The Belonging Wound: Raina LaGrand on Identity, Community, and Healing

What does it really mean to belong when your identity doesn’t fit neatly into one box?

In this powerful and deeply human conversation, Dr. Shawna Gann and cohost, Marcel DeJonghe, chat with somatic psychotherapist, coach, and educator Raina LaGrand to explore the layered realities of mixed race identity. Together, they unpack the tension between fitting in and truly belonging, the emotional weight of code switching, and the complexity of navigating spaces that were never designed with multiracial people in mind. Raina shares her personal journey, including unexpected discoveries about her ancestry, and how those moments reshaped her understanding of identity, healing, and wholeness.

The conversation also dives into what Raina calls the “mixed race belonging wound” and how it shows up in relationships, self-worth, and the ability to take up space. From racialized trauma and complex trauma to the surprising power of community and shared language, this episode is both validating and expansive. Whether you identify as mixed race or simply feel like you exist between worlds, this conversation will leave you thinking differently about identity, connection, and what it means to feel at home in yourself.

About Raina LaGrand
Raina LaGrand is a somatic psychotherapist, coach, and educator who supports mixed race adults in healing belonging wounds and reconnecting with their innate wholeness. She offers one-on-one and group programs worldwide and maintains a psychotherapy practice in Michigan, where she specializes in complex relational trauma, chronic pain, and racial identity. Raina lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan with her dog, Willa, and enjoys cooking with friends, reading books by women of color authors, and indulging in reality TV.

Connect with Raina
Instagram: @mixedracebelonging
Podcast: Mixed Race Belonging Podcast
Website: mixedracebelonging.com
Therapy practice: roottorisesomatics.com

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Transcript

Intro  0:00  
Welcome to Our True Colors, hosted by Shawna Gann. Join her as she explores the challenges of being a racial riddle, an ethnic enigma and a cultural conundrum. Let's dive in. Hey,

Shawna  0:22  
Marcel, how you doing?

Marcel De Jonghe  0:23  
I'm good. Johanna, yourself.

Raina LaGrand  0:25  
I'm doing pretty good. I found some extra pep in my step this week. It feels really good when there's that extra level of productivity happening. I feel like I'm accomplishing things.

Marcel De Jonghe  0:35  
I feel that there's a little bit of energy out there in the world. I think this week, I've ticked off a lot of things which have been waiting in the wings to happen, and they're just coming together. Yeah, I feel you.

Shawna  0:47  
How's your little one?

Marcel De Jonghe  0:49  
She's good. She's definitely found her voice, in regards to telling people who she does and doesn't like.

Marcel De Jonghe  0:57  
I think she's she knows about emotional blackmail this evening from nursery, and the nursery staff member was like, Do you like me yet? and Genevieve to turn around? Not yet. Two and a half. Like, how are you able to know how to make this person want you to want them?

Marcel De Jonghe  1:20  
Yeah, you're gonna be a tough one.

Raina LaGrand  1:23  
You know, I have to try to control it, but comes out. Listen, she knows who she is already and what she wants. Do you think she got that from you?

Marcel De Jonghe  1:34  
I'm a people pleaser, so probably not. I would probably want to tell her that. Yeah, of course, I like you, even if I wouldn't, and her mom's not like that either. There are a lot of similarities, like she has my face, but she has a mom's expressions. So sometimes it's seeing the rolling of the eyes, the look which she gives me, which is sweet for now, but I suppose you always want to raise an independent little person, as long as that independence isn't coming back at

Speaker 1  2:05  
you, listen, there's going to come a time where I will send you this episode to remember when you said it, does it come back to you?

Marcel De Jonghe  2:13  
Oh no. It's coming back to me. It's coming back too

Raina LaGrand  2:14  
quickly to me, already. Okay. Yeah. Buckle up, my friend, buckle up. Oh, my God. Well, I asked you if you thought she got it from you, because there's this kind of idea of inherited identity rolling around in my brain today. Is identity a thing that we inherit? Is it something we build a little bit of both? What do you think

Marcel De Jonghe  2:39  
there is an argument that nature versus nurture isn't there? Like, yeah, so my stepdad, I have similar personality to him, but not 100% so there's the nurture part. But apparently I do quite a lot of things, which my biological father did, and I remember the first time my mom spotted it like no one had taught me. I clean my knife pretty much after every single time I eat. Don't know if it's a neurodiverse thing. Don't know what type going on there, but mom just stopped. So what were you doing? And I just cleaned my knife. So why don't dirty knife? And I was a kid, and she's like her dad used to do that really, and he passed away when I was 11 months old. So, like, I didn't

Raina LaGrand  3:24  
observe that? Yeah, yeah. I do think there are some things which we pick up just genetically, and then there are definitely behaviors, like our biases in the way we we build things. Yeah, I do think it's a combination of both. It's interesting when you find out things later in life about your identity or where you come from. I was just curious about that. It was just something I was thinking about. I'm excited to introduce you to the guest that we have today. Her name is Raina Legrand. She's a somatic psychotherapist. She's a coach and an educator, and in her coaching practice, she offers one on one and group programs for mixed race adults worldwide, helping them untangle and heal their belonging wounds so that they can reconnect with their innate wholeness and write the next chapter of their belonging story. Raina also maintains a psychotherapy practice in Michigan, where she specializes in supporting people with complex relational trauma, and she also supports people when it comes to chronic pain and racial identity issues. Raina lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan, on occupied Anishinaabe land with her beloved dog, Willa, and enjoys cooking with friends, reading books by women of color authors and indulging in bad reality television. Me too, girl, I can't wait get on your show so we can talk about love is blind. We'll talk about the other stuff later. Yes,

Speaker 2  4:46  
I haven't watched this season yet, so I need to catch Have you ever watched

Marcel De Jonghe  4:51  
Married at First Sight?

