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One of the exercises in CLP is about identifying and clarifying our personal values. We each identify our top five values, writing one each on five index cards. Then we have to drop one, and another… until we are left holding the card with our number one, top value. What is your current One right now and why?
Consideration. To me, consideration is an overarching value that touches on a lot of different values. Although a lot of values interact on each other, I think consideration accounts for so much. It’s an act of love and compassion; it sets the tone for how you practice inclusivity and community, inviting other individuals as opposed to operating from a space of being in your own world and thinking about yourself.
That’s how I feel love — when I’m considered. It’s also how I experience violence, when I’m not being considered.
I’m curious about the relationship for you between consideration and respect?
Consideration and respect — I was just having this conversation with two different friends on two different occasions this week! We were talking about the abstraction of respect. It is one thing to have a value in theory, and another thing to uphold a value in practice.
We could have the same value, and because of our mental models, we can view that value or or define a word so differently from one another based on how we experience it.
For me, the consideration and the respect relationship turns to — how do you experience respect? How do you like to be respected? What is respect predicated upon?
One friend’s opinion is that respect is predicated upon trust. What is trust predicated upon? Feeling safe enough to trust. Safety is developed while interacting with each other. So again, those experiences — how do I experience you, and how do we engage in those experiences?
I do a lot of trauma-informed work — non-violent communication, restorative practices. The training that I’ve undergone and delivered has allowed me to view that word respect so differently.
Disrespect is based on perception a lot of the time. When someone behaves in a way that I find unpleasant, am I making the assumption that their intention is to disrespect me? How can I really understand that? I think the best way to understand that is through communication. I have a choice in how I operate in the space of respect and consideration — holding a boundary for it, or demanding it. How I engage, or if I even choose to engage.
It’s interesting — this is something that came up for me in CLP. We were charged with some pre-work on a conversation around race. Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen: An American Lyric was interviewed by Krista Tippett.
The title was, “How can I say what I need to say while keeping you in this car with me?” The caveat was something like: All conversations about race don’t have to be about racism.
My first reaction is always to assess, is this someone that I even desire to be in the car with? Does this individual consider me? Do they add or subtract value? Is it pertinent for me to do the labor required to move through whatever I may perceive as disrespect or a challenge?
I’m hearing that respect carries judgement for you, whereas consideration is a more universal ‘I see you,’ I may not agree with you, but I’m being considerate of your right to take up space?
Absolutely, I think that’s spot on.
Your reflections about consideration seem like it’s rooted in connection with others; would it be the same core value for you focused internally, individually?
I’ve been journaling so much, and I was also journaling about this topic recently. I don’t think I’ve journaled as much as I have in my entire life than I have since ending CLP!
I try at least once a year, to reassess my values and ensure I’m practicing them. They evolve, they change. I think that the fixture for myself is integrity, which also interacts on other values.
I struggle with moral perfectionism as a personality trait, not as some ideal. So practicing the value of integrity helps me curb that by curtailing whatever shame, guilt or other negative feelings I may internalize. When I say it interacts with other values, I mean authenticity, autonomy, lots of things. But I feel like as long as I can show up as my authentic self and operate genuinely in all spaces, then I feel satisfied with myself.
What is one big, burning leadership question you are wrestling with these days?
I struggle with cynicism and recently came upon a quote from George Carlin: “scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.”
The biggest burning question I have as a leader is — is it possible? Is it possible to do the work? Is it possible to actually progress in a way and at the rate that is required for individuals to exist. Not in peaceful bliss, not in a utopia, but just exist safely. I struggle. I think I have struggled since the beginning of my professional career in leadership, with this question.
I hear you. Especially today.
Yes.
Would you like to say more about it? I wonder where the question comes from for you, related to your experience or family of origin?
I grew up in very interesting dynamics — contradictory and contrasting spaces.
My mother was a community pillar. She organized on a very, very grassroots level. The way that I often refer to that is like, her body itself was a hub. She was a resource center, she would guide individuals toward self sufficiency.
That was my model of what it is to operate as a leader.
I also come from an environment, a community that is divided in many ways. Hopeful, defeated and everywhere between; a direct reflection of the actual lived experience. A visible distinction between direct impact and indirect system change.
The cynic doesn’t necessarily say, “that can’t be.” But sometimes might question, “how can it be.”
It comes from fighting for progress, making small progress, but still being under the thumb of it all. So, it is a conflicting experience itself — the reflection, results, the impact makes it easy for the cynic in me to thrive.
Has your relationship to the question of ‘is it possible’ changed over time?
I think it’s linked to the evolution of my leadership journey.
Six or seven years ago, is when I truly entered the leadership world of leadership intentionally. I’ve always led as a mother, sister, and a family member; but as a professional, this is when I entered the role in the nonprofit sector.
I started off serving in an AmeriCorps service branch, basically being assigned to a local nonprofit. In this space, the burning question that I had at that time which relates to this, is — how can I be both palatable and progressive? Because I can’t be radical in these spaces, I recognize that. Right? I can’t be radical and be digestible here; I’d be ousted from these spaces.
But these are the spaces that require the most change. So how do I be palatable to exist in these spaces, but also progressive enough to make the change that is required here. These things seem like they have a difficult time co-existing with each other.
I still don’t know if it’s the right thing, I just learned that for myself, it required a lot of development and growth around the person that allowed me to move with a lot of tact and diplomacy in a way that I can never betray my own self, or my own values, or be disingenuous to myself, while showing up in a space and saying things in a way that allow my audience to be receptive to my message.
It has been a struggle. Because the audience are usually individuals who are the authority in the power dynamic. So you have to be super-tactful about how you approach that. I ask myself, does this change? I see some of the people who I have admired — or currently admire — in power positions, and fail to see progress. That burden is not to be placed on their shoulders, right? But I also sit with individuals who say, “all of these years, and nothing.”
I was recently having a conversation with a son of a former Black Panther from New Haven, who actually helped kickstart the Black Panthers out here. The history of the Black Panthers in New Haven is very rich yet he expressed, he doesn’t see the change between now and then, and it’s very disheartening.
It’s like both things are true at the same time. Progress is made in very slow strides, and it makes it feel like progress isn’t being made at all. Granted, there are people that are feet-to-the-ground, constantly working hard, there are also people in power positions who have succumbed to the nature of the beast.
What does this mean for me in my leadership? Sometimes I get disheartened, and I tell myself that is my body and my environment telling me that I need to take a break. So currently I’m on a break, intentionally taking a year sabbatical, because that has been a burning thing for me lately.
It just so happened to coincide with CLP ending. It ended, and I separated from my position to really sit with myself, give myself the rest that I need from the burnout that is very real, so that I can come back and do the work.
Thank you for sharing. Does faith enter into it for you?
I’ve also struggled with my personal, spiritual beliefs and faith. I’ve been Muslim for over ten years; but not a traditional, practicing Muslim. I was recently looking up something just to quell myself — what does Islam say about being doubtful. And it was so beautiful – the result was that doubt is something that’s sacred, because doubt is a precursor of thirst, a thirst for knowledge, a thirst to know and to learn more.
So I do hope that this space that I am in is just something that very often happens — it ignites a thirst for me to figure out more, to learn more, to find a better way while not leaning on my own understanding. My relationship with faith serves as positive reinforcement. That’s why I think the rest is super important. It provides me the clarity to connect.
So timely and powerful. Along those lines, what would you say inspires you, gives you hope these days?
I think what inspires me most are the other leaders around me, those who came before me and those who are emerging. Leadership shows up in so many different capacities. From the arts, to politics — every facet of life. I draw inspiration from figures as big as James Baldwin, to as personal as my mom, to as close as individuals who were in the CLP circle — Karen, Kia, Bill, and so many others.
Related to your earlier reflections and sabbatical, this work of transformational change is hard. Stepping in, stepping up, over time, can be draining – physically, intellectually, emotionally, psychically, spiritually. How do you recharge, restore, take care of yourself, rekindle your fire?
There are regular practices that are a part of my daily life. Not just because I’m on a break, but I have to, I breathe them — because if not, then I can’t breathe.
What do those look like? I wake up almost every day around 4:30 am, have for the last decade. It’s a time of stillness that allows me to be present with myself without having to tend to anybody or anything. I utilize two hours to really ground myself, in all of the ways that set the tone for my day.
Which includes meditation and prayer — I do yoga, exercise, I listen to affirmations and healing frequencies. And I listen to an audio book — if I don’t do that in the morning when I’m cleaning and cooking, then I’ll do it when I’m driving.
Those things help me recharge on a daily basis.
When I say I’m a non-practicing Muslim, I struggle — like a lot of individuals — with my relationship in faith. So I practice in a way that feels right for me. Once upon a time, that looked like making prayer five times a day. And then it turned into setting an alarm on my phone at the prayer times, so five times a day, it would remind me to meditate so during the day when I encounter challenges, I can remember the tools that I have available to me to use, to ground myself in a moment. I might be feeling frustrated, and that alarm will go off that says “meditate.” And I remember to stop, and take a breath.
These are daily things that I do to remind myself to stay present with myself.
Journaling has been a big thing. I did journal before, but CLP has really charged me up to a space where I’m getting my thoughts out daily. Before CLP, I started at the advice of a friend, color-coding my entries. That helps me associate a mood, and it also helps me identify the things that I need to do to maybe move away from a mood, or come to a mood more.
Quarterly, I make sure to see my chiropractor and I go to the spa. It is just a part of that rejuvenation and reset. Sometimes, rest and rejuvenation doesn’t come from being in community, or being in reciprocity with anyone other than yourself. Fortunately, I can afford to go, ‘cause it is a luxury to be able to pay for self-care. It really helps me physically remove the load from my body.
And I think a lot of self-care is predicated on reflection. For me, there has been a need for discernment around what is self-care versus self-indulgence. For a long time, I over-indulged. That looked like eating whatever I want, buying whatever I want, just doing whatever I wanted to do to make me happy, even if it had an ultimately negative impact of overeating, or overspending.
I was able to define that as self-indulgent. So I know that if I get stressed out and I want to go spend like a maniac at Bed Bath & Beyond or something [laughing], I’m being self-indulgent and that’s not going to make me feel better in the long run.
There’s this quote that I love, that says that discipline is the highest form of self-love. I think that discipline is the highest form of self-care and self care is self love. It’s really how I take care of myself and my body, when I’m disciplined around my nutrition, when I’m disciplined around my exercise, when I’m disciplined around everything — my interactions, all of my consumption.
I so appreciate that framing. I thought you were going to say the difference between self-care and self-maintenance, that Duanecia Clark (Cohort 21) was talking about recently in her Interview.
Oooh, I like that.
Something that’s of utmost importance for me — aside from the direct implications of what happens when you don’t take care of yourself, is that stress is a killer. Especially for women, and even more so for women of color.
Auto-immune diseases, the prevalence of them in women and again, in women of color, really show us what happens when we busy ourselves so much with tending to everything around us except ourselves.
It’s a mantra of mine to say, “I’m not going to kill myself over this. This is not happening, I’m just not going to do it,” if I feel like it threatens my nervous system and it’s a consistent thing that’s only going to breed negative implications? No becomes a complete sentence. I’m going to make the choice to prioritize my sanity, and my overall health.
Amen. And as you said earlier, self-care keeps us healthy so that we can stay in the work. I’m listening to Caste by Isabel Wilkerson for the second time, and I’m just at the point where she’s writing about how stress shortens telomeres, leading to premature aging and disease.
Yes. I just put it on my wish list on Audible.
You know, something else I want to add to when I said that I was taking a year sabbatical so that I can curtail burnout. Very often, what I’ve noticed in the service sector and nonprofit sector whether national or local, just across the board — is that very often people are not getting burnt out with the work that they do. They love the work that they do. They’re getting burnt out with the people around them, who they have to do the work with.
I haven’t really unpacked that fully, I just know that for myself — whether it’s burnout, compassion fatigue, whatever — I believe completely in our emotions being indicators, messengers for us. If I begin to become frustrated or easily agitated with something, that’s an indicator that I need to take a step back from that thing. In whatever capacity it is, that’s the indicator — take a step back.
It makes me think about organizational or policy brokenness; it’s easy to think about it all as huge intractable systems, when actually it’s people.
Yeah, people are at the helm of that. So I always think about that when I work with organizations. It’s easy to get lost in creating monoliths out of spaces that say, “this is a great place,” despite the potential and reality of one-off or multiple bad experiences. Because the place is just a place, and it’s made up of individuals.
You know, they teach us that when you enter the nonprofit sector. You’re an individual in a role in an entity. And, these are real humans who show up here. With all of their biases, with all of their BS, and we have to hope that they’re operating with the best interest of the community that they serve and not their own selfish agendas.
Forget about the places that are outright awful. They’re obvious. What about the places that are more obscure? The places that are supposed to serve a community and instead create harm. The places that slip through the cracks. The transgressors of oppression who can’t see their blind spots, who think that they’ve done the work. I’ve encountered so much of this in my last six years dealing with so many individuals and their ego in the work that we do.
I started off serving with Public Allies, which is an AmeriCorps service branch that focuses on community leadership development. And then I graduated into running that program myself.
Because we’re a statewide nonprofit, I managed partnerships with nonprofits all across the state. The individuals who show up almost always have good intentions to do the work, but often miss the mark.
I think that’s also the place where courageous conversation is most required. Individuals who aren’t afraid to say the “thing.” At the very least, it shows us — exposes to us America’s soft white underbelly.
I really appreciate your centering individuals’ ability to make needed changes — internal and external. Connected to the theme of challenging each other to grow and lifting each other up — would you please 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?
My children.
My children have challenged me to grow more than anybody else. I have issues operating outside of my absolute authenticity. It’s been like that since I was a kid. Some people call it “defiant.” But I just don’t know how to show up as anybody other than myself.
I believe that a lot of people move about the world with personas that permit them to exist in certain spaces. And then they come home, in a space of comfort, and they show their full, true self to the people who are closest to them.
As humans, we are not monoliths, we’re multidimensional, we’re not perfect. Very often, I feel like our family members get the ‘ugly us’ the most. The exhausted us, the us that cannot keep a smile on, that can’t be passive, that just can’t do what we do when we’re forced to posture ourselves outside of the home.
The dynamic is such an oxymoron because often the people who are closest to us are actually the ones who tend to support us the most and thus, deserve the best versions of us.
So I ask myself, if I can posture myself out there, how can I posture myself better here? The way that I treat my children then serves as the standard for the way that I treat everyone else. Because I treat them with the utmost respect and regard, compassion.
I have been charged, by my own choice, with their leadership. So how do I lead them? I became a mother at the age of 16 for the first time. I had three children by the age of 19. And people would say, ‘it must be so hard being a teen mom.’
Being a mom as a teenager wasn’t hard for me. It was very natural, actually. I used to say, ‘I think the most difficult thing is remembering that our journey and our children’s journey, while they intersect, are very separate.’ And because of that, I’m charged with leading them to self realize and that’s at the core of what I do. Help people and communities self-actualize.
I was taught to lead from an asset-based perspective. To leverage strengths, to let the individual come to their own conclusions and solutions while simply serving as a guide. What is that if not parenting in its essence?
My children are that for me. Being a parent is the most fulfilling thing that I have ever accomplished. And I feel so gratified, not when things are actually going best, but when things are most challenging.
Because it activates the best parts of me. The innovator, the problem solver, the doer, the ally who may not necessarily be proximate to this thing outside of a relationship in which I desire to support others in their life with what they love to do or who they want to be.
I have one girl, Syra, she’s my oldest, and I have three boys. My oldest boy is Jayden, then Haason, and my baby is Nasir.
So yeah, my kids.
You mentioned that your children challenge you; do you want to say more about the ways they do that?
A little disclaimer, I believe that vulnerability is a superpower. Vulnerability is something that shows up in my leadership often, because I feel like other people who may feel alone in their struggles may benefit from resonance.
So what I’m going to share is going to be super-vulnerable.
In 2012, during one of the most violent summers in New Haven, the father of my daughter, my first-born, was murdered.
I’m so sorry.
My daughter has battled suicidal ideation since the age of six years old, and still currently does. She’s a creative and has done a lot of art around it, so it’s an open conversation, not a secret. It’s visual art and storytelling which she shares publicly and is ok with my talking about it.
She started self-harming around the age of 10. As a parent, that presented a challenge naturally, clearly, to support her through that. But also as an individual, it presented a challenge to me.
I think that it’s just a natural part of life and growing, that you exist in your own narrow vacuum of time and space, and you have to be exposed to certain things to help you shift your perspective. I couldn’t understand when this started happening, when she displayed the suicidal ideation, how could someone want to hurt themselves.
Because I couldn’t understand it, I didn’t know how to serve her. I made attempts, and those attempts were trying to give her as many soft places to land as possible.
I had a friend one day that I was venting to. I was saying, ‘I’ve done all these things, I did this, and I did that, I facilitate this for her, and that.’ And, nothing. He finally said, “Well, have you asked her what she wants?” [laughing] Are you doing the things that would’ve made you happy, or would’ve been helpful to you? As opposed to what she needs.
Those kinds of moments of clarity, which seem really simple — but when you’re really narrow, it’s hard to see, are vital. The way she requires support is super-contradictory to my lifestyle and personal beliefs. I don’t have to be so attached to the feeling that I am betraying my values, when I am showing up and supporting this individual and their need to exist in a space of safety.
Those moments challenge me to ask myself, ‘ok, how can I be who I needed as a child?’ How can I shift the paradigm of what parenting looks like not just in my family, but in my culture and in my community — which is one that hasn’t been beneficial to healthy childhood development, and instead churns out really dysfunctional adults.
So I constantly challenge myself to break those narratives, and to also recognize when I’m wrong or require growth. And I think that is also reflected in less extreme moments, like natural childhood milestones.
I think that for the most part, we as a nation do not really have enough healthy dialogue around the nature of parenting and the undertaking that it is. Not having a baby, but helping a whole human become a productive member of society and become good to themselves.
Most of us just wing it. There’s a lot of books out there — literature, information, research. But there is a disconnect in my community’s ability to evolve to a village.
From identifying your child’s learning style to how you help your children manage their emotions, dealing with teenage angst — because they all have it, and we think that we may be special in our circumstance, dealing with the worst situation, when it’s just an organic phase all kids go through.
When my daughter went to kindergarten, I had to learn very quickly that the trap of not being better informed about parenting is thinking “your kids will be like you because they come from you.” As opposed to, they’re going to be their own people, with their own struggles.
I was so academically charged; schoolwork was a breeze for me, I never had that challenge. My children do not pick it up the way that I picked it up. I found myself getting frustrated when my daughter started doing kindergarten homework. I asked myself, how do I posture myself in this situation so that I’m not frustrated, so that I’m supporting her and so that I’m maintaining my values.
Again, it can be something as small as homework, to something as big as suicidal ideation. How do I really challenge myself to grow in the face of humanity.
My perspective is shaped by the unpleasant relationship that I had with my own mother. She wasn’t supportive, she was verbally abusive, and there were a lot of different dynamics that caused me to run away as soon as I was of legal age — just to not have to engage her.
I decided early that I want to have a healthy relationship with my adult children. They’ll become adults and one day they’re going to get to choose. I get the choice to set the tone for a welcoming environment. I want them to choose to share with me the most important things so I can support them through those things. They should be able to be as vulnerable as possible, so that they’re not alone in the world when they have to figure things out.
I want them to be able to come to me. I want my kids to be able to say ‘ma, I don’t feel safe in this space, will you please pick me up.’ And challenge myself not to be frustrated, not to be judgmental, just to support.
I think that also in parenting there’s a very fine line between supporting and enabling. But I think that the best way that I can sum it up is from a letter that was written to me specifically, about me and my mother. I would love to share the excerpt with you ‘cause I think it’s a perfect way to cap the question.
The observer said:
“It is strange, all of the things that we do for our children. To give them a better life, and yet we do not allow ourselves to see them as they are. Because we dare not look at ourselves. We want to promote their well-being, and yet find it difficult to separate our trauma from what they represent before us.
There is an unintended consequence of violence in being a mother that hurts children, and in being children that hurts a mother. And it has everything to do with labels that do not allow for humanity that demands us all to appeal to who we are, beyond our biology and kinship.
The importance of this has everything to do with the fact that you are a daughter passed into being a mother, and then a grandmother. Yexandra has and will continue this trend. But who is Yexandra, or Yexi as you call her? And who are you?
This is where the pain lies. A mother and daughter forbidden to cross a boundary over roads at the expense of seeing each other clearly. And touching that clarity with hands that are made of no categories, hierarchies, or labels.”
And I think that if I can manage to see my children so clearly as individuals, not as my children, then I can extend that to everyone else.
I hear so many echoes of your core value of consideration. Do you feel like you learned it from your children?
I want to say — and I think it’s important for me to say — I learned it from myself, and they catalyzed it. I wanted to be considered so badly by my mother for such a long time. I just wanted to be seen. That I told myself, that no matter how challenging it was when I became a mom at 16, that I was going to see my children.
That’s beautiful; thank you for sharing. And that brings us to our last question; what do you recommend to us, in each of these categories:
- Reading – The Prophet, by Khalil Gibran.
- Listening – Listen to your intuition.
- Eating – I have so many different answers, and I was trying to tie them all up. [laughing] I do a workshop on food, identity and culture. And in that space, I recommend that people eat things that are closest to their cultural or ethnic background, to the geographical location that your people come from. So I eat a very Puerto Rican diet — I eat a lot of roots, starches, vegetables of course, but there’s just things that are staple in our diet that I still stick to, very traditional. However, people don’t always have access to that. So I recommend that people eat what is accessible to them, so at least they’re fed. Ultimately, I hope that people eat what makes them happy and healthy.
- Watching – There’s this really amazing Korean film that I love, Along With the Gods.
- Laughing – Good company.
- Wildcard – your choice – Travel somewhere far outside of your culture or comfort zone, by yourself.
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Get in touch with Yexandra directly: yexidiaz9@gmail.com
#powerful
#keeponkeepingonsista
The ‘superpower’…that…agree. Loved the groundedness is process, discovering, and evolving… prayers and love your way.