Carry On Friends: The Caribbean American Experience
Carry On Friends has an unmistakable Caribbean-American essence. Hosted by the dynamic and engaging Kerry-Ann Reid-Brown, the podcast takes listeners on a global journey, deeply rooted in Caribbean culture. It serves as a melting pot of inspiring stories, light-hearted anecdotes, and stimulating perspectives that provoke thought and initiate conversations.
The podcast invites guests who enrich the narrative with their unique experiences and insights into Caribbean culture and identity. With an array of topics covered - from lifestyle and wellness to travel, entertainment, career, and entrepreneurship - it encapsulates the diverse facets of the Caribbean American experience. Catering to an international audience, Carry On Friends effectively bridges cultural gaps, uniting listeners under a shared love and appreciation for Caribbean culture.
Carry On Friends: The Caribbean American Experience
Third Culture Experience: Navigating Identity, Belonging & Boundaries as Caribbean Immigrants
Simone W. Johnson Smith is the author of Decoding America: The Immigrant Experience and host of The Immigrant Experience in America podcast. A Jamaican-born public servant and cultural coach, Simone supports immigrant professionals through the emotional and cultural transitions of life in a new country.
Caribbean immigrants create something new and powerful when they leave their birth countries—a hybrid identity that's neither fully their native culture nor completely American, but according to Simone, a third culture person with unique strengths and perspectives.
Key Takeaways:
- Third culture persons develop a hybrid identity that becomes their superpower.
- Code switching is a natural adaptation strategy that all humans use in different contexts.
- Culture shock symptoms range from mild depression to fatal self-harm and should be taken seriously.
- Coming home to yourself means integrating valuable parts of both cultures deliberately.
- Healthy boundaries with family back home are essential for immigrants' well-being.
- The immigrant experience involves balancing communal values from home with American individualism.
- Work environments often present the greatest challenges for Caribbean immigrants.
This conversation complements the Caribbean Diaspora Experience Model (CDEM), developed by Carry On Friends to help Caribbeans better understand their evolving identity across time, place, and life stages.
Connect with Simone - thebridgeconcepts.org
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A Breadfruit Media Production
Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Carry On Friends the Caribbean American experience. And I'm excited, always excited, to have my next guest on the podcast, simone, welcome to Carry On Friends, how are you?
Speaker 2:I am well. It's such a pleasure to join you, carrie-anne, on the show. I've been watching you on the sidelines and hearing great things about you, so I'm so glad that we finally are connecting. So thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:I am excited that we're connecting because you cover something that aligns with the show. I just talked about my Caribbean Diaspora Experience model and I really would love for the audience to just get into this conversation as we dive deeper into what you call third person or third culture, people or persons, and we're going to get all into that. But before we do that see, I'm so excited I'm getting ahead of myself in the conversation why don't you tell the community of friends a little bit about who you are, Caribbean country you represent and the work that you do?
Speaker 2:Sure happy to share. So I am originally from Jamaica. Right Yadi Yadi 100%.
Speaker 1:And we would say boop, boop.
Speaker 2:Yes, 100%, yadi. But I've been here now for over two decades, and now longer than I was in Jamaica, the land of my birth, right. And so, boy, it has been a journey and I had to start the podcast and everything I've done since. But currently I do so many things Right, so I have a full time job in the public service. I do so many things right, so I have a full-time job in the public service, right, so I do my full-time job.
Speaker 2:I went to work at Rose at 5 am this morning, went to work, got there at six o'clock, left at 2.30, picked up the daughter from summer camp, we went to get our smoothies from Smoothie King. I got home, she's in the room watching her little monster dance show and I'm here on a podcast at six o'clock. So I'm a busy woman, a busy working mother, but on the side, outside of my full-time job, my own life experience has pulled me into this world of what happened to me after I left my birth country. Oh my gosh, I have changed in so many ways and so much richer. Life is so much richer, right, I had no idea what the experience I was about to go on, but these days I go by author.
Speaker 2:Author of the book Decoding America the immigrant experience, where I talk about you know what is this new place I'm living in and how do you understand these people? Why do they behave this way? They don't sound like me, I can't fit in with them a lot of times and it's nerve wracking trying to figure out this place. Right, what is American? So I talk about all that in my book and then I am a podcaster right of the podcast called the Immigrant Experience in America, where we amplify and humanize the experiences of immigrants living around the world. Right, we now have over 180 episodes. We've interviewed people from around the world talking about you know why did they leave their countries? What were the challenges and successes over the years? Leave their countries, what were the challenges and successes over the years? And all of the things that goes along with adjustment, challenges that comes when you leave your birth country. And I also.
Speaker 2:I have a course and offer coaching to people who are going through the thick of culture shock, loss of cultural self. You don't feel like yourself, no more. You can't really put your finger on it. In fact, you don't even have the words to explain. What am I going through? Why do I? I don't like. I don't feel like myself anymore. In fact, the research says that culture shock. The symptoms range from mild depression to fatal self-harm. It's that serious and I have personally heard of stories of people who have fatally harmed themselves. So take it seriously, folks. This is why I have put so much of my personal time in really finding the research.
Speaker 2:I talk about it in my book. We know the challenges are real. The research I talk about it in my book. We know the challenges are real and sometimes you might think that, okay, I'm living in a new place, I'm trying to assimilate and it's not working. But oftentimes it's deeper than that and it's important. My message is it's important for you to come home to yourself. A lot of people, when they move abroad, they feel like they have to give up everything and every part of who they were, and you can't. How do you throw out 10, 15, 20 plus years of your life and just start anew? You just simply can't. It's very. And come home to who you are and you then are able to create something amazing, which I call your superpower. Right, it is a superpower to be a third culture person, to be a hybrid of your old country and the new country and there's so much power within that space and I'm really encouraging people to embrace it and uh and see what it does for you in your life.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. So, um, are you focused mostly on adults, people who migrated in their adult age, because there's a difference migrating as a child, which is, you know, I, 17 and under, um, versus 18 and 18 and over. Is that where you mostly focus on in the work that you do?
