The Waging Peace Podcast
Introducing the Waging Peace Podcast, where Diana Oestreich dives headfirst into finding the unsung heroes of change, rebels against the status quo, and visionaries shaping a world that refuses to settle.
Discover your power, ignite your passion, and redefine what it means to wage peace and make a damn difference in this world.
Join the revolution as we learn how to transform our communities with justice, equality, and unwavering connection.
Are you ready to shake things up? Welcome to the edgier side of peacemaking.
The Waging Peace Podcast
Breaking Boundaries: Layla F. Saad 's book asks us how we become A Good Ancestor?
A viral instagram challenge became a New York Times bestselling book that challenged a generation the summer George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery became a rallying cry in cities and towns across the country, forcing the United States to confront the racism of its past and present.
How do we combat racism, change the world and become A Good Ancestor?
Layla Saad, an East African, Arab, British, Black, Muslim woman living in Qatar, came up with an impressive answer — a 28-day process that she calls a "personal anti-racism tool" designed to teach those with white privilege how systemic racism works and how they can stop contributing to white supremacy in the world.
Her book is called Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor.
I wanted to catch up with her and ask her
- How does language change us or challenge us?
- What purpose is worthy of spending our lives on?
- How do we find our purpose?
- Where we can do Justice, wage peace and put love on display as ordinary people if we aren’t a NYT best selling author?
Her superpower – language – becomes a beacon of inspiration, a tool for courage, and a medium to spread love. Tune in and join us for an enlightening conversation that promises to challenge your perspectives and ignite a your spark.
Follow her on IG @laylafsaad
https://laylafsaad.com/
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Welcome. Welcome, layla. Thank you, I'm excited to be here. Well, you've definitely been on my bucket list of people that I've like always wanted to get to connect with and chat with. So you know, when they do those dinner party things of like, who would you invite to dinner? I'm like, well, I've got like a solid list of 10 and also a list of 50. So this is like a wonderful day in my world, yeah that's what people who don't host podcasts don't understand.
Speaker 2:It's just an excuse for us to have interesting conversations with the people we admire and who inspire us. So yeah it's a cheat code, for sure.
Speaker 1:I feel like it's kind of like one of those like friendship bracelets, of like, hey, can I give you a friendship bracelet? Can we hang out and people will do it. So I think it's been the most exciting and I think a life giving thing is starting a podcast to be able to connect with people that you see, that I see are brave with their life and, layla, you are brave with your life and people who are generous with their wisdom and with their hope for our common good, that you can do it. And so I've watched you from afar for many years. But I just want everybody to know. I feel like our social location matters and then also like where we put our feet, where we're sitting in the chair. I think is a really valuable thing and I wanna honor that. So could you tell all of our wonderful listeners where you are?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm sitting in my chair in my home office at home in Doha, qatar, which is where I live, with my family, who are downstairs. My son is currently doing his homework while my husband supervises him. My teenage daughter is in her room doing God knows what. She barely speaks any words to us these days when she's there. And not too far away from us lives my mom and dad, who I get to see every day, especially my mom.
Speaker 2:I go see her every day, and so, yeah, this is the place where I live, and I was writing a lot around location and identity this week, as I'm writing an essay for a book that I'm contributing to, and I spoke about my parents background, our ethnic background, our cultural background, being a third culture individual, which is somebody who spent the formative years of their childhood in a country that wasn't the country of their parents, and I've really lived around the world, so I find it hard to like most third culture individuals. I think I find it hard to place where is home, but home for me is where my family are, and so wherever we are, that's home for me.
Speaker 1:That's really beautiful. I feel like just to hear that again and again, that I feel like so much right now. People feel displaced in many ways and that look for belonging. So for you to say that your home is your family and that can be anywhere, I think is such a good way to describe it. And there's a professor named Mahmood El-Kati and he is a professor in Minnesota.
Speaker 1:He's actually retired, I think, on anti-racism, but I remember seeing him speak once and he challenged people. He's like you can't. You can be from a land and you can be from a language, but you can't be from whiteness. You can be from a land and you can be from a language, and I have always been digging my hands into the soil of what he said, of that and looking at the land of where I grew up, but also the language that I was taught, that I was told to see things, the language of our worldview, the language of who's good and who's not, and who's our team and who do we not trust. So for you, being a third culture person, when you think about the land you grew up and the language that you grew up with, what is that spark for you?
Speaker 2:That sparks a lot because my parents' mother tongue is Swahili, which they're both from the Swahili coast, so my mom from Pemba, which is an island that's part of the Zanzibar archipelago, and then my dad from Mombasa, which is the second largest city in Kenya, and so they met in Wales in the 70s and their mother tongue for both of them is Swahili. They raised us, myself and my siblings, speaking both English and Swahili, so I understand it plenty. But because I grew up in an environment where the primary language is English, english became my mother tongue, and so when it comes to speaking Swahili, I don't speak it very often. The person I speak it most to is with my mom, who for her, that's still the best way for her to express herself is in that language. She speaks English perfectly fine, but that's the language she feels most herself in, and for me that's something really special, that connection between myself and her and that place of me feeling most safe to speak my stumbling Swahili with her and no, I'm not gonna be teased for it, I'm not gonna be made to feel like you're not really this. So that's one thought that I have around language.
