Welcome to an exploration of intersectional identities, featuring those who live at the crossroads of race, gender, sexuality, and disability. This episode is a departure from The Rub's usual style, and we hope you enjoy this brief detour.
Here is the audio piece about addiction that inspired this episode: Life Left In Me
All audio is from interviews on Healwell's podcast "Interdisciplinary."
Welcome to an exploration of intersectional identities, featuring those who live at the crossroads of race, gender, sexuality, and disability. This episode is a departure from The Rub's usual style, and we hope you enjoy this brief detour.
Here is the audio piece about addiction that inspired this episode: Life Left In Me
All audio is from interviews on Healwell's podcast "Interdisciplinary."
Healwell is a 501(c)(3) non-profit based out of the Washington DC area. Check us out at www.healwell.org
Corey Rivera:
Welcome to the The Rub. I'm your host Corey Rivera. And in this episode, we're gonna do something a little bit different. I think about the process of creation a lot. Making this podcast requires me to constantly learn new things. I learned that writing for the ear is different than writing for the eye. I've learned how to use audio editing software, I've learned to apple juice can cut down on mouth sounds. I've learned about fair use rules and how all electronic notes can be subpoenaed, so it pays to be discreet. I've also learned that accurate reporting takes time. I'm currently working on episodes about massage robots, heels, research news reports and what happens to massage therapists after they're done seeing clients. None of those episodes are ready yet. So this episode is a showcase of the new skills that I've picked up. It's a collage of 10 episodes from our former podcast interdisciplinary. Pol is a big fan of learning and public. If you want to know more about the process of creation. Please join us in the helo community where we are working on helping our members plan their wishes. I hope you enjoy this episode. And thank you for listening.
Harry Pickens:
So let me start by saying that you know, if you can't see me I'm I am I live in a brown body. I'm an African and Native American descent I'm six foot nine.
Frances Reed:
For me. Genderqueer is the is the term that sits most comfortably in in my inner self. Because I feel like what I do there when I feel the most expressed in the world, is mix it all up. It's
Chase Anderson:
not just for me about like being African American or like being gay and like are part of the LGBTQ plus community. I think those are pieces of me but also like being a psychiatrist.
Jennifer Hutton:
I am black. I'm blackity Black, okay, I love who I am. I love where I come from, no matter what my history says I identify as a black person.
Ro Walker Mills:
I'm a 31 year old trans man. And
Jamil Rivers:
I was diagnosed with stage four metastatic breast cancer in 2018. I
Bridget Sumser:
am a clinical social worker, amongst other things.
Arika Patneaude:
I'm a black cisgender indigenous woman and I'm you know, I'm the daughter of a Ashkenazi Jewish woman and a black indigenous man. One of
Kayln Falk:
the things that has shaped me a lot as a human are the humans that I live with. I am a parent to two adult children. One is autistic and functionally nonverbal. And one is non binary Femme and
Anna Valdez:
I appreciate that you guys found me related to disability post, which is sort of interesting because I have had lupus which is the primary cause of my disability. I have several autoimmune disorders. But lupus is the big one. If
Frances Reed:
I've got people scratching their head going, huh, what is this person, then I know I'm in my sweet spot I'm being seen in the world.
Chase Anderson:
So I've been hearing. And I got that the first summer after my first year of med school, because I was like, You need to remind yourself to like, rebel a little bit.
Jennifer Hutton:
I am a born leader, I am a born Hellraiser. But I was also born into some mess. And I had to figure out how to get out of it, and still feel free.
Harry Pickens:
I'm a contemplative performance artists and musician, and a teacher and a writer, and a meditation guide, and I help people, I help people connect with their true nature as love and bring that love into all aspects of their life.
Frances Reed:
I don't pass and I don't want to pass. But as
Chase Anderson:
time went on, I actually learned that the best thing for me was to be myself in the room.
Anna Valdez:
I was getting reprimanded when I got sick. And ultimately, that was going to be problematic for me. And there was nothing I could do about it and have control over when I got sick. Lupus is unpredictable.
