Boundaries, Burnout and Black Educator Wellness with Josephine Ampaw-Greene

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   📍 Folks, welcome back to another episode of the Exit Interview, a podcast for black educators. And it's me, your host, Dr. Asia. And as usual, another fantastic, uh, guest. And the best part today, I know that a lot of times we have educators that come in and share their stories, and a big part of that is just like the education component.

We are talking to someone who is also a family therapist, so we're gonna get into that later because I wanna make sure that you all have some tips and tricks to support yourselves as you think about and move towards wellness, and of course, for your family as well. Welcome to the show, Josephine. I cannot complain.

Uh, Josephine was in here before we got started wrangling a set of newborn twins, y'all, so. If you hear some babies, it is just a part of what it is. 

 Perfectionism is a form of white supremacy. That's what I like to say.

Now you not about to start dropping jewels. We just got started. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. That's so real. And I think that newborns will humble us. We think we got it all planned out and we got it all figured out. And when they get here,

all lies. 

I'm like, I've, I've given, I've thrown that out the window. I can't even argue with that anymore. Yeah. Yeah. That's so real. And I think that newborns will humble us, or we think we got it all planned out and we got it all figured out. And when they get here lies, they're all lies. 

So yeah, we gonna get started the show, but if we are some babies, we know what it is. Um, we're gonna do the thing because we're humans and this is a human experience. So go ahead and get started. First things first, you have a very interesting path in education. Tell our audience, like what made you decide that education was for you and what's that journey been like? 

Yeah, so it started actually when I was in high school, my junior and senior year of high school, I had the opportunity to be a para in a preschool for, uh, for babies with, um, intellectual and developmental disabilities. Um, and also with mental health disabilities. So like some, some babies were, uh, had autism through folks, some having down syndrome, and it was just like a very.

Like eclectic group of kids. So I was 17, 16, 17, 18 years old. Um, as a parent in a classroom working with those teachers who really taught me a lot about education and really made me want to go into the work, um, and really supported. And I grew up with educators. My brother-in-law's an educator. My sister's an educator.

Um, parents are educators, aunts, uncles, so I just kind of grew up around teachers as well. But my first experience kind of going into the work myself was then, um, and I, as I say, the rest is history. It's kind of, um, it's kind of just pushed me more and more into the work. So after graduating from high school, um, I ended up doing a history degree, um, along with a feminist studies degree.

And after that I really felt like I wanted to go back to that teaching experience. So I ended up applying to an alternative school up in Estes Park here in Colorado and getting in, um, and it was a residential school, so I lived with, was it 12 or 13 of us that we're all in the same house? Um, and I wanna say seven of us were people of color.

It was like an anomaly for, for that group. And after that, I ended up going to graduate school, getting my master's in social work, getting my master's in education. I did both at the same time. I would not recommend that. Um, and doing an MFT after, I would not do all at the same time if I were to go back and do it again.

Um, but that gave me the opportunity to. Um, do a lot of afterschool programming work in special education classrooms. Again, um, doing a lot of curriculum. And I also did some consulting for some nonprofits here on curriculum development. So it's been a journey and now I'm adjuncting, um, at the University of Denver Graduate school social work, um, teaching like their family therapy classes.

So I've seen all the way from the very, very little. To adults. Um, there are days where I, I definitely miss being in the classroom, but I love what I do as a therapist too. 

I love that and I, I wanna ask the question, kind of going back to the residential program, because I don't want to fall, like skip past that because you are the first person that we've had that is living on the campus in this way and. Like being with the students I and you and I know I like, I've been up to that campus before and their concept and everything is really innovative.

I love to know like what your mindset was going up there for the first time. Some things that you've learned, the, were there benefits for you? Were there benefits for the students? Tell us about that time.  

Yeah, so I had just finished college and I went up there. I went to the University of California in Santa Barbara, so I was essentially living on the beach, having a very good time. I loved my undergrad experience. I wouldn't change anything or most things about it. Um, but I wanted something different and I realized like I was getting pretty burned out with the environment and I just really wanted a fresh start.

Mm-hmm. And I knew teaching was something that I had thoroughly enjoyed, um, and something that I thoroughly loved to do. And so I thought going to this campus, it's in a d different state, it's in the mountains. When I met my, or we kind of got the picture of all of us in the cohort. Seeing like five of us who were black.

I was like, this is gonna be so much fun. Yeah. Um, and it was, and I still consider some of the folks from the, from those programs, some of my closest friends. Um, I would say that during that time I very much so learn the importance of taking care of myself. Um, tell us about that. I think before then I was kind of in go mode.

