Episode 175: Rejecting Resilience
/Show transcript:
Welcome to The Broad Experience, the show about women, the workplace, and success. I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte.
This time…rejecting resilience at work.
“You’re supposed to be the person who has all the answers. Like, I was doing a very radical thing in terms of being a physician and sharing with the world that I don't have it all together.”
And someone who’s dedicated her young career to helping Black women with their mental health…
“There are some clients who after a session they’re like, man, I’ve never been able to talk about this but just thank you for being with me every week, thank you for listening to me, validating me.”
Coming up on The Broad Experience.
Today, Dr Omolara Thomas Uwemedimo runs her own business: Melanin and Medicine.
She is also a pediatrician who has worked all over the world – from New York City and Boston, to Cuba, Malawi, Kenya, and South Africa.
Omolara grew up in Queens, the daughter of Nigerian immigrants. Her mum was a visiting nurse when she was young. After school, Omolara would go with her on her rounds…
“And I was her assistant, so get the dressing, get the gauze.”
But she says it was another woman who inspired her to become a doctor, when she was just five years old.
“I was always around my pediatrician, I had a lot of sinus and throat issues and so I'd always go and she was a Black woman and just so caring, so nurturing, I loved this woman… And I thought of the fact that somebody who's not a part of my family, but a part of our lives, I thought that's a really special place to be. And I wanted to replicate that.”
Add that to what she saw went she went out on rounds with her mom, and she was attracted to the idea that medicine was a way to heal the body, yes, but more than that, it was a way to connect with people on a pretty intimate level.
Her parents were thrilled with her chosen career path…in fact she says they probably helped push her in that direction too, keen to see their daughter excel in their new country.
Fast forward close to 20 years and Omolara is standing in an interview room at medical school. Although she herself had a Black female doctor as a kid, they were still a rarity, and she was still an unusual applicant. She’d prepared her speech about why she wants to follow this path. She’d practiced it multiple times, and she launched in…
“And so everything came out beautifully about my story, what's going on, why I want to be a doctor. And then the first thing after I finished my monologue, was ‘wow, you're really articulate.’ And I was just like…did you hear what I said? I don't know if you heard it, or if you were just amazed by the fact that I could put words together coherently, despite the fact that I am a college graduate and, you know, and applying to medical school.”
Now of course she didn’t say any of that. She knew something was off, but she didn’t have the vocabulary to describe it back then.
She says the Black women she met and connected with at medical school…they really bonded. She says like people in the army, they went through things no one else could understand, not even their families. And what they learned there – what they were taught, she says – was to be stoic…resilient…
“You know, in my work right now, where I focus on black women physicians, I think that is why it's particularly important because many times there's an inability to be vulnerable, which is what we've learned in medical school. We learn that vulnerability is not the way that you are able are supposed to practice. Although what I've learned culturally is it’s exactly the opposite. Like in terms of the more vulnerable I am about my situations and what I'm going through, I actually resonate a lot more with my patients of color and my Black patients.”
Omalara has been dedicated to children’s health her entire career. Specifically getting under-served kids from immigrant or minority families access to good care.
By her early 30s she’s seeing patients, she’s teaching, she’s setting up programs to serve children and their families…she’s married and she’s had her first baby.
It was a lot. She had become a doctor to her family’s delight, she was doing work she cared deeply about, and she was very much a minority – Black women doctors make up about two percent of doctors in the U.S. She felt a lot of pressure to be good at her job, and to prove herself. She says she never said no to an opportunity.
“So I remember that if someone needed me to speak for something, I had no time to do it, I’d figure out a place, I'd probably cancel a weekend that was supposed to be with my family in order to do that. I remember seeing patients and being so afraid of like, if my notes were fine enough that if people… would people say anything about my notes, that I would stay sometimes up to 12:00 AM, after seeing patients in the clinic, basically the cleaning team knew my name by that time…”
Meanwhile she says she’d experience indignities at work, comments, slights…and she says it was never one person, or one thing…
“Like there are multiple times when, you know, we were in, I would be in meetings and I had, I was basically an expert in the topic and, and would raise my hand to speak and would always be overlooked. And were dealing with those things. But then there were these things where it was almost like, um, I think people call it stereotype threat where it's kind of, I don't want people to think that I am lazy, not good, so I'm going to do above and beyond. And so that there's not even a trace of that. And I think that medicine sometimes rewards that.”
She says self-sacrifice is generally seen as a plus. And that reminds me of conversations I’ve had with other female doctors for this show.
The other women in medicine I’ve interviewed are white – but Omolara says on top of some of the gender stuff she was dealing with stereotypes about who Black women are, and the ‘strong Black woman’ trope. The idea that she could handle anything, that Omolara would always get it done… for ages she believed this herself.
“…and so when you have both a trope that says that, and the work that you do, it's kind of a recipe for disaster where you are also really scared of saying no and potentially jeopardizing or alienating yourself, and potentially saying the wrong thing that might make someone think that you're being angry or hostile and potentially that jeopardizing your job.”
She says that worry was ever present for her…so she didn’t speak up about the comments and assumptions that belittled or stereotyped her. She had a good job. She’d made her family proud. She didn’t want to rock the boat.
She points out that recently there have been news reports about black women physicians who spoke up about racism and sexism at their institutions, and lost their positions…
“And I think that fear was in my mind about well, this is all I have, I have no other things. So let me make sure I conform myself, follow the rules, don't make waves, and make sure that I do it really, really well.”
AM-T: “What relationship do you think your upbringing and the way your parents raised you had to do with the way you felt you had to conduct yourself?”
“Ashley…what a good question. So I think many children of immigrants will feel that there is a duty when we think about our parents and we think about what they left and, and how much, how hard they work. My parents worked in a factory, although they were trained professionals, initially, and also how hard they do everything just for us, that there is this thought of how do I pay them back? How do I make sure that they're the most proud people? And I think that a lot of the over-achieving that happened to some extent is, I'm just compelled to like help people, but to some extent of thinking that, okay, validation, let me make sure it was this good enough - was this good enough? And I think when you get accolades for the work that you do, you feel like, well, that's a testament to them. And it almost is like, okay, well, maybe it is worth it because at least it's showing in a good light my family and all of those connections. That there is a deep component, especially for, I know in the Nigerian culture, there is a very deep component around education, and what does the end product look like?”
During this time she had a second daughter. Her girls are a couple of years apart. So on top of burnishing the end product she was tending to them, driving them from place to place as they got older…we’re going to talk more about her family setup later, but suffice it to say that Omolara was doing the bulk of the childcare, then working late into the night.
After years of doing it all, in 2019 everything changed.
“I was seeing patients, I was educating, I was starting programs, leading them…and it hit a wall. I actually stopped seeing patients for a few months. And then I found myself hospitalized. I found myself over the course of one week going from nauseous and dizzy to being unable to move my right side of my body and unable to walk.”
For a while she didn’t know what was wrong…was it cancer…what was causing her body to behave like this? Her life had changed in a matter of days.
“The woman who would travel and do everything for everyone couldn't even go to the bathroom by herself. And as I sat there, my brother called me and said, ‘Omolara, I need you to sit here and just think about you and what brings you joy.’ And I couldn't even answer that. I had no clue what brought me joy. And that was the moment where I realized, how many of us are like this? How many of us are on the outside as Black women taught to suppress our emotions, taught to care for everyone, but also taught to be uber independent, and end up with some physical or mental health crisis?”
That realization caused her to pivot. More on that a bit later in the show.
Like Omolara Uwemedimo, Camesha Jones got into her line of work because she wanted to help people. But her personal experience also played a part.
Camesha is a social worker and therapist based in Chicago. But less than ten years ago she was a student.
“During my final year in undergrad I was under immense stress. I was working 20 hours a week, in school fulltime, and at that time I knew something was off, cause I’m like, I shouldn’t be this stressed and this overwhelmed all the time.”
She started to experience depression-like symptoms, but she put it all down to stress…told herself she’d get through it.
“And I think a lot of people are like this, where they are noticing changes in their mental health but they don’t necessarily attribute it to a mental health condition…it’s more so like I’m just going through a lot, or I’m just really, really stressed.”
The summer before she due to move to Chicago to get her graduate degree she experienced a few different crises. She was told she had bi-polar disorder. Which initially she rejected because of the stigma she associated with that label. She ended up in an outpatient program, seeing a psychiatrist…but not seeing her experience as a black woman reflected anywhere. She didn’t feel they really got her.
Ultimately that experience and her own efforts to improve her mental health led her to start an entrepreneurial venture – it’s called Sista Afya, and it provides mental health support to black women in Chicago, many of whom have never had the opportunity to get it before.
Camesha says she’d seen so many Black women beginning with her own family members, downplay their own wellbeing and see it downplayed by society.
“For me it was important to say that Black women deserve quality mental healthcare, they deserve the space to connect with one another, to receive support and to heal.”
Another thing that galvanized her was the number of mental health clinics the city of Chicago shut down in the last decade…often in black and brown neighborhoods…
“So if you think about that, that was a political decision that disproportionately impacted black and brown communities so where do those people go? How do we fill that gap?”
She says Sista Afya helps do that. As a therapist she sees everyone from women on public assistance to professionals with PhDs.
AM-T: “And has your work changed a lot during the pandemic?”
“Yes, yes, the demand is through the roof. That is the biggest thing that I’ve seen, and not just for myself but for other therapists in the field, is I don’t think the mental health field has ever experienced this high of a demand for services, so that’s one thing. The other things is working with people who have contracted Covid, people who never had mental health symptoms before and are now experiencing them for the first time. And then people who have existing mental health conditions and now it’s worse, because of all the stresses related to the multiple pandemics – so we have Covid 19, we have political issues, economic issues, racial injustice issues…if you think about that particularly in the black community, I don’t want to necessarily say black people are necessarily experiencing worse stressors, I just think it’s different for us.”
She says her clients are grateful for the opportunity to talk to a professional, to have their mental wellness considered a priority.
“There are some clients who after a session they’re like, man, I’ve never been able to talk about this but just thank you for being with me every week, thank you for listening to me, validating me …I will say most of my clients do say thank you, and that means a lot because this is not an easy job, you’re holding a lot of heavy things that people are going through.”
AM-T: “I was gonna ask you about that, I mean it is a lot to carry yourself, you must have ways of managing your own - the burden of this job. I mean I know a lot of therapists have a therapist, I hope you do.”
“Yes, I have a therapist, I see her every two weeks, and more if needed.”
Camesha is only 29. She says there’s a lot else she wants to do outside of her professional life – live in different countries, have a family. But it is really important to her to keep advocating for the mental health care of women who haven’t had a lot of access to these services. Because they need them as much as anyone.
“We know if we’re not OK mentally a lot of other areas of our lives deteriorate, and sometimes people don’t see mental health as being something that should be really prioritized or attended to, but I believe it’s literally the gateway to healing. It’s the gateway to having the life that you want.”
Omolara Uwemedimo has done a lot of work on her mental health in the past two years – as well as her physical health. Her tests in the hospital finally revealed that she had multiple sclerosis. That explained the changes to her right side, her sudden inability to walk.
Today she’s 39, and she’s a lot better, but her right side is still affected. She says she can feel stress these days in her leg or arm…so she’s unapologetic about needing naps. Also doing yoga.
It is a big change from the old days when she kept pushing herself to do more. And her workplace happily gave her more.
“When I left, when I was hospitalized, my work was distributed to five different people. And that was a wake -up call.”
She knew there were a lot of other Black women like her, in medicine and academia, who felt they had to keep out-performing just to stay in the game. She initially started an online support group based around black motherhood…
“But then I realized that there were these group of women who would never talk that were in the group. And they were physicians like me. And I realized that there was an inability to be vulnerable in larger spaces because you're supposed to be the person who has all the answers. Like, I was doing a very radical thing in terms of being a physician and sharing with the world that I don't have it all together. And I wanted to create a space for them because I know how much work it is not just to be a black woman, but to be a black woman who is not only caring for family, friends, but also caring for patients, and holding that load. And a lot of time keeping it all in.”
That’s when her business Melanin and Medicine was born. She wanted other doctors to be able to do what she hadn’t before she got sick: reject the idea that they were superwomen, and that the workplace needed their resilience to function…
“That piece has been something that I've really worked in the coaching and the strategy work that I do with a lot of the women I'm blessed to work with, because it's unlearning the fact that you can be more than that and that you can say no, and it's okay to say, ‘I don't have time to do that. And no, I'm not as strong as you think I am and I can’t do five jobs.”
She finds the work incredibly rewarding – so rewarding she has to remind herself not to over work in this new life she’s created.
She says she’s finally spending time nurturing her kids – not just feeding and bathing them but talking to them, listening to them, telling them about what she does, why it’s important. They know she needs to rest and take care of herself.
It wasn’t until she got sick that the whole family was jolted into doing things differently. Including her husband.
“He was like, Oh, I guess I have to do this now. Right. And now I ask, and now he's there and he does everything, but it wasn't, I asked him and he wouldn't do it. It was like, we never asked, we just thought, that that was what we were supposed to do. Do everything.”
AM-T: “Oh…so you mean you as the mum had that thing of, ‘this is my job, as well.’”
“Correct.”
AM-T: “And my husband is the man of the house and he doesn’t really do the kids…”
“Correct, correct.”
After all she’d seen her own mother do everything when she was a kid. But in the last couple of years her mom has told her, you think I wouldn’t have liked some help if I could get it? Her family supports her career shift.
AM-T: “Is there anything you’d like to say that you haven’t said, particularly about what your hope is for the future for black women in your field?”
“I think the biggest thing that I hope is that we get loud, that we take up as much space as possible, that we allow women who are coming into this field to see that as the norm, and that we recognize that safety and security comes at a cost, and that a lot of times the risk is staying where you are and staying in that place of settling - not shifting. And so when I see women understanding that that's the actual risk now, that's a generational legacy. If we can change the strong black woman trope to that one, I think that would be a really cool thing for black women professionals at large, not just physicians.”
Dr. Omolara Thomas Uwemedimo. You can find out more about her work at OmolaraMD.com. Thanks to Omolara and Camesha Jones for being my guests on this show. I’ll also include links to both of their work under this episode at TheBroadExperience.com.
That’s the Broad Experience for this time.
This one-woman podcast has been going for nine years. The world of women in the workplace has changed in some ways and in others, not so much. Of course the pandemic has caused huge changes to the world of work and I want to look at how all this is affecting women in more shows later this year.
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I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte. Thanks for listening. See you next time.