Right Within

Chapter 1

I CAN’T GIVE UP NOW

Nobody told me

The road would be easy

—Mary Mary, “Can’t Give Up Now”

I have always been the only Black woman in the room. Meaning, in the course of my career, I was the only Black woman in the boardroom and the only Black woman in the break room. And I hate to admit to you that, at times, it was a lonely journey. I’ve eaten way too many lunches alone. I started to settle into the microaggressions and the bias that so effortlessly tended to greet me at any given time during the workday. I don’t know how many times I’ve told myself that Bob didn’t mean any harm, and neither did Kim. Maybe you have created the same fairy tale so that you could get through your workday too. The crazy thing about this narrative is that I began to believe it. In my previous career, I started to feed myself tablespoons of BS—little by little, over fifteen years—and none of that brought me any peace. It only resulted in me questioning my self-worth.

I spent a lot of time questioning. Questioning if what I was experiencing at work was in fact racism, or if I was just reading too much into the situation. I would question if my colleague was just being a jerk or if they were being ignorant. All of that led to even more questioning, especially toward myself. I believe systemic racism was created to make people of color question themselves.

Now, before you go any further in this book, one thing you should know about me from the jump is that I am going to keep it real with you. If I am going to get vulnerable with you about my journey toward healing from toxic workplaces, in return, I hope you’re willing to be vulnerable and unpack your racialized baggage along with me, so that you can be right within.

Please don’t pretend that you forgot the famous song “Bag Lady” by Erykah Badu: “One day all them bags gon’ get in your way, so pack light.” I realize this song might not be talking exclusively about racialized work trauma, but Ms. Badu wasn’t wrong. I don’t know about you, but there was a time in my not-so-distant past when I had all kinds of workplace trauma in my bags. And to be very clear, my trauma wasn’t tucked inside a fancy designer handbag. My baggage was so battered and strained, it started to look like those cheap plastic grocery bags, about to rip open at any moment. When we don’t know what to do with those burdens, we sometimes try to deny they exist, only making matters worse.

Recently, I was on a panel with the CEO of DiversityInc, Carolynn Johnson, and she said she didn’t believe in unconscious bias, but she believed in unchecked bias. I wanted to throw my invisible church fan in the air when she made that comment. For so many years, we have made excuses for many of our white colleagues’ unchecked racialized behavior in the workplace. And because many of us don’t have the agency at work to speak truth to power without facing backlash, we try to pretend we aren’t hurt and tell ourselves that our colleagues had no ill intent. I often think about an old manager who constantly made racialized comments to me about my hair or the bright colors I wore. Those comments always ended with him making jokes at my expense. And even though I unfortunately had learned to laugh through the pain, it didn’t make his words hurt any less. They just added another invisible cut, and my white counterparts never had the emotional intelligence to see my racialized scars. With each racialized experience, it was like salt being poured on reopened wounds, and there is no Band-Aid big enough to heal the pain. The last time I checked, dealing with racialized work trauma was not in the job description. I think I might need some workers’ compensation, because these darn racialized trauma bags are causing me some severe back pain. And since you are reading or listening to this book, I hope you are ready to lighten a load that you should never have been burdened with in the first place.

MY THESIS

I began to realize that women of color needed to solve a big problem. The problem is that many of us have never given ourselves permission to address and heal from the trauma we’ve encountered from oppressive workplaces. The older tools of denial don’t work; they just enable the gaslighting to continue. The burden shouldn’t be ours to carry, but we can help each other tell the truth, validate our experiences, and let go of what we can. We can give ourselves space to reaffirm our value first to ourselves, and then to everyone in the boardroom. We need to breathe easier so we can take our rightful place at the table. We deserve to be right within.

Most of us have been suffering in silence, sweeping our trauma under the rug, or pretending those workplace devastations didn’t affect us. You know those times your manager told you that you weren’t “ready yet” for bigger responsibilities, even though you were his go-to for any crisis. You know the time when the promotion went to your white colleague instead, to the one who always came to work late. Oh, and of course you remember every time you did all the work and never got any credit. In my case, my career devastation happened when I had to walk away from my dream job because I didn’t have any advocates willing to support their only Black woman colleague. When I needed them the most, my supposed friends wouldn’t speak up. If we are honest with ourselves, we’ve often desperately tried to forget these workplace experiences because they hurt so badly. If we aren’t careful, all of those years of so-and-so not meaning any harm will eventually catch up and cause us even more damage. We won’t ever be able to be right within if we don’t admit we’ve accumulated lots of workplace baggage during the toughest moments in our careers. Racialized trauma in the workplace is just as insidious as any other form of harassment. Yet Black and Brown pain seems to be something some white people don’t want to acknowledge. Therefore, we have been conditioned to view our pain the same way they do: as nonexistent.

Additionally, culturally speaking, I believe there may be a common practice across communities of color where we are taught to silence our pain. We’ve learned to “hush up” when that crazy relative gets noticeably tipsy during the holidays, even when they make us uncomfortable. And we’ve learned not to “tell” when someone in our family might have harmed us.

Many people of color have gone through life being told the greatest hits: “Just be happy you have a good-paying job,” “Make it work,” and “Keep your head down.” Unfortunately, we haven’t always been encouraged to speak about the pain that we have experienced, especially pain related to the workplace. It’s almost like we’ve let society convince us that racialized work trauma doesn’t count. In the Black community especially, we are often told that racism at work is “just the way it is.” If you are told a lie enough times, eventually you might just believe it. And many of us have believed that lie and passed it along to others. The ugly truth is, too many of us have the scars to prove it.

I wish I could help you let go of the baggage from every bad situation that has ever happened to you or someone you love; yet the gift I can give to you, the skill of packing light, might help you on your journey in the workplace today. The gift of potentially healing from workplace trauma, in my opinion, is better than any holiday or birthday present. Right Within is what I wish someone had given me when I was starting my climb up the workplace ladder. May this book serve as a resource that you can return to whenever you might need help along your journey to healing.

When I was four years old, I was in an unfortunate car accident that left a visible scar below my left eye. It’s a scar I have grown to love, and it’s part of who I am. The injuries I have from past toxic-workplace experiences, which I believe were racialized, led to scars that I learned to hide, and no amount of Neosporin can heal them. They are cuts that I wish I never had to endure. You might not know that these internalized scars are even there. But I would bet money that your invisible scars are the ones that hurt the most. The funny thing is, when we have external scars, there are bandages to aid the healing process. Why wouldn’t we need resources for those racialized bruises too? News flash: learning to have tough skin doesn’t heal you any faster; it just prolongs the pain.

I love the work of Dr. Thema Bryant-Davis, a tenured professor at Pepperdine University. She has conducted in-depth research around racial trauma. In her book Healing Requires Recognition, she says we must consider both the impact of the “systems and institutions that devalue members of one’s race” and the impact of violations “being minimized or ignored because of one’s race.” It’s not lost on me that the emotional scars we will discuss may be triggering for you, and I apologize. Even learning to address our pain may mean reopening old wounds caused by negative workplace experiences—a painful process in and of itself. Too many of us have been in workplaces that never bothered to extend to us the same level of professionalism and care that is extended toward our white colleagues. One thing that can help to overcome the gaslighting—the denial of our experience—that we’ve endured is recognizing among ourselves that our workplace traumas are real. These are violations that I wish companies, academic institutions, government agencies, and organizations would take seriously. The human resources department would never tell an employee who was physically assaulted at work that her attacker didn’t mean any harm. Yet somehow it’s acceptable to say to a woman of color who has been victimized because of her race, It’s just Bob being Bob and you are being too sensitive. I am tired of this line of thinking, and I am officially implementing a no-tolerance memorandum for any institutions or corporations that do not take racialized aggression or trauma seriously.

We have to unlearn the idea that our racialized trauma doesn’t matter. Those companies and organizations can’t undo the past, but—whether we choose to speak up or not, whether these companies step up or not—it can still be empowering to take charge of what we can control. We can empower ourselves by centering our experiences and prioritizing our healing. In fact, the healing can start with us. But, with that said, we can and should hold companies and organizations accountable for creating a safe work environment where women of color can thrive and not just survive. Creating an equitable work environment that is free of racialized aggression is 100 percent their problem to solve. And their first step might be not letting Bob just continue to be Bob, because Bob’s authentic self is harming others. And that should no longer be tolerated, no matter how nice of a guy Bob is to the higher-ups or how good his golf swing might be.

MY WHY

While I was on tour for my first book, The Memo, I met thousands of Black women and other women of color who appeared to still be grappling with many of their past and current workplace “broken hearts.” In my first book, I posed a question in the chapter called “The Ugly Truth”: “Where do the broken hearts of women of color go when we can’t take it any longer?” That was the most quoted line from city to city, via email and social media. After the first ten cities, I realized there were recurring issues: unaddressed racial workplace trauma, the need for its recognition, and a lack of models of healing. Too often, healing had not yet taken place because we hadn’t even allowed ourselves time to heal. Or perhaps we didn’t even know we needed to heal, and therefore found it challenging to understand what it would look like. Many of us carry workplace baggage from job to job and position to position, which ultimately prevents us from adequately securing our seat at the table. And some of us are currently working in toxic environments that seem to prevent us from being able to heal, because we are triggered daily by the pain and the people that cause it.

I know from personal experience that, even if you change jobs, even if you move across the country, you can’t keep avoiding your past. If you don’t face this trauma head-on, it’s just another bag you have to carry that was never supposed to be yours in the first place. I believe as women of color we have to heal from this workplace trauma because our health and wellness depend upon it. Not to mention, it becomes a heavy load to bear, and it’s not our job to carry four-hundred-plus years of racial oppression. It’s time we gather our tools to pack lighter and learn how to be right within, because our ancestors are begging us to. They had so many racialized bags that they were forced to carry that the stress alone killed many of them. We have the opportunity to turn our trauma into our most significant advantage: freedom. Audre Lorde said, “When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” Healing can be scary, but we must be willing to push aside our caution and see how powerful we can be as women of color without all this extra sh*t weighing us down.

BEWARE OF FEELING LIKE YOU DON’T DESERVE IT

For many women of color, before we can ease on down the workplace road and get our seat at the table, we first need to heal. But how do you learn to be right within when you have settled into the microaggressions? Or perhaps you’re accustomed to trying to make a toxic workplace work. It’s not easy to heal, but we owe it to ourselves to try. As much as I want you to secure your seat at the table, I want you to make sure you are right within first. I want you to know what it feels like to be free at work. Webster’s dictionary defines freedom as “the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action.” Wouldn’t it finally feel good to experience freedom at work? Freedom from the stereotypes of an Angry Black Woman, Feisty Latina, or Docile Asian? Don’t you want to be released from the past triggers or the current toxicity that you may not even know is causing you pain? Here’s another way to look at freedom. Billie Holiday had a song called “Good Morning Heartache.” She sang, “I’ve got those Monday blues / Straight to Sunday blues.” I don’t want us to feel like we have to say good morning to the trauma, good afternoon to the trauma, or see you tomorrow, trauma! Trauma can’t go where you’re going. Your future can’t sustain it. And you shouldn’t be expected to normalize your racial trauma. All of that stops now, and I’m asking you to trust me when I tell you there’s a lighter load on the other side. You deserve to know what healing feels like. And you deserve to know what tools you can use to pack a little bit lighter at work.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE