Good morning, Precious. How are you doing Sunshine?
Speaker 2:I'm good, I'm good, I'm good. How are you?
Speaker 1:I'm good. I'm good, I had a good morning this morning.
Speaker 2:So Me too, you look energized, energized. Yes, I like to ease into my morning. So, as a non-morning person, having lots of runway to my morning is good.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's needed. You know that's. I think the most beautiful thing is when you start to support what your needs are and not what people tell you you should be to maximize the best way that you need to be, and yada, yada, it's like this works for me. This is what works for me to bring out the best way that you need to be, and yada, yada, it's like this works for me. This is what works for me to bring out the best in me. So absolutely.
Speaker 2:this is why I understand the teenage brain and I get why school should not start at nine o'clock. Even their teachers at least this one is it is it my freshest at that point in the? I tend to be fresher later on in the afternoon and so I always joke that if I built a school it would go from three to midnight. Yeah, it would work. Three pm to midnight it would work. I'm like let's do it.
Speaker 1:It would work. It would work Like, let's do it, it would work. It would work. Well, I am here today with an amazing human being. She is no other than Adrienne Afua-Codette, and if you are from Ottawa, you know who I am talking about, and if you don't, you need to go and inform yourself. Welcome to the Lift One Self podcast, adrienne. I'm so thankful you finally accepted and you're here with us.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me. I'm so glad I figured it out and did the same and finally got on.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 1:I love it, I love it. I love it. Let's enter into a breath together, and I'll invite the listeners also to partake in this. I'm going to ask Adrienne to close her eyes. You, the listener, if you're driving, please don't do that, because we need our streets safe. Yet you can still listen to the prompting of the breathing exercise while you are doing your activities. So, adrian, I'll ask you to close your eyes and begin breathing in and out through your nose and bringing your awareness to your breath, watching your breath go in and out through your nose, not trying to control it, just observe it, and any sensations or feelings that come up, just let them come up, while still staying with your breath.
Speaker 1:You're in a safe space to feel, to release, to open up. Keep your awareness on watching your breath, allowing yourself to drop into your body, releasing whatever sensations or feelings, and just staying with your breath while still staying with your breath, while still staying with your breath, feeling more of a deep relaxation.
Speaker 2:When you're ready.
Speaker 1:Gently open your eyes.
Speaker 2:Right, how's your heart doing? My heart is lovely, just a nice morning. It's my favorite way to get up too. So, um, you know I'm a wake and baker, so it's, uh, my routine to sort of spend some time getting anchored to what my day potentially can be, and it's where I do most of my thinking and creative, have my most creative moments it's usually early, even though I don't see myself as a morning person, embracing what morning possibilities exist in the mantra that people give about early birds and getting worms and stuff like that, I always thought it was something related to what you had to do to prepare for work.
Speaker 2:Since being introduced to the sort of thing that helped me get my focus, which is the declaration of the international black summit, and becoming a facilitator of that conversation, you know our practice was always to start your day with a sort of moment like similar that that she guided me through, and then you know reading the declaration itself and then kind of pulling from that, what did you hear for your day that you know is inside of your own vision?
Speaker 2:And you know, doing all of that has become a routine for at least 20 years, and at first I do most things, as my life has demonstrated. I do it through a routine structure that sort of allows me to regulate my discipline and my self-regulation, and then it becomes meaningful, and then it becomes meaningful, and when things become meaningful for me they become embedded practices, like breathing. I have to do it. There's been cycles of things that are like that for me, and you know it doesn't mean I stay with the same practice forever, but when I stay with it, I stay with it through. You know, I think that's what my athletic career taught me An ability to sort of regulate your mind with the discipline of your body. And so I've come back to some of those practices, definitely later in life to sort of save myself.
Speaker 1:I hear that For the new listeners that may not know Adrian because this podcast goes internationally, can you answer the question of who is Adrian In the spiritual aspect and also in the worldly aspect of career and functions and roles that you do?
Speaker 2:who is adrian. Adrian, at this stage of her life, is probably the fully uh, most fully self-expressed version of herself. Meaning I, I, whatever phases I used to go through that I felt needed an explanation in order for me to go through them and sort of how I want to experience my world no longer require explanation. It's me, it's just who. Either I've come to know myself to be, or people maybe have come to know me, but how I've come to know myself.
Speaker 2:I'm playful and youthful in my mind and spirit and energy. I love to dance and listen to music. I love to be with people, but I also love being alone. I spend lots of time by myself, and that might not be something that people know about me. I like to be in my thoughts and lost in them without fear, and I like to uh.
Speaker 2:There's one distinction that I use most often. That's uh, uh. The exercise of it is what I use most often. It's called there's no out there and uh, anytime that I think there isn't out there, I like to take it as ridiculous as you can take it, so you really isolate it to yeah, no, that's not even out there. That like to take it as ridiculous as you can take it, so you really isolate it to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's not even out there, that's all me, and so I like to believe I'm on a continued practice of owning all that I create and that I'm in a practice of exercise of no matter what my judgment about something might be. If I can see the intent, importance for its possibility, beyond whatever my judgment might be, I can hold my judgment. I think teaching has given me a lot of practice about that and I continue to be in the daily practice of holding my judgments so that we can become and so that we can move as a collective and that I can see where my tribe is, because they give me fuel and energy. So I get lots of energy from the people, but I also am capable of generating that in myself, and I think that's the best way to describe Adrienne today.
Speaker 1:And you mentioned, you're a teacher. Can you let the audience know who your students are and the age that they are?
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm a high school educator. I've been one, if I count just the classroom that kind of educator in the classroom. I've been that for 25 years. As that, teacher of history, law, social justice, equity are the courses that I teach, and I teach to grade 11s and 12s most likely, and on the occasion the youngest grade I typically do teach is grade 10. But I do tend to get the you know, 16, 17, 18-year-olds and love, love when I say I love working with that group particularly.
Speaker 2:And I was an educational assistant for seven years prior to becoming the person in the front of the room. Becoming the person in the front of the room. I did that with a Catholic board for seven years. Then I went to Teachers College at the University of Ottawa and became the sort of you know they say hey, get the education, they give you the big bucks to stand in front. Education, they give you the big bucks to stand in front.
Speaker 2:And it wasn't where I saw myself going to be. I have to admit that out loud. It was probably a place I avoided most frequently, not only just myself as a student, but the thought of being a teacher was not something that I originally thought of. I think my first profession as a child. I was going to be a photographer and I know my first student was my sister, as a person four years younger than me. I had a little blackboard and it had chalk on one side and magnetic alphabet letters on the other side and I used to love to write on the chalkboard and I remember the sort of lessons in helping my sister write her name and do her alphabet, do her alphabet and and her numbers and stuff like that, and I found that you know, I like doing that and there was something about me that children always liked. Now it just just like still now there's children, their energy and my energy. We just don't mix. We know that right off the top, um, but for the children that have the same or attracted energy, like since I was a child, children always were attracted to me. So I was the person who came over and all the kids were always around me and I could be relied on as well to be in charge of a whole bunch of children.