Um, I did four years of college, four summers. I was just very much so dialed into that experience and I worked while I was in school for a little bit of it or for a majority of it. And so I never really understood what it was like to really pause and not, um. Not just be in go mode. Yeah. And being in Estes Park, it's so easy to just like pause, take the environment in, you'll see like an elk walk by and you're just like, oh, I just, there's an elk walking by.

And I had never lived in a place that snowed. And the first day I was there, it snowed. Oh. Um, and so I think it really taught me the importance of. There could all be all of these things happening that are so hectic and so stressful, but the environment and the community there really showed me that my value wasn't just in what I did.

My value is in, was in who I was and the person that I was and how I showed up. So I still, I still credit my instructional coach to this day. For why I am a therapist and an educator, because he not only took the time to care about my wellbeing as a teacher, he wanted to see my growth just as a human.

And I think there are some folks who really helped me develop that there and help me not get into the cycle. Of burning out while there, once I hit graduate school, that was a different story, but I think that year was a real, almost like a sabbatical from the go go, go culture. Mm. Um, and even though, yes, we were really busy there, our personhood was what came first.

And that's a lesson that I kind of forgot once I got to graduate school. But then when I finished it kind of, it reappeared and I realized all of those things that I had taken there. I've been working to really reintegrate them, um, so that they are a part of not only my life, my husband's life, my children's lives.

So I really credit that experience for really just helping me grow up. Yeah, that's really interesting because when I went to visit that school, I thought the same thing. I felt this different way in which. Students were seen. Right. And you can't tell from the outside. Right. But to hear someone say, I taught there and this is a hundred percent true.

I love that. Um, and. Uh, folks who've been in that K 12 space or a higher space, but really in K 12, there's always this, every sense of urgency of running around the physical. Yeah, I've talked about this a lot, the walkie talkie. So walking quickly, everything's urgent, everything's fast, respond to emails, and within 24 hours, and so on and so forth.

And for you to have that opposite experience, right? Especially coming right at the gate. From undergrad. It's really, really beautiful and I'm glad that you have that experience. Yeah. But then you decide to go to back to school, and why was that? Why, why did you make that decision? So most, many of the students that I taught were from my hometown.

Um, I'm originally from Anaheim and from la and many of my students were from the valley, from la, from the Bay. And so there was just a lot of common experiences. That I just got, because I knew the places they were talking about. I knew the stories that they had gone through. I had seen and experienced things that they had seen and experienced.

Um, and I found that, I actually talked about this in my grad school application. My students, I challenged them pretty heavily, but they also trusted me to take care of 'em. Like I'll never forget, I was editing, I was teaching history and social studies, and so they would write papers. I would edit every grammar mistake.

So they would get their paper back and it would just be all covered. And I used to use red all like all covered in red and they would just, they would just be in tears. And I would say like the world that you're preparing for needs you to know to capitalize and to use periods and to write in complete sentences.

And if folks are not challenging you to do that, somebody from your hometown. Or somebody 30 minutes from your hometown is gonna do that. And so it built this sense of trust. And I think even my lead teacher really supported me in not being so hard on myself when things didn't go the way that I had planned.

But it built that sense of trust and rapport with them where they would share their lived experiences with me. And I ended up really gaining a lot of good mentorship actually from a social worker who was working kind of in the health and wellness department. She was also a fellow alongside me and she sat with me and wrote, helped me write all of my grad school applications for education and for social work.

And she was a, I think she's a licensed master's in social work. She's in New York now. Um. So her sitting with me and, and really challenging me the way I was challenging my students and her being, I mean, she was from New York and the Bronx, so it wasn't identical, but her experiences being so similar to mine let me know, okay, the way that I am challenging these students, I also need to be challenged to do.

And she started to do that. I understand. But I think going back to grad school, um, really emphasized. That, at least that's what I thought going in. It ended up being a very different experience from what I expected. Um, 'cause I was a dual, um, a dual master's student. So I did a Master's in education and a master's in social work in three years.

And I designed the entire three year path myself. Yeah. Wow. And I petitioned both the pro, it was a very long and extensive process. I'm glad I did it now, but I think being at at the school was a much slower pace in grad school, and so coming out of grad school, I had to remind myself that I had permission to go back to that slower pace.

Yeah, that's really interesting because when I went to visit that school, I thought the same thing. I felt this different way in which. Students were seen. Right. And you can't tell from the outside, right? But to hear someone say, I taught there and this is a hundred percent true. I love that. Um, and folks who've been in that K 12 space or a higher ed space, but really in K 12, this always is every sense of urgency of running around the physical.

