Rejection is Not Final

On this episode of "WORTHY.", J.U Jones has a chance to talk with Dr. Lena L. Green, the Executive Director of HOPE Center Harlem. Born and raised in Harlem, NY, Dr. Green had her share of ups and downs. One down included being bullied and not understood by her peers. Tune in and hear her triumph story, reminding us that rejection and failure are not final destinations. 

Transcript

ANNOUNCER: WORTHY:  A Hope Center, Harlem Motivational Podcast.

J.U JONES: Hey there, HOPE Center Family. It's me, J.U Jones, your professor of positivity. That person that helps you live life and believe in possible, one post, event, or podcast at a time. And yes, yes, and yes... This is WORTHY, a motivational podcast brought to you by Hope Center Harlem, a free mental wellness space that offers a host of free therapy and wellness resources.

To learn more, please visit www.HopeCenterharlem.org. That's www.hopecenterharlem.org. (laughs) Woah. I am so excited. Yes, extremely excited to welcome each of you - each of you that I call Students of Life - to WORTHY, and I think that it's that time right now before we start to give a few quick notes as I welcome you into this space.

WORTHY is a motivational podcast whose motivational interviews will run 10 to 18 minutes every fourth Monday of the month. We do this so that you can listen, get your motivation through stories of others, and then get on with your day. It's all about helping you rather than lecturing you. From stories of working through and beating mental wellness challenges to stories of going from setbacks to breakthroughs, WORTHY will inspire you to continue to live this thing we call life. Using all of its learning lessons as a guide. 

On WORTHY, the professor. aka me - J.U Jones - will refer to each of you as “students of life.” Why do I do that? I do it because we are always learning, always growing, always moving, always shaking in this thing we call life. So students of life… Are you ready for the first guest, who happens to be the Executive Director of Hope Central Harlem?

Well, I am so excited in this moment, in this time, in this space, to welcome our esteemed guest for today, Dr. Lena Green. Dr. Green, welcome to WORTHY the Podcast. 

Dr. Lena Green: Thank you, J.U. I am excited to be here. Thank you for having me, and really looking forward to sharing my story for the lessons of life. 

J.U Jones: I love it. I love it. Before we start, I think it's always important for us to share exactly how we're feeling without saying those normal words. Good, great. Blast, et cetera. So if there was something right now that details how you're feeling, what is  it?

Dr. Lena Green: today I would characterize, um, really this entire week as abundant. That would be my word. 

J.U Jones: Love it. Come on, abundance. We love to hear it and not to shift us fast. The show WORTHY is about talking about people's lives, whether it's downs, ebbs, and flows, et cetera, to where they get to their mountaintops. So I wanna start with you, Dr. Green. Who are you, and where are you from?

Dr. Lena Green: Well, I am a kid from Harlem. That's who I am.

J.U Jones: Come on, Harlem. 

Dr. Lena Green: Yes, I am an individual who was really born and raised in the village. Someone who had a lot of hands on her life. From community members to friends to family with Southern roots. So my family is from South Carolina on both my mom's and my dad's side.

J.U Jones: Nice. You know, we love some good cornbread, collard greens, all that good stuff. 

Dr. Lena Green: all the good stuff. Okay. But my people come from Gullah country, so they're rice. So, yeah, so a, a girl who, who had big dreams and big hopes with a community of folks who wrapped their arms around her to help her get where she needs to be.

J.U Jones: I love that. I love that. Before we go into the moment that we talked about pre-show, I would like to talk about little Dr. Green before everything happened. So tell us some of the moments that led up to you getting to where you are today. 

Dr. Lena Green: So growing up, I think one of the things that stands out about my life, including elementary school, was being one of very few black folks in mostly white spaces.

Although I'm from Harlem, I actually grew up in the projects, Martin Luther King projects, also known as Foster, right on 114th Street in Lennox Avenue. And I went to school on, uh, the Upper East Side for elementary school. And then I continued on similarly, uh, in the sort of sister schools that took me through high school.

I, you know, spent my summers in camp, actually at a Jewish camp. And pretty much outside of that, the things that I focused on were educationally. Emphasized, and then I had sports and church. So those were sort of the three areas that my life was focused on. Those spaces really helped to shape me, mold me, and there were really some key folks that were able to do that along the way, which I'm grateful for.

J.U Jones: I love to hear that, that your focus was education, sports, and church. That's, that's amazing. And so before we get into the, the rest of. At that time in your life, what did people misunderstand about you the most? Especially coming from Harlem and having to go all the way downtown to school, There's normally moments of misunderstanding, moments where people might look at you and make a judgment, and those moments normally stick with us throughout our lifetime. What was one of those moments and how did you feel? 

