The One You Feed - How to Turn Shame Into Connection: Why Normalizing Helps Us with Ginny Gay & Brandi Lust

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

Have you ever felt like this? That showing vulnerability is weakness, that asking for help is a sign of incompetence, or that everyone else has the very thing you’re struggling with all figured out? These misconceptions can lead us to isolate ourselves and feel shame about our own struggles. Ginny and Brandi are here to share the power of normalizing our human experiences and how it can dissolve shame and create meaningful connections between us. This is the first episode of a special 5-episode series we’re releasing called “Something To Normalize”.   Embracing the universality of human experiences that lead to deeper connections  Defining what it means to “normalize” something and how powerful it can be Recognizing and learning to tackle the risks associated with normalizing detrimental behavior and attitudes Harnessing the strength in vulnerability and cultivating spaces for open honesty Talking about difficult experiences as an antidote to shame Opening up about personal journeys while safeguarding your growth with healthy boundaries To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I've got a very special episode to share with you today, and it's part of a series we're releasing called Something to Normalize. One of the reasons I've always loved The Wolf Parable is because it normalizes being human and having difficult emotions. These podcast episodes feature my partner Ginny talking with her friend and previous guest of the show, Brandi Lust. In these unguarded conversations, they'll be sharing their lives and perspectives as women alongside insights from experts, researchers, and writers on topics that are

hard to talk about. We tend to keep these things to ourselves though, and when we do, it can breed a sense of being the only one, feelings of shame, or evidence we're somehow doing life wrong. Brandy and Ginny hope that by giving voice to experiences, feelings, and thoughts we often keep to ourselves, we can create a community with less shame and a deeper sense of belonging. I am so happy to share their voices with you. I think you'll find these episodes a wonderfully nourishing and supportive addition to the regularly scheduled One You Feed podcast episodes you are used to hearing here. And now, I'm proud to present to you something to normalize. Hey y'all, I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls.

This January, join me for our third annual January Jumpstart series. Starting January 1st, we'll have inspiring conversations to give you a hand in kickstarting your personal growth. If you've been holding back or playing small, this is your all-access pass to step fully into the possibilities of the new year. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Can you believe this is finally happening? I know. It feels like it's been so many months in the planning.

It has. And I kind of can't believe how many like atomic bombs have gone off in each of our lives as the reason for this to not happen when we thought it was going to happen. I know. You're absolutely right as far as that goes. And then I think with each of those moments that we were having a crisis, the evolution of this idea and topic has just continued to come to fruition in the way that it's landed today. So I'm excited to be here. Me too. I'm so excited to do this with you, Ginny. Me too, Brandi. Maybe with that, we should say welcome, right? So welcome, everybody, to the very first episode of our podcast, Something to Normalize. So I'm Ginny Gay,

and I'm a certified mindfulness and meditation teacher. I help people become more aware of and work skillfully with their thoughts, their emotions, their experiences so that they feel less stress and struggle and more freedom and joy and ease. Yeah. So what about you, Brandy? I am a speaker and consultant who's worked for myself for the last eight years and primarily worked with organizations and nonprofit and businesses and a lot of schools to really focus on how to build cultures of well-being and think about well-being as more of a collective enterprise as opposed to individual activities. So yeah, I wonder if it makes sense to touch on like why we even thought of doing this in the first place before we dive into like, what does it mean to normalize something? a walk next to a river that goes through the city that we both live in. And we had only briefly met through Eric. And I was excited to meet you. And it just so happened you're talking about those

atomic bombs that like go off in our lives that one had just happened to me like right before we'd met. And so I think we just dropped into this really vulnerable place very, very quickly and both felt really connected to each other. And I felt like you understood something in that moment that helped me to feel less alone. And I feel like that depth of connection and that depth of vulnerability has really sustained itself over the course of us knowing one another. And we almost immediately started talking about doing something together. And this idea, I think, was one of a couple of iterations. And it's the one that really landed inside of us. And throughout all of the last few months of different life experiences coming into play,

we would sort of revisit and think about timing. And now on this day, it's arrived. Here we are. Here we are. So we are friends and we were fast friends. Like you're right. Circumstances just sort of opened both of us up and we connected. And what a gift and treasure that felt like I know we've talked about for both of us. Like this just doesn't happen so often in life, especially the older you get. I feel like sometimes that's a little less common. So I remember when we were on the phone one day and you were like, I know what we need to do. You were like, we need to do a podcast. And it made perfect sense to me for so many reasons, but most of which like neither one of us have a problem, A, talking, B, talking to each other, or C, being like kind of

constantly curious about ourselves in life. So like, yes, yes, we absolutely should. So here we are. Okay. And normalizing things is kind of the place we thought we might start because it's such a powerful phenomenon to normalize something for somebody. So maybe now it makes sense to sort of dive into that a little bit about what exactly do we mean when we say something to normalize or normalizing something.

I mean, we can look at it from a couple of different angles. I mean, maybe just to start with our home base, like what we mean when we say normalize, we talk about really just naming an experience or a situation, right? And acknowledging it as real. And that's really so much of the power of naming something is saying like, this is a real thing. And also then to accept it as just another part of our human experience, right? Rather than evidence that we are bad or we're doing life wrong or we're the only ones that have ever had this experience or situation or thought or whatever, you know, that can be so isolating and so shame-inducing when we don't normalize things that are pretty darn human. And you and I, Brandi, kind of came around to like, that's what we mean. But what do others mean? Yeah, just to build on what you said before I talk about some of the definitions and history of this term normalizing, I just wanted to mention that I think at the root of the work that I do professionally, but then also at the center of so many of our conversations is the idea of a common humanity

intervention. And that concept of having the moment where we look around and see that we're not the only one and how incredibly healing that can be. And that so oftentimes when we're experiencing that sense of shame or that sense of alienation, it just takes one conversation of someone saying, I understand, I've been through something similar. And that conversation can really open us up to accepting parts of ourselves that previously felt like they had no place in the world or even inside of ourselves. And so yeah, I think that you and I have this common understanding of the word, but I thought it was really interesting when I looked up the dictionary definition of this word. There are a number of different ways of interpreting this.

