Dignity & Social Justice with Megan Albertson

In this episode, Dr. Jennifer Griggs speaks with Megan Albertson, the director of the Jackson Care Hub in Jackson, Michigan. They discuss the work being done in Jackson to create a more just and equitable healthcare system. Megan emphasizes the importance of understanding and addressing disparities in healthcare, as well as the need to move beyond charity and focus on systemic change. They also explore the role of love in the work and the ingredients needed for societal transformation. Overall, the conversation highlights the power of community and the potential for positive change.

Guest Contact

• More information about the Jackson Care Hub
• Viral Podcast with Linsey Grove and Megan Albertson

Episode Resources

• Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution by Elie Mystal
• Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul by Dorcas Cheng-Tozun
• The Eating Instinct by Virginia Sole-Smith
• Ice by Amy Brady 
• Whalefall by Daniel Krauss

Chapters

00:00 Introduction
01:01 The Work in Jackson, Michigan
06:15 Understanding Equity and Disparities
07:09 Counting and Measuring Needs
09:04 Moving Beyond Charity
11:39 The Limitations of Helping
13:28 Critiquing Systems, Not Individuals
21:37 The Role of Love in the Work
25:21 Ingredients of Transformation
27:13 Sustaining Joy in a Challenging World
29:09 One Wish for Listeners
35:22 What's Lighting You Up
40:09 Conclusion

Exploring what it means to live and lead with dignity at work, in our families, in our communities, and in the world. What is dignity? How can we honor the dignity of others? And how can we repair and reclaim our dignity after harm? Tune in to hear stories about violations of dignity and ways in which we heal, forgive, and make choices about how we show up in a chaotic and fractured world. Hosted by physician and coach Jennifer Griggs.

For more information on the podcast, please visit www.thedignitylab.com.
For more information on podcast host Dr. Jennifer Griggs, please visit https://jennifergriggs.com/.
For additional free resources, including the periodic table of dignity elements, please visit https://jennifergriggs.com/resources/.

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Transcript

Megan Albertson

We are failing because people should have flowers, they should have poetry, they should work in something that lights them up, that brings to bear the gifts that they have to give and the love that they want to show to the world because it's there.

Vanessa Aron

This is the Dignity Lab, a weekly podcast in which we share stories of dignity, its violations, and its reclamation. Your dignity is your inherent worth or value. Dignity is both essential and vulnerable to harm. The good news is that no matter who you are, no matter what has happened to you, no matter what you have done, you can reclaim your dignity. Tune in to hear stories of inspiration, healing, and leadership.

Hosted by physician and leadership coach, Dr. Jennifer Griggs.

Jennifer Griggs

Several years ago on an eight-degree Fahrenheit windy Chicago morning, I saw a person sleeping on the ground under the L, the elevated train. He was leaning against one of the trestles and I could see the bottom of his socks. And the socks he was wearing were the same brand as I was wearing. You may know the brand of socks that when you purchase one pair, you're also donating a pair to someone in need. When I bought those socks, I felt like I was making a virtuous purchase.

When I saw them on his feet, I wasn't so sure. Here was someone who had socks, yes, but he had no boots. He had breathable, durable socks, but no warm place to be. How can we meaningfully change the way things are to the way they could be and should be? How do we honor the dignity of every human being, both in small ways and big? I asked these questions of Megan Albertson in this episode of the Dignity Lab.

Megan is the director of the Jackson Care Hub, a community exchange in Jackson, Michigan. A quick heads up, this episode contains curse words. If you would prefer to listen to a version without these words, please go to our website, www.thedignitylab .com. We started our conversation by my asking Megan how she came to the work she does.

Megan Albertson

I think of the work that I do as, being a very place-based work. I work in Jackson, Michigan, which is the town that I grew up in. I had a great childhood. I had great people in my life, great friends, great adults in my life. It felt like a community of grownups who loved and supported me, and I always felt very safe. And so when I left to go to school, I left Jackson to go to college in Ann Arbor.

