Podcast Transcript: Intersectionality and Burnout

Listen to our latest podcast where Jayne is in conversation with Marcia Brissett Bailey, listed as one of Women Beyond the Box's Top 50 Influential Neurodivergent Women, as well as being an award winner of the Dyslexia Association BDA Adult Award. She's the author of Black, Brilliant, and Dyslexic, as well as being a narrative changer, who's featured by Forbes and the co founder of British Dyslexia Association's Cultural Perspectives Committee.Michael Amster, a physician, awe researcher, writer and teacher with 20 years' experience as a pain management specialist, and who has been a meditation practitioner for over 30 years.

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Here's the full transcript:

Marcia: Great. Thank you for having me and that lovely intro. A little bit of what I I'm doing and just feeling like I'm sharing and telling a bit of my story to hopefully make change and bring awareness, especially within the black and brown community.

For me, I can speak for me. And I, I just want to say that within this podcast really is that I can't speak for everybody and it's important. My lived experience will be different because of those intersectionalities, class culture. So it will show up and impact people differently to the opportunities and the opportunities they may not have and the experiences that they experienced. And that trauma piece may traumatise people in a different way because they may not have the support, they might not have the right mechanisms, so it may show up in a different way. Burnout can look different for different people, depending on those intersectionalities and that kind of lens of what lived experience has happened or is happening and how we stay present.

I guess how our mindset is, and that can all be because of traumas and different types of traumas that experience, it will just show up differently. So what is important for me, and I guess I'm saying it's my disclaimer that I can't speak for everybody as a black woman or somebody who's neurodiverse.

And we're all on a spectrum and you know, it's authentically unique to us. That's kind of the bottom line for me. So. If I just give you a little bit of my story, just that little bit, I didn't get diagnosed with dyslexia until I was 16. Prior to that, I would say, pretty much, I showed up loving school initially but I just felt school didn't love me.

And I think it's important to sort of give some context and, you know, to where my journey started, because I do feel, I don't want to give responsibility to our education system, but unless you choose to do your homeschooling or private education, whatever that looks like, whatever form that is, whether it's a bit of learning within the mainstream and then home learning, whatever that looks like alternative provisions.

I just feel that there's a duty within us, you know, our education system to support us and nurture us really but I just feel like if you don't fit into a certain way of learning, then it can exclude you. So for me I guess phonics and learning to read was really difficult, but at that time, I didn't know I was dyslexic.

And the way my brain processes and absorbs information is a little bit different. So if you're testing me with standardised testing, you wouldn't be correct in showing what, whatever we mean is intelligence. It wouldn't be correct in terms of testing me because I just didn't learn the way the system is assessing us.

And I think It's key to really look at that because we know the prison pipeline, we know the youth justice system. And we know 50 percent of those who are neurodiverse are in the prison system. And I just wonder if we were looking at belonging or looking at other pieces, what that would look like if we was to do kind of a case study and look at their experience and what was happening at school.

For me, there's something stemming from our education system from the early years. To how some of us are turning out in different directions and then ends up, we are neurodiverse. So there's a lot of stories to tell. And a lot of people, if they feel they're able to tell their stories, will tell you about the possible traumas possibly depending on those intersectionalities.

So for me, I was traumatised at school. I didn't know it. At the time, I didn't know what anxiety was. I didn't know what sweaty hands and palpitations are at primary school. But all I knew is that I felt like a bit of an alien. And then those intersections that I'm being told from a cultural perspective, you've got to show up, you've got to work twice as hard.

I got that intersection very early on because there is the culture and race piece of knowing there's racism or knowing there's inequalities or injustices as a black person. So I had that context being fed to me within my family sort of circle and community saying that we've got to show up, you've got to perform, you've got to be good, you mustn't break the rules you've got to follow.

So there's a colonial thing feeding into that as well about behaving yourself, listening to authority and respecting. So if I put that all in context, that's my early years. So if you kind of have to listen to all of that, I call that my kind of shopping bags. That's a lot of things I'm carrying.