Speaker 2:Not necessarily I'm starting there, right, because that's been, that's. I'm an adult, an older adult, right. But I do know for third culture, kids. It's a whole other experience, right? Some people come when they're five or they're eight or even younger, and or even they might be born in the US or any other Western country, such as my daughter, and at home there's a completely different world, a completely different culture. But when they go to school and with their friends, they're in the local culture wherever they're born, whether it's Germany, the US, uk, canada, and so oftentimes there's a lot of clashes that comes in with as they get older.
Speaker 2:What culture am I? You know, who am I going to be? Am I going to be American? Am I going to be Canadian? Am I Jamaican? Am I a blend of my daughter's six? And she's already having those conversations with me. So I find that I can support both.
Speaker 2:But I, you know, I've niched down to really zone in on the pain points of working professional parents, because it's real, the struggle is real Raising children in a culture that is so different from the one that you were born and raised in. You're now working with so much less support than you had back in your home country and plus the clashes that comes with the pressure to support your community and your family of origin, plus balance your personal life while you're a working professional, raising children in a new country, you're a spouse, managing work, challenges and pressures and self-care and your own personal aspirations and figuring it all out. It's very complex and so I start there. But I understand that in the middle of that I can also support first-generation Americans or first-generation third-culture children who are children of immigrants and are in the thick of trying to make sense of who am I?
Speaker 2:Who will I become? Will my parents feel disappointed if I choose to be totally American and totally assimilate into this culture? I just want to fit in. I don't want to straddle the fence, I just want to be a kid and I get that. So you know I'm here for the gamut of people, but I'm just starting with the adults because, hey, I can relate to them easier, easily, more easily.
Speaker 1:That makes so sense. So, audience, this is why Simone is on, because the work she's doing has so much synergy with CDEM, the Caribbean Diaspora Experience Model, because I've come through most of the model, or my brother and I. So you have adults, you have those who are like late teenagers, then you have the younger ones, you have those who are born in the diaspora and connected to culture and those who aren't connected to culture, because I've seen how that works and you are right, you know everyone, particularly the kids that were born in the diaspora. They go through this feeling of am I, am I not? Which one do I consider? And you and I, obviously we are like you have a right to choose. Obviously we are like you have a right to choose, but you're not either, or you are both. You are this and this and this, if you choose to want to embrace that.
Speaker 1:Now let's go back to you. You started the podcast. You've been here 22 decades, right, I have three decades here, and so at what point did you say, aha, I should start this podcast to have this conversation. Why did you call it? Third Culture Persons?
Speaker 2:Well, you know what it was. In the middle of COVID I had been going through years of just disorientation, just not feeling like myself, not as confident. I remember when I first arrived I was this bright eyed, energetic, I was ready to take on the world. And you know, when I came up against the discrimination and the racism and all that, I didn't even have the words because this is not stuff we talk about in Jamaica, right? So it was a learning curve for me and for years I would just brush it off and just say, oh, that's just a nasty person, and just go on my way. And in fact some of my friends say that, oh, we're just so amazed how far you've gone or how much you've accomplished since you've been here.
Speaker 2:And I think it's because partly I didn't carry that weight of people didn't like me because of my skin color, because I just didn't understand I didn't have that complex right, it wasn't inside of me. I was just oblivious, naive, very naive, to some of the environments and people that I were among and didn't realize what I was dealing with. And so the microaggressions in the environments and people that I were among and didn't realize what I was dealing with. And so the microaggressions in the office and not understanding why you just you feel microaggressions before you can actually decode it. You just know something does not feel right in your body and I was having all of these experiences and over time it just kept eroding, slowly, eroding who I was, eroding my confidence, eroding just who I was, my identity. I wasn't quite fitting in with the. I don't really like to identify by my skin color and people might find it weird. I prefer to say I'm Afro-Caribbean, I'm Jamaican-American, because I feel like when you use nationality it says more about who you are, how I was raised, how I eat. It tells someone so much more definitively about how to relate to me If you just say I'm a Black person, but what does that mean? If you say you're white, it doesn't really mean much. It's a social construct.
Speaker 2:So for me, I was going through this internal turmoil of who am I now, what's my identity, who's my group and, frankly, was very disheartened that people who looked like me at work just didn't pull me in, they didn't clue me into the cultural dynamics in the office, the politicals, which I was on my own for so long, and it was so painful. It was so painful and you know, in the middle of COVID, I was going through another work situation and just trying to like, not understanding, like why am I not clicking? I'm just being myself and being told that I'm acting white, being told that I'm not Black enough, being told or being treated like I'm a threat to everybody's job because of my resume. I worked hard, I did the work and everybody sees me as a threat. I'm here as an immigrant, hyphenated American, to take their jobs or they feel like I'm going to have a foot in the door over them, and so people were just hostile towards me, just nasty, and I actually have expressed to one of these persons that I am traumatized and I'm trying to work through the trauma of looking at people who look like me and not being accepted just because I have a different accent in the way I express differently, I show up differently, I have different credentials, I'm from another place and I've traveled around the world several different countries. I never really experienced that until here in the US, right, so it was so confusing for me, it was such a disorientation and it took my mom passing January 1, 2021, that just pushed me out because I wanted to do it in 2015. And I was so scared. I was like man, I can't put my face, my personal story, because as people from collectivist cultures, we're very private. We don't put our business out there, we don't put our dirty laundry. It was a huge thing for me to put my voice, my story. In fact, when I did my first few interviews, I literally was shaking, shaking in my body like it was just reverberating.
