Welcome to Radical Remembering with psychologists Dr. Norissa and Dr. Bukky. In this podcast we explore the ways we’ve internalized oppression and consider what it really means to be liberated. Each episode will leave you with intimate knowledge of the liberation process, sprinkle a little healing magic, and leave you with wisdom for your journey.
Liberation is the state of being free from the bonds of ignorance. It is the ability to live in a way that is not limited by past or present circumstances. Liberation can be experienced through many different spiritual paths, but it is essentially the same, no matter your chosen path. The type of liberation you experience will depend on the intensity and quality of your practice.
Dr. Norissa Williams is the founder and executive director of Liberation RPI. She is also a psychologist, healer, interventionist, scientist, and practitioner. Dr. Bukky, on the other hand, is the founder of Relationship HQ. She is also a licensed clinical psychologist, practitioner and is actively in the process of reclaiming her identity as a healer
In this episode, Dr. Norissa and Dr. Bukky, the podcast hosts, share some extremely powerful insights on what the Radical Remembering podcast is all about, how Dr. Norissa and Dr. Bukky met, about Dr. Bukky’s work, a little about Dr. Norissa’s background, what attracted Dr. Norissa to her work and Dr. Bukky’s journey into deGEMMification.
Timestamps
[00:35] How Dr. Norissa and Dr. Bukky met
[05:02] About Dr. Bukky’s work
[08:16] About Dr. Norissa
[12:37] What Radical Remembering podcast is about
[19:58] What attracted Dr. Norissa to her work
[27:58] Dr. Bukky’s journey into deGEMMification
Notable Quotes
● (05:24) “There is a difference between learning to treat people vs learning to heal.”
● (11:18) “Healing is influenced by things that we don’t always have control over.”
● (13:12) “We are facing an environment that does not have support for us. It’s really radical.”
● (13:30) “Our DNA is encoded in social memory and spirit consciousness.”
● (13:38) “We know so much but we forgot in ourselves.”
● (15:30) “When we think of remembering, we think about bringing back the parts of ourselves that we’ve lost because of trauma.”
Relevant Links
Radical Remembering Podcast
Website: https://radicalremembering.com/
Connect with Dr. Norissa
Connect with Dr. Bukky
Have you ever wanted to learn more about liberation? Are you ready to take the next step in your healing journey? Radical Remembering is here for you. Subscribe now! Each episode will leave you with intimate knowledge of the liberation process, sprinkle a little healing magic, and leave you with wisdom for your journey. Thank you for listening to the Radical Remembering podcast! Listen to our next podcast and tell a friend about us.
Transcript
Dr. Bukky Kolawale: 00:01
Welcome to radical remembering with psychologist
Dr. Norissa Williams: 00:05
Dr. Norissa
Dr. Bukky Kolawale: 00:05
And Dr. Bukky
Dr. Norissa Williams: 00:06
This is a weekly conversation where we explore the ways we've internalized oppression and consider what it really means to be liberated.
Dr. Bukky Kolawale: 00:12
Each episode will leave you with intimate knowledge of the liberation process, sprinkle a little healing magic, and leave you with wisdom for your journey. What’s good, y'all? Norissa, this is our first podcast. So, I think we should probably start with telling people how we even met, what do you think?
Dr. Norissa Williams: 00:31
Yeah, I think so.
Dr. Bukky Kolawale: 00:34
What's your memory of it?
Dr. Norissa Williams: 00:36
My memory of it. So, we were supposed to meet as far as I'm concerned, because at the time I was the director of a master's program at NYU, and my students kept insisting that I come to this, they had a power and partnership group, insisted that I come to this particular meeting, and I was like, Okay, it's late, it’s 7 o'clock on a Friday, and I had a 40 hour workweek. And I went and the speaker was somebody who was interning for you. And I don't know, everything they were saying about you was intriguing to me and I remember googling you and seeing your face from then. And then a little bit after that, being at one of Ken Hardy's conferences and seeing your name as a speaker. Fast forward a few months, recently moved to Maplewood, New Jersey and I’m at this festival I had never been to before, and I'm like, is that the one whose picture I’ve been seeing? Like this is crazy. But also add to that, our friends, our shared friends Melissa Robbins and Dr. Mel Robinson had been telling me, oh you have to meet Bukky, you have to meet my friend Bukky. And this is four different avenues pointing to you or to our union. So, by the time we finally met in September, so that's not even a full year at the time of this recording, it’s either you had just come in or I had. You had just come in and you had your plate in your hand. And we were standing up talking for like a good 45 minutes and we knew immediately like this is it. This is it.
Dr. Bukky Kolawale: 02:00
Yeah, I know that. I feel it's like spirits sisters. And by the way, for the audience, I identify as gender non-conforming. So, a lot of times if I identify a sister like, brother, sister, so the masculine core of me, I'm always wanting to be helped. But there's something actually quite comfortable actually with you in the sense of like, sisterhood* But literally, I think I wish I had been there because there's something about you Norissa, I think when people meet you, there is a gentleness, there is lots of space you give, there's a brilliance, there's a groundedness in terms of the way you move in the world. And it's easy to be attracted to that. And I feel like certainly, Mel had been talking like, you know like Mel's new friend that Mel kept talking about, and she told me one of the things that y'all had been involved with, that I already knew more people. And the thing about that connection is that, I trust Mel, and so I trust whoever she says are her people, are immediately my people. Well, one of the things I remember is the fact that I feel I came into that party with crazy energy but I was starving. But I literally was talking to you and I was just like, oh my god, Norissa is so fucking brilliant. I was just engaged, and I feel like talking to you, you're someone who when people talk with you, whether or not they intended, they leave that conversation a little bit smarter, they understand something a little bit more precisely. So, I feel blessed about our union, and your invitation to be here. I think we could do some fun work around this together. So, thank you for everything. And people don't know Norissa has been the brain behind a lot of what we're going to be doing, and you're all going to see us do, is this vision. She’s had this vision, I feel like it made sense to me in my spirit as well. But I just want to be explicit and to give you credit for the fact that if you all are listening to us and watching us right now, it is because of a lot of the heavy lift that Norissa has done. so, I just want to be explicit about my gratitude to you for all of that.
Dr. Norissa Williams: 04:17
Thank you. You're trying to make me cry. Thank you. Talk about feeling seen, I feel wholly seen, I appreciate that. And just so that you know, whenever I talk about you to somebody, I always feel like you already have met everybody in my circle and you just really, you haven't yet, but I always say to you, I was like oh to know Bukky is to love her. You know what I mean? Because I feel the same about you and your person and your charisma and your brilliance also. Every single time that we have a conversation, she sees so clearly, she sees so clearly and it makes me know how good at your work you must be. So, can you share a little bit about the work that you do Dr. Kolawale?
Dr. Bukky Kolawale: 05:04
You’re really going to go there. I'll put it this way, I am trained as a clinical psychologist, and I've been talking very actively that I am actively in the process of reclaiming my identity as a healer. I think that when we go to school to go to grad school, there's a difference between learning to treat people versus learning to heal. And if I'm just being like to the heart of it is, given white supremacy culture and how complicit our education systems and psychology has been embedded with white supremacy ideology, in many ways, I feel like the training I received made me a psychologist. And I'm like, that's not what I signed up to be. I think my gift is really around being able to see people, being able to support people in really coming to their own truth, telling their own truth, feeling their own wisdom and courage to do that. This is just a long-winded way to just say, I think that the work I do, and I can get into the details of I do organizational work, as well as I also provide one on one as well as therapy for partners. But I think the piece that I'm just saying is, no matter what work I'm doing, part of what I'm always doing is healing. And to be clear, and I think it's a bidirectional experience that, my work is healing for me. As I'm also feeling permission to really be leaning into this, that word healing is such a complicated word. And I think this is a part of our conversation around even our sense of audacity to, when I say the word, I have no problem describing myself as a practitioner, but to say, Yo, I'm a healer, there’s this responsibility that comes with that word. So, I feel the best way to say it is, I'm doing healing work. And it's really being in service of helping my people be able to reclaim their voices, and for our white brothers and sisters and non-binary siblings, is really similarly to be helping them so they can do their own work too, so that we can really be involved in much more authentic relationship that doesn't require the kinds of patterns of relationship and relating that we've been engaged in. So, I don't know if that's helpful, but it was like a long-winded way of trying to introduce myself, because I'm going to pitch the pitches. I should be doing pitches maybe.
Dr. Norissa Williams: 07:40
I love it, I love it because what we will share with you all is that we're focused on liberation journeys, and I can hear the journey also in your identification of what it is you do and where you are. Because you move from the box of practitioner psychologist to something that is more broad. And that was situated only in your educational training and professional background and different things like that. So, I think that that's liberating and decolonizing and exemplary of what it is we're here and talking about to do. And so, I probably wouldn't have even thought to... I mean, that speaks of the liberating work that we all have to do. So, I probably wouldn't have even thought to identify myself in a context like this where there’s a larger audience that I didn't know as a healer, but I most certainly am a healer and have been in healing professions for over 20 years. And so when I think healing, I think of it a little bit reverse from you, it feels like less pressure to me to be a healer, because I don't think that I have the power to heal anyone, I think that I create a healing context, and the individual or the group, whomever I'm working with, can choose to step in and engage in that context, realize their own power, we share power together in that dynamic, and we realize the healing together. And so, for me, because I think of it in such a dynamic two part, multi part kind of way, it takes a less pressure off for me, too. But my first degree is in social work, and I definitely worked a lot in the community mental health centers. And then my doctoral degree is in psychology, which trained me more in the research realm because it's applied developmental psychology where I studied lifespan development and intervention throughout the lifespan. And so, in many ways, I'm an interventionist, scientist, I never intended to steer away from mental health and so I can never steer away from it. So, I consider myself also a practitioner, even though I'm not actively seeing clients in that way right now, but I also do energy healing and different things like that too. And what I do full time now is I partner with organizations as the CEO of Liberation RPI to help them move along. And this endless liberation journey is also to create context where marginalized people in general, but as a black woman, I'm super passionate about the black experience, and but very much through an intersectional lens, because there is no single issue struggle, as Angela Davis says. And so, creating context where people are free to be themselves and free from white supremacy, because even white folks need to be free from white supremacy because it's not working for any of us. It's a very, very, very small subset of the population for whom it works for. And so, my passion, and as one of my students said, she's one of my biggest cheerleaders, she’ll say, you're doing the Lord's work. So, that's my ministry right there.
Dr. Bukky Kolawale: 10:46
That's amazing. And now I feel like exactly what you just did. You all remember when I said earlier, already, how much have you already learned? But I really, really appreciated how you broke down this piece around the ease with which you feel like you can use the word healer, given that your sense of what you see as what you're responsible for, is creating the container. And what you said, you said in a much more eloquent way. And I still think even the sense of somehow because I think healing is organic, it is influenced by things that we don't always have control over, it is also influenced by our attention and our intention. Because of all of those things, I think even the sense of, somehow in my head, it is easier for me to have this model in my mind through which I do work. And it is an application of intervention. I feel like I have a lot more control, whereas even the idea of my role is just to create the container. My point is, I feel the piece I'm just trying to emphasize is that, I think that that thing you said earlier, it's like related to where you are in your journey is part of what makes it easier for you to be able to hold that with a little bit more comfort. And even to the word confidence, that's, for example, someone like myself where I'm still trying to be like, does it really fit? Can I really own that? So, I just appreciate the way you talked about that and you think about that, and just the recognition around sharing power as we think about healing.
Dr. Norissa Williams: 12:32
So, let's talk about, what are we here to talk about? What is this podcast about? What can the people expect?
Dr. Bukky Kolawale: 12:37
Yeah, so but let's start because you remember we asked this question and we said like, we named this Radical Remembering, right? So, maybe we’ll play with this idea, what is Radical Remembering to you? Maybe what we'll do is break those words out together, and then put them together.
Dr. Norissa Williams: 12:55
Okay. So, when I think of radical, I think of an about face, right? So, we are in a stream going in one direction. And that stream is white supremacy, male supremacy, all those kinds of things. And when I think of radical, we're doing an about face in an environment that does not have the support for us. So, it's really radical, it's really going against the current and going against the stream. And the remembering part speaks to me about multiple things. So, first, it speaks to me about the fact that I do believe that in our DNA is encoded ancestral memory, spirit consciousness and all these sorts of things, so we know, right? So, we know so much, but we've forgotten in ourselves what it is that we do know, what it is that we're here to do, how we can better relate with one another. And so, moving away from the toxins and poisons of domination, and that domination being white supremacy and all the other forms of supremacy manifests in society, moving away from those things so we can come back to our true essence, right? And so, our true essence is a liberated space, a liberated being that is in right relationship with our own power. And so, when I say remembering, it's for me remembering our power, remembering our history, our stories, who we are, but I also think of it through a trauma lens. And so, from a trauma lens, when any individual or group has experienced trauma, we dissociate as a means of coping. And so, when we dissociate, it becomes a separate part that is not digested into the hole. And so, when we separate the head from the body, so I can cope and I can think about these things and I can move through and push through all these stressors, whether these be our intimate family stressors or societal stressors, or ancestral history, the transatlantic slave trade and all those things, and we push forward, we're separating our head from our body. And so, we're not embodied and we're not present in our body. And it has been necessary for our own healing. So, when I think of remembering, I'm thinking Association, bringing back those parts of our stories, digesting it so that we have healing for ourselves for the generations that come after us as well as, so it can trickle up the line, and there's some intergenerational healing in our bloodline. So, when I think of remembering I'm thinking of bringing back the parts of ourselves that we've lost because of trauma.
Dr. Bukky Kolawale: 15:40
Yeah, I think that's a such a beautiful way and eloquent way of describing it. This is what I was talking about, when Dr. Norissa speaks, you better get those notes out, start writing things down. Because I just think you’ve broken it down on the different levels that need to be, I think the only piece I would add, for me, is that one of the things that white supremacy culture deludes us about is this idea of objectivity. And that the only way to know is through the scientific mind. And it's really just the mind. And there has been a devaluation of the body and around the ancestral wisdom we know, around emotional experiences we have, and emotional truth. And so, for me, I think remembering is around an interrogation of this idea of objectivity, and really an abandonment, to be clear, to recognize that objectivity, and like, it's not real, we can't have it. The mere fact that we're human beings already removes us from our ability to be objective. So, let's stop lying about that. So, I think for me, it is a process of constantly reminding myself to no longer lie about that, and the permission to start to claim all the parts of myself that I have separated from because of my attempts to succeed in a world that's dominated by white supremacy ideology. So, I think the only piece I would add is just to get what this piece of objectivity, let's get to the heart of it, for me, that's the piece. I mean, I was telling you, the other day, I went to this retreat, where a lot of the time was just spent in somatic practices, being able to be in touch with our body, and paying attention to sensation. And literally, this is a piece you were saying, what happens when we've experienced trauma, and just this constant way our society has been requiring us and cutting us off from our body, and the wisdom of our body. And our body is keeping a whole lot, storing a whole lot. So, I think that it's this piece around becoming reacquainted with our body and becoming more embodied with what we know. So, I think that's the piece I would add to what you've already brilliantly shared about what radical remembering is.
Dr. Norissa Williams: 18:17
I’m clapping on the inside, because, first of all, this conversation is so exciting to me. One of my favorite quotes that that brings to mind, Audre Lorde says in The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House. She says, The white father says, I think therefore I am. And that speaks of that separation, and how Eurocentric culture has sought to normalize that as a way of being in our institutions. But she said, The black mother says, I feel therefore I can be free.And it's just like, if you just meditate on that, just that one verse right there, feeling and being in your divine feminine, and I'm not speaking about that in a gendered way, because I think we all have divine masculine and divine feminine characteristics. The society has geared us towards the divine masculine to the under development of the divine feminine. And really what she's talking about there is just living in that place of feeling and allowing ourselves to integrate all these things, like you're saying, and it has so many benefits, whether that's social, psychological, emotional and all those kinds of things. So, I appreciate what you had to say as well.
Dr. Bukky Kolawale: 19:34
Norissa can you say that quote again? I feel, say that quote again.
Dr. Norissa Williams: 19:38
The white father says, I think therefore I am. The black mother says, I feel therefore I can be free.
Dr. Bukky Kolawale: 19:46
I love it. Thank you for sharing. Alright, so now, I mean, I think part of the question is like, how did you get here, Norissa? Can you tell the audience about what brought you to this work?
Dr. Norissa Williams: 19:59
This has been a journey. I’m like, what's the short version? Is there a short version? So, my family is from Trinidad. And so, when your family is an immigrant and they come from a context, which is majority people of color, right now, it's more Indian than it is black, but it's people of color 98%, right? When raised black and white is not an issue, if you come here and they don't prepare you for it because that was not their reality. And my family also, when they came to the country, because they had a lot of negative things said about them, go back home on your banana boat and different things like that, it couldn't necessarily assimilate to the African American culture because they fell outside of it and different things like that, but yet I grew up in an African American context so, I didn't have preparation for the racialized world that I was in fortunately, enough. And I give that context to say it's not their fault, this shit is not normal, we shouldn't have to socialize our children about race. I was fortunate enough when I was 14, to get a job at a youth organization in the community, United North Amityville Youth Organization. And it was led by Valerie, I gotta give praises, right. And so, what they did was, as part of our orientation, I thought the orientation was going to be about, okay, this is how you take care of kids, and this is what you do. The orientation was like, let me talk to you about who you are as a black woman, as a black young girl, and we're not starting after the Mayflower, we're starting before the Mayflower. And so, the beautiful thing is that the rooms, the groups that we were in, the camp rooms, every year, it was named after different things. So, one year, it was named after the Kwanzaa principles, one year, it was named after ethnic groups throughout the continent. We learned everything, the original name of Africa, Alkebulan, and the fact that it's not a country, it's a continent, and all these kinds of things. So that was always important to me. And then, I've always been spiritual, I have a different spirituality now than then, but I was Christian hardcore, didn't listen to secular music, all these kinds of things, but I did used to pray a lot. And so, one time in prayer, I felt like the spirit was telling me that I would be studying abroad in Africa on the continent. And I was like, that I would love to. And so, by the end of my studies, I saw this opportunity to study abroad in Ghana, and I could have gone to South Africa, I chose Ghana, because there was more black people in the pamphlet. So, I did that. And again, I was so heavy in my Christianity at that time that this was the first time that I had been in a context where I wasn't going to church for the half a year that I was there. And then even when I did go to church, so one of the things that was pivotal for me, and I'm going to try to make this short, but one of the things that was pivotal for me is that this young woman, I should say, she was sitting on the bench, and I was standing there waiting for someone else. And she was like, you're invited. And I was like, ah. And she was like, you're invited. She had nuts in her hand. And so, we started a conversation. I was like, Oh, thank you, I took some nuts or whatever. And I asked her what her name was, and she said, Linda, I was like Linda? I did not expect to come to Ghana and meet somebody named some damn Linda and talking about that’s her Christian name. I was like that shit is not even in the Bible, how is that your Christian name? And so that was one of the beginning ways in those months that I was there learning about Kwame Nkrumah, and just learning about how Christianity was used to colonize, and different things like that, and how until Kwame Nkrumah, because of colonialism, imperialism, you weren't allowed to use your African name, wear your traditional, how all these things were stolen from their spirituality and all these sorts of things. And I began to think about it in new and different ways. So, I came back, and I was going to church, but it was hollow for me now, because now I was questioning things like, this is a form of social control, it feels like. And so, it will still be another two or three years that I was going in church. And because that had been for 10 years so ingrained in my identity, I didn't know who I would be outside of church, so I didn't necessarily leave. But then something happened, and I ended up leaving with my then husband who was Ghanaian, and began to see things in new and different ways. So really, for then it was like you were just out there, I didn't have much of a direction. And so, I would say for a good 20 year period, I was finding my direction. And without intention, I was decolonizing and purging from the doctrine that I had received. And so now it has been so much more intentional, because even when I went back for my doctorate, I was focusing on race as a context and race within institutions and how providers could be more culturally competent and all these kinds of things. And so, this is the last piece of the story, having always felt like an outsider, because I've never really kind of fit in, I've always had a hybrid identity, I'm Trinidadian American, I am this that, I've always been here and there, that's like my life story. Being very aware of what it is to feel other within a context led me to really think about race, ethnicity and all these things. And that intellectual pursuit has been my salvation in many ways.
Dr. Bukky Kolawale: 25:43
Wow, thank you. So many questions. And part of what's so nice Norissa is your ability to tell that, your journey has not been a straight line, and the way that you can quickly punch that up to just help people be able to see and understand how you've gotten here. And I'll have a longer struggle. Because I don't even know how, because as you were even talking, part of what I was really appreciated, I think we were talking about this earlier, is true about the ways in which you have been actively decolonized. And as you were talking, I was thinking about my own self. And it's interesting, I think this is why it is interesting that we decided to do this together, because I think your work and the things that you're doing is constantly talking about decolonizing. And the piece of like when I enter this conversation is around being degemified, right? I will explain that concept to you all later, just hold on it. But it's like, as you were telling your story, I was noticing that my story has really been around my journey around becoming degemified, being in my degemification process. Yeah, so I was just saying how when I think about my story, my point is, literally, in our telling of our stories is the context, you're telling a story of decolonization of your own self. And the story I'll be telling is the story of my own journey into degemification. And if you're in the audience, and you're like, is that even a word? Watch our next episode, we’re going to break it down, explain it and all that. But I think the gist of how I would say is, I'm Nigerian, born in Nigeria, born and raised in Nigeria, I moved to this country when I was about 12 years old. And as Nigerian, Yoruba specifically, similar to you Norissa, I talk about not growing up with the burden of racism, right? Is anti-blackness really in Nigeria? Very much so, even among people who will deny it all day long, ask them about their bleaching creams. But the gist here is that, if I'm even honest about it, I think that I started thinking much more consciously around race when, I've been having lots of experiences, and not having language form the racialized experience I was having. When I moved to this country, I was 12 years old, and if you look at my poetry when I was younger, I would write poetry, I remember writing one poem, within the first year or two years that I've been in this country, where I talk about the experience as a teenager walking into 7/11 and being followed, and my white friends not being followed and that was really confusing to me. Yeah, so I was just not clear around, it was not until that experience that I personally realized that there is, in this country, in America, consequences for my blackness, I had never experienced that being somebody who grew up in Nigeria, moved to this country, started high school, and we were talking about it saying, as Nigerians and Africans, because we live in a society where most of us are pretty homogeneous, like different hues, but we're all black people, right? So not just understanding what it means to be racialized. And so, it was a quick lesson, or it was my beginning of my initiation. Anyway, fast forward to going to school, all of that. And I remember actually even my ex-girlfriend, we used to have this stupid fight where she was trying to bring attention to the fact that as an African, there are ways in which in this country, sometimes what even happens is that this thing that happens that white people do that put Africans in battle with African Americans, right? So she was trying to point out to me how, I can’t remember the conversation we were having, but I'll never forget. And now especially with this concept of gemification and degemification that I'm in now of like, isn’t it interesting to me that I was one of the people that anytime they wanted to give awards out to a black person, it was always me, or someone I looked and sounded like. And part of what she was really talking about, and I didn't understand that then was around how whitewashed I was, and just the way in which my consciousness as somebody who didn't grow up in this country was very, very similar to the consciousness of white people, like, in the emerging. So, the school did all that stuff, and there was a point when I was talking with another clinician. And this is Dr. Marjorie Nightingale. She is a badass clinician. So, if you ever see her doing a talk, go, she's brilliant. Anyway, so I was learning this model called emotional focus therapy. And that's the model I use to do my couples work. So, she was in the process of getting her doctoral degree at that point. And she was doing some research where she was essentially studying the application of this model with African American, black American people. And so, she was in conversation with me. And she was like Bukky, so I'm doing this research. And so, she had a qualitative, she was doing interviews with our participants. And she's asking about their experiences of, I think it was talking about race in therapy. And so, she was like, Bukky, can you believe that even folks, even black therapists ain't talking about race with their clients, with their black clients, with their clients of color, can you believe it? And I was like, No, I cannot believe it. And inside of me, I was like, Oh, shit, I'm one of those therapists who's absolutely, unless my client was bringing it up, I actually wasn't raising it. And I was like, it was one of those first moments of being really aware of ways in which I had been, like I said, white washed and trained, really, really well to not talk about race in professional. I'm having these conversations with my friends, I'm having these conversations around race with my people in nonprofessional settings, but there's this different way that I realized I was engaging and showing up around race and racism in professional settings that was really curious to me. So, it was one of those things where I was like, a moment of internal awareness, I don't even think I would call it reckoning yet. And I noticed a discomfort, let's not call it discomfort, I noticed shame, I noticed shame about it, especially because of my clarity that people were choosing and opting to see me because of my blackness. So, part of it is this piece of becoming aware that, Wait, my clients are finding me because they want a therapist that looks like them. And then here I am not even raising, not even bringing up race, unless they brought it up. So, there was just this piece around just feeling like mad shame about it, feeling like mad disappointed around about it. And then also recognizing that, not only had I not been taught, but actively discouraged. Our programs when you're being trained as a psychologist, the only conversations where anyone was invited to really talk about race explicitly, was really when they would be training white clinicians, to do that piece around, so what is it like to work with a white therapist, right? To talk to when you're working with a client of color? And so that was my only even like awareness or introduction of how you can bring that into the clinical setting. So, it was just one of those pieces where I was just like, all these things are sort of making sense, it all click, click, click, click, click internally for me. Then I went to this conference, you all write down the name of this conference, by the way, one of the people you will hear me refer to in the season of this is one of my mentors, Dr. Kenneth Hardy, one of the most brilliant human beings I've ever met. If I could have a day to just sit inside this man's brain, I would give up the day, I would do it. Anyway, I went to a conference called the soul war conference, and it's a conference that's focused on healing and it is actively, whatever the theme of this conference is, it's always talking about really doing our work as people, it's designed for folks of color, right? White people are certainly invited as well, and white people will also be doing their work while they’re there, trust me. But the piece that like, I can't remember what it was about that experience, but it was the first time that I got clear around the thing I was talking about earlier around objectivity. And how this idea, it was the first time that I realized that all of these models that, as clinicians we’re trained to be objective, that's almost like the cardinal rule, it’s around this piece about not imposing any of our agenda. So, part of the reason why we are trained out of not bringing up for example, as clinicians of color who move around in a quite racist world and no experience of racism, we are not bringing up and getting curious with our clients, independently about their experience of race and racism, right? Because if the client didn't bring it up, then that's my agenda. So, when I've been trained to not do that, but part of the piece I’ve got clinging to me is that these models that I had been touting and holding up and using as my clean objective lens to which I'm working with people, it was like the first time where I was like, Wait, men, and usually white people, white men, some of EFT white woman designed this model, and whose values are actually built into these models? Theirs. So, this idea of objectivity, I'm saying, I'm being objective, I’m being objective, I'm just imposing somebody else. So, it was one of those moments where I got clear and I was like oh. So, it's one of those that I would sort of describe as part of what my awakening, and has really helped me see the ways in which I was engaged in collusion with white supremacy, by actively avoiding and engaging in professional other professional with race and racism, given the ways in which the power I was acquiring as a clinician as I'm doing talks, I'm doing whatever. Dr. Ken Hardy talks about this piece around being trained to just be a good white therapist, right? But we have people of color walking around, but really, we're just like white therapists. So, one of the moments where I really saw myself and I was like, Yeah, nah, I don’t want to do that, I'm not here for that. So that's really part of my very long winded story to help you understand how I've gotten here. And I am in battle literally daily. When I do talks and I go to these conversations, and this is what I'm trying to do now is to support organizations, certainly in building their capacity to have conversations about race, racism, and inequity, and how long it took me to be able to use the word white supremacy with white people present in professional spaces. And I know you all know about that. So anyway, that's just my story. I am so excited about just what we have planned for you all and the conversation we're going to be getting into, because my hope is that you will be using myself and Norissa as just like one, as the way Norissa talks about it like a point on the spectrum of what liberation looks like. And we're all in different places in the journey, and yeah, that's what I got, Norissa.
Dr. Norissa Williams: 38:36
Loving it, loving it loving it. And so yeah, so all in all, this conversation is a good sample for all of you to know about what the rest of our podcast will be about. It is going to be about liberation journeys. What has this process been like? Because all of you are on, I'm assuming listening to this somewhere in your liberation journey, and to be able to have this supportive community of people who are decolonizing, liberating, coming back home to themselves and all these kinds of things, we hope to offer something useful for your journey. Thank you. Thanks for listening.
Dr. Bukky Kolawale: 39:14
If you [unclear] we have to say, please subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.
Dr. Norissa Williams: 39:19
I’m Dr. Norissa, and you can find me on IG at Dr. Norissa Williams.
Dr. Bukky Kolawale: 39:23
And I'm Dr. Bukky, you can find me on IG at the official Dr. Bukky.
Dr. Norissa Williams: 39:27
You can also stay abreast of our latest offerings on our website, radicalremembering.com
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