Why you feel the need to belong, with Amena Chaudhry

What does it mean to belong, and why is it so important to us?

In this episode, we dive deep into the profound concept of belonging with Amena, a Belonging & Emotional Resilience Strategist and Coach, who helps high-impact, high-integrity leaders master the skills to foster cultures of belonging.

Together, we explore why belonging is so vital to our survival and well-being, the shifts in DEI language, and the challenges and complexities of creating inclusive environments. Amena shares her personal and professional journey, highlighting how the physical and emotional impacts of non-belonging can often be detrimental.

She also talks to us about her new venture into sourdough baking, and how it intertwines community, resilience, and systemic change. An enlightening conversation that promises to reshape your understanding of belonging.

You're going to need your notebooks for this one; so grab your coffee, and listen to Amena get on her soap box!

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Amena’s website

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Transcript

Peta: 1:17

We talk about. Belonging. Quite a lot. We talk about belonging to groups, belonging to communities. We talked about belonging to countries, social groups, religions, races, classes, families. It's a word that slips off the tongue easily, and a word that you learned pretty young, what it means. You also learned through your life, whether it's something that you have. Or whether it's something that you don't. And essentially it is what we are all searching for. It's one of the reasons social media is as successful as it is. We are all looking for a place. To belong a place where we feel like we found our people. But. Why. It's belonging so important to us. Why is it like the thing that we need that we search for on various platforms? In various places. At various points in our lives. Today I'm talking to, I'm going to Childry. She's been on the podcast before. Everything that she has to say is always ridiculously, insightful, thoughtful. And perspective shifting. So I'm always really excited to talk to her. But this time we're talking about something different. We're talking about. Belonging. We talk about how acceptable language is changing, especially. As, I record this. The us is about to Deal with Trump's inauguration. We talk about how DEI is falling out of favor. And we talk about how. Belonging is the most vital thing for individuals. for communities and also for businesses and organizations. I'm going to says that we are physically wired for belonging. And as part of our conversations, she goes, takes me through an absolutely fascinating explanation of like the neuro-plasticity and the neuro connections. In our brain, that mean that. We can actually see this happening. She talks about how important belonging is for the businesses that she works with. And she also talks about how, Wanting to create space. Where people feel that they belong is not enough. And about how it's a continual. Working. To make your company, to make your organization, to meet your community, a place where people can find belonging. You are going to need your notebooks for this one. I was scribbling notes as I was talking to Amina. But honestly, You will learn so much about the way your brain works about the way that communities work. About how to build belonging, emotional resistance. And also, uh, quite a lot about Saturday. So. So let's jump in. Grab a cup of coffee, get ready to do your laundry, whatever it is you do when you listen to this podcast. and listen to. I'm gonna get on her soapbox. Amina, it's so nice to have you back on the podcast. Chatting to you is always fabulous. Thank you for coming on.

Amena: 4:43

Oh, it's amazing to come and talk to you again. Thank you so much for having me back. I think that like if there is a person for me to start my year again with podcasting, I, you're, you're the perfect.

Peta: 4:55

Aw, thank you. Um, for people who haven't heard your previous episodes, and if they haven't, they should go back and listen to them because they're both fabulous. Um, you give us a little, or give them a little bit of an intro into who you are?

Amena: 5:09

Yeah, sure. Um, uh, so my name is Amina and I am, I am calling myself. Um, for whatever labels are worth, belonging and emotional resilience strategist and coach. My, uh, consultancy is called Zarafa Consulting, and I work with teams and organizations who understand the importance of fostering belonging, In whatever enterprise they're in, um, whether it's grassroots organizations, corporate government, but don't know quite how to get about to achieving that. And more specifically, especially if there is like a live conflict, um, that is impeding and being an obstacle in belonging, being fostered. I, I love helping people navigate and get through conflict because I think. The space of conflict is one of the most generative spaces to actually lay foundations for the skill sets we need to produce belonging for each other.

Peta: 6:13

Yeah. And the last time we talked you were talking in terms of, uh, language around kind of DEI and DEI strategy and consultancy but you're not really using that kind of language anymore. do you want to tell me a little bit about how that happened?

Amena: 6:34

Yes, um, I feel like this might be also a trend we're noticing with not, not going to say a lot, but quite a few DI consultants. Um, back when I launched Zarafa Consulting, I want to say in 2018, um, I didn't quite have the word belonging centered in the work that I do. It was more the acronym Diversity Equity Inclusion, or then sometimes you would get like the J put in for justice or the B put in for belonging or the A put in for accessibility, um, and a whole bunch of other, uh, letters. What I have found over the past three and a half years of doing this work. Both in terms of, like, difficulty in securing clients or work, um, and noticing that I'm not a good fit for organizations and teams who want to do DEI work that is just a checkmark, and they're looking for that standard implicit bias training, the standard set of, like, six or seven trainings in the year, the standard set of come speak to us, inspire us, um, give us a motivational talk, and, that's it. And it took me like, it was a learning curve. I want to say it was a long learning curve. It took me about two years to realize that I thought I was doing that for them in a different way, but they were looking for like the checklist. They just wanted to see the checklist and get the work done. They weren't actually interested in systemic change and setting up systems that would auto produce belonging as a default. Right. And so it took me a while to figure that out. And I think that's one. Um, lens I want to just share in terms of like how I figured out that the DEI acronym just wasn't a good fit for what the work I was doing just in highlight and surface what I do. Um, and secondly, I'm going to say is the last 15 months has been the other eye opening and, uh, experience for me and realizing that, the kind of work I want to do with organizations, what I want to empower individual leaders and companies to develop the skills and the strength and the muscles. So that they can ignite and activate individual and collective courage towards systemic change for the purpose of producing belonging, right, that I realized that that has been really clear to me in the last 15 months, um, in the context, in case it's not clear to anyone in the context of the Israel Palestine catastrophe and the genocide that's been carried out, um, and like the business that I lost over my vocal solidarity with Palestine. And against anti Indigenous land theft, erasure, displacement. Um, and so, I, it just became much more clear to me. And funny enough, like, the last, up till about a few months ago, I didn't have a website. And I think it was precisely for this reason was I could not figure it out. I never liked the DEI acronym. I always found a way to dance around it. And, you know, in answer to your question, it was not until, I want to say, end of summer that I was working with my copyright, um, Nora, you know her, um, and she and I was, were like talking and it was clear to me, it was like equity and belonging is the core outcome that I'm helping leaders and teams achieve, and it's emotional resilience is the core broad umbrella skill sets that I'm helping them build so they can achieve this, so they can engage in this work. And so that's why I introduced myself as a belonging and emotional resilience strategist and coach. And because that is actually what I do with clients. And I don't know if that answers your question. That's one of the reasons. I made the shift away from the DEI acronym. Never was a good fit. I was just using it because it was the most popular thing. For lack of a better term that that was what people were familiar with. I do remember like in the beginning when I would talk about even emotional resilience or belonging like people's eyes would glaze over sometimes because it was just not the vocabulary they were used to. Um, and Yeah. So that's one of the reasons I've shifted. And so like once those pieces fell in place, it was very easy for me to figure out like what my website would look like. What is it I'm saying that I'm offering clients and leaders and individuals. Um, yeah.

Peta: 11:10

Sometimes, yeah, there's just this one block and then everything just, yeah, everything just

Amena: 11:15

Yes. Yes. Yes, there was this like one little Tetris piece that needed to move out of the way so that everything can just cascade down. Absolutely.

Peta: 11:24

That's cool. That's cool. Um, so what is it about? Belonging that makes it so powerful an outcome to reach for, for organizations.

Amena: 11:38

I love that question. I really love that question. I want to hang on to it and not lose it. Um, what is it about belonging that makes it central,

Peta: 11:50

Yeah.

Amena: 11:51

Um, I don't think we recognize as humans that belonging is as central to our survival. And our ability to thrive and fulfill our potential and meet our potentials, um, as is water and food. It's a, it's a, it, we, for all practical purposes, when we don't experience belonging, our brain thinks we're gonna die. So, you might have been, our audience might have heard the phrase, you know, we're human beings are worried for belonging. Like a lot of people say that. That didn't hit me like the, what properly that meant has not hit me until I recently, about a year and a half ago, was diagnosed with three autonomic nervous system disorders. Um, and just a quick, uh, little context for people who might not know that it's not autoimmune. Uh, disorders with autonomic nervous system disorders. So we have a nervous system and one part of that nervous system is the autonomic nervous system. Autonomic means automatic, meaning these are functions that we can't actually control. These are functions that the, there's like an internal thermostat setting that we were born with. And the body uses that to gauge when do I need to raise blood pressure? When do I need to Lower blood pressure. When do I need to raise the heartbeat? Um, how fast does this person need to be breathing, right? Uh, breathing is one of the parts of the autonomic nervous system that is both autonomic and not autonomic because like I can start panting, I can fake heavy breathing, I can hold my breath for a while. But I can't change my heart rate. I can't be like, oh, I would like my heart rate to be running faster because I just ate some sugar and I'd like to pretend I'm doing a cardiovascular workout. Right?

Peta: 13:56

be very useful. I wish we could do that.

