La Shanda Sugg: Collective Change Conversations with The Hive

The Common Good podcast is a conversation about the significance of place, eliminating economic isolation and structures of belonging.  For this week's episode, Daniel Hughes and Joey Taylor speak with La Shanda Sugg as a part of a live podcast series with The Hive about Collective Change. 

La Shanda says, "I am a translator and healer living in a fat, Black woman's body. My lived experiences in my numerous intersecting identities, along with my gifts and talents, have called me to create safe spaces for exploration, healing, and growth. A native of Detroit, Michigan (stolen land of the Meškwahki·aša·hina (Fox)), I now reside in the Cincinnati, Ohio (stolen land of the Kaskaskia, Shawnee, Myaamia, Adena, and Hopewell) area but work nationally to heal relationships - personal relationships, professional relationships, and communal relationships. I bring my full self to my healing work and am a combination of wise sage, standup comic, and passionate preacher. I am. "

The Hive  is a grassroots mindfulness community curating multi-week classes, workshops and a Membership community. It has been formed by facilitators asking the question, "What are the resources that lie within our vast lineages, traditions, and modalities of healing, and how can we place them in service of the common good?" In this series we’re talking to The Hive’s 6 core faculty members, all of whom have a unique perspective on navigating collective change.

The music excerpt was "My Little Light" by Beautiful Chorus.

This episode was produced by Joey Taylor and the music is from Jeff Gorman. You can find more information about the Common Good Collective here. Common Good Podcast is a production of Bespoken Live & Common Change - Eliminating Personal Economic Isolation.

Transcript

 Sondra,  Having a conversation with you is always an experience. It's an encounter and I don't want to jump into this conversation and have others drown but there are some things that you talk about that I'd like for you to just kind of offer up into the field and we can bounce around there, you talk about come be. And I know there's a story around what does it mean to come be. You asked me a question last week about how do you know what you want? That kind of thing. To me, it's in your come be the way that you've talked about come be, which I think is really important. And the other thing is you've often talked about the way in which we respond under stress. You talked about the different ways in which we respond. And when we are together, there's a way that we can communicate. There was something about like, I'm open, I don't have to just let my hands down and take everything in. You've talked about those things. And I think it would be helpful to hear. You can hit on any 1 of those and we're gonna come back to those. 

So you just talked about, about five years worth of conversations and like 10 different, so I was like, hands up. Oh, you took it back there. I'm taking it all the way back. Okay, got it, got it.

Because if you, if I need to, you know, Hey, hold on, hold on. I need to catch up. But the come be really is where you've been for a while and you, it's taken time for you to get there. I would love for you to start with, how you got there. How did you come to a place of just come be?

I appreciate that. So how did I come there? Well, I think we start by having a conversation about how we're in a culture, in a society that uber prioritizes productivity and production. We drink the water, we breathe the air. The systems tell us that our worth is directly connected to what we produce, how quickly we produce it, the quality of that production. And then how quickly we can do it again at a higher level. we all in some ways, I believe, get caught up in that in some way, shape, or form. We get indoctrinated into it through our schooling systems. And then we move into workforce sometimes and all of that. And I really, honestly, I think I got there out of exhaustion. I was tired. But tired didn't register as tired. Now, if I narrow it down to what it registered to me in a fat black woman's body, it registered as you ain't doing enough. You should,  you should, you ought to, who else needs you, so I have a longstanding history where the productivity and production that my worth was attached to was helping others. So imagine me feeling like my worth is connected to helping others, but it's not the act of helping. It's the result of my help. So if I offer something to you and you're still struggling for me, that meant I didn't do my job well enough. There was very little autonomy in my life because I was enmeshed emotionally and spiritually and mentally with the struggles of everyone else and I got tired. So I first started as a participant encouraged to connect, several times and then I was invited to co facilitate courage to connect, which is A gathering that we hold that allows people to examine their own relationship with racism and the systemic things, all the things and so we had done that for a while and I remember Troy coming to me and we were deciding what we were going to offer. And I was like, yo, I just want to be, I even want to just call it come be. And he was like, okay, good. So what are we going to do? And I was like, no, listen, I literally mean,  I just want to be. And so that started like the come be, which was maybe a six week course where it's like, just show up as you are and let's be together. And  that is the essence that I've developed through decolonizing my practice as a therapist and a coach and trainer, my own religion, all the things. And there is power in being, and no one told me that when people showed up and just be, you know what they were called  lazy, and there was always some quiet, but still hearable discourse about what they could be doing. To contribute to the space, what they even should be doing to contribute to the space. And so I had this negative relationship with the art of just being. And so personally, I went through this space and development. I went through a very impactful coaching program, coaching for healing, justice, and liberation, which didn't teach me. It just gave me space to practice. So what I've come to realize is. No schooling. I went through no certifications. I went through taught me how to be me some of them just created the container I needed to practice being me and so now that I understand that essence Those are the spaces I want to create for other people, you got plenty of spaces where you can go with expectations where they want something from you so when I do things with people one of the first things I'll say is specially If it's overworked people, like if I'm working with teachers or helpers, one of the first things I say is, I don't want anything from you. I take a deep breath and feel what that feels like in your body to hear a person say, I don't want or need anything from you. And people always respond about like how that feels because everybody wants something from us,  everybody. So my act of resistance to the systems like capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and all of them is I'm a B. And once I learned to be, I had to go into the practice of divorcing my concern and gaze to how people feel about me being, because me being was either intimidating to some people, you know, it activated other people. We confused some people. And my trauma response that has done a lot to keep me alive growing up was I am highly attuned to facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language. And the minor shift in it, I detected because that was kind of my preemptive signal that I needed to shape shift in some way to make somebody else comfortable. This thing still exists in me, but I have a relationship with that part of myself now where when she notices the furrowed brow, I have to go, it's cool. First of all, we don't even know what that means. They might have gas, you know what I mean? Like we picking up all kinds of stories and then shifting, imagine shifting based on an imagination that you can't even confirm. So for me, it was okay. Now that I've kind of gotten this being down, I'm going to be, then I had to realize that people get to have the experience that they're having around my being. And that's just not my business. Especially because I root my being in love. When I, I do my best to be mindful that I am rooted in love and compassion and curiosity. Once I've gotten that y'all get to have whatever experience with me you want, because the reality is it's actually not about me. I don't know what I activated in you, what memory, whose voice I sound like, but I realized I was wrestling against people's histories. And losing every time, 