Speaker 2:Another thought that I have is, obviously I'm a writer and being a writer. Language is so many things. Language is a tool. Language is a place where I get to understand what it is that I think and feel about my own experience and what I see in the world, and it's also the way in which I share my art. It's my chosen art form that I choose to not only engage in for my own joy and pleasure, but also where I serve from as well, and so I'm really interested in language and the ways in which different writers express themselves in different way to share their art.
Speaker 2:It's oftentimes when new writers are trying to figure out like what's my voice, what's like my way, and I wish I could write like so-and-so writer. I wish I could write like this writer and really coming to the place of understanding you're only ever gonna be able to write in your own voice, and to try and make your voice into someone else's is a disservice to you, but it's also a disservice to the world, because I couldn't imagine if Tony Morrison felt like gosh. I wish I wrote more like Octavia Butler and Octavia Butler thought gosh. I wish I wrote more like Audre Lorde and Audre Lorde was like. I wish I was more like Bell Hooks, like, every one of them brought their own magic, their own medicine, and so when I think about language, I really think about also honoring our own unique expression of language and knowing that, first of all, it's enough, but also that it's what we need. We need your voice, we need your language that helps us write this story of humanity. Is your voice, your language?
Speaker 1:I was just talking to, as you said, somebody who I just really, really loved and I loved what he's doing. Nicholas Smith just wrote a book called Artivism for Kids, but his art has truly carried grief, it's carried stories. It was the most shared. His painting of George Floyd was the most shared around the world, thanks to Michelle Obama God bless her. But he has a saying and he says that he's like I have a unique perspective and I'm going to fearlessly share it with the world. Oh, yes, and I wrote it down. And then I wrote it down three times and then I had that thought with yourself of like can I say that I get the courage to believe that, no matter what anybody else thinks, no matter what publishing thinks, no matter what the going narrative that makes sense to people, will I share my unique perspective with the world fearlessly? And I was like that is a throwdown. But it's also that glimmer where you're like your little kid self says yes, and then your adult self is like I don't know.
Speaker 1:It could be costly, speaking of tension and costly things. You wrote a book in 2020 that spoke to over 100,000 people, hosted a viral Instagram challenge that we can safely say changed the world, equipping people at a moral crisis moment with a personal anti-racism tools that folks desperately wanted and needed. But too often we don't acknowledge the humanity of the creator behind things we love or the writer who did the work to give that offering to us. And so this is a couple of years later and I really wanted to come back to you as the creator, as the person who generously and at a cost, gave the world something that people desperately needed, and also on a very lightning pole topic. I feel like when you talk about taking responsibility and being disciplined in how you change the white supremacy of the world, that brings out a lot of trolls. So I guess my question where I just wanted to start and this can go any direction that you'd like but what is the most significant place in your life that has changed since you wrote me, me, you and white supremacy?
Speaker 2:Hmm, say that again. What is the most significant?
Speaker 1:What is the most significant place in your life that has changed since you wrote the book?
Speaker 2:I guess I'm thinking about how much the world has changed, first of all, because that was 2020. We have been through and are, you know, in many parts of the world still going through, a global pandemic. We've been through the big energy of the Black Lives Matter kind of global uprising of 2020, and then the subsequent kind of white lash back of that and works that came before it. Like you know, it's supremacy of book bans, attacks on critical race theory, really a lot of right wing nationalistic rhetoric and uprisings as a result of the courage, the bravery, like you said, of so many creators, activists, thinkers, movement organizers who were like this is what needs to happen. And so I feel like we're in a strange time where I think many of us are having to remind ourselves or almost like dig back in to what keeps us sustained through this work, because the disappointment and hurt of everything that came out of that and then the backlash that comes afterwards, it is so devastating and I think we take for granted just how devastating that is. And so I've seen a lot within myself and within many of my peers in this time of the importance of really digging into our own self care, into community care, into prioritizing joy into really thinking about not just how can I call on that warrior energy of pushing, but also being reminded that we're in this work for the long term. And so, when we're devastated in this way, how can we make sure that we don't allow that devastation to make us stop? Because when we stop which is the very design of what this backlash is designed to do is to make you stop, to make you feel so hopeless, to divide you, to devastate you so much that it just doesn't feel worth it anymore, and so we really have to, like root into okay, so what makes this worth it for me, then? And it can't at least for me, it can't just be based on even though we want the result. It can't just be based on result. It can't just be based on if I get this result, then I'll keep going. And so I really root into this philosophy of becoming a good ancestor, because that gives me a very long term, intergenerational, even spiritual, view of why I do the work that I do.
