Your Therapist Needs Therapy 86 - Deconstructing More than Doctrine with Tori Williams Douglass

This week Jeremy Schumacher sits down with Tori Williams Douglass to discuss their journeys through evangelical upbringings, mental health, and deconstruction from rigid religious systems. Tori shares her experiences as a non-binary, neurodivergent person of color raised in predominantly white evangelical spaces and how those intersecting identities shaped her path to becoming an anti-racist educator and advocate. The conversation explores the challenges of breaking free from colonial, capitalist, and christian supremacist ideologies while addressing the necessity of grounding practices like hiking and community engagement for self-care. They also reflect on the importance of learning from marginalized communities to imagine and work toward a better, more equitable world.

To learn more about Tori and her work, head over to toriglass.com or you can find her socials here, and make sure to tune in to her podcasts, White Homework and Go Home Bible, You're Drunk.

Jeremy has all his practice info at Wellness with Jer, and you can find him on Instagram and YouTube. 

Head over to Patreon to support the show, or you can pick up some merch! We appreciate support from likes, follows, and shares as well!

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Podcasts about therapy do not replace actual therapy, and listening to a podcast about therapy does not signify a therapeutic relationship.

If you or someone you know is in crisis please call or text the nationwide crisis line at 988, or text HELLO to 741741. The Trevor Project has a crisis line for LGBTQ+ young people that can be reached by texting 678678.

Transcript

Your Therapist Needs Therapy - Tori Williams Douglass - 2025/02/04 11:24 CST - Transcript

Attendees

Jeremy Schumacher, Tori Williams Douglass

Transcript

Jeremy Schumacher: Hello and welcome to another edition of Your Therapist Needs Therapy, the podcast where two mental health professionals talk about their mental health journeys and how they navigate mental wellness while working in the mental health field. I'm your host, Jeremy Schumacher, licensed marriage and family therapist. Today we are back with a special guest episode, a non-therapist, but somebody who is totally doing the work and helping people out, which I love to get other perspectives here. somebody whose work I followed for a while and I'm excited to finally get to connect with. I am joined by the host of White Homework,…

Jeremy Schumacher: the co-host of Go Home Bible, You're Drunk, a fairly large figure in the exeangelical community, I would say. Tori Williams Douglas is my guest today. Tori, thanks for joining me.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah. Thank you so much,…

Tori Williams Douglass: Jeremy. I'm really excited to be here. This is awesome. I love I love the premise.

Jeremy Schumacher: You made a bit of a face at a fairly large figure in the exeangelical community. Yeah. Yeah,…

Tori Williams Douglass: I never know what to do with that. People "You're famous." So this one part of Twitter, back when it was Twitter and I'm always like, am I okay? I don't know how to measure such a thing, So it just feels like this really interesting. It feels so abstract to me, but then, I'll like if I go to a talk or a conference or whatever, people walk up to me and they're like,…

Jeremy Schumacher: it is.

Tori Williams Douglass: Hey." I'm like,…

Jeremy Schumacher: It is weird.

Tori Williams Douglass: " s***.

Jeremy Schumacher: My podcast is smaller than yours.

Jeremy Schumacher: So again, I have a margin of this, but I'm 6' 3. I look like what white people want Jesus to look and so I coach volleyball, so a lot of times I'll go into a gym and people recognize me. My nickname is volleyball Jesus. And so I stand out and It's weird when people recognize you or people be like, "I've heard your voice before when I talk at conferences." And be like, " my podcast." Sure.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah. …

Tori Williams Douglass: yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: But it's very uncomfortable. Yeah. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: I mean, honestly, I'm pretty okay with it. But it is really funny cuz I'll like if I go drop my kids off at camp and I'll come home and I'm like I have DMs from people who are like, " I listened to your podcast. I saw you dropping your kid off. I hope this isn't weird." And I was like, "No, it's not weird. It's fine." Everybody who actually listens to me is a very cool person. So, Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: I think I vibe with the neurode divergent. So I always say I get a lot of neurody divergent guests because neurode divergent brains find each other I think it's a general comfort with not following social norms…

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah, we do. What's that about? I love that about us. It makes me feel very seen. You just sort of gravitate towards people who …

Jeremy Schumacher: if I had to probably oversimplify it.

Tori Williams Douglass: yeah. Yep. I love that.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah,…

Tori Williams Douglass: I've never been good at following social norms or picking up on them or which I think that's part of why I didn't do so well in evangelicalism. there are so many layers to it, right? Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: there's a lot of rules. Yeah, let's talk about that if you don't mind. maybe doing the cliffnotes version of your evangelical journey into being a anti-racist educator and podcaster and public speaker. can you give us sort of the abridged cliffnotee version?

Tori Williams Douglass: Absolutely. this is not what they would have said the Lord's plan for my life was. I'll just say that. And yeah, I was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. I attended evangelical kind of charismatic churches like non-denominational. I was homeschooled K through 12. Portland is non-denominational charismatic churches in Portland in the outlying areas are very white. So we were very consistently the only black kids or kids of any color at all depending on where we were going to church.

Tori Williams Douglass: and so all of that was a little bit strange. And then add on top of that that I'm non-binary. Have no understanding of what gender means at all for other people. I know other people perceive and feel a gender and I'm just like what does that mean? I don't get it. I love that for you. And it's like jarring. I have a friend who has this line of merch that has this very pro- feminist sort of like loving being a woman and I'm just like this is so beautiful. I don't know what you're talking about. never felt like I wanted to be anything other than myself. Never really felt the need to fit in.

Tori Williams Douglass: I didn't pick up on those unspoken, not only the social cues, but the Christian cue, the evangelical cues. I didn't get it right. And so I would hear sermons about Eve in the Garden of Eden and how she was responsible for all of this pain and suffering and sin and whatever. And I would just be other women right in the space and people who are coded female were I think supposed to feel bad.  And I was just like, "This is a weird story, you guys. I don't think it means this." I just went right over my head. they're trying to make me feel shame about stuff. And I'm just like, I don't Okay, I guess I feel bad. And so, yeah, I just wasn't the right cookie cutter sort of mold to be an evangelical for very long. so I'm not

00:05:00

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah. and…

Jeremy Schumacher: I'm curious sort of in the timeline not where it came from obviously it was there the whole time but when did you get diagnosed sort of how did that fit in?

Tori Williams Douglass: Right. Okay.

Tori Williams Douglass: That is a really good question. I would say I was officially diagnosed with ADHD in 2015. I have the weirdest possible story about that. The most ADHD story of all time. kind of already gave away the jump, but do you remember the beginning of lockdown for the pandemic. I don't know where you live if your state shutdown in Oregon. nothing was happening. there were no public things.

Tori Williams Douglass: And I was three, let's see, it was probably May and I called up my doctor and I was just like, I have no executive function. I don't know what is happening. I can't execute on anything beyond a single task every day and then I need the rest of the day to recover. I don't know what's going on here. And I was like, can I just get a screening so that we can talk about getting me medicated? I'd been on Zolaf for several years at that point for anxiety so anyway, this took forever because I was not the only person calling a mental health hotline being like, "Please help." And so they were like, "Yep, for sure. Let's get you let's try something." They did like a tellahalth appointment, got me all set up, and they're like, "We'll get you in the queue,…

Tori Williams Douglass: get you screened again."

Tori Williams Douglass: And so I get there one day with a psychiatrist. I'm on the screen and he's like, "Hey, let's talk about what you feel like you need help with? What's going on?" And I was like, " I wanted to do an ADHD screening cuz just my executive dysfunction is gone." He's like, "Tori, it says here in your chart, you got screened for ADHD and diagnosed in 2015, 5 years ago. And I'd forgotten did not remember because I was just like I had a newborn baby and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: a two-year-old. I was in survival mode at that point,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Right. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: And so I was just like, " my god, I can't believe that. obvious. cool. I was like, "Okay, thanks for the meds. I guess I app they're helping.

Jeremy Schumacher: It's interesting and I like to talk to exeangelicals about this because my experience, I got diagnosed in my last semester of my post-graduate degree, which is a really useful time to get diagnosed when you're done with school.

Tori Williams Douglass: Boy.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: And…

Tori Williams Douglass: Okay. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: but I think where my ADHD probably showed up when I was 10, 11, when it was getting really bad there were so many rules.  Both my parents were teachers taught at the parochial schools. So there were so many rules for me to stay like quote unquote good and all these sort of fail safes to Jeremy, you clap the halkboard erasers out. as I'm old enough to have actual chalkboards and I had all these extra rules and tasks where I was like this kid can't sit still.

Jeremy Schumacher: But because there was all these sort of extra curves and then I think all the extra rules of evangelicalism, I sort of reflect back and I was like there was some functionality to that. But then when I hit my twe my teens and went to college, it stopped being structurally helpful and…

Jeremy Schumacher: became very restrictive. Sure.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: Nope. that makes perfect sense. I mean, I think that I was in kind of an interesting position because, I was homeschooled. I'm the oldest of five kids. and so there was a decent amount of free time, running around time, so I didn't have the same kinds of constraints as if I had gone to school. and so yeah, I think that there was some flexibility there. And I don't want to say understanding because I think that's giving away too much credit, but my capacity was pretty well known in terms of my education if you can call it that.

00:10:00

Tori Williams Douglass: I mean, yeah. And I don't know. I feel like it's doing a disservice to myself when I say things like I was homeschooled K through 12 cuz my parents didn't know how to teach me math. So, I was homeschooled K through 5 and a half with math, Cuz it's like that was those things just weren't available. And so, I think there were some pros.

Tori Williams Douglass: I suppose. and also a lot of cons to it. But then, being a black kid in an all-white classroom in suburban Portland might not have been good for me e with, who was queer and ADHD and pro probably autistic, might not have been great for me either. I don't know. Right.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Right.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: So, it's hard to say, but yeah, I think that for me it didn't really become a major issue…

Tori Williams Douglass: until I don't want to say a major issue. It didn't kind of stop me in my tracks until I had kids. So, I could swing it, but I think that's very normal for people who are socialized female, right? That we can kind of swing the rules a little bit longer typically.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: And I think again there's when we look at that normal bell curve of folks and…

Jeremy Schumacher: functionality and I don't love that term that is what we use in the mental health field of high functioning…

Tori Williams Douglass: Right. Yeah, sure.

Jeremy Schumacher: but those high functioning folks tend to sort of brute brain strength their way through a lot of stuff and so impairment doesn't necessarily show up the same way as you know you do well enough to pass your standardized tests or you do well enough to get your daily chores done so …

Jeremy Schumacher: for me, as a white kid at a white school, all I was raised Lutheran, which even evangelical, but none of the fun stuff, not charismatic,…

Tori Williams Douglass: Okay. …

Tori Williams Douglass: guess Sure.

Jeremy Schumacher: very stoic German, don't feel your feelings evangelical. and so, I had all this middle finger to the law sort of as that queer ADHD autistic kid growing up with knowledge of that stuff then, not knowing why I didn't fit in and why I disliked everything so much even when everyone was like, "Look at you.

Jeremy Schumacher: You got all A pluses. Good job, and I was just sort of miserable with it. And so I think it's always interesting when I get to talk to other exeangelicals about …

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: hey, how is that rigid structure? When did that break? Cuz for a while I think it keeps people in place, but it becomes very restrictive very quickly.

Tori Williams Douglass: That's so interesting because I really sincerely thought that it was like being black was why I didn't fit in.

Tori Williams Douglass: And so I didn't need another explanation for it because it was like I was the only one in the room,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: And so it was just like yeah, people treat me weird, people treat me differently. it was very rarely cruel.

Tori Williams Douglass: I would say worst case scenarios for me typically were just being ignored,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: which again, someone probably on the spectrum most of the time I was fine with that I was like, I don't want to talk to you people. but yeah, I think that I didn't realize it because I had these other factors at play that were kind of like,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: yeah, this is why I'm different. and this is why I'm being treated different. And the layers there reflecting back on it were really interesting. It's like,…

Jeremy Schumacher: And…

Tori Williams Douglass: right.

Jeremy Schumacher: I think again just like it would be easy to say let's talk about racism in the church and…

Jeremy Schumacher: that would give us a lot of content and fill up more time than we have.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yes. Mhm.

Jeremy Schumacher: But I do like to bring up the neurode divergent piece just because again as a white dude who the privilege was designed for and it never fit for me growing up ultra religious. I really sort of raged against that from a young age. Like I told my parents when I was 10 I didn't want to go to heaven. because I didn't like singing and that's all I've been told that heaven was.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: And it's interesting you talk and pretty open about your upbringing growing up below the poverty line too. And I think again when we look at that intersectionality, it is privilege in the church is actually really really limited to predominantly the white male leaders. a lot of people aren't benefiting from the system.

Jeremy Schumacher: My parents were teachers at the Lutheran school and…

Tori Williams Douglass: right? Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: we were very poor. my childhood I remember we spent hours cutting out coupons. that was a family activity. Otherwise, we couldn't afford our groceries.

00:15:00

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean that was very much a part of it. and there were all of these reminders of how we just had less than everyone else, which again makes me sort of wonder about

Jeremy Schumacher: Mhm.

Tori Williams Douglass: what would it have been like if I'd been at school, cuz we didn't live in a povertystricken area. we just had a very inexpensive little apartment in the suburbs.

Tori Williams Douglass: Which is so again I don't really know how that would have impacted but I think in terms of how the privilege sort of trickles down or doesn't it is really interesting. my co-host Justin on Go Home Bible You're Drunk talks about this a lot, where he was technically in a position that might have been considered fairly privileged and outside of a church context, but in church kind of it's like sure maybe you get some more passes compared to other folks, but they're as a neurode divergent person, they're not really benefiting you because again it's like there's all these unspoken rules and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: things that you're supposed to just catch and sometimes you don't.

Tori Williams Douglass: And I think that that's really interesting because again in a very white environment a lot of the racism is something that're You're supposed to just know it. and I was just like again had no clue that and when it did come up when race when racist theology or ideas because there were both for sure did come up. I was just like that doesn't track to like what I know about Jesus. That doesn't track to what I know about aven. Which again, I was in the same boat of I don't want to go to heaven. I'm going to see if I can talk my way out of it when I get there. and it was just like I think you're just saying this,…

Tori Williams Douglass: which it probably was not good for my faith.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, right.

