Redux — Revisiting My Purpose as a Writer

AUG 09, 2024

(This is an expanded and edited version of my very first substack post.)

It’s been nearly a year since I’ve started writing Deliberate Disruptions. It has been a labor of love but, more importantly, an act of radical self-care. I wanted to take a moment to reflect and, if necessary, expand on some ideas.

I was raised in a family that taught me to put the needs of others before my own. I’ve been socialized by an American culture that has reinforced self-sacrificing behaviors shown in research. Study after research study has demonstrated that Black women are expected to be overly caregiving and emotional caretakers for others. I’ve worked most of my life in a nonprofit sector that has often reinforced and often exploited this expectation.

What did I get from all this? A chronic immune system disorder called Grave’s Disease, and a bone-deep willingness to change my behaviors. I’m not a natural caregiver (I’m grateful to those who are), and I’m not even particularly nice, although I try to be kind.

This makes it challenging to authentically work on diversity, equity, and inclusion because people’s intense emotions (often unacknowledged) are present in every training and coaching session. There’s more to diversity, equity, and inclusion than meets the eye.

Unseen mechanisms keep White supremacy culture, inequity, and exclusion in place.

The social scripts we reenact, the asymmetrical power dynamics that remain unchallenged, and the social hierarchies we’ve inherited and mindlessly follow work together to stall our attempts at progress.

Defeating these mechanisms requires deliberate disruptions, which are increased knowledge and awareness and a change in our behaviors.

As I struggle to understand and reconcile my experiences of these mechanisms in the nonprofit sector—which does so much good yet causes so much harm to the people who work in it—I hope that my thoughts, experiences, research, and desire for liberation can benefit others.

This Substack newsletter is a personal diary about the mechanisms that are viciously and quietly alive in the backgrounds of the places I’ve worked in, consulted to, and volunteered in.

I’m still committed to drawing from my 30-plus years of experience working in the nonprofit sector. I use scenarios, anecdotes, and critical fabulation to incorporate a historical perspective and psychoeducation to develop disruptions that promote psychological safety in the nonprofit workplace.

Today, I work as a consultant, trainer, and organizational development coach specializing in equity, diversity, and inclusion. I am also a personal coach for women of color navigating racialized, toxic workplaces.

My goal is to build a Substack community, a psychologically safe space where we can explore, accept, and change our behaviors so we can do the work we desire to free ourselves and others to live lives full of autonomy and agency, which are the keys to happiness.

As Isabel Wilkerson beautifully states in her book Caste: Origins of Our Discontents, she encourages us to disrupt the system by no longer playing our unseen habitual parts. Exploring our roles, accepting our complicity, and changing our behaviors is difficult, grueling, and ultimately liberating work we will do together. I hope Deliberate Disruption’s comment section will be a lively exchange of ideas, experiences, and strategies that can help us create healthier nonprofit workplaces.

Guiding Questions

1.    Do you bring your role in your family of origin into the workplace?

2.    Are the Black women in your workplace seen as emotional caregivers?

3.    Do you hold a role in the workplace that is not aligned with who you are?

Notes:

Black Superwoman Syndrome: What It Is and How Organizations Can Better Support Their Black Female Leaders

Black Superwoman Syndrome: What It Is and How Organizations Can Better Support Their Black Female Leaders | Bellwether

Sojourner syndrome and health disparities in African American women

Sojourner syndrome and health disparities in African American women - PubMed (nih.gov)

Social Scripts

Social Script definition | Psychology Glossary | AlleyDog.com

Critical Fabulation

Saidiya Hartman’s Critical Fabulation Can Help Inspire Today's Activists (studybreaks.com)

Psychoeducation

How Psychoeducation Is Used in Therapy (verywellmind.com)

Psychological Safety

What Is Psychoeducation and How Can it Help? | Psychreg

Caste: Origins of Our Discontents

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents: Wilkerson, Isabel: 9780593230251: Amazon.com: Books