Amena: 14:02

know. I think there's a reason why we don't get to control that. I think we would, we would, we would abuse it. Right, so, um, when you have an autonomic nervous system disorder, uh, for example, one of the disorders I have is called centralized sensitization syndrome, CSS. And basically what that is, is every single stimulus that my body experiences through the five senses. Plus, through neuroception, so in addition to our five senses, we have our body experiences sensations outside of those five senses. And it's difficult for me to explain. I've like read so much on it, but I still have a hard time putting it into words, but it's called neuroception. Every stimulus that it experiences, it experiences as important and urgent, and therefore it's experienced as pain. So my skin hurts all the time. And when I'm outside and I've experienced the wind, I feel like pins and needles. And so if it's really windy, I can't go outside because I feel like I'm getting cut. Right? Because it's, it's really severe. and Uh, when we say that human beings are wired for belonging, that autonomic nervous system, it's main, I don't know you wanna say measure to figure out if Amai is doing fine. It's main measure is does she belong? That's the entire fight flight response thing. It's looking to figure out, are you part of a herd, are you part of a whole. Is there a hole that, that, for whom you are, there's to care for? No, then you need to go into flight fight mode. I need, you need to figure out how to survive. And that is what it means to be wired for belonging. That is like the core of how our body determines if I'm okay. And when it gets non belonging signals, so racism. Microaggressions, not being part of a community, having financial distress, and not knowing who to lean on, constantly worrying about where your next meal is going to come from, or if you're going to be able to pay your mortgage next month, like all these things. These are all stimuli and information and data that our brain gets that tells the brain, I don't belong. I'm not part of a whole. And, when it gets those indications, that's when our body is flooded with stress hormones. One of the stress hormones that is really important for it to flood our body with is, um, the hormone to clot blood. So when the lion finally bites into me in order to preserve organs. to prevent me from bleeding out. Blood clotting hormones are coarse. They're meant to coarse through our body for like 90 seconds, every now and then. Um, if you're part of the herd, a lion is not going to be chasing you for the most part. It's not meant to be a function. The way we live society today, I think those coarse in our body 24 7. If you're in a toxic workplace environment, they're coursing your body the entire time you're thinking and stressed out about going to work and coming back from work. I'm ruminating about the things that were said to you or done to you that day, right? Or if you're constantly afraid that they're gonna, um, fire you or, or, and so, um, that was actually the cause of my blood clots. And so, like, even though I was doing this work, like, it did not hit me until I had my pulmonary embolisms, and then I had my concussion, and then I had these autonomic nervous dissonance disorders. And I realized Holy shit. This is what it means when we say we are wired for belonging. Without being part, um, social death for, to our brain is literal death. It does not know the difference between literal death and social death. And that is what makes belonging the absolute core thing that we as human beings, workplace or not workplace, need to figure out how to both produce and demand and expect because, um, from early childhood, everything that's done to us, we are deeply socialized into mastering the skills, the knowledge, the muscles to produce non belonging. We're actually walking around experts of how to, how to make people not belong, including ourselves, right? We're taught that in different ways and that teaching happens differently based on your social identities and where you grow up. But that tends to be our expertise and we bring that to the workplace. And so when I'm working with clients, like, that's the core outcome. It's like, if you want a healthy workplace environment, you can't assume that you start from ground zero and belonging is like the default. No, you're all experts at creating non belonging. You're going to create non belonging in the place. And so you as leaders, what leaders need to do, you need to figure out how to create a culture that's going to offset for what skills the people are bringing to the workplace. It's not that we don't have skills to create belonging, but systematically. The skills and the behaviors and the norms that are supported are the ones that support status quo, and status quo are systems of oppression. Systems of oppression do not want us to belong because people who belong don't follow rules, people who belong expect others are going to take care of them, people who belong are not going to fall into capitalism as easily as, as, right? Um, and so, um, belonging is the core of everything. Any, so DEI is shit. If you're not helping teams and organizations figure out how to produce belonging systematically and sitting in an implicit bias training doesn't do that. Doesn't teach that. Learning all about anti-racism or anti uh, homophobia or Islamophobia or all these other isms, and being very good at regurgitating the knowledge is not how you do it. We have to pay attention to the norms we've. Internalize the ways that we show up, the things that we say, the things that we do, how we distribute power, how we engage with power differentials. That is the stuff that we need to, like, look at and tweak. And then we have to figure out, like, how do we engage those things. How do we relate to ourselves and to other people around us in a way that we can start creating new norms and systems so that we can make a few of these things that we grew up with obsolete? That to me is dismantling isms.

Peta: 20:52

Well, I mean, there are like a million things that hit me in that, but there are two particular things that hit me in that. The first is this idea that, if you are in a situation work wise where you do not feel like you belong, where your organization does not have that sense of belonging, then you are constantly in a state of danger of fight or flight of fear. And not only does that impact your Physical well being as we've kind of gone through in terms of the hormones that are rushing around and, and heart rates and all that kind of thing. It also, from the organization's point of view, affects the quality of the work that you're doing and the quality of the connections that you're making. Um, you are not, no one who's in fight or flight mode is doing their best work. Like from a purely mercenary point of view, like it's not, it's not possible because a large part of your brain is caught up with trying to keep you safe. so that was the first thing. And the second thing was, this idea that you're not starting from ground zero. And I think a lot of, a lot of founders, so I work with a bunch of startups, have done over the past few years, a lot of founders assume that they are starting from scratch, they're starting fresh, they're not starting with any of the kind of big cor, like, corporation hangovers or assumptions or systems or, like, it's all, It's all new and it's all nice and fluffy and everybody's going to be lovely because we're not dealing with any, um, historic oppressive systems. That's like, obviously that's huge stereotypes, but like, that's the assumption. That they're going to start from scratch, it's going to be new, and they will, and they'll build, work to build that sense of belonging with the nice people who are there. And everybody will come with the, yes, yeah, yeah, and everybody will come with the same, like, good feeling that that's what they want to do.