Speaker 2:Nobody saw anything was going to be a problem if Adrian had all the kids controlled, which I always laugh at, I'm like, well, I had no clue. I had no clue what they were thinking. What are these people doing? They left them with me. I'm like, oh gosh.
Speaker 2:And so I noticed that in childhood and I noticed it because I know who adults I was attracted to, and I was attracted to the adults that never treated me like a kid. They treated me like another person. They would intentionally say hello to me and ask me how I felt about things. They'd always notice me and I thought that that was like the coolest thing, and that's probably why some of my parents' friends now that I'm, you know, no longer a kid there are certain of them that I'm still like cool with that. I still hang out with that. I still like really enjoy seeing and we talk the same way we talked like when I was a kid, like straight up and honestly. You know all of that was all cool, and so I like to be that for kids, a person who listens to them.
Speaker 1:So that was my attraction. You do that, and you also, as you said, the subjects that you teach. You're very passionate about advocating, so can you dive into a little bit more where that passion comes from and how long you've been advocating for?
Speaker 2:advocating for. Yeah, it seems like I've been holding space for an opportunity to experience the world in the same way that everybody gets to. As a Black youth since I was one. It was always like a fight to just be fully self-expressed. We just seem like black youth don't ever get permission to to do that and to just be, and I remember the spaces where we got to just be and how amazing it felt.
Speaker 2:And, um, last summer I got a moment to reconnect to. You know, you get older and you forget. Even nostalgia, uh, doesn't always have you. You know, with like really clear, distinct memories that are just like at the touch, you have to have something that like kind of draws that out of you. And this 83 to infinity um installation at the gallery is is like a collision of my 15 year old, 16 year old self and like how it felt to be um a kid when Lenny Puckering decided that he was gonna have blockos every single Sunday, um, from noon until, I think, like four o'clock in the afternoon at confederation park, and it was true, like every black kid in the city was there, and this was something that you didn't ever want to even miss all summer, that's. All you had was the summer, and, um, I remember gathering there and we got to listen to the music we wanted to listen to. We got to be in that space without parental eyes. So you got to practice what whatever maturity looked like to you. You got to just dance and kick it. And so in those early years of hip hop and all of its pillars, it was the full appeal because it came with a sense of freedom as well that you were doing something too anti-social was that? That's all I needed, and so advocating to be like that seemed one of the first ways that you know brought my energy to organizing, and I brought my energy to organizing too, in a sort of traditional kind of way too, the way I saw my parents doing it, where, you know, you gathered, you strategized, you came up with the plan, you executed that plan, and maybe it was protest, maybe it was just going to Caravana.
Speaker 2:I learned nowadays that those are things that are examples of our resistance, and so my parents brought us everywhere, whether it was to meetings, to socials, we were everywhere with them. Like you know, when I get big, that's what I want to be able to do. And then you get big and you learn what happens to old revolutionaries. They get a car loan and a mortgage. They can't be out there. We don't shop here.
Speaker 2:Like you know, the days when I first went to Howard and you know I was in so much glee about just being there and all of the twists and turns and or the challenges of politics and our choices I noticed things and I began to again be attracted to the people who you know. At that time, at that age, yeah, we were willing to take a few different risks than we are now, maybe in later years. And I do remember the upset that I got involved in when Raz Baraka and April Silver our two class presidents, sort of you know we were upset about a choice that the university had made and we felt as students, we had voice to make sure they heard what we were trying to do. And you know, I remember being caught up in the full feeling of it when it was occurring, and just feeling like I'd chosen the right side of history. And then I do remember some of the consequences and I'm like bumped on consequences that we write.
Speaker 2:And you know, coming out of that experience, I wanted more of that and so when I first came home, yeah, that's what we created, more of that, and you know, vincent Gardner, police shooting and a few others and then we created a community group, first to strategize about how would we deal with these issues, but also to educate some of the young men, particularly that we had been confronting, who were angry, and you know we wanted to fill them with something more in in the container than just anger, like we saw. Here's a place we can help you deal with what you're angry about, but what can we teach you and what can you learn? And so we started access the, the African Canadian Educational Services myself, paula White and Kevin Bradley and then to fund it, we called it Party with a Purpose.
Speaker 2:We started throwing parties, so that we could fund what we wanted to do with these youth, and those parties funded trips to New York for the African Street Festival, to New York for the Black Expo, wanted them to see critical mass of black people doing things in a way that, you know, confronted the lie. It's a lie. How did we do all of these things if we were? We're these, all these other things? And we wanted them to have the experiences that showed them. Because some of those experiences showed me and even though I didn't know it at the time, that I had it in me to stand in a way that I feel now I knew those experiences were like food to me. I needed them to be able to sort of make my way through the world, and so you come back and you'd be full of possibility. But then what do you do with it? So we discovered that the events themselves were not the thing it was. What did you do in between them to sort of encourage yourself and others to put that sense of whatever into action in a way that actually builds something in the community, just like many things? You know we're doing this from pure passion. We've got no good sense at all. We're pulling. You know this that da, da, da, da da. We're doing risky things too and that adds to the antisocial thrill that you know, just feeling like you know you're a little off of what other people want to do, so you're adventurous in a way, or just stupid, I'm not sure. And so, you know, people's lives change and Kevin and Paula went in a different direction and I went in a different direction and I went in a different direction and my life at that time too was kind of showing up with a lot of different direction.
Speaker 2:I came home for the summer, I thought, and that summer just never changed. My parents were going through it. My mom myself and Angela were going through it. My mom myself and Angela were going through it and we lived in lots of different places around the city for about two years and then we finally got settled as a family. That getting settled sort of then triggered a series of other things that let me kind of formalize my time. So I graduated from Ottawa U and then I got into Teachers College. I had a job as an EA. I was living as a young adult, you know, living and sharing an apartment with my mom, but you know, I was just living, I was having fun, trust. I still remember the phone call from Kerwin Dugan that said girl, you want to go to Mexico, go to Cuba. We can go four days, three nights for $450 all in. I said that's the airfare, the hotel, the food, let's go.
Speaker 1:Go had the most disposable income of my life and I was absolutely a ridiculous person as far as feeding that impulsive side of myself that I don't like to always acknowledge leads a lot of what I do still yeah, I think a lot of experiences so you can people and I think traveling is the biggest education we can have because you viscerally feel these expressions by connecting with other nervous systems, other foods, other magnetic fields in the earth that all of a sudden it's difficult to put into words, but it becomes your embodiment to be able to express that with other people.
