Announcer: Welcome to The Voice of Counseling, presented by the American Counseling Association. This program is hosted by Dr. S. Kent Butler. This week's episode is SOWA BONA: Normalizing Grief, and features Dr. Ebony White.
Dr. S. Kent Butler: Welcome to The Voice of Counseling from the American Counseling Association. I am Dr. S. Kent Butler and joining us today is Dr. Ebony White. She is a mental health therapist, professor, researcher, and activist who is committed to improving mental health outcomes for Black women, teens and families through education and training. We're going to have an opportunity to talk with her a little bit about her mission and what her purpose is here as a counselor.
She uses experiences, evidence-based practice, humor, definitely humor, movies, and music to engage audiences and to think about the mental health of their families, communities, and themselves. Welcome Dr. Ebony White. How are you?
Dr. Ebony White: Thank you for that warm welcome. I'm well, and yourself?
Dr. Butler: Am doing well. It's good to see you.
Dr. White: It's good to be seen.
Dr. Butler: I've talked to you every once in a while and get to hear some of that humor, but Ebony, tell me a little bit, how did you get started? How did you become a counselor?
Dr. White: It's interesting. I always knew I was going to go into the mental health field. Probably since around middle school, I knew that was my path, to the point I was taking college psychology classes when I was in high school. That was just something I knew I was going to do. I think I was influenced by the people around me, my community around me, seeing a lot of despair and a lot of issues and not really understanding or having a context to understand what was really going on, but really knowing in my gut it was more than just people are violent or people don't want to try. You know what I mean? I knew that there was more to the story.
Being able to really study psychology while I was in high school gave me a better understanding of what might be going on. Then on top of that, my mom is a certified social worker. She did a lot of work in the late '80s, early '90s with HIV AIDS populations, and so seeing her advocate inspired me as well.
Dr. Butler: Wow. That's pretty interesting. You said early on, you just knew that this was where you were heading. Was there anything that really stuck out that you look back at that and say, "Wow, this really was a defining moment when I knew for sure there was mental health"?
Dr. White: Yes. I didn't intend to be attracted to, but people who were experiencing-- so some of my friends or peers who were having problems at home and things of that nature, those kind of peers seemed to be attracted to me and my family. That probably was a defining moment for me, seeing that people came to me as a support or saw me as a safe place for them and also understanding that-- I live in the same community with my peers and we have similar issues and similar successes as well, what's going on with them that's different than what's going on with me? Why do they prefer this space over that space? I think having those experiences really were defining for me.
Dr. Butler: One of the things that you do is you are an activist and you work in your community, but one of your strong points is that you do grief and loss. We want to talk a little bit about that today, but we'll get to that a little bit later. I also wanted you to focus on what led you there? The reason why I'm asking that now is because I'm wondering in a sense, did that also come from where you grew up and where you lived and what you were seeing in the community that you were living in?
Dr. White: Yes, personal stories or my personal experience led me there. It's interesting because loss has always been a part of my life and it's so interesting every time someone says grief and loss, I always say, "It really should be lost in grief," because the loss typically comes first. I had a lot of physical or relationship losses growing up. I come from a huge family and a multi-generational family. My great-grandmother and her sisters were very much a part of my life. As people age ,you're going to lose people, but also, anyone who grew up in a urban neighborhood, under-resourced community, you know that there are other losses that happen due to violence and things of that nature.
As early as middle school, peers were dying. Those losses were being experienced. I know you said we would get into this later, but the interesting thing is and then the teens that I work with now say this too, "These losses happened of my peers and then you go to school and no one's talking about it." The teachers just say, "Now turn to page 25," as if that seat isn't empty. That is very impactful for a young person to say, "What does that mean about how my teachers feel about me, about how my school feels about me?"
Dr. Butler: We might've just dive right in then because you really said something just now that made me think, "What it says about my peers and my teachers and how they think about me." Can you explore that a little bit? Can you unpack that?
Dr. White: Absolutely. Not to get all researchery or clinical on you, but there are studies that show that young kids know about bias and discrimination and race very early on. Students of color, particularly Black students, that's the population that I am mainly focused on, particularly Black students, they perform better or worse depending upon who's in the room, meaning who the teacher is and then how they view their teacher seeing them. That means the difference between a C and an A could simply be the person teaching me in the room, not about my knowledge or capabilities.
Dr. Butler: I say that all the time because I think that a lot of people forget that how a person approaches the teaching environment is based on, like you said, how people see them. I think about this all the time. I wonder what your thoughts are at this. A fourth grader gets a F on an exam, knows the information left and right. Showcased it all throughout the whole day, the day before, the week before. The teacher knows the student knows the student knows this work. Sees it in their homework, sees it in everything that they've ever done. They can talk about it for days. They get in front of an instrument, test instrument and they bomb it, but that defines their grade.
Talk about that, what comes to you for that? What does the teacher need to do in that instance? Because to me it's like you really hurt that kid, because now, here you are, know you you know this information left and right. Then when it comes to having to regurgitate it or to give it to someone, you failed in that. Why wouldn't they drop out of school?
Dr. White: Absolutely. That's why we need to look at alternate ways of evaluation. I'll give you an example. When I was in college, I took this class of one of my mentors till this day. I remember I went in to take the final-- I had done well on everything and I went in to take the final and I got my final grade and my final grade was an A+ in the class because I had done so well. I was like, "I never got my test score back," and she said, "Oh, I didn't grade it." I said, "Why?" She said, "Because you already demonstrated that you knew it."
Why is it then that the case that you put forth could even exist? If someone has demonstrated their expertise in a content area, why do we meet a piece of paper to determine what we already assessed them to know?
Dr. Butler: That's what our reason is for being in that space in the first place, is to assess them and help them to learn and to grow. Again, so you wonder, why is this kid dropping out in 5th grade, 6th grade, or 10th grade or whatever grade? Because, like you said, they're not seen and they're knowledge is not respected in the way that it could be. I think about that all the time now. Not that I was a bad student, but I never did really well on those types of instruments, like the SATs and the GREs and all those other things, they weren't my strong suit.
Now did I pass them? Yes. Were they high scores? No, they were not, but at the same time, I knew that information. Now, the flip of that is, I grew up in a predominantly White neighborhood, I went to predominantly White schools and I still was suffering. If that's the case, what happens with a kid that's growing up in an environment that doesn't have all the resources that are necessary?
Dr. White: Now you're in my sweet spot because I have so much to say about what you just brought forth. A couple of things, we know that class does not protect Black folks from discrimination. Those same identity issues that would happen if you grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood, if you are a Black person, you're still going to have those, and sometimes even more those identity struggles.
We also know that there's a real validation to how White educators, White doctors, White legislators view Black people, whether they want to admit it or not. Those beliefs show up in their behavior. I think about what are you reading or what are students picking up from their teachers and their learning? Are they not picking on me? Are they picking on me? Do they discipline me more than my peers? You talked about why students are choosing to terminate their education early. Honestly, particularly if you live in an underfunded, under-resourced community, there's many reasons for that.
One of the things we need to look at is how does our curriculum match with the daily lives of the people that we're educating? Yes, there is a place to teach Shakespeare and all that kind of stuff, but are these things transferable to the communities in which they live, to the jobs that they are interested in? We know that as a collective, as a community, for the most part, we're very learn by doing. If you have any child, especially any child of color sitting at a desk saying, "Sit still and listen and watch this workout," and you're not-
Dr. Butler: - go to the Principal's office.
Dr. Ebony: Exactly, and you're not making it relatable. First of all, at my age, I can't do that. [laughs]
Dr. Butler: Okay. All right.
Dr. Ebony: I can't do that. [crosstalk]
Dr. Butler: I don't know what age that is, but [crosstalk] I’m going to leave that alone.
Dr. Ebony: No, it’s true, though.
Dr. Butler: No, I said, I don't know what age that is, but I'm going to leave that one alone. I listened to a podcast that you created, and I won't go there in terms of that, but there was something that resonates with me in that podcast that speaks to what we're talking about right now. It was one of the things that I think as a Black person you need to recognize. It was about when you went away to college.
When you went away to college and then you came back to your community and the changes that you'd seen in yourself and the changes that you'd seen in your community, I was struck by that because it was so vivid how you explained that whole sequence of, "How I came back and how I saw my people and how I had to recognize that I needed to see myself in my people and that I could not come back because I had an education now in a different space." Can you talk to that in terms of what we're talking about here?
Dr. Ebony: Yes, absolutely. It's an interesting thing. I grew up in Trenton, New Jersey. I always shout out my city. They are responsible for who I am today. It was predominantly Black. It still is predominantly Black and Brown communities, so predominately Black. I went to school with a lot of Black students, a lot of Latinx students. It was a majority minoritized population that I attended school with.
Then for my undergraduate college degree, I went to Michigan State University, which is-- I don't know if there's a word more than predominantly, but it was definitely a predominantly White institution. I think at the time I was there, it was either 8% or 12% minoritized.
Dr. Butler: Every once a while, you run across somebody who might have looked like you.
Dr. Ebony: Exactly. Not every once in a while, because all the people of color knew each other because it was so small. [laughs] We all knew each other because we were a very small population. A strange thing happened while I was there, I started to internalize some of the beliefs that the dominant society believed about people who look like me. [00:13:53] I started to believe in that whole respectability politics and the myth of meritocracy, because if I'm at college and I'm getting a degree, why can't you?
