Notes on Resilience
Conversations about trauma, resilience, and compassion.
How do we genuinely support individuals who have experienced trauma and build inclusive and safe environments? Trauma significantly affects the mental and physical health of those who experience it, and personal resiliency is only part of the solution. The rest lies in addressing organizational, systemic, and social determinants of health and wellness, and making the effort to genuinely understand the impact of trauma.
Here, we ask and answer the tough questions about how wellness is framed in an organizational context, what supports are available and why, what the barriers are to supporting trauma survivors, and what best practices contribute to mental wellness. These conversations provide a framework to identify areas for change and actionable steps to reshape organizations to be truly trauma sensitive.
Notes on Resilience
100: Life Transitions: Resilience and Community Support, with Dr. Ebony Stone
What happens when life throws you a curveball, and resilience feels like an elusive dream?
Join us for this next episode in the Life Transitions series to talk with Dr. Ebony Stone, a resilient voice in the world of coaching and personal growth, to explore how communities can uplift us during life's transitions. Her approach to resilience, emphasizing lessons learned and positive impacts, challenges us to redefine strength beyond the traditional narrative of merely pushing forward.
We discuss the power of pausing and pivoting. Resilience is not just a relentless forward march but sometimes a gentle step back to process and make mindful choices. These intentional pauses remind us to savor every day and find clarity amid chaos, and give us a fresh perspective on navigating life's inevitable twists and turns.
Dr. Ebony Stone wears many hats: corporate executive, entrepreneur, practitioner scholar, leader, mentor, author, speaker, and coach. She has led diverse teams across various levels of corporate structures, from entrepreneurial startups to large organizations. This extensive experience has fueled her passion for development, particularly in coaching women to become their best selves.
She is the author of The Power of the Pause: When a Female Executive Can No Longer Hide Behind High Functioning Anxiety and Depression, which delves into her personal struggles with anxiety and depression, offering a candid and empowering narrative that encourages women to embrace their vulnerabilities. By sharing her story, she aims to inspire others to own their narratives and find strength in their unique experiences.
Dr. Stone's authenticity, transparency, and candidness set her apart in her niche. As a high-achieving black woman, she understands the pressure to hide imperfections. However, she now recognizes that these so-called imperfections are what make us unique and drive our passions. Dr. Stone's message is clear: the effort to live up to unrealistic expectations can hinder us from realizing our true potential. Instead, she encourages embracing our journeys' beauty and greatness, which lies in our authenticity.
You can reach her on her website, on Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn or email her at info@drebonystone.com. You can purchase her book on Amazon.
Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.
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Producer / Editor: Neel Panji
Invite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity.
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And then there is community as a whole, when you think of workplaces or our country, and I think we've got to do a better job in those spaces to support people in their transitions, their pivots, their pauses. I don't think we've created space for that in the larger community as a whole and I think we have to do a better job of that. The way we do that is that I think those of us that have influential voices, no matter where we are, that we take a stand for it.
Manya Chylinski:Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, manya Chilinski. My guest today is Dr Ebony Stone for our series on Life Transitions Building Resilience in Change. Dr Stone is a coach, a speaker and the author of the book the Power of the Pause when a female executive can no longer hide behind high functioning, anxiety and depression. We had a conversation about resilience, change, the role of our personal communities and the community at large in supporting our resilience. I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation, bony. I'm so excited to talk to you today. I'm glad you were available for the podcast. I'm so excited to talk to you today.
Ebony Stone:I'm glad you are available for the podcast. Yes, thank you so much for having me. I am super excited today to talk to you, but also to talk about this topic that we're about to get into.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, and before we dive into the topic, the question I start with if you could have, dinner with any historical figure.
Ebony Stone:Who would it be, and why any historical figure? Who would it be and why? That's an interesting question. So I've thought about this and I think that I would have dinner with Coretta Scott King, and I think it is because of the time period, of course, that she lived, and all that she saw and all that she fought for, but also because she was. I think she represents for me what I see in myself, which is someone who sometimes invisible but highly visible at the same time, and so she had to be going through some things that we never heard about. Right, as the wife of Dr Martin Luther King, I can't even imagine what her life is like trying to raise children, trying to be her own woman, yet support this monumental figure that was her husband, and I would just love to learn what her life was like during those times I want to be a fly on the wall at that dinner and I appreciate you saying that sense of being highly visible and also being invisible and an unknown sort of an enigma in a way.
Manya Chylinski:So, yeah, I think that's a great one. Thank you for sharing that.