Speaker 2:And you get to see also that when you visit these places and you tell young people certain things, you're not just telling them from this metaphorical way, You're telling them from. I actually saw it. I went and saw it. So the privilege to travel was something that you know I was provided by my parents, and so taking advantage of that in my twenties was something that you know gifted them talents and ways of being and ways of knowing that they can share with the world proudly, because that is the asset it continues to be to the world. And so, you know, I spent time doing that continues to beat to the world, and so, you know, I spent time doing that, and then I got.
Speaker 2:I felt like, though I was kind of throwing myself into the wind though, and so, although my advocacy continues to be that, I was myself finding that you know, advocates don't get paid. You know advocates don't get paid, and I continue to work for the people, and I find myself like every time I went into the Scotiabank and I said, hey, can this rent get paid? With good intentions. And you know, I work for the people and I'm working really hard and it's costing me a little bit more than I had thought so I did some good deeds, Will that be OK? No, they want money. And so I noticed that you now have this moment where you become an adult, where your claim of this youthful way of thinking and being has to end.
Speaker 2:And then you got to get serious, apparently, and so I get to advocate for that as well, because adults, adulthood sucks, and it's the worst decision and choice that was ever forced upon me, this one way of being an adult, and it's the only way you have to give up your childhood likes, and because that's claimed to be immature, and, um, you know, you got to get into this mold now. That is so not a fit, but we'll all try. We'll all try, and then you discover something. So Adrian knew Adrian was never going to work in an office, even though Adrian had figured out a few times that if I don't do things in a particular way, I'm going to end up working in an office, and so I did. I came home, and I was working at a home care, health care, in the accounting office, hating every single minute, every single minute, and so you know. What brought it all together, though, was, just, like I said, this moment where I sat in a room. It was like 500 plus people around me, and I know. I looked at the room, and what I saw was a commitment to self, that each of those persons were called to that space so that they could make a commitment to themselves and finding what it meant to be their vision fulfilled.
Speaker 2:And I kept saying to myself like, uh, there's so many different pieces moving at the same time, so it can't be just one thing. But like what could it be? And those three days I kept like saying to myself it was a fight between those two parts where I'm supposed to have this rational, formal thinking or I'm supposed to just have this free like random, pick it from wherever. And I started writing down. I was like, okay, well, you know, I coach basketball, that's a thing. And you know I started my teaching career. And I was like, okay, that's a thing In the community, and I hadn't yet established Three Dreads and a Bald Head in the way that people know it. And I was like, okay, you know, that's a thing.
Speaker 2:I said, but what ties it all together? And I said, ah, the one thing empowerment through laughter ties it all together, cause that's the one thing that's always been with me, that, um, going back to a previous question, I've always been that kid. I've always been happy laughing, making others laugh, and it's my gas tank, and even when my gas tank is empty, it's like a sign. That might be even funnier, but that's what brought it all together, and so, if I'm any kind of advocate, that lesson also taught me that I have to be that thing. You have to be able to see it, and if you see it in me, then you understand what I'm advocating for now in this version that you take up that space, open and freely giving to it whatever you want to and receiving from it whatever you're open to receiving, staying present and conscious to those gifts that the world is presenting to you so that you can be in action about the things that you think you have the capacity to transform. And so boom, that's kind of it.
Speaker 1:You got here. I'm curious. You went to Howard so you had that experience. Why did you come back to Ottawa and really keep the roots here and not anywhere else? Because you know, back in the day we were creating the excitement. Because you're talking about Kevin and I'm like, oh, off limits. Yes, there was all kinds of things going on that the underage kids could party with the overage kids and in that experience. So we were creating it, but it felt like a rebellion against you know the stiff collar of this city that you can feel like. So my curiosity is how did you manage to stay here and still keep that light Right?
Speaker 2:um, so I mean that that's a that the part of the story that that, uh, is sort of, I guess, the the the sad reality of what took place at that time, for what sort of derailed us was my parents relationship ending and you know, it had it had been ending and and the child we'd lost. Our childhood home over there on in Pineview and we, you know, we're scattered. My sister was away at school, was away at school, my dad was living with me in my dorm at Howard, my mom was here by herself, living in, you know, precarious housing situations, and we did that for like two years, as I said, and then she had been always working and she'd worked at Tunney's Pasture, and she had been always working and she'd worked at Tunney's Pasture, and so on her lunch hour she'd walk the streets around Tunney's Pasture looking for an apartment. And there's always these people who just like seeing, I don't know, it's just their energy right, every place you go to requires you to play first and last, and then whatever that sounds like today, know, security deposit plus, you know first month's rent, whatever. And we didn't have first and last. We had enough between the two of us for first month's rent. That's about it. But this guy, she walked in and he just looked at her, the super. He was like yeah, no, it's cool, I'll take, I'll take the one month. You and your daughter move in. And we, we just moved in with bags, that's all we had.
Speaker 2:So we did that for a while and from out of that same unit she'd move into the next door unit a year later, a two bedroom. So she and I had a two bedroom and she'd end up buying that condo. But that's the resilience of my mother. But all of that was going on at the same time. So I came home for the summer and I was told, like yo, like there's, there's nothing for you to be able to go back. And I did try, trust me, I did try to go back. And that's actually the time when you discover like wow, I actually totally get how somebody could be. You could hear that they went off to college and then, like you get this news report that they got arrested.
Speaker 2:Because the times of my life where I considered crime were all related to trying to stay at Howard and trying to make it financially work. And I remember I had made this understanding that sometimes you got to do the bad to make some good work and trust. So hustled for like a year and a little bit more, trying to stay doing all kinds of madness, and then it just got real and it's like yo, I got to come home. So that's when I came home. Now, again, you're still thinking, you're working to get back because there's something there that you're attached to that you think is what gave you the life that you were feeling then. And now being thrown back here is like maybe some punishment from the universe. Like hey, it was right there for you and all you had to do is grab it. But you got some other sticky shit you didn't deal with. So now you gotta like figure this out. But at first, when it's happening, it doesn't feel great. So I was depressed.
Speaker 2:I was also working all day and all night trying to keep stuff going. So this is the, this is the job. That's not on my LinkedIn account. When I used to work as the operator for the party line Ooh, the 976-8585. That is a real thing and I worked at the party line for like six months from 7 pm to 6 am, and then I was working at the accounting place. I was working at the accounting place Monday to Friday, 8 to 4. So I never was getting any sleep. I was absolutely losing it.
Speaker 2:I was super depressed and an opportunity kind of rolled my way through Yvonne Harper. She offered me a day replacement for one of her EAs at St Bridget Elementary and and I said, okay, I didn't even know what an EA did and I didn't even know what she wanted me to do that day, cause I kind of just sat there in this room for like the whole day. I got paid, and then she did that two more times and then she told me why she did it and she said the guy that's in the job is a black guy and he's leaving to go to teacher's college and she kind of wants to set up somebody else who looks like him to take the job. So she gave me like three practice runs so that when the job posts, you know, I can compete for it. And that's how I became an EA at her school and I started working really closely with these three little girls with um, two with spina bifida and one with cerebral palsy, and I was there like everything for the day.
Speaker 2:I work with them in the classroom, I did their bathrooming, I was with them in the play yard with them at lunch. They were under my care. And that's when I was like them in the play yard with them at lunch. They were under my care. And that's when I was like, okay, there's something to stay here for. And, like I said, I'm charged with like a goal centered, but like when you give it meaning, I'm like I'm all in. Like when you give it meaning, I'm like I'm all in.
Speaker 2:And so I moved with each grade with those girls and time began to pass and going back wasn't going to be possible. So now I had to figure out what did it mean to start from scratch here? And I started from scratch again. And I went back to Ottawa U. I did a continued undergraduate degree that I had actually started three times and completed it this time. That was a big, big goal done.
Speaker 2:And then, when I got that done, my mom was like oh well, now you can go to the teacher's college. And I'm like no, I'm good, I, you know, I got the little piece of paper, I was good with that part. And then she, she just kept at it and, um, I had three, um, two, two previous applications that were not accepted, that were not accepted. And then you know, I just centered the UFO degree and applied a third time and I got in 12th on the waiting list and 11 people said no. And yay, they let Adrian in.
Speaker 2:I was 32 at that point and it was perfect, as I was mature enough to understand what was going on and how to be in as a student who also has a full-time job, how to hustle it, and all those hustle skills came into to total alignment with what you needed to do to make it through university while you're still like you're a big person and you're still working, and you got all these ducks in a row Foster Farm coaching at St Pat's, the basketball team, and all of that will collide to give me another life, in addition to being an educator, which is coaching basketball, uh, basketball. And so, yeah, I found a way to stay not just stay, but like invest myself in my community, the way that lots of people who are still around to tell the story of how they invested in the community so that I could have these same opportunities to do so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you've invested a lot. Like I said when I introduced you at the beginning, if you don't know who Adrian is, you are basically under a rock. If you live in Ottawa, has you have made sure to put your hand everywhere and just really amplify the voice of the youth. That's what I really appreciate that you get it and you want to give them language and you want to give them a way of a path so that they can feel a sense of belonging. They can feel a sense of messing up. Yet things are still achievable if you take accountability and responsibility of these things, not just always layered with judgment that oh it's, you're not this or you're not that. It's like, no, there's a place for you here. So let's help you thrive and let's help you, you know, be curious about what that place is for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when we started working it intentionally around the Black Youth Conference that we used to hold and we saw that there was something about a transformational conversation that fed specifically to the social-emotional needs of this particular conversation is, you know, for people of Black African descent. But it didn't matter how I shared it in the classroom as a sort of creating the conditions that we will have communications in this space, that we have a language that we can use together so we understand each other and that we don't bring harm into the space and we stay open to learning from each other. And so I had already been guiding students and classes through this kind of process where we created the ground rules, um, and you know, I gave students space to, to, to decide what what those ground rules were and said you know, this is your. I said people say that to you, but I was like I really do mean it. I don't come in here every semester with any preconceived notion. No matter how many times I've taught you, I feel that you are going to grow as a person through this subject area and it really is less to do about the content and more to do about you understanding who was I when I started and am I aware of who I am as I come out, and so I noticed that I was being perfectly aligned with what we need. Now I know that because it seemed to already feed what young people needed, like all along, and then it didn't even matter. It doesn't matter what age you are. This, we knew, was a powerful opportunity for people to explore themselves.
Speaker 2:You are the curriculum and now that we are so heavily in need of people to educate from a more social, emotional, of the needs and less around the tasks that make you good employees. You do all those tasks if you want to. You get perfect on your SAT, but if you don't have an emotional IQ for yourself, not even for, like the general world, just your own roster of what am I feeling and I will express it when I'm feeling it, and you don't have like some flexibility and your bandwidth for what that looks like, then you're not, you're gonna. You're gonna crush under the pressure of tasks, um, and you're gonna meet that crush at some point if you haven't already met it. You're gonna come to a collision in the world where the world will test you and you'll think you can do the tasks of it, but you wouldn't have factored in your mantles. And now you're crushing and you're expressing it all over your world and you're the only person not present.
Speaker 2:To how you know, I describe the dinosaur and it's like you can see over the trees and it looks lovely. It's like you can see over the trees and it looks lovely, but if you ever look back and see how your tail is devastating the forest, you know. And so that's why the imagery of Sankofa to us sort of reflects now how we want to move with young people and what we're discovering in our previous action research. We can action research all of this and say that we may have discovered an opportunity to support Black youth through high school by having them be more self-aware and conscious of how powerful they really are and then giving them chances to train that power and how they see that you know happening. And we've got seven cohorts and um, this one being the most challenging of them.
Speaker 1:But we offer the challenge oh, why is this one more challenging?
Speaker 2:They've come in a large number and they are less related to some of the sort of foundational things that young people used to come with. You know, some of that is eroding, so we now have to come and build that part back. And it's really about strong community connections. They do not have strong connections to the places in our community that say they would like young people to be, and so that's now the other side of of the work that we stay to do um, in training adults to really actually be truthful about when they say it takes a village to raise the child and the work that needs to be done by the village, like you're not going to get the credit without investing the time, yeah, and so when the when the person grows up in the village and now you sit back, it's like, oh, look at, look at her. And you're like, well, what did you do?
Speaker 1:Where were you? How did you empower me? Where did you educate me? Where did you mentor me? Where did you hold spaces for me to better understand myself, so you could be a reflection that I felt safe to ask these questions and so on? And where were you to give me correction, not just judgment. It's correction of letting Not just judgment, constructive feedback, not criticism, feedback of you're going in a wrong direction, that long term your brain cannot see. But because I have a brain that can see and have experiences, you don't want to catch a fire over there.
Speaker 2:You may survive and this is why I got to give them some safe ways to screw it up. Yeah, you know what I mean without, without the detrimental parts of of, like what we just throw in the world and let it all happen, we and so then we get. Then we get together and we say, all right, let you know. We pat ourselves on the back for the parts that went well. And then we ask ourselves truthful things about like what, how much of yourself did you really bring to the space that should have gotten you that result? And like, tell yourself the truth about that.
Speaker 2:And you know, um, we, we also are clear that the fix is not the kids. So we, we, we try never to come from that perspective. I try never to come from a perspective that's this generational disparaging of them, so that I look cool and I look good, because when it shows up in the kids, it merely indicates how unwell the adults are. And so when we create it and shift it in the kids, it is the adult's opportunity now to also reflect on, like, like you could have done this on your own too, and that the work was not just one sided and that you need to listen. So when we show up as asked, and somebody says oh, adrian, bring some young people, absolutely no problem.