Amena: 22:55

Yeah, this is an assumption. Yeah, this is, I wanted to grab the assumption while you can hold on to your thought. The assumption that we are heavily taught is that nice people, if you have nice people working together, that they're going to somehow create belonging. Nice people actually are the worst to create belonging.

Peta: 23:13

and that, yeah, that reminded me of the book that we read, the um, what's it

Amena: 23:18

White women?

Peta: 23:19

no, the one after that. Um, oh, The Wake Up.

Amena: 23:23

Oh, yes.

Peta: 23:24

Yes, there's a lot in there about nice people

Amena: 23:27

Yes.

Peta: 23:28

assuming that because we're nice people we don't do certain things. Um, that was really interesting. But yeah, like, but what you said was that not only are they not starting from scratch, it's almost like the opposite, because All the people coming together to form this organization, even if it's brand new, are coming with all of those non belonging socializations that they've had.

Amena: 23:53

Yeah. Even if they're all POC or BIPOC, let's

Peta: 23:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So even if you have the best of intentions, you can't just magically let this nice kind of aroma of belonging kind of pervades your new organization. You have to, you said you had to consciously work to put things in place to build that sense of belonging back and to undo those socializations. How do you do that?

Amena: 24:20

How do you do that? Um,

Peta: 24:22

Just like, you know, in 30 seconds.

Amena: 24:23

in 30 seconds. How do you do that in 30 seconds? Um, I was watching. Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna come to answer your question, but like a little bit of a detour. I was watching a TikTok this morning. uh, this girl sitting in high school, I don't know, I think she's probably seventh, eighth grader, sitting in her, uh, classroom and she's recording. So she's got a camera on and she's recording herself and making faces. And then obviously she's uploaded it afterwards with a little like words so that she can give you context of what's happening. And so you can hear the teacher talking. Basically the teacher is explaining some rules that they have to follow in the school year, during the school year. And she, the teacher. The part that she records and uploads is where the teacher is explaining how many bathroom visits they get per week. I want you to make a guess of the number of bathroom visits the teacher tells them they can have.

Peta: 25:11

Any number is going to make me angry. This is something I

Amena: 25:13

Yes, I know any number should, but like the fact that we're putting a limit on how many times you can go to the bathroom, but just guess.

Peta: 25:21

Five.

Amena: 25:23

Uh, three. And the teacher is explaining, this is not per class, this is all of your classes combined. So basically, as an 8th grader, or whatever grade this girl is in, you can only go to the bathroom 3 times during a school week. You're at school about 8 hours a day. That's 40 hours. You're, you're being allowed three bathroom visits in 40 hours. Now I'm assuming that during lunch, you can have more or that during sparrows, you can have more. It's an assumption I'm making, but even then this girl's face is red. And so the caption that she has is like, we're only allowed to have three bathroom breaks per week. If I get my period, I am going to use all of those in one day. And so she's just thinking, how am I going to, how am I going to manage a menstrual cycle? Right. All right. I'm sharing this example because. As a kid growing up, I always found it incredibly violating that I have to ask to go use the bathroom. Not that I have to be given even a number, but even that I have to ask. I have all, and I've gotten in trouble, entire childhood, of going to the bathroom and learning that I need to tell the teacher before I go, but then getting in trouble because I just tell and not ask. I've always found it obnoxious and bizarre that I have to seek permission to go take a shit. And that someone can say no to me and then I have to sit in that discomfort somehow. I share this example to say, to share that all of our schooling. is about teaching us how to submit to the social systems and to submit to authority and to conform so that we are good citizens of the empire. So that when the empire wants to commit a genocide, we won't let out a peep because we have three bathroom visit limits. Right, because we will only protest on weekends, because we will not disrupt daily life, that we will not go on massive employment, like all of our schooling, I don't care what the school is and who's listening to this, and it's a principal of a private school and says not my school, I don't care who you are, schooling system in the US and Canada, Is designed to create obedient, docile, non threatening citizens who will

Peta: 27:39

the UK. I wrote an email about this two weeks ago.