Speaker 2  4:52  
Australia, not the Australian version.

Marcel De Jonghe  4:55  
Australian wants the best. Oh, absolute car crash. TV. I'll add it to

Raina LaGrand  5:01  
my queue. And Secret Lives of Mormon wives. I cannot. I cannot. Just started Vladimir on Netflix, which is interesting.

Unknown Speaker  5:09  
So interesting.

Shawna  5:10  
I don't know if that one is what you would like.

Marcel De Jonghe  5:12  
Marcel, I know who's in it. Rachel fies,

Unknown Speaker  5:16  
don't know their name.

Marcel De Jonghe  5:18  
She's married to Daniel Craig.

Raina LaGrand  5:20  
She seems like she'd be married to Daniel Craig, yeah, that is, I love her.

Marcel De Jonghe  5:25  
She's in the mummy.

Raina LaGrand  5:26  
Yeah, that's her interesting show. But once again, that's not what we're here for. Hi, Reena, welcome, Hi. Thanks for having me. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for joining us. You have like, all this interesting stuff going on. And for fun, I'll let listeners know you were recently at the cmrsa conference in Los Angeles, which I attended to, and we kind of talked about it a little bit before. I hope that you had a really good, fulfilling time there. It's so interesting to bring all of these different folks with different disciplines together, who are in this space of what it means to be mixed race, multiracial, complex in all these ways, and then share with each other.

Speaker 2  6:11  
It was such a wonderful time. It's always just nourishing to be around other people who just get it and who you can like learn with. Yeah.

Raina LaGrand  6:20  
100% 100% I love to start our conversations here in the show, asking our guests, how would you describe yourself to folks who are listening racially?

Speaker 2  6:32  
I really identify in very like layered and fluid ways. I use the terms mixed, mixed race, multiracial, black, all of those feel right to me, and I just kind of use them when it feels right to pick one or, you know, I mean, I also think there's value in just listing them all off, not having to pick one. But yeah, those are my racial identities, and I'm also queer, neuro, divergent, I live with chronic pain among other identities.

Raina LaGrand  7:06  
Yeah, yeah, we contain multitudes. That's It's no joke, right? So it's kind of nice to know what lenses we're looking through. Though, when we have conversations like this, it gives folks an idea of like, okay, this is how we're seeing this perspective, when did you first begin exploring questions of identity and

Speaker 2  7:24  
belonging in your own life? As a child, I was acutely aware that I was racially different than other people in my community. And I grew up in a really segregated community, you know, there were a lot of black folks, a lot of white folks, a large Latinx population. And since then, like, there's been a larger Burmese population of like, refugees entering the community I grew up in among, you know, other racial groups as well, and I navigated different spaces in that community. I went to a primarily black school. I went to a primarily white dance studio. You know, my parents occupied different spaces in the community too, and I was close with each of them, and so I was always aware that I was different and that we were different as a family.

Shawna  8:17  
What do you mean when you say we as a family were different?

Speaker 2  8:20  
You know, there were comments made to me at school, micro aggressive comments about my skin tone, or talking white or acting white. There were plenty of times when we went out to dinner and we're receiving pretty obvious stares. Also, I'm a big feeler, and I was aware of tension in the black community, in particular around my father's marrying a white woman, and as I got older, learned that I was sensing something real there, that I sensed in the way that I was treated and talked about and talked to by different adults in my community, that I was different then, and I was being raised differently than their kids.

Marcel De Jonghe  9:04  
It's gonna ask with the with the obviously, dance school, and he said there was a two different ethnic mixes, you know, did you ever find yourself code switching or understanding at the time that you were code switching because that, you know, you're traversing two worlds to an extent, even though they

Speaker 2  9:20  
should be wrong. Yeah, absolutely, I found myself code switching and really performing what I thought would help me to fit in, especially around pop culture and like slang, you know, around like music and different like celebrity icons and what everybody was into. You know, my neighbor and, like, best friend growing up was white, and introduced me to the Backstreet Boys and in sync and Britney Spears, which I'm not mad about. And then at school, you know, I was learning more about, like hip hop and, you know, even like Mariah Carey and stuff like that. So. So, yeah, I think a lot of code switching, a lot of liking things to fit in. I mean, I liked it all. I've always been, you know, somebody who's interested in multiple different things, but yeah, and then, and then, absolutely, like, linguistically, code switching.

Marcel De Jonghe  10:15  
I think that was a key for myself as well. It was, you sound too white, wow. And then sometimes intentionally elongating words or not pronouncing them quite correctly, because it would shine a light on you. So that must have been hard. Was that, like the 90s, early millennium,

Speaker 2  10:33  
90s, so late 90s, early aughts, yeah, being told I acted or talked white or was so white that was, like, the worst thing someone could say to me, even a white person, you know, because I was aware that there was a reason why being white was bad, you know, and I wanted to be seen the good side, quote, unquote.

Raina LaGrand  10:56  
Oh, interesting the things you're saying right now, a white person has never said to me that I speak white. It was often the black community that challenged me the most when I was really little, not really little, I'd say middle school age. I wanted to be white because I could see that that's who the popular kids were. And so it just sort of felt like, in order to be pretty, in order to be popular, in order to be liked, you had to be white. And I would like, honest to God, pray, like, can I just wake up tomorrow and look like this or be like this? And it's so sad. Like, if I could go back to little Shauna and just be like, girl, don't pay them. No mind. The thing that's interesting to me is, I was born in the 70s. So hearing you say what was bad about being white is the complete opposite. I would say. I notice more on social media these days that there is sort of this, I don't want to say shame associated with being white, but like, people are a lot more, I think, aware and able to express what was always taboo before when it came to whiteness and superiority and all of that stuff. And that makes people feel like, Ooh, I don't want to be part of that camp. Is that kind of what you experienced? Because literally, when I was growing up, it was clear that whiteness was a path to a lot more success than if you didn't have whiteness, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2  12:26  
Yeah. I mean, there were definitely times when I did want to be white, and I think more so I wanted to look white, I wanted the hair, I wanted to fit white beauty standards, yeah. And I wanted the normality that came with whiteness that even my white family didn't have, because many of them are alcoholics and all these, these other things, right?

Raina LaGrand  12:48  
But you're talking about the stereotypical sitcom Family, yeah,

Speaker 2  12:52  
yeah, Seventh Heaven, you know. Do you all remember that? Yeah, yeah, and not that, yeah, I'm not religious or anything, but just like that, like, yeah, we fit the all the norms, you know. But I think that I saw a different kind of community, camaraderie in the black community that I was surrounded with, that I wanted. Because I think as I've been doing more writing for me, in some ways, it wasn't about identity. It was that I wanted the village. I wanted

Raina LaGrand  13:27  
the village. Hey, there's that belonging.

Speaker 2  13:29  
Yeah, exactly. And like I said, with family members dealing with alcoholism and other, you know, remnants of intergenerational trauma on both sides, that village felt so scarce to me in my family unit. And so, yeah, I saw, like, the Juneteenth parties and, you know, this and that. And I was like, Ooh, that looks fun. Like I want to be there. I saw the inside jokes, you know, the ways of like, talking to each other in the black community that could be, like, harsh but affectionate, you know? I I wanted to be part of that. Yeah, I

Marcel De Jonghe  14:10  
remember the first time being invited to something which was specifically for people of an ethnic minority, not as an afterthought, but part of that community first, and I didn't realize that that was something I was aching for and thinking, Oh, okay, so this door is open to me. I've never pushed on it. I never wanted to push on it because I was worried that it was locked. You know, no one likes egg on their face, so you just kind of you wait for this open invite to come, and then it came, and it was like, I'm seen, yay, but then also not running away into that and thinking by my previous experiences, because we are humans, we're comedians, I think that's the beauty of us. We adapt to our surroundings, but we shouldn't be at a cost to ourselves. Loves, yeah,

Raina LaGrand  15:01  
I mean, it's a double edged sword. I think that there is a beauty to being able to adapt. It's a superpower that we have, if we leverage it, not everybody can naturally show up with empathy, because you're so used to being in different worlds and being so used to having all these different perspectives. It's something that is a great advantage, in a way, to be able to adapt. However, adapting takes energy, right? I don't know that we can escape the cost of it. So it's one of those things that is a double edged sword. I think I'm listening to both of you talk about the sense of community. And you know what it felt like to be part of the black community or part of ethnic communities, and I grew up in a black family, so I didn't even think of myself as being mixed race or multiracial until I was in my 40s, because the one drop rule is so prevalent here in the United States that pretty much I grew up with if you're a little bit black, you're just black, even Though the rest of the world didn't necessarily see me that way, I never felt like, Gosh, I wish I were welcomed into the black community, because I grew up in it. For me, it feels like home. I like to give the example of the Wizard of Oz. I don't think I have ever seen the movie The Wizard of Oz from beginning to end. I have once, but we were listening to Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon while watching it, because that was the thing to do. I don't even know why, but that was the thing to do. However, I can quote, recite every lyric, song, script of the Wiz, because I grew up with the Wiz. Yeah, I tell people all the time, we don't follow the yellow brick road. We ease on down like there's a difference. Okay, that's what I grew up with. So that just naturally feels like home to me. I'd love to hear actually from both of you. Like, what was that feeling you're like, oh, I want to be welcomed into this space. And like Marcel, you said you thought the door was locked, and then it wasn't just as a person who kind of maybe took that for granted a little bit. I'd like to know what made that important to you? What made it feel different than being with your other friends and family?