Speaker 2:I know that, no matter what you're about to do, the experience is of value for them. They need to see this and they need to see our community in its authentic way too, need to see this and they need to see our community in its authentic way too. This, this black excellence, understanding, you know, can't always get framed the way it does, because the, the village idiot lives in the village too. So so we have to see it all. We have to see ourselves in the mess, but we also see, need to see, where there's beauty in the chaos of all of that as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's acceptance of, of the full spectrum of things. So now I'm going to ask, as a person on the outside and other people that may be listening, what, as the adults, can we do better for the community and the village? To you know, support the younger generation.
Speaker 2:Live your true self, live your truest life, live happy. Are we not ourselves in some sense in recovery of the moments when our parenting wasn't that? It wasn't given with love, it just was given with like? I didn't even understand myself. So you know, I think about all the time Like my parents were 21 and 22 years old when they got married, so they were like 25 and 26 years old when they had their first child.
Speaker 2:When I was 25, I was the most stupid person on the planet, trust me, and there was no way on earth I would have had a husband for five seconds, let alone at that point, for nearly five years, and give a birth to who? That makes me crazy when I think about the life decisions. I know now how old my parents were when things were crumbling and I'm like you was 40? In your 40s, man. So I think about how life just did not seem to give them the same space. And then they learn it later in life. I won't lie, though. They fix it, they figure it out later in life, and I think that's an encouraging sign that people, right now, you can learn it right now and just live happy and be that space for your children, and that doesn't mean we're like toxically positive or anything like that.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Thank you, cause. Just be positive. Just just nothing's negative positive. It's like you need the two to be able to create a charge Like this. Toxic positivity denies people from their own experience to better understand themselves.
Speaker 2:We know that lives are complicated and that they have ups and downs, and what I think, through exercise right now I'm continuing to connect to, is this sense of how temporary that is, how temporary the pain is, and the real challenge is not that I know it's going to be painful, I already know that. Can I confront the pain? And so I come up to one of those exercises in the morning and it's more of my mental battle. I know it's going to be painful and I know it's going to be over. I know both of those things. So then, adrian, what's stopping you from just pick up the weight? You just get to decide now because it's going to be over. After 10 reps you put it back down, it's done, the weight is over.
Speaker 2:And so that relationship to that, to me, has been like one of the greatest exercises of my mental health and keeping it healthy. That man through the last few years. Lots of challenge in all kinds of ways, but all of it was temporary and it came with beautiful and joyful moments that, if I remember myself in the way I used to be stuck in this cycle of grinding, I didn't do it right, I didn't do enough, and never actually having any pleasure of the journey that it takes to actually manifest things in the world the way you saw them in your head.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, wow, four years through a damn pandemic. I would think people's greatest gift at this side of it is to be like yo that agony is temporary and the joy is much greater than any of that and it can be long lasting and it can fuel you, even in the times when you're in your low. You can know that from myself. I know that even when I'm in a low, it's temporary and I get an opportunity to work it out and figure out how to get to the other side and I I get to decide to uh, how long is this going to take, adrian? Like, how long are you going to sit in this shit? You're like I'm just going to sit in the shit, I just want to. And you're like all right, cool, I'll let you do that for a minute or two, but after a while get your shit together and get going. I do that every morning. When I look at it, I say I don't want to do it and you just say, adrian, this hour is going to be over in an hour.
Speaker 1:It doesn't feel good to have to step into that. I want it. You just mentioned that. You know the years have been challenging, so if you're not willing, it's fine. I wanted to maybe give an opening of the grief that you've experienced as your mother transitioned, your father transitioned, so now you're in the world where some people will explain like it feels like an orphan.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it does A parent to call and yet, spiritually, if you're, you know of the belief that you can open up and speak with your ancestors and feel that energetic Living with grief and still, you know, showing up in your personal life. How has that looked like?
Speaker 2:Because it's still fresh for you, it is, it is, and I will say that the community is real. The community is real, I mean the community that I showed up from my dad, a complicated man who you know, charismatic and everything, but he had some healing in the community to do at the same time and his death was sudden, although he had been sick, like you know, we didn't expect him to die when he died. Expect him to die when he died and so, having been, you know, one of his, you know primary caregivers as well, along with the community of help. My gosh, there's no way I could have done it at all without the community. I remember I told him I said look, look, there got to be some benefits of being a sexy black man. Like damn, come on, bruh, pull out the stops, get it together.
Speaker 2:Sexy black man, get some of them women up in here to come and help us do some of this stuff. Man and boy, he had a whole whole group of women who, with love, like for real love for him, like I, made him meals every week and came and cleaned and you know, and we navigated some systems that you know. His financial situation meant that you know you're at the bottom and navigating some systems from that position does not ever usually come with urgency. So when he died we knew that there was going to be consequences of him wanting to stay in place and what that would mean, you know, especially for a dude on oxygen. Oh Lord, when I think about trying to get through COVID with that, I'm like thank you.
Speaker 2:And so you know the getting a phone call that the personal support worker can't get in because there's no response at the door is now the reality of what that looks like. And if I get the phone call, you know I was out the door pulling on pants and a shirt and I was at the apartment within six minutes and I found him. And I was at the apartment within six minutes and I found him. So that for the panic of that was like giving me nightmares for like two months after. So I went to therapy for that because I needed to express and let that go, and so that was a great gift that he provided. So that was when it was an unexpected death For my mom. This was a bit of a journey as well, because this is also happening during COVID. Covid's height, you know, 2020, she gets back here to Canada early after. You know she's a snowbird Zoom zoom.
Speaker 2:Zoom, zoom out of town. But when, when, when her prime minister said, hey you snowbirds, your insurance ain't gonna pay for you if you go get sick, my mom was like the next thing, flying out of Florida and she was home. So we were doing great, locked up in here at first, and then she started getting some signs of what we now know as a bowel obstruction, and so Canada Day weekend she went into the hospital and the bowel obstruction turned into the bowel and ovarian cancer that they discover that we then now have the consequences of removing of the obstruction, but plans for chemotherapy to start all now while schools are. You know, I'm at school but I'm masked up, but I got my mama's in chemo, you know. So it was a lot of energy. So for this one to my sister, I just moved back, so we were sharing the load of that.
Speaker 2:For all of those months, two massive surgeries, six rounds of chemo, a recovery that had her do exactly what she said she was going to do, which is I am going to be playing tennis by June, and she did, and that summer she was having a ball Learning to live with what it meant to be living with cancer at that stage. Some things that were hard for her and you know she got it done. Watching her get back on that tennis court, though, holy shit, that was amazing. So when the obstruction stuff started again in August, you know we had had that like sense of relief. Then they say, oh, they got 98 percent of the cancer. You're like, oh, it's like we're in the clear, we're good, this is this. And then you watch her like hair grow back, full of energy, full of life, going back into the jazz festival. She had just enjoyed her summer. And then she gets sick again and she never really comes out the hospital. So we, we, we fight for seven weeks to get her home. And then then we knew, okay, once we got her home, that that was a victory of who fight the people, my God. Of who fight the people, my god.
Speaker 2:Uh, covid's additional cruelty was that services in the community were impossible to access because it's just overloaded because of everything directed to hospitals. So what people weren't understanding at that point is that people who were in hospital got sicker. People who were at home also got sicker because their care has been reduced, because the hospital is so overcrowded, and we were living that and my mom got sicker for real. And so by the time we got her home she was frail, she was still hilariously conscious, trust, but she was serving it up no chaser at this point. And I called everybody. I said, look, she's still here and she's here now. So take your chance, man, and come and talk to her. And people came.
Speaker 2:I mean, of course we had to keep it, you know, to a level of her energy. And then, of course, like I said, it's just covet too right. So she saw her family, she saw all her friends, and that's when she made the decision that she wanted to have a medical assistance in dying. And so we went through the protocol for all of that. And then they told us they're like, okay, saturday morning 10 o'clock we're coming. So we accessed the sort of thinking and support from I didn't even know this existed, but ooh, god bless them Death doula.
Speaker 2:And she gave us this steps to go through and do when it's an expected death and how for this vessel that brought you to the world, you could assist them in making their transition. And it was hard, but it was beautiful, it really was. All of us were there and she got to say everything she wanted to say to you and we got to say everything because death is final, so you don't have another chance and to have those beautiful weeks and months with her, when she was like no longer limited by anything previously that had restrained her from being her like full self A sadness about it coming near the end of her life, but like how grateful to be part of her. Seeing that, grateful to be part of her. Seeing that.
Speaker 2:And then my mom being kind of who she is, knowing who we are for real, her children, she made it possible that the year after that, my sister and I, knowing the meaning we've put around Thanksgiving, that we were to go and make new memories, to sort of give us that push.
Speaker 2:And so my sister went to an NFL game with her friends to New Orleans, and that weekend I went to Atlanta to a music festival I wanted to go to, but it's Thanksgiving weekend and they have no way you were going to tell her you were going to some music festival by yourself. And that's what I did and I had spiritual moment after spiritual moment listening to some of the best music that I love from the best artists that I love in a community of people that I love. So my parents were true givers, just like community says they were, and, man, they gave us two amazing gifts, through which the grief that we experience now kind of allows, at least me, to find a way through those ups and downs, knowing that you know it's temporary and it's part of the journey, so I don't hold myself hostage to any of that. I see my dad everywhere, like I'll roll up on somebody and I say, oh God damn, that looked just like Archie.
Speaker 2:And then my mom. It's an essence of her and in this space, in this house, man, she's everywhere. So you just have to speak and you know you're talking to her. Where you heard her. You know you heard her, so you know that, I think, will be the joy of this home forever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and especially how you held space for the transition in such a radical way that you've been hearing stories or been told that you went totally polar opposite, that we're going to embrace this and we're going to make it an opening way. And it creates a different memory in the home where if it was something different like I'm sure if you were had to live in the house where your father transitioned it would have been like I got to get out of here Cause there's just too much.
Speaker 1:I just cannot accept what this was, so I don't have a good relationship with the space.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that was the critical intention. You not only knew you had to still live here, you have to be with the energy of what that meant and what that means. And so I said it from the very moment. We knew that the best thing that we could do was bring her home and I said, look, we have to all be in a literal cahoots with each other. That kind of depth of relationship, the cahoots kind of relationship that we are jointly conspiring to provide this woman with every single thing she needs at once, and and positive energy.
Speaker 2:Yes, uh, in that you know, um, she's alive now. Like we're not walking around here, like she's not dead yet she's alive. So we're not, we're not, we're not, we're not doing that until we got to do it. So enjoy her right now, man, she told us some stories that were hilarious and we laughed and and and we cried. Man, we saw her for the Adventurer. She told us about the story for why she loved French. We never knew why this Guyanese woman was so in love with French, and you know, she told us all kinds of stuff. So it was beautiful, it really was.
Speaker 2:So it lets me understand, too, that there's a sharpness about the early days and months, and you know, the first little while after death. It's sharp and it doesn't take much for you to feel it. As time passes it's like a smoother, but it can still hit you in the same emotions as when it was sharp. It can be triggered right to that same uh of it, the gut punch of it. But I think if you give yourself a chance to move through it and not fight it, it can provide you with some additional connections.
Speaker 2:So that's why I like this concept of the whisper telephone. They have one up in Cantlie or in Chelsea, okay, and it's this kind of space where you just speak to the wind and carry that intention like a whisper telephone to whoever you want to speak to. And I remember doing that on the beach in Zanzibar oh, that's one of the most beautiful beaches ever the heat, combination of the heat and the wind in a beautiful place, and whispering intentions to the breeze and knowing that that whispered intention is just a breeze away. And so whoever set up that telephone, they get it. And how you can get to connect and I think the part that of grief that I Also is a combination of all these other ways of being Is that I don't have to hide it and that is in itself A freedom. Yeah, I don't have to hide that I'm grieving and it doesn't always look Like tears, so you know just, it's just something you carry, and how do you choose to carry it? I guess is is what is maybe a lesson?
Speaker 1:Do you have any words for anybody that is in the beginning or will go into the process of grieving? Are there any tools or practices that you would impart to them?
Speaker 2:Don't do it by yourself. I'm privileged to have a trusted circle of friends who know me and are my lifelong friends, rely on them. I think in both cases and everyone in between you know, there's Michelle Walker on that end as well. She died the year before my father. So there was, like a stray.
Speaker 2:My uncle, my aunt Maude you know it was a string of them might be bringing you, but if they become a dependency, be like, be, be ready to have somebody who will, you know, a trusted person, who you've already given them permission to tell you some hard truths about how you're behaving, um, and you, you've got a common agreement that that's not gonna be, uh like factor of impact to our friendship.
Speaker 2:If you call me out on my shit and because that's what people who love you, uh, do, but when you're grieving, uh, or in any other maybe emotional crisis that you, you hear it, you have to be careful for the difference. How did I hear it? How did the person speak it? Because you're going to hear that You'll be like wait, she's going to file now, and so just know that that first response is visceral and therefore you're not listening to the love that that was given to you with. So you got to work those things out too. Yeah, so, but I would say my trusted circle is most important to me and so grateful. I work at a job that has benefits so I can pay for the therapy.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes. I hear that I'm going to bring you into a reflective question. I'm going to ask you to take your awareness right now and go back to your 18 year old self, and you have three words to tell your 18 year old self to carry you through the journey. What would they be?
Speaker 2:to carry you through the journey. What would they be? 18-year-old self. Don't be scared, you're enough, you are special.
Speaker 1:I love them, I love them.
Speaker 2:Where can the listeners find you? At three dreads in a bald head on the IG. I think at three dreads is my whatever the X thing is called now, and uh, yeah, that that's where my community shenanigans take place. Okay and um, you know we're always plotting, and in a good way. Uh, to you know, use our power for good and uh, put young people in a good way. To you know, use our power for good and put young people in a collision course with awesome, so that they too can experience some of the amazing people in our city who continue to generate and create an awesome experience, even though we're in judgment about that experience.
Speaker 2:I never say that Ottawa folks don't keep working and trying hard.
Speaker 2:They sure do, and we create every nature of thing that could keep you busy, and I think that's amazing still, I think, to be at the center of, and so, yeah, I want young people to explore this city and I think they live even more isolated now than in the past, like if you live in the East End, you're stuck in the East End, you don't ever leave the East End, you're stuck in the East End, you don't ever leave the East End, and I think that's even more than how we were stuck in the East End, but we always had reason.
Speaker 2:You know, come across town, meet in the middle, and I find one of the sort of, I guess, social experiments that happen when you bring Black youth together in one space from across multiple high schools. You thought it was like that for everybody and then you buck up against another school who might contradict how that looks, because there's other dynamics to that school that are playing out and included in how they are walking Black. And so when you bring them all together in one space and you look at all of the everything across it, you're like look at us, we are this hilarious mishmash of all of it in one space, trying to figure out what does this all mean for something that's made up in the first place? Isn't this fascinating?
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, yeah, yeah, so we keep working. That's where you'll find our shenanigans.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it. Is there anything that you'd like to impart to the listeners?
Speaker 2:I mean, if what I can say about what I'm learning by observing my teachers who are younger the 40-year-olds and the 30-year-olds and 20-year-olds the power of your journey to self On a daily basis as a part of your commitment, is the best work you'll do. Give yourself the tools so that you can live your most authentic, free, self, achieve that vision Of what you want for yourself, your community in the world. Um, I think the best road to it is through a journey to self, and so keep doing the work, even even when it's ugly. You gotta still do it. Um, because you're an indivisible whole and so you don't get to exercise One part of yourself Without figuring out the other parts too, so that you can, you know, stand as the powerful being that you are, and, I think, Revelations of your 50s. That is a that one one I give you for free.
Speaker 1:Just be free yeah, be yourself, be and that can be. You know we I didn't bring up the subject, maybe you'll come back on on another show which I would love to have you is to talk about the trauma-informed aspect of you know, educators, and to understand how that impacts an individual human being, um, and how it's, you know, so subtle, but I know it's a hot topic that people are overusing trauma, and what I replace trauma with is energy. So there's energy blocked in your system from you being able to connect with yourself, to be able to fully understand yourself and understand your nervous system. Our biology is very unique to each of us and we haven't really been taught to really be our own mad scientists of what does this nervous system read and what does it do and how does it house and how can I use it to its best ability yeah, and so what we, what we try to encourage teachers in teaching practice to, to sort of consider.
Speaker 2:Okay, we are not therapists, we not therapists, we're none of these things.
Speaker 2:But so I asked the teachers in my department. I said, consider that the child in front of you, even though they've spent a significant part of the day with you and you think you know them, I want you to first consider what part of what you think you know did you make up. I want you to first consider what part of what you think you know did you make up. Is it actually based on something that you know, know or something that you just assumed? Second, that the complexity of these young people's lives often do have them having trouble. That's beyond just your schoolwork. So until you three get to know, know, know this kid, please do not stand on things that we cannot fix because you've made it up. So if we give an example, example, science class the student hasn't been to class in two weeks. The science teacher has looked at this kid and just decided that this kid is, um, just not, you know, working hard enough. And so if you're not working hard enough, and so if you're not working hard enough, the response then, unfortunately by this educator, is then you know you're not worthy of my attention because you know you don't deserve it. That's part of our addiction to punishment. So now, when she doesn't get the response from the student, and the student is now delinquent well, wow, wow, that's how you treated the student. So why would the student come to the class? So now she's reported, the student is skipping. So we now are dealing with the student and the teacher now is going to voluntarily pile on some more, even though the teacher has not inquired yet about what we're actually dealing with. So while the student, the teacher's talking, I say stop.
Speaker 2:Let me start with this. The person you're talking about is 13 years old. Just because he's big and black, he is not therefore going to make decisions like an adult, like you're framing him in this moment, supposed to have this series of perfectly rational decisions. He's 13. Then I give her some additional information about his home life, his precarious immigration situation as a Haitian, a little history about why we expel so many Haitians, and then I ask her could you please factor that into what you're about to tell me is the problem? Because if you didn't already know those things, things, it means you didn't do your due diligence to understand that this young man's going through a lot and all you needed was to have a consideration for what might be possibly more important than him coming doing your science work. So I don't know if that's a trauma-informed process. I continue to do the training for myself so that I can identify it from that perspective.
Speaker 2:But in schools I just think that as educators we could be more sensitive to the world we're living in, a world that's got a lot going on. Why wouldn't we consider that that's what we're seeing showing up in our kids? So I I want to. Anytime somebody comes now and says, you know, here's my problem, I said, okay, I would like to use a more holistic assessment model where we take in a little bit more information about home life and parents and friends and the students and is there something we can identify that was different before this moment that is now going on?
Speaker 2:And or we just look at the kid and say, hey, you know, you know it's not working today for you, right? And they just go yeah, can I just sit here and just take a moment? Absolutely, we can, but please, once you have your moment, we need to agree to next steps to move forward, because we can't just respond to the ache. We need to have a plan to move forward. So that's what I'm enjoying about this phase of my teaching career that is near over, for the way that it used to look, used to look, and I look forward to moving more into a place where I can do some more of what I just described in informing teacher practice and working directly with the students to make sure that they have an excellent as excellent an experience of our schools as they can, and right now they're not so thank you, thank you, thank you for being you and being so amazing and willing to look at yourself and bring that out to better understand what's in front of you, this conversation.
Speaker 1:You've been so vulnerable and open and you know you bring in the laughter. You're bringing the sensitivity, and to know you is to love you oh, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2:And you know, as I mentioned when, when I put meaning to gestures, and especially when those gestures are truly meaningful. You know, as long as I owe you, you'll never be broke. And so I take that for true. And you know the offer that you made. I remember exactly where I was when I got that message. I was downstairs in the basement. I lived in the basement for two years. I was laying down there the morning of my mother's funeral service, a gap in time when you could have people but you had to limit the numbers. And I remember getting a text. It was like 7 or so in the morning and you just said, hey, you know what.
Speaker 2:I woke up and I just thought, you know, I offer, can I come take some pictures? And I remember I paused and I'm like pictures, huh, I considered a lot of things. I just never considered that as a part of this type of event. I said, but that would be kind of cool type of event. I said, but that would be kind of cool. But I let it marinate until, as I said, I was easing to wake up. And then I just messaged you back and I said, hey, well, if you can get on the list still make it happen. Let's do it. And you were there for every part, except the last 30 minutes that we had that window of time for people to come. And we look back at those pictures and we smile. I look back at those pictures all the time. I'm so grateful that I said yes to the opportunity I was being offered and I saw what you saw, that there'd be value in the keepsake of it. So thank you so much, natalie, for that.
Speaker 1:And, uh, shifting forever how we relate to each other, thank you and you know I was scared to send that, because I understand how you know grieving and in those moments it's so personal and so subjective. Yet you know, standing with my intention, I know afterwards what these videos and memories can do, and a lot of times funerals, that's when we see people and it's not until later on that all of a sudden it's like oh, we didn't take a picture together and so it was really just capturing that essence and remembering your mother in her true form and what it brought together and everything else.
Speaker 2:So thank you for that, yeah, yeah. And even in the capturing of the video of, you know, at Kerwin's service, of my tribute to Kerwin I mean that's a keepsake. And then you get the perspective from the other side of what you delivered yeah, what you delivered. And I remember being up until four in the morning trying to finish off what I wanted to say that day and I just kept saying I don't want to be sad, I don't want to be sad, I don't want to be sad. I just kept repeating that in my head. I don't want to talk about sad things, I want to talk about that, kerwin. And so I get the feedback now, like what the audience heard is so that I would. That was a great keepsake as well. So thank you for that one too you're welcome.
Speaker 1:Like I see people in in I, I see things in depth, so I knew that you speaking and you probably hadn't been in that church since your father's funeral and when you had to speak for the totally different Adrian than with this, and you you use it in a way where you're like, okay, I'm not going to go in that part, I'm really going to amplify. You know who Kerwin was to me in that relationship and I really like that and why I take these images too, because when you're going through it you block out so much that you don't remember your your all the blur, right?
Speaker 2:the whole day was a blur. The whole day was such a blur and I remember that most from my brother's funeral. I mean, there were, so were so many people there, but the day was a blur. I just have flashes of it. I don't even remember People tell me you know all the time, no, don't you remember? Blah, da, da, da, da. I'm like no, actually I don't remember a thing, and so, yeah, that's the biggest difference. For that one for sure, there's a few pictures of my dad's service that are also like cool and more so, pictures of the gathering of the cadet family. That was probably the most impactful series of photos that we probably got from when he died. So that that was like a different, uh way. Somebody, yes, definitely captured our celebratory moments, uh, together, for that part. So, absolutely I agree, people don't expect that. Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1:People don't expect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, people don't expect that. That would be, you know, something to include intentionally about the gathering to celebrate somebody's life.
Speaker 1:We have a really wrong relationship with death and that's what I try to change. And you know, lift oneself in dialogues with people of this is part of our whole journey in life and there's a way that you can change the definition that you have with this and the relationship with it. Does it stink? Does it hurt? Does it have jagged pieces? Yes, yet it's still part of the journey and the more you avoid, the more that they're suffering. Yet if you can face that pain, like you said at the beginning of the podcast, it is such a different experience Doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, still hurts, it just doesn't last as long.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean there's. There's a aspect of our training through facilitation in the International Black Summit that I've taken from this, when I used to hear everybody make reference to it's a transition, and you know that gave me language and space to hold it. It is a transition and it's now about building a new relationship to that person, as they have transitioned from the way you've known them to be and now there's a new way to know them. And so you know, I'm like, wow, okay, well, if that's a new opportunity, then, hey, I want to be in tune, I want to be in the tune, in the tune up that allows me to relate to them in that kind of way. And so you know, that to me, was what transitioned, that's what I heard, and I got to hear it from less like the religious, procedural side of it, like funerals, death, passing things like that into this really other space where you could just like recognize it differently.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, like I, I frame it as it's the other side of love and as there's a depth of that other side of love that is, there's no bottom to it. And so you haven't gone to those kinds of depths and you don't know that other side of love because nobody's ever told you about it or explained it to you. And so, oh my gosh, what is this space? And it's like well, until you you go through this experience, you don't know. Nobody can prepare you. It's no different than a pregnancy or labor. We can all say what it is, but until you experience it it's individual. Of that we can give a similarity, or going through a surgery or anything like that that we can give you prepare you, but everybody it's subjective and it's individual, but it's the other side.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and and like, as soon as you said that, that, that one quote or so popped up in my head about it's love, and you have nowhere to put it. And as soon as you said it like this, I was like, oh, like that, it's like wow, it's like I've got all of this. And you're like, where do I put it? You find yourself, especially when, you know, I put this in the post for Paula White and hearing her father died and I was like it's going to seem weird for a while to want to talk to them, to tell them about you know how you want some help with a life choice or decision and they're, you know they're not there. And when, the first time, like I remember when I went to Atlanta, that feeling of there's no expectation, I don't have anybody to call, that it's like it's not that there's nobody worrying about me, that's not true. But like you know the phone call when you got there to say, yeah, mom, I got here safe. You know the ritual, got here safe. You know the ritual. You're like, wow, it's like I gotta replace that now with like, find someone else that's reliable to know I'm safe. Um, and you didn't have to consult with her. You didn't even. You know my favorite one that you didn't have. You didn't have the judgment. You're like I'm about to spend money on a ticket. Uh, you know the, the VIP ticket. I bought the VIP ticket. Nobody told me about my bills and what. You better be careful, save your money. I didn't have to do none of that, yeah, and you're like, wow, what a bizarre feeling. You've been holding that expectation for this person's judgment for so long and now, wow, I live free of that. Yay, a difference. Weird, yeah, it's so weird, um, and so, yeah, it it.
Speaker 2:Uh, but, as I said, um, in the post I continued. I said this is what they built you for to live in the world without them. For them, this is the order of things. They were to die before you and they were to see you in your life's best moments. Maybe, maybe they didn't plan for seeing you in your life's terrible moments, but, but they've seen plenty of those too. They've seen you figure it out, stand on your own and be good that they could be out of this world, and you are the you you are, and that's why it was just their time. So their journey is complete and that's why it was just their time, so their journey is complete, and so that's also a tough revelation to deal with.
Speaker 1:Sometimes as well it is. It is, you know, we're all walking each other home and those paths can look different their home and those paths can look different. Yet when we can find spaces where I can tell my story and you're not trying to fix it or redress it or repaint it, and I can just express it so I can figure out myself and and feel safe to do that, it makes a difference and I thank you for being who you are and having this open conversation. I know it's going to touch at least one person and one is a million, and so that's going to be the ripple effect and people can, like. You know I always say you can always see a glimpse of yourself in other people's stories, so you're going to give them a glimmer of what's possible and to still choose joy, as difficult as that is.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Thank you so much for the opportunity. It's been great.
Speaker 1:Thank you, remember to be kind to yourself.
Speaker 2:I will, I will. I'll always remember that part.