Latest / Creative Roots Podcast / Racial Healing Is More Than A Thought - Dr. Lisa Collins | Ep. 60

Transcript

Racial Healing Is More Than A Thought - Dr. Lisa Collins | Ep. 60 · Creative Roots Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: And when we think about civil rights and everything that's happened for us, I mean they had like a whole I didn't see this day coming, but you know, maybe somebody else did, but I I will elaborate on it, and I would say everybody knows what racial trauma is.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: I want all people to realize we can be free.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have to be truth in the air, let it speak.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: Love it, love it, love it, love it, love the conversation.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, very honored about Juneteenth.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's just so perfect right now.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: So um I'm just very honored to have this opportunity to talk to you.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and I appreciate it because I was talking to Caroline and you know, she was saying how you know we were gonna set things to where we can both be on each other's podcast.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, well, the month of June, I'm trying to reach out to, you know, people to make you know June, uh the whole month of June be more like a uh Black History Month, you know, compared to choosing February out of, you know, normality.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, but I haven't really found it.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: But she's like, oh, I've got the perfect person.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like, okay, Caroline, let's go.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: And she gave me, she wrote everything down.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: She wrote your email, uh, not your email, but your uh your website.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, okay, cool.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: She said, I put it in your notebook.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Oh, okay, cool.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, what notebook did she put it in?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I had like two or three notebooks that day.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I had to go find them.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I had to go find out where she put it, and I was like, okay, let me contact Lisa now.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then one of my kids called me and I forgot.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: But when I got back in my office, I said, nope.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: I said, we're gonna go ahead, we're gonna send this email right now.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, well, I don't know where I should send it to.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'll send it to both.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: That way I know she got it or her team got it.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, well, now we wait.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: So when we responded, I was like, oh, oh, I say, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: I say, yeah, I'm excited about this one.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: So yes.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: So listen, y'all, welcome back to another episode of Creative Roots Podcast with Seeds Zone become visions grown.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we are sitting here with Lisa Collins from coming to the table.org.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to let her explain everything about her company because y'all know Tay don't like to get that stuff wrong.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, Lisa, can you introduce yourself and let everybody know about the things that you do?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: I absolutely will.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Dr.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: Lisa Collins.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'm an assistant professor, a small business owner, consultant, and I did start the Portland chapter of coming to the table, which is a national organization that deals with racial harmony, healing racial trauma.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and that is part of what we will be talking about today.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you say you started the Portland chapter.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I know you all, y'all know you all are national.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: I started to dig, but I say, you know what?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: If I dig, I know the answer.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'll ask Lisa.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: So can you let everyone know where else the organization is just in case they're interested instantly?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: I would, if they're interested, they should go to Coming to the Table and just sign up to be a member, and you will be directed to the chapter nearest to you.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: They are coast to coast.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: And really interesting, the founder of Coming to the Table is a white man from Portland, Oregon, who found out that his name is Tom DeWolf, that his family were enslavers, and that caused him to take some actions and to dig, and that is the beginning of coming to the table, which comes from a quote from Dr.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: King, that one day they will all come to the table.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's powerful.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: The reason I say that's powerful because that that's one of those things that comes from a speech that most people probably wouldn't think to use.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, especially coming from Dr.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: King, and you think about like you said, this is coming from um man, my people are kept slaves.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't sit well with me.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: So let me do something about it.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and it's let me find out what happened, yes, and why and they made a film and they did a documentary of his family going back to where this happened, and so um I think it's like on PBS.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: You could easily find this film.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's like coming to the I'll I'll get the actual name of it, but he made a film, he he got together with his family.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: What are we gonna do about this?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and that makes a difference because most people would have been like, oh, brushed it off and kept going.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, some people don't even dig deep into that history.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Some people don't dig at all, you know.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: No, they don't.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: No, they don't.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: And my other work, my my my my work in racial healing is came from the trauma work that I did, like the strategies for trauma awareness and resilience.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: And that particular work comes from peace builders, and it's part of coming to the table.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I didn't know that.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know it came from peace builders, it came from the Mendonites.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: I had no idea who they were, even I never heard of them.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: I just went to the training because it was in a location I wanted to go to.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and it changed my life.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: And what was that word you said?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: You said the racial something.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: The racial racial reconciliation.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't say reconciliation, it was um, I don't remember.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: I want to say you basically said racial trauma, right?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, racial trauma, absolutely.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's what my work is.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's my scholarship, is in racial trauma, racial healing, rather.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, oh, we're gonna go with racial healing.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Can you elaborate on that a little bit for those that aren't fully aware of what that what that entire uh entails?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: I I will elaborate on it, and I would say everybody knows what racial trauma is.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: They've experienced it or they have seen it.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so when we talk about trauma, everybody knows what trauma is.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: Or some people don't know.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: In my book, The Truth About Trauma, is about all of the healing I've done, and the specific things are in my book that came out last year.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: Well, what I know about trauma is that it happens in the body, you feel some kind of way.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: So if you think about racial trauma, like you know, you walk in a room, you feel some kind of way.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: And or if you have kids, they say the teacher doesn't like me.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well, what did the teacher do?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: And the kid can't they can't tell you exactly.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, oh, come on now.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: They feel some kind of way, like they know in their body they're feeling something.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's what trauma is, and racial trauma is think about the oppression, think about the systemic things that we live with day to day based on race, or watching other people like secondary, vicarious trauma, me watching you be harmed.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: We are all in it right now.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, my question to you, straight out of the gate, with with now that we have the foundation laid, what led to you starting the chapter in Portland?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, I'm gonna tell you.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna tell you.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: You said that like it's a lot.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it goes back.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, what happened was I got my dissertation, and in my dissertation, I studied racial, I studied myself.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: I did an autoethnography, I studied my lived experience in three school districts in the Pacific Northwest.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: And what I found is that I experienced racial trauma four times more than healing.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I wrote a racial trauma healing framework, but I wrote that framework based on the trauma framework that I just mentioned, Star, Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: And after I wrote that, see, you see, I'm piecing it together, the story.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: A man in Portland was killed by the college police.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: A black man was killed by the college, the college police.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: They were carrying guns at that time, and they killed this brother named Jason Eric Washington.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: And when I heard about it, something in me broke.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I have three black sons, and I sat down and I wrote a piece, a play, and it's called Be Careful What You Ask For.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: So COVID comes around, and that play gets into a play festival, but it has to be filmed.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: And all these people came out of the woodwork for this film.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: Be careful what you are short, be careful what you ask for.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: And when people saw it, something broke in them.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like I saw people, um, I call it racial consciousness.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: Pablo Ferry calls it critical consciousness.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: What it means is that you're able to see the oppression, you're able to see where things are not working, not because of you, not because of you, because that's the fishbowl that we're all in.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: And when I saw my European Americans, my white colleagues getting broke watching this film, they start coming to people start coming, asking all kinds of people, all nationalities, God, thank you for the film.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, I gotta do something, I gotta capitalize on people wanting healing.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I started the chapter.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, pick up on that momentum and carry it while people are interested, while people want to know.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to be able to take that while it's in the moment and do something.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a lot of times they say, you know, when it comes to music, have a follow-up.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: If this blows, what's next?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you're a photographer or videographer, okay, you've done this, what's next?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so even in this space, especially when it comes to the community, you can't have a lot of people, in a sense, riled up and ready to march, but no destination to give them.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: So am I preaching a little girl?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: For real.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Come on.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: You preaching to me, come on.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's so true.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it because it happens a lot.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you have people that are there, you have this momentum, and then you're like, I reached a point.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, you reached a point, but you have to continue to go past that point.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: You can't sit when you have a lot of people behind you, like, all right, what's going on?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: What are we doing?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: What's next?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I applaud you for starting that chapter.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because for you to start the chapter, that means that this this um the organization was already in play, correct?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's national.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess you just reached out and said, Hey, I want to start the chapter in Portland.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: What needs to happen?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: I I did.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: I I had a colleague, a friend, when my film came out, uh, my friend Alicia, um, she invited her sister, who was a police officer, to come to because I had a talk back after, but it was invitation only.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I've been down this road before.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: Invitation only talk back, and she invited her sister to come.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so she didn't tell me until she was like, you know, I invited my sister, she's a police officer.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: She didn't tell me till afterwards that her sister was so impressed with the film, and that her sister insisted that their cousins sit down and watch this film together.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: That let me know that there was something higher than me that was going on with this film, and that when people can gather around it, for some reason it opened up a little window they could talk about racial dynamics.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: Not mine, yours.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's all of our problems, it's not just my problem, it's your problem.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: So that that spurred me to say, Alicia, come on.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: And and she's a European-American, she's a white, she's a white woman.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, we do this together, yeah, and we did.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that that says a lot too, because I think people tend to forget that even with Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party as strong black organizations as we know them to be, I feel a lot of people forget that there were white people that were there.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm with you.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, we do need to do that.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel sometimes people take this oh, well, it's not a real black organization if it started from you know a white person or if it has white people helping.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: My response to that is if that's an issue for you, jump on board.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, because if you feel that white people will never understand, and I'm heavily paraphrasing all of that into that one statement, help the other ones understand.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Understand where this person is coming from.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because, like you said, and that's what's so yeah.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, go ahead.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you no, go ahead.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: That's what's so great about coming to the table because it is it is a reconciliation with ourselves, not anybody else.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: So we have white members who come who find out that their family were in slavers, and you know what?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: They call me on fire.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like this one lady called, and she was she was in a trauma response once she found out her history, and it wasn't okay with her.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: She didn't know what to do, she didn't have a place to go.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_02: I come to the meeting, yes, and then there's other people there whose families are enslavers who want to work.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: If we don't burn through it, we're not gonna get to the end, and we just seem to be stuck in the trauma part of it, but not the healing part of it, and so my work is healing racial trauma and trauma healing, yeah, because you have to get through it.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think it was uh Valia a few episodes ago.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: She's like trauma, healing, or something about healing from trauma is it has no destination.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: It like it has no end point, like it's it's a journey that you have to continue to go through.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that, like you said, some people kind of just sit in the trauma and it's kind of like they just use it as a vice in a sense of why they do what they do and act the way that they do, compared to okay, I've identified the problem, how do I resolve it?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: What's coming up for me?
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, what's I'm thinking about Nick Cannon when he made the comment about like I have all these the all the kids he has and about his trauma, and I end up writing a medium post about it.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, he brought up this thing, but he didn't name the foundation of that.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: About uh, you know, the black community as a whole has been traumatized.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: The lineage of black Americans is traumatized from way back and fighting for civil rights, fighting for our lives, fighting for education, still being treat, mistreated in school daily, being killed on the regular.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like we have not stopped to say, hey, we just gotta like pause and reset our nervous systems and come out on the other side.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: What's so great about the strategies for trauma awareness and resilience is you've noticed that you're on the cycle of trauma.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: You break free a healing community of support.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say that your podcast is that, right?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: People are getting healing and restitution from just you doing your work in the world, right?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: Acknowledgement and reconnection with yourself.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: And what I see is the cycles, and we never get off the cycles, right?
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: So, and when we think about civil rights and everything that's happened for us, I mean, they had like a whole bunch of people doing a whole bunch of things.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: They weren't just protesting, they had people with money, you know, to get them out of jail.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: They had researchers, all the women were doing the organizing, they couldn't be the face, the men were the face.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: It was strategic.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I talk a lot of let's be strategic about our healing, let's be strategic about what we're doing, yeah.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: And things like that take a team.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like going to therapy.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: You can't go through healing without someone there to help um shape what's going on.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you think about trauma is like a big blob, and we put this, it's like a liquid.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: It takes the shape of whatever we put it in.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to under, yes, so your trauma can go from this big old gallon jug to a little baby cup of water at the local restaurant, and it's not saying that you're just getting rid of it, but you're pouring it out to where you don't have to worry about so much, and that's basically your healing.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: You you need to pour out from what you've healed from, you know.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: So having this conglomeration, this team, everybody can feed off of each other.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to carry everything.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yes, it's still your trauma, it's still your healing, but like you said, you don't have to carry it by yourself, you know.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: So with your short film, because I need to see this, I really need to see it.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know you had to see Yes, please.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a playwright and and uh an academic, a playwright, an author, yes, um, a trauma practitioner, a life coach, and a filmmaker.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you're doing all the things to help shape this, and I applaud you again for that because again, there are people that aren't doing anything but complaining.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're using it.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: So with your short film, when you had the the multitude of people reaching out to you, how how quick were you able to enact on um creating a short film?
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that's a great question.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: You know, everything that I have done, the universe, I'm guided, I'm guided by spirit.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like the universe has like moved me from one place to the next.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I wrote I wrote the short, and then after the short was after I wrote it as a play, and because of COVID, it became a film, and people came on board.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: So that film came out in 2021.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it came out in 2021.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: And it has been in film festivals, it has um, and people were so moved.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: So I, you know, when I was during that time, they had us do a media thing.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like a media, it was a media night where people, reporters ask you questions, and it was on Zoom because of COVID and all that.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: And the first question was asked of me was why are there not any black people in this film?
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I wanted to like say some cuss words, and I I didn't.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I said, because people listen differently when when white people are speaking.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: And the film is a husband and wife having a cup of coffee talking about the state of the nation.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: All the things.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: If you saw the film right now, you would think, is it written for right now?
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: Is it written for this very moment?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: And at the end, Black Lives.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Come up, and at the end, I don't want to give away in case people want to watch it, and I don't want to give away the end.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: But what ends up happening for people is I'll just say the uh husband is upset about black about black lives being taken, and he is a white man, and that does something to people.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: And the person who asked me that called me crying after watching the film, saying my whole family needs to watch this.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I knew like it happened fast, people came on, I'm professionally filmed, professional sound, actors, a whole nine yards.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: That that's from up above.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'll take that.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because for you two have it written, and then again, you know, people that just like, I want to help, they help, especially during COVID, because a lot of people were not even trying to go see family members.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people weren't trying to leave the house.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I feel COVID traumatized a few people as well.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: Completely.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: We haven't dealt with that.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, it totally did.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, just like you talk about there's so many different kinds of traumas.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: So we have individual trauma, collective trauma, we have participatory trauma.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: That means if you're just doing your job, that can be traumatized.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: We talk about first responders, teachers.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: We have structural trauma, cultural trauma, historical trauma.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we have a lot of traumas.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: We have dignity violations, and we're all it's a it's a pool.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: We're swimming in it all the time.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: And what happened for me that kind of like centers my work is that I realized it was happening to me and that I was swimming in it and I didn't know it.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: And that made me want to say, hey, let me share my experience.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: So my book, The Truth About Trauma, is sharing, hey, this is what this is what I felt.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: This is my arrogance around this whole thing.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: These are the things that I did to bring healing to myself so that I could do what I'm supposed to be doing in the world.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: And there's nothing wrong with that.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: You have to know where you are in order to get to where you need to get to.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: Did I word that right?
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: In order to go where you're trying to get to, you need to know what you're dealing with now.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, that's just life.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: And like you said, I feel people are, I don't want to say oblivious, but people are I was oblivious.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: I was oblivious.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll go with that.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: People are oblivious to certain things.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, going back to the the top of the conversation, some of this stuff is embedded in your DNA and you don't know it anymore.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, because it's it's uh again, it's a feeling.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so you feel these things, and some of that stuff is just again already embedded in you before birth.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: So you sense it, you feel it, and you just know what's wrong.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: So knowing you have the book, you have the short film, and I guess you I I want to say founder so bad, but you f uh started the Portland chapter of coming to the table.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: How has friends and family supported everything that you're doing at the uh I guess from then to now?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: That's an interesting question.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, the journey started as a by taking the that trauma course, that peace builder course in 2015.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: So I I ended up becoming a star, like a uh trauma trainer uh in that in that in that denomination, in that not denomination, in that model.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: Friends and family, they didn't they watch me change from the outside.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like they watched, they didn't know what was like really going on.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: I come from a family that um, you know, there's alcoholism in my family, there's sexual abuse in my family.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: My last play, uh Highway 8, which was uh produced in April, a short, it was uh a reading, a stage reading.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: There's there's sexual abuse is a lineage of sexual abuse in my family.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm naming and saying things that is invisibilized in my family.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: We don't talk about that.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: We don't want to, you don't want to talk about that.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: Not out loud.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_02: We don't want to talk about no.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: So what I am done through creativity and through my walk is pull the covers off.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: So I think sometimes my my I think my family is sometimes uncomfortable.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, I guess I was married to a man, now I'm married to a woman.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean my life is you know, I think I'm just on the shelf a little bit.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: They're proud of me, and I think what I bring up, I'm pulling the covers off.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: I'm looking at my generations, I'm looking at my children, my grandchildren.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: I want them to be able to be free.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: That makes sense.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: That makes sense.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um again, especially with everything that you know, you know, some people call those generational curses.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we gotta get find those, and we have to be the ones to break them.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, regardless of how old we are when we recognize it, it takes one person to break it.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: I had to.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: I had to.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I had to, yes, and so my use my life as an example.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I was I was molested at the age of four.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: Four is a baby.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, that is a baby, and so it how did I heal that?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: How did it inform my relationships and how I saw things?
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: And the the tricky thing about trauma is that you think it's you, you think it's who you are, and it's not who you are at all, you make it a part of your identity instead of a situation that took place.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: And it's hard to know, it's so buried, it's so buried, and so it was almost like the universe was just like moving me from place to place, and then I would get a little bit, then get a little bit more, and all of it is compiled in the truth about trauma, which I will start a podcast probably next month.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: I was about to say soon.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, so thinking back, um touching on a lot of things for the black community, right?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: We know what we've been through, we know what our grandparents have had to deal with, great grandparents, you know, um the whole lineage, right?
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um is there anything specific?
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I know this is gonna be a broad question, but is there anything specific that you feel is still being swept under the rug of just the things that we've had to deal with as a culture?
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's probably like everything, like our lived experience, because we're always fighting, and then we are such a loving people, we'll fight for you.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: We fight for ourselves, and then we will turn around and pull you really close, and we will fight for you.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I think like for us, what I would love to see, what my dream is, and Martin Luther King had a dream.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_02: I have a dream that we have these healing places in every city.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: And coming to the table is a healing space, but I'm talking about a space where you could come and say what you need to say.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: I would love that for the black community.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I would love that because some of the things that I have learned through my lineage and some of the things that I've learned through the lifestyles that I've had were things to protect me.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: And when they stop protecting you, you and they're doing more for you or to you than for you, like you know, alcoholism, drug addiction, um, you know, unhealthy dating or unhealthy sexual experiments, whatever the thing is out there right now, fentanyl, marijuana, whatever the thing is, I didn't see at the core what was there.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: What was there at the core is love and good, always.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I would love for the black community to have a place where they could come, and trauma's so complex, and just kind of like peel a little bit.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: First, it starts with attunement, someone being there for you, not shaming your experience, and some of the things that we do to each other have been taught throughout generations, too, and they're not loving to us, right?
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so what you what I hear too is the fact that we are not who you see on TV.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: There's a huge difference between the majority of what you see on TV, and I know for me, I used to watch certain shows.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not even gonna say any names, but I'm pretty sure everybody can just think of two or three instantly when I say this.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: But there are shows that start out good and it's like majority black cast, and then it takes a left.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: And now we're robbing, we're stealing, we're killing, we're dealing with, you know, the sex, you know, all of these things are now a part of a TV show, and I'm like, I thought this show was about music, I thought this show was about being a business owner, and here we are flipping the coin, and this show isn't any better than the shows that don't have us fully cast it, but we're the thugs, we're the gangsters.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: Why do we continuously put these out?
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're entertaining.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to be entertained off of continuously putting the black community down.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: You are bringing up so much right now by that statement.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: You're bringing up so much for me.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like I barely can contain myself right now.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: I would I just finished like um spending a couple days in Atlanta with my my dear friend Dr.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: Muhammad Khalifa.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_02: And what Dr.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_02: Khalifa talks about is he talks about all the ways that we are treated goes back to the debate: are the dark bodies savage or are they subhuman?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: And those debates that they had back in like in the 1500s of putting us in like if they if they're savage, then we must treat them and we must give them humanity.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: If they're subhuman, they don't have a soul because they don't have a god, and he traces everything back to this debate and then also back to the extermination of the Moors all the way till today.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: So, and we know during the war that we didn't want the Englishmen did not want their women chasing black men.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: So they said they have a tail, they have huge genitalia, they're like animals.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: We know that through minstrel shows and history.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: Then today, what are we doing?
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_02: We're re-traumatizing, we're putting in front of us, trying to don't give me, I'm starting to preach, the well, the poison well that we see in media.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, that we are this, and that it's a trope.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a trope.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: All of it is for us to drink the Kool-Aid of the self-hatred that's being put before us.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's not true.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_02: No, that's not who we are.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's not where we came from, it's not who we are by a long shot.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now, every culture has his bad seeds, you know, but that's I would honestly say I don't even I wouldn't even say that's 2%.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't even say that's 5% of, you know, black people or people of color in general, you know, but if you're gonna treat us like savages, you have to do a whole lot, go back a whole lot further than you know, in history to see where we truly come from.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: Where we and they don't want us to know that, right?
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_02: They don't want us to know the greatness, right, the number systems they're using right now.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_02: They don't want us to know who we are, but guess what?
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: They cannot stop us.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: No, and I feel good, bad, neutral, we will always be a threat.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not saying it in a bad way, but when you think about it, we have created so much that has been taken from us.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: One of the biggest things that has been taken from us is the um the school programs when it comes to food.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: The Black Panther Party started this whole free lunch, free breakfast program, and I can't remember who wrote it, but they wrote in their letter that is the greatest threat to the government.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: How is it feeding kids who can't eat at home a threat?
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's never sat with me to make sense.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I know I can't be the only one, but all we're trying to do is feed these kids and give them, you know, rise to school and make sure that they're taken care of in these low-income areas, and you call that a threat.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: We cannot.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_02: I think Jeff Andradi says it the best.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: He says this is the only this is the system is so perfectly created that it harms you and you think you're the problem.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: So when you're feeding children, we must interrupt that.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_02: Because I know as an educator, I taught elementary, middle, and high school.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_02: I was assistant principal, I was a director of programs, that that food that does come into the school comes from the government.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_02: And we see the political context of where the government has put its hands in everything that we need to do to take care of ourselves.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_02: Black Wall Street, Tulsa, gone.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, every city, a freeway must go through your neighborhood, and it's not gonna go through Bill's neighborhood, but it's gonna go through yours.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, the hospital's gonna be there, you're gonna be disrupted.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: Why?
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_02: Why must my lineage be disrupted?
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_02: Right, because we cannot have you having the wealth that you have.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: We must interrupt it through policies, through procedures.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um what I would love for the black community to do is to be together, do healing and organizing in a way that's not asking for permission.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_02: We don't need permission for you.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: We don't.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: No, I mean, we do have organizations that don't necessarily say uh we're focusing on trauma, but we do have organizations that can help you through trauma, if that makes sense.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I'm saying?
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like we have coming to the table, right?
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about everybody.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I love to include everybody and let them exclude themselves, correct?
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you have organizations that are created for men, that are created for women, then you have organizations that are created for children, you have organizations created for the whole family, but we must be the ones to take advantage of all these different programs and um organizations compared to just stepping back or staying back.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you know, um yeah, so from from that, when it comes to I don't want to say niching down, but when it comes to making this thing plain, is there a statement that you would make that just says here's one sentence take this and carry it with you.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_02: What we know about everything is that trauma happens in the body.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_02: Start connecting to your body, start instead of ignoring your body, start connecting to your body.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: That's the beginning of healing.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I have two things that I I make for a bar for myself.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_02: Eat when you're hungry, go to the bathroom when you need to go to the bathroom.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: If you can do those two things every day, you are connecting to your body.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: Your body is telling you something, stop ignoring it.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_02: Pay attention to it, and then the universe will just show you the next thing.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's like following the yellow big road.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: Healing is possible for all of us.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I my life is a my life is a testament to that.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: Me sitting here in front of this camera is a testament to that, you know, for those that have seen multiple episodes, you you hear me say I didn't want to be in front of a camera, and things go all the way back to like pre-birth childhood trauma, you know, from what I found out from um an NET uh session, right?
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: You have to just start listening.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: Those triggers in your brain, like you said, oh, I'm hungry, go eat.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I have to go to the bathroom, go.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: Don't say, I'll go in 20 minutes.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'll go when I get done with this.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: Your body is constantly talking to you.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter if it needs something to come in or if it needs something to go out.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like you said, you have to listen.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm working on that myself.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm working on that myself because my body is constantly telling me, sit down, don't do anything.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: Today we rest.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: Rest.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I will fight and say, But I gotta get this done.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta get that done.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta go.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: I have to do what is on my to-do list and my honeydo list, and I have to I'll rest tomorrow.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: But then that day comes and it's like, now I have to go do this, and I gotta go here and go there, and it's like, oh my God, I'm not supposed to be doing anything today, but you know, I'm I'm still working on myself to get in that space of when your body says stop, nothing is important to stop except stop, don't wait to get sick, don't wait to get sick, right?
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: No need to wait to get sick, right?
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: Pause and take a breath.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and the the uh cycles of trauma experience is acting in things that are happening in your body and acting out.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_02: You it's not like lashing out at other people, it's you kind of it is lashing out, you blaming other people for different things, but just think how you feel, how you feel when you go to like if you're I I fish.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_02: So if you fish or are you on a boat or you do something that it just makes you feel so good, either one of those don't make you feel good.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_02: So I want you to break free.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_02: I want all people to realize we can be free, we don't have to be, and you know what?
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_02: Oppression wants us to be spinning, yes, it does constantly moving, yep, yes, in a negative way, yes, and if we work together, if we come together, and it's hard to find a place where to start because it could be so overwhelming.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: But I really say just begin and don't be by yourself.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: Get a friend, reach out to me, reach out to me.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_02: Let's let's talk online, let's let's start a group.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_02: I say I say yes, I say yes to healing.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we all should, and like you said, just start.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter which part you start.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you I feel I I look at this too, like a lot of people don't know where to start, and even in that motion, whatever that thought is, that inclination, nah, that can't be it.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: That that might be your starting point.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: If there are multiple starting points, go with all of them.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: Go with all of them.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that way you can't.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: Pull the thread.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_02: I always say pull the thread.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, at least that way you can say.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: I started the process compared to doing nothing, you know, overthinking it.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because we can definitely overthink so much in life.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: We shouldn't overthink how to be healed, how to recenter ourselves, how to find our balance again, you know, and it's something that just runs rampant in our community, in our culture.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: I see it.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_02: It does.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a part of it.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_02: It does.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: So and I think the you know, the truth about trauma talks about you know, your body, your mind, your spirit.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: Because once you start with your body, you can start paying attention to yourself.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: The next step is you go into your mind, like what things are racing through your mind.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_02: If it's not you're wonderful, you're amazing, it's not you.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: If it's a negative thought, it's not yours.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_02: And then your spirit.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what I found is that when I worked on my body, then I worked on my mind, and there's tools throughout the book for that, as well as you can write through it like a journal.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_02: Then I was able to connect to all I would have never, ever thought I would be a Reiki practitioner, a medium.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_02: I would have it.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_02: How did that stuff happen?
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: I never thought I would be sitting here having a multitude of conversations with people about so many different things from photos, video to sitting here with you now talking about an organization that is being pushed to help the black community with all races attached to it.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I didn't see this day coming, but you know, maybe somebody else did, but I I didn't, you know.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, so uh I'm and I'm gonna have to do this properly, Dr.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: Collins.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh if there was anything that you could leave to the viewers right now concerning black history, um, or just getting in a creative bat because you, you know, you you have you're an author, you've done films, you've done playwrights.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: What advice would you give to anybody, however you want to give that advice to them?
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the first thing I would say to whoever's listening, whoever watches this, is that I love you.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_02: If no one's told you they love you today, I love you.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I know that love rules everything, and we live in a very harmful place.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it's just like it doesn't seem like there's hope, but I'm gonna tell you there's hope.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: There is always hope.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I also would say that whatever you're going through, whatever challenges that you have, that there is someone, and that's someone may be me or somebody else that can be with you, that you don't ever have to be alone, ever, ever, ever have to be alone, and that you can heal, whether it's coming to the table, that's doing racial reconciliation work, um, coming to the table is moving past enslavement, moving past it together.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_02: So that means, you know, my white brothers and sisters, it's for you too to look at yourself.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then I would say when it comes to trauma, trauma is so pervasive that start small, you know, body, mind, spirit, look for the truth about trauma podcast because it's coming your way.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I have other um free resources uh on my website.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_02: You can find coming to the table through coming to the table, I think.org.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_02: I think you said that earlier.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_02: And the other thing, coming to the table is doing a liberation right now, is they are taking the path of Harriet Tubman, they're walking the path of Harriet Tubman, which has been done before, but they're doing it, literally doing it as a like, how can we liberate ourselves during these times?
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think people needed to hear that.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because, like you said, a lot of people don't hear I love you.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: And we covered a lot today.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm glad we had this conversation.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't expect to, you know, get in preacher mode just a little, just a little bit.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't expect that today.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um Well, I went there.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and and I feel I feel educated, especially with, you know, the whole coming to the table aspect, and then the film, you know, everything that you've done.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: So this was definitely um eye-opening for me.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um so now I'm going to open the table uh for you to ask me a question, give advice, make a comment, whatever it is that you you want to say, the floor is yours again.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_02: I want to ask you.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, because you know, we we just met.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_02: I want to ask you.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_02: I know that you came from someplace to this place, and so in your journey of healing yourself, what was the pivot point for you?
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: The pivot point to start healing that happened some years ago, and I just realized that I was just always angry and I was always ready to fight.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: And one day I said, God, what is wrong with me?
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: What is wrong with me?
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: Why does some of the smallest things irk my nerves to where I'm ready to go either throw hands or shoot up a place?
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it was as like in that very moment, you know how you watch The Matrix, and then they're standing in the hallway, and all these rows of shelves just fly by.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: It was like that, and it was just realization of everything that has taken place in my life, you know, memories just coming back, and it just it was like a very big anxiety attack without the anxiety, because everything just flashed, and I was like, Oh my god.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I kind of had to just sit and do one of these because I had no words.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_01: And when that took place, I said, Okay, I need to work through all of this.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: There are certain things that are still being worked out, certain things that are still being worked on, but I'm not as angry as I used to be.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm not feeling like I always have to, and this was another thing.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is one of the biggest things.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have to be anybody's savior.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that that was the biggest thing.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have to be anybody's savior.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_01: Reality sits and I'm sitting in it, and I just think that the majority of the times where I'm angry, I'm ready to fight, I'm ready to do like three, six mafia says and tear the club up, you know, I I have all these things, and it basically comes from me holding on to somebody else's feelings, me taking on their feelings as my own, and now I'm ready to act.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it's you can't do that.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then when my daughter was born, the bar was raised.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: I I can't do that anymore.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: Y'all got it.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_01: Don't call me.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: Y'all, y'all got it.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: If that's what y'all want to do, go ahead.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: But as far as me, I'm done.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that I I think that answers your question.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_02: It does.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you just surface something, you mean you name boundaries and you name self-care in a major way, right?
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_02: Be able to say, like, I'm so used to doing this thing, I'm so used to, and but I have to stop.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_02: I have to stop.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, I I totally experienced this, I mean, I've had many lifetimes of doing many things, some of them not good, you know, right, to where I am today, to where I am today.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_02: And if I can do it, anybody could do it.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's available to all of us.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you for sharing that with me.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you're welcome.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: Y'all are welcome too.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: But yes, yes, yes.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't expecting that course, but then again, I never really know what question is going to be asked.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I have to sit with an open mind and then just be like, I hope it's nothing that's like, I don't have an answer for that, but I've had those too.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so yes.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_02: I could tell, I mean, I can sense that you've been on your own journeys.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so we are we're kindred spirits in that way.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm I just thank you for opening the door and letting me see a little bit.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: You're welcome.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: And to those that are watching, if you want to respond to that question as well, please do so down in the comments because I know that'll help, you know, especially for those that are looking for a place to start, start there.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, start with making that comment.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what where do you want to start?
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: How do you feel you need to start?
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_01: Just start, just leave it.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm not even gonna elaborate on, but use the comment section as your starting point.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so with that, Dr.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: Collins, I greatly appreciate this conversation.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: I feel it is going to be impactful.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: I know it is, and again, I just appreciate you because especially with this being innocent last minute, I really, really appreciate it.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for having me.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for having me.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_02: I'm really honored.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's just it is a privilege to be able to sit with you.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_02: And if people want to contact me, they can contact me at LisaYCollins.com.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_02: I have that's my website, and I'm on Instagram.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Lisa YavetaCollins.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_02: My name is my Instagram.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_02: You can contact me there too.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and if you're in need, please reach out because I do care.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_02: I care.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's the part I forgot.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_01: Tell the people where they can find you, but you just covered it.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, that's how I know the conversation is deep because I'll be forgetting that I need to let everybody else know where they have a com where they can have a conversation with you too and find you and stuff.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, I'm glad you said that.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: But listen, y'all, that is it for this episode of Creative Roots Podcast, where C Song Become Visions Grown.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't do it at the top, so let me do this now.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_01: I would like to give a shout out to Alan Lux Studios, Charlotte Podcast Studio, and Artbox Charlotte.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_01: I would like to thank us.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, that's it for this episode.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_01: Y'all enjoy y'all Juneteenth weekend, and I will see y'all next week.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: Peace.