Marcel De Jonghe  17:06  
So I went to predominantly white school on the other side

Speaker 1  17:10  
of the city. So that's you in a different space, different world.

Marcel De Jonghe  17:16  
It was like predominantly white, wealthy area of the city as well. And I lived in a impoverished area. I lived in an area which was predominantly Asian, Black and some white people. Okay, so you suddenly go into this, this, this part of the city, and no one saw me as black until I told them, and then they were like, oh, okay, yeah, yeah. But I was welcomed as white because I'm light skinned white. You know, it was generally someone just thought I was Hispanic or just tanned really well. I've got a lot of freckles. And then it was just me when I started to mature, and was 1617, 18, that's when I stopped myself a part time job, and I interacted with people, and I found myself being able to talk to black people about Black culture. I knew about it, and I would probably be the most educated in my school about it, because no one else did, because I'm a mom and, you know, just the music I listened to, but then suddenly realizing, actually I know a little bit of something. So I've gone from one pool where I was knowledgeable, and everybody came to me because they thought I was the cool kid, because I understood black culture and they didn't, and then I suddenly went into the black culture. Was like, I know nothing. Like, I know nothing. So for me, it was just like, I'm gonna just sit here and watch and understand. But then I was also aware that I felt sometimes I couldn't embrace it too much because I I'm not black enough in some people's eyes, you know. So it was more of I was observing and taking what I liked or felt I had the right to take into myself, you know, certain things I you know, I couldn't do.

Speaker 2  18:46  
What about you? Rina, yeah. I mean, I think retrospectively, me feeling like I didn't belong in black spaces, or like as a black person, that I wasn't black enough, was partly sensing that, like anger in our like immediate community, or like the tension the discomfort with like my father's choice and me being such a people pleaser, like just being so attuned to that that I wasn't welcomed by certain people in The same way I saw, like my monoracially identified friends, and my dad was the school social worker, and my god mom was the school principal. So I also kind of got picked on a lot for being all those things, you know, yeah,

Shawna  19:33  
were associated with the law,

Speaker 2  19:35  
yeah, exactly. So I think now I see that there's so much more complexity around why I felt like an outsider. Once I got, like, out of college and grad school, I was more comfortable with myself, but, yeah, I started to make black friends, where I started to really see that there wasn't a wrong way to be black. So I kind of like met the other quirky black people, you know. Know, and the ones who were, like, really, like, soft and socially conscious, and those were, you know, they were everywhere, but I didn't really make friends with them until, like, after college and in grad school, and it just felt like finally I can be honest about what it's been like for me as a person of color in this world, I had so many relationships where I couldn't talk openly about those things, or I wasn't understood. They didn't get it, you know. So it felt like an exhale to be able to be in those spaces and to also develop more relationships with people who had other liminal identities for different Reasons, like being immigrants or whatever.

Shawna  20:46  
Yeah, that resonates you.

Speaker 2  21:03  
A few years ago, I had an interesting element added into my identity journey. My sister is adopted and has been really into genealogy. She's done DNA tests and learned a lot about her birth family, learned about like her ancestors, and so a few years ago, she bought DNA tests for my parents, and I'm their biological child, so I kind of, like, learned, you know, via, like, their experience doing the DNA tests, my dad's came back, you know, pretty expected, like, mostly West African, and, like, 2% Scottish, and my mom's came back. And when she got her results, she was really confused by them at first, and then took some time to process and realized what she was seeing was that, essentially, there was enough information in there for her to realize that her birth father, who is deceased for a long time now, was not her birth father, that actually her birth father was Turkish. And so she called me, and she was like, I just figured this out. Turns out I'm mixed in some ways. And yeah, like, and my grandmother is is gone too, so she has not been able to speak to either of them about it. She's been able to speak to her sister about it, but we have put together the pieces that my family was stationed in Turkey, my grandpa was in the Air Force, and they were never in love. We all knew that they were together because it was the 60s, and they got married and divorced later, but my grandmother had an affair when they were there, and my mom was the product of that affair, and so it added this whole other layer of like identity and complexity to me that is also so ironic, given that I do this work. You know, it took me a while to figure out how this was going to fit in. And while I don't claim at all to have any true experience, like, culturally, as a Turkish person, it has felt right for me to like share that when I'm talking about my ancestry, and that's not how I identified at the top of the episode, but when I'm talking about my ancestry, I normally say, you know, I'm Scottish and English and West African and Turkish or something like that. There's lots of other mixes in there, but it's felt important for me to like, name and be honest about like, it feels weird to just like not name

Raina LaGrand  23:27  
it, you know, now that you know, yeah, yeah. I have a friend, Dr Anita Fomin. She does such interesting work, and a couple of the studies she did were on talking to folks after they get back their DNA results, especially when there's something surprising. Do they change how they identify? Do they deny it? Do they say, Never mind. It doesn't matter. It's an interesting thing that people react so differently, but it sounds like it was very important to you, particularly with the work that you do, to include this.