Amena: 27:42

yeah, uh, who will fill out their taxes, who will not start their own businesses, right? And we saw this, there's like this. And rage a little bit from the corporate world about people just because everybody's an entrepreneur today, right? Like, they look down on that, like, this is not supposed to be what the masses are supposed to do. Um, I'm thinking of a book written by, um, Dr. Afzal. It's called Teaching at Twilight, The Meaning of Education in the Age of Collapse. And he talks about how, as we are killing our planet, And possibly, or not possibly, definitely heading towards collapse and extinction of our own human species. We are in the sixth grade extinction. Like, the purpose of education has to be different. Like, we can't keep educating students to have jobs. They need to be, our education system needs to produce generations who can deal with. What we are leaving them behind with and instead we are producing like people for our pasts It's a really interesting book. It's not an easy read in that the English is easy, but emotionally it's a heavy read And I share all of this to you because when you say well, how do we do that? As in, how do we change people, if you're all muscled up and capable and skilled and made to produce non belonging, how are you going to reverse that? I think that what I have found is my in has been when I'm working with a client, I'm going to help, I help them do an assessment to measure some skill set related to this. And I use the IDI, um, assessment currently, it measures basically how you relate to difference. I think it's a really important muscle and I have a love hate relationship with that assessment. There are a lot of things I don't like about the assessment, but I use it in a very particular context. there is no other assessment that measures this particular skill set and so I really appreciate it for that. I think that you need to first have a reality check of where you are in that. In terms of like, you need to see how good of a, how, how successful has socialization been on you. You really need a good awareness. Everybody thinks they are unique, because this is one of the things we get taught, you're unique, no one's like you. and the problem is, yeah, they teach us this lie because they don't want us to think, they don't want us to look up and realize we're all the fucking same. And so, um, it's Important because we tend to under or overestimate that skill in us. It's a soft skill. Soft skills are difficult to get real live data to show how good you are at something. And so it's hard to, it's you end up overestimating. I'm never going to overestimate my ability to like ice skate. Right? I think I may have told you this before. Because the minute I put on skates and go stand on ice, I'm gonna know right away that I suck at it. In fact, I don't need to put a pair of ice skates on. I've had enough injuries in life, I'm not even going to try it. But my emotional resilience, I might be like, no, I'm a very even keeled person. I barely ever get angry. I only get angry when I get just, when it's justified. Nothing wrong with anger. Don't taboo anger. And my son might come and tell me, uh, excuse me. Yeah, I'm going to rate you at 50%, 5 out of 10. Right? My husband might rate me at 6 out of 10. My mom might rate me, like, I don't know, 10. A colleague might rate me 5 10. So like it's important for us to get a good objective measure, even if that measure is something you don't agree with, but it's important for an objective measure to be a little bit of a mirror to show you how successful has socialization been on you. And this is where I feel like sometimes people with dominant group member identities who have social identities that make them misfits think that they're not good products of socialization, and they are actually. So people will be like, well, I have ADHD, or I'm an extreme introvert, or I whatever, and they'll think that they're not good products. And it's, so it's deception, because for the most part, the bulk of us, I want to say 95 percent of us are extremely good products of socialization. I know I was. Even when I struggled and I stood out and refused to, like, submit to the bathroom rules, even then, like, I'm a people pleaser. I try to avoid conflict the bulk of my life. I have been taught to defer to the comfort of white Christians around me and I still struggle with that and whatever. So it's important to do that assessment to get a little bit of an awareness and eye opening of the, Oh, I am a product of socialization. And then you need a coach. And so you need a mirror of some sort to help you discover all the ways that you've been socialized into. And then you have to start making choices of like, what parts of socialization are you going to keep because they are beneficial, effective, and good, and helpful, and what parts of socializations you have to undo. It's not easy work. It takes time. This is the work of transformation, but it is this Individual change, this is the change that people need to engage in because this is the change that leads to systemic change. All this other professional development that I feel like organizations put you through, you know, for communication purposes are all superficial skills slash expertise that people get, but they're all in service of maintaining status quo. They're not in service of changing systems.

Peta: 33:31

I mean, that was a pretty good answer for a, um,

Amena: 33:33

That was a very long

Peta: 33:34

oversimplified question that I asked you.

Amena: 33:36

I loved your question. Your question was so beautifully succinct. I hope you like hang on to it because I want it. I'd love to like maybe do a blog on it.

Peta: 33:44

Sure. Yeah. No, that's cool. Okay. I am going to go away and find that book and add it to the pile of books that I need to read that are on my shelf. Um, okay, so you are, um, you've got the new, new website, which I'm going to put in the, in the notes, which is very exciting. So you are at the moment booking open for organizations to go and work on this kind of, tricky, sticky problem with.

Amena: 34:13

yes. So I'm working with, I'm taking on individual one on one clients for inclusion or belonging and emotional resilience coaching. I really think the systemic change starts with you. Um, I get that you want to do collective change, but does it does start with people, but you have to do the right kind of personal work, um, that connects to. The system. So I do take on and work with executive leaders one on one, um, because I believe that coaching is what is transformative. Consulting is not for the most part. Coaching is transformative. And when I work with teams and leaders, that is what I'm doing. I'm always building in coaching because I want to help, whether it's individual or group or hybrid or something like that. I'm helping teams and leaders figure out, like, get the resources, the skills and the tools they need to figure out how to start. Changing how to human, because the way we are human ing right now is not working, it's not working for anyone. I don't care how rich you are, it's not working for the rich either.

Peta: 35:12

That's one of the things I love most about the way that you work, is that it spans, it's always about what's good for the individual, what's good for the organization, and what's good for society generally. Like it's this, it's the proper meaning of the word holistic.