I've talked about this a lot, the walkie talkie. So walking quickly, everything's urgent, everything's fast. Respond to emails are within 24 hours, and so on and so forth. And for you to have that opposite experience, right? Especially coming right out the gate from undergrad is really, really beautiful. And I'm glad that you have that experience, but then you decide to go to back to school, and why was that?

Why? Why did you make that decision? 

So most, many of the students that I taught were from my hometown.

Um, I'm originally from Anaheim and from la and many of my students were from the valley, from la, from the Bay. And so there was just a lot of common experiences. That I just got, because I knew the places they were talking about. I knew the stories that they had gone through. I had seen and experienced things that they had seen and experienced.

Um, and I found that, and I actually talked about this in my grad school application. My students, I challenged them pretty heavily, but they also trusted me to take care of them. Like I'll never forget, I was editing, I was teaching history and social studies, and so they would write papers. I would edit every grammar mistake.

So they would get their paper back and it would just be all covered. And I used to use red all like all covered in red and they would just, they would just be in tears. And I would say like the world that you're preparing for needs you to know to capitalize and to use periods and to write in complete sentences.

And if folks are not challenging you to do that, somebody from your hometown. Or somebody 30 minutes from your hometown is gonna do that. And so it built this sense of trust. And I think even my lead teacher really supported me in not being so hard on myself when things didn't go the way that I had planned.

But it built that sense of trust and rapport with them where they would share their lived experiences with me. And I ended up really gaining a lot of good mentorship actually from a social worker who was working kind of in the health and wellness department. She was also a fellow alongside me and she sat with me and wrote, helped me write all of my grad school applications for education and for social work.

And she was a, I think she's a licensed master's in social work. She's in New York now. Um. So her sitting with me and, and really challenging me the way I was challenging my students and her being, I mean, she was from New York and the Bronx, so it wasn't identical, but her experiences being so similar to mine let me know, okay, the way that I am challenging these students, I also need to be challenged to do.

And she started to do that. I understand. But I think going back to grad school, um, really emphasized. That, at least that's what I thought going in. It ended up being a very different experience from what I expected. Um, 'cause I was a dual, um, a dual master's student. So I did a Master's in education and a master's in social work in three years.

And I designed the entire three year path myself. Yeah. Wow. And I petitioned both the pro, it was a very long and extensive process. I'm glad I did it now, but I think being at at the school was a much slower pace in grad school, and so coming out of grad school, I had to remind myself that I had permission to go back to that slower pace.

That's interesting that you say that because I feel like. Sometimes we get into a place where we're in school, getting our master's, getting our doctorate, and there is this rush and we just keep rushing, right? We're trying to get back to where we used to be, get back in this, in this harmful way, and we don't realize it's harmful, right?

Hurry up do get applications in hurry up, get another job, hurry up and. Internships and so on and so forth, and there's no place to slow down or we don't give ourselves permission to do so until we hit a wall. And so for you to come out of undergrad and have this foundation in your first experience in education, be a place that respected the need for rest is really fascinating.

Yeah. So you, you had a short standing education. But it was enough for you to understand the need, right? And the urgency for quality education for our students and for, and I'll say students, I mean younger folks and older folks. Tell us, I'm, I want you to tell us, I'm skipping a few questions I normally ask, but what are you doing now?

'cause I think that's what I wanna to spend a lot of time on this podcast at interview talking about.

Yeah. So now I own a group practice. And my model and my group practice is that it's a teaching practice. Um, we focus on identity based and relationship trauma. And I tell my team all the time, you have three years.

Hello you are in, and then you are gonna go and you're gonna do exactly what it is that you wanna do, and you're gonna develop your own mission statement of what your career is gonna look like. And I'm gonna stand all the way behind you in doing that so that I can bring another group of folks in to train and learn.

So I think I've incorporated that into my practice. Yeah. And it's really fought the scarcity mindset of, I need people in my practice in order for us to make an income. That's actually not true. It's actually much more expensive to have folks working for you. But this idea really being able to be a teacher in that space.

So I take folks on as interns and then they stay for two years, and most times I'm like, okay, this is year one. Like, are you ready? Are you ready to jump out on your own? No. Okay, let's give it another year. You ready to jump out? No. You wanna get experienced supervising. Cool. I'll teach you how to supervise.

And then it's very much so a conversation of, I don't want anybody living in my dream. I want people to have their own dreams. Oh, it's that simple. Say that again please. I don't want people living in my own dreams. I want them to develop their own dreams. I want my practice to be able to spark that in them.