Speaker 2:And I was writing today, I've been thinking about my next book and I've been thinking about more, about what does this mean? To become a good ancestor, what is it that we ultimately want, and I'd written about recently how the work that good ancestors do is justice work, healing work and creative work. Right, and so we labor. We labor in this way, but for what ends? What is it that we ultimately want? What is it that we're saying when we have a world where justice exists? What is that? What is that ultimate result?
Speaker 2:And for me, I eventually came down to it's love. Love is what it is that we actually want. We want to not only practice it, we want to experience it, and so to experience love, we don't have to wait to get to the end result. We don't have to wait to get to a world that is free of systems of supremacy. We can cultivate, nourish, share, experience and embody love now, and that can be this really generative force.
Speaker 2:And I started writing about all the ways that movements throughout time, as well as modern thinkers today, talk about love as this force that drives it. I think sometimes we shy away from it because it's hard to define love and also because it can be seen as this thing. That's very unreal. It's sort of disembodied and it's sort of like. You know, love is like. What is that? But when you really look at the movement, the movement leaders throughout time, and how their work was ultimately very spiritual, even though they all believed in, their spirituality was different. They had a different form of spirituality and what that meant to them, but love was this guiding, guiding force, and so that's where I find myself now, and I think the roots were always there.
Speaker 2:You know, when I did the Instagram challenge in 2018, and when I wrote the book in 2020, my intention was always to lead with love, but I feel like now, years later, that has become something that I'm thinking about in a more, in an even more tangible way, because I'm seeing it as that's the only thing that has the power to not only dismantle the systems of supremacy that we see today, but also build the world that it is that we do want, and I see systems of supremacy whether it's supremacy around race, supremacy around gender, supremacy around able bodiedness, whatever the case may be as a lack of love.
Speaker 2:It's lovelessness, and so, in kind of pursuing pursuing what is love and pursuing how can I embody it. I think it's very worthy pursuit of a human life and bringing it into practice and sharing it with other people. I think, ultimately is the point, I think, for many of us when we get to the end of our lives. That's what we want to say we've done. And when I think about being a good ancestor, it's not just about how will I be remembered, what will people say to me, what monuments and biographies will be written about me? But really, did I do the work of passing on this intergenerational legacy of love from one generation to the other? Did I help facilitate that, or did I stand in its way and I just want to be someone who helped to facilitate that?
Speaker 1:I think you're so right about love being one the answer. But also people's eyes glaze over. They're like sure love. But I think the point that you make about being a good ancestor is one of the most. I think it calls us to account, because to be a good ancestor forces us to make a choice and forces us to reckon with am I going to leave? Am I going to make the way wider so that more people get to experience thriving and more people are going to experience not just surviving but joy? Will I make that for more than just me?
Speaker 1:The studies show that everybody thinks they're a good person, no matter what their actions are. There's just this thank the good Lord that we all think we're awesome, but how does somebody go from loving themselves and their family and their ideas? I feel like that's a pretty natural place to start. But how do we? A good ancestor looks for the common good. A good ancestor works on behalf of more than themselves and I feel like that is such a bold vision and it's a bold call and it's a reckoning with yourself of am I just going to take care of me myself and I, or is the possibility that I'm going to extend justice? I'm going to extend love to more than just the people that are important to me, and I think that's why being a good answer is kind of badass. I'm like it is asking us to do something that most likely the person next to us and behind us is not doing.
Speaker 2:You know, what I also love about it is that it's not the question of will I be a good role model, which is really about how other people see you. Will they see you in a positive light? Will they uphold you on this pedestal and say that was a good person? This is just coming to me as we're speaking, but I think the real power of striving to be a good ancestor is that there is a desire or an understanding that, in order to be a good ancestor, you have to be in relation to other people. It doesn't mean that you have to have birthed or raise children or be a parent. It doesn't mean that. It just means that you understand I have a connection to other human beings, whether I know them or not, and so it does call us to account, which, again, I think accountability is present when we understand our connection to other people and when we understand that we do have a choice how we're going to live. We don't have a choice that it's going to end. We don't have a choice that we're all going to eventually become ancestors. That is, that's been decided for us.
Speaker 2:But we do have a choice on will I choose to use my time to act in ways that demonstrate love, and love not just through my words, which are easy, and I'm a writer, I love words, but words are easy. Do I live them? And I think you're right. People hear the word love, their eyes glaze over, and so that's why I like to think about love in two ways. Number one, in Bell Hooks' book all about love. She shares the definition of love that she really loved, which is from the book the Road Less Traveled by M Scott Peck, and he defined love as the will to extend oneself for one's own or another person's spiritual growth.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So it's for both. It's for ourselves and it's for other people, and it's the will to extend, to go beyond what you have to do just to be able to like, survive day to day and say I see myself and other people as having the spirit within and I want to nurture that Right and so I like that. And then, within my own work, I talk about love being demonstrated through these three different types of work justice work, which is about helping to create a world in which everybody gets to live in the dignity of their humanity. And I think justice work isn't just about repairing what went wrong, but actually about seeing dignity and humanity as the found like. It's the basis. It's not something extra that's a nice to have, this is what it should be. And so this is the bare minimum, because I think sometimes when we hear justice we think about, we think only about it in relation to oppression and what needs to be fixed, and we don't think we think once that's fixed, we don't need justice anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I read something about one of the definitions of justice or where it comes from, in the justice system, and in one version the word justice means honorable. So are we acting honoring to each other? Yes. Is there an honorable way that we are interacting together or fixing things together?
Speaker 2:Yes, I love that I love that.
Speaker 1:Right, I think my work is around peacemaking. It's also one of those words that people are like God, my eyes glaze over. It means nothing and everything, but not and, as I keep looking like it's the possibility of what we could do, right where we're at, together today, in one action, or even if we commit our whole lives, our entire time here, of which we'll never regret. But I feel like coming up with a generative definition that shows that it is something that we build and we do. Yes, it's not something that we arrive at and it's not something that we have to be.
Speaker 1:You do not have to be a calm, happy, zen person to be waging peace. It's active and it disrupts things, and so my working definition of peace is a little bit like yours with justice. It's where everybody has a seat at the table and they have what they need to thrive. Yeah, and that's kind of the step up. I'm like just surviving is not what we wish for ourselves or our kids or anybody it has to be and thriving means, given the seat you sit in, in the place you sit, it'll be different.
Speaker 1:It should be different. People deserve dignity and that means they will get different things and that's a positive, absolutely, absolutely, yeah. So it's hard to be able to catch what the great possibility that we can do when we choose justice and we choose love and we try to do something that hasn't been done. And you say the word love and I feel like, yeah, everybody likes love and everybody loves to love. And at the same time, how can we look around us and it be a struggle to see how many of our systems our education system, our health care system, our warring system, our military system, our justice system and our laws when we look at our history and even present tense, I'm like I don't know why anyone is confused that this is unloving towards most people in most ways, like this doesn't have love at it. So I would think it would be pretty simple to see.
Speaker 2:And yet you know, yes, you know, and I think about, I think about you know the period of time in which African people were enslaved and I think about how those who are participating in that you know, in that enslavement, whether they were the actual people who were capturing and selling human beings or they were buying them, you know, or they were just in that society at the time and how, like you said, you know, so then would have said I think I'm a pretty good person. You know that, because I want to come back to this like good this word good it's not for us to. It's not for us to self assess whether we are good or not. In the same way, it's not for us to self assess whether we are an ally to a group of people who don't have the privileges that we have. You know, our work is just to do the work. Whether it was good or not, that will come out in the wash later on down the line. But our work is to, like your work, to wage peace, to do the labouring, and I really, today I was writing about you know why do the work? Like it's so hard, it feels so grueling, but for me it comes down to. I just don't want to get to the end of my life and feel like I didn't use this gift that I've been given to live, love and to make the world a better place for other human beings as well.
Speaker 2:And you know, there's a lot to be said around the ways that other people thrive. Some people thrive from greed and from seeing themselves as superior to other people and from having more than other people and taking pride in that, you know, and that's their definition of thriving. History will tell if they're seen as good ancestors, but I know that for me and my values, that's not how I would define it. You know, and I get really inspired in a new book about looking at the systems that exist and it's really. It can be really disheartening looking at that.
Speaker 2:I get really inspired looking at the people who I can see are, in their own way, creating things that help to somehow create justice, somehow create healing, somehow inspire hope, somehow create connection. And I really wanna pour all my energy into uplifting those people and uplifting their work, because that's where the magic is really happening and that gives us that like that nourishment, like that re-nourishment of like, yes, everything is terrible, but look at what all these people are doing and they don't have to do it. Nobody's making them do it. They choose to do this work and that tells me I can choose as well and so, yeah, I get a lot of that. Just really replenishes me.
Speaker 1:I feel like that's the gift of when one person walks, has the bravery to walk in their purpose.
Speaker 1:Then the gift keeps going because I look at them, I'm like wow, you're doing it.
Speaker 1:And whether that is something that nobody will know their name or somebody who everybody knows their name, I still get that same encouragement and I get that same like twinkle of like what's possible. When you see people creating art for justice or they're creating community to care for the community. When I see these things and that's one of the things I have talked to a poet from Brooklyn and I've talked to a rapper from LA and I'm talking to Layla in Qatar and I'm like these are people I see activating justice because they're using their purpose, and it is instigating joy for me and it's giving me a bigger possibility and encouragement to show up, Cause I think maybe just for me, but I think it is so much easier to sit on the couch and drink tea and only do the things that I know aren't gonna be painful and they aren't gonna be hard and they aren't gonna have pushback and even be ignored. I think when you do something that you know matters and then people ignore it, it's a little soul crushing to be like oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Or they just don't get it. You're like, but it's this, and they're just like, yeah, I don't get it, I don't get it.