Speaker 2:It took me many episodes before I got used to hearing myself and I just wanted to talk to other people. I was like, and it was in the middle of the turmoil of one administration I can't, I don't remember the exact number and I kept saying who are they talking about? I'm not one of these immigrants who are coming. Who is this or that? All these labels and it was the palpable negative sentiments in the media, in the air was so strong that I was like I don't know anybody. All the people in my family are hardworking people who are here to contribute and, in fact, are contributing, and I just felt like I needed to be that space. I needed to step out. I needed to talk to other people to figure out like what am I going through? What all this negative narrative and in fact, would I have come if I were older and knew all of this? Today? I don't know. I was going through a very personal experience of trying to figure myself out, and I just started talking. And here we are, three years later. I've learned so much.
Speaker 2:This whole idea of the third culture person. I came across it through my research, from my book, listening to another podcast and doing some reading on my own, and all I knew at the time was like you know what? Well, when I go back home to Jamaica, people say you don't sound the same anymore, and the moment I open my mouth, they know that I have not been on the island for a while and the price goes up. How many times? Right, I come here and I don't quite fit in either.
Speaker 2:And so I felt like I was in this in-between, and so the only thoughts I had were well, I know, I'm a hybrid. That's the only way I could explain it. I'm a bit of the old, I'm a bit of the new and I'm in the in-between. And it was through the research that I came across the whole concept of third culture person, third culture kids. And then, all of a sudden, it started making sense the research on culture shock and what I was going through. It's pretty serious people, but a lot of times people don't have the words to even start talking about what they're feeling or experiencing.
Speaker 1:So this is my life's work. I really do feel that way when they come to America, because when you're in the Caribbean you know you're just living right, and it's not until you come here that you are aware that, oh, it's not that you didn't know you were Black, but it's not a thing, it's not made an issue. Until you come here you realize, and to your point, it's mostly the adults I mean the kids experience it in a different way, but the adjustment is harder for adults because they've spent so much of their lives. You spend so much of your life just living in your body and you, being black wasn't a thing, right? And now you now have to wrestle with these things that now you can't even find the words for Like, why are they so nasty to me? I said good morning. Why did nobody answer me? You know, like, wait, didn't? I just say good morning. And you want to do the Jamaican thing and say I said good morning.
Speaker 1:So these adjustments, and you talked about the slow erosion, right, because you're still not fully reconciling that, right, because you're still on, you're still not fully reconciling that. And I think even with both our respective life's work, what we've recognized is that we've been experiencing things and the people before us have been experiencing the same things, but didn't have. This is what's happening and that's important, because the slow erosion of self and you talked about something that pushed me to start the podcast which is work you know, the work environment is rough, you know, on so many levels right, and it forces you to make a choice, right. That's why some in addition to why many black women start businesses, for us, as Afro-Caribbean women, it's even that more where we're like.
Speaker 1:You know, I need to do this because I it's said the slow erosion, that sense of not belonging, what do you feel typically is the first thing that people need to pay attention in their bodies, because you've said it at least multiple times in the 15 minutes we're talking it presents initially intellectually, like, oh, this person is mean or disrespectful. But if you started feeling in yourself and your body that, oh, something is not right here and you couldn't identify, could you talk to me a little bit more of? You know sometimes, the physical symptoms you, you know people might feel and dismiss it like, oh me sick, me need to drink some tea, I need to get more sleep that people should be paying attention to when it comes to the adjustment, especially for adults into you know, this new life in America and adjusting to all these different things that they're not used to.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah. So I think, looking back, I feel like I was going through depression, the anxiety I had a lot of anxiety Sunday night the thought of getting up and showing up to work the next day and the fear that would just run through your veins. You can't sleep, fear that would just run through your veins. You can't sleep. You know, having to show up to work and deal with the toxic people around you who are just mean and rude for just no reason because you and them didn't have any fist fight, right? They just don't like you because it's just how you phenotypically look or show up at work, or they feel like maybe you have a position that should have been theirs or whatever. It's a complex issue, right. The shrinking wanting to ask a question when you're in a meeting and you have this amazing thought or amazing addition to the meeting, but being afraid of speaking up because you feel like somebody in the room. Afraid of speaking up because you feel like somebody in the room. They may either steal your idea, they may downplay it and then use it for themselves later and you might not get credit for it, or you just feel like you don't look like one of the people who should be winning, and so it's like a place that you need to kind of fall back in in the office Like you can't shine.
Speaker 2:I was used to doing well in school and so I don't even know how not to shine. I was just a kid. That's the environment that we have in Jamaica Everybody do well and we all compete and you say kudos to the guy who make it to be the head boy and the girl who make it to be the head girl, but we just it's healthy competition and but you know, finding that you're afraid now to speak up and share and then you find yourself just shrinking, staying in the shadow, not wanting to go out to the happy hours. And that was one big thing too, because it was so awkward for me, because I didn't grow up going to happy hours.
Speaker 2:Like what in the world is this whole idea of just going out for a few hours and just getting wasted on liquor? I mean, we grew up having dragon or rum or whatever, a little bit in the carrot juice or sorrel or whatever. It's a regular thing for us growing up. So when you get to 18 it was no big deal. But for here, I mean, I was a resident assistant at my undergrad and to see the freshmen on the freshman dorm come in and as soon as their parents leave, the front of the business building is lined up with people smoking, drinking, wasted, wasted, not showing up to class. I'm like this is not. I don't know what this is. Okay, simone.
