Ep 27: Exhaustion

The work of fighting racism can be exhausting. This is especially true for Black folks and other people of color who have to work to dismantle systems that are actively oppressing them. Today April and Tracie talk a bit about strategies and frames to help counter the isolation and the internalized not-good-enough that comes along with the exhaustion and burn out for people of color and the ways in which white allies can provide support.

Find April and Tracie's full bios and submit topic suggestions for the show at www.JewsTalkRacialJustice.com

Learn more about Joyous Justice where April is the founding and fabulous (!) director and Tracie is a senior partner: https://joyousjustice.com/
Read more of Tracie's thoughts at bmoreincremental.com

Resources and notes:
Jonathan Metzl, Dying of Whiteness
Mary Winters Black Fatigue: How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body and Spirit
April and Tracie's "Flip the Script" resource can be accessed here.
Read more about and from Julius Lester.
Find Megan Madison at her website.
Learn more about Re-evaluation counseling.
Load = Work / Resources * Time * Efficiency
Dr. Harriette Wimms is a leader in the JOC Mishpacha project, which is convening a national Shabbaton for JOCs and their allies this May.
Sign up to access the free three-video series, (Joyously!) Moving Toward Racial Justice. 

Transcript

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- [Tracie] Racism is exhausting. Fighting it adds an extra layer of effort and exhaustion. In today's episode, I asked April to help us think about strategies for combating the exhaustion that comes with the work.- [April] This is "Jews Talk Racial Justice" with April and Tracy.- [Tracie] A weekly show hosted by April Baskin and Tracie Guy-Decker.- [April] In a complex world, change takes courage.- [Tracie] Wholehearted relationships, can keep us accountable. Your dad friended me on Facebook, I accepted his friend request, he went deep, deep, deep in my Facebook stuff. He was liking, and loving, and sending care around stuff that was you know, six, seven, eight years old.(laughing)- I guess he's been watching our episode, hi dad, hi daddy.(laughing) All right, so I think we wanna talk a little bit about fatigue. And in our last episode, we zeroed in on something that seemed to particularly impact white folks. And this week we wanna zero in on something that specifically affects people of color, yeah. Specifically, and especially black people but not exclusively at all(laughs) the manifestations of racism that cause extensive fatigue and health issues, disproportionately affect black people, but also other communities of the global...that makeup, members of the global majority, so...- You know I just finished reading, Jonathan Metzl's "Dying of Whiteness" where it's a book-length exercise in proving that it actually also shortens the lives, racism also shortens the lives of white folks.- Yes, I am so here for that, I know it does. Thank you for naming that. So, there's so much to say here, fatigue and overworking, and the fatiguing impact of terror that folks face.- Yeah.- And you know, I was joking with you before we started recording, like I'm tired right now.(laughing) I'm often tired.- I wanna ask you about that too though, because I feel like yes, yes, yes, everything you said, the hypertension, and the anxiety, and the cortisol caused by having to face microaggressions and all of the structural indignities that racism causes. But, I also want to ask you about the exhaustion that comes from the work of...- Yeah.- Fighting it, of educating around it, of having to...- Of surviving it, of navigating, of fighting.(laughing)- Yeah, and doing the work of educating other folks, especially you as a woman of color educating white folks. That feels like...- And while we're naming, right go ahead, please continue.- It just feels like it must add an extra layer to the many layers being navigated of things to pay attention to that then becomes exhausting.- I wanted to get more specific about it, 'cause I think you kind of basically addressed this earlier, but I wanna get more precise in articulating it. So it's clear to folks and for us that, it's that, it's all the layering, and then it's also for me largely too'cause I feel pretty resilient taking on a lot of stuff. It's also the lack of infrastructural support, the lack of compensation, the lack of resources that can hold us and support us that we are often carrying these things on our own, whereas other people have all kinds of supports, just the psychological comfort of inherited wealth, might not be a lot but it's something. Or the likelihood, you know, one of the sore spots for me over the summer, 'cause in general I just choose to focus on what I want and building that, and I've gotten really ruthless, which is sort of getting into some of the strategies around how to navigate some of these challenges, around continually working to get clearer and clearer on what is my role, and not taking it all on. So the Winters Group, which is a very successful long time established, global diversity and inclusion firm that also has, I think a lovely justice lens from what I can tell. She, Mary Winters is the founder of it, and she wrote a book that was published I believe this summer about, called "Black Fatigue". So if folks are so off the bat, if folks wanna learn more about this, she has a book about this very subject and the subtitle is;"How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body, and Spirit" So, there's a lot to say here, as is often the case we're not gonna get to it all, but I want us to touch upon this in a few key ways and be guided by our free flip the script resource that we've created, that we're now doing these episodes to provide even more free content for our community members and folks who are just encountering our work and are eager to learn more. And I think a lot of people of color, whether it's around, just a range of issues, I've had to say with certain things, if we wanna get food tonight, if we want to go to the school that we wanna attend, whatever it is that there are, there's a black tax.- Yeah.- And there's a POC and black indigenous people of color tax that we need to pay, and it's got to come somewhere else because we both live in an abundant universe, which I do believe, and we're also human and mortal, and there are finite limits to our human capacity and only so many hours in a day.- Yeah.- And so often that ends up coming out if we're not mindful, and if we don't have enough supports in place, which is often the case,'cause it's not just about mindfulness, it's about infrastructure and yeah, you were about to say something.- I was gonna ask you actually to talk a little bit more, you said something about, getting ruthless about taking on only what's yours, and I think that really resonated for me when I think about some of the other folks of color, especially Jews of color in my orbit who are working so hard because it's important to them that our community change and I worry, and I try to support as much as I can without falling into either saviorism or insulting their agency. But I also, I just, I worry that my friends aren't resting enough, that they're not taking care of themselves, and so I wondered if maybe you could talk a little bit about your strategies or I don't know, just some thoughts on what that looks like, and what difference it makes and how to go about being more, maybe boundaried is the word I'm looking for?- I have a bunch of different thoughts and I'm counting on you Tracie to help make some of the stuff more practical. And so I'm just feeling the enormity of this, but I need a like onto that and set it on the shelf, so I can hopefully deliver something that is resonant for folks and of value. So here's some things that come up for me with this, right? If we go back and look at specifically what we wrote in our "flip the script" resource, which you can access at joyousjustice.com, is"I'm totally exhausted, I can't keep going," right, and I think in some place we say like, yeah you can't keep going like this, right? You know, "likely you can keep going, but not like this." So first is just to validate, like I hear you, I hear you. I know from personal experience, and I also know there are people who experience far more intense exhaustion, and difficulty, and challenge. So, we get to rest first and foremost, we get to rest. I remember after I had some medical challenges earlier in my career that, I needed a break from doing work in the Jewish community, I'd just accumulated too many hurtful experiences, and had given everything I had and more, I pushed myself. And I got some amazing results, and I also got a lot of hostility, and lack of gratitude, and wind in my face. While I was leading in a role where I wasn't paid. There are times it was amazing to me that kind of resentment and racism that was directed at me, and I was like,"I'm doing this work for free, I'm not getting paid, I'm not your elected official, nobody's compensating me for this."- Right.- I'm a young professional who comes from a family that's navigated a lot of hardship, and I'm working a full-time job, and also leading in this space, and treating it like another full-time job. And I don't even need praise, but it would just be although like a little bit is obviously nice, but it would just be helpful if you don't constantly beat me up all the time.- Right.- And so coming out of that and from other experiences, I just was heartbroken, and exhausted, and needed to do a reset and figure out what I needed to do, and I remember very clearly that my dear friend Yavilah said at the time, that she'd gotten the lesson from another movement elder and on her journey Julius Lester, that this is why we have a movement, and that your rest and healing is critical social justice work, it's critical to racial justice, it's critical to our collective liberation, we need to start caring for ourselves, and to the point that a number of my colleagues in this work make, I see on social media my friend and colleague I highly respect Megan Madison. I'm really big into self-care, I think it's really fantastic, I also think it's not either or, and she's one of the people I often see leading on the leading edge of saying,"Self care ain't enough we need communal collective decisions. And it disproportionately places blame on an individual to overly emphasize self care." which I do agree with. And I don't think it has to be either or, and so I'm also hearing her wisdom. There's also a way in which a number of us throughout our society and