And the first primary definition is to make something conform to or reduce something to a norm or standard. So I think that's really interesting because for me, what I hear when I read that definition is like something getting smaller, like forcing something into a box, like this is where it fits. So is there anything else that comes up for you around that first definition? Yeah. And that I don't like that. I don't like that because to me, normalizing is like expansive and like expanding out into connection as opposed to like being authentic and like letting our experience be what it is rather than trying to fit it into something. I don't like it.

Yeah. So that's the first definition. The second definition is to bring or restore to a normal condition. And so I love the word restore in this because I think there's something about, again, bringing in parts of ourselves, parts of other people into belonging or acceptance that's really important. Then we have this term normal condition. And I feel like that is so confusing. So we'll talk more about what normal actually means, but I'll pause there and see if you have any responses to this. Yeah. Yeah. Normal is like a loaded word, right? Because it bears some unpacking and also like clarifying based on how you intend that word to be sent out of your mouth. But I might look at that definition and go, you know, restoring it to a normal condition can feel healing if the word normal refers to something that is

very often experienced by human beings because they are human beings, you know, just a very human experience, right? So that can feel healing. And that's how I'm going to choose to hear that because another interpretation might not. But what do you think? Yeah, well, I love what you just said. and what it made me think of is replacing the word normal with the word wholeness or normal condition with the word wholeness. So to bring or restore to wholeness, I think has more of a resonance for me. I love it. If I were to rephrase that for our own purposes. Love it. And then the last definition is to allow or encourage something considered extreme or taboo to be viewed as normal. We did not make that up. Was that a

dictionary definition? No, this is a dictionary definition. To allow or encourage something considered extreme or taboo to become viewed as normal. I kind of like that one. How does that one land on you? Yeah. Well, you know, it's so interesting. I think the word extreme doesn't completely land for me. There's such a depth and a breadth to human experience that I think that viewing something as extreme doesn't always completely fit. But I do think that this fits most with the ways that we've been talking about normalizing, which is to take something that maybe doesn't completely fit into our mold of how we talk to one another, I should say.

Something that doesn't completely fit into the ways that we accept or don't accept things in society. And then allowing space for those things. Yeah, you know, allowing space for those things. Yeah. You know, it just occurred to me as initially the way I heard that or read that was to allow or encourage something I as an individual might consider extreme about myself or taboo about myself to become viewed by myself and great if, you know, also by others as normal, you know, or so maybe less about what others think and more

about what I'm secretly thinking about myself that this is too extreme. I don't really know. Yeah. I love that. I love that as a reframing. Those are the dictionary definitions of this word normalize. And we've talked about what we mean by this term. I also want to talk about normalizing as a process. And this was really interesting to me. So there are a couple of researchers, Adam Baer and Joshua Nob, and they talk about normalizing as a process that is part descriptive and part descriptive. So I'll say that again, normalizing is part prescriptive and part descriptive. So the prescriptive part is really about what our ideals are. So it's really about saying, this is the ideal of this thing, or this is the perfect version of this thing.

So an example that they gave is the ideal version of a grandma. And anyone who has a daughter or son who has a child is technically a grandma. However, when we think of what a grandma is, ideally, quote unquote, in our society, you know, it's a friendly, warm, cookie baking, older woman with gray hair, who really has a lot of wisdom for us. And there are all of these connotations of that. And so that's the prescriptive aspect. And then the other aspect is descriptive. So it's really looking at what is the average of this particular thing? What is it that most people think or feel or experience about this thing? And so what we don't realize is that when we're talking about normalizing without even being cognizant of it, what we're doing is we're taking

the prescriptive and the descriptive and we're kind of smushing them together. And that's how we come up with what feels quote unquote normal to us. And so I thought that was incredibly fascinating because then we can begin to think about what are the ideals in our society that we uphold? And then also thinking about what do we assume as the average. And sometimes the assumptions that we're making aren't necessarily the truth or the actual averages don't reflect what we think should be happening. And so those are some really interesting circumstances. And an example that they gave of that is the average number of hours that people watch television. And so they asked, what do you think is normal, a normal amount of television to watch?

And people for that particular question leaned more toward less television than what was average because they saw that as the ideal. And so there are lots of ways that these concepts interplay with one another. So what do you think about that, Jenny? Oh, that's so interesting. That last part especially kind of hit me because I think it shows how skewed our assumptions and projections often are about what an ideal is or what normal is or what good looks like or, you know, it's often so convoluted by so many different variables, yet it so often can play a role in then how we compare ourselves as well, how do we fit? Or do we not fit? Are we good enough? Are we not good enough? And it's all just this like fabrication,

you know, from a bit of a faulty operating system in that regard. Yeah. So that's so interesting. Yeah, I think this really leads into this piece about why this is an important concept. And there's a quote that I want to share with you. And this quote is from an article in The New Yorker. It says, what we think of as normal shapes our field of vision. It tells a story of the world and its possibilities. Let's let that land for a second. That's huge. I think that's so powerful. It tells a story of the world and its possibilities, not only the world, but our own world, our own internal world, how we experience the world and its possibilities, like what is possible, what is permissible, what is allowed and what is shut down. So I think that obviously it's a loaded like what is possible, what is permissible, what is allowed and what is shut down. So I think that obviously, it's a loaded gun. And it can be a powerfully good thing to

explore, examine, claim, you know, discover for yourself and begin to connect and share with one another, you know, what our experiences are. But it can also be a really harmful thing, don't you think? Yeah, I do. It's really interesting because one of the things that I read about was that the term normalized gained a huge amount of popularity in 2016, right around 2016, during the presidential campaigns. And it was incredibly popular, particularly with liberal folks, to talk about what we shouldn't allow to be normalized. And so I think that when you're talking about how this is such a powerful idea, like this quote that it shapes our field of vision, and what's possible, what's acceptable, that was a time in American history where a lot of norms of what was acceptable in public discourse started to be broken. And what was acceptable from public leaders really began to change. And folks sort of had this, I guess, mantra of don't normalize this. Don't make this the new normal for how public dialogue operates. And so that's an example of like when normalizing something can be really destructive, really

harmful. Yeah, because in so doing, you almost desensitize yourself to the shock and offense of things that are harmful. If you give it permission to exist as this common human experience that we ought to just sort of allow and almost embrace, right? So some discernment is, I think, important here. Yeah. The term desensitized really resonated with me when you said that. Like, I think that in our society, there are a lot of things that we've become very desensitized to, and we don't even realize the impact that that has on us.

And so I'm thinking about a friend who really loves and has experienced and had a lot of pleasure in listening to true crime podcasts and watching true crime shows and really just immersing themselves in this world of violence to an degree. And I think so many of us do this. And so we had talked about monitoring the consumption of just different media and how that might be impacting her, particularly because she was struggling with some depression and anxiety. And certainly that was not at all the only factor by any means. But she decided to sort of play around with that a little bit and see how it affected her. And we had a conversation just the other day. She's been practicing this for a couple of months, and she was talking about how she had become much more sensitized to violence.

And she had found that now there were things that she wasn't able to watch that before would have felt like no big deal to her. And I thought that was incredibly interesting. So sometimes there is this piece about normalizing something where we're desensitizing ourselves to things that are really profoundly impactful. Yeah. Yeah. As you're describing, like that doesn't surprise me at all as I think about it when you're talking about your friend. I mean, I just think this whole topic requires some care and some checking in with where things are coming from as we bring them up to talk about through the lens of normalizing. Absolutely. What else is kind of coming up for me as we're just exploring this terrain of like when it can be kind of harmful or really harmful

is sometimes for me, the fear of either me normalizing something that's in my experience that I might feel shame about. Is that shame because without me realizing it, like it's something that can be harmful to others or myself, right? Like I don't know that. And so am I afraid that I'll get backlash highlighting that, which then causes me to

anticipate the shame I'll feel, which then causes me to not even bring it up in the first place. So I think there's a degree of like vulnerability that's required, a degree of humility, you know, that's required and giving one another, at least in this container we're in, the benefit of the doubt and the grace to learn where we need to learn, you know, and also like love one another in our attempt to grow in these directions, you know? I love that container setting that you're doing right now. I absolutely love it. Is that what I'm doing? I didn't know. Yeah. What I'm redoing is

like speaking to us, the two of us, but also speaking to the community that we want to build and thinking about grace and learn room to make mistakes and to grow together and to know that all of that is okay. Yeah. Yeah. That that's actually welcome. And so we can have these conversations and do so with kindness, with the recognition that every person is coming with a different set of life experiences, a different set of skills, and we can meet one another where we are so that we can grow together. And I think ultimately this word is going to come up a lot, that discernment process of is this thing inside of me something that I really need to examine and have some deep work around because the shame is coming from perhaps a place of genuine discernment around something being harmful to someone else, for example, versus, you know, the discernment of here's a part of myself that I have become to believe I should be ashamed of, but really is just a piece of myself that needs some love. And maybe there's no difference between those two things. Maybe these are all just parts of ourselves that need a little bit

of love. And so I think in this space of creating a container where we can really begin to normalize the parts of ourselves that need to come to the surface that maybe don't always get as much love and attention because they aren't as pretty. We can do that with a sense of hope. And that really, I think, is important because there are, this is certainly dicey territory and mistakes will be made, but having these conversations can actually lead to a different perspective on our field of vision. You know, our field of vision can change when we examine what's normal, right? And so I think a really wonderful example of that in our society is the incredible expansion of sexuality and gender that we have seen over certainly many, many years,

but especially over the last couple of years. And not to say that any of these possibilities for self-definition are new. All of these possibilities for self-definition are new. All of these possibilities for self-definition in regards to sexuality and gender have always been present. But this new era of naming and allowing these identities to be recognized, to be accepted, to change our lexicon in ways that are more inclusive, to change what's in the media that we consume, to be more representative. All of that change has happened so quickly. And I think that's a really beautiful example of something that's been normalized. And it's so hopeful to see that. Yeah, it's so hopeful. And the last thing I'll say is I think we grow

in connection as we restore connection within ourselves. And as last thing I'll say is I think we grow in connection as we restore connection within ourselves. And as we build connection with one another, you know, that's how we grow. So I hope through this podcast that I will continue to lean into the connection of sharing this with you and the folks that are listening, whatever that experience is that I want to share with everybody that I've had. In fact, maybe this is a good time to mention that like our intention with this podcast is to take on more topics than just the topic of normalizing. We want to actually apply the topic of normalizing to other topics that seem, you know, relevant and important, at least for starters to the two of us, right? So grief is one that we're going to be diving into. And we're going to be sharing a bit from not only our experience with grief personally,

but also other voices that we think have interesting and important things to say on the topic. I mean, we have a smattering and we have a list of topics we'd like to sort of bring up for discussion. But yeah, we're going to start this episode as we are already 30 minutes into it, but we're going to start through just exploring this topic of normalizing. Yeah. And I think now is a really good time to transition into our own stories with this topic. You know, we can begin to dive into maybe the times when we've taken a risk to say something

out loud and saying that thing out loud was hard and it can have a whole range of results. And so I'd love to hear from you, Jenny, on an experience that you've had. I was just about to say, Brandy, you don't have any of those, do you? You have none of those experiences, right? have none of those experiences right. We could all use the occasional nudge, a little wake up from the autopilot we fall into in our day-to-day routine. That's why we send brief text reminders to listeners of the show for free. The texts help you stay on track with what you're learning from the podcast episodes we release on Tuesdays and Fridays. They periodically prompt you to pause for a second and become more present and mindful and encourage you to engage with the week's podcast

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Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So, Janine, I feel like you will have a lot to say about this idea of the risks we take when we're trying to normalize something. I feel like something you're really passionate about is the experience of shame and how it influences us and the ways that it can sort of stop us from moving forward. So I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about that. There are perceived and real risks, right, with stepping

out and being vulnerable and sharing our experiences in hopes of connection and better understanding, right? So there are certainly inherent risks, and we can explore those. I mean, I think I might want to back up and say, like, first, there are the inherent perceived risks of, like, embarrassment, which leads to this idea of shame and judgment and criticism both from others and from ourselves on our inner world. And that can just lead us to not speak up and things don't get normalized. So there's a risk when we don't normalize something or attempt to speak up about something. or attempt to speak up about something. I mean, I think when we don't speak up with someone else about what's going on in our inner world

or our world with other people is we tend to suffer when we think we're the only one who's experienced or is experiencing a certain thing. You know, I think we can find tremendous healing and freedom in connection and community with others. But when we don't speak up, when we don't speak up, when we don't give voice to what's going on inside of us,

that is the breeding ground of shame, right? Shame thrives on secrecy. It thrives on not being spoken. In fact, if you think of something that you are the most ashamed of about yourself, you almost can't think about it, much less ever say it, right? Like it's the thing that can't be spoken. That's how you know it's the shamiest thing. So then the antidote to shame is talking about it. Of course, you know, if it's a very

vulnerable spot, you know, finding a person you feel safe talking about it with. You don't want to just, as my mother would say, cast your pearls among swine. You know, that's a terrible saying, I guess nowadays, like it just doesn't sound very politically correct for whatever reason, but that's what she would say. But you just want to use some discernment with who you talk to, right? But once we speak about our shame, it loses its power. The shame begins to melt away.

So I think of normalizing as the antidote to shame and self-hatred, and I'm not the only one. So Brene Brown, the great, the brilliant, the beloved Brene Brown says this. She says, I define shame as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging. Something we've experienced, done, or failed to makes us unworthy of connection. So this terrible lie that shame tells us cuts us off from connection and love and belonging. And the antidote to it is speaking up, right? So when we realize that something we've experienced, done, or failed to do is not a personal flaw or evidence that we're

inherently bad or doing life wrong, but rather it's a common human experience, you know, shame is lifted, right? Connection is restored and we feel more free to grow beyond what has previously kept us really small and stuck. So that's some of the risk of not taking the risk of speaking up, right? But when it comes to your experience, yeah, have there been times when you tried to normalize something and maybe it didn't go as planned or it didn't go very well? Yeah. So the very beginning of working for myself began with this idea of trying to make something normal that wasn't normal at the time. I want to begin by saying I have never told this story publicly before because I was embarrassed when it happened

because I felt like it really undermined my credibility to do the work that I had been doing and then continued to do after the circumstance happened. So as a little bit of background, I was a high school English teacher for a long time. I think it was something around eight years. And the last couple of years that I was in public schools, I transitioned from this role of being a classroom teacher to being what's called an instructional coach. And essentially what that means is that I was kind of a teacher of teachers to some extent. I would provide professional development experiences for teachers. Another way of saying that is learning opportunities. And then I would

also work with teachers one-on-one in their classroom and help them to implement new strategies and try some new things. And if they were open to it, I might give them some feedback. And this transition happened in a time in my life that was just completely unmooring. So the same time that I accepted this new job, I started really struggling in my marriage and we went into therapy together and I was having an emotional affair with someone at work. My grandma, who I had been close with my entire life and lived with while I was in college, started dying of the cancer that she'd lived with for over a decade. And during that two-year time period passed away. So all of these things were happening during this two-year window. And it became very clear that for many reasons, I needed to leave my

job and go do something else. So in the process of this, I had reached out to someone that I'd worked with in a professional development program at a local university. And the program was really for educators to wanted to write themselves. And so I asked her to write me a letter of recommendation because I was going to go to grad school for counseling. And she happily agreed to do that. And the reconnection point really facilitated a conversation around me becoming part of a project that she was working on. And so this project was an extension of the program in the university. And we were going to write a book for teachers by teachers, just talking about the experience of being an educator. So one of the things that people who aren't in education may not know about education is that it really has this history of being restrictive in the ways that you're allowed

to share personal content. And so if you have ever posted about drinking or smoking or any of these things, like literally when you apply for a job, if they were to find something like that, they would make sure that you took it down before you would step foot in a classroom. Like that's not an unusual circumstance. There are some teachers who don't live in the communities that they teach in because people can be judgmental. Some people don't want to be seen having a drink in a bar because a student might see them. And a lot of this is really based upon the history of education as a primarily female enterprise and women as moral pillars in the community. And so there's all of this stuff in educational communities about showing up as we really are. And so this was something that I wanted to begin to normalize. And as I was working on this book

chapter and talking about some of the things that I had been through, I also decided that there were many other people like myself who were struggling personally and professionally at the same time. And I was seeing that. And so I wanted to offer something to them. And so I offered a series of mindfulness-based workshops and invited anyone who wanted to attend to come to these workshops. And it ended up being a really gorgeous experience where I had these rooms full of people, maybe 10 folks who had showed up to really be themselves and to see themselves not just through the window of their profession at work, but being at work as human beings and talking about things that human beings go through. So it was really influential for them. It was very influential for me. And I wrote this

chapter based upon my experience of running these workshops and trying these tools out myself and shared in a really vulnerable and meaningful way. And so I remember the day that I got a call from the editor after this project had completed, I was standing outside of my son's elementary school classroom. And I got a call from her. And immediately, her tone was just so apologetic and sad. And she said, I'm really sorry, Brandy, but the folks above me in this program said that we cannot publish this book chapter because it puts you at professional risk for sharing that these things had happened for sharing the fact that, you know, I had had an emotional affair or that I had drank too much while I was depressed, that I ended up going to

therapy, like saying these things out loud, they felt actually put my professional reputation at risk. And they also said that they did not think I was qualified to do the work that I was doing. And they thought it put me at risk and the school that I worked at at risk. Yeah, it was, I mean, it was such a blow because I had just started this business and I really was already feeling like, can I do this thing that I think that I can do? And I just started to reevaluate everything. And it really made me question myself and wonder if I was going to be able to do it. If I was allowed to do it, it made me deeply insecure, I would say, and just really shameful. You were hoping to get, I'm sure, support for doing a brave thing that was healing

and brought about connection. And yet you were met with the establishment's mantra of why this isn't done. Exactly. Exactly. And so it's really interesting to think back because the story that I just shared with you that I wasn't allowed to write in a book is the same story that I tell at the beginning of almost every single speaking engagement that I have. Good for you. And so I've shared this perspective in school buildings across the country with thousands of educators. And universally, there is just this sense of relief

when people have that moment of, yeah, I've experienced something like that too. I actually, when I tell this story of the experience of going through such a difficult time while also being an educator, when I tell this story of the experience of going through such a difficult time while also being an educator, when I tell that story to folks at the end, I ask them how many of you can relate to some part of what I've shared. And I ask them to bravely raise their hand if they feel comfortable to do so, and then look around the room. And it's incredibly powerful to just see, you know,

hundreds of hands raised and people just looking at one another and knowing like, yeah, this is part of it. This is just part of the human experience. And so it went from a situation where I wanted people to be at a certain point and that community just wasn't. And so I think that gets into this idea of you talked about the risks of not taking the risk. There is also a risk to doing the thing. Totally. There's a risk that the community that you're in may not be your people. And that can be really hard. You said it was a blow and it sounds like one. And so did you initially have the experience, wow, my community is not ready for me? And or did you you initially have the experience, wow, my community is not ready for me?

And or did you also initially have the experience of like, I am bad, or I've done something bad, or this is not something I should have done? How did that land? Yeah, well, it's really interesting, because I remember in the conversation with this woman, and I still think of her as a wonderful mentor. In this conversation with her, I said, let's call her Mary. Mary, this is exactly what I was writing about. This is so ironic. And she just said, I know. And so immediately, I did have this sense of just the irony of the situation. But I also remember, and this is so embarrassing, but it just so happened that someone else was standing. There was like a little playground right outside of elementary school and parents would stand there kind of like, you know, as kids were going into

school and then a little bit afterward and just in this place of deep insecurity, talking to another parent who was a professional psychologist and essentially asking them for permission and like being really kind of awkward about it because I was seeking that validation. I think that's what these situations can really do when we're feeling really torn down about who we are and was this okay? We start looking outside of ourselves for validation of was this okay? Was this okay? Was this okay? And I think that that was just where I was in my development with this particular issue. I wasn't secure enough in myself yet to sort of stand up and say, you know what, I have every right to share this content. It's really interesting because the

credential that this organization thought that I needed to have was actually a master's in counseling or some sort of social work counseling, I guess that kind of area. And I was actually starting a program that next year to get a master's in counseling. And the year that I spent in the program, which I didn't end up finishing, the year that I spent in the program, which I didn't end up finishing, I didn't learn anything about mindfulness-based tools or even positive psychology. In the application of those tools, I had a professor that told me that they thought psychoeducation, which is the category that he put my work in, he essentially told me he thought it was bullshit. So even that community was not really interested in the particular thing that I was doing.

Wow. So it's just the perceptions that people have. And I wonder, probably there are lots of communities that are like this. I know myself that education is one of those communities where the credential, the piece of paper, the next class, the next training, all of that is highly emphasized. And I think it can really lead to a sense of inadequacy, like never good enough to really, you know, do the thing that we're already doing and doing so well. And I think so many people have that sense of it too. Like, I'm not trusted to just do this thing that I've been doing for so long and just do it well, you know?

Absolutely. I think what you did was so wise, which is to connect with like a mentor, someone who you know to be a bit of a touchstone and in line with your values and who you hope to grow into being. And like you had a bit of a check-in around that based on, you know, hey, I was met with this response, had some guidance on navigating that from somebody you really trusted so that you could stay true to like your values and your voice. Yes, definitely with a woman that I had the first conversation with. Yeah, the woman. Yeah, like I said, we'll call her Mary. Yes, the second conversation I had, I think that person was like, not talking about that one. Yes, not that one. Not that one. Yeah, the first one, Mary, for sure.

Not the second one. Not the second one. That's so interesting. I was in the pharmaceutical industry for 13 years. And very often, especially with the last company I worked for, feeling like I was just a square peg in a round hole. Like I just didn't fit in the things that I did from a place of like either wanting to normalize or empower were often met by the systems of power with a lot of like, just shut it down. But anyway, potentially more on that another time. Yeah, I think you're touching into one of our favorite topics. Yeah. for later, but certainly the power of the patriarchy and what it means to be a woman within the structures of a system that's very male dominated and just has that ethos and that

energy. So we'll definitely have to talk more about that later. Yes. Yes. Stay tuned for more on that. All right. So how is the idea of normalizing showing up in your life right now? I'm curious to know. Yeah. Something we haven't necessarily talked about in the last month or so. So there are a couple of things that I think come to mind when I think of this idea of normalizing. One of the pieces that I would want to bring into the conversation is working at the edge of what it means for me as a highly sensitive person in a world where the structures in place are not intended to create a

sense of safety and are really built around maintaining power. And those who have power really just holding onto that very tightly and not really allowing the voices of folks who aren't having the best experience inside of that system. I think that as a highly sensitive person, I get an intuitive sense sometimes of whether a container is safe or isn't safe. And then that can evoke really strong feelings for me, feelings that something needs to be done to try to create change. And none of that is easy, but it is also I'm recognizing a little bit of my own superpower to be able to walk into a container. And by container, I just mean a space that's intended to be held for a specific purpose. And then like sit with the sensations of things just being a little off and knowing what those

are. But then when it comes down to human dignity and humanity, allowing myself as that sensitive person to say what needs to be said and not really worry about what others say in response, because I think oftentimes the response in those situations can be very gaslighting. It's sort of like, what are you talking about? That's not how things are. And so working at that edge, I think I'm trying to radically accept those parts of myself that have not always been easy. Another way that it's showing up in my life right now is creating those same really safe spaces for others to be radically honest about who they are. host an event series here in Columbus. It's a monthly breakfast lecture series called Creative Mornings. And during our last event, this gentleman raised his hand after the speaker. And honestly, I have to say that he fit the stereotype of someone that I wouldn't have expected to be vulnerable. And that's my own stuff. He was someone in his 40s, looked a little bit like a businessy type

of person. And what came out of his mouth just really surprised me and made me question my own, I guess, perceptions of what's normal, to use that term. And he shared how he had just moved to our city three years ago, which of course the connotations of that are that we've been in a pandemic for three years and that he'd been telling himself that home was inside of himself and that he realized during this event that he's been lying and that he felt a sense of home for the first time in a long time being in this community. And it was very emotional. And the community just really lifted this person up and was really present for him. But you know, he showed up exactly as he was, exactly as he was on that day. And I was just profoundly touched

by that. It was incredibly brave and just an example of that radical transparency, self-acceptance, honesty that I want for myself and that I want to build in the communities that I serve. So that's how normalizing is showing up in my life right now. How about you, Jenny? Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls, and I'm thrilled to invite you to our January Jumpstart series for the third year running. All January, I'll be joined by inspiring guests who will help you kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations. We're talking about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow. I always tell people that when you buy a handbag, it doesn't cover a childhood scar. We're talking about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow. I always tell people that when you buy a handbag, it doesn't cover a childhood scar.

You know, when you buy a jacket, it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were told not to love. So when I think about beauty, it's so emotional because it starts to go back into the archives of who we were, how we want to see ourselves and who we know ourselves to be and who we can be. So a little bit of past, present and future, all in one idea, soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be always an insecurity. It can be something that you love. All to help you start 2025 feeling empowered and ready. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. worry first on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your

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For me, the most recent example that popped into mind was around the topic of grief. So not to take too much from the episode that is to come on that, but there's one example that I thought I'd share. So my mom passed away from a long battle with Alzheimer's back in October. And so as her primary caretaker, I've been, you know, on that journey with her since diagnosis and with her, you know, physically most of the time. So there's a part of grief that, you know, I've been grieving the loss of her little by little as this disease took her from us, you know, little by little. And then her death, of course. But for me, it ended up being the hardest years, which were like the first three or four, actually. I can remember when I was with her, it was acutely hard and acutely sad and all-consuming for me.

It was really hard for me to do anything when we were in Atlanta with her other than attend to her. You know, I just didn't have the bandwidth for much else. And then we would go back to Ohio and I would return to like a cadence of day-to-day life and attending to life and work. And I remember feeling like those were moments where I could have a respite from the weight of what's going on elsewhere. And over time, when I felt

that division in my experience, and I just felt so distant from my grief when I was in Ohio, very often, I looked forward to going to Ohio where I had some space. And I just remember as I was experiencing that, what I thought or I feared was that I somehow was not integrated in my experience. I was really compartmentalizing and almost felt guilty for the ability to go have a life somewhere else while she was suffering so mightily under the weight of everything here in Atlanta. And I had some judgment on myself around that, although I didn't know how else to navigate the situation that I was in in life.

So then I was reading this book. I am reading this book on grief. And it's a book called The After Grief by Hope Edelman. And anyway, she says there's this idea of very normal experience that people have called grief dosing. And she describes it as moving back and forth between periods of acute emotional distress and periods of focusing on practical restorative tasks. So it's like loss-oriented versus restoration-oriented states, that this actually resembles an organic pattern of like emotional or self-regulation. And so when I read that, I immediately thought about this three, four-year period. And what I was actually doing was like grief dosing. And I was fortunate enough

to have an actual like place to go that was separate from her. That's not a privilege that many people have, but I was fortunate enough to have this. And it gave me a time to restore and rejuvenate and then dive back in. It turned out to actually be a really like supportive healing thing to do along the way. All my like judgment on myself, I all of a sudden was like kind of patting myself on the back. Like, yeah, it turns out you navigated that pretty well, you know. But Hope goes on to say about this idea of normalizing, and she's talking about it through the lens of grief, but I think it broadly applies. She says, when my lived experience

didn't mirror the path I'd been told that normal grieving people should take. I assumed the failure was mine. I never considered that the definition of normal might be flawed. Yeah. So I did not have a role model for someone that was in any kind of similar position I was in at the time. I just had what was happening in front of me and inside of me. And so I guess I thought if you love your mother and you're sad that she's dying or has died, then you can't pull yourself off the floor and you can't pull yourself out of grief and you're gonna be sad for years.

I mean, that was just the idea I had, I don't know. So the other thing I thought was like, well, maybe I don't really love my mother as much as I thought I did, like shoot, because I'm able to pull myself out of it when we go to Ohio. So more on that later, actually. But that's how it's kind of showing up for me right now. Wow. Yeah, it's really interesting. A couple of things that came up when I heard you talking. And one of them is, like you had said, the skillfulness, how you were engaging in that way and that your body actually just knew how to do that. I'm trained in somatic work and there's this concept called titration where you actually

navigate in your inner experience between a place that feels really safe and comfortable for you and then a place that maybe feels uncomfortable or a little higher risk, or there's some physical manifestation of discomfort there. And so an example might be, let's say someone is experiencing a lot of anxiety in their stomach, and they're trying to really get away from that anxiety. It's the anxiety is creating anxiety, right? The desire to escape. So, you know, you can navigate, for example, to your hand, touching something soft, and really feel into those sensations of the softness and the contrast of any temperature that might be there. And those experiences might be pleasurable or neutral. And then you can slowly dip into, okay, now how's the anxiety

feeling? What's the impact of that? And then navigate back to the part that feels comfortable. And so that actually is a skill for building resilience and being with difficult experiences. So you were building your resilience while you were dipping in and out of that space of grief. So I thought that was really beautiful. And you know, when we talk about grief, I think one of the things that we're going to need to talk about is pets. Because I have been following a local Columbus woman. Her name is Allie and was a photographer here locally, but now works with a lot of small businesses. And Allie Lehman, I should say that's her last name. She's been very public about

the grief that she's experienced from losing her pet of 13 years. And one of the things that I thought she said that was really interesting because she also talked a lot about the death of a grandparent that she had. And she said the death of losing a pet is so immediate because it's so daily. It's so moment to moment. It's like losing a part of yourself. pet is so immediate because it's so daily. It's so moment to moment. It's like losing a part of yourself. And so I think that there's a lot of grief that we don't acknowledge as being significant or real. So I just love that you have brought your experience to the table and really shared

this piece that was important for you in your own survival and resilience and how that was reframed from something that actually at one point created shame. That's so powerful. Yeah. Yeah. Whenever I would come back to Columbus and people would ask how I'm doing, I had to explain or justify why at this moment I wasn't actively weeping. You know what I mean? I promise you I'm sad, but at this very moment, I can't live weeping. You know what I mean? I promise you I'm sad. But like at this very moment, you know, I can't live like that. I have to like survive and do life. So I'm okay. But yeah, we should absolutely talk about the grief of pets. In fact, but my heart just like clenches when you say that because our two little doggies that are 13 and I'm just like,

living in some anticipatory grief of them passing. But more on that later. Yeah, it's interesting, because I hadn't even thought about on the one you feed, I always hear Eric talking. That's something that he brings up a lot is grief from the loss of pets. So yeah, yeah, you know, themes, lots of little threads that we can pull on. This past Saturday, I don't know that I mentioned this, but we drove from Ohio to Atlanta, a nine hour track and got in at 7pm and realized that I mentioned this, but we drove from Ohio to Atlanta, a nine-hour trek, and got in at 7 p.m. and realized that I needed to take Lola to the 24-hour vet emergency room because she had what we thought was a UTI, like pretty obvious in all the signs. And like

they came on all of a sudden and they were really intense. And so I drove her down there. You know, it was a long night of like tests and stuff. But I mean, I just had that sense of like, please God, let it just be a UTI that a round of antibiotics can address. You know, I mean, we love our pets so much. Turns out it was, which is glorious. Yeah. So that's really good. But now we have two dogs and diapers in our house. And it's Yeah, it's quite a place to be with us right now. Anyway, I digress. I digress. Yeah. So as we're nearing the end of our conversation, I wanted to ask the question, are there other voices that have impacted your perspective on this topic or just other voices you want to bring into the space to honor them or give a moment to appreciate?

So glad you asked. There is. There are a couple actually, but I think the one I'll focus on right now is, so as a mindfulness teacher, that's my practice. My daily practice is around mindfulness, mindfulness meditation,

but it's the lens through which I experience life. And Joseph Goldstein is a teacher, a really revered teacher in this space who's written a book called Mindfulness. And one thing he points to is this phenomenon that tends to be a, this is how I guess Buddhists would say it, but that all things arise when the conditions, when the appropriate conditions are present and all things pass away as conditions change. I love that in particular because I think it speaks to sort of anyone being capable of anything given we think, the emotions we feel. And that making it less personal, to me, causes me to be able to examine it closer without a lot of moral judgment getting in the way. Here's just a quick example. So when I learned

about what Buddhists would call the five hindrances to mindfulness, which are desire, aversion, the sexily named sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry and doubt. So these are things that literally we will all face and people have faced since they started meditating centuries ago. When we learn about them, then we can expect them and we can skillfully navigate them instead of experiencing them and interpreting it as, well, I get so restless and distracted that that just means I can't meditate. Meditation's not for me, right? Actually, no, what you're encountering is absolutely inevitable. And here through the centuries are the ways that we've learned to navigate this skillfully so we can stick with it.

Instead of saying like, this is my restlessness that's coming up. It's just restlessness. It's just what happens to us and we know how to meet it. So that's one example that's a little bit from another context. But I think for me, I see a connection in that human experience. The fact that there are reasons and contributing factors to the experiences we have. And by connecting with others, we can learn how to navigate things skillfully. So I'll just pause there for a second and see kind of what's coming up for you.

I love Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg and all the folks at the Insight Meditation Society. And I actually had the opportunity to, over the course of the pandemic, do a silent retreat, an at-home retreat with the two of them. And I feel like I didn't know as much of Joseph's work, but getting immersed in hearing him speak about these things was just really incredible. And I think that's all to say, I think that we really need to talk about retreats and silent retreats because it is so interesting the responses that people have. When I tell them about this thing that I do, but something that I wanted to share that came up for

me while you were sharing these sentiments that are so, I think, powerful and really the foundations for mindfulness meditation practice is that on retreat, and I cannot remember which teacher this was, but one of the teachers that I had would say that all of our inner experiences are just nature. It's just nature coming through. And so I think that going back to the idea of normalizing, if normal is the natural state, if we want to use that as a term that we can play around with, because I think that that's one of the beautiful things about language is that it does kind of evolve with us and can mean different things at different times. But if we're going to use that as an example of what this could mean, then nature is our natural state. I love that.

It is just what we are. We are part of it and it's part of us. And so I think that speaks to what you're describing. Everything has a cause and effect and a consequence and we're all just nature unfolding moment to moment, right? Yes. Yes. It's so beautiful. I love that. Oh my gosh. Yes. My teacher, Martin Aylward, he says, like, I'm never surprised by my thoughts. I mean, like, I can think anything, any kind of thoughts can pop into my head, like with the right conditions, anything can pop up there. I'm never shocked. I'm never surprised. I mean, and what I think he's saying by that is like, I don't take them too personally, like, because I thought that that means I am or,

you know, and so I appreciate that freedom to just be like, look at that, you know, I'm just, I'm just, yeah, an animal doing its thing. My very first retreat was so awful. It was a 10 day retreat. the- That was your first one? Yeah. With, uh, Gawinka is the teacher. And so, um, for anyone who knows anything about retreats, they're quite intensive. Yeah. I can't remember exactly how many, let's say like 12 to 14 hours of meditation a day, three hours a day where you're supposed to try to not move at all while you're sitting, um, Only two meals a day.

So you don't have dinner. It's just a very highly structured system. I've only ever done it once. It just wasn't my jam. But kind of along the lines of what you're saying about thoughts and how they just pop up, I had two roommates, but one that I had gotten to know a little bit before we went to silence because you have 24 hours or something like that before you kind of dive into the silence and we chatted before and so then 10 days later when we got to regroup she told me this story about sitting outside in this freezing cold I think it was February and a Midwest state and so just completely. And she said she was sitting on this bench, looking out at this like frozen lake. And in her head, her first thought was, well, this is actually kind of pretty. And she said in a completely different voice,

this voice just came in and said, desolate AF. But without the AF, like saying it all out loud. but without the AF, like saying it all out loud. And she said she just sat there and thought, huh, okay, not sure where that came from. Exactly, exactly. They're just the most random uncontrollable things, right? I mean, yeah, try to control your thoughts. Like good luck with that, yeah. Okay. So I think we are coming to the end and a question that I love to use for reflecting

upon an experience and feel free to... I love when you use this question. Use it. Say it. Lay it on me. Okay. I love it. Feel free to take your time with us and really kind of settle in and see what comes up for

you. But my question is, what's alive for you right now, Jenny? What's feeling alive? Okay. So I'm feeling a lot of gratitude for the last hour or so that we've been able to have this conversation. I'm feeling grateful for our friendship and our connection and for our showing up and doing this thing that we've been wanting to do for a while. I'm also feeling my inner critic popping up going like, oh, you know, you explored things too philosophically. It was you bored people to death.

Like, you know, who's going to come back for more after this? I'm just noticing that. I'm noticing it. I'm also noticing how much I love this. I'm just noticing that. I'm noticing it. I'm also noticing how much I love this. I love being able to explore this idea and the ideas to come like with you in this forum. Also, what else is alive for me is, I guess, just the insecurity and nerves around hoping that what we're saying connects with people in a way that we hope it will. And for me, that hope is in a way that feels healing and enjoyable. You know, I just, I hope that that is how it lands.

And I hope people join us for future conversations. So I'm just feeling all kinds of things alive in me right now. What's alive for you right now? It's interesting because we've had so many conversations and I think that feels very alive for me right now. I'm thinking of all of the moments leading to this. For example, and this has popped into my head probably three or four times in the last hour that we've been sitting together. But I'm just imagining leaving you a voice memo on WhatsApp while I was sitting next to this beautiful little waterfall

on this hike. And I was by myself and I was just thinking about you and wondering how you were doing and wanting to be there with you in this hard moment you were in losing your mom. And just when I would hear your voice back, when you would leave me the next memo, like the threads through all of those experiences, just being like, this is such a rich dialogue that we're having. And it's so personally meaningful. And it also feels like something I want to include other people in, you know? And so I think that that's coming up for me, that something that has been a personal experience with the two of us. Like, I'm so excited to share that with a larger community. And like you, at different points in this conversation, I feel like there's two parts of me and one part's watching the other part do the thing. Because that's how it is when you're doing something

that you are aware of the fact that other people are going to hear. And so you have the watch yourself going on. And then you also have the self that's just trying to be in the moment. Yeah. So yeah, I'm aware of that too. Just the watch yourself. And yeah, I'm really excited for some of the conversations that we're going to have. We talked about, of course, the topic of grief. And I know that we also want to talk about boundaries, I think is such a passion topic of mine. I know we both have a history with family estrangement, and we want to talk about that with folks and lots of other just really juicy, juicy things. Yes. I mean, my hope in future episodes is that we continue to find

ways to share more and more of our own stories. Because I think those are the moments in this conversation that I enjoyed the most. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Same. All right, friend. I never know how to wrap things up. I always feel so awkward. I mean, like, okay, bye. Okay. See you next time. Okay. Okay. That's a wrap. Yeah. How do we even, we didn't even talk about this. How do you, how do we end our episode? I think just saying, you know, thank you for spending this time with us. I hope that you got a sense of the care and the love and the joy that's present, the positive intentions and the hope for grace and kindness for all of us, especially within ourselves, but also with one another. You know, those things really ripple out. So I think we wish those things for our new friends out there.

I love it. I love it. We'll say that. Thank you, friends. Thank you, friends. Thank you, friends. Bye. Sharing and learning about human experiences is what we love.

You've heard some of ours. Now we'd like to hear some of yours. Head to oneufeed.net slash normalize to get in touch with us with comments, experiences of your own, or really anything you'd like to share. You'll also find all things related to Something to Normalize right there on the page for you. Most of all, thank you so much for spending your time with us today. Until next time. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. This January, join me for our third annual January Jumpstart series. Starting January 1st,

we'll have inspiring conversations to give you a hand in kickstarting your personal growth. If you've been holding back or playing small, this is your all-access pass to step fully into the possibilities of the new year. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, small, this is your all-access pass to step fully into the possibilities of the new year. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.