Um, 'cause especially since I have a lot of clinicians of color, um. Folks who have worked in education, folks who've worked in behavioral health and have worked in these other fields, I am getting tired of us all being on hamster wheels where we're just working to meet the status quo and working to just make ends meet or just make enough, like I am personally getting very sick of it.

And now I have two children to consider. So of course that's caused a lot of adjustment in things. But I do not want any clinician or educator that I come across to feel like there is not room to, yes, do what you need to do, but then also be in this constant state of dreaming and building community so that you're able to then give to the next.

Next what not give to the next out of a space of scarcity and not having enough, but giving to the next out of the abundance that you have. 

That's a whole word.

 Folks, we are talking to somebody who got up at three o'clock this morning. I haven't had a newborn in a long time and never had twins, so we we're doing this. I so. Very much you are in a teaching space and you're holding space for folks of color who wanna do this work in supporting them, and I've never heard of that before.

Not to say it doesn't exist, but I've never heard of that before. How did you decide that that was going to be the model for your business? 

So I started off so low, um, and the way I started my practice was very unconventional too. I was working in a group practice and there was just a lot of miscommunication and I would also waitress some level of dishonesty. And so I was like, you know what?

I'm just like, I made the decision very blunt, like very quickly. I established the LLC, the website, the name, everything. Within a 48 hour period, it was just like. I'm not thinking this all, I'm not taking this long to think through it. And I borrowed 50 bucks from my sister. I borrowed 50 50 bucks from my boyfriend at the time.

Now husband and I started my practice. That's kind of how it, those were my investors.  And once I hit a point of like, okay, I have more clients and. I'm getting to a place where it's more than what I can do on my own. I thought back to that person I was when I started, and I never wanted another clinician that came across me and working for me to be in a spot where they had to question whether what I was doing was possible for them.

Mm-hmm. And of course, have I ran my practice perfectly? No. I've made plenty of mistakes. I don't think you're a good business owner if you don't make those mistakes. Um. But I think there is a piece around knowing who I was when I started in 2021 and when I expanded to be a group in 2023. I wanted for folks to not have to borrow 50 bucks from their partner and 50 bucks from their sibling to start.

I wanted them to have everything they needed to be successful. Um, and so that kind of created the model and I'm, I'm building it out now. I learned a lot from my maternity leave, so I'm doing things very differently than I think I would have if I, not, it didn't have children. I think I used to have this very idealistic, optimistic, um, idea that like, I need to give, give, give, give, give, but not pour into my own cup.

 Um, in that working space. So I definitely. Um, I'm now operating differently so I can go back to not necessarily being in, not being in scarcity, but being able to show folks that you don't give outta your deficit, you give out of your overflow. 

Yeah, and that seems to be such a theme amongst all the therapists and healers and coaches that come into the on the podcast is. You can't pour from an empty cup. And it's, it seems so  it's cliche, but it's so true.

It's so true. Yeah. And I, I, like I said, I love the way that you're thinking about this and these iterations of your business and this 50,000, $50, let me go back to this. So. I think that what I've found is so many folks that I talk to in community get to this place where it's like, it's time to get off the, the highway.

It is time to get off this exit and I gotta do what I gotta do. And I feel like that's really unfortunate that we, we wanna be in a place with community, whether that's another job or working with other clinicians. And then we start to see the writing on the wall. And we have to figure these pieces out.

And at the same time, how beautiful is it to have community to say, listen, I need a couple twenties to get this down the road. And there are community is like, I got you. Right. And so I wanna say the, to the audience out there who's thinking, especially in this time was, we're recording this on February 24th, 2025, and this.

Executive order era that we're in and you're saying I gotta do something else. The climate in my classroom, my school specifically is just becoming really intense. Or any workplace, what can I do? I would say lean on community. 

 . And the reminder that I have to tell myself, not too long ago, I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma for a conference and.

I was able to really learn from folks in that community about Black Wall Street. And the piece that was the backbone of that community was black people owning businesses. Mm-hmm. And I know many times in helping professions, we are like told to think that we are degrees are meant to just work within systems, but they're not.

When I started my private practice actually. 50% of my time was going into seeing clients. The other 50% I was building curriculum for nonprofits and other private practices so that they could have alternative streams of income. So like I am so pro business, I know that's not everybody's stance. Mm-hmm. Um, but even if it's a side hustle, being able to have that sense of ownership over what you do for me has been a form of taking care of myself.

Yeah. Can we talk about the curriculum development component? 'cause I know somebody's gonna perk their ears up and say you're writing curriculum as a therapist. What is that? So tell us about that, please. 

So many times, especially in the world of mental health, there are many clinicians who want to have multiple streams of income in their businesses, but they got the clinical degree.

The clinical is what they know how to do. So there's this phrase that therapists say all the time of, I wanna get out of the chair, which is essentially like, I don't wanna be sitting in the therapist chair doing sessions over and over and over again. So, me being my innovative self and having this master's in curriculum, I thought, well, lemme just be an educational consultant.

And if a therapist wants to create a course that's self-paced, that they, that folks can take online. Based on their areas of expertise, I can teach 'em how to teach. And so I worked with a little more than two handfuls of therapists, um, who now have podcasts, who have courses. Two of them have tutoring programs.

Um, one has an ebook and like Facebook group community. Um. So like they were, they were able to just really take all of their clinical knowledge and in order to fight that burnout, be able to provide it in ways that would be more accessible. And therapy can get very expensive, very, very fast. Mm-hmm. And so it allowed these folks to be able to take what they knew.

Be able to provide it at a cost that was really affordable to folks or for folks who were not comfortable with going into the therapy room. Um, and something that I constantly told folks who I was working with doing this work is that healing, yes, can happen in the therapy room, but it's more likely to happen in community.

So you might as well tap into the folks who are never gonna go into the therapy room, but still need the knowledge and tools. Materials and, and guidance to be able to, um, to get there. And so I did that for a little while. Um, I think there was a lot that I learned about being a consultant through that journey, but the work itself I loved, but I just knew it was time to pivot and become a group practice and teach in that way.

Um, so I'm grateful I did it. I learned a lot doing it. If folks want to do it, I'm still anti gatekeeping. You can email me and I'll, I'll essentially tell you how I did it. 'cause I don't wanna do that anymore. Yeah. Um, and the work is needed and therapists absolutely want it. So that I will say, 

Hmm. I love this. I love this so much. This is perfect. So let me ask you a question. We brought you on the show. There's no we folks, I don't know why I always say we. It's me. I brought you on this show because yes, you're Journey education, but also you are a therapist and the folks I'm talking to and our audience, a lot of them are experiencing.

Burnout, racial battle fatigue, racism related stress. And so I wanna ask you, with all your experience, what can, first I want you to ask, what can the educator do to support themselves as they're experiencing this hostile work environments? How can they stay well? How can they sustain themselves in the job that they love?

So that they can continue to teach. That's the first part. 

So the first thing I always like to tell, especially my students, is your career does not define who you are. And when you go into the therapy room, and I would argue even when I was working. At DU doing afterschool programming and helping undergrads learn how to teach. I used to tell them the same thing.

What you're teaching yes, is important, but the people that you are teaching and interacting with benefit from your personhood, they could put anybody into that spot. You know what I mean? Yeah. But there is a reason why you are the person in the room. You are the teacher there. If you don't preserve that, your students are the ones who suffer.

So if you are like me and you have a hard time thinking about taking care of yourself for yourself's sake, I would argue that it is a part of your job if you were a teacher to take care of yourself. And I, I have been there, I'm even there right now as an adjunct with grading and dealing with classroom dynamics and like, like all of these pieces, yes.

So true, but there has to be a point when you put it down. And so I work with my clients using this analogy of a pie. If your career is a hundred percent of the pie, something's gotta adjust.

And I can't say you need to have this much of the pie be your career. It needs to be 25% or 50%. Like that's not what my role is. As a therapist, my role is to help you identify how much of your personhood you want to place in your career. That will help you be able to do the work that you love without sacrificing who you are and how you show up.

If folks keep this like pie analogy in their minds and think, I want, like, I'll use myself for example. I want my children to get 75 to 80% of me in this season with them being this tiny, they're six months old. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And they're the size of four and a half month olds. 'cause they were born six weeks early, so they're teeny tiny.

Um, maybe when they're 10 they'll take a 50%. Because I want them to go and explore and make their own friends and make their own community so it won't be the same. Um, but with right now them taking 75%, that 25% really needs to be focused on me. So like I take Aquafit classes with a friend of mine to make sure that I'm able to like, enjoy.

Workouts that I'm doing. 'cause I hate being on a treadmill. I hate being on an elliptical and I grew up swimming as a kid and so these workouts just feel really good for me in recovery from, uh, from pregnancy. That's absolutely something that I do in order to be able to show up. I also love to sleep. I'm not getting much sleep these days.

Yeah. But like, don't be surprised if I did not respond to an email in 30 minutes because I'm somewhere in a corner in my child's daycare. That's also a coworking space in the rest Nest taking a 30 minute nap before I have to do something, like I will sneak in that sleep. So that's for me. And so figuring out how that pie needs to be prioritized will force you to be able to make sure there is a sliver for you.

Yeah, because nobody will benefit. The airplane analogy of like, you have to put your oxygen mask on first. Yes, it's true. But you have to remember in that analogy, the plane is going down and we're in a world where that might be true for a lot of us. So even if it's more important now than ever.

It's not just about taking care of yourself for yourself's sake. As Tricia Hersey says, it's an act of actual resistance. It's an act of actually showing those who are in your community and who are around you, that your wellbeing means that your community is in wellbeing. And so if a teacher's standing in front of the classroom and they're snapping at their students, and, and I was there.

Please know, I have been there myself of like, there was one day none of my students did their, like the whole room, there was like eight of them. Nobody did their homework and I was pissed. Um, and I remember my lead teacher coming in and being like, okay, let's break this down. And he had to write out all of the strengths that I had as a teacher and all the ways that I wasn't taking care of myself that week before all the steps I needed to take.

You know what I, I thank Dan Hoffman for that genuinely. 'cause there are even moments now where I, I go back to that memory and I have to list out what are all of my strengths in this situation. What, and I wasn't even from a therapist, I was from another teacher. What are all the ways that I haven't been taken care of myself And what are all the things I need to adjust in order to be able to show up better in this classroom?

So I pass that advice along 'cause it was really helpful for me. Another piece is, um. You have to make sure your physical body is taken care of. Like we, we talk about self-care. Self-care. It's not just like taking a nice bubble bath and watching a move. Like, yes, those things are nice, but like you need to eat, you need to drink water.

You need to stretch. Remember when I used to teach, I used to stretch by, um, like putting my hand on my desk and just lifting one leg at a time and like just stretching my arms and legs before I had to go off and do the do the next thing. Um, and being regulated is a huge piece, something that I. Always recommend is if you have Colorado, might be questionable because of how cold it gets, but cold water, especially on your extremities.

So like your hands and your feet can do a lot to regulate your nervous system, especially if you're in a state of either panic or high stress. So what I used to do, um, especially when I was doing like some school social work, 'cause I would keep a bottle of ice on me, that was like separate from my regular water bottle.

So if I was really feeling just like dysregulated, I would just take an ice cube out of the little water bottle and just let it melt in my hands. Oh. So that it helps you be order to remain regulated as teachers, and I would argue in most helping professions, you don't have the luxury of standing there and being like.

Let's look at five things you see and four things you hear and like, yes, that exercise is great. I'm not bashing it, but like we don't have the luxury of time. So we need things that are quick and that are fast and that will help us be able to get through. Um, and that ice cube trick I use a lot even now.

Thank you. So I, along with our black educators, our folks of color in the audience, there's also their family members and their community members. Uh, and so we know that racism related stress, racial battle fatigue, spills over into our communities, cross over into our communities and impacts, um, our families.

And I've talked about this in the past where. When we get a job as educators or para school psychs, whoever we text our family, we call them, we do all the things with them, we celebrate, go out to dinner with them. And so also when we experience harm, that also happens, right where we call them and text them.

So they're with us this whole time. None of our educators are alone. At least I hope not. So my question to you is. Talking to their family and community, how can they help support that black educator that's ex experiencing racial trauma, racism related stress from the workplace? How can they help them when they get home or even when they're texting or calling at work?

What can they do to support them? 

It's two sided. One is the book answer. One is the non-book answer. I think they're both have some equal truth, but I'll stop. Start with the book Answer. The book answer talks about boundaries. Boundaries are essential to keeping us sane. And so I'm not saying boundaries in, oh, you have to leave your work at work and come home and like not think about work at all.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that systems of oppression win the more gasoline we pour on the fire. Hmm. Talk more about that. Yeah. So if, if someone experiences racism at work or experiences homophobia at work or sexism at work or whatever oppression is, um, at work and it impacts their ability to function, that further perpetuates.

And gives the ammunition for it to continue. And so when I say boundaries, some folks like to say, you can't let 'em see you sweat, which I think in some cases is very true. But I think in this particular scenario, the boundary might be you as a person who is causing me harm, do not have the privilege to see my emotion.

S So you're talking about the family member or this teacher? 

Uh oh, the fam. Oh, I think I was talking about the teacher there. My bad. 

Oh, that's perfect. That's totally fine. We love that. You could continue that. Well, you know what, actually finish your thought and then you can answer the question about the family. 

Yeah, my bad. Um, with, and I think in terms of that boundary. Them not seeing you sweat means that your family members would inevitably be the ones that are seeing the full reaction. And so for family members who are taking that on, they have to think about how much they can handle. Yeah, because it can be a lot to bear.

Like for example, when I was teaching. At ESS Park. My now husband was in the US Air Force working on missiles in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Um, and so he had a super stressful job. I had a super stressful job and we were together. And so I think in, I think about that experience and I think for family members, we sometimes need to be able to, yes, hold the space.

But also know when we need to call in support to help. So if it is going to therapy, that is an option. If you're like, Hey, I think you really need to talk to talk about this with a therapist who's able to give you the tools and resources to be able to help you. That could be option one, but if it's also, okay, we're going to talk about all of these things and how stressful it is for an hour.

And then we're gonna take time to really rest and take care of ourselves for an hour. So creating some time parameters mm-hmm. Will also help the home not become a boiling pot of, of stress. 'cause I would argue, regardless of whether it's a physical, tangible space or even the relationships that we have, home should be a place where we're able to fully be ourselves.

Yeah. Being able to have time for, just like I was saying with that pie earlier, to have parts where we're not just focusing on what it looks like to heal, like heal the problem, but times where we can focus on really taking care of ourselves. Those two things are equally important, and if there are necessary steps to take, like.

Figuring out what it looks like to name harm or like, yes, time should be made for that, but I always argue that we should do it in chunks so that our bodies aren't so exhausted by the process. It's like what I tell folks in couples therapy when they're in argument, sometimes you need to take a 10 minute break.

Cool off. Mm-hmm. Let the front of your brain come back to being what you're working with, rather than that survival part of the brain, being the part that you're working with. Um, and I think that's true for this too, if you're able to take some time out and just say like, okay, we're gonna put this down for a second.

Really figure out, do we need to eat? Do we need to take a shower? Do we need to drink water? Do we need to go on a walk? Do we need to. Just watch a movie and hang out. Like all of those things will help your brain go back to working from the front of the brain in order to figure out, even if it's not solving the problem, figuring out what it looks like to support somebody through a problem.

But I think it's essential that as family members, we are not demanding like what it is that folks should do, but we. Provide suggestions and if we need to take breaks from it, we take breaks from it. But then also knowing that if someone's operating from that back of the brain survival space, they're not gonna be able to join you and being in a place where the, 

where they're able to make decisions. . So I always like to tell family members. To really work on, yes, working through the problem, but helping folks really move out of that survival place into the decision making, which usually comes through incorporating some level of, many folks call it self care, but like just community care, like resisting through rest, active play through conversation, and just allowing yourself to be human outside of the problem.

Hmm. Thank you. That's really good. This idea of two of capping the time in which we discuss a situation is huge. I, I remember when I was getting my doctorate, I was interviewing families of black educators about racial battle fatigue, and I remember two sets of families. Said the same thing. They didn't know each other separate situations.

They both said, if we're not talking about the racism happening in our schools or in this person's workplace, we wouldn't have anything to talk about. And I think it was because of that so much time was taking up, talking about, well, she said this to me, she said that to me, or Help me navigate this conversation.

That's gonna happen up happen next. They ended up all they talked about, and this was like a, a, a husband wife, and it was also a mother daughter where it was just taking up so much space in relationship that other parts of their relationship, other conversations kind of just went to the side and we, we know that was damaging to the relationship. 

Right. And so I always like to say rediscovering hobbies or forms of connection that establish the bonds that you have is a great way to resist racial battle fatigue. Because what racism, and really anym is fighting is the idea that we can be ourselves and be intersectional. And we, many different things can make up who we are.

Racism operates in a monolith because there are stereotypes that are just associated with that one part of self. But if we focus on creating a very intersectional. Multi identity based, like view of ourselves and the communities that we have, and we're able to discover new parts. Like I'll use my, my husband for, for example, he loves, he's a tech guy.

Um, but he loves using, um, uh, his 3D printer to like print out different things and like make different, and it's like kind of how he uses his creative side. Um, so even when he's dealing with all of the, the stress of the military or even the stress of it, and he's able to come home, I have multiple baskets of yarn and crochet hooks and things like he's just, or like figurines that he's just like, he took the time to make me.

Yeah. And that was something that we were able to talk through and have that be a whole new part of our relationship. So even like the basket where I put all of like my, my makeup and stuff. He made, uh, and he asked me, how big do you want it to be? How, what color do you want it to be? And I was able to really like, have something made that I really liked, um, and I still treasure it.

And it allowed for that part of our relationship to be able to get better so that we weren't just talking about all of the stressors.

 My husband is a dude's dude. You know? Like he's a dude. Yeah. And he's the fact that he's able to use his 3D printer and of course he makes his Star Wars things and he makes all his dude things, but he definitely wanted to make sure that he could connect with me that way. 

I love that so much, and I love that you gave this example of something that will be considered. Feminine or girly with this making creation of these baskets and saying like, everything is for everybody . Making the baskets and doing the. And so, and also rediscovering that you're never too old for creating new hobbies or figuring out new things and connecting with your spouse or your child or your, whoever you're staying with or living with or in community with. Um, thank you for sharing that.

I really appreciate it. So, um, two more questions. The first question is, we're talking about this and you're already on the same vein For you, what does it mean to be well? 

Being well means that I'm not pretending to be, well,

Say it again for the folks in the back. 

being well means that I'm not pretending to be well. And I will tell you I am very good at pretending to be well, um, especially being pregnant very recently and. All the changes and things that came up with my practice while on my maternity leave. I spent a lot of time pretending to be well, and I think I am I now.

And it, it tells us that we're constantly in evolution. Um, and me being well meant, okay, this is all chaos here on the side. This feels like a dumpster fire, but it doesn't change. My personhood. Of course, there are areas where I needed to take accountability, where I needed to learn, but those mistakes and those things that I went through don't define the person that I'm actively working to become or the person that I am now.

And so being well means that I'm able to have some degree of separation between myself and my mistakes with the bridge of that being my accountability.

Wow. I love it. Thank you so much. That's something that's folks in the audience. I hope you push pause and like sit and think about that and rewind that like being well means not pretending to be well. And I think a lot of us do a lot of pretending, right for the sake of keeping up appearances for the sake of not wanting to burden others for the sake of fake it till you make it and it's not working. 

And I don't want my children to remember me as a person who pretended to be. Well. I think that's where that mindset shift really happened. Um, 'cause very quickly, they were in the NICU for 16 days and they were fighting, fighting, fighting that entire time.

And their doctors there were like, it's okay if you're not. Well. This is very hard. You have two children who are literally fighting for their lives here. Like, if you are not, well why? And she said, why pretend? I was like, oh. And so it forced me to really think about that and that's how I, that's a big piece of wisdom that I've gotten in the last year.

Hmm, beautiful. Last question. Is there a black educator that you would like to shout out? 

There is, she's actually my aunt, um, her name is Christina Ole. She's been working in education since 19 97, 98, and she's been in a myriad of roles. She's my mom's best friend and she's now also a board certified behavioral analyst and, uh, behavioral analyst supervisor.

And when I was teaching. She was one of my, well, she still is, but she was one of my greatest mentors. Um, so on tv, watch this. I love you. Um, oh, I love it. Like, I, I could cry thinking about it in each season that I've had. She's, she fully accepted me for who I was and the teacher that I was in that moment.

And funny enough, we actually consult about our cases together in mental health too, to help each other out. But she always encouraged me to never stop learning, but also never feel like there wasn't room to grow and room to change. And I think she's the perfect example. Of being in my life, of being well.

'cause even when she's stressed and all of those things, she knows really well how to separate that from her, her identity and herself. And she's very good at like really introspectively thinking about how she wants to show up for others. So, I mean, I wanna be her when I grow up in many ways. And I think a lot of the wisdom I get from, from her.

And she's in California, she's in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Shout out to her. Alright, so Josephine, how do people find you if they want to connect with you? Oh, oh, I have social media. I'm like now kind of getting back in the swing of things. I'm actually, I just started another LLC that's gonna focus on really training and development and supervising and consulting for a therapist and for folks who really wanna work within mental health.

And it's called the mental health Therapist Hub. It's brand, brand new, so I'm still in the building phases of it. Um, so I have an Instagram for that called the Mental Health Therapist Hub, or Mental Health Therapist Hub. I have a Facebook page for that. Um, but folks are also always welcome to email me. Um, I remember going to a conference and the speaker being like, if you ever wanna.

Connect, just send me an email. I was like, he's bluffing. And I emailed him and he responded and he's like, of course I'll mentor you. I was like, oh. So that's awesome. I would say the same thing, like if someone's listening to this and they feel like they don't have that sense of like mentorship or community with other folks, um, you can email me at hello at the mental health therapist hub.com um, and I'll be down to always meet up.

That's awesome.

Alright folks. This wraps up our show, Josephine and Powell, thank you so much for coming on. We wish you success in your businesses. And the twins are asleep, I think, 'cause it's, they've been quiet. , folks, make sure to check out the show notes to get all the information on how to find Josephine and make sure to follow her.

Definitely connect and we'll talk to you all on the next episode. All right, peace. 📍