what was coming to mind was, okay, so you have someone who is living into this, just being as an eight minus, I got to armor up to go into the, whatever. So you're inviting say an eight to come in and just not even armor up, just come be.  So my concern is like, how do I protect myself then? How do I speak? How do I stop someone when they're crossing a boundary, right? So you talked about skills that you can notice how, whether or not you're okay with, whether or not you're giving your consent. Could you share more about that as a practice for people who, who may want to lean into this coming and being without being overtaken by the room or the stronger personalities or voices? 

I can. I want to go back to what you said though and clarify. My invitation to you as an Eight is to come with your armor. You see how now you want to come B. So I think the invitation that I'm expressing is don't come trying to be Shonda. Don't come based on the expectation you think I have of you because I don't have one home with your armor. But what happens when you come with your armor is you get into a space and you're like, she don't want nothing from me. She ain't threatening because interestingly, as armored as you are as an 8, I can't remember experiencing your armor. Can you remember a time where you felt armored with me? Did I ask you to drop it? Did I suggest you drop it? Did I have the expect? No, my being allowed you to disarm her, and that's the essence that I think people aren't getting. We want to tell people what to do. We want to force people what to do. We want to convince, coerce, manipulate all the things. When I don't ask anyone to do any of that come  so the number of people that I get saying things to me like I don't normally cry in front of people. Oh my god I have never said that to another person all these things I didn't ask them to and what I usually respond with is your body is intuitive It would not have let me done it if it didn't feel safe to do it So the key is not to hinge that on Shonda though I don't want all that responsibility, but what I want you to do is I want you to go feel this that you're feeling right now. Where do you feel that in your body? Does it have a color, a texture, a shape? Now when you go out into the world, you know what to sense for. So you're around another person, you're like, Ooh, I'm getting that purple Shonda feel. That's the feeling I get when I'm with Shonda.  And that doesn't necessarily mean you automatically de armor. But what it does mean is you might be more curious with that person,  I feel like in some ways, one, I begin to create a relational familiarity for people. By creating safety, by being safe, by being that when they're out in other relationships, they kind of know what to look for, what to sense for, to help them know which of those relationships they want to lean into, or the ones that go, this feels actually the very opposite of that, um, good, which is slowly overriding the autonomic trauma response that goes, everybody's unsafe. Everybody, I don't trust nobody, I especially don't trust nobody who looks like that. Who's that race? Who's that gender? Who's that expression? All those things, and it starts to go, maybe I don't have to generalize entire groups of people, but I'm seeking that purple feeling, that thing that I've come familiar with that I know breeds safety. So come with your armor. Ain't nobody drowning yet. Right. We good.  I think what you're referencing with the hands up is one of the ways that I've talked about boundaries and my work and training as a developmental and relational trauma therapist is where I kind of draw from this, which is boundaries. I love talking about boundaries.   I don't think you can talk about them too much. And essentially we have, let's say two types of boundaries, not exclusively, but in this conversation, two types of boundaries and it is our protective boundary. How can I manage, be aware of what's coming in and then our containing boundary? How can I be aware and manage what's going out? And both of those boundary sets have three different positions. So the first is boundary less. When we are boundary less in what's coming in, that means every facial expression, every noise you make, your body language gets direct access to me, to my psyche, to my emotions, to my body. There's nothing there to catch or filter anything. And with our containing boundary, when we're boundary list, it means I call it like head to mouth and out. Like we just say it, it's almost like vomit. And if you've ever vomited, you don't control that. It's part of the brainstem controls that, it can just come without you knowing, but maybe before you feel embarrassment about it, you feel relief. I just had to get it out. So there are a lot of people who are boundary lists and they're containing boundary. Because they just got to get it out and there are a lot of people who are boundaryless in their protective boundary because I'm so afraid. I'll speak for me. I didn't have boundaries in my protective boundaries because I was so afraid that if I put even the thinnest veil between me and another person, they wouldn't choose me. I didn't want to have any barrier between me and them choosing me. So I couldn't put a boundary in place. I couldn't say, I actually don't like when you talk to me like that, because what if they actually just stopped talking to me? I can't have that. So I guess the price I'm going to have to pay is let you talk to me how you want to talk to me, but at least you're talking to me. So this is not a good, bad, right or wrong. This is just an is okay. So we can be boundary less than what we receive and what we let out. The other position is walled off. No, thank you. Ain't nothing coming through right now. That's the compliments or the complaints. That's the good stuff or the bad stuff.  I can't take any of that in. And a lot of times we can get to a walled off position because we've been hurt, particularly if we're dealing with or engaging with the same person. You like, I done this too many times, not doing it today. You get the wall, right? The thing about the wall though, is. It don't let nothing in, so we can say, Oh, I'm avoiding the pain but if we're conscious enough, we say, but I'm really lacking joy. I'm keeping the pain out, but that free and easy, we can't feel that because we can't let that in either. And if we're walled off in our containing boundary, that's that. I'm just not gonna say nothing and we got a lot of reasons. I don't want to disrupt the relationship. If I say this thing, maybe you won't choose me, right? My voice won't be heard anyway. Ain't nobody listening. There are a lot of reasons we can find ourselves behind that walled off space. But our third position, we'll call it functional. When we have this functional, receiving,  protective boundary, we have an opportunity to go like, some stuff can get through. And for me, that's always, sometimes the data is necessary. Even if you don't like how somebody said it. The information is helpful. How can I take the information without carrying the emotion of it? I hear  you said it angrily. That doesn't mean I have to carry your anger around how you said it. And an example I use is if you're driving Down the highway, minding your own business, doing your thing, and someone is doing something and you almost collide and they lay on their horn, right? Now, they might also give you the finger and use colorful words. Maybe you can hear, maybe you can't, it doesn't matter, the honking horn is good information. You hear that and you can avoid a collision but if I get so caught on your angry stare and your middle finger, I'm all caught up in that. And how many that has ruined people's whole week and I can't believe they did that. The honk was necessary. I'm glad we avoided the collision. The anger is not mine to take because really  it probably had nothing to do with you. They morning got started off in some kind of way, right? So that functional boundary allows us to go like, okay, how do I take the data without feeling like I have to take on all the emotionality that comes with the data that someone is presenting. And when we're functional in our containing boundary we decide I get to speak my truth, but I am going to be aware of like word choice, body language, facial expression, timing. Timing is so important. You know, my kids got a lot of important things to say, but seven o'clock in the morning, it's just not the good timing for me. That's when you tell your dad stuff. But I, I don't have to shut off what I'm saying. I get to speak my truth. And when I'm mindful of all of those things, we said that's functional to me. Anybody ever tried to swallow throw up? Oh, it had a visible reaction because that, it makes you shudder. That's what we're doing every time we don't speak our truth. Yeah, y'all weren't ready for that because it's nasty. When we have that physical reminder of that. I mean, I pretty much watched everyone that's in front of me shudder. But think about how many times you swallow your truth. That ain't helpful. It was trying to get out of you for a reason and so those hand motions that you're talking about, it's sometimes like, Hmm, am I walled off? Am I boundary less? Or am I functional? Am I letting some things through? Am I walled off? I'm not speaking my truth? Or am I just vomiting on everybody? Or am I being functional? And those are ways that we can start to gauge ourself. Because boundaries are not about other people. When people say, I'm setting a boundary, I'm not gonna let them treat me like that. And I go, oop, not a boundary because them treating you like that, it's outside of your control. Boundaries are What are my parameters once this line is crossed? What are the series of things I put into action? Most people nowadays, if they drive a car, that car has anti theft system, having an alarm on your car don't stop people from breaking in it just alerts you if somebody tries. That's what boundaries are. People do what people do. That boundary isn't, I'm not going to let you talk to me like that. That boundary is now that you are talking to me this way, I'm exiting the conversation. Now that I have stated where my boundary is and you have violated that, I know what my next action is. And when we have solid boundaries, we don't get all flustered. We go, Oh, In call. That felt more simple than I thought it was. What should I say? Nothing. 

I appreciate that for a variety of reasons. Last week I was trying to emphasize self interest. I think so much of it starts with what do you want? And it's hard sometimes to name what we want. But if you don't know what you want, it's hard to set a boundary. And then people are running in and out of your space and starting with what you want allows you to come be you. Like if I know I want to be free and easy, if something disrupts that then I know I can put a series of reactions in place and so how you ground that in, in who you be, which I think is really the starting point of importance. So, yeah, thank you for that.

So, um, being and boundaries. What do these things have to do with navigating collective change and that can be either as Daniel says, life is lifing and we're trying to deal with it, it's coming at us or it could be a more proactive stance where we're saying, actually we want to be agents of change in this world and  we want to co create this world together.  So what is being and articulating and keeping  a functional boundary has to do with that? 

What's coming up for me first is this idea that I think sometimes when we think about or talk about collective change, there's an automatic enmeshment that we envision. Like I'm no longer an individual that's part of a collective. I become the collective. And that's challenging for me because I need you as an individual to be a part of this collective as we change. There won't be another Shonda. So I don't need you coming, trying to be me, but I do need you to be you because there's something in you that activates something in me and boom, this little light used to be too afraid to shine. But when mine met yours, it will run and hide. Now we don't have your light. Collective change means a collection of our lights. I don't need you to hide behind mine. I know it's bright, but so is yours. I might be a big beam and beacon, but I need a candle too. And I need a flashlight, right? My cell phone got a light. I need all kinds of light. And so I think one, the functional boundaries say here I am here. Here's who I be and my being wants to contribute to collective change. But when we don't have our self interest, we come into these collective groups and we try to meld Into this, it's why, even as a child, I hated that they called American a melting pot. Irks me, because you ever seen cheese melt? It loses its identity. It might still taste good, but it don't look like it did before. I want to retain my identity. Can we be like jambalaya? A tossed salad? Can we be something that has separate components, but it still tastes good? And so I think the boundaries in the being is when we recognize that. We have the capacity to be change agents in ourselves, but how much bigger the impact of that changes when we are collectively together, but that doesn't mean you have to lose your identity, who you are, and I think so much in our culture promotes this. So I went to private schools from kindergarten to 12th grade, and there was a uniform from like first to eighth grade. And then it went to like a dress code,  my partner,  public school, the thought of a dress code, I think makes him itch. Like it is something about like, no,  I'm me, I'm aware what I wear. And then here I am coming along, I've been looking like everybody else my whole life, I was reared in this idea of identity, less being. I think that's intentional sometimes because if we can take away people's sense of identity and then give them a collective identity to ascribe to, then we can move that collective without having to move the individuals. It just kind of comes along and that's why sometimes the people who refuse to conform or assimilate are called troublemakers. They get scapegoated all the time. 

No, I appreciate that.  Going back to the self interest, I think when folks assimilate and become part of the group,  you're in jeopardy of group think, but you could be as extreme as a cult,  that's what folks do when they lose their sense of self and just go along with the group because the group is so powerful. It's like, no, you need the devil's advocate. You need that troublemaker because you need someone saying, I don't know if this is the right way to go, or it's definitely not the right way for me. And so I appreciate you naming. That assimilation as we, we've looked at that up as it's a beautiful thing. We should all assimilate. I'm like, hell no, we don't need to assimilate.  

And for real, like if I am the group and not an individual who's part of the group then when somebody else in the group lets you talk to them any kind of way, I'm like, Oh, is this what we do as a group? This is how abuses get perpetrated and perpetuated consistently because the group itself has said this is acceptable but when the individuals in the group say, Oh, no, that's not working for me. I'm still committed to collective change, but, that's a whole different thing to me. So I do think that they are very much interconnected.

I just keep thinking about you saying to people, I actually don't want anything from you. And so often it feels like to me, the effort around wanting to be an agent of change has to do,  I'm going to put a fine point on it, which is probably not very compassionate, but it has to do with a drive for. ego, what's the balance there? How can you be totally at ease and who you are and also see the shit that's happening in the world and want to be an agent of change in it?  Cause it does feel like there's a tension point there. At least for me

no, I, it's such a good point. I feel like there's harmony. I started using the word harmony over balance a while ago, because balance for me carried this weight, tension, and expectation. There was a fine point at which everything rested. And if you sneeze, move or blink, you're out of balance. You got to try to find it again. But I opted to think about when I sang inquire and all parts. Did not have equal things. I'm a shout out the Alto's because I think they hold down every choir but I was the print I'm a Soprano and all I had to do was sing 100  and everybody like, it's like they doing all the work. I come in, you get the tennis, a little something, something, and everybody like, Oh, you know, I see y'all. But there was a harmony that was created. That sounded beautiful, so when I think about that question, I think about what's the harmony. And when we get out of harmony is sometimes when we do the, I see something that needs to change. I'm passionate about this. I feel equipped. To do this. And so we move in, but then we get there and seeing that just like that was the doorway you go in and you go like, Oh my God, it's so much more that needs to be changed. I thought it was just this one thing. And I think sometimes we have a compulsion  to keep going instead of going, I came through this doorway to do this one thing. I have done this one thing. Now, let me check in with myself. Now, let me reset. Now, let me reevaluate. How has I been changed by creating change? I think people don't ask that question, which is why 10 years later, they still doing the same movement work and they looking like, I don't, what, how, what? Come on. At some point, we got to reevaluate, right? At some point, the choir has to sing a different song. And we keep wanting to play the same song because it worked for that, but things are changing. So I think the tension is we don't prioritize rest within change work. There's an exhaustion that happens. But remember, if we're not careful, our worth is directly tied not to the efforts towards change, but is it really changing? And when it don't, when we don't see the change fast enough, then that signals for a lot of us work harder, try harder, do more.  And I think that's where the tension really lies in our gluttony, and our unwillingness to go, I can rest within the movement. I can rest within the change and really what's happening too. I found, is there somebody ready to to tag in but you've been doing it so long. You have this reputation and platform. You won't sit down long enough to let somebody come in and get their practice. You carrying it by yourself and mad resentful when there is 10 folks trying to carry it with you but that's the ego part for me and the more we invest in something, the harder it is to let it go and some of us have dedicated our whole lives into some kind of change and so when someone asks you to rest or take a step back, that can feel like a slap in the face so we started ruminating on stories to, you know, I think I'm good enough. Is it this and this? And sometimes we say, we just want to preserve you. You've got to rest. So there is tension there, but I think when we take good care of ourselves and collectively take care of each other, then that tension dies down a little bit because we're like, it can still go. Ego says, I'm the only one who can do it. And that feels so dangerous. I don't know if I want something that I'm the only person that can do it. I just don't know if I want that. Because I get tired, I get sick. Sometimes I just don't want to but if I'm the only one that's more pressure than any of my body is willing to carry. And we put it on ourselves.

That's powerful. Daniel, say something about that. 

I was wondering if tension was actually a bad thing because  you brought in the musical metaphor and it's like how much of our music is because there's a little tension or there's a lot of tension. And the goal is to give it enough tension, close to a breaking point, but not. And so I'm wondering if there's maybe a, a new relationship we need to tension. Is there something about just accepting that there's going to be a degree of tension in this and that is okay, or maybe even good. And what sound can we create? What can we do with the tension rather than trying to ease it?  

Yeah, that makes so much sense to me. I think a lot of people, myself included, are seeking kind of a unified theory of all things, there's no tension here. We have it all figured out and  that doesn't exist, right?

I mean, we don't even have it in ourselves, for real, for word,  right? Like, I mean, I want to have an integrated life, but there are plenty of times where my head's over here. My heart's over there and you're trying to figure out this way to go with the thing.

 I think the one primary story that is interfering with folks living into their birthright is that we are separate. Now, let's not confuse that with the earlier conversation about self interest and boundaries and being an individual moving into the collective but when we begin to believe that we are separate, not just from one another, but from Earth, from the grass that grows and the bird that flies, dangerous. Because separating this idea of separating humanity from all other living things was the basis of creating the hierarchy where things like genocide and atrocities are being created right in this moment. Because if I am not connected to the tree, I'll cut it down. Not realizing that I need it for oxygen. And if we will do that to the very sources that were given to us for life, how much more will I do it to you as a person? Cause I can't see your value, so I think that's the, that's the narrative that we're separate. We get to have self interest. We get to have boundaries. We get to be individuals, but we're not separate. We are connected. When I realized that the same matter that makes the stars in the sky is part of me. It changes how I engage with everything and the systems will tell us to create the hierarchy, assign value and then engage with things based on the value we've assigned,  so what happens to the things we assign low value to, then we don't have a problem trotting over it, killing it, throwing it away. And so for me, that's the narrative. We're not separate. We are interconnected. I need you. You need me and we need the trees, and the animals, and as much as I don't like creepy crawly, they got a place in the ecosystem. Look, I don't want to do your job, spider. Trapping insects and making I'm good. I'm cool. Not my gift. It's for real. Killing bees. How are bees going to be extinct and they're  pollinators. Can we actually think about what we're saying? You gon go pollinate the tree? The flower? You gon get in the little pollen and You're not. THe bees have a purpose. And so do the things that make me squirm like snakes and spiders and things I don't even know exist. In the sky, in the ocean, all created with a purpose. And so were we, 

the thing that I always love when I speak to you is that you have these incredible metaphors. You just like pull them out of your hat. I don't even know where they come from. So in my mind, I have this image Of a self of a person right and  this person is resting there's a semi permeable membrane where they're trying to decide what comes in and out there totally in control of that. And yet, they are connected to everything else as well. What's the metaphor that we can work with that packages all that together. 

What does come to mind when you ask that? Is really sitting to consider that the air you breathe in, we started this with a grounding, deep breath. So we draw air in. That's oxygen. Most people can't hold their breath longer than probably 30, 45 seconds. The air you release is carbon dioxide. Have you ever sat and actually thought about that? You draw in air and it's oxygen. You release it and it's carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide is needed, and so is oxygen, and it didn't spend that long in your body to transform. We overcomplicate some things that are simple, and then we try to simplify things that are complex. And so for me, the metaphor is, we know without breath, there is no life. But we need both oxygen and carbon dioxide in order to breathe. I think we get so narrowly focused on things that we lose our peripheral vision, sit back and look at like, how am I connected to you? When I began to realize that there was not a single decision I was going to make in my whole entire life that did not in some way impact somebody else. Think about that. There is not a single decision you will ever make or have ever made in your entire life that will not in some way impact somebody else. We're connected.  

Could you answer Phil's question around just that part about ease versus easy. 

I thought that was 

really, ease feels internal, easy feels external. So as I move to do something, external barriers make it not easy. But when I talk about ease is an internal experience where whatever parts of myself create those tensions and barriers against doing a thing, then I can go in and connect with my internal ecosystem to figure out what's the roadblock, what's the concern, what's the fear. And that has been a lot of my work when I hit internal resistance, I used to think, Oh, maybe I shouldn't do that. Oh, I'm feeling something. And I've learned that different parts of me have different experiences. And just because one of my parts comes up and goes, I don't want to do that. It doesn't mean don't do it, but I need to come and connect with that part to say, help me understand your concern. Part of the concern might be, well, I'm seven years old and this looks just like that thing that happened. And I can go, Oh my goodness. You're so right. I want to update you. You might be seven, but I'm not, I got a lot more experience. Here are all the ways that I can protect you from that thing that happened. Here's how you know you're not in it alone. So then I go to do that thing again and then that, that resistance that I was feeling, it is eased back. But don't think you can just jump into that. That requires trust. And your internal ecosystem has to learn to trust you just like you got to learn to trust somebody else. And when we think about how little attention we pay to those relationships, we have this external narrative about systems of oppression and people who are dictators. But we dictate in our whole internal ecosystem. We ain't checked the temperature. We ain't said, how you doing? We haven't acknowledged and validated the pain and the experiences we went through, but we want our body to just come along and do the thing. Nah, it don't work like that. So there is a relationship of trust that we have to build inside. So ease, as I talk about it, is that experience. And that means I can do hard things externally with ease inside of me.

My name is Kelly and my question when you're talking about boundaries and even the facial expression, I just relate to that so much. And I was saying in my group that I felt tension around that because I feel so far from thinking that that's true that feels impossible to me that all I can do is like make space for the possibility that that could be how you're experiencing life because that feels impossible that even if you're feeling like I'm not going to react to somebody's. So maybe I can get over the shape shifting. I can't get over that sort of sick in my stomach feeling, you know, 

 I do know,  I do know. So one, I say, Kelly, come be with all that. Okay.  Okay. It's one of my favorite words in the English language.  Okay.  Genuinely. Okay.  Do you speak German?

No, I do not. 

Okay.  Thank you. Do you feel shame about not being able to speak German? No.  Can you tell me a little more about why you don't feel shame about not speaking German? 

Partly because I don't know anybody else who speaks German. 

Did you grow up around people who had real good boundaries?

No. 

No.  No. Did you see it happening in front of you?  No. Did people encourage you to put boundaries in place? No. Protect and contain yourself? Definitely not. But you don't speak German and you don't feel shame for not speaking German,  why would you know this, Kelly? Why would you know inside of your body that one day it is possible for somebody to do whatever they want to with their face and you go, not my business, You didn't know because no one taught you. You don't know because no one lets you practice. I didn't know it either. Not only did I not know, no one taught, I don't even know where I learned it was a possibility. But that's also the importance of why we share our story. Because today, Kelly learned something. And tomorrow, she will not perfect boundaries. I don't have unperfected boundaries. But there is a thing that exists outside of your experience that you're curious about. And so be with what is. That's the starting point. Get curious about it. And when the parts come up and go, well, why can't we do that? And then we go like, well, dang, we can't change the transmission either. I do that? Oh, I cannot build an airplane. Oh, you know,  Kelly, there's so many things you can't do because you've never been taught. No one's giving you an opportunity to practice. But that that's what we do here. That's what my courses are about.  Come be, let's share, because then we also feel like it's an isolated incident. And I'm not saying Kelly feels this way, but I know I hit that and I'm the only person in the whole wide world who don't know this boundary thing wrong.  Okay, then we come together and you start to go like, oh, you didn't know it either. Oh, you, you didn't know, but you learned it. Oh, you took one of Shonda's soul hugs before. So you kind of know a little bit. And so we be together, right? This is not, Shonda's going to lead you. Shonda's going to be with you. We're going to be together. But that feeling of like, I can't even see this happening. I want to remind us that january 17th, 2020, you ain't see COVID. Somebody probably did, but that's a whole different story. We didn't see it. We were unawares. We ain't see it, right? We could not have imagined what that was going to be like. We could not fathom global shutdown, all that, right? And then. April 7th of 2020, we couldn't see today, there are many things as we've been navigating this thing called life that we couldn't see before us. But we keep moving towards it, community, the Hive motto, find your people, find your practice. Cause it's not just about knowing a thing, but knowing is important because you ever bought a car and you thought she was being real special and unique, especially in your neighborhood. And nobody had his model. Don't nobody had his color. And then as soon as you drive off the lot, you see five of them that day everywhere now. They didn't mass produce the car when you bought it. The brain is like, if I had to pay attention to everything that existed, we couldn't function. But once the brain knows the thing is the thing, it starts to look for it. So now you're going to start noticing opportunities where boundaries could go. We don't even have to rush to the place of putting them in place. We're just going to start noticing them. And once we notice them and get curious about them, we build the capacity to practice a little bit. So knowing what was the GI Joe. My, my partner hates when I say this, knowing it's half the battle. And every time I say an application is the other half. And he's like, you're ruining my childhood. And I'm like, am I lying? It's like, you out here telling people knowing it's half the battle. What's the rest? So now that you know it. Find your people that doesn't necessarily mean the people who have arrived because what is a rival, but the people who are striving, the people who are walking, the people who are curious, and then develop a practice. And I am so looking forward to the moment where Kelly gets to say,  I see it.

So that's the perfect segue. I want you to talk about the fear cascade and the power of flocking. 

So what's generally known as the fear cascade really highlights the five options we have as human beings really mammals, but I'll stick with us five options we have as humans to when we encounter stress threat and danger. Okay, the first option we have is to flock flocking essentially means gaining safety through connection. None of these are good or bad right or wrong, they just are, and they manifest in all kinds of ways but they are these categories flocking gaining safety through connection. If we can't flock, we will flee,  gaining safety through distance. If we cannot flock or flee, we will fight, gaining safety through control. To be clear, an attempt to control our internal experience, oftentimes through trying to exert control externally. In order to flock, flee, or fight, there has to be even a little bit of safety present. The people I'm trying to connect with feel safe. The place I'm withdrawing to in my flea is safe. I can get some control. I can win this fight. When no safety is present, we move into freeze. Freeze is this temporary immobility. That don't mean you don't know you should do the thing. It don't mean you don't want to do the thing, but the body is not cooperating. It is not releasing you to do the thing. This temporary immobility can last a second, like a startle response can last years. If, while we're in freeze, safety presents itself in some way, we have the option to move towards the fight, the flee, or the flock. If it does not, there are chances that we move to the final F, which is fawn, F A W N, gaining safety through appeasing or acquiescing. I'm going to give the situation, the person, the incident, whatever they're needing of me to hopefully reduce the stress, threat, and danger. It's not about what kind of person are you? It's about understanding that we move in and out of these all day, all the time. Why understanding the fear cascade to me is so crucially important is because it reduces, it has for me, reduces my judgment and increase my curiosity. When I see someone doing a thing and I go, Ooh, that's a fight response. I wonder, two of my other favorite words in the English language. I wonder how that's helping them feel safe in the moment. I wonder how that's getting their need met right now, without my understanding that we are all operating in these five categories. I had a lot of judgments. I didn't say I wonder I say a why day.  Why are they doing that? What's wrong with them? I had a lot of wise instead of I wonders. And so We move in and out of these things all the time. Optimally, where we want to be is flock. Without getting too technical, that flocking is in our parasympathetic nervous system,  it's called social engagement. It's the part of our nervous system that allows us to connect with other people. We learn when we're there. We connect with others. We rest when we're there. When we are in flock, our entire body is operating optimally for many things. Like blood circulates to all of our extremities, not just the vital organs that will happen when we're in flea or fight. You ever been so stressed, you break out part of that's because ain't no blood getting to your skin because all of the blood is pulling to your major organs so that you can run or fight. Now another part of the parasympathetic is when we go into shutdown. That's that freeze, right? And so when we start to feel things like helplessness, hopeless, we might use words like depression, right? That's the body saying this is too overwhelming. We can't do this. So we're going to apply palliative care It shuts down pretty much all the functioning and it increases endorphins  Just gonna make you comfortable until we until we done right? These are not mental states. You cannot think yourself Out of farm, you can't think yourself out of freeze, but we can activate our bodies to move into a different part of our nervous system. Flock is ideally where we want to be. It's not all like flee and fight. They cool. We intentionally put ourselves there. Sometimes I heard a rumor that people run. Just because they want to that,  that is  weird, like not a thing I do, but I heard that it happens right. And like a lot of people, they're intentionally moving into flea. You know, they're intentionally activating our nervous system. Why humor is so important in my work is because it gives you a jolt into your sympathetic nervous system and allows you to come back. That hearty laugh you just had, that's part of your sympathetic nervous system, but we're still connected. So flocking is important because when we talk about all this collective change, what we have a tendency to see is that folks are coming together in the fight but it's hard to connect when we're in the fight, when we come together in the flock, it doesn't mean that we don't mobilize, but we're more connected there. Safety through connection. But we have been so culturalized that, again, we're individuals and we're separate. So if I'm separate, my survival is my survival. Y'all gonna figure it out. But when we come into this flock, we go, My survival is your survival, and your survival is your survival. And the beauty of that is it's hard when my survival is all my responsibility. It is so hard when I am solely responsible for my survival, but hands down, matter of fact, there are two people in this room right now that I know no matter what go down, my survival is not my own. They got my back front and sides so I can go out at night. I can go do things. I can be here. I can do that because I know like an equal, I got theirs. So all of a sudden we're sharing the responsibility of us surviving by flocking together instead of fleeing or fighting, right? Yes, they're automatic responses. The brain and the body collaborate. It's going to give it to you. The beauty of doing the work though, is it might give it to you, but you ain't got to take it. You ever been to a restaurant and they tried to deliver you the wrong meal? I know some people who would eat it. I really do. I know several people who will be like, well, that's not what I ordered, but oh, it's all right. It looked good. It ain't okay. And  I'm the person that see it coming to the table and be like, timeout. Is that intended to be mine? And part of the reason I do that for real, having worked in a restaurant is I know the second they put it down is contaminated and they got to throw it away. My thing is before you set it down, that's not mine. I don't want you to have to remake it. I want you to give it to who it belongs to, you go get mine so it's that depth of understanding that I'm not being rude. I'm saving your food cost. I'm saving your customer service. They ain't got to wait 15 more minutes to get their meal now, because I didn't wait for it to hit my table to tell you that's not mine. So there is something about being able to, that's that self interest, that advocacy, that contributes. It wasn't just about my meal. I realized that my meal being wrong affected somebody else. Blocking, carrying the collective burden of, I'm not separate from the person at the other table that I don't know who ordered that and I didn't. I'm connected to them. So before you set this down, That's not mine. That's an example of how that flocking and collective carrying can really help us, I believe, move towards collective change. 

Oh, I'm Chris. As you were talking, Shonda, like there was part of me that was lighting up on behalf of my Gen Z generation, who I feel like has a very unique challenge ahead of them, inheriting a world with systems that are falling apart. And so I was curious what your, your blessing is for them, for them to learn how to flock. 

So the first thing I will say is I'm glad they're falling apart because they weren't intended for our good in the first place. So sometimes it's perspective, inheriting a role with systems falling apart, because for generations people have been working to dismantle those systems. so it's an acknowledgement of reverence and an appreciation for the generations and ancestral work that has been happening over time. That while it looks like it's crumbling and it is crumbling, the gift that has been given to this generation is the continuation of a thing, not having to start it. So that's one thing.  The other. Is I already feel this and I honestly am in this space where I don't even know what generation I'm a part of  and I'm this person that no matter who I'm talking to, they talked to me, like, we decided to be talking to a 60 year old woman and she'd be like, you remember when we were younger and I'm like,  yeah. And I can be hanging out with some 20 year olds and they're like, cause yeah, you know, and I'm like, Right. So,  so  there is an expandability I feel about myself across generations, but there is something about I feel like the Gen Z is taking less fluff. Like there've been other generations that said, Oh, that's how it's gotta be. And so it is. And there's something about the Gen Z generation that's like, well, why? Tell me more, or outright, I don't like that, and I know this is happening because folks who are boomers and Gen Xers are calling them things like disrespectful,  entitled, whiny, and so I hear underneath that language, I say, I bet that does make you uncomfortable, because you weren't permissed to ask why some of us grew up in a generation when you were told to do it, you did it 'cause you were told to do it, why was literally considered disrespectful. And so now we got a whole generation of people who go, why? And that would make someone uncomfortable who one developmentally didn't get to express that and do that, who has been compliant their whole life following the dream. I would be pissed too. Boomers, I would be hella pissed Because you were taught head down, keep working, achieve, achieve, achieve, give the respect because they told you, and then you get to be the person. And now, the people who are supposed to just be giving you respect because you older are like, why? I would be kind of pissed too, get it. I really do. So I guess my blessing to Gen Z, but not just Gen Z, because there's some of us, no matter when you born, you can encapsulate that spirit. Is don't do it alone. Don't do it alone. Like a fierce rejection to this notion that I have to do this by myself. For me, that's pretty foundational. It's like, no, maybe I don't know the who yet but I'm not doing it by myself, but when you think it's just you, you put your blinders on, you forge ahead. And there are people who are coming, trying to be a part who are trying to flock. And sometimes we don't even notice them because we're so focused on the goal, the achievement, the destination, like we are missing the journey. And the journey can be very beautiful.