Tori Williams Douglass: was like, "Okay, I see what you're saying here. I like sure, but I'm not reading that, right?" And again, I was somebody who was forced to read through the Bible every year. So I had a better,…

Tori Williams Douglass: when people would come to me with stuff, I had a much better grasp on the actual biblical sort of ideas or again not understanding it wasn't my place as a woman to be preaching or teaching out of the Bible. It was but sure, you can say that, but also look at these verses.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: I probably should have just listened to the white guys…

Tori Williams Douglass: who were trying to tell me stuff that hierarchy kind of just was lost on me in a lot of ways. and so yeah, it's fascinating the way that it played out for me because it wasn't blatant for the most part. There were obviously blatant moments, and there were so many just confounding factors that I had no hope,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Mhm.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Right.

Tori Williams Douglass: I think, of staying in that system and continuing to just skate by.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. What was sort of Right.

Tori Williams Douglass: It wasn't designed for me.

Jeremy Schumacher: If there was a formal break for leaving? Was there know. I think deconstruction's over so much time for so many people, but this is my clear obvious break.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yes, absolutely. so before I got to that point, I spent a lot of time sort of wrestling with all of the anti-quer theology that I was taught.  And again I was like I see what you're saying and I see these verses that you're using and it doesn't really line up with my understanding my reading of again it's the Americanized English Bible right so we're like many millennia and multiple continents removed from the original stories

Tori Williams Douglass: acknowledging that. I really struggled with that. I think I was probably 18, 19 when I figured out that I was queer and…

Tori Williams Douglass: dont really why would someone care what's in someone else's pants? that's weird to me. again, just not getting same with gender roles. And so I wrestled with that idea of I'm supposed to hate queer folks because God does. We don't say God hates queer folks. we say God loves queer folks so much he wants them to be straight and sis. But Right.

00:20:00

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Right.

Jeremy Schumacher: He loves them so much he'll send them to hell if they're wrong.

Tori Williams Douglass: And so I wrestled with that for a really long time.

Tori Williams Douglass: pretty much daily was trying to figure out how do I make sense of this. and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: I got to the thing that actually ended up breaking for me was the Ferguson uprisings in the wake of Michael Brown being murdered in 2014 and just the amount of mask off racism that was in my evangelical circles because this was at a point where

Tori Williams Douglass: everyone was on Facebook right everybody you knew was on Facebook every day multiple times a day and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: so I saw everybody's unfiltered thoughts and I was like okay you've made this very easy for me I will leave because I am not wanted here it's very clear that myself as an individual my family like we are not wanted in these spaces I will help you all out and take off hit the road. And so that was really the thing for me. so as I'm kind of processing that which was actually incredibly traumatic, took me many years to process just that experience.

Tori Williams Douglass: I was also kind of going, "Okay, if we all have to give an account for everything we do and I get to heaven, I was just like, I'm not going to give an account for I cut off people that God accepted. absolutely I will not do that." And so,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: that kind of became a hard line for me. And then eventually I was just kind of like, this isn't really worth it,

Tori Williams Douglass: I still engage a lot with Christianity and the Bible, but in terms of belief, it was like, yeah, I never wanted to go to heaven anyway.

Jeremy Schumacher: 

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: So, yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: I relate to that. some of your work as an anti-racist educator like working with church groups, working with religious organizations. I'm curious and this is one of the reasons I wanted to reach out to you is have this conversation. I'm curious what you see at least for folks who want to do better. because I see so many Christians or progressive Christians or recently deconstructed folks who I would say have left the faith but kept the church in them and sort of maybe don't deconstruct things like colonialism and imperialism and…

Jeremy Schumacher: a lot of that stuff.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah. …

Jeremy Schumacher: So I'm curious sort of like I guess what's your read on that and how do you sort of tackle some of that stuff as an anti-racist educator?

Tori Williams Douglass: truthfully, in most of the context that I'm in, I suppose I have a limited set of tools that I can use in those contexts,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Mhm.

Tori Williams Douglass: but in something like again having a podcast every week can go a little bit deeper. I don't know how many episodes we have, but we're coming up on four years for Go Home Bible, you're drunk. And so, I have the ability to kind of reflect more on the failure to deconstruct colonial kind of constructs and hierarchy.

Tori Williams Douglass: authoritarianism is I found very jarring when I went on for example the exeangelical subreddit and people were on there talking about I quit going to church I'm voting for Trump and I was like okay so why did you quit going to like so…

Jeremy Schumacher: Right. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: why those are your people yeah and so for me and I've had

Tori Williams Douglass: I've had this moment in therapy myself where you get to that I don't know you get to that moment I don't know what you call it in therapy right but you have this sort of ring of fire moment where you're whoa look at all of this stuff that I have to unpack and heal from this will take more than the number of years I have left in my life this is way too  much and it's a very humbling experience and with with friends that I've talked to, And for myself, you have this moment of seeing yourself kind of clearly in this mirror for the first time and going, "Holy s***, look at all of this damage. This is so I can't do this." And you get to this kind of breaking point of I can't do this.