Speaker 1:I don't mean to cut you off, but I had another person so I went on another podcast talked about this. The host connected me with this other person who said the same thing. I went to college and they have empty beer buckle and liquor buckle line up on the windowsill and I'm like what is this? Every Thursday night, everybody get wasted. I'm like I don't understand why, everybody frightened. So it's that culture shock for us because we're like for liquor, Really Like what is this Right?
Speaker 1:Even the college experience, this whole thing. Are we in pajamas to class? We're like, oh my gosh, what kind of shame and embarrassment this would be coming on us. But again, it's that culture adjustment. And you know, at the time my mother, my mother, didn't go to college here, so she couldn't have prepared me, you know, for for what I was going to see when I walked into college, you know. And so all of those adjustments, they let you stand out, right, and you said something a collectivist culture. You know, we compete and it's interesting how we compete in class, everything you said, but no one really stands out, the way that you know what happens when we stand out, and because we feel like we stick out like a sore thumb, we shrink back, cause I remember doing that.
Speaker 1:I did not want to feel like I was outshining people and I remembered the feelings I got when people felt like I was outshining them. But I'm like, I'm just being regular, I'm not even really trying here, I'm just doing what I know I'm supposed to do. So, like I, everything that you're saying is really resonating with me, you know of. You know, and sometimes some of that residual probably still happens where I'm just like you may not catch me on social media a lot, because I'm just like, yeah, you know those wounds, they leave deep scars, you know of. Like, you look down and you're like, yeah, this is what happened when I did something and someone thought I was trying to upstage them and I was just doing a regular, I'm not.
Speaker 2:I didn't even prepare like you're threatened and I didn't even prepare Like Seriously, what if I put some work into this? But the thing about it is at least two people who've told me multiple times there's 48 laws of power about not outshining the master. The master. That was not in my consciousness Right and I still feel like I struggle with it because I show up and I just I'd look to my two cents and all of a sudden everybody thinks, say you know, I'm coming for them. That was like the last thing on my mind.
Speaker 2:But you know when, when you, I mean that's a mediocrity. You know people who kind of dwell in mediocrity, and if you have somebody who just comes in the room and they're used to healthy competition and just shining and doing you know just your regular best, then all of a sudden everybody um feel threatened. I don't know Is it the crab in the barrel or some. There's this thing called the tall poppy syndrome in the research that you know, in collectivist cultures they don't like when people are too showy and they call it boastful or if you're trying to outshine everybody and so they tend to tear down that one person.
Speaker 2:But it's here a lot too in the US, interestingly and you'll find people who will literally hide their talent or behave a certain way just to be part of that in-group. And it's pretty sad. Yeah Right, it's pretty sad. I've observed it at work and in other people, but I honestly I've struggled with just staying quiet, not saying too much, because you know I'm excited to just contribute and put my energy into things and it's so you're being taught that you know you're only to contribute to this much to keep don't rock the boat you know you can't help it.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I do a good job, just shut my mouth, as me, say, but there are moments where I'm just like me, can't shut up, like you know something, like it's like you see it, like it's me alone seeing this. You kind of have to say something and it's just like sometimes you just you know it's it. I still struggle with that. You know how much I want to to to shine and you know and I put shine in quotations is how much I want to just be free in my expression and my thoughts and my intellect and how much?
Speaker 1:and and and when I just want to, to just go in a cage and sit down, like a lioness goes into the cage and sit down and watch everything. Or do I want to come out and, you know, prowl and watch the pride, and I do. I find myself still doing that because I'm very conscious, you know, in, and sometimes people don't realize in what they do or how much they do. They to to, to put you, not you, simone, but it's the little things, because we pick up on those things. Right, to them it's nothing.
Speaker 1:But because we are the outsider, we are sensitive to the little things that they do to make us know that I just did something that you did not like, and now I'm more aware of that, and so now you're kind of navigating spaces. So I just love that you're having this conversation, especially for adults, right, because there are many resources that you can potentially have for children. Right, but dealing with adults and this adjustment, there's not enough resources and also adults may not even want to admit that this is an issue for them. Right, because guess what Generations before was dealing with it and they were fine. So you don't want again, you don't want to be the tall puppy standing out and say, oh, I have a problem cycling into America when all these other people came before me auntie, so-and-so, uncle, this had no problem.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about belonging, right, because it's a term that people use, you know around, like what does that look like for immigrants? Is there such a thing before we had assimilation? Are we still assimilating? I don't know if assimilation is the thing that we're doing now and belonging, like. How are those two words make sense in today's world?
Speaker 2:Right, right. So when I first got here, I would hear accommodation and assimilation and for the longest time I kept saying I'm accommodating because I'm not giving up who I am. I mean, how do you expect me to come to the table and erase my entire life, Exactly? I mean, how do you?
Speaker 1:even begin to do that. I don't know how some people do it. As long as me born in Jamaica, there's no way you're going to erase anything Jamaican out of my DNA, my words, my body.
Speaker 2:But how do you even do that? It's impossible. Even people who quote unquote are fully assimilated and you can't even tell where they're from or how they sound. That culture is still under there, the roots and the influence from birth, I mean, because that's what you pick up when you're a baby. How do you get rid of that? You don't erase it.
