 Welcome back to the Diversity in Action podcast. In honor of Women's History Month, today's theme is providing healing, promoting hope. Healing is not linear and it is in fact multifaceted. Today, we will have an opportunity to talk about healing and hope through the lens and perspective of my colleagues who I also have an opportunity to call friends. Joining us here today, we have Miss Tania Livingston, Dr. Clinisha Johnson, and Dr. Erica Hartwell. Ladies, thank you so much for being here with me today. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Absolutely. So before we jump right in, just wanted to get to know a little bit about you, a bit about your professional background as well as your hometown and something that you're most proud of. So Tania, we'll start with you. I'm originally from South Carolina, small town called Camden, South Carolina, very proud to be from the Carolinas. My professional background, I've been an administrative assistant for many years and what I'm most proud of is my journey overall, where I'm at today and how far I've come. Awesome, thank you Tania. I am Dr. Clinisha Johnson. I am a psychologist by training. Some of you might have known me from counseling and psychological services on campus. I am currently now in the Dean of Students Office and I am the Associate Director for Student Support Services. So I have interesting trajectory that I can maybe talk about and share with regards to healing and one thing that I'm most proud of I think is my family, where I come from. So has a lot to do with my healing too. So we'll get into that a little bit. Awesome. Erica Hartwell, I'm an Associate Professor of Marriage and Family Therapy and I also direct the sexual and gender minority mental health program on campus. I've been a licensed marriage and family therapist for, oh I don't know actually, over 10 years. We'll just say that, I actually don't know how long. I grew up in Massachusetts, so about two and a half hours from here and something that I'm most proud of right now is my house. I bought a house in the last year and it was a fixer upper and it's now pretty cute and mostly livable. So that's been a journey. Well thank you and Erica I can totally relate when I was actually thinking about this I was like, I think Erica's gonna say your house. I was like, I would totally say my house. Right? You should. Absolutely. So as we're talking about healing and hope today we'll just start off with your own personal working definition. So if we can just kind of go around and think through, well what is your definition of healing and what's your definition of hope? I can jump in. So when I think about healing, I think about like becoming whole again that we sometimes experience ourselves as broken and I don't actually, it's interesting I actually think we're ever broken. Like I think we're always whole, but we feel broken at times or our dreams or our plans feel broken. And to me healing is about coming back to wholeness. Like knowing that you're whole again. And hope I struggle with. To me, hope is about wishing things were different and I think sometimes that actually creates more suffering for me, like not accepting the way that things are can create some suffering. So hope isn't necessarily something that I hold on to or means a lot to me. I think more for me it's about faith that everything will kind of work out and acceptance of just what is because struggling against what is creates a lot of pain. That's been my experience. The therapist over here stole all this therapist's answer. Right. Of course. Especially wanted to jump in first. You can just say ditto. Ditto, done. Tania. For me though, healing is just essentially like you stated Erika just like this process of getting to feeling a completeness or a wholeness again. And really the focus is not so much for us unfortunately depending where we are in our lives about that process but more about what the outcome looks like. But for me, healing is about that process. So what it looks like from beginning to end and being able to connect with that and what that looks like and appreciate it. Which can be a struggle for so many people and for so many reasons. And again, like Erika, the whole piece for me is more faith related. It's about what the potential of something can be that you want or believing in something that isn't seen, that it can exist. And I try to stay there as much as possible. I'm definitely a big optimist. I stay very optimistic. However, there are times with regards to feminism, dare I say, and racism and things related to diversity, equity and inclusion that I struggle with with hope because of the systemic things that are in place. Which I think also sort of helps to capture some of what we struggle with as women with regards to healing to those structures. For me, healing is about the journey to wholeness just being a better person and fixing those areas that have been broken. And for me, it's a continuous journey. I would be very cautious to say that I have been healed of things because I feel like the journey is continuous. That's why it's healing. I'm continually on that journey to be being healed. And for me, hope is anticipation for better. And I think every day I have hope that tomorrow is gonna be a little bit better and that my future is going to be a little bit better. And as a woman of faith, I put my faith out there to say, as far in terms of hope, I hope for each day I'm gonna continue on my healing journey, but also that there's better up ahead. And that's what inspires me to continue. Is this a little stages? Awesome, thank you. And two things that really just stuck out was process and journey. And I feel that we're going to talk about that a lot today. And as we talk about healing, we're really gonna get deep into stuff. It can be a painful process. Healing can be very, very, very painful, but there's also beauty in the process. So is there a specific moment in your healing process that was transformative for you? I think that painful part is the most transformative. To me, the most painful point is right before healing starts. Like, so when I'm suffering the most is usually the moment where I realize how bad it is and that I could do something about it. So it's just what I've experienced is things have to get really bad before they get really good. So usually when I'm in the most pain, there's just some moment where I'm like, wow, I am suffering right now and I don't want to suffer anymore. And then it's a very clumsy, awkward, slow journey of healing and returning to that wholeness. But it starts in a really painful place. And usually once I get there, now when I get to that painful place, I'm grateful for it because I know it's coming. But the first time I fought it like hell because I didn't know what it was. I think what you just brought up for me is actually having this level of awareness that healing has to happen or that you're in a position or a situation where there is going to be healing from something. I think sometimes we take some of those situations for granted. I definitely think back to some of the things I've gone through in my life, whether it's professionally, whether it's academically, whether it's personally, where I actually didn't even know that I needed to heal. And I think that can be painful for not only an individual, but for others as well around you, your loved ones, your friends, your family, your coworkers, whomever you're socializing with. And so I think just having that awareness is huge. And I think as you sojourn in life and take life on as it comes, you start to realize and identify those places in your life where healing has to happen. And even sometimes in your life where you have to go back and you're like, oh, I need to work on this. Like, and we know, you know, in therapy, we often raise that up as well is like, you know, you miss this, you gotta come back because life has a way of like repeating certain experiences or themes and bringing them up until you kind of get it right. And so a lot of the healing that I've experienced in my life has come by that way. And so for me, it's always been sort of in hindsight where I have like this testimony at the end and I look back and I'm like, oh my gosh, like that was a healing process. Why didn't I realize that? Why didn't I connect with it? For me, healing, like you said, as everyone has been saying, it has been very painful. And the way I've ran from it is by healing or trying in my best efforts to heal other people. So I went around a bout way of saying, I'm gonna fix everybody else because I don't want them to experience what I experienced. But it also helped me to take the focus off of what I was struggling with and dealing with personally. And I ran from it until I hit a brick wall and I couldn't run anymore. And I literally found myself stuck and my mind literally was like, yeah, you're done. Like it's time to work on you. And I really couldn't move forward until I did focus for myself, but it was very, very painful. And I just covered it up with busyness. I covered it up with helping everybody else around me. I covered it up with family and just raising kids and just staying busy and just not giving myself a breather because I didn't want the stillness. I didn't want the quiet because when it got quiet, then I had to deal with me. So I think there was a point in my life where thankfully my mind and everything just said, it's enough, let's work on you now, Tania. Yeah, and I was smiling when you said that because I feel like most people who enter therapy, like who want to become therapists are focusing on everybody else. I mean, I was, I got this figured out. I'm gonna fix other people. Absolutely. That actually is a perfect segue into our next question that I really want to direct towards Erica and Clinisha. And Tania, at any point, feel free to add. But when it comes to counseling and with your counseling background and as clinicians and therapists, you're helping to heal people, right? Your job is not to heal people, but to really help people on their healing journey. How has it been really navigating your own healing journey and also supporting someone else during theirs as well? How has that been for you? It's different. But what I will say is, I've always said to myself as someone who has been helping people and counseling people in any capacity that I'm responsible for interventions and not outcomes. And I feel like that has kept me extremely humble and humble within my own stuff as well. Meaning like you can only lead people so far before it's on them to have the agency and to make their decisions. So I can give you the tools, but you have to ultimately be the one to use them. And I've never given people the understanding that I'm gonna fix something or I'm gonna heal you. I'm gonna wave this magic wand and then you're gonna be fine. And I think a lot of people think that that's what they're paying you for, essentially. And so I kind of express that in my work with people or I have expressed that in my work with people so that they have the agency to know that it's more of a cathartic experience if you get there as I'm kind of like leading you rather than me to just give it to you. But with regards to how it impacts me and how I have to sort of navigate myself, I just have to keep myself in check quite a bit. I think we take on more than what we think we can. And through that there's a lot of suffering or there can be a lot of suffering. So you have to know where to go to be able to restore and refill yourself. You can't pour from an empty cup. It just isn't gonna work. And realizing like I have stuff. Like my stuff stinks too. You think your stinks, mine stinks too. I'm just as human and have blind spots because I'm in this profession. And so I think recognizing that has helped quite a bit but it's extremely difficult. I've pivoted from the therapy world and I'm using my skills now in an administrative way to connect with people. And I think that some of that is also because I feel like I could potentially reach people in another way that have more work to do at like a different level. But another piece of that is that it's very laborious work emotionally, physically, mentally. So. Absolutely. Yeah, it is. So I train therapists. So I train people to become therapists and I get this really cool, like 30,000 foot view of like the development, the making of a therapist. And most folks do come in like we did, wanting to fix people and thinking that we can, if we have the right tools and we have the right interventions that we can get anywhere where anyone, anywhere we think they should be. And so I spend a lot of time with my students helping them kind of unlearn that and recognize that there's only so much we can do for another person and that the best thing they can do to become a great therapist is to work on themselves and to heal themselves. Because ultimately I think what we're doing is we're just giving another perspective. I'm here with you and I'm not personally tied to what's going on so I can ask some different questions and give some different points of views and then you're gonna kind of take that and change with it or not. But if I can't see past my own stuff to give you that different perspective, I'm not gonna be very helpful. It's actually super harmful. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. One of the things that I was thinking about as well as you were talking, you know, speaking about like our own stuff, right? Have you experienced kind of trying to help a client or a student through something that you were currently struggling with? Like it's, you're literally struggling with the same thing they're struggling with but you, as a professional, right? And as your job, really have to help them navigate that, right? It's not like, you know, in your personal life, you can say like, I'm not there right now, you know? And kind of table that. How has that been? Or have you experienced that, I should say? I mean. Okay. So every therapist experienced that for the last two years, right? Oh my gosh. Because everybody was going through and experiencing the pandemic at the exact same time. Like we didn't have any lead time to process that move through a pandemic, get some perspective on it, you know, and be able to hold space for the way other people were experiencing it. Like we were experiencing it at the same time as everyone else. And the last two years have been really, really hard on mental health professionals, I feel like, for that particular, for that reason. Because everybody's walking in with the same things that we're already feeling. And so to your point about, you have to know your limits and set boundaries and take breaks and take care of yourself. Because we're processing all of that at the exact same time. Yeah, so that came up for me as well, just like being able to connect with another student who's like, I can't get toilet paper and feeling like the same way, you know? Me neither. Yeah, me neither. You get some pass-off. But, you know, actually in my experience being the first black therapist in counseling and psychological services at Fairfield University and connecting with other students of color, you know, there's a shared experience just in sort of that diet, if you will. And so a lot of times students of color as many of us here today know, they come in with a lot of the experiences of what we would refer to as just inequities, right? That black and brown folks have a different set of circumstances are coming in with different barriers than people who don't look like them do. And so I obviously have those as well. And I've worked on them and are working with them and challenging myself personally and professionally. But I would hear things come up. I'd be like, yeah, you're there. And then how do you create a formative and corrective experience for them to keep pushing forward, to not be discouraged? And then they're looking at me on the other side of that, sort of like, well, you got to where you're at. Like, how do I do this? And do you feel like I feel? And so that would come up for me quite a bit. And then being vulnerable enough and disclosing when there's trust established in a good relationship, it's really, really helpful because I think that they realize that, I'm not that different from them in that way. And it gives them some tools and techniques and a place to feel safe and to press forward. So I remember those experiences. And even now, that comes up still in my new position. And so I would say that that's probably, outside of the pandemic, the most unique situation I've been in this field. Awesome, thank you. Cleansh, I'm sorry. Tania, do you have anything to add? Just, I think, because I'm not a doctor, but... Neither are we. But she plays when I take a date. But just being the type of person that is like a healer by nature. That's who I've been since I was a kid. Like, I was the type of person that my friends came to talk to, to share with, to open up. And I was like, let's fix this. Let's, I'm gonna fix this or let me walk you through this. And then a lot, like I said before, me doing that was, if I felt like if I could fix them or help them, maybe some way it was gonna really help me. And just not, and just being able to relate to other people and get people to share. And I just think that was, that's always been huge for me. I think women by nature, we're healers. We're nurturers. We want to be there. But a lot of times we put ourself on a back burner. So we don't have to focus on us. Or sometimes it's just because we just don't value our own self in our own journey or the need for healing for ourself. So it's really important to do that, focus on ourselves. I think you made a really good point if we could just kind of go there. Like women are socialized to be healers. And what if I don't want that job? I mean, it's one thing to get paid to do it. But then when you're not, I mean, it's obviously, it's something noble to take on. But do we really have to take it on? Sometimes I don't have the capacity to help others outside of my work parameters or however you wanna frame it to do that. Like I just can't take on someone else's stuff. And is it okay to set that internal boundary at times to say like, eh, I understand, I hear you, I validate you, but here's where you can go. And I think especially as women of color, that's like a huge burden. And we have seen that be passed on generationally, but there are just some times I'm like, ugh. You gotta say no. I work two jobs, I have kids, I have a husband. I mean, how much more? Yeah, we haven't been taught that we can say no. No, or how to. Right, so there's a lot of shame when you reach your capacity and you reach burnout. Yeah. And when you do start to set boundaries and say no, it's, talk about painful. That hurts at first. That's a healing process. But then it feels really good. Right. When you lose, you know, at some point it changes the dynamics of your friendships. Because if you're that, if you've always been that friend that your friends come to when they have issues and they have problems and they lean on you. And then you get to that point where it's like, guys, I'm going through my own stuff. And I really don't know how to support you. Your friends kind of look at you like, well, what happens with our friendship now? Because you were, that's what you were for me all the time. And I've learned, I've had relationships that have changed. People who I thought were, we were really good friends. But when I reached my limit and I had to focus on my own self and my own personal healing, they felt lost. They felt like I neglected them. So that has been really hard. But it also taught me that I should have had boundaries established early on, and I never did because I didn't want to focus on my healing, you know? And I didn't want to focus on me, so. Conversely, I feel like the relationships that are deeper and maybe more authentic get stronger when we set boundaries or when we ask others for help and healing instead of only giving. I think for me, for a long time I only helped and I didn't want any help and I could figure it all out and I didn't need anybody and everybody came to me. And then at a point, at a painful point, I was like, wow, I'm super unhappy and I am doing this. I'm creating my life this way. And so I started like tentatively trying to like open up and be vulnerable with close friends and my family and ask people for help and tell them what I was struggling with. And I was like, so scared to do that because I'd never thought that I could. And some of them like just shocked me. They were so grateful that I would ask them to support me because I had supported them so much. And those are the relationships, I think, that got deeper and better. And then of course, the other ones that weren't quite as good fade away. One of the things that I've learned is to not have to accept certain identities at certain seasons in your life, right? So what I say is I'm like, I'm not the strong friend this season. I'm not the consistent friend this season. I may not even be a reliable friend this season because I'm gonna choose me this season. And one of the things I know for me personally has really been looking at what is choosing you look like, right? And it sounds like some of those friends and some of those situations that fade away, they don't understand what choosing you looks like. Your boundary is choosing you. And it looks different for everyone, right? And there's different needs for everyone. We talk about choosing you. But I say choose you anyway, right? Some people have to isolate to recharge. Some people need kind of like extra love at this point. Some people need just kind of breaks or whatever it is, right? And to your point, Erica, it's hard to really communicate that sometimes, right? And to get into the habit of communicating that. You mentioned earlier just about, you know, unlearning certain things, right? And we have to unlearn these narratives, right? Or at least for a part of a time, right? It's this season right now, this is where I am. And being able to not only identify but also communicate it and also live that out, right? And to the no peace, it is hard sometimes, you know, saying no to your loved ones because you want to. You genuinely want to do that thing that they ask you to. But you have to check in with you first. One of the things I've actually started doing is, if someone asked me something, instead of saying yes immediately, because that's what I normally would do because I'm the helper, right? You know, you're just so quick to say, yeah, of course, I got it, you know, I'm gonna help you, you know, either I'll check in with you later, or if it's like a weekend plan, a lot of times on Sundays is like my self-care Sunday. I'm like, I'll check in Sunday morning to see how I feel like self, are you up for that today? You know, and being very intentional, you have to be intentional about you. And I think that as women, and even specifically as women of color, as black women, we're not as intentional about us, right? And what our needs are, because we put everyone's needs before ours. But it's time for that to change. It's time for us to choose us, you know, moving forward and whatever that looks like. So I think that the first part of this, you know, even when it comes to healing, is what does choosing you look like, right? When people say, you know, choose you, I'm gonna choose me, what does that mean? And what does that mean today? Cause it could look different tomorrow and it could look different next month and it can look different next year, right? But yeah, it's, you have to choose you. Like that's when you do choose you, I think that that's really when healing really, really is not beginning, but in play, right? So yeah. But as we started talking about students of color, people of color, the black and brown community, I want to direct this question to Tania and Clinisha. There's a lot of stigma about mental health in the black community, right? And as we know, healing is a big part of mental health, right, when we talk about that emotional healing piece. For you, Clinisha, even as a therapist, as a psychologist, but just as a person of color, as a black woman, and Tania, you know, just navigating different struggles, healing and everything, how has that been for you with the stigma in the black community and really pushing towards your healing process as we're talking about it looking different, right? And not maybe being received by your family or friends or people in that community because it's like, you know, depression doesn't exist. It's like, you'll be all right, you know? Pray about it, you know, or whatever the case is, right? What did that look like for you all, navigating true healing, being black women? For me, it was very difficult. For one, like you said, putting you first is not popular in the black community, especially for black women, it's like, especially once you start having kids, it's like, you are a wife now, you're a mom now, that is, you put everything else behind you and you just grind and you just do what you need to do for your family and your kids. And so it was never a thing. And then again, for me, I grew up in a very religious household. So I grew up seeing so many different dynamics where people I knew I could point out needed healing, but their healing was, go pray, you know? You need to pray about it. Or it was going to someone in the church who was assigned to the marriage committee or assigned to the women's committee and you talk to her and she'll tell you because she's been married 30 years or she came out of this and she used to be depressed. So it was never an option for me to get help officially. And when I remember when I started questioning it at a young age and reaching out, saying I needed professional help, I remember being told, you just need to pray more. You're not praying enough. I'm like, I'm praying all the time. We're in church literally six days out of the week. And it just, the stigma, I didn't get, I got very little support from the black and brown community in terms of getting professional help, reaching out and that it took years, it took years for me to actually say I need the support service and I'm gonna reach out because it really was me crossing the lines of everything that I was brought up believing that was an option for me. For one, we don't think that we can afford it. Two, we don't think that it's necessary because we're made to believe that we're weak and that we should be able to carry this burden of whatever you're going through because the people before us carried way more than we're carrying now. There's no way you could feel more of a burden than what your mom or your grandmother went through. So for you, this is nothing without people, even for myself, my own family, not even really knowing the things that I was suffering from, the trauma that I've experienced. They didn't know the level of pain that I was caring. So for them to even say, you've got, just pray, figure it out. It's gonna focus on your family. It was very detrimental to me. And when I did eventually go out and get help, I was really at a breaking point. Like, literally, my therapist at the time said that I don't know how you have been, how you made it here today because I was holding on to just a very little thread and thank God that I had my children at the time that kept me going because I didn't focus on me. I was just burying my life and my kids. So the stigma definitely, it does a lot more harm than good. And thankfully now that by education and awareness, raising awareness about these important topics and the availability of black and brown therapists in our community is really helping to change that narrative. I would agree with a lot of the points that Tania raised. Something that's coming up for me is more about how mistrust of practitioners in the medical community in black and brown communities has perpetuated the stigma or has created the stigma, has perpetuated the resistance to get mental health services when needed. There's no trust. I don't wanna come in here and tell this stranger my likely white person, right? My issues, I don't know what they're gonna say. I don't know what they're gonna do with them. I don't wanna be judged. I don't wanna be persecuted. I don't wanna be punished. I don't wanna be hurt. I've been hurt enough. And it's not for me. So I think it's a double-sided coin. And that mistrust has to be validated. It comes from a history that has shown us that it's happened. And so in terms of me getting into this field and trying to counter some of that with my presence or some of the other work that I'm now doing in terms of my family, I think it's taken some work and some advocacy because it's really hard to convince someone who's a part of a history that has witnessed harm being done by professionals that that's not gonna happen again. It's like telling someone to put your hand over the stove and we promise you won't get burned this time. How do I know? And so leading people to that, reinforcing that, even as a black therapist myself has been very, very difficult. And so I think a lot of the work that I do now and get to do now actually helps to sort of raise that awareness more than what I was able to do in session or sort of more connected to the therapy community, if you will. There's not a lot of black psychologists. I think it's like 10% maybe in the country. That's like extremely low and there's a reason for that. Programs are too expensive, they're very long. People don't have the resources to be able to commit themselves to do that, to get a doctorate degree in psychology. And so there's that as well. But some of the things that I've shared with my family or friends personally who are of color, they don't really buy into some of it. They don't know everything. And of course no, we don't all know everything. So I'm always sort of in the middle because I'm trying to defend the field. But I'm also like, yeah, you're right. We don't know everything. And actually that study that's on depression in blacks is not generalizable. There weren't enough participants in the research study. Cultural considerations is a appendix in the back of the DSM. It's probably only about this big. I mean, then my mind starts really going. And so I'm always on both sides of the coin. But what I have relied on to sort of keep pushing against it is my belief and my faith that God has me here for a reason to be a vehicle of change and to live out my purpose and to just help in any form and fashion that I can. I don't really care about the titles or the degrees or anything. But if I can stand in the gap of myself and another student who's struggling, then I'm gonna step in the best way that I can and help that healing process. No, just to kind of normalize experience. I just want to add to one of the things that you, a point that you brought out about the mistrust in terms of getting help. I think a lot of, we have to acknowledge the fact that so many people have been harmed by people who have assumed the role of people who've gone to school for this trade, especially within the black community because we're taught to rely on the church, the pastor or different people that hold position in church for help and counseling. When there's people who really need help on a professional level. So if you need help on a professional level and you go to your church and you're getting counseling from someone who is not licensed, who just feels like they know how to talk to people, a lot of times, the harm that takes place throughout that transaction leads to mistrust. And it leads to people saying, I will never do this again. In reality, you haven't done it yet. You haven't done it. You haven't done it on a professional level. Your pastor, unless he has his doctorate degree in counseling, he may not be the best person to counsel you if you're suffering from depression or if you have a mental illness or those different things. He may want to help you. He may want to guide you and give you advice but he is not your therapist. And I think those, I know for myself personally, I was damaged by that. By people who thought they knew how to counsel me and they didn't. And if anything, it set me back years because it led to so much more distrust. And when I did start it reaching out to professionals to say, are they gonna do what happened when I was in church? Like is this gonna be similar to that experience? So I think we definitely have to acknowledge the harm that has been done by people who have stepped into that role without really having the qualifications for that. Sure. And your pastor, a pastor's in two roles, at least two roles, right? Like he's a leader in this community that you belong to. So what I was saying before about like therapists, we get to be like separate from your lives so we can take a bigger view. That's gonna be harder for your pastor to do because he's connected to your life in other ways. And I think even when you then walk into a mental health professional's office, there's still, you still might get your hand burned. There's still a risk of harm because every therapist is somewhere on their own journey of healing from racism and sexism and homophobia. And so it's like those therapists are people too and they're still doing harm. Sometimes unintentionally, sometimes like really blatantly, there's still a lot of people who are practicing like sexual orientation change efforts, like today. Absolutely, thank you. And as we're talking just a lot, just about healing. And today's theme being about healing and hope. Has there ever been a time where you felt that healing was hopeless and who or what changed your perspective? I mean, I can jump in here. I definitely felt there was a time where healing was hopeless. Since I was a kid, I remember struggling with depression and just low self-worth and insecurities. And it was really, it got to a really bad point when I was in high school, where I started trying to end my life. I really started, I was taking pills and I was cutting myself, I was cutting my wrist. I had written a note to end it because I didn't think I was ever gonna get past that moment. I didn't think that I was ever gonna be able to address my healing or that people just noticed me. I felt like I was just fading away. And when I felt that I had this one friend that realized she's seen, we were going to school together, she was a year under me and she's seen, happened to see my wrist and she grabbed me and she was like, what are you doing? Like, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? Like, what's going on? Like, talk to me, talk to me. Like, I want you to, like, I don't want you to do that. And her just, she from that point on, she would call me every day. She would check up on me in school. And just having that one person that said, I want you to live, you know, we were the same age. She'd be like, what do we need to do? What do I need to do to help you? I'm like, she literally, you couldn't do anything for me. You live at home, I live at home. Like, what can you offer me? But it was just her genuine compassion and just showing me like, I want you to make it. Like, I want you to live. I don't want you to do what you're trying. I don't want you to end your life. But just that feeling, that hopelessness, that is a very real thing. And even though I made it through that stage as I got older, once I moved on, had my kids, I buried those feelings. I still struggled with that. I just buried it in motherhood and just being busy. And I got my kids, my kids were young. You know, my husband was working all the time. And I just, I busied myself so much in my kids and raising them and being so involved in the school system and doing all these different things because I didn't want to focus on me. I didn't want to, I didn't want to face that I still had these issues that I was still broken. I didn't want to face that. And I can remember one incident that I had went to a girl's night in. One of my friends was like, you know, we're gonna get you out of the house. We're doing a girl's night out this weekend. We're gonna go to a hotel. It was like six of us. Let's go to a hotel. We're gonna get to me out. We're gonna get you out of the house or whatever. And I went with them to mind you. I was like, at this point, I was really struggling. Really struggling. It was just a weekend. I was having a hard time. And we were all sitting in this hotel room and we're all like chatting. Everybody's laughing, joking, whatever. And they got to me and they was like, Tania, why are you so quiet? So I just, I pulled up this poem that I have wrote like the night before. And it was basically about me taking pills and not wanting to wake up. And they stopped and they were just like, oh my God, Tania, you didn't tell us. Like we didn't, we would have never known that you were struggling like this. And it just changed the whole vibe of the evening but it was so great that in that moment, those women really like rallied around me and was like, how can we support you? We're so sorry that we didn't know or that you didn't feel like you can trust us and tell us this. Like how can we support you? What can we do to help you? And that kind of started leading me to start saying, you know what, maybe I should get a little, I need help on a professional level because girlfriends are great and that's all great but I knew that I didn't really start getting real help until I actually started going to therapy on a regular basis for a while. Sounds like women's saves your life a couple of times. Definitely, definitely. Thanks for sharing that, it's powerful. I think we all get caught up in that numbing, like trying to stay busy so we don't slow down so we don't get quiet. I see so many people do, I mean, I did it all the time for years without realizing it. I loved being alone but I didn't wanna be alone with myself. So if I was alone, I was working or doing a chore or just numbing out in front of the television and it took me a long time to realize that I was never really present for my life. I couldn't handle being present. And now, I don't know how. Therapy, journaling, years of work. I love being alone and with my thoughts and quiet and every time I recognize that it's like I get, I almost say a little prayer like I'm so grateful that I can be here in this moment in my body and just feel okay because I feel like it's actually incredibly hard. Definitely. I think it's really easy to forget, you even have thoughts after a while. I just have to do list. It's a task list. That's all. Now I hear Siri telling me what I need to do but you all brought up some really interesting perspectives and journeys. I guess one of the things that I'm looking at now with regards to healing and hope is the recent passing of my father-in-law. I would say that's where I am now actively trying to heal and grieve. Still very early on. It's not even been two months but he had been a part of my life since I was, again, it's like 16 years old easily and that noise really does a lot to sort of like numb but in the moment you feel like you're doing what it takes to go on, to push forward. It's almost like a strength-based approach or thought but I think at some time it can be really harmful and so last night actually, I guess probably reflecting on doing this podcast. Thanks, Elaine. I had some time to myself to think about it and I actually was like going through his Facebook page and processing and then it kind of just set in like, oh my goodness, you are still struggling with this. This is like a huge life change. How are you doing? What do you need to do for yourself and why haven't you checked in with yourself in so long? Cause I'm just like on, I don't know, like on autopilot I guess. Survival. Yeah, survival. At the same time though, it's like, is this helpful, am I healing or have I just sort of like decided to bypass a lot of this grief and I check in and I do all of these other things at different times but there's also this potential of like handling this in a better way and that I don't necessarily need to be like healing balled up in a corner. So then that feels weird too, right? Because you judge yourself based on what you think healing should look like. And so I feel like right now I'm in a healthy space. I'm very sad that he's gone. I realize I haven't addressed a lot of the grief or I'm getting to address those things but at the same time it's like maybe this is healing. Maybe this is just where I am and is that okay? Does healing always have to look miserable, feel extremely painful, debilitating. I don't think so. Right, but we do judge ourselves around them, right? No? Am I alone in this? Come on guys. What do you judge yourself? Give me the session. No, I think healing can be joyful at times and light and liberating. And I think sometimes it's like miserable falling to pieces. And then sometimes it's just super boring and like mundane. Yeah, like let's get through this. I feel like when I was going to my therapy sessions I would have days where I would go and literally cry and just cry through the whole session and then some sessions I would go in and I would be happy and we would talk and we'd make plans for the future. And then some other days I would go in and be like, do I really have to be here today because like... I don't wanna deal with this. I don't wanna talk about it. You know, last week was really happy and now we gotta dig deep again and I just don't really wanna go there. So I feel like it definitely changes but it was all definitely a part of the process. The ups and downs. The ups and downs of it was definitely a part of it and necessary. But you see there's so much judgment in where you are in that journey. A lot of criticisms. You really have to trust the process. We say this but there's so many things that we say but we actually have to do. We lie into it. Right, trust the process. We have to actually trust where we are, sit with where we are and be content with where we are, right? But in the healing process, when we have a level of clarity, I think that's where some of the joy comes in, right? Because we like to call things. Like that is that, you know? But when we can't call it, we're like, I don't even know what I feel. I don't know how I feel. So that, you know, there's frustration to that because we wanna be able to put something to something, right? But I think when we have a sense of clarity and I feel that when you took that time, right? To really sit with yourself and sit with your thoughts and you're just like, yeah, I'm really hurt. I'm really sad, you know? But this is reality, right? And getting to that point and giving yourself that point of clarity where you're just like, I'm also happy that I'm in this space just to your point too, Erica. About being able to be at a certain point with yourself, right? Because only we know what we've gone through, right? Only we know all the stuff that we've gone through. Our girlfriends don't know all of it, you know? They only know a piece of it. They only know what we will allow them to see. And that's kind of, I mean, the beauty of it in a way, right? Where it's like, I control what you see of me, right? But in your mind, your mind knows, you know, all of it, right? But sometimes you don't recognize that you even know all of that because to a point earlier when you're like, we even have thoughts at a certain point, right? Because we don't sit with it. It's kind of like, we have to keep moving. We have to keep doing. And you have 10,000 a day at least. Thoughts? That's what research shows, yes. 10,000? 10,000 thoughts a day. Now that's gonna bug me. I'm gonna be thinking like, wait, what am I thinking right now? That was only a hundred and five, right? Exactly, right? Now that's probably gonna psych me out at this point because I'm gonna be more mindful of my thoughts. Probably the numbers though. That's good. I'm probably doing it for a numeric purpose. I'm like, I was just trying to count them. 1087 thoughts? Awesome. Well, before we wrap up and before we close, I wanna definitely close on a more hopeful note, right? Not that this all wasn't hopeful because it's part of the process. I mean, this is so important. I do wanna touch on what you said earlier in the beginning, Tania, just about healing being a process and we're not healed, right? We're healing, we're continuously healing because we can heal from something but as a whole, we're continuously healing, right? We can heal from something that happened but then something else can happen tomorrow, right? That we need to heal from. So understanding and giving ourself grace. I think that that's so important and that's something that we lack a lot of times. Like we're being really hard on ourself. We're like, this happened eight years ago. Why am I still struggling with this, right? But you have to give yourself grace because that's where you are, you know? And a lot of times, you know, as women, we say, I know I should have been over this already or I should be over this. Or someone else tells you to be over it. That too, yeah. Yeah, and then it's like, but I'm not, right? And really sitting with that and giving yourself grace to say, this is where I am in this process and that's okay because that's real, right? Because if you're just kinda like, okay, I'm gonna get over it, you never really got over it. You're just saying that, right? But to end on a more hopeful note, as we talk about healing and hope because there's that intersectionality between the two, what or who gives you hope? I'm just, I'm not gonna name a specific person. I think just people, people in general give me hope. Just watching people be compassionate, noticing when they're like taking a risk and being a little vulnerable or being really authentic. Like people are just self-expressed, just putting it all out there. That gives me a lot of hope. Just watching people be kind to each other. Okay, I said I wasn't gonna name specific people, but my students, my students give me a lot of hope because I challenge them. I ask them to really take a look at themselves and be on that journey. So that they can actually be a healing space for their clients. And they really show up and they take a hard look at themselves and they ask tough questions and they discover capabilities they didn't know they had. And yeah, I'm really proud of them and they give me hope. They inspire me. I think for me, I go back to my faith and being able to witness other people's testimonies. Like I've seen not only in therapy space but just in my personal life, people go through some really difficult, crazy, challenging experiences and the resiliency is just amazing that we can take on so much and have a transformative experience start in one place and end up in a completely different place. That's just amazing. And that's enough of a reason to sort of just like get up and try again, dust myself off, try something different, do it in another way, think about it in another way. That's really helpful for me. It gives me a lot of hope. Also my kids, they're young, one in four, but my four year old in particular like has a very unique way of showing me my imperfections. That keeps you really humble but it also keeps you hopeful. And they are just so pure and innocent and unfiltered and that's so helpful because it's refreshing and it's like, wow, I can put on my best self today because I'm modeling for this individual and then they're showing me whether it works or not all the time. So that's really helpful for me and it gives me a lot of inspiration and push to keep it going, keep a good fight. Awesome. I definitely just have to note that as we're talking about being mindful of our thoughts when you said, dust yourself off and try again, the like Aaliyah music video just like came on in my head and I was just kind of like dancing and I'm like, you're telling me. You're telling me. You're aging. All right, all right. Or our age. Right, right. That counts as a few thoughts, by the way. Right. There we are. Tania. I think for me, definitely my faith but I also have to, I've finally gotten to the point where I look at my own journey and my own journey gives me hope because there was a time when I literally didn't want to be here and I didn't think I would be here. So when I look back over my life and I look back over the things that I've gone through and where I'm at now in this place of healing on my journey, that gives me hope because on those really tough days, I'm like, you got this girl. Like, look at you. Like I have this in my drawer at work in the office. I have a picture of myself at my previous job when I was like really happy with what I was feeling in that moment. I was really proud of myself and I took a picture of myself. I keep it in my drawer at work and it says, hey girl, and I look at it throughout the day and it's like, girl, look at you. Like, you know, because there's not a lot of times in life for myself personally speaking where people was like, Tania, get it, like go or you got this or let's go. So I have to remind myself of that, you know? And I do have a really strong foundation of faith. So that pushes me to say, we're gonna do better and it's gonna be better. And then like you said as well, clinician, looking at my children, my children, my husband has been a part of my journey. I've been very transparent because I feel like as well back in the days, like I didn't see that transparency growing up. So I felt like I needed that for my kids, you know? So that transparency has really brought us closer but it also has motivated them to do so much better, and it motivated me to provide a better space for them and to push them and to make sure that I can do everything within my power to help them be successful. So definitely myself and watching my children just do amazing things. I love that you said yourself. Because we should all inspire ourselves. That's awesome. And I have a Polaroid in my car too of myself from like a moment where I just like to look at it and just remember how I felt and who I was in that moment. Yeah. It took me a long time to get there. It really did, you know? So I have to keep those reminders, you know? Like, you got this. Look at yourself, be happy what you look like, what you look like, where you are. Petrol and self-harm. Yes, petrol and self-harm. You got this, girl. Your own inspiration. Yes. That's real. That is so real. About where you were and where you are now and really that being hopeful because you've come such a long way, you know? And again, even from this and what you've shared we don't even know a quarter of it, right? Like we just, we hear it and we're like, you know, kind of filling in those gaps and kind of imagining, right? Because if we don't share those same experiences, all we can do is fill in the gaps the best that we can, right? Even if we do share those experiences to some extent we're filling them in with our own experiences essentially, right? But really that's a great point. Really looking at yourself of where you were to where you are now. And I always say progress is progress, right? And a step forward is just that a step forward, right? And we really need to sit in that and we really need to focus on that. Because as we know, there's so many, you know, negative things that we can be worried about, right? Or we can worry about how far we haven't come, right? Instead of looking at how far we have come. So thank you for that. Any last thoughts before we close out? Be hopeful. Seriously. Be hopeful. If not for any other reason, but for yourself, right? Awesome. Again, ladies, thank you so much for joining me here today and really talking about this, not only important topic, but this vulnerable topic, right? And for bringing your whole selves to this podcast today it's really appreciated. And I'm sure that our viewers have been inspired and encouraged and motivated and really giving them hope as they move forward on their healing journey and their process. And so all of our viewers, all of our viewers we just wanna say thank you for tuning in. We hope that you found this helpful and we hope that you too will have a healing journey that is continuous and we thank you for tuning in. I'm Yulema Felican and this is the Diversity in Action podcast.