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How to Be Self Loving While Being In Service
79 Plays6 months ago
How can teachers practice self-love while being in service?
In episode 7 of Drawing From the Well, we hear from:
- Youth expert Jolie, who gives us insight on what teachers’ wellness and stress looks like from the eyes of a student.
- A Q&A with Dr. Carissa Purnell, the Director for The Alisal Family Resource Center. In our conversation, we attempt to unpack what drives mentors to sacrifice their wellness for this
- Dr. Stephanie Cariaga, who provides testimony on how experiences of grief can illuminate new paths for wellness.
Drawing From the Well is hosted by Tiffani Marie and is produced by Jon Reyes.
Music by King Most.
DFTW is supported by Community Responsive Education, continue the conversation at youthwellness.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Drawing from the Well
00:00:02
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Drawing from the Well is a podcast series from the youth wellness movement. We are educators, researchers, healers, parents, and community members striving to repurpose schools to address the critical wellness gaps in our youth's development.
00:00:19
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Founded by Community Responsive Education.
Pandemic's Impact on Education and Wellness
00:00:26
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It took the world stopping for me to realize as an educator, how much of my work was done through exhaustion?
00:00:40
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I started in my twenties and I've shared before on this podcast that I had health issues in my twenties that I really felt uncomfortable sharing with others, including mentors, because of the ways in which our health was seen as something that wasn't centered or discussed.
00:01:00
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It was something that was adjacent often to our work. And so when the world stopped, and a global pandemic hit, and we were not able to do school and schooling the ways in which many of us had experienced as children and had been mentored through, ah had the space and time to slow down, to work out, to meditate, to grieve on a daily basis.
00:01:43
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I had time to tap into my indigeneity. I took on a new language.
00:01:50
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And my time with young people, because our school community altered our school day and altered what we expected of young people, we centered their wellness.
00:02:02
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But in the process, my wellness was also centered. And I am still amazed at the work that we were able to do with and for them.
00:02:17
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And this episode is really pushing us to think about what can be done when the wellness of teachers are also prioritized.
Prioritizing Teacher Wellness
00:02:30
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so I'm going to have our young people open our episode, and some will just really be engaging in land acknowledgement We will join in with Ohlone youth to honor the lands that we all are on, but also to learn from and be educated by our young people and their engagement of their indigenous languages and practices.
00:02:59
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We hope that you learn and glean gratefully from this episode.
00:03:31
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Oh
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Oh
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Talofa, O lo'u'i ngoa, o ma'lia akili ni wa toa. Oa'u, o le sa'amoa ma'o'i. O le nei lao ele ele e mana tua ai tangata.
00:05:34
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Ngā mua i malai, wha atasi ai, mā la tau, oa whai i langi le malanga. E ho mai ka ike mai iluna mai e.
00:05:48
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O nā mea hunā no eau o no eau o nā mea le E ho mai, e ho mai, e e ho mai kaike mai luna mai O na mea hunano e o mea le ho mai, e ho mai
00:06:46
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Hello, my name
00:06:52
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is Yohan Kiet. My name Yohan Kiet. My name is desla nano toka loranojo yawa san francisco mexico e ish
00:07:35
Speaker
Shikili ama machoka pampama ishikiliyimiya.
Exploring Self-Love in Service
00:07:41
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Welcome to
00:08:00
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to drawing from the well i'm your host tiffany marie today's episode explorers how to be self-loving while being in service First, we hear from youth expert Jolie, who gives us insight on what teachers' wellness and stress looks like from the eyes of a student.
00:08:17
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Then, speak with Dr. Carissa Purnell, the director for the Alisal Family Resource Center. In our conversation, Dr. Purnell and I attempt to unpack what drives mentors to sacrifice their wellness for this work.
00:08:31
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Finally, we hear from Dr. Stephanie Cariaga, who provides testimony on how experiences of grief can illuminate new pathways for wellness.
Addressing Teacher Stress and Solutions
00:08:46
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My name is Jolie. I'm 16 years old and I go to El Camino High School. I think self-love is taking time to yourself and having a balance between work and personal life.
00:09:01
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And I think self-love is accepting what you can do and what you can't do and being okay with what you've achieved so far. I think teachers could be stressed because they have a lot of work to do or maybe a serious thing happened with their family like someone passed away or is ill or something.
00:09:25
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If they can't properly conduct their classroom, like if their students are being rowdy, I've noticed that really stresses teachers out. Like if it's a continuous thing that they can't control their students.
00:09:38
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I think students can feel when the teachers are stressed and they want to help understand what like the teacher is going through or try to see what's wrong with them. But also, i think when teachers are stressed, they tend to withdraw from their students and not really talk with them as much or be as friendly or nice. Not to say that they're mean, but they might just give the instructions or not explain everything.
00:10:08
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Or they just might sit at their desk and give us work instead of talking with us or asking us about our day or warming up into the class. Maybe sit at their desk alone. or Also, sometimes when a teacher's dressed, they might snap at a student.
00:10:26
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It's not necessarily mean, it's just the students know that the teacher isn't in the best mood.
00:10:35
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When I see a teacher stressed, I feel concerned and worried for them, but I also feel that I can relate to what they're feeling because I've been stressed before.
00:10:49
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When I see that my teacher is going through a hard time or is stressed, I want to understand why they're stressed or if there's anything I could do to help them, and i also feel concerned for them.
00:11:03
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I think that if they could have time off from the class maybe or have another prep period or maybe an hour or two more just to themselves not being with their students it would help them but if they had to still continue to teach I think students like following their directions and not being rowdy or like talking back would help them so that they could just teach and then maybe take a break from their problem and they could just teach without worrying.
00:11:44
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I also think a lot of the times teachers are stressed because I know teachers get like pretty low pay and I feel like a lot of of times that's why they're stressed like teachers sometimes talk about how it's hard for them to commute to school every day or it's hard for them to stay in our school because it's so expensive I think that on top of other problems is really stressful so if teachers
00:12:15
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were able to get their like basic needs met already coming to school, I think that would alleviate a lot of stress for them.
00:12:28
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I think it's cool that the teachers themselves are friends with each other and I see them talking a lot with each other and I'm sure sometimes they talk about their problems with each other and I like how they have like a certain bond like our teachers recently have started protesting for a higher pay and it's nice to see that all the teachers are doing it together like one time they all closed their doors for lunch because they're not being paid for lunch and when we would complain about two teachers walking by that we couldn't go in someone else's
00:13:07
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room they'd be like, oh, maybe you should tell your parents to like support the teachers. And I thought it was cool how all of them support each other and do it together.
00:13:18
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Camaraderie. My teachers often say to keep your work life and your private life separate. But I do think that it's helpful when your teachers know your parents or when your parents know your friends. And I think it makes everything easier and your parents can like understand you talking about school with them more or your teachers know your specific needs maybe because your parents have told them.
00:13:50
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Sometimes it's helpful, but sometimes I'm not really sure that necessarily has happen.
00:14:09
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Thank you, Jolie. Next, I speak with Dr. Carissa Purnell, who gives us insight on how teachers and mentors get to that place of exhaustion. Dr. Parnell and I reflect on our moments of sacrificing our wellness early in our professional journeys and what can be done when we prioritize our own wellness.
00:14:32
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All right, we are here with the prolific, profound professor, teacher, mentor, community organizer.
Community Service and Wellness Connection
00:14:41
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I'm excited about this interview today and there's so much that I can say about her, but I'm gonna have her introduce herself.
00:14:48
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So Carissa, tell us who you are, describe your work, your life's work, and you know, just give us a little bit more about you. All right, thanks Tiffany. Buenos Aires everyone, my name is Carissa.
00:15:01
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I feel like I'm a little bit of everything. First and foremost, I'm a daughter to Irita and Curtis. So my mom migrated here from the Philippines and met my dad, which is where I came from, born and raised in Sacramento.
00:15:17
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I headed this way when I had started college. so that was kind of my journey towards the Bay. And I think being bicultural, biracial, different languages, I think different set of experiences it meant a lot to me to be able to come to a place like Salinas and feel at home.
00:15:36
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So here I run a network of family resource centers. So I think East Salinas has historically been everything that the world wants to glamorize in terms of poverty, high incarceration rates, gang violence.
00:15:51
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Here in this district, we're about 90% Latino, free and reduced lunch. but it's also the most beautiful place in the world and I can't imagine my life and service anywhere else outside of this space.
00:16:02
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So here we really exist to support our students and families and whatever it is that they need. So we're well aware everything that happens in the neighborhoods and in the homes follows our young people into that classroom space. So we've got everything from attorneys on campus outside right now. We're handing out fruits and vegetables and diapers to our families. So We set our families up to be successful, to not have to get caught up in sort of the stresses and burdens of surviving because it's very real here.
00:16:32
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We work to do things like advocate for increased hourly wages, workers' rights. You know, it's our responsible to be representatives and good stewards of the people who feed and clothe and support us.
00:16:43
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So think when people ask me, what do you do? I say, whatever our community needs of us. So that means that being present in all hours of the day and all times of the night. And we're we're grateful to be part of it. So the last couple years, we've tripled in size, tripled in our scope of work and been able to hire some really amazing young folks who grew up in this community to come back and be of service. So I'm just grateful to be in that space. And I think that's why after work, I also teach up at CSUMB in the evenings and ethnic studies and service learning department.
00:17:15
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I spend time up the prison teaching because I came to realize that so many of our young men who you know were struggling at home with lack of a father figure, their dad was just down the road because they had been impacted by this justice system that we've got here. So being able to share space across generations has been important. and I very much consider this home and everyone who we work with family.
00:17:37
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I think what's really interesting is you raise this idea about East, the area in the East. and And when I think about it and the ways in which people use it in discourse, it's often used as a euphemism for a lot of things.
00:17:50
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But usually when we're talking about the Eastern part of somewhere, whether it's East Palo Alto or other Eastern areas around the nation, we're talking about folks who have been the most impacted by settler colonialism and oppression.
00:18:03
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But from an indigenous perspective, the East is also representative of the sun in terms of new beginnings and and new direction. And so you name a lot about your work and where you're from, particularly relating to the East.
00:18:19
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But I also want to think about it from an indigenous perspective and wellness. How do you feel like your work, your community-grounded work, aligns with wellness? How do you incorporate it in your practice?
00:18:32
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What does it look like for you?
Wellness in Communities of Color
00:18:34
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i think wellness in a lot of communities of color is seen as a luxury and a privilege and something that's oftentimes not discussed, right?
00:18:43
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Most of us who grew up in a community of color watched our parents work more than eight-hour days. There was never a paid vacation and things like retirement and pension were not part of the vocabulary. So, you know, having the opportunity to go to college to learn ethnic studies, to study psychology, to understand the impacts of trauma on my body itself was really shocking. And I think I struggled quite a bit with this idea that my mom has been living her whole life in this constant state of trauma and stress, unaware, right? So I think that they set this expectation that
00:19:20
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You have to do backbreaking, dehumanizing, laborious work to be a value when so much of what the research and sort of science is telling us is that it's the opposite, that my productivity is going to increase if I myself am whole.
00:19:35
Speaker
You know, being conscious of what I put in my body and how I take care of this vessel has been a struggle. So when it comes down to something as simple as shutting down at the end of the night and turning off my phone and laptop and sleeping, it almost seems like selfish in a way, right? So my mom, you know, would work, she was a mother, she was a partner, she provided for our family. And I don't remember ever her falling asleep before us, right? So in my position, especially doing the work that we do, we walk into these situations and having a conversation with a mom, you know, you are going to be better for young people if you yourself step back is rough. So we try to create spaces that are really inclusive, honoring that
00:20:19
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historically and generational, we've been taught otherwise. And that tradition is something that is who we are, but it's something that we can work to kind of adjust and make little edits to. We partnered with the National Confadres Network the last couple of years, really creating like círculos. So we create a space for moms to come and be women.
00:20:37
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we will provide childcare. We will provide you with a meal, but in this space, share with one another and have those conversations and get to check out of your sort of obligations, right, to creating life and supporting your family so you can be whole and be yourself. And here at work, we take time to check out every other week. So we have mental health care days, right? So even this idea of mental health, I think for a lot of communities of color has been stigmatized. But so much of healing means letting go and sharing in that sense of solidarity. And when you realize you're not alone in your frustrations or depressions or struggles, that's sort of how we move collectively forward.
00:21:14
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Just this idea of community in itself has been healing. So being able to be vulnerable, to be broken, i think comes with the humility to do this work well. So a lot of our wellness is just being vulnerable with one another and being able to ask questions. And if I need help on a home visit or if I need help with a case, I know that there's 30 other people who are sort of sharing in that space as well. So our wellness is a collective wellness, especially in this work.
Balancing Personal Wellness and Sacrifice
00:21:41
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So I'm hearing you tell a lot of these stories, and it's making me think back to our time together when we were TAs. And I'm connecting what you're saying into these memories I have.
00:21:55
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A mentor of ours had asked us to TA his class, and I was only coming from about 15 minutes away to get to San Francisco State. But I know that you had over a three-hour drive, and this was weekly, to be able to support this mentor.
00:22:11
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And i was always impressed by your commitment around the driving, around the energy that you put into the class. But I'm also thinking about how that impacted today.
00:22:23
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in your body. And I'm not always proud necessarily of some of what I've done and the sacrifices that I've made when I have this time to reflect. I'm not necessarily proud of the spirit of martyrdom that I was supporting in the ways that I was denying myself access to wholeness. And so I'm interested to hear from you around how you make sense of some of the sacrifices that you've made for this work and those that you are proud of and maybe some that you are not so proud of.
00:22:54
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anyone who chooses to invest in this kind of work, it comes with a little bit of shame and guilt for how we got there because the sacrifices along the way are heavy, right? And I think reflecting on that question, I'm sitting in my office in front of a UFW flag and this idea of martyrdom is heavy. And it was actually part of my dissertation because I came into this work thinking nobody will love these kids like I love these kids and no one is going to work for these families like I will because I see myself in them. And it was almost this sort of selfish righteousness that I was the only one committed to justice in the way that I felt was right. And I think when I was able to step back and humble myself, I think particularly in like that higher ed space, the more I learned about the people doing the work and the movements themselves, there is no movement that exists with one person, right? So if I am this
00:23:48
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warden of equity and all of these things that I believe in, I could not be the only one doing it. And so I remember crying, you know, driving that three hours because it was something like I felt like I had to do because this mentor who had given me everything, you know, I owed it to them. But at the end of the day, you know, like how much do we owe to others? Because if we can't even fill ourselves, we're not going to be of service. And I think particularly,
00:24:15
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I speak so often about my mom and my grandma coming to this country and this immigrant's journey and all of these struggles they had to take to get here. And I spend so much time at work, i don't give time to my mom.
00:24:28
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So I think of the sacrifices that she has made. and I think in terms of struggle for myself, the thing I carry that's the most heavy is I'm not the daughter to my mother in terms of that care that she has given to me.
00:24:41
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So you know, right now, my dad's birthday is tomorrow, and I have scheduled this food drive. And it's sort of like, you make these decisions to put your personal life and your family on hold to help others. But what does that say about my commitment to family if I can't even model that for people? So we push mental health, we push wholeness, and we push value and family and ethics.
00:25:03
Speaker
But if we ourselves don't walk it, I think that's a giant hypocrisy that's really heavy in this movement. So things in terms of shame that I carry. i don't practice self-care like I should. I still eat what I should not eat, and i oftentimes don't sleep, and I'll skip family events to come to work, but I need my family to do this work, and I need space outside of work to be successful, and so sometimes to say no is this heavy thing that we've been taught not to do, but until we learn to say no and ask for help, nothing is going to change because I think folks in
00:25:38
Speaker
places of power, understand that we're willing to sacrifice everything that we are and who we are for the greater good. But at the end of the day, it doesn't solve sort of that rooted, you know, historic disinvestment in our communities.
00:25:51
Speaker
Wow. You definitely shared so much that resonates with me. You know, my grandmother was a sharecropper at 12 and my great, great, great grandmother escaped slavery at 10 and she died at 90, in the field, still picking cotton.
00:26:14
Speaker
And I think sometimes we talk about this in this really cool way around how far we've come and the ways in which we like to celebrate the resiliency of our ancestors.
00:26:26
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But my grandmother, she's still alive. And for me, when I think about how much time and energy she exerted and how much labor she was asked to take on, and ah think about myself, it's hard for me to understand really advancement and how far we've truly come. Because in my first few years of teaching, I was getting there at six or so, 6.30 in the morning because school started at 7.15.
00:26:58
Speaker
And I was leaving around 10 or 11 p.m. every day. This is 22. And there were times where I was having you know heart palpitations and I couldn't breathe. This is at 22. And I chalked it up, sucked it up.
00:27:11
Speaker
I said, this is about the struggle. This is about our work. And I really genuinely felt like I couldn't share with others what I was going through because... as we mentioned earlier, so much of it was about committing our lives to this work.
00:27:25
Speaker
I hadn't known at that time they meant quite literally. And even this idea of self-care was so corny to me. And I remember ah maybe five years ago, my my mentor and therapist at the time who told me to just try to do things at 80%. And when she said that, it seemed so insulting.
00:27:49
Speaker
It seemed like an insult to my ancestors because I'm like, they didn't get these breaks. This is not what led to us being here. And I felt like I had to mirror that. and she helped me to understand that those were sacrifices that they made so that I did not have to continue to put my body on the line in the ways that they had to.
00:28:08
Speaker
and so attempting to do that year at 80% was life-changing. I don't think I can go back to that now. You know I'm 38 and a part of my schedule, a part of what is mandated is my wellness because it's intimately connected to me loving myself.
00:28:26
Speaker
How can I teach young people to love and care about themselves? And for me, that's intimately connected to their wellness if I don't set aside that time for myself. And so I'm interested in you and how you make sense
Leadership and Self-Care
00:28:40
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of this. you know like What is self-care look like for you?
00:28:46
Speaker
And what have been the challenges in your journey towards self care and the ability to center your own wellness? I think it says a lot about your leadership, sort of how you model self care and step away from that idea that you are the person who's going to bring about all equity and end poverty in your community. Right. So for me,
00:29:08
Speaker
shifting that framework from I'm the one who's going to get this work done because I'm going to put in the work. I realized when I build up my team, like that's an extension of me. So I'm super proud. And I find a deep breath in being able to give work to others when I know that it's being passed off with the love that I bring to it too.
00:29:26
Speaker
So, you know, this last week, I think specifically we had all of these, you know, important elected officials in a room And for so long, I've been preaching this narrative of why you need to invest in our community and why you need to come to East Sillianus and why you need to see our families for who they are.
00:29:42
Speaker
When I was telling that narrative, it wasn't my voice. So when I opened the door for people to be that authentic voice, I was able to let go and sit back and be proud and be humbled and watch, right? So I think that the movement is happening, whether or not I'm the one in front or in the middle or behind it. And I think that's a beautiful part of it. So when you learn the history, I think that's what really kind of set me back was understanding that I think, you know, one of our mentors, is Jeff Duncan, always tells us, like, I'm not going to be the person who's going to spark change or whatever, right? But Pac told us that I could be the person who inspires another young person to do it. So
00:30:22
Speaker
a form of self-care, saying no and letting go has been huge. So I'm not big on vacation, right? I do carry that student loan debt that so many of us have. So that idea of sexy, sensationalized vacationing and yoga massages is not something that I value, but being in an outdoor space has been important to me. And being in the sun has been something that I took for granted growing up. I think I was raised by people of the sun. Like my family grew up next to the equator and I need to be outside to be whole. So getting to enjoy nature, getting to be outside and walking with my dog has probably been the most profound thing the last two years the pandemic as being not around people, being not in a workspace and enjoying my companions. And I think that, you know, people tease me because I don't have children of my own, but I very much consider
00:31:18
Speaker
that space with my dog, a sacred one, because it's a time for me to check out and reflect. And this idea of self-reflection in itself is hard, right? Like I make mistakes every single day and it's hard to sit with them. And it's hard to know that the impact of my decision-making can completely change the trajectory of someone's life, but that's what comes with this work. And until I can reflect and be broken, i'm not going to be able to piece things together. so Being outside, saying no, building up young people and just that sense of pride has been such a form of self-care, knowing that this is going to live on whether or not I walk away and I can leave with 100 percent confidence that this community is taken care of.
00:32:02
Speaker
I appreciate that. Yes, so much of how I have been committed you know to self-care, it is still a buzzword for me. It really captures the complexities, but I really appreciate you taking the time to discuss family and community My mom used to tell me, you know, I see you with all these kids, doing all this work with kids, but you don't have that type of time for your cousin. So super triggering. It was super triggering at the time, but it's a very real conversation.
00:32:33
Speaker
And I realized also the kind of the disconnect between our generations, like a lot of Young folks and younger folks don't know how to pick up a phone, let alone have a conversation with their elders and others in their family.
00:32:48
Speaker
And the elders are around us, you know, and they have this wisdom to share. So when I think about self-care, i'm very interested in us establishing a much more robust body of language around what it means and how it plays out. So you were saying that you support communities and families taking care of themselves, but that it's hard for you to do that for yourself.
00:33:13
Speaker
you know I have a friend who she wanted to rest and she has so much trouble that we joked about it. like She literally Googled, What does it look like to rest?
00:33:26
Speaker
And if a young person came to her and said that exact same thing and we're talking to her about their stressors, like she would know exactly what to say to them. But for some reason, when it comes to ourselves, we struggle.
00:33:39
Speaker
Theoretically, we know what we want for ourselves and our communities, but in practice,
Practicing Self-Care: Challenges and Solutions
00:33:43
Speaker
it's much harder. So I wanna know, what what do you think of that? Maybe contradiction, the complexity, why does that exist? Like what's going on there?
00:33:53
Speaker
How is it that when young people come with a specific problem around their wellness, we know what to do and we support them in that process. But when it comes to loving ourselves and we talk about self-love, especially for folks who teach ethnic studies in these practices, but it's harder for us to do it for ourselves.
00:34:12
Speaker
you know, where does that disconnect come from? What do you think it's connected to? I think for a lot of us, it's this like privileged place. Like we know this, right? Like I could, cite you the research on the impact of cortisol on your body and what hypertension and heart disease can cause in you long term.
00:34:28
Speaker
But I literally practice every day the things I tell people not to do. And so I think it's a sense of urgency, a little bit of guilt sort of mixed with this sense of like commitment and how committed and woke are you if you're not doing this constantly. Again, back to that idea of work is nonstop, but is that a determinant of your success and long term impact, right? So I love telling young people what to do, but at the end of the day, like I'm sitting here drinking a Red Bull, right? So like how much of what we preach are we truly practicing? And that's a heavy one for all educators. And I think the last two years of the pandemic here at the centers, we've had educators referring themselves.
00:35:10
Speaker
So we have these groups like Joven Noble and Hira So to create a culture of community and healing and to sit in a circle to be reflective and to heal and teachers are saying, you know what, like I'm carrying everything that my students have been close to me and there's not a space as an adult to be vulnerable and to let go as an adult. So this expectation in the world that anyone who is in a place of power in the education setting should know how to fix everything is absurd. So build up your team. Like we need psychologists and social workers and counselors.
00:35:45
Speaker
Futures cannot be the ones to fix everything going on in the world because it's too much. And so whether it's an administrator or a district making that decision to create that team, you have to do it collaboratively. and You know we're human beings and we're collective in nature. And so I think part of that problem solving has to happen collectively. But There's just that, you know, norm that we can fix it on our own. And if you can't fix it on your own, you're not a good educator when it should be the exact opposite of that.
00:36:14
Speaker
I feel it. feel it. It reminds me of this video where this young man gets these young children. They're like seven or eight. And he shows them this video of how chicken nuggets are made. And the kids are screaming and they're like, ew, yuck.
00:36:28
Speaker
And at the end of the video, he says, okay, now who wants some chicken nuggets? All the the kids. raise their hands. So, so much of what you're saying reminds me of that. It makes me think of that.
00:36:41
Speaker
And it also reminds me of um Dr. Michael Yellowbird's distinction between colonization and oppression. And he says that colonization is so profound that, you know, if our ancestors were to eat something from McDonald's, they would probably die immediately, some of our ancestors, because their diets and their ways of being were extremely antithetical to the poison that is in that food.
00:37:06
Speaker
But now our bodies through colonization, through settler colonialism, have been exposed to these toxins at such a pace and rate that,
00:37:17
Speaker
that it kills us very differently. So much so that we can't, truly recognize when we ourselves are harming ourselves. We say oppression um becomes this way that we still know, we can still feel it, the impacts of it um on our bodies. and And there's something about um these toxins in our bodies and the ways in which they kill us and in the ways in which through colonialism that that death exists around us in so many different ways.
00:37:52
Speaker
so much that our alignment with death is even celebrated. The ways in which we slowly kill ourselves. We are honored in his work often for how we do that. And so I'm really humbled by what you're saying and appreciative because it's helping me to reflect on this journey.
00:38:09
Speaker
And as I am pushed in thinking about this next question, I'm thinking about our work with some of the sickest people in our
Transforming Education Through Wellness
00:38:18
Speaker
society. You know, like what has happened?
00:38:22
Speaker
where the work that comes out is really grounded in the normalizing of social death around us. And as we say, we're doing it ourselves. But I think about how much is produced through our exhaustion.
00:38:34
Speaker
And that if we're able to do this, And I think there's some great work that's happening, but let's be real that this is through exhaustion. If we're able to do this through exhaustion, then what can happen when we are actually doing it from a place of wellness? And some people would argue in the U.S. you'll never get to wellness, but what happens when we prioritize it What does it look like?
00:38:59
Speaker
And so we have some teachers who are, you know, coming into the game. We have prospective educators, community activists who want to do the work. And I want to know from you, given all that we've discussed today, what advice do you have for them?
00:39:13
Speaker
I think it's interesting, too, because you stay young. And I feel like I sit in this weird space, like late 30s. You're not young anymore, right? Like you're not listening to what your students are listening to anymore. And you transition into you're not quite an elder, but I have some stories and I have some things to share with you. So you're not going to step on the same landmines that I did getting here. But even to call it the work is heavy, you know, like be a good human being, right? You don't need to be calling it the work because it's almost this like obligatory thing. And like you said, we've been trained in this capitalistic framework of how we do everything and work is productivity. And at the end of the day,
00:39:52
Speaker
I don't really care if I'm productive. What I care is that I leave something better than we started it. So even shifting in the narrative around this idea of work is interesting. And so if you are truly doing healing work, you're not doing it correctly, right? And so sometimes it doesn't mean a scripted curriculum and it doesn't mean a pedagogical approach. It means allowing people to be what they need to be in that space and just stepping back. So when we have our mental health care reflection days,
00:40:21
Speaker
I don't give anyone anything to do except not be here. So if that means you go spend time with your kid or you want to go shopping at Target, go wild. you know like Everyone has their way of healing and I think that that's also okay.
00:40:35
Speaker
There's this sort of expectation we're all going to do yoga and practice mindfulness and it's going to be cool, but it's not. you know We come with generational stories and generational layers of just this thick heaviness we have to be able to shed collectively. So for young people,
00:40:51
Speaker
For me especially, it wasn't until I learned how to ask for help when I had someone who was older than me basically put me in check, that's kind of what humbled me. So when I had started my doctoral program, I started out of spite because I was tired of being the young brown girl with a hoodie and hoop earrings just coming into faces being angry because my community wasn't getting what we needed and what I knew that we needed.
00:41:15
Speaker
So it was actually Jeff who said, you know, you want to leave, that's great, but you're turning your back on every single kid you've ever worked with in your community. And that was painful, but was right. Like you need someone who will always be honest, who will humble you and correct your mistakes because I am so imperfect. And I think that that's what makes me good at what I do is because no one who does the work is perfect. So don't come in with your 4.0 and think that research will save you because it won't. And if anything the last couple of years, this pandemic has showed people everything we've been taught in education.
00:41:49
Speaker
it doesn't matter anymore. I don't care what kind of reading curriculum or science adoption you've got. Our kids are coming from spaces where they're literally losing the people who they love the most and their worlds are falling apart. So whatever you bring into that classroom, if it's not rooted in their humanity, it doesn't mean anything.
00:42:07
Speaker
But how can you shift that expectation in education when it's evaluations and test scores and assessments, that's not part of the narrative. So it means a lot to me to see even like my own mentor shifting their framework and like re-looking Maslow and re-looking at this idea of community, but also cultural responses. if it means a lot to our family. So being flexible, always being willing to pivot and change, and you can't get stuck in your image and your ideology because none of it is going to be stagnant. So
00:42:38
Speaker
To see Allison and Jeff adjust has meant that I can adjust to, and I need those people to push me along the way.
Self-Love and Grief's Influence on Teaching
00:42:51
Speaker
Finally, we hear from Dr. Stephanie Coriaga. Dr. Coriaga shares her recent experiences of grief and how grief can create the space and stillness necessary to cultivate self-love.
00:43:09
Speaker
When I think about the ways in which I've learned how to love myself as a teacher, I think of these moments in my life that actually happened outside of the classroom.
00:43:23
Speaker
And these moments that I'm going to be talking about today, I think of them as what Gloria Anzaldúa calls arebatos, which are these really tense, emotionally driven moments that kind of rip everything from underneath you and cause you to look at yourself differently, look at life differently, and ultimately leads to different ways of being, different ways of knowing, and for me, different ways of teaching.
00:43:56
Speaker
In those moments, what I learned is that Learning to love myself really meant learning to listen to my body, which always inevitably led me back to myself.
00:44:08
Speaker
And learning how to love myself also was about knowing when to let go and when to surrender and when to walk away. And also wrapped up in that is recognizing the things that I needed to walk away from.
00:44:24
Speaker
And I'm also going to be talking about how loving myself also meant learning to embrace and protect my innate ability to create new life.
00:44:36
Speaker
So the first story I want to tell is something that happened in my sixth year, which was my final year of teaching high school English. I was teaching Locke High School in Watts with amazing young people, but I was also feeling really burnt out by that time.
00:44:57
Speaker
Close to the end of our time together at the end of the year, about maybe two months before the end of the year,
00:45:10
Speaker
was pregnant, but then I ended up going to a doctor's appointment and learning that I had a miscarriage. And we were devastated, of course.
00:45:24
Speaker
I didn't know... what the process was going to be like, right? I had never gone through that before. had never really known anyone who had gone through that before. And so we were shocked.
00:45:37
Speaker
And the doctor at the time, who was this very kind of straightforward, robotic, kind of cold, white man,
00:45:49
Speaker
He said sorry, shook our hands and told us that, you know, I could either have a procedure or I could carry out the process at home. And then he just closed the door and left me and my partner in the room.
00:46:04
Speaker
And so we went home and eventually I did carry out the process at home. Throughout this process, I was really angry at the doctor for not really breaking down what that process was going to look like.
00:46:21
Speaker
And I think I even, you know, I'm not sure if I did, but I think I even thought about writing him a whole letter um explaining how angry I was that he didn't break it down to us, that he didn't offer as much empathy and compassion that we needed in that moment, right?
00:46:38
Speaker
But what I realized now, many years later, I realized that we didn't need the doctor. That my body knew exactly what to do. My body knew what positions to get into.
00:46:51
Speaker
It knew how to release fear and sadness and rage. And it knew eventually how to release this lost life that was inside of me.
00:47:04
Speaker
And so without knowing On an intellectual level, what a natural miscarriage would look like, my body had this intuitive knowing of how to do that.
00:47:21
Speaker
And this whole experience eventually prepared me for another loss, another significant death, which was when my mom passed away and leukemia.
00:47:36
Speaker
about more than a year ago now. There was a moment when my mom was sick. This was also during the pandemic. All of us as a family were trying to rally together to talk to the doctors, to the nurses, to talk to her, to figure out how to get her to survive and to be better.
00:48:04
Speaker
and to fight against this cancer. But eventually, it got to the point where it became clear that my mother's body and the knowing and the deep knowing that she carried inside of her body knew that it was actually time to shift our attention.
00:48:31
Speaker
It became clear that she was ready to let go. There was a moment where she stopped eating. And, you know, one of the big regrets that I have is that when we talk to when we talked to her doctor team, they had recommended that she have a procedure to put a tube in her stomach so that it could help her get nutrition because she wasn't eating.
00:48:59
Speaker
But what I realize now, and even talking to other folks in palliative care and who understand, you know, how to take care of a person when they're dying, is that oftentimes the body will let you know when it's ready to let go.
00:49:16
Speaker
And that was one of the signs. And so we eventually figured out how to get her home. And we shifted our attention from trying to keep her here to pouring gratitude into her, being present with her,
00:49:35
Speaker
to as much as we could in those final moments reciprocating the care that she had shown so many generations, right? Me, our kids, her own loved ones, her relatives, pouring that back into her in her final days.
00:49:57
Speaker
And in those final days with my mom, there was such a miraculous way in which her body just was peacefully, slowly starting to surrender to this transition into ah different place.
00:50:15
Speaker
And there was enough spaciousness, there was enough calm and peace, I felt like there was enough time to do that in a sacred way.
00:50:26
Speaker
And I don't think that would have been possible if she had stayed in the hospital because I knew she was not happy there at all.
00:50:36
Speaker
And so I share both of those stories in order to illustrate a couple important things. Both my mom and I had learned to depend on an institution outside of us for care and for wisdom, particularly hospitals.
00:51:00
Speaker
And what we learned along the way is that we actually don't need to depend on them, that there is a deep sense of knowing in our bodies that knows how to heal, but also how to let go and how you to surrender and how to shift towards different realities.
00:51:27
Speaker
even as unbearable and even tragic as both of these experiences have felt, I'm grateful for both of these experiences and really witnessing the miraculous power and really deep knowing of our bodies.
00:51:48
Speaker
Now what does this have to do with my self-love journey as an educator? but when the miscarriage happened, i reluctantly, and I mean really reluctantly, took a month off of work, which felt like a really long time to be away.
00:52:08
Speaker
But it was necessary for me to just be present with my grief at that time. And it allowed me to come back and be present with my students for the rest of the year.
00:52:20
Speaker
But even by the end of that year, I realized that even that wasn't enough and that I had to quit teaching at that point. And now that I look back, there were so many different signs that my body was trying to tell me that I was done.
00:52:34
Speaker
There were moments where it became harder to wake up in the morning. I would literally drive slower to school to the point where I would show up late often but just on time. There were moments after school where I would just have these emotional outbursts.
00:52:57
Speaker
I remember throwing a chair one time in my classroom and just being really ashamed and confused about what was happening with me at the time.
00:53:10
Speaker
And I also remember, you know, driving through traffic and coming home and my poor husband wanting to know how my day was. And I was just not. having I was so burnt out that it was impacting my relationships outside of school, outside of work as well.
00:53:29
Speaker
And I was listening to this podcast the other day, this person named Kazu Hago, who is a restorative justice practitioner, leader, he says that when conflict happens,
00:53:44
Speaker
We are conditioned to be afraid of conflict and thinking that it is ah bad thing.
00:53:55
Speaker
But he says the conflict actually allows you to deepen the relationship between whomever is involved. And for me, I realized that all of these signals, all of these internal conflicts that I was having,
00:54:11
Speaker
inside my body with all these different emotions kind of erupting everywhere, and these different conflicts that I was having with my loved ones, and even with my students. like I think I became resentful of some students as well.
00:54:25
Speaker
These were all opportunities for me really to deepen my relationship with myself, first and foremost, and the folks around me. What my body was trying to tell me that I couldn't keep going and that I needed something better, that there had to be something better to really help me remember who I was and what my purpose was and how I wanted to approach my work and my life.
00:55:00
Speaker
And when I had decided to quit, I packed up all my stuff. I even asked students to help me clean up my classroom. But I actually never had ah conversation with them about leaving, that I was quitting.
00:55:17
Speaker
And I think I was so embarrassed and I was so ashamed that I was leaving and I felt like I was abandoning them. i think part of it was, you know, some of my martyr mentality, you know, that i felt like I was betraying in some way.
00:55:36
Speaker
But I think we need to find better ways to model self-love. self-love in ways that recognize that sometimes when I'm honoring my own needs, that impacts others, and perhaps even harms others.
00:55:51
Speaker
And so how do we show our students that, you know, sometimes we do need to walk away, or sometimes we do need to end our relationships in some ways, and how do we do that in ways that honor everybody's needs and helps folks grieve together?
00:56:10
Speaker
And I'm not trying to share this to tell folks that, you know, everybody needs to quit teaching necessarily. i know I had many privileges, financial, economic privileges, to be able to walk away from working and actually take a good amount of time off.
00:56:32
Speaker
But what i want for everyone and I mean everybody, is the chance for folks to be able to walk away if they need it, right? And to have the time to recharge, to replenish, to recenter.
Burnout and Modeling Self-Love in Education
00:56:54
Speaker
I was unfortunately not the only one who had to walk away from teaching. I've had so many friends who are amazing, powerful educators who have had to walk away from toxic work environments, from work that they really loved, from relationships that they had built.
00:57:17
Speaker
Part of me learning how to love myself as a teacher is also about grieving. Grieving about the ways in which schools not only fail students, they also fail us as educators.
00:57:31
Speaker
and realizing that it wasn't that I was just burnt out. Many of us get pushed out. And what I wish for all of us educators who have decided at one point to walk away, even folks who are considering walking away, that we have a collective place to actually grieve together.
00:57:53
Speaker
to just process the ways in which we have tried to contort and distort ourselves to fit in to these really fucked up standards, to fit into these just very small, limited containers that can't really contain our full humanity, our whole selves, our passionate selves, our emotional selves, our critical selves.
00:58:24
Speaker
All the things that a lot of us learn how to silence. And now that I am a teacher educator back in the classroom many years later, working with folks who are becoming teachers and folks who are still in the classroom, my way of loving myself and modeling self-love is to unapologetically bring my full humanity and assert my full humanity into these learning spaces.
00:58:59
Speaker
And sometimes that also means, you know, taking off these superwoman, super people capes that really hide the messiness of who we are the ways in which we also need rest, the ways in which we make mistakes.
00:59:17
Speaker
so that we can just be our full selves with each other, which actually I think deepens our ability to be present with our students and learn with them. Another significant time in my life where I have learned how to deeply love myself and transfer that love into my work as an educator has been giving birth to both of my babies, to Lila and Lino, who are eight and five years old now.
00:59:46
Speaker
And much like the way I described what happened when I had a miscarriage and when I witnessed my mom's transition, it was really this sacred time where i didn't have to think about creating life inside my womb. I didn't have to think about going through labor.
01:00:11
Speaker
There was this very deep, intuitive knowing that I could tap into this deep reservoir of power that I could tap into to usher life into this world.
01:00:24
Speaker
An important part of that process was really protecting this gift and this sacred process. And so I had decided for both of my births, based off of the violence that i experienced in hospitals, and just knowing the ways in which women of color in particular are treated in these spaces, I knew I wanted to have a home birth.
01:00:49
Speaker
I wasn't able to do it with Lila. I had to transfer to the hospital eventually to give birth to Lila, but I was able to have a home birth with Lino. But for both births, when I was laboring at home, it was just this really special place where I had been really intentional about who was there,
01:01:11
Speaker
I chose two wonderful midwives, Black women, again, who understood the reasons why I wanted to give birth in the safety of my own home.
01:01:24
Speaker
My partner was there. And that process really just taught me about dignity and collective dignity and the ways in which I could go through so many different emotions through so much deep pain and uncertainty about like, well, and can I do this?
01:01:47
Speaker
There were a lot of moments where I wanted to give up. And I learned that there could be dignity in me actually leaning on my partner, literally, and allowing him to hold the pain with me.
01:02:02
Speaker
I could lean into my ancestral knowing of knowing how to give birth. I could lean into the wisdom and the love and compassion of midwives who trusted in me, right?
01:02:17
Speaker
I think that's what was so beautiful about the process is that I learned how to trust in myself because they had put their full trust in me even when I couldn't see it myself.
01:02:30
Speaker
And so I think My self-love journey has really been about realizing that I can't do this work alone. i need others around me, people who I trust, people who can protect the things that I value and understand the way I see the world to help be a mirror, to reflect back who I am and the power that I have to create life.
01:02:59
Speaker
But the irony of both of my births was that as much as I had created this safe refuge within my home, I still had to go to the hospital for different reasons.
01:03:14
Speaker
With Lila's birth, i just got so tired after being in labor for like three days straight that I went back to the hospital for an epidural so that I could eventually push Lila out.
01:03:28
Speaker
And then for Lino's birth, I was able to give birth to him at home, but my placenta wouldn't come out afterwards. And so I had to take an emergency ambulance over to the hospital and and have a procedure to do that.
01:03:44
Speaker
And unfortunately, especially with Lino's birth, when I transferred to the hospital, ended up experiencing more violence at the hands of nurses and doctors who couldn't really understand why i had decided to have a home birth.
01:04:02
Speaker
I mentioned this because I think, you know, Unfortunately, our self-love journeys as educators, as folks at different margins, it's this constant journey of creating autonomous, self-determined spaces where we can just fully be ourselves.
01:04:25
Speaker
And then also realizing that we live in a world where we are still dependent upon these violent-ass institutions for care. And for schools, we are dependent upon them to send our babies, our children to We work within them because we care about the young people who are there, right?
01:04:44
Speaker
And so it's this constant, tense, weird, strange, dissonant process of facing all these different contradictions.
01:04:57
Speaker
Gloria Anzaldua uses this Nahuatl word, Nepantla, to describe that very tension, this process in which you are trapped and stuck between these two dissonant worlds and you have to figure out how to find your way. And as I've been listening to this podcast, Drawing from the Well, about wellness and sharing my own story, ah feel like a lot of what we have been collectively sharing is this notion of being stuck inside of Nipantla.
01:05:34
Speaker
On the one hand, knowing deeply that we have all the resources and the tools and the deep knowing to generate and create life and treat it as sacred and take care of ourselves.
Envisioning New Educational Paradigms
01:05:54
Speaker
while also still operating within these schools that should be pronounced as dead. Like we know that they cannot give us what it is we need.
01:06:08
Speaker
And it reminds me of this apocalyptic education that I know Tiffany and Ken just talk about in their work. around being in this liminal space that really challenges us and really forces us to be able to let go.
01:06:29
Speaker
to also grieve that which we need to release and no longer depend on and no longer treat as an authority, which is schooling.
01:06:42
Speaker
And to have the collective strength and courage and deep knowing that we need to move into and usher a new world that we deserve for all of us.
01:06:56
Speaker
And I don't have all the answers about how to do that and how to fully move away from these toxic places that we find ourselves in.
01:07:07
Speaker
But I do know, as I've been reflecting on my story as a mother, as a daughter, as someone who is still deep in g grief, and someone who still wants to create new life, that I might not have the answers all the way, but I do know that I have a map within me, which is my body, which is our bodies, that can help us get to where we need to go.
01:07:53
Speaker
This episode pushes us to acknowledge that teacher wellness directly impacts our relationship and our ability to mentor our students.
01:08:05
Speaker
Dr. Stephanie Coriaga reminds us that our bodies have ways to let us know when we are unwell, if and only if we create space to listen.
01:08:17
Speaker
And finally, we're reminded that schools, particularly in their origin, We're not created as ways to center our wellness, as sites that are central to sustaining our wellness.
01:08:31
Speaker
But really, schools are foundational for the reproduction of a capitalist system and the ways of being that support that system. And often these ways of being are not in alignment with our wellness.
01:08:46
Speaker
As we move forward, we want to continue to imagine and interrogate what can become of our lives and our practices when we shift from acts of schooling toward acts of education that are about our sustainability, our cultural perpetuity, and ultimately, our wellness.
01:09:21
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this episode of Drawing from the Well. I'm your host, Tiffany Marie. This podcast was produced by John Reyes and music by King Most.
01:09:35
Speaker
Join us as we continue the conversation at youthwellness.com.