Speaker 2:So I always have used the word accommodation. Assimilation to me is when you fully, like, you take on the local lingo, the sounds, you just completely kind of give up who you are before and you don't really. You keep that to a minimum, right, and you just kind of do whatever you need to do to fit in with whatever group you feel like you need to be fitting into. That was never me. I just I just I didn't even know how to do it. In fact it's years down the road that I started even becoming more aware and learning, having the language to have these conversations. So I didn't even know how and a lot of people don't. They just know how to be themselves. So for me I like to use the word integration, right, because it really goes along with becoming a hybrid. It's impossible to live five, 10, 15, 20 years in a country and don't change Right, eventually parts of who you were from your birth country are going to start fading.
Speaker 2:Who you were from your birth country are going to start fading, you know. And then when you go back home you don't quite fit in anymore. The subtleties, the nuances, the sort of nonverbal communication that kind of happens in communal cultures, like in some cultures. They make sounds and people are able to pick up communication low versus high context levels of communication, and so once you've been out of that for a decade or more, sometimes you lose that.
Speaker 2:And I, you know there's some people I go back and people will just say things and they just get it. And for me it will take me a while to kind of decode what's going on. And so you're always going to be a hybrid or integration of this, and so some people might try to fully assimilate when they go outside of their home, whether it's at work, socially, but people use the term code switching. People use the term code switching I talked about in my book, contextual code switching, because I find that there's no way really that you're going to just be consistently this one person in every environment, because you have to kind of adapt yourself. You're not going to walk into a room with a group of quote unquote white males or Indian males or black males and use the same type of communication. You really have to tailor that to your audience, right.
Speaker 1:Simone, when I first heard that it was wrong to code switch, I struggled with that because I disagree. We code switch every day. The way I address my brothers, I would never address my mother the same way.
Speaker 1:That is a form of code switching because it's based on the audience, the way that I even even the way that I address my grandmother wouldn't be the same way I address my mother, the same way. You know, so it is. You know so it is, you know I. I mean it's unfortunate. We have to put the context before it, because you, you code switch based on the context. Also for me, me going between the patois and the speaky-spooky is a superpower, but also it's relationship right. Me can't talk to you this way, simone, because by culture we have a sort of relationship right, it's a level of cultural intimacy.
Speaker 1:Right, I'm not going to talk like this to certain people at work because one they don't get it. But we are not that culturally connected for me to speak to you this way, and so you know it's the. It's, the superpower in having this culture is the superpower that I'm bilingual. You may not recognize my Jamaican language officially as a separate language, but my bilingual. Try talking. You can't. So that makes it a language for me, right?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:I love that you're talking about this contextual code switching, which is what code switching is anyway is necessary for survival, right, it is just how we go about. You know I won't. I mean every day you're not going outside to talk to this. You know you're in school. Would you talk to the principal or the teacher the same way? You can't do that and we learned that it's like like me, sound like we went to high school in Jamaica. You must be mad. I talked to the teacher a certain way. You listen.
Speaker 2:Yes, miss, good morning miss.
Speaker 1:First of all, the minute them touch the edge of the classroom, you stand up. Good morning, good, yes, when they leave class same thing'll get up and address them. I mean, when your classmate comes to the class you're not standing up and addressing them. So this idea of painting code switching as a bad thing, I don't think it is. It is. It's oftentimes necessary, based on the audience for survival, and it just makes sense. We do this all the time. I don't address, you know it's just, it just, yeah.
Speaker 2:So yes, we're on the same page.
Speaker 1:We're on the same page, it just riled me up every time we hear it, because I'm just like this don't make no sense yes, it's true actually as I was reading.
Speaker 2:but you know I kind of understand why some people might feel a way about it. Because certain groups have been so silenced, right and in the workplace and socially in other spaces, them feel, say them constantly have to change themselves to whatever dominant culture it is, whatever space you're in them always feel, say them just never can show up and just be who they are. So them feel, say, boy, I'm tired of your change, go to college and teach me some alpha behavior this way. When is, culturally, who I am going to be accepted? So I get that conversation and for those people I have empathy and I get that.
Speaker 2:But on a larger scale, for me that just didn't make sense. Because, may I say, if I go to work and speak like this and use certain terms and vibe a certain way, when you go giving a presentation in a meeting, people just won't get it. So you really have to tailor yourself and how you communicate audience right and adapting yourself to your audience. So what we can't understand. The other side of the conversation too, with the people, them who feel like from birth they've lived in such an environment where they're constantly having to just silence and be in the shadows and can't be themselves, and so they're tired of it. So me get it. I get that part of the conversation and I can empathize, so yeah.
Speaker 1:How do you guide your clients to navigating this multiple world that they're now living in?
Speaker 2:You know, easy Mental health wise, that's a big thing I'm interested in right. For a long time I, you know, I did Spanish and international affairs in undergrad and I did international relations in my master's program and I've kind of always felt like I had a calling to go into either psychology, psychiatry, maybe neuroscience, neuropsych or clinical psych or something. But because I've always kind of had an eye for the psychology of things and you know, and now I'm into this whole idea of positive psychology, because I really do think that on a very deep level we're experiencing so much and not really even know how to manage it and how it's affecting us first internally, and how then do you make sense of you know, your own personal experience, find that peace and then to be able to show up healthily and relate to another person, right. So for me in my book I talk about coming home to yourself and for me that means, you know I say world peace begins inside of you. We've become so externally driven right, not necessarily becoming because, when you really think about it, in collectivist cultures and I do still consider Jamaica more collectivist compared to the US and like other Western cultures I interviewed somebody recently, jamaican who studied in Korea and she said, compared to South Korea and Jamaica, she thinks Jamaica is more individualistic and I can see that it's probably influenced by the US.
