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Aaron Perry
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In this very special episode, Dr. Jandel Allen-Davis, MD, shares her perspective as an African American woman and professional leader on the events unfolding in communities throughout the United States and world-wide. She discusses our collective trauma, having witnessed the cold blooded murder of a man and United States citizen, Mr. George Floyd, during the course of an eight minute, forty-six second video recorded by an onlooking citizen.
As Dr. Allen-Davis tells us, “We’re all in this together,” and, “We have to start talking about this in order to stop talking about it.” Reflecting on generations of institutional racism in the United States, following a terrible history of slavery, genocide, and profound physical, psychological and spiritual brutality, Dr. Allen-Davis discusses the importance for each of us to feel the pain – to allow ourselves to feel, deeply, the grief of such tremendous sadness and injustice. This isn’t a matter of simply tweaking policy or replacing incompetent individuals, we must feel in order to heal.
Citing the ancient African tradition of Imbizo (“talking things out”), practiced by the Zulu nation and others today, Dr. Allen-Davis discusses the need for diverse talking and healing circles in communities everywhere – diverse not only in terms of ethnicity or sexual orientation, but also, and very importantly, diversity in terms of socio-economic status. In these “safe places,” Dr. Allen-Davis advises, we have the opportunity to cultivate the adaptive change necessary.
In this emotional and moving discussion, Dr. Allen-Davis also speaks directly to white America, providing very important input and invitation to “Channel empathy,” as she says, “Don’t be sorry for me, be sorry with me.”
Although she is rightfully skeptical that our society will rapidly heal this generations-deep psycho-pathology, having witnessed the riots and fires in the fourth grade following the cold blooded murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dr. Allen-Davis is hopeful – especially given the diminished racism, bigotry, and hatred that she observes among younger people. She leaves us with a powerful exhortation: “Believe in your own goodness!” and implores us to take the time, “Going slow to go fast,” to have the conversations, feel the emotions, listen, and adapt together.
Dr. Jandel Allen-Davis, MD is the President and CEO of Craig Hospital in Denver, Colorado, a world-renowned rehabilitation hospital that exclusively specializes in the neuro-rehabilitation and research of patients with spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries. Dr. Allen-Davis was the vice-president of Government, External Relations and Research for Kaiser Permanente Colorado from 2009-2018. In that role she led the organization’s government relations and regulatory affairs, community relations and community benefit investment, clinical research activities, stakeholder engagement, communications, and advertising and marketing functions. Dr. Allen-Davis is board certified in obstetrics and gynecology and was in active practice for 25 years. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Dartmouth Medical School, Dr. Allen-Davis completed her residency at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. She is an active participant in the community and currently serves on the boards of Denver Botanic Gardens, the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, National Jewish Health, and the Geisel Board of Advisors at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. She has been recognized as a 5280 Magazine “Top Doc” in the Denver Metropolitan Area in addition to other leadership awards, including Outstanding Woman in Health Care by the Denver Business Journal.
Transcript
(Automatically generated transcript for search engine optimization and reference purposes – grammatical and spelling errors may exist.)
Welcome to the YonEarth community podcast. Today, we’re visiting with Dr. Jandell Allen-Davis.
Hi, Jandell. Hi, Karen. I really appreciate you taking the time to visit with us today.
I appreciate him as I said, and I’m honored that you asked.
And we’re going to be talking about this incredible time that we’re going through as a nation and as a society
and get the perspective from you, Jandell, which I am so grateful you’re taking the time to share with us
with our audience with the YonEarth community.
So to introduce Dr. Jandell Allen-Davis, MD is the president and CEO of Craig Hospital in Denver,
Colorado. A world-renowned rehabilitation hospital that exclusively specializes in the
neurorehabilitation and research of patients with spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries.
Dr. Allen-Davis was the vice president of government, external relations and research
for Kaiser Permanente, Colorado, from 2009 to 2018. In that role, she led the organization’s
government relations and regulatory affairs, community relations, and community benefit
investment, clinical advertising, and marketing functions. Dr. Allen-Davis is board certified
in obstetrics and gynecology and was an active practice for 25 years. A graduate of Dartmouth
College and Dartmouth Medical School, Dr. Allen-Davis completed her residency at Thomas Jefferson
University Hospital in Philadelphia. She is an active participant in the community and currently serves
on the boards of Denver Botanic Gardens, the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce,
National Jewish Health, and the Geisel Board of Advisors at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth.
She has been recognized as a 52-80 magazine top doc in the Denver Metropolitan Area
in addition to other leadership awards, including outstanding women in health care by the Denver
Business Journal. And, Jen, you’ve been on the Winers Community Podcast before a little over
a year ago, I think, when we were talking about leadership and vuka. And, you know, right now,
we’re talking in a very different context. And I’d like to just open it right up and
and invite you to share with us what’s going on from your perspective and how is it affecting you.
Well, thank you, Aaron. And thanks again for the opportunity to come hang with you for a little bit
and talk about these incredibly vuka times. And thanks for living on their views. In fact,
I’ve used that phrase a couple times this week with our incident command team because, as you know,
we’ve been at fighting a war, a battle against an unseen enemy that is the coronavirus.
And I can say proudly, but still, you just never attempt to fake that we have had no COVID cases
that crack. And you don’t get that blessed, that lucky, without a lot of work. And so,
the whole idea of figuring out now is the community is relaxing or reopening.
How we keep our patients, say it’s given how vulnerable they are, has absolutely
about the whole sense of vuka volatility of certain complexity and ambiguity. And then
to have what happened, and as unfolded over this last, you know,
darn near two weeks, it’ll be two weeks on Monday, with Mr. George Floyd,
to have that on top of it with these absolutely righteous protests. Violence notwithstanding,
but to have, you know, this midi people in the streets across the country, let alone the world,
in the context of a pandemic is the change of your plan. And for one thing, for sure,
that we’ve had to do is remain very agile and flexible and measured.
And I can remember at the beginning of the pandemic having my own sort of sense of,
wait, what? Kind of that emotional thing at the same time trying to help take a team and
keep a team safe, worry about my kids in New York City and family other places. And at the same
time, having this big job to do in terms of being one of a member of several people,
what certainly is the president CEO of our incident command to figure out how we were going to keep
people safe. And it’s a crazy thing to have to sort of manage your own emotions or sort of the
least sort of touch-based is probably better. Your own sort of emotional almost stages of grief
at the same time, if you’re trying to do this very technical or justical thing that is not
just the technical problem. It is very much an adaptive problem. And now we find ourselves
still in the throws of that. And this yet again, here we go, race issue in this country.
And the thing I, and the interesting thing is maybe folks know, but you probably don’t,
is first of all, I’m the first woman CEO at Craig, first physician in a long time in terms,
well, modern Craig for sure, first physician, first African American leader at Craig.
And so there’s me, and then there’s, you see every now and then, faces in the sort of middle ranks.
And then the only other place, I mean the highest concentration of people of color at Craig are
those who clean the floors and cook. And I knew that when I got there, but I also know having
served on the serve a long time and having observed lots of ways to enter into this conversation
about race, that if I walk in on first day and say, what’s up, I would have been instantly
marginalized. You have to almost like earn your stripes, which you do anyway, just in general.
But then certainly on an issue as emotionally charged. And unfortunately in this country,
almost it’s like a third rail issue, like me talking about it, would have been hard.
At the same time, harvoring a lot of guilt about the fact that we’ve got this big rotting,
stinking elephant sitting in the middle of the room, because every white person in the place it
knows, oh my gosh, we have a black person in the big office.
And we’re kind of, we never really talked about it. I did a couple times trying to
approach the subject of the diversity through sort of wanting just to see numbers. And
that’s for another day. But it was interesting being told, we’re doing well in that space and
thinking, well, my eyes would tell me something different. And again, you need to face myself.
Well, I have a strong, strong, strong, strong belief that nothing happens by accident. Nothing,
there are no coincidences. And there was the opportunity for synchronicity,
serendipity in the face of even some of the icky stuff you’re going through. And the idea of a pandemic,
and in fact, last or when the protests started, I was calling it P-square, pandemic and protest.
And by the end of the week, which I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before, I was calling it
P-cube. Because it’s the pandemic, it’s the protests and the political environment that we’re
living in right now that it turns this thing into a hot mess. And, you know, and cubed is,
or squared is appropriate because the impacts are exponential. They are not added.
And so you put all that in the space. And because I don’t believe that there’s any such thing as
accidents, this is another example. One of the phrases people are sick of hearing me say is never
let a good crisis go to waste. So this is the time to step into this space and pull back the veil,
pull back the veil. We sit in our walls at Craig, let alone the conversations in the opportunity,
have some Craig, and just start talking about some things. So we’ve started some of them.
So I’m doing all right at cry a lot, you know, tear up here and there, maybe today.
Cry is like not wailing. I did cry myself to sleep that Tuesday night, because I hadn’t seen that video until
last Tuesday night. And I was just like the whole at rest of the world in shock and so sad and so
mad and so many emotions and so scared on some levels. So most certainly tears and resolve,
resolve, that we got to do some things.
You know, Jan Dell, one of the main reasons I reached out to you a few days ago, there really are two.
One is a friend reach out to me and said, what the heck is YonEarth doing about what’s going on
right now? And it caused me to pause and think what else what can we be doing right now? And I think
sharing this conversation is one of the minimal and small, small steps we can take and make.
The other reason I reached out to you is that you, you shared it really what struck me as a very
emotional Facebook post several days ago. And I love you, you post a lot. It’s so fun to see
when you’re out walking and seeing the eagles and sharing what’s going on with your gardens.
It’s lovely, right? And the one you shared a few days ago really hit me in the heart and it was like,
wow, and it caused me to just pause and think and feel a bit more about what’s going on.
And I just, the emotional piece, I think sometimes it’s hard when we’re doing a podcast or
having a recorded discussion. But the emotionality of this is so real and intense and raw.
And I wonder in a position of leadership, how do you obviously leaders have to manage emotions
in ordinary circumstances? But when it’s appropriate to share and convey
emotionality and depth of feeling, how do you, how do you do that in your position?
Well, I actually, I actually have a different point of view about whether leaders
and when and what and how leaders show emotion. And it’s actually grounded in the fact that,
you know, when they’re CEO and president, job at Craig, came up and God didn’t send them.
So, okay, we need a new one, boom. And now, okay, there’s somebody there.
You know, we’re humans for crying out loud and we have our own walks and we have our own
sort of origin stories. And what I know because I
as all of us, unfortunately, unless you are really one of the fortune ones had
experience, I’ve lived under some terrible leadership and I’ve lived under some great leadership.
And I’ve lived under some terrible times with great leaders and some good times,
with not so great leaders. So, and in over many, many, no, at least a number of decades,
I had two lists in my head. Do that, don’t do that in terms of what leaders do.
But out of all of it, what I know that every human honor and for sure what people who we as
leaders serve want is to know that they’re showing up matter, to know that they have the opportunity
to contribute and realize their full potential. And most importantly, neither of those can happen
until or unless leaders allow themselves to be seen and also see the people around them.
And I’d say, look, I said, see, that is so, so I think there’s this, when we give,
when we show that sort of emotion and not fallen in the floor and fallen apart, because
we’ve never do that. But even to show, really, let people have the opportunity to see you
authentically, especially in something like this, you know, around this issue of race, because it
like it’s so obvious, she’s black and all of this are pretty much white. How is she doing?
You know, how can I have this conversation to not show that impact the raw emotion is a
of missed opportunity, a lost opportunity, but it shuts down, it does not invite conversation.
And we will as I sort of talk into someone Thursday. And I said, we’ve got to start talking about
this so we can stop talking about this because we keep revisiting this conversation because
it feels too emotionally heavy. So, you know, I don’t worry about that. I think the only time,
I think from, if I acted whatever buttoned up is, which I think sort of that one archetype of
what a good leader is, if I act a buttoned up now, I think I think it would scare people,
because I’m just not that kind of leader anyway. And in the last thing given, PQT, given PQT,
that anybody needs is a leader who shows fear. We’re watching enough of that play out in something.
Ways that you just go, wait, what? We’re watching enough of that right now that is leaving everybody sort
of in the sense of uncertainty. That’s not my role. And so the other thing it does is it invites
peeps in and invites your people and those who love you and who you love to help you sort of figure
out that way for you. So, that’s how I handle it by being as authentic and as consistent and as
you know, as the same person who’s at home is the same person who goes into work every day,
the whole self. That’s what we do. There’s a sense of integration there that’s really inspiring.
You shared with me, Jandell, some of the missives, the short writing pieces that you share with
your team and your board. And you even gave me a sneak peek at some pieces you’ll be sharing
in the coming days. And I was struck to read in there that you were in the fourth grade in 1968
when Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered. And you were in Washington DC and went to your grandmother’s
house and saw buildings burning as a result of the riots that erupted following that murder.
And I’m wondering from your perspective, given everything that’s going on right now with the three
peas set in the context of your perspective, your historical perspective of what’s been going on
in this nation and in this culture going back centuries, what are you seeing and what are you
anticipating going forward? Do you think things are going to start changing or is it more of the same?
I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know. I know what I want. I know what I wish for. I know that
absolutely things need to change. But what I think is we’ll see some incremental change if I’m
really honest. But what I want is transformation. I mean, and there is this little part of me that
wants to hope that because the very thought that we have protested about the way black people,
and frankly, we need to way open the aperture, widen the aperture and say, brown people of
all kinds on this earth and disable people and women and children, you name it the inhumanity
that power. And that’s what it is. Let’s just call it what it is, that those in power
rain down on their people as those stuff. But that said, the fact that we’re seeing protests around
this world right now all over the globe in support of, and it’s interesting that black lives matter
but that it is really being experienced and being expressed as a uniquely American,
a neatly American phenomenon. It’s not to say that there aren’t issues in England and I heard
a little bit about that with the protests that are going on here this morning or in France or
in Germany or places far even in Africa, places far from here. But the support is really focused
on the American journey. And I think that’s where that third P is really, really hurting us.
It’s focused there because we do not mean America is the, you know, the leader of the free
lot. The whole world has been able to look for stability and hope and strength in the United
States. And I’m going to tell you, you don’t have that right now from a leadership perspective.
Pure and simple. And so I think that’s the, that’s the part that gives me a little bit of hope.
So it’s almost like how do we leverage what the rest of the world is doing and how the rest of
the world is watching what we’re doing. And an effort to really make some lasting change this
time and some sustained change and actually in some very, and even walk into these conversations,
walk into this work differently than we’ve done in the past. Because otherwise we’ll get some
incremental changes. Frankly, it makes me sad and frustrated my policy had on that we feel the
need to pass more laws around what’s happening with police. There’s no, no, there’s no doubt that
there’s, you know, because of, you know, 50 states and they’ll do their thing differently,
you know, that there might be some universal foundational ways that might be there should be.
But mostly, if people, if leaders were just following their own policies, if we were looking at
how bias plays out, if we believed, which we clearly don’t, we clearly don’t, that this sort of
brutality is real. I’m going to fix that. So, you know, in some cases you need more laws,
not policy, you need laws. But even the only thing you need laws is because they’re not following
their own damn policies. So, I think we’ll see some stuff there. That’s not nearly enough.
What I feel like has been awakened. And it’s been interesting talking to some of my white
colleagues over the last few days. There’s a shock that I’m just going to say, you all,
are manifesting that, frankly, shocks me. Because this has been all around you. I mean,
and interestingly, it started with the pandemic. The first shock was, oh my god, more black people
are dying from this. Disproportion is like, and y’all seems right. But when I saw the news,
you know, you see these newscasters, I go, but we’ve been talking about the social determinants of
health and health equity and health disparities for 20 years. And so now you’re woke.
So, it’s not, it’s not news to us. It’s not news to us. And we clucked our tongue. And people
have talked about it. But, you know, even just the, you know, the contributing factors to
why that is. And central, the only people who are still out here work and are four people,
somebody got to drive the buses. Somebody’s got to clean the buildings, the few that are open.
Somebody’s got to cook food. Somebody’s got to provide nourishment to all of us.
So, it’s just kind of an interesting thing. And then to have this and say, but I, and here’s the thing.
Please don’t hear in this any, I’m not trying to engender guilt because in shame, because I don’t
think it’s that they’re useless emotions. And they actually inhibit innovation, creativity,
and certainly create goals. But, um, nice, wonderful people who I love and trust,
you know, they have their walks like, they have their frame of reference, they have their,
who they are, how they live. And to hear and see, I just never thought about this this way.
Is, um, it’s just sad. It doesn’t make me mad. It just goes to show, you know, that one of the,
it’s one of the very much fundamental elements of human beings is our selfishness,
and our sort of ego simplicity that can get in the way and make it hard for us to see what’s going
on right around us. And so, that was a very long way of saying, I don’t know, my, um, my belief is,
I’ll die trying, which I hope is many, many, many, many, many years from now, to continue to stay
in this fight. The only other thing that keeps me though, very, very optimistic is this generation
that’s coming along now. The young people, man, you know, my kids see color and don’t see color,
and it’s wonderful, right? Because you need to do both. My kids that they hang with see color and
don’t see color. What we’ve got to then do, because both of those things are only possible,
because we’ve set up a model for what civility both looks like, and are hideously uncomfortable
around poor black folks, and poor Latina, and Latinx, and hideously uncomfortable around people
who don’t cherish, no brain interest in that. And we’ve got to be able to see beyond all that
shift and just, how many wish and just see the person and see the soul that’s within. And that’s
a good thing. But part of what this, um, that informs that soul and informs that heart is in fact
the disability, is the skin color, is the gender, is the ethnicity, and we need to celebrate and embrace
it all, because that’s America. Yeah.
I’m struck thinking at about how so much of what’s taught under the banner of history in
a lot of our schools really, I mean, white washes to say the very least, so much of the history of
this country and this culture, and I’m wondering, what, what would you advise or hope or
exhort or implore us white folks to do, to not do, to do more of, to better understand
the reality that is around us?
So, you know, um, I remember last Sunday, and I, oh, it’s coming up, it’s not in the, the thing
that I sent to the other day, but it’s in one of the seven changes. After I wrote that post on
Facebook, um, it’s had 270 small, you know, like hugs, whatever it films up, but that,
the 166 comments that I, you know, sort of either had some conversation with, it’s had 31 shares,
and I, you know, it’s not viral, but that’s striking to me, and what it said to me is that people
really need to talk about this stuff. But one of the things that was the, one that I, that I
still am uncomfortable with, and I got an email from a dear friend today, who was, I’m sorry,
I’m not doing enough, the shame was just oozing out the phone, because I was reading this email,
and I think this is not helpful, and this woman is so good, she is goodness personified.
Um, and I’ve been trying to figure out why did it, why does that bother me? And it bothers me for
an interesting reason, it bothers me because, um, and last Sunday it hit me, I had the epiphany.
It’s, it, you know, further sort of solidifies separatism. You know, you think about when
somebody dies, I’m sorry for your loss. So you think about this whole thing, I’m so sorry,
it’s like, no, we all need to be sorry, because this is, this is a shared shame,
this is a shared state. Um, and I’m sorry, and then saying to me, well, what should I do assumes
that I am in a powerful enough position to really make the kind of substantive change that
needs to happen. Now, I think that there are, this is going to sound weird, but I think that
there are conversations that black folks need to have in their rooms and Hispanic and narrow rooms,
and those conversations that white folks need to have about this discussion in their room a lot.
So I think there are some discussions, and really what that means is that there’s some looks
in the mirror we have to do. You don’t, don’t think for a second that I have an Harvard
sum level of guilt every day, I not every day, that’s dramatic, but when I come into Craig,
and I think about the fact that when do you then get about really broaching the subject of why
there are no people of color in leadership in this place and why there are no, um, there’s one,
I think, um, African-American, OT, is OT, PT, PT, PT, PT, and, and tell us what PT,
I’m sorry, physical therapy, physical therapy, and the other’s occupational therapy.
And when are you going to get about this? You can’t, this is weird, this is, you are, you are not
doing something you know that needs to be addressed and why aren’t shown, it’s because,
interestingly, we need you to invite the conversation. We do, you to say, let’s fix this,
what, what, how would we go about this? And it’s because what I think everybody’s
and this is, we’re just as uncomfortable having this conversation as you like.
You know, when you stop to think about it, it, it, it, it, it, it mostly happens in the context of
loud screaming black lives matter, right? I mean, that’s when people, that’s when people get
woke, that’s when people say it, um, and then what, but what happens at work is we play nice,
and we play nice because we are nice, we play nice because we do like each other, I love the people
I work with, I’m not going to cry every day. Um, and now it’s time. So if you ask me what,
what, what can we do, even saying what can we do? I mean, it, it sort of implies what’s your
contribution to this thing that’s your problem over here as opposed to saying, this is all of our
problem. Um, and change is going to have to happen at a policy level. It’s going to have to happen
at a political level, which are different. It’s going to have to happen at an organizational level,
a community level within homes level. Um, and, and so then you look at that and you go,
my head just exploded. I don’t even know where to begin, but I think I do know where to begin.
And if you can’t, we’ve begun by talking. There’s a custom, old, um, African custom, um,
called in Bezo, in Bezo. And it’s, um, it means talking things out. And the elders in, um,
villages were all men, by the way, to send to the African men. Um, when there was a problem or a
community issue that needed to be solved, they’d sit under a tree and they would talk things out.
And you would talk and you would talk and you would talk and you would visit and come back to
it. And what that tells me is that they sat with the tension because it’s in the tension that
the real goodness is don’t, don’t, don’t be, um, repulsed by it, don’t be repelled by it,
and don’t rush to sort of solve to it and get a technical, try to find a technical fix for
something that’s actually adapted. Um, and that’s what we need to do. You know, one of the
interesting stories about that as a human-socena is what, um, two women, two Ethiopian women did
in Africa to, um, take acceptance of female genital mutilation from 98 percent in, in 1998 or
1999 down to, um, I think eight percent by 2008 or something. And it was exactly this technique.
It was talking things out and making the space, making it safe enough where people felt safe
enough to say, I don’t like it either. And these were women who were actually doing the procedure
on these young girls. And that’s what we have to do on this. So I think it actually starts with
talking. It doesn’t, it doesn’t actually start with compliance. You know, if you think about this
on one side and you want to spectrum, there’s commitment. There’s engaging the heart. And then on
the other side, there’s compliance. And what we always want to do is go over here and just work on
the compliance side. Well, let’s make sure let’s check some boxes and which I will not do in terms of
getting enough black people or Hispanic people or whatever. And we’re going to take our time and do
this the right way so that it doesn’t fall off. And we will set up measurement and look at which
is measured as managed. We’ll get there. We’re going to start with talking because people want to talk
and people people and people do want to express sorrow. And it’s nothing wrong with expressing sorrow.
Just don’t do it in a sense of either be, I mean, don’t be, don’t be sorry for me. Be sorry with me.
Be sorry with me because it’s we’re all in this mug. Every single one of us is some of us are
deeper, much than others. A really wonderful phrase. I’m just writing this down really fast.
Can you sorry with me? I should be writing it down to it. Don’t be sorry for me. Be sorry with me.
I’ll send you a note.
Sorry for me. It applies kitty. And kitty is another one that doesn’t get us anywhere.
We need to channel empathy because y’all are getting screwed by not
facing and dealing with this as much as we are. It really is that whether you want to call it on all
folks rise with the tide or we’re all, you know, every system is perfectly designed to achieve
what it achieves. You’re part of that system. We’re part of that system, so.
Yeah. Yes. Very much. It’s it’s so interesting on looking back at the
mis-view road where in an introductory paragraph, you’ve mentioned shirking
responsibility commitment and accountability. And what I’m hearing in this call to talking
it out into channel empathy is for each of us to perhaps pause and take a look at what we might
be shirking. Yeah, you know, the other part of this cause, I love that you said pause,
because there’s another phrase, go slow to go fast. We immediately go fast.
You know, they’re already talking about passing federal legislation around policing for
attention. There’ll be someone who will bring up, oh, we’ve got to get education.
And there’ll be small non-profits who dollars will flow into to do God knows what.
And we need to slow our role. And really, I think I said in that same piece. Yeah, I think it’s
in that one that yeah, you know, we go back to in my case, the last Tuesday making masks with
the television behind me watching sort of in and out, but that metaphor of my back’s turned
to the ugliness. And that’s what we do. We clock our tongues. We have our protests. Then we go back to
work. We have, you know, thinking about the women’s marches on a Saturday and then Monday,
you go back to the same oppressive or maybe very much in light and workplaces.
And so if we want real substantive change, what we have to do is slow our role long enough to
talk and to really talk about the issue, which is racism and bigotry and hatred and bias,
which are all part of the human condition. But we’re higher, we’re presumably higher order
beings some days. I wonder and are more evolved. So how do we use this thing called the cerebral cortex,
which is still a pretty new part of the brain, but at least it gives us the thinking part,
we think relative to other animals. And the one thing it for sure gives us is choice.
And we can choose to run away from this. In which case, back to your question, you asked me earlier,
change the answers now. We can choose to kind of look at it, in which case we’ll get incrementalism,
or we can slow down long enough to really be able to see each other and be seen by each other.
And have honest hard conversations where we would walk away some days for crying so hard,
not flying out of our nose, but come back the next day and keep talking. Because these are
conversations that, and these are relationships and connections that are based on love and trust
that we’re having those with. That’s why protests, they’re the wake-up call,
but then the real conversations are one at a time or small circles. That sort of thing with people
you love and trust you don’t look like you. And also people you love and trust you do look like you,
because there’s some hard conversations we need to have on both sides of these fences about how
we’re showing up for each other or not. It’s striking me right now. A friend of mine, a female
professional therapist is doing work to launch small discussion circles, pods around trauma,
different forms of trauma that people experience as a way to heal. So I’m wondering if part of what
might be showing up for us for our culture is an emergence of these, these conversation circles,
you know, in addition to what we might do in our, in our homes and our neighborhoods, etc., maybe
there’s something emerging that actually helps us heal these centuries-long issues that surround us.
I don’t know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As you say, I’m going back to my, sort of, the 70s when I was,
you know, a teenager in the 70s, and thinking about what they called rap sessions.
You know, they were all the power of small circles.
And so there is something there, you know, in a muscle, it’s not a lot thought out,
it’s sort of thing that’s emerging here coming up, but thinking about what,
why is it that my kids don’t see color in fact as much? Why is it that white kids walk around and
have such access to the black culture in a way? I mean, it’s so funny, people play your music
for my time, like I never heard that song. And what they failed to realize is that white music
was very separate from black music, right? Like never the twain. And now it’s just all out there in
its music. And even art was very separate. And now it’s just out there in its music that’s
successful. The technology has helped, I think, a lot of some of those things. But I think there
was incredible power in small circles. And in fact, he’s going to forget his name, but he wrote a book
called Community, he says we can found it, maybe it’ll come back. But he talks about the power of
the small circle. And structurally, which is not like a how to do it, but the real power in the
small circles is that we’re all having the same conversations at the same time, right? You don’t
it’s not just in having some structure to them. So, you know, I mean, I remember when I first
read that, I thought about how cool would it be? It was thinking about an organization not in
sort of a community level. Yeah. All of us at eight o’clock on a da da da night were
going to talk about X in terms of this and be taking ourselves through and have some way
them through these technologies or blogs or, I don’t know, those these sort of things to share what’s
coming out of these and begin to build on it. What humans lack the ability to do though is to stay
in any conversation too long, right? Or stick to anything too long, but, you know, you know, it’d be
the only way you can make it a universal would be to, you know, wave really a magic wand, but it’s
not to say that we can’t start small and do that in some places. And you know, start where you start,
you could learn, you don’t want to be building it. I wanted to be diverse groups, obviously. And
not just diverse in terms of color, but diverse in terms of socioeconomics, because
the other thing that we need to recognize that’s going on out there right now is if this is a class
war as much as it is a race war. And there’s so much to unpack. There’s so much unpack. Even with
this protest one thing that I don’t know that I haven’t heard anything about and I want to go
back and take a look again. But I do believe the young man who called in the, you know, whatever to
the police department is Asian descent. And the relationship and the history and the tension
that exists in African American communities where Asians have businesses is ugly. And we’re not
talking about them. So there’s that one to talk about. I mean, it’s, this thing has so many layers
and it’s so nuanced. At the same time, it’s right there for all of us to see. And I do remember
because I went back to say, wait a minute, counterfeit? Was it real? Wardery? We almost got on
and I saw a picture of him as I recall, or maybe even some video I forget now. He’s seen too much
this week. And I said, he’s Asian American. Oh, here we go. The relationship is so tense. And
there’s so much disrespect there that needs to be unpacked too. Anyone? We got to be talking now.
Well, yeah, no, you know, it’s that that shows up in hip-hop songs. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s there. And
I didn’t know that. Yeah. It’s, uh, speaking of this, this cultural access to each other’s
art and music, you know, my son, I listened to a lot of hip-hop when I’m hanging out with my son.
And it’s interesting because it has, I used to have a different view, I think. It just didn’t
quite appeal to me, although I really love bass. I just didn’t know. But lately, I’ve been listening
to it with an eye to trying to understand a little bit more cultural experience that isn’t the
experience I’ve had in my upbringing in my adulthood. And I have to give, you know, some kudos to my son
for, through his basketball, you know, has been able to do a lot more interacting across all
different parts of town. And kudos to him for being so open. And like when he’s on the court,
it’s, it’s not at all about how much money your parents have or what color of the skin is. It’s
whether you’re good at passing and shooting and defense and all that. So yeah, that, that, that,
that Asian African-American tension definitely shows up in some of that. I did not know that. Wow,
now we have to, I’ll talk to my kids and say, um, turn me on to some of that because it would be
good to hear how it comes in, how it’s even introduced because we do need to talk about that.
Um, and it once again sort of points to the class war and the intra-cultural and the inter-cultural
wars that we have that we don’t speak about. Yeah. Enough about it, but all.
Jen Dell, let me just remind our audience that this is the Why Honors Community podcast. And
I’m your host, Aaron Perry. Today we’re visiting with Dr. Jen Dell, Allen-Davis,
talking about so much that surrounds us in our culture that really needs healing.
And I want to give a quick shout out to the sponsors who make this podcast series possible,
including today’s episode. And that includes Earth Coast productions, the Lidge Family Foundation,
Purium, Earthwater Press, and Waylay Waters, as well as a number of individuals who have joined
our monthly giving program. And if you haven’t yet joined and you’d like to, you can go to
Why Honors.org to find out about that as well as the rest of the community mobilization that we’re
doing for climate action, soil regeneration, community resilience, and culture of kindness.
And of course, today’s discussion relates in a really big way to the culture of kindness
and the community resilience. And Jen Dell, I’m just so grateful that we have this opportunity
to visit with you, given everything that’s going on. And also given how busy you are and how
full your part is with responsibilities, professional and otherwise. And I just I really appreciate
the opportunity to have this discussion with you. Well, you know, I get as much from it as it
gives, if not more. So that’s all good. It really is. Well, I’m just wondering before we wrap up and
close, is there is there anything else that you’d like to share that we haven’t had a chance to
get to? Yeah, I take them. We’ve covered a lot of territory. I think the thing I humbly implore
all of us to do is to recognize that we are, I was thinking, oh, I know, I was thinking about
this and talking to one of my, our director of psychology yesterday. And this is an interesting
story who asked, you know, after having a meeting, why isn’t Craig putting something out there
about this? We’ve said nothing. And I said, so and so and this company and this one said,
well, it turns out I’ve been asked earlier in the week. And I saw the email and I’ve just
been so busy. I didn’t get a chance to get back to our communications team to tell them, no,
I’ve done that. So I was asked at the beginning of the COVID thing, oh, everybody’s been so
now, shall we put them out? No, we’re not doing that. You know, and so then tell me and I got
in this conversation, I said, here’s one of the interesting ways you can be helpful to us,
is that this is trauma. Let’s just call it that in some way, it was what we’re walking through
and enduring a break of pandemic. And then global, forget the, forget the consequence, but we all
watched a man get killed. We watched, not and it wasn’t like a gunshot, which would have been
traumatic enough, but to watch somebody’s life slowly from them over eight minutes and 46 seconds
or something like that. This is a trauma that we’re all facing. And I said, you know, it might be
helpful just in terms of helping your team, but also being helpful to us and sort of being like
an interesting kind of truth teller observer is what stage of trauma are we in? What stage of grief
are we in? And I call that Aaron because we’re in the early stages of this. In fact, it was really,
I was supposedly off yesterday, I didn’t do a very good job at being off. And this conversation
was troubling to me because, you know, I did have this moment as the leader where I went,
am I, am I not doing something I’m supposed to be doing? I said, no, I’m here if that’s good.
Do you know you are not? Or are they sensible? Nobody has said anything. And he said,
I knew stuff was going on and I knew we had talked about it on one of our big soon leadership
halls. And I said, and I planned to talk about it in all staff meeting on Wednesday, but the
guy who we brought in to talk about the vexious disease coronavirus, I didn’t always going to take
a whole hour. So there was no time to really speak to our teams. So then I said, I want to get this
first installment or segment out. So I got it out yesterday. But I said, and we’re in the early
stages of trauma. And here’s how I wrap up with that way of context. What everybody wants right now
is for the pain to be with. That’s what they want. We all want, you don’t even want the pandemic to
go away. We want our livestock. We want to be able to hug. We want to be able to touch.
We want to take these masks off. We literally emptierly do that. And right now people just want
the pain to stop. They want the image of watching Mr. George Floyd kill to be sort of somehow
the cut out of our psyches. What I beg and humbly implore all of us to do is feel every bit of
this pain. Do that thing that I can’t think of the name of power of now. You know, that offer
of gosh, that’s by the power of now, which is all about taking a moment and observing your thoughts.
Um, give it, you know, I see you try to figure out, remember what his name is.
I can’t wait. I can’t wait for the power of now. And is this, you know, we must feel every bit
of this grief and trauma. Don’t anesthetize. Don’t try to, as I said, don’t try to cover it up
under strong stoicism. Don’t, um, don’t actually stop at why am I angry? I’ve always, I really do
view anger as a secondary emotion. This primary emotion almost always is fear.
Explore that fear in yourself. Um, and let yourself feel this grief. Let yourself cycle through.
Maybe several times a day, but certainly several times a week, the stages that have been talked
about. And by the way, um, Cuba Ross’s five stages of greed, Kessler was the other person to
open it. Well, as I added a sixth, what the family’s permission, and it’s called meaning,
is that that last, so you go through it on the anger, the bargaining, the denial. You can’t remember
the other two right now, but they know the final one is sort of this resolution or acceptance.
But beyond acceptance is meaning. Don’t rush to meaning. Don’t rush through this.
Feel this. Please feel this. I beg you not to stop it because if you stop it and try to like
rush through this, that’s, I think you called it, um, as you call it, a window dressing,
I forgot what word you used earlier on some of this stuff. I call it papering over or just
papering over a thing. And what we need to do is actually, I’m going to be a gross doctor for a minute,
this is an abscess. Ooh, it’s a beefwood. And this thing needs an incision and draining. And I’m
going to tell you something having had to do my IDs on incisions and drain, drainages on women
over the years, either incisions that got infected or some of the things that happened on some of our
other body parts, um, there is nothing comfortable about an IND. And until you do it, you’re not
going to make your patient better. So we need to feel this. We need to feel every bit of this and,
and be okay and attention be okay and that is comfort be okay and the pain. And don’t do it alone.
And don’t do it alone. These are the times where it can
tend to kind of separate, which is why it’s beautiful that you’ve called and why I said I’d
humbly accept, because I need this as much as you do. We need this as much as you will need this.
So, um, yeah, stay close, stay connected. And allow yourself the gift, the tender mercy of
feeling every bit of the host of emotions that will wash over you in these coming weeks and days.
And that’s why, you know, in my mind and so we begin is, and hopefully, and it isn’t again,
you know, and so we begin again. But let’s begin differently this time. That’s what I’d say.
Yeah. Tears, through tears. Yeah. Thank you, John Del. Yeah.
Beautiful. I so appreciate you and thank you.
Thank you. You’re welcome.
Yeah. Yeah. Let them flow, y’all. Windshield tears. Sowing room tears. I’m making so many masks.
These days. Yeah. Just wearing a flow. We need to put them through,
let them flow through your smiles, let them flow through your crowns.
And just believe in your own goodness, because people like that person we saw are so broken.
And that’s not the state of most humans on the surface. So believe in your own goodness.
Don’t get yourself too admired and ashamed so that we can get about it.
Beautiful. Thank you, my friend. Thank you. And you’re welcome.
Well, yeah, we’ll share this discussion very soon and with the audience.
And again, just appreciate all that you’ve shared with us today, John Del, really do.
Well, thank you for the opportunity to be vulnerable and share a little bit. And I can’t wait till we
can get back to the days of whole faces, no masks and lots of good hugs. But not yet. Not yet,
this Dr. Allen-Davis. So take good care of you. Take good care of you.
Thank you. And likewise, they love you. Love you. Yep. Bye bye.
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