Dr. Butler: Why can't you?
Dr. Ebony: Once I graduate, I come back to my community, a lot of people in my community were successful or traditionally successful and not traditionally successful, but I didn't see it that way. I saw people who had criminal records now, or people who had multiple children and were unmarried, or people who were receiving public benefits, all of that. I decided, because of how I've been indoctrinated, to view them as less than like, "Oh, you don't want anything for yourself." I had adopted that view and I had to be checked on.
Dr. Butler: Did you check yourself or did somebody checked you?
Dr. Ebony: Somebody checked me. It was my momma.
Dr. Butler: Oh, your momma?
Dr. Ebony: Yes, my momma checked. She was like, "Wait a minute, hold up. You have to look at the circumstances." First of all, being a very religious and spiritual person, she said, "For the grace of God, there go I," first of all. "At any point, your situation could be their situation. Never forget that."
Then she said, "Secondly, you can't measure success based off of your idea of success." Even more importantly, she said, "Don't you ever look at your own community the way that other people look at your community because this is your community. If it weren't for your community, you wouldn't have been able to go to college." She reminded me that it was the church who raised money for my books, it was the community center who took me on college tours. All of those things happened in my community.
Dr. Butler: You could have turned easily your whole head away from that had she not necessarily snapped you back?
Dr. Ebony: Oh, absolutely.
Dr. Butler: Wow, that's incredible. That's absolutely incredible.
Dr. Ebony: Absolutely. I was always battling that exceptionalism, too, thing. People were always like, "Oh, Ebony, you're so special. You're so special. You're so special." It was like, "If you say it, I must be." [laughs]
Dr. Ebony: When in actuality, there were other factors- [crosstalk]
Dr. Butler: You are what people like, that's your affirmation, because you are what people see you. Even though that might not be the way that we need to be going, that's how we view ourselves, through the lens of other individuals. They put you up on that pedestal and then you-- What do they say? Start to believe the hype.
Dr. Ebony: I stepped right on it.
Dr. Butler: Stepped right on it. Start believing the hype. Exactly. You went to school, you got your counseling degree, then you came back. There's something you shared with me yesterday when we were going through what we could talk about today. You said that you were then thinking about your master's degree, your PhD, and you made deliberate choices as to where you were going to go. You knew that you were going to get a PhD, but you made deliberate choices as to where you could go. Can you talk about that? Can you explore that a little bit?
Dr. Ebony: Yes, absolutely. My family is supremely important to me. We are a very big, but very close-knit family. One of my favorite people, I would say she was my first friend, is my grandmother. I couldn't see myself, at the age that she was at the time, going far away to college. I said, "PhD in counselor education program is near me." There was one at the time, and that was at Montclair State University. I said, "Okay, I'm going to apply to this one school and I'm going to get into this one school and that's where I'll get my PhD." Part of me manifested it, but also it had to be because for me, that was my only option.
Dr. Butler: Nice. That's another important piece because we're going to talk about loss and grief. I think I put it the way you said it.
Dr. Butler: We're going to talk about that, but a part of why you stayed and why you went to this program to understand this, to get to this area-- I don't know if that's where you were studying when you got into your doctoral program, but you talk about community. Then if you attach loss and grief to that, you understand what leads someone in the direction that they are going in in terms of their life work or their destiny. You went to school, was that your area? Was loss and grief? You got to be trying to do tumblesaults in my head right now with grief and loss, loss and grief, but anyway, was that a content area that you wanted to focus on?
Dr. Ebony: Absolutely. I'm going to tell you not just my experiences, but when I was getting my master's degree and we had to do a residency in my master's degree, and I remember-- I can't remember her first name, but her name was Dr. Gray and she was having us facilitate these groups and she specializes in loss and grief. I remember we did our group or whatever, and after it, she said, "Ebony, I really think that this is going be a niche area for you. You've really grasped it." That's when it really got embedded in my mind.
Loss and grief have always been a huge part of the story, but I was asked one time by a friend of mine, what is the biggest issue I see in my practice? Like the biggest diagnosis, most common diagnosis. I said, "Well, it's not in the DSM." He said, "Well, what is it?" I said, "It's not depression, it's oppression." I really see myself-- I know that oppression can manifest as depression, it can manifest as trauma, all those things, and those things need to be looked at, but it really is oppression. Within that oppression, we have to deal with loss, we have to deal with grief.
Dr. Butler: Wow. You also talked a little bit about-- Now, I'm not sure if this person was a mentor for you, but you also talk about how mentor's so into you and help you find your identity and- [crosstalk]
Dr. White: Yes, help guide you. Absolutely. That's so important.