Speaker 1:Right, it's hard. Yeah, there is a book called Man's Search for Meaning and I had been. I was going through some things and a friend was like I want you to read this book because it's about suffering. Yeah, and I was like I don't think it's the right time. Why would you ask?
Speaker 2:It's a hard book. It's a hard book. Fix a Frankel. It's a hard book, right.
Speaker 1:But truthfully, if you've been on my Instagram or my Pinterest, I went on a Frankel frenzy because he what he gives us and for listeners who aren't super familiar, the beginning of his book. It's super small but it sold a millions of copies and he almost never put his. He almost didn't put his name on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:When he published it and the beginning lines. He says I have to tell you that I have two PhDs he's a doctor in psychology and I think he's a medical doctor. He's like and I've survived four concentration camps and I have to tell you these things so that you will listen and read the rest of my book because this idea is so important and I thought you're right, victor.
Speaker 2:Yes, I will listen.
Speaker 1:But the thing that I feel like has been so empowering and also like I see it and I know it and I feel it, even if I couldn't put words to it is he said he says that we need purpose. He says human beings cannot thrive without purpose. They can do a whole lot of stuff, like you mentioned they can get big bank accounts, they can get world fame. They can do a lot of stuff. But he said that in order for a human being to thrive, whether it is surviving a concentration camp or he even said he was practicing in, like America in the 70s, and saw so much anxiety and depression, like his work span from concentration camps from Europe to America, across the globe, and he continues to say that without purpose we will shrivel, without purpose we really can't thrive. And I feel like he said it and it's true. And if it can be true in a concentration camp, then maybe it's true here. And I continue to see people who are walking in their purpose, who are laboring, whether they feel like it's sucking the life out of them or they're sucking at it. I think they're still alive and I recognize that violence.
Speaker 1:And the second thing he said I think also really relates to what you're saying is he said that you can find saints or swine in fellow prisoners or in the guards. You're right, right, basically yes, and that was a little tough to swallow because you didn't wanna throw shade on fellow concentration camp folks but also they're just people. And then for people who were born into Nazi Germany or participated, he still said that he saw humanity, he saw people. And for him to say that he can say that I can't say that. That's not mine to assess, but I also feel like that is the challenge of being a good ancestor, no matter where you're born, no matter what you're in, no matter whether you're complicit in that system or you have broken free or paid the cost to not be anymore, that we can find both. We have a choice to be our true self, which we can be a saint or we can be swine. I love that.
Speaker 2:So what a challenge for today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really love that I'm going to be sitting on that question of purpose as well, because I think we all define purpose differently. Like you were saying, what gives all of us dignity is going to be different for each one of us. What makes us thrive is going to be different for each one of us, and purpose is also very different for each one of us. Some of us who are who who Franco in his language may define as swine, you know, they have their own purpose, right, that drives them and keeps them going.
Speaker 2:But that's why I try not to be so prescriptive in a good ancestor. Is that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, like this list, because how each one of us is here to be, is here to serve, is here to create art. And when I say art, I don't just mean being a painter or being, you know, I mean whatever thing that you create, whether it's a family, a friendship, a book, a podcast. You know you're a teacher, you're a lawyer, whatever the case may be, that's your art, it's something, it's something that you're cultivating, and each one of us has a specific art that we're here to, to contribute, and so our purpose, like I was saying, in the same way that we should not compare what our language sounds like, what our voice sounds like, we also shouldn't compare our purpose. We shouldn't, we shouldn't say well, they are going to be remembered as this greater ancestor than I am, because they have X, y and Z happening, whereas I only have ABC.
Speaker 2:Right, every, I think, every. Maybe I'm getting a little bit esoteric, but every act of love, I think, has its own weight and measure and we can't compare in that way and say they lived with more love, because how do we know Someone who fully like their purpose, has been? Let me, using the example of raising a family, let me pour everything my art, making my love, everything my good ancestorship, into raising this family, and that's all that I'm here to do. Who's to say that that is not as big a service to the world as somebody who runs a global nonprofit that helps millions of people? Right, there's no need to compare, there's no way to compare, and there's no need to either.
Speaker 1:Right, because the comparison only cuts down the possibility that I think is ours to do, and then it also attributes something that may not even be real to somebody else and that's a burden and a weight for them to carry that they don't need and one of the wild things Frankl says to that I still don't totally understand.
Speaker 1:But he's like the purpose of life is not one thing and it's not one thing for each person, he said. But we are responsible to answer the call of life and that might be whatever life is asking of me in Monday morning or this moment, or it might be 20 years from now. But he really puts a lot on responsibility of owning that. Life might be asking us for something in this moment and that's all our responsibility is. That's all our purposes is to respond to that, just that in that moment, I love that.
Speaker 2:I love that because, going back to your question on where I'm at now and even what brings me joy now, life a few years ago was calling me to write this book Me and White Supremacy and that's where I put so much of my focus and I'm really glad that I answered that calling and I acted on that calling and I completed that assignment. And where I'm at now is, yes, life is calling me to write another book, but it's also really calling me to fully immerse myself in the joy and pleasure of art making. That isn't for anyone else's consumption or joy except my own. And it lights me up when I think about it, because I started two arts this year. One is crocheting, one is painting.
Speaker 2:I have no delusions about becoming a master in either one of those things, but every time I poke up my crochet hook on my yarn or every time I sit down with my paintbrush and the canvas in my paints, I just feel so happy, I just feel so alive and so full of giddy joy. And that is also life calling me, and it doesn't necessarily result in OK, and this is going to help these people in this way, in the way that I know and hope that my books do and my writing does, but it reminds me that my life is also for me, that my love is also for me, that I'm not just here to serve other people and that if I negate myself from my service, then I'm also not being the good ancestor that I want to be, because I didn't get to live my life during this lifetime.
Speaker 1:Which is important, and also we know why. Why is this so hard for women? Why do we feel like workhorses in so many ways? But I think that part of being a good ancestor to yourself, that is answering the call to creating art or the thing that makes you giddy with joy, that that's also dignity, like the dignity that we are not people for service.
Speaker 1:But, we're having a human experience first, so we're a human first who gets all those things and we have the opportunity to serve, because otherwise I think it does take away from the dignity of the people that we are. And it truly isn't even about kids, because I'm always I love parenting and I'm like peacemaking and parenting are kind of what you're probably always going to catch me experimenting on. I totally do experiments with my kids when they're little. We decided to eat dinner for breakfast Because someone thought they were always hungry from eating breakfast foods.
Speaker 1:And they're like well, is it true? So, yeah, I want to show them something else, but I think the bravest and the most courageous thing is to show up for yourself as your authentic self. And when I had gotten a diagnosis, and the same friend who gave me that book he told me he's like whatever decisions you will make as you walk through this, he's like remember, diana, your life is a gift to you. First, yes, yes, and trying to hold that and embrace that has been a beautiful and hard thing to do. I don't know why that's so hard to.
Speaker 1:I can see the places that I want to see more love and I want to see more justice. I can rattle those off, but to say that what's the gift to myself? And that my life isn't just to spend in service, but it has a beauty all of its own that doesn't need any anybody else's validation, but it's up to us to live it ourselves. Like nobody will crochet for you, nobody will paint for you, but the joy is yours. But also you doing that for you is yours too.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, it reminds me of my friend Ebony Janice Moore, her book All the Black Girls Are Activists, and she talks about how just us existing in our skin, in our joy and in our humanity, whatever that, whatever's showing up, is enough activism. Because we are, especially as Black women, we live in a world where we're not. The world is not set up for us to thrive, it's barely set up for us to survive, and so for us to just live our lives, just live our lives Like that's our activism, and I love that, obviously, being a Black woman. But I also love the extension of that, which is that each one of us are we get to do that as well, each one of us living in our joy, living in our dignity, is also an act of activism, and I also think that when we're living from that place, it overspills Whatever is on the inside is what's going to come out. So if we're living from a place of and I don't mean living because of what is systemically put upon us, because systemically a lot of things get put on us, including trauma A lot of us are living with trauma, so a lot of trauma comes out. But I'm talking about where we are able to live with choice, that we choose things that allow us to expand rather than contract. The more that we do that, the more that we make those tiny micro choices, the more that we're able to experience it for ourselves, which means we become more comfortable with extending it to other people, and we celebrate it when we see it within other people as well.
Speaker 2:So, as an example, when I first started doing my work around anti-racism discourse, I was also going through my own awakening. So it was a lot, and I'm having this public conversation and then I'm realizing the people around me who I thought were nice white people are being really triggered by this and it's bringing out stuff that I hadn't expected and it really put me in a place of feeling very traumatized and feeling like I actually just don't feel safe around any white people period, and so I was really closed off and that was part of my self-protection. That was me honoring myself, that was me responding to reality and not just what I was imagining. But also, the more I kind of closed off, I think, the less I was able to see the shared humanity as well, and so I also had to learn that if you can't see other people's humanity, of course you're so hard on yourself, of course you make things so hard for yourself and you don't give yourself grace and you don't give yourself self-compassion and you don't give yourself space to make mistakes and learn and grow. And so I had to start with myself and learning to extend that within myself.
Speaker 2:And when I did, I began to notice that it was harder for me to judge other people, even though they did have privilege and even though we shouldn't even be having this conversation, right.
Speaker 2:But it was harder for me to just point blank write them off and I had to really see. Okay, of course this is really hard for them because they live in a world, in a worldview that is entirely different to yours, and they're beginning to see, but it's very hard because it calls into question everything that they know to be true. So I had to learn not to take things so personally and also learn to balance giving grace while also holding people accountable to doing better, and it's a fine line to walk. But I found that the more that I was able to give myself grace, the more that I was like okay, you're figuring it out, and where the intention wasn't malicious or it wasn't willfully and purposefully ignorant. I was like okay, I don't have to be the one to guide you through this, but I can give you grace to be like you're figuring this out and I can take care of myself. And you're figuring this out.
Speaker 1:Right, which I think is so important, that you take care of yourself first.
Speaker 1:Because as people are on, are coming through your life or trying to intersect. I feel like it's always it's been a lesson for me to if something affects me very, very deeply and has caused trauma and harm, then they don't know that because they haven't experienced it and it's up to me to protect myself from that's just might not. I'm not their person. I can wave hello, I can say you know what? Wish you well, keep going. But it is not a safe place for me and it is not a place I can't give. That because it will crush me and 100%. And I just bless them on the way, say hello and keep walking with with.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I think I have to. I have to tell myself, with no judgment, just say you know what my spidey sense says I don't want to have this conversation with this person and I don't even need to be right about it or wrong about it. I'm just going to walk my sweet self by. That's right, I say and trust that there is somebody on their path who has not been impacted the way I have been impacted and who is the right person to be having that conversation or calling them to account. Or you know, that's right, which I think is hard to do, but that's why I'm really grateful when other people raise their hand for things that I'm like. I can't do that, that is, I'm too tender for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, this will hurt. It will hurt me to help you. If it hurts me to help you, then that means that I and if I choose to do it which I did at the beginning and this is why I burnt out at the time it means that I value you more than I value myself, which means that I believe the lie of white supremacy, that you are more valuable than I am Right. So I had to learn that. I had to learn that that was a form of internalized oppression, of self-sacrificing for whiteness. I really want to shout out Maisha T Hill and her work around breaking the addiction to whiteness, because I think, going back you said it right at the beginning right, you can come from language and you can come from location, but you can't come from whiteness. So breaking that addiction of white has to be put first, has to be prioritized. I had to learn not to do that and I also had to learn and this is why I referenced Maisha's work I also had to learn that each one of us is a human being having a human experience and that we are just figuring it out.
Speaker 2:So, in order to do this work, it doesn't have to be this rigid. Everyone on this side is wrong and everyone on this. You know we're, each one of us, individuals. Yes, we're affected by these larger forces around privilege and power. None of us are not impacted by that. But also each one of us has the choice to come back to that definition of love. Each one of us has the choice to extend ourselves for our own or another spiritual growth, and so when I see that someone is making that choice, that tells me this person is worth being more vulnerable around, this person is worth spending more time with this person, is worth a bit more grace, because I can see them in that struggle of love and really trying to figure this out.
Speaker 1:I think your words calling it a struggle of love, just like, just guts me in the most beautiful way, because it is a struggle. You can tell when somebody is struggling to love may not, may have been given a language of supremacy, may have been given a language that dehumanized, but when you see somebody who has that, that beating heart, that's like I don't quite know how. But I know this is not love and I know I made to do it and I want to figure it out. That's one of those beautiful places and I was wearing this. It always brings me back to who am I willing to sacrifice for and show up?
Speaker 2:for.
Speaker 1:And in some spaces I'm like, oh my gosh, like the love will always have pushback when you choose to call out the on love, it is threatening for folks who have zero interest in writing that wrong, and then oftentimes you're lightning pole for those people. But they're, they're not, they're just the hazards out there. And I was wearing this t-shirt at a big airport that says black boys deserve to grow up, to picking up my two teenage sons, and one looks just like me whitey whitey and then one is a stunning Ethiopian boy. So these are both my sons and we do a duration work because this is what is best for all of us, for both sons, for our world, for our family. Anyways, I'm wearing this t-shirt and I get to the airport and I see a guy who is wearing one of these shirts that I'm like, oh man, like same shirt. Well, he was wearing a shirt that I see a lot of people wear. Okay, we'll just say it, it's a 1776 shirt, so and a lot of people wear it with the flag.
Speaker 2:You have to give me. You have to give me context, because I'm not American. So you have to give.
Speaker 1:So the context is, this shirt normally comes with a big old flag on it and it says 1776, which I'm not the expert, but a reference to, like the beginning of America. But it tends to always come along with Trumpers and with this kind of like. Let's have America be America, okay. Okay, everybody else F you. Okay, you know, and and also because I am a combat veteran, I see all these typically men wearing these shirts that I'm like. You did not serve our country.
Speaker 1:You might sit on the couch, but I served our country, but I don't look like, yes, a war hero, and evidently he does, so he gets to wear the T shirt, and that must be.
Speaker 2:That must be very jarring, I have to say.
Speaker 1:If you ever figure out a way for me to navigate the fact of I don't look like who I am and how to let people know that because I don't look like I have a black son.
Speaker 1:And so people say things to me because, yes, they don't know who I am, they don't think right and I'm a combat veteran, but their eyes don't tell them that. So they say things and do things. So I'm like I don't know how to navigate the world. So people understand, just don't say these things to me. Yeah, so I was standing there. I'm like, oh man, under my breath, I'm like, oh, please don't say something to me. Please don't say something to me. I was going to call me out and I'm nervous, picking up our kids from the airport and as we're walking out, a lovely family because they're just coming back from vacation from Florida, a really beautiful black family all of a sudden the mom taps me on the shoulder and she's like thank you for wearing that shirt. And I didn't even in a moment. I didn't know what she was talking about, but I was like oh, you know.
Speaker 1:So if we are going to show up and try to right a wrong and black boys not getting to grow up due to police violence is a wrong then I am going to put myself out there to get yelled at by people.
Speaker 1:But the worthwhileness is that another mom in that room knows that her kids are stunning, that they're worthy, and that she is another person who says her kids deserve to be safe and celebrated and work. That's right. Yes, no-transcript, you know. And figuring out the work and where you do the work and how do you take care of you, I'm like man, it's just always gonna cost. But as long as we choose to be good ancestors and the cost is worthwhile for the right thing, I'm like we can handle the ups and downs on that one. Yes, but not doing it. I'm just unwilling. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it. I mean, that story demonstrates that what love is right, because that T-shirt was you demonstrating your love for your son sons right, but for your black son and the effect of it affecting a complete stranger right and her relationship with her family. And it's moments like that that we understand that when we embody love, this can be the ripple effect that we can see in the world. And you talk about the cost of it. And yeah, love has a cost, because we don't live in a utopia where love is the status quo and everyone is loving and love is all there is and love is all around right. We live in a world, unfortunately, where there is a lot of lovelessness, and so the demonstration of love which I think living love is ultimately like our, like the human spirit, when we are at our source, is love.
Speaker 2:But who we are in this like physical 3D world isn't always that, and so there is a cost to it, because when we show it, we're showing our vulnerability, we're showing the things that matter to us, that we care about, and these are the things that people can take advantage of.
Speaker 2:These are the people that, these are the things that people can turn around on us and hurt us with, but it's so powerful because that lingers, that feeling that you got from her and she got from you will linger and linger and linger and it will. It's sort of this contagious thing where it spreads and it's like you know what that was worth. It, like that joy of having that reaction was so much greater than the fear I felt of this potential threat from this person who is just straight up ignorant, right, and so love does have a cost, and I think it comes back to that question of the choice that we make to extend ourselves in. It is the choice that we're also making to pay the cost of love. But I think the cost is worth it. It's so worth it.
Speaker 1:It's so worth it. And the Grinch in the Grinch movie says his heart grew three times three sides. And I'm like that is the power of love. Like love is the only thing that I've seen can disarm people of their violence. It's the only thing that can make enemies into friends. And someone loves your kids, you can't help but be loyal to them forever.
Speaker 1:So I feel, like love, is this expander, and not easy. But if that's the magic sauce, if that's the secret ingredient that bounces back to us, roots us deep, creates a path forward, then I think it's always going to be what we go to.
Speaker 1:And so I'm so grateful that you gave this love offering in 2020 and you did it for free in 2018 on Instagram. I love that and I think the love has echoed. And then, as we catch up with you now about what, where's the love that you're learning to turn inward, yeah, and to express? So I'm super grateful that you are so generous with your life and super brave, I think, the stuff that you're doing. I'm like it is brave to continue. It's brave to care for yourself and to find what is your next step.
Speaker 1:What anybody else thinks, not what anybody else expects, not even what people think you should do Right.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:But the North Star for you. So thank you so much for being willing to stay up a little late, since you're around the world and talk with me, and before we go I have some rapid fire questions, okay, but don't be worried, I can, I can tell some people's faces are kind of like oh no, I can always edit them out, leila, okay, okay, and we, we did these around our dinner table the other night, which was hilarious, so they are no pressure shoot from the hip.
Speaker 1:Anything goes, I will not hold you to them, okay. So I'm going to ask you quickly. First one is what's your purpose? Ah, love, how do you play Art? What's your superpower?
Speaker 2:Language Ever.
Speaker 1:You have been the best rapid fire guest yet. Like you nailed that, Leila I love it.
Speaker 2:Thank you for that clarity. I'm going to go write those down now.
Speaker 1:Leila, it has been a delight you inspire people to be courageous, to do their work and to show up with the biggest love and make that contagious.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. Thank you, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much.