And then I moved abroad for a few years to do work. And when I came back and wanted to work domestically, it never, I guess, occurred to me in the path that Jackson, that going like back home would be a place that would be compelling to work. Within a month or two of being in the work, it just so happens that some of the most compelling, innovative, interesting, heartfelt, disruptive work in healthcare, specifically in this like little space of like healthcare, you know, redesign from a financial sustainable perspective that is based in community need and community health and community activation and community justice. This work is happening in Jackson and it is so far ahead of things that are happening in other places. If you are empowered in your job or in your life to just not do the stuff that we are absolutely positive doesn't work, you'll change the world.

The amount of times we have to do stuff that we understand objectively and from the deep whisper in our hearts, this will not work. The amount of time we have to do that is baffling if you start paying attention to it. And I liked the ability to translate that into policy, into things that felt systemic, right? Like looking at the levers that actually underlay the behaviors we make and how money moves and how resource moves and how power moves. So I think I acquired a combination of kind of technical capacity that I think is really important in doing kind of, you know, any kind of work in healthcare, but also my path took me through really justice -oriented spaces. I got to know people who really had a heart for service, who wanted to do things the right way. So that combination also, I think, allowed me to be in a community where I'm from, right? I really get to do the work that I feel sent here to do in a town that I feel sent here to be a part of and to love.

Jennifer Griggs

How do you define social justice?

Megan Albertson

Ooh, so good. Yeah, so I mean, there are a ton of people who have a ton of really great definitions. But I do think like justice as in terms of things that are fair, things that feel open to serving people in a dignified way to be on The Dignity Lab podcast, right, that are rooted in love and compassion and the alleviation of suffering. And when you look at the injustices, right, they are things that structurally design suffering and allocate it in ways that are unfair, that are unjust.

So I think broadly when I look at the work that I do, I am in the work of alleviating suffering when possible, right? Like using that as a compass to understand where I work, the things that I care about and the things that I do and what I want the world to look like when I'm done. I think we have the capacity to alleviate a tremendous amount of suffering nationally. I just... It makes complete sense to me that we could make better decisions at policy levels and in communities such that everybody has enough food and every single person has a safe, clean bed to sleep in every single night. These things seem reasonable, they seem doable. And to me, social justice is, well, then we should do that. We should decide to do that. And I should be a part of the advocacy and the work and the grit to kind of change the world in that way.

But I think in the work, we talk about equity really specifically as tracking population metrics and breaking them down to look for disparities. So we talk about disparities by race, by queer status, by socioeconomic status, and by fat status, all of these ways that we can look at what the system produces. So if we want to understand what our current system does, we look at the outcomes that it consistently produces and we decide what is not acceptable and then we work to change it. And we track those changes over time. And to do that specifically, we look at where the disparities exist because those are instances of injustice in the system.

Jennifer Griggs

How do you know what to measure?

Megan Albertson

I'm an analyst, right? I have a math background. I'm in the data quite a bit. And there are certainly instances where I go into meetings, I'm off the top of my head, I'm thinking of youth homelessness. We talk about alleviating suffering. There's a tremendous amount of suffering among our youth, especially queer youth, being homeless, we call them unaccompanied youth, couch-surfing youth, there is a tremendous amount of suffering there that we could do much better to alleviate. And homeless youth, quote-unquote, unaccompanied minor, they are extremely difficult to count.

You don't see them because they don't want you to see them. And for the most part, they're not going to be counted. We know enough about these folks, right, these young people who are surviving, that they're not showing up to census counts. And our definitions, the how they're living is also very fluid. It doesn't fit into, and there are many things like that. And so when we look at like youth homelessness, I worked in a project in youth homelessness in Miami for a time and this was the big thing, like we need to get a census. And from a data perspective, like I certainly understand that. And I would say this idea that we use data to justify intervention and resource allocation, like we use this kind of, we implicitly put a, you know, a kind of we'll prove that it's a problem kind of framework on because we have these limited resources. And I'm like, I kind of get it. But also that's a pretty colonized way of thinking about it. Like, how about we start with an asset map and you show me every resource, every organization, every safe place that a youth who is kicked out of their home for being trans show me every place they can go. 

Show me, show me the steps that they take walking out of their door. Show me that. And if you can't put anything there, then that empty map of resources is the only data you need and it doesn't matter if there's one youth or 5,000 youth. The damn map is empty. There are no resources. And I'm not burdened with counting anything, right? You as a system are burdened with understanding how to support all youth. And if you can't show me that you thought meaningfully about that, then it doesn't matter.