around the world have been conditioned through unhealed trauma and different lessons, we've learned from different sources to not ask for help when we need it. So a core, and that's part of the inner game, but ideally being in a community, whether it's a spiritual professional, there's a lot of different supportive communities, the more anti-oppression, and the more healing focused it can be the better. But even in some of our traditional, spiritual, or professional communities, there's a lot of people who care about us and who want to support us. And so reaching for help around how to navigate these things, also, there's a range of different resources, some really gorgeous black mental health initiatives that have come out, particularly in the last year that I would encourage specifically black listeners to look for, and some of this is not just about mental health, is also about our bodies, right? So I just wanna name the one, I feel like this is a topic that's a bit in the deep end. Like I wanna offer up some insight, very humbly, very humbly, I would encourage you to, as much as you can be gentle and loving with yourself, many of us have been conditioned to be tough and to just stick it out and keep going. One of the things that I think I can say completely from humility, that feels that it's in my lane to say is to really encourage us to be gentle with ourselves and listen to the messages our bodies are giving. I believe that our bodies are our allies, it doesn't always feel that way, but I believe they're trying to communicate with us in different ways for our thriving, and the more we can slow down and soften enough to listen, the better it is. And then there can be a lot of anxiety or fear that comes up when we hear the answer from our body, because we might think (laughs) like me, like I need to go to the doctor when hold my schedule, how am I?(indistinct chatter) How do I? Like, then some panic it can kind of set in, but if we can just breathe and remember.(deep breathing) We can reach for help to help think through some of these things if it's feeling overwhelming I just, I think what I would say is you get to heal, you get to take the time that you need to heal. And if you don't have the time because I know what that's like, when you or a family member of yours may be ill or dying and the rent needs to get paid, and it's difficult, also reach for help. There are a number of funds that have developed to help folks in a number of efforts, that to me is really big, I would just encourage you as tough as it is, to reach for help, and if you get rejected, keep reaching, keep reaching 'cause you just may not have asked the right person, or you might have asked the right person at the wrong moment, but there are other folks and we need each other. And so that's a big piece that I would say. And the other piece that I would just put out as humbly as possible, is that even if it feels impossible to get rest, it may take a little time but I wanna pause it that it is possible. You might just need to a little support and resources around figuring out a new way forward. I once heard a teacher saying, this really resonated with me, and it was said in a very loving, positive way that most likely in our world there's someone who has your situation, who's navigating pretty similarly close to what you're navigating or possibly worse, and through help, or through contemplation, or through journaling, or through prayer, they were able to find a pathway forward, and so as hard as it is, there is support. Another piece that came up for me early on that I'm just naming now as I was thinking about this that feels important, although it's hard to map precisely where it goes, is the value of healing. That a lot of things don't feel possible to us at times because we didn't have that support earlier in our life, and it wasn't there, and we did reach. And what I would say is that, often those things happened when we were younger and we're older now, and we have more resources available to us, and we are also better equipped as tired as we are, a variable in this equation here is that we got to release, like I am fully deeply entrenched in working in the Jewish community now, and part of that came from me being so blessed and fortunate, shout out to Becky, not all Becky's are bad, for reaching out to me and introducing me to a counter oppressive healing practice. I went on, here's like, I think my story can be helpful. I don't know if instructive but helpful. I'd given up on working in the Jewish, I was so hurt, I was so hurt, by repeatedly experiencing things and having so much resilience in continuing to go, but I'm experiencing so much racism, and so much rejection despite continually getting better, and continually learning and bringing my heart. But I think a number of us can relate to in different ways around just feeling defeated, whether it's from our early life or at some point in our adult life. And the difference maker for me was not time, and it wasn't just my own healing practices, it was from joining an explicit healing community. In my case, Re-evaluation Counseling or Co-counseling but it can be other somatic healing. There's a range, traditional talk therapy with a fantastic anti-oppressive therapist, you can also there's a lot of different means. So I