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Health Centered Practices in Education
80 Plays6 months ago
In Episode 7 of Season 2, we're talking about health centered practices in education.
In this episode we hear from...
• Mental health expert and practitioner Glenda Macatangay, who shares with us how her transformations around land and spirit clarified her ideas about health and wellness
• Youth expert Mailia who shares about her own experiences attempting to center wellness within her schooling
• Practitioners Cindy Bonaparte, a womb doula and Chanel Durley, a death doula, sit down with me for our Mic Check..1,2,3! round table segment and talk about what it means to center life and death in our conversations about shifting from schools as sites of schooling toward frameworks of education
Drawing From The Well is hosted by Tiffani Marie.
The podcast is co-produced by Tiffani Marie and Jon Reyes with music by Jansen V.
DFTW is supported by Community Responsive Education.
Continue the conversation at youthwellness.com
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Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker
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
Speaker
Founded by Community Responsive Education.
00:00:27
Speaker
I learned early in my life that to really learn, you must stay in your body. However, for me to survive physically and emotionally through some of my most formative years, it was in my best interest to evacuate my skin and live outside of myself.
00:00:44
Speaker
Trauma was the impetus of this process of self abandonment and dissociation. It's been a three decade journey of coping, surviving and healing that finally found its crescendo in the last few years.
00:00:57
Speaker
This little story I will share is a clarifying moment of wellness for me. It kind of is one of those you had to be there kind of stories, but I'll tell it anyway in hopes that it invites others to feel called to a vision of beauty, otherness, and the mystical, magical mystery of the natural world that lives and breathes in and outside of us.
00:01:17
Speaker
It's this relationship with source, spirit, and my interconnectedness to land that has provided me true nourishment. A few weeks before the fires began in California in 2020, I spent time with my homegirls in this home we call the Circle House tucked away in the woods in Grass Valley.
00:01:33
Speaker
The pandemic was in full force and we have been sheltering in place and decided to reconnect over a couple days in nature. The second night, at around midnight or so, I woke up from my sleep from a burning sensation in my left hand.
00:01:46
Speaker
It was painfully hot, however, nothing externally was triggering this temperature change. It was concerning to say the least, but since we were in the middle of the woods and nowhere close to urgent care or hospital, I tried to relax, meditate, and breathe calm into my body.
00:02:01
Speaker
I grabbed a bag of frozen vegetables from the freezer and held it in my hand so the heat sensation would subside, and I fell back asleep. The next day, doing what I normally do in situations like this, I began Googling to better understand what might be at play here.
00:02:15
Speaker
I've been taught over the years by life and my mom, when a physical ailment emerges, there's often, if not always, an emotional or spiritual trigger. I've always been taught to not ignore these messages from the body and acknowledge the emotional environment that may be causing stress.
00:02:33
Speaker
So yeah, I started Googling the spiritual significance of burning sensation in left hand. What I gathered after scrolling incessantly was an experience pointing to a reawakening emerging around my healing gifts.
00:02:46
Speaker
I left it at that and since the pain subsided, I accepted this to be a spiritual nudge and continued to tune in. Later that week, the California fires began. I didn't make a connection between the fires and the sensation of the burning in my hand until the following month, my partner and I decided to take a road trip to the Oregon coast to get away from smoky skies.
00:03:07
Speaker
attempt to breathe in some cleaner air and grieve some losses in our family and community. On our trip to the Pacific Northwest, we decided to stay a couple days in Mount Shasta to absorb some powerful energy and reground.
00:03:19
Speaker
The skies were smoke-filled and gray. Everything felt dry and we were inhaling soot from miles and miles away. I didn't have any expectation that we would be able to see Mount Shasta, but my partner was adamant to at least try.
00:03:31
Speaker
He did some research on the best views of Mount Shasta, and found ourselves at this spot called the Bunny Flats. It was supposed to be a spot to get a clear view of the mountain. We found an empty bench and decided that we would spend time here meditating and experiencing the vibration of the land.
00:03:47
Speaker
We asked for permission, acknowledged the native people of the land, and began to meditate. Right then, a message came to me and I recalled the time several weeks back at the Circle house with my homegirls, where my left hand was burning.
00:04:01
Speaker
I'm not sure what triggered that memory, but I listened to that recalling. My body, having a mind of its own sometimes, decided to reach my left hand out in front of me. I allowed this to happen and continued to meditate.
00:04:14
Speaker
My meditation turned into prayer for rain. Within minutes, maybe even seconds, Rain began to pour directly into the palm of my hand. Raindrops started trickling down on my face.
00:04:26
Speaker
I called out, babe. My partner with his eyes closed said to me, just allow it to happen. It's happening. Keep meditating and asking for it to continue.
00:04:37
Speaker
And so that's what I did. and began to cry and we were laughing and crying and feeling overwhelmed with emotion. Shortly after, i opened my eyes and right in front of me, the clouds started parting in opposite directions.
00:04:52
Speaker
I called over to my partner and said, oh shit, open your eyes. And within seconds, Mount Shasta was fully revealed. We were stunned, humbled and so grateful.
00:05:04
Speaker
And within minutes, it was gone again, completely covered in gray smoke. We expressed our appreciation and left completely speechless.
00:05:14
Speaker
There's been dozens upon dozens of stories like this that we experienced when time slowed down during the pandemic. It made me reflect on my childhood, the only other time in my life that felt slow.
00:05:27
Speaker
I reflected on how much magic reveals itself and how life can transform when our relationship to time changes. When we allow for our natural rhythm to dictate the flow of the day versus being controlled by this colonial imprint that our time should be spent diminishing our self-worth, disconnecting from our intimacy with land and our loved ones and our own sacred legacies.
00:05:51
Speaker
I continued to engage life in slowness, centering my relationship with Source and Spirit like never before. and the blessings continued. The wisdom strengthened, the conversations with Spirit deepened, and my relationship to energy, creation, ancestors, angels, celestials, and other entities began to grow.
00:06:12
Speaker
Experiences that I had as a child returned home to me and it all felt wildly familiar. What these moments meant for me was an offering of guidance, a window to elevate consciousness, and it was an opportunity to experience growth by way of joy, pure, expansive joy.
00:06:30
Speaker
we were in the middle of a pandemic, crisis and chaos in our communities, tremendous loss, and my center of gravity was stronger than ever, and I was finally taking root.
00:06:43
Speaker
Taking root for me was taking time for me to tell myself the truth about me and the world that we live in. It was a process of understanding who I was in the world, to whom I belonged to, the lineages that claim me, the stories that birth me, the love that loves me under all conditions.
00:07:00
Speaker
It was truly an awakening to love. i was ready to receive. i was undistracted. i was committed to this practice of remembering, of locating old stories stored within my intuition, blood, breath, and bones.
00:07:15
Speaker
This inner world I had abandoned was on its return and this connection, this momentum of creative energy, imagination, and aliveness within me was flourishing.
00:07:27
Speaker
and built rituals around this connection daily, holding myself aware and accountable for making time to be in conversation with my body, with the land, and more blessings came.
00:07:39
Speaker
I documented many of these supernatural experiences, mostly in my journal, but some even on film. The more raw and powerful the experience, or the more impractical and nonsensical, I put on film, expressing that if there was ever a time I went crazy, this could be that moment.
00:07:56
Speaker
And I've embraced this edge. I've invited myself into this space, often playing with the tensions between utter amazement and self-doubt. This process has allowed me to grow self-trust, begin to really heal my inner child, the traumas of my past and present, and i was developing more courage.
00:08:17
Speaker
The most simple things, the mundane moments of life became glorious. I would go for daily walks and not one chirp of a bird went unnoticed. I traced tree branches with my gaze from tree trunk following each branch to its end and I would repeat this over and over again.
00:08:37
Speaker
And when I would hear the wind chimes, I couldn't help but smile and feel very held by spirit. The simple process of drinking water became a thoughtful ritual of appreciation and cleansing.
00:08:50
Speaker
I paused for it all. I honored it all. I was advancing and engaging an intelligence that was of the universe. And my children's own intuition, practices of remembering, were being drawn out.
00:09:04
Speaker
They began remembering their own spirit friends, their spirit friends they spoke so frequently of as toddlers. My youngest son, Cruzee's spirit friend, Carly, reemerged. He used to speak so frequently about her at the age of two, described her in detail as this taller girl around the age of 12, wearing a red dress, black shiny shoes, and her hair in pigtails.
00:09:27
Speaker
He would share that they used to run through fields and climb trees together. He explained to us that she didn't want to cross that bridge, so she stayed on the other side this time. My middle child Maui has an intuition that communicates more audibly rather than visually.
00:09:44
Speaker
He hears the names of his grandparents. He even receives communication from my partner's grandfather. We notice his connection to spirit growing more so when him and his brother would be out catching geckos and frogs in the valley and then sharing their names with us.
00:10:00
Speaker
Usually they name their pets very closely to what the pet is. so say frog, they would name the frog froggy. gecko, they would name the gecko gecky.
00:10:12
Speaker
But this time they named their gecko Walter. Walter is the name of my partner's grandfather, who I've been mentioning for weeks that I can feel his spirit around me.
00:10:24
Speaker
Like my relationship with time, my relationship with my body was also changing. Things that in my body I have simply accepted as fact or truth, like living with anxiety, ADHD, and even my issues with dyslexia were diminishing.
00:10:41
Speaker
My nervous system was recalibrating, was healing itself. Even chronic pain from a back injury was long gone. And I was learning and moving through life with so much more ease. I went from surrendering to this notion of being unable to read and process information well, to reading a dozen books in a month's time.
00:11:00
Speaker
I was absorbing knowledge differently. ah was embodying knowledge. This was all very new to me. I was in a place of undeniable learning.
00:11:11
Speaker
i was integrating, merging the wisdom of others, the universe, my own sense of knowing and being. My mind and body intelligences were beginning to blend. The level of hope scales mountains and life just feels more honest.
00:11:27
Speaker
I feel more whole and to be quite honest, it's exhilarating to feel connected to something bigger. It's been a long time where my intuition has felt this activated. And i realize how critically important it is to hear your own voice, to love yourself.
00:11:50
Speaker
i wish this for all, for our young people and our own inner children, I wish for them to all feel a connection or an opportunity to access land and spirit in the way that has been very powerful to me and my children.
00:12:08
Speaker
Everything we see, imagine, create is colored with this radical supernatural love, wonder and possibility. And it truly brings me into a feeling of harmony.
00:12:21
Speaker
It makes me more brave, more secure, more seen. And my wellness journey just took time.
00:12:34
Speaker
Greetings, everyone, and welcome to Drawing from the Well. I'm your host, Tiffany Marie. Today's episode focuses health-centered practices in education.
00:12:46
Speaker
You just heard from mental health expert and practitioner, Glenda Makatanai. And next, you'll hear from youth expert, Malia, who shares about her own experiences attempting to center her wellness within her schooling. On our Mic Check 1, 2, 3 segment today, we got some amazing practitioners who are joining us.
00:13:08
Speaker
We have Cindy Bonaparte, who is a wound doula, and we have Chanel Durley, who is a death doula. Collectively, they will talk about what it means to center life and death in our conversations about shifting from schools as sites of schooling toward frameworks of education.
00:13:34
Speaker
Hello, my name is Malia Niwatoa and I am a young Samoan woman that is from san Francisco, California. I am 19 years old and I am currently attending UC Riverside.
00:13:46
Speaker
I have never felt completely centered while being at school. There was always like something about me that was like mentally detached. I just always felt like I didn't belong there and being forced to be at school made it like even worse. It's like I had no choice of like how I would live my childhood.
00:14:05
Speaker
There were a few times where I can remember where I enjoyed school, but there are many times where i like I felt lost, depressed and like mentally paralyzed, I guess.
00:14:18
Speaker
I think one time where I got a sense of being centered is when I took a trip. I took a trip to New Zealand and stayed with the students of Keato College. ki oto I don't know what I'm saying. I'm so sorry that I'm mispronouncing it.
00:14:35
Speaker
But I guess like it felt like for the first time like during like my childhood, teenage years, that I can actually like be with like young people that are similar to me in like an academic institution.
00:14:47
Speaker
It was like the first time I've ever seen majority of the student population that were Polynesian. Because in the States, like you will only see like a ah handful or less than a handful of Polynesian students in one school or at least like one city.
00:15:03
Speaker
And to top it off, like the teachers and like the mentors were Polynesian too. I've never had or still haven't had like a teacher that was Polynesian. In a sense, that was like really, really cool.
00:15:16
Speaker
Being in New Zealand, it opened my eyes and made me feel like I was welcomed in a way. And like, I wasn't like an outcast, I would say. That's what it made me feel like that I wasn't.
00:15:28
Speaker
Well, it kind of did and because I was, I'm American. But at the same time, I still felt it was really like a good opportunity to go out there and like see how different our academic institutions are.
00:15:43
Speaker
I feel like ours and America should be more like theirs. They should revolve around our culture.
00:16:09
Speaker
All right. Welcome y'all to Mic Check. One, two, three. Just today is Tiffany Jewell and Chanel Durley and Cindy Bonaparte. And we're just super excited to have this amazing conversation.
00:16:23
Speaker
Welcome, Cindy and Chanel. Thank you so much for being with us this morning. Thank you. Morning. Greetings. Grateful to be here. We're so excited. i believe the point of this was thinking about health center practice and education. But I imagine with the two of y'all, we're going to do way more than that.
00:16:40
Speaker
Go up under and around it, come back to it and then leave it again. So i just want to start with Cindy. Can you like tell us about your service and your art and your work, particularly in health? like How did you come to be concerned with health and the well-being of other people?
00:17:00
Speaker
i have to take it back to when I was five. At my grandmother's church, we had a pastor, Mother Pulling, and she had announced that I had like the gift of laying hands. And the way I had interpreted that is, like in the real world, the best place to put that would be to become a doctor. So I headstrong on becoming a doctor from the age of five. And I've just always had like a nurturing experience.
00:17:24
Speaker
When my sister was born, I thought she was a doll and I thought I had to take care of her. you know, I just I kind of was already oriented that way. And so when the learning channel was the learning channel, they used to have operations.
00:17:38
Speaker
In elementary school, i was watching like incision to closure, like vasectomies, C-section, know open heart surgery. I asked my mom to buy the little organs that you could grow from KCT.
00:17:50
Speaker
And since she taught us how to sew, I would like try to practice the suturing. So I was really like on there and I was always focused, but it switched for me when I started to understand how the medical system worked and how I was like, well, as a doctor,
00:18:09
Speaker
Because of the expense, because of how the business works, i was like, I don't want to practice defensive medicine. I want to actually help people learn how to take care of themselves. So I felt like being a doctor was not the best place for me to take care of people because of how I was oriented.
00:18:23
Speaker
That's intense. I remember when I was 13, wanted to be a forensic pathologist because I watched the X-Files and Scully was my favorite. So I was like, that's what I'm about to do. And then somebody told me it's like 13 years of school. And I said, nah, I got a PhD and did even longer instead. I don't know what I was thinking.
00:18:44
Speaker
could have been a forensic pathologist today. I'm just fascinated with black girls and bodies. That's powerful to me. And Chanel had the same question for you. We were super grateful to have you today. but And what was your story, your trajectory into health and well-being?
00:18:59
Speaker
Well, first, thank you, Cindy, for that, and because there's a lot that you were saying that I was like, ah, that definitely reminds me of my own story. So I was pre-med as well. And, you know, things shifted, partly because of what I saw within the medical industry. And then the other part being curious about behavior and psychosomatics.
00:19:19
Speaker
So I went into psychology, but... Also, and intuitive child. And then growing up Catholic, and my dad was going to be a deacon in the Catholic Church, that's a whole other story.
00:19:31
Speaker
But they didn't know what to do, like what box to like place me in, because what I had conviction in, what I was seeing was not necessarily what boxed in as what intuitive should be or what you you know, what we should know.
00:19:45
Speaker
So I thought I wanted to be an OBGYN for a long time. And I thought it was because i had this ability to know when somebody was pregnant and even being sensitive to the spirit. right And i was like, well, of course, then I'm just going to be a doctor and help women who are about to have a baby.
00:20:07
Speaker
right But over time, and understanding my abilities and everything. Like I'm more about transitions and not necessarily birthing into this realm, but also birthing into the other realm.
00:20:20
Speaker
Once I finally came into peace with that, I began on my death doula journey, which was actually been like a 25 year process. But far health, it took health crises for me to really dive in and understand my own health and how I need to be an advocate for myself, but then not just that, how do we turn around and teach other people to be advocates for their own health?
00:20:45
Speaker
Because having worked in the medical field and research and in healthcare, care I definitely saw both sides, being a patient as well as being an employee.
00:20:57
Speaker
And when things changed from When we were at the hospital i was working at, we stopped calling patients, patients, and instead clients. And it was on all the... It was a big shift.
00:21:12
Speaker
It didn't resonate with me anymore. So there was a big, I guess, you know come to Jesus type moment of like, is this really what I want to be doing for the rest of my life? Is this how I want to spend my energy? And is this just what I want to be a part of? And it wasn't.
00:21:30
Speaker
Ooh, I got like seven questions that came up, but I'm going to try to stick the script for right now, but we'll get to that. You know, one of the things that comes up is unique, but also central to both y'all stories are these gifts that you had very early on.
00:21:44
Speaker
And I think about like everybody is born with those. And then we go into these institutions that influence our relationship to those gifts. I was reading this post a while ago that said even, and some people going to feel crunchy about it, but thinking about like special education and IEPs, the post was saying how a lot of young people who are labeled as whatever are given these labels because those are gifts that people don't know what to do with.
00:22:14
Speaker
And i think about schools and their relationship to young people's gifts. And, you know, a lot of folks think about schools because that's the primary institution that we have that's responsible for cultivating young people for the longest span of time. Mm-hmm.
00:22:30
Speaker
And it's seen in a very objective way to a lot of folks. And so, you know, we have a critique or approach it with anything other than it just being this normative thing that we're supposed to go through. It's a lot of pushback.
00:22:41
Speaker
But I'm interested for the both of y'all, how you in your schooling experiences, how teachers and even the process of schooling responded to your gifts.
00:22:52
Speaker
Like what's your experience with that? If I may, I'm actually going to take it back to my mother. My mother, she was labeled as a child. So she was labeled and she was put into special education classes.
00:23:09
Speaker
You know, she grew up in Watts here in the 60s. And she knew from her experience how teachers were. So that influenced how... I was in school because she came into it like with the idea that she had to protect us all the time from teachers.
00:23:26
Speaker
And one thing that I told my mom one time in college was that because she had some learning difficulties, but the schooling that they provided for her was not focused on you know her gifts, right?
00:23:43
Speaker
So she, i think... always looked at me it like, you know, I was the first in my family go to college. And when I went to college, there were just some common sense things. Like I've been looking at like mother wit, just that mother wit, that mother genius.
00:24:01
Speaker
Like she had that. So she gave me fundamentals of like wisdom, knowledge passed down through our ancestors and things like that, that were just normal for me that I didn't see amongst my peers.
00:24:14
Speaker
And so i told her one day, I said, you know, I said, a lot of the comments and stuff that you're telling me is guiding how I use my intelligence that I don't see my peers using in that way. I said, don't feel bad. I said, my peers that have professors as parents and stuff, I said, still prefer that I had you as my mom to teach me that.
00:24:37
Speaker
So as far as the schooling, I was in the gifted programs growing up. But honestly, probably by a about the time like high school and junior high, I really started to feel like it hindered me in some way. And I couldn't put a finger on how.
00:24:52
Speaker
I made good grades, but I still felt hindered. Like there was something hindering about it. I just couldn't really explain it and articulate it. Shana, what about you? Well, my schooling, most of my life, I had a lot of teachers and counselors tell me how special I was not.
00:25:12
Speaker
So i was a Navy brat early on. And the last place my dad was stationed at was in California. So Skaggs Island. And although it was close to Vallejo where I grew up, I guess they were identified as part of Sonoma County.
00:25:27
Speaker
So Kids on base had to travel into Sonoma, like another hour to get to school. It was a predominantly white town, but the school that I was in was also predominantly white.
00:25:40
Speaker
So there was a lot of racism that I experienced early on from classmates, from teachers, everything. It was more of like... I was a nuisance to be there. It didn't matter how smart I was or how and knew how to read early on and I could read very well. i was still kind of like pushed to the side. Definitely a traumatic time.
00:26:01
Speaker
I didn't understand any of that. And then when I... went into Vallejo schools, which is predominantly, I'd say, Black and Brown. very diverse culture, but we also had teachers and counselors who just did not care at all, unless you were in the gifted program. And more often than not, the gifted program were the white students in school.
00:26:27
Speaker
It was very rare to have any person of color within the gifted and talented program. And then, of course, the way that they separated the schools was like, oh, well, if you go to Vallejo High, it's about athletics and they're going to put focus on that. and But if you go to Hogan, that means you're smart.
00:26:42
Speaker
And it was like citywide. Everybody kind of knew that. I remember when I was a sophomore in high school. And at that time, yeah, it was my first year in high school. it was like the last year, like the 10th, and 12th.
00:26:56
Speaker
every parent had to come like on a weekend with their child to see the counselor. And my mom is Filipino and she has an accent and she was with me.
00:27:08
Speaker
And so i remember my counselor was so disgusted by us. And looking at my transcripts, even though my transcripts were good, he didn't feel like they were great.
00:27:21
Speaker
He was like, what do you want to be when you grow up? I'm very dismissive. And I said, I want to be an OBGYN. I want to go to UC Davis. And he was like, that's not going to happen. was like, what? Why? Because I really thought, well, my grades are good and I have a few years to you know get it together for like to do pre-med. And he was like, you're just going to be like every other Black girl here at Vallejo and you're just going to get pregnant at 16 and you just need to accept your fate.
00:27:45
Speaker
That's all. Oh my God. And then, you know, my mom's trying to speak up for me. I'm trying to speak up. We were completely shocked. And he was making fun of her accent saying like, can you understand English?
00:27:56
Speaker
Things like that. So we got up and left. And I remember that being a very like traumatic experience that fueled me to want to do better in school. And then when I met with him again in the spring,
00:28:12
Speaker
And he looked at my grades and they were even better than the fall. And I told him that there was a possibility for me to go to some school in Napa that was a technology high school. And what did he think about that? And he was like, I really don't give a damn what you do.
00:28:26
Speaker
And then that's when i was like, okay, I got to get out of this school district because nobody's going to care. So when I think about my experiences, I don't think it was until I got into and junior college. I decided to go to DVC junior college in the Bay Area. And there was one teacher who fostered my intuition to the point of calling me out in front of a class of 100 be like, you already know this ish.
00:28:52
Speaker
stop playing games, you know, and that there's no reason to separate my intuition from how I was forward facing in the world. And like that they can be together.
00:29:05
Speaker
He was a really huge part of my life for the short time that I had him as a teacher and as a mentor. but He got kicked out of school because he was too progressive. So he was fired from the college.
00:29:16
Speaker
So when I think about my path right now, this is just who I am. And I'm like, it doesn't matter what other people think. It doesn't make me less of who I am. You know what I mean? But I definitely think about him as a teacher in college or even going to grad school. And some of my professors in grad school who are like, do you? You know, like they were very supportive. But definitely didn't get that in undergrad or anything like other than that.
00:29:42
Speaker
That's a long, long journey to say. It's definitely been a interesting journey for sure. You brought back so many memories for me because I'm seeing a lot of parallels.
00:29:53
Speaker
I'm hearing your story. My parents actually we moved to Texas when I was 14. So had the programs here, very some supportive teachers, others not so much.
00:30:05
Speaker
So was mixed. But when I went to Texas, they made everyone take a state test to see like where you are because it was, you know, teach to the test type of thing. And I never performed really well in standardized testing, but my grades were always really high.
00:30:20
Speaker
I also got out of school a month earlier than we did in California. So when I tested, like normal, i didn't test well. They put me in a slow class and the teacher was black.
00:30:32
Speaker
And I told him, I said, I was taking pre-algebra. i don't see how doing timetables on little stick is going to help me get better for the test. I was like, they already have tutoring in the class and I can catch up that way.
00:30:46
Speaker
he came down with me. He's like, she doesn't belong in my class. She's had these classes in her other school. And they're like, sorry. They're like, that's where she has to stay because of how she scored on the test.
00:30:58
Speaker
And so I literally felt my brain melting in that class, but I just stuck through everything. And then by the time I got to high school, so my junior high transcript from that school in Texas didn't show any advanced classes.
00:31:11
Speaker
So I tried to get back into it. And I experienced having to advocate for myself because there were times when my mom went back to California to work. She was my biggest advocate. My dad was a bit more conformist, but when they put me in the The class was like home ec and then you had to have these sugar baby dolls to discourage teen pregnancy. So you had to take a five pound bag of sugar get a grade on it to discourage it so you could feel what it's like to have to take care of a baby.
00:31:41
Speaker
so repeat I was like, I'm not having any babies. Like my mom has been the person for all those things for me. And they also did like some home ec things. So that was perfect because usually my dad is like, do what your teacher tells you, but he's Haitian.
00:31:57
Speaker
And he don't want to think about babies and his daughters like at all. So I went to the counselor and I told her, I said, hey, I said, I want to go to college.
00:32:07
Speaker
I don't think that this is a necessary class on my transcript. I should be taking something else. She did her fake computer typing and it's like, no, sorry, everything's closed. I said, well, I'm a freshman. There's like four years of classes. There's nothing. And she's like, no, sorry. So I told my dad, I said, they put me in a class that's going to teach me how to take care of babies.
00:32:26
Speaker
And he's just like, off like tell them to take care of this class. And I said, I did. They said they couldn't. so that was the first time my dad actually stood up for me at school.
00:32:39
Speaker
That's all I told them. I didn't tell them the other stuff. So it was very funny when I went the counselor's office. and And I just come in and I sit down and he comes in behind me. He doesn't even sit down. He just looms in the doorway.
00:32:51
Speaker
And she's like, hi, Sandy. And I was texting. I was like, hi, Mr. Bowne Pah. And he just goes, take my daughter out of this class right now. Like, there's so many things she's going to learn that's going to be useful. And all he heard was baby.
00:33:10
Speaker
So it just infuriates him. It's like nostrils flare. he just repeats again. Take my daughter out of this class. And then she's like, oh, OK, let me see. She's like, you want to take public speaking, health, government?
00:33:23
Speaker
You know, and I sat there and kind of reveled in it, you know, thought for a while. And I got my classes, but. You know, I had to like navigate getting back in those courses because she would only suggest community colleges.
00:33:37
Speaker
When I was very clear, I wanted to go to a four-year college. And she did this the whole way, didn't support me in looking for college campuses. I didn't know I should have applied for like more than you know four schools, but that was what you could send your SAT scores to for free.
00:33:52
Speaker
you know And so it ended with, I went into like one of the most expensive schools and got like the most money out of everybody in spite of that. But I had to advocate for myself and get myself back into those AP classes But again, like I knew how to do that because I saw my mom being mama bear when they tried to put my sister who tracked differently in track school. She's like, oh, no, you're not putting her at track.
00:34:17
Speaker
She's not going to get the same kind of education as my other daughter. Like, no, you're going to put her them in the same track. like You're not going to do that. So I saw her do that with us all through elementary. So when she was away and I was in high school, I was able to advocate for myself.
00:34:32
Speaker
It's just interesting like hearing your story and all these like similarities and things. I feel the same way. Yeah, it just makes me think about, like I'm not sure where you grew up and stuff, but it's just everywhere.
00:34:44
Speaker
um you know It's just everywhere. Yeah. Maybe it was last year. There was a doctor that I follow on Instagram and she posted a photo of her graduating from medical school.
00:34:58
Speaker
And she was talking about how incredibly depressed she was the day she graduated because of everything that she had been through and how many counselors and how many people told her she was not special or how she should just quit. There's no way she could become a doctor. And then one person in the comments said raise your hand if you're a Black woman who was also shunned like that by a teacher or a counselor. And there was just, you know,
00:35:26
Speaker
Black woman after Black woman. They went through the same thing in school. And i was like, golly, is this everywhere? and it seems to be. And how ironic, Cindy, that you eventually became a womb doula after being taken out of that class. Exactly.
00:35:46
Speaker
That's what's so interesting about Black women's narratives is that we complete the schooling process as a trauma response, as a way to prove that we can do it. But we also see so many Black women now going into Indigenous and traditional methods of wellness.
00:36:04
Speaker
And I'm just thinking about how we go through all of those years of proving ourselves and getting the degrees and then making that shift you know And saying like we want to tap back into our ancestral lineage. And I just think that's a lot of story and weight to carry.
00:36:24
Speaker
Because we still went through that schooling process and all of that proving yourself. So I'm just thinking about all of the undoing that we also have to take on as we go into these traditional modalities. We have to go into the undoing of...
00:36:40
Speaker
not proving ourselves and just all of those things that we've been taught by traditional schooling. And I imagine, Tindy, for you, a lot of that is embedded in your work as a wound doula. Can you tell us more about that? like What is that? What does it embody? What happens? What are the outcomes of your work as well?
00:37:03
Speaker
I started calling myself a womb doula because none of my work was focused on being like a birth doula, birth support or postpartum. um So basically, I started learning about Ayurvedic healing.
00:37:16
Speaker
i learned Reiki. I wanted to focus on like women's health, womb health. Also came out of wanting to heal myself. getting involved in healing. And when I took a course with Marcia Lopez of Women's True Healing, she was teaching this course on shamanic yoni steam healing.
00:37:36
Speaker
And so I think it was actually in the abdominal therapy course that I took with her for wool massage. But I remember telling her like, this school feels like Hogwarts.
00:37:48
Speaker
Like it's a little... Yeah, she's Guatemalan, and so she's learned from like indigenous traditional practices. And so i wasn't connected with anyone who was doing like African traditional practices, but I still felt guided through these other practices to like find my way and look first to just look at African traditional practices, not evil. like That was the first breakdown, really. So I called them my auntie medicines. They're my aunties.
00:38:17
Speaker
leading me back to my mother medicines. And she's like, okay, point of this shamanic journey that you're going to facilitate is for the client to hear the voice of their womb. And I'm like, what are you talking about? you know I'm a Reiki practitioner. I'm still like, what are you talking about?
00:38:33
Speaker
I hear the voice of your womb. you know So she guided us through them and we basically do guided meditations. Now, this is in a setting where a holistic practice, spiritual practice where you know I set up and I esteem and I'm dealing with people from different belief systems. So usually i try to get idea, like, am I asking them to call in their ancestors?
00:38:55
Speaker
Do they want to just talk to their higher self, you know meet people where they are? And it's funny because i didn't feel like I heard the voice in my room or heard it. too It grew louder as my practice continued. And it's a very grounding voice.
00:39:12
Speaker
The example she gave me and that i I've even experienced is that, you know, you meditate. And I think I saw this video meme where was an African woman. She's like, you know, universe, what should I focus on? And it was like, your laundry. And she's like, yeah.
00:39:29
Speaker
You know? Something else, clean out your car. you know I've experienced that. like When I'm in meditation, it's like, what do focus on? And it's like, the first thing comes, like drink water.
00:39:42
Speaker
Then somebody's grandma will tell you, go drink water and go lay down. i you know so the voice of womb is very practical. People kind of want... You know, I don't know the unicorns and whatever um new age tells you.
00:39:56
Speaker
But sometimes it's literally like, you know, like, go take care of your Monday night and your basics. Like you want all the magic and you can't even clean out your car. Uh oh. but So like for me, my practice, whether I was giving someone a lifestyle consultation, like with diet, herbs, like i would always go back to, I was like, I have a a science that I work through to help you figure out what's going to help you like heal your womb, menstrual issues and general overall health.
00:40:29
Speaker
I said, but whatever recommendations I give you, I'm trying to show you these signs so that you can start to learn how to listen to your body. You know, you you can hear the sound of your womb through your grandmother's voice, like her mother wit and things like that. So to me, I see the womb as like your Built in, whether it's physically built in or whether it's just the energetic center, but it's a divining tool.
00:40:57
Speaker
And just how you meditate and pray, like that's just one aspect where you can tap into that. Like for me, like your bloodline met your lineage. That's ultimately whether I'm teaching meditation.
00:41:12
Speaker
health, even art, if I'm teaching art, because it's your creative center. I'm really about like trying to get people to wake up to be able to listen to that wisdom.
00:41:27
Speaker
you know Thinking back to what Chanel was saying about intuition, i think about intuition as relationship to schools and schooling particularly. Even if you think about it from a historical context, schooling has always been about separation from our bodies, separation from the land, from our people that are those reminders of our connection to our body.
00:41:45
Speaker
And um I was in therapy yesterday and making connections between how so much of my success and my rewarding has come from my separation from my body, how quickly I can make moves and complete this. And those are all distractions. And have so much anxiety that has been rewarded.
00:42:07
Speaker
because I translate it into work. And then all the things that i like a lot of things that I like to do, I think I like to do, are really critical distractions from being able to listen and connect to myself.
00:42:19
Speaker
I was thinking about when I reached out to Chanel, your auto-reply email. I've never seen anything in my life like this, y'all. It's like three paragraphs.
00:42:33
Speaker
And also you blessed us. We don't deserve that. But it's like, first off, expect to reply within three to such and such this many days. I'll allll see it within that many days. Then you'll get a reply within this many days.
00:42:48
Speaker
And I remember the end was like, and what are you doing you know for yourself? And how does this land? like i was just like, oh my, initially I was offended.
00:42:58
Speaker
I'm going to be honest on here because of the realm that I was in and receiving that. As if you had, had the audacity, right? To assume that you were should be accountable to me immediately. right There's an ethic, there's a culture that I was a part of in sending that. So when I received it, I'm going to be really transparent. How dare this person- Not, oh me, right? And that's the culture that I had been celebrated in, is that type of, and your protection of yourself, your sacred space was offensive to me. And that comes from the space that I was sending that in, where I was extremely disconnected from my own body, extremely disconnected from my own source.
00:43:39
Speaker
And when I came back to I said, that is a gift that without the resource that I've been given, because there is that realm, but I've been blessed enough with slowness, with mindfulness to be able to return to my body, to even see that as a a gift that we don't deserve. So I do i first want to say thank you for even allowing us to be blessed by that.
00:44:03
Speaker
And I'm using that as a connection to your work as, so Cindy's wound doula, but I'm connecting that to your work as a death doula, because I believe that in order to see that as a gift, there were some parts that I was operating in that actually needed to die.
00:44:19
Speaker
And I'm really grateful for the consistent leaning into debt and grief work that has allowed me to even be able to appreciate and learn and glean from folks like you and the work and the service that you do.
00:44:36
Speaker
Can you tell us ah more? Because I've heard of it and I consider some of my work to be hopefully catching up to some of the work that you've been doing for a while now. Can you tell us what is that? What's a death doula? What's a part of that work? like What does that even look like or mean?
00:44:52
Speaker
I think that even the term seems very new to the tradition because people have been doing death work since the beginning of time, you know, and ushering the,
00:45:10
Speaker
the next life or even holding space for grieving people to be, you know, to be in their emotions and to process and to work through it, whether it's using, you know, ancestral methods, healing modalities or, you know, newer things like therapy.
00:45:32
Speaker
And even being a part of this, you know the death doula community, seeing how everybody uses their work has been really cool. Really, really cool. Kind of like, so my bachelor's in psychology, and there are so many different ways you can go with a psych degree. And I feel like the same thing is with being a death doula.
00:45:51
Speaker
Me personally, my father was the first death doula that I knew. Mm-hmm. I remember him doing death work early on within the church and then having really great relationships with some of the funeral homes in Vallejo.
00:46:07
Speaker
And so people knew of my dad because of that, like whether he sat with people who were about to die because he was a chaplain at Kaiser for a little bit. So he was helping people who were about to die. He was also helping people who were just ill in the hospital and then sitting with families in preparation for loved one's death and then helping them put together the services and being there for the vigils.
00:46:33
Speaker
So that started like around the time I was 12, 13.
00:46:38
Speaker
He would always tell me, not ask me, to come with him or to just to sit in on some of these sessions that he would have with family members. And I didn't want to do it because I was like, oh, why would I want to do this? Right.
00:46:53
Speaker
Being a teenager. But he was like, you are going to need to know this. You will be using this one day. i think that was another way for him to like he didn't know how to foster my intuition.
00:47:07
Speaker
But he knew that this was one way that he could. So I you know went, can not kicking and screaming, but I was kind of like, okay, me just sit here and learn something. And over time, I definitely utilized that information.
00:47:21
Speaker
So family members or friends who had family members that passed away, they would call me like, hey, Chanel, can you help me out with this? And i'm like, yeah, no problem. Or I direct them to my dad if they needed something.
00:47:33
Speaker
and I would find myself doing more vigils for people, sitting vigil for people who were in the space transitioning.
00:47:46
Speaker
Honestly, it's a privilege to be able to share that sacred space with somebody. And I would never feel like I have, like that's, that's not, um,
00:47:59
Speaker
it's not my right to be there in that process. So being in that process and being able to like, just hold the space and even witnessing that beautiful transition is huge. I suppressed that part, even, you know, the way that my intuition worked in that way for a long time, but it wasn't until my dad died and working through my own grieving process, but even being in wellness before that, I realized everybody was grieving something.
00:48:29
Speaker
Right? Not just a death of a being, but a death of whether it was a career, death of a relationship, even in things where they were experiencing ah really beautiful joy in their life, there was still ah death of something else.
00:48:48
Speaker
So holding space for grief has been like, you know, very deep. But then when ah my dad died, oh understanding grief in a deeper way, it's like it broke me open into a whole different world.
00:49:05
Speaker
I'm a very different person than I was the day before my dad died. And I think about that transition a lot, right? And how I understand the depth of love now because of the grief that I held around my dad.
00:49:18
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And then I had my own you know deeper spiritual, of personal journey with that, that allowed me to hold space for people in a deeper way.
00:49:29
Speaker
mean, using some of the traditions that I use and that our ancestors have used in order to help with grief I had a really whack grief therapist and like we went as a family and i was like, this is not going to work for me. I'm all for therapy, all for it. If it works for you, but it's not the only way. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:49:54
Speaker
So that's when I started to lean on the things that I knew helped me or like that was I was open to. so breath work has been a huge, huge thing for me and it has been huge for other people. So facilitating breath work for grief and allowing that to be just a huge ah healing practice has been, ah it's just amazing to be there as a witness.
00:50:16
Speaker
Yeah. But so my death work is like, end of life planning and helping people like really think about, okay, what can I do now?
00:50:27
Speaker
We can get all the logistics down, right? But we can also talk about some of the things that people don't talk about with grief, right? We have a very methodical way, even you know like the school system, methodical way of how we think we should be, but our bodies are telling us something different, right? how we should feel.
00:50:46
Speaker
and then holding space as a death doula, I can... kind guide people through that. When they're thinking like, wait, I'm not sleeping. I'm not, why am I feeling this? Why am I feeling that? I should be done grieving, right? Because the funeral was on Tuesday. I'm like, no, this is a journey.
00:51:03
Speaker
It's really guiding people back to their body, guiding people back to their intuition because we are so disconnected. And we have been taught to be very disconnected in that way. Wow.
00:51:15
Speaker
There's so much that comes up and I don't even know where to go. Wow. Wow.
00:51:21
Speaker
As you were sharing, I was thinking about so much of this as it relates to location as well. When I was a child in both sides of my family from Arkansas, when I would visit, I clearly remember going through albums and I was like six or seven and I'm flipping through I'm like, why all these people laying? And hit me that these were on the coffee table.
00:51:46
Speaker
and it hit me that these were on the coffee table photo albums of dead people, and it was just out. And I like remember turning and looking to my auntie's like, what is this madness?
00:52:00
Speaker
In the South, there's such a different relationship to death. Of course, I think because it's different relationship to time. like When I went to bury my grandmother, i remember online, was creating her obituary. We went to go get it printed.
00:52:16
Speaker
And first off, i was like, why is this such and such closing at 1 p.m.? And it was like a chain. It was one of those photo stores, even ones we have here, the copy stores. It's at one o'clock. I was like, what in the world? So rushed over there. I got there by 1130 closed.
00:52:30
Speaker
and it was closed They operate their own ethic of time, relationship death, relationship to the land. And that's so fascinating to me because I think in the West and thinking about the context of the US as the West, but literally the further West you go, Europe of course is at the center, the further West that you go,
00:52:50
Speaker
There's an avoidance, such an avoidance of death. And you know the style of folks be flipping in the caskets and this celebration and there's a different type of leaning in. And here folks won't, as I say, both figuratively and literally won't look at the body.
00:53:04
Speaker
Yeah. And that has very different outcomes. And so much of how, you know, my brother and colleague, Kenjus, and I wrote this piece, Apocalyptic Education, couple years ago, where we pronounced schools dead.
00:53:20
Speaker
We were both excited and saddened by the fact that it took us that long to come to terms with it. But it's like so shocking to people and folks will not look at or just do not want to lean into that that idea, that possibility.
00:53:33
Speaker
So i appreciate you raising also this idea of it as it being sacred. And i think there's so much fear that we can't even get to the sacred part. We can't get to the celebration. we can't get to it because there's so much avoidance. And I also think about both people who are dying, who are in denial of the fact that they're dying, and families and community who either know something or someone has died or are dying and are also in denial and how much harder and less sacred that process is.
00:54:03
Speaker
so I'm really interested from you, Chanel, like how do you even understand the relationship between your work and this idea of school abolition? Well, the first thing that comes to mind with that is like teaching people how to be human again.
00:54:16
Speaker
a We've been taught to be machines, you know, and to the lack of any emotion, our intuition, our inner wisdom to cut off our ancestral roots.
00:54:31
Speaker
We know that there is not only one way to learn. Just like Cindy, I don't do well on standardized tests, but my grades will be good. you know I could give you a presentation, right? But I'm not going to be like, you give me a star test, I'm not going to do great at it.
00:54:46
Speaker
And if we know that, then why are we acting like there's only one way to be? Why is society yeah teaching us this? So yeah, it's about coming back to being human and this whole concept of time too, right? Yeah.
00:55:05
Speaker
To your point, Tiffany, my automatic reply, i was in that same space as you for many years as well, right? But then when I had to unpack and unlearn and be like, wait a minute, you know, this time is sacred.
00:55:18
Speaker
Like all of our time is sacred. Everything that we do is sacred. Everything can be ritual, right? If we allow it to be. yeah But in school, we're teaching students to, don't know, climb this weird ladder I remember being on the, I took myself off and I was like, can't do this anymore. It's just too much. Right. Like one is enough enough.
00:55:41
Speaker
Like we need to teach people how to understand when enough is enough. And when I think about grief and grief work, and i remember learning early on, even like doing yoga teacher training, like the suffering is in the attachment.
00:55:56
Speaker
Right. So sometimes when I'm like going through it, I'm like, what am I so attached to? Why can't I like say my stuff? You know what I mean? figure out Why am i so attached to this particular outcome, right?
00:56:08
Speaker
This thing in my mind that I feel like, okay, this is the next step or blah, blah, blah. Like if we can eliminate that and like just help people take themselves off this ladder, you know, whether it's this corporate ladder or this like...
00:56:20
Speaker
weird hierarchical ladder. Wow. How much more human can we be? like like What are we bringing ourselves up to be able to receive? What are we going to be able to call in?
00:56:31
Speaker
So much joy is there. You know i mean? Releasing so much anxiety and so much stress. i That's what I think about. like And if we could teach people that as part of a curriculum, as part of education yeah in schools,
00:56:47
Speaker
gosh, these students would be, and these younger people would so much more like, well-rounded or like empathetic. You know what mean? Like empathy would be so like, it would just be a part of who they are and not something that they feel has to be separate of, you know, there's a great resignation for a reason.
00:57:09
Speaker
And I think that even this reset had to happen with the pandemic for people to realize like, oh man, I got to come back home to my body or when we're losing people.
00:57:19
Speaker
And there's been many people. have one in nine people are, know somebody who has, died from COVID, right? And even more, obviously, you know somebody who has had COVID.
00:57:30
Speaker
So we've all had to kind of reckon with our own mortality. And even thinking about during this time, this downtime of what matters to us, you know, and how we want to spend our time, who we want to spend our time with.
00:57:46
Speaker
But could you imagine if we taught that early on for it to be so baked in into our curriculum or cultural education it would make even working through grief or confronting grief easier, normalized even, you know, words like death doula, womb doula, holistic wellness consultant.
00:58:14
Speaker
That would not be alternative or it wouldn't be something like woo woo. It would just be, Hey, this is what it is. Like, why aren't we thinking about our health holistically? You know? You said lot.
00:58:27
Speaker
Listen, I got to go back to one the things. I got to backtrack a little. Oh, my goodness. There was a part where you were talking about when your dad transitioned and how you were different. The person you were before is obviously you were different like within that day.
00:58:45
Speaker
and I'm thinking like your father transitioned, allowed for a part of you to transition into like this deeper part of you that expands on like how you can navigate and support yourself through grief. And you were talking about land and nature.
00:59:02
Speaker
and just so much is clicking on me. For my position, I'm like this wellness person. And I wrote up this whole thing and I looked at it yesterday and decided I don't even like it.
00:59:17
Speaker
And I was talking to my supervisor and I said, i don't want to take no more trainings online. want to hear no more people talk. I want you to pay for me to go to this eight week training where I didn't land and I'm working on a farm. Yes.
00:59:31
Speaker
Yes. And I said, because i need to get uncomfortable because I'm too comfortable and our young people are not comfortable. And I said, and what I'm really reckoning with is that so many of our migrant families come from land-based communities. So what I wrote in this proposal is sufficient. It may feel good for teachers, but it actually doesn't support what I believe for young people and what I believe for myself.
00:59:59
Speaker
And, you know, she said, Basically, like, maybe you could do it. See if you get a scholarship. We'll pay for partially. But we have to make sure that there's a return on the investment. Of course.
01:00:10
Speaker
And she was like, I hate to say it, but we have to make sure this. But I am the return money on the investment. Saving my life allows me to understand grief and really be present with these young people who are on land that potentially they don't even want to be on. Mm-hmm.
01:00:32
Speaker
They're in schools and operating in spaces that is not land-based when so many of them, some of them in the pandemic, they was like, oh yeah, we was building houses with our cousins. I was ain't you 15?
01:00:44
Speaker
He's like, yeah, but my cousins from Brazil is out here and we built houses when we get together. i'm so disconnected from that context because I have been so well-trained in academia.
01:00:58
Speaker
Okay. And so I'm so grateful that you're like bringing us back to when transition happens for someone else and you're a witness, or when transition happens for you, there is a deeper way that you could connect with people in grief.
01:01:13
Speaker
But I'm not a firm believer that I can get that if I'm not centering land and nature. So many lessons. So many. you know Cindy, you have gotten to and you continue to get to see life and life created and the sacredness that we can be in the business world, you can be disconnected, but you get to be in this portal of reconnection.
01:01:38
Speaker
And I think regardless of where the person is, I've seen the movies, it's like when you see a baby baby, born. When you help usher new life, it it it does it it rarely matters who it is. There's an invitation that is so powerful that you get to return.
01:01:53
Speaker
And even like over the years, we've had young people. had a former student who had, his partner had a baby while he was in high school. And so she was with us and it would just undo so much. Every time she was the classroom, you don't get to do the business as usual. You don't get to do the institutionalizing.
01:02:13
Speaker
You got to, right? All of that, it was ironic. School was already being abolished when she was there because the reminder was present. and And then some weird thing happens through schools where we don't have to see that all the time. and We start to treat those sacred blessings as objects, as at least stock, due to your point, this investment.
01:02:37
Speaker
And so I'm interested in c sending your time with families and birth mothers and babies, like some of the lessons that you have learned that are important for educators to remember. You know,
01:02:53
Speaker
I haven't actually been at a lot of births. At first, I was kind of you know embarrassed by it because I was like, you know people are like, oh, I've been to like 50 births, 100 births. like I don't advertise for supporting births.
01:03:07
Speaker
I think I've only had one client that wasn't in my community. So maybe someone would call me up because a friend who couldn't locate a doula didn't know what's going on. And so I'm like, you know, I just go.
01:03:20
Speaker
first birth I witnessed was my cousin, my cousin having my second cousin. and You know, we call her my niece. And that was the first time and I'd heard people talk about this.
01:03:33
Speaker
something happens. It's like a life happens and it just like fills you up. We're like up for 24 hours, not getting sleep, you know, just going through the whole thing. And i had so much energy. i was like, I'm going to go back to the house.
01:03:47
Speaker
I'm going to make some bone broth. I'm going to do this, that, and the other, you know? And I just felt like i felt the surge of energy and, you know, and then you see the birthing parent or the mother and,
01:03:59
Speaker
and the partner and a fight and and it's just like everybody's eyes get big, you know? I think it's just like, it's this natural, like you want to take in all of this life. It's just life happening and your eyes get big. Some people's mouths open. And it's just like, I think it's just our response to like taking in all this life that has just, you know, come earth side.
01:04:22
Speaker
And so, you know, to your question about like, what have I learned? we have to get out of our intellect. I think like with schooling, it's all about like the intellect and taking care of the intellect for a consumerist, capitalist, racist society.
01:04:40
Speaker
That's what schooling is. That's what I understand it is. And I think, you know, we've been just listening to and listening to y'all speak about the value or like, you know, the return on investment and like, I'm the investment.
01:04:56
Speaker
I think that, you know, if you have a system that is like only values, intellect for the purpose of production, for the purpose of capitalism, and you don't see the whole person, yeah, there's no way that system can profit or benefit from your wholeness of a human being, from your spirit, right? So every time we start getting into like, let's grieve, like that's valuable, like supporting someone grieving, like,
01:05:25
Speaker
That's a currency, you know, like that's a currency, that's energy. And it serves our humanity. It serves our humanity and our connection. So we know that that's not what they're about. But that is very scary because they're like, nah, y'all gonna be spending too much time, you know, like grieving and like, what are we gonna do?
01:05:46
Speaker
So I feel like they're just running scared, like we crying. and But then, you know, I need my comforts. I need someone doing the work that I don't want to do. And I don't want to have to think about it. And I don't want to have to do it You know, I'd rather just pass it off.
01:06:02
Speaker
I was just talking to a friend about, you know, the nap ministry. And I was like like, that's the closest thing I have to organized church right now, and like jumping on the nap ministry. And, you know, this whole like, what are you supposed to learn by the time you're six, seven, eight, nine, you know, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, you know, putting all these constraints on it.
01:06:25
Speaker
And you have nap time for the kindergartners. And then after that, there's no nap time because you've got to work, work, work. all the pop It's gone. Man, it's vicious. Yeah, i know. One of the posts that were up was talking about like, no, I don't want to collaborate. Why do I want to do more work?
01:06:40
Speaker
Like, why do you think I want to do more work? And I thought about that because I, as a, you know, before I was a doula, I was a personal assistant. So now I see that Interesting. I kind of look at the personal assistant job as like i was dueling their ways of maintaining, like in a way that wasn't healthy because it's like it's about commerce.
01:06:59
Speaker
Right. And so that role did not fit with me in that way unless it could be like, you know, healing. You know, it's funny that I feel like dueling is kind of like a personal assistant, you know.
01:07:13
Speaker
Yeah. because I'm nurturing and stuff and I'm helpful, I would get calls from my family, from friends, and people just asking, hey, are you busy? And you know, the people asking, can I ask you what they want you to maybe help them with?
01:07:28
Speaker
And now that question drives me up a while. i'm like, don't ask me if I'm busy. If you need something and I have capacity, I'm going to do it. Like if we have that relationship, I'm going to do it.
01:07:42
Speaker
But also it's not about me being busy because like me being busy says I'm busy for capitalism and that's more important. Yeah. And that's not the case. So, you know, now I'm like, don't ask if I'm busy.
01:07:56
Speaker
Don't think because I'm not busy. Like, I was like, okay, I'm dreaming. I'm like healing. I'm meditating. and'm I'm doing, I'm resting. know, and so it's like, why do you think that it's okay to interrupt that?
01:08:11
Speaker
And why do you think I should fill that with a task for you? And why aren't you doing it? Why aren't you resting? you know And so I was just contemplating on it. And then the other side of that is like when you're not busy, people seem to get angry.
01:08:24
Speaker
They kind of go like, well, I work hard for my thing. yeah Even in school, it's like, well, no, I'm not going to help them because I worked hard and I read this. I'm not going to help them get the concept because of the competitive nature of it.
01:08:36
Speaker
now And so it's like, how are we creating classrooms where We're learning without that competition and without that, you know, well, I learned it the hard way. So you need to learn it the hard way, too. Like, where do we take that out?
01:08:50
Speaker
You know, because I was like, that's just rest envy. That's rest envy. That's nature. You know, you're addicted to the go, go, go, you know, and you're addicted to the competition.
01:09:03
Speaker
Rest envy. Cindy, I do. You um were talking about grief. And I do have a question in regards how do you support people who have experienced abortions or miscarriages because you're a womb doula? What supports come with folks who have experienced those transitions?
01:09:23
Speaker
Yeah. So like, you know, not every birth ends with a person that survives. Right. Even when they do, like I consider the birthing parents when they have a child, that's a death of who they were before the child ends.
01:09:39
Speaker
And if the child doesn't survive, now there's a death of who they were. And there's also the death of this life that they were expecting, you know, to grow with. For me, i think I haven't had the direct experience of dealing with that. Like a lot of my work actually came sometimes people years later sometimes recently after it. And they come in for, say, steam healing.
01:10:06
Speaker
You know, they're looking for like the spiritual healing. So a lot of that really has to do with catching them where our society and their families have not given them the tools to grieve.
01:10:21
Speaker
wise It's a lot of listening to where they're coming from. And the way I work is, especially like around abortion, you know, there's guilt.
01:10:33
Speaker
Like even if they say, I'm happy that I did it, but then there's this guilt and then there's unprocessed grief, you know, so there's all these layers. So it's like, what I'm trying to do is first, know,
01:10:48
Speaker
The medicine I've worked with like compassion and forgiveness, like of self. You know that's the medicine that I look at because you're dealing with this lack. Like they lack the skills to grieve or they feel this didn't happen because they lacked or they got in a situation because, you know, so that and just like reminding them it's okay to connect with your body. Like you can feel very disconnected when something you know, from your body that you're like, you know, life wants to live and that process gets interrupted.
01:11:22
Speaker
And so then there's a lot of, okay, like, what did I do wrong? But like, even if it wasn't like a decision, like a miscarriage, like my body did something wrong, like my body wouldn't you know, a lot it. So me personally, it's also kind of comes down to like, I can work with people with different spiritual backgrounds and things like that. Cause I can look at that common human thread, but I do find myself more wanting to focus on folks that can connect with their ancestors because that's how I connect.
01:11:57
Speaker
So I do think that like, even when we think about schooling and think about black life, right. And how important it is to have that common lineage or bloodline. you know Not like necessarily like the tribe, but just like, or that common experience of being Black and collective.
01:12:19
Speaker
And how that's really important. I think what is like knowledge of self. When I started, of course, like knowledge of self is a process. You don't like say, oh, yeah, I know myself now. There's aspects of yourself that you know.
01:12:32
Speaker
so I try to meet people where they are. It's like whatever aspect like you know this about yourself so that you can cultivate you know the other layers as you go. So I'm just thinking like you know as parents with children in school, parents,
01:12:49
Speaker
As students, as teachers, you know, we have to ask, ask the school administration, like, do the teachers know who they are? I mean, they'll probably look at you like real crooked. You know history do know, but even the exercise of starting to ask those questions without even forcing an immediate answer from anyone.
01:13:10
Speaker
It's very powerful because there's something about when you speak something, even if you don't get an answer, but it's like, do teachers know who they are? Do they lead their intellect with their heart and wisdom?
01:13:21
Speaker
We never ask. And I say, okay, well, I'm asking, you know, and then you, before you become a parent, before you become an auntie, Before you teach other people, do you know who you are?
01:13:34
Speaker
Are you looking to lead with like your intellect with your heart and wisdom? That's what should be driving. The intellect is like the car. That's like the mechanics and, you know, and you fuel it, you put fuel in it and you keep it nice. You add like soup it up, you know, you can put your car, put some hydraulics on it, however you want to.
01:13:54
Speaker
do your intellect, but like your heart and your wisdom, um like guided by your ancestors, guided by your connection, that should be driving and steering. And so I think like in my work, it's not about reaching a point,
01:14:10
Speaker
some imagined point of where to be. It's about just asking those questions and that's the direction that you're like, well, that's the trajectory I'm looking at. And that will guide that will guide you to, you know, deal with whatever pops up.
01:14:26
Speaker
We're always going to be met with like new situations and we have to be able to respond just like in birth. It's like, oh, we didn't expect that to happen. Okay, what do we do now? Well, we got to do it quick, you know? Hmm.
01:14:40
Speaker
Thank you so much for that.
01:14:44
Speaker
I want to stay with y'all for the rest of the evening, but I don't want to assume how you want to use your time. We've been learning about that today. I say that to say thank y'all so much. I think it may seem repetitive, but there may be some things that have come up for y'all throughout this process that will guide your response to this last question and what we're going to leave our listeners with.
01:15:06
Speaker
And i think for some people, This may be such a stretch in bringing a womb doula and death doula together to talk about the future of schools and education. But just today in general, in this interview has made so many things clear and shown the alignment. But I think my last question for the two of you is how do you see your work, your service,
01:15:33
Speaker
as ah wound doula, as a death doula, and what you've learned, how do you see that interacting with or fueling the next direction of schools, whether they exist or not, and how parents should advocate, parents, communities, families should advocate for the education of their children? like What are your parting words to listeners around those ideas?
01:16:00
Speaker
Going back to what I previously said, and really hope that we as a society and, you know, within our communities, within the school districts can carve out space and time to reimagine or daydream what it could really look like to incorporate not just rest, but empathy.
01:16:26
Speaker
First off, that compassion for ourselves, like coming back to our intuition, coming back to our innate wisdom. Maybe if schools would acknowledge erasure first, that could open the door for so much more.
01:16:42
Speaker
right it would allow for even deeper representation or even deeper like just knowing that your story matters or your family's history matters or yourself, your agency, your body matters. I think that would be huge.
01:16:57
Speaker
If that could happen, then my work would not be something that is so like niche and my alternative. People would be able to sit with not just death, but life in a different way.
01:17:15
Speaker
Even when I think about illness, A lot of people don't want to acknowledge illness in their bodies. They're so blind to it. They have their blinders on, right?
01:17:26
Speaker
And we've been taught to place our own power outside of ourselves externally. Instead of listening to like, you know what, that's not quite right. i don't my stomach has actually been hurting for like the last three weeks, you know?
01:17:41
Speaker
I really feel that if that was our wisdom, our our humanness was really centered and learning, in curriculum and all of that, then it opens us up to be even more human.
01:17:57
Speaker
And even more compassionate, even more empathetic. You know, with my work, I talk about a lot about death with people, but it's really talking about life. It's about how we're living, you know, and how we are consuming our time. How are we, and not just consuming our time, how are we enjoying our time?
01:18:18
Speaker
So, yeah, I could just see humanists becoming more normalized. That's what I hope for. Thank you, Chanel.
01:18:30
Speaker
I never had a conversation with a deaf doula. So it's beautiful also to see like, you know, deaf doula, you know, womb doula. There's so much overlap in the world.
01:18:42
Speaker
I'll share my rumination because I feel like an answer to the question is that there's a collective answer to it. I've been thinking about that, well like how we ask ourselves as individuals questions.
01:18:54
Speaker
And I think about, you know, how do I answer that in a way that feeds into creating a collective answer? I was just thinking about what Chanel was saying about how we're not acknowledging illness.
01:19:08
Speaker
And i also see how Sometimes when we talk about, you know, what we imagine or we talk about wellness, and I've realized in my practice that they're not acknowledging what, you know, the illness, but they also don't know what being well feels like.
01:19:30
Speaker
You know, mentally well, mentally healthy, their body, you know, people are constantly tired and fatigued and that's their normal. And then it's like when someone has a chance to get you know on a program or they cleanse or something, you know if something shifts or even an attitude shift can have a big impact on the way your body feels.
01:19:50
Speaker
When they have that shift and they feel what wellness feels like, it's like they never felt it before. They don't have memory of what that feels like. So sometimes it's like we can talk and talk about things, but it's a very experiential learning. It's like you got to do something.
01:20:07
Speaker
you have to do the practices, you have to do these things. And that's how we learn, like even if you don't have certifications, I mean, obviously like within like safety, right? Like we're not gonna try to do things that we're not skilled in that are dangerous, right?
01:20:22
Speaker
But we have to practice. I look at what's going on right now. Like, you know, we hear people talk about how this is like a spiritual war, right?
01:20:32
Speaker
I noticed that like when I wanted to be a doctor, I kind of knew I didn't really want to be like an yeah ah ER r doctor because I was so interested in like preventative measures.
01:20:44
Speaker
So I was really like interested in like teaching people how they should eat, how they should do all these things to take care of themselves. And so when I think about this, like I was with our colleague, Kendra, in this class co-facilitating and You know, whether I'm with a client on a steam pot talking to them or whether I'm with these students who've been, you know, schooled, I'm like, I'm just looking around. i see the spiritual warfare. I see it happening in the clients. I see it happening in the groups. I see the struggle. You know, I pose questions and I kind of get like deer in the headlights like,
01:21:22
Speaker
You know, because you ask something that stretches them beyond what they're used to, whether it's going into grief or you're not. As one student said, like, i asked him, I said, how do you feel being invited to collaborate making the course?
01:21:36
Speaker
You know, like, how does that feel in your body? I said, because me, if I was in your situation at your age, I probably would feel confused or, you know, uncomfortable in some kind of way.
01:21:48
Speaker
i said, when I did that in grad school and they were doing it, I was like, you know, excuse my reference to the Wild Wild West. But I was like, it's like the Wild Wild West. I was like, we can make it up as we go. I was like, that's great. You know, like, I'm going to ask for everything, know?
01:22:03
Speaker
But, you know, they're not there. And, you know, the students, they did, they said, like, yeah, like, I'm excited, but I'm also anxious and nervous because I don't feel practiced. So it's like, yeah, we have to focus on the practice.
01:22:15
Speaker
And when I'm looking like me as a facilitator, whether I'm facilitating healing or teaching, because for me, teaching is a healing work, not for everybody.
01:22:28
Speaker
But for me, teaching is a healing work. And so when I'm in there, I'm just looking. I'm like, this is like spiritual triage on the battlefield. You know, so it's different. Like, it's different from...
01:22:42
Speaker
After the fact, when the wounds had kind of had a chance to heal, they survived, you know, these battles and these inflicted wounding. And you're with them in a space that you saged and, you know, you called the ancestors in and all of that.
01:22:56
Speaker
That's a different way of healing than, say, even I'm looking on the campus and they're getting microaggression assaults. They're Black, being an American. They were assaulted today. They were pulled over by the cops and assaulted.
01:23:11
Speaker
So we're coming out there and it's like, I'm not going to like hug you right now. need stop the bleeding, you know, like and get you patched up, you know? So I'm looking at it like, you know, in the classroom, like,
01:23:23
Speaker
what wounding is like immediate? What's the current conflict? What's happening? And how do we deal with that for the next day? And then where do we make space also for like, okay, so I'm thinking of bell hooks, the pedagogy of love and, you know, having a love ethic, like coming from that place, building trust, being responsible, respect and providing care.
01:23:46
Speaker
That is what we should be focusing on. Like, you know, they focus on testing and All this ridiculousness that isn't getting anybody anywhere. It's broken. As you said, it is dead.
01:23:59
Speaker
School on the battlefield is dead. But yet it has all these people still like fighting for it, profiting off of it. And so like, I think coming from it, from that perspective, like, yeah, how do we just create by those definitions more love?
01:24:16
Speaker
Students need to be loved upon. They don't need to be like overly tested. It's like meet them where they are. Everybody learns different way and taking our culture into account and our experiences, our positionality, all that has to be factored in.
01:24:31
Speaker
Definitely. And it did just that as you answered and you said it was generative and then a hundred more questions came up, which is so important. As I said, I would love to spend so much more time with y'all, but my goal is for this not to be extractive.
01:24:48
Speaker
you know Cindy, we already have a relationship and hopefully we'll continue to grow and Chanel, I'm so grateful for the time that you share with us I'm excited about continuing to learn from you and hopefully be able to support you in future endeavors as well.
01:25:02
Speaker
Thank y'all so much for today. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
01:25:16
Speaker
Oh my goodness gracious. I'm leaving with lot. But one idea I want to center that Chanel shared with us little bit earlier, which is that the suffering is in the attachment.
01:25:34
Speaker
My God, today, let me stop messing with y'all. The suffering is in the attachment.
01:25:43
Speaker
You leave with what you want. but some questions, particularly around our suffering and its relationship to what we are attached to.
01:25:55
Speaker
What are we willing to let go of? We've asked before, what are we willing to let die? what becomes necessary for us to lean into the grieving process?
01:26:10
Speaker
If grief is a language of love, what does it mean For us to love our young people, to love ourselves for that matter, in a way that we detach ourselves from the sites of suffering compromise our wellness.
01:26:52
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this episode of Drawing from the Well, brought to you by the Youth Wellness Movement. I'm your host, Tiffany Marie. This podcast is co-produced by yours truly and John Reyes, with music by my boy Jansen V. Drawing from the Well is supported by Community Responsive Education.
01:27:13
Speaker
Continue the conversation at youthwellness.org.