Dr. Lena Green: Well, one of those moments actually happened quite a bit. I never really felt like I fit in sort of in those spaces. You know, a young girl who didn't sound like the people around her. so oftentimes I got teased and they were like, you know, hey white girl, come over here.

Sometimes they attempted to bully me. uh, and thank God for, for sisters and cousins  Yeah. Who you could call in those moments. Right?

J.U Jones: right. 

Dr. Lena Green: You know, I, I, I'm, I'm grateful for the spaces that I had that were really my protective spaces or the things that I like to call my protective factors. Having older sisters and older cousins who, you know, came from the same neighborhood, who could really protect me, pour into me, guide me.

in those ways and having, you know, a host of aunties. And so that's one thing. And then in school, interestingly enough, I talked a lot and I got in trouble for talking all the time. So, you know, there's some report cards that folks could look back on and they would see, you know, Lena's a great student, but she talks too much And so 

J.U Jones: it's the negation for me. (laughs)

Dr. Lena Green: Right. You know, and so, you know, there were often times that I got yelled at in class, but I felt like I always had something to say. Right. I think I, I sort of had some leadership qualities early and so the folks that were working with me were trying to sort of guide me and help shape me.Um, so that I could be a leader and be a strong example for those around me and not be a distraction. But I think having those things that stand out that I can look back on, I'm like, yeah, I was born to talk. Right? Like I, I'm a professor, I'm a teacher, um, I'm an educator, I'm a mental health clinician, right?

And all of those things, you need to be able to talk, but you also need to be able to listen. 

J.U Jones: I love that. Thank you so much for sharing. Let's keep going on in your story. After high school, what happened?

Dr. Lena Green: I went and stepped foot on the good campus of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Okay. Amherst, yes, I, I got accepted actually into a lot of different schools, but that school for me just felt like it was far enough away to come back home easily if I needed to.

And it gave me an opportunity to be clear about the areas of my life that I wanted to really develop. So I knew I needed to get, get away from home, get outta the city, get outta Harlem. I wanted to be able to have some new experiences. And so I was also trying to make a lane for myself where I didn't have sort of this crutch of like this familiar community that was all around me.

J.U Jones: And so then there was grad school. 

Dr. Lena Green: There was grad school. Um, and happy to let everyone know that I'm my alma mater for both my masters and my doctorate. New York University also known as. Yeah. 

J.U Jones: And so I'm just gonna assume and deduce here that most of the time, even thinking about childhood, when people made certain comments that in theory would make us feel not WORTHY, or when teachers would say, we talked too much.It makes you feel that you need to change something. That there were more of those moments. So we finished college, we finished grad school, we got into our career, we did all of these amazing things. And then the moment happened from my understanding, it was in 2014, what happened? 

Dr. Lena Green: So what happened was I was Applying to doctoral programs.  .  and I was focused on one program in particular, actually. So after, you know, it takes, it takes a lot out of you to actually just apply to a program. So you've gotta get recommendation letters, you've gotta take exams, you have to do some writing. That line of academia is sort of a different ballgame, so you've gotta be on top of pretty much everything. But I had put all my eggs in one basket and applied to one university because honestly, I was so sure that that was my next step, and I got rejected. 

J.U Jones: Oh, let's, let's, let's, let's dig into that. Yeah. What I hear is that, You really expended a lot of time. If, if there's a number that you can come up with. How much time did you expend getting that application in?

Dr. Lena Green: Ooh, it's hard to put a, put a, um, an hour on it. So I would say about three to four months' worth of work preparation, interviewing, prepping, and all of that stuff. And money, right, because it costs money to also do some of those things like take. All that time, I felt like I could not believe that I had just not so much wasted.

But that's what it felt like in the moment, that, that piece of your heart that you are so excited to sort of share with, share with the world. Right. Um, and, you know, I had also been quite sure that God had saw me that I was gonna be a doctor, right. So to, to move forward and confidently in this space and to just have the, the wins just knocked out of your.

Um, and it had felt like I had been knocked down hard. 

J.U Jones: In this moment, I'm feeling a little of emotion from you, from the gestures on your face. does it still feel like it was yesterday? 

Dr. Lena Green: Sometimes. Yeah. It does feel like it was yesterday, right? Because that, that you, you, you hear your, your, the hitching your voice, right?  .  and your heart sort of stop a little bit because I can remember opening up the letter and being like, I cannot believe this me. I put all this time, I put all this energy into this thing that I felt like God had said yes to and was moving forward. All confidence that that was the next step.

Unbeknownst to me it was not. And so there was some hard lessons learned there. But what, but it was not without disappointment. It was not without a little bit of shame.  . . Um, and it was not without some hurt and anger, to be honest. 

J.U Jones: Disappointment, hurt, shame. Like those are words that a lot of us feel every day.

How did you work through those moments? And this is before you got to the mountaintop. So you're literally going through this situation, you're feeling. Basically life fell apart. You did all this work, and I can just feel it from what you're saying. How did you get through the disappointment, hurt and shame, and even anger.

Dr. Lena Green: Yeah, well, for one thing, I let myself have all my feelings, so I was able to talk to my therapist at the time about how disappointed I was. I felt like a little bit of a failure because, you know, she had invested in me. There were several people that had invested in in me in that time, and I had done everything right, and so there was nothing that I could point to that said there was a, there was something that you missed. None of those things were missed. I then had to sort of take a step back and say, you know, am I gonna give up on this dream and this thing that I know was sort of in my heart? Or was I gonna try again? And I have to find the courage to try again.

J.U Jones: All right, so we try again. How long was that? How long did it take us to get to that try again moment? 

Dr. Lena Green: Probably about a year. So I started looking at other programs. So I had said to myself, well, you know what, what I'll, well that will be one program that I will, I will apply to, but I'll also apply to other programs. So to cast a wider net right. To sort of give myself an opportunity to see if, if, even if I didn't make it to the program that I initially applied to, that other schools might be interested in. 

J.U Jones: All right, so we did it again. How long did that process take? 

Dr. Lena Green: That process, interestingly enough, went really fast.

I was already prepared with some of the things that I had written previously. I had went back to my same recommenders to say, you know what? It's a year later, but we're gonna try again and I'm gonna apply to a couple of different schools. And one of the schools that I applied to was, of course, NYA. I applied and I got in earlier than expected.

J.U Jones:  Oh my goodness. That is amazing. And so that then gives me failure… Is not your final destination, or even rejection in one moment is not your final destination.  . . After getting to NYU and then moving through the ranks of school, what then happened?

Dr. Lena Green:  after that, so many doors started opening for me. I had incredible mentors that really held my hand through every step of the way, but I asked for the help that I needed. Right. And I, and I maximized every opportunity that was given to me. 

J.U Jones: I love it. I love it. And now you are the executive director of Hope Center, Harlem, and you're also, go ahead and tell the students everything else you do.

Dr. Lena Green: Oh my goodness. Well, I'm a professor at two universities. both Columbia and my alma mater, nyu. I also have a consulting agency called GreenPrint Wellness, which I also use as an opportunity to do, uh, work in the mental health and wellness space. Um, and that, those are just a few things and a few opportunities that have been granted to me, and I'm sure that there's much more.

J.U Jones: I love it. There's an old quote, and if you know the professor, you know, the professor loves a good quote, and it's actually by an unknown author. It says that sometimes rejection in life is redirection to something better, and in your case, it sounds like your rejection, that moment where you felt that everything was done, where there was no worth, and that moment, Was a direction to NYU was a redirection to doing something, um, even grander and even more doors opening.

Love it. Love it, love it. Let's shift a bit and ask a question of you to take it back. If you could go back and give 18-year-old little Dr. Green some motivation or one piece of advice, what would it be? 

Dr. Lena Green: It would be that sometimes the answer is not yet. Right, because sometimes we're, we're on this path and we're moving full speed ahead, and as you said, sometimes we need, we do need to be redirected.

Sometimes the not yet is the is not, is not ever. It just means not right now, right?  . . And so we have to have a little bit of patience. We have to trust the universe. We have to trust that the words that we hear from, from God or the creator who, whomever you call, call the power in your life that it is leading you on the right path, and that you can continue to move forward knowing that the best is yet to.

J.U JONES: I love it. Thank you so much for sharing that. As we close out today, we always allow each of our guests to say, I am WORTHY, and then finish their own sentences. And so go ahead and in this moment, in this time, in this space, remind yourself, the world, the universe, why you are WORTHY. By starting with, I am WORTHY.

Dr. Lena Green: I am WORTHY of being invested in. I am WORTHY of Second chances. I am WORTHY of love, and I am most certainly WORTHY of an abundant life. 

J.U JONES: Dr. Green, thank you so much for being here with us today. I think the students of life were truly moved by today's segment. Thank you. 

Dr Lena Green: Thank you. 

J.U Jones: Students of Life, students of life. Students. Yes. Yes, and yes. It was such a gift to interview Dr. Green, who reminded us that people may talk about you, but never forget who and whose you are, while also telling us that rejection and failure is not. A final destination. As we close out, I want to say thank you. Thank you for listening to WORTHY a Hope Center, Harlem Motivational Podcast.

I am J.U Jones, your professor of positivity, signing out, reminding you that you are WORTHY no matter what. Never forget that. And as I close today, I must say I love you. I love you for who you are. And I love us for where we're going. Class dismissed.