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I didn’t quite feel comfortable letting the last minutes of February slip by without saying something. As busy as life gets, and the farther we get from elementary school programs and poster boards, the more we have to attune to the real black history – not just the history that made us, but the history we’re making for generations to come. 

I know that for myself, there are two things I’ll always take pause for – race and religion. I’d say, smelling the roses isn’t quite the appropriate phrase, unless you imagine holding the thorned stem in clenched fists while breathing in what good the aroma that opposes the pain brings.

It’s taken all of this short month, but today is my turn to remind myself of all the subtle ways we put “power” into being Black.

Being a Black speech-language pathologist, a Black Latina, a Black Master’s grad, a Black writer, a Black snowboarder, a Black business, a Black … anything.

While it means so much more that we acknowledge how important it is to be Black in just about any space, we also acknowledge that the space was for some reason not made just right for us.

… or so it may seem.

If I were to describe my Black experience as an SLP, I’d say it’s been great.

Great?

Great. More than great. And it’s quite the surprise. I remember sitting in a white-dominated classroom in undergrad being taught about AAVE (newly referred to as AAE) and while my tongue usually prefers a more standard English, I was the professional on the topic with many blue and green eyes and dropped jaws unable to grasp the topic for what it really was.

I remember punching the air in grad school when I nearly failed an in-house clinical rotation, and a black supervisor gave me “the eye” and reminded me of what I needed to prove.

I remember being rejected reference letters because of my “demeanor”.

I thought for a while SLP might not offer much but proving myself time and time again.

Yet… somewhere along the way I was a little more self sufficient. I walked a little more confidently.

I embraced people in employment and academic settings that made me feel at home around them, which were not many.

I embraced mentorship that pushed me to be great because I needed to be great, and not because I needed to be great for a black person.

And now, I can say I have not worked in a single place that put me under the kind of pressure I was most afraid of: a place where the pressure rises around me each day to not be an outsider, to rise above each occasion, to be a socialite in the effort of accomplishing these things effectively.

Have I experienced any racism? Yes, once or twice with 95 year old dementia patients that loved me just as the hard the following day.

But, I have felt systematically safe. I’ve ensured, in my own way, that an imbalanced demographic would not stand in my way. Going back to my “interview tactics”, you don’t just bring YOU to the interview, you bring YOU to work every single aching day. I’ve turned down jobs, school acceptances, and anything else that I felt would lead to my discomfort or distraction with things other than what I came for.

I’ve realized with time, that I don’t have to do that. SLP has offered me something much greater than simply avoiding an uncomfortable situation – it’s given me peace in turmoil, resilience in chaos, the motive to serve, and the why? I am persistently trying to satisfy.

It’s still great to have the ability to see many people that look like me in high places – it’s a Black girl’s forever dream to have a Barbie doctor, dentist, or model with an afro. 

I’m somebody’s Barbie speech therapist – just with shorter legs and dreadlocks. I move at the beat of my own drum here. I take the roads less traveled. I follow ALL of my dreams.

So, when someone complains that they’re out of place in a white-dominated space… I just reflect on my own path and realize that community just makes us feel ourselves. It isn’t the source of power, though – that is from within.

If 2020 was a gift, I would wrap it in the ugliest, most depressing design of wrapping paper. No bow, no frills, and as a matter of fact, no tape either. Just stuck together with some chewed up gum at the corners where the folds of paper meet – not to mention, no less than three big tears, like when you accidentally tug too hard and the result is irreparable, but you act like you can hide it under tape or patch it with another piece of paper. Yeah. 2020 was THAT gift that if you saw it before it came, you would have looked the other direction. It’s been one for the books, and mostly not in a good way.

Although that gift is rough around the edges like Santa’s last minute effort to deliver his drunken elves work down a chimney with the fireplace still burning the midnight oil… sometimes what comes of it is a bigger lesson and a bigger blessing than the ones with all the frills.

If it weren’t for 2020… If it weren’t for COVID… things would look very different.

Tattletales had a name before 2020 began, but it didn’t have anything but a few paragraphs strung together. Now it is a book, the beginnings of a community and service organization, and a growing resource center.

Breaking the fourth wall, well I had credentials at the start of this year, but I was actively running from my job. Any and everything outside of those lobby doors looked like fuzz and frill and fun…

Work was work, and life was life. I was determined to live them as separately as possible.

Yet, today, I find myself toppling task over task, most of which have a similar foundation in my work. But I’m loving it. I’m finally proud to be a speech-language pathologist. It’s a funny thing, but the more I lived life away from my job, the better I was able to give to myself from a work perspective. I deduced that the only way to make it come full circle was to learn what my needs were, and have the work follow. 

Heck yeah, there’s a long way to go. If there’s anything 2020 has taught me, it’s that good things take time. Inevitably. Uncomfortably. 

So I welcome 2021 with open arms and a few items on my bucket wish list. Most of all, I wish to see curious but hesitant post-grads learn how to love this field – to help build a recipe for success. We bring so much to the table, in such a unique way. I want that to be noticeable, to be a source of pride, and to ultimately elevate everything we touch.

Cheers to the undergrad and graduate students, clinical fellows, licensed clinicians, researchers, directors, private practitioners, and leaders that make the SLP world go ’round.

You are somebody’s hero.

Recently, I have come upon a bunch of new opportunities and ideas that have moved me left or right, onto some new path tangential to the one before it. To say the least, I’ve accepted so many new things, that my already full plate is weighing me down and I can’t stomach it all. It all looks, smells, and give the right appetite can taste amazing. But I’m learning slowly but surely that I can’t say yes to everything.

I’ve gone above and beyond in my confidence, which I denounced in my recent post on interviewing. I’ve also made promises I couldn’t keep…. send me to the guillotine. I don’t even follow my own advice 😩.

I’m going to be honest with you all, at all times. What good does it do me or you to be any less? At the very least maybe you can laugh at my pain. At best, you can make fewer of the amount of mistakes I have or tweak my successes into your own great feats.

We talked about how 2020 has been all the big, long, uncomfortable things. Well, to give myself the relief I thought I needed, I searched high and low for new opportunities. Some, I forgot all about until they came knocking at my door. I’m a pleaser, of course I invited them in for hot chocolate and cookies 🥴

To stay long or to stay for just a little while, I have said “yes” as a jerk reaction to just about everything.

“Yes, I will take that job”

“Yes, I can move”

“Yes, I can learn how to do that”

“Yes, I can meet that deadline”

“Yes, I am ready to take this to the next level”

“Yes, I can commit to that in a short-time frame with no experience”

“Yes, I can work weekends”

Let’s stop right there. I do NOT, have NEVER considered working weekends. If you read Tattletales of a Speech Language Pathologist, you know I was in shambles when PDPM, the new system for reimbursement in the skilled nursing facility, had me working every other Saturday.

Why am I being so untrue with myself and (potential) employers, you wonder? 

It’s nothing more than the FOMO that plagued my social life for many years, and has now picked up its things and moved over the professional side of the neighborhood. FOMO has led me to believe that after 2 years of practice, I need all the right answers right now. I’m accepting things that I hope will advance me intellectually, put me in an enviable position, and set me on a path towards greatness. Maybe I don’t need to take a jet pack up every step at once, but I need to know where I can place things on a calendar. How long will it take?

This type of thinking is actively ruining me. I’m saying this because I think we all will run into a point at which we don’t know which way seems the most direct, or maybe you’re standing at a fork after which all paths seem to be littered with jewels of great fortune. Maybe they all are, but if you choose one, the others are inevitably removed from your sight.

The idea that you and I should choose “reasonably”, is unfair. Perhaps what’s most reasonable in my case is making more money. Perhaps what’s reasonable in your case is having great job security or being able to travel. We have to be willing to sacrifice. A wise man once said “What are you willing to go without?”

I was challenged this past week to make a list of the things that are most important to me, where a job or career move is concerned. Making this list may be less the challenge for me because I am driven to believe in the impossible, chase every dream, and trust that I have the power to make it come true.

The greater challenge, which is really the unspoken one, is crossing out one, two, or even all of those things. Maybe it seems like working backwards, but it isn’t. 

In reality, how many “most important” things are there really? When it comes to a job, even less. There are things that may give us value in the workplace itself or in our total prospect towards a successful career. In this, we may accomplish a lot, but it is not without the sacrifice of something that we consider to be “most important”

I yielded a little bit of myself in a way in my book, and I spoke about my relationship with my family. “Workaholic” is one word that can bring rise to a lot of negative feelings when I consider the effect that its had on my life. I know that the allowance for personal or “family time” is on every professional’s list of important things. It’s also the sacrifice of many who realize a need for additional money or to stride towards a higher position on the totem pole.

There are things that are never worth the sacrifice, but that will be a subjective and personal decision. I think that when the time comes, we all have an internal shift towards what feels most correct, and I want to say more often than not we are right about it. 

I say all this to say that coping with “I accept” syndrome has looked almost like digging a shovel into a hollow grave. There is nothing productive about it, it isn’t safe nor satisfying, and it wastes potential energy – at the end, there is barely enough to show for all of the hard work.

This time I vow to follow my advice, finally. Setting myself up for success is creating a vision and working effectively towards it. It’s saying “no” more often, even to myself. It’s establishing “What’s the one thing you can do, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?

-Gary Keller

Ideally, you’d spent some weeks training. Maybe, instead, a stork just came and dropped you head first into a several-hundred-bed box of no windows, squeaky doors, paper charts, and slow elevators. Don’t panic!