Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
This is what the world needs now: two free-thinking “seasoned” Black women speaking their truth and inspiring others to do the same. Shaped by 45 years of friendship that began at the prestigious Brooklyn Technical High School through the Ivy League, medical school, marriages, divorces, triumphs, parenting queer children, life-threatening illness and many many amazing adventures. Each week, besties Leslie Osei-Tutu and Angella Fraser will push against boundaries in love, culture, careers, faith, politics and out-dated assumptions about women of a certain age. Remember, you’re never too old to change your mind…or your hair! (but more on that later :-)All views are our own and do not reflect the views of our institution/company. Information provided is not intended to serve as medical advice.
Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Pivoting to Bigger & Better
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Pivoting - in our careers, where we live, and such - is something many of us have had to do during the pandemic. In this episode, we share how we developed our pivot power way before 2020: Leslie’s circuitous path to medical school at the age of 35 and Angella’s move far from all that was familiar, with her 3 young children (and a pet snail) in tow.
Visit Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn website for behind-the-scenes extras.
Hey Ange, it's Leslie here. Really? Hi, Les. It's Ange here.
SPEAKER_03So I'm so excited to be bringing back our second episode of our podcast, Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn. Thanks for coming back to hear about an exciting conversation today. How would you characterize what we're going to be bringing to our audience today?
SPEAKER_02Well, I wanted to talk about having permission to pivot. And usually we've been hearing pivot around COVID and all of the changes in people's careers and how they make money that COVID really forced folks to think differently about those things, right? And we've heard about pivot in that regard. But today we're going to be talking about pivoting just in general, when you make a shift, right? A pivot is you're going in one direction and you just almost abruptly just kind of turn on a dime and go in a different direction. And there have been a few cases in our lives, Leslie and my lives, where we've had to do that, right? And just like with COVID, the pivoting was thrust upon us through circumstances that were outside of our own making, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I'd say that's true.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Um, and that's usually, and you know the way we think, sometimes that's God just putting something that's forcing us to do something that we don't necessarily feel comfortable doing, but we know that it's time to do it. And we have been ignoring that soft, quiet leading, and God has to be like, yo, now, now, now. And I'm thinking, like, what's that I hear? Right? What is that? You talking to me? Sometimes he kicks you in the butt. So that um has happened with um Leslie and I separately, of course, and maybe together too.
SPEAKER_03Definitely too, probably. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And so we wanted to talk about that. And what we're hoping that you, our beautiful listeners, get from it is that things are hard, and sometimes you have to do hard things, and you can do hard things. And there is another side, there is um joy that that comes in the morning. And so I've been dying to tell more and more people about what my girl did at one point in her life, which every time I think about it, even right now, I feel myself welling up because people will look at where you are right now and they don't know what you had to come through to get there. You know, and that's why things like jealousy or envy, it's like, you don't want my life.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, just to jump on that a little bit, the way that I would frame the conversation we're about to have, if I had to use one word, I'll use the C word courage.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um and oftentimes we look back on our experiences and recognize that it was a courageous move before we even recognize and acknowledge that we even had the courage to pursue whatever it is that we're going through. So let's chat about that a little bit because I know that so many of us say, I can't do that, I could never do that. It, you know, there are so many barriers put up before us that it'll I'll never be able to achieve that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And just before we go further, on that word courage, I want to be clear. Courage does not mean that you don't have fear, right? You will always have fear. Maybe the thing that you used to fear last week, you don't fear this week, but you have something new that you fear. So the idea that you're not gonna fear something and that's when you should move is yeah, yeah. That's that's not it. That's not it.
SPEAKER_03Courage is doing it afraid, yeah, in spite of the fear, you know, sometimes closing your eyes, saying your prayer, and jumping right in with two feet. Exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_02So what had happened was when Leslie was uh 36 years old, right? So think about what you were doing when you were 36, what stage of life you were in, children, marriage maybe, or serious relationship. Definitely you're a full-on adult. And at 36, my bestie Leslie decided to go to medical school. Um it was not a uh, you know, a kind of it was a a thoughtful decision, but it was a major, major pivot in what her life had been before, right? In a lot of ways.
SPEAKER_03So I'll set the stage a little bit, okay? Um years prior to that, I was a single parent of my darling son, who's now an adult. Um I was working as a high school science teacher. But what I felt was um that I didn't love where I was. Now, I come from a background of professional educators, my mother, my grandfather, my sister. Um, so it almost felt like the family profession. Um, and it was ideal for a person who's a single parent. You get out of uh school at three o'clock, you can um, you know, spend the evenings with your child, etc. Um, however, I didn't love it. And what I recognized early on was that students need someone who has a hundred percent of their whole heart in it in order for them to grow. Um, and I didn't feel that that was me. What I did feel since I was about five years old was that I wanted to be a doctor. Uh, I don't recall how it came into my mind at that time, but um, all of my life, my idea was that I was either going to be a neurosurgeon or later on I decided I was gonna be a geriatrician because I grew up with my grandparents and great-grandparents around me.
SPEAKER_02Leslie had five generations of women living in um uh a large brownstone. And so that was always, she's always had a love for and and reverence for the elderly. So that makes a lot of sense.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so after college, um and then I got off track a little bit. Um, I had my son, as I said, as a single parent, and I figured that the education career would have been perhaps an easier, more logical um path forward for me. I went and got a master's in education, and that was where it was going to be. And then I believe my son was about eight at the time, and I looked myself in the mirror. I said, I'm not happy doing this, and what do I want the rest of my life to look like? And I really believe that that's where it started. The second part of that, which is really important and I want people to pick up, is that as primary parent, I needed to set an example for my son, knowing that it is possible to achieve your goal, whatever it is. I've always been a hard worker, so that wasn't the problem. Um, so I said that I'm going to try to get into medical school. I only try once, and then education would be my fallback career. I thank God that I was able to get into several medical schools and ended up entering medical school. Um, I I think I was about 36 at the time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So let me fill in some of what I saw as um as her best friend.
SPEAKER_03Okay, here you're gonna start talking about the barriers.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so here's the thing, right? Um, so Leslie was always a science head, not not the better science, not physics, which we fight about that. I'm the physics person, she's a chemistry person. So not the better of the two major um sciences, but so Leslie was always into chemistry. She excelled in chemistry, right? But not only I used to teach chemistry in high school. You see, okay. So, but not only that, Leslie for some reason was always the person we went to, and I don't know why that is. We went to when we had any kind of medical thing. I know you worked at doctors' offices and things like that, but that wouldn't necessarily make someone be knowledgeable about, but you always knew, like we always kind of naturally just came to you when we had some kind of ailment.
SPEAKER_03I think because I verbalized my interest in medicine so early on. Remember, age five. So through junior high school, I talked about it, through high school, I talked about it.
SPEAKER_02But there's a difference between you having an interest and us believing that you could give us answers. I was a good liar. I had you fooled. Yeah, but just one time you you tell me to do something and it didn't work, I wouldn't have come back. Right. So not so much. So at the time, Leslie and I were roommates. We were living in a was it around then? Was it what I no, it was later.
SPEAKER_03We were roommates.
SPEAKER_02It was after that. Okay, yeah, okay. I have to get it. You see, this is what happens when you've known each other for so long, you start to forget when different things happen. But Leslie was a full-on single mom. Yes, and I'm going there. Yes, um, his father is is very uh a wonderful person, it turns out, but there was a point where he wasn't showing up the way that he really needed to. And it was during that time that um, or just maybe a little bit after when we started to understand what had happened. And so her friends, namely me and a lot of other friends and your family, we weren't necessarily feeling him when, you know, we're just gonna say, or not.
SPEAKER_03I don't think that that was what actually happened. What happened is it became clear that I couldn't parent Omari as a single parent and go to medical school at the same time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So then it's what do I do? What happens with my eight-year-old son? Do I leave him in the care of my sister who's wonderful and has a son her his age, and you know, who grew up as a brother anyway? Do I leave him to in the care of my mother while I did my clinical rotations and what have you? And I made what turned out to be a wonderfully um thoughtful, blessed, privileged decision to have live out of state with his father.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And it turned out that he lived with his father for seven or eight years.
SPEAKER_02Which is amazing. What I'm calling out is, and I I'm saying this and I'm making a point of it because number one, Leslie really pushed against the counsel that she got from others, people who loved her. We were so concerned about maybe um punishing him in a sense, or or maybe not making um you feel like um you needed him after being such an amazing single mom. The fact that you knew so strongly that this is what was necessary.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02That was one of the most influential things that you have done for me.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02Is that sometimes you know, sometimes you know, no matter what. Even if your mother, your grandmother, your bestie, oh yeah, sometimes you know.
SPEAKER_03There weren't too many people that were on my side. I was called selfish. I can't call it. Why would you do this? Um you're throwing your son away because of, you know, why don't you stay a teacher? There were just so many things. And in my heart, this could have been the God moment that said, um, not only is this a good time for your son to be with his father, uh, a good male role model, um, but this is also something that you had to do personally in order to show him and others that one, I needed to show myself that I could do it and I was capable. That's really one thing.
SPEAKER_02And it was by any means necessary.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and the other thing, um, I needed to do this in order to enjoy a profession that I love and that I would do it for free if they didn't pay me, and thank God they do.
SPEAKER_02The other thing that I want to call out that I saw you do is forgiveness. You had a lot of reasons to hold on to regret and anger and um you know, and vengeance maybe. Um, but you chose not to do that. You put that aside and I think I think your son saw that. You you put that aside for the bigger good, and how amazing is that that had such a ripple effect in our circle. Yeah, yeah, you know, it's just incredible. So all right, enough about me. Can I stop speaking about you now? I'm not done. I'm not done. So um at the time Leslie was living in Brooklyn, and there were decisions that she had to make to um allow her to be able to afford to go to medical school. And this woman, and it was like we can look back now and it can look like a blip, but just it can also look crazy. Remember that like you're insane.
SPEAKER_03You're really gonna quit your job to go back to school full time? Full time. You're a mother? How it was just nuts.
SPEAKER_02It was nuts, it was nuts. But she just remember that sequential left-band. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I put one foot in front of the other. One foot in front of the other. I'm gonna keep moving forward. Every obstacle that came up, she did the old bob and weave and she made it happen. And maybe the last thing I'm gonna say, but it may not be, I'm not gonna promise. When I came to visit you, um, when you were in your apartment, now you're living in New Jersey, when you were living in that apartment and I came to visit you, um you were showing, I was flipping through your medical books. And guys, let me tell you, it was disgusting, the stuff that was in the book, like stuff that you could barely look at. And I said, Leslie, how can you look at this? How can you, you know? And she said to me, and this is this is how you know that it's a calling. She said to me, How can you know that people are suffering like this and not want to do something about it? That was a mic drop. That was a mic drop, and this is why I tear up because it's a calling, and she pursued it, and it came to be, and now you're this kick-ass, you know, um, physician, and um couldn't be more proud of you. And you you were are an example of going after your dreams and and getting there. So um kudos to you.
SPEAKER_03And and a good segue into that is something that I think about all the time, and this is what I want our listeners to pick up on is that the way that I looked at it is if anybody can do it, then I could do it also.
SPEAKER_02Wow. Where did that confidence come from? Was that confidence, or was it just, you know, you just close your eyes and swing?
SPEAKER_03I think it comes from being an observer in the world, looking at people um tuning into them and doing things that seem to be difficult. And when I see people doing things that look difficult, but they're doing it with facility, then it's like, wait a minute, if they could do that, especially people that I may not have so much respect for, it's like that idiot can do it, you know, so you know. So I think that's where it comes from, but I still believe that. You know, I still believe that.
SPEAKER_02Now, you young lady, let's talk about a I know we I know we want to talk about me, and I do want to talk about me because I do want to get my flowers. Are you stalling? I totally want to get my well, I'm just not done, and I don't want it to just kind of fit in this thing because you know, I just want to say a few more things, if I may. Okay, if I may. Um, I don't know if any other person who has so much joy when they are working, right? When they're doing the thing that brings home the bacon to have so much joy. Leslie literally enjoys what she does. And so this idea of this is what I want to do when I'm five years old, and then living this through, and I I believe, like I said, this was just meant to happen. You were meant to do this. When Leslie graduated medical school, they had a new award, right? Don't skip over that. Don't skip over that. Because Nana Ruby, her grandmother, was so proud of you. Don't skip over that.
SPEAKER_03Right. I was a recipient of the Gold Humanism Award. Right, okay, so nominated by my um professors and fellow students.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so what that means is Leslie got an award basically for the way that she treated her patients with love and care. How rare is that for a physician and to be recognized that way, to like be so above the crowd in that particular way, not in how you know she administered this and this and this, or how well or how pain-free she did um uh epidurals or anything like that, but in how she treated her fellow human being. That was like, of course, Leslie got that award.
SPEAKER_03You know you're gonna be the right of my obituary, right?
SPEAKER_02I'm just saying, that's okay, I'll take it. Maybe they'll just pull it from the podcast. Folks, that that was like, you know, the cherry on top, the yes, this is what she was meant to do. Yes, the profession. Validation. Validation. The profession needed you. And I know in whatever hospital you work in, the nurses, your fellow doctors, they're also um seeing the way that you interact with um your patients, and it's having a ripple effect because you love what you do. So so what does all this mean? Seek out the things that you love.
SPEAKER_03Right, right, and bring you joy. And if you can make a profession out of it, gravy. If you can make money out of it, if you can feed your family and support yourself, all the better. And when you make right decisions. That feels right in your heart. I think God ordains things like that. You know, you get his assent and his yes.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. So anyway, I think I'm good now.
SPEAKER_03All right. Well, thank you for that. I appreciate it and I feel it. I receive it.
SPEAKER_01You receive it.
SPEAKER_03So Ang, there was a time in your life now, 20 something years ago, that made me most proud of you. Okay. And the way that you handled this um circumstance. So the the l events that led to it, I'll it's your story to tell briefly. Okay. And then I'll tell um how you reacted and what my how well how I viewed it.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Well, what is the what is the thing you're trying to call out? I'm trying to-cause I've done so many amazing things.
SPEAKER_03I'm trying to call out when you lived in New Jersey, had life changes, left New Jersey, and created a life elsewhere. Okay. Talk a little bit about like how that came about and why. Why would you leave the comfort and of a beautiful McMansion in the sh the the hills of New Jersey with your uh picket fence dog and three kids and we didn't have a dog, but okay, let's talk about that.
SPEAKER_02So at the time I had three children, my three children. Um one was five, one was seven, and one was um a newborn. Uh I noticed some things going on with my then husband, and what was really uh wonderful about it, if you can imagine, something that I would never change, is at that time I had uh found this amazing church to um to attend, right? I uh kind of rediscovered my faith when um before my third child was born. And by this time I had found a church that really spoke to me and where I felt like I was learning and where people actually opened their Bibles and read from the Bible. It wasn't just something that you know you read a verse, it was a verse-by-verse um teaching Bible called um Bible teaching church called Calvary Chapel. And so during this really hard time when it it became evident that uh I had to change things in my relationship with my then husband is it it made me get so close to the Lord. Like in my sorrow, had I not prior to that connected, reconnected with with um with Christ, I don't know how I could have gotten through it because I would spend a lot of time in my closet reading and crying and just kind of pouring it all out. And I got to the point where I learned the difference between pleasing someone and blessing someone. Oh, yeah, that was my big lesson. There's a difference between pleasing someone and blessing someone, and the blessing someone, for me, it came out of living a principled life and having principles and not allowing someone else to step all over them just to make them happy, right? So I got clear on who I was in Christ, and um that's where I that's kind of where it started, and why when I felt led to leave, I didn't kind of there was no kind of going back and forth. I didn't do any of that because it the spirit came to me and said, get out of my way, you're enabling bad behavior. And with that, I decided it was time to put our beautiful home on the market and leave. I didn't know where I was going, nothing was planned out because this is something that you know wasn't anything that I orchestrated.
SPEAKER_03Right, right. So you felt like you were being obedient.
SPEAKER_02I just felt like I was being obedient. I felt like, okay. And it was one of the maybe two or three times in my life where it was almost an audible voice, you know, not kind of just in your head, but it was so strong that it was, okay, if you're not gonna do this, you are clearly disobedient.
SPEAKER_03You're clearly, there wasn't any kind of and um so I'm gonna jump in right now because I'm the semi-outsider looking in. So Ange comes up to me and says, now I know that there was trouble in the marriage and trouble in her home. She says, Les, I'm moving to. And I'm like, what? I did like a spit take. Spit take. You know, like when you, you know, you spit your coffee and that's a spit take, by the way. You know, your eyes, the uh Roger Rabbit one. So, first of all, I don't know anything about North Carolina.
SPEAKER_02Neither did I. I also You know what I knew about North Carolina? I knew about down south.
SPEAKER_03I was just gonna say, what I was going to say is I knew that black people from the north weren't necessarily safe down south. Why would you, uh a Brooklyn girl, bad enough, you're in Jersey now, but now you want to go down south to this unknown place. Yeah. Um, at that time you told me that you had found a church that you liked. It was a a sister church to the one where you worshipped here. And you also told me that your the company that you worked for also had a large presence down there. Right. In um and hence you were on your way with your three babies, my net niece and nephews. I was like, what in the world this woman has lost her mind.
SPEAKER_02And I hadn't lost my mind. I had actually found my mind. I had actually found my my mind and um knew what um I wasn't afraid.
SPEAKER_03I I was I was impressed by that and struck because I thought that it was just maybe trauma from the ending of the relationship. What that you were just like stunned. Right. But you really were at peace.
SPEAKER_02I was so much at peace. It was scary. I was I was scarily at peace. And I didn't um I didn't know, and actually You didn't even have a lot of answers for my question. I didn't, I didn't. Um so I didn't even know when when I knew that it was time to to separate, and that's what I thought I was doing. I was separating um from my then husband. Um I just thought I would just move to another place in New Jersey. But I had um a manager at um my company, and this is a just it it was one of the best places that I've I've ever worked, and I worked there for almost 20 years. Um I mentioned that there were some things going on, and you know, we we were pretty close, and I had been going to North Carolina to um for training or for classes or to meet with with clients down there. And so what happened is while I was going down there, I would go to church. I see. Yeah, and I looked for the sister church to um the one I was um attending, and I started going there whenever, you know, um they would have like Wednesday night service or things like that. I would go and I would just sit in the back and you know, um, and so everything just kind of fell into line because my manager said that he, you know, would I want to move to North Carolina because it's a pretty big um head, it wasn't the headquarters of the company, but it was one of the largest um the the second largest um campus, we call it. And so it just made sense because we were like in a satellite office in New Jersey, and he asked me if I would be interested in moving there. And I said, sure, why not? It just it just came at the point where you know me, I'm writing everything down, the pros and cons, where I'm gonna leave. I'm I'm big on decision trees. I'm an engineer by my first degree's in engineering. And so I'm doing decision trees on which way to go. And then this opportunity fell in my lap. So to me, it was just the Lord saying, okay, this is where you should step into next. So I didn't um I wasn't kind of wound up, I wasn't afraid. Um, I think Leslie and my family thought I was a little crazy. Um I did.
SPEAKER_03I think but again, and this is something that has permeated through our entire relationship. I trusted you and I trusted your decisions. And certainly, if you tell me the Lord spoke to you audibly, um, who am I to say that this is not um a good move for you all? Um, obviously you had my support.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I felt that.
SPEAKER_03And um yeah, it kind of worked out. What I don't want to lose track of, though, is that this wasn't the only courageous move that you made.
SPEAKER_02What?
SPEAKER_03What?
SPEAKER_02Okay, yes, this was not this was not planned. We were just gonna talk about one.
SPEAKER_03Well, what now? You were happy at the company that you were there. Yeah. And this might be a conversation because it brings up some other things for our um some um upcoming episodes, but you didn't were not just satisfied with your 20-year career at this large Fortune 500 company um making good money. Good money. You know, and then good bonus money. That didn't seem like it was yet enough for you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I um I do want to talk about that. There's a lot that went on there, and I want to unpack a lot of it so maybe in another episode we can we can revisit that.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, this would be good. Like we can leave our uh listeners in suspense about what the heck are they talking about? Yeah, but you know, the bottom line, let's just bring it back full circle, talking about um even before COVID required this of us, we can make intentional decisions to make changes in our lives when we're not satisfied with the trajectories and the way that things are going for us. I've started um thinking about this podcast, and one of the things that I've said, come on, be honest. And if we can't be honest with ourselves, then who can we be honest with?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um, it's never too late to start thinking about making changes that might color the rest of your lives, as my dear sister has always said, and this may come up a lot because it's one of my mantras now, there's not too many shopping days left till Christmas. And if you think about it, as funny as it is, she's right. If I'm now 60, how many more years may I have on this earth? Nothing is promised to us. So if I want to climb Kilimanjaro like my medical school buddy did recently, not that I ever would, now's the time to stop prepping for it, folks. Yeah, I wanted to be a f physician, and I said I didn't want to leave this earth without making the attempt and knowing that I made the attempt. Pass or fail.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But I needed to know and then show others that this was something that the trial was the important part of it.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_03Look at what example you set, Ange, for your three children. Yeah. About the canduativeness, about girl power, about black girl magic, about pivoting after a relationship ends, about forgiveness and moving on. There's so many lessons here that can be unpacked.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. About not being um just seeing only one way of getting things done. There's not only one way of earning a living. There's not only one way of finding joy, right? You may be making choices to do things because it's your script, right? Or a script that someone else placed on you. You know what I mean? Exactly. And it's like, write your own script. And this isn't, I want to say this because this isn't about like always making these big, huge decisions, right? We can look back on these things and we can say, wow, that was big. But in the moment, it was incremental decisions. Today I'm gonna do this or not do this. Today I'm gonna say this or not say that. And those incremental decisions lead to the what you see as a big shift.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Right?
SPEAKER_02And so it's it's in those little decisions that start to um widen your comfort zone, right? I always say, Les, that your comfort zone gets widened the more you push against it. Yeah, it's not gonna widen unless you push against. And once you push against, it gets bigger.
SPEAKER_03Are you making a physics reference again? It sounds like physics.
SPEAKER_02It's like you're putting air into a balloon. Yes, it's gonna expand and expand.
SPEAKER_03Only when you hit only when you stretch the latex.
SPEAKER_02Right. So, and remember, Leslie is the um left brain person, right? And so for her to make this big shift, it has nothing to do with kind of your wiring or oh, I'm not like that, or I could never do that. Why? It's not about it's about how can you? Not should I, but how can I? How can I? How can I? So anyway, I think we're gonna call this a wrap.
SPEAKER_03I think we are, but oh, we have so many things for you guys to look forward to listening to. First of all, the end of this story about pivoting and changing, but also it just reminds me of why we decided to talk to you all. Um, you're gonna start noticing that we've we we do things a little bit differently. Um, some things may be similar to many people, but I think that um you'll start seeing some differences, and um, we can continue to talk about how we uh navigated and negotiated those things.
SPEAKER_02So why she has a black eye? No, I'm kidding.
SPEAKER_03All right, guys. Thanks for listening, and we really appreciate you all listening to Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn. See you later.
