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Episode 40: The Importance of Diversity and Education with James B. Golden
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In this episode, we talk to James B. Golden about diversity in the field, training, and leadership. Visit our website at www.nbhap.org.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Dr. Golden
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Destination Change, a podcast where we talk recovery, treatment, and more. I'm your host, Angie Fiedler-Sutton, with the National Behavioral Health Association Providers, and I use she, her pronouns. My guest today is Dr. J. Lee Golden.
00:00:17
Speaker
Dr. Golden is he, him, is an industrial psychologist who co-founded TTC College of Substance Use Disorders Counseling and is founder and principal advisor at Golden Globe inner Enterprise.
00:00:27
Speaker
A recognized leader in this field, Dr. Golden has received numerous accolades, including an NAACP Image Award, a California State Senate Commendation for Contributions to Arts and Letters, and a Visionary Award from the California, from CCAP, for groundbreaking work and education.
Dr. Golden's Expertise and Contributions
00:00:42
Speaker
With over 20 years of healthcare experience and 15 years of organizational development, Dr. Golden specializes in training and design, executive coaching, systems improvement, strategic planning, and diversity initiatives.
00:00:54
Speaker
A passionate advocate for anti-racist policies in K-12, higher education, and organizational spaces, he also excels as an educator, teaching courses in addiction studies, professional development, writing, business strategy, and leadership.
00:01:07
Speaker
An accomplished writer, Dr. Golden's work has appeared in The Root, Vibe Magazine, Clutch Magazine, and LinkedIn, alongside four books of poetry. He is also the author of the Golden Globe Mindset Newsletter, where he inspires healthcare and education leaders with practical insights rooted in servant leadership. Thank you for joining me today. you, Angie, for having me and and for that wonderful introduction.
00:01:29
Speaker
Yeah, I stumbled there a couple of times. that My brain, my mouth got a hole a little ahead of me. Those things, but no, it's it's great to be here with
Journey into Addiction Treatment
00:01:38
Speaker
you. Now, long time listeners are going to know what my first question is, because it's always the same for everybody.
00:01:43
Speaker
I ask what I like to call origin stories. Basically, you know, there are a lot of jobs out there. You could have been a, you know, a teacher, you could have been an accountant. You know, how did you get into the addiction treatment and behavior health? What made you decide to go into that field?
00:01:58
Speaker
You know, I got into addiction treatment over 20 years ago now, and i think it was an accident, honestly. i wasn't really looking for sober living or a residential program, but I was a 19-year-old kid in college, and I needed to get a job because I was staying back from the summer break, and I was going to be here and not be able to go home, and I needed to pay my bills.
00:02:26
Speaker
And so I looked in the newspaper, which is what we used to do for any of your listeners who are young. we used to look in the newspaper and we would circle in the classified section, different jobs, but there was this little job that said Catholic charities.
00:02:41
Speaker
And it was working with youth who had substance abuse and mental health and gang related issues. And I was like, you know, this is kind of cool. I mean,
00:02:53
Speaker
My parents were probation officers and worked in juvenile justice. And so, you know, I'll check it out. And I went down and I met with this incredible organization called Rancho San Antonio.
00:03:06
Speaker
And they have spent the last almost 100 years providing services to primarily black and brown youth in Los Angeles. who are suffering with substance use disorders and mental health, gang issues.
00:03:22
Speaker
And I went there, took a part-time job that it was only supposed to last for about six months. And then I ended up staying 11 years. And that was my entryway into behavioral health. And from there, I just took off and and went to a variety of places, from working with children with autism, who were, you know, one through five, two working in a celebrity rehab in Malibu and just, you know, all over until getting to Tarzana Treatment Center. So that was my origin story. And yeah, I kind of was pushed into it but you know, this field is very seductive. And once you get in you want to stay because you believe in the work.
00:04:04
Speaker
Oh, totally. My background is nowhere near in behavioral health. i actually have a degree in journalism and my own podcast, hence why I do this one. but And I started this job as a TEP job, and I've been here about 10 years now. So I can definitely relate.
Perspectives on Treatment and Recovery
00:04:19
Speaker
Now, since this is a cast for people in addiction treatment and through behavioral, I always ask, because this definition varies depending on who I ask, what does it mean to you for someone to go through treatment or to have go through recovery?
00:04:34
Speaker
How do you define so let me just first say in California, they call me the bad boy of health care for a reason. And it's because I don't believe that there's one way to do anything.
00:04:44
Speaker
Right. There too many programs that I have done too much work to think that there's one way to provide treatment. And so I'm actually interested in uncovering and listening to community members to see what's their idea of what treatment is.
00:05:02
Speaker
And the way that I've trained my students is I'm going to teach you these basics, right? And you're going to learn about the span of health care when it comes to behavioral health. You'll understand all of the different parts, whether it's residential outpatient, medical managed, detox, prevention. You'll understand the scope, but also understand that we live in a society where if you are Native American, you have a different relationship with healing. If you are from the Black community, you have a different relationship with healing.
00:05:38
Speaker
And if you come from different backgrounds that incorporate spirituality and incorporate community and ah different pieces that we can find healing in anything and anywhere.
00:05:51
Speaker
So I tend to keep my mind open. But I think that, you know, generally, if people are doing work on themselves, if you are looking at what has happened in your life and you are recontextualizing it and you are waking up every single day and doing something a little bit differently or trying to, then to me, that's treatment.
00:06:15
Speaker
That is a very liberal approach to that. Not to use the term in a political sense, but in the the literal defend definition of it, which I like. It means you're able to be flexible kind of thing. Now, one of the reasons this is this podcast is called Destination Change is because we feel that recovery is... a journey, not a direct line that, you know, you may have setbacks, you may have barriers and whatnot. What are some of the things that you've seen that are barriers for people to move forward in addiction that you feel a are like some of them the the more common ones?
00:06:52
Speaker
Yeah. The biggest barriers, I think, are external. And I know a lot of times we'll look at some of the internal barriers, whether that is resistance to change or some of the pieces around wanting to make sure that sometimes we feed our drugs self in mind before we do our physical health mind.
00:07:16
Speaker
But honestly, I think that the biggest barriers I've seen in the last 20 years have been around access to treatment. And, you know, when I look at certain communities, especially the rural areas in California, today I'm doing trainings with county leaders all over California in rural areas in particular to talk about building stronger substance use.
00:07:42
Speaker
systems and support for people who have to drive an hour and a half in Mammoth to get to the closest mental health or SUD treatment. And it's like, well, one, in between that time, there could be an accident on the freeway because there could be a DUI.
00:07:59
Speaker
But two, the further away it is, the the more motivation is lost. So there's that issue, but then there's also issues for people who don't fall into like a dominant ah treatment narrative. So you know if I have a patient who is ah trans as an example, there's limited of facilities that they can go to where they will actually feel nurtured. So yeah, they can go to a general rehab, but then they're going to have to deal with some microaggressions and things that might actually hinder
00:08:33
Speaker
their ability to heal. So, you know, I think those are some of the big barriers. I mean, part of it is that there's just a, there's not enough treatment. And we know that as people who train counselors, that we're like 3000 counselors down in Los Angeles. So we're pushing out at TTC college, a lot of counselors and we have been for the last six years, but the rate of need is so high that,
00:08:59
Speaker
And it's hard to keep people in this field. So, you know, I think that's some of the the big barriers that we see. Well, that brings up ah is a good segue to a question i was actually going to ask later, but this makes
Diversity and Inclusivity in Healthcare
00:09:11
Speaker
a perfect one. You know, your bio mentioned that you do diversity initiatives. You talked about working with trans people.
00:09:16
Speaker
For better for worse, diversity is definitely a hot button issue nowadays. Talk a little bit about that, your work there, and kind of why diversity is important to you. And what does that mean to you?
00:09:28
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I think it's it's ironic in a country that, you know, this has this really big background with diversity, that it's actually become a hot button topic today.
00:09:42
Speaker
These are things that, you know, this is why they call me the bad boy of healthcare, because again, I'm just not going to play with with these systems like that. Not when people are hurting. And I think that We forget sometimes that we are human beings on this planet and that we all deserve to be treated with respect, regardless of where we come from, what the circumstances are or the situations.
00:10:06
Speaker
And that is just my moral code of life. And I'm not going to be in any situation where I am see another human being and I feel that I should mistreat them or not give them the same as me just because they're on this planet.
00:10:25
Speaker
you know i For me, the work that I do around diversity really is out loud. I've been a writer for a very long time. I started writing articles as a freelance journalist almost 20 years ago.
00:10:41
Speaker
And so I started by talking about some of the disparities that I saw in the community with how women are treated as a Black male feminist i at a time before me too. And and then I went on to focus on finding students who had been traditionally left out of substance use programs. Because when I looked around the counseling field, I wasn't seeing a diverse representation of people all the time.
00:11:10
Speaker
So I said, well, why don't we go to areas where you can find trans counselors who are looking to go back into their community? Why don't we go into the hoods in South Los Angeles and find people who are doing work out of their garages already, but just need the certification who look like me? And I've worked with beautiful agencies that ah do work with the Asian Pacific Islander Native Hawaiian community.
00:11:39
Speaker
What I find is that substance use does not discriminate. That is going to take every group and every marginalized, from veterans to people with disabilities, to young people, to women.
00:11:54
Speaker
Everybody has to be represented. And until our country gets that, We're going to continue to suffer, unfortunately, but I will never stop calling a spade a spade. I'm not going to be scared to say inclusion.
00:12:10
Speaker
i also was the same person who was across the street from the White House right after the mandate went out that we stop using that language in this field. And I was speaking at an, um day and I said, listen, you guys know who I am. i'm not going to sit up here and play
Daily Routine and Emotional Well-being
00:12:27
Speaker
in your face.
00:12:28
Speaker
we are going to be diverse. We are going to be inclusive. We're going to make sure that we take care of everyone, regardless of their citizenship status. So that's just me.
00:12:40
Speaker
know, I'm not for everybody, but I'm i'm also not here to play games. like Yeah, no, I am very much a fan of diversity myself. I grew up in a small town and that was not diverse. And there's a reason I moved out as quickly as I could. But my wife is trans and I try and, you know, I, as a woman, I know the the experiences I've had. So I'm very much...
00:13:02
Speaker
aware that how people get treated differently because of what you know i am fully aware of my my white privilege because you know uh as i walk around the especially la now i know you probably don't have a average or a regular day because you know your bio has you doing all sorts of stuff but do you have any kind of routine that you follow or do you ah you know how do you determine what you're going to work on day to day It depends. It depends on the day.
00:13:31
Speaker
Some days I'm very tight with my calendar. So i my calendar, my assistant, they keep me really, really tight on schedule. I am also a very emotional person. i'm an empath. And so there are certain days when my body just won't do the things that I plan for it to do on those days. And so I have to be okay with Having a day where I'm like, you know what we're going to go hiking today. And that's what we're going to do instead of all these meetings.
00:13:59
Speaker
But most of the time, i spend a lot of time coaching and developing leaders who are servant leaders. I'm not just in healthcare, care but in religious organizations and in service-based companies.
00:14:15
Speaker
And then i I do a lot of speaking engagements. So I'll usually be speaking at least a couple times a week, whether that's virtually or I'll fly out, go different places. And i do a lot of development. So a lot of research.
00:14:35
Speaker
I have a team of incredible health educators who and they help me to figure out ah what's needed for different populations and counties in California.
00:14:46
Speaker
and so every day is just, it's like the wild, wild West. You know, I i get to do a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I do some writing. I just published it an article on Jesse Jackson, Reverend Jackson in the advocate, which is the nation's most prestigious LGBT publication um,
00:15:06
Speaker
You know, I think that I don't like being bored. I'm still a ah creative and an artist at heart. So I can't have a regular job, which is why I always have like 20 different things that I'm doing.
00:15:19
Speaker
But all of those things combined, create these incredible days where I start off with meditation and I make craft coffee in the morning and just try to live um intentionally and softly, but aggressively when needed.
00:15:40
Speaker
I actually predicted my next question, which was going to be how do you not feel overwhelmed, especially with as as, you know, wild as the current world situation is, you know, what do you do to kind of keep yourself afloat, I guess is the best way to put it.
00:15:57
Speaker
Yeah, I get overwhelmed very easily. I'm an empath, and it's really easy for me to get upset. These wars and all of that, it really impacts my spirit.
00:16:08
Speaker
And I think for me, it's the balance of mind, body, soul, spirit that I'm constantly thinking about. I write every single day. a journal everything.
00:16:19
Speaker
And I'm looking for ways to look into my subconscious to see what's stressing me out, what needs to be balanced. i need to get better at going to the gym, but i do walk my dog multiple times a day and I'm out in nature a lot.
00:16:38
Speaker
So, you know, I think that for me, it's it's that, it's meditation, it's prayer. It is a calling on ancestors and, know, Being a good person, you know, I think, you know, being able to show up for people and to pay it forward and to lift people up, those are ways that we can absolutely be beautiful for people and and live beautiful lives.
00:17:06
Speaker
Amazing way of looking at things.
Leadership Philosophy
00:17:08
Speaker
Let's talk a little bit about your work. You've you've mentioned your your leadership work couple times now. So in your personal opinion, what makes a good leader? What do you try and guide people towards?
00:17:20
Speaker
Good leaders are servants. You know, I think we've had a... Few thousand years of understanding what that leadership does to civilizations.
00:17:34
Speaker
But when I think about great leaders, I think about people who are servants of not just the community, but the people who work with them. You know, these are people who sacrifice.
00:17:48
Speaker
I think they're people who can see that we're all interconnected. Good leaders have deleted their ego and are not looking to pad their resumes any longer.
00:18:05
Speaker
They see their work as service. And I think that good leaders have morals and values that guide them toward impact. And, you know, like they're willing to do what's necessary to have the hard conversations to challenge systems that are unfair.
00:18:26
Speaker
You know, like these are are real leaders. Now, there's a lot of people who are in leadership roles, right? who probably consider themselves leaders, but what are you leading for? What are you leading to?
00:18:39
Speaker
And who are you leading is always the question. So yeah, I think about the great servants, whether it's Jesus or Gandhi or Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Malcolm X. you know i think about people who have just poured their lives into moving us further without complaint.
00:19:02
Speaker
e And you've been in the business for you know over 20 years, 15 in organization development. i always ask, like to ask people who've been in your industry for a while, what are some of like the big changes that you've seen? How does it compare today to when you were first starting?
00:19:17
Speaker
It's a whole different day. at least in substance use and mental health treatment, behavioral health world. and When I first came in, we were still using words like clean and dirty to talk about people.
00:19:31
Speaker
You know, their harm reduction was like, I worked at a celebrity rehab and they were pushing that. And and this is in the mid 2000s.
00:19:42
Speaker
And we would just get calls all night. from different people who were just like, how could you say this on TV? If you're taking methadone, then you're just, you're the problem. And I'm like, we are so literally saving lives because this person could have overdosed and died yesterday.
00:19:59
Speaker
Then when we first came in, there was no trauma-informed when we first started working. And we had inklings of that, but we were still heavily institutionalized. You know, people were not talking about substance use as a medical condition.
00:20:16
Speaker
They were still talking about it as a criminal intervention. Even in the work that we did, our patients were criminalized for using drugs. And so today, i mean, we when we look at the opioid epidemic, it's seen very differently than the crack cocaine epidemic in the 80s and 90s.
00:20:38
Speaker
There's a lot more diversity, I think, at a level where decisions are being made. And I noticed that as I moved forward into leadership in this field,
00:20:55
Speaker
that I was able to open some doors and set a table for women and for people of color who were not usually ah in these seats. And so there's something about California changing and you're looking and you're seeing major players in in behavioral healthcare who are dark skin and who speak with an accent and who have different languages and religions and this is something that's a new because when I was coming up in California and behavioral healthcare and I looked up the ranks, I didn't see people who look like me.
00:21:31
Speaker
And now I have students who are entering as counselors who are saying, well, the person who built my school looks like me, or, you know, he talks like, you know, he speaks Ebonics.
00:21:45
Speaker
And I think that, is really beautiful and is helpful to us all believing that these systems are for us. I was never going to have my students just rely on motivational interviewing to help people out. Like you need to respond to the communities and the people based off of what what they're asking for, what their communities are. And that's the privilege of of having diversity is you're able to think about other people.
00:22:16
Speaker
And it's just, it's beautiful. So those are some of the changes I've seen. Yeah, no, that definitely makes sense. Well, and along the same line, where do you kind of see the industry going in the next, you know, five years
Industry Changes and Innovations
00:22:27
Speaker
or so? I know it's probably impossible to predict nowadays when things are changing on an hourly basis, but kind of where do you think it's going to be going heading?
00:22:36
Speaker
Yeah, I think the the big changes in our community, in our sphere, are going to be around these intermediate roles that are kind of like conduits for the community. And so I think the role of the community health worker is going to i become the primary treatment provider.
00:23:02
Speaker
and Community health workers can do what Treatment staff cannot for many reasons. They just have ability to be in the community, to work with consumers and patients at a different level and to speak their languages and to translate things.
00:23:21
Speaker
they have some of that flexibility. So that's what I'm looking forward to. i think that's a big answer to some of the health disparities and to making sure that the social drivers of health are intact.
00:23:37
Speaker
if you have someone who doesn't speak English, that they have a neighbor who is able to help them to ensure that they're getting everything they can from their treatment experience.
00:23:50
Speaker
To me, that's the the big future. i also think telehealth, and I think we're going to see a lot more treatment in the metaverse and online. And I'm hoping that That'll get better. And the last thing I would say is standardizing education more and more.
00:24:11
Speaker
You know, we, that's the field that I'm in. I'm in behavioral health education and there are regulations, but they're constantly changing. And sometimes it's based off of financial pieces. Sometimes it's based off of regulatory pieces. I think that we'll, we'll move forward and i have more of a standard.
00:24:35
Speaker
which supports both this idea that people who want to be counselors need to have competencies. that they can prove, but also that we can't be so rigid that we make it difficult for people to enter the field.
00:24:51
Speaker
So yeah, I see a few changes coming, hopefully.
Entrepreneurial Journey
00:24:55
Speaker
Hopefully, knock on wood. Now let's talk a little bit more about Golden Global Enterprises. ah You are the founder and principal advisor. ah This is kind of along the same lines as the origin story. What made you decide, I want to start my own company versus, you know, maybe joining another company or that kind of thing?
00:25:11
Speaker
I think I'm probably hard hard to supervise. And so I think I needed to have my own company. Part of it is i needed to be able to have a home.
00:25:24
Speaker
I've been doing a lot of contract work for a long time and just projects here and there. So I needed a central home where I could have other advisors who are directly mentored by me.
00:25:37
Speaker
who can provide the same type of leadership support, who can provide system level support. And i just decided a few years ago, said, you know what, we need to go ahead and and do Golden Global Enterprises.
00:25:53
Speaker
I was really pushed by people who used to work with me as apprentices who said, we're waiting for you to open your business. What's going on? And I was just like, no, I'm just going to stay an instructor and, you know, I'll just retire out of this. And I started to think i i really do need to diversify my reach and to have a place that i think I can retire out of.
00:26:21
Speaker
that will reflect... my morals and values and vision long after I'm gone. and so Golden Global, I wanted it to be something that I could leave behind on this earth that could teach people how to lead and could show people that there's a different way for us to show up in our organizations and that we can make money and still impact the world for good. And ah we can love the work that we do
00:26:53
Speaker
And that we can be change agents. That is a amazing. Now you are a consultant. You consult businesses, people, both.
00:27:04
Speaker
Yeah, I do business consulting, management consulting, and I do a lot of leadership coaching for servant leaders in particular.
00:27:14
Speaker
But I like to tell people I work with, and it's a variety of organizations. The thread between everybody is different. It has to be leaders and organizations that are mission-driven and that are looking to make a change in the world. So it can be LinkedIn that's working with me, but I need to understand what kind of change you are trying to make while you're also making all this money.
00:27:40
Speaker
Otherwise, I can't be aligned. So leadership, and I work with organizations that are just starting, that are building, that are strategizing, that are fundraising, that are forming.
Organizational Challenges
00:27:54
Speaker
And then I work with organizations that have been established for a long time, but they've hit a growth spurt either unintentionally or they want to move into the next level.
00:28:07
Speaker
And then I work with just these the most incredible leaders, rabbis and people who have been servants of the community for 40 years, who use their life savings to open a recovery home and have never seen themselves as these big visionary figures.
00:28:27
Speaker
And I help them see themselves the way that the community does so they can raise more money and they can have a tighter ship in their in their companies. makes sense now i you said they're a bunch of different companies so obviously they have different issues you kind of already touched on they have you seen one or two issues that kind of have been bubbling up as the most common or yeah and i hate using this sp phrase because i just don't personally believe in it but i see a lot imposter syndrome up and down i mean i'm talking about people who are running state departments and
00:29:06
Speaker
you know, who have been in the field for 35 years, who still are, they don't have the confidence or they're not seeing themselves as who they are.
00:29:18
Speaker
And I understand that because I've experienced that many times. And, you know, it's it's also part of, I think, servant leadership is the humility and it's the I have this really big title and this access to all of this power.
00:29:35
Speaker
And I'm not sure that I deserve this. It's that feeling. And it's like, no, we need you in that position because you feel that way. And it's helping to reframe. So, That's one of the big things. I think that money is always going to be an issue, especially when you're talking about nonprofits.
00:29:54
Speaker
The ability to gain support, whether it's federal or through private dollars, is... It's just pervasive. And i try to let my clients know, you know, like I'm not a money magician. I have worked in program development for 10 years, but that's not my ah lane. You know, let's structure this so that people will just want to give you the money that you need to run.
00:30:23
Speaker
And so I think that it's that. But the last thing I would say is um the need for inclusive policies. And this is something that people ask me all the time. I want to make sure that my company a reflects that.
00:30:38
Speaker
when we put that rainbow flag up on our website, that our policies and procedures are also reflecting that. And just got chills. like you know These are the things that I see almost in every single company.
00:30:54
Speaker
And it's it's an honor to be able to work it. It it lets people know like there's nothing wrong with you. You're just like every other leader in every other company. Yeah, no, definitely walk the walk is is big philosophy of mine as well.
00:31:07
Speaker
What would you say is your least favorite slash hardest part of what you do? No, the hardest part for me, I've worked for a long time as a mentor for people, you know, for the last 20 years in different levels of behavioral health and in leadership and in the world.
00:31:27
Speaker
The hardest part for me is the betrayal that you experience at the hands of people that you really, really care about. And backstabbing, it's more of betraying the vision and betraying the morals of the company that we built.
00:31:47
Speaker
That is what sends me often. And you know everything else I can usually take care of with my therapist or hike. But when I see people who I perceived and understand as good make really immoral decisions, and usually for the pursuit of power, that makes it really, really hard to keep a attitude of faith and to stay humble and to not go off on people.
00:32:21
Speaker
you know, and to not become petty. And it it really challenges me every day to make sure that I do walk the walk. You know, like the Migos have a song, Walk It Like You Talk It. um And I want to walk it like I talk it. I don't want to write on LinkedIn every week and inspire people to be better leaders and then turn around and not be an example of that.
00:32:48
Speaker
There's sometimes where people will do things and I'm like, if you had met me 10 years ago, we would have been having a whole different conversation today. Yeah. I might have been getting fired. And so, you know, I think that for me, it it really is that betrayal.
Homelessness Crisis in Los Angeles
00:33:03
Speaker
But it's it's also just it's hard to see the community suffering.
00:33:08
Speaker
When I go outside, live in downtown Los Angeles and it's, you know I live blocks from Skid Row. There's 80,000 unhoused people in Los Angeles. We have the largest population of unhoused people in the world, in our city.
00:33:23
Speaker
And when I walk around and I just think, How did we get here? How did we normalize this? Where people are food insecure, they sleep on the streets, there's no access to showers and steps from where they're sleeping on the corner.
00:33:42
Speaker
You know, we're having our five course meals from Whole Foods. Something about that doesn't feel right. So those of are the hard things for me. Yeah, no, having having been very, very close to homelessness myself, I definitely feel that. On the other side of things, what would you say is your favorite part or your easiest part?
00:34:01
Speaker
Pick one or both or what makes the job worth doing? Yeah. two sides of the same coin. As much as I feel betrayed, i ah more so feel proud of the people that I work with.
00:34:17
Speaker
I have seen so many people that i have worked alongside and who I have mentored who have gone on to do these huge, incredible things in behavioral health care.
00:34:33
Speaker
And i always tell people, don't feel like you have to stay with whatever project I'm on. This should be a stepping stone for you. And I keep that attitude. And then I just watch them leave and I'm sad. And they may go and do these huge things across the state and across the country.
00:34:50
Speaker
And I feel really proud to be a part of people's journeys that way. I see all of my students from the last five to six years the same way, where I hear back from them regularly, oh, you know, I graduated the program five years ago, and here I am now becoming a supervisor of a residential facility. And I'm just like...
00:35:15
Speaker
That to me is is what matters more than anything. People like looking and seeing that my students have ah changed the fabric of their families where their children are looking and saying, I want to go to college. I want to be working a job where I can give back the way that mommy and daddy do To me, that's the greatest feeling. It's knowing that um while there's a a problem with homelessness,
00:35:42
Speaker
that I'm working to push people into the community who will solve that problem. It's phenomenal.
Poetry and its Impact
00:35:50
Speaker
Yeah. Now we're about a little over the halfway department before I start moving to kind of wrapping things up as someone who was almost an English major, we have to talk about your poetry, why poetry, what made you do it, what draws you to it, that kind of thing.
00:36:06
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I used to say that I was a musician first because I started playing piano at at five and I had no idea what I was doing, but I i started in that field.
00:36:20
Speaker
I kind of think might've been a writer first. And I think I may have been a poet. Little Me was really expressive with words. And I found some old poems from when I was in middle school and ah my incredible instructor sent them out.
00:36:37
Speaker
So I think I've always wrestled with words and and tried to use words even before I knew what a poet was. but I was trying to rap and do a whole bunch of other stuff. But, you know, when i I went to my undergrad program at Cal State Northridge in in Los Angeles, and I went in as a music major, and I abruptly changed it to Pan-African Studies and American Literature. And I think from there, I found the words of Langston Hughes and Nicky Giovanni, Audre Lorde, Melvin Tolson,
00:37:16
Speaker
Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Charles Bukowski. and I was just blown away you know by Leaves of Grass and ah by these by James Baldwin and and these incredible people who seemed to be able to do something that I wasn't even sure I could do.
00:37:37
Speaker
So I just started writing. And i wrote poetry. That was my area of focus in undergrad. And so at the end of, we had to do a chat book as our thesis from that program.
00:37:53
Speaker
And that became the beginning of my first book. And I just said, you know, i just wanted to write a book so I could say I'm a published author. And I started sending it out and, know,
00:38:04
Speaker
um People kind of liked it. And so I did another one and and that one just really took off. And that's when when I got into awards season and um doing a national tour.
00:38:17
Speaker
i was really blessed because... I did not see that coming. It just sort of showed up. ah For me, I wanted to be honest. And I think Afro Clouds and Nappy Rain was an honest reflection of Black boys in the juvenile justice system.
00:38:36
Speaker
And it touched people's hearts. you know I was scared to put it out because there was ah it was a sad book And I didn't want to be known as a sad writer, but there's so much of our story that that is sad and and it's okay to ah be expressive. and And I think, you know, there's something that you can do with writing that you can't do anywhere else.
00:38:57
Speaker
The poems sit with you. They allow you to express deeper meanings and and things that you don't want to say out loud and in ways that are safer. So, yeah, I'm always going to be a writer.
00:39:10
Speaker
i know it drives my team crazy, probably drives my supervisors crazy, whoever has to work with me because I'm extremely, you know, I'm a creative and you have to have that alongside the business side in order to work with me.
00:39:25
Speaker
Well, that's actually kind of where I was going for my next question. This is going to sound like a stupid question, but hopefully you understand what I mean. How does writing poetry kind of connect to what your work in the behavioral health and addiction treatment industry?
00:39:38
Speaker
I mean, that's exactly it. There's a connection between the heart and the mind that comes from poetry. i am very sensitive and I tap into humans.
00:39:52
Speaker
Before I got into behavioral health, writing and reading and speaking and reading poems live helped me to speak to the hearts of human beings.
00:40:07
Speaker
And I think that that is a skill that I was able to transfer into the behavioral health field where I recognize the heart and I know how to speak into the heart and to how to feel when someone's speaking into me and poetry does, you know, this is why children have to have the arts, you know, like if it's a mind thing with music and,
00:40:34
Speaker
It is a hard thing with with writing and literature and dance. And we have to be able to make liberal arts great again. Exactly. No, I'm very much aste versus dumb a STEM supporter. ah For those who are unaware, STEM, science, technology, engineering, and math.
00:40:55
Speaker
a of The A adds art for those who may not be really acronym. Now we're getting close to to kind of the end of the thing. So i um one of the things I like to ask, if you could travel back in time to when you were first starting out, what advice would you give yourself? What are kind of some of your biggest lessons learned?
00:41:13
Speaker
I'm really grateful for my experience. and I had great mentors. I think if I could tell myself anything, going back into time, it would be, don't feel so bad.
00:41:27
Speaker
you know, about what you're doing. You are a beautiful human being on this planet and ah you're gonna touch a lot of people's lives. So just keep on keeping on. And, you know, we feel so bad sometimes in these service oriented fields because they're thankless and they're hard on our emotions and our bodies.
00:41:51
Speaker
And so I would say, love yourself, be proud of yourself. You are unique and you are going to be a blessing to a lot of people.
00:42:02
Speaker
And so just to stay humble, like Kendrick Lamar said, sit down, be humble, read more, listen more than you talk and continue to to love on yourself.
00:42:17
Speaker
You know, you deserve it. Those are the things I think younger James B. Golden probably needed to hear. but I'm proud of him, too. He was doing his thing. Yeah, no definitely. That actually leads to the next question. um I always like to ask what resources you use on regular books. What kind of books, you know newsletters, web websites would you recommend people to read or look up or research to kind of help them do better at what they do?
00:42:44
Speaker
You know, i I'm an avid reader and I try to read across disciplines. The one thing I would say is the big thing that I would tell people is read as much as you can. You know, like I know the YouTube videos are good, podcasts are good, but there's something about old school reading that infuses within your mind a little bit differently. And so I would say read a mix of journals, whether that's some of the APA has some journals, the American Psychological Association.
00:43:18
Speaker
and then i I tend to get a lot of information from memoirs. And so especially in in substance use and mental health, you know books like i am I'm Black and I'm Sober by Chaney Allen, as an example,
00:43:31
Speaker
or God and Starbucks by Vin Baker. I think about those from recovery to discovery, Felicia Lee Sexton. Being able to take some of those and then to combine those with some of the good literature that you would see from like even Kodapt in California has a newsletter that they publish. You know, like those things are really great balances.
00:43:59
Speaker
Or DHCS, a newsletter, SAMHSA has publications that are really great. So yeah, I mix mediums and I try to stay up to date on on what's going on Now, as I said,
Inspiration for Collective Action
00:44:15
Speaker
we're getting close to the end. Was there something that you wanted to talk about that we haven't or that you thought I was going to ask, but I didn't?
00:44:21
Speaker
So great. That used to be my favorite question to ask in Rob interviews. What have, you know, what have I not asked you that you need to know? No, you know, I think that i just hope my life represents something on this planet.
00:44:36
Speaker
You know, it's not the work that I've done, but it's the ability to inspire people to do more work and to take what, whatever you're doing, whether you are sewing clothes or, know, cleaning floors that you find a way to, to provide some type of service to people.
00:44:57
Speaker
There are too many people on this earth where if just a few of us could, think outside of ourselves, I think we could change the world and we wouldn't have a lot of these issues.
00:45:10
Speaker
And so that's what I'm trying to do for the rest of the time. Whatever amount of time I have left on this planet, it's just inspiring people to do something to help your fellow human being. It's beautiful.
00:45:24
Speaker
For those who may want to get in touch with you or learn more about you, where is the best place i can get and spell out websites? The best place to get me is on LinkedIn and James B. Golden on LinkedIn.
00:45:38
Speaker
I'm always on there and I put all my articles and different things up there. I have a weekly newsletter every Monday that comes out. on LinkedIn. And you can follow me on Instagram, the J B golden t H E J B G O L D E n that's on Instagram. And then if, if all else fails, just put in James B golden into Google and you'll see my websites.
00:46:06
Speaker
We have a few.coms golden global enterprises.com. And there's always ways to to get in touch with me, but yeah, I'm i'm around.
00:46:17
Speaker
Awesome. Now, my last question, you've already kind of approached this and it's basically a rephrasing of the the first question. But, you know, gut instinct without thinking about it.
00:46:28
Speaker
Why do you do what you do? I do what i do because I have to. You know, somebody has to be out here making a change and speaking truth and providing opportunities.
00:46:41
Speaker
i couldn't imagine living this life and not doing the work that I do today. And I'm going to do that regardless of where I work. I'm going to be an advocate. I'm going to open doors and push seats under tables for people.
00:46:58
Speaker
And I'm just really grateful to have the ability to to do that. the perfect way to end this podcast. You've been listening to Destination Change. Our guest today was Dr. James P. Golden. Thank you for being here.
00:47:12
Speaker
Our theme song is Sun Nation by Kitsa and used via Creative Commons license by the Free Music Archive. Please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on Apple Podcasts so we can get more listeners.
00:47:22
Speaker
In the meantime, you can only see more about the podcast, including show notes and where else to listen, on our website, www.nbhap.org. If you questions for the podcast, please email us at info at nbhap.org.
00:47:35
Speaker
Thanks for listening.