Hi, I’m Rée.
Growing up, I felt like the education system wasn’t built for people like me to succeed. As a student with undiagnosed neurodivergence, learning disabilities, and anxiety, I struggled to learn in the ways my peers learned.
In the decades following, I became an educator and taught in various classrooms around the world. I taught in public schools, private universities, large government funded programs, and even small academies. I designed curriculum, measured student success, and even assessed teacher efficacy.
Then, while teaching a group of English language learners in South Korea, who like me, hadn’t received adequate attention in school, I realized I was using the same methodologies as the ones that had failed me.
homeroom is my attempt to remedy this on an international scale. To speak with as many people from around the world about their own education systems to rethink what schools can be. What it should be, when we design systems and metrics which are inclusive of more diverse types of learners and thinkers with varying levels of family involvement and access to resources.
In this episode, I speak with Roxanne—a social worker, psychotherapist, and mom of two boys—about her earliest memories of attending schools in Jamaica, and loving science so much that she thought she’d become a biochemist before immigrating to Canada and ultimately pursuing a career in social work and psychotherapy. We talk about the injustices and systemic inequities she saw that led her to working with children, the lack of support young families have from society, as well as what skills around socio-emotional regulation and communication we need to teach our children, as well as our inner children going forward.
Here is our slightly edited conversation.
Computer-generated Transcript
Accessibility Disclaimer: Below is a computer generated transcript of our conversation. Please note that there are likely very many errors––including the spelling of our names––and may not make sense, especially when taken out of context.
00:00:03:04 – 00:00:30:10 Unknown Hi, I’m Ray. Growing up, I felt like the education system wasn’t built for people like me to succeed as a student with undiagnosed neurodivergent learning disabilities and anxiety, I struggled to learn in the ways my peers learned. In the decades following. I became an educator and taught in various classrooms around the world. I taught in public schools, private universities, large government funded programs, and even small academies.
00:00:30:12 – 00:01:02:22 Unknown I designed curriculum, measured student success, and even assessed teacher efficacy. Then, while teaching a group of English language learners in South Korea who, like me, hadn’t received adequate attention in school, I realized I was using the same methodologies as the ones that had failed me. Homeroom is my attempt to remedy this on an international scale, to speak with as many people from around the world about their own education systems, to rethink what schools can be, what it should be.
00:01:02:22 – 00:01:34:00 Unknown When we design systems and metrics which are inclusive of more diverse types of learners and thinkers with varying levels of family involvement and access to resources. In this episode, I speak with Roxann, a social worker psychosocial therapist and mom of two boys, about her earliest memories of attending schools in Jamaica and loving science so much that she thought she’d become a biochemist before immigrating to Canada and ultimately pursuing a career in social work and psychotherapy.
00:01:34:02 – 00:02:02:01 Unknown We talk about the injustices and systemic inequities she saw that led her to working with children, the lack of support young families have from society, as well as what skills around socio emotional regulation and communication. We need to teach our children as well as our inner children going forward. Here is our slightly edited conversation.
00:02:02:03 – 00:02:38:17 Unknown I grew up in Kingston, Jamaica, and I have very early memories of always having my head in a book. I have very early memories of knowing how to spell the name of my city and being so proud of that. I think reading came from me at a very early age. I remember being in like preschool and, you know, writing that a date in big letters and numbers.
00:02:38:18 – 00:03:12:16 Unknown I remember being a very precocious child. I was always with the questions. I remember adults around me saying, You’re so inquisitive and you’re going to be a lawyer when you grow up because you know, you have all kinds of questions and opinions about things that I didn’t. I wasn’t even sure I knew what a lawyer was, but I was always reading and I was quick with words and language.
00:03:12:18 – 00:03:47:12 Unknown The English language and English literature, prose and poetry and composition and all those things were my friends in school. I was not a huge fan of numbers. I actually quite very vividly remember being really confused about math in school. And even though I’m the youngest of three and my siblings are six and seven years older than me, and even though I had older siblings, they were busy doing things with their friends.
00:03:47:12 – 00:04:10:18 Unknown And so I didn’t have them to kind of help me with school and homework and that kind of thing. And I think my my mom and I, we were raised in a single parent home and my mom was she loved us and took care of us, but she was often busy working. And so I kind of was left to my own devices a little bit.
00:04:10:18 – 00:04:36:10 Unknown My school was concerned and I remember being in school thinking math is very confusing and I wasn’t quite sure who to ask. And I remember extremely vividly in grade four getting a report card, and I failed math, and it was the very first time I had a failing and it took my little eight year old heart right out.