Marcel De Jonghe  24:00  
DNA tests have a lot to answer for yeah, as I had a similar experience, I think I've told you, haven't I Shauna, that my biological father died when I was 11 months old. I knew nothing of him. My mom obviously was married to him, father and my sister as well, he was and I've always just said to my partner, I know nothing about this man because of circumstances of his death. My mom just doesn't talk about it. I can't get anything from him. So for Christmas slash birthday, the wand and the same day for me, thankfully or unthankfully, I don't know which way it is, he's a Christmas baby, yes. Unfortunately, yeah. But my partner got me a DNA test, and never thought too much about it. Did it, sent it off. I sleep through the night, generally, for some unknown reason, I just woke up like two in the morning, and a few minutes before then, I had an email from them with my results, and for the first 10 minutes, I just couldn't work. It out, I was like, what my predominant, which no one had any idea, was Jewish, Ashkenazi, Jew. What? You know, I've still got the black African. I've got all the Bantu east and Western. I've got Cameroonian. I've got Scottish, Irish, got English, but the prominent was Jewish.

Raina LaGrand  25:21  
Many of us have grown up with some narrative of who we are and what our ancestry is, and you get this report, and it could be like, where did that come from?

Marcel De Jonghe  25:30  
Yeah. So rang my mom up the next day. She was like, Yeah, that could be right. That could be right. Gee, the most I got from her about confirming my mother's Jewish heritage, wow.

Unknown Speaker  25:45  
So maybe they had never talked

Shawna  25:46  
about it, Yeah, isn't that like being left on red? But it comes to your

Marcel De Jonghe  25:55  
idea, yeah, it's like, wow. But like you said, it hasn't changed who I am. I have no faith, and, you know, I'm not I don't pretend to be Jewish. But still, I think mixed people are such an enigma sometimes to ourselves,

Speaker 2  26:12  
yeah, I mean, so many people are mixed and don't know it, and it might not be relevant to like, their lived experience, you know, but it's just, yeah, it's interesting. I think for me too, it was like I had lived my whole life on this, like, black, white binary, you know, and like, repelling whiteness, wanting to be black, but not feeling accepted by black people. And then I was like, Oh, I'm this whole third thing, you know, that's also like, Turkey is such, like a mixed, multicultural country too. So it's like, I don't know. Am I Asian? Am I European? Am I right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, in Europe and Asia are one continent, so there's, there's that too. Yeah. I you

Raina LaGrand  27:23  
so as you continued to discover who you were and go along your identity journey, how did that shape what you do today?

Speaker 2  27:31  
Yeah, I mean, as a helping professional, there's a part of me that, yeah, like I said, is a people pleaser, and I think caring for others felt naturally for me because of that. I mean, I think it's two sides of the same coin, you know, like there's a benefit and a drawback to how open and interested in connection

Marcel De Jonghe  27:50  
I am as someone who feels a lot right when you're reading a book or you're watching something and you like the character and you kind of resonate with them, but then they go and do something which is out of your character, like you wouldn't do it. Does that feel personal to you?

Raina LaGrand  28:10  
I can relate to that. And I just think, having been trained as, like a trauma therapist and understanding our like wild behaviors and like protective survival patterns so deeply. I like people's complexity and like that. Good people do bad things. You know that actually feels so relatable to me. It keeps us human, right? Yeah, I think it helps us forgive ourselves when we need a little grace too, because it's like good people can do bad things. You should almost expect that good people will do bad things just because that's part of being human. I appreciate you saying that. Yeah, do you ever think that essentialism gets in the way for us too, like sometimes when we connect, maybe connect isn't the right word, but we feel a connection to a person because of some shared identity or shared characteristic. We innately want them to be good, right? Nobody wants to be bad, and so it can be a disappointment if they let you down and do a thing that would be out of your character or is against your value set. It's like a very exaggerated stereotype based on a person's identity, where we think, if you have this identity, you are going to behave this way, and it's what I expect, right? I feel like we can also err on the side of maybe giving the benefit of the doubt more than we should, because we believe they should be good, because we have this shared trait with them, it could be like such a letdown. But then you have to realize, okay, what they did had nothing to do with the skin they were born

Raina LaGrand  29:43  
in the end, like we have to be careful that we don't just automatically put them up on pedestals or just assume that they're going to be great people just because of what they look like.

Marcel De Jonghe  29:53  
Yeah, very good point. Do you find that because of the way you are, what you do for a living, that there is. The less of a tolerance people have for you being human. And what I mean by that is making mistakes.

Speaker 2  30:07  
I should say I'm just thinking like I'm a people pleaser. In recovery, I used to appease a lot more, and then I actually went through a phase of, like, really rigid boundaries. And now I feel like I found some balance. But I do think I notice that people do often expect me to provide teaching for free, which I think is both because of like being, you know, seen as a healthcare worker, essentially, and also being a woman of color. People often expect me to work for free. I used to have a lot more anxiety about, oh, this doesn't feel right, but I'm scared if I say no or I need this, that they won't be able to meet that need. Or, you know, and I've definitely, I've definitely had people be surprised when I say, I actually am not coming to do this workshop for you. I think I experience it more, yeah, not in my intimate relationships, but in, like, more professional spaces.

