contributed photo
One of the exercises in CLP is about identifying and clarifying our personal values. We each identify our top 5 values, writing one each on 5 index cards. Then we have to drop one… and another… until we are forced to choose our number 1, top value. What is your current One right now and why?
My top value now, and always – it hasn’t changed – is integrity. As a person who has gone through a lot of significant challenges and trauma since childhood, the one thing that was static and under my control was how I showed up – in life, in relationships, in the community and at work. Integrity is something that is very important to me. It’s a core value, and I have a personal belief that if I’m in misalignment with my integrity then I’m not living my best life.
What is one big, burning leadership question you are wrestling with these days?
These days, my toughest leadership challenge has been embracing change, and leaning into change when it is happening. Pivoting is often the most difficult part of change, along with grieving the loss of comfort. But like it or not, the challenge to change has been knocking on my front door. So, I have learned to:
- Keep an open mind about what my new journey may look like; it may not seem as I had envisioned it, the steps may not be as clear as I would want them, and the package may not be as neat as I would like.
- Train for mental agility, focus on endless possibilities and positive outcomes.
- Let go of the need for a predictable environment. This has been particularly difficult for me since I grew up with the absence of predictability, and that was directly tied to my survival.
- Care about what is important. In the midst of the storm, I have learned to anchor myself in the joys of my family. My beautiful family has been my biggest life success.
- Check survival and put it where it belongs. As I evolve, grow, and mature I am embracing the “shift” – behaviorally, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually – around what it feels like to be in a space of thriving. When we shift from surviving to thriving, we have to let go of a lot of things that benefitted us before, because they were survival mechanisms. But they do not benefit us when we are in a space to thrive.
Is the shift also related to risk-taking?
Yes, it’s about embracing risks and entering into the unknown. I think the unknown can be very scary. When you are at a crossroads, and one road is what you’ve already traveled, no matter how dysfunctional it is, there is a sense of comfortability because you have already been there. On the other road, you have no idea what life is going to look like or whether you’re going to end up leaving that road unscathed. Sometimes we choose the dysfunctional road, just because it is predictable – even if it is chaotic.
There is a lot of risk in being goal-oriented and progressive. Innovators, trailblazers, pioneers always face risk. For me, that is the constant rub. My emotional side is constantly seeking out ways to shake up the status quo, and my intellectual, logical side wants to be anchored in routine and predictability. I am challenged by the notion that these two sides live within me. How do I make them get along, LOL!
And then there is FAITH. I have faith in the fact that I’m a good person, a caring and compassionate person, that I’ve worked really hard to get to where I am and that whatever the outcome is predestined. So it’s safe to let go.
Are you a spiritual or religious person?
I am spiritual, I would not call myself religious. I believe that there is a God, I believe in the universe allowing you to attract things that are connected to the desires of your heart. I believe that there is an in-kind reciprocity between mother Earth and us human beings that occupy time and space. I try to live every day to its fullest. I love freely and I trust openly. Sometimes I am disappointed and hurt, but that is what happens when you choose to love unconditionally. I would not trade my kind of love with any other, to me this is the highest level of enlightenment. It’s understanding that good and bad can happen all at the same time, and we choose which one to focus on. I choose love.
What inspires you, gives you hope these days?
My children, this new generation of unapologetic fighters really gives me a lot of hope.
The Gen Z’s are taking no prisoners, they are not having it. They are calling BS, calling it what it is, they’re clear about their message. They are entering into complicated, turbulent waters without fear, and with a level of courage that I have not seen in my lifetime. They motivate me, they invigorate me to stay in the fight. They give me hope.
And, it becomes quite an honor to think that for some of these dynamic young people, I was part of their healing, and that I am helping to create the new warriors, the new leaders, the new trend-setters, the new advocates, the new freedom fighters. And that they are going into this fight more whole than any generation that I know of.
It is not to say that we did not have fighters in the past – for freedom, for equality, for racial justice. But I think a lot of those activists were full of unprocessed pain, were traumatized and emotionally exhausted. They knew what needed to get done, and just did it; often sacrificing themselves and their families along the way. I think this generation understands the importance of being whole, and engaging in healing at the same time that they are taking the position of social advocacy. And that’s different. For me, seeing that difference really does give me hope that we are breaking the cycle of trauma with a legacy of healing.
I have a 21 year-old son and a 14 year-old daughter, which gives me first-hand exposure to what our youth are thinking about. They’re extremely political in their thinking, they have a strong perspective and voice, I hear it all the time during our dinnertime conversations.
I’m so happy that one of the things my husband and I were able to do in our lifetime is break what Trevor Noah calls the “Black Tax.” I was able to fully understand that my children do not need to inherit my traumas. I have a responsibility to manage my past and work on my healing process, and as much as I can, keep them free from having to carry that. Minus some of the biological components, I think we’ve been able to do a really good job of keeping them open and aware about who they are as black (Caribbean) children in this society. We work to keep them grounded in their identity so that no one can challenge that. And we encourage them to use their voice.
Do you want to say more about the biological components?
The new epigenetic data shows a clear linkage between historically marginalized, abused, oppressed groups of people. Humans carry a trauma gene through epigenetic inheritance, one generation to the next – particularly if we do nothing about addressing and healing the trauma.
My son asked me this past weekend, ‘mom, do I have urban trauma?’ And I answered no, because he does not have all the characteristics, the components. He may have the biological part, just like he’s susceptible to diabetes, which runs in our family. But he’s also an athlete, aware of healthy nutrition and what to put in his body. The likelihood that he will develop diabetes is very low, based on how he manages his health as a young man. Same thing for urban trauma. He understands our history, he is firm in his racial identity, he has taken his anger about racial injustice and turned it into civic engagement. He was not exposed to poverty, community violence, and educational disparities; those were real challenges that his dad and I carried, but intentionally disrupted for our children. Now, let’s be clear – as a black man in America he is always at risk, but where he is anchored right now, he does not have urban trauma.
This work of transformational change is hard. Stepping in, stepping up, over time, can be draining – physically, intellectually, emotionally, physically, spiritually. How do you recharge, restore, take care of yourself, rekindle your fire?
I’m very selective about who I choose to spend time with, when and where. I am not the type of person you will see at every event. I’m not driven by being in the limelight or social circles. I get my fuel from spending time with my family. Every opportunity I get, I will quickly not do something if it means that I get to spend time with my children and husband, and the people that are close to me, my village. That feeds me in really meaningful ways.
We’re a very close and active family, we do all kinds of things together. Biking, running, and we are all foodies. We love to explore, travel all over the world. Sometimes we’ll just get in a car and say ok, where are we going today? Let’s go explore a new beach, so we’ll pack up and go do that. Coming back to our center together is important for each of the four of us.
I’m from the Caribbean; I was born in the Dominican Republic, and I go home quite often. My husband is from Trinidad; we go there every year as well and it’s become my second home. Both are part of my life’s balance, and I will not give that up for anything; it tends to be the way I recharge. I thank God I have a home to go to that is outside of the United States, where I can have a reprieve from all the negative messages against people of color. Where I feel included and supported, where I feel part of a community. My children are both Dominican and Trinidadian, and it’s important to me that they see both sides of their identity, which is so rich in culture, heritage, ethnicity – everything you can think of.
The way I heal is through writing. I write and read a lot. Marcus Garvey said we have to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery, and despite being physically free, we can still be mentally enslaved. The only way to combat that is through education and information. So I educate myself about different things, fill my soul through reading and connecting with others that like to do the same. My writing varies. It’s poetry and spoken word – I don’t share that publicly – some journaling. I also love to do yoga, meditation, running, and anything that soothes the body physically, and challenges me at the same time. Physical exercise allows me to be more creative.
The process of writing my book was very cathartic for me. It’s funny, I really wanted to take an academic route during the framework development for urban trauma. When I gave the first manuscript to my publisher, she sent it back and said, “I’m not interested in publishing this.” It was clear to her, through a lot of our initial conversations, that I had a story to tell. She asked me, “why are you hiding from this story?” And the reason I was hiding is because of the shame around my childhood. I had kept it such a secret.
People just saw the package that I showed them, and I was very well-packaged. But they didn’t know the pain and the hurt that came before that. So it was a process of being ok with the exposure, and dealing with the shame that I would feel, and did feel, allowing people to read about the intimate parts of my life. But for me, doing that and being challenged in that way, was extremely liberating.
It’s like what Brene Brown says, shame grows in darkness – and when you bring it to light, it’s gone, it doesn’t really matter anymore. You can author that. You can drive how that comes out to the world. You do not have to allow someone else to shame you.
What was the process of writing the book like?
I probably had been writing it – theoretically – for the last 15 years. But in actuality, beginning to end, putting it together was about a year. Which is pretty aggressive – it was a short timeframe. I committed to writing 50,000 words, and I wrote 667 words per day. If I missed a day, I doubled up the next day. I was extremely disciplined in my approach, because I was very serious that this was something that was super-important for me to get out.
I became convinced that sharing my personal urban trauma was useful, as something others could relate to – especially coming from my field (psychology) where self-disclosure is highly discouraged. But what was really important to me was creating a common, comprehensible, well-defined framework for urban trauma. I felt like the clock was ticking, people needed to hear about and understand it.
There were pieces of urban trauma that had been written, including Joy DeGruy’s work on racialized historical trauma, research on adverse childhood experiences, toxic stress and exposure, as well as epigenetics, as I mentioned earlier. Bringing these three complex components together was my focus and purpose; I was fueled by wanting to describe what it looks like when they are combined. I wanted to make clear what characteristics we can expect to see, and how the human experience is impacted for people of color. I would do it again in a heartbeat.
Introduce us to someone you are/were close with personally (e.g., family, teacher, friend, mentor), who shaped (or shapes) you and how you view leadership and possibility for a better community/world?
One of the biggest contributors in my formative years was my fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Freedman. She significantly shaped my life and the way I view the world. Before meeting her, I was identified as an ESL student; Spanish was my first language. Based on my second-language status, I had been retained earlier on and classified as special education. In my fifth grade, Mrs. Freedman realized very quickly that I was not a special education student, and that I had a lot more potential than what was described in my IEP.
She took it upon herself to champion a meeting with the PPT team. Even though I did not have good parent advocacy, she single-handedly got me out of special education, and throughout the year prepared me to be in the honors and advanced, gifted classes from sixth grade and beyond. That gesture, that support – seeing in me things I didn’t see in myself – allowed me to excel. Not just to her highest expectations, but also to the high expectations that were placed on the most gifted students in my elementary school. It carried into middle school, high school, and every other accomplishment that I have been able to achieve.
My motto after spending that year with Mrs. Freedman is: mediocrity is not part of my DNA. I work very hard, and very diligently. I persevere in all kinds of situations – not to be enough, or to pass a class, or to be average in anything that I do – I work to excel, to be at the highest level and the best version of who I can be in every single space I enter into. That was a life lesson for me.
Mrs. Freeman also taught me my second life lesson: always pay it forward. So, what I do in my profession now with young people I serve – mostly people and families of color – is to encourage them to see the best versions of themselves. And to not limit their dreams to what other people say is possible for them, but to see beyond and outside of that. To reach for every single star they can imagine, to dream as big as they can, and to succeed at every single level.
Today, I have lots of different mentors and people I look up to. I don’t know that there’s one specific person I can single out, but I can identify that there is a village I have created. When I have to make an important, critical business decision, I have my business advisors I go to. When I have challenging leadership questions that I’m struggling with, or I need to get insight or advice on how to move forward, I lean on those people. When there are policy and law changes that are going to affect the work that I do, I lean on the folks in my village who are experts in that area.
In the business world, you’d call it an advisory board. In my social justice world, I like to call it the village. My village supports me in every kind of way. The village is supportive, insightful, educated, expert – they willingly and unconditionally support my work. At so many levels, I have appreciated being able to create this village.
I credit Mrs. Freedman for helping me see the importance of a village, because she created one around me at a very young age.
What do you recommend to us, in each of these categories:
- Reading – Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance, just because I am reading it right now.
- Listening – Trevor Noah’s audio book version of Born a Crime – because I love his personal story, his accent is to die for, and his political satire is A+.
- Eating – Dominican food, of course!
- Watching – Dear White People, just because I am watching it right now on Netflix.
- Laughing – At yourself, especially when you make a mistake or fail at something. Laughter is the best medicine.
- Wildcard – Travel the world, even if you are on a budget. You will never be able to appreciate the full extent of humanity until you have gone outside the U.S. and experienced different countries, cultures, people, languages, faiths and religious beliefs. Mostly, sit on the beach, watch the sunset, marvel at the beauty of Mother Earth, and be thankful for all the lessons and blessings in your life. Be thankful.
Interview with The Circle’s Creative Director & Editor, Lara Herscovitch (Cohort 10). To reach Lara directly: thecircle@clpnewhaven.org or Lara@LaraHerscovitch.com
Learn more about Dr. Maysa Akbar, CEO of Integrated Wellness Group and her book, Urban Trauma: A Legacy of Racism
To contact Dr. Akbar directly: makbar@integratedwellnessgroup.org