don't wanna, I'm not meaning just to name one thing but specific healing with another person in community or with another person who was there to witness and to allow us to tell these old stories that carry so much pain, the current and old stories, and have them just with their loving presence or things they say affirm our humanity and affirm that what happened was not okay, and it was not our fault, right? That to me, a big theme here that's a little bit more subtle is the healing in the exhaustion, and the healing from being in a place where we got to the point of exhaustion and also the healing around the things that tell us that we have to keep working or that we don't deserve better treatment, and that's not our fault, but there is something, what I'm saying is that especially with supportive community, we can begin to set different standards and reach for new places. I did that on my own career, as I moved through my career, I've moved into increasingly supportive communities, that not only align with my values and word, but also in action, and when they don't, we are able to work through it together, and it's not only me continuing to reach, but they reach too. Oh, I thought of something else really pragmatic that I meant to talk about.(laughing) Welcome to adventures inside an ADHD brain. Okay, so here's the thing. Another piece that I think is interesting with this is that at times I think, there's some folks who were saying I'm totally exhausted, and then there are other folks which goes back to my point about being gentle with yourself who are being incredibly self-critical, who are not meeting your goals, or who are stumbling and fumbling. And it's because you're exhausted, it's because there are way too many outputs, and it's actually not your fault.- Right.- You do have likely over time once you get some additional support, you do have control to shift some of those things, but it's not necessarily easy and it takes time. And so I just wanna say it's not your fault. Before things got even worse, I was talking to a friend of mine and saying to her,"Shira, I'm falling behind on things, I'm really ineffective, and I'm not showing up the way I want to." and I was going through all these different things, and she asked me some questions and I was telling her all about it, and at the end of it she said, Shira is so smart. She was like, "April, just to put it really simply I heard you just tell me about everything that's happening in your life and heard that like 95% of what you were saying that you're doing right now, they're all outputs, it's all for other people, and I don't hear you talking about inputs, I heard you say that you're staying up late, that you don't have a social life right now, that you're giving a lot in work, you're giving a lot to the Jewish Multiracial Network, you're really working hard to advance them and put systems in place which will support them for years." Yay, so now the systems are still supportive years later, but like and that was a huge epiphany. I was like, "Oh yeah, you're right."'Cause I was just being hard on myself and I was just saying to her, I called her to be like, well I don't remember who called who, but like I really when she asked how I was doing, my check-in with her was like,"I don't, Shira, I'm not fully sure why but I'm just not, I'm not doing well, and it's not okay for me because I really wanna show up effectively." And she was like, "April, you're working around the clock, and it sounds like you just have way too much load, you're carrying back to the question we were talking about earlier, there's just too much, so it sounds like you need..." you know, and in my Selah Leadership training through Bend the Arc, they have that great equation that I love, it has like load equals, and it has a graph with like the work, your workload divided by resources, time, and efficiency. And they say, when they did the training with us, that efficiency can only shift by about 5%, it's really about, you either need to reduce the workload, lengthen the timeline, or get more people involved, more resource, more help, so I love that equation, to think about things and to map out different things. And so essentially what she was saying is like, just even a simpler way like,"You need to take more time to do inputs, and I don't think this is you, just math wise, mathematics." she's like, "This is a mathematical equation, and this equation is not gonna add up to you being able to be the kind of effective leader you wanna be, something needs to give. And if it's feeling like if you're having a hard time figuring out what to let go of just focus on adding, putting more input in, and some of those things might get bumped, and just focus on nourishing yourself, figuring out the sleep, just taking a deep breath, most of these things like you really have these big, big dreams, but April if you're the only one who's working that hard, something else has to change, there should be also other people who can put in." and there were other people but, in generally speaking there was a small handful of not exclusively, but mostly Jews of color who were doing work for this effort and it wasn't sustainable. And so, I just think that's a helpful frame of like looking over your life and being like how many inputs are there? And now I'm at a point now where, to give you a sense of how far I've come over about whatever that is like 12 years now, that I'm now at a point where I'm like, I'm not even about a couple hours a day. Although, now I'm more into my entire life should be structured around self care, that my work, that the way I'm doing, the way I'm taking breaks, that everything is working in a way that is not, which is not fully very head, that's the goal. But I'm in that, I'm more in, headed in that direction than I was before. And it gets, and at this level, as I think some of you can probably relate, it gets complicated again, because I've limited my work to what I love, but now there's also an abundance of that, so I still need it.(laughing)- Right, even more winnowing.- Limit and winnow down But, it's a continual process, but just checking in with yourself and thinking, how many inputs do I have and what is my output? And if it's a lot, then thinking about what are other inputs that I can add? Whether it's around food, or rest, or connection, or something that brings you joy or releasing something too. But if that feels hard for you like it does for me, then you can just think about nutrients. Something as simple, like when I'm in a crisis mode, which is a different subject, but kind of related, I just even think about one of my crisis act that because fortunately, unfortunately that's something that I'm intimately familiar with is, eat multi-colored produce, if I eat multi-colored produce I'm gonna be getting better, like one step at a time, but that might actually be helpful for some folks. So if and when I'm in crisis, if you're in a crisis of fatigue or exhaustion, I just, I have a whole thing, but a few of those steps include switching gears and focusing on my breath, and deciding for the next few hours and often days if it's something really traumatic or upsetting, and something has happened that I didn't foresee, and that shifts temporarily or permanently my understanding of the world, I just decide I'm gonna do one thing at a time, that's it. I'm just gonna focus on one thing at a time, once I do that one thing or make progress on that one thing, then I'll move to the next. Because it's too much to hold all of it, right? I often make a playlist, I make a playlist that is either one of two things, or incorporates both. It's a playlist of songs that is either deeply nourishing and affirming of where I'm wanting to go or what I'm, or the messages that I needed to hear for forward movement and or it's a playlist that's focused on release, that are songs that aren't upsetting but that speak to what I'm going through, and help me cry, or shake, or say, "Yes that's what I'm going through, and it's not okay." One of my go to's is, it's both been for relationships as well as for some of my work in our community, has been Beyonc's "Why Don't You Love Me" is if I'm going through something where I feel like I've given my everything and there's, and I've tried so many times, and it's still not enough for you to treat me with kindness, I'll listen to that song at times and just cry and hear this woman saying,"I am doing everything so mindfully, and ultimately it looks like this isn't gonna work, but I'm heartbroken, I'm heartbroken." And so it's to things that presence and witness our own feelings.- So presence and witness, I think is a really great segue to what I wanted to say to other white folks who might be listening is that, I mean I've been in spaces where I've heard a JOC leader say,"I'm exhausted." which took courage to say, because the response was, "You can't be tired we have work to do." from a white person. That's not helpful and...- Not helpful.- Not helpful, and it came from good intentions, which is that the white person who said that is you know, sees opportunities in this moment, and there are. But, I think in this specific situation and in all situations when someone shares their lived experience, we need to believe them, and just be with it and offer what support we can, and I think that that is sounds really obvious, but it's not what we're taught to do, right? Our society teaches us to try to fix things. And that's not actually, especially from us white folks if our colleagues, friends, loved ones of color are expressing exhaustion at the work, fixing is not, we should try to make that not the first thing we go to. So that's just my sort of piece of advice after, I think a lot of, April you shared a lot of really practical stuff and a lot of what your story I'm sure resonates because I recognize it, and other Jews of color, obviously not exactly but sort of the same...- No, but there's a lot. Yeah, I'm not alone.- Those same patterns, those same patterns of feeling like somehow you're failing or not doing enough, or if you could just, show up differently, or show up more or work a few more hours that you could get there. So I think that I really hear that.- And the thing like to the clarification is, it's not we're not enough it's that the oppression is that bad.- Exactly.- And it doesn't mean that it's not surmountable, but we need to support each other more because often(indistinct chatter) Not to be working solo on things that need whole groups of people to make. And then often as leaders we're set up to feel like failures when in fact you were incredibly courageous and despite not having enough resources we stepped into the fray, and so that deserves incredible love and respect, and we get to reach for each other and continue to figure out how can we set our, we deserve to be set up for better success in our solo ventures, as well as within mainstream institutions. Which is an ongoing learning journey in our community around how to set up leaders of color well, and everyone doing racial justice work but especially leaders of the global majority. Set us up for success and to be protected, and respected, and to get the feedback we need to hear, and for us to be able to give the feedback that others need to hear.- And to your point earlier, like build in the structure so that those leaders and all leaders are getting the rest, and the nutrients, and the nutrition, and the support, and like literal and figurative nutrition, you know like the inputs to your point that we really need to be more mindful of that. The we, I mean as a community about how we're thinking about leadership, which maybe is a whole another episode. But I think that we've been programmed to believe that leadership is sort of a singular activity of like one person acting in their...- Anti-White supremacist delusion, and white dominant culture.- Right, that's not gonna make change, it's not how we grow as a people, but I think that the consequences of that framing those assumptions about leadership, mean that we often leave our leaders out in the cold. We isolate them and then they isolate themselves.- And it is painful.- Yeah, and we isolate ourselves too because we've internalized those things so...- And as a final plug, what I wanna say to everyone not just the funders, is that part of this pragmatically I was just talking to a beloved colleague, Lindsay Newman and she was articulating this really powerfully, and I wanna echo her, part of this is about just funding leaders of color more, especially those of us who are qualified, right. Whether it's me, or I need your help figuring this out, what's Harriette's last name again?- Wimms, Dr. Harriette Wimms.- Or like Dr. Harriette Wimms, who is facilitating and helping to organize a national JOC gathering Shabbaton in just a couple months and she, I believe has a doctorate, like she is highly qualified.- She's a physician, she's a psychiatrist, she's amazing.- I didn't even, oh my goodness, she's just like, she is really, she is a physician, she's on track to become a Hebrew priestess, many of us are highly overqualified, so I wanna encourage folks, both who have funding and those who have access to it or just in your mind to help, because part of this is about just a lack of resources. And there are people who have experienced being excellent stewards of resources in a variety of positions who aren't getting the resources they need. So part of this is real pragmatic and simple, in that there are great folks who are getting some funding, and it's enough to get it off the ground, but it's not enough for them to not have to be in a position where they have to choose between foregoing some of the basic elements of their dreams, or having to cannibalize their self care in order to make it, to deliver on what they've told their community they can. So that's another piece of it too, that is worth tossing in there.- Right, right.- Okay, so...- So in the words of April Baskin, this world will not be a better place if you are completely depleted, it really won't.- It won't, so we deserve to get to figure out together for some of us we have access in different ways to care for ourselves, please do that. And for others continue to reach for help because it's on all of us to collectively begin to develop solutions that support us all in moving forward with wellness, and joy, and balance, and much love.- I'm gonna wrap us up for the episode with a plug. I'm really excited to let all of you listeners know that we actually, April and I are releasing a free three video offering called,"Moving Towards Racial Justice". Well actually, April I've been thinking about it, we should have called it, Moving Joyfully Toward Racial Justice because the joy is an important piece.- Tracie.- I know it's too late, it's too late...- No, it's not, we can revise it for the third one.- For the third one we will add it, but so that...- Yes.- And those of you listening you get a sneak peek that we're revising on the fly that you now know that no one else knows, although the content is there. So this three free video, this three offering start over. this free three video offering, it's a lot of fun, we had a lot of...- Free three video offering. Free three video offering.- I will put the link to the offering in the, into the show notes for the podcast. And I...- Show notes.- I hope that you will all come join us for this journey, we've had a lot of fun putting it together.- Yes we have, it's so exciting yay.- [April] Thanks for tuning in our show's theme music was composed by Elliot Hammer, you can find this track and other beats on Instagram @elliothammer. If this episode resonated with you, please share it and subscribe. To join the conversation, visit jewstalkracialjustice.com where you can send us a question or suggestion, access our show notes, and learn more about our team. Take care until next time and stay humble and keep going.