And when do I let them go? And who am I? Who, you know, who am I? Because I'm having these, all the intersections, I have to carry them. Whether we want to say it's masking or showing up, I've had to do a lot of having to carry myself and be resilient, be strong in order to show up. And I think it's really interesting because, you know, you've got to sometimes unlearn things and learn things.

And through my journey, I've had to, I've learned things and my culture has really helped me in terms of my cultural perspective of my upbringing, be resilient, be strong. You know, be strong as a woman. You know, you've got to show up because I came from a very matriarchal, but those are good because the system was against me.

If I didn't have those, those elements and I didn't follow those, I really would have sunk in a way. And you don't, I don't know what that would have looked like for me. Does that make sense? So I tell you that early bit of my intersections of my life just a snippet because there's a whole story to it because I'm just aware of how much time we've got.

But I think it's important to just say those are some of my foundations of having to feel like I have to show up a young black girl and to be present, be strong, be resilient. If I don't, what would happen? But the only thing about that I didn't then speak because there's also an aspect of you don't speak you don't share your business because then it's almost for me that's a colonial piece as well.

That is still carried or embedded within my cultural unit, not for everybody as I said I can't make assumptions or speak for anybody else but for when I was growing up was very real for me and I didn't know what that was it just felt normal. But now I know that kind of colonial intergenerational traumas, community traumas, this is where that's all coming from.

So when people say we can't talk about slavery, we can't talk about that, we have to still talk about these kind of colonial pieces to where the racism systems, you know, built up to exclude people. Or if you look this way, you know, what is that? So I had to grow up learning that and then going into the workplace and understanding that I'm not always going to get what you know the job, or I can have about five degrees but I might not get that job and it possibly, or there's a possibility, we don't want to go out there and say that it could be because of the colour of my skin.

So I had to learn those kinds of things and you know, I'm not going to be quiet about that anymore because that's my lived experience. It's my lived evidence and no one can take that away from me because I've lived it. I was born in the UK, you know, we can't just kind of oppress that and put it somewhere because it bubbles up.

People bubble up, you know, and this is where other aspects of mental health, trauma, it shows up in different ways. If we're not dealing with that piece of work that, okay, we can say slavery's gone so many years ago, but it's having an impact on some people. People are being marginalised and I'm part of that experience.

And you can't deny that experience for me, but no one wants to talk about it. And it's, where does it go? So that's just a little bit of the fundamentals of the context of my experience. But then I guess when I was diagnosed with dyslexia, it all made sense for me. It all made sense that, you know, how can I show up?

Okay, so I'm black. I'm a woman, I'm a dyslexic. So we've got the woman piece of the glass ceiling. I knew about that being part of a matriarchal, you know, we were strong women, so I couldn't show up and be strong because that would look like you're a black strong woman and that's going to have another connotation.

Then, okay, then I'm dyslexic. This all felt very negative. It all felt like there's an you know injusticeness, you know, if that makes a word because dyslexics like me, I like to make up new words, but they just didn't feel right. So how do I choose? How do I choose to show up? They're all part of me.

So if we're talking about burnout, for example, can you imagine you're going through your life at some point? When do you stop to pause and actually take a breath? Yeah, if you're kind of reacting or responding to how you're meant to be showing up, how is a society or system created that you're having to kind of react if you don't sort of take control on yourself and actually reflect on what's actually going on to be present and to be able to live your life. What is the purpose and what is my purpose if i'm reacting because I'm having to think oh well that person doesn't like me because of this or if i move my hands they're going to say that i'm being aggressive? Where does it stop and where can I breathe? So I think this all being strong and being resilient is great. But I also I'm I'm also vulnerable and I didn't know how to do that because I was always having to be strong.

Jayne: Yeah.

Marcia: So I think that that could be an element for some people and may not be even aware of it because you subconsciously just learned to do this thing or behave this way and you, there's, yeah, burnout can really happen and it is really real.

And I don't think people get the opportunity and the space sometimes to share that and really reflect unless they're going through therapy, unless they're having coaching or having a mentor where some of those aspects are being looked at to how you show up and how confident you are to actually find your voice.

Because people say, how did you get to speak? And I had to feel the fear and do it anyway. That's been part of my life, whether there's other elements of other neurodiverse elements there, but I do tend to, okay, I just go for it. And I think this particular part of my story before I wrote the book was about sharing my story because I didn't want to be silent anymore.

