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An interview on life in Colombia, academia, and self-empowerment media with coach Margie Serrato, Ph.D. - Ep 166
2.6k Plays1 year ago
In this episode of A Life In Ruins podcast, David does a solo interview with his friend Dr. Margie Serrato, an anthropologist turned empowerment coach.
David and Margie begin talking about what Margie does for a living and her life post PhD. After, Margie discusses her childhood moving all over the US and also growing up in Medellin, Colombia during the height of Pablo Escobar’s narcoterrorism.
Margie then details her experience in academia, and why she decided to leave it. As well as appointment, discussion regarding psychology and culture, and how anthropology forces us to shift our perspectives.
Lastly, David asks about her experience in the Miss Ohio pageant, and she details, but that was like anthropologically and personally. But also, they end the podcast talking about alternative careers in anthropology, and why she seeks to empower others to find careers outside of academia.
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Transcripts
For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/ruins/166
Links
Literature Recommendations
- The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz (Beginner)
- The Five Levels of Attachment by Don Miguel Ruiz Jr (Intermediate)
- A Course in Miracles (Made Easy) by Alan Cohen (simple to understand, challenging to apply)
Guest Contact
- [email protected]
- Inststagram.com/dr.margieserrato
- (@dr.margieserrato)
Contact
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
Integrating Spanish into Content
00:00:07
Speaker
¡Vamos tas! Muy bien, necesitando mucha practica. Estes primer podcast en español. Muy bien, woohoo. No, but we want to speak Spanish. We'll do it in English. Connor and Carlton are not here today, so you guys know what that means. I just do whatever I want. So I'm going to do just my own kind of podcast here.
Introduction to Dr. Margie Serrato
00:00:29
Speaker
I'm here with Dr. Margie Sarral.
00:00:32
Speaker
Serato. Okay. She is a, do you want to just say it? Yeah, sure. So I'm a cultural anthropologist. I always say I'm a cultural anthropologist by trade, but I also transition into being a professional, like personal development coach.
Research on Gender and Culture
00:00:48
Speaker
So as a cultural anthropologist, my, basically like I've had like over like 30 years of research of gender and sexuality and culture and particularly nonconformity, like
00:00:59
Speaker
spaces where we are not allowed to be because of our gender and how people perceive that and what that means. You want to give me an example of that? Like what kind of stuff? Sure. So some of the examples would be like women in the military or male nurses.
00:01:15
Speaker
or, you know, male teachers, right? So we associate certain areas of life with caregiving, you know, with women, so with like certain genders. So I look at it from the perspective of like the traditionally binary kind of like, you know, women and men, but then we can obviously like extend a lot more into that. But yeah, so like, when we're not allowed to be in certain places because of something that we are absolutely like have no control over, which is who we are.
00:01:42
Speaker
So my PhD research was about women in the military because women in combat in particular, because we have a lot of very deeply held beliefs about where women should or shouldn't be. And the military is not one of them for a lot of different reasons. Yeah, it's pretty recent.
00:02:01
Speaker
Not yet, what? Yes. And we're very slow to change our ideas about gender, our beliefs about gender, particularly about women and where women are allowed to be or not and what they're allowed to do or not and how we condition kids from the beginning of like who they're supposed to be and how they're supposed to behave and what they're supposed to say or think. And that has a lot of implications for us in a lot of different ways.
00:02:29
Speaker
Like GI Joes versus Barbies as kids. Yes, exactly. Yes. Cool. Well, we can definitely dive further into that later because your PhD research was, I guess, fascinating would be the word, but also kind of bumming. But we can get into that. But I'd first like to ask, what was your childhood? Would you grow up?
Family Migration Story
00:02:48
Speaker
Okay. So I am the first person in my family to be born in the United States. So I'm like the first in a first generation American. My family is originally from Colombia.
00:02:58
Speaker
and kind of came here because of the tragic reasons that I kind of mentioned to you yesterday but ultimately it was a
00:03:05
Speaker
My maternal grandfather, let's say, was irresponsible, is the very nicest word that I could possibly use. But ultimately, he was a gambler, a womanizer. He had a lot of faults. And he lost everything. And so he basically gambled away his house, his home, his belongings, which were also his family's belongings.
00:03:30
Speaker
And kind of like had no other choice but to move away and try to find something somewhere else. So he had, you know, it's kind of like this that the stereotypical story of like, you know, people come to the United States is like, you know, someone who has been here. And then suddenly that opens up like the possibility for you of like, when you know somebody,
00:03:51
Speaker
first hand or like, you know, somebody who's close to you that has done something extraordinary. Somehow, like there's there's definitely parts of you that go, I could never do that. But then there's also another part of me like, well, if that person did it, so can I. And so it was kind of one of those situations, the friend was like, you know, come over, this is the line of opportunity. This is mind you, like mid 70s.
00:04:11
Speaker
And he went to New York, he got a factory job and then lucky bastard that he is, he won the lottery when he was here. So one of the lotteries that he has won, he won a lottery multiple times in his lifetime, but one of those was here. And so because of that, he was able to quite literally buy a house and car and send for his family.
00:04:32
Speaker
within like a few years of being here. It is. And honestly, that's probably like the only time that he didn't completely ruin his family financially after that. So that was a good thing. But of course, like, you know, then there's this like, you're sending all of his kids at that time. So my mom is the oldest, they, you know, she was a teenager at the time, she was like, I think 16.
00:04:52
Speaker
She came over with her siblings. Her siblings were all younger by a few years. And yeah, they just they grew up here. They went to high school here. And yeah, the then after that is kind of what a lot of families have to go through as first generation and second generation Americans or second generation immigrants in any place is like
00:05:12
Speaker
how do you go from everything that you knew everything that's familiar not just a place but also your beliefs your traditions your everything your entire way of life and how do you adapt to the new place not just a simulation but also integration of like the things that
00:05:31
Speaker
are important to you that you don't want to give up, but recognizing that those are things that you aren't always able to hold on to when you're in a new place. And so that was a lot of that for my mom.
Feminist Influences and Gender Equality
00:05:44
Speaker
My mom, she is an incredible person. She's literally my best role model in a lot of the best ways
00:05:54
Speaker
um because she even before like coming to United States she had very strong ideas about like looking at her family dynamic and going okay him having all these mistresses him being an alcoholic him being like like all of these stories and she she was
00:06:10
Speaker
From the time that she was really young, she was able to see those situations as incongruent, like these things are not okay. And so she came to the United States then also at a time when feminism was, you know, the women's rights movements was very, you know, very alive. And so she was she was in the middle of that transition to a new culture.
00:06:28
Speaker
at a time when all of these conversations about women's rights were really, really, really coming alive. So that kind of compounded the things that she already felt for herself of, these things are not okay. This is what we learn. Well, screw that. I don't believe that. I don't believe for myself. And I want to get out of that. I want to get out of that mindset. I want to get out of that ideology. And it's really hard when your immediate family
00:06:57
Speaker
does not believe that, right? There is, I can go into a lot of different things on that. But for me personally, seeing both the example of her, particularly because she was a victim of domestic violence, like, I'm just one of those people that is okay, going pretty deep personally. So
00:07:19
Speaker
just content warning, trigger warning here. My mom married super early. There's a whole lot there. And that's her story, not mine to tell. But when I think about the stories of my life and my early childhood and how it was for my mom to be pregnant with me, she went to the doctor after they got married. She was feeling ill. My family's very Catholic, not. We don't talk about sex. All of these different things.
00:07:44
Speaker
She was just sick and so like she went to the doctor with you know, my biological father and basically the doctor's like, oh, you're not sick. You're pregnant. Congratulations. And that was literally the first day that she was ever beaten by my by my father. He did not want to have children.
00:08:01
Speaker
And she did not know how to, you know, she didn't know anything about card receptions. She really didn't even know how babies worked, you know, like how to have one, like how reproduction works, like very things that we can take for granted. But in her generation, right, you just don't talk about. And subsequently, like after that, like,
00:08:20
Speaker
he basically be here to try to induce a miscarriage. So that was for me personally, like from the time that I existed or it was known of my existence, right? Like there was this immediate kind of like mom being my protector trying to keep me alive quite literally and keeping me safe quite literally to, okay, also at the same time
00:08:48
Speaker
her knowing that this was not okay, but having no support from her family because, oh, well, you're married and this is the cross that you must bear. And they would not help her. And like, there were a lot of different things, but because of all of those situations of her trying to leave my father, things that I got to see very early on, things that I got to see that no kid, no kid should have to see, you know, their parents, their mother getting beaten by someone.
00:09:18
Speaker
Those were actually the things that to me really cemented the whole in my, even without my mom's instruction or modeling, knowing that this is not okay and it's not okay for her and it's not okay for me. And I don't have to accept that in my life. And the same way that she felt like she didn't have to accept it in her life because of her own struggle and being a divorcee, like in the late seventies, early eighties was really bad.
00:09:45
Speaker
anyone the nicest? Yeah, yes, absolutely. And so she struggled a lot with that, in addition to just trying to escape and trying to make a better life for
Overcoming Childhood Adversity
00:09:56
Speaker
herself as a single mother and like, so to me, those were very important, adverse childhood experiences that I, it can go either way. Some of us who go through those experiences,
00:10:10
Speaker
just don't have the inner resources or the adult guidance to recognize this is not normal. And you don't deserve this.
00:10:23
Speaker
And I feel like a lot of times because as kids, we don't understand how to make sense of that. Our brains just go automatically go into this place of, I must deserve it. I'm a bad person. And especially if you'd like add on a lot of the religious ideology of, you know,
00:10:42
Speaker
your sin from the start. And it's like, well, like, what can I do about this? Like, I'm screwed, right? So it was, for me, like a lot of that stuff really became important when I started looking at like, what do I want to do in my life? What matters to me? What is meaningful to me? Because those were the questions that I wanted to answer in my education. So
00:11:09
Speaker
Do you have any questions? Several. Well, thank you for sharing that. That's a lot to, I know that's probably hard. So thank you for sharing. Okay. So that probably influenced you then to do the work that you did for your PhD. Yeah. Okay. But to back up, you were born in New York city, but you eventually moved back to Columbia.
00:11:32
Speaker
So I moved. Yeah. So in that process of my mom trying to escape my biological father, she got back with him several times. And so I ended up, one of those times I ended up after she divorced and then she remarried a lot, a lot of story there, but I ended up finishing elementary school in Columbia. So I was there, finished fifth grade. And that was like during Pablo Escobar like time. So that was like a really rough thing because I was experiencing my own set of like
00:12:02
Speaker
abused because of her family, like really severe abuse, me and my brother and Medellin. Yes, we lived in Medellin. On top of that, there was then the, so there was the internal home dynamic that was really abusive. And then there was the external like, you know, cultural, you know, geographic, political dynamic of literally like when you hear a motorcycle, everybody runs and hides because it could be assassins.
00:12:29
Speaker
Like some of my, like one of my friends who lived like down the street, his mother was a judge. She was like shot down, like right across the street from where we were. Things like that, that again, like I was, you know, I was 10 at the time. Those are things.
00:12:45
Speaker
no kid, no person really should should experience but especially like trying to make sense of that yourself as a kid is really hard and then going through like the internal like familial trauma too on top of that like honestly like I think when a lot of people hear when a lot of people get to know me and get to hear a lot more of like all of my really messed up horrific stories
00:13:09
Speaker
They always go, you're really normal for having gone through all of that and still be good. And it's kind of funny because there's this test that a lot of therapists will do, which is the adverse childhood experiences test. I've never taken one of them. I actually took one, it was literally four or five months ago.
00:13:31
Speaker
because I was at a workshop and they had this like quiz. And I was like, Oh, I think this is gonna be bad. I'm gonna do it anyways. And I had a score of eight out of 10. And I'm like, you know, this is not one of those scores that I'm like, yeah, you got to be like, like, it was just, it was really confronting to put a number to that or to put a score to all of the shit that I've been through in my life.
00:13:58
Speaker
Because then that's the moment when I realized, oh, I see what people mean. Like, I've been through so much. And why hasn't this stuff beaten me down? Why is it that I'm always getting back up? Why is it that I'm always seeing this?
00:14:14
Speaker
There's different perspective in a lot of these adversities that ultimately lead me to this place of A, I don't deserve it. B, does not mean I'm not worthy. C, I know I can make myself better through it. And those are hard things because it's not the same. You know, a lot of times when human beings, like they get uncomfortable with
00:14:34
Speaker
the sadness of others and the grief of others and you go through experiences and people be like, so for example, miscarriage. This is one of those that I've been through. Five miscarriages, three before my daughter, two before my son. I appreciate that. But a lot of people will say like, especially after you've had one, a lot of people will say, oh, but you should be grateful that you have a kid and it's like,
00:14:59
Speaker
I am grateful that I have a kid. That doesn't mean that I can't grieve and be upset and frustrated and sad and angry and all of the raw feelings about losing all these other pregnancies. Like there is nothing in any freaking rule book that says I'm supposed to be happy because I have something to be happy for when all of these other not happy things have happened. Right.
00:15:25
Speaker
But, but again, it's our automatic like wanting to take a situation that is making us uncomfortable and are taking somebody else's negative feelings and wanting to just
00:15:36
Speaker
put a little band-aid on it so we can move on. Like we have to be okay with discomfort. It is actually in discomfort that we learn so much about ourselves and about others. Just be quiet and just be uncomfortable with the feelings and see what you get out of that.
00:15:56
Speaker
versus trying to move past it and not feel the things. Like truly process, like process your emotions and kind of processing your emotions.
Emotional Healing and Well-being
00:16:06
Speaker
Yeah. One of the things that in, in coaching, we say is emotion is energy in motion. When you don't allow your, your emotions to really process, it's almost like trapping them in your body. Yeah.
00:16:20
Speaker
Right. The thing that we want to do is like, no, I don't want to deal with that. I'm going to close myself off to this. I'm going to either distract myself or I'm going to just put this freaking wall around this thing and not deal with it or I'll deal with it later. And often we just don't learn the right coping skills. Right. And so that's the best that we can do to feel safe and to protect ourselves. We do it unconsciously, obviously. But but by doing that, we're not actually allowing those feelings to be released. And so one of the things that we often say is
00:16:50
Speaker
it only takes like 30 to 90 seconds for an emotion to process in your body. And when you think about that and you think about how much you stop yourself from feeling, like 30 to 90 seconds is not a lot of time, but it's in the thinking of going to the emotion that we stall ourselves, right? But if you just make it a practice to, nah, this really sucks.
00:17:18
Speaker
Okay. I'm just going to sit with it and just breathe into that feeling and let that feeling pass. Let that feeling flow. Let all of the thoughts and all of the crap that comes up. Just go at the end of that, you know, however long it takes for you to process a particular emotion, your body feels better. Your mind releases all of the crap and the anxiety, at least for that moment. And, and you feel better.
00:17:49
Speaker
but we don't learn those skills, right? So yeah, no, definitely. I think just, yeah, exactly. And even, you know, this is kind of one of those things that I, I,
00:18:01
Speaker
have to constantly remind myself of, which is like, oh, this stuff is so natural to me. Like people know this. And it's this awful trap of, oh, if I know this and this is like natural to me, it's natural to everybody else. And that's, that's one of those like fallacies that I have to deal with because I am great at teaching these skills and I'm great at holding space for people in a very non-judgmental way and just
00:18:27
Speaker
being fully present with them while they're going through this stuff and trying to try to support them the best way that they need, not in the best way that I can. Right. Because everybody, everybody does life differently and everybody learns things differently and everybody processes differently.
00:18:47
Speaker
Being able to hold space is in itself something remarkable that I don't give myself enough credit for. So I'll give you an example. When I started coaching training, which was in
00:18:59
Speaker
At the end of 2020, we always, it's like a six month training program, which I absolutely loved. I did mine through the Coactive Training Institute. And every time I went through a training line, you just come so much more transformed as a person, but also come out with so many more skills as a coach.
Presence in Coaching
00:19:18
Speaker
And one of those things that we would always do is after all of our coaching sessions and practice and things like that, we would always ask for feedback from the other person. What was the feedback? What's the testimonial for what I do well as a coach or what I don't or what things to work on and things like that? And it was really interesting because the thing that
00:19:38
Speaker
All of my fellow coaches would always say is, you have this laser focused presence. Like, I feel like you're really, really with me.
00:19:49
Speaker
And I thought that that was such a weird, like I'm like, well, yeah, I was. I was with you, like, you know, like I don't understand, but it was coming up so often. I finally like, I finally just got complained about it a little. I was like, why does everybody say this? Like they feel like I'm like present with them. And so somebody, somebody meant, the other one was that I was like, they felt that they could be fully themselves without any judgment, which I'm like, well, yeah, but that's just who I am. Like to me, that's not a big deal.
00:20:18
Speaker
And it wasn't until I complained and somebody said, how many people in your life can you have conversations with where you feel like they're fully with you, not like thinking about like what their reply is going to be or not thinking about how to solve your problem or not, but just there. And not judging you for what you're feeling or for what you're thinking or making you like change your mind or your feelings or not. And then once they kind of explained it that way, I thought, oh,
00:20:47
Speaker
Got it. Yeah, I can't say that I know anybody like that. Okay, so I finally clicked the importance of that. And it's something that I feel really, really matters as a human being.
00:21:01
Speaker
But that is also one of those parts of me that is also really important in coaching. And the same thing would be in therapy. If you don't have that sense of feeling heard and seen and just fully accepted as you are, we're pretty crappy at accepting ourselves. And we're really masterful at judging ourselves.
00:21:27
Speaker
You don't need somebody else to do that, especially not in a space where you're meant to process and heal and learn and grow and...
00:21:37
Speaker
Yeah, grow. The biggest word is just growth is messy. Transformation is messy. And we can do it ourselves, but it does help a lot more when you just have the space with somebody else to be, just to be all of you, all the messy shit, but also all of your glory. And to have somebody else to see that in you is very remarkable. And to me, that's very easy to see in others.
00:22:06
Speaker
I just have a hard time accepting that that's a gift or a skill or something that is not something that's rare. You know, something that it really is not as common as I think or certainly is not as common as I think I'd like it to be. And I think that that's where there's that disconnect.
Anthropology and Coaching Career
00:22:25
Speaker
Yeah. Well, we have to go to a commercial break right now, but I guess just to sum up, you went through an intense childhood with not only epigenetic trauma, but you know, trauma and then the largest narco terrorist in the world down the block. And now you are a speaker that talks about, you know, or a coach with people about this kind of stuff. Yeah.
00:22:48
Speaker
not specifically Pablo Escobar, but. No, definitely not. But it doesn't come up very often, but definitely growth and what culture means in our conditioning. What does that mean for who we're meant to be as individual people?
00:23:03
Speaker
Okay. Well, we will be right back guys. Thanks. Okay. We're here with Dr. Margie Serrato and we, am I saying that right again? Sorry. Serrato. Serrato. Okay. I gotta get that hard T in there. How did you find us or did you find my, my page first? I can't remember. Instagram algorithms, probably because I have anthropologists is like one of the things in my, in my head. Uh, so it's like, Oh, you must like anthropologists too. It's like, yeah, duh.
00:23:30
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, we started messaging. Remember I asked you a question about something or you asked me. I think it was partly like, you know, the, the anthropologist side, but then also when I look through the things that you talk about and the things that you do, I'm like, Oh, this is, you know, this is really fun. And it's something that I can appreciate. But the other part was, I think you actually had mentioned something about mental health. And so I think that that's, you know, that it was multiple layers of connection there we got talking about.
00:23:58
Speaker
Yeah. And I immediately like, kind of like you were saying, those people have learned that about you. It was, I could just easily just not trauma dump on you, but just, I could just express myself and you were like, yeah, totally. And then you just threw your stuff at me too. And yeah, so I would agree you have that quality. And I think, I mean, obviously it makes for a good coach and what you do, but I would say it makes you a anthropology makes you that way too, where it makes you a good anthropologist, I would say.
00:24:25
Speaker
Yeah, and that's kind of one of those things that as an anthropologist, one of the things that I always mention to fellow anthropologists is you're a good person. And I can tell you're a good person because you're in this field. And I say that because this is just one of those fields that you don't go in because you think you're going to be famous.
00:24:43
Speaker
You're gonna get rich. You know, like, not that any of those things is bad. What I'm saying is more like the things that drive people to anthropology are things like social justice.
00:24:57
Speaker
wanting to make the world a better place, wanting to understand others, wanting to deepen their empathy, like they're wanting to learn, answer a question, an existential question that they haven't, that is important to them. And they haven't figured out how to answer. And then we learned that, oh, this is, this is a potentially good place to do it in this field. So from the start,
00:25:24
Speaker
A sense of curiosity and a sense of wanting to understand fellow human beings, I feel like is such an overlooked, there's such overlooked qualities that are very common in our field. That doesn't mean that every anthropologist is an awesome human being. They might've started off that way, but sometimes they forget that because academia will ruin you, but-
00:25:50
Speaker
So there's definitely like, you know, but and this is something that I've been talking to anthropologists in conferences lately. If you actually sit with the very basic question of what drew me to this field?
00:26:05
Speaker
And you understand that part of why you're miserable or you feel like you're not fulfilling your purpose as an anthropology, if you understand that it's because you've come far, far away from that important thing that you started with, you can at least start going, oh, I see where my path shifted and where it shifted away from the things that actually meant something for me. And that really matters, not just in our field.
00:26:30
Speaker
that matters for anybody. Like understanding your purpose and knowing how to identify that. I know that that's it. To a lot of people, I feel like it seems so like spiritual. It's not like we all have a purpose on this earth. We all have something that makes us unique and beautiful and
00:26:48
Speaker
We matter, all of us, every single one of us matters in this world. It's just that not all of us understand why we matter and not all of us have learned, unfortunately, that we matter, right? Family dynamics, teachers in school, bullying kit, like any number of different things, right?
00:27:09
Speaker
can really mess with your sense of self and your sense of worthiness and therefore your sense of like mattering and therefore your sense of I'm meant to do something important in this world.
00:27:24
Speaker
And if you don't feel that, then it's hard to look at your life and go, well, this is actually what matters about my life. This is what matters about why I'm here on this earth, why I'm here in this moment. And so you don't then dig into it. And I will say that for me, it really wasn't until the past like five years that I dug into that question of real, like meaning, like what actually matters about what I do? What matters about who I am?
00:27:53
Speaker
We'll talk a little bit more about that because this is also from a trigger warning on this one. This is the label that I have to come with all the time as a trigger warning because of being physically assaulted at my last job as a postdoc. The reason why I went into anthropology
00:28:13
Speaker
was because again, like all these dynamics about gender, like all my life, I was told, you're a girl, you can't do that. You're a woman, you can't do that. Women shouldn't be in the military. So I'll start with like, when I was in Colombia, when I was in Medellin, and again, I was like about 10 years old,
00:28:28
Speaker
Listen, I have always loved soccer. I'm Colombian. Soccer is a national sport. It's worse to say something bad about Colombian soccer than it is to say something bad about your mother. It's really deeply ingrained in this sense of nationalism and patriotism.
00:28:46
Speaker
Being Colombian is synonymous with being a diehard soccer fan. And so because I was in that environment, right? Like, I like playing soccer. And I was really good at it. I'm tall for a Colombian, but I was also like just fast because I was lanky. And really, I was like pretty much the only girl in my neighborhood that played soccer. It was all boys. And I basically was allowed to play soccer until I got better than the boys. And then people started complaining. And then my grandmother was like, yeah, you're not supposed to play soccer.
00:29:16
Speaker
girls don't play soccer. And then when I wanted to get into soccer, like after being here in the US, my dad would say the same thing, like, oh, soccer's not for girls. And then I like, that was really hard for me. When he said it to my sister, this was like after I had married and left home, when he said that to my sister, which was like 14 years later, probably, I was so livid. I was like, I think that was the very first time that I ever yelled at my dad.
00:29:42
Speaker
because you're so repeating the same crap that screwed me up, that took away opportunities for me that I could have had because of nothing other than ideology, nothing other than your silly little belief that girls shouldn't play soccer. Girls shouldn't do this, women shouldn't do that.
00:30:02
Speaker
And so Indo-European, you know, yeah, what's it called? Patriarchy. Yeah, absolutely. And so military was another one. So because so I finished school and all the traumatic stuff with my mom's family came back to the US.
00:30:21
Speaker
So I did, we moved to California at that time. I've lived like all over like the East coast and in California. So moved to California, which is where my mom was at the time. She had remarried. So I met my dad who's like, he's my dad. When I say my dad or my father, that's what I mean. And so we moved in. I finished all the way up to like eighth grade there. And then we went to Columbia to where my dad was born and raised, which was Bogota.
00:30:51
Speaker
So, the capital of Colombia. And we moved over there, didn't have any friends, which is kind of like the story of my life because I was moving to a new place and I was a new person in a new place all the time. And so, when I finished high school there, it was very apparent that I was not going to be able to go to college over there because most of the colleges in Colombia, obviously universities are private.
00:31:14
Speaker
And my parents just didn't have the kind of money that is required to get an education there. So my mom was like, yeah, we don't have the problem in the US. Let's go back. So we went back and we came back to the US.
Impact of Affirmative Action
00:31:26
Speaker
The thing about, and this is like a source, really sore spot for me right now with the whole affirmative action cases. I wouldn't have been able to go to school if it had not been for affirmative action programs and
00:31:39
Speaker
programs aimed at recruiting minority students and students of low socioeconomic status. So I started school, started community college. I got a Pell Grant, which is what allowed me to go to school. And when I went in, I actually thought about what I want to do. So I first went in as a pre-med because my mom had always said that she wanted a doctor in the family.
00:32:04
Speaker
And so, you know, I think at that point I was just like, oh, I want to make my mommy proud, right? Which is what a lot of us do. We want to make our parents proud and we just don't realize that that's not the best reason to go to college. Seriously, like so many of us do that because we, again, that we're conditioned to
00:32:23
Speaker
want to make our parents proud. We are conditioned as human beings to want to belong. And what is the smallest kind of unit of belonging? It's your nuclear family. We also get validation or not from that dynamic, right? So it was in my very first semester, I was already enrolled and then I realized, oh, I didn't want to go to med school. I'm doing this for my mom.
00:32:48
Speaker
Yeah, OK, we're not doing that. So I started looking at what is it that I want to do? And the thing that came up for me was I'm always struggling with this cultural dynamic of being born in the United States with this ideals, even though we know it's an illusion of gender equality, and then constantly being told that I was not allowed to do things because of my gender.
00:33:14
Speaker
It's like, okay, well, this is about how people believe, like what people think. So I went into psych because that's the field that I was familiar with that I thought I could learn these things.
Discovering Anthropology
00:33:24
Speaker
And I ended up going into psychology. That was my major as an undergraduate. And I did two tracks, childhood development, which I'm so glad because it allowed me to understand a lot of things about my
00:33:38
Speaker
own childhood, but also how the things that we do as adults affect kids in ways that are generally really detrimental and we really have to be cognizant of that. The other track that I was on was abnormal psychology. And I loved it because I love learning about how different psychologists came up with different theories with or without drugs.
00:34:05
Speaker
Abnormal psychology? Abnormal psychology, yes. And so it's really like it, what I got out of that was understanding that the things that we might find abnormal to think of like mental illnesses, for example, the things that we find abnormal at one time in like human history are completely actually normal. We just didn't understand them at the time.
00:34:31
Speaker
So things like hysteria, things like even like, you know, like psychosis, things that there's a lot of different things that we, yeah, autism, ADHD, like so many of these different things. These were, these were, or are abnormal. There's this idea though, that underlies all of that, that there is such a thing as normal.
00:34:55
Speaker
that there's a status quo, that there's a, you know, we should all fit in this little place and anything outside of that is not normal and it's bullshit. But the thing is like, we have learned for so many different things about humans. We have learned that we're all supposed to fit. That's conformity. We're all supposed to fit. We're all supposed to follow the same rules. We're all supposed to act the same. We're all supposed to, you know, have this,
00:35:25
Speaker
clearly understood and generally agreed upon norms and rules and beliefs and things that were supposed to all fit into the same little hole. It's like a large amount of the population falls into what we would call like neurotypical, but neurodivergency is totally fine as well.
00:35:46
Speaker
Right. I really like that we're in a place, especially with social media and just being more interconnected with so many different people in the world and so many different fields and that we're understanding that actually the neurotypical doesn't mean that we're normal. It just means that this is just how your brain operates and how your body has adapted to things or whatever. I feel like that is very also deeply immersed with ableism.
00:36:15
Speaker
Right? Which I've been learning a lot lately, thanks to social media, on a lot of these things of like being able to reflect on my own ableism just because of what I learned growing up. Right? And unlearning that has been a huge part of like just who I am in general, but
00:36:33
Speaker
At this stage of like understanding the within the context like I said of like abnormal psychology and the things that I learned what I got out of that really was.
Commonalities in Human Experience
00:36:42
Speaker
These things are not because people are normal or abnormal it's because what we understand at that.
00:36:48
Speaker
So, you know, in anthropology, we know that they're like historical context makes all the difference in what we perceive and what we understand about human beings. And that matters in everything. So I did those two tracks. But what was interesting is when I had to take my first social science elective for my undergraduate degree, I had two options. I had sociology or I had anthropology and I had no idea what anthropology was. And so my academic advisor was like, who was that?
00:37:16
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I know. We're here to evangelize about anthropology. So when I asked my academic advisor, I was like, what is anthropology? Just like, oh, it's like the study of cultures. And it's like, oh, that is so cool. Because I love learning about people from other places. At this time, I was in Orlando as an undergrad. And I worked in the hospitality industry. So I was on International Drive, which is literally the longest tourist road in the whole world.
00:37:44
Speaker
And as a result of that, just being in the hotel industry, like I was constantly seeing people from different places and I absolutely loved it. I loved being exposed to different people who dress differently, who eat different things, who speak differently, who like, because the thing that I really just got out of that was we just all want the same thing. The truth is that
00:38:04
Speaker
There is so much more shared human experience that we over overlook because we're constantly stuck on how we are different, how we look different, how we think differently, how we eat different things, how we believe in different things. And we get so hyper focused on that that we forget what actually matters, which is like, what makes us more alike? What makes us alike? Yeah.
00:38:28
Speaker
That's what matters. And so I really got that out of just being in the hotel, understanding like my own dynamic and like how I, my own perspective on things. So when she said like the study of cultures has, Oh my gosh, this is so exciting. Like I actually have a class on this. This is pretty cool. And what's interesting is like I took the very first day of my first anthropology class, which was a general anthropology class. I felt like I was home. Yeah. I had this very clear sense in my body.
00:38:57
Speaker
of like, ah, I have arrived. This is what I'm meant to do. And you know, like every time I tell this story, like that feeling resurfaces, right? It's really easy to recall that feeling because it was so profound and different and distinctly like just, it's in every cell of my being, just knowing that I was exactly where I needed to be.
00:39:26
Speaker
Yeah. And that matters.
Belonging and Purpose in Anthropology
00:39:29
Speaker
My Anthro 101 class, like I just sat in there and like just the syllabus when she went over it, my brain like
00:39:37
Speaker
There was like an itch in it that was finally scratched that I was like, this is what I want to learn. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you experienced that too. And a lot of people who accidentally stumble on anthropology like us, that's what they get. It's like nobody knows about anthropology, but the people who are fortunate enough to stumble upon it, we have that. We have that experience because
00:40:02
Speaker
It's the thing that we realize we're, you know, it's a discipline, it's a field where we realize that we can get answers to what matters. Yeah. And that is really important. I would say for sure, for ourselves and for humanity itself. Yeah. And I wonder how many engineers or
00:40:25
Speaker
or people in other fields, I wonder if they ever get that.
00:40:32
Speaker
It would be a really interesting study, or at least poll, to people who are in the field that is right for them, not the field that their parents want, not the field that society says, which is so limited, are the ones where you're going to be successful and you're going to have employment for the rest of your life and you have security, all these different things. The people who are actually in the fields that they are called for,
00:41:01
Speaker
Do they experience that or not? And I would be very interested to ask that question and see, is this singular to certain fields, particularly the humanities, or is this something that other people experience in other ways?
00:41:18
Speaker
I'd imagine if you invented a new casing for an Energizer battery that was sold at Target, it's not the most rewarding thing to do in the world. So I would agree. But when you go into the degree, you don't go into it thinking this is what you're going to make, right? It's more like the bigger picture of all of it. So for example,
00:41:40
Speaker
When I was sitting there feeling like I was home, at that point, I had no idea what I was gonna do for research for my PhD. I didn't even know that I was gonna get a PhD. It wasn't like the specifics of what was meant to come of it. It was more like whatever I'm meant to do, it's gonna come from this place. It's gonna come from the perspectives that I'm gonna get from this. It's gonna come from the things that I learned about others through this field, the tools that I'm gonna get, which some of them,
00:42:09
Speaker
were intuitive, but they were also, they were also I feel like more refined, or certainly they were made more complex by the process of being trained as an anthropologist.
00:42:27
Speaker
Like you now had a lens in which to like look at things you wanted to examine. Yeah. So like anthropology, for example, was, was the first, this wasn't until grad school. So, you know, much later in life, the first time that I took a, like a feminist anthropology class, which was with my, with my doctoral advisor. It was like one of the first like weeks of the semester. And she talked about like the things that we take for granted that are.
00:42:52
Speaker
that we're inculturated with. And so she said, for example, like, you know, women are supposed to have kids. She's like, I want nothing with kids. I don't want to have babies. I don't want. And honestly, that was really confronting to me. That was the first time that I ever heard a woman say that she doesn't want to have kids. Now, if you look, you know, look back on like my own lifetime, being Catholic, being Colombian, being like, be it.
00:43:19
Speaker
Being a woman, what do we learn? We're supposed to be baby makers. We're supposed to love babies and want to have babies and want to nurture. And women are nurturing. No, fuck. There's women who are not nurturing. And there are men who are. But it's what we learn.
00:43:37
Speaker
And the thing is, when you end up being, if you are naturally one of those women who wants nothing to do with babies, and there's nothing wrong with that, gosh, I don't want women, women who don't want to have babies to go and have babies because that's what they're supposed to do because it is a life's worth of regret. That doesn't mean that motherhood can't teach you things you might enjoy it or whatever. You're just doing it for the wrong reasons. And doing things for the wrong reasons is never a good thing. But it was, to me,
00:44:08
Speaker
Confronting my own unconscious biases was really helpful. And I was in a field where that is what we actively do. And we actively go through the process of trying to understand where that comes from, maybe more at a cultural level than at a personal level. But to me, I certainly took that as this is a personal responsibility, too. I have to understand when these things come up.
00:44:37
Speaker
why they're coming up. Ableism was not one that I had to confront at that time because I didn't really have any courses that related to that. So that was one where this has been a more recent part of my own growth is confronting my ableism and understanding what are the things that I think I know or the things that I grew up learning what was right versus not. So mental health, for example,
00:45:05
Speaker
has been one part of that, of understanding my own mental health and my own mental health struggles. What was the onset of all of those things? But then also physical disabilities as well. There's this great social media. Her name is Samantha. Her tag is a disabled icon. And I learned a lot from her and from another one that's called Blindish Latina. Both of them have dynamic disabilities.
00:45:31
Speaker
or actually Samantha has dynamic disability. So she uses a wheelchair, but sometimes she also like walks, but she has a chronic, you know, illnesses. And the way that people perceive like when she's walking versus, you know, when she's in a wheelchair, if people see her walking after she's been a wheelchair, they'll tell her like, Oh, you're faking it. And it made me realize like, I think at one point in life, I would have thought the same thing because this is what we learn. But learning through her of like, Oh, this is this is so it's just, it's just been a, it's
00:46:02
Speaker
getting uncomfortable with ourselves is so important and part of it is because we get we have to constantly every day make it a practice to to question what we think we know or believe and more importantly to understand
00:46:20
Speaker
Is this just something that I learned or is this truly what I believe on my own and examine that very critically? It's a practice. We learned to do that in graduate school, but you can do that in a lot of different ways without going to grad school. Yeah.
Pageantry and Personal Insights
00:46:38
Speaker
So on that note, let's end this segment, go to the commercial break and let's talk about grad school and some other things.
00:46:46
Speaker
Okay, we're back with my friend Dr. Margie. I wanted to ask too, I didn't quite follow it on Instagram. Were you Miss Ohio or were you just in the pageant? I competed in Mrs. Ohio and I did not place at all.
00:47:01
Speaker
And this is okay. No, it's okay. You know, it's kind of one of those things where I didn't even know that there was a Mrs. Pageant. I did a few pageants when I was in undergrad, actually. And I didn't know that there was, there was this adult, like, you know, older woman side of, of pageantry. And I've learned a lot. Um, but anyways, it was kind of one of those, wow, like, I didn't know that was a thing. And. Hmm.
00:47:27
Speaker
maybe I'll look into it. And then just that curiosity, I'm like, you know, this could be fun. This could be something that I can give myself because as an undergrad, I wasn't able to really fully experience being in the pageant. Like I basically signed up and showed up, but I did not have time to really prep because I was going to college. I owe this a four. So I was responsible for my siblings. So I kind of gave myself this opportunity to experience pageantry more fully. And, and it was great. I felt awesome. I loved, I had, I had fun.
00:47:56
Speaker
I enjoyed doing that. I got some really important things out of it for myself. But it was really literally backstage in my pretty golden sparkly gown when I realized I am not the best ambassador for this. And there was this question that I had asked myself before, which was, am I going to be disappointed if I don't place or if I don't win?
00:48:22
Speaker
And the truth is, when I thought about that before, I thought, no, I'm gonna be fine. I just know that when something doesn't work out, it's a redirection to something else. I'm still gonna learn something from it. And so when I asked myself that question in my gown, all glammed up and stuff, it's like, am I gonna feel disappointed if I don't place? And it's like, no, no, I really truly am okay with that.
00:48:48
Speaker
honest answer that I am not going to be the best ambassador for this. I need the space to be all of myself, especially in this stage of life. And pageantry was not going to allow me to do that. And so that was like, you know, that matters to me more. I'm not the best representative for this, but also like these women who compete.
00:49:11
Speaker
and who were finalists, they've been doing this since they were little. This is not my world. So as an anthropologist, I feel like honestly, it was more of an anthropological experience. And it was great for that alone. Plus when I got out of it for myself, which to be honest,
00:49:28
Speaker
Actually, this is very relevant to something that I mentioned to you a few days ago, which was the uncomfortable truth for me in that moment was also asking like, okay, what did you learn, right? And so I ran through some things and learning the good stuff is fine. Learning the uncomfortable stuff. That's the stuff that you got to sit with. And like I said before, being okay with discomfort. The thing that I learned in that moment was one of the reasons why I decided to compete
00:49:58
Speaker
is because pageantry is a speaking platform. It's a built-in speaking platform as a queen. And so the uncomfortable truth was, you know, I've been doing this thing in the past few years where I've collaborated and partnered with a lot of different organizations, always trying to hide behind somebody else's brand.
00:50:26
Speaker
And I just hadn't seen it quite that clearly until that point of like, I am trying to do this by hiding. I'm trying to do the speaking thing by hiding behind somebody else and two things. One.
00:50:45
Speaker
Okay, I see it now. I can't not see it now. Thanks. Okay, so now I know that this is my default. I'm trying to do this in a way that is actually not meant for me. The other part was just understanding that it's because I'm afraid of being fully visible as me, as Dr. Margie, as
00:51:11
Speaker
everything that I am because that is scary. That goes entirely against all of my conditioning and all of my traumas and all of the crap that I have to actively work on every day, every time I post something on Instagram, every time I, you know, and it's really interesting because when I'm speaking like at workshops, at engagements and stuff at events, none of that bothers me.
00:51:38
Speaker
It's the act of self-promoting. That's the part that's like, that I just rather have somebody else handle it, which is why I've tried partnering. You feel vapid and self-aggrandizing. I hate it when I do it too.
00:51:54
Speaker
It's like I said, it's just totally against our conditioning, right? We learn not to be in the spotlight, specifically for me too, because I tend to be just one of those people that even if I hide, people find me, even if I hide the spotlight always ends up on me. Even if I, when I try to be in the background, I always end up leading. It is just what I naturally do and I just have to accept it and surrender to it. And so it's struggling between what is naturally me
00:52:22
Speaker
and what I've been taught to do. So that process of unlearning this for myself, it's gonna require a lot of practice.
00:52:33
Speaker
It really is. That's the biggest thing. So I did not place. I was very grateful for the opportunity, partly because thinking about this from the standpoint of academia and the things that we learn in our culture of your professional self is supposed to be different from your personal self. You don't bring your personal life to work. All of these things that we have learned about who we are supposed to show up as at work and your profession and your career as a leader, it's this.
00:53:02
Speaker
fragmented, just like a separate part of you. And that's part of why we all burn out is because we are constantly performing a part of ourselves. And we're not allowed to really integrate the fullness of everything that we are. Hmm.
00:53:27
Speaker
into something that matters a lot, which is our career, right? We spend more time in our jobs, in our professions than we do in our personal lives. And part of that feeling fragmented is you don't feel like you have permission to integrate all of the parts that matter in your life. Yeah.
00:53:49
Speaker
So you're constantly feeling like I have to prioritize one or the other. I can't have both. And that's a bunch of bullshit. Like we have learned that that we have learned to operate that way. There is nothing written in stone. There's no rule book that says that that's how it is supposed to be. That is simply what we have all been brainwashed to believe.
00:54:16
Speaker
And so for me, even within academia, me talking to other anthropologists about what I do as a coach, me showing up more fully, including the fact that I love clamming myself up, think about the things that women often learn, which is what I learned. And this is something that I struggle with. And I figured out a few years ago.
00:54:40
Speaker
I love I've always loved climbing up, but I never really give myself permission to do it unless it was like a special occasion. Because I always learned you can either be smart or be pretty. You can't be both. If you're smart and pretty people don't take you seriously. And sadly, we've all learned that so it is quite common that that actually happens. Women get dismissed for a lot of different reasons and
00:55:07
Speaker
Caring for your looks is one of those. It's like, oh, you must be very superficial if you care about how you look. To me, one of the things that I learned when I examined that and when I really dug into all the layers
00:55:21
Speaker
was realizing what does makeup mean to me? What does beauty mean to me? Like how do I want to define that for myself? And to me, like one of the things that as I gave myself permission to just play with makeup, I was playing with a lot of different colors, a lot of like really bold colors and vibrant, you know, kind of makeup and more
00:55:43
Speaker
intense, let's say, dramatic makeup. To me, the thing that I understood that I never really would have put words to is it's an outlet for creativity. Exactly. Some people use, you know, paint on a canvas. And for me, my canvas is my face. I get to do different things so that I get to experiment with techniques. I get to learn new things.
00:56:11
Speaker
and in the process also of making up my artwork when I give myself time to do it.
00:56:19
Speaker
I recognize that it makes me feel like I've spent time on myself, that I've spent time caring for myself, doing something fun for myself, and that matters. We really have a lot of struggle as adults with letting go, resting, doing something just for fun, because we are taught that if it doesn't have a purpose, then we shouldn't be wasting time on it, quote unquote.
00:56:49
Speaker
Right? And we learned that very early on. We learned that a lot earlier than we need. We're not allowed to be kids, really, because we learned that from a very young age. Or if you're not good at something, you shouldn't be doing it. Like all of that crap. And we've been talking about this for years. So for me, even showing up this way,
00:57:12
Speaker
as a professional with a PhD, like I honestly at this point don't really care what people think, but I know that that would have been something hard to really be able to embrace as I was in my academic career, like when I was teaching and things like that.
00:57:28
Speaker
And it's something it was really interesting because when, when I started teaching, which was, so I went to graduate school at Texas A&M. Okay. And the first time that I taught is really, this is kind of, I got my assignment for teaching literally like two weeks before I was supposed to teach. And I was, it was like, congratulations, you know, you get to teach your own class. And literally like the letter right underneath it was, and your, your book orders and, you know, all of this stuff, you know, need to be submitted by, you know, next week kind of thing. And I was like,
00:57:58
Speaker
Oh, okay. So all of the anxiety and panic and things. So I basically was like, okay, what do I do? And one of the faculty, I asked, he's like, you know, listen, just go in, just know that, you know, be tough, you know, the students are going to try to run you over and all this stuff. And so I went, when I went in to teach my first class, which was in spring, I went in very militant. I mean,
00:58:21
Speaker
really envision it like hair pulled back like I was there to teach and I was there to like be a hard ass and because you know I don't want people like running me over and things like that. Then we had spring break and in that in that in that little time away I just recognized something which was like I'm not teaching in a way that is right for me. I'm not being myself. I'm trying to perform somebody somebody else somebody else's role that they I've been assigned to basically.
00:58:51
Speaker
And so I was like, OK, well, let's not do that anymore. And so I went in after the semester or after spring break and I was more of myself and it felt better. And it was really interesting because when my adviser showed me the feedback, she's like, hey, have you looked at the comments from your students? And I was like, no, but I can imagine they probably said something like this. And she goes,
00:59:13
Speaker
Are you sure you didn't read the comments?" And I was like, yeah. And she's like, oh, that's literally exactly what they said, is that you went in really strong as a hard ass and stuff. But some of them that recognized that there was a difference after noticed that difference. And I was like, well, that's cool. That's good. And she's like, you're very self-aware. And I'm like, yeah, I tend to be that.
00:59:36
Speaker
So that was good to know. But one of those things that mattered to me too, like as I was in my time at Texas A&M as a student was a big,
00:59:46
Speaker
Be a good anthropology teacher. This is an opportunity to change a lot of people's perspective, to build empathy, to teach students how to see the world. And a lot of the students, they were like white Texans who'd never left Texas. Texas is everything. So working with that perspective of they've never talked to people from other places. How do I give them that experience in a classroom? How do I teach them to
01:00:15
Speaker
what we do in anthropology so well, which is to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar, right? And I did a good job of that. I did a really good job of that because I could see the times that I can reflect on now where I miss teaching. What is it that I miss about it? When is it that I felt that I was impactful? It was, and I mentioned this to you a few days ago, which was I could tell when I was challenging a perspective that was deeply held by them.
01:00:44
Speaker
that they never had an opportunity to examine and their entire worldview changed. I could see it in the way that their face was blank like, oh, wow, something just shifted tremendously. Their body would be like,
01:01:01
Speaker
Like you could tell they were really internally struggling with something that they never had to look at. And I live for those moments. I live for those moments. It is a great feeling because you know that you've shifted them into a different way of thinking about the world, but also a different way of thinking about how they think.
01:01:20
Speaker
And that matters. That matters. It is, to me, it's the thing that I've kind of, the word that I use for it more, even though people don't really understand it, but it makes sense to me, is it's waking up. It's waking up to a different way of thinking, a different way of being, a different way of seeing the world. It's waking up to what we experience every day. We think that's reality. It is simply the reality that we're currently in.
01:01:48
Speaker
When we get to recognize that we have a choice in the lives that we create, that matters. When we get to realize that we have a choice in how we perceive others, that matters. That's the stuff that
01:02:03
Speaker
is important to me as a human being, not just as an anthropologist. It's just that there's a lot of parallels and a lot of really good ways of marrying together anthropology as a field with the skills and the contents of coaching.
Synergy of Anthropology and Coaching
01:02:19
Speaker
because anthropology is really about outside of yourself, about culture, about layers of culture, about understanding others outside of yourself. Coaching is about understanding everything inside of you. And so the two together is a perfect combination because we get to understand, okay, what have we been conditioned to do or to think? And coaching is more like, is that really true for me?
01:02:48
Speaker
What is the choice that I actually want to make about this? And choice is power, choice is everything. And it's a thing that we don't learn. And that's the thing that I want to, I want to spread more of. That's the thing that matters to me. In that time too, because I was doing my PhD research on women in combat. So basically I did a comparative analysis of women and men who'd been in ground combat in Afghanistan and Iraq post 9-11.
01:03:18
Speaker
And I went in to this subject with the idea of just learning what was for me, women are supposed to be in the military. Those were a lot of the debates that were happening at the time that I entered grad school because of the 9-11 wars and because of women being in combat. And so these public debates about whether women should be in combat or in the military were resurfacing again.
01:03:42
Speaker
It was a timely topic. It was also important for me because when I was in college and I was trying to find ways to finance my education, there is like this giant Montgomery GI Bill poster in like the school cafeteria. And it was like, at the time it was like $30,000 to go to college, which would have paid four years of school and that would probably have been the piece for one year.
01:04:03
Speaker
But I did the ASVAB, which is the entrance exam. I scored for military intelligence. I wasn't going to be a grunt. Now that there's anything wrong with being a grunt, it's just that for me, I knew that my family was going to be less inclined, let's say, to even consider me going into the military if they pursued that was going to be suffering in any way.
01:04:24
Speaker
At the end of the day, they still had a very hard, like, women don't belong in the military, especially because I had an uncle who was in the Marines. And so he was like, you know, women don't belong in the military, and I didn't want to make such a big commitment without my family's support.
01:04:39
Speaker
So I kind of took the opportunity of the PhD research as a way of digging into this thing that always bothered me, that I struggled with in my personal life, but also learning why do women go into the military when they're not wanted there, when they're not welcome there? Why are they still compelled to do this? And more importantly, do they really experience combat differently than men? And I got some really good findings out of that, out of just
01:05:08
Speaker
spending time with female soldiers and with male soldiers and digging into those questions of what were those experiences like for you? How did they change you as a person? Do you believe that women should be in the military? Why or why not? There's also the tragic stuff about sexual harassment and sexual assault that we have heard a lot about. So there's definitely a lot of that that I didn't expect to get in my research, but it is just hand in hand part of
01:05:36
Speaker
the military experience. It is very, very prevalent and horrifyingly so. Yeah, horrifyingly so. But anyway, so it was good to do that research. I'm glad that I did my PhD. I, however, have a lot of issues with
01:05:54
Speaker
how we're trained as academics, not as anthropologists, but as academics to view certain things as better than others, that tenure track position is like the golden ticket. Because the thing is, we don't learn that there are a lot of other ways of being an anthropologist, of practicing anthropology in ways that are successful and impactful, because
01:06:18
Speaker
Guess what? The faculty who reach in your track have never done those things. They have no idea how to steer us in different directions because they haven't been there themselves. That's a great point. Yeah. No. And it's like, so it's like, gosh, you know what? I think a lot of us who goes in, who went to anthropology here, like anthropology is such a great field because you can do anthropology anywhere. It's about human beings. Human beings are everywhere. So you can literally take any context that you're interested in, look at it from a human lens and you got yourself something. Yeah.
01:06:49
Speaker
But in the process of becoming trained as academics, we don't know how to pursue or even explore what those other opportunities are. And that's one of those reasons why I've been going to conferences in the past few years, is to help people see, as anthropologists, see a life beyond academia that is actually successful and fruitful by actually doing what matters to them, by actually taking the things that
01:07:18
Speaker
drove you to anthropology to begin with, looking at the things that let you up and putting those things together. I think you could definitely speak a lot about that, like how that has been meaningful to you and the things that matter to you and how you've come up with your own, have you created your own avenue for doing those things for yourself? And I think a lot of times anthropologists will look at somebody who has successfully done that and immediately in their mind, they have to struggle with
01:07:47
Speaker
Well, but that's not anthropology. That's not what I learned an anthropologist is where true academic is or all this stuff. And I know because I had those issues too. I had to wrestle with those questions every day. Yeah.
01:07:59
Speaker
Yeah, but no, it's, um, like I'm doing what I would want to do with the PhD right now. I just, I wanted to teach and like do a Bill Nye type thing. So it's rewarding. And yeah, the way you said it, like the expression on people's faces when I lecture and you can, I can tell I'm getting to them, it's very rewarding. And like, yeah. And I think you and I talked about it the other day, it's kind of like a standup comic, like you, like the audience is your barometer for,
01:08:28
Speaker
how you're doing and like your impact, you know? And I get that too, both. So the thing that was important for me that I got a lot of clarity on is that that same shift that I created in those moments that I feel were meaningful as an anthropology instructor. That's the same shift that I create in coaching one-on-one with people. And it's also the same shift that I create when I speak. There are just things that when we hear certain truths,
01:08:59
Speaker
we can know, we can't unhear them and we just have to sit with it. Especially in like in a speaking engagement because you quite literally just can't get up and go. You just have to sit there with the discomfort of what you heard and take personal responsibility for it, for what you do with that truth. That's the thing that again, the discomfort,
01:09:25
Speaker
But I'm really good at providing those moments. I'm really good at it. And that matters. That is basically like a freaking neon flashing sign from the universe that says, this is what you're meant to do. This is what you're great at. This is what your gift is. This is how you're meant to impact the world and help others to wake up to what really matters and to what matters about themselves. That's not something that's easy to access.
01:09:56
Speaker
But that's the thing that I know that I can provide and I just have to get out of my own way and just practice self-promotion. Well, I know I've only known you for what, six months now? So I feel weird saying I'm proud of you, but I'm proud of you for...
01:10:16
Speaker
getting that, finding that avenue and sticking with that niche, you know? Yeah. What is it called? Human empowered? Yes. It's the company. It's basically like a coaching company. Yes.
01:10:28
Speaker
Okay. So where can people find you with that? So social media, I feel like is the most accessible for, for people, but I'm on there on doctor. So DR period, Margie Serato, M-A-R-G-I-E-S-E-R-A-T-O. And I'm sure you can put that in a link somewhere. And, but yes, but my, my site is human hyphen empowered. So ED at the end.com. And, uh, I really need to update it, but you know, that's where you can find me at the very least.
01:10:56
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, I guess that's it. And if there's anything else you would want to, I guess you already covered it, what you would want to say to anybody in anthropology. I think in anthropology or anywhere else is that what first we have to know what actually matters, what is meaningful about us, which there is meaning to each and every one of us.
01:11:17
Speaker
to make the choice to live through that. That can be hard, but it matters and it's important for you to do that. And if you need support, you know, one person who can do that with you. Awesome. Thank you for sharing all that with me today. I really appreciate it. It was fun. Thank you. No problem. Happy to have you on any time. If you guys want to rate and review the podcast on Apple or Spotify, it would really help us out. And you can always shoot us an email with questions if you have them and
01:11:45
Speaker
If you send us a review or put it on Apple, Carlton will send you a sticker and I will make him do that. But yeah, that's it. Connor's not here, so no joke. All right, thank you. We're out.
01:12:04
Speaker
Thanks for listening to a life in ruins podcast. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at a life in ruins podcast. And you can also email us at a life in ruins podcast at gmail.com. And remember, make sure to bring your archeologists in from the cold and feed them beer.
01:12:32
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, Dig Tech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.