Raina LaGrand  31:07  
Can you talk about how you support mixed race folks, challenges, transformations? What's that journey like?

Speaker 2  31:14  
Yeah. So in 2020 I was working at a group therapy practice, and like transitioning into my own private practice, and after the murders of ahmaud arbery and breonna Taylor and George Floyd, and things were really volatile in America and in the United States, I should say, to be more specific, everybody was going through a reckoning with that, and as a mixed race person, it brought up a lot for me about my anger as a person of color, but then also feeling like I wasn't entitled to that anger, or people didn't think it was as valid, right? And so I really went through, like, a big trauma response, and then like, came out on the other side of that, seeking resources. And it was so cool, if there were suddenly all these affinity spaces specifically talking about things from, like, a politicized lens, but like, nobody was doing that for mixed race people. There were resources out there for mixed race people. There always have been, but people weren't like, Let's get together and specifically talk about the political nature of like our identity, and what do we do as mixed race people? And so mixed race identity emerged from that as, like a key area I was interested in, and the belonging aspect of identity. And I just kept offering workshops and groups and things like that, and working one on one with mixed people. And I realized that that work, I was ready for it to take on a life of its own, which is how my mixed race belonging business was born. Like, I just think we're at this point where so many people are craving community healing and like, need that experience of connecting. And it's so magical when somebody in a group says, I experienced this. I was called an Oreo, and somebody's like me too, you know. But we are so wounded, we have what I call the mixed race belonging wound that shows up in how we relate to other people, whether we feel entitled to certain things take up space. You know, it really shapes everything we do. And so I see my work as like supporting people and really healing that wound or tending

Raina LaGrand  33:19  
to it. When I was doing my study, I had some folks respond on the survey with things like, I'm not a tragic mulatta. I don't feel all this, but I struggle. Because, on one hand, I don't want us to be walking around crying all the time about the wounds, but they're still there. That doesn't stop them from being there. I think once we can heal, and once we can embrace who we are, and then be like, Oh my God, because of who I am, look at this amazing stuff. I can help other people with. It doesn't change the fact that there are the wounds that you talk about. I always think about the people who say, I don't believe in the tragic mulatto trope. I mean, tropes are called tropes for a reason, but also there is a little bit of tragedy. So how do you reconcile that?

Speaker 2  34:10  
That's a great question. I think that when we think about this like tragic mulatto trope, I think why it's so problematic is because it casts this lighter impression that, like, we are so unique in our struggles, and nobody gets us. And I don't think that that's entirely true. Like, I actually think everybody has a belonging wound because of the legacy of colonialism and like, how disconnected so many of us are from land and culture and our bodies. So I think, like the belonging wound for me, is something that everyone in the United States shares, that a lot of people around the world impacted by like Empire share. And the mixed race part of it is unique, because as mixed race people, we reveal part of the issue. With, like, colonialism and racialization, right? And that makes people uncomfortable. I'm thinking of like, I think you moderated this session on mono racism and like, how mono racism, like, upholds white supremacy, one of the talks at CMRS that I really appreciated. So for me, it's not about that we are unique in our wounds, or that our wounds are all of who we are. Like you said, we both have a superpower, and there's a cost to that superpower. And the same thing is true for monoracial people. Black women are bad ass, and they don't get to be as like soft as they want to be in this world. And so I think the tragic mulatto feels like a very simple lens to like view our experience from or like how that experience shapes people.

Raina LaGrand  35:48  
Thank you for responding to that. It was something that was very interesting to me when I saw that come through in the data. Because I was like, Huh. I didn't even know that people were really still thinking much about that. I think about tragic mulatto, mulatto time being more like in the 50s, or going back to Amos and Andy and Sapphire and Imitation of Life, is a movie that stands out to me a lot, because I've watched a lot growing up. Do you know that movie, Marcel imitation

Marcel De Jonghe  36:16  
of it, but I haven't watched, I don't believe,

Raina LaGrand  36:19  
basically it's a light skinned girl who is the daughter of a brown skinned woman who's single mom, who meets another single mom on the beach, and the other single mom is white, and she's got a daughter that's white, and she asks the black woman to be her housekeeper, because of course she would in Hollywood then. And then these two girls grow up together with I feel like her name was Jane, the light skinned girl. It was basically like she wanted to be white, so she started passing which she could, yeah. But then the tragic part was that she had to choose her world, because then, you know, during segregated America, she basically had to leave her mom and not associate with her mom in order for her to pass so it's like this being torn between I want to be part of this world, but I am part of this world thing, and I don't think we're really there anymore in that sense. I think people recognize that there are definitely privileges associated with being I call not just white privilege, but light privilege. We can't deny that, but I don't know that there is necessarily that kind of trope. However, the belonging thing is real and not feeling like you belong. Hell, that's one of the taglines of the show, right? What do you do when you feel like you fit in everywhere, but belong nowhere, all at the same time? Right? Like, that's that chameleon thing, like, I can fit. That doesn't mean I feel like I belong. That's why I was curious.