00:04:36:12 – 00:05:07:08 Unknown And so I always felt a little bit nervous around that. Decimals weren’t my friends. Algebra wasn’t my friend. It took me until high school where I had a teacher who recognized that I was a little bit lost and came alongside me and said, If you have a question, please feel free to ask. I don’t know who told them to say that because every day I had a question and I could hear everybody’s eyes rolling because everybody else got it and I had to hold up the class.
00:05:07:10 – 00:05:52:19 Unknown But outside of that, school was a wonderful place for me. I had really lovely teachers in in high school. I didn’t move to North America until I was 19. So I did most of my education in my younger years of education in Jamaica. And I just had really great teachers, really encouraging. Yeah, I love school. That’s amazing. I’m really interested about this math experience and how that sort of, I guess, impacted like your your later parts of your life.
00:05:52:19 – 00:06:23:16 Unknown I wonder like. Yeah. Me? Yeah. Yeah, it has. It has. I think I’ve gotten over the the grade four experience with that poor grade, but not I feel like I have always felt like I was not quick with numbers. Right. It took me a long time to learn my times tables and all those things, whereas kids in my class could figure things out mentally.
00:06:23:16 – 00:06:48:03 Unknown It took me like 5 hours and pencil and paper. Right. And so even to this day, at this big age, I am having to tell myself, stop saying you’re not good with numbers, because that has been my you know, I’m Roxanna. I’m not good with numbers, but that has been my identity. And I and it has impacted me.
00:06:48:03 – 00:07:22:09 Unknown It has impacted me in managing my finances. It has impacted me in, you know, letting my husband take care of certain things and I really had to grow up and say to myself, something happens to this man. Like, you got to figure this out. And so, you know, it wasn’t until I was maybe 23 or so where a mentor of mine pulled me aside and said, let’s figure out how to make a budget, because you’ve got to figure this is you’re grown now, right?
00:07:22:09 – 00:07:56:13 Unknown You got to figure this out. And so I have and even even now, like if I sit to chat with my accountant and still be rattling off the things, I will be super lost. And I would have I’ll have to say to her, okay, I need you to slow down for me because. But I just don’t I, I listen, give me concepts about policy and, you know, about equity and mental health and language and arts.
00:07:56:13 – 00:08:28:19 Unknown And I am we could talk for days when it comes to figure out numbers. I had to sit down all day one day and force myself to go through like, you know, the business of entrepreneurship and profit and loss sheet and revenue versus profit and all these things, right? Because you hear so many times in the news about these famous people whose accountants displaced them and they had no idea and they end up going these millions of dollars in taxes.
00:08:28:19 – 00:09:09:07 Unknown And so I’ve had to tell myself, okay, we are going to figure this out. And it it has helped me kind of on turtle on myself. I have this way of of titling all I don’t know, let someone else figure it out. Like, we got to figure, my gosh. You know, I think my yeah I think the first time that I actually enjoyed math or that I felt like, you know, I was incentivized to enjoy it was when I was playing Scrabble.
00:09:09:09 – 00:09:36:03 Unknown And I remember being really good at the game and I just got so much joy out of like seeing how far how much farther I was in scorer with, like people that I would play with. And that was the first time like in my kind of, I don’t know, life that I was like, okay, math is enjoyable, but yes, yeah.
00:09:36:03 – 00:10:05:15 Unknown So I hope, like, I wish that you had found something like that where you know it finally gave you that agency to be like, Yes, I can tackle this. But yeah, I think what has helped me actually is, is is parenting, right? I have I have two children and they’re going through school and I’ve had to sit with them.
00:10:05:17 – 00:10:27:23 Unknown And, you know, I could have easily said, well, let your father, you know, he’s good with numbers. But I sat with them and we worked it all out together. And, you know, sometimes I’m not quite sure, but we we sit down, we put our heads together and we figure it out. And it’s made me feel like, okay, I can sit up a little bit taller.
00:10:28:01 – 00:10:55:21 Unknown Yeah, I saw your back straighten. Yeah, Yeah, I know. Exactly. Like kind of taking the control back, right? Yes. Yeah. Seeing that had power over you for so long. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess, like, you know, do you think so? I feel like this math component kind of sticks out as, like, a really big challenge that you kind of struggled with when you were younger.
00:10:55:21 – 00:11:31:11 Unknown But I’m wondering if, like, there were any, like, socio emotional kind of struggles or any kind of like relationship related struggles that you had because I’m kind of curious, like how you got into psychotherapy and, you know, like that journey piece and was there like a tie for you? Like was there a challenge that you had wanted to overcome, like an interpersonal one that led you to psychotherapy or Yeah, I’m curious about that journey.
00:11:31:14 – 00:12:04:09 Unknown You know, it’s so interesting because I hear a lot of my psychotherapy friends say that they came to this field because they had interpersonal issues or they had some kind of trauma, you know, and working their way through that made them realize, this is the field for me. I have no such story. wow. I will say that I really it’s so funny because throughout high school I really enjoyed the sciences and I told myself initially I was like, I’m going to be a doctor.
00:12:04:11 – 00:12:34:11 Unknown And then I decided that that was too hard. And then I decided, Well, I’m going to become a biochemist because I really, really, really enjoyed learning about the genesis of things. And so I got into I started university in the Caribbean, and I was taking genetics classes and botany classes and zoology classes and all of the bio biology related things were phenomenal.
00:12:34:13 – 00:13:16:21 Unknown But all of the chemistry related things were up in my behind and, you know, all of the biology related things made me feel like a superstar. And all of the chemistry related things made me feel really not smart. And in the middle of that education, my mom said to me, We’re relocating and we moved to Canada. And I believe it was the journey of relocating because immigration is a very, very, very challenging experience and I had to put school on hold for a couple of years and I had to start working.
00:13:16:23 – 00:13:52:16 Unknown But in the midst of that, what happened was I would save my little money and I would go back to Jamaica and visit my friends. Then. And what what I finally realized in the difference between the two countries, other than one being a developing nation and the other one being a more, you know, a developed, if you will, nation, is that in North America there is more of a bit of a social safety net for people who are unable to work or unable to take care of themselves.
00:13:52:18 – 00:14:16:04 Unknown And in the Caribbean, that does not really exist, at least when I grew up. And so I would go back and I would see for the very first time with different eyes that some neighborhoods were really wealthy and some neighborhoods were very poverty stricken. And then I would, you know, hang out with my friends and my extended family back home.
00:14:16:04 – 00:14:41:07 Unknown And then I would go back to my life in Toronto. And when I would get off the plane in Toronto, the difference, it was jarring to me. And I just got arrested by this social justice thing that I could not shake and the idea of and you always needed I always knew that I wanted to go back to school.
00:14:41:07 – 00:15:05:09 Unknown But the idea of having seen all this, the idea of being stuck in someone’s lab, just felt like it just didn’t make any sense to me. I need to I need to work with people and so I went to school for social work and it really became alive there. And I realized that this kind of work that I want to do.
00:15:05:11 – 00:15:43:15 Unknown So I became a social worker and started working initially in children’s mental health. I started working with children and their families and I really enjoyed that work. But as I was working with children, I began to realize that children don’t exist in a vacuum. They are a product of their environment. And so I started working with the systems, the schools, the doctors offices, the parents, and it was my work with the parents that I began to realize that this this is actually what I was called for because the children were struggling because the parents had trauma.
00:15:43:17 – 00:16:15:11 Unknown The parents, you know, were, you know, sort of emotionally struggling because the parents had difficulties in their relationships and they couldn’t stop screaming at each other. So the kid goes to school and the seven year old is throwing chairs. Right. So I began to realize that there was a bigger systems issue. And so I kind of pivoted out of children’s mental health into working with adults directly and the rest is kind of history story.
00:16:15:13 – 00:16:41:03 Unknown Wow. I didn’t know that you had started working with children first and then and I know, like, I think that when I’ve heard and I don’t know what the programs were like for you at your school, but I know that that you have choices, right when you come out of school, like, you know, what age group or what population or community you want to work with.
00:16:41:03 – 00:17:14:03 Unknown And what about children were you drawn to? Initially, I felt like children were misunderstood. And dare I say, I was right, because what people see are behaviors right. And what people don’t understand is that what children have, that’s that is their behavior and that is actually their language, right? It is their language. It is their it is their cry.
00:17:14:03 – 00:17:36:04 Unknown It is there something is wrong and I don’t know what to say. So when children go to school and they are having their peers and they’re throwing chairs and they’re yelling and screaming, the school calls a parent and says, Come in, scoop your child, because we can’t handle them. And then the child comes home and the parent is upset with the child and the child gets the consequence.
00:17:36:06 – 00:18:04:00 Unknown That child internalizes that. And even though what they’re trying to communicate is things are not okay with me, the message that they receive is I’m a bad person and they further internalize that and the behavior perpetuates itself. Right. And so I just felt like children are misunderstood and they need someone to come alongside them to to unpack the behaviors.
00:18:04:01 – 00:18:42:03 Unknown And I have to help them make healthier choices or to speak to the adults in their lives and say, hey, this is what these behaviors mean and this is what’s causing it. So let’s come up with a solution. Yeah. that’s so beautiful. And, you know, I think like for me personally, dealing with a lot of like intergenerational trauma and doing a lot of like re parenting work, you know, I was I was a child or a student or a person who really was stuck in that fawning mode, like the majority of my life.
00:18:42:05 – 00:19:17:12 Unknown And, you know, I talk to various individuals who are kind of stuck in or had been stuck in like other parts of that ladder. And I feel like, you know, some people find some people freeze, some people are like five, some people three. And I’m wondering like how you sort of I mean, I’m sure you probably need like a thin slice of like 20 seconds to know like what what stage that people are stuck in.
00:19:17:12 – 00:19:51:09 Unknown But I wonder, like how you go about recognizing and the different like approach, like what kind of approaches that you take to kind of meet each person where they are and to identify how far along or where on that ladder they are and how you sort of help them shake out of what or like to where they need to go.
00:19:51:11 – 00:20:25:13 Unknown Does that question make sense or did it kind of come up? Yeah, Yeah, I’m I’m kind of picking. Yeah. Thank you. So you’re welcome. No problem. And there are times when I see someone in their existence and it does take like a minute and I’m like, okay, so this is the issue. And there are other times where, you know, sometimes someone like, you know, as a therapist, sometimes someone will come to my practice and they’ll say, you know, I have anxiety and I just need strategies to help me cope with the anxiety.
00:20:25:15 – 00:20:44:16 Unknown And I will say, that’s great. I can give you the strategies, but let’s talk about what’s causing the anxiety right? And I will often ask people to tell me their story. You know, what’s what’s what has been like for you? You know, where did you grow up? You know, what did you grow up with? What was school like for you?
00:20:44:21 – 00:21:19:01 Unknown Tell me about your parents. Where do you work? Are you in a relationship? Do you have children and in and then telling me that story, I am able to unravel some of the bits and put little markers. that’s important. This is why you’re finding. okay. You couldn’t say no as a child. This explains that. And so when people unpack this, I often say to people that it’s important for me to get to know the person before we start to tackle the problem.
00:21:19:03 – 00:21:52:02 Unknown Right? Because when when you get to know the person, you’ll get some of the story and you’ll have a bigger understanding of where the problem is coming from. But the other thing, too, is that when you get to know the person, they feel safe enough to be vulnerable to tell you what’s really happening. I’ve heard of a therapist tell me that it took seven sessions before their client told them that they had an assault in childhood and they don’t understand why.
00:21:52:02 – 00:22:17:14 Unknown Because, you know, at the beginning, if they had told you this at the beginning, then they would have been so much further along. And I will say to them, it took them seven sessions for them to feel safe with you. Yeah, right. That that safety is is really, really important. And so I’m not even sure if I’m answering your question, But I think that it takes it takes me understanding the story.
00:22:17:16 – 00:22:46:00 Unknown It takes me understanding the temperament. Because if someone comes into session really angry and, you know, have they have on all of their armor, my approach is going to be really different from someone who comes in, who is emotionally raw and very tearful. Right. But, you know, I often pay attention to how the individual was parented, whether or not they felt safe as a child.
00:22:46:01 – 00:23:06:03 Unknown One of the questions that I that I ask often is if you were hurt as a child, who did you go to? Right. And you can get so much out of that, that answer, some people will say, I could go to either my parent at my parents and they would have scooped me up and just taken care of that pain.
00:23:06:05 – 00:23:28:03 Unknown Some people will say I had to go to my grandmother because my parents passed away when I was young or my mom went to a different country to work or had to go to my grandmother. But she would spank me and then give me a bandage. Or some people might say I had no one. I had to sort of cry to myself and try to offer myself some healing.
00:23:28:05 – 00:23:56:02 Unknown And out of each of those answers, it tells you why that person is how they are today. Right? Because so much of that. So for that that that child who had no one, they will learn that they can depend on anyone than anyone else. They have to do it all themselves. So that person is hard to trust. They have a hard time trusting anybody.
00:23:56:04 – 00:24:21:01 Unknown The person who had a parent who would lovingly or a caregiver who would lovingly take care of them, they are more open, they’re more trusting. Sometimes their issues are a little bit more a little bit lighter in therapy, if you will. The person who’s parent went away and they had a harsh relative take care of them. And they they they are longing for a relationship.
00:24:21:01 – 00:24:52:14 Unknown And so there’s some some attachment stuff that needs to be unraveled. And there are some people who will say, you know, when I talked to you mentioned one morning, but I have my clients who are my followers. I will quite often the case has been that they couldn’t find their voice when they were younger or they couldn’t disagree with a parent.
00:24:52:14 – 00:25:16:20 Unknown You know, that that’s kind of old school parenting where you can’t say no, you got to eat all of your food. You can’t tell me, can’t provide a dissenting opinion. How dare you talk back? All of those peace like any any response opposing mine is is is a cause for discipline. Right. And that child learns that I must consent.
00:25:16:22 – 00:25:46:16 Unknown I can’t say no. I can’t trust my own voice. And so you know, I find that that’s such an unsafe place for a child because they grow up in this world feeling like they cannot say no. And that often puts people in a very precarious position. Growing up, teenagers going off to university, their friends are all drinking and they feel like they can’t say, This makes me uncomfortable right?
00:25:46:18 – 00:26:09:10 Unknown Or they can’t say, No, I don’t want you to touch me. They’re or they they can’t say. I think spending all that money tonight is a really bad idea. They don’t learn how to trust their voice because they’ve never been given the permission to use it right. And so they just fine. They just say, okay, sure, no problem.
00:26:09:12 – 00:26:43:23 Unknown I agree. Even if even if they don’t, even if their insides are screaming, they have a hard time acknowledging that piece. Yeah, I feel like all of the people that listen to this podcast and who are my friends are probably feeling really seen right now by what you just shared. And I think it’s funny because the people who can’t say no attract people who can’t say no as friends as well, 100%, 100%, 100%.
00:26:44:00 – 00:27:25:14 Unknown And it’s like, I know that this is a problem I’m working on. And so I’m trying to raise my daughter in the opposite direction. But it’s like every day I’m learning new knowledge and I am making the effort. But the the lesson learning takes a long time. And what you said about like, you know, like what you said about the person, it taking seven sessions to share something so pivotal in their life was because it took seven sessions for them to feel safe, right?
00:27:25:16 – 00:27:53:01 Unknown That really I don’t know what happened, but just like cold sweat, hot sweat, just all over my body. Yeah. And, you know, I think it took me like two or three years to actually be very forthcoming with my current therapist and so, yeah, like, you just, I think, made me feel so seen. Thank you for that. You’re welcome.
00:27:53:03 – 00:28:32:05 Unknown And welcome. Yeah. And I kind of wanted to ask you about, I think my next question I kind of want to tie to this piece about I’ve been hearing from like thought leaders who I respect and like the things that I read that in the future, the the really two important skills that we need to drive in our children, our young people, are this idea of like emotional intelligence and resilience and like mental stability.
00:28:32:07 – 00:29:13:12 Unknown And I’m just wondering, like, in what ways do you agree with this or disagree with this or feel like there’s something you’d want to add to that? So my I agree and disagree that disagree part is the resilience. Now, don’t get me wrong, resilience is really important. My concern is that people, when they hear resilience, that they will think you must be tough at all times, right?
00:29:13:14 – 00:29:53:12 Unknown That isn’t the the the the center of resilience. Resilience is about being able to navigate difficulty in life. Now, that means you may spend a few nights crying on the floor and that’s okay, right? Resilience means being able to live through the thing that has happened, not to be able to always toughen up and prevent the thing from happening.
00:29:53:14 – 00:30:50:03 Unknown Right. Or to not respond or to not react to the thing. And, you know, and then there’s a piece about emotional intelligence, which I lean into 100%. You know, my kid came home from school the other day with a kindness award, and I was so excited, so excited because being able to recognize your emotions, communicate them, recognize emotion in other people, those pieces are really, really important, particularly in this day and age or everything is tech and AI and almost like seemingly devoid of emotion.
00:30:50:05 – 00:31:21:12 Unknown It’s really, really important because in our world the emotion that is readily accessible is is anger. Right? And people seem to understand it, but it can also, if you don’t know how to harness it, it can get you into a world of trouble, right? We end up damaging property, damaging people, and all of those things come with massive consequences.
00:31:21:14 – 00:32:07:02 Unknown And so it’s really important to understand that anger tends to mask other emotions. You know, people talk about the iceberg analogy all the time, where anger is what is seen at the top of the surface. And underneath anger there’s often disappointment, fear, rejection, anxiety, loneliness, worry, all those pieces, right? And so, you know, I have two boys and the world isn’t ready to help, despite despite my parenting, the world is already telling them how to be right.
00:32:07:02 – 00:32:40:07 Unknown And so when my 12 year old gets really sad and he’s fighting to hold back tears, I’m reminding him that it’s okay to cry like tears are healing right when my younger son, he’s nine now. But when he was younger, I remember one time he tripped on the stairs and he was crying and I rushed to him and I said, Are you okay?
00:32:40:09 – 00:33:08:18 Unknown And he’s nodding. And I said, Does anything hurt? And he said, No. And then he said, But I don’t understand why I’m crying. And I said, Are you frightened? And he nodded, almost in relief, like, Thank you. And so it’s important that we give that when we have emotional intelligence and we can recognize what’s actually happening. It’s really important that we give our children the language so that the next time something happens.
00:33:08:18 – 00:33:34:15 Unknown And he I said, jump over the chair and he missed this or whatever. And he hurt you know, he’s he’s he’s frightened. He is able to say, Mommy, I’m frightened. Right. It’s really important that we we start to recognize what these emotions look like, how they can manifest in terms of behavior so that we can start to communicate back to the people around us.
00:33:34:17 – 00:33:57:20 Unknown So they can start to recognize that in themselves. You know, one of the things about life that I’ve learned in this journey of being a therapist is that we learn most about ourselves in relationship with other people. You know, when you have a solid file, it tastes really good. You’re invited in afterwards because you just ate a healthy lunch.
00:33:57:22 – 00:34:35:16 Unknown You have no idea that there’s medicine, your tea. It takes another person to look at you from the other perspective and say, Hey, you got food in your teeth, right? Otherwise, we think our smile is fantastic and the same is true about our lives. We think we’re amazing. And it takes being in close relationship with a best friend, with a sibling, with a partner, with a child, you know, someone close to you in your life who will say, I didn’t like it when you said that.
00:34:35:18 – 00:35:02:20 Unknown When you laugh in that way, it makes me feel embarrassed. And when people give us feedback, it makes us a little bit uncomfortable. But we begin to learn more about ourselves and and it causes our emotional intelligence to to grow. Right. When I say to my son, when you respond in that way to your brother, it makes him feel really, really bad about himself.
00:35:02:22 – 00:35:41:14 Unknown And then he doesn’t like my feedback when he goes away. He’s quiet for a long time that I notice. But the next time his response, his brother is different, right? Lesson Parenting isn’t easy. My children aren’t perfect. I’m not the perfect parent, but I do lean into that emotional intelligence bit. Because in our world where it’s easy to be unkind to someone behind a screen, we must have some emotional intelligence so that we can be aware of how our words have impact right?
00:35:41:16 – 00:36:25:21 Unknown We can there can be a decrease in things like cyberbullying and, you know, all those negative things that happen on social media. If we double down on our emotional intelligence, I could talk about this for days. No, but I thank you for that. That’s really beautiful because, you know, as we head into like this world that is almost I don’t know, it’s becoming 100%, I, you know, or like we’re constantly behind our screens and we’re doing most of our socializing with people that are strangers and that we’ve never met.
00:36:25:23 – 00:36:52:09 Unknown And I noticed that the way that you communicate with people, even when I think they’re crossing serious social boundaries, the way that you communicate, is so compassionate and empathetic and still firm. And, you know, I keep like I read your posts like multiple times and I’m like, how did you do this? You know, like, wait, let me where is the firmness coming from?
00:36:52:09 – 00:37:28:21 Unknown But where is the kindness coming from? You know, I’m like analyzing, is it the words? Is it the arrangement of words? What what is going on? You know? And so I like you have that knowledge and experience of like doing the social work and centering people and leaning into compassion and armed with emotional intelligence. So I’m like, well, you can’t I can’t like, piece this out because, you know, I’m seeing a master at work here now.
00:37:28:23 – 00:38:27:02 Unknown But, you know, like there is a lot that we can take away by the boundary that you set, but also being very giving other people the benefit of the doubt, not as like not assuming that intention immediately or at least in the way that you communicate. And I’m wondering like, you know, as somebody who grew up never feeling safe to disagree with people and really avoiding confrontation and like to the point like I was raised, to empathize to a fault, right, that I was raised to see somebody else’s emotions before mine and to to give them the power before I give myself power.
00:38:27:04 – 00:38:49:22 Unknown You know, like it’s always a little painful when. You know, I am, like, blindsided. And I, you know, in my heated emotion, kind of forgot about the other person. And then someone’s like, how dare you do that? And I’m like, actually, you know, my entire life I’ve been on the other side, so excuse me. And I’m always shocked.
00:38:49:22 – 00:39:24:19 Unknown Yeah, I’m always a little bit shocked. And so I guess, like my next question for you is really like, how do we center ourselves but without slighting the other person? How do we teach our young people or even ourselves as we were parent ourselves? How do we teach ourselves in our young people how to communicate in a way where it’s balanced, you know, where it’s not like encroaching on either side?
00:39:24:19 – 00:39:56:03 Unknown How do we stay in our lanes, but also socialize in a way where we can empathize with other people but not at the cost of empathizing with ourselves? Yeah, yeah. That’s a really, really important question. You know, it’s really, really important that we stand up for ourselves because we won’t always have a life where other people will stand up for us, right?
00:39:56:03 – 00:40:27:08 Unknown We would every we would love that for people to come to bat for us. Right? But it’s really important that we recognize that we are worth coming to our own defense. Right. And it has taken me some time to sort of find who in that fine tune that that the, you know, standing up for myself, but not knocking the other person down in the same in the same breath.
00:40:27:10 – 00:40:50:00 Unknown And one of the things that I have recognized or I think it might have been Oprah, I can’t remember someone wrote a book a while back, the title of which is something that I wholeheartedly agree with. The title says, What happened to you? Something from me? What happened to you? Yes Yes, that’s it. That’s it. That’s it. That’s it.
00:40:50:02 – 00:41:22:15 Unknown Right. So instead of saying, you know what’s wrong with you, right. When someone unkind behavior, bullying behavior, harmful behavior, it’s so easy to say what’s wrong with you. Right. But the reason they got to that place is because something happened to them. Whether or not they realize it, whether or not they will even admit to it, because, again, most of us think we’re perfect, right?
00:41:22:17 – 00:41:57:22 Unknown But when someone displays harm harming behavior, harmful behavior, it is because something has gone wrong along the way. Right? They may not even know that, but it’s important for us to recognize that so that we can respond in kind. Now, don’t get me wrong, if someone’s coming to physically harm my family like gloves are off, Right. But even in, you know, someone was emotionally harmful to my kid at school.
00:41:57:22 – 00:42:30:12 Unknown He came home in tears. I fired off an email to the principal right away. We need to have a conversation right, even in maintaining your decorum, if you will, It is still okay to be firm. One of the things around not being able to find our voice means that it’s hard for us to stand up for ourselves, and it’s hard for us to find our boundary right?
00:42:30:14 – 00:43:02:01 Unknown I say to people, Pay attention to when you get angry. Now, I will invite people to be inquisitive about their anger. Like, Is there something else going on here besides anger? Like all the other emotions that I talked about earlier. But if you find that you’re just just angry, right? And I tell people to pay attention to that because oftentimes the anger means that our boundaries have been crossed.
00:43:02:03 – 00:43:27:02 Unknown Right? Right. So ask yourself, you know, who am I angry at? What am I angry at? Is it because someone overstepped? Right. And that means you, me, you now need to be more firm about your boundaries. Remind them where these boundaries are. And we can do that in a variety of ways. Like we can totally go off. Right?
00:43:27:02 – 00:43:57:10 Unknown But how will that serve you? And I think I think for me, that’s probably the the the the core of the answer to your question is if I lose my cool, how will that impact this situation? Right. If someone is snarky to me on social media and I completely lose my cool, how is that going to impact our interaction?
00:43:57:10 – 00:44:29:03 Unknown But how is all else or how is that going to impact me? You know, yes, I’m a nice person. It’s been I’ve been told that different occasions. That’s just kind of my temperament. But also I have to remind myself that I have two children who are watching and trying to learn how to be in this world. I you know, if I go to my kids school and I lose my cool, not only are my children seeing that, but their friends are seeing that.
00:44:29:05 – 00:44:56:03 Unknown Right. And they will have to live that long after I’ve come back and I’m gone home. They still have to go to school tomorrow when I’m on social media and someone is someone has overstepped a boundary or they are being less than lovely. I have to remember that I still have a public persona, right? There are 17 year olds who asked me questions and my DMS were following me, so I can’t lose it.
00:44:56:05 – 00:45:30:20 Unknown Right? It’s it’s not, it’s not wise. And so I have to ask myself, how is my losing my temper going to serve me? But also if someone’s being unkind to me and I stand up for myself, I also don’t want them to be unkind to the next person. And so I, I try to temper my response in such a way that they will, but they will at least pay attention to the response, right?
00:45:30:22 – 00:45:53:12 Unknown If I take them off, then they’re just going to brush off my answer and never engage with me again. But I would like to pull them in. So at least be thoughtful about what they ask me, about how they responded to me about my response. So they will think twice the next time they set their keyboard to to attack somebody else.
00:45:53:12 – 00:46:21:12 Unknown Right. And so it’s I mean, I’m able to craft a response in 5 minutes because I’ve been doing this for years. But those are the considerations, right? Restating your boundaries, standing up for yourself, recognizing that that person may be responding to out of a place of hurt, you know, who knows what has happened to them over the course of their life.
00:46:21:12 – 00:46:50:08 Unknown Why? Why they see the world in the way that they do? And also, how is how is the anger going to serve you? How is how is that going to how is my response going to impact this situation right there? Everything that I will say about anger is that and I’m not saying that you shouldn’t get riled up, but when you do when you do get riled up, I love it.
00:46:50:08 – 00:47:25:18 Unknown To allow it to have purpose, allow it to propel you into into action. Right. I remember being 20 years old and going back to Jamaica after living in Toronto for a year and a half and seeing children like seven, eight years old selling fruit on the sidewalk at night when they should be in bed and being so riled up about that, like so frustrated and coming back here saying, I need to live my life in service of that.
00:47:25:22 – 00:48:03:15 Unknown What what can I do Right. And that might not be everyone’s response, but when you find that you’re angry about something, let that anger propel you into into some kind of of of behavior. Yeah. And I see that so beautiful. And I think, you know, when you talked about how you as soon as you got out of school and you started working with the child population and just feeling that like social justice, which I would kind of categorize in the anger category if I were to choose emotion.
00:48:03:15 – 00:48:38:23 Unknown Yes. But, you know, you you activated that and you channeled it into, you know, becoming and stepping into a role where you could actually, I guess, create change. And so I guess, like my last question for you is knowing that you worked with like the different sectors, like education and, you know, the the supports that these students and children needed to get their support and their resources met.
00:48:39:01 – 00:49:14:04 Unknown And knowing that, you know, the education system really does need help. What do you think going forward is the most impactful thing we can do to get the help that we that that the most, I guess, vulnerable members of the community need? How can what is the next most impactful thing that we can do systemically that can help them?
00:49:14:06 – 00:49:51:06 Unknown That is a loaded question, but I think that we need to I think that we need to support young families. I really do. I think that, you know, I promise you I’ll answer your question when I work with young children, I don’t really work so much with young children one on one anymore. When I when I didn’t, parents would come in with their five year old parents would come in with their six year old, their seven year old and say, I can’t sleep alone.
00:49:51:07 – 00:50:23:10 Unknown They’re having nightmares. They’re stuck to my side or they’re they’re being destructive at school. I don’t know what to do. I will do a complete history of the family, you know. How was pregnancy for you? What was birth like? Was there any trauma when you were pregnant? What was it like when you brought the baby home? And what I have seen time and time again is that parents come home and they have no support.
00:50:23:12 – 00:50:56:04 Unknown Parents come home and there is abuse in the home. Parents come home and they’re alone. The parents come home and they have their own parents who are being completely overbearing and not supportive. You know, I have women who will say my partner has gone back to work and I feel completely overwhelmed and alone with this baby. And I have a toddler at my at my my knees.
00:50:56:06 – 00:51:30:16 Unknown And I don’t know what to do. My house is a mess. And I feel like all of these things are going to impact how they parent. All of these things are going to impact that child’s readiness for school. All of these things are going like I can tell you time and time again, when I work with young people who tell me I do all the extracurriculars at school because I am loathe to go home, I when I go home, I know it’s going to be pandemonium.
00:51:30:18 – 00:52:15:20 Unknown And so I hang out at school for as long as I can because parents don’t have supports around them. You know, I have seen life in the Caribbean and I’ve seen life in North America, and I have friends who are from, you know, other developing nations. And they will tell me and I have seen that some of the difference from their home country, between their home country and, you know, North America or the global west is that there is a larger that supports the nuclear family.
00:52:15:22 – 00:52:44:08 Unknown And in the global west or the global north, there is an emphasis on individual living, and it is it can be crushing. Yeah, it can be crushing when you are living your life completely alone. Right. And you are you know, they send you home with this baby or you have this baby and you’re like, who’s going to make sure that I do this?
00:52:44:08 – 00:53:23:01 Unknown Right? Right. And so there is this I’m parenting, but I’m not quite sure I’m doing this. And this huge crazy thing is happening in my family and I have no one to talk to. I feel shame. And so you’re doing all of this while you are raising these children and their primary years, their years that are most where where cognitive development and the sense of self is is so fragile and can be so at risk between birth and maybe age 7 to 8.
00:53:23:03 – 00:54:00:12 Unknown And if that season is not handled with care, that is going to impact that individual’s complete trajectory for the rest of their life. And so it’s really important systemically that we ensure that there are community programs, that there are doulas, that there are, you know, that we give support to extended family, that we check on each other like all of these pieces are so important.
00:54:00:14 – 00:54:29:13 Unknown Again, I could talk about this piece for days, but I will say that, you know, when I got my first job out of school, I did work with children, but I spent some time on a very small unit, a very small team called 0 to 6, and there were very few people who understood the importance of that, Like, why do children under three I’m under three mental health for tiny children.
00:54:29:15 – 00:55:21:09 Unknown And the truth of the matter is what we found is that if we took care of the parents when the babies were little, then these babies were going to be fine as they got older. But if those parents were isolated, were not given the support that they needed, were not cherished and spoken to and given love and all the things, all the tangible supports and emotional supports and resources, then it impacted how the parents of these infants and these infants, if were left to cry for hours on end or if parents were nursing them, but completely dissociated, then these children grew up with all kinds of behavioral and learning challenges.
00:55:21:11 – 00:55:30:07 Unknown Thank you so much for listening. If any part of this episode resonated with you, please connect with us on social media at the links in the show notes until next time.