is a big month that I read my work with a lot of nonprofit.

- Cari Hahn

And I hear some hard news and I see things that I do in my day to day anyway. I do those things, but especially in October, it's really tough and I love those. And I have women that are sitting there giving their chemotherapy and delivering and I'm so grateful that I get to be a part of that with them. And that that's kind of a badge of honor.

- Cari Hahn

Yeah, there there's some lovely pieces and I have been the beneficiary of receiving some of your candles and some we just burned through to the very end of the last one there in some beautiful.

- Liesel Mertes

Containers smell great. They do not give my people headaches, which oftentimes happens in Bodyworks candles. I will we'll have a link in the show notes. There are some physical places that they can get them here in central Indiana where some of those places.

- Cari Hahn

Yeah, so I have a handful of local retail defeat factories.

- Cari Hahn

So I am in Denver from Tucson, down from Carmel. I am coming in from all the sisters in Indianapolis.

- Cari Hahn

I am at Cloud9, which is a day spa. So I have a handful of retailers. Oh, I am for getting back to the studio here with my candles. They're phenomenal and a lot of a lot of the places that are Women-Owned too, and they're local. And I'm always about people going to support those places, which is great. So one of the things about the is that the headache. So they're laugh so as I can possibly make a film and then all of my fragrance with something called phthalate free.

- Cari Hahn

So we basically don't have any of the chemical plasticizers in them. So we're just going to burn their cotton because again, I want I want the face that people are and I want to be is clean and non-toxic.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, they're they're lovely candles, you should check them out. Cari, I appreciate you opening up your story today. Was there anything that you would really like to add that you didn't get a chance to say?

- Cari Hahn

No, I thank you for one thing that I didn't probably say is a phenomenal book. When I was diagnosed with someone gave me a call. There is No place like Hope. You can get it on Amazon. I really, really recommend that it was written by someone. I think he was a prosecutor, but I love it. I love that. It's a really easy book to read that would fill my great name to vomit a little bit that that book still goes with me to appointments for sure.

- Cari Hahn

And when I'm going through, if it's if I have a scan, I grab that book and I always recommend that to people who are newly diagnosed. And I recommend to you that their family members have it. I think even regardless of what you know, in the beginning of this, I was so fearful of the diagnosis. But really, the treatment is not worse than the disease. You want to fight it regardless, even if it's even with terminal cancer.

- Cari Hahn

I really still believe there and I really still believe you can still fight. You know, you've got to do it in your mind. But I think you can do it. And that's why I love a book like that, because I think to read it and I have to surround yourself with positive things and positive people to make the outcomes better when you're going through. Thank you for that recommendation.

- Liesel Mertes

I will also link that in the show notes. Yes. Well, Cari, thank you so much for your time.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

Here are three key takeaways from my conversation with Cari:

• If you know someone that is living with cancer, resist the urge to tell them all about the people you know that have died of cancer.Cari heard these statements a lot. In my trainings, I talk about the empathy avatar of Commiserating Candace, she (or he) always has a sad story to share. This sharing hijacks the story of the person who is currently suffering. Don't be a Commiserating Candace
• If you are an employer or a manager of someone who is living through cancer, what support systems do you have in place for once the chemo is done?Cari talked about being well-supported initially, pushing through all of the appoitnments etc. But her body was exhausted on the other side and, when she asked for flexibility, her workplace was unwilling to shift. Do you have policies in place for the long-game, designed to accommodate the aftermath of bodily stress that happens post-treatment?
• Breast continues to influence the lives of survivors.There is the stress of wondering if the cancer will manifest again, the bodily exhaustion, and the survivor's guilt. If you are a friend or a coworker, continue to check-in with the survivors you know, especially once the chemo is done. They still need and will appreciate your support on this long journey.

Learn more about Karma Candles at www.karmacandlesandkinds.com

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

I have no problem having everybody know that I had COVID. I don't I don't feel I don't feel that that is a reason for shame. After all, we are literally in the midst of a global pandemic and tens of millions of people have this and often through no fault of their own.

INTRO

Today, we talk about leadership and COVID, how the virus gives us a chance to model a different openness and acceptance-without-judgment and how throw-away comments can trigger cycles of shame and judgment. My guest today is Arwen Widmer-Bobyk, She is Canadian, living in Los Angeles on assignment with the Canadian government as the Consul for Political, Economic, and Public Affairs at the Consulate General in Los Angeles.

I first met Arwen in that most 2020 of ways: over a Zoom call. I was kicking off a year of intentional trainings, teaching about empathy in relation to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the North American Candian MIssions. Arwen was part of an organizing task-force. She was a warm smile and lots of red hair on the other side of the screen. A few weeks later, Arwen was diagnosed with COVID, the first person in her consulate to get the virus.

Her story is one of poor responses, missing email links, uncertainty, and ill-considered comfort. Yet, through it all, Arwen has seen the diagnosis as a tremendous leadership opportunity, to model a different way of engaging the virus. Her perspective has take-aways for leaders everywhere.

But first, a little bit more about Arwen.

- Liesel Mertes

Tell me about the origins of your name and like the Arwen.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Oh, so my name has become legendary even within my organization in which I work, which is Global Affairs Canada. So my name are when comes from the book The Lord of the Rings. When my mom was pregnant back in the mid 70s, she was reading The Lord of the Rings and she kind of had this feeling that she wanted to name her daughter after an elven princess.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And so she chose ah. When the story at work, though, goes that there's a very, very senior manager in my organization who is actually now an adviser to the prime minister. And we were on a work together a few years ago. And he asked me he asked me, ah, when you know such an interesting name, do you have any siblings?

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And I said, Yeah, I have a younger sister. And he's like, Oh, does she have an interesting name, too? And I said, Well, no, I think my parents kind of gave it all to me because her name is Rebecca Sarah. And he just thought that that was the funniest thing I've ever heard. And so he often tells that story like on national stages about how he had this colleague who had this great name and who was just Rebecca.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And my my middle name actually has a very, very funny story, too. So my middle name is Ganessa and Ganessa is spelled G-A-N-E-S-S-A and my mom always said to me, well, you know, so we had an elven princess as your first date. And, you know, your middle name is is the name of a Greek goddess, the remover of obstacles and the goddess of wisdom. And I was like as a young child, I thought that this was just the greatest thing ever.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And when I got older and the Internet became a thing, I kind of tried to, you know, look that up on Ask Jeeves and didn't I didn't come up with anything else. I was like just kind of weird. And then when, when I was a brand new mother. So, I had just given birth to my eldest daughter.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And it was the first time I left the house without her kind of to go on my own after I think she was probably a month and a half old. I left her with my husband to go see a movie. And I saw Eat, Pray, Love. And I don't know if you remember in the movie, but it was really like quite an outsized role for the Hindu God, Ganesh and the remover of of the God of wisdom and the remover of obstacles.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And I just had this, like, crazy epiphany in the movie that my mom just misspelled my middle name and got three completely wrong.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And so I was like, oh, my goodness, that is a huge mistake.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

But I'm really glad my middle name isn't Ganesh. I like I'm kind of attached to Ganessa.

- Liesel Mertes

The the epiphany moment, and I like it because it's resonant with me, I remember using Ask Jeeves and you have to be of a certain age to remember what that was like a player before the ascendancy of Google.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Yeah, I remember asking do use all the answers. Where do he go? Where did he know you?

- Liesel Mertes

He was the little guy that got smashed by the hegemon and just, you know, wandered off.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

He's probably in reformism, but I'm sure he is.

- Liesel Mertes

Well, he's in the hospitality industry, so maybe he's indefinitely furloughed.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Good point.

- Liesel Mertes

Tell us a little bit. I think that you mentioned in your bio that you married your college sweetheart. Is that correct? Or did you meet in the in the consular affairs?

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

So my husband is also a foreign service officer.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

But indeed, we did meet the first day of class in our master's program, and it was a tiny little program for total international affairs nerds. We were studying international political economy, which is like, if you know, that has its origins in Marx or something like and there were eight of us in the class. And so I had moved from Vancouver to Ottawa. He had moved from Chicago to Ottawa to do this very niche program.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And I looked across the seminar table at home and I was like, Harvard, you know, interesting guy. And then I saw him later in the tunnels. And Carleton University in Ottawa is famous for its underground tunnels because the the climate is just so inhospitable that they needed to connect all the all the classrooms and all of the buildings, underground tunnels. So I saw him in the tunnel and I was like, yep, that's the one.

- Liesel Mertes

So I knew really I knew that knowing this or did it take him awhile?

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

It took him about twenty-four hours, the longest twenty-four hours of my life.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

But no it was, it was so interesting because we were together and that was so that was twenty, twenty two years ago almost.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And we were together within the first week and all of our classmates just assumed that we had like relocated from different sides of the continent to finally be together.

- Liesel Mertes

Well, you would get settled with one another.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Yeah. So we have been ever since and we've been we've lived many different places in the world and and we continue to to be the ultimate partners.

Arwen has worked for Global Affairs Canada for almost 14 years. Like the US Foreign Service, it is a very rotational job, with moves every few years. She started out in the Privy Council, supporting the Prime Minister, and is now in Los Angeles. She moved ahead of her family to the new posting, before COVID hit.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

For the first 10 months I was actually here on my own, given the kind of issues with travel in the pandemic and my daughter is finishing their their school year. And then we were separated for longer than we had planned. But finally, my family is here in Los Angeles with me.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

We've been working since March remotely. So I have a small team that manages some really key files, political relationship with our territory, which covers Southern California, Arizona and Nevada, economics, security, defense, climate change, environment.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And then a big one for my team is all of our. Full cooperation with Hollywood and the connections between our cultural industries in Canada and and this mega media entertainment epicenter, so that's that's what I do.

- Liesel Mertes

That sounds fascinating. So are you. Is your office like being consulted as they are portraying Canadians in films? Are you fact checking or are you resourcing? I'm intrigued by this.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

So our role when it comes to cultural, cultural connections between the two countries is really to celebrate Canada's achievements in in the cultural industries. So everything from fine art to film to music to television and to make the connections and be a platform for making sure that Canadian artists and creators are able to access who they need to access in in Hollywood in particular.

Arwen particularly looks at her role through the lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion. She has developed curriculum to incorporate women's voices more robustly.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And the cultural industries, of course, is a target rich environment for expanding access for diverse creators from Canada into Hollywood. And so we're really putting a huge emphasis on highlighting to American producers and buyers the kind of rich tapestry of talent in Canada, which is incredibly diverse and inclusive.

- Liesel Mertes

So I hear when you talk about what this last year has been, I hear a number of disruptive life events that in the language that I use within my consulting, you had a move, you had time without your family. This was all in the midst of being in a new city and in a new pandemic for everyone.

- Liesel Mertes

Tell me about how some of those stresses and upheavals were percolating leading up to what we're going to talk about a little bit later, which was your COVID diagnosis as well.

- Liesel Mertes

But even preceding that, it seemed like there were a lot of ups and downs in your year.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Definitely. It's been it's been a year of of the sense that I've that I've had a lot of the time, both personally and professionally, is just pushing a big boulder up a hill.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And the weight of the responsibility for me to to kind of manage getting my family here, eventually working through my department's H.R. processes and relocation processes and, you know, determining when it was safe to have them come from Ottawa to to Los Angeles and and, you know, trying to maintain connection with my two daughters who were also experiencing the stress of not being in school and going through kind of the newness of what this pandemic meant.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And then, you know, also maintaining connection with my husband, who was single parenting for 10 months while I was here and managing the girls and their.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Their stress and their worry about me being here by myself and, you know, the pandemic situation in Los Angeles has been not great from the very beginning. And so, you know that it was definitely a challenging year.

- Liesel Mertes

And I know you have a parent, two girls, who are know as the parent of my own children who are close to your ages. I have a 13 year old and an 11 year old. Yeah.

- Liesel Mertes

It can be kind of an all hands on deck time. And to be doing that from a distance and managing, you know, their schedules and people in their own uncertainty. I hear how that could feel really complex in the midst of just a new job and a new city.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Absolutely. And also managing remotely a team for the first time and, you know, keeping their motivation up and transitioning from a very in person type of work that we do, which is creating relationships and networks to a fully virtual maintaining virtual relationships and networks and still having the the pressures to produce and perform and promote and protect Canadian interests, even amidst this pandemic.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

So when you put it that way, Liesel. Yeah, it's it's been a year. It's been a year.

- Liesel Mertes

Tell us a little bit about when you got your COVID diagnosis.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Sure. So just for background, I'm the first person in the consulate to have a positive COVID diagnosis. So I was the the vanguard and the groundbreaker in that it happened the week of the election.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And of course, you can imagine in my position, the election was kind of a big deal. So we had a lot of pressure to do reporting and analysis. And then there was also the the concern about the potential civil unrest, which has been going on really since George Floyd's murder here in Los Angeles on a major urban center.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

So that even more top of mind.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Yeah, so it was that week and it was the Thursday. And I was having a meeting and, you know, typical Zoom meeting. I try to avoid looking at myself in those meetings because it's just so weird. I'm sure that, I'm sure the listeners can relate. It's just very strange to be having a meeting, but also seeing yourself talk. But I did notice out of the corner of my eye that I looked white as a sheet like I did not look well.

Arwen made is through the next important meeting with the Canadian Olympic Committee. But when she shut her laptop, she was exhausted.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And I thought, I hope I don't like the way this feels, just feels very strange, so I immediately texted my boss, the consul general, and I said, you know, I am not feeling well.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

I am going to schedule a COVID test. It's funny how my brain kind of seemed to just tell me that this was not, you know, just tiredness. This was not maybe I you know, I was like, I don't even think that this is like a cold or flu. I'm also a person who who almost never gets sick. So I hadn't taken a sick day before this in well over a year.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

So I, I told my family, you know, I'm not feeling great. I'm going to put myself in in my bedroom and have a rest. And then I had a COVID test the next day.

She was feverish and nauseous through the night.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

So the two of us went to to get a COVID test at Dodgers Stadium. And I have to say that L.A. County really, really knows by this time how to manage large volumes of people getting tested. So is quite, quite efficient.

- Liesel Mertes

Can I interrupt for a second? Are you feeling anxious at this moment? Is there a sense of dread? Are you taking just taking the appropriate steps and kind of on autopilot or like what's what's the swirl for you?

I think that. There was a, there was a sense of almost disbelief that this was happening to me at that time, you know, I had gone, what, nine months of the pandemic without getting sick? You know, we were starting to hear that the vaccine was going to be available relatively imminently. I had felt just maybe a few days prior to that, that, wow, we did it. Nobody in my family got sick. That's fantastic.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And then and then to start getting sick, I was like, wow. So there was a little disbelief that there was concern. And really, right from the beginning, my biggest concern was not myself, but the health of my husband and my girls, particularly my daughters, because.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

My youngest daughter has a lot of food allergies, so her immune system is is kind of wonky to begin with, and then my older daughter has juvenile arthritis. So, again, an autoimmune disorder. And so I was very much mostly concerned about them.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

I'm relatively young, although I did refer to Ask Jeeves, but I'm quite healthy.

- Liesel Mertes

And and so I, too, am relatively young. And I know about ask, do you say you are relatively young.

Exactly. And so and then and then, you know, as a as a parent you start thinking about and your mind goes down these rabbit holes of OK, well if I'm sick and my husband's also sick, who's going to take care of the girls? Actually, I came to the realization very quickly that the girls would be taking care of us and they're very, very OK with that.

Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

But, you know, you do start to to go down those kind of anxiety holes of, you know, what happens if I get really sick. Right.

- Liesel Mertes

And so also the complexity of parents in the midst of a pandemic at whatever stage, I mean, you're both aware of your own health and how it affects your work. But there are these people that you're responsible for and it's it's it's it's own.

- Liesel Mertes

It's not easier, but it's a it's a luxury that parents don't really have to just focus singularly on their own, on their own health parents or just people with partners, other people in the house.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Absolutely. So so that happened. I was pretty much kind of laid out physically and then so that was a Friday, Saturday morning. I get a text from L.A. County and it's actually my husband's results. And I click on the link and it says Negative. And I was like, wow, what an incredible relief. A few minutes later, I so so I guess I would talk to him and I said, you know, you're negative. This is really exciting.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

I'm sure I am, too. You know, I went into that phase of kind of denial, you know, I guess this isn't COVID. I guess I was just kind of jumping to conclusions and, you know, I'm sure I'm fine, too. So, you know, dodged that bullet, so to speak. And then I get another text about five minutes later and the link doesn't work.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

It's it's a broken link. And and so that was just incredibly frustrating to me. So, you know, I emailed their tech support ways to deal with tech support.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Women's rights waited for hours. Finally, they sent me a new one and the result was positive. And at that moment, I remember like my stomach, my stomach just sank. It was when it was then when I was feeling sick and really tired and then realizing that this was not going to be a quick road to recovery, likely that, you know, it kind of just very much hit me. And so I kind of took a few minutes to to let it sink in a little bit.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And then I went into, OK, now I have a whole bunch of things to do.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Being of a foreign diplomat here, I had responsibilities that I had to execute in terms of informing my boss about my diagnosis, but also informing our mission security officer who who deals with all of the kind of emergency management stuff.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And at that point, I was thinking solely about any potential exposure to my colleagues that I may have inadvertently perpetuated.

Luckily, Arwen did most of her work remotely. She would only pop into the office occasionally. Colleagues were notified.

- Liesel Mertes

What what kinds of things were people saying or doing that made you feel well supported in the midst of all of this?

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

So it's very interesting because we plan and we plan and we plan for emergency situations and we think we know how we're going to respond and we know how we should respond.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

But the interesting thing for me was that when you have it all written down on paper, the first thing and no one is not kind of, my goodness, how are you feeling? You know, it is it is kind of going directly into the kind of duty of care. Mode, as I like to call it, and so it's the primary responsibility of duty of care is to make sure everybody is safe, so, so safe from a physical perspective rather than safe from an emotional perspective. For example.

- Liesel Mertes

So step one in the. That makes total sense of just this, the first step is process, not necessarily guidance in how to interact in this potentially very freighted, uncertain person on the other side who are dealing with a really complex, unknown disease. You don't really script out how to meet that person in that moment necessarily.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Precisely, which I hope to change soon. But for me, it was very interesting. So. The first question is always, where do you think you got this, like that's the most important question ever, you know, and I think I read a statistic later on that I think somewhere north of 70 percent of people have no idea where they've actually contracted COVID. For me, I was extremely careful, have been for the previous 10 months all through wearing a mask at all times in public. And I still I still caught it probably in the elevator somewhere with somebody who wasn't wearing a mask, but.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

You know, for me, that question triggered and I and I received that question from almost every single person that I encountered and told the question, triggered shame, like the answer that that was expected was, oh, well, that that one time where I was just, you know, floating all of the rules and and, you know, in an indoor restaurant, breathing in as much virus as I could, you know.

- Liesel Mertes

Some Friday night where I said, screw it, I'm doing whatever I want.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Exactly. You know, so so that was that was interesting. My work was excellent in in kind of putting together the steps that were needed to take to notify anyone who may have been in contact with me. Thankfully, everyone was negative.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

But then I learned a little later on after I talked to the contact tracers in L.A. County that really they're most concerned and really exclusively concerned with only the people who you had been in contact with 48 hours prior to the onset of symptoms.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And for me, that was only my family. So it was kind of out of an abundance of caution that my workplace initially was told, but I very quickly realized that it was an incredible opportunity for leadership, for me to

- Liesel Mertes

Tell me more here.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

So to destigmatize this, I felt very, very severe stigma about this, this diagnosis, and I really wasn't expecting that.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And so I asked my boss to...

- Liesel Mertes

Can I ask you a little bit more about that, because it seems it seems really important. So there, I imagine there's the the shame and the stigma of that first question, that sense of suspicion of like your irresponsibility or what you've done.

- Liesel Mertes

What are some other ways that that stigma was being expressed and perceived by you?

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

So on the personal level. My I. I soon found out that my daughter had my oldest daughter had told her friends at school that I was positive. So within the first 48 hours they all knew. And of course, as a mom of a teenager, we thought, you know, how quickly word can get can get around. So I received an email from the parent of one of one of the girls. And remember, these are very, very new relationships for our family.

We had just moved to L.A. The girls had just started virtual school in September. And so very much brand new relationships and still establishing, you know, trust and and familiarity, I guess.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And so the the email I received was just a visceral reaction to potentially having exposed. The family of this girl to COVID now, I had not been in contact with them for over two weeks and Grace hadn't been in contact with them for 10 days. And so it never even occurred to me to notify all of the families that, you know, I had seen in the previous three months, you know, but I really quickly learned that the reaction was very much based in fear, in the unknown of this disease, but also the unknown of the timeline.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

I mean, teenagers are not really precise when it comes to kind of delineating the exact timeline of, you know, when their parents get sick.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And so I just remember feeling intense kind of sorrow and shame and regret for not having informed these families, even though I was very sick at the time, I felt. Regret for not having thought through all of the potential people who may be afraid of my diagnosis, which seems very strange to me to say now, but it was it was just kind of a gut punch, so to speak. The email had used words like betrayal of trust, of, you know, putting our lives in danger.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And so it was quite dramatic email, to be totally honest. But but I knew that it was just all very much fear based. And so I put my my mind I put myself into her shoes. And I could very much imagine, you know, a mother's instinct to protect her family. And and so I repaired the relationship. I wrote back and I and I and I copied all of the parents of the the very small study pod of four girls.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

But I just kind of explained and I and the first sentence of my email, so you'd be proud of me was I can imagine how scary this is for you. Let me walk you through the timeline to reassure you.

- Liesel Mertes

I am proud of you, not my pride. You know, it is the delineating factor, but, you know, one of the reasons that I really wanted when I first heard your story and just the high level of it to have you as a guest, because I just want to step back.

- Liesel Mertes

That takes so much choosing towards empathy and choosing towards and I want to circle back. You began to say, you know, a leadership opportunity because, I mean, how how complex and hard is that like you were you're very sick at that moment. Like you feel terrible.

- Liesel Mertes

It's this new relationship like there you're you know, the parents of your daughter, you know, that's just complex of like it's not like things are well known relationships.

- Liesel Mertes

And you could feel attacked, you could feel defensive. You could feel like lashing out and saying, hey, you're not caring for me at all.

- Liesel Mertes

Like I'm feverish and in bed. But to be able to process those things and still respond in a way that sees another person's emotion. Yeah, there's a lot of steps to actually executing on that maturity. To get to that point.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

It was really valuable. And I kept thinking about it. And, you know, I'm I'm one of those cheer, Cheryl. So I guess you could say in that I always look for a silver lining and no one does that apply to more than the situations that I find myself in. So you'll never hear me saying, at least to anyone, except for maybe myself. And so I was looking for the silver linings to this. And personal growth has certainly been one of those intentionality as well in the relationships that I have professionally, personally.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Another excellent silver lining. And keep going. Sorry. No, no, it's OK. So, you know, through through that very open, authentic and essentially raw message to to the other parents, I think that I, I there was leapfrogging happening. I was able to establish more trust than, you know, just 10 months of, you know, banal dialogue, you know, normal parental dialogue. Could have could have possibly established.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

We'll return to Arwen's interview in a moment. This episode is sponsored by Handle with Care Consulting, my company. The world went sideways in 2020 and it is hard to know if your people are feeling supported and engaged amidst all the challenges. Empathy is THE leadership skill for our times, and Handle with Care Consulting can help build this skill into your people and processes. Contact Handle with Care Consulting for coaching, keynotes, and certificate programs to create cultures of care. And now, back to Arwen…

MUSICAL TRANSITION

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

I have no problem having everybody know that I had COVID. I don't I don't feel I don't feel that that is a reason for shame.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

After all, we are literally in the midst of a global pandemic and tens of millions of people have this and often through no fault of their own.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, there's the shame and fear. Response cycles, though, are so powerful. You know, it just it puts us in such a defensive crouch. And you know what? What a true awareness that you're able to have of looking and seeing all these people are in their own fear cycle that is just causing them to act so defensively. And it's it's a good thing to tuck away to to be aware, like, oh, yes, I could suddenly be triggered to feel very concerned just about my own safety and things like that.

- Liesel Mertes

But how will that actually inhibit my response? And and that comes through to someone you're talking to, like, oh, you, you know, are only thinking about yourself right now instead of having any care for me, which I imagine, as you said, is a tremendous opportunity, as you were the first within your organization to get this diagnosis.

- Liesel Mertes

Tell me some about you mentioned using it as a leadership opportunity and wanting to cultivate and model something different. What things are you pulling forward that you're wanting to incorporate in kind of a different way of approaching people who get covered?

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

So I think like most large organizations, medical information, of course, is generally very confidential in a work setting. And so one of the initial first reactions of my organization was we must keep this super confidential. We have to keep your identity confidential. We can't tell anybody it was you.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

For me, that just felt totally wrong because I felt that that that lack of transparency, even if it was well-meaning and meant to protect me, would possibly lead to even more fear.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

For example, imagine I was one of the workers who who had been in the office and I was told that someone has COVID and that you may have been in contact with them and therefore you should get tested. I can imagine the amount of fear.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

That that would instill in someone, because you don't there's no certainty, right, you don't know if you don't know who this person was, maybe I actually only saw one person in the office when I went. And so the other 12 that or eight that would have been told to go get tested where I know we're at no risk whatsoever.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And so I asked, I asked my my boss to include in his message to all staff that it was me that was diagnosed and that I felt provided an opportunity.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

To show that it is absolutely OK to disclose your diagnosis in the workplace in order to keep your colleagues safe in order, there's no reprisal. I wasn't sent home to Canada because I got COVID, which was something I was actually worried about.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And we can talk about that as well. But for me, it was an opportunity to destigmatize the diagnosis, to take away the shame, to not hide something that really, really didn't need to be hidden. Right.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, I hear that that that's a powerful signaling in that way. You mentioned an apprehension that you had. Tell me a little bit more about that.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Sure. So, you know, on the back end of things, we have a giant organization of of 15,000 or so employees spread across the world. So the background is that about a thousand of them, I think, were repatriated home to Canada due to their own health risks or the particular health infrastructure of the countries to which they were accredited. So that happened in the spring.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And when, when I was diagnosed, I texted a very, very dear colleague of mine who is still based in Ottawa and told him about my diagnosis. And he said he was somebody who still works in the in my former team in the North America Advocacy Division. And he said, ah, what can I tell the rest of the team? And I said, absolutely, 100 percent. And so he did. And then I got an email from my former director, so my former boss.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And he said, OK, well, there are some official things we need to do now are when I need to inform officially the medical infrastructure of global affairs. And so he's very sweet. He said they're very well meaning are when they're there, they can be. I've heard that they can be a little intense, but they're extremely well meaning.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And so I was I hadn't even really thought at that point. Of what the potential implications were for the duration of my posting, the duration of my assignment here is should I have gotten really sick? And so I kind of sat in that fear for. A little while, I would say about 15 minutes, talk to my husband, I was asking questions like, well, what if I recalled what if I get really, really sick? And, you know, health care here in the United States is very expensive.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

What if they'd rather treat me in Canada? What happens if I go home and you guys stay here? And so there are all of these questions in my mind as I waited for that official notification of of you have now been assigned a file, so to speak.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And that notification came. A lot of people were copied on it. And the wonderful thing was that employee assistance program was copied on it. They reached out to me separately after and said, if you need any support, if your family needs any support, if you have questions, if you have concerns, reach out.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

But also the kind of the chief medical officer of global affairs was copied and he was the one who then continued to follow me and to be in dialogue with me on a daily basis for the for the next month and. That having that support and that expertise and that person who I could ask medical questions of was was very, very helpful. I'm kind of a medical nerd myself. So if it wasn't political science, I probably would have been a surgeon.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And so I very quickly kind of got up to speed about what I needed to do to give him the information he needed to assess my condition. And so I ordered myself an oximeter the next day and started measuring my my my blood oxygen levels. And that's kind of key for COVID. And that was something that helped him monitor my situation. At one point, and COVID is, of course, different for everyone, and I know that some of your listeners are dealing with diagnoses themselves, perhaps, or those of their family or friends.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And it's very different for everyone.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

For me, it really went in waves. And so. I would feel terrible for a few days and then I would rest and I would start to feel better and then I would overexert myself and then I would feel terrible again.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And at one point, my my oxygen levels were really, really not good. And the chief medical officer said, you know, Arwen, if if you don't rest and if you don't really, really take this seriously, I'm going to be ordering a medevac for you and you're going to be coming home to Canada.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And that was really the thing that scared me into. Resting, taking it seriously, and the realization that if I didn't, this could be a condition that I would have to deal with for a lot longer than I would have liked.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, I hear I hear so many threads in the midst of that that are important, I hear the communication and the cooperation, whether that was from the medical staff or the EAP, of being able to really reach out to you on a couple of different fronts, to put it to deal with some of the fears that might come up to have information going back and forth here, the importance of rest.

- Liesel Mertes

I also hear just harkening back to as you're dealing with like emails from your daughter's friend group, I'm thinking there's always so much going on that we don't know, you know, behind the scenes. Like they don't know that you're not only sick, but you're dealing with apprehensions as to whether or not you're going to have to be taken back to a different country. And how is this going to affect the continuity of your posting and all of your family situation?

- Liesel Mertes

And that's just your particular complexity. But everybody's story has their own complexity as to how the diagnosis is playing out with their financial situation or their health care plan or their partner or their aging parents. And I I hope that it gives people more of a sense of pause before they just rush into an interaction. So there could be like there's the stress I know, which is a sickness. And then there are probably a dozen ancillary stresses that are attached to this that I don't know about.

- Liesel Mertes

And I want to tread graciously and carefully because there could be a lot going on that I have no idea about.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Exactly. And it's just kind of layer upon layer. And then I have so much empathy for. People who are going through this and who are also, you know, high functioning professionals or in fact even, you know, like a grocery store clerk, the people who who can't take the time they need to get better because of financial considerations or professional considerations or family considerations. And I mean, you know, I'm very lucky that I had plenty of sick leave thanked.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

But at the same time, this is an incredibly busy time for my for my program. And so prioritizing my health over the hundreds of emails that were flooding my inbox on a daily basis was really, really, really hard. And I was my worst enemy. I mean, I had a lot of support from my boss to to to disconnect, but I you know, I don't have any backup at work either. So it's it is it is not easy.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And and if you see someone who's just kind of. Struggling with it know that there are many, many angles of pressure happening at any given time.

- Liesel Mertes

You mentioned, you know, needing to quarantine within your house burns that loomed large about the health of your children or your husband.

- Liesel Mertes

What what is that like, the isolation or the uncertainty within your home? Are you having to have people bring you food? Like what is the life of quarantining within your house look like?

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

So absolutely. I was kind of at the at the whim of my my family to bring me food. Thankfully, they're very good at that after having been doing that for 10 months on their own anyway in Canada. But I was kind of isolated in my bedroom with a bathroom attached. I didn't leave that room at all. My husband generally would be the one to put the plate by the door. We'd all have masks on. He'd leave, I'd go get the plate, I'd eat, put the plate back.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

It was kind of like a bit like being in prison, actually in your own house. Yeah.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Yes, a bit like a prison, but maybe friendlier people that come by your door each day and better bathrooms.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

But I definitely went through many series on Netflix and I am fully caught up on the Queen's Gambit and what I would recommend highly recommend to anyone. It's a great, great piece of television. But there were there were times when when I felt really, really ill that.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

I just kind of felt miserable, and I think the isolation made it a bit worse. And then there were the times that I felt more energetic and that was also really frustrating to, I think, one of the most heartbreaking moments for me, though, of over those two weeks of being isolated was just seeing my youngest daughter's face 12 feet away from me and and just knowing how much she just wanted to hug me. I think in follow up conversations after, you know, we've all been cleared and healthy talking to my girls about.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Their feelings when I was sick has been very illuminating for me because they were very worried. They were worried that I would get sicker and sicker and they were probably even worried about my mortality at times because this is an unpredictable disease that attacks all sorts of different systems within our bodies.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And so and and honestly, I think this is the first time I've ever been confronted with my mortality from a kind of a sickness perspective. And so it's it's hard on it's hard on those who love us to.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah. You you've mentioned it throughout the episode, but just to keep you up to make sure we didn't miss anything. What would you say to someone who's listening and perhaps over the next couple of weeks they are going to interact with someone, whether that's in their family or their friend group who had a COVID diagnosis? I always ask on this podcast,

- Liesel Mertes

What are things that you would say, don't do this like this, don't do this. This will be bad.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

So the number one thing that I think I alluded to it before is don't let your first question be. Where do you think you got it? Because rarely is that actually a meaningful question, I would suggest instead that your first response be how are you feeling?

- Liesel Mertes

And on the positive side, what were things that you experienced that you would say this was so meaningful, whether it was in support of you or people who supported your wider family in the midst of that, what would you recommend to people who want to show care?

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Well, interestingly, I've never been a fan of sending or receiving flowers. I find them so temporal and yet so expensive at the same time that it's never been my go to. But I have to say, being stuck in a room by yourself, having a beautiful bouquet of flowers or forms of flowers was just this wonderful visual kind of place. I could rest my eyes and concentrate on some beauty. And so interestingly, I would suggest flowers. I totally lost my taste buds for four weeks, so food would have been completely wasted on me.

- Liesel Mertes

So no chocolates does make you more accepting of anyone who has to cook for you, though. You can just be thankful for whatever you gave me. Absolutely.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Normally I love hot dogs, but this one didn't taste like anything but from an emotional standpoint.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

The daily check ins, I received text messages from dozens of people a day checking in on me, and even if I didn't respond back right away, I would get another one the next day checking in on me. And that was very, very impactful for me. It meant to me that people were thinking about me, that they were wishing me well. I took a lot of the energy and I I accepted the responsibility of finally resting enough to get better because a lot of people were really concerned across the whole world.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

And and that was very, very impactful and very special. So it only takes, what, 10 seconds to send a text to somebody, but it can really make a big difference. Yeah.

- Liesel Mertes

Is there anything else that you would like to add that you didn't get a chance to say in the course of the interview?

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

I think that, ironically, I'm really, really, really happy that it was me that got COVID in my social and professional network because I. I wouldn't have wanted anyone who didn't have the kind of agency that I have to have faced the shame and stigma of being that first person, and for me, not only has it been an opportunity for leadership, but.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

An incredible opportunity for her personal growth for me, and I'm I'm just very, very thankful and well

- Liesel Mertes

And I I hear that something that touches on a note that we discussed earlier in the podcast, especially as COVID, is disproportionately affecting, you know, black and brown communities. And, you know, as as so many people from those communities are frontline workers and, you know, are disproportionately at risk that, you know, things that are already unfortunately and baked into so many interactions of like shame or blame or judgment or feeling like there's a power dynamic, that things that were inadvertently doing just unthinkingly as we respond to people with COVID could really reinforce some pretty toxic interaction cycles of people who have who tend to have less agency within the dynamics, whether that's interpersonally or at work.

- Liesel Mertes

So, yeah, I hear I hear that aspect of what you're saying.

- Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

Yeah, it's very that's very important to to think before we talk. Always

- Liesel Mertes

They tried that in kindergarten and it remains an important lesson decades later.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

Here are three key take-aways from my conversation with Arwen…

• Leaders, consider the unintended consequences of your policy about confidentiality in COVID cases.There can be many good and important reasons to protect privacy, but what are you inadvertently communicating with the shroud of secrecy? What are ways that you as a leader can be proactive in dismantling stigma around COVID? For Arwen, this was sharing the news of her own diagnosis. What steps will you take?
• Go gently with people who have gotten sick.Remember that you always know only a portion of someone's story. Arwen was coping with concerns about having to leave the country, worries about her daughter's health conditions, and a number of large projects that needed her attention…all of this on top of her COVID diagnosis. The moms who sent frantic, shaming emails had no idea of this cascade of pressures.
• When you hear that someone has gotten COVID, do not let your first response be "Where did you get it?"Most of the time, people do not know. But on a deeper level, this shows a self-interested posture that fails to truly pay attention to the person who is sick. Instead, try something like, "I am so sorry. Can I send you a DoorDash or GrubHub gift certificate?

OUTRO

- Liuan Huska

And so I. I felt like when people were able to say to me, you're not just like something to be fixed, but we can actually learn from what you're going through and what you have to offer as someone who is suffering is valuable and actually may be central to our human experience, is not marginal in something that we just put on the aisles.