Ebony Stone:Absolutely. Thanks for asking. I think that's a great question.
Manya Chylinski:Yeah, I love hearing everybody's answer and I'm going to be honest to you and our listeners I don't know what I would answer if somebody asked me that question. I think it would depend on the day.
Ebony Stone:I was just going to say that's your answer today. Yes, but depending on what's going on in my life at the moment, it might be someone different, but I think historical figures, I think of figures that are no longer with us.
Manya Chylinski:Yes.
Ebony Stone:But there are a number of highly visible figures that I would love to have dinner with that are still with us. So, yes, great question.
Manya Chylinski:I know. So theoretically there is an opportunity to still have dinner with them, but practically that isn't really going to happen. Right, absolutely, right, Absolutely. Well, today, you and I are talking about transitions and building resilience in the face of change. So just to get us started, how do you define resilience and what role has it played in your own life as you go through changes?
Ebony Stone:Yes, great question, because I don't think I define resilience as most people do. I define resilience as getting through whatever you're going through, having learned lessons when you come out on the other side that you can utilize to impact your future and the future of others. I like that Thank you.
Ebony Stone:Yes, I think a lot of people think of resilience as, just like I got to be strong through whatever this is that I'm going through and get through it right, and sure, we're going to keep living, we're going to keep waking up every day. But I think it is important that you not only get through whatever it is you're going through, but that those lessons are being learned, and then take it one step further, that those lessons are being implemented to impact things, but also to impact others that may experience very similar things.
Manya Chylinski:And how do you feel that that sense of resilience has served you as you're dealing with change in your life?
Ebony Stone:Man, let me tell you so I've had what I would call a blessed life. I've had a lot afforded to me, but that doesn't mean that I have not been through some things right and going through those things. Often I'd get into the middle of them and I would just wonder, like, how am I going to get through this? Like, what am I going to do? And when I got through on the other side, I'm big on reflecting and spending some time just trying to understand what did I just go through? What am I supposed to learn from this? What am I supposed to do with this? And I have been able to take those lessons and build for myself so that the next time I see something like that coming, you know what to do, or at least I have an idea of where to start. But also I try to hand those lessons down to others right. So I went through this. This is what helped me get through, because it's not always something you can do right.
Ebony Stone:Sometimes life hands you things that you can't do. There's nothing you could have done to stop it. There's nothing you can do in the moment to stop it right. I have two parents that both have chronic illness. My dad lost his fight. My mom is still here. There's nothing that I could have done to stop that. But what did I learn? You learn that every single day is special, and even while you're at the hospitals, even while you're going through the surgeries, the transplants, whatever it is, you make those days special. Right, that's what you learn. And so when you come out on the other end, going to take my mother to the grocery store is now different than it was before because of the lessons that you learn, and so that's how it's impacted my life. That's just one story, but as you go through transitions in life, I think that's how it impacts you. Right, you learn the lessons. If you don't learn the lessons, it is unfortunate.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, I really like that aspect of it, thinking about as lessons that we've learned or what lessons have we learned. And I do think that when we think of resilience, often the sense of that means we are always moving forward and we are kind of progressing. But I think that sometimes maybe, resilience means you have to pause and pivot. Tell me a little bit about how you feel about that.
Ebony Stone:Absolutely so. As you know, I just wrote a book called the Power of the Pause, right, because sometimes you just have to stop and sit with whatever it is. Resilience is not about just going and ignoring what you're feeling inside. If you ignore it too much, you end up in a really bad place, right? We have to process those emotions. We have to pause sometimes and in that pause so what it just happened to me recently in that pause I began to realize I'm also a woman of faith, right, and so I stay in prayer.
Ebony Stone:In that pause, I began to realize just what you said it was time to pivot. It was time to head in a different direction. Not because, where I was, there was no indictment on the past. It was just time for something else to happen. If we never pause to understand what is happening in our lives, if we never pause to reflect on the lessons that we've learned and what we need to do with them, if we never make that pause, sometimes that pivot doesn't happen and you find yourself just in this space of existing and not really living. So I think it's important that we pause and sometimes pivot right. That pivot has to happen. I need to shift just a little bit.
Manya Chylinski:Yeah, as someone who's gone through my own journey of resilience, dealing with something very difficult, I want to ask about how do you know when it's time to pause or when that pause is appropriate? And for context, early in my journey I didn't know what I was doing.
Manya Chylinski:I just was living my life. I didn't realize the tools I was accessing that were my resilience. I didn't always know should I be pushing through on this or should I be kind of stepping back and taking a break. So how do we know it's time to pause and that's the quote unquote right thing to do in that moment.
Ebony Stone:That's so powerful. It's a powerful question. I think you have to be in tune with your body, right? I believe that life will start to tell you you just feel off, kilter, everything. It might be going just fine, you might be in your day-to-day routine, but it just doesn't feel right. Right, it's time to pause. Or it is feeling really wrong. Right, something is feeling just really wrong, and I think you can practice pauses intentionally in smaller ways. Right, we're talking about large pauses, but I think you can start to practice intentional pauses in small places. That will allow you, as you go about life, to understand when a larger pause is needed. For instance, we live in a world where everything is like right now, you do the next thing, you do the next thing, you do the next thing.
Ebony Stone:I think that you can absolutely stop. If you need to make a decision, let's say something like I don't know, you're trying to determine next steps for your career. You need to just pause for a moment before you say, yes, I'll take that job, or yes, I'll do that, and just reflect when have you been? Where are you trying to go? What have you learned? All of those things before you make a decision and you make that decision in peace Me, I'm always going to pray about it. I'm always going to pray, I'm always going to look to be led internally. But I think you can practice those intentional pauses in small places in your life and then you really know like, okay, I got to step back. Absolutely need to pause in a major way right now. Yes, need to pause in a major way right now.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, as I think back to my own experience. As you were talking, I realized early on, as I was going through this in the early weeks and months after the bombing, I didn't trust my feelings, so I'm not sure I could have decided to slow down or speed up or pivot because I didn't trust that what I was feeling was, or I didn't even understand what I was feeling, let alone trust it.
Ebony Stone:Right, and when you don't understand what you're feeling. I'm also a big advocate for therapy, right, and I think therapists can help you understand where you need to pause, but the world doesn't create an environment that gives you permission to pause, right, if you think about this world that we live in. This world doesn't give us permission to pause. Everything is about going faster, doing more, being stronger, right. Nothing around says it's okay to just stop for a moment, it's okay to just pause. Nothing says that. And so when you decide to do it, I think most people wouldn't trust themselves, unless it's something that they have done intentionally over time, because it's very opposite of what the world says you should do. It's very opposite.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, especially here in the US it is. If you are not moving or taking action, then I guess you're not doing it right. But you mentioned something I really appreciate, which is the community and how our society looks at us as we're going through this resilience journey. And what do you think is the role of community in whatever way you define that in helping us be resilient?
Ebony Stone:I see community in two different ways.
Ebony Stone:First, I'll talk about community in terms of just the community of people that you hold near and dear to you, whether it's family, civic organization or something like that. Whatever you hold near and dear to you, you know church members, members in other, you know if you're a member of another faith. I think that that community is extremely important. I think that you have to support them and they have to support you. I have just a heck of a support system right my family. I'm really close to family. I have a couple really close friends and they oftentimes can look from the outside and see what's going on with you long before you feel it. And if you trust them, you know my best friends I've been friends with for over 30 years. I've been married for almost 23 years. They look and they see you need to slow down. I remember this last really big pause that I took. As I reflected on it. I can remember almost every person I hold near and dear to me saying something to the effect of Ev, you got to slow down, ev, can I help you with something? Can I take something off your plate? It was that concern and it was them telling me like, hey, you got to stop. And then, when I did decide that, hey, I'm going to pause for a minute and figure out next steps, I almost got cheaters. It was like, yes, thank you. Finally, thank you, right.
Ebony Stone:So I see community in that way and I think it's important to build that and it doesn't have to be huge. I think people think you have to have these massive support systems. It doesn't. It can be one or two people on this. You know this new journey that I'm on. I have my support system. That's always been there. But I've met two just amazing ladies that talk to me every single day, that encourage me. I encourage them. I see community that way. And then there is community as a whole when you think of workplaces or our country, and I think we've got to do a better job in those spaces to support people in their transitions, their pivots, their pauses. I don't think we've created space for that in the larger community as a whole and I think we have to do a better job of that.
Ebony Stone:The way we do that is that I think those of us that have influential voices, no matter where we are, that we take a stand for it right when we walk into the room and we know there's just one more thing. When you see the face of the person across the room that doesn't say anything, but you can see all over their face, that just can't take one more thing. But they're not in a position of power, quote, unquote or influence, and I think it's it's incumbent on us to say like, hey, well, can we look at this a different way? Can we maybe do that next week? Or, can you know, is there something else we can do? Or maybe even pull them to the side and say like, hey, how can I help? Do you need to sit this one out? Is there a pause? I think we can start to shift the culture by standing up and doing just that.