00:25:00

Tori Williams Douglass: this is too much for me to heal from in one lifetime. And that moment in therapy I think also kind of translates to anti-racism and unlearning all of the social hierarchies that are put into your nervous system in capitalism and evangelicalism, by existing in empire, And I think I don't want to guesstimate…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. right?

Tori Williams Douglass: how many people come to this really hard, cruel, crushing moment and then continue to move forward. I don't know.

Tori Williams Douglass: But I do know that when you finally face kind of all of it at once and it feels really overwhelming and you want to shut down that that's a good sign, sort of just because it's been my experience like it does sort of remind me of this moment when you're giving birth also of you get to this point do this. I think we need to pull the plug. I don't know what that means but I'm out of being able to support myself in this moment. I don't think I can do this anymore.

Tori Williams Douglass: so there are different places in life where we have these experiences and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: I think that it is really essential to get to that point with colonialism, capitalism, Christian supremacy, Christian nationalism, and to be so incredibly humbled by that the enormity of the work that's left to be done and to keep moving forward. And I think I don't have a lot of language for it yet, but I'm realizing that that is something that not everybody does and not everybody gets to that point.

Tori Williams Douglass: And I do hope to be able to help more people through that because I think that people you can get to that that moment and go like,…

Tori Williams Douglass: screw it. but you can also get to that moment and say, okay, What's the next best thing I can do in this situation?

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. it is fascinating and…

Jeremy Schumacher: I don't have any extra insight. I think research around complex PTSD, religious trauma especially is very lacking.

Tori Williams Douglass: Mhm. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: It's brand new. what's going on right now, but we don't have a ton of research on it. because I would be curious what the numbers because I think a lot of people do get to that point and it's not an obvious outcome that people push through it and do the work. I think sometimes people kind of go, I got rid of the bad theology,…

Jeremy Schumacher: so now I'm good.

Tori Williams Douglass: Right. Mhm.

Jeremy Schumacher: And, I hold some space. I guess I don't agree with it, but I can understand the sort of path of least resistance that's available there, especially for white people deconstructing.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: Because I see a lot of deconstruction groups, and I'm not going to throw shade at anyone in particular, but a lot of deconstruction groups that just sort of reform a church without a theology attached to it.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yep. Yeah, it's true. And it's sad,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: Because there's so much more freedom outside of this model that you've been given.

Tori Williams Douglass: And there are so many other kinds of frameworks that we can be exposed to and embrace and all unlearn all of what we were taught because I think that there are things from Jesus that we can learn that still have value outside but in terms of evangelicalism Jesus was just a means to an end right like Jesus was just the sanctification that they slapped on their racist sexist  misogynistic, transphobic, homophobic policies and ideas, to sanctify them, to make them pure and holy it didn't actually have anything to do with Jesus as a person if you want to imagine him that way.

00:30:00

Tori Williams Douglass: But yeah, I guess it is a little bit discouraging, right, when you see those just people don't examine the structure, so they just recreate them outside of a church setting. which is again we don't have to do it that way. There's so many ways to do it.

Tori Williams Douglass: And I love reading history and part of why is because you learn some of the other ways that people have done things. And it's really kind of shocking and dropping in a lot of contexts, And it's like the people that were demonized in our textbooks,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yes. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: Mhm. Right.

Tori Williams Douglass: for example, had all of these tools, right, that are just mind-boggling to us.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: And it's like, we can try these new things, But I do,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Mhm. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: there is something especially about evangelicalism that's very limiting, And there's something about capitalism that is very limiting in terms of our creative imagination.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. I think I mean they play off of each other certainly.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: But yeah, it is right. it's hard for people to imagine something different like it is the water we swim in, especially capitalism.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah. Mhm.

Jeremy Schumacher: It's hard to imagine anything else because people don't have that frame of reference.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yep. Absolutely.

Jeremy Schumacher: I will also piggyback a little bit and shout out to reading history. a little bit of a pivot here, but living through fascist times,…

Jeremy Schumacher: it's been very grounding for me to read other authoritarian regimes come and go. And again, I'm not minimizing the harm that is happening right now and will continue to happen under Trump, but some of the dooming that people are doing is humanity will continue to exist. America might not,…

Tori Williams Douglass: Mhm.

Jeremy Schumacher: but people still will.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah. Yes.

Jeremy Schumacher: And there's a grounding like hey people have and…

Jeremy Schumacher: again I don't mean to speak for all white people but I will say to white people especially other cultures have been resisting and doing it in community for a lot longer than we have. with so much love in my heart for recently deconstructed white people we don't need to invent this. It already exists.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: And something I wish I could remember who said this. I should double down in should redouble my efforts to find who said this.

Tori Williams Douglass: I at one point saw some content from an indigenous native person here somewhere in North America and they were talking about the idea of the apocalypse, And the idea of the end of the world and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Mhm. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: native people have already experienced the apocalypse started when Columbus got here for us. The world has ended in so many ways and for entire people groups, right? The world has ended and indigenous people are still here, right? And they're still resisting fascism and authoritarianism in these really incredibly beautiful ways.

Tori Williams Douglass: And it was, again, as someone who was raised with a huge amount of rapture anxiety, a huge amount of end times anxiety and, who is the antichrist and are they going to make me take the mark of the beast? all of these things that it's like,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: there are people alive right now who have experienced the apocalypse and live to tell about it, and I should be learning from those people.

Jeremy Schumacher: 

Jeremy Schumacher: And there's so much to learn I'm in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and so we have Milwaukee hosts the Hunting Moon Wow every October. and…

Tori Williams Douglass: Okay.

Jeremy Schumacher: if you're in a majority group and you've never experienced being in a minority, it's very jarring to go to a pawo as a white person. and I grew up in the black part of Milwaukee, so I'm used to being the minority and it was still a little weird to be …

Jeremy Schumacher: I don't think there's anywhere to sit here." but it's deeply ritualistic. It's steeped in community and…

00:35:00

Tori Williams Douglass: Get out.

Jeremy Schumacher: there's so much joy in it and…

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah. Yep.

Jeremy Schumacher: it's again a community for a group of people in the Midwest who you can all these places that are named still their indigenous names and the tribes either don't exist or have no say in that anymore to come together and…

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah. Right.

Jeremy Schumacher: 

Jeremy Schumacher: have joy and have community. And I talk a lot about ritual in decon conversion spaces just because again the church didn't create that. Humans have been doing ritual forever.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: But it's again some of those things that I think people are talking about now with the Trump presidency have been out there. Community mutual aid like finding your joy and connecting to your community, doing things in ritual to protect your own peace. that those are really obvious lessons from other communities that have gone through much worse times than this.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that you're right. I think that we're actually in terms of people who have experienced the rise of fascism and authoritarianism and…

Tori Williams Douglass: we're some of the luckiest because we have the history books, And we have indigenous people and people we can connect to anyone on the planet and learn from them and learn from their experiences,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, right.

Tori Williams Douglass: right? Because again in a lot of other cultural contexts those histories are much more sacred, right?

Tori Williams Douglass: Whereas whiteness is predicated on erasing your cultural history and…

Tori Williams Douglass: where you come from and your connection to land and your connection to other humans. And so wow.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yes.

Jeremy Schumacher: There's not that cultural cache, which I think is why white people struggle with sort of struggling to learn some of those other lessons because they seem again I'll say foreign…

Tori Williams Douglass: Yes. Mhm. Right.

Jeremy Schumacher: because for a lot of us we didn't have it. that I grew up German Lutheran. that doesn't mean very much growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. there I go to German Fest and I drink Jagger and that's really I mean end of list. and so there's not that cultural cache I think for a lot of people. but you're the anti-racist educator, so I don't want to do too many of my own talking points, but I get fired up about this stuff cuz I see so many people in recent deconversion where it's …

Jeremy Schumacher: if going to a pow-wow seems overwhelming, like Kendrick Lamar just won five Grammys and he talks about how Atlanta was a black mecca and was raised to the ground and so was Tulsa in Oklahoma. stuff I think is readily accessible.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah. Mhm.

Jeremy Schumacher: System of a Down is talks about the Armenian genocide in their songs. there's groups of people,…

Tori Williams Douglass: Right. Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: there's public figures who are talking about this stuff, who are putting it out there. It doesn't need to be, I think it's good to do the work however you can right now. And I think sometimes people get caught up in this is too big of a project or too big of a process. And it's out there.  Kendrick just won five Grammys two days ago. Right.

Tori Williams Douglass: No, I think that's so true. And I know not everybody has a natural I suppose procliv I don't want to say proclivity that's the wrong word but the natural sort of inclination to try to learn as much as possible from every other group of people that's ever existed on the planet like I do. but I do think that there are again the really great resources and people that we can learn from and books that exist now and research that's been done that can really help and inspire us to understand that another world is possible Andre Henry says that there's other ways of thinking about this. There's other ways of existing.

Tori Williams Douglass: There's of relating to one another. There's other ways of getting everyone's needs met.

Tori Williams Douglass: We don't have to actually invent anything if we're willing to just sit down and listen. And I think,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Right.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yes. Which I think is that's hard for former evangelicals.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah. Absolutely. I think that that is sort of a component of whiteness especially, right? and the example that I give all the time is that I don't like 3 400 years from now there will never be a film movie let's say right there'll never be a movie about some high-powered super successful attorney in Manhattan who gives up everything to go feed white babies in Kansas as an indigenous American person.

00:40:00

Jeremy Schumacher: Right. Right. Right.

Tori Williams Douglass: That won't ever exist because that narrative doesn't resonate with the whiteness at all. white people are the saviors. and white people don't really need saving White women, white kids maybe need to be rescued from people. but the narrative of needing to be saved is very foreign to white folks.

Tori Williams Douglass: and again it's like there is sort of the Christianity piece of you need your soul to be saved but that in terms of American Christianity and Christian nationalism yourself and your culture are fine you're already sanctified you've already checked off all of the boxes you've met all of the goals right and yeah I am constantly trying to learn as much as I and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Mhm.

Tori Williams Douglass: from indigenous people across the planet because the ways that they think about things are so antithetical to the lens of whiteness, Which to, hopefully I'm assuming people who are listening understand the difference between being a white person and whiteness is like a construct. But the way that whiteness is sort of monoculture, right?

Tori Williams Douglass: So whiteness is sort of like this field of soybeans or as far as the eye can see. everyone is but you have to be that crop right or you get cut down torn out and thinking about the world as you know I'm lucky enough to live in the Pacific Northwest and that we have this temperate rainforest here right that's just beautiful and gorgeous and has thousands and thousands of different plants and animals and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Right. Right.

Tori Williams Douglass: fungi and

Tori Williams Douglass: Can you imagine, I think about this all the time that white folks for example came to what is now northern California and saw the redwood forest and we should cut all this s*** down, man. It's like what? Whoa. how are you in such a magical place and the first thing you think is's destroy Let's erase this from the planet.  and the way that and kind of examining the ways that whiteness sort and capitalism sort of infect every aspect of research for example, that for decades or centuries, people thought that trees in the forest would compete with one another for sunshine. And it's like, nope, they're all sharing resources. Everybody gets what they need automatically.

Tori Williams Douglass: There's no you don't have to beg for nutrients…

Tori Williams Douglass: if you are a tree in the forest. You just get what you need. They just show up there. And there's this whole system that goes from the roots all the way to the canopy of sharing whatever someone needs. And it's our scientists in the US especially had this idea that they were fighting one another tech bros or finance bros.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Right.

Jeremy Schumacher: Right. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: that wasn't at all…

Tori Williams Douglass: what was happening, and indigenous people were telling researchers this again for centuries. That's not like that. And it's the fact that we spend this is my guess.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Right.

Tori Williams Douglass: I suspect we have spent billions of dollars proving in a lab the stuff that indigenous people have been telling us since 1492.

Jeremy Schumacher: And…

Jeremy Schumacher: then the grossness that gets stacked on top, wolves don't have an alpha. that's bad science.

Tori Williams Douglass: Right. Yep.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yep.

Jeremy Schumacher: And so Andrew Tate teaching young men…

Tori Williams Douglass: And harmful.

Jeremy Schumacher: how to be alpha males is so stupendously stupid. But again, yes, for sure. But again, when you're raised in an empire in imperial structure, that sounds you don't necessarily have the wherewithal to be able to say that researcher…

Jeremy Schumacher: 

Tori Williams Douglass: Right. Right.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah. Yes. Absolutely.

Jeremy Schumacher: who studied wolves for two months and didn't know anything about them might not know know what he was talking about. that is a good place to deconstruct. I do want to pivot a little bit. I know this is what a time to be alive. as a millennial, just coming up on my third major economic crisis. once in a lifetime. but Donald Trump isn't going to cure racism just cuz he stops counting it. I think that's maybe his plan like he had with CO. what are you doing in your own life? How are you taking care of yourself?

00:45:00

Jeremy Schumacher: obviously your work is very very relevant right now and there's so much that I think is triggering around something like complex PTSD, around racism, around misogyny, around just fascism in general right now. how are you sort of taking care of yourself? What do you do to find that balance to keep doing the work and also be a human yourself?

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah. …

Tori Williams Douglass: I mean, my main thing that I've been yapping about for years at this point is hiking. it's just really grounding for me. And it's really funny how I get to go and be in a space and then if I've been feeling discouraged, even for maybe weeks up leading up to that point and then I get back and I'm just whoa, I feel like myself.

Tori Williams Douglass: It for me being outside is magic.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, right. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: I know that there's science behind it, but it functions in my nervous system as magic. So it's really wild that before the new year, December was pretty rough for me after daylight savings time. one of my kids has been having some mental health struggles and I wasn't spiraling but I was really not in a good mental space at all and I decided there was this completely sunny day on the calendar in December which is a big deal again in the Pacific Northwest and I was like we are going to the coast which is hour and a half from here and I just

Tori Williams Douglass: loaded my kids up. I filled the car up with snacks and juice pouches and we just drove out to the coast and hung out for a little bit explored a shipwreck that's out there and I just kind of stood on this bluff for a while. I don't know how It was long enough that my kids were like can we go? and just stared at the ocean and when I got back home I was like what happened to me it was really transformative in a fairly small window with a fairly minor amount of investment kind of on my end.

Tori Williams Douglass: So, I know that's something that works really well for me and I do try to encourage people because even folks who are like I'm not an outdoorsy type of person,…

Tori Williams Douglass: they'll go on a hike after, not having gone on one since they were a kid or whatever and then come back and be like, "Whoa, worked. That was weird how that worked." or just going and sitting outside blue space. That's kind of like my favorite. if I can do whatever I want to do. But there's other things right limiting my time on social media especially before bed is very helpful.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Mhm.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: And just doing something else like listening to a podcast episode that I already know and love that isn't going to have some traumatic triggering thing listening to a book.

Tori Williams Douglass: I try to do breath work twice a day when I wake up immediately when I wake up and right before I go to sleep also that is really helpful for regulating for me but I don't want to I realize that in my obsession with outdoorsy healthy stuff air quotes that video games and movies are regulating for people right

Tori Williams Douglass: I love doing arts and crafts and making messes my favorite thing in the world is when there's glitter all over something from a project…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, right. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: which is very disregulating for other people but for me it's like yes this is awesome this is evidence that something amazing has happened here right and so I have a lot of practices and as somebody with ADHD and no object permanence I have to write them down and then put them in a

Tori Williams Douglass: where I remember to look at them and I try to go back over them several times a week so that when I'm in that moment of my god, this is too much, right? that I'm like, " yeah, I have a list of tools that are available to me." I've done stuff like I've texted my best friends and I was like, "Hey, if I'm in a crisis, please send me this list back to me so that I remember what I'm supposed to do because I won't remember that I have skills or tools." Right?  And then I would say the final thing is being really intentional about spending time with my friends aka community whatever you want to call it right but that for me is there meditation and spending time with friends I get to temporarily punch out of Donald Trump being the president right that's just not a thing and I can just be fully myself and

00:50:00

Tori Williams Douglass: have some mo and I talked to Justin about this on Go Home Bible recently, but I'm like I deserve to have moments where Donald Trump is not the president. And again for other people that could be video games or crochet or being in the garden or what there's so many options right for things you do you really have to just kind of follow your own joy and figure out what those things are. but yeah, I've been trying to be really intentional. Again, object permanence. If I'm not seeing people,…

Tori Williams Douglass: I forget they exist. And so, it's like, okay, got to make a list,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Right. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: write down, hey, I want to see my people this month. And then text everybody, put something on the calendar.

Tori Williams Douglass: And make sure that I make that happen because it is really good for me to be able to just clock out of the fascist authoritarian government that we're all living under right now and…

Tori Williams Douglass: to just feed my own brain and soul, I guess. I don't know. I'm like I don't use a lot of spiritual language but whatever it is whatever language you want to use that is hugely important for me as a person.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Whatever.

Jeremy Schumacher: Right. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: So yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: And I think, however 200 ex executive orders or whatever we're at, that's designed to set your nervous system on fire,…

Tori Williams Douglass: Yes. Mhm.

Jeremy Schumacher: but capitalism is designed to keep you in a state of arousal that limits your ability to do things like protest or resist or take care of yourself and…

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Jeremy Schumacher: 

Jeremy Schumacher: your community. So yes, and I love having people you coming on who educate other people about this and then like to hear you say and I need to remind myself because I think right the knowledge isn't the point. Knowing it doesn't mean we get to check the box.

Jeremy Schumacher: We still have to do these things.

Tori Williams Douglass: Right. Right.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah. Absolutely.

Jeremy Schumacher: Ri, this has been great. I mentioned white homework. I mentioned Go Home Bible. You're drunk.  But if people want to work with you, if they want to learn from you, if they'd like to have you speak to one of their groups, how do they find How do they connect?

Tori Williams Douglass: So if you go online and just search Tori Glass, most of my social media will come up. you'll find the podcast. and you can connect with me that way. my email address is hello toglass.com. Very easy. So, if you wanted to shoot me an email,…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Heat.

Tori Williams Douglass: that's also great. I love collaborating with people on kind of whatever. Again, ADHD, I'm like everything is interesting to me, right? And so, it's really rare that I'm going to look at something be like, yeah, I don't know. that's probably not for me.

Tori Williams Douglass: I'm always at least really intrigued by the work that people are doing. So, if people want to connect in any way, that would be wonderful. yeah. yeah, you can go to whitework.com and, get updates from me there as well. that's the Patreon for white homework, obviously. But I also post anti-racism resources and things like that. So you can sign up even at a free tier just so that you're getting notifications for when stuff is happening and things like that. but again if you just Google Tory Glass you can find all of the things and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah.

Tori Williams Douglass: find ways to connect. So awesome.

Jeremy Schumacher: And we'll have the podcasts and your website and socials in the show notes, too. So, wherever you're listening to this podcast,…

Jeremy Schumacher: drop down and check out those links there. Tori, this has been awesome. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Tori Williams Douglass: Yeah, thank you for having me.

Tori Williams Douglass: It's been a wonderful conversation.

Jeremy Schumacher: And to all our great listeners, thanks for tuning in again this week.  We'll be back next week with another new episode. Take care, everyone.

Meeting ended after 00:54:51 👋

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