Speaker 2:But I grew up in a large family. My dad is one of 11. Mom is one of 12. So tons of cousins and community and people everywhere. So you know you are always raised to look out for everybody else, your community. There's really no strong sense of self. You're going to school, you're studying and people know you as Simone, but there's just that sort of an innateness about just looking out for everybody else. And I remember about just looking out for everybody else and I remember, you know, even after moving here, just I was so concerned about cousins and friends and everybody and I had to learn this whole thing called boundary. That was a new thing for me back in like 2013. I was continuing behaving as if I were living in a communal setting where everybody is looking out for everybody. But when you're living in an individualistic culture, it's the what's in it for me Everybody just come and them take, and them take, and them take. And if you don't really make sure that you are fill up your tank, guess what You're well. Agarone, drying up up your tank. Guess what? You're well, agarone, drying up and so the type of personalities that exist in this culture. If you don't make sure that you are responsible for self-care and filling up your own tank, you better know. So you're going to get to burnout Every minute. You're in a burnout because you're constantly just putting out, putting out, putting out, because that's who you are, you're just. It's about community, we're big about community. So I had to learn to balance that Right.
Speaker 2:And so a lot of times, a lot about the mental health and the effects that are going through. You're not even having the language, but you need to come home and you know you have to find that peace within you first. First, the world peace really does start within you. You cannot give what you don't have and the turmoil of disorientation and culture shock and everything else. You just don't feel like yourself, no more. You have to really get a hold of what's going on inside of you first, set healthy boundaries because no, listen, you're living in a context where you might be married, you're working professional, you're raising children. There's so much that's in that You're no longer living in the midst of a community where you have mom and dad next door, uncle down the road some cousins who can babysit your, your chef, your chauffeur, you are financier, you're doing, you do everything, and so you have to have some healthy boundaries. Um, I think I actually lost track of the question, to be honest no money you're going good during it.
Speaker 2:No money you're going good, you're going um, but. But the mental health piece of it is really big, because I think a lot of people come in the US and they want to drive the Mercedes Benz or the Tesla or the Alfa Romeo. They want to have the big horse in a year or five years and it takes time. You have to know that these things take time to work at it and a lot of the skills that you bring from your former culture will help you survive here. Such as you know, in Jamaica we have the whole partner thing, where everybody pool their money together and everybody I mean those skills and those types of operating very vital in this culture, because you come and you get so strapped into the credit and you're spending outside of your means, over your budget and, before you know it, everybody have plans for your money and you don't have no plans for your money, you know, and all you want to do is rent a car and put that picture on Facebook and everybody thinks that you live big and broad, but the reality is that you're broke.
Speaker 2:So you know, I am really big on coming home to you, finding that internal peace and balance, healthy boundaries and recognizing what's going on at home first right, and then we can start influencing, balancing your personal aspirations of whatever you feel like you want to achieve being in this land of milk and honey, and then you can have social impact right, and at some times you know, I say, while you're climbing you have to be pulling. At the same time we get that, but we have to find some balance and boundaries in there because, believe me, it can be overwhelming. And I've heard too many stories of people who come here, them work two, three, four jobs and then send everything home and sometimes literally them get sick and then just go home and then not even have help to enjoy all that them work for right Because of this big, grandiose expectation from the community and everybody else. You know you live a foreign. Where are you complaining about? What kind of burnout are you talking about?
Speaker 1:That's kind of why I wanted to ask. You said come home to yourself. I don't know. Could people know what that means? I mean, do you even know yourself? Because social media is now dictating what success looks like and, like you say, all of the fancy brand name where you just call are this that's, that's what it's saying is success or is attainable? So sometimes people can't even really tell really what coming home to self is, because you know there's so many things externally influencing what people think they want. And so do we really even know? Even me, you know, I think I want a podcast. You know I have a podcast. You understand. Did I really want to start this, you understand? So it's like this idea of coming home to self, I like it.
Speaker 1:But that's where the work is, because you have to really start to break down. What is it, do I really want? And sometimes it's okay to say I don't know. You know, because for such a long time you're going on this, this auto script that's been given to you, you know, hand it down and you just feel like, and then you know all these other things. So, long story short, I think that makes sense, right, working Cause. My question was how do you work with clients? And that's based on the client, because a lot of this is social, social, socio-emotional, psychological, because, depending on where they're coming from, coming here will impact them differently.
Speaker 2:Yes, and there's different dynamics in each family structure. Oh, my goodness, I, I, I'm telling you as I have started to go through my own digging deeper in myself. I tell her there are books, so many books. I can't stop writing. When you think about the positive and healthy sense of what exists in communal communities, but on the outside of that, the trauma and the dysfunctions and all of the bad stuff that happens in the silence that exists in some of these communities where things happen and people are not given the space to speak up because the magoshim is a person here, and all of the reasons why people are told not to speak up, because the Mago Shem there's a person here, and all of the reasons why people are told not to speak up.
Speaker 2:I think America is the place where people come. You lose yourself to find yourself. That has been my journey losing myself and then coming home and finally deciding look here now. This is a part of the Jamaican culture. I don't like it, I'm going to leave this behind and I'm going to get the choice to do that. I mean, look here now. Whether it's the family dynamic, the community dynamic, the friend dynamic, whatever dynamic, everybody come in. You know, whatever connections you have, you get the choice to say look here, now, this sort of dysfunction that exists with this person, I don't want it no more, it's harming me, it's causing me trauma, and I get to choose to love you from afar. That's where the boundaries come in because, listen, you cannot be healthy and function and serve, serve, really serve and have community and social impact if you're not healthy. Right, because the type of pressures that exist in America, where you have to perform professionally parenting, carry your host and a lot of times you and your spouse are doing it all alone. So you have to have a certain level of stability and integrity, personal integrity, and that is the journey that you go on to send me. I excavate some of them, some of them here are going to serve me, and I also get to choose some of the things from the Western or the individualistic culture and say look, you know, this whole idea of boundaries is very important. This idea of identity is important. This idea of self-care is important, this idea of me aspiring and achieving something to be fulfilled, to have very strong personal integrity and standing who I am and shining who God made me to be and what my purpose here is and in that is, know what flows out of the cup is yours. You know, ian Levan's aunt said what's in the cup is mine and what flows out of the cup is for everybody else. But I think when you come from collectivist cultures, that whole dynamic is like everything in the cup is everybody else and there's a lot of dysfunctions that goes on with that, and I'm sure some people might disagree with me, depending on where they are in their own journey. But listen, this is where I am.
Speaker 2:I have had to walk through some very challenging experiences where I'm just I'm crippled, I can't get out of bed. I'm trying to seek validation, the people pleasing, and some of them don't care. They want you to continue to play the role that you've always played in that, whatever community or setting you're coming from. They want you to, and some of them are abusive. Some of them take advantage of our hard work here when we're overseas, the amount of stories people will tell you, just so they can't get money, the lies and the stuff and they say but you don't care about me, but they're here and I'm struggling to make sure all the bills that me have to take care of pay my own house. You take the money and go buy iPhone and me not even have iPhone. You want me to buy you name brand something and me buy the brandless something so me can save up and be able to have social impact and give back, but you want me to buy you brand, name brand stuff.
Speaker 2:It's so much complexity in the experience of people, who they are foreign and the expectations from everybody back home. I'm telling you you do get to choose who become. The person you're becoming this hybrid, this third culture person. You get to decide what goes into that pot. Yeah, it's not passive. You have to be very active in working on yourself and going deep, deep, deep.
Speaker 2:And I'm telling you it's not easy. No, because sometimes, when you start changing people, not go like it. Yeah, because you're going to be becoming somebody and you're stepping out of the role that they've always known you to fit in. That keeps them comfortable and keep you in a place that they can manipulate you however they want manipulate you or however it makes them feel comfortable. So, people, you, it's a journey. You gotta be prepared. I've gone on my own journey and that's probably one of the most important thing that qualifies me to walk on the journey with another person because I'm I'm still on it. It's not easy because there's so many cultural expectations for people who come from other places and are now in the west where you know the supposed abundance but people don't understand. So we have to buy everything when we eat. We can't go outside and go pick a mango.
Speaker 1:Listen, I cannot go to Miss Simone and say Miss Simone, hey, the breadfruit that look like it, good it turn. You know you can't pick the breadfruit, so we can't go roast it. Yes, right, or oi, miss Simone. Missy too, aki, pan the tree. We can't get the aki them Right, a mango season in Jamaica.
Speaker 2:Now you walk past somebody mango and the mango them just a drop off and you just pick some of them and have no problem with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a different world here, yeah, so you have to adapt to your new environment and now devise a new plan for you to be healthy so that you, in turn, can be healthy and strong in integrity for everybody else who depend upon you. Right, because not everybody not going to come here and I encourage some people who are overseas consider if you have psychological safety in Jamaica or some other place where you're from. Daydreaming about being in America is not for the week. You know it's not for the week and people think so they won't come here. So there's a girl, a Jamaican girl, online who talked about when she go to the store them tell her she can't get cash back on our card. And she said oh, I saw people get rich. You never see it. You never see it. I was cracking up because people come and they don't understand the way the system works. I'm serious. This is complexity, yeah, and it takes us who've walked the journey, to help people to unravel it, to decode it, to make healthier decisions so that they can leave a legacy for people coming behind them or even impact other people who are looking to them.
Speaker 2:Because you know one of my guests on the podcast and listen. She says she come over on a plane and she don't want to go back on a boat. So if you don't have a plan for your money when you come in, you can't stay there. Go buy the rent, the Mercedes and living at a big house and do it in debt and you spend 20, 30 years at payback how many times over? And you end up with nothing saved up. So you have to be smart about this. But listen, let's continue the conversation because it's so needed and you know that there's so much that's taboo in our culture is that people just, you know everybody just come on them, smile, likes everything All right, but the one, you know, some people in a period and I'm just, I'm scared for talk and said no, you can't behave that way, it hurt me. Yeah, you can't carry on that way there.
Speaker 1:Simone, you've covered so much, right, our respective work is complimentary, but handling so many things, so, like we talked about the starting points, depending on the age you come, it's going to impact your journey You've talked about. You know your identity will shift. That's the point. That's okay, right? You, if you live here for a certain time, it's going to evolve. It's going to change your connection to culture you talked about and I will send you the newsletter because I promise you every a lot of things.
Speaker 1:I sent a newsletter a couple of weeks ago and I asked people what aspects of your culture are you leaving behind? Some of it was keeping up with music and some of it is like some of these behaviors that you talked about. We don't want to do that. We don't want to keep up with it again, Right? So there are aspects of that. As you mature, as you navigate, as you become a parent and all of these things, your perspective is going to change.
Speaker 1:You talked about work. That's one of the big things. Culture impacts how we show up at work. And then there are aspects that you I identify, that you talked about, which I totally believe that we should go into this transnational finance and supporting people in multiple locations and all the burdens and the pressures that come with that. A friend of mine, mikey T, he has a short out called Beg your Car and it was around the story of, you know, getting phone calls, this, this, have to pay for this, need to do, and all of that. And it made me take a step back and say, before I came to America, was I such a nuisance to my uncles when I first came, before I came here? You know so, and the pressures that they have to face, you know, because when rent due, rent due you know what I'm saying JPS might take a week to come. Cut off the lights, you know, over here is immediate.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's true it's true, it's true. So all of these things. So we definitely should continue the conversation Before we end, because we're going to have a little labrish after. Do you have a hope for the future? Is there? You know, we came up here in the last 20 to 30 years, right, because they are 30 plus years. Anybody coming now do you feel like there's hope for them having a better chance of navigating the immigrant identity and the experience versus when we came here 20, 30 years ago?