You know, my ancestors, you know, walked through fire for me to be here and how am I going to show up? And it's a really hard one. And I just made the call of just sharing that and there is vulnerability in that. There is a little bit of trauma in that because every time I share a piece of my story, I'm having to relive some of that.

But I also know it can help and make a difference to others in telling that story. And another thing I want to say, which is really important, and I think people get really confused when I wrote the book, Black Brilliant and Dyslexic, yes, I did write it on the basis of having Black authors or people telling this story, but it's not about being Black.

It's about the fact that people are not always being seen. You see me when you want to, but then you don't see me other times, you know, what is that about? And so people maybe are fearful to talk about conversations that they don't understand. Or it's unknown to them because they've not been in that community group or they've not been in that kind of setting to have those conversations.

But we have to be more comfortable, you know, with that. So sometimes you have to be uncomfortable to be comfortable, but that should be what learning is about.

Jayne: Yeah.

Marcia: It should be what's learning about, we should be evolving as people understanding each other, compromising, having balance regardless of religion.

What is all that about? So for me, I think because also the trauma aspect for me is that I selectively muted as a child, I had a lot of time to reflect. When I tell you the things I'm thinking about, that's probably why I couldn't really relate to my peers because I was trying to understand who I was.

Because why couldn't I speak? Why couldn't I say what I wanted to say? Because it was fear. Because I already felt different because I couldn't show up like my peers who were writing things I'm writing, but I'm getting red marks. So you can see if we don't deal that trauma or that kind of foundations from our early years, and they say nought to five is the most important years of a child's life.

So if I'm not getting those fundamentals, and I don't mean just from home because I felt my parents really showed me that unconditional love. So I was very fortunate. I got a lot of love, but I didn't get love I felt from the system. So that's a system that we're being put into. How are they supporting us?

You know, not to say they have to have the whole ownership about diversity, but how we as young people, children who are neurodiverse. So there's something not quite right. So we've talked to that about that prison system part. We talked about, you know, going into the workplace and showing up. There's something not quite right.

We all know there's something not quite right, but no one's doing anything to kind of work through it. We're starting to do things, but the school, I think a lot of you know, emphasis is on school, but we're not funding schools. It's always, we don't have any money, but we're nurturing children. So we have to think outside the box.

We need to find a different way. So by the time you get to be an adult, of course, you're going to be burnt out. If you're having to mask, if you're, you're, you've developed imposter syndrome, you know, I used to talk like to 200 students, they'll go "Miss that was amazing talk. But inside me, I'm thinking, why am I standing here talking. I'm an imposter, because I've had to feel like I've had to hack this system to show up.

Jayne: Yeah.

Marcia: So then there's a lot of self-doubt, self-belief, confidence, self-esteem, and that's all started in that early foundations of primary school. We're not even talking about secondary school, primary school where I didn't feel I belonged. I felt like that alien, as I said. So how do you begin to even unpick that?

If you don't do that inner child work, which I had to do, I had to invest in myself and do that work because I was trying to seek the answer to understand why I was feeling the way I was. Why would I feel really low? And why would I feel, you know, that I couldn't show up and I didn't want to be here?

What was that all about? Where did that come from? And it's complex and I do feel that sometimes we have to do that work and that can be scary for some people to start opening up, whether we call it, you know, into that box and start unpicking some of those things. But within some of that for me, and I can only speak for me, has become healing and peace.

So it's, it's that piece as well, you know, and that can be hard for people to even want to open up that box to start unpicking. So that's really a little bit of my thoughts and some of my journey around being dyslexic, being black and a woman. You know, there's so many intersections, stereotypes, assumptions made without asking questions.

And actually sometimes not wanting to know, because we talk about unconscious bias and biases. Some of the biases are conscious because we don't know when we, we, we don't want to say nothing because we say anything we're scared to say the wrong thing. But if you don't say anything, then what happens?

Jayne: Yeah.

Marcia: You have people who are traumatised and I'm not just talking about being black. I'm talking about people who are neurodiverse. Because we've not got a system that is radically inclusive, making decisions to make things different. And we, and we don't want to just blame teachers.