Dr. Butler: Now you're a full fledged PhD, you are out there winning it, and you're doing the work in loss and grief. Can you talk about now what your clientele get from you? What do they expect from you? How do they see you? How do you see them in the counseling relationship?
Dr. White: I just want to put a stamp on what you just said. You said how do they see me? How do I see them? First of all, I see them, and that is important. I'm looking at your shirt and I'm sure you know the whole sowa bona, sikhona. That greeting, where it really just means, I see you and that I exist for you [unintelligible 00:20:46] I see you too. I'm here for you. I bring that to all of my clients sessions. What do my clients expect from me? They expect me to keep it real. [laughs]
Dr. Butler: Listen, I didn't even know you and you kept it real. [laughs] I'm just messing with you. Go ahead.
Dr. White: That's the truth, right? I am 100% and that was a journey too. I am 100% myself. To what degree? That varies, but I am 100% myself, and so my classes are going to keep it real, they expect me to challenge them, but they also expect me to validate them and support them and to love them. Not in an unethical way, but I counsel with love because everyone deserves love in that way.
Dr. Butler: That's a very important piece that you just said. I love my clients, not in an unethical way. Why was it important to say that?
Dr. White: Well, we know that many inappropriate relationships can form in counseling because counseling is such a place of vulnerability and people really get opened up and clients start to imagine you in a certain way and want to be closer to you. I can't tell you how many clients wanted to be my friend afterwards. I understand that because that's such a vulnerable place where they're not judged and it's not biased.
Dr. Butler: You're very intimate with that person.
Dr. White: Absolutely. That's the perfect word. It's a very intimate exchange. Then the other side, there are some counselors who feel like, "Oh, if this person wasn't my client they'd be my friend," type of situation. Lines can get murky, so it's important to make that distinction there. There's certainly a inappropriate way to engage with clients. I just wanted to make sure that was clear that yes, I do show my clients love, but I don't cross a line.
Dr. Butler: Excellent. It's a wonderful understanding of counseling when you encompass it fully, right? When you understand your role, you understand the role of your clients, and you understand activism, that social justice piece of understanding the community in which you work. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of that, especially in loss and grief work, why is it important to understand the community?
Dr. White: I'll give you an example. To put it directly, because issues don't happen in silos. There's a context to issues. The example I was going to give is, at one point in my practice, I was getting a referral for Black teenage boys. I'm like, " this is an abundance of referrals." I'm like, "Something is going on here." Then I would meet with these teenage boys and they had their typical problems, but they were being referred from school and they were all having issues in school. I'm like, "Something isn't right. We need to talk to the school."
It was very obvious to me that these boys who were in predominantly White schools were being typecast, were being micro-aggressed and things of that nature, weren't being seen. They're being disciplined for, when I tell you, the dumbest thing like reciting rap lyrics at their locker. Not even in class, reciting rap lyrics at their locker, and they were being disciplined or suspended for things of that nature. Of course, when you work with minors, you work with families. Then of course, having a conversation with parents, "This is what's going on. Your child's doing well. Won't tell you what they told me, but there's an issue at school. How would you like us to address it?"
Because I'm an activist, I'm a part of their family now, I'm a part of this community. It's up to me also to step in. Not only do I contact the school, like, "Listen, I'm noticing a trend here. Do we need to get the board of education involved? Would you like some training?" I offer training as well. "Can we have a meeting with the parents and the teachers that this is--" You know what I mean? Sometimes the work is in the counseling session with the client and sometimes the work is bigger than that, and that's- [crosstalk]
Dr. Butler: Now, I will stop you right there because that's a huge point. A lot of people don't understand that, they think that, "Oh, come to my office once a week," and I send you back into the abyss. Talk a little bit about that. Why is it so important to get outside of your counseling office into these other spaces?
Dr. White: Particularly if you're working with oppressed populations, because in my opinion, I never want the counseling space to be a space where I say, "I want you to learn how to cope with oppression."
Dr. Butler: Can you say that one more time for the people in the back?
Dr. White: [chuckles] For people in a back, I never want counseling to be a space where I say, "Let me teach you how to cope with oppression. You need to have this expectation that you just going to be oppressed and here is where you learn how to cope with it." No, we need to be a part of shifting the system that's causing the oppression so that they can go out and be healthy and thriving and live like everybody else deserves or everybody else gets to do.
Dr. Butler: Powerful. Wow. I don't even know how to even come back from that. You're in this space, what does it look like when you're talking with these parents and others in the community about the situation, especially with the boys that were rapping at their locker?
Dr. White: Here's the thing, something that I don't think we talk about enough in counseling is partner with your community. I am privileged to do most of my mental health counseling in the community where I grew up. I already had some relationships there. Then when I came back and opened my practice there, I formed relationships with the community. I got involved with grassroots organizations. I'm a