Episode 9: Living Life in a State of Awareness with Regina Louise

Unprocessed trauma and maladaptive coping mechanisms can often leave us operating in survival mode, without us even realizing that we are living in a state of constant fear and anxiety. This week marks the final episode in our series, and we have a truly remarkable guest to bookmark the end of this first chapter. Regina Louise is the best-selling author of several books, including her incredible memoir Somebody’s Someone, and Permission Granted: Kick-Ass Strategies to Bootstrap Your Way to Unconditional Self-Love. Her devastating experiences in the foster care system as a child led her to become a children’s advocate and shaped her deep knowledge of healing and self-love. Regina speaks about her healing journey with immense wisdom and generously shares the context of her painful upbringing. We delve into the prevalence of imposter syndrome among women of color and ruminate on the role that radical self-love has to play in freeing one’s self from the judgment of others. Our conversation also covers the weight of intergenerational trauma, its disproportionate effect on women of color, and what it means to be “adultified” at a disturbingly young age. Join us today for a beautiful conversation on the universality of suffering, the healing journey, and what it means to choose to live life in a sublime state of awareness.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Introducing today’s guest Regina Louise.
• How Regina is choosing to live her life with an elevated sense of awareness.
• The Hoffman method and other supportive interventions for healing and embodying our higher selves.
• The prevalence of imposter syndrome among women of color and how learning to love yourself can address it.
• How the Hoffman method facilitated Wilma May’s journey to self-love.
• Regina’s devastating experience of being raised in the same foster home in which her biological mother was trafficked.
• The disproportionate presence and impact of intergenerational trauma on women of color.
• A special quote from Anais Nin on taking the risk to bloom and how it manifested in Regina’s life.
• Regina’s healing journey and a beautiful and vulnerable description of where she currently places herself.
• What it means for Regina to depart from living in a constant state of survival.
• The damaging effects of being “adultified” as a young child.
• How Wilma Mae challenged her preconceived notions around healing to allow herself access to practitioners who understand suffering.
• The concept of the wounded healer and why Regina identifies so strongly with it.
• A reading of the Anais Nin poem that played a pivotal role in Regina’s healing. 

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Regina Louise

The Hoffman Institute

The Red Book

Somebody’s Someone

Someone Has Led This Child to Believe: A Memoir

DRK BEAUTY

DRK BEAUTY Healing

DRK BEAUTY on Instagram

DRK BE

Transcript

Speaker 1: (00:01)
Welcome to dark beauties, the healing home podcast. I'm Wilma Mae, the founder and CEO of dark beauty. This week. Our guest is Bridget Coulter. In addition to being an accomplished actress, textile and interior designer and property developer. She is also the founder of Blackbird house, a life work community for professional women of color and allies seeking to create positive change for each other and the world. They are a progressive collective that celebrates creativity, promotes wellness and inspires productivity and encourages activism. We were introduced to each other recently by our mutual friend, Michelle, and we immediately found common ground and sisterhood. Each time we speak today included, I find that we have shared experiences, but more importantly, I learned from some of the life tools she has employed to navigate some of her journeys, highs and lows. I am in awe of how seemingly fearless she is when she steps onto a stage in front of complete strangers or decides to learn about a completely new field of work and succeeds at it. And now she has created this wonderful, supportive, inclusive and healing community that is blossoming and embracing all of us, women of color in its fold. I hope you enjoy this episode and at the very least take away something for yourself. Oh, and I do use swear word in this episode. Sorry, not sorry, Bridget. Thank you so much for joining us today on the healing home. Welcome. Thank

Speaker 2: (01:40)
You, Wilma. Appreciate it. Happy to be here with you.

Speaker 3: (01:43)
So we were introduced not too long ago by a mutual friend, Michelle, and I know we have been talking and exploring how dark beauty and Blackbird collective can hopefully work together and build a relationship it coming and going in the future. What I wanted to do first, it was just, I'd love to hear from you about your, you, who you are, Bridget Coulter, and also black for collective and a little bit about your journey because it's, you know, in the pandemic, we've all been through this kind of up and down round about pivoting nature of everything. And I know that you have kind of been going through those similar things like we have. So I wanted to hear that from you.

Speaker 2: (02:27)
Absolutely. And thank you like you're in the shell is wonderful and just felt like we had to just like you two need to know each other. And that's part of this sisterhood and the network and the connecting that really excites me about even putting yourself out there for something like the work that you're doing with Blackbird. And I'll kind of start by sharing that, you know, I am frankly an introvert, which is funny because I wanted to be an actress. I've been in theater since I was in elementary school, doing school plays and doing summer things, which people, sometimes you say, because I can, I love one-on-one conversations. I'm very comfortable in that and you can navigate a social environment, but I'm a curious person. So that introvert person is sort of overtaken sometimes by the curiosity, it's like, oh, I still have to know this.

Speaker 2: (03:23)
So I'm from Berkeley, California. We were raised with very experimental in the public school system. There was a lot of experimental education. I think the city as a whole was a social racial, political experiment in and of itself. And I grew up in what I learned later is a bit of a diversity bubble. I grew up with diversity surrounding me. We, our neighborhood was integrated. Our school system had 50% to 70% diversity in it. And it kind of is a Shangri-La and the positive and the negative that, but growing up with that environment where your differences are welcomed and in a school system that pushed you to think outside of the lines or would change it, you know, at one time they have this methodology that they're learning another time. There's another really was a great way to grow up and fed the person that I become because I was always curious anyway, and that curiosity was encouraged.

Speaker 2: (04:27)
I come from working class, poor parents. We did not have a lot growing up, but we had love, we had music, we had fun. My grandfather's blues singer. So I have this dual experience or actually I have myriad experiences, but have highs and lows of life at a very young age. My parents were teen parents is not recommended by the time I was thinking about some of my mom was 21. She had three children and I have a 24 and a 26 year old. And I cannot imagine that responsibility. Right. Wow. And I'm thinking of it from the child perspective, but lately at my age, where I'm at, I'm looking at it from my parents' perspective and my mom's perspective and the things that she gave up. So I'm always wondering about family and relationships and connections. And at that young age, you're seeking out to find your space. And at this stage coming out of the pandemic, really diving in to think of all the things that kind of led you to here and what you want to do moving forward. So I don't know if that's a little bit about me, but that's a bit about how my brain works.

Speaker 3: (05:34)
Every time we speak, I always kind of have to nod back to the shell again. Cause I'm like, I feel like she's like my sister, because I know you, I feel like you think in a similar way to me, I too am an introvert and I'm curious, but I know that like doing this zoom call, like, I'm just feel like I'm in the room with you, but I don't feel like anyone else's listening. So that's in my happy space. Right. And I have to, no one would know that I have social awkwardness. Right. And I'm also really good at masking that, and I can be out in a room full of people and work the room and do the whole thing. But when I come home, I have to sit up for an hour or two to just let all those energies kind of wash away. And it sounds like you have a similar experience.

Speaker 2: (06:27)
Absolutely. I feed, like I recharge. I can spend a lot of time alone. I love being around people. I love that energy soaking, but I don't want to be the center of attention I like to observe. And then I come home to recharge and feel grounded. So I think that's, there's a book called quiet. I don't know if you've ever read quiet. I was reading it a couple of years ago and it talks about that in, you know, different levels of introvert extrovert. We all have a little bit of it, but if you lean one way, there's where you feel versus where you are stimulated. And people there are extroverts who are fill up by being around people. And so they're kind of the opposite. And then there's layers in between.

Speaker 3: (07:10)
Absolutely. My son is, is completely the opposite to me. He needs to he's 27 and he definitely needs to be around people. And I'm just like, Nope, I'm happy staying in, you know, reading my book or watching some TV show and going through lockdown was also for me. I, I was absolutely fine being on lockdown. I was fine being on lockdown. I wasn't fine with everything going on. Right. That was the thing that was impactful. But, and so you want to kind of ask you a couple more questions around how you were raised, because it's interesting to be raised as a black woman in a place like Berkeley and you and I are similar ages. And, um, so I'm assuming this was like early, early, mid seventies to the late seventies to eighties. And that you talked about there being both positives and negatives, but that you think of your childhood as generally like fun. And it wasn't many people I talked to if I've had traumatic childhoods in one way, shape or form, but you talk about having this happy childhood. Tell me about that. It's

Speaker 2: (08:17)
Not all happy. It's interesting because I think it would be a 14 hour podcast. If went through everybody's day journey of its of course, I would say it's, there's an outlook that somehow I had a positive outlook and a way that I don't know if it's healthy or not. I'm really unpacking it now, but to compartmentalize because there was trauma, I don't know that any family run by teenagers, would it be? And I have so much forgiveness for my parents being that they were doing the best they could playing the model of family that they thought they were supposed to do. But with that, there is a lot of trauma. There is a lot of relationships that you develop, you know, in a traditional manner, you mess up all your young relationships in your high school and twenties, and then you figure it out in your thirties.

Speaker 2: (09:08)
You know, some people figure it out it 23, some people, whatever. But they were doing that with the family with pressures, with financial struggles of being working class poor, doing their education while we were being raised. So there, they both went to college while we were kids. So we, you know, it's not that it was, there was a lot. And the same time, there was so much joy because the family, my family's from Louisiana on my mom's side and my, they both met in high school in Berkeley. Yeah. And the joy of having my aunt lived a couple blocks away. My grandparents lived across the street, another aunt. So we were always surrounded by a little bit of a village. So I loved, and this is probably where my introvertedness got deepened was my family is like loud. Like everybody's talked to him, they talk over each other.

Speaker 2: (10:05)
It's just like a joy, somebody playing music, somebody else's telling somebody cooking in the kitchen. And I thrived on it because I didn't have to say anything. So I could be a silent observer to this dynamic. My grandparent's house was like the center and my grandparents were the center of our family. So I could be the shy, quiet me, or come from a situation that may have been stressful at home and go over to my grandma's house. And it was a safe Haven. So it was not perfect in any way, shape or form. There was some pretty terrible things that happened. And I wrote a play about it when I was 23 and presented it to everyone. You

Speaker 3: (10:42)
Performed it to your family or publicly

Speaker 2: (10:45)
To the public. Yeah. And I did it with two other friends. It was, you know, so I'll say this and I'll talk about that a little bit. I did a lot of acting work and deep work, and I feel the privilege of being an artist and a creative who's works with your human instrument and is trying to understand the human experience of an individual that isn't you, or take parts of you to imbue in, to make a whole person when you're acting means you do a lot of deep work. I work with amazing artists and trainers and you know, you do movement dream work with Kim Gillingham, which is incredible. She works a lot of artists. Larry Moss was our teacher and he challenged us all to do our story exercise, which is where those projects came out of. We were all in his school and it was probably one of the most healing things that I think changed the trajectory of my life and my relationships and everything that I could have imagined by being as vulnerable as I could onstage about some pretty traumatic incidents that happened around race being called the N word, some child trauma stuff, but maybe my, you know, it sounding happy to me, to you at moment is me having healed from so much of it and coming at it with so much forgiveness because they tried, they loved us.

Speaker 2: (12:01)
They didn't know how to do everything. Right. I don't know how to do everything. Right. And looking back, you know, my dad would take us to ice cream and into the park. So I see those and the other ones have been deeply worked through. And there's probably more that comes up. So it's more my perspective than the experience.

Speaker 3: (12:18)
Yeah. That makes sense. I'm always fascinated by how people heal and the levels of healing that we reach. Because I personally believe that, you know, it's not a destination, like, okay, we're healed. So we're all like hunky Dory tickety-boo we are on this journey. Right. And we get through layers of it and we get through those and we, you know, chew it up, spin it out, remold it into something else. And then other aspects come up at other points. And with the tools that if you're on, like for me, I consider myself to be on a healing journey. And I consider that, you know, every few years, every year, every month I'm discovering new things that I go to, let me delve into that. How can that help me with what I'm doing right now? And trying different modalities and practitioners? I don't consider myself like someone that's like constantly jumping from one thing to the next, but when things come up, I try and sort of go, okay, what do I need to access in order for me to kind of deal with this bit that's coming up. And so I'm always curious as to what stage points, which points in your journey do you feel like you've kind of like you, you you've mentioned the dream work is, was that the dream work that you were doing with one of the teachers that was really one, I would love to hear a little bit more about that. But then as you've moved along through the years, what other healing work have you done to kind of help that process?

Speaker 2: (13:54)
I will start with the dream work right now because I still do it. It's a present. It's like you said, it is a journey that I hope will take me to the end of my life of exploring and expressing and looking for the authentic ways to be in balance between life work, family, all of those things. And the dream work is one of those beautiful experiences I've had. And some of the deepest work I've had in a creative manner that is healing. So the intention, it is not necessarily to heal. It's more to explore what your unconscious is saying to you. So it's based in union work. And Kim gallium is an expert at it and I've been working with her for a decade. And she works with artists, writers, producers, directors, creative people who are trying to get to something deeper. And you basically take that process and you do a lot of just letting go of your top side to say and get into a dream state, but it's not necessarily dream state.

Speaker 2: (14:58)
It's not meditation. You do that to access your symbols in your dreams. What is that core part of you telling you to do? And sometimes, you know, I had one that was really cool. It was like a little girl version of me on a rock by a river and the visualization of the river, the sound, all of those things were a dream. So you, then you wait, you wake up in the morning and you write that down and then you try to explore the symbols. There may have been, if there's an animal in it, you go to the animal. So this work just uncovers what your telling yourself anyway, or where you need to go or what your subconscious part of you gives you the courage to put that together. So a little girl on the rock by the river with a house in the forest that was unattainable, like all of those things, you start breaking down what that means.

Speaker 2: (15:45)
So in a way it's like taking yourself off of your traditional worries, your analytical version of solving things and getting to that core you, so in the process of exploring my creativity and passion and purpose, I find healing in it and you leave fulfilled. So that's sort of the dream work thing it's really magical. And then in the journey of it, it's funny because if I look back, you know, that I've been known for the last 10 years before that it was always that creative expression from TaeKwonDo doing ed Ditech window as a kid. And we would do demonstrations in the park. And again, this shy person would have to go out and, you know, do my, my forms and cottages and all that, and then go fight him in tournaments and all of those things. So all of these times that you're facing the different phases of exploration for me with just perfect and didn't ever know what it was doing, but it led me to the next thing.

Speaker 2: (16:46)
And when I was 23 and was really doing a lot of deep work, it was talk therapy combined that came out of doing the acting work, which was like, oh, this is uncovering some scary stuff that needs healing talk therapy was the way. And I did that for at least 10 years. And I still check in at least every month or two, no less than four times a year. Like, is it a seasonal check-in we have to do. And then if you're going through something, just working, when that that's a weekly, you know, some people go three times a week for stuff I've heard, but that is an effective form for me, in addition to the deep creative work and then doing that play was incredibly healing because went into these shameful experiences. I wanted this other image of who I was growing up. I did have a two person family, two parent household, all of these picture S things and acute house in Berkeley and dah, dah, dah, but the deep things that needed to be worked out started coming up in this work with Larry Moss.

Speaker 2: (17:43)
And he recommended everybody, everybody. First of all, he was like, oh, y'all artists need therapy. And secondly, tell your story and share these things that I thought were shameful and embarrassing. And, you know, being called the N word and having a gun pulled on me in another situation and having, you know, some traumatic events happen. And it opened me up from having to pretend like they didn't happen and just go, yeah, that's part of my experience. I had that there's a, a state or a time when I was that girl, you know, I was like in that space to protect yourself, there's a certain way you have to hold yourself. You know, it's just like hood, mentality, safety, all those things and neighborhood and belonging and being. And so I know that I lived that and I also got this education, which was healing because even though that was more of the mind, it was this freedom.

Speaker 2: (18:38)
And I think that's what college is like this freedom to sort of explore outside of the safety net of your home safety or not unsafety out of your home and find out who you are. And then it continues to develop. So it feels like I've had five to seven year journeys that a different path. And like you were saying, I think you were saying something about yourself. Like, it's not that I keep changing my mind, but I do not changing my mind. But if that's not where I'm supposed to be right now, I'm not afraid to go to the next, this is where I'm at right now. I had a whole career acting that was like my focus. And now it's, oh, I dabble because I can kind of get into that every once in a while. But it's hard if you don't act all the time, that is not like riding a bike. It's really a different thing for me, for, for what I care about how I want to express in that way.

Speaker 3: (19:26)
So it's interesting when you talk about how you stay safe, right? How you had to kind of prepare yourself to walk through the world when you have, you know, hood mentality or you had to kind of like make sure that you were a certain way in certain environments so that you kept yourself safe. And that is something that I had to explain to my husband who didn't really understand, like how one walks in the world as a woman. And I lived in New York in my early twenties. I was here in New York and New York back then was really rough. And like today, new York's like Disneyland compared to what it was back then and what I had to do just to walk out the door, how I had to dress, how I had to not attract too much attention to myself in order to walk from the subway to my university classes when you were in the presence of other people, how I had to be and how I had to minimize parts of myself or, you know, do things so that I could just stay protected and I wasn't always successful.

Speaker 3: (20:32)
Unfortunately. And so when I hear you talk about that, it brings up something in me in terms of like, how much of that do I still do like that walking into certain situations and having to make sure am I safe, whether it's walking a room and going, am I the only black person in the room? And that informs how I need to act, or am I the only woman in the room and what kind of men are in the room and how do I, you know, how do I do, how do I walk in that space and make sure that I'm safe? So it was interesting to hear you talk about that. And I think about when you talk about acting, it seemed to me, and I don't know a lot about acting, but it seems to me that the act of acting is almost like therapy in itself.

Speaker 3: (21:18)
Like when you're doing that. So when you talk about the fact that it's not like a bicycle, like you have to work at it all the time. I think I heard in another interview where you talked about how, as an actor, you really have to understand the human condition. And I get the sense that you, you do understand the human condition because you've been through what you've been through, but you've also experienced like joy. And you've also experienced some of these things, all these sort of like the gamut of the emotions, but how that comes up in other people as well. And that journey of forgiveness of your parents, which is really important. It's really important in the healing thing. Because when you realize like what you've experienced and you realize that they were, you know, I'm just saying, it may not be your parents, but it might be negligent or in some way.

Speaker 3: (22:11)
And you've got all of these things mixed in to get to the point where you go, I forgive them. They did the best they could and I'm okay. And I've worked, I'm working through it, or I've worked through that. That's like, that's really powerful, that thing right there, and that kind of healing doesn't happen overnight. And so I imagined that when I talk about the human condition, that some of that is like what you've experienced, but you seeing then other people as well, I'm assuming and correct me if I'm wrong, that informs your acting and have about five questions in my head at once. I have to ask one at a time,

Speaker 2: (22:53)
I can hear them all coming out on the go. I do that too. So I'm not even that I'm like tangent, tangent woman. Like here we go, we will be here. And then when we get back,

Speaker 3: (23:04)
So I want to go back to the acting and the human condition. You said you jumped back into acting. I saw you for the first time, like a few months ago, I was watching black Monday, second series. And I, I didn't even like connect and all of a sudden, like I know that woman and I didn't connect it at the, at the extent of it silly, but tell me about that with your acting and jumping in and out and how, why that's not as easy as one might think. Yeah. I love

Speaker 2: (23:34)
That. First of all, I really appreciate your insight and listening kind of the disjointed journey that I'm talking about and talking about safety and bring up in that really hit a nerve. So thank you for that. And I think a lot of people, if we really count it, we're trying to figure out how to be safe. And right now there's no more important time than that in, in my lifetime. I've never seen a time where we're Roseanne important and how our personal choices can affect the safety of others. So I'll leave that at that for now. And then for the human condition. I'm again, a curious creative. I wasn't always re I was very myopic in the situation that, you know, when things would be difficult, I could completely zone into something else, a drawing, a painting. I wasn't really ever a journaler. I was a doodler.

Speaker 2: (24:29)
So my expression, which probably ended up why I do design and all that was the way that I could create safety in a terrible situation. So I could have a sketchbook and doing that and everything could be going wild around me. And it's like, you're in here. I don't even know why I couldn't hear it, but I was here, dream and plot and plan and something else. And then at some point, especially deep dive in, deeper in there acting, and you start to have to understand this character. You, we go out, we do life work IX back when I worked with Sal Romeo before, that was one of my early acting coaches. And Sal would have us kind of go do case studies where we do an improv in the street and try to make sure people don't think we're acting. So just here's your 1% it's improv.

Speaker 2: (25:12)
You know, I don't know if he's supposed to do this stuff in the street, but it was like in, on Vermont and Los Angeles back then. But so we would go and just do these exercises where we were a character with an intention, the thing we needed from the other person, and you go and you have this scene and then you come back and you kind of talk about it, but when you're doing it, you have to be aware of the people around you. They're not in the scene. They're really living life in that and be feel to it. And you can't be like, oh, we're lovers having a fight and be like, you have to be like, this is what, and you notice that the person kind of staring at you and you get quieter. That stimulated my curiosity, even deeper than the nosy kid, I was, my grandfather used to call me nosy.

Speaker 2: (25:53)
I would take things apart. I w I took cameras apart. There's some picture of me in a diaper, like taking a camera apart. I just wanted to know how things work. It's part of who I was, but it's such a gift that, that, to me, I feel so lucky that I had that curiosity. But then when you start looking at, and you just talk to one person and then you start to hear their story, it's not the picture that you see. It's like, we are surrounded by the most fascinating stories in every single part. And so in a character, I would try to take a little piece of maybe multiple people and then part of my own personality or curiosity, and put that together and why I think it's difficult. And there's some people who, you know, I think my husband is done it 10,000 plus hours, probably 10, 20,000 hours.

Speaker 2: (26:37)
So that Malcolm Gladwell is just second nature. He breaks down a scene. It's does it? He doesn't know how easy that isn't. He was like, you just do this. And that means that I'm like, okay, you can do this all day. So for me, when I was doing the scene on black Monday Sierra, all the way over here, right back here, since, but on the black Monday, my heart was beating out of my chest. But because I was playing that particular character, which wasn't me, was this woman from the black Panther that, you know, her husband had been incarcerated because of him. It was the situation that I could play and the pain that woman had. And then they had a connection because there was something, you know, it's one of those complicated relationship things. And then I had on blue eye shadow, a yellow dress.

Speaker 2: (27:21)
I was just not wearing anything that I would wear. And my hair was cookery crazy. Cause they, wow. They didn't know what to do with my hair. Well, I was a guest star. I wasn't a regular, if you're a regular, they're going to get your person. They're a guest. Are you going to get whoever you get? And she was like, let me, let me take this. All right, that's good. Let's just put that out. That was the, kind of how, what I looked like. And it was giant, but it's always giant. But the point of that was it created this character. So if I looked in the mirror and I had this 80, late eighties makeup on and this thing, and I wasn't really me. So I had freedom to sort of explore what that woman was going through as a single mom, with two sons who were rambunctious.

Speaker 2: (28:04)
And at this vital age, knowing their dads in jail caused by this guy who was taken care of. So all of those story things you just dive into, but it's still hard like to remember. Cause we were always like, remember, how do you remember lines? That's actually the easiest part. It's how do you say the connection to, I mean, maybe not for everybody is not the easiest part, but if the words that you have to say to that other person are connected to a need, then the words flow out. If they're connected to, I have to say these words together and it doesn't make sense then. Yeah. It's different. So yeah, so that, that's what I mean by that. It's not a, there's just different acting styles, but mine is, I'm interested in going deep in it. And so it's a little scary and vulnerable. And the people that I love to watch, my favorite actors are ones who are really trying to say something. They have an objective, they have a deep story and a secret and all these things that people have that make it fun to watch.

Speaker 3: (28:59)
I'm always fascinated. And in awe of actors, because I have a few friends who are actors and I, I see some of the angst behind the scenes, but I also see the artistry, right. Just the sheer artistry of what they do. And I just Marvel because I can never do it. I can never do it. It's just phenomenal to me. Tell us Bridget about, I want to kind of work my way up to Blackbird collective. But before that, I want to kind of just talk a little bit about your design work and the work that you did with properties. And not just simply because I want to hear about that because I do, but I think that when you're expressing yourself creatively, that that is also something that's super healing. And so, you know, jumping from acting, I know that what you're doing with design and working with properties is another expression of creativity, but I kind of want to understand like what that was like for you jumping from that, to that and doing them both maybe at the same time. Yeah, it was

Speaker 2: (30:00)
Definitely, you know, I kind of at one point doing all three sort of auditioning, sometimes doing my design business and building Blackbird, but the design is just this passion for, and you know, I was addicted to HD TV shows. I just like wanted to see transformation of space and room. I grew up in a 1920s, oh no, 19 0 8, 19 0 8, a little like modest craftsman house and with dark mahogany walls and texture. And so I always grew up in Berkeley. You know, architecture was interesting, no houses look the same. Everyone was expressing my thing. Gardens were wild or theory, few manicured gardens where we grew up, it was very Berkeley ask. And I moved to my first apartment at college was always moving things around. So it was always something interesting to me. And I, I do share the story about being 12 and, and remodeling my parents' kitchen on the little blue and white, what it called graph paper.

Speaker 2: (30:53)
And, but it was like selfish. I really wanted a dishwasher because I was the oldest. And I seem to be the only one who ever had to wash dishes and out cry and be upset. I hear my little brother and sister playing outside. I'm like, why am I washing dishes? So my plot, when I was 12, I was like, I'm gonna figure this out. And I thought I drew a really beautiful one. They didn't select it. But anyway, those are my early, when I look back, I realized I was always trying to redesign something, but what happened was the, as I was moving my apartments around or we had our first house and I'd move furniture all the time, my husband was like, Hey, so is there going to be a month? I walk home and everything's in the same place.

Speaker 2: (31:35)
And we did a little remodel and friends started asking me to help them with theirs. And I just felt like, I don't know enough. I'm, I'm really pro-education if you're going to pretend to be some knowledgeable about something. So I just thought, well, people keep complimenting what I'm doing. Maybe I'll go see. So I took some fundamental classes at the UCLA arc ID program, which is their master's level program for interior design. And I fell in love with it. And then it even deepened where you you're in art school, you're in strategy school, you're in drafting school year and surface material. And it was just, I felt myself in that world and sprung from it, with the audacity to open my own spot. So I put my business plan together. I opened a storefront in Santa Monica on fifth street between Santa Monica and Broadway, downtown Santa Monica.

Speaker 2: (32:25)
And I had this vision for a little showroom that could host artists and this back part, that was our workspace. And we did, we hosted artists. We did music events. We did an early thing when Kamala Harris running for Senator, we did an event for her. Then through my friend, Jennifer Henry, like it was an event space. I hosted a fundraiser for an incredibly wonderful woman with brain cancer who had turned and opened up the line of art and her, it was stunning. And she ended up extending her life for, I think at least a decade or maybe two when she had three months. And she since then had passed away, but her art was epic. And so we did a fundraiser of her. I just met the most incredible people and did a lot of different types of things in that space upon graduating, when they said go work for a firm, I was like, okay.

Speaker 2: (33:14)
And they like, don't strike on your, I was like, great. I'm going to hang my shingle. I made a pretty shingle. I was like, but because it was risky. I lost money. The first year I lost, I think I lost like $15,000 the first year. And I was so upset because while I was in school, I had been building up doing little consultations and it built up a little nest egg. I thought to open this space and it was not great. And it was, I opened it in 2008, 2009 during the boom. I mean, I'm sorry, not the opposite of boom. That's when I decided to hang up my shingle, it was not brilliant, but because of it, I had to dig down deeper, rebuild, continue the community engagement. And funny enough, when I look back, it's all fed into Blackbird, right? It's the same thing.

Speaker 2: (33:58)
And during that time I was on nonprofits. I was a part of ICF public school boards in south LA that does charter education for them. I did that. We did fundraisers, I've done poetry. All of those things that you're doing, I was on the board when my kids are in elementary school being one of those bossy moms who, you know, fig thinks they know how to raise funds for, but when we do, but you know what I mean? Like I'm sure the teachers were sick of us, but they were very kind. And through all of those things, the design developed parallel to all the other things I was doing and the passion for it. And after 15 years, and I was like, oh, I'm actually not so bad. In the beginning, I look back at some of my drawings, the thinking I've always been proud of, like the thinking is there and the pushing the limits.

Speaker 2: (34:45)
I even thought about going into public art because my projects and design school were always like these public art projects. And it just fascinated me. And someone's like, Hey, you have kind of the thoughts for political art, but that takes a lot of a different type of focus that I didn't even know how to approach and design to seem like something I could do. Even though early on, I didn't see a lot of people who looked like me doing it. Now, there is just this growth and great organism that were even then, but we couldn't find each other. Now we've found each other there's guilds and all kinds of beautiful things happening to amplify. It's still lacking, but the passion for design and the service of creating a home for people or creating a sacred space or a sanctuary, or just a fun place, or just a pretty place for people's homes.

Speaker 2: (35:32)
And I did a few small offices, creative offices where my favorite was like of service. For some reason, I always thought I was going to be like, I'm an artist. No, you're a service industry provider. And that was freeing because now, like you were talking about earlier about your favorite thing as an introvert is highlighting other people. I was making other people's happiness and through it, you're more happy. Like it's funny giving feels, I mean, getting the right experience feels great, but giving other people the experience is like, that's the real world. Yeah. That's the juice, that's it? So design is a multiple things. And then it went into design build where I, oh, I decided, I thought, well, I think I can, I have a feeling I could build a house after I finished design school. I was pretty sure I could just build houses.

Speaker 2: (36:20)
So I bought a house, a little tiny house in Venice and I remodeled it and I built a house. And then I was like, Hey, that did kind of, well, I want to do that again. So every couple of years I buy a house and do it. And I just keep rolling those funds into new thing. And it became this other pipeline that was creatively exciting. My lofty goal is always to do something bigger. So I wanted to populate the landscape with homes that respected the neighborhood, but pushed the creativity and made someone who lived in it feel inspired to do the best in their lives. That was my goal. Now you see the houses, you may be like, that's just a nice little cute house, but that's what my goal was going into it. And the last one that I did right before, the one I have right now, I will share. I envisioned because again, it's about people and storytelling. So I tell story through home. I still story through how you walk through the space. What are your adjacencies? What are the colors are warm? Do you feel it? How cool do you feel in it? How hip do you feel in it? And I designed that house with the intention. I kept seeing either a female producer or a Google executive. I was like, that's who this house is for. And literally a Google executive house.

Speaker 2: (37:34)
I mean, just for real, it's just a fact. I was just like, okay, that's that whole, that

Speaker 3: (37:38)
Is not manifestation. I don't know what

Speaker 2: (37:40)
It is. Yeah. I mean, it's for, it's just, I don't even, yeah. Sometimes I just like, okay, I pinch myself, but yeah,

Speaker 3: (37:48)
That's amazing. And

Speaker 2: (37:50)
I have people who walked in and hated it too. So I was like, yeah,

Speaker 3: (37:53)
Well, see, this is the thing. It wasn't meant for them. Right. The energy went out and they came, they felt it, they came right in. That's amazing. So when you talk about you were of service, but you also had achievement. And to me, that's also really something really powerful for oneself through work when you're healing through the work that you do. And you do that through being of service, in my opinion, as I've, I'm still learning, but also in that sense of achievement that you've done something you decided to go into something that you didn't think you had a right to be in a space. And that I hear people still today talk about imposter syndrome. And, and when I listened to you, I feel like, you know, you transcended that perhaps, maybe, I don't know, maybe you do still feel imposter syndrome, but I feel like you still went ahead and you put it to the side and went, I'm still going to do this anyway.

Speaker 2: (38:48)
Yeah. And I didn't feel like I knew that's why split school did for me though. That was how I got my courage education kind of brought me out of my neighborhood into other possibilities. And then education brought me out of my love for a passion or interest in, into the ability to do it. And you just do it over and over again and you get better at it, but it's not that I don't have self-worth issues. Cause I, I do, I struggle with those, but I do notice that I, what I've learned is I don't feel doubtful with myself as a designer, but I do have doubts sometimes during the process, like, am I doing the right thing is, but I know that I'm always searching for it. And when it, I don't know that I necessarily find it faster than anyone else or better, but the process of design for me, isn't collaboration between the person I'm designing it for whether they're theoretical as in a design build or an actual person or family that I'm building for that story of who they are. I ask probing questions and there was like, why are you asking all this? Because at the end, when they move into their home and they feel like this is me, and it's not a bridge design house, then I've done my job.

Speaker 3: (40:02)
Right. But when you experience that self doubt, perhaps is that part that self-doubt, is that an important part of the process to have that in order to spur the good work? Or could you do without it, could you still do it without that to

Speaker 2: (40:16)
Do without it? I think you could do it without it, because I shouldn't have that doubt. I showed it like, where's the evidence. If I look at the evidence over and over again, over the last 15 years, a couple projects didn't work great, but most of the projects have worked really well. So the doubt I haven't lessened design now. And I haven't, now that I've taken on my new challenge of entrepreneurship and founding Blackbird, I have the doubt there and I've put myself in another rarefied world with the few founders and this whole thing. So I must enjoy torture or something because once I feel like I've achieved a level in design and early on, I got a lot of press for it. I was doing for, I still do furniture, but only Italia like custom furniture. I was doing textile design through my drawings and paintings, all of this attention that hourly was like, oh, okay, this is it's, it's my path of ease. It's what I naturally am just able to fit. I see in 3d and that helps I can look at a floor plan and it stands up in my brain. Like I see all the pieces like rain man of the physical space. I was good in geometry class. I had an engineering scholarship. So I look at the evidence

Speaker 3: (41:34)
While you were taking apart cameras in your diapers. Right?

Speaker 2: (41:39)
Exactly. I had experiences there. There was a thing that led me to that for whatever reason, those are the, of the things

Speaker 3: (41:49)
It sounds to me. Like you have been an entrepreneur before you consider yourself an entrepreneur, like you were taking these courageous leaps into different spaces and to, to spaces that can be where you put yourself out there and to be subjected to other people's judgements. I mean, I don't know, getting up on stage and front of strangers. That's freaking scary, but it is. It's some scary.

Speaker 2: (42:21)
I think there weren't tears in the, in the wings before going on before going on, it's like, I would throw up, I would cry. I'd be shaking. I be hugging my coat, whoever my co-partners were in it hugging, like, why do we do this? Why don't you do this? The lights come on. I'm on stage. And I know my story and I can't wait to share it. I don't know who she is, but that, that woman just shows up and she's like, cause it's all the preparation, but she shows up and it's like, I love it's again, my gift to people. How do I express this part or what I want to share, especially with the personal story. But I did a Walter Mozu play in New Jersey at crossroads theater a couple of years back while it was designed before I started Blackbird. That cause there was no way, but I'd gone and done that in the middle of a big design project.

Speaker 2: (43:07)
And I talked to my design clients and I was like, Hey, I'm going to do this, but my team's got all that. I'm still accessible. It's going to be all this crazy stuff. And the same thing, I hit the theater and I'm a theater. So that's my favorite is theater. That's like home, but I hit the theater, the lights go out, the beautiful warm lights come in. You're on that. And I love expressing and is a great writer. So that helps. But I love expressing story, whether it was my story, which was terrifying or this story of Willa Mae, who I played funny enough, Willa Mae now

Speaker 3: (43:39)
How interesting. And

Speaker 2: (43:41)
So, yeah, I think, I think it is vulnerable, but I thrive on it. I thrive on that. Like, am I still in my path? Because what I think is Blackbird, is it like, this is the culmination at this point in my mid life, the culmination of everything I've done means that there's no one else who's had this particular experience. I have to think of think this to RT everyone. Anyone can think of Blackbird. It's not some ingenious idea that women of color have, should have a space center on them. Everyone should have known that, but the way that I'm going to articulate it for life work balance and productivity and advocacy and creativity and wellness is because of my journey. So I have super privileged and I feel obligated to like follow that truth as best as I can, whether I fall my face with it or not. It's not going to be because I didn't give it everything I had and bring the most amazing people I can meet to be part

Speaker 3: (44:39)
Of it. And like, you've just, you've had this amazing entrepreneurial journey. Cause I feel like being an actor is a little bit is entrepreneurial.

Speaker 2: (44:47)
Oh no, you hustling. You're hustling with no food in between playing the unemployment. Let's be real. The unemployment dance, you have a job, you make great money and then you're not great, great money for like that. If you make $5,000 on him back then you make $5,000 as guest star that would hold in those days, I would hold me like three months and then unemployment while you catch up. And so yes, it's an entrepreneurial journey. Yeah. You understand. You're an entrepre. Totally.

Speaker 3: (45:17)
And you know, being in hustling out here in these streets is time consuming and draining for an introvert entrepreneur, but okay, so now drum roll, please tell me about the Blackbird collective. Yes.

Speaker 2: (45:34)
This baby is my heart, right? Because Blackbird is just for anyone who's listening and doesn't know Blackbird is a collective, it's a private membership collective for women of color and allies. It's a workspace. It's all about life work balance, but it's a place to create positive social and economic change for each other in the world. That's the mission lofty dream of it. It is a physical location. Again, we'll start it as a physical location with plans to go to hybrid at year two, COVID explained to us that at month seven, we're going to go hybrid and not have the physical, but we're physical and digital. So we have a physical space with a meditation loft, a gathering space, workspace and gym, different sort of food services, programs, offices. So it was just this like Shangri-La and then programming. And then we went to all digital and now we're going back to physical.

Speaker 2: (46:34)
And again, it was one of those poles. We could have tried to stay digital and done that, but the core of how I tell stories through space and through how you walk through space. So when you, if you can visualize Blackbird, I'll talk about what Blackbird will be. And it's kind of based on what it was. You walk into Blackbird and you are greeted by faces that look like you or people who are allies who understand and need to touch a hair. And you walk into a design space that is intentionally layered and surfaced with materials that respect cultural diversity, not through being tribal or anything, but through this texture, through the adjacencies, through the way that you walk through space, the whole journey is to take you into you. And what Blackbird really is to me is a reflection of us, a place for us to shine a place for us to be our best selves, a place for us to be our imperfect selves and have brave conversations and lift each other up network, work with each other, to have a shared economy, get your paper, you know, cause financial, it's basically a place for equity, equality, and equanimity.

Speaker 2: (47:49)
And if you're financial part of it, financial wellness is so underrated. And now I'm sure you hear conversations about it makes so much sense having that stability. We deserve the basic all of us. Like there's no reason, you know, any one person should have as much as a billionaire has, but if you do, then everyone else should have millions. So at least it's like, there's some balance. It just shouldn't be that people are not able to eat. So getting all of those things and as you know, women of color, that number one growing, especially black women, no more than growing entrepreneurs start more businesses than anyone else. So creating that network and being part of there are so many people doing it, find each other, like what we're talking about, partnering with dark beauty and what you're doing with wellness and mental health, like, okay, great. Let's do it. Let's rise together, which is how we all get to that equitability.

Speaker 3: (48:42)
Right. And you're creating a safe space. Like to me, I just feel just listening to you. I feel like, okay, that's the place where I can go. And I know cause now what part of LA are you in now? You're in Culver city and is it open, open

Speaker 2: (48:58)
This fall it's weeks away. But how many weeks? I don't know. We're just waiting a little bit on a permit, but it's the building's done and all the TBI and all the pieces and furnishings that go in in the company.

Speaker 3: (49:10)
Are you going to have a party?

Speaker 2: (49:12)
It's probably going to be not, we're going to do some small opening things like October, November, December, and then January or February, depending on this pandemic, frankly, when we had the pilot location, we had our grand opening, October 26th, 2019 with 500 people. And it was like coming home and going to the park and go into a party and get we had, well, we had our reading, we had chefs, we had a financial conversation about entrepreneurship. We had massages going on in a room. We had a poet there creating poems and we photo station where you can do like a community thing. We're like celebrating what we're about to do. And then obviously we can't do that yet, but that's the goal.

Speaker 3: (49:58)
Okay. Well, I would like to come to one of those little parties. Thank you. And this is actually been such a wonderful, wonderful chat because I feel like I still feel like I'm only scratching the surface. And I know when we meet finally in person, we'll have our own little powwow and go deeper, but I just want to thank you for sharing your journey. I think it's really important for people to hear that other women of color, not only do they go through it, but we do heal right. And we do have different ways of doing it. And I think that there are different things that are part of your story that people can tease out for themselves. And that, you know, just you talking about, even sometimes having those insecurities, even as a successful woman, that that's also normal, right? And that we, you know, it's never just, we're finished, we're successful and everything's, hunky-dory in our lives that we still have to deal with those things and we still are learning and we're still learning how to figure out those things in our lives. So I appreciate you sharing that with us and I really want everyone to make sure they follow you. Can you just tell us where they should follow you on social media and can people sign up and how do people become members of Blackbird collective? Yeah.

Speaker 2: (51:11)
Thank you. You can follow us on Instagram at, at the.blackbird.house. I think it's the same on Facebook. And then Twitter is just Blackbird underscore house. You can go to blackbird.house, www.blackboard.house. It'll bring you to our front page, which is actually in development. It'll be different. But at the moment, you can still click in and join the waitlist for the physical membership. Or you can sign up and go through the application for the online membership, which is global. We have members all over the world and thank you Wilma for the work that you're doing with dark beauty, the partnership and the sisterhood. It really means a lot. And, and I want to double down on that, like outward success is encouraging. It helps you kind of get through things, but all of us have those days and giving myself grace is what I've been working on because sometimes it's just sad. It's just a sad day. No reason everything great is happening and it's a sad day, but the next day may not be, or a couple of moments. Weren't won't and just accepting that this is a journey. And so I love the work you're doing too and appreciate your time. Thank

Speaker 3: (52:19)
You. Thank you. And I will speak to you soon. Sounds good. Take care. You too. Thank you for listening to today's podcast, the healing home. I really hope you enjoyed it. I'd like to leave you with one last thought. I have seen this quote attributed to Robin Williams, Plato phylo and more whoever said it. I give, thanks everyone you meet is fighting a battle. You know, nothing about be kind, always please subscribe to our podcast and share with your friends. We would love for you to join our community and also share your constructive feedback. You can also find us on Facebook groups@facebook.com forward slash groups slash DRK beauty, Instagram at dark beauty healing that's DRK beauty healing and our website, which is www dot. This is DRK beauty.com. We also deliver free therapy to women of color through our nonprofit initiative. DRK beauty healing. We have over 120 clinicians in our network who have donated 10 or more hours of pro bono therapy to explore therapy for yourself. Please visit our website and click on the link to our dark beauty healing directory. There you can find your state and explore to connect with participating clinicians. If you feel emotionally or mentally unsafe and in need of urgent assistance, please immediately contact 9 1 1 or the national crisis hotline by

Speaker 1: (53:57)
Dialing nine, double eight on your phone or calling +1 800-273-8255 that's 1 802 7 3. Talk in the yes.