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This Is Not Right: Learning to Advocate for Yourself · Side Note...

• Melissa: Welcome to Side Note with Melissa, where personal stories spark deeper connections, conversations, and questions. Have you stood up for yourself? Overall in your life, have you stood up for yourself? Whether it was at a job or class, perhaps in a relationship? If so, when did you do it? Why did you do it? And how did you do it? Is it difficult for you to speak up or to speak out? I feel like in my experience and observations. The majority of people don't speak up. Now, maybe it's a little bit easier for them to stand up for others, but for this episode specifically, let's talk about standing up for yourself. By definition, advocating is publicly supporting a cause. In this case, it's supporting what you believe for yourself. Welcome to Side Note. This is episode 10. Let's talk about advocacy. Side note: this episode is definitely for men and women, but I think generally speaking, we know that women have a more difficult time advocating or standing up for themselves. So it may be geared more toward women. Now, to recap, I've taken you through the decades. In the last episode, I summarized my 30s. Which ended in me getting sober from alcohol. But throughout all of the decades, I told you in all of the episodes about various stories, situations in my jobs and careers and class and with my parents. There is a theme, a common thread, and that is that I have advocated for myself. And I've spoken up. So it could be as young as when I was in junior high and I spoke up to my parents, mostly my mom. Now I was not a problem child. I was actually a really good student. And I was a kid who didn't get in trouble, but I still saw things and felt certain ways that made me want to speak up. These things happened at home. At school, at work, in my personal life, and even at church. Even when I was in high school, something had happened and I remember thinking, that's not right. One of my English teachers, Mrs. Mitchell, I'll never forget it, she introduced me to this concept of writing a letter to the editor. That was one of the first times that I was able to use the written word to advocate for what I believed to be right. People often ask me, how did I learn to speak up? Or how did I learn to advocate? Because it is difficult for people to do this, in particular, as I said, women. This is actually something that not only is easy for me, but that I am quite passionate about. And again, that is advocating. Now How did I learn how to do this? Why is this so easy for me? Well, honestly, I think that I was born that way. And so I've always had this super awareness and sense of my observations or my surroundings, knowing when to speak up. In all seriousness, here's what I often hear in my head and I feel in my body. This is a constant. This is what I hear. This is not right. Whether I'm In a job, and I've been asked to do something, or I'm seeing something in my family at church. This is the sentence, the thing that I hear, and it is, this is not right. Or wait a second, what? Or whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What is going on here? Now I've had people through the years tell me, and I think they meant well. But I actually think it's not a good way to encourage people who are able to observe things like I did and do. But they would say, You're an overthinker, you're overthinking it, you're too sensitive, or just let it go, Melissa. In particular with jobs. Just let it go. Just go to work, do your job, get your paycheck, work towards retirement, get your health benefits, all of those things. And I tried that in particular for jobs, because I was always struggling with jobs. And so I would try that. I'd say, okay, okay, okay. I'm not gonna say anything. And I just couldn't. After a while, I just couldn't take it. If I saw something that I felt was wrong or unethical, I couldn't stand it. Now I think the other reason that I learned how to advocate, and the thing that made me feel this way is because I was a child of an alcoholic. I did grow up in a home with mental illness. So I think that I might have felt like I was not heard. And also I saw a lot of things that I just knew were not right. And oftentimes children of alcoholics have this elephant in the room where it's the parent who is having mental issues or addiction issues and nobody says anything and everybody kind of skirts around it. That drove me nuts. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is not right. I see the elephant. It's right in the middle of the room. Why doesn't everybody else see it? And so that I think is one of the reasons that I learned how to speak up at a younger age. And I think oftentimes people learn to be something, in my case an advocate, because it's what they want so badly and they're not getting it. And so they learn to do it for themselves and they learn to do it well for others. I also think that is just a gift that I was given by God. It is internal. It is a gift of mine to be able to advocate based on my intuition and my feelings. And I think that that's just the way that I was born. One of my biggest pet peeves in going through life became people who were not held accountable. Now, it's not rocket science to again look at my past and understand why that became a pet peeve of mine. I'm seeing something that is clearly wrong. And nobody is taking accountability. Nobody is saying, ⁓ My bad, that's