Also, I'm not counting how many people like we talk a lot about food needs. Stop making me count food needs. There is no concept of food justice in Jackson in the United States. Like we do not have a systematic process to move food towards people who need food. I mean, we have free and reduced lunches in schools if kids go to school, but we also have that is kids don't go to school every day. Figure out like start at a different level. Figure out like put a stake in the sand and say every kid in Jackson is going to have enough food to eat. And then we'll just figure out how to do that. And we don't have to count. That's one piece.

The other piece is, you know, there are certainly some population metrics that we know to matter. So like infant mortality rate, maternal mortality rate. In many communities, we think of like literacy rates, especially among women, as being markers of economic progress and prosperity and health. I believe very much in the methods of public health and look at the metrics that we are benchmarking at across the nation and across the world and understand those. And within communities, we need to do better as people who understand information, right? Peddling more in information, not just data. People get obsessed with the data. You don't need one shred of data for me to know that there's like kids are hungry. So like, stop asking me to dance this data dance and figure out what you're going to do to make sure kids eat like on Christmas Day. Just do that.

Jennifer Griggs

Measuring what matters begins with the end in mind.

Megan Albertson

Right. So if the question is about from a social justice perspective, right, the question changes. I want to understand how food sovereignty works in my little town because we have enough food.

So how does food sovereignty work? Because food sovereignty is not food banks, right? And I have a tremendous amount of respect and appreciation for people who work in food banks. And, right, as a system, as a healthcare system, as a public education system, as a library system, as well-funded institutions within our community, we can certainly do better than making people stand in line in Michigan in February to get, like, I don't know, canned soup or something silly.

Jennifer Griggs

I told Megan about my socks and the socks of the person I saw on the street in Chicago.

Can we talk about the ways we try to help others and the ways in which helping profoundly misses the mark? I bought a pair of socks and felt some measure of gratitude to the company that a person in need would also have a pair of socks. And yet this unsheltered person had no shoes or boots or a place to be on a cold Chicago morning.

Megan Albertson

This kind of idea that we have stuff and we're going to use our stuff and kind of give it to other people, right, to help them.

And I just, the framing is understandable, right? Within kind of the capitalist, colonized way that we've kind of moved through the land that is currently the United States and just kind of like taking stuff from people and then like giving them another plot of land over here. But I do think, you know, it's 2024, right? We are living in just a resource saturated nation, really globe.

Again, not that there aren't pockets of scarcity, right? But as a species, we have plenty. So when you look at being in the United States, the wealthiest nation on the planet, instances of food scarcity, homelessness, right? When people's basic needs aren't met, these are critiques of systems. It is no longer the case that people's hunger, their acute lack of food at any given moment has anything to do with their choices.

And look, we can debate, people want to debate whether or not that's true. It doesn't matter actually if it's true. It matters if it's helpful, right? It is not helpful to look at moments of food scarcity and say this person, this individual person needs to make better decisions. That doesn't lead to any meaningful policy change. It leads to no meaningful questions and it leads to no meaningful answers. What is meaningful is to say we have plenty and how did we create within a system of plenty?

A model such that we know 40 % of kids in a community qualify for free and reduced lunch. So this idea that we are somehow helping people by subsidizing systems that are designed to keep people like they're designed to produce the results that they produce, right? They're designed to such that children, large percents of children in the United States don't have enough food. The systems are designed to do that because they do that. There's nothing else you need to figure out. The systems do that.

And these are the results that we get. So to think that we're somehow helping people by giving them food while not having the courage and the humility to look at the system that continues to perpetuate those realities is, it's just, it doesn't make sense. It's the wrong question, right? And it leads us to the wrong types of solutions. And there are people whose lives, their work, the work that they want to do is in service of helping people in the moment that kind of the tyranny of the moment. There are people who do amazing work on the streets, in shelters, in food banks, whose work really is drawn to serving people in that immediate need. And I have a tremendous amount of compassion and respect for those people. I want to work at the system level.

And I think we need both. And I think there can be more advocacy for at a policy level, right? The people who are very high up making decisions about resource allocation and how resources flow through the community. At that level, we need to be a lot more intentional about what the question is we're actually trying to answer.

Like no kid should live in a world where they can only eat when they go to school. Yeah, that's a great example of kind of another lens through which to examine what we were just talking about, right? So there are systems, right, in place. I mean, we live, this is, we're in a giant, society, right, both nationally and globally. And we've created kind of conditions and values and policy that reflect those values.

And I think there is a part of the marketing, right, we have to market these systems, right? I mean, we really are. And I understand that there's a whole different level of critique about the functionality and legitimacy of democracy currently, because I like democracy in an age of social media and where we're at is interesting.

And, nonetheless, these systems are marketed. They do not exist in a vacuum. They exist in a socio-political framework that is designed to support and perpetuate them. And part of, I think, the marketing and the sustainability and the underlying level of truly comfort we have with current systems. And I'm not saying that there aren't people who want to reject the systems and chain the systems. I am one of them. But really, the fact that, you know, most people go through their day-to-day lives doing work and trying to live in solidarity with our values, but the ability to live truly ethically, like if we had to think intentionally about every single thing we do, every single moment of the day to live in accordance with our values, it's just, it's absolutely not possible. There is a level of marketing and messaging that goes into kind of our acceptance in a day-to-day basis of where we are.

And I think part of that is providing people with these instances of do-goodery, right? The do-goodness of, you know, think of like, you know, big oil creating messaging campaigns about like, it takes all of us making decisions in the house, right? Like all of us turning off lights. There is not enough light switch flicking that I can do in my day-to-day life that is going to counter the effects of like, policy that allows the extraction of fossil fuels in perpetuity until the end of time.

I understand that I have a role to play, but my role is to elect politicians who actually curtail the late capitalism that is depleting the planet and our natural resources. It's not me flicking light switches. So when I think of like, you know, for-profit companies that have created a marketing schtick, you're willing to pay more for socks. You are somebody who can pay more for socks, right? And it feels good to do so.

And that is a marketing campaign. And I get it. It makes sense. And I think there are a lot of instances when we look around of like the release valve, right? You just think of like something that you're pressing and you release some of the tension of if you're paying attention, how painful it can be to live how we live. If you see the effects on individual people in our communities and when you think globally about the impact of how we live on communities that are required to be crushed under the weight of our consumption.

And so there is a need for people to have this kind of release valve. And I think companies have figured that out and they give that to us. They sell that to us and we buy it.

I believe that it is not enough to buy overpriced socks because one pair goes to a poor person. That is not enough. I think we need to think critically about why some people don't have socks in the wealthiest civilization in the history of our species. And I certainly understand and honor and respect the desire for people who buy those socks to want to buy socks that do something good, that feel aligned with their values, because I actually think most of us want everyone to have socks. And if there's something we can do in our sock buying that makes it more likely that somebody has socks on the Chicago street when it's 17 degrees, then most of us are gonna do that.

So it's both, right? Like we have to figure out how to get through our days every day feeling okay, okay enough to at least have another day. And we need to be, again, have the courage and the humility to say, this is something we need to address at a different level.

Jennifer Griggs

It sounds, Megan, like you're saying that not only can we not blame people for the ways in which they suffer, but we also cannot blame people for the limitations of the ways in which they help others.

Megan Albertson

Yeah, I mean, I think everybody's where they're at, you know, again, and I don't have a, this is again, I think the distinction between true and useful. I don't know whatever, there's seven billion people. I don't know what half of them want. I don't understand half the people like I'm in traffic with, like let alone people just all over the world trying to figure out how to like make it through their days and lives.

You know, I think there are, I just, I have a tremendous amount of grace for just people, just be out there peopling, like everybody just trying to people, I guess the best work is done when it's done passionately and with great love and care and purpose and for me a lot of that time is in my in the work that I do and there are times when that's taking care of my wife because you know she heard her back and she needs and and and that's the work and when that happens I'm not paying attention to socks and Jackson right because the work that I need to do is tending to my family and so there are periods of my life where the work that I'm doing may or may not be aligned with the social justice systemic levers of peace that I want to do.

And I think that's true for everybody. I don't want this work to require anybody to be sacrificed to it. I don't want more people to be kind of browbeaten and crushed by the desire to alleviate suffering. That just seems to not work.

And actually, Adrienne Maree Brown writes a lot about this. I forget the exact quote, but it's liberation will only happen when it becomes the most pleasurable thing we can imagine. So she has a book on pleasure activism and she talks a lot about pleasure. I want to do this because I want to do this. And I think a lot of people do. So I just, you know, I think people are doing their best. I give them a lot of grace and whether I, there are certainly bad actors out there. This is not to diminish the reality that there are people who are really spending as much time as I am kind of trying to alleviate suffering who are creating ad campaigns to create policy that make it harder for women to get healthcare. I just, for me, the desire and the ability to continue to work every day requires me to believe things that are helpful. And my belief is that people are doing the best they can for the people that they love at any given moment.

Jennifer Griggs

As we're talking, I'm thinking about Maslow's so-called hierarchy of needs, in which our basic physical needs have to be met before we can have things like belonging and love and flowers and poetry. It turns out, I don't know if you know this Megan, psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman in going back to Maslow's primary work demonstrates that Maslow never made these needs in the shape of a pyramid. Rather, Maslow and Scott Barry Kaufman describe cycling through these needs that we all need, yes, food and shelter and a warm place to be and socks and boots. But we also need things that allow us to transcend those basic needs.

Megan Albertson

The whole pyramid was a lie? Is that true? Oh, yeah. That makes so much sense. Like, hush, you don't have food so you don't get flowers. Oh, that'll get you.

Well, I mean, I feel like, rightly, this is we've been talking a lot about this is like people getting food like these are functions of society. This is what government is supposed to do. If food, shelter, housing are essential needs, the like physiological animal needs that we have on a day to day basis, this is why we have a government right. Like safety. Like I would like a society in which like I'm not a constant risk of like rape and assault.

Like, so please figure out how to do that and also do that in a way where other people aren't arbitrarily put in cages for years. Because that second clause of like, don't do it in a way that arbitrarily puts people in cages for years. So I think you're exactly right. I mean, we need these things. But again, critiquing an individual for being hungry is not useful or helpful right now. These are critiques of society. If we need to break things down, it's food scarcity, housing scarcity, people not having transportation to good jobs because we put a highway through a poor community. These are failings of the government, of policy, of the people who have controls. Like every billionaire has a failed policy. Yeah, like these are instances where we collectively have not made good decisions. So like stop talking to people about food and start like talking to your senators about food. Right, and when we talk about people...

Then I think it's such beautiful imagery how you said it. It's poetry and flowers and people not just wanting soul-crushing, body-destroying jobs at a minimum wage that hasn't kept up with inflation, right? It's not that. There's no... Like, stop telling this bootstrap bullshit that there is inherent honor in destroying your psyche and your body for a minimum fucking wage for 10 years to maybe claw yourself out of a hole that we built for you 200 years ago. Stop telling me that that's honorable and start looking at that and saying, we are failing as a system of governance, of self-governance.

We are failing because people should have flowers. They should have poetry. They should work in something that lights them up, that brings to bear the gifts that they have to give and the love that they want to show to the world because it's there. The critique rightfully belongs in the systems of governance and policy that move resources predictably, historically, inevitably, towards certain communities and away from others.

Jennifer Griggs

What are the ingredients of transformation in our society?

Megan Albertson

Oh, the ingredients of transformation. As an avid baker, I very much like this framing. Little bitty yeast, little bit of dill and flour. If we actually want to do something, we have to ask better questions. We have to understand problems more differently.

Like how rights were determined hundreds of years ago when we literally didn't have enough food. There literally wasn't enough stuff and how we have now progressed and feeling empowered to change these things. I am so sick of hearing about the Constitution. And it is not because I don't love and respect this idea of federalism and the structure that we have to create a sustaining system of self-governance. There's an excellent book called Allow Me to Retort a Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution and it is a spot on scathing, furious, hilarious critique of just the absurdity of trying somehow to match 2024's issues and problems with a document that was written hundreds of years ago, mostly by people who enslaved other human beings. Right? Like these are not the guys from whom I want to take guidance about how to create a moral and just society. This is an outrageous proposition. If you remove the constitutionalism and how we've been like bred and marketed to believe that any critique of our system of self-governance would lead to complete destruction, like that's a lie. That is absolutely a lie.

First of all, capitalism will maintain capitalism. Capitalism is going to maintain the flow of goods and resources. We can actually look meaningfully about how we govern ourselves and we can make better decisions. I don't give a shit what the constitution says about whether or not I get to be married to my wife. Whether or not they thought that that would be cool in the society is not our issue. If they think that that's not okay, then that is an indictment of that document and we should trust it a little less. And stop it with abortion in the constitution. For fuck's sake, some of this stuff is so absurd. So the ingredients that we need to change society is like...

I just, uh, just start back at the beginning, right? Like acknowledge that we are, that we are intelligent adults, that we can live in the gray, we can compromise, we can acknowledge things that have worked in the past and honor them for what they have done and how we have gotten here. And we can say that is not good enough. And we can say it is not good enough from a place of humility and love and respect. And we can just do something better.

For fuck's sake! These are the hoops you're trying to jump through? The slavers document? And it's the fear -mongering. It's, if we critique this, then everything falls. This slippery slope argument meant to hush people who say it's not good enough. Because we can actually do this. We can amend the Constitution. We can decide that we want a different society. We can decide that we don't want an economic system that is steeped in neoliberal kind of policies that funnel resources away from the majority of the population, we can just say we don't want to do that.

And then we can work to meaningfully enact that kind of change. And we will not fall into some sort of dystopian Orwellian hellscape. There is no reason to believe that that will happen. What we do have a reason to believe will happen is the continual devaluation of specific types of bodies in the United States by the existing policies that were literally designed to devalue specific types of bodies. Like, we can actually believe that the systems will do what they were designed to do. So that seems like a good place to start.

I don't know. That, sorry, that got me. I'm awake now.

Jennifer Griggs

What's the role of love in the work you do?

Megan Albertson

Oh, love is the good stuff. So I just like, in my mini-meldown about the Constitution being somehow implicit in whether or not I get to marry my wife. Yeah, I mean, like, love is the thing.

It sounds so cliche, you know, like there are centuries of poets and artists who have written about love and they certainly have done a better job than I could do. It's the thing that makes me happy. It's the thing, it's like true or useful. Love is the most useful thing. It feels the best. It is, I am the best version of myself when I am connected to the things that I love.

And I've learned recently actually in some of the work that I've been doing, there are… a new antagonist has emerged in the work. And it has been challenging because now my job, right, has had a new wrinkle has been added to my job. And there's this kind of antagonist, which has never the job has always been pretty amenable to the justice work that we've done.

And recently, you know, this new dynamic has come into play. And it really sent me I was really kind of spirally for a bit because I was just so mad and I was rageful and I kind of had to think like, okay, like I just kind of like melted down and was like, I'm done with this. And so like what happened? And I really, I learned it was like, I had somehow changed my framework that I was working kind of in opposition of something that like, screw this, I'm going to burn it down. I'm going to do everything I can. And the work had kind of slowly and I, my framework had changed to like, I am working in opposition to something and I cannot work in opposition. I am not fueled by rage or vengeance or indignation. Those things contribute to my... They help me understand where I think my attention should be focused. They irritate me. They scratch at me. I don't like them. And it's empowering for me to articulate the absurdity of many of these things. But at the end of the day, I work because of great love. I work in Jackson because I love the people in Jackson. I love walking around there. I love the history that I have there. I love, hopefully, being able to look back on my life and feel that there is some evidence that I was there. And that's the thing that sustains me.

And so I just, kind of within the last couple of months, had this realization, I was like, that's why I feel depleted. That's why I don't want to show up to this job and I don't want to do this work. And I'm constantly telling my wife, like, what am I doing in my life?

It's because I forgot that I do things for love. And it doesn't mean that the antagonist doesn't exist. It doesn't mean that there aren't threats. And it doesn't mean that there aren't days where I'm like, I'm out. I need to go for a walk and listen to my book on tape and hang out with my dog. But the love is what brings me back and what makes me able to rejuvenate myself and restore my reserves so that I can do it again. Yeah, so the love is, yeah, for me, it's why we do it. I imagine that's true for... for lots of folks, for the love of the people that I know and for the love of a broader sense of how things could be.

I love the vision of every kid in Jackson having enough food and having safety and a clean place to sleep every single day. I love that vision.

Jennifer Griggs

It's funny we don't talk about love at work very much, do we? We don't use the word.

Megan Albertson

I've been microdosing everybody in my office with love for like a decade.

I'm always telling them I love them and asking if they'll consent to hugs and yeah, I try to make it as low-key weird as possible.

Jennifer Griggs

How do you sustain joy in this world that we live in?

Megan Albertson

I think the world is actually just delightful. I just, I find people delightful. I like personhood, like how us as little animals are designed and the complexities and how interesting and everybody's story. I'm an introvert, so I don't get out much by design.

However, every time I meet people and I am a gay, gender, queer person from a little town in Michigan, right? So I'm like, I'm kind of a weird take out in the streets actually in Jackson in a lot of ways. And I know enough about the kind of sociopolitical breakdown of our community that many folks that I meet just out in the street aren't politically or socially aligned with where I am in my far-left liberal ideology. And I just find them fascinating. When I actually talk to people, I'm like, you are so fascinating.

And also I think I have selected people in my life who make me laugh. I laugh all the time, every day. My wife is funny, my parents are hilarious to me, my friends. The work that we do, the people who I get to work with in Jackson. These things are funny and I'm not trying to diminish the seriousness, right? And the acute reality of trauma and terror and the terrible things that are going on. Both of those can be true. I can honor those.

I get to spend a lot of time with my parents when I come back to Michigan. My parents have a long driveway and at the bottom there's a specific type of tree. I don't know what it is, but it drops these berries. And my dad... from when we were little, at the time of year when the berries drop, when we drive up the driveway, he would roll down the window and be like, all right, kids, listen. And he would drive really slowly over the berries and they sound like applause. And he's like, we're going over the applause berries. And these berries as the tires rolled over them sounded like little applause. And it's just like this simple whimsical thing.

And like that's been, you know, the people in my life, like that's the stuff, like the applause berries. Oh Meg, next time you come home, the applause berries are out so every time we drive over this section of the driveway, roll down the windows and hear the berries applaud to us. And that is, that'll say, like, whatever happens in my day, you know, three seconds of applause berries and the connection to my dad, who was a good, peaceful man who loves me. Like at the end of the day, I am restored by that. 

Jennifer Griggs

What are they applauding for?

Megan Albertson

Just another day. You know, just where there's life, there's hope. And being able to go home, you know, I feel like they're heralding me home to a place of rest and peace, which is good, you know, which I can do it again, because I have a place that I can go and people who love me and, you know, all the things we want for everybody. I have food and safety and connection, clean clothes, a warm shower.

Jennifer Griggs

If you had one wish for our listeners, what would it be?

Megan Albertson

Applause berries! Ushering you home to a place of great love and peace and comfort and rest and applause pulling you back out into a world that needs you to do the exact thing you're designed to do with great love and great service.

Jennifer Griggs

So what are you reading these days?

Megan Albertson

So I'm reading several books. I tend to have several different genres in play. I'm reading Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul, which has been really helpful in, I think, helping me feel empowered in being sensitive and still wanting to do justice work. And also helping me, I think, feel comfortable setting boundaries about what I let into my life and my psyche and my thoughts on a day -to -day basis. So that's been really good.

I'm also reading The Eating Instinct, which is a book about kind of how we learn to eat in America, which is really fascinating. I'm reading that for a book club that I do with some friends out in California. So a couple of those type of books.

I'm also finishing the book Ice by Amy Brady. And it's people I think like because I read kind of justice books that it's like ice like immigration ice. It is not. It is ice like cold water and time and the stuff you put in drinks and it is absolutely fascinating. This is one of my favorite books of all time. The stories about ice, the history that she puts together and how she writes it is just tremendously charming. I absolutely loved it. It's been a blast. So I actually, I just started when I listen to, I'm usually listening to at least one. I'm listening to one book like an audible when I run or when I'm outside walking. So I just started and those books are usually fiction. They're just fun. I'm like out vibing on my little locks.