We've got to think about the training system. These things are not new. We've been talking about them for centuries, you know, our training system from, you know, the old system is kind of for me, if you know, and I've been in education, we're working in education for the last 30 years, I feel like it's a bit broken.

And I was one of those same children that was going to give up. I was in that corner. So what was my life statistics? What was the expectations of a girl growing up in Hackney? What was that? Because I didn't feel that you had my back, but I'm told or we're told we have to go to school. And, you know, we've got a high proportion of young people who are not going to school anymore and don't feel safe.

And we talk a lot more now about psychological safety. So if we're talking about that in the school system, what happens in the workplace? And if we haven't dealt with all of those things. And then you want to show up and be your best, right? We talk about authenticity, being our authentic self, but how can we be, if we don't feel safe.

If I say one thing or I use my hand, you know, somebody said that that was aggressive and you know, I'm down there now in a performance and be careful about how I use, then I'm going to be fearful about anything I'm saying, and I'm scared to lose my job because I've got to pay my bills.

It's a cycle, but we've just grown up from adults from school. It's, it's complex. And I could talk about this forever and, you know, I'll let you say a bit, cause I think I've spoken a lot, but you can see how the patterns of burnout and , if we don't deal with some of that inner child work.

And I think that's my ending on that kind of piece. We've got to do some of that work if we feel we can, or we're up to it. And if we've got the right support or a coach, depending on where you are on your journey, on the chapters of your life.

Jayne: Everything that you said that's needed is about finding the voice and speaking out and shedding a light on things and easing the discomfort around the topics so that people can have conversations around it and open it up and explore it and whether that's in the education system, whether it's in workplaces, whether it's simply somebody reflecting for themself and connecting dots for themself through listening to you.

And then, as you say, recognising that actually doing some inner work around what might be sitting in the backdrop for them and how that's maybe been impacting on them, that that then could start to help to unlock things and to enable them to take that, that pause that you said at the beginning for, for breath and not be constantly in this sort of fight or flight reactive mode to life, which is absolutely exhausting.

I wonder at the stage that you recognised for you that that would be useful, what was going on at that time? Was it before you'd burned out? Was it after you'd burned out? When did you realise that?

Marcia: I think I realised in my mid twenties. You remember, I was quite aware from a very early age, there was something not quite right with the system.

I was aware of that because I was doing the best I could do. And it still wasn't enough for the system that we've got in structure. So I was fully aware and it's interesting that I've met with many neurodiverse people and there's some kind of, I'm not saying it's a superpower or anything, and I'm not saying it's specifically for people who are ND or neurodiverse, but there's something about being really aware of your whole self.

And with me, I don't just feel words. I don't just see words. I feel them. I visualise them. There's a whole feeling piece, and something didn't feel quite right with the process I was going through in the system. So I would say from very early on, I was probably having burnouts, but it was probably different as a child because I had parents. I had people who nurtured and cared for me. I was exhausted showing up for school. And that's the selective mute. So I can't say there was a time. It's just that I had different support mechanisms and systems to support me through those processes. I mean, because of the selective mute, I went to psychotherapy, so I then had a different kind of support and that psychotherapy only came about 'cause my mum said I wasn't reading and she came to the school and said, "What's happening? My daughter's not reading". They did some assessments and I think because I was selectively mute, and this is the other thing about assumptions and our systems and when, when it worked, it doesn't work. It's like people choose to what bits they take. They felt something more sinister was happening at home why I was not engaging in school.

And this happens a lot. And it happens for people of colour in particular, you know, and then, you know, it's not my story to tell, but there's lots of things that can happen and people go into different sets, you know, even people being sectioned, we don't really know some of the full stories to how we got there or who got there.

And we know it's a high proportion of African Caribbean or Caribbean descents, which are sometimes sectioned in this way, without knowing those intersections, what happened to how we got there and no one's doing the unpicking. As I said, I can't share, it's not my experience, but I know there were things and I've been to things, but where these conversations are happening.

So, so do you see, that's why I say life can be a thin line. You can go one way or another sometimes because of the support mechanisms in place or because of the conscious biases or biases. So for me, I had it where being a black girl, it was, you know, the quietness was okay, but there must be something else sinister happening.

It's only because my mum stepped in. Those days you could go into the school, you weren't banned, or you could go and say I need an appointment. It was so much more smoother and easy. And that's how my mum got that support for me. And I think that's why I think I've had that early work.

It was a doll's house and a wooden doll. I remember the wooden doll house and she would ask me lots of questions. Of course, I still wasn't saying my whole business because I was taught you don't say everything. But when I did an interview with my mum in a podcast, my mum said it's because they thought something else was happening at home. And I had no idea it was that I thought it was about me learning.

So do you see what I mean? So for me, I was very aware from very early on, again, that intersection, I can't speak for everybody. But I think when I got to university, because that was one of my goals, it became apparent, I felt like I was carrying a lot. I was the first, it's actually making me quite tearful, I was actually the first person to go to university in my family, but I still didn't have the strategies to actually fully show up.

And it was getting a lot so I won't go into but it felt very dark and it felt there was lots of days where I wasn't sleeping, you know, one day would going to another I was starting to hear the birds and the next day. Oh, it's morning again. And because I felt the pressure of feeling like I didn't want to fail.

And I didn't feel good enough. And, and I know there's some data and some work going on where we're now starting to look at people dropping out of uni and what are the intersections to why they're dropping out. So some, some, some work around that coming up, which is really exciting. And I could have been one of those people.

And it was just the friend that said, Marcia, "We're going to go and talk to the head of your department to see if we can look at what we can do. All it sometimes takes is someone believing in you or somebody holding your hand. And I've been fortunate. I've had a few people who've held my hand.

So the person who done the diagnosis for me to get my educational psychologist report, Jenny, who I got to meet a year ago. She held my hand and helped me and I felt she saved me really from, you know, sinking because somebody started to believe in Marcia and see that, you know, it's not just that you're not good enough. There's something happening here more than you realise.

It was my government politics teacher. He said, "Marcia, you know, you're so articulate. And if we're in the classroom you know, and we're speaking, you're getting an A every time, but when it doesn't kind of relate when you're writing it down."

Jayne: Yeah.

Marcia: So that, that person seeing something in me genuinely led me to Jenny, who did an assessment. And then from Jenny doing an assessment, I had an educational psychologist assessment to say, you are highly dyslexic in lots of areas, that spiky profile. Do you see what I mean? So I think I've been fortunate to have people who've believed in me, whether it's because I'm a girl, whatever the stories of those intersections to how I've showed up. I was quite quiet, I feel those people helped me and saved me along the way, and I will be forever grateful.

So for me, the turning point came when I was like more now on my own. I'm at university as an adult, and it just felt really hard. I just about understand the framework of writing essays now, so I was there, but then that organisational piece, trying to put things together, I didn't have all of the strategies, I didn't have all the keys I had some because I got to this part.

I needed this next level of understanding and it just felt really, I was on my own. I wasn't, but I felt that I was going back to that 10 year old child.

Jayne: Yeah.

Marcia: That nobody understands that. And then you start saying, well, I feel like I'm 10. No one gets that unless you're in that field of understanding.

So I took myself to counseling and that really helped me and you know, this one friend, Nick I felt he saved me too. So I had lots of saviours, if you know what I mean, in helping me, when I didn't feel like I was strong enough or have the voice. And I think what happened for me, I reverted back to that non verbal muting.

So that's what I do as a protecting mechanism. So yeah, it was at that point when I was at university, my first year and I was really finding it hard and I almost thought I'm going to fail and I'm not feeling good enough. All those things that imposter syndrome, you know, self sabotage was coming back.

And so I think that was my turning point. I can't remember the lady who did the counselling, obviously, I'm not trying to disclose her name or anything, but she again was one of those people who just helped me along the way. If I didn't take that next step, again, I don't know where I would have gone.

You see, there's these transition points of steps and support. How do you ask for help if you've never learned how to do that? For me, you don't ask nobody, you just get on, you strive. So that served me for a long time, but then it doesn't within these systems that don't work and the processes that don't work for you because they're kind of broken or they're set up not to work for you.

So you know, I've been fortunate. I've had some really good people who were genuinely caring and could see potential in me, which we've all got potential in different ways. We've all got our strengths in different ways. But I was just fortunate people saw those at those really integral points in my life that it could have gone down a different road.

Jayne: Yeah. And it sounds because of those junctions and that support coming in the trajectory then led to a positive path for you, which is great.

Marcia: Positive, positive. Yeah. Positive in lots of aspects. Yeah, but still rocky.

Jayne: Absolutely.

Marcia: You've still got the intersections of being black and a woman and all these other things that go along with it, you still have to navigate and you have to have thick skin because they're real.

And I now can speak about that with conviction and say, you cannot deny me that. And I'm not going to be oppressed and go in a corner anymore. They are real, but we need to talk about them.

Jayne: And I guess that's one of the big things that isn't built in, in terms of our education system or workplaces or other areas of life is recognition for the impact that the generations before us and their lived experience has on us. There's a lot now coming through in the world of neuroscience and our understanding at a cellular level, what, what we're made up of and genetically the impact of things that have been felt, experienced, thought and how it's passed on to us, even if it's not explicitly said in our family units, it's there in our genes, it's there in our DNA, it's, it's, it's brought in with us. So we don't always necessarily know where something comes from. There's just a sense in us that, oh, I need to back into the corner and not say anything.

But I guess that's one of the areas where some of the psychotherapeutic counselling approaches, and even in coaching, depending on the training of the coach, there's work that can help us as individuals when we recognise that there are things that have helped us, that we've had an internal dialogue going on that maybe we're not conscious of, but then through talking about it, we start to become aware of it.

So then we can hold that awareness and look at it and, and sense into it and see, okay, this helped me actually through this time of my life or in these experiences. But if I continue applying that to everything and it being my default setting and it becomes kind of overplayed then, like you said earlier, I'm constantly then in this place of response.

And it's not a conscious choice about how I'm interacting, how I'm communicating, how I'm showing up, whether I'm even able to take a pause. So I think it's really fascinating that as a field of work, I think there's so much we need to learn.

Marcia: There's no data, there's no anything because who's invested in it? Who cares?

Jayne: Yeah.

Marcia: And who's lens. So we talk about the therapy and why I'm talking and I'm going to give a talk and I think I've given a lot of my talk away actually, but you know, that the lens of who's doing that. So we have the therapy, we have all of these things, but who's lens?

And that's the thing. You know, for me, I knew very long because especially because I learned a lot about African history and you know, before I was learning at school because it wasn't taught at school, the curriculum didn't cover anything to give me empowerment that there's something greater to me and there was inventors, queens and kings before, you know, some of the things that we learn, you know, in the system that we're in, in the curriculum, in the history books.

So I always thought things were like a bit of a farce because that's not real because that's not the only stories. And actually you're not telling my story. So I was fortunate again, I had Saturday school, so I built a lot of understanding of who I was and that's really important.

And if you don't have those aspects as well, so a lot of it's not built in. So whose lens, and that's again, why I wrote the book. We have lots of organisations out there, but whose lens are they talking from? I don't see myself there. So why would I want to be there?

I've always been a bit different, I speak to everybody. I love people. And, you know, we talk about the consciousness, but 99. 9, we're all human, no matter what our colour of our skin is. It's all the other bits. What is different But 99. 9, we're all the same. Yeah. So if we take that, so how did we get here? How did we get where we're segregating people?

How did we get there? So you're segretating me because of the colour of my skin. Okay. Oh no, you're segretating me because I'm a woman. You're segregating me because I'm working class. You're segregating me because I don't speak the right language. What is it? What, what, you know, what is that? So if we start unpicking some of that, what is that?

So there's prejudice, there's racism. You know, this is just real talk. I'm not hiding this. I'm not unapologetic because I've had to live it. And it's exhausting and I'm actually really tired to be honest.

But I've got children. I want a different life for them.

It may not be in my own lifetime, but I've got children. So I've got to keep going, but it is tiring. I keep it real.

Jayne: You shared there a kind of an element really of, of where we might be able to move forward collectively to make progress in the direction of, of opening things up and really honouring that 99 percent that is the same, so that that 1 percent that's previously been seen as difference begins to dissolve. I wonder in your book, you, you kind of touch on other solutions, I guess to where we're at the moment and how can we in the generation that we're in, and I'm not presuming you're the same age as me because you're probably a lot younger than me, but as mothers, we've got, you know, we've, we've got children, there's a, there's another generation beneath us that are coming through that making a massive presumption here, but you probably care quite deeply about them not going through the same struggles that you've gone through.

Marcia: But sadly, I do think the same thing. I've got a son. I go, if he goes on the bus, what happens? Unfortunately, as a black mother, I've got other things that I've got to think about too. Yeah, I'm a young black boy. So it's just so many things to be honest. I don't know how long a piece of string is and how, you know, we haven't got a lot of time in those conversations.

They're pockets of conversations, but we need allyships. We need collaboration. We need thought thinkers and leaders that think a little bit different and willing and willing to make change and actually say what they do and do what they say rather than just this kind of tick box. "Oh, we've done a diversity piece and let's move on."

You've got to do the inner child work. What is your organisation, what you're doing? So that's just to give you a little snippet, unless I do a masterclass on it or something, but you know, And it's all going to be my lived experience. I, I don't say I have all the answers. That's why we have to collaborate and work together.

That's the only way we can enrich our society. If we exclude people from that, who's at the table? It's not going to be me. They're not going to look like me and we need to get over ourselves and realise there is enrichness by diversity and if you just feel that you could have a whole board that's all white, then that's just not going to work because you're going to, you're going to have your perspectives and your viewpoints, your unconscious biases that you feel you don't have, but you do.

This has lots of things to be honest and where do you start? Because you've got to start somewhere.

Jayne: Exactly.

Marcia: And do you want to start somewhere? Do you want to? You need to ask yourself those questions. Do you want to? If you're privileged enough and it's all going well for you, maybe you just don't have the feelings and the compassion you think you have.

So you have to do some of that work as well to what is the issue by Marcia having a book called Black Brilliant Dyslexic. You need to ask yourself, what is the issue with that?

Because the only reason why I'm doing that, because I've not seen myself anywhere else. So I have to call it out.

Not because I want to say I'm black. I'm not even black, I'm brown. I've got a brown, brown complexion . You know? But you do what you got what I mean? You know, you need to ask yourself the questions. I don't need to ask myself the questions in that way. I've to ask myself questions. I have to be accountable to things.

But you know what I mean? If we are not wanting to have a conversation and there's something that bothers you with having a book called Black Brilliant. If you wanna have a book and it's called White, brilliant, but you know, but it's defeating what the kind of, the idea of this is. It's not because we are wanting to, it's because we are not seen.

Jayne: Thank you Marcia. Yeah. I think whatever reason they're listening all of what you shared for all of us to, to go away and reflect and think about how we're bringing ourselves to, to our lives in general. And that, that point that you made about people saying what they mean and meaning what they say and doing what they say they're going to do as well.

I think there's something very very significant. I don't think anyone has the answers, but there's something in that that I think does hold the key. So thank you.

Marcia: Yeah, we've got to start somewhere. We're just born, aren't we? No, there's no kind of like directory, like to be a parent or, you know, you, you find a way and you, you have lived it.

You, you learned things along the way, didn't you? Things might be passed down to you things you, you like some things you think, no, that's not, I'm not going to do that, but that's how I feel society works. We learn things, but some things we're not learning. We just stayed there and we haven't learned.

So no, it's a pleasure. I, I, I came with a lot more than I expected I would. Not that I'm, I will ever hold back, but there was a lot of emotions of journey and tears that I've kind of held in this space, which feels safe and I hope people who listen to this can find something in it that there's some understanding of what may be happening for them or maybe not, or just appreciate the story because it makes them have some awareness, you know, I hope that it does that.

So, you know, if it does anything at all, that they take away some awareness about somebody else's lived experience and how it looks for somebody who's been born in UK. I was you know, born here, I've never lived anywhere else.

Thank you for you.

You're welcome.