Dr. BlackDeer

Welcome back!

I know its not quite Monday, but tomorrow is my birthday! Woo hoo! And in true Virgo fashion, I’ve been reflecting on the past year and couldn’t wait another day to share what I’ve been marinating on.

If you’ve been with me for a minute, you know I’ve shared pretty openly about the struggles of navigating academia / higher education / the workplace at large I guess – because I don’t think the issues I encountered are unique to the Ivory Tower. There are for sure certain structures that insulate folks from accountability, but overall, I always say,

bureaucracy is a poor substitute for community.

If I could summarize my time from both my doc program and first foray into faculty life, I would say that there is a huge lack of relational accountability. You can be anywhere from spiteful, passive aggressive, to downright hostile – I’m talking full on knock down, drag out, throw down arguments in front of everyone, and we’re all supposed to show up same time, same place next month like nothing ever happened. I remember one post I shared was something like, In a room full of people asking for repair, don’t be the person going over Robert’s Rules of Order. lmao like that really has to be said.

And while my time here in Canada has been starkly different from both my PhD program and my first few years on faculty, the same issues still happen. If folks have not had opportunities for meaningful repair, you cannot just keep pushing forward with business as usual. That seeds resentment. And when folks say Hey, we need to pause and actually deal with things, in tune leaders will actually pause and say Hey. You’re right. This is messy and uncomfortable, but we all genuinely value this space and want to be able to show up as our full selves, so yeah. Let’s get into this. Let’s figure out a way to *repair* and then we can keep doing what we came here to do.

Which is the biggest difference I’ve experienced – a willingness to be wrong. To step into the mess. To be accountable. Did it go smoothly? Absolutely not. Were there still ww tears (even by not ww)? Yep. [to white woman: is a verb]. I’ll elaborate more on that another day though!

So Auty, you’re saying there were still the same chaotic messy situations at your new place, but it was better there? How?

Put simply: me.

I know, I know. It’s my blog, I can be self-centered if I want hahaha. But seriously, I do think that I am different. I spent so much of the last year focused on healing from that toxic environment, that even when I encountered a similar challenge, I didn’t fold right back into my former self. I stepped back, got grounded, and then stepped up and said, Can we just call things what they are?

And right there, in the middle of the meeting, I’m sharing with my new coworkers how I grew up in a very emotionally unstable household where I felt responsible for keeping the peace. [To keep the peace, I learned how to keep my fingers on the pulse of everyone’s feelings, which inevitably requires tiptoeing on eggshells.] So with that, a big part of my personal healing has been asking folks to quite literally just say what they mean. I have such limited capacity for double talk, or professional bullshit, or whatever you want to call it. My spirit cannot handle trying to decipher what folks really mean when they’re speaking in code. Just say what needs to be said!

That is the difference. I know how to speak up and advocate for myself. I know how to clearly state my boundaries.

It’s been so encouraging for my dear friends and comrades to tell me how much better I’m doing. That I’m glowing, thriving. My best friend told me Friday that I have a night and day difference in my attitude. But I didn’t want to start this blog sharing that without stating that this isn’t all sunshine and maple leaves, but that I feel personally stronger and more capable this time around. That I’ve been focused on healing, not revenge.

And did I have a flash of embarrassment when folks told me how much better I’m doing? Of course! Because that means I was doing bad. Was I seen as a Negative Nancy? Was I draining folks energy? (Welcome to my brain, I have this thing called anxiety). But I quickly shut down those internal noises, because I know my people rock with me. The ones who get it, get it. And the ones who don’t, don’t. I remain so grateful for folks who’ve stuck with me through all the ups and downs.

I know I’m cheesy just like my Mama, but her go-to hashtag for her posts would be #ThankYouFatherForThisBeautifulLife – and that’s exactly how I ended my journal entry the other day. I am so grateful that Creator brought me through it. And Ma’heo didn’t bring me this far, just to bring me this far.

I truly am looking forward to this next chapter. Like we’ve been saying, Creator has a plan with my name on it.

Here’s to Chapter 32!!

-Auty