Frances Reed:
As soon as you do something that makes me feel small, and like you're in charge of took my power, and you made me feel small. And it seems to be about your discomfort, boom, you're not going to listen to me anyway. And
Anna Valdez:
I often have to say to people, nobody feels worse about this than me, I am in too much pain to climb out of my bed today, or I would have done it, nobody feels worse about this situation than I do.
Chase Anderson:
The other thing is just code switching in and of itself and having to adapt, it puts a different cognitive load on a person when
Jennifer Hutton:
they are tired and fed up and lash out at you understand, it's from a place of I've been doing this for years, I've been dealing with this stuff for years, I'm tired, I'm over it. And so it's not just you it is the representation of what they have been dealing with. And
Chase Anderson:
that adds another like cognitive load, because you're having to like, figure out how to fit in while also like doing well. The
Frances Reed:
one that that really gets me kind of dysphoric Glee is when I catch myself being automatically willing to erase my identity.
Harry Pickens:
What do I do with that? You know, do I live the next 30 years my life completely broken in anger? or frozen? Or do I just become somebody who's always pretending with one of those fake smile? Smiley face? Is
Frances Reed:
it worth it? Do I want to tell this person? Do I want to correct this person? Is this environment, a place where it even matters to me to be seen? And how am I gonna process the fact that I'm doing that on the inside. So
Jennifer Hutton:
the first you know, the first thing for me is everybody has to be willing to put their ego aside and understand what you're actually saying is going on.
Anna Valdez:
Because I think it's hard for people, whether they're you know, nursing students or working nurses, even physicians, to really understand the impact of illness, when you haven't experienced it,
Chase Anderson:
that means that that space is not safe enough yet for that person to be themselves. Yes, we all like code switch a little bit. And we all like have different faces we wear when it's becoming the only face that that person is wearing, and they don't feel safe to be themselves. Think about having to hold all that in. But
Jennifer Hutton:
when you walked out the door, you didn't consider not coming home, you didn't consider that somebody wasn't going to want to be treated by you or somebody wasn't going to sit next to you deciding
Frances Reed:
which aspect of my identity is going to be present in the room and what choices I'm going to make about my expression that are going to support that for whatever purpose I need.
Anna Valdez:
And he said to me, are you trying to convince me you have lupus and I said yes I've been saying this for a long time. He said I know you have lupus you don't have to explain it to me I believe you and I broke down crying because it was just like having somebody say I believe you that you're actually experiencing all these horrible things. There
Ro Walker Mills:
was two hospitals that I could have had the surgery done that and one was a Women's Hospital and without even me asking, I was already put into the other hospital for the surgery which was also there was an
Frances Reed:
all gender sign on the bathroom. There were little thought you know there were rainbow flag and trans flag sitting in the tip jar whatever at the counter, you know the the signs were there and that was enough because I knew this is a place where the queers on and it you're queer, you know the importance of finding that?
Jamil Rivers:
James Baldwin used to say, Well, he did say that black people know white people really well, because we've had to really learn who white people were. Because they were the power structure, we had to know how to navigate through these systems and society, in all these public spaces, really to save our lives. It was a survival.
Jennifer Hutton:
But it sounds like the whole system needs to change. And we're clearly breaking down systems all over. So why not just keep going.
Jamil Rivers:
And if you think about just how we're still so segregated, in our housing, in our schools, in our workplaces, if they aren't, if they are exposed to a black person, it might be what they see, and maybe movies or something like that. And then there's something that develops in their brain as to who this person is,
Bridget Sumser:
what are the possibilities for like just being aware of like, Why do I exist in like, basically only white spaces? That's how I cultivate relationships with I maybe want that to be different. But how do I do that authentically. And I don't have answers for people on that. One
Harry Pickens:
of the pathologies of American culture, it's based on domination.
Jennifer Hutton:
And I usually take implicit bias and put it right next to white supremacy, because white supremacy is the belief that your race as a white person is superior to any other race, and therefore, you should have priority.