Manya Chylinski:Well, I love that you broke community to us. I think many of us can have that compassion for one another on that personal level and we can connect and be supportive on that personal level. Be supportive on that personal level and when we get out into the larger community and we think about the workplace as a whole, for example, or the city or the country, and we think about these big systems and our big society, that we feel for our personal communities, I think there's a real struggle to translate that to the larger communities.
Ebony Stone:Why do you think that is. I think it is because we've tried for as long as I can remember. You hear things like there's a personal life and then there's your professional life. Well, there's not, there's just life. Right, you can't separate the two, but I think we've tried and you can't, so I think we have to bring them together. I think that organizations need to do exactly what people do as we go through things. There have to be lessons learned, and then you have to be willing, as the leaders of these organizations, to shift, willing, as the leaders of these organizations, to shift.
Ebony Stone:One example that we all went through recently, right, is the pandemic. And when the pandemic hit here in the States, right, organizations some shut down, but not many. We had to keep going and we figured out ways to work from home and people shifted lives. And then, all of a sudden, it was like, hey, it's safe to go back in the office, let's just go back and we're going to go back to normal. Well, that's a problem. You can't just go back to normal. What did going through this teach us? How do we, the places we work, how do we impact the places we learn, like there was a lot to be learned and to ignore it and just go back to where we are or where we were. I don't think that's resilience. I think that is just again, existing right. I think we've got to learn the lessons and then build on those lessons.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, I think it's denial as a trauma survivor. Afterwards I was trying to figure out how do I get back to the person I was before, how do I get back to my normal, which was me two minutes before this happened? And at some point I recognized, oh, that's not actually what I'm, that's not what the goal is. And I recognized, oh, that's not actually what I'm, that's not what the goal is, and I didn't know at the time. But I think my thought process is what did I learn from this and how has it changed me? And I think you're right as organizations, as a society, we didn't take it as what can we learn from this? We took okay, thank goodness, that's over. How do we get back to what we were before?
Manya Chylinski:One of the silver linings I thought to the pandemic was that it forced our professional lives and our personal lives closer together. So you'd be on a Zoom call and somebody's child would run in the room or their cat would walk across the keyboard, and before that was just this violation of the workplace if you were somehow working from home. And now we got to the point where we accepted it and we were even hey is Junior home, let me see and wave and say hello. So we really reduced, if not removed, some of those barriers and it's so disappointing to see that we're putting them back up it.
Ebony Stone:I'm going to call it. Maybe the word I'm looking for is equality, right, because everybody had the same size box. Your office was no bigger, no smaller. Your cube didn't? Everybody had the same size box on Zoom, which was determined by how many people were in the meeting, right, and so it was just the human nature came out and you got to see just the human side of people. You got to see children, like you said. You got to see husband.
Ebony Stone:I remember being in a meeting at one point at home, at the I want to say, april, may of 2020, zenna 101, with my leader, and at some point that meeting shifted and the next thing I knew she was having like a 20 minute conversation with my leader, and at some point that meeting shifted and the next thing I knew she was having like a 20 minute conversation with my husband about cookies. I'm like what, what just happened? But we got to see people as human beings. Some of the walls, like you said, absolutely came down. But one thing, you know, I heard you say I was watching some clips of you speak and I think you just hinted at it a few moments ago there are moments that change the trajectory of your life right, and that moment that you can point to, there's a before and then there's an after right, and the problem is you can't go back to the way it was, because that doesn't exist anymore.
Ebony Stone:You can't go back to who you were, because that doesn't exist anymore. And I think, if our organizations as a whole understand, and I think if our organizations as a whole understand, we can't go back to who we were you know, pre-february 2020, because that world doesn't even exist anymore. So we've got to shift the people who work for us. They have the same names, but they're not the same individuals. There was change, an unfortunate amount of loss, but there was also a lot of growth. People learned a lot about themselves, and so the workforce that you have, even if not one person has left and not one person has come in, they are different. They are different because of the transitions that they went through, and so now the organization has to kind of shift and move with the people that make up the organization.
Manya Chylinski:Well, another word for transition is change, and we know how hard it is to change, even when we know the change is good for us and even when we want to make the change, it can be difficult. So, as you were talking, I know how hard change management is for organizations and I think we will make a change if we are forced to, and it is very difficult to do so otherwise. Difficult to do so otherwise. Very true.
Ebony Stone:I recently heard, and I cannot remember who it was. I heard someone speaking and they talked about the butterfly and how so many times the butterfly tries to emerge from its cocoon and it is not strong enough yet the moment is strong enough that you merge. It emerges beautifully. And we talk about that, how beautiful the butterfly is when it comes out of the cocoon. But we don't often talk about that process of trying to get out is strengthening its wings so that we can watch it float through the sky. And so when I think about change, change is hard.
Ebony Stone:Change management, like you said, is really hard. That's why their entire department is dedicated to change management, because it is not easy. But I think we have to continue to try to break out of the cocoon so that when we start to fly it is a beautiful thing. I don't think we can stop. We have to continue to try and it's scary and it's hard and we're going to make mistakes and there will be some quote unquote failures that we learn from, but we have to keep going because it is necessary, it is absolutely necessary that we change.
Manya Chylinski:And I appreciate that you mentioned fear. That is such a big piece of all of what we're talking about Transitions, whether you decided on them or they were thrust upon you, and wanting to go back to the way things were is fear of what will happen if we go into the unknown.
Ebony Stone:It's like am I going to be good enough when I get over there? Am I? Will I be as good at this thing as I was at that thing? Will? Will people respect me the same way? Will I, you know, for organizations, am I going to make the same money? Like what will those things look like? And I remember I was in my freshman year of college and I did not do well in a class, and so I was trying, as a then 17 year old, to kind of warn my parents that there was going to be a bad grade coming to the house.
Ebony Stone:Doing my best right, and so it didn't turn out well and my mother called me and she said I'll never forget it. He said do you remember that class you were worried about? Say yes. He said don't worry about it, you failed it, you got to take it over, and then the conversation just went on.
Ebony Stone:And I learned from that that that that the reality is we're all going to fall, like if we keep worrying about falling, we don't make progress. You are absolutely going to fall. If you think about riding a bike, nobody gets on the bike and just takes off. You fall. Nobody gets on the bike and just takes off. You fall. And then you get up and you try it again and you might go a little further and you're going to fall again before you learn to ride the bike. And so the fear is that we're going to fall. And I think if we can just take the attitude that, yep, we're going to fall, we just have to get back up, then we'll be okay. But so many people, so many and I'm not exempt of that right we all at some point feel like, oh, no, I'm going to fall, I'm not doing that. Well, no, just go fall, you'll be okay, get up.
Manya Chylinski:And, whenever possible, put on the knee pads, put on the helmet, find the guardrails that are available in that situation to make the falling a little bit easier or less painful, so that you want to continue to do the work I love that.
Manya Chylinski:So, bony, we are at the end of our time Already. Has it been 30? Wow, it has been, and I could talk to you for about five more hours on this very same topic, and perhaps offline. We are going to do that, I hope. But as a final question, is there anything I didn't ask you about transitions and change and resiliency that you would want me to have asked you, and how would you answer it?
Ebony Stone:Great question. I don't know how I would ask the question, but I can tell you what I want people to know. Okay, I want people to know that, when they think about resiliency and transitions through resiliency, that there is power in the pause and it is okay to slow down and go fast. That is absolutely okay.
Manya Chylinski:That is a wonderful sentiment, thank you, and please tell our listeners how they can reach you and learn more about you and your work.
Ebony Stone:Oh, absolutely so. My website is just Dr Ebony Stone dot com, so DREBONYSTONE dot com. And then I am also on Instagram and TikTok, but mostly LinkedIn. Right, I'm trying to learn the other social media platforms, but mostly LinkedIn. If you look for Dr Ebony Stone, you will find me, and then you can always email me at ebony at drebonystonecom.
Manya Chylinski:Excellent, Ebony. Thank you so much. This has been such a fabulous conversation and I know our listeners are going to learn a lot. Thank you.
Ebony Stone:I had an absolutely wonderful time.
Manya Chylinski:I appreciate you having me today such a fabulous conversation and I know our listeners are going to learn a lot. Thank you, I had an absolutely wonderful time. I appreciate you having me today. Thank you for listening. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I did. So if you'd like to learn more about me, manya Chilinski, I work with organizations to help understand how to create environments where people can thrive after difficult life experiences, and I do this, thank you. Thrive and be engaged amidst difficulty and turmoil. If this is something you want to learn more about, visit my website, wwwmanyachilinskicom, or email me at manya at manyachilinski, or stop by my social media on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thanks so much.