And I just started a book called Whalefall by Daniel Krauss, which is I've seen kind of everywhere. I guess it's technically a horror book, but it's about a diver whose father has died in the ocean and he goes to look for his remains. And while he's diving, he gets attacked by a squid who then gets eaten by a whale. And then he has like an hour of oxygen left inside a squid that's inside a whale.

Jennifer Griggs

Sounds like a turducken.

Megan Albertson

It's like, yes, it's like a, yeah, it's a terrible tale of turducken gone nautical.

Jennifer Griggs

I'm adding those to my list. What's lighting you up these days?

Megan Albertson

What is lighting me up? I mean, my job, I get to do a lot of interesting research. My people, my people are kind of always the thing that lights me up. My wife lights me up. My parents are delightful little 70-year-old monsters at this point. And I just like, they are so funny to me and they are just like living their best lives out here and out here in these streets running wild and you know. It's just, they're so fun to watch. Like my mom is just living in like adult day camp all the time. Her friends are awesome. They have all these like things where they take, you know, they go on these tours and they do stuff at like 11 o'clock in the morning. So they're like at full cocktail hour by one and they're home for like a tasteful dinner at 5:30. And like that is the schedule I want in my life.

Jennifer Griggs

I love that you call your parents monsters.

Megan Albertson

Oh my gosh. No, my mom is, I love it. Like they're just like my favorite people. So I feel like I could say this, but she's just a savage.

She's just, she's come to a point in her life where she's just like, child, I'm not doing that. I don't want to do that. I'm leaving. And she just like does her thing. And she's just this 75-year-old woman who has come into her power and is like, I'm not doing that. I don't really like it. It's just like, mom.

Jennifer Griggs

What a role model. How can people find you?

Megan Albertson

Oh, find me. Dr. Lindsey Grove and I have a podcast called The Viral Podcast where we talk about public health and the history of public health. And it's implications, profound and absurd in today's society. So you can check us out on the podcast. I'm also on bebopping around Jackson, Michigan. So if people are interested in the work that's going on in Jackson, Michigan, they can find me there.

Jennifer Griggs

Megan Albertson, thank you so much for this conversation on the Dignity Lab. It is my pleasure. Thank you.

I hope you are as energized and hopeful as I was after talking with Megan to hear someone deeply delight in their work and their people. To hear ways in which we can live in a world that is topsy -turvy, a world in which we can care for one another despite systems that threaten to destroy our humanity, to hear about applause at berries and the ways in which we can make meaningful change made this a surprisingly joyful experience. Surprising only in that we were talking about the failures of our current system, which can seem overwhelming.

What did you take away from our conversation? Let us know by visiting our website, thedignitylab .com and leaving a comment or send us a question.

Our guest next week will be Madelyn Yacht. Madelyn is founder and CEO of the Summit Executive Advisory Group and has been coaching leaders for over 25 years. We'll be talking about the privilege of leadership and the things that leaders do without even knowing it to diminish their effectiveness.

We talk about the steps leaders can take to change in authentic ways that honor their own dignity and that of the people they lead. We hope you'll join us. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate and review us and share with someone you know. This helps us build our audience. And if you leave a review and send a screenshot to jennifer at jennifergriggs .com, we'll send you a small gift.

This has been the Dignity Lab with Dr. Jennifer Griggs.

If you have experienced a dignity violation or have a dignity dilemma and want to be a guest on our show, contact us through our website, www .thedignitylab.com. Guests may remain anonymous. And if you're a leader wanting to up -level your leadership with a small community of like -minded people, please visit our website to learn more about our group program for leaders. Our website also has free downloadable resources.

Vanessa Aron

More information about our guests can be found in each episode's show notes. This season of the Dignity Lab is produced by me, Vanessa Aron. Pete Carty is our audio engineer and sound designer. Kaci Frenette is our executive assistant. And Chase Miller composed our theme music. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

The content discussed is intended to explore and raise awareness about dignity. Sensitive topics may be discussed that could evoke strong emotions, so discretion is advised. Listeners are encouraged to engage with the material with empathy. Remember, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars."