How do you divine?

FEEL AH WAY-Unpacking Emotional Communication in Caribbean Culture

• How do you divine? • Season 3 • Episode 28

Share episode

Welcome to a special episode of 'How Do You Divine'? where we explore Feel Ah Away, a project aimed at understanding the unique emotional communication within Caribbean culture. Discover the unfiltered, raw dialogues from the streets of Brooklyn, stories that highlight the complexity of Caribbean emotional intelligence. Sanika delves into how generational and cultural nuances shape our way of expressing and processing feelings, bridging past and future generations. Tune in to learn about the project's inception, its goals, and why its street-level insights are crucial for evolving our communal and emotional well-being.

Watch the series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_zO7uQUSvjTHmRPx7fPpf9X3Kz2Nw2ZK

Send us a text

Thank you for listening and for adding new dimensions to your definitions. Keep growing, keep exploring, and keep defining life on your terms.


🌐 Explore the new website www.howdoyoudivine.com
📲 Follow us on social media

Meet Our Founder & Host 🎙️
Sanika is a storyteller, vibe architect, and crowd igniter—passionate about self-discovery, culture, and the power of words. With a background in technology and marketing communications, she’s built a platform rooted in authenticity and resonance. Whether commanding the stage or leading deep conversations, Sanika doesn’t just hold space—she transforms it. Her work inspires growth, challenges perspectives, and amplifies the voices that need to be heard most

As the host of How Do You Divine?, she invites listeners to redefine meaning, embrace transformation, and navigate life—one word at a time. Her mi...

Speaker 2:

Welcome back to How Do You Define a show where we explore how we've come to define and redefine the words that drive our life and how that conflicts or compliments with our spirituality. And on today's episode is gonna be a little bit different. We are going to explore a project that I launched earlier this year called Feel Away. Let's get into it.

Speaker:

As we wind down season three, I wanted to bring you into the special project, feel a way that we recorded over the summer. I briefly mentioned it in Stick a Pin episode, but with only two episodes to go for this season. I thought it deserved its own episode to speak about the importance of why Feel Away was born. Give you a little insight on where it's going, and share the true vision that feel a way will become as a home for scenarios, conversations that we wanna have in the Caribbean, but we're too afraid to have or not ready to have. As we evolve as a culture and as a community to adapt things like social media, ai, even some countries are updating their infrastructure. How are we emotionally adapting to this evolution, our communications following and how we leave our people feeling both at home and abroad is important. It is our responsibility to bring generations, past and generations to come into a world that is welcoming, that honors who you are, as well as see you beyond your external appearance.

Speaker 3:

This project isn't about our accents or traditions. It's about emotional literacy in Caribbean culture, how we love how we defend, and how we heal.

Speaker 2:

You ever notice how a Caribbean person can tell you a story just by using a phrase? And when I initially thought of this concept, I wanted to explore the dynamic relationships and the way we communicate, how we grow, and how we explore as Caribbean people, The Caribbean spans many different countries, but somewhere in that through line, we have very similar ways of how we treat each other, how we love each other, and most important how we communicate. It's not anger, it's not sadness. It's this in-between space where emotion meets reflection. Where words fall short, but feelings says it all. That's what feel away is all about. It is more than a phrase. It's about that emotional takeaway. When common scenarios happen in the Caribbean, that leaves us feeling unsettled, not hurt, but also not satisfied, not happy, but maybe a little underestimated. Feel a way is peeling back the onion on how we intended, on communicating to how it was received. Not only from our family members, but our friends. And an effort to bridge generations to see how we can evolve together in a world of ai, social media, many people feel like this is a new world. This didn't happen when I was a kid. I don't know how to understand. I don't know how to comprehend. I don't even know how to relate, but feel away levels. The playing field, we talk about these common scenarios that happened in the Caribbean that often go unaddressed because it is becomes standard. And what is our standard way of communicating, of loving and treating one another? How we process, it's how we protect, and it's also how we present and preserve ourselves in a world that often misunderstands our rhythm. They can take, they love the vibes, but don't understand the beats. They don't understand the melody that brought together the culture of the Caribbean.

Speaker 4:

Migration gave us survival instincts, but survival isn't the same as healing. Feel away acts how we move from surviving to thriving without losing our rhythm.

Speaker 2:

First, let's discuss why this project exists for generations. Caribbean people have been labeled as too loud or too much, but those same traits are what makes us dynamic. Our culture feels deeply loud and profound and sometimes problematic. I created feel a way to explore the truth, to show how that emotional intelligence exists in our culture, just in a different dialect. We laugh through pain. We reason through rhythm. We connect through conversation. Why? Street interviews and not a sit down interview with many different generations and people from various islands, because I wanted it to be raw. I wanted it to be real. I wanted it to be off the cuff. How would you respond in this scenario? And. Most often, it's something that you've actually already come across. I didn't wanna talk about Caribbean people. I wanted to talk to my fellow Caribbean people. I wanted. This conversation to have the lens of multiple generations, multiple countries from various perspectives of a common scenario. So one of the scenarios that I talked about was about being approached in regards to your parents. And in the Caribbean, you're either too fat or you're too skinny. You're rarely in a happy medium. But when presenting this scenario to the people on the street. That was the response that some people would either address it head on, depending on who was presenting them in the situation. Even the younger folks talked about the importance of honoring the elderly and the seniors in their community or even in their family. So sometimes there misunderstandings when someone would walk up to you and say, Hey. You getting big. You see, see your face is fat. And instead of addressing it head on and saying, that hurts my feelings. Why would you say that about my appearance? I don't come to you to be belittled or hurt about my appearance I would love for us to have a more comforting and nurturing relationship. They just would say nothing because sometimes. In order to address a situation in real time can be received as confrontation. So the alternative is Nora, just be passive and let it go and deal with it on the back end in your room alone, or hopefully with another family member. But how do we move past this standard way of conducting ourselves when we are met with a situation that leaves us feeling uncomfortable? That's why I feel a way happened in the streets, because that's where our story lives. At. The corner bus stop, in the barbershops at the market. That's where we exist in real life. So I wanted to meet people where they were. No fancy studio, no need for. Performative responses where UA English and laughter overlap without apology because we know the migration story can sometimes come with a deep sense of shame and presentation.

Speaker 5:

Feel ah way is what happens when, how do you divine leaves the studio. It's the street level version of self-awareness where reflection meets reality. It reminds me of being on the veranda are a stoop with a mango. In one hand it's the conversations that connect us, but also evolves us. It's the reasoning.

Speaker 2:

Do I look proper for that format? Am I speaking clearly enough? I wanted to remove these barriers to be a part of the conversation because if you're living and you're breathing and you are from the Caribbean, you are already qualified. No subjects required. If you've done the CXC, no degrees necessary and no need to straighten your hair opia locks'cause everyone deserves to have a seat at the table. To speak about how can we communicate to each other our concerns or observations in a way that does not leave us feeling not enough or of no value or discarded. These lingering feelings happen very commonly because we're busy, we're running, we're in survival mode, because that is also deeply woven into the migration story. But how do we set a new standard to take a beat, take a pause before we engage, before we respond to someone about their appearance, before we inquire about their current work status or their pursuits in school, or without attacking their character. By taking. To the streets, we got raw, unfiltered voices of the culture. That voice that doesn't make it to boardrooms and headlines, but drives how we show up every single day. We can all remember someone in our community or in our family that really nurtured that child inside of us, that help us stand tall or maybe sometimes stand beside them in an effort to find your way, feel a way is a conversation that happens on the stoop in the island. It happens as you walk into market. It happens as you're standing outside, after church. Wow. But how do we bring that conversation to a platform in its most authentic version without exposing, because there's still an element of not telling embodiment business in the culture and also worrying about what people will think because it's deeply woven in the migration story. So how do we honor the cloth of the migration story while. Building and interweaving a better fabric, a new version that will heal generations to pass and also usher in new generations to come. What you heard on Feel Away, which is now available on YouTube? You'll hear joy. You heard humor. Sometimes a little tension based on those situations. Two people can feel a way about a same situation, one ready to cuss and the other ready to Nevada. But deep down inside, they wanna pray for you or they hope you would've went about addressing that situation differently, but both responses come from love and survival. How do we create a mirror? In our migration stories so that we are positioned to thrive because survival is a very stifling stage in life. And while we all need it to achieve the goals and aspirations that we have for who we are in this world, and the purpose that God or whomever you worship. Have placed on your life? How do we transition from survival to thriving in the Caribbean culture if we do not address the pain of the migration story? So let's talk about it and feel away. It's about seeing how we carry emotion through language, through history and pride and how that shows up across generations and islands, and how can we show up differently. 1% different every single day is, um, author James Col. James talks about in his book Atomic Habits. My goal in all of my creative endeavors is to improve the way the Caribbean culture is seen and evolves 1% better every single day. There is so much intelligence culture love and unique. Honor in being from the Caribbean, that can also be misinterpreted as hustle, grit, and sometimes a bad attitude. How do we change that cloth to show them who we really are? I'm not a therapist or a scholar. I am a student of the culture. I was raised in it actually across three separate religious practices. I have one side of my family that's Seven Day Adventist, another side that's Baptist, Christian, and another that is Rastafarian. I have seen the full range of what it means to be a Caribbean girl. And now a Caribbean American woman, wife, and professional. I've lived it, I've observed it, I've meditated through it. And what I've learned is simple healing doesn't happen in silence, not in the corners on the phone with a friend, hoping that it can help you through the next interaction, a healing. Happens when we start to talk about it, when we start to understand it, when it's okay to laugh at the things that hurt you, when it's okay to see it happen in another generation and help them see the line of differentiation between who they were as a child and who they have become as an adult. Healing in my perspective happens when. We can sit down and talk about one event experienced three different ways because of the baggage we brought into that event. Often we talk about how funerals and weddings can really show you who people are or who they used to be. And I actually feel like funerals and weddings show who you'd like. People to see you as versus who you really are. It's this silent behavior in between when you think people are watching and when they're not, is the version of you you're afraid to show. Feel a way was yet another pillar. My creative universe of Caribbean excellence. We were in the streets of Brooklyn, New York, talking to different people about how they would respond to these common scenarios and why they felt the need to respond in the way that they did. Is it based on their family history? Conditioned behavior. We walked the streets My team and I, we laughed. We love, we made really good connections. But one of the best takeaways from Feel Away. Was an elderly man in his eighties from Haiti. After the cameras were turned off, we started talking about the purpose of the project and where I was going to put it and how it aligned with my goal and I spoke to him about my desire to unite people across generations. As a millennial, we have the awareness. We are slowly getting the tools and we have the experience of the traditional way of how we were brought up. Many of us are first generation Americans, so in our homes we're very much like the island. While outside our door, we lived in this new reality that we helped our parents adapt to. And I feel like as millennials we have this unique perspective and strength and ability to do that because while we are first generation, we can also. Pull from our relationship with our grandparents who may probably still be in the island, and the conversations we have with our grandparents. So speaking to him, I spoke to him about my grandfather who was Rastafarian and his wife, who was very much a Christian, and just the dynamics of their relationship and how I felt that. In the Caribbean culture, we communicate quite often, but not to be understood, but mostly to be heard. And as a child I can see and hear the way messages and situations where communicated with one another and how we can improve it if we just slow. Down and pause and listen more than we talk. I say that as someone who sometimes also need to listen more than I talk. So again, not a therapist, not a scholar, just someone really dedicated to connecting and uniting people for the purpose of living well together. I like to read a lot of books about wellness and to be emotionally and mentally healthy, and a lot of those authors and doctors speak about boundaries and isolation and all these things, these tools and great, um, systems that they've set up in place, many of them, which requires you to have a great sense of self. I believe that generations that have passed, unfortunately never got the opportunity to gain a strong sense of who they were due to survival mode and through survival mode. They raised their children to survive and progress. They also did not have the opportunity or space to identify who I, who am I? And here we are as first generation kids, millennials, who had that opportunity to live in the progress that was made a few generations prior to us, but also given the tools and the language to go, who am I? And create the space to identify the answer. It's a game changer. Generations of past didn't always have that opportunity, and if they had, it was due to different economic situations. So how do we bring everyone along? Feel a way is my way. Identifying common scenarios that happen in the Caribbean and asking the audience their response to how they would react. Because every single day we all get 1% smarter and we become more and more aware of the relationships we'd like to retain in our lives. And the ones that don't necessarily mean that much, but feel away also has a subconscious task, feel away also forces you. To address why you would respond that way. And one of the great things about this being an In the Streets Real Talk series is that every respondent talked about their source of the response. One woman told us it was because. It's happened many, many times before. Friends would disappoint her and not show up, make a commitment, so she's sick of it. So if someone would disappoint her again, she had nothing to do with it. She was over it. We had another scenario where a young man said that he would respond more passively to a situation because he knows the burden his mom is bearing, he wouldn't want to. Bring her any more hardship or heartache. So he would bury how he feels and channel forward. And I love that we talked about the response and the why to a response. Because in the Caribbean often we just respond. We don't leave any room for why did you come to that decision? And the the sauce, the real goal isn't why did you come to that decision? And sometimes. Guilty as charges Myself. We are so hothead and so determined to move to the next thing that why does not have room to grow in the discussion. It's like I told you, but tell I do this thing. I'm gonna want you to do it and just shut up and move on. But while the task is complete, you've just planted a seed of trauma and hurt that will grow to build. Distance in that relationship, resentment in that relationship. And that's what feel away is. Where culture meets communication. Emotions meets understanding. Let's continue to talk about it.

Speaker:

I Believe curiosity and self-awareness are the gateways to growth. We live in a time where emotional passiveness has become the norm. People scroll past their feelings. They ghost instead of communicate. They deflect instead of reflecting, and I can sometimes be guilty of that. But one thing I'm very grateful for is that I'm very self-aware. I hold myself accountable to interactions, relationships, but never the outcomes. I lead with intention and ensure that my actions are aligned. The rest is up to God. So the outcomes are never my concern, but feel a Way is a direct challenge to that. It's a reminder that curiosity isn't just about learning, it's about listening. It's about asking, why did that make you feel this way instead of pretending it didn't. That's the heartbeat of how do you divine finding meaning and emotion and making. Space for reflection instead of reaction. Because when we get curious about what we feel, instead of numbing it and dismissing it, it leaves space for awareness. We evolve, we divine. Feel away isn't just a side project, it's a living and breathing expansion to how do you divine. And what it stands for. It stands alone, but it stands in the streets. So while we started in Brooklyn, New York, we will be in a country or state near you. It's the street level application of self-awareness, real people, real feelings, real dialogue. And this is how do you divine?

Speaker 6:

So next time you feel way, don't scroll past it. Sit with it. Ask yourself why. That's where growth begins. If this episode made you think, share it with someone who needs that reminder too, because the more we talk about how we feel, the more we evolve together and not isolated.

Speaker:

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of How Do You Divine? Feel Away. See you on the next one. Two more episodes to go.