Harry Pickens:
One group lording it over another group, right. And whenever you have a culture like that, of course, you don't take care of each other.
Arika Patneaude:
We live in an individualistic society, and we're all individualistic, and we move away from each other. We don't create our communities. And we don't do this. And we don't do that where it's easier to control us. So
Anna Valdez:
I think, you know, we we set this expectation, and we don't talk about the fact that anything can change, right? I didn't, I didn't expect to get diagnosed with lupus,
Arika Patneaude:
another aspect of white supremacy is perfection, right? We need to be perfect at all things at all times.
Jamil Rivers:
You want to dress up in present yourself as professional as possible, so that you're one of those acceptable people,
Bridget Sumser:
right, as a professional mean, my clothes have to look like this, or your clothes have to look like that, or we have to speak in this way who decided that?
Jamil Rivers:
Yeah, when you think about it, it's challenging to say, Okay, I'm going to now shut down a system that has benefited me, my family for generations.
Bridget Sumser:
And that's complicated, because like, nobody wants to say, like, I'm grieving the world where I was totally comfortable because I was incubated in my privilege, but you are, we
Jennifer Hutton:
are every system that you felt comfortable in, you need to question.
Frances Reed:
I can know the human condition of squirming and needing to, like, resist and you're having inner dialogue, that's not pretty and whatever. Those
Arika Patneaude:
questions are not actually a question. But more like, I don't actually believe this. And I need you to prove this to me. And I
Ro Walker Mills:
would say educate yourself. Go find a trans woman online and hear her point of view, go listen to the actual voices of the folks that you're you want to help.
Jennifer Hutton:
My thing is just continue to educate and place yourself in those environments, so that you can feel that natural connection.
Frances Reed:
Because if you want to be a place where I can exhale, you need to know more about my existence and the existence of my community. If we treat
Chase Anderson:
each other respectfully like, right, like, you can ask me questions, I might tell you, like, Hey, I don't want to talk about this aspect of myself right now. But it doesn't mean I won't want to talk about it later. If I
Frances Reed:
can feel you listening, then I'll stay.
Jennifer Hutton:
You know, even if I didn't appreciate how it came out, absorbing it, I understand the place that it came from. And now I will do better than next time.
Ro Walker Mills:
Just like if you're using new pronouns for someone, you might make a mistake. Because it's so ingrained in your brain that you need to retrain It think that's
Arika Patneaude:
why people will say like, I hadn't been trained and equity work. And I'm like, okay, neither have I. And by the way, those training programs, that's not really training and equity
Anna Valdez:
work either. And I hear students say, thank you so much for being vulnerable and human with us because we're human too. And we feel like we've got to be perfect all of the time.
Harry Pickens:
Through effort and practice and community and knowledge and feedback. We can retrain our brain to reclaim our true nature beyond the fear. If
Arika Patneaude:
you really want to do this work you have have to be willing to sit in that discomfort. And yes, there's going to be grief that comes with that, like, just know that but as humans, we are so good at avoiding anything that's going to cause grief. So
Ro Walker Mills:
be easy on yourself, know that it's going to take some time for you to maybe start learning some of this language, or just start moving into that uncomfortable space. That's okay.
Arika Patneaude:
But what we hear is people say, Well, I wasn't trained in that. I don't know how to do that.
Ro Walker Mills:
This is about retraining your brain. It's not going to come overnight. It never does. You
Anna Valdez:
need to center have the person who's having the experience and not centering yourself, which I think is a problem that we see in health care all the time.
Arika Patneaude:
Because people are like, Well, I'm not intentionally doing this. Well, I know, I don't intentionally cause harm. But guess what I still do, we're not
Jennifer Hutton:
attacking people, it's attacking thought you should want your thought could be attacked, and tried and trial, so that you're making sure whatever you think you're doing, you're actually doing, I always talk about, you know, impact over intent. How
Bridget Sumser:
do we exist in this space that is depersonalized. And yet so intimate. It's not about me, it's deeply about me. The awareness that comes from that place, allows some softness allows some flexibility to be real and honest and authentic about where we messed up. But to
Arika Patneaude:
interrupt that shame spiral and say, like, okay, how can I be accountable. And one of the ways that you can be accountable is that you apologize, and you say, I'm learning and I'm growing, and I hope to do this better. And thank you for holding me accountable.
Kayln Falk:
Yes, you can put a rainbow flag on your window. And then it's like, now I'm, I'm woke, and I've got that. But do you know the obligation that you have signed on for that, because
Anna Valdez:
sometimes people don't say anything? Because they're afraid they're gonna say the wrong thing. So you know, you can always say, I'm sorry, that's happening to you, I'm here for you, I support you.
Arika Patneaude:
Right? What does it mean to show up again, with that humility, you know, you
Anna Valdez:
can train anybody how to do technical skills, you can give anybody education about diseases, but it's being able to pull all that together and see the human being in front of you, and care about the human being and accompany them through their healing journey, who
Chase Anderson:
are the like allies who actually stand up for me in the ways I need,
Jennifer Hutton:
and I understand the frustration with people calling themselves allies, and then not being able to back up. But the fact of the matter is, the definition of ally is someone who is backing up a community in need.
Frances Reed:
don't oversell yourself, it is dangerous. You
Jennifer Hutton:
also can't just be an advocate, if you don't understand what is needed from that marginalized community that
Frances Reed:
if you can't back it up, you are actually making that person unsafe, because we come in with our guard down.
Anna Valdez:
Is there anything that we could do that would allow you to be able to fully participate in the way that you feel like you need to participate?
Jennifer Hutton:
You have an inclination to work with children? But do you really want to see all children? And do you really see how all children are not being served the same way?
Chase Anderson:
The other thing I always think about is how many pictures of different types of families are there on the walls? Or like, how do you show that we accept all types of body types here? All different types of people, all cities, all religions? How is that seen in the office? How is it seen in the space that you're building? You're
Jamil Rivers:
not making eye contact? Your body language makes it seem as if this person is a bother or a burden, or you're disgusted by them? They'll How could this person trust you with their care? People
Anna Valdez:
who are disabled know what they can do? They will self select, if you ask somebody, what can you do? What can I What can we do to make sure that you're able to do this job? Are there accommodations that can be made? We know exactly what it is we need. Like
Chase Anderson:
when you have meetings, who is speaking, who is given room to speak, who is asked like directly to speak who talks over other people?
Kayln Falk:
I think it's great that they at least have an awareness. Is it great that they're creating a policy? Yes. Is it great that they are asking and make keeping an eye out? Yes, that's all great. And then the one more step is, and now you're kind of using someone's personal lived experiences, but it is fundamentally advancing your career and not the other person's career.
Jennifer Hutton:
Look at your community, what is the makeup? What are your percentages? Because if you are in a predominantly white area, please don't just go get a black person and bring them into your space. Because that's gonna be uncomfortable for them and for you, because you're not gonna know what to do with them.
Chase Anderson:
I think the other thing is, how do you actually talk about being minoritized or things like that and how do you have those systems? shins? Are they are there people in your office who are talking about those things already?
Jennifer Hutton:
I they're only people of color at the front desk and none in the back room. So what are you teaching kids when they walk into your clinic that only people of color can work and be in the front and only this certain person can work in the back?
Chase Anderson:
There are so many kids who don't have safe spaces. There are adults who don't have safe spaces. One, how do we get to those people to help give them a safe space, but also them grounding themselves in their identity in the ways that they can, and being gentle with themselves when there's certain things they can't show about themselves yet.
Bridget Sumser:
Part of how you act accountable is by slowing down paying attention to your body before you say something asking like where is this coming from? Why do I have anxiety in my body? Do I have some tightness?
Harry Pickens:
That's normal, but the question is, okay, great. What do I do with that?
Arika Patneaude:
Let's start with the pause. What is the pause? Why is the pause? You know, what is the pause interrupting? That pause might be interrupting my brain saying something stupid,
Bridget Sumser:
but those are the questions that maybe start to get you into a different world.