Speaker 2  37:43  
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think just the other thing that's coming up for me, as you ask that question, is, like belonging. One to me doesn't have to be this, like, tragic, sad, shame, sometimes it's anger, like, Fuck, this shit. You know that we all are, like, forced to, to choose, and maybe not As explicitly anymore, but in like more subtle ways you

Marcel De Jonghe  38:28  
So you mentioned earlier, when we were speaking, you do yoga. Do you find as someone who is of a mixed identity that gives us a bit of a carte blanche to step into even worlds which aren't potentially part of our own identity.

Unknown Speaker  38:45  
That's such a good question.

Marcel De Jonghe  38:47  
I meditate a lot. I'm not of any faith. However, I like the ideas of Japanese culture. I love the way that the calmness even striking a match now I consciously strike it towards myself rather than away from myself. And that's all to do with if it was to fly off. You know, even Japanese culture, they sweep towards themselves rather than away, just in case, the thing in it flies off and causes damage. And I think that's the one thing we get, because without that comedian, we can go and taste other people's cultures, and we're invited in. I told you, I grew up very much in an Asian area, and I was called Asian. Don't have any Asian in me, but it's because I was accepted in with the Asian kids as well, to the point where I learned how to chat up Asian girls,

Shawna  39:40  
imagining young Marcel like

Marcel De Jonghe  39:46  
none. But do you find obviously that you'll probably be accepting more if you went to do yoga? But there's bit of a backlash right now, isn't there of a lot of white people doing yoga? And like,

Speaker 2  39:56  
yeah, I love this question. I think it's easier. For us to go into cultures that are so different than our own, because then, in a way, we're not worrying about, am I black or white enough for this space? But like, Oh, I'm just an outsider, and I know it, and I'm going in right? And I do think so many people are turning towards meditation, yoga, Reiki, like all sorts of things, white people in particular, because there is like this lack of like identity and culture with whiteness, right? But the issue is like whiteness has entered into those cultural spaces in a way that is appropriative and extractive, rather than really developing a relationship with the culture, or learning from elders, or just like revering that culture in different ways. So I think that, yeah, there's some ease we have in entering different cultures, and we still have a responsibility to be respectful like in right relationship with those practices. Yeah. I mean, that's something I'm always like exploring as a person who practices and teaches yoga, like, how do I do it in a way that recognizes, like, whatever power dynamics there are there

Marcel De Jonghe  41:09  
it's that appropriation, appreciation, balances.

Raina LaGrand  41:12  
Yeah. Marcel, you said, Does it give you carte blanche? I don't know that. It would be fair to say, because of my racial ambiguity, I just have carte blanche to do this, be there. But I will say, and this might be, maybe specifically a US thing, this whole everything is on the binary of black and white. So if it's in between that there feels like there could be more belonging, like even as an adult, I find myself in such mixed community, no pun intended, because I just can fit in those spaces. And oftentimes I feel more comfortable because I'm not any of that. Like you said, you're like, I just recognize that I'm not that. And so if I know I don't have to try to be more of this, or try to be more of that, even subconsciously, it's a little bit more freeing to be a little bit more authentic in those spaces. To be honest. Right now, when you're like, hey, other people in liminal spaces get it too. We're not the only ones. Like, that's something that comes to mind for me. Like, if you've ever worked in foreign service or been in these places where you've lived as an expat or something somewhere else, I think it's easier to understand, because you never quite belong there either, but you could still appreciate all of the complexity you

Raina LaGrand  42:45  
SG, one of my episodes that's listened to the most on this show is about racial trauma with Therese Kim. And, you know, I think it's something that people have truly been exploring a lot in the last maybe five years or five, six years or so, but understanding the difference between what we think of as trauma and what is complex trauma. Can you explain it a little bit?

Speaker 2  43:09  
Yeah. So, I mean, there's a lot of different words out there when it comes to different kinds of trauma, I think you can think of this. There's like an umbrella of two different kinds, one being more, what we call shock trauma, what is like, what we generally associate with trauma, like a violent experience, a car crash, you know, a one time thing,

Raina LaGrand  43:33  
like a traumatic thing

Speaker 2  43:34  
happened, yeah? And you're like, that's it. That's where my trauma comes from, right? And then there's complex trauma, which is actually the experience of having multiple experiences of trauma that are maybe even, like, sometimes not as explicit or like shocking as, like a shock trauma experience, but somewhere like 1000 paper cuts, right? So complex trauma can include, like developmental trauma, so growing up in an environment where you are chronically emotionally neglected over and over and over again, right? So maybe there's not even the violent like abuse that's happening that that is definitely multiple shock traumas that compound and an experience of complex trauma in the body, but yeah, it could be like, multiple experiences of like, emotional neglect that compound and like really affect our sense of self and our ability to relate to the world in a way where we feel like, safe and open to connection. I think of racialized trauma, and a lot of people agree with this, like, as a form of complex trauma, there's all these different experiences you have of being micro aggressed, being macro aggressed, somebody saying this, somebody doing that. And you know, for mixed people, like racialized traumas, like micro aggressions that are mono racist, and the not being able to, like, check. Off a box so like, all these little or big paper cuts that really disconnect you from your body and make you feel unsafe.