on me. ⁓ I owe you an apology. I'm sorry. So this became a pet peeve of mine. Well, one of the ways to deal with that is to become somebody who can battle that. And again, somebody who has done something that is not good or ethical or moral or right and gets away with it is a big pet peeve of mine. The other way that I learned how to advocate was. literal training. Remember I shared with you in an episode of when I was in college and I had gone to an advisor and I expressed an interest in wanting to possibly be a pre-law student and go on to law school and the bad advice that I was given. So remember, I always kind of had this thought in my mind of being an advocate, which as far as careers are concerned, is usually Law of being a lawyer, but I actually got training in advocacy. So backing up a little bit in the last episode, remember I talked about at the end how I got sober. But at the end of my 30s and beginning of my 40s, I had three jobs. I was teaching English as a second language. I was nannying a family from Saudi Arabia. And Also a young boy who was Thai. And I was selling cupcakes at Enjoy Cupcakes in the Santa Barbara public market. And I just still wasn't making enough money. That whole time I was still applying for jobs because I just knew I couldn't continue working that much and I would never get ahead not making enough money as a nanny and a teacher and selling cupcakes. So I applied. For hundreds of jobs, not only in this period of time in in my late 30s and early 40s, but in my twenties and all of my thirties. I mean, this has also been a theme. It truly is a separate book about the jobs that I applied for, why I didn't get them, why that impacted the way that I think about my career, my education, and my life. I got so desperate. At one point. Again, now I'm forty, forty-one at the time, and I got so desperate that I almost made a move out of the country. Now remember, everything is connected. That Saudi family that I was nannying for, I was teaching the daughters English. At the school in the afternoons, I was nannying the young sons and I was teaching the mom how to drive because Saudi Arabia was then allowing women to drive if they went back to Saudi. Well, that Saudi family finished their classes at the English school in Santa Barbara and they moved not back to Saudi Arabia, they moved to Ecuador. And in my moment of desperation and Thinking I have got to get another job. They contacted me and said they wanted to hire me and pay me to move to Ecuador to help them start an ESL school. So I actually flew down there, met with them, drove around, looked at different sites, talked about salary and details and all of the stuff that goes with moving to Ecuador. To take a job and help the Saudi family start an English school. Imagine how different my life would be. I can't I can't even imagine. I mean, right before I made that big leap, I finally heard back from a job that I'd applied for. And that was with Pepperdine University. The Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, right off the PCH, overlooking the ocean. And I think everybody knows about Pepperdine, it's well known. I had applied for an admissions recruiter position for MBA students to recruit MBA students. This meant I would be working in higher education again. I would actually be using my graduate degree. But Pepperdine was opening a campus in Santa Barbara. So it met all of my requirements. I didn't have to move to Malibu. I couldn't have afforded that anyway. I would be working in higher ed, and it was actually a full-time salaried job. This came in the nick of time. So I interviewed, I got the job. I was now an MBA recruiter for Pepperdine University for the Santa Barbara campus. It was amazing. I had an office downtown. I was no longer nannying. I didn't sell cupcakes anymore. the English school was actually sold to another entity. So I would have lost that job anyway. So it came just in time. Now I will tell you at Pepperdine generally, it was a good experience. I had a salary, I had benefits, I made good friendships and good contacts. I completely, as always, loved working with the students, recruiting the students. meeting the professors, becoming friends with the professors and talking with them about higher ed and business and it was very helpful for me as a person and it was it was a good job. But there were issues with it that really surprised me. They hired me as a recruitment manager and this was right around the time when I don't I'll had already gotten sober. I was going to my AA meetings, but it was difficult because I was working about 60 to 70 hours a week at Pepperdine trying to recruit students. The hours were intense and I was becoming really discouraged. Now here's why. Remember Brooks Institute, the photography school that I got a job at in career services right after graduate school. And I quit because they were doing unethical things, because they were a proprietary school or for-profit school and they were fudging numbers and things like that. Well, Pepperdine was not a proprietary school. I mean, Pepperdine is Pepperdine. Everybody thinks Pepperdine is great, right? But all of a sudden, my supervisors and managers were pressuring me and pushing me, not only in the amount of hours that I worked during the week, But in the amount of students I had to recruit, it was like a sales position. I felt like I was a recruitment manager for the University of Phoenix. And I honestly felt a little bit guilty because I felt like I was keeping this secret about Heperdyne. Like, yeah, you just have to apply to get in because we need to fill these positions. And it was 90,000 a pop. I wasn't meeting the recruitment. Numbers and they were having us do like sales type things. We had to make so many calls a day. When I say so many, I mean a hundred calls. We had to log the calls. People would get annoyed at me and they would answer their phone and say, I told you I'm not interested. But then I log it as a call. I mean, it was not what I went to graduate school for. I went to graduate school to help students in higher ed, to support them, to encourage them. not to sell them something that they may or may not want later. I tried to make the most of it. It was very difficult. The hours were long. I was not having a good life balance. I remember one time I was driving to work. It was early morning and I hit a deer. And I was completely frazzled and stressed out. And I called my supervisor and said, I'm gonna be late. I got in trouble. She didn't actually believe me that I hit a deer. She thought I was making it up so I wouldn't have to go into work. I mean, like that's just one example. So during this time at Pepperdine, though, something great happened and lots of great things happened. Again, I've met and connected with people that I adored. I really respected the professors and I was in awe of them. And the MBA students that are recruited really enjoyed having them. And it was a night program. So we were there at night as well. I mean, it was again long hours. But something came up at Pepperdine and Pepperdine also is known for its law school. So I was recruiting for MBA students, but we got a notice that Pepperdine Law School was offering a mediation and negotiation. Training workshop for women. And I remember seeing it and it was a few thousand dollars. But as a staff person, we got a significant discount. I went through that week-long training through Pepperdine Law School and I got a certificate in mediation and negotiation. And let me tell you, it was hard. These were Pepperdine Law professors that were teaching the course. It was difficult, but I was in my element. And it was very affirming for me just realizing the approach that I took, the words that I used, the language that I used in order to advocate for myself in various situations, all those years. And now I was just learning tools to help me continue that. Well, that became very helpful later on with Pepperdine. Because let me tell you something. I was at Pepperdine for I think it was two, maybe three years. And because I wasn't meeting the numbers despite my very long hours, there were some issues regarding my job title and the hours that we were putting in and what was expected of us. They let me go and the program closed. No more Santa Barbara MBA program. So the classes graduated, and once again, I was let go. But me and one other person who was on the admissions team as an MBA recruiter, she and I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is not right. And we filed a class action lawsuit against Pepperdine University. I mean, can you imagine? Yeah, we did it. And I had the skills and I had the receipts and I had the exhaustion to prove it. Let me tell you something. Advocating is not easy. And sometimes you have to be persistent. And we persisted for eight plus years. And last year, after I had already moved to Texas and I'd been here for three years, last year I got notice from my lawyers. We won. We won the case. And it was class action. So we had advocated for several people that didn't even show up for the work that we had to do to advocate. And guess what? They were rewarded. Because of the advocacy that I did and my friend who also worked there did. So that's how I learned to advocate. I was born saying, wait a second, that's not right, and questioning things. Growing up in a home where I didn't feel heard and I wanted to be validated and acknowledged with what I was seeing was plain as day, and somebody needed to be held accountable. It was my natural intuition, my natural gift, my feelings. You add on training that I got in mediation and negotiation through Pepperdine, which later on I used to file a class action lawsuit, which lasted eight plus years, which I won in more than one way. The people that supervise me are no longer at Pepperdine. That alone was helpful to me. That alone was accountability. So again, this Advocating for myself has been a thread throughout my life. And it's really, really important. You know, when I think about advocating, there are two types ⁓ of advocacy, generally speaking, that I have come up with. The first one is just sort of your life situations. You know, you're at work, you've got a supervisor who is not treating you well. You've got something in your relationship, something going on with your partner, and he or she is. Doing something or saying something that isn't right. Maybe it's your health. Maybe your doctor is not helping. But also the other type of advocacy is sort of this bigger philosophical way of advocating for yourself. For example, me getting sober was very much advocating for myself and for my life, looking around at my life and going, this is not right. This is not working and I need to change some things and I need to get sober. Philosophically, your you know, the bigger picture advocacy could also be getting a divorce. You know, it's not just a supervisor who's verbally abusing you. We're talking your marriage and you deciding to get a divorce. That's advocating for yourself in a big way and in your life. But I think the other reason that I'm so passionate about advocating is because I think about the things that happen if you don't advocate. The first one is that if you don't have a voice, if you feel like you can't speak up and speak out, I feel, in my opinion, that causes illness, mental and physical. Side note, in my twenties and If you've listened to the other episodes, you remember in my 20s, when I was married and I was stressed out and I was working tons of jobs, I was not happy in my marriage, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in my early 20s. I was in so much pain. Who wants to be in that much pain when they're in their early 20s? Maybe when you're in your 90s. But I even knew then what is going on. I should not be feeling this much pain. And it was because I felt like I couldn't speak up at that time to my in-laws, to my husband. But I'll tell you what, if you've listened to the episode, you remember I finally did speak up. And I finally did say, no, I'm not going to do that. And after two years of symptoms of pain, my fibromyalgia was gone. So again, I feel like there are Things that will happen if you don't advocate for yourself. And if the messages are coming through and you're not paying attention to them, they will continue to come through. Even Chinese medicine talks about stagnation. You know, this idea of stuckness. This is where disease starts. If you have any stagnation from repressing your feelings and not getting it out and not talking about it. That causes a stagnation and a stuckness and can cause disease and illness. But what else happens if you don't advocate? No accountability. The people who are misbehaving are not held accountable. And then the pattern continues, whether it's institutionally or individually. The pattern continues. This is not good. So the next question is: when do you advocate? When should you advocate? Well, as I said a minute ago, if you feel like, ⁓ that makes me uncomfortable, I won't kinda want to say anything. ⁓ no, I'm not going to. But then it keeps bothering you. You keep thinking about it. You hear the little whisper. Then it comes in louder. If you don't address that, it will keep bothering you. And if you keep hearing that voice, that's when you need to speak up because it's not going away. Now, I do think it's important to choose your battles. I'm doing this more and more as I get older. So you realize like, yeah, I'm not bothering with that. I'm not taking the time to do that. I have limited time on this planet. I'm not doing that. Even certain things now for me, things that I quote unquote should advocate for, I choose not to because of peace. But again, that's a conversation for you to have either with somebody you trust or with yourself. Is this important? Do I need to do this? But life will always test you. Especially if you're paying attention. And I've seen it my entire life. You're always going to be tested. And if you learn how to advocate when you're younger, it's going to be such an amazing life skill for you to carry throughout your life. My question for you, aside from the question that I started with, and that is, do you stand up for yourself? And if you have, how did you do it? When did you do it? How did it make you feel? But I have another question for you. Has anybody Ever advocated for you? I want to ask you this because I want to see how that made you feel. Generally, I've never had that. I've had a little bit here and there. I don't mean your bestie who's supporting you through a divorce. I mean somebody who is big time advocating for you and speaking up for you and saying, I've got your back. And they're actually speaking it out loud and they're saying, she is right and you are wrong. I've actually never had that. There was one time at Santa Barbara City College when I had a union rep who kind of acted as an attorney for me. And I didn't ask her to do it. I think that was the big difference. Because the lawyers at Pepperdine, I paid them to do it. That's different. They're lawyers, that's their job. But this union rep, I think it was a 10-minute conversation and she spoke up for me. And she validated everything I said. And the feeling I had of somebody standing up for me was so powerful. But what it did teach me is I need to learn how to do this for myself. Again, I also advocate for others. I've done that my whole life. We're talking Women's Resource Center, teaching English as a second language, helping first-generation college students. It's advocacy all over the place. But Standing up for myself, I learned how to do that because I knew overall in life you cannot depend on people doing it for you. Thank you so much for listening to Side Note with Melissa. If these stories resonated with you, please share this episode with a friend. Don't forget to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube, and feel free to leave a comment. You can also follow and connect on my Instagrams, Side Note with Melissa.com. or June Bloom Lavender. And I hope my crazy convoluted stories made you laugh, smile, and even reflect on your own chapters. This podcast is brought to you by June Bloom Lavender, a lavender speakeasy in the Texas Hill Country. June Bloom specializes in handcrafted lavender gifts and a premium skincare line made with lavender harvested each summer by owner Melissa Broughton, that's me, in Santa Barbara County, California.