Speaker 2:Well, you know what there's hope for? The fact that there's me and you, if nothing else.
Speaker 1:Boom. See it there. See it there, they have guide. Now, we never have guide, so we become the serpent and our parents.
Speaker 2:They came older and they have months to feed. They've never had the luxury to go, study and read and do all of them something that we've been fortunate to do. So it's I. I counted a privilege, yes, a privilege to be in this position, to have experienced this. To decode it it's, it was part of what was meant to happen.
Speaker 2:But we are here, we are on the air, there's social media, we have podcasts, we're getting the word out there and there's actually a few other people that I know who have different angles of this. Focusing corporate Immigrants in corporate is one that comes to mind Immigrant finance, a few other people. Right, I've gained so many resources of books on my shelf here, of people who've mailed me books and people who've said, oh, simone, since I've been on your podcast, you know you've inspired me to kind of look at our community as immigrants and how, what angle I can be of support to our community and so it's growing. So it's not going to be as hard. All we need to do is to get the word out and make sure that people in other places are able to access and hear the conversations. But unfortunately, no, there's hope, it's not. Unfortunately, there is a lot of hope because of these platforms social media and everything that we are now able to do that generations before were not. And you know when I think about I watched Marcus Garvey's story on YouTube and then I went to a presentation in downtown Atlanta a month or two ago about his life story and to think he came over on a ship and the amazing galvanization that he was able to do without social media and some of the tools that we had, and the amount of impact and influence and legacy that he's left.
Speaker 2:Listen, there's so much hope and information, the age of information and just so much experience to share. So let's carry on, friends right, and keep sharing, keep sharing and talking and letting people know that it's okay to let that little light. You know that little hole there that just hurt. I don't know why, when somebody says something, it just, you know, feel little hole there that just hurt. I don't know why, when somebody says something, it just feels right in your body. You just notice something off, it touches you at a tender spot and you may get anger. Afterwards you might feel all sorts of other emotions coming up and you can't figure out why did this touch me? So you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:I'm just so moved by this because I feel like there is so much healing that is happening with the work that we're doing. There's so much hope moving forward and I'm so energized to continue to learn more, to have more conversations, to do more research and to help people come home to themselves, to heal, to embrace their superpower of being a third culture person and to help those going on the journey afresh. They might be able to do it in way faster times than you and I were. You know they don't have to go through all of them pitfalls and the mistakes that we made, and I've always wanted to do kind of something we'll talk about, about really kind of dramatizing, acting out Like if you find yourself in this scenario at work. These are ways that you could respond.
Speaker 1:Simone, may I ask you something? We have the same brain. Listen, a couple of years ago they had this thing, where you know, and I posted it on social, like I was going to do like Caribbean Incorporate, right when you know, the co-worker come with the fish and I warm up and we're going to tell the co-worker I said my girl, I know. I said the steam fish did nice, but no, bring it in here, so don't do it.
Speaker 1:You know like somebody said something to you and you want to respond, and in my mind, your mind is saying all of the things all of the torii was say, and then you're cut to what you're actually supposed to say in that scenario and it's a form of, like you said, they're examples. Nobody's not really catering to us this way, and so sometimes we have to give people the tools to say, okay, while you want to tell them about the what's it, what's it not. Let us not use that and calm down, and I think it's a brilliant idea. I mean a lot of synergies in the work that we do, and so I'm really excited that you know you're doing this work for immigrants broadly Me I focus probably Caribbean people, which is which is again so complimentary, and I know that it is a reason why we find each other and we're having this conversation. So, before we go Labrisha a little bit more. Tell the people then where they could find you on the internet. I hope they connect with you.
Speaker 2:Sure, sure, sure. Thank you for the exposure and all and opening up your space. I much appreciate it. So you can find me on LinkedIn right Under my name, say here, simone W Johnson Smith. Find me on LinkedIn. On Instagram, tiktok it's the Immigrant Experience Podcast. Just search, you'll find me there. And then on YouTube, same Immigrant Experience Podcast. You can find our page on YouTube and we have our business website. Find our page on YouTube and we have our business website. It's thebridgeconceptsorg, where you'll find all of our everything our course coaching.
Speaker 2:My book is available online everywhere. Books are sold online and you know. Sign up for my newsletter. I have a free guide on there that talks about finding belonging as an immigrant and what's that like, because it's a big deal. You know, not fitting in and just feeling like you don't know what your identity is anymore is a big deal. So check out the guide and get some insight. Sign up for the newsletter. We do a weekly newsletter. So, again, thebridgeconceptsorg, and you'll find us on TikTok, youtube, instagram and I'm always on LinkedIn more than any place. But we need some more hands. The thing I grew, I grew up. We need some more hands. I don't know how I'll keep up with all of this Right and still working full time with the family. So if anybody interested and you want, you you're really passionate about this type of work. So if anybody interested and you want, you're really passionate about this type of work, listen, let's collaborate with Carrie-Anne, figure out a way how we can spread the word, because people need this information. It's so important.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is All right, and so I'll make sure I put Simone's information in the show notes. Me and Argo still leverage for a little bit. You could join our community and hear the after show, but for right now, until next time, walk good.