INTRO

My guest today is Liuan Huska. Liuan is the speaker and the author of a tremendous book, just released this month by IVP Press called Hurting Yet Whole, Reconciling Body and Spirit in Chronic Pain and Illness. Today, she is going to talk with us about living with chronic illness and the turn that life took for her in her early twenties, upending what she thought about the world and faith and the body. Our conversation is far reaching, Liuan is Chinese American, we dive into intersectionality, the dark side of capitalism, and why weakness invites us deeper into our shared humanity.

But first, a little bit more about Liuan. Liuan lives in West Chicago with her family.

- Liuan Huska

Is my husband and our three kids, and we just adopted a couple of feral cats who live outside to get rid of our mouse problem.

- Liesel Mertes

How has that gone as you hoped it would go?

- Liuan Huska

So far we've only had like one or two mice since they've been outside catching mice for us. So I think it's going in a good direction.

Liuan's children are 1, almost 4, and almost 7. During COVID, finding outlets for fun has been complicated, so Liuan and her brood have started to forage.

- Liuan Huska

So we started going I made a point to try to go to least one new forest preserve every couple of weeks. And we picked up what we downloaded an app for plant identification. I also picked up a book from the library about foraging, and that became just this lovely adventure that we had over the summer of identifying all these new things out in the woods and some of them even edible. So we really enjoyed that.

From dandelion soup to chicken of the woods, they've enjoyed being more grounded in their immediate surroundings.

- Liuan Huska

Yeah. It's just a great way to pay attention. Right. Like we're so caught up in the the macro level of what's going on in our world and it can feel really disorienting.

- Liuan Huska

But I read an article about how like naming and paying attention to what it's like their local flora and fauna is a way of loving, like what's right in front of you. So the foraging was like my way of doing that was saying I'm here and yes, I'm present to this world right here, right now. I can love this place in a really attuned way.

Being grounded is important to Liuan. She likes to be in nature, in the dirt, and teaches yoga as well. Liuan is also a lover of words, both as an author and as a voracious reader.

- Liuan Huska

So one of my the books I read most recently, one of my favorites was called An Elegant Defense, and it's a New York Times science writer who basically looks at the immune system and all the new developments around the research of how the immune system works.

- Liuan Huska

But he tries it in four different people, stories who have autoimmune disorders or have different experiences related to like cancer or things like that. So that was just really fascinating to me. And it's something I try to do in my book as well.

- Liesel Mertes

Mm hmm. Well, and I hear in that. Connections to your own story and your journey with pain and the embodied experience,

- Liesel Mertes

would you set up for me what your life felt like in in college, in your early 20s and then.

- Liesel Mertes

Then the moment when things started to change and you had the first like a, you know, flickering of what would become a much larger part of your story.

- Liuan Huska

Yeah, well, I come from a Chinese immigrant family, and my family has always been kind of like we get things done. I think of that Hamilton quote, like immigrants, they get they get the job done. That's totally my family. So my parents owned a Chinese restaurant when I was growing up. And I, I also had two younger siblings that I took care of a lot while, you know, doing school and extracurriculars and working at the restaurant.

- Liuan Huska

So a lot of my growing up years was just kind of plowing through everything that needed to get done and felt like was my responsibility. And I felt pretty good about that. Like I felt like I was a very capable and responsible and competent person and I'm going to be in college. I definitely carried that, um, that sense of self with me.

Liuan moved across the country to attend Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian school in the suburbs of Chicago. I am also a Wheaton grad, and we overlapped by a few years, sharing space on the leafy campus. As an aggregate, our college was a driven bunch of young adults.

- Liuan Huska

You know, Wheaton is a pretty type A community. I think I've I've heard someone say that.

- Liuan Huska

He's like a psychologist who had been with Wheaton students say that these are like Wheaton students are some of the most like angsty students I've ever met under the surface. And I think I probably I'm lucky because I resonate as a graduate as much as we could try to relax. We're still trying.

- Liesel Mertes

Yes, exactly right. It's always pushing, pushing, whatever it is.

- Liuan Huska

It's funny because somebody just told me I posted a question on Facebook about what are the what are the most unhelpful things that people have told you when it comes to responding to pain or illness. And somebody said. You don't try it, you're try it, you're not trying or you're trying too hard, you just need to relax and then God will, like, go in there and take care of it for you.

- Liuan Huska

It was the same idea, right, that if you're not going to try hard, you're going to. Try to not try hard the same thing, apply your world to relaxing.

- Liesel Mertes

Yes, yes, I know that is true about our shared learning community.

- Liuan Huska

Mm hmm. I mean, there were some I did experience and in my first year at Wheaton I was a transplant to the evangelical community and I experienced a lot of culture shock and had a hard time making friends to begin with.

- Liuan Huska

But I was eventually able to get plugged into this group of people that I really felt like I could be vulnerable with. And so there was it was it all just pushing, pushing for sure, but that was the overall feel of that community.

- Liuan Huska

And when I graduated from Wheaton, I expected that I would go on to graduate school, I wanted to travel around the world. I wanted to write books. And I just sort of felt invincible like that.

- Liuan Huska

My body was just something I was using to get to my goals, but, um, that I didn't really pay too much attention to as far as like the signals and maybe ways that my body was saying, hey, you should slow down or this isn't feeling good.

Good.

- Liesel Mertes

And let me dig a little bit deeper what you talk about, "maybe I wasn't paying attention to the signals". As you look back when I fill that in for me a little bit more. What were some of those signals that you would say you were experiencing, OK?

- Liuan Huska

Yeah, well, when I finished we in I started a nonprofit job and it was again, I applied that same just barrel through.

- Liuan Huska

And there's a psychologist, therapist whose book I really enjoyed. Her name is andI Kolber. I don't know if you've heard of her. Her book is called Try Softer, but she uses the phrase white knuckling. And that's what I, I feel like I've done so much in my life. Is white knuckle my way through anything that's hard instead of just like maybe realizing I could take a break instead of, like, pushing through?

- Liuan Huska

So I had I got this really stressful job doing conference planning and it was a Christian organization. And that layer of the Christian mission over my work made it harder because it made me feel like I really couldn't stop. Like I was like maybe letting people down that needed this ministry if I somehow didn't, like, fulfill all of the expectations that our the director was putting on me. So I was just kind of just doing everything and saying, yes, we'll do that.

- Liuan Huska

And I did try with another co-worker to kind of push back, but. You know, I just had I think I was like not as well equipped as I am now with the kind of knowledge and confidence and ability to honor my body that I was then.

- Liuan Huska

So I just kept going and. We did the conference, it was in June, which would have been a year after I graduated from college, and I remember after that conference, my husband met me at the conference location and we took a two week vacation and my my brain was just like in a complete fog.

- Liuan Huska

So that was one of those, like, signals of something's not quite right. Or like I, I pressed the override button too many times on my body, and that was the biggest one.

- Liuan Huska

And also just like really easily triggered emotions and tears, really trivial things or what seemed maybe it was trivial on the surface, but it was just the tip of the iceberg of a lot of the bigger issues that I was wrestling with.

- Liuan Huska

Yeah, and that summer was when I started having some minor pain in my ankle and I didn't think too much of it at first.

- Liuan Huska

It was just. I thought, oh, it's just like some kind of weird sprain and it didn't happen out of any kind of injury, so that was what was sort of strange about it. But I thought, OK, it'll go away in a couple of weeks and I'll just go back to normal, which normal means just, you know, assuming that I could do everything that I put my mind to and I could make my body fit into my agenda.

- Liuan Huska

Mhm. So yeah. Yeah. Just continuing to chug on through.

- Liesel Mertes

And boy you gave voice to of the the nonprofit like whether it's Christian or not, trap of the mission driven organizations that can't compensate you on pay but can definitely drive you on a mission to continue to give more is absolutely a real dynamic of anybody who has worked for very long in that world.

- Liuan Huska

So yes. And it's so hard when you're relying on donations. Right. So you think, man, I really have to.

- Liuan Huska

Make these people's money count. So it seems like almost impossible to say I need to use your donations to pay for my health care or take care of myself. That seems like that's not what they were intended for. But that really misses the point of, you know, what what what the mission of being taking care of other people are doing good in the world is that it has to incorporate the people who do it to not just the people who receive it.

- Liesel Mertes

Right. And like you said, I mean, asking for any degree of rest or release can be construed as like you are taking resources away from, you know, homeless youth in Chicago or starving, you know, entrepreneurial mothers in Bangladesh. That's horrible of you, which has its own psychological pressure.

- Liesel Mertes

So you're feeling you're beginning to feel this pain in your ankle. You are hoping that it can go away so you can get back to performing and executing in a way that feels good. Incongruent to you. What happened?

- Liuan Huska

Yes, so it didn't go away, it just kept spreading, so within a few months, you know, I was limping and I was using crutches or using a walking boot and that just translated everything that was going on my ankle up through the rest of my skeleton so that my knee started hurting and my hip started hurting and my lower back started hurting and my neck started hurting.

- Liuan Huska

So it became like this sort of whole body thing and.

- Liuan Huska

Really, though, the hardest part, I think, for me was I had this expectation that it would go back to normal pretty soon, and when it didn't, I it was just a lot of psychological turmoil because my expectation didn't match up with the reality. So I just wasn't able to accept what was happening.

- Liesel Mertes

Tell me a little bit more about the particular messages that are going on in your mind at that time, the things that is you maybe even still presently like what are what are the statements or conclusions that are being offered to you as you're trying to make sense of this? Hmm.

- Liuan Huska

Well, um, within the Christian community, there's I think there might be this assumption. That our bodies, God created our bodies as perfect and then. You know, whatever pain or disease or suffering that we're experiencing is the result of Adam and Eve eating the apple or whatever fruit you think it was and the fall and sin coming into the world.

- Liuan Huska

So there was this narrative going on in my mind that my pain is somehow connected to. Sin and not necessarily my own, although I definitely had question that what did I do to to make this happen?

- Liuan Huska

But it was even just more generally, I think it's it goes beyond just that people that believe that you can claim your your healing and you'll have it. I think there's a really subtle variations of that within a lot of different Christian communities. And and does that feel then like. I I need to work harder to get to the bottom of the medical causes or I need to understand better, is there an element of I need to be trying to do something better to get me healthier?

- Liuan Huska

Yeah, I kind of went on this like a seesaw between. Oh, you just need to trust God and wait, and you're not trusting God enough by seeking out kind of frantically seeking out all these different possible medical treatments.

Liuan saw an orthopedic doctor who told her to take some Tylenol. But the pain was still there. She went in for an MRI,

- Liuan Huska

In my book, I write about how it was like I felt like I was like offering myself up, like, you know, to like a priest, like on a table, you know, as like a sacrifice or something, because it just felt like this. Oh, I'm just waiting for, like.

- Liuan Huska

The oracle to speak and then and then once you know the magical interior images, we are right out like seeing through and like, you know, the power of science. So but then it didn't come back with anything conclusive.

- Liuan Huska

Like I said, there was something about a swollen navicular bone, which I still don't really know what that is. But the prescription was just more Tylenol and more walking. Puzzo I really was hoping that I would be able to get some kind of surgery and that would be it.

- Liuan Huska

But that was not the case.

- Liuan Huska

So I just kept going to different doctors and sometimes I would take breaks because it's just really exhausting to tell your story over and over again. Different medical professionals and nobody's talking to each other like, you know, the osteopathic doctor that just like natural medicine is in talking to, like, the guy that checks your hormone levels and the guy that looks at your bone.

- Liuan Huska

So it's it was really challenging to be like a medical advocate for myself. Yeah.

- Liuan Huska

And having to put together the almost mosaic of different pieces of insight and trying to make sense of it.

- Liesel Mertes

Well, and I imagine in the midst of that, I mean, you're just living the dailiness of chronic pain. And I think for for people who haven't gone through that, it can seem kind of amorphous, like, well, it sounds painful, but

- Liesel Mertes

could you tell me what what a bad day looks like for you in your journey with chronic pain as you're walking with it?

Mm hmm.

- Liuan Huska

So I should say this is part of my journey. Is that because you say what a bad day looks like?

- Liuan Huska

I, I have way less pain than I used to. And we can talk we can get into like what happened like several years down the road when I got pregnant with my first child. But whenever I do have a point, a pain flare up. I just can't walk that far, and that is actually one of the really hard things for me, being someone who loves to be active and out in nature and being out in nature is such a powerful way for me to find meaning and just feel alive.

- Liuan Huska

So whenever in the worst of the pain, I know I wasn't able to walk more than a couple of blocks and that sense of like, I'm so stuck in my own body and like I there's, you know, when when something traumatic happens, like there's this fight or flight reaction, you want to somehow get rid of the threat or like by, you know, killing the predator or running away from it.

- Liuan Huska

And there are so many times in my in the worst of my pain that I just wanted to get out of my body.

- Liuan Huska

I just wanted to run. And that was like the thing I couldn't do, was run. I wasn't able to kind of like process that the sense of like trauma and being like having my life being derailed. I wasn't able to integrate that into my body very well at the beginning at least, you know, I was just kind of keeping it in in my head for so long.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

We will return, in just a minute, to my conversation with Liuan. But I want to take a moment to tell you about our sponsor, Handle with Care Consulting. 2020 has been full of disruption: COVID, an election, murder hornets, rising unemployment, a national reckoning with pervasive racism. Empathy is THE leadership skill in the midst of these upsider down times, and it is how you will ensure that you don't just survive as an organization but that you stabilize and thrive. Handle with Care Consulting can help, with interactive keynotes, certificate programs, and coaching cohorts, we give you the skills you need to build a consistent culture of care.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

- Liesel Mertes

You spoke earlier about being Chinese American and this this capacity to push through and get the job done. How did that particular orientation affect your view towards yourself? And I don't know if at this time you were surrounded by many other Chinese Americans, but even in your family, how did that affect maybe how they were able to come alongside you or not in your pain?

- Liuan Huska

Mm hmm. Um, so the main, um, person who in my life at that time who kind of brought our Chinese background into my life was my mom. She lived in a different state. But I I was definitely in contact with her a lot, telling her what was going on. And so my mom is one of those people that is like super like. Kind of paranoid about everything and really anxious, like as a mother, mothers are towards things that are going on with their children.

- Liuan Huska

But also she when I was growing up, she would tell me a lot. If you don't have your health, you don't have anything. And because she grew up in Mao era China, where. It was a pretty materialistic perspective right there. There's no like nothing exists outside of, like, the material stuff in front of us. So if if there's nothing else but our bodies, then if our bodies are not working as we want them to, that means, like, what are we supposed to do like that?

- Liuan Huska

Like signals, like bad things for our future and our moneymaking ability and our ability to provide for retirement and everything. So unfortunately, like that sort of really like. First perspective wasn't always helpful because it infused more anxiety into, like the way I was approaching it as sort of like, this is all I have, my body is all I have.

- Liuan Huska

But on the other hand, my like my Christian communities were saying, like. It doesn't matter what's happening in your body as long as you're spiritually well, so there's like this opposite push towards well.

- Liuan Huska

The spirit is the most important, so you can just sort of like, ignore and transcend your body in order to just do what God is calling you to do. So my book really came out of that wrestling with the one pole and the other of,

- Liuan Huska

OK, we are our bodies and that's all we are, or we're more than our bodies. And we're actually our bodies are not essential to who we are. And I think that the truth lies somewhere in the middle and that's that.

- Liuan Huska

And it's really, you know, it's a mystery to be able to hold both of those things together. But I think there's something really valuable that we can learn from just holding those two tensions together. And that's what I'm trying to do with the book, is hold those two things together.

– Liesel Mertes

And you are you're both telling your own story in the book. You also are an aggregator and collector of some other people's stories of how they have worked with pain, whether from your own story or those that you talked to. You know, you talked about like a specific thing that your mom said. What or some other things that you heard or that doing research for your book. Other people heard that you would say this is just don't don't do this.

- Liesel Mertes

This is not helpful to people who are going through pain in their bodies. Hmm.

- Liuan Huska

Yeah. Well, you know, you were asking me about how my particular cultural background shaped my experiences, and it's something that I write about my book.

- Liuan Huska

But one of the other things that really shaped my experience was being a woman. And interestingly, like most of the people, all but one of the people that I interviewed, whether that's because I connected better with women, I think. But partly I think it has some grounding in the statistics to all.

- Liuan Huska

But one of the people I interviewed was a woman I met were women. So there's only one man that I interviewed and. What I heard a lot from from people who are sharing their stories with me was. A lot of dismissal, just like, oh, fibromyalgia, that's a fake illness, right? Or one woman who was kind of my is my age and was at an editing job at the time, told me that she just started getting her fibromyalgia symptoms as she was doing this job, taking care of three children.

- Liuan Huska

And she she would ask for days off and the the dad and the family would say, OK, can you just come anyways? Like you're you're still like you're sick, but you can still work. Right.

- Liuan Huska

So there was a lot of frustration over the ways that pain is dismissed or seen as in in our head or seen as just women being overreactive to like kind of like too emotional about what's going on.

- Liesel Mertes

Hmm. Well, and I hear how that touches on aspects of intersectionality of like, you're missing me in my lived experience.

- Liesel Mertes

And I'm experiencing a dismissiveness that to be female in the world also like just yields up to my experience again and again in a way that is painful. Yeah.

- Liuan Huska

And the word intersectionality is something that I didn't really come into contact with until a couple of years ago. One of my friends is a therapist who works at that with people who have intersectional identities, which is just more than one marginalized identity. So she works particularly with Asian-American men and women. But when you have more than one aspect of your identity that is marginalized by society or kind of seen as lesser than all of those things affect our health, like just being in in a society that is not structured with our unique interests and needs in mind is a source of constant stress.

- Liuan Huska

And the you know, there's so many stories of like black women having higher rates of, you know, pregnancy related complications. I think, like the statistic is like black women experience like preeclampsia, an early birth at like three to four times the rate of white women. And that is something that I explore in my book, like how those aspects of our identity that aren't accepted as part of like, you know, like fully accepted when we bring ourselves into wider society, how that affects our health.

- Liuan Huska

And it does in so many ways that science is only beginning to document.

- Liesel Mertes

Oh, absolutely. I, I resonate with a. A fascination of the growing body of scientific research that supports the reality of the way stress and marginalization is held on a somatic level. And and it's not that it has to be validated by a researcher in a lab, but to begin to have the language. To discuss that in, you know, the science is a part of opening the gateway for that to be in, you know, just more of the commonplace understanding of the lived reality of so many.

- Liuan Huska

Yes.

- Liuan Huska

And I think it's becoming clear in the pandemic. Right. We always hear the statistics of African-Americans have been dying of COVID at higher rates than other communities and. It just makes you realize, like people are finally asking, like, why are people why are black people sicker than white people? And it can't just be because they make poor choices like something else is going on. So it's I think that statistic made it really clear to me, and I hope it it's like making others ask questions as well.

- Liesel Mertes

Right. Well, and it's fascinating. Even the you know, the data points of how stress affects you in utero, you know, before you've even taken a breath, you know, the stress of your parents lived situation, how they are experiencing, you know, marginalization and trauma and how that affects development of just in a way to be taken seriously of. Like there are formational forces that are being imprinted on the body as a result of stress and marginalization.

- Liesel Mertes

They have incredibly deep roots. And what does it mean to reckon with that, you know, as society and as individuals?

- Liuan Huska

Yes. And I was just speaking with someone who works in the health insurance industry yesterday. It was really fascinating because we were talking about the way that health care costs have been rising and people are just have such a hard time getting their minds around why things cost so much. Right. Like, why does an MRI cost like ten thousand dollars and why are we paying so much for premiums when we're only getting out like we're only just going to see a doctor for a physical every year,

- Liuan Huska

like we're not getting out what we're putting in is the feeling that a lot of people have. And he was talking about like we as a society, as Americans, we're just so sick and depressed and in bad shape collectively. And I think that just has to do with this drive. That part of it, I think has to do with this drive that has been so ingrained in the American psyche of we we just like produce and we push and we we make it right.

- Liuan Huska

And we're just like the economy needs to keep going and we need to just make things happen, like we can't shut down. So that has affected everyone. And people that are feeling it the most are the people that are the most vulnerable to all the economic shocks.

- Liesel Mertes

Well, it's the it's the two-faced aspect of capitalism, right?

- Liesel Mertes

You can be whatever you want to be. But also like people are they matter based on their capacity to produce in that brutal expression of that. And especially as that relates to some of the idea of talking about like why did empathy in the workplace matter? There is there is a truth that that runs counter to some of the most foundational grain of capitalism, which is like just keep producing, which is probably a good segue I'm talking about. So you you are living with pain.

- Liesel Mertes

You're going to lots of doctors. How is that translating into your work situation? Are you needing to take time off and how is that pain being met by your workplace?

- Liuan Huska

Yeah, so I quit that job that I was mentioning to you that was really stressful, that conference planning job. I felt like I just had to keep going for the sake of the mission. After I finish working on that, it was an annual conference that happened in the summer.

- Liuan Huska

And at that point, as when I started having pain, it still didn't play a huge role into my calculations about what what's feasible for me to do for a job. But I was also planning to apply to graduate school at the time. So I ended up taking a couple of part time jobs while I was applying to graduate school. And thankfully, the one job I had was with a Christian, what's called the Christian century. It's a it's another publication of a magazine.

- Liuan Huska

But they they were actually such a healing place to be after the. The not the Christian non-profit conference planning job that I had, because they gave me the space to say. It was a flexible job and it was based not on the hours that I worked, but on like the I was doing business administrative stuff just like fulfilling the task. But then I was able to go home after I had finished doing what I was supposed to do that was like so surprising to me that they didn't say stay and keep doing more things because like, you know, like we are here and you're a willing worker and, you know, for the sake of the mission.

- Liuan Huska

But I do want to say, going back to just like the the workplace thing and how the the work my workplace has received me as I was figuring out what it meant to live with pain on a on an ongoing basis is that I had the ability to work two part time, really flexible jobs that really probably wouldn't have supported me, like if I if it was just me.

- Liuan Huska

But I was married at the time already and married to someone who wasn't going through health struggles and had a full time job with health insurance, which was a really important and that enabled me to sort of explore different options and put together different combinations of work and school that I know not everybody has a lot of people. They're dealing with these health issues that are coming up, but they don't have like good support networks. And they have to they just have to keep going to work to take care of their families and put food on the table.

- Liuan Huska

So I just want to be like, you know, kind of bring that up that I I was definitely in a place of privilege to be able to have options for how to handle what was going on.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, that's an important point.

- Liesel Mertes

As you think about for yourself, things that people did that made you feel or make you feel especially well supported, even if outside of the workplace in your journey with chronic pain.

- Liesel Mertes

What what makes you feel seen and supported one of people done well that's been important for you. Mhm.

- Liuan Huska

So I think that listening is really the best gift that I've been offered, listening in a really nonjudgmental.

- Liuan Huska

Just holding the space sort of a way, you know, um. As a Christian, going through these this health struggle, I just had so many questions about like questions questioning God's goodness to me, questioning whether I was, you know, my life was going according to God's plan and having places where or at least people that I could raise those questions with without feeling like I was being like going off the rails of my faith or becoming heretical gave me the ability to really reckon with the hard things without having to just stuff it, stuff, everything I was feeling into like a tidy Christian narrative.

- Liuan Huska

And and out of that, I was able to like the listening that people have provided me, allowed me to just come to like truth and insights about like who I am as a human being.

- Liuan Huska

And what does it mean to be a human being with limits and vulnerabilities? And how are those things maybe not only just not not necessarily liabilities, but strengths

- Liuan Huska

like all those conclusions that I was able to come to happen because people gave me the space to process and and weren't like trying to push any kind of agenda on what I was processing, but simply being present to the pain and.

- Liesel Mertes

I think that it's an important turn of phrase and one I'd like to hear a little bit more about for those people that were, from your perception, pushing an agenda. How did some of those? Because because we translate a lot right in our you I look in the sort of questions we ask in the sort of statements we make. How did those agendas sound to you?

- Liuan Huska

Hmm. And I remember going up to ask for prayer at a church that we were visiting on Sunday and was one of my really desperate moments of like, I really need to be fixed. So I went up for prayer and told the prime minister my story. She was listening very kindly and attentively. And then she asked me, are you harboring any unforgiveness in your heart? And it was just this really odd moment of like, wait, I thought you were like here for me.

- Liuan Huska

But now I feel like something you're asking me to.

- Liuan Huska

Like, it's not and I don't want to say that there's like there's no link between emotional trauma and unresolved wounds from the past to our physical pain, but the way that sometimes people sort of interpret it, they're kind of their view of what was going on and and push that into the ways they were trying to help me. That was really it just felt like I wasn't being seen.

- Liuan Huska

You know, I was I was kind of being put into there what the way they wanted to see the world and the way they wanted to understand how God and healing and bodies work, being maybe processed within a paradigm.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah. Hmm. I would call that persona in some of the work that I do. Aspects of a a Fix It frank, hi. Oh, this is a problem. And even even if she posed it as a question like let's fix this.

- Liuan Huska

Right. Yes. And we all have those tendencies like I, I do too. And I like I was I remember like speaking with a friend who was going through really hard times. And the first thing that came to my mind was actually seeing a counselor have actually seen a physical therapist or she should try this. And then I had to just stop and sit and realize that's not what she's asking of me is a major problem. She's asking for me to listen to her.

- Liuan Huska

That's all I have to do. And that's. Way more helpful to her than what I have to tell her about how she could fix her problems, right?

- Liesel Mertes

Well, and sometimes I I tell people who who struggle with that tension, like they feel like they have a lot to give, even to ask the question, like what what would you like of me in this conversation? Are you looking for suggestions or would it be more helpful for me just to listen like I have to do just on a micro level? I do that sometimes with my husband because I can have this very default tendency of like, oh, well, let's talk about solutions and more often than my personality would like.

- Liesel Mertes

He says, I just want you to listen. And I think, OK, I can do that. I can table all of these marvelous suggestions that I feel like I have.

- Liuan Huska

Yeah. But I think that's a good point that you bring up, that there are times when people are looking for, like, really practical, like what should I do? Sort of help. And it's it's important to just be sensitive and read read the people for like in their body language and and, you know, know from the history of your relationship together what's needed.

- Liuan Huska

But it's really great to just be direct and say, what do you need? That's like. Right. People like have such a hard time doing that.

- Liuan Huska

They just they just want to, like, jump right in it, especially especially if you're a person who's verbal anyway, bring it back, know genuine listening.

- Liesel Mertes

Were there other things that were really helpful to you along the way that people said or did?

- Liuan Huska

I mean, just physical presence too, was another one that. So I tell the story in my book of one night when I was having a panic attack and it related to the pain like it was, you know, pain, kind of like fed into depression and anxiety, which fed into insomnia, which made the pain worse. It's just this vicious cycle that kind of goes on.

- Liuan Huska

And I was I was in the middle of that cycle and I woke my husband up to try to, like, shake me out of it and just talk to somebody.

- Liuan Huska

But he had been woken up so many times in the past months. And this was like just a moment where he.

- Liuan Huska

Felt like he needed to sleep and wake up the next morning and go to work, so he just turned over and said, can we just talk about it tomorrow morning? And I just snapped at that point like it was something just like. Kind of just like, you know, a thread was snapped, snipped and a I went out into the living room and just had this like. I don't know, like frothing at the mouth episode, basically, it's I'm laughing about it now, but it was is pretty bad.

- Liuan Huska

It was just that, like, I want to run and, you know, leave my body, but I can't feeling. Just yelling and I took this jacket that was right next to me and I was just like pounding it, like slapping it on the wooden floor and I just couldn't stop, like, I needed some way to, like, physically do something about how I was feeling. But my husband ended up obviously he was woken up by the whole thing and he came out and he just.

- Liuan Huska

SAT behind me and put his arms around me and just stayed there with me and that physical presence of knowing that someone is with me in my pain and I'm not alone,

- Liuan Huska

I think I needed that, like tactile, like signal of that to like what it's to in order to kind of release the feelings of panic. And so I know that's not always like a appropriate thing in the workplace, but even being present, like without touching and asking, like, can I put my hand on you like.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, embodied acts of care are so important.

- Liuan Huska

Mhm, yeah, but but then I wanted to say like beyond the on the level of what, what can people like, what are helpful ways that people can come around people, those experiencing life disruptions. Um

- Liuan Huska

another one for me uh that I talk a lot about in my book is. Just like like we were talking about, like we don't want to come at it as you are a problem to be fixed and.

- Liuan Huska

What I realize in in a lot of Christian churches is that the people that, um, kind of have like these things that they're going through that are ongoing and just seem like unresolvable, they're seen as people to be ministered to. And so they're put sort of on the margins. Right, of of the churches like they're in the handicapped, sit in the aisles or they're, um, they're going up for prayer on the sides at the end.

- Liuan Huska

But, um. We don't understand sometimes that those places of of deep suffering are also the places where, like life and creativity and new things happen if we are able to just be present to them enough to let those things happen.

- Liuan Huska

One of my favorite quotes is from Brother Roger of Taizé, who founded the Taizé Communities in France. And it's in the pains, or where or when the wounds where anxiety is seething, creative forces are also being born.

- Liuan Huska

And so I. I felt like when people were able to say to me, you're not just like something to be fixed, but we can actually learn from what you're going through and what you have to offer as someone who is suffering is valuable and actually may be central to our human experience, is not marginal in something that we just put on the aisles.

- Liuan Huska

Like like we want to hear your story and your voice. And that matters like when I was as I started getting opportunities to speak out of that experience and have it be welcomed as as not just something that scary and that needs to be fixed and threatening, but like valuable.

- Liuan Huska

That was really healing for me to be able to integrate my experiences into who I was and who I am today.

- Liesel Mertes

Hmm. That's a really I feel like important reflection that I'm going to mull over to think about how how we encounter people, that we would say, oh, they they need something, you know, not not just in a utilitarian sense of fixing them, but also without defaulting to some of like that the trite language of just like gods, God's going to use this. And it's all going to be in striking the right balance of saying whether it's in a Christian or secular environment of like you actually have something to give out of this without pushing people to do it before they're ready, you know, but.

- Liesel Mertes

I don't know, almost just to make the space for belief that that they're like and and to have a posture that is ready to receive that when the person is ready to give it. Yes.

- Liuan Huska

And it's also one of the things I note in my book is that the gifts that we receive from people who are whether they're disabled or they've experienced some kind of terrible loss or in pain, they're not always things that people give to us.

- Liuan Huska

Like people in the disability community will talk about how the communities that have that are able to welcome people with disabilities are more peaceful because they've learned to deal with difference better. So they're able to just integrate those differences in ways that don't cause, you know, strife.

- Liuan Huska

But they're also the teachers teach better whenever they have people with disabilities in their community, in their classroom, because they're learning to adjust their the ways they're teaching to their their student with disabilities. But that improves the way they teach to everybody.

- Liuan Huska

People are more grounded when they have people that are different with in their midst, like, you know, like allowing people to go at their own pace, whether that's like a child that's just learning to tie their shoe or or someone that's having trouble walking and just like slowing down to walk with them to the store or to their car like that.

- Liuan Huska

Those are all gifts that we receive from people that are are suffering, whether or maybe not suffering in the case of disability, but. Whatever it is like not conforming to the workplace norm or the societal norm, when we're able to just. You know, be in their presence, that itself is a gift without them having to, like, offer anything to us.

- Liesel Mertes

Mmm. That's so good. And it makes me think of an article that I sent out to family members just this morning.

- Liesel Mertes

It was a New York Times article, and it was it was talking about just like community, OK? It was called American. Stop being ashamed of weakness. And it was fascinating. It was fascinating on a number of levels. But there was one place in which they were it was quoting a noteworthy anthropologist. I'm not going to say their name because I'm not going to pull it correctly at this point. But this anthropologist was being asked, what would you say are the first signs of human civilization as differentiated from just other high functioning mammalian civilizations?

- Liesel Mertes

And was it going to be tools or signs of being Hunter-Gatherer like cultivating the soil? And this anthropologist response was the remains of someone who had been found and they had had a femur that had broken and healed and had for the time. What she said was this is evidence that, you know, like a femur fracture like this would take six weeks to be able to heal at this level. And during this time, that person obviously would have had to have been, you know, had food brought to them and shelter and the care of a community that comes alongside them in that sort of a, you know, prolonged time horizon as really being a marker of, you know, like a particular type of care and civilization that is given.

- Liesel Mertes

And and for some reason, I'm I'm reminded of that. Our capacity, actually to care to learn from is making us better. As you said, you know, the data points that show that, but also a marker of something deep and human within us.

- Liuan Huska

Yes. Yeah, I've I thought a lot about that because. Right. Are the ways that our bodies fall apart or just our vulnerability in general. It seems like such a flaw. Right, in the design.

- Liuan Huska

Yes, exactly. People have talked about that. But I've talked with like evolutionary biologists and and people in the field who have who have said what one person told me. She called it a selective advantage for community in that she was giving the example of, like, humans have a really short inner birth spacing. So they tend to have children like one after the other, whereas other primate species, they have like five to eight years between when they have children.

- Liuan Huska

And and that could be considered a design for like why if humans are having this many children, they're not going to be able to give as many resources to children. So there's going to be more deaths. But the ways that human communities have made up, so to speak, for that side flaw is that they share child care and they they co parent and resources are shared among people. So that that's just show to her that, like, the way that we've evolved, if you want to think about it in evolutionary terms, is towards community and towards being able to like.

- Liesel Mertes

Integrate our weakest members instead of just leaving them behind so they can just die of their broken femur, right. And this this has been a wide ranging from personal to metal level statistics conversation. I know that you draw a lot of these wisdom and insights and even more into your book, which is due for release in this December of 2020. Congratulations.

- Liesel Mertes

And can you tell us a little bit more about your book? We're going to link it in the show notes, but where people can find out more about you and preorder or order your book as well.

- Liuan Huska

Thanks for asking. Yes, my book is called Hurting Yet Whole Reconciling Body and Spirit and Chronic Pain and Illness. And it's published through Intervarsity Press. And it's it's springing up. All of these things that we've just talked about, how my story led me to ask these questions about questioning some of our common assumptions about healing and then coming to the conclusion that are the way to heal is not to overcome our limits and our vulnerabilities, but to learn to embrace them as what it means to be human and what in a way that connects us to other people as as a way to become whole, not just individually whole, but whole in a group with other human beings.

- Liuan Huska

So you could you can get it wherever books are sold on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, your local bookseller, the Intervarsity Press website. And then you can also go to my website, which is my name, liuanhuska.com and you'll find an excerpt for the book. And also you can preorder at that on the site as well.

- Liuan Huska

I also have in case readers are interested in a series of meditations that are a companion to the book, that there's for ten minute meditations that kind of takes you through some scriptures and silence and invites us to come home to our bodies and embrace what our bodies are.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

This conversation with Liuan sparked so many points of interest for me, and I hope that you do check out her book, there is more info about ordering in the show notes. And here are three key-takeaways to consider:

• Do you consider someone who is living with pain, whether that is physical or psychological emotional pain, as a problem to be fixed?How does this Fix-It Frank mentality limit your interactions with them? What does it look like to consider them as individuals that actually have something deeply meaningful to contribute to the collective life of a community?
• Physical presence, just being able to sit and be with someone in their hurt, is incredibly powerful.And this can be hard, because we live in a society prizes happiness and success AND we often feel the need to fix grief. Liuan spoke of the power of her husband just being with her, bearing witness to her emotions instead of moving away. How can you show up like this for people that are hurting in your own life? In your work setting?
• Are you promoting a white-knuckle culture within your workplace or family? Liuan wrestled with this type-A drive. And if I am honest, this is a take-away point that is totally for me. I can really prize pushing through and doing hard things. How can this lead you (and others) to ignore the needs of the body as you constantly prioritize productivity over rest?

OUTRO

Find out more about Liuan Huska and her book here: http://liuanhuska.com/

- Cedrick Smith

We're going to tackle topics that are hidden in the crevices, that are a lot of times filled with shame and no one wants to talk about. But in order for us to get to where we need to get to and to heal from those pains and traumas, we are going to cover those topics and this being our first film, we couldn't be more pleased

INTRO

This is the conclusion of a two-part conversation on Working While Black, where I talk with Tosca Davis and Cedrick Smith, two Black workers and film-makers. Their powerful, award-winning documentary, To Be Us: To Work, is making the film festival circuit and garnering praise. It looks at the disruption of living and working in a world where whiteness is supreme. If you haven't listened to the first episode, I encourage you to do so now. You will hear more about Tosca and Cedrick and their formative life experiences of marginalization and oppression in the workplace.

Their film features candid, compelling stories from Black workers across a range of industries telling their working while Black stories. Both Cedrick and Tosca hope that it resonates powerfully.

- Cedrick Smith

I would have to say, To Be Us, To work the movie, the film that we did was made to help liberate and to heal. Tosca and I always talk about the healing element of To Be Us: To Work and that we knew we made this movie specifically for Black people.

- Cedrick Smith

We know that everybody is going to see the film and take away from it what they want to take away from it of all different ethnicities and races. But we also know that this film specifically was made for us, was made for black folks to be liberated and say, I can identify with what is going on here. I didn't know what microaggression meant. I didn't know that this is what it's called.

- Cedrick Smith

And and we believe, like Tosca says, in naming things. And once you're able to name things and pull the scab back, that is when the true healing begins.

- Cedrick Smith

And so the authenticity of the storytellers in the film, which at some point we hope everybody gets to see the film because we're currently in film festival mode right now and it's not in distribution and we're looking for a distribution deal.

- Cedrick Smith

You know, that that was the the crux and the intent of making this film. And as we move forward, To Be Us Productions, that is the. The force behind what we do is that we're going to tackle topics that are hidden in the crevices, that are a lot of times filled with shame and no one wants to talk about. But in order for us to get to where we need to get to.

- Cedrick Smith

And to heal from those pains and traumas, we are going to cover those topics and this being our first film, we couldn't be more pleased about the outcome. We couldn't be more pleased about the storytellers and the courage that they had in telling the stories.

But there was a particular challenge to carrying all of these stories.

- Cedrick Smith

Early on, I would have to go out and talk to people and get their stories, write them down. And then, as you can imagine, the next weekend I went out and talked to people. I would kind of regurgitate some of the other stories so they could understand what I was talking about. And then the next weekend, I was telling some of those stories. Right. So invariably what was happening to me was, you know, even when we were having our business meetings with To Be Us Productions, you know, putting our production schedules together to map out how we're going to make this happen and so forth, I was becoming very irritable.

- Cedrick Smith

I was, no, not becoming, I was irritable. I was I was depressed at sometimes. I was very on edge. And I literally had to tell Tosca one day. I think I probably called her late one night. It was like, "Hey, Tosca, you know what it is?

- Cedrick Smith

I have internalized these stories." I had nowhere to diffuse them, so as you can imagine, I had these 40 stories that I had inside of me that were angering that you just sat there and you said, how could somebody be that cool to somebody?

- Cedrick Smith

And one one story, this the guy in particular was there's a young lady who told me the story of she had changed her hair. She had made it instead of, it was straight, it was curly. But maybe she wore natural that day.

- Cedrick Smith

And she's on an elevator getting ready, going to work.

- Cedrick Smith

And there's a white co-worker that's with her get ready to go into the office with her. And the white co-worker goes up to her and grabs her hair and starts touching the hair. Literally, this is what happened to her.

- Cedrick Smith

And she's said, hey, look, don't touch my hair. What are you doing? You know, like, no, don't touch it. Oh, it's not a big deal. I just wanted to kind of see how I felt it. I like your hair and you just tell me you like it, but don't touch it. You have to touch my hair. So she works throughout the day. She gets a call from the manager, said, I need to see you in my office.

- Cedrick Smith

The Black woman gets a call from the manager saying, I need to see in the office. She goes into the office. The manager says to her, "Hey, look, I heard you got into a little altercation with X white person that was touching her hair, like, she didn't really like the tone that you used, you know, maybe." And so do you hear that?

- Cedrick Smith

So she had hurt. That's dang near an salt. You touching my hair without my permission. She tells them not to touch my hair. And she's the one that got reprimanded for by the manager because of her tone of telling her not to touch my hair.

- Cedrick Smith

OK, I mean, I was blown away by that

- Cedrick Smith

another story was a young lady who had a degree from an Ivy League type school undergrad, who had an MBA from a Power five conference school.

- Cedrick Smith

And she was a director at a at a job where she was co-director with another white man.

- Cedrick Smith

So it was a public institution where you can see the salaries of the salaries come out and she sees on the email she's making thirty thousand dollars less than the white male in the same position.

- Cedrick Smith

All right, she's been working it for years, that's a difference of three thousand dollars in ten years, that's a significant amount of dollars, whether it's private school or maybe we get a second home or, you know, saving for college or whatever have the money to use. That's three hundred thousand dollars.

- Cedrick Smith

The interesting thing about it was she thought she could go straight to her boss and say, hey, look, we need to rectify this.

- Cedrick Smith

This is ridiculous. I'm in the same position. I should get this at least equivalent money or even more. We need to correct this. And the boss says, "No, we're not gonna do that. And the boss will have to be a woman, a white woman. She says, OK, I got to go up above you. She goes in thinking, OK, I'm going to HR, is going to get taken care of. It doesn't get taken care of.

- Cedrick Smith

She had to threaten to go to EEOC. ABC did ask you to threaten to get a lawyer, then they they finally brought her salary up to here is the new salaries come out on the email. He's making four thousand dollars more than she is and she has to start the whole cycle again.

- Cedrick Smith

The caveat to this is, is that the white man didn't even have an undergraduate degree from college.

- Cedrick Smith

He had graduated high school. So she had an MBA from a Power 5 conference, undergrad degree from from an Ivy League type university, and she's making still less money than he was making.

- Liesel Mertes

Not to overuse the word exhaustion, but just the, having to keep asking is, is this habit like is this habit, that person I think they're treating me that. I think that that would be denied to someone else and like, am I not getting invited here? Or is that specific in

- Liesel Mertes

That sense of like the mental reprocessing that has to go on as a subtext all the time? I mean, I just imagine it's that much less attention to give to all the other things in life that we want to demand attention if you're having to constantly run that tape.

- Liesel Mertes

And yeah, I just that was something that I perceived as well. I'm like, that's that's just must take so much energy that could be, you know, doing all the other things in life to have to be processing at that level.

- Tosca Davis

Right. And I want that.

- Tosca Davis

I don't think you can overuse the word exhaustion, but if you hit that, you hit it because because we do have less time than white people. We have less money than white people. We have less power than white people. We have less everything than white people. We, we have, you know, the health disparities, the wealth disparity is all because of white supremacy. You know, there could be a there could be in a house that the exact same house, a street away.

- Tosca Davis

What is the black neighborhood? What is it, a white neighborhood and what is worth, quote unquote, two hundred fifty thousand dollars. The other one worth five thousand dollars. That's a disparity in wealth. Just awful white supremacy alone.

- Tosca Davis

Just because white is normal, just because there is there's the assumption that white people are supreme or that they are smarter or they're cleaner or they're the best. That is a difference in two of fifty thousand dollars in wealth.

- Tosca Davis

Everything about living under white supremacy is exhausting and takes away from our we don't ever have pure experiences, we just don't I can't even imagine literally and I have a I have an awesome imagination. I can't imagine what it feels like not to have to wonder if you didn't get something or if you did achieve something or something happen to you because of the color of your skin.

- Tosca Davis

Like what does that even feel like? I've never just in my forty six years, I've never just had pure joy, even even doing something that I love to do, which is, you know, we talked about the top of the hour is watch TV and and watch movies when most of the movies are still white centered and a lot of them have micro aggressions and, you know, jokes that are that are racist even a2020, even as we progress, even though many of the shows I watch are definitely different than the shows I watch in the 70s and 80s and 90s.

- Tosca Davis

But even watching TV, white people are centered.

- Tosca Davis

No matter where I go, white people are centered. Even if I want to move to another country or a city, I have to do research on that neighborhood to see how anti-Black they are, that if they are antiblack, how antiblack they are, and how does it feel to see a house that you want to move to in butt-fuck Wisconsin and as a white person, not have to do research to see if they don't like white people.

- Tosca Davis

That's just not going to happen. But I have to do that any time I move the whether what neighborhood I moved to where if I want to work somewhere, I do research on. What's the scale, do they hate black people this much or this much so that

- Tosca Davis

It definitely takes a toll on you? Because it is it is part of everyday life for me, even if I'm sitting at my home looking at TV.

- Liesel Mertes

And. That's that's powerful and well-spoken, and I I can imagine that there's a perspective that you have encountered and you've spoken some to it, that sounds like this.

- Liesel Mertes

Is this all just in your head? I mean, haven't we passed the laws? Haven't we had a Black president? Why are you still making a big deal out of it? After all, America is a place where you can be anything you want to be if you just try hard enough.

- Liesel Mertes

Cedric, how does that sort of a statement sit with you?

- Cedrick Smith

You like for it to be that way of life or for us to have Utopia? But that's not the case. That's that's just typically that is just absolutely not the case. The disparities that are there show it. I mean, I'm about data. You know, we have health disparities. I do a lot of research around health disparities, do a lot of reading around health disparities. And these are actual impactful numbers. We're dealing with COVID-19. We're seeing black and brown communities that are being devastated by this disease.

- Cedrick Smith

And there are reasons for that. And a lot of those reasons are based off a systemic oppression, the systemic racism, period. That is the number one factor. You know, when you look at Barack Obama gets elected president, doesn't mean white supremacy goes away.

- Cedrick Smith

In fact, you know, even in our film, we have instances where, you know, even the groups that that are oppressed, if you will, even the groups that are affected by the systemic racism sometimes take on the characteristics of the group that oppresses them.

- Cedrick Smith

So you even have Black people in positions or Brown people in positions that propagate or are the gatekeepers for white supremacy.

- Cedrick Smith

You know, even in our film, I think we have one young lady that was like, you know, I went to this one person.

- Cedrick Smith

I looked for it for empathy from this person who was like me thinking that, like, I can find and embrace something with them and they will understand what's going on. And even at that person is not able to give them the empathy that they wanted at that moment. And I have other reasons why that person may not have been as empathic as that person wanted. It may have been the ten thousand the ten thousand story that that person had to deal with when they're working there for 40 years as a mentor and they're just tired that day, it's all about blame them.

- Cedrick Smith

And so when I hear this, you know, "You can be all you want to be," there's so many instances where, like Tosca says, you know, the margins are very tight. The risk is greater. My one hundred thousand dollars is not the same as on a thousand dollars as a white board. It just isn't. You know, I got to pay for Big Mama's medication.

- Cedrick Smith

Sometimes I help a brother pay his rent, you know, or I help a cousin out who's not as well off as I am.

- Cedrick Smith

So it's not like I'm taking my whole one hundred thousand dollars home with me. It just doesn't work that way. And in a lot of Black families it it not that way.

- Cedrick Smith

When you're looking at disparities of wealth where the average net worth, depending on what labor statistic you're looking at, is anywhere from nine thousand dollars to, I think, the latest labor statistic may be seventeen thousand dollars for the average net worth of a black family versus one hundred twenty two to one hundred eighty thousand dollars for white family. We're talking upwards of ten times, sometimes twelve times more in net worth.

- Cedrick Smith

That is a huge, impactful disparity.

- Cedrick Smith

You know, to I remember when I sold my house, I live in a very nice neighborhood here in Houston. And I remember when I sold it, I remember one of my neighbors that I've been neighbors with for eight years. Pretty cool guy, you know, seemed like pretty cool. I remember when he saw that I sold my HOUSE for a pretty, pretty good lake and he said he looks at me and he goes, "So Cedric who bought the house? Were they Black or white?"

- Cedrick Smith

I he literally asked this question to me, not thinking. I'm cool with this dude. I'm like, where does that come from? Like, that's the question you're asking me on a block away from my house, too.

- Cedrick Smith

And so when we throw out these, you know, everybody's equal and all is great and all is good and you can achieve the American dream list.

- Cedrick Smith

This is not the same. The pathway is not the same. You know, oppression hurts. Systemic oppression has impact. The data is clear. And from health to economic disparities. Go ahead, Tosca.

- Tosca Davis

I'm sorry, obviously to say and not to mention the five hundred year head start, like I, I,

- Tosca Davis

I am offended when someone says bootstraps or, you know, you can make it if I can make it. Are you, whiteness alone is a privilege. So you know, the poorest white person has privilege, which is we have evidence based on how they vote. So many people talk about, well, white, poor people, they are always voted against their interests.

- Tosca Davis

No, they're not. They're voting for whiteness. It is a privilege to be white. That's why every century or so white people let and other rules, you know, the Irish, they weren't always white. The Greeks weren't always white. The Poilish weren't always white. But every so often they let people into the club and they become white. So that is a privilege to be white.

- Tosca Davis

And if you've had a three hundred, four hundred, five hundred year head start I really don't want to hear about, we're even an even playing field,

- Tosca Davis

because even, even if we had the same amount of wealth, even if we had the say the best health, you're still white, you're still going to have the privilege over me.

- Tosca Davis

You're still going to get into clubs I'm not going to be able to get into. You're still you're still not going to use a lot of your mental energy trying to figure out, is it because a black is because I'm black? Is it because I'm black?

- Tosca Davis

I would if I didn't get this because I'm black. Maybe I should change my name on my resume. Should I take Tyrone off and put Dan? I mean, what should I do? These are things that we have to do all of the time.

- Tosca Davis

So I'm very offended when anybody feels as though, you know, we are only saying I want equal ground when there are Jim Crow laws there. Redlining, there's voter suppression. I mean, it is it is is offensive.

- Tosca Davis

I mean, I'm angry thinking about it right now.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

- Liesel Mertes

So for yourself, within the stories that you've collected that are particularly unhelpful as you for for people from a white majority culture as they interact with black people in the workplace, they would say, hey, don't do this. It's really stupid and offensive. Feel free to start wherever you want.

- Tosca Davis

I'm just here thinking about that question, because there's it's not that there's it's not that I don't have an answer is that I have too many answers on.

- Tosca Davis

I think. This is you know what, this is one I don't think a lot of people think about, I, I would like for white people to understand that many times, not most. Not all the time, but many times black people don't trust you enough to be your friends outside of work.

- Tosca Davis

They have information about their private lives and their personal lives have been used against them before. And also, it's very hard to trust the oppressor, just just generally speaking, is very hard to trust the majority culture.

- Tosca Davis

So many times black people are penalized for not going to happy hour or sitting at lunch. Understand that we have a limited amount of time or we could just be ourselves and not perform.

- Tosca Davis

And so, you know, I don't think it matters if you take it personally, but it's not a personal thing. It is a security thing is a safety thing. We don't feel safe being vulnerable with you. And I don't even think we have to go into the reasons why.

- Tosca Davis

I just know that it is unhelpful to assume that someone wants to be your friend and to be friendly. You may have a carefree life where you don't have to think about the oppressive systems, but black people don't have that. And we definitely don't have time to sit with you at lunch if we don't like you or go to happy hour or play golf with you on the weekends. Our weekends and our evenings are our time not to be in an oppressive system.

- Tosca Davis

That that is the main thing I want to tell white people.

- Cedrick Smith

Yeah, and I would add to that that, you know, you were saying some like don't do is more like me. Tell them what you need to do. You know, there's a there's a large amount of healing.

- Cedrick Smith

I think white people need to do, you know, when it comes to racism, when it comes to the history of this country, if you're you know, we talk a lot about doing these diversity and inclusion classes that are supposed to kind of help, you know, equalize everything and help us understand each other better and deal with unconscious bias.

- Cedrick Smith

But and a lot of instances, Black folks got to deal with conscious bias, you know, and so let's deal with that first.

- Cedrick Smith

I mean, we know that unconscious bias exists. You know, we know that there is sexism and we know there are some other isms that we have to deal with. Yes.

- Cedrick Smith

But to think that in these diversity and inclusion classes that we come into it, you know, equally afoot in the same way is naive and one in which if at some point in your lifetime you're not trying to get a better understanding of the impacts of chattel slavery had on this country and had on Black people, what red redlining had, what what black codes were about, vagrancy laws that were put in place after emancipation of slaves, understanding Jim Crow and what happened. If you're not put in the work to try to understand that and understanding white fragility, then, you know, hey, you can take it someplace else.

- Liesel Mertes

There's resources like on the Internet, in video and book and article form. Like I, I think it is worth noting as people are receiving that challenge, it's like, you don't have to feel like there's not a place to start. There, there are actually some very good scholars, activists, artists that have put together some great stuff. And it's not like buried deep in Google. You can just start looking.

- Cedrick Smith

There is a there is a very good book that that talks about kind of like redlining, talks about the history of Section eight housing and how it was created. And it wasn't just a black thing. You know, now we look at Section eight, like as a Black problem, like this is not what it was for.

- Cedrick Smith

It's called The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. Very good book. I highly recommend it. There are some other books out there, White Fragility and so forth. But that's about the kind of shows you systemically how policies, specific policies were made against Black people. Specifically and the impact that it has very matter of fact book, but very well researched and I highly recommend.

- Liesel Mertes

It makes me think of a statement that I have seen in the mix, which, you know, has an aspect of like America is functioning the way it was designed to function. I mean, it's it's not just by happenstance, like there were actual, very purposeful, interest groups and, you know, mortgage associations and bank cabals and like, it's functioning the way it was meant to. Like that, that was not just how it happened.

- Liesel Mertes

What are things from white people that you know, that have made you feel most seen and heard

- Liesel Mertes

that you would say, OK, these are these are things not true. And Cedrick, you touched on this some, but on the positive side to say, you know, these these are things that were important to me that I received from white people in my life.

- Tosca Davis

I have very few white people in my life, and the white people who are in my life now are very anti-racist, very progressive. They understand that they must give up power. It is not so, you know, we tell people to read and do things like that, but you have to be active.

- Tosca Davis

And so actively giving up power looks like giving up leadership roles, giving, giving the mic to someone else, not centering yourself at all, not being involved at all. And

- Tosca Davis

the number one thing I would that makes me comfortable that I've seen white people do is to give money directly to black women. OK, so one of the things that that bothers me is the performance of white people when they are performing woke or performing anti-racism. If you're not giving money directly to Black people, then you are not woke. You need to give money to Black trans women and Black women. That makes me comfortable because when Black women and Black trans women get everything they need, the world is all in. And when I say Black, I mean we're talking about the United States, then we're talking about African-Americans. But if you're talking about on any continent in the world, on the world, the darker skinned people, if you're taking care of, if those people, are well cared for.

- Tosca Davis

They have everything they need, then the whole world has everything they need. And so that is what white people need to do. They need to give up resources, give up power, give up the mike, give up leadership. That is the only way that we are going to make a more equitable world.

- Cedrick Smith

And and to add to that, kind of make an analogy, I am, yes, a Black person, but I'm also a Black male.

- Cedrick Smith

And with that, I know there privileges in this patriarchal, hetero normative, patriarchal, ladened society where everybody views everything from their certain privileges I have as a man.

- Cedrick Smith

So if I am going to request that those who are of the oppressive group, which men are oppressors to women, which I am a part of that group, then I would have to say that some of the practices that I have had to put in place that I've been called on, that I have been shown that, no, no, this is wrong.

- Cedrick Smith

What you did. This is wrong. What you said to to, to Tosca's to tune of saying giving up the might mic and being centered.

- Cedrick Smith

I've been centered so much as a six four black male in certain settings to where people thought that, oh, let me just go ask the doctor over here, this tall and handsome, the answer to this question. And I have no idea what the answer was, but this black woman to the left of me knows all the answers. And you should be asking her, so what does someone do in that position? I say the mic needs to go here and you need to center her.

- Cedrick Smith

This black woman who knows the answers to these questions and who has more knowledge about this. You just assumed it because I was male

I want to share just one way that I have seen Cedrick share the mic. When I posted the first installment of this podcast, I wrote about "Cedrick Smith and Tosca Davis", listing Cedrick first on my LinkedIn notification. He sent me a kind email that strongly (and kindly) requested that I reorder the names. He wrote, "we are intentional about tosca (woman) always being placed before me (privileged man)". Big themes are communicated through a series of small but meaningful gestures, like this one.

- Cedrick Smith

Having an awareness of that privilege. As a white person is one of the first steps, and I'm trying to make it analogous in that way from being a man and being more aware of, like, let me not center myself. Let me move to the side. Let me empower somebody. Let me go in my pocketbook and give some money to some Black women who I know are out here doing some things that are going to change this world for the better.

- Cedrick Smith

That's what I do. And so that's what the charges would be for white folks. To do that, you need to give up that power, like Tosca says, and decenter to yourself, you know, and we'll be more effective in that in that matter.

- Cedrick Smith

It's going to feel odd, because you are brought up in a system and this is what Tosca talks about all the time, is that we are unlearning.

- Cedrick Smith

And believe me, once you unlearn a lot of things and have a vigilance to do so, because we're not perfect, we still make mistakes, I still make mistakes and have to say, oh, you know what? And I wasn't as vigilant about that. I need to I need to correct that. And having that that self-awareness and working on it can make things better.

- Tosca Davis

I know that people are listening and they're like, how do I give money to black women? I can definitely send you some grassroot organizations because, again, the the biggest organizations are typically not giving money directly to the people on the ground. So in order to make change, we have to have community. We have to have grassroots organizations who are doing activism or doing social justice work.

- Tosca Davis

And that's typically not your big name, nonprofits that you're where where the CEO is making a million dollars or half a million dollars. So I always send your money directly to the bottom line, and that is how we make a more equitable world. And I'll I'll get some resources out. And you can start from there.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, we will link those in the show notes.

- Liesel Mertes

Thank you. Thank you both for taking time to Put just words and voice to that, a question that arose as I was listening was, I feel in white America that that there can be this interpretation of having Black people in your workforce, that it is either, it can tend towards tokenism of like, well, we need to do it because it's the right thing to do, tinged with an aspect of a fear-based crouch of like we don't want to screw this up.

- Liesel Mertes

We know what a hot topic right now. We don't. And it can it can be the sense of, you know, we can vacillate between these extremes of like, well, you're here because we need to, but we're super scared of getting it wrong.

- Liesel Mertes

I would love it if you would both speak to the positive side of that equation.

- Liesel Mertes

What would you say our workforce's, our communities are missing out on by not allowing black people to flourish and just, you know, not have to be made small.

- Tosca Davis

I would, first of all, let me respond to getting it wrong, if that that is that's the discomfort, that is something you're just going to have to deal with. You have to deal with making mistakes and feeling uncomfortable.

- Tosca Davis

But how you handle that, that is being vulnerable is that I think I made a mistake. I apologize. I will, I will do better. And not relying on that person to teach you , you know, don't ask for labor that you're not going to pay for.

- Tosca Davis

So I definitely want to speak to that. Is that your discomfort is something that you need to get used to.

- Tosca Davis

If you are comfortable white person, you are doing things very, very wrong. OK, you will probably need to be uncomfortable for the rest of your life

- Tosca Davis

to answer your question on what you're missing out on, what you're missing out on by not engaging black folks. You are missing out on a a world, a world that you can't even imagine.

- Tosca Davis

You you may or may not notice that there is a large group of black people who are in the helping field. Black people are typically in the human resources field because we have been socialized to think about other people. We have no choice. That's the only way we get to civil rights. That's the only way we get through slavery. We could not be individualistic. We have to think about other people. So I think that's what I think that's the main thing you're missing.

- Tosca Davis

Of course, you're missing imagination. You're missing all types of solutions to problems because you're not asking the right people that goes without saying.

- Tosca Davis

But but holistically. You're missing out on this wonderful world where we are not destroying the earth. Well, we are not using terrorists to pull these neighborhoods where we are using community as the the basis for everything we need for education, for teaching, teaching people. Some people may say punitive or punishment, but imagine a world without police.

- Tosca Davis

I guarantee you, if you put enough black people together to make decisions, at some point you're going to see that you don't need police because the police are always in our neighborhood. If they're not in your neighborhood, they're in our neighborhood. Let us get together and I guarantee you will find a way to bring down crime, which we know why we have crime, poverty. And so if we get rid of poverty, we'll have less crime. Right.

- Tosca Davis

So I think that's what you're missing by not employing black people is you'll find out how how we'll make this world more equitable.

- Cedrick Smith

Mm. And on a more, you know. On a more acute level, I guess, in in this capitalistic world that we do live in. You know, I got to go to a job tomorrow that is rooted in capitalism.

- Cedrick Smith

We're starting to see patients as units and you got to see him in 15 minutes each. You know, what you're seeing in these types of settings in this capitalistic world is a creativity that you're losing. I have an instance where I have a buddy in IT, and he talks about how he literally has solutions to some problems that that were happening from an I.T. standpoint in this company. And they were having a big meeting.

- Cedrick Smith

And invariably the question goes around and all the supervisors were white guys and they go around and ask, you know, other white guys like, hey, what's the problem there? Like, I don't know what the problem is. I don't know what I don't know what the solution is. I don't know. I don't know.

- Cedrick Smith

And if all the white guys don't know what the solution is, they just closed the meeting down and he said there's been so many instances where he had the solution and he just felt like, you know what, if you're not going to ask me, I'm not going to offer it up because you're not validating who I am as a as a human being.

- Cedrick Smith

You don't even see my humanity.

- Cedrick Smith

You know, you just see me really as an object to be like in the movie we talk about our narrator says, you know, to be surveilled, you know, just to be, you know, surveilled and not even validated as a human being in the setting like a contributor.

- Cedrick Smith

So I think a lot of times in corporate America, in any type of setting, I mean, blue collar, the would be even in our movie we have where the guys knew how to fix something in 30 minutes, whereas a lot of guys try to fix it for three hours, some white guys.

- Cedrick Smith

And when they fixed it, they were the one that were demonized for fixing that in 30 minutes.

- Cedrick Smith

And so acutely in this capitalistic world that we live in right now, you know, you're missing out on creativity that is unparalleled in regard to coming up with solutions that you're tamping out and not allowing to flourish, which would make the environment, the working environment, a better working environment, which would make it a more productive working environment, make it a more creative working environment. And so, yeah, I would say on a on a more acute level, looking at it from that standpoint.

- Cedrick Smith

You just missing out.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

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- Tosca Davis

I guess I would want people to take away the fact that we are all victims of these systems and that we all have privileges, and I want us to all be super aware of that and that we need to all go an through unlearning. And it will be a lifetime of unlearning.

- Tosca Davis

And I know people aren't going to believe this, but trust me when I tell you this, if you are a straight person, you are very homophobic.

- Tosca Davis

I don't care how you were raised. If you were raised in the United States of America, where straight people are centered and are seen to be valuable, you are homophobic, OK?

- Tosca Davis

If you are, if you have no disabilities, then you're able if you go through your entire day in your life without thinking about how a person in a wheelchair or how someone who has a mental illness, you don't think about how they are going to explore the world, how they're going to engage in the world.

- Tosca Davis

You're not going to think about that at all, as evidenced by how quickly we were able to work out of our houses and how many times a person with a physical disability was told that they can't work from their houses or they can't take classes from their home. But we did it very easily for able bodied people. And so once you realize that you're homophobic, that you're able that you're transphobic, that you're racist, that you're misogynistic, that you're sexist.

- Tosca Davis

If you can't say those things out loud, then you are not going to get anywhere. As a white person, you are absolutely racist. There is no way around that because, because I am a Black person and I happen to have I happen to suffer from internalized racism. I have taken on many of the oppressors behaviors because that culture was centered in my life.

- Tosca Davis

I was taught that culture. I'm embedded in that culture. So I have I have and will spend a lifetime un-learning white supremacy. And I'm a Black person. So if I'm a Black person who has taken on the oppressors behavior, there is no way you escape without being a racist.

- Tosca Davis

OK, I need for white people to stop being ultra offended by being called a racist because you are a racist. I'm a straight cis person. I am very trans-phobic and I'm very homophobic. But guess what I'm doing. I am unpacking all of that. I am I'm learning all of that.

- Tosca Davis

You cannot live in a world that is centered Christian, male, white, able bodied heterosexual CIS people. And not have an "ism" yourself is just not going to happen. So tell yourself, you know, before you are after you listen to his iPod. I am racist and homophobic and transphobic and I am doing my best. I am unlearning. I am listening to people, I am reading, I am giving other people the mic.

- Tosca Davis

I am giving up leadership roles. I am giving up power. If you do not do that, we are not going to move the needle, it is just not going to happen. So I am I am asking you specifically white people to stop being offended when someone call you racist, because you are racist. And if it does, you cannot live in the United States of America and not be racist.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah. And well, and, you know, in the white communities where that I'm a part of that are having these conversations and it's important we need to be having them like not just with black people, but with the other white people, you know, to also have this realization of like the long term commitment of the process and the work and that there will be time like it's heavy stuff, it is heavy stuff to confront. And there will be times where, you know, you'll feel like, oh, man, this is so much.

- Liesel Mertes

And it's like know how to care for yourself, know how to go. You know, that's that's an adult thing. That's a differentiator between adults and children, that you can like self soothe and be able to go to bed or take a walk or do some yoga and then like return back to it.

- Liesel Mertes

I think I think at times, especially people who begin, they're like, I started and I wanted to learn everything. And then I just got so exhausted and I'm so tired myself and now I can't pick it up again, like with anything.

- Liesel Mertes

You know, if you're committed to health, like you don't run, you don't begin running like ten miles. And then when you can't do that four days in a row, say, I'm never going to run again. Like you begin the process and you say I'm committing myself to, like, taking the rest I need and going back.

- Tosca Davis

I totally agree with that, I think because of 2020, there's so many people who are trying to rush and read everything and take these classes, they're going to wear themselves out and they're going to feel like a failure.

- Tosca Davis

Then they're going to go back to the same behavior and they're going to be exhausted, because when you're exhausted, you don't perform well. So I totally agree with you. This is a life, if you don't think it's the lifelong commitment, it's going to it's going to be so overwhelming for you. Again, as a black woman, I know I have a life long commitment to unlearning homophobia. I know this because I know that I'm going to unlearn this for the rest of my life.

- Tosca Davis

So it is a slow process for me. Some weeks I learn more information, some weeks I don't learn any information so or able to behave in a way that is empowering to the LGBTQ community. I am committed to providing resources to the community. And so if you do everything at once, like you said you are, you are going to give up. You're absolutely going to give up. So I totally agree with you on that.

- Cedrick Smith

And then kind of piggyback on what Tosca said earlier, I was kind of I didn't mention the word misogyny, but that was the word of the system, that being a male is that I'm a misogynist. And the unlearning of that has been a process.

- Cedrick Smith

You know, it doesn't mean I'm this evil person or anything like that. That's not what it is saying, stop being offended by that. It is a fact that I grew up in a system that was was built and designed to be oppressive to women.

- Cedrick Smith

That is what Tosca is talking about, that every day or every other day or whatever I can to do and my behavior and and in practice, that I do things and am mindful and intentional about the undoing and unlearning of those misogynistic ways that I have. Not perfect every time, I'm not going to get a quote right every time. But there's an intentionality that says, no, I'm going to do this and behave and change this and do this and do this and do this and be consistent about this.

- Cedrick Smith

And as she says, it is lifelong, but I'm definitely better off now than I was 15 years ago. Absolutely.

Absolutely.

- Cedrick Smith

But and and I'm not done. And it does it doesn't work that way.

- Cedrick Smith

And it's nothing it's nothing to sit there and go, oh, well, let me put myself in the back. I've gotten to this point. No, it is still a vigilant, as I say, a hyper vigilance that one must have every day or however the interval is for you that you can tolerate to continue that process.

- Cedrick Smith

And you will see the change. You will see it, you'll see the change.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

Here are three key take-aways from this second part of my conversation with Tosca Davis and Cedrick Smith.

1. For my White listeners, we must begin by asking better questions and open ourselves up to different perspectives.Did you struggle listening to some of the labels? I know that I still do, there is a part of me that wants to defend myself and say, "No, not me!". But I really like and appreciate the labels that Cedric and Tosca encourage us to embrace (and use for themselves) is that they use them to signal of the need for vigilance, NOT as a marker for shame. Because shame always has been and always will be a crappy, crappy motivator. This is not about taking on a label as the totality of all that you are, but using them to signal of aspects of privilege that you and I will need to be constantly unlearning.
2. The unlearning is made up of small and large gestures, letting someone else's name be placed before yours, giving up power, contributing money to Black women (you can find notes of Tosca's recommendations in the show notes).Where are you doing this (or not doing this) in your personal life? In your business? And realize that this is particularly hard in a strongly individualistic society like our own. For White Americans, we want to assume that we are entirely self-made and unbound by wider structures.
3. Realize that compassion fatigue is real.To make a meaningful difference, you have to be committed to the work of equity and justice for the long haul. When you start to feel exhausted, take time to step back, do something that refreshes you or makes you laugh, and then return to the good work of making the world a more beautiful place where everyone can flourish.

OUTRO

Cedrick Smith

So the disruptive part for me is the white supremacy, the white supremacy, and the microaggression is the microaggression of outright racism, to be quite honest with you, that I've had to deal with and I think that's what people don't realize is what we're bringing to the workplace before we even hit the door, before we even have to deal with some of the I want to say normal disruptive events that we all have.

INTRO

This is the first in a two-part series about the challenge of working in a world where whiteness is supreme. And if you don't know what that means, if that previous sentence put your teeth on edge, then this episode is probably one that you especially need to hear.

My guests are Dr. Cedrick Smith and Tosca Davis, two Black activists, professionals, and, most recently, filmmakers. Their film, To Be Us, is making the film festival circuit, receiving accolades for telling the stories of Black professionals whose primary disruptive life event is living and working in a world that does not value divergence from the norm of whiteness. The question that they ask all of their interviewees is, "What is your working while black story."

I am giving it two episodes not because it is easy listening, but because it is essential listening. I've seen the film; it is both powerful and necessary and I am eager to be a part of exploring the themes in our next two episodes.

We began our interview during election week in November of 2020. The whole nation was tense, but I was especially struck by the physical uncertainty for Cedric and Tosca in Texas.

- Tosca Davis

Friends walked into the apartment building and this white guy said, what are you doing here inward? And, you know, I was like, OK, it's already starting. So regardless of who wins as a black body, there's going to be terrorism stuff. We're going to feel it. So it doesn't have to be physical. I'm always going to be very protective of my body and I'm already conscious of where I am as a black person. I've already been socialized to be conscious of my body at all times, regardless of where I am.

This is Tosca Davis, an activist, mystic, a storyteller, and the co-CEO of To Be Us Productions. We will hear more from her soon.

- Tosca Davis

But as far as feeling safe, I wouldn't say you would find too many black people who are going to feel safe in either.

- Cedrick Smith

In fact, back then to that, we already won and family members are still like that, we have text groups that are like, hey, look, if you are by yourself, be very aware where you are. Be very aware of your surroundings. You know, go with somebody, gas your car up in the daytime. These are literal things that we're texting to one another during this time. So, yeah, like Tosca, we don't never feel safe.

This is Dr. Cedrick Smith, he is an activist, an athlete, a writer, a comic book collector, and a physician. Very much a Renaissance man and a co-CEO of To Be Us Productions.

- Cedrick Smith

I just don't think that I was at my country club the other day hitting balls and we have a practice area and there was a guy's house and he's always trying to police. And I put that in quotes, police the practice area.

- Cedrick Smith

So every time I come out there, he's always like, hey, you replace the divets? Are you doing it? I'm playing golf since I was seven years old. I'm fifty. And so I'm like, yeah, I'm doing all of that. But he's he's like surveilling and policing. So he he comes out of his house when he's walking toward me. And I was like, OK, who wants to do walking toward me? So I just kind of moved away from it, first of all, because the would not want to be close to him, but he was going to get one of the golf carts.

- Cedrick Smith

And I said, I hope not coming out here, police me like you always try to do with people that have the driving race. And I'm not really trying to please you. So that's what you always kind of do when I'm out here just trying to get golf balls. And so we kind of got into it and it ended up this kind of a back and forth ended up with him at some point saying like, well, how to get my gun and shoot you.

- Cedrick Smith

It got that elevated, you know, and I mean, so you like, OK, this is you know, I'm just trying to tell you, I don't I don't need you to police me. Let me hit my golf balls and enjoy it. That's why I'm out of here and about. And you leave me alone.

- Liesel Mertes

Well, and I imagine that that there's no way that that feels like just an empty threat that is easily passed off, like, you know,

- Cedrick Smith

He knew what he was doing. He noticed that. I mean, you know, I don't think he was going to go get a gun and shoot me. I didn't. But again, you know, just the fact that you went there, you know. Right.

- Liesel Mertes

Well, and if you're a member of a community where actually that sort of violence is not even an aberration like that, deep in the psyche to be like, yeah, people make threats and that happens to black. Yes.