Amena: 35:26

oh, thank you. Like, and I tell people, like, I've also been asked, you know, um, somebody asked me a while back, like, why do you work with corporations or organizations? These systems are never going to change, you know, they're meant to serve status quo. And I tell people that, like, the bulk of our socialization is through our school system. We spend 40 hours a week plus. With, in the school environment, and we brought that school environment home, actually, right? There's a reason why white Christian supremacists kidnapped and set up boarding schools. There's a reason why they're stealing busloads of Palestinian children. And they're just disappearing because the way that you destroy a culture, right, or create a new one is from indoctrination of the children. It's the next generation. You socialize the next generation. Um, and so how we've been socialized in is through, I was, I went to 13 years of, uh, elementary and high school because Canada used to have 13 grades back then, it's switched to 12 now. Um, that's a lot of years. And for the most part, the socialization is like complete by age five and then it's just practicing and putting it in place and like your report card and your grading is basically, I think, for the most part, grading how successful you are at being part of it. They're teaching you how to be well adjusted to a sick society. in Taro's words, right? That is what's happening. Um, and then we leave the education system and we go into the workplace. That becomes our second place that we spend the 40 hours a week. We move from one, and we graduate to the other, unless we have You know, graduation, I mean, yes, you have, um, college, possibly, uh, higher education degrees. But you get the point. Like, these are the main lifeline, the main organs of the system that we are being socialized in. And so when, in the workplace, why I want, love working with people in the workplace is because it is the perfect place to practice daily how to do new things. How to be human in your ways because you are spending the most time there. That's where you're going to have the most opportunity for sustained practice. Yes, you spent time with family, but we tend to. Not overly, uh, you, uh, oppress each other and family, and I'm saying that with like lots of tablespoons of salt because we do do that as well. But when you want to practice a new skill, it's the professional setting where we're willing to do new things. Um, it's one of the only places where you have to work with people who have a whole lot of differences from you, with you. Right? If you're white, it's the only place you're going to have to engage with Black, Indigenous, Brown, Muslim people. If you are a predominantly able bodied family or a person who is only, who's never had a person in a wheelchair in their family, for example, right? Workplaces where you're going to have to potentially engage with the person and learn and work with them. So it's one of the only places where you have to work with people who are, who you are very different from. And then, um, it's the place where we have the least amount of choice to be segregated from difference. And so, it is the perfect place for us to figure out how to build new cultures of humaning, practice it, and we take that home and hopefully reverse engineer that socialization in our home environments, in our church environments, or religious spaces environment, the grocery store or wherever else.

Peta: 39:21

Yeah. Yeah. It's the perfect, like, playpen, I guess. Yes. Yes. Definitely. Yeah.

Amena: 39:26

It's the perfect lab, practical lab. That's a, that's a practical lab, yes, coming from my medical schooling years. It's the practical lab where you can actually get the most practice.

Peta: 39:37

That's true. Okay. I have a question. So, um, I followed you on LinkedIn for a while now. Um, and I know there have been a couple of occasions where you have been disappeared by LinkedIn and then reinstated. But recently. You are not only talking about belonging and community and inclusion and all the other incredibly interesting things that you talk about on LinkedIn. Uh, you've been baking and talking a lot about sourdough starters. And as someone who is, like, who did kind of delve into the world of sourdough over the pandemic, like a lot of people did, um, I'm intrigued. What is that all about?

Amena: 40:20

Mm hmm. Yes Part of it is pragmatic and part of it is like I have found A purpose in a space that has been surprising and exciting. Um, it is something that I'm starting, like, I'm going to be, I'm nearing 50. I'll be 50 next month. And it's been weird to start something so new, so late in life. And I do feel like 50 is late in life. I remember there was a time when we, I was like in a trauma informed training and the leader had gotten us to do an average of like how long people in our lives, in our, from our maternal and paternal lines have lived to get like an average life span. I know it wasn't, it is a little terrifying except that it wasn't in the crowd that I was sitting in. Like people came up with like 70s, 80s, someone had like in the 90s, one person had like late 60s and mine was 49. And I actually did literally die at 48, uh, 47 actually. If it wasn't for blood thinners, I would be dead today, right? Had I gone to bed, had I succeeded in going to bed that day, my family wouldn't thought, would have thought I was napping and wouldn't have left me alone. I would have died. And so, um, it's very weird for me to start something so late in life that's a brand new and a new skill and then like, think and consider that this could be a business. So it's been a, it's been a bizarre journey. Um, and it's been, it's been meeting like my purpose in a way that I wasn't thinking of ever. so part, I'll do the pragmatic part because that's the simplest part. Pragmatic part is that I lost a lot of business to, with Zarafa Consulting last year because of my vocal solidarity with being against genocide and against like, uh, Israel. I'm just going to say that for being anti Israel because, um, I am in solidarity with Palestine, but what I was punished for was the interpretation that that means that I'm anti Israel. And I might be, but that's not what I was saying out loud. So I feel like I want to make that distinction. Um, And I was in a really bad, dark place. I was in March of 2024, thinking that I am never going to work again. I'm never going to be able to find a way to make money and pay my bills. And I was in a really dark place. I was like, I don't know how I'm going to ever function, live. Um, my husband is Not doing well and I was just like in a bad place. And at the same time, I was trying to master sourdough baking. And what that means is, if you've ever had done this before, a sourdough starter is a live culture of yeast and bacteria. It's not some inert packet of instant yeast. It's a live thing and so you have to, it's a pet, you gotta feed it daily. You gotta keep it alive and healthy. And um, mastering the baking of sourdough bread With type A personality and OCD and kind of an attachment to perfection, right? I let go of my attachment and into perfection when it comes to interacting with human beings. But then I take it out on my knitting projects and things like sourdough baking. So, um, that takes months. To, uh, uh, cultivate and almost means that you're baking almost daily. You're making a loaf almost a day and you can't eat that much. So I was giving out a lot of free bread and at one point somebody gave me money for it. And I was just like, what? Why would you give me money for food? I was giving you a gift and I was like offended. She's like, yeah, but aren't, isn't Zarafah like struggling? And I, I would just want to pay you for the bread. You, this is like, 15th loaf you're giving me and then she encouraged me I should probably sell bread and so those conversations turned into me thinking okay I'll see if I can sell the bread and if anybody likes it. Well it turns out people were addicted to my bread after one taste and I myself had not had bread in over a decade, but it turns out that store bought bread, conventional bread, is shit. And there's a massive difference between the bread you bake at home and the one you get at the store, um, in addition to the fact that the ones at store have carcinogens in them. Um, but like just taste and texture wise, it's not nutritious and it's spongy and Doesn't hold itself. Um, so the demand was there. So I started baking and started selling and then started a spreadsheet because I'm type A and I started like seeing the numbers and seeing that like, Oh my God, this could actually be a business. Like I have a long way to break even, but like if I did the math as like my sales were increasing, I was like, this is, this is a business. Like I acquired my starter. I was looking into low glycemic index foods around October 7th. That's when I discovered around that time is when I discovered sourdough accidentally and was just mind blown that you could have white bread and have it be low glycemic index if you ferment the bread, and I was just like blown. So I was like reading all about the science and like why behind it and then, um, Followed and joined like 50 Facebook groups, starting to watch people's journeys, you know, trying to absorb some of that institutional knowledge that I don't have community to learn from and, um, realize that I needed to acquire a good starter because I had tried a few and I didn't like the results. And so I obtained the starter that I have now. And. I obtained it in dehydrated form. It's 130 years old. It was kept alive for 130 years and was first dehydrated for me. So it's not that like this person is selling their, yeah, it's from a friend whose friend got it from her great grandma. So they just kept it alive across the years. And when anybody in the family gets married, they get A fresh starter.