Raina LaGrand  45:09  
Yeah, thank you for breaking that down. I think it's important that people know that you can experience something that's complex, that it doesn't have to be a one time thing. So that's why I wanted you to sort of talk about that, because sometimes we're not even aware, like, oh shit, these things are happening in my life where I'm experiencing life a certain way, because this thing has happened long term, not just a short term, one thing. So I appreciate you sharing a little bit about that, because I think sometimes people are walking around they don't even realize that they might be in that other side of the umbrella.

Marcel De Jonghe  45:41  
Would you say? Understanding that you said short enough it doesn't have to be that you can put your finger on the one thing, but sometimes actually not being able to hold on to it can be really difficult to put your finger on it. Yeah, you just know it exists.

Speaker 2  45:56  
And I think why complex trauma has become so popular now is because people are starting to learn that there might not even be multiple things you can put your finger on, right, like, if you think of, yeah, that experience of I almost drown, versus I'm being abused. I was abused growing up, and I know all these instances in which I was abused, complex trauma can be often a form of trauma that we don't actually have any conscious connection to because maybe I wasn't abused, but there were all these times when my needs weren't met. And that doesn't even have to be because my parents were bad. It might be because mom was working three jobs, Dad was taking care of grandma, and like, I think we we live in a society that is actually has a lot of complex trauma because our emotional needs have not been met. And you know, I mean, this happened the other day where I started to ask about somebody's childhood, and they said, Well, I don't want to complain. My childhood wasn't that bad. But if you struggle with your emotions, if you struggle with relationships, complex trauma might be a piece of the puzzle. It could be other things too, like neuro divergence, and, you know, whatever. But I think so many of us are also actively experiencing trauma, right? It's not always that. It's in the past, wow.

Raina LaGrand  47:17  
So I'm reaching into the archive Raina. It's in my little box here. These are quotes that are either from previous guests on the show or folks who participated in my study, other voices of people who have experienced the complexity of identity. I just picked one. I'll read it to you, and then I'd love to hear what comes up for you. It doesn't have to be something that you relate to personally and then save for you. Marcel, so here's what it says,

Raina LaGrand  47:47  
it's exhausting constantly talking about my racial background.

Speaker 2  47:51  
I think it can be really exciting to talk about my racial background, you know, and fulfilling, but I think the having to explain myself or educate others, or prove like who I am. That's the exhausting part for me, and like having to talk about our identities existing within such systems of like privilege and power and oppression like That's exhausting to me. I want to be able to have an identity that is complex and layered without it having to exist in like, the structure of like, racism and sexism.

Raina LaGrand  48:29  
I like how you said it's exciting to talk about identity too. I think it sounds like to me when I hear you say that like what you just explained, it sounds like the difference between freely sharing because you want to and then it being labor

Marcel De Jonghe  48:42  
for me, it's it's definitely about why that conversation is being broached. Is it because you genuinely want to know about me and you know, or is it because you're trying to work out my position in society? Being mixed is uncomfortable for some people because they don't know what privilege or power, which we shouldn't have, by the way, but you know, we know the way of the world. You know, how much power do you have? How white are you? How proud are you? Tell me more about you so I can put you in a league chart. And if it's that, then, yeah, it's exhausting, because it doesn't matter the

Shawna  49:21  
racking and SG of it all.

Raina LaGrand  49:38  
Raina, wow. What a good conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Marcel, always you have like, such great questions, and you contribute so well, too. I really appreciate it. Where can folks find you and want to learn more about what you do and who you are?

Speaker 2  49:53  
Yeah, so I'm mixed race belonging on Instagram, and I run what's. It's called the mixed race belonging podcast, and it's mixed race belonging.com. So mixed race belonging everywhere, for all mixed race belonging things. And if anybody's potentially interested in one on one therapy, that's Root to rise somatics.com.

Raina LaGrand  50:14  
Excellent. I will link all the things in the show notes. Appreciate you so much. Thank you.

Speaker 2  50:21  
Thanks for having me. It's great to talk with you all absolutely bye. Y'all.

Shawna  50:31  
Wow, what a conversation. There were so many powerful moments in this episode. But what really stands out is this idea that belonging isn't just about where you fit, it's about how safe you feel being fully yourself. And for so many people, especially those navigating mixed identities, that journey can be layered. It can be complex, and it's sometimes exhausting. It's not just a mixed race experience. Some of you have been following me, you know I'm writing mixed signals, and I talk about that, right? This idea that there are others who have complex identities and experience these liminal spaces. It's something that many of us carry in different ways, and yet there's also this incredible capacity for empathy and adaptability and connection, that duality, that superpower and the cost that comes with it. It was such an important takeaway. If this conversation resonated with you. I encourage you to check out the show notes where you can find Raina and learn more about her work. And as always, I'd love to hear from you too. You can also head over to true culture consulting.com to learn more about the work that I'm doing and sign up for updates on upcoming book. Mixed signals

Shawna  51:40  
until next time. Stay curious, stay connected and keep embracing your true colors. Spread the Love y'all. I'll talk to you soon.

Intro  51:52  
You've been listening to our true colors.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai