Tanya Hale 00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale, and this a bonus episode podcast, "Supporting Our Sisters with Anita Miller." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

Tanya Hale 00:24 

Alright. Well, hello there, my friends. Hey, I am just doing a bonus episode. Things are just a little bit crazy in our world and I have found myself just up to my eyeballs in trying to learn new information and figure things out and understand things. I'm sure a lot of you are in the exact same place, just trying make sense of this reform movement that we are in right now. You know, one of my biggest things that happened to me in regards to this was several weeks ago I was listening to a podcast from Brooke Castillo and she talked about unconditional love. She wasn't even talking about this race issue that we have going on in our country right now in response to the George Floyd murder, but all of a sudden I just received this insight. I thought, you know what? It really is about unconditional love. And I can be completely against the looting and the violent riots and still get to a place of compassion in my heart for what is going on here and for these people. I mean what kind of lives do they have to have, to feel like this is the only way that they can be heard? The only way that they can be seen, to feel like this is going to spark the kind of revolution that they want. 

Tanya Hale 01:55 

And so that really kind of changed my my ideas a little bit and I started thinking more in terms of me, in the sense that how do I want to feel? Do I wanna feel angry and upset all the time and in fear? And I don't. I don't want to feel that way. I want to feel like I'm in a place of love and compassion. And again that doesn't mean that I have to condone the violence and the killings and the destruction that is happening. But I can strive myself to get to a place of compassion. And when I did that I started to get a lot more curious. And as I got curious I started reading and watching videos. And in the last two weeks I've probably spent, gosh, 30 hours just absorbing as much as I can, understanding as much...I will tell you that I am in a different place because I understand concepts and ideas that I never did before. 

Tanya Hale 02:59 

And as part of this I called my friend Anita Miller who I did life coach school training with. A year ago we were in the middle of our training and she is Black and lives in North Carolina and I was like "can we chat? Because I have some questions." And I know it's not her job to educate me, but I appreciate her taking time to help me see things from her perspective and to help me understand how we could come together. Because I don't want to be a whiner and a complainer. I want to know how can I be part of the solution here and what can I do? And so this is a lot of what Anita and I talked about. And I actually talked to her about doing a podcast with me about this. So we called one night and we were gonna do that and we started chatting and almost two hours later we were like "oh, we haven't recorded the podcast yet" because I had just been so involved and fascinated with what she had to say about what's going on and her perspective on it. So then we had to set up another appointment, and i think we recorded for about 40 minutes, but we were on the phone again for about two and a half hours as we discussed again so much of what's going on. So I think you'll love Anita. 

Tanya Hale 04:18 

Anita has a podcast as well and she has a business where she is a confidence and career coach for women of color and she has a brilliant mind. She's a wonderful, kind person and I think you're just going to enjoy listening to what she has to say about how as women we can come together. So I'm titling this one "Supporting Our Sisters with Anita" because there's a place where we really need to start supporting each other and coming together on this and really learning to listen and understand and see. So that being said, here's my interview with Anita. 

Tanya Hale 05:01 

Hi, Anita, how you doing today? 

Anita Miller 05:04 

Hey, how are you Tanya? I am good. 

Tanya Hale 05:07 

Alright. Anita is one of my good friends that I met when we did life coach school training together last year. And, Anita, go ahead and introduce yourself, if you will, please. 

Anita Miller 05:20 

Thanks. So I am Anita Miller. I'm a confidence and career coach. I am a wife, a mother. I live in North Carolina. So, I guess to some extent at this point, I think I'm a Southern woman. I've been here since about the early 2000s. So there's that. I also work in corporate America. So that's a part of coaching that I do, is really helping Black women navigate corporate America. I think, you know, with all this going on is highlighted some of the differences that you see, or that we face, in corporate America, so based on my own experiences, as I am looking to serve that community, to really help them grow in their careers as we move forward. 

Tanya Hale 06:12 

I love that. I know that when we were in coach training together, Anita, one of the things that I just respected you so much for, I just love that you would speak your voice, which a lot of times as women, I think we've been kind of trained not to. And I loved that especially as a Black woman that you speak up and that you are willing to share. I just think it's a beautiful thing. And I wanted to talk to you at this time specifically, because I think there's a lot of disconnect with what's going on in our country right now, with the protests and the riots and all of this. I know that for me in the last two weeks, I've had a huge shift in what I started to understand. What's your take on what going on right now? 

Anita Miller 07:02 

So my take is that there is a lot of, I'll call it noise in the system, and so I think it would be helpful for all of us to take a step back, breathe just a little bit. I thing that the protests and the noise that is being made has certainly served as a catalyst, right? It's certainly got all of our attentions, is opening up this kind of dialogue, and I think that that is a great thing. But I think as we think about, okay, what's next? How do we get there? We then have to, you know, kind of even allow that to continue if that's the way in which you want to use your voice. I don't think there's a problem with that perspective. 

Anita Miller 07:51 

But for those of us who may not want to protest, who are not fully understanding, you know, even the reasons for why people are protesting, to do some of the things like you've been doing, like, you know, reading and listening to various voices so that you can educate yourself, to garnish your own perspective of what is happening that maybe you were or were not aware of. And then from there, what part do you play in that going forward, right? Whether that's helping, whether that's "yeah, I want to protest now," whether this is how I want to see things improve in my community. I think that is a question that we can all ask ourselves regardless of race right now, right, is what can each of us do to make an impact in our local community? Because i think it starts there in our own homes and then in our local neighborhoods and our local, you know, greater area, if you would, to make an impact. 

Anita Miller 08:52 

I think it becomes overwhelming when you try to think about, okay, this is the way we've all been programmed, so to speak, regardless of race again, because it's programming that takes place on both sides or on all sides. And then tomorrow, everything that I believe or everything I was taught is kind of gone by the wayside, and I'm supposed to be something that I didn't think that I was or I'm supposed to do things very differently, but if I say something, I get in trouble. If I don't say, something I'd get into trouble, I think that all becomes overwhelming and keeps people stuck, all people stuck, right? So if we just breathe and become curious and think about what's the next best step? Like what can I do next? For some of us, that means just learning, like you've been doing. 

Anita Miller 09:43 

And then once you learn, and I think the next step is, okay, what do I wanna do with this knowledge? Are there any thoughts or things that I do wanna change out, right? Like, are there are any new thoughts that I want to try on to see if they're true for me? And then again, I believe the final step is how can I make a lasting impact in my community? How can get to know my neighbors? I live in the South and I will just tell you that I know the neighbors like next to me, like I'm calling them my eyesight, but I don't really know all my neighbors, like even on my street, past a couple of houses. So what can I do to get outside more, to wave, to just go up and have a conversation, to know them, they get to know me, to build a greater sense of community. And I think it starts there, versus, you know, finger pointing, blaming...we can all do that, but we're not moving forward. When we blame and we guilt and we shame, we are just standing in judgment and from that place we can't move forward. Because the other person either is not listening, they're judging, it would be no different if we were having an argument and we were husband and wife, right? The same would result, right, that's how we get to, as wives, "you're not listening to me," because we just throwing comments out of anger and guilt and frustration, right? And they become defensive. So then there's comments thrown back. And that's never the way to get to a place where we get an agreeable solution or we get a way of love and moving forward from that place. 

Tanya Hale 11:27 

You know what, Anita, I love that because I think that that is what most of us want to do. I don't think we want be in this battle. You know, we don't want to be defensive. We don't want to be angry. I think we do want to approach this from a loving and a kind place. But I know for me, I didn't realize the ways that I wasn't coming at this from the loving and kind of place, because there are things happening that I've never seen before. So can I ask you this question? What do we as women need to understand, I guess we as white women, what we need to understand about you and your situation that will help us to understand this whole situation better? 

Anita Miller 12:23 

I think for Black women we have not seen white women as a friend. And even in the Women's Rights initiatives, you know, even if we think about either the previous kind of campaign for Women's Rights and the Me Too movement, we haven't seen that as white women also being inclusive of Black women. From that perspective, I can tell you from a corporate perspective we've seen white women kind of reap the benefits of diversity inclusion and not reach back out to also pull up Black women, right? It's kind just taking care of each other. So I think for a lot of what you see, it's just the culmination of a lot of experiences with white women, too. With that being said, we are all still women. Right? There's a lot of commonality in terms of how do you balance your career and be a wife, be a mother, right? We all share in that struggle. How do manage having your voice heard in a corporate or work environment that's still very much dominated by men? 

Anita Miller 13:44 

And I think that sometimes where we get into strife is not respecting the differences between our approaches on that. And so I think traditionally white women have been told to kind of be softer about it, softer in their approach. Whereas Black women had been taught, we have to be strong. We have be to strong, we have to be smart. In order for us to even get a seat at the table, it meant that we worked likely twice as hard as you did. 

Anita Miller 14:22 

And so I talked a little bit about that if you've heard my podcast with Brooke Steele. And so I think that that has created this sense of animosity between Black women and white women. I think it goes back for generations, right? Even if we think about some of what you see in terms of slavery and the role that white woman played in sitting and watching it take place and benefiting from it taking place, benefited from us taking care of your children, cleaning your house, benefiting from all of those things over the years, right? So that would have been, you know, our parents, our grandparents doing that work for your parents and your grandparents, and then caring for you guys and seeing how it's playing out today where you see things happening and you say nothing, or those type of things. 

Anita Miller 15:15 

And I'm not saying that no one says anything, because I don't think that that's true. I think just like you and I talked about, we've put people into groups, right? We've said we want to be considered individuals, but in the same token in what's going on now, and we put all of you guys into "you're white." So it was what white people do. 

Tanya Hale 15:36 

Right. And we'd done the same to you as well. We've said, "oh, well, all the Black people are protesting or something," right? 

Anita Miller 15:43 

Right, and I haven't protested. I am not against the protest, but that's not how I'm choosing to use my voice. I think that we all have a part to play in getting to the next point. And the role I choose to play is to use my voice, to have the conversation with you one-on-one or to do the podcast with you, versus protest. I think the protest is a catalyst. I think that these type of conversations lend itself to you getting to know me and being open. So if you're not hearing the protests, then there has to be another way, potentially for you to be open to hearing and I think that that's through personal connection. I think that through getting to know your neighbors, right? Getting to know people in your community from a place of love versus judgment, just being open to see if you do have anything in common. I think we would find that we have a lot more in common, but we are all a product of the programming. 

Anita Miller 16:51 

I'll tell you, that same young lady who got promoted, her and I just talked on Wednesday because I would consider her an ally. But here's what I will tell you, I love her, but I don't trust her. And I coach people.... 

Tanya Hale 17:08 

Can we...So this is actually going back to a conversation that Anita and I had before. Will you just tell the story about her? Because that was before we started recording. So you getting passed over for that. 

Anita Miller 17:22 

Yeah. So I think the second time that I got passed over promotion, it was with this particular white woman who had no experience in what we were doing. And so at the time the promotional opportunity came up, let's say I was highly qualified. Let's see, I had five to 10 years of experience, she had less than two and her previous background was in something different. But I knew going in that she was going to get...it's one of those things where if you've been around in corporate America long enough, I think she was going to get it. And she did and so that created guilt and shame for her quite honestly because she knew that the the rest of the team didn't want her to have it. She new that she really honestly hadn't earned it, but in doing so it created a wedge in the team, because you have a team of other qualified people of all colors to we now have this white woman. 

Anita Miller 18:19 

But for her and I, there was a period where our relationship was very contentious. It was really contentious, and we had to get to a point where we have to work together. How can we do that in a more productive and respectful way? So for her and I it became, we both want to be the best. We both want to get it done and we found commonality in that. So how do we get it done? 

Tanya Hale 18:54 

Yeah. So you said that you respect her but at this point you don't trust her. So where does that lack of trust come from? And I could guess but I'm gonna let you put it out there. 

Anita Miller 19:10 

Yeah, so I respect her. I love her, like I truly love her. She is an awesome person. I don't trust her. Now, with that being said, a part of me not trusting her is me understanding who she is and allowing her to be who she is, from a place of love and not judgment, right? So she's the type of person who is going to do what is necessary for the greater good of her career, even if it's to your detriment and even if potentially not right. And so I understand that about her and so instead of me being upset 

about it, I can still love her. She is smart. She does things differently. 

Anita Miller 19:57 

One of the things that I teach my clients, and I use this as an example all the time, because what I see happen in my community is that we just say "you're bad and i'm not going to deal with you," right, and or "I don't trust you so I'm not going to deal with you." And I remember one of my mentors telling me the person that you don't want to deal with is the person you should absolutely get to know. It is life-changing and it's a moment of growth for you, not them, in being able to do that. And so here's what I learned about her. She doesn't go about it the way I go about. So for example, I am much more hands-on. I have a hard time in delegating, but a part of not being able to delegate and give people things, I don't micromanage. I give people the opportunity, but something along those lines also keeps me stuck. 

Anita Miller 20:55 

Whereas her thing is to use other people to get her work done. Now, people see that as a bad thing. However, as you move up, if you think about leaders, they don't do the work. 

Tanya Hale 21:06 

Right. They always delegate. 

Anita Miller 21:08 

They're always delegating. She's also a great presenter. Her background is in sales, so she does it well. She is an influencer. She knows people, right? And there are things that I have learned from her. When I had trouble saying things warm and  fuzzy because I live in the South, I call her and I say, "okay, here's the situation. How can I save this in a way that would be useful for the conversation?" Now, if I didn't know her, I wouldn't have to do that. Now, she calls me when she's probably being more emotional and needs to be more strategic because I'm analytical and I think that way. 

Tanya Hale 21:48 

I love that. 

Anita Miller 21:49 

How can I be more "big picture" about this? Like, how can I be strategic? Right? And so we found commonality in, hey, these are your strengths, these are your strengths. How could we use those for both of our greater good? Versus "you are my competition and I'm going to do anything I can to bring you down." We can both be great together. And I think if we take that mindset versus "if I uplift a Black woman, it takes something from me being great too, or if I help her, if I use my voice for her, it takes something away from me." I don't think we wanted to take from you being great. I think we just want, from a woman to woman perspective, a human to human perspective, for it to be you also not against me. 

Tanya Hale 22:44 

You know what, I like that because I see where the lack of trust for her doesn't come from the fact that you don't appreciate her skills or her talents, and probably the same for her, but the fact that she felt guilty because she knew that she got a job opportunity that really you were way more qualified for. And when I was listening to something yesterday, an interview with Brene Brown, there was a piece where she said that she keeps getting all of these these offers to speak and she'll come back and she's say "you know what I appreciate the offer but that really is something that a woman of color should be addressing." And I think that that's kind of, isn't that, is that kind of what you're talking about? Like, we need to step back and say, "you know what, we to hold hands. We need the link arms with each other and we need help each other." And if you are more qualified, girlfriend, you come and you do this. If I'm more qualified then, whatever. But helping each other rather than just always being so self-serving. I mean I am sure it would be easy for Brene to say "oh here's an extra sixty thousand dollars because I going to go speak at this event," but instead for her to say "no, this is a topic that needs to be covered by a woman of color." 

Anita Miller 23:59 

Absolutely. I remember that is what using your circle or your sphere of influence is about, right? And it only serves to make you greater. When you're at the place of abundance, like Brene Brown, right, where she can say, "I'm not the best person for it," and be confident that it takes nothing from her, is not going to take anything from her. It absolutely just creates more abundance for her, right. It just really upped her stock in terms of more people wanting her to speak and things like that. And I think our understanding that in this, it doesn't have to take anything from you. I'm not looking to take, you know, your life or to impose upon your livelihood or to take from that. I am just looking to create that for myself. 

Anita Miller 24:52 

And if we think about it from a place of abundance versus scarcity, then we'll know that we both collectively can be mothers, be wise, be women, abundantly and together without it taking from either one of us, and leveraging each other when the time is right or when the purpose is needed, either together or otherwise. There are absolutely things that I think she is better at, and her and I have had that conversation. She is better at being warm and fuzzy. I can remember her telling me that I needed to be softer And if I wasn't at this current, you know, period and age of my life where I'm comfortable with who I am, I would have taken an offense to it. But what I told her was that that wouldn't be being genuine to me. Right? I've tried to be warm and fuzzy, even though I live in the South. And bless my own heart, I cannot. I cannot. Because it's not true to me, so it creates this anxiety when I attempt to do it. Now, is there a time and a place? Is there always the ability to grow is they're always their ability to remember your approach in a conversation absolutely but for me to just show up smile and it would be disingenuous to you and to me if I tried to do that, and I wouldn't do it well. And then I would be awkward. 

Tanya Hale 26:23 

Yeah. So do you feel that white women, specifically, try and make you behave like white woman? 

Anita Miller 26:33 

Yes. 

Tanya Hale 26:34 

How do feel that? That's interesting. 

Anita Miller 26:37 

So the example I just gave you, like, "it's just a little softer if you just show up and laugh at the guy's jokes." If I just get to know all of the white male leaders, spend more time with them. I think that that is the approach that I've seen taken by a lot of white women. And I won't say my circle, but in my area of visibility, right? Then my life would just be better. And I'm not saying that there's no truth to that, right. It is working for them. What I've had to explain to her is what works for her does not necessarily work for me because of my race. How she can interact with a white man, I cannot in a lot of cases because my race. 

Anita Miller 27:38 

But it seems to her, so apparently, like if you just go do this, you can make whatever you want happen. So all the reasons we've been talking about over the last couple of weeks, that's not really how it works for me or it's not that simple for me. It has to be someone who is open. Like my set of mentors will probably not be the same set of mentors that she has. Now, do I need to go network, have mentors, do all the things that you say I needed to do? Yes, maybe just not with the same group of people. 

Tanya Hale 28:20 

So this is where we do need to understand that there are differences in mindset among our different cultures and our different experiences and where we come...and this is, I think, where I was hung up on the term "colorblind" for so many years. Because I thought, and this gonna make me cry, because I feel like I've been so dismissive in so many ways and it breaks my heart, but I really thought that this term of "colorblind" was exactly what I needed to do to be a good person. I thought I need to not see your color to see you as a person. And now I'm starting to realize that I do need to see your color to you see as person. I can't be colorblind because a huge part of who you are is your culture and your community and how you've grown up, which is different than how I've grown up. So this term "colorblind" that, up until about two weeks ago, I thought was like the ideal of what I needed to be, now I'm seeing this idea of colorblind as I am not seeing you if I don't also see your color. Am I on track, off track? Tell me what you think. 

Anita Miller 29:42 

Yeah, so I think when we came up with the term of "colorblind," it had good intent. But ultimately what color blind did was make me invisible. So by you not see my color and you not trying to see color, you didn't see me at all. It just meant that you walk past me as if I don't exist. You don't see me as a person, a human being, anything. Because you're trying so hard not to have thoughts about color. So to not have thought about colors or to feel any bias or anything that you think are inappropriate types of thoughts about color, then you've made me invisible. So now I don't exist. And because I don't exists, you couldn't see all the things that were happening in the midst of that. 

Tanya Hale 30:37 

Right. 

Anita Miller 30:39 

And so I think that that's the challenge with the concept of colorblind, is that colorblind shuts down the part of you that has the thoughts that you don't want to deal with or that you don't wanna have, especially at the time for which that term was, you know, we were taught that term, and so that's why you can't see all the things that are happening to us as Black people, how systemic racism is working and operating, because you're trying to just focus on "everybody's just here. And I'm treating everybody this way." But if you think about it, if you walked into the Starbucks and you saw another white woman, you would speak. When you walk into this Starbucks, you wouldn't speak to me. Even under the pretext of colorblind, you just wouldn't, because you don't even see me, you don't acknowledge me you, don't interact with me, but we're at the same Starbucks, which means I am a member of your community or the community that you're in at that moment. And we still don't interact. So I think that that is a challenge with kind of using "colorblind" or kind proceeding with that or continuing to think about things that way. 

Anita Miller 32:07 

I think it's absolutely okay to see my color, we see color, we talk color. I don't know that for me, it was really talked about a lot growing up. I didn't really see the difference in color or hear conversations around color until I moved to the South. And so for I think that that has helped to some extent. Like when I show up in a room at work, I just started noticing that I'm the only person of color in the room, because I grew up in mixed schools or predominantly white schools. And so I'm not uncomfortable being the only person in a room. But for a lot of my clients, they are uncomfortable being the only the person  of color in the room, but it just never occurred to me because, I grew up mixed schools. My husband, who is from South Carolina, he never interacted with white people until he went to college. And I venture to say his three white roommates probably never interacted with Black people until they went to college. And so that was his first interaction because, you know, in the South they talk about living on opposite sides of the railroad tracks, because it was still very much segregated. And we're not, I mean, when we think about segregation and when think about our parents, but it's still segregated, we were just there last week. I think in a town that does have both Black and white people, I saw five white people and I was on my last day and we were headed out. They just don't interact or intermingle even though they are both there. And so there's still a lot of that that exists and I think that we change that by starting in our own communities. If we want that to change it has to start now in communities. 

Tanya Hale 34:02 

And how do we do that more? So if I want to be more inclusive. If I want to be less colorblind, because I want be a loving kind person, right? But how would you suggest personally on an individual level? How do I go about just being more the kind of person that I want to be, where I see you for who you are, everything about you? 

Anita Miller 34:40 

I think it starts one person at a time and I know that there are people who kind of disagree with that. So I think it starts with, okay, what do you need to know or learn or understand? I think people can hold on better to connection than you can to reading. Reading gives you context. Reading may help you understand just some of the grievances that we have. But then in terms of how to connect, I think it's just having a conversation. It is likely that the path that the Black woman in your community took to get to your neighborhood is very different than the path that you took. But in that commonality, we're both here, we're both likely married. We both have kids the same age and maybe dealing with teenage stuff that we share commonality and there is commonality in it. We may like a glass of wine, we both may be highly religious, Black women are typically highly-religious women. And I think that that's a place where we can find commonality as well, right, is in religion. And like I said, Black women are typically, like if you were to Google, I think the number is more than 80% of Black woman consider themselves highly religious. So maybe that's a place of commonality is just in that. It's being open to conversations. It's being opened to knowing that you may not say the right thing and that is okay. And if the other person reacts badly, that's not a reflection of you doing something wrong. That's just a reflection of where they are in the process too. Because this is a learning opportunity for us all, right? 

Anita Miller 36:42 

I think you can use your sphere of influence. So you and I talked about being a teacher. As a teacher, do you have the same expectations for your students of color? As a teacher you play a pivotal role, especially if you're doing elementary school teaching. And setting the expectation early, that everyone is expected to succeed. Everyone has that expectation. That child may not be getting that expectation set for them at home. And no, it's not your responsibility to be their parent, but they are with you a core part of their day, just like I'm at work, a core product of my day. And so setting that expectation that you expect all your students to excel, regardless of race. If they need extra help, you know, setting them on a path where they can get the resources to get that extra help. If we instill that in these young people early enough, they will carry it with them even if they don't understand it in that moment. 

Anita Miller 37:46 

You know we talked about a lot of white women sits on boards of foundations and things like that or committees, PTAs, providing opportunity for internships that offer skillset to a group of young people who wouldn't have otherwise had them. Teaching them something versus handing out something, right? So that was one of the things that we talked about, was how can you employ them? So if you own a business, not just having diversity and inclusion, and not looking right now to hire a Black person, hiring a qualified Black person but also hiring someone who is showing signs but can't find an opportunity and maybe you're offering an internship that would give them a work experience that will then allow them to build upon that. But maybe if someone comes to you and they're not qualified, we're not saying you should just hire an unqualified person. But, maybe it's "hey, I can offer you an internship," and maybe it's an unpaid internship but if they want the experience they'll take it, right, because that experience is worth its weight in gold. And doing that, I think that those are ways that we can impact our community, that we change economic conditions, education conditions, these are all other ways systemic racism exists, right, in our communities for the greater good of our communities. 

Anita Miller 39:16 

That doesn't mean that it takes anything from you by doing that. It doesn't take away any more work. I like to believe that if we can all get together and do this, it will take us back to a place where we are really proud in our country. We are best in class and education. We are innovative, we are using our diversity to build a future that we do want to leave our kids. That's how I like to think about what it offers from an abundant place versus a place of "if I help them, then maybe it means I won't have a job." I think it creates more opportunity for all of us. 

Tanya Hale 39:57 

Well, I think there's only things to gain from all us hearing and seeing each other at a deeper level. And only something to gain from bringing all of our diversity to the table and having that conversation. Because if I'm sitting at at the at table and discussing a big issue with only white women, I am going to get a very, very limited perspective, right? And I'm not going understand whether we're solving problems or regardless of what we're doing. But if I'm sitting at a table with some Black women and some Latino women, and some Polynesian, I don't know, wherever, you know? And some white women. We're just going to get such a greater overall understanding of how we're all seeing the world. Because we are all all see it from a very different perspective, right? 

Anita Miller 40:50 

Yeah. And I think that that is key. You can't...I know you and I talked about you reading about White Savior. You can't save Black people and not have Black people at the table. It's not possible. You don't understand enough. You haven't walked in our shoes. And listen, my shoes as a Black woman is different from the next Black women's shoes, as well. So there's that. And so to your point, and that's where diversity comes in, right? is that, okay, there is a perspective that I have. It is not just, again, having what we refer to as a token Black woman at the table. It's really listening too, if you want to make an impact for whatever the cause is. So I like to rally around a cause. I think we all have a lot on our plate today as people. And so I would encourage all of us to think about where can I make the most impact? And it's likely in a place where you already have influence, right? So while you can donate to any cause you would like, I think without a whole lot of, you know, extra work on your part, I think that that is fine. 

Anita Miller 42:04 

But when we talk about doing work, it has to be work that you are passionate about. And I want to suggest that you think how you could make impact here where you're already passionate. Like, I'm already passionate about helping Black women from an economic mobility, a career mobility perspective. So that is where I am focusing my work that I need to do both for myself and my community and for our country, for the greater good, right, is in that same place. You know, I talked about the work I do or volunteering for Dress for Success because they do economic mobility and teaching women how to, you know, stand on their own two feet, whether it be through divorce or through other social economic conditions and focusing efforts on more that, helping with resumes, volunteering my time to do that as a career coach, coaching on interview prep and things like that to give them that opportunity. That is my circle of influence. How am I helping at work from a circle of influence perspective to have the conversations, to being open to having conversations with my leadership. Because I'm passionate about it, if you can't tell. It won't be lasting change if you are out doing something for the sake of doing something. It has to be in a place where you were likely already passionate. So if that's education do the work there be a part of the way to good for that system. If it was, and again, foundations or community organizations do the work there, do it in an area, whether it's women's rights, being more inclusive of what that means for Black women, if that's where you were passionate, if it is in church and religious ways or other community ways, then do what you're truly passionate about and learn and things like that from that place. Because there we can make lasting change. You won't continue to do anything to be a part of the solution if it's not a place that you are passionate about. It's just how we operate as humans, right? It like, what's your "hard why" for doing any of this? 

Tanya Hale 44:22 

Right. And coming from a place of love rather than a place of fear or a space of obligation, right, is very different in what we bring to the table. If I am doing something out of a place of obligation, you know, that's very different than doing it out a place love for sure. 

Anita Miller 44:42 

Absolutely. No one likes to do things out place obligation. 

Tanya Hale 44:45 

It only builds resentment in the end. 

Anita Miller 44:48 

So it absolutely has to be from a places of love, a placed of purpose, place a passion for it to something that you want to, and do it, like you said, in a loving way, not do it just because there's immense pressure in the environment right now to do something, to say something to be agreeable with whatever the ideology is today. It has to "I've learned and educated myself. Here's my stance on it. Here is how I wanna proceed. And I'm gonna proceed here out of love and passion because this is what I believe I meant to do or be a part of". 

Tanya Hale 45:30 

Right. Okay, Anita, I adore you. I love your perspective and I appreciate so much that you have allowed me to ask all the questions I've never dared ask before and you've allowed me have a conversation that I always felt it was a little bit inappropriate to ask questions because I was colorblind, right? And if I'm colorblind then I don't see your color and so I can't ask the questions. But I'm seeing now the fallacy in that because there is no understanding if we're not asking questions, there no ability to hear you and there are no abilities to see you if I don't have the conversation. So I really appreciate you opening up your life for, I think, we're going on like over three, almost three and a half hours now of just chatting about stuff, because it's a conversation that I've needed to have for me to help me, I feel, get myself in a better place, a more loving and more accepting place, which is the person that I want to be, right? So thank you. 

Anita Miller 46:44 

Well, thank you and thank for asking the questions. I am a "why" type of person as you know so I ask questions probably much to other people's dismay. So you can always ask a question. I think that that's one of the things that we have lost as a society is the willingness to question things. Or to ask question from a place of understanding, not that "what you're doing is wrong but just so that I can understand what you do, why you did it that way, what led you to think that way." And then be able to love someone from that place, whether you agree or not. Right? Asking questions and understanding does not mean that you have to agree. 

Tanya Hale 47:29 

Right. Right, I love that and I appreciate it. I know that for me, a big piece of this was getting to a place where I was feeling a little bit threatened and where I took the opportunity to stop and say "okay, when I feel threatened I need to actually start getting curious." And more and more I'm understanding that curiosity is just really the piece of the puzzle that a lot of us have been missing out on. We are so intent on standing in our place and feeling like we're in the right place and we get it all and see it. When we feel a bit of pushback, rather than getting curious of why that makes us uncomfortable, we start protecting our ground, right? 

Tanya Hale 48:14 

And I love that in that same interview I referred to earlier, Brené Brown, one of the women that she was talking to is Austin Channing Brown, who just recently released a book about what it's like to be a Black woman in white America kind of stuff. And Brené said that several times when she was reading it, she threw that book across the room because it just was so uncomfortable and made her so angry. And I think the piece that that a lot of women like me need to deal with is we need to see your pain and accept your pain, and not shut down because we see your pain. We need to not turn off and say "well, that doesn't affect me" or we need not believe you. I mean, we all know stories of women of any color who have stood up and said "hey, look, this is a that happened to me," and and men are always saying "oh no, that's not right" or "that's not a big deal" or whatever. And I think that we as white women need to start looking at your experiences as Black women and not shutting you down as well and saying "oh no, that's not right, that doesn't really happen." We need to start seeing your pain and accepting your pain rather than feel the pain, and then shut down because it's just way too and comfortable for us to deal with. 

Anita Miller 49:34 

I think in feeling that pain, it's where we have a connection. Right, just like what we saw in that video, for the majority of people, was heartbreaking. The same goes for when we see things that happen to women that if it was you, you could see how painful that might have been, and all sharing and rallying around her and that pain, versus being quiet and allowing it to continue in our society as a whole. To your point, regardless of race, there's a lot of things happening to women that we all have some awareness of what's happening, and we all kind of turn a blind eye to because we don't necessarily see it in our day to day, right? And then when a woman speaks up, we do not necessarily support her. We just kind take a passive role then, "okay, here is today's news." But if other women aren't going to rally around her, then who is going to rally around her? And therefore we've all lost our voice. 

Tanya Hale 50:50 

Yeah, and I think we as women are so uniquely qualified to support each other because we have this innate sense of love and compassion and nurturing. And I think if we can really strive to understand each other and to see one another and hear each other, I think we have an ability to change this world like men don't. I think we can make a bigger impact as women as we stand shoulder to shoulder. And I think we can do more in this world than men can do because we carry the love. Like I heard it referred to this last week as the Footprints of Heaven or something like that, like the Handbook of Heaven or something that we have inside of us that that we have in common. We're women, right? And we have this ability to do this. 

Anita Miller 51:53 

Absolutely. As women we give life and we give love, that's what we do, it's innate in all of us. And so we can operate from that place of giving life, me speaking life into you, you speaking life into me, because giving life isn't just birth, it is what we say to each other, it's how we think about each other, it's how uplift each other. And so if we can do that sincerely and genuinely from a place of love, you're right, because in that we, can use our voice we can use, our influence as women to create a place that is good for all of us. A place we want to raise our children and that we want to leave to our families and to our children to inherit. 

Tanya Hale 52:34 

I love that. Anita, thank you. Okay, so Anita does career confidence coaching for business women and mostly Black women is what your focus is, right? And she also has a podcast that I've listened to and that love and I think it's so great. So Anita, if anybody wants to learn a little bit about you, will you give your contact information? 

Anita Miller 53:00 

Yes. So you can go to sisyouareworthy.com, so that's S -I -S -Y -O -U -W -O-R -T -H- Y .com. From there you can learn more about what I coach on, as well as have access to my podcast if you'd like to listen to it. 

Tanya Hale 53:19 

Yep. And your podcast is the same name, right? 

Tanya Hale 53:23 

It is. Sis You Are Worthy with Anita Miller, right? So you can check that out, too, and I've loved it when I listened to. it. So, okay, that's going to do it for us today. And thanks, Anita, so much. 

Anita Miller 53:36 

Thank you. 

Tanya Hale 53:37 

Alright, bye. 

Tanya Hale 53:41 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.