It’s another week of our illuminating For the Love of Being Seen and Heard series. We’re talking to people that are doing the life-changing work of helping each other see and hear each other–to see and hear communities that we are not a part of, to see and hear voices that have been traditionally silenced or marginalized, or even to see and hear ourselves in honest and affirming ways. Our guest this week is a powerful advocate, but with a tender heart who works in so many spaces that matter: feminism, racial justice, the arts, activism, self care and healing. Rachel Cargle is a writer and entrepreneur who has created powerful online learning spaces. She’s a regular contributor to Cultured Magazine, The Cut and Atmos. She’s been featured in the New York Times and Forbes as well. Her work centers around an invitation to pursue healing and growth, as well as re-imagining how systems that no longer serve us can be dismantled or changed to embrace justice and liberation. Her belief is that every one of us has power–the power to unlearn, relearn and reimagine–taking ourselves out of stuck spaces and creating places for understanding for everyone. Her thoughts on feminism are so insightful as she looks at how a well intentioned movement for the progress of women leaves out key communities and how reimagining how to see and hear the needs of every woman toward better conditions for all women. This powerful discussion centers around:
An explanation and brief history of the feminist movement and how communities of color often are left behind in this work
How the culture, both inside and outside of black communities often stereotype black women as workers, as strong, as able to bear pain differently than their white counterparts; and Rachel’s work to help black women feel cared for–which leads to an amazing ripple effect on families, organizations and communities
The Loveland Foundation, which gives black women access to black therapists, to self-care and to other resources that are so often not readily or affordably available
Simple ways that women can get involved in the conversation to become clear about this intersection of feminism and race by hearing and telling truths, and to engage in knowledge, empathy, and action.
Sometimes the truth can be hard to process, but when there is intentionality in how we exist in our efforts toward benefitting the condition of women, the result is liberation for all women.
We’re back for more of our Being Seen and Heard series! In a time where it feels like we are struggling to really see and hear one another, there are some bright lights who make it their mission to help one another understand each other a little better. Our guest today, Sara Cunningham, the founder of FreeMomHugs.org, is one amazing example of what can happen when we really see people for who they are and begin to hear their stories. Sara was on the show right at the beginning of her journey with Free Mom Hugs, and now the org—which started with the simple idea of attending Pride parades and holding up a sign that said “Free Mom Hugs,”—has become a national and world wide phenomenon. She uses her own experience as a guide to how she advocates, and is absolutely passionate about connecting with faith, civic, business, and government leaders in efforts to make the world a kinder safer place for our LGBTQIA+ family.
Sara and Jen touch on these topics:
Sara’s roots in conservative evangelicalism and how she found herself moving “from the church to the pride parade” after she reckoned with her son’s admission that he was gay and going to live in his identity
The stories of people who, after coming out, lost their families, were kicked out of their churches, and felt completely alone and found solace and comfort in the simple act of a mom extending a hug
Sara’s son Parker’s (as well as her own) journey of self-discovery and then coming to live authentically after seeing others, who had come out in faith environments, survive and thrive after loss
How we can affect change with our voices as it relates to legislation that targets the LGBTQIA+ community
We’re back with our series For The Love of Being Seen and Heard. There is so much right now floating around in culture about what happens to us when we don’t feel like we’re either being seen or heard. For most of us, the longing to be understood by others is a core need. And for some groups or communities, including the disabled community, the task of being seen, heard and understood is more challenging, and we’ll hear why as we talk with disabled scholar-practitioner Dr. Amy Kenny. Dr. Kenny has made it her life’s work to shed light on and help clear up misunderstandings around the abled community’s view of the disabled. Her latest book, My Body Is Not a Prayer Request does a deep dive into one of those communities—places of faith—and the particular biases and unintentional ableism propagated there. Amy compassionately offers insight and solutions toward understanding in a new way.
Jen and Dr. Kenny discuss:
Common misunderstandings that abled people have toward disabled people plus words and actions they can learn from disabled people toward connectedness
The “invisible qualities of God’s divine nature” and how we might be able to accept imperfections in nature, even considering them beautiful, but are unable to accept or find beauty in the imperfections of our bodies
“Inspiration porn” a phrase that relates to the overall view of disabled folks being the poster children for overcoming—putting them in the position of feeling as if they are objects on a pedestal and that their sole purpose in life is to inspire the abled
The challenges around access for disabled people and how to think differently about the right of access for all people
There’s hope in this conversation, and Amy guides us to a place where we can unlearn some ableist tendencies and learn more about a community that has much to contribute to our world.
To be Black in America means living at several different intersections. Writer and thinker Marcie Alvis-Walker joins For the Love Podcast to share the inspiration behind her beautiful, thought-provoking space called Black Coffee with White Friends. Marcie shares about her experience having to code switch as she grew up—she’d have to adapt her language, her likes and dislikes based on the group she was with—and what it’s like for her family to navigate the world being members of different races. Marcie leads us to think about what it means to “celebrate” holidays like 4th of July, Memorial Day, and Columbus Day when your skin isn’t white, and how siblings of different races can use their influence to help their Black siblings.
Stories come in many forms: in the reports we see in the news, the TV shows and movies that light up our screens, from books to toys and so many other places. New York Times bestselling author Brit Bennett is here to discuss the ways that Black stories are told and the ripple effects they have across American culture. She shares insight into her life as a young author and how she’s used her writing as a way to figure out the way she feels about different topics—like what it means to “perform race,” which she wrote about in her latest book called The Vanishing Half. Brit dives into the stories she’s looking to create in the world—ones that show the human experience of what it means to struggle and the ways we experience hope and joy and love.
What does it mean to build the world in a way where every single person, no matter their color, gender, ability or religion has access to security and opportunity? That’s a question inventor and entrepreneur Jessica O. Matthews has spent much of her life asking. Jessica is the CEO of Uncharted Power, a company looking to build sustainable infrastructure in the world—which Jessica launched when she was just twenty-two years old! She shares the legacy of curiosity and hard work her parents passed onto her, and why having countless hmm moments leads to that one a-ha! moment. Jessica and Jen hash out the opportunities the world has left on the table of innovation and why Jessica’s place at several intersections—a Black woman who’s a dual US/Nigerian citizen—helps her recognize developments that are still possible for parts of the world that typically don’t receive investment. Because as Jessica says: “I have the ability to not see the world as it is but to see the world as it should be. That’s something that would not have happened not only if I wasn’t just Nigerian American, but if I wasn’t a woman of color.”
Having access to learning is a portal to opportunity, a key to unlocking your dreams and leaving doors open for those who come after you. That’s what education has been for Dr. Monique Morris, an author, scholar, justice educator and die-hard Prince fan who, in sixth grade, found herself at a fork in the road. She got into a fight with a boy who’d provoked her. And instead of suspending her, expelling her, or arresting her and pushing her away, Dr. Morris’ teachers reconnected her to her learning community—a key moment in the life of a girl who’d been dealing with sexual abuse and violence in her home. This moment of restoration paved the path for Dr. Morris to go on to earn a doctorate in education. Others in Dr. Morris’ situation haven’t been as fortunate, and find their studies interrupted by disciplinary action and a descent down the slippery slope known commonly as the “school to prison pipeline,” where they are pushed out of the education experience and criminalized by administrators. Dr. Morris uses her own education and experience to advocate for Black and brown students, encouraging schools to look at themselves as places of healing and restoration, not punishment, so that more students of color can become the scholars they are meant to be. Because no person is “unrecoverable,” and the important“freedom work of education begins when teachers ultimately see themselves as healers.
Cultivating a healthy mind is essential for our entire well-being. Psychologist and theologian Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes joins us For the Love of Black Lives series to help us unpack how the anxiety and trauma carried through generations of Black Americans affects the flourishing of communities of every stripe (and newsflash: the trauma we experience can be passed down through four generations after us). For so long, Black women have been praised as “strong,” and they absolutely are. But when we only view Black women as unshakeable “superwomen,” we take away their right to vulnerability, their right to care for themselves, and their right to be cared for by someone else. And instead, we hand them a standard that’s impossible to achieve—which, as anyone knows who’s tried to achieve something that can’t be attained, causes shame and depression. Dr. Chanequa describes the effects of living in a community where anxiety is normal for everyone. As she says, “I was never taught to think of what I had as anxiety, even though now I realize, on both sides of my family, there’s anxiety.” She explains why it’s vital for Black women and men to have access to Black mental healthcare providers, so clients can feel truly seen and heard, and receive the true care they need. And above all, Dr. Chanequa reminds us that every Black woman, child, and man is worthy of self-care. They are worthy to notice and treat their pain and anxiety, so they can flourish in wholeness.
Black culture is central to American culture—we simply don’t have America without having the Black experience, born of slavery and systemic racism and white supremacy, of physical and mental and emotional pain. But through generations, Black women and men have passed down stories given from their mothers and grandmothers. They’ve cooked and sang and danced and played the most beautiful music. They’ve written and dreamed and created. Black culture has inspired us for hundreds of years as it has woven its way into the tapestry of American life. And today, we’re going to talk about the richness of it all with Dr. Tanisha C. Ford, a cultural critic and professor of history at CUNY. Dr. Ford shares the artists and icons that shaped her world as a young Black woman growing up (everyone from her own mother and her leather jackets, to the music of Aretha Franklin and TLC, Roberta Flack and Mary J. Blige). Dr. Ford shows us how looking deeply at culture helps us see the threads of politics and society woven within. We learn why cultural appropriation is tied to systems of exploitation. We see why we need to shift our eyes away from history books that haven’t centered important Black pioneers like Anna Julia Cooper and Ida B. Wells, why everyone needs to read words from thinkers like James Baldwin and Audre Lorde. We see how Shirley Chisholm paved the way for Kamala Harris. We see the beauty and strength of artists like Nina Simone and Billie Holiday, and how they birth artists like Alicia Keys and Janelle Monáe. And through it all we see how new forms of technology have carried Black voices to new corners of the world for decades, planting the seeds for social media to blossom into a powerful force for the change that we’re seeing today.
Though many of our country’s systems of care desperately need an overhaul, there’s one system in particular that could improve greatly to help Black Americans: healthcare. It’s unimaginable to any of us that we might get lesser care, for example, if we were giving birth to our first child. But black women find themselves in these situations often–even those who wouldn’t be considered to have less means–where healthcare professionals aren’t listening to their needs or taking time to understand their health concerns–and this sometimes leads to disastrous consequences, including deaths that could have been avoided. These healthcare gaps are part of an unhealthy loop that starts with a huge imbalance in economic resources, which leads to a lack of access to healthy food, gyms, nutritional education, and as our guest today says, “places that are considered well.” Christina M. Rice is a wellness expert and chief experience officer of OMNoire, a social wellness community for Black women and women of color dedicated to living well. Christina shares about her own wellness experiences as a Black woman, and how finding yoga helped her realize the need for wellness spaces where Black women and women of color feel seen and welcome. Christina describes why it’s so important for everyone to prioritize the health of Black women and men and that tackling the issues of health care inequity may be daunting, but we must speak up and do our part to amplify voices of color so that Black bodies are allowed to flourish.
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