- Liesel Mertes

Well, that's it is it is a nationally happy moment, but I hear in both of your voices a level of concern for physical safety and well-being. That is not part of my experience. And, you know, it feels draining just to live my experience. I cannot imagine having all of those other levels of care on top of that, which is one of the things that we'll be discussing some in today's episode.

As you just heard, Cedric loves to golf. He plays many sports: football, basketball, tennis, ping-pong. He was the QB for the Dallas Carter Cowboys the year before the won the title. But it is golf that is his passion.

- Cedrick Smith

And the thing I love about golf is there's a there's a singularity to it. There's a. Not having to rely on, you know, other teammates, which I enjoy that part of team sports, but in golf it's really about you versus the course, you versus your feelings, your anxieties.

- Cedrick Smith

You're feeling the pressure and having to hit a particular shot at a certain time. I tell people all the time there's I happen to have played golf at a very high level. I played college, golf. I was an all-American two times. And I tell people all the time that there, for me, there was no feeling greater than winning a golf tournament.

- Cedrick Smith

I don't care if it was with 10 guys or with a tournament where I won out of, you know, 50 to 100 people winning a golf course. There's a there's a habit I get that I can't really explain.

- Cedrick Smith

When you look back at all the work that you did to improve, to get better, all the failures you had, where you were in contention and you got third place because you missed a shot here or you mismanaged the last three holes or you couldn't manage your emotions well or you didn't win. The shot was called for. You weren't able to pull it off.

- Cedrick Smith

And it's disappointing. And then getting up from that and learning from it and going back out and executing it and winning, there's no feeling like that.

- Cedrick Smith

Even the feeling of being in contention, you kind of know where other people are at that level.

- Cedrick Smith

And for me, there's just there's just no feeling like it. I cannot explain it. I can explain to people. I just. The joy that it is giving me, the pain is giving me the learning lessons it's given me is just an incredible sport, incredible sport. And I'm glad my dad was able to teach me the teach me the game.

Cedrick hasn't had much time for golf recently. He works in preventative health and has been hit hard by COVID.

- Cedrick Smith

Early on, we were seeing patients were really, really sick and not knowing exactly what was wrong with them. And so. With that, as a medical director, you're trying to come up with protocols and real time for your staff, you're trying to balance family members who are not quite as aware you as you are with what's going on, telling friends, warning them of what what is to come.

- Cedrick Smith

It's been a lot more strenuous in that regard.

Cedrick has also been busy with his activism work and his film-making, which we will hear more about later on in the episode. But I also want to introduce you to Tosca Davis, Cedrick's co-CEO at To Be Us Productions.

- Liesel Mertes

Tosca. What are some things that fill your time right now that give you joy?

- Tosca Davis

Oh, thank you for asking that question. I really appreciate that what brings me Joy right now, several things. So first of all, I'm going to be honest, I love watching TV. I love watching movies. I you know, that's my escapism. My belief system is that most people have a drug and my drug of choice is storytelling. And so I like it in the form of, you know, visuals and 3-D. And so that's why I love streaming services and I can watch anything that I want to watch.

- Tosca Davis

Sci fi fantasy, romance, rom com and fantasy are my two favorite genres. I was born in the 70s and I grew up on big gesture rom coms.

- Tosca Davis

I've even tweeted Tom Hanks and let him know that he ruined my romantic life because I that my life would be that way because I grew up on great rom coms with great soundtracks. And so that is bringing me joy right now. It would bring me joy regardless if there were if there were a pandemic or not.

I just loved TV and film.

- Tosca Davis

The other thing that brings me joy is, well, I already talked about that. I love storytelling. So within that I love mythology. So under the umbrella of mythology and storytelling and symbolism, I study astrology. I study tarot. I'm now taking classes to be an herbalist. So, you know, some people may call me strange and I rather love that. I love that moniker. I love to be called strange, but I kind of like to do things that are that are unique.

Tosca is imbued with deep curiosity and an omnivorous intellect.

- Tosca Davis

I think I don't really have I don't think I had a problem being strange. I knew that I was strange early on as a child.

- Tosca Davis

Even my family has called me strange, but I've never I've never was made to feel bad about that, really. And not that I didn't have. You know, it's not that I have didn't have a you know, I had an upbringing that was a little traumatic, but still, I was never that was never told that I was abnormal or strange.

- Tosca Davis

But I knew I was because I knew I had different belief systems and different interests than other children.

- Tosca Davis

So, for instance, I when I was when I was smaller as a I guess maybe around eight, nine years old, I want to be an architect. And so I wanted to I spent hours drawing floor plans and reading better homes and gardens and checking out drafting books and mechanical drawing books. No other child was doing it, but nobody told me that I couldn't do it. So I. I don't feel like I was made to feel bad.

- Cedrick Smith

And, you know, one of the things Tosca talks about with her being, quote, weird and strange and an open toast is very she the openness that she has is she has this talent of freeing people of of you know, she always talks about. People being given the permission to be who they are or having a belief system that may change, or you may have thought this one time, but hey, if that doesn't fit with your inventory now, when you do your yearly inventory, you can change it.

- Cedrick Smith

And that was one of the things with her that I must say with me was very freeing. I mean, there are there are a lot of similarities that we have to go into something that was healing, which is medicine. She did social work. So there are some commonalities there.

- Cedrick Smith

But also, I must say, I was inspired by her in regard to how free she was in navigating this world that was very harsh and harmful and very rigid at times.

- Cedrick Smith

But her saying that you can do this, you can be this.

- Cedrick Smith

If you feel like doing this, you can do it.

- Cedrick Smith

You know, so there's a there's a permission quality that she has that is very endearing and and much, much, much appreciated. She has definitely inspired me in so many different ways.

- Cedrick Smith

And I couldn't have thought of anyone more to to that I would have enjoyed more than working on this project of creating a film production company that's so out of the blue for both of us,

- Tosca Davis

I know that. Thank you, Cedrick. I feel so honored. I appreciate all those words.

Tosca began her studies pursuing architecture.

- Tosca Davis

And then I took one psychology class and that changed everything. So everything became about human behavior. And that's when I made it a social work and psychology and became a social worker.

- Tosca Davis

And then I'm not a social worker anymore because of what I've learned. As someone who's very intuitive and can be very empathic and sensitive, people like me tend to go into the helping field or the social work field where it will definitely it will wear us out because we feel everything. So because I felt everything, I decided to leave social work, but I still want to help people.

- Tosca Davis

So I went into nonprofit and so I worked for the United Way. I work for Children's Aid Society. I work for Planned Parenthood, I work for some major nonprofits and I work for the Sickle Cell Association. And that's where I met Cedrick.

Cedrick was on the board and Tosca was an employee at the Sickle Cell Association. This was 15 years ago, in 2005.

- Liesel Mertes

What were your first impressions of one another?

- Cedrick Smith

I guess for me, I was a board member and I just remember Tosca had really big hair. And no, I mean, at that time, I think she had kind of like a reminder there was a movie kind of came from that movie by M. Night Shyamalan with Samuel Jackson as Mr. Glass.

Yeah, I care about my mother and broken or something like that. Yeah, unbreakable. Unbreakable.

- Cedrick Smith

And I just remember one day, seeing as I was a board member living across the sea. And the thing that struck me was this kind of like in the movie, Mr. Glass had this kind of like hair that was like their signature and our hair was big in that way. And then from there, I remember, I think at the time I was working on a book. And I didn't have a computer at home here.

Cedrick was co-writing a book with a friend, coming into the office to work.

- Cedrick Smith

And so one day, Tosca and I got into a conversation and she said, "Well, Cedrick, what where did you work on the book?"

- Cedrick Smith

And I said, I'm working on it at work, on the computer, at work. So why don't you work on another computer work? Because I don't have a computer at home.

- Cedrick Smith

And she started laughing and she's like, What do you mean? And what, you don't have a computer at home? And so I was like, no, I don't. I just work on it and, you know, it at the job. And so after hours.

- Cedrick Smith

And so she said, no, you should have a computer.

- Cedrick Smith

And I said, OK, all right. Well, look, look, you give me the money, I'll go back if you and set it up for you. And that's kind of where. You know, our friendship took off. Got to set it up in my house, and from there we just developed a very good friendship.

Five or six years ago, Cedrick began getting more involved in activism spaces, especially after the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Jordan Baker.

- Cedrick Smith

And so with that, I found myself going to various groups, sitting down, listening, being quiet. It doesn't matter that you, a doctor in those kinds of settings, sitting back in the back, being helpful and learning what it's like to advocate, learning what it's like to be organizing people and protesting and what is to come and what is to be expected. Learning from organizers locally of how to have specific asks and executing that and trying to get incremental change in this big system that you're trying to fight and get rectified and change.

- Cedrick Smith

But we would find ourselves going to a lot of these black spaces dealing with black issues that was in regard to uplift or liberation or what have you, dealing with police brutality, economic disenfranchisement, whatever the the the oppressive ism was at the time, we were dealing with these things at these meetings and what we came away with many times and not every time, but many times was that the culprit in the room was not addressed.

- Cedrick Smith

And so for us, there was this sense of, yes, you're doing the work, but we felt like you can't do the healing.

- Cedrick Smith

You can't get to the crux of the issue or to the solution until you have. Gotten to what is the cause and the cause in these situations was. White supremacy, and no one was saying that no one was talking about the actual system that is the culprit.

- Cedrick Smith

So with that fast forwarding, one day we're in a car which is driving.

- Cedrick Smith

And I just was I think I was going to pick up a trophy from a golf tournament that I just won like the week prior. And course, I wasn't able to play in this particular time because I was injured.

- Cedrick Smith

But we were talking I was like, you know, Tosca I'm just I'm just frustrated when I go because I just come back from another incident where it didn't go in on the culprit of the situation.

- Cedrick Smith

And I said, I'm just tired of coming away feeling as though we're not dealing with the culprit.

- Cedrick Smith

And as we talk back and forth, I said, look, why don't we just start a production company and we'll make films that we want to make to get the message out, that we want to get dealing with the issues that we want to deal with and we're going to go from there.

- Cedrick Smith

And that's kind of how it literally started. And so fast forward, we try to come up with a name. As you can imagine, Tosca has many names of trying to name a company and she had astrological names. I was more binary in my head, my approach to coming up with a name. And then I just lean back one day. And I said, you know what? I just want people to understand what it's like to be us.

- Cedrick Smith

And I say, just like that. And Tosca looks at me said, and that's it. That's that's the title of the company. And I was like, What do you like to be us? To be US productions?

- Cedrick Smith

And we were like, we talked about him a little bit. And it was like, that's it. And then I'm there. Now you're trying to figure out what you want to do with regard to making a film and. We decided to do a walking while black story with stories that are coming from from different storytellers, because we knew that one work is universal to talk, we'll probably get a little later.

- Cedrick Smith

She had a personal experience. You had a disruptive experience in our own life in regard to working on Black Story.

- Cedrick Smith

And three, we knew that we would be able to find content. The only challenge was what would would we be able to get the people to tell their stories on film?

- Tosca Davis

You will be amazed or maybe not. How many people have never been asked to do something? I've never been asked to participate or engage in a project outside of their family or their business or work. But I do believe that when you ask people something, they think about it and they say, well, OK, then no one's ever asked me that before, but Cedrick did a lot of good research and one on one face to face with people.

- Tosca Davis

And I would like for him go into how he did that.

- Cedrick Smith

I would go to restaurants where I knew that black people frequented. I would go to other black spaces, lounges and hangouts and, you know, odd spaces where black people were with this little literally black book that I had with a pen and sit down and kind of intrude a little bit as much as I could and ask them, hey, you know, I'm doing this research project.

- Cedrick Smith

Would you mind if I could talk to you for about five or ten minutes? Many people were receptive, and they would tell their stories. And I would say, you know what, driving while black means, right? And I was like, yeah, oh, yeah, you know, that is that's where you deal with the police brutality and stop by the cops and so forth. One black person doesn't know that. And then I would say, well, what about working while black?

- Cedrick Smith

And to a person, you know, if I was talking to a group of four people, three people would immediately say, yes, I do have a story. I know exactly what you're talking about. I do have an experience at work where this happened or that happened.

- Cedrick Smith

But invariably, what would also happen, that fourth person who said they didn't have a story, they would say, you know what, after hearing their stories, I do have one. I knew then we were on to something.

- Cedrick Smith

I probably have 40 stories literally in this black book that I have where, you know, some of the people are actually in the film. Most of them aren't.

- Cedrick Smith

But, you know, from the film and the story us that we got, we were quite pleased and shocked and surprised and amazed by how well they told their stories and just we were humbled and humbled by their stories.

- Cedrick Smith

So that's, that's kind of how we got. The people to come in was just basic guerrilla interviewing tactics and going to churches and so forth and just asking people, hey, we're doing this, could you come and tell this on film?

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, and you know, someone who has seen the film, they do tell their stories with. With vulnerability and openness and, and they're you know, they are divergent to an extent, you know, it's they're different manifestations, as you said, of the same theme of feeling silenced and marginalized.

- Liesel Mertes

And you are you are both obviously care and tell the story as well. But especially for this, I guess I'd like to ask you both the question that you ask in your film Tosca. What is your working while black story?

- Tosca Davis

Well, as as someone said in the film, I have several working well black stories, but the one that stands out the most would be the most recent one, which was a catalyst for the film

I need to interject here as a podcaster. It is very important to Tosca, to Cedrick, to the very ethos of To Be Us Productions to hold individuals and organizations to account. Part of this truth-telling is directly naming names.

I believe this is incredibly important…but it also puts me in a potentially legal space as a podcaster. So, here I am, caught between my resonance and my potential liability. As a sort of half-measure, I am editing out the names that Tosca said, but I am linking a Facebook post by To Be Us that specifically names both the organization and the individual that are players in Tosca's working while black story.

Tosca was working for a very well-known, national non-profit that specializes in women's health (more specificity is available in the link in the show notes). It was 2014, her last year working there,

Tosca Davis

And I was called into the office of my manager, who happens to be the vice president of Human Resources, and she asks me and she shows me screenshots from my Facebook page, my personal Facebook page.

- Tosca Davis

And she said, Tosca, just want to make you aware of this. And I want to ask if you you know, if you were OK with taking these down. Somebody reported that they feel if they feel offended by these posts and the post was they the post was about white supremacy and racism, oppression, whiteness.

Tosca was surprised, shocked, especially since the national wing of the organization had just sent her to a training on bias, racism, and white supremacy. Tosca wondered, was it a volunteer that had reported her? No, it was a co-worker. You can find her name and role in the link in the show notes. This co-worker had taken a screen shot of the post and turned it into the VP of Human Resources. The co-worker felt offended that Tosca would feel a particular way towards white people.

- Tosca Davis

And I immediately told my manager that I was not going to take it down and they were going to deal with it.

The VP of HR wanted to set up a meeting to discuss the incident, which Tosca thought was absurd.

Tosca Davis

When it was time to have the conversation. She was treated as though she was the victim and I was the aggressor, as she just really felt offended and she felt like I was being racist and she knows I was being racist.

- Tosca Davis

And if we need to be brought up, that they need to have some type of training. And if she is, she knew people who could train us in all kinds of whiteness, all kind of white madness. This is what I call it. And so I quit that day or the next day, I can't remember. But I definitely was not going to stay in an organization that claims to help women, just not black women, especially if you look at the the C Suite, you know, it is all white people except for one black person, one that's not even the stakeholders.

- Tosca Davis

That's not the community that they're serving. And none of them were child bearing age. So, again, you're talking about white women who should give up their positions to people who actually like the community. So all of that live to.

- Liesel Mertes

Do you use that?

- Liesel Mertes

Let me just jump in unison and evocative term white madness. I tell me a little bit more about that because I feel like it it bears unpacking. I feel like there's probably more there.

- Tosca Davis

OK, a white madness to me is the is kind of the audacity of white people to feel offended and the performance of it all, because that's what that's what I was getting. I was giving a giving a performance, especially from someone who claimed to be a white feminist. It was is the performance of being outraged and having the audacity to even challenge the whiteness or challenge someone who assumes that they are better than I am, are so that I am not not as knowledgeable as they are.

– Tosca Davis

So that they are the norm and I am the person on the outside, so that's how I describe madness, is that it's a performance that I've seen white people do and honestly, more specifically, white women. And I can go into more detail about what I think is white women, because they are trying to move, you know, in a parallel position of white men, white men. Typically, they already have that position. So they don't really do a lot of performing.

- Tosca Davis

A lot of their violence comes in in a very silent undercover way. The white women, they tend to be very performative when it comes to their violence towards women, especially toward black folks, especially in the workplace. That makes sense.

- Liesel Mertes

Yeah, thank you for taking the time

- Tosca Davis

so that so that was my working while black story and I'm especially offended and I wanted to to say for two reasons, again, because this is a nonprofit and non-profits typically get away with this type of violence and trauma toward their black employees.

- Tosca Davis

It's I've heard it is been discussed so many times in circles about, about this type of treatment. And personally, I can tell you that I did dabble in for profit and corporate before I worked in oil and gas. I never had any incidents of sexism or racism in that. And this is the Fortune 500 company.

Now, I'm not saying that it didn't happen, is just I didn't experience it. I think the Non-profit is very relaxed. And because they help people, quote unquote, like I said, they get that they can get away with doing these types of things.

- Tosca Davis

So that's my working while black story. I still remember it again is one of the reasons why we made the film, because I just didn't want anyone to get away with that anymore.

The stakes felt especially high for Tosca. From her perspective, this co-worker was out to get her fired.

- Tosca Davis

And if you're going to get me fired, that means I'm not going to be to pay my mortgage. I'm not going to be able to eat.

- Tosca Davis

I'm not going to pay my car. Note that is a that is a violence and a trauma that black people feel. You are putting my livelihood at risk because you are fragile. So that's why I keep using the words violent and traumatic and terrorism. I'm not trying to be hyperbolic at all. That is exactly how black people feel. We feel terrorized. We feel traumatized. We feel abused when white people feel like they have been offended by something.

- Tosca Davis

So that, again, that's the most interesting part is that I literally have left a conference on all of these topics and and dare to post anything on my Facebook page about it. And so that's the white man is right.

- Liesel Mertes

And yeah, we I think especially white America, wouldn't we love to think that it could all just be taken care of in a three day conference and then we would never have to talk about it again? Because what you said of the feeling of. It's it's a powerful and can be a powerfully oppressive thing, white discomfort, and I feel like, you know, I I as I continue to grow and avail myself to different stories, I just realized that the unwinding from me will be a lifelong task that I can, you know, either keep pushing to the side or be able to embrace, even as it makes me uncomfortable, because frankly, I mean, it's my discomfort is not on the same level as, you know, someone's livelihood or the safety of their bodies.

- Liesel Mertes

And I think that there is especially for for for me as a white viewer of your film, you know, there were places where I was like, I have done something like that. I have been on the other side of perpetrating you know, there is one one guest talked about a dismissiveness towards Black History Month, you know, as far as people were talking. And I thought, oh, like I know as a kid, you know, for whatever mix I was a part of, I talked about like Kwanzaa and why did we have to talk, you know, and like it was Christmas.

- Liesel Mertes

And I thought, like, I could see myself in those stories. And and there there is something to seeing the pain that is inflicted. Like it's it can't we cannot continue to imagine that they're just passing comments and feel like I'm just I'm just talking.

- Liesel Mertes

And so, yeah, that I think there is there's a powerful thing that white viewers need to see with the spirit of inquiry of where am I in these stories, because there are enough that we will find ourselves there. And it's important.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

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MUSICAL TRANSITION

- Liesel Mertes

Cedrick, what is your working while black story?

- Cedrick Smith

Oh, man. I mean, where do even begin? I mean I mean, yeah, I'm a practicing physician. You know, I've gotten anything from one in particular I talked to said, you know, how many stories are out there? I mean, I could go ad nauseam with that one in particular.

- Cedrick Smith

So one day when I'm on medical assistant is crying in the break room and I went over and asked, or it's not something that we're going to sit and just kind of play like it doesn't exist. I'm going to sit down as the medical director and say, hey, look at you, OK, what's going on?

- Cedrick Smith

She said, Dr. Smith, I'm tired of this. I'm like, well, what's what's happening is I'm tired of when patients come in and they ask, is it Dr.

- Cedrick Smith

White or black? I'm like, OK. And I'm like, well, what what do you like? Well, he's black and then the patient will go, Well, is there a white doctor I can see? Was there another doctor I can see? And so I'm like, OK.

- Cedrick Smith

I said, look, I mean, yeah, you're going to get that is excuse me is not the first time that I've experienced racism in the setting of being a doctor who happens to be black, you know, being a black doctor, but seeing the pain on her face, knowing how hard we worked to have the types of ratings that our clinic gets, like, you know, you probably Google Review us were like four point seven out of five.

- Cedrick Smith

And we really take very much pride in that. And they know that it comes from all of us working very diligently and hard and making sure that the patient is treated well.

- Cedrick Smith

And she, she also mentioned how she notices how when the patients come out from the visit with me, how happy they are, how they end up saying, like, wow, you know, he was really into my diagnosis. He really showed a lot of empathy and care, you know, and even gave me his card and said, like, you can call me 24 hours a day, you have a problem. These are types of things. It's just natural what we do and how we execute our patient care.

And so she see, so this doesn't happen to be a woman.

- Cedrick Smith

She happened to see this kind of dichotomy between how they are when they first come in, when they're prejudging to having the actual visit to leaving and seeing this kind of duality of the racism on the front end and then having this wonderful experience with the doctor that they didn't want to see in the first place.

- Cedrick Smith

And the only reason that they didn't want to see him was because, well, not knowing that the doctor was he or she knowing that this doctor was black. And so that that and I remember that date. I remember going into the restroom after I talked to her and I remember I cried. I just remember I was like because I didn't realize the kind of the micro trauma that even my staff was going through as they were trying to, quote, protect me or, you know, having to deal with this.

- Cedrick Smith

And it just happened to the point for this particular person where, you know, it broke them. They were tired of seeing because they know what they mean to me.

- Cedrick Smith

They know how hard we all work and how hard I work to to practice my craft. And so that's one. I mean, I remember being in a room one time, you know, I have my white coat on. Is this, you know, medical director, all the big name, everything. I'm talking to this guy and he I mean, literally for like five minutes, ask him questions about his.

- Cedrick Smith

No problem. You know, what medications are you taking? Blah, blah, blah, going through the whole rigmarole. And he looks and says, wait, when is the doctor coming in? And I'm like, Mom, he wasn't blind yet.

- Cedrick Smith

Twenty twenty vision. I'm like, I'm the doctor. And he just had this look on his face like, oh, and so I mean, I had one time where this one, this really hurt this, this was all of them hurt.

- Cedrick Smith

But this is really painful because it was a child I was seeing a kid came in. The kid must have been three, four maybe, and was with the mother and nothing to get out like a sore throat.

- Cedrick Smith

I was reading a chart kid, a little sore throat. So I walk in any time I know children are going to be in the room. I kind of want to come out a little more animation. You know, I'm kind of like big kid at heart. I love seeing children when they come in. I rarely see them in our urgent care setting. They typically take them now to urgent care pediatric locations, not ours. But occasionally I gets on well, anyway, this walk into the room and the little child goes, Mom, there goes a nigga like that.

- Cedrick Smith

And and I and it the shock of my face.

- Cedrick Smith

As I looked at the mom, I remember I kind of turned to when I said where, you know, trying to be funny, trying to diffuse it, trying to deal with it at the same time. And then the mom just looks at me like I don't know where she got that from.

- Cedrick Smith

And so I went through the visit professionally. I saw the patient obviously treated her for her strep throat or otitis or earache.

- Cedrick Smith

I'm sorry not to use medical terms or earache and treated, but I just remember going home that day and I just I just cried like a baby. In her I mean, now that was piercing that a three year old or four year old child that was, you know, you know, saying that I've worked all this way hard to get to where I am.

Cedrick Smith

And at the end of the day, this is what I was reduced to from a three year old so that I

- Tosca Davis

Don't forget about the symbols.

- Cedrick Smith

I want to make sure you talk about, you know, when people, you know, undress and you see certain symbols on your body. Oh, yeah.

- Cedrick Smith

No, I mean, I've had to see people who come in and have swastikas, you know, on it, just because you know what? I have to do a physical exam. I believe in doing a very thorough physical exam.

- Cedrick Smith

We do it a little differently now because of COVID, because the touching and I may see 30 patients a day. We're little more different. If if it really doesn't want me doing a hard exam on this patient. I don't do it now just because we've got to use your stethoscope so many times and clean it off and you can miss something in, you know, transfer corona to somebody else.

Cedrick Smith

I'm not going to do that.

- Cedrick Smith

But in the normal setting, you know, I'm very thorough about doing examinations and people I've seen that. I remember one guy came in and he had a swastika around his chest. And I remember when he opened his shirt or opened his his gown for me to look at it. And it was like this moment of like he knew I saw it.

- Cedrick Smith

You know, he knew you know, he knew that I knew exactly what it was, and it was just that moment of pause where I still had to stay professional.

- Cedrick Smith

But, you know, a little bit of me was like, you know, you know, this this joking.

- Cedrick Smith

You know, he I mean, I don't want to curse on the show, but, you know, every every bit of me had to be like, I can just put a rating on it or not not work.

- Cedrick Smith

He didn't want me to, you know, look at him and take him out behind the building.

- Liesel Mertes

Well, and and you one of one of the interviewees was I think at that point he was a doctor, but he was reflecting on his residency and talking about just even the denial of the, the title, like the purposeful way that that was withheld from him. You know, like there they call me by my first name or they'll call me mister. And these these things that, you know, like they're, they're signaling they're signaling something that is profound. And this is this is something I'm asking out of not out of my experience, but out of my intuition.

- Liesel Mertes

I feel like the workplace is like it's generally a complex place to display sadness or grief.

- Liesel Mertes

Anger oftentimes by white men is acceptable in, you know, even like you're saying, with a cursing, like it's acceptable in certain circumstances. But to be emotionally flooded in a way of anger, sadness, I'm I'm struck that it's it's hard in general. I feel like there are particular unspoken rules as to how black men and women are, quote unquote, allowed to feel angry or sad, like there are some pretty swift penalties or judgments that are placed on them.

- Liesel Mertes

I'd love you to speak on that. If that has been your experience and if it has been to expand upon it or feel free to tell me I'm crazy if that hasn't been.

- Tosca Davis

Well, yeah, I mean, I think that atrocities like. I was just going to say that, I mean, I know you asked and I know your podcast is specifically about the workplace, but, you know, we've been we've been taught that since birth. I have been very aware that I can't have certain behaviors.

- Tosca Davis

I can't express certain feelings. I can't do things that, you know, the dominant white culture is allowed to do out in the open and free. I am in a place where I'm learning all of that. You're learning things because I'm learning things. Black people. You know, I my my plan is to to have full liberation. And so I am unlearning the oppression I'm learning. So I am when I'm loud, I'm loud. You know, as a child, you were told not to be loud or don't act like that in front of the white.

- Tosca Davis

Folks don't do that in front of white folk. You know how white people look at you if you do that.

- Liesel Mertes

And so, you know, can you tell me a little bit more about that? Just to flesh that out? Like what what were you hearing as a kid? Like, you know, that will get you in trouble?

- Tosca Davis

Well, I won't. I'll say from my personal experience, I wouldn't get in trouble. And I and I want to be specific that that was my personal experience. I do know that there were certain families that you did have to act a certain way and you did get in trouble. But it was it was it was always I was always taught to kind of make yourself small.

- Tosca Davis

That's what black people do. We make ourselves small so we won't be seen. So we won't be in the way. And then if you're a black woman, is the the, the teaching is supposed to be invisible. Don't be seen. Don't be heard. Make sure your hair is not wow. Which again, I go against everything which said I already told you when he first met me, my hair was big. I work in corporate America as someone with my natural hair.

- Tosca Davis

I was one of the very few black women who who actually had the hair grow out of my scalp as the hair that I presented. And that is one of the things that when I was younger, we were taught to relax our hair to make sure that it was not big or not high. So everything all of that we're unlearning as adults. But but getting back to your point that definitely, you know, will bleed into the workplace. I remember reading about this lawyer who was he was he was a lawyer.

- Tosca Davis

He was he was a big black bald guy. And just his body alone was intimidating. So he had to make sure that he was not loud, that he did speak. And this is an attorney where you need to be loud. You need to get into people's faces. You need to be aggressive. You need to tell people the law. And he had to make sure that he did not intimidate the white people, make sure that he was a scary to the white people.

- Tosca Davis

So my entire life is making sure that I am that seen, that I'm not heard. And so, as as I've gotten older, I have released that. And you're going to get me I'm not going to code switch. And code switching is using a vernacular are using grammar that is more palatable to white people. I typically don't use that either. I talk the way I talk with black people because I'm not good at all. Of this is exhausting.

- Tosca Davis

So you may be able to imagine if I have to change my speech, I have to make sure that I'm small and to make sure my hair is straight. I have to make sure all of these things are presentable and palatable to white people. How exhausting that is. So I stopped doing it. I have no longer doing any of that. You're going to get black Tosca and you've got to deal with it.

- Liesel Mertes

That sounds exhausting on so many levels.

- Cedrick Smith

Yes. And no, yeah, just to piggy back on it, I mean, it's the same way growing up is kind of like you don't really you don't really know how to process it when you're 10 or seven or five.

- Cedrick Smith

You just know that it feels different that when we go over someone's house and have to be white folks, that mom was like overly or dad was like overly like, you know, when you get there, you can't do this, but you better sit still.

- Cedrick Smith

But it just so it was always this kind of couching being couched in this whiteness.

- Cedrick Smith

And in retrospect, you look at it as you're twenty five or thirty or whatever, you start and you start saying, like, man, that was so weird.

- Cedrick Smith

You know, I want to be who I was. I could even dream like I want to dream, you know, it was almost like there's only to a certain point. I mean, you talk a lot in your podcast and regard to disruptive events and we all go through them as humans. That loss of a spouse, illness, sickness, whatever the case may be, whatever that disruptive, even the loss of a child or a child with a disability, whatever the case may be.

- Cedrick Smith

But when you get the disruptive event in my life and I can speak for me is white supremacy, because when I look back at every stage of my life from being for you, from being in the fourth grade and and our teacher saying, hey, look, let's partner up.

- Cedrick Smith

And you're thinking you're going to partner with one of your friends and you just kind of see the guy and and, you know, everybody's kind of grabbing hands.

- Cedrick Smith

And then one kid leaves with white kids, says, you, I'm not part up with you. And you're like, wow, you know, we call it together. We do math problems together. And he looks at you and says, I'm not doing it because you're black. And you're sitting there in the fourth grade going what you like. How do you process that then in the seventh grade, you want to you're the best golfer in the junior golf in the area and you live a block away from the country club that you can join, that you can walk to every day and hone your game.

- Cedrick Smith

You look in the fence, you see people playing golf and you're happy.

- Cedrick Smith

You want to go do that. But you have friends who are members there. And you guys, hey, look, I like to come play the course and they just say, now you can't come play like we play basketball together.

- Cedrick Smith

We play football together. We hang out together, going to ride our bikes together. Why can I come over here?

- Cedrick Smith

And he looks and he said, what was my father's membership? And, you know, we can't have you there and you're in the seventh grade. You're 12, 13 years old. So again, it's this reboarding again.

- Cedrick Smith

And when I'm 18 and when I'm 20, going for this interview, for this job and when I'm this, I get told so it doesn't end. So the disruptive part for me.

- Cedrick Smith

Is the white supremacy, the white supremacy, and the microaggression is the microaggression of outright racism, to be quite honest with you, that I've had to deal with and I think that's what people don't realize is what we're bringing to the workplace before we even hit the door, before we even have to deal with some of the I want to say normal disruptive events that we all have.

- Cedrick Smith

I have to deal with how my blackness is is is viewed. I have to make myself smile.

- Cedrick Smith

I'm 6'4. I have to be a pretty good-looking guy, you know. But I do remember times where I had to make myself smile or my passion for a project or my passion for defending my workers and trying to get them raises or whatever the case may be, is seen not as being impassioned, but being angry.

- Cedrick Smith

And being written up for that, do you like wait a minute, I mean, I've written up because, you know, you all did this to this coworker of mine and I'm just kind of fighting for them to get what they just deserve, being a part of an elite center, being a part of a team that does excellent work.

- Cedrick Smith

So it's those types of instances I did a I did a presentation, I went to a conference, I saw the conference, I said, you know what? I'm sitting on the ice. And like, I can I can do a presentation here. If they're doing presentations like this, I know I can do one.

- Cedrick Smith

So the following year, I want to do a presentation that happened to be on bias and happened to be on how to connect better with patients kind of using some of the tools that I use to help the other doctors understand, hey, this is how you can make your bottom line better by, you know, being more sticky with your patients, if you will, making them want to come back and being your marketing tool for you as they go out and tell how you need to go see Dr.

- Cedrick Smith

Smith or go see Dr. Johnson, because they do this, this, this and this.

- Cedrick Smith

Well, they put me on at five o'clock, which is the last presentation. And I said, OK, that's fine. I'm still going to do a great presentation. I end up doing a great presentation. No one left typically. Do you know about these conferences? People, if you've got a presentation at five o'clock, people are trying to run out the door, do the presentation when all of the the ratings come out. My presentation was rated number one at the highest ratings of all the presentations.

- Cedrick Smith

So, after that, they had like a no excuse me. They after that they had a like a a gathering of all the doctors who presented and kind of like a social hour, happy hour type deal with drinks and so forth, little light bites. And when it the first thing when I walk in, one of the people were at the thing that was kind of over. It was kind of like, oh, here's the shining star, here's the Mister Presenter.

- Cedrick Smith

But it was done in a very reductive manner. It was done with the sarcasm. Not like you really did a great job. That was awesome what you did. It was this kind of backhanded.

- Cedrick Smith

You can't give me all the love that I know you would have given had Muskingum and white and I was blond hair and blue eyes and looked good. As I look. I know I wouldn't like all the star. No. And I was also told, hey, when you get back to your region, I want you to do that presentation in your region.

- Cedrick Smith

Do you think I ever did that presentation? Do you think the guy that was over me let me do the presentation? He never did.

- Cedrick Smith

He never did.

- Cedrick Smith

And those are the types of things. That's the exhaustion. That's where you just sit back and go, hey, man, you know, what do I have to do?

- Cedrick Smith

You know, how do I get rid of this this this being less than. And so it's a good thing, and that's what you see in the film

MUSICAL TRANSITION

This is the part of the show where I offer three key takeaways from the conversation. And I'm still going to do that, but I want to remind you that this is just the first of a two-part series on working while black. In our net episode, Cedric and Tosca will go deeper into the stories of the film, pulling back the layers on the many levels of exclusion that Black Americans face daily in the workplace. You can find out more about their film, the production company, and the details of Tosca's story in the show notes.

Here are three key takeaways from my conversation with Cedric and Tosca…

• There is power to just listening to someone's story.That is what empathy is all about, giving another person's story weight and space. The stories that Cedrick and Tosca are telling are not what I daily experience in the workplace of America. Which means that it is even more important that I listen carefully, without judgment and "what-abouts?" and second guessing. If you are White, be aware of what was going on in you as a listener. What sort of responses or defensive postures were coming out in you? Full disclosure, they were happening in me too. This is because we don't like to hear that the world is not how we want it to be. The next question, for me and for other White listeners, is to ask where these messages might originate from?
• The marginalization of Black Americans is not a one-off that just happens every now and then.As I listen to Cedrick and Tosca and the many, many participants in the To Be Us documentary, I hear how much of their life experience has been marked by the long shadow of normative whiteness. The pain is deep and real. And, as I mentioned in the interview, if you are White, you have contributed to the problem. I have been dismissive of Kwanzaa. I remember dancing with a really handsome Black boy at a party and asking him, "So, you must be good at football. Aren't all of you good at football?" These microaggressions create a cumulative weight.
• If you are Black and listening to this episode, I hope that there is a heightened sense of community. One of Cedrick and Tosca's aims is to let Black people know that they are not alone and that they are not crazy. Their film captures this ethos powerfully and I look forward to sharing more of it with you next week in Part 2 of this series on Working While Black.

OUTRO

For more info on Tosca's Working While Black Story: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=1052380424956777&story_fbid=1460604034134412

Learn more about To Be Us Productions: https://www.tobeusproductions.com/