Latest / Living Midlife In Color / I Spent Years Deciding Which Version of Me Belonged in the Room
Transcript
- Shar'da: Welcome to Living Midlife and Color Room. Women's Voices Don't Fade Into the Background and the Code Never Switches. I am your host, Sardet. And boy, do I have a deep one for us today. A deep one and very revealing. And to start off, before I get into my midlife confession, I would like to know: have you, my audience, ever changed pieces of yourself depending on who was in the room? And I want you to think about that a little bit because I don't mean just at work. I think we all do that at work, right? We don't bring the family gathering, barbecue, cookout, weekend churning up version of ourself to the office on Monday. We don't do that. I mean, depending on who you are or who you're with outside of work even, have you changed the way that you spoke? Have you changed the type of music that you play? your mannerisms, are they changing up when you're around these certain people? I wanna know, have you avoided introducing certain family and friends to someone or someone you were actually dating These people you were hiding from. Have you kept two parts of your life separate because you weren't sure what would happen if those two worlds collided? Now that's the question here for you. That's the question, and that leads me into my midlife confession, which is I And probably the worst, no, ain't no no problem to it. I can guarantee you that I am the worst code switcher you've ever met. And that right now, how I'm explaining it as I'm listening to myself, that doesn't even give it justice. What I just said was very surface. We're gonna get into it because it gets really deep. And I realized that nobody actually told me to change who I was. I just always decided which version of myself belonged in the room. I realized that I created versions of myself just to feel accepted or to convince myself that that was what I needed to do to feel accepted. And I didn't just cold switch at work. And let me say this too with the cold switching thing. I realized that I was doing this without even realizing what the heck a cold switcher was. So to give you a little bit of history, back in like 2012, 2013, I lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And most of my friends there were white. I met them at work. We were all nurses on the floor. And I generally cared about these women. These women cared about me. But to be honest with you, I never really felt completely comfortable letting them see every part of me. And it's nothing that they did wrong. It's just that I always felt different. My ideas were sometimes different. I was definitely raised different from these women. I lived differently from these women. So I felt to keep myself safe and to keep my respect at work, I had to be a different version of myself. But even outside of work, though, we hung out. And if I was driving, we were intentionally right in silence. I wouldn't listen to certain radio stations or because I thought it would be too much rap on and I didn't want to get caught, you know, singing and dancing and rap along to the song because that did not coincide or that wasn't parallel to the person who I was at work or the person that I led them to believe that I was. So I would just not listen to music or let them talk, you know, do whatever it's gonna do. I already decided which version of myself belonged in that car. And shortly after I moved to Pittsburgh, my brother moved there too. I lived there for a total of six years. let me tell y'all something about my brother. We grew up in the same household, okay? But they never met him. My brother is outgoing, he's opinionated, and he is unapologetically himself. And I remember thinking to myself that they are not ready for bro. I'll call them juice, they're not ready for juice. Because he was never gonna be a puppet Meanwhile, me, I was playing the imaginary TV show in my head, and I had the leading role, and I was going for the Oscar. That's just what it was. I was going for some reward. And my goodness, this story just let me tell y'all this real quick before I keep going. My brother and I, we like a couple years apart. And it was one point in time that we were all in high school together. We all meaning myself, my brother, and then my sister. And after I graduated, he was up on next on deck to graduate, right? So I remember coming home from school and my mom telling me or asking me to go to the school and see what's going on with Juice. Because he told me he graduated, but I don't necessarily believe him. And the reason why they want my parents wanted me to do that is because they threw us nice open houses and graduation parties after we graduated, right? And they didn't want to. And spend all that money and send down all these invites for people to come to the house and a party if the boy wasn't gonna graduate. So I'm like reluctantly, I'm like, fine, okay, I'll go. So I walk into the school and I find the administrator. I'm gonna call him Mr. B because I'm a new podcaster. I don't know if I can just be dropping names. I'm gonna call him Mr. B. I saw Mr. B. He's like, hi Sheridan, how are you? How are things going? You know, just trying to keep a little brief conversation to catch up. I'm like, things are going well. But I come to check on my brother. My mom wants me to see if he's I just come out with it. Come out with my mom actually wants me to see that he's gonna graduate. And he was like, Well, we don't really get that information out, but who's your brother? My brother is juice. His jaw almost hit the floor. because let me tell you myself. I was never really in trouble in high school. I was a go by the rules kind of girl. I always got good grades. Meanwhile, my brother, he probably was like a C average or something, you know, just barely getting by. Stayed in trouble. They stayed called him out the my mom. My dad for something he done did, so he could not believe that we were products of the same household. He what he wanted me to prove it. I had to show him my f my D that had both my first and last name on it and comp to for him to look at my brother. It was the funniest thing. But he he did graduate. So shout out to you, Juice. You did that. But anyway, I remember thinking, I can't bring him around. They're not ready for him. Because I was not ready for them to see that part of me that he represented, and that had nothing to do with embarrassment. Okay. Nobody told me that they were not going to accept him. I just decided that on my own, I thought that he would change how they looked at me. So I never brought him around. As a matter, I remember this one time too. My unit director ended up inviting me when I first moved. She ended up inviting me to, I don't know, Thanksgiving, Christmas, one of the winter holidays. And of course, I wasn't not gonna invite ask him to come if I was gonna go. But I'm like, I'm not about to bring him to these, these proper people's homes. So if we didn't go, we ended up doing our own thing. And that was fine. Cause, you I I enjoyed being with him. But and there is also a just a lot of envy that I have for him too. For people who are just not afraid to just be themselves. The people who are like, if you have a problem with me, then that is just your problem. That's not going to have anything to do with me. And my brother is that that's the type of person that he is. All right. He is never going to be the puppet unless somebody else be the puppet master. I guess that's just the type of person that I was. Eventually it got so bad that I started to just have these feelings of anxiety and depression. Some I forgot the didn't realize the top who who am I? I was asking myself questions like that. I was became miserable at work. Some of the patients were even starting to complain at me. I remember there was a girl who I worked with on the floor too, who I I was never really warm towards her. I was it was like two of these girls, actually. I was always very cold. And it was nothing against them personally. I was just sad, depressed, miserable, and I felt like I didn't fit in. I eventually ended up moving back home to Michigan because Of this. Nobody missed me when I left. It got like that towards the end. But I moved back home, and a couple months after that, one of my Pittsburgh girlfriends reached out to me and she told me that she was getting married and she invited me to her wedding. I said good. At the time I was dating someone after after I had moved back to Michigan, I re-kindled an old flame, make a mistake. and I was not gonna leave him home if I decided to go to the wedding. I asked if he wanted to go. He said, Yes, let's go. Now, mind you, the distance between Michigan and Pittsburgh, it's about a six-hour drive. So we drove the six hours, we made our hotel reservations, and we got there the day before the wedding, and we had fun. We had a lot of fun. But the entire drive there and the entire day before I remember thinking I don't want to bring him to the wedding. I don't want to introduce him to my group of friends because he was not like their husbands. Okay. Their husbands were making a lot of money. They were educated. They're well spoken, well dressed, the whole nine. Meanwhile, this person that I was dating was the complete opposite. He did not have a college education. He did not make the amount of money that they were making. And honestly, he wasn't really all that well spoken either. So I became embarrassed and I'm like, I I don't wanna I thought that if I brought him to the wedding, that the version of them who they thought that I was, this confident, you know, it would he would blow it all up. Blow it all up to shreds. And so we didn't go. So we we drove the entire six hours there. And we didn't go. And it was really one of the worst decisions that I made. He didn't think anything of it because at the end of the day, it was a vacation for him. He had never been to Pittsburgh and he had fun. I but I didn't want them to see me as that stereotypical educated black woman who settled for someone who I was not equally yoked with. I was afraid of what choosing him would make them think about me. And it got bad, y'all. When I say it got bad, it got bad. They went looking for me, because we didn't go to the wedding. They went looking. They were calling me. They were texting me. Y'all, they ended up finding an old social media account. I don't even they played detective, found these account. They were messaging my brother. They found him anyway. Big surprise. Messaging my brother, messaging some members of my family, asking if they see me, cause this whole panic with my family. Have my family calling me. Hey, these random girls are calling me, asking me where you at? You know what's going on. They even took it as far as to send in security to my hotel room to make sure that I was okay, because in their mind, They couldn't see the sharded that they knew dodging her good girlfriend's wedding. They thought something had happened to me. They thought harm had come to me. Meanwhile, I am just as careless in the world, sitting hiding out in the hotel, listening to them knock on my door like a coward, like an irresponsible fake friend, to be honest with you. And maybe when I think about it, maybe I was a fake friend the entire time. And eventually I ended up losing those friendships. And they have every right to be upset with me because here's what I've had to admit. Don't actually know if those women would have rejected me. They never told me my brother wasn't acceptable. They never told me that the man that I was dating wasn't good enough. They never told me to change the music in the car, but the fear that I was real, the rejection, but the rejection I was afraid of hadn't even happened yet. That's crazy. That's crazy. So it's it's like, how much of ourselves do we hide because we've actually been rejected? How much do we hide because we are afraid that we might be rejected? I didn't think about that then, but I think about that now. And you know, if those women are listening, I apologize. I apologize sincerely. And the worst part of it is I've never really given I I I didn't give them an explanation. I just made something up. I actually I think I lied. I want to say that I told them that I wasn't getting the phone calls and the text messages because I ended up losing my phone or something silly that they were able to see through. And I never really gave them the true, honest answer as to why I didn't go to the wedding, nor did I tell my Date at the time why I chose not to go to the wedding. Guess the cat's out the bag now. But for those who don't know, cold switching is when we change Who we are. Sometimes it's intentional, sometimes it's strategic. everyone addressed communication dependent on the setting to some degree, but I realize I've done it for so long that I didn't even realize that I was doing it. And the bigger issue, the bigger issue is when we start believing certain parts of ourselves are accepted in certain rooms. here's a statistic for you. Back in 2023, it was a survey that was done. All right, and they went around as a workplace survey and it exported 27,000 employees across 33 different Saman companies how they felt at work. And among the black women, 36 of them reported co-spitching to blend in at work. That is about one in three, which is a large number. A third of women felt like they had to pretend to be something else to be accepted at work. This is a big issue because that means that one in three of these women believed that certain parts of themselves were not gonna be accepted at work. But then 39 reported not speaking up or sharing or an opinion to avoid being perceived as difficult. And that right there is not about changing how we speak. That's about whether we believe it's safe to have a voice at all. But what happens though when we say silent? And I remember when I was prepping to present this to you guys to put myself out there and embarrass myself in front of you, I came across this quote that's often attributed to Zornel Hurston. And the quote goes: if you stay silent, they'll kill you and say that you enjoyed it. That really just puts a whole different spin, a whole different flavor, a bad taste in your mouth about cold spitching. Period. I remember there was a time where You guys know I'm a nurse practitioner and I was doing some telehealth. And I had called the young woman up who I was getting ready to have an appointment with, and I was helping her get set up with the instructions because she was having a hard time connecting to video. And once the video finally kicked in, the first thing she said to me was, You're not white. And she paused, and she paused because she wanted to see. what kind of feedback I have. She wanted to catch some sort of reaction. She wanted to know my insight or how I was gonna respond to her silly little comment. And we're sitting there in silence for a little bit. And then I finally say, you know, no, I am not white. I happen to be black. But if you find this to be unsettling, I can find you a different provider that can help you with your needs from now on. How would you like to proceed with this? And of course, because I didn't get all belligerent and ignorant, she finally, you know, changed her tone and apologi- No, actually she didn't apologize. She just told me, No, you'll be fine, and we kept going. But I was very upset about it. So upset that in fact I told my supervisor. And my supervisor responded by saying, Well, she's right, you do sound white. Supervisor is white. I was just so deeply insulted by this because she didn't think about the statement and what that really means to a person who was black. What she tr what she is saying is because I sound educated, because every other word out of my mouth isn't profanity or the N-word or whatever, whatever. Or because I'm not speaking in ebonics, that that means that I black people can't sound like you, black people can't speak like you, black people don't speak with your kind of cadence and enunciation, but black people don't do that. That's white people. I didn't say anything. I didn't speak up. I didn't defend myself. I didn't let her know how racist and insensitive that comment really was. When I I really should have. That's what I mean. it came together for me. That quote, that Zora No Hurson quote really came together with me when I thought about that situation. But I want to let you guys know for Whoever is doing this, if you're in that 39%, if you don't speak up because of how you might be perceived, other people would never actually hear what you think. They won't know what you actually have to bring to the table. As a matter of fact, being silencing interpreted as an agreement to something you're not even really on board with. Staying silent in a room. can be interpreted as acceptance or making it appear that something didn't bother you when it did, like how it bothered me when the my supervisor told me that I signed it, sounded white. It's about recognizing when fear of being stereotyped has become the reason you don't use your voice. So, at what point does adapting to the room become disappearing inside of it? I wonder. Maybe this today is a chapter where we stop editing ourselves too much. Midlife has made me look differently of how I show up. And I'll tell you, if I was the woman today. back in Pittsburgh, I don't even know that they would not like me. I wouldn't I I can't say that they wouldn't accept me. I put in my head that I wouldn't be accepted. So I'm asking myself if I even want to keep doing that, not about becoming inconsiderate, unprofessional, or or unwilling to adapt, because you have to do that, but I'm no longer assuming that who I am naturally needs to be corrected before other people could be comfortable or accept me. Let's change gears a little bit because I'm I don't know, I'm just getting all worked up and now I'm getting upset about all the things that I let slide and the fact that I pretended to be someone who I was for so many years. Let's transition into XR the NP. And of course, XR the NP is a segment where I take your questions, your concerns. They could be professional, personal, medical, whatever. And I answer them here on the podcast. And the question that I have right now is Sardet. I keep hearing that dense breasts can make mammograms harder to read. How do I know if I have dense breasts? And does that mean that I need more than a regular mammogram? honestly, I took this question from the podcast that I was discussing the details around my very first my very first mammogram and the answer to the question is dispress are very very very common okay as a matter of fact now they're we're they're starting to make it mandatory that if dispress are found in your mammogram that those that has to be interpreted on your mammogram result. And how do I know if I have dense breasts? Only way you can know if you have this breasts is if you get it on a mammogram. You can't really tell by filling during yourself breast exams if your breasts are really dense. Maybe you can, but we don't really recommend it. And we can't always correlate bra size or cup size by breast dense because there could be someone that has the large breasts and their breasts may not be as dense or as packed as someone who has, you know, just a cup breast. And does that mean that I need a more than a regular mammogram? Not necessarily, not necessarily. Guidelines state now that if you have dense breasts, you don't necessarily have to have a follow-up of ultrasound or MRI. However, if you do have dense breasts in the family history of breast cancers, then I don't think it would be a bad idea to go ahead and get additional imaging. As a matter of fact, you can ask your provider to just skip the mammogram altogether and just go ahead and get a breast image. All right. I hope that answers your question. So let's go ahead and get into the finer reflection. This the finer reflection is one of my favorite parts of the segment, and I want to know. What parts of yourself have you been fading to gray? What have you turned down? What have you hidden? I want to know what have you decided certain people weren't ready to see quite yet. Maybe living in curl lure isn't about becoming someone completely different. It's about allowing other colors that were already there to finally be seen. And you know what I'm gonna do? I am gonna go first. And I want you to do this exercise with me. All right. My name is Sharday. I'm a nurse practitioner. I have a master's degree in nursing. I have a bunch of nephews, but you know what? I don't like collard greens. I don't play spades well. I love Jerry Seinfeld. You know, but as a matter of fact, I ended up going to go see Jerry Seinfeld live for the very first time. It was this past summer. I was in Vegas and I sat front row. And the crazy thing about it is I thought that I was gonna sneak in to go see Jerry. And I'm looking around, and it's people of all different ages. And they're all different ages, all different races, enjoying Jerry Seinfeld. And I'm like, why have I hidden the fact that I am a huge Jerry Seinfeld fan for so long? When I'm looking around this room, and all these people can care less. Nobody is caring about what you're doing. Nobody's caring about the kind of music that you're listening to. It's crazy. And at the end of the day, I'm starting to realize that all these different pieces of me, just like all these different pieces of you, can exist together. Let's stop, let's break down stereotypes. Okay. Let's stop with the code switching. Let's stop letting people hurt you without letting them know that, hey, that in fact was BS, and that hurt. None of these things have to cancel out one another. I don't have to prove my education by distancing myself from my culture. I don't have to prove my blackness by checking off some imaginary cultural checklist. That is insane. So you know what? I hope that this resonated with you guys. Until next week. Talk to you later. Bye bye.