Peta: 46:34

That's so cool.

Amena: 46:36

so when I was learning how to rehydrate the starter and get it to the liveliness that you need to get it to, which takes about 2 to 3 weeks. I remembered waking up, this was around November, early November. I remember I would wake up and the first thing I would look up on Instagram and TikTok is, I would look for evidence that Bisan was still alive as of seven hours ago. Um, and Bisan is a journalist in Gaza who recently won the Emmy Awards. I, I, that, another bizarre incident. And then I would like go to the kitchen to quickly check if my starter was alive. And that happened a few times and I realized, Oh my gosh, I have to name you. I think, and I named my starter Bisan. Um, and it started off as an affectionate thing and now it just has stuck. And then, yeah, her name is Bessan and she's phenomenal and she's amazing and I really hope one day that, uh, I hope Bessan survives. I hope this genocide comes to an end and that I can actually give her a loaf of bread or more. I know, I would friggin love to figure out how to do that. Um, but it just became a really I just, it's, I started selling, a logo showed up for me that is like also intersecting with the Palestinian movement, Hannun is the Palestinian poppy. It's a symbol of resistance and resilience. No, sorry, not resistance, symbol of resilience, which is self determination. is a marker of my life, like I've had to be resilient to survive a lot of trauma and systemic harm. Um, and then just health crisis the last four years, I just feel like it's been a lot for me. Um, so that's what this is about. So it turned out like, and then like around August and September, when I tried a few markets, I hit my limit to baking and my body was like, yeah, you can't bake more than 20 loaves. I've ended up in the ER a few times with really swollen legs and fear of blood clots. And so, um, so what you're seeing me do now on LinkedIn is like I launched, um, after talking to a few business coaches, launched a 25K Kickstarter campaign to get the commercial equipment that is actually designed and made for the home microbrewer, which is amazing because all I need to do is, you know, Do a small little electric work, which I've already done and you just plug the oven in and what takes me like 13 hours to bake in my home oven. It's going to take 40 minutes.

Peta: 49:04

That's exciting.

Amena: 49:05

I know it's like, it's phenomenally magical. And like, it just hurts my head to think that I'll have 12 loaves out of the oven in 40 minutes. My God. Um, so. Uh, it'll help me set up myself for markets. And so the idea is for Hanun and Zarafa Consulting to be these two businesses that can kind of be interconnected and, um, make up for each other, I think, like as a combined way of making a living. And then, um, I began by answering the question by saying, like, it's intersected with the purpose. Uh, what I've hated about COVID. The most is how isolating it has been for me, because I mask, I have to mask, and nobody else around me does, which means I can't spend time, I'm not spending time with human beings unless they're doctors and nurses and physical therapists, um, and so this has been the entryway, like, into, like, being with people, like, I love, I'm baking, I love that I'm baking bread with clean ingredients, Potentially going local and organic soon and the amount of joy I see on people's face when they consume a product or eat it and I know that I'm doing something healthy. I'm teaching classes. It's like I'm masking up and going and teaching classes and getting to engage with people in that way. Um, it's strengthening community. I feel like I'm bringing people together that we normally wouldn't actually be in a room together. Um,

Peta: 50:35

it feels like it's the epitome of belonging, that whole breaking bread together.

Amena: 50:39

I was trying to figure out how to bring it to that. Thank you. Oh my gosh, people, people can't see us. I am like smiling so wide, my teeth might fall out. Um, I was gonna say, it's a really, I would never have imagined experience belonging from this way in my life. And it just made me realize that, like, this is why most, like, say religious or community or indigenous rituals do center around food, food making, food growing because Like food, belonging is a core ingredient to our survival. And traditionally, we have done this through food. And one of the ways that the Empire has taken that away from us is divorcing how we get our food. It's making that process so sterile. Um, how we grow our food, how we get our food, how we consume our food, like alone in front of the TV. Um, and so, I have You know, and I mean, I was looking for low glycemic index foods and got into mastering sourdough because I've, I'm deprived of eating bread before that I never, I would not eat bread because I know that eating flour causes certain health issues genetically for me, but I didn't eat. I didn't eat. I also know that, like, when I was at Mayo and they were diagnosing me with CSS and chronic fatigue syndrome as well, one of the things they told me was that how you can heal autonomic nervous system disorders, right, is basically means you're stuck in flight fight mode and you need to figure out how to get back to the parasympathetic rest mode. That, that The thermostat settings are off and it's not, um, it's stuck and it won't flip back. Even when it can, it won't. Is by engaging in activities that slow things down and where you can experience time in the speed that time moves versus being overproductive. Destroys your autonomic nervous system, and

Peta: 52:49

Which as a Type A person, that's

Amena: 52:52

so literally in their like modules that they gave me, they had like a wheel with like 30 modules and things to engage with. Forest bathing was listed, meditation, acupuncture. So everything that was non medical system related, like they don't have a solution because medications don't work. Like I've tried all the opioids and the ketamine and everything else, like medication doesn't. Impact the autonomic nervous system because it's kind of exempt from, it's a, it's an operating system disorder, not a hardware disorder. Um, and so, um, one of the things they had listed was like things to do with hands. So gardening, knitting, baking was listed. And so it turns out that when we do things at a slow with our hands, the signal that goes through the brain is, I must belong. Because I wouldn't be doing this if a lion was chasing me.

Peta: 53:48

so interesting.

Amena: 53:49

I know, right? That gives me the goosebumps. That that's, that that is, that's why yoga, all these things where you actually slow down. And so being productive, rushing, is a signal of like something's out to get you. It's, it's been mind boggling. Learning about ANS disorders and learning about like belonging from this lens has been phenomenal. And so like, That's, uh, I mean, I have other health issues that don't let me bake and stand on my feet for 12, 13 hours a day. But, um, for the NNS disorders, this is one way to come comet and to soothe it is to do the things that take long time to do.

Peta: 54:39

I feel like I need to go and do a whole bunch more reading. That's just so

Amena: 54:44

Or, or maybe you just need to go for a long walk.

Peta: 54:46

Possibly that, yes. Although it's dark. But, but yeah, so, there might be lines, who knows. Okay, so if people want to contribute to your crowdfunder, get you your your micro bakery oven, which already sounds magical I'm going to pop the GoFundMe link in the show notes, along with your website and your LinkedIn and other ways they can find a way that they can work with you generally. Um, and that they can follow you and listen to all the incredibly interesting things that yeah that you say Um, so yeah, that's that's what people

Amena: 55:23

I would. Yes, I would love it. I was talking. I'm just gonna do a little, uh, pitch. Uh. I was talking to somebody the other day, and they're from finance sector, and I think the VC world, and he was just like, he was like, I don't understand why people are giving to your crowdfunding because, like, you haven't provided any ROIs and blah, blah, blah. Like, he goes, I don't understand this. And I was explaining mutual aid to him. And he's, he was just like, Didn't get it and we had a really phenomenal fascinating conversation because this guy is like immersed in a very different Relationship with money right in a different world. And so it was new to him And so one thing I explained to him was like like It's a commercial oven and a mixer and a setup that is going to help me get my processes streamlined. Um, and I would have to sell something like, I don't know, 8, 000 loaves of bread to get to the place where 25k would be a break even for me. At 50, that's a really hard thing to do. And so, the advice has been, I don't know, just crowdsource. This is doable, and I've been told it's not a large amount, so

Peta: 56:32

Yeah, that's very cool. I'm enjoying watching it go up. Yes. So this has been as always Fascinating and fabulous. Thank you so much for sharing the changes in your business and the sourdough starter. Um, I had a sourdough starter that was not 130 years old and managed to kill it, but I was keeping two small children alive at the same time. So I was happy it was that way around rather than the other one, frankly, it's fine.

Amena: 57:02

yeah.

Peta: 57:02

Um, but yeah, thank you so much. And yeah, I will I look forward to seeing what you end up creating.

Amena: 57:09

Oh, thank you so much, Preeta, and then thank you so much for having me on again, and as always, I always love our conversations, whether we hop on a Zoom or are chatting in DMs, I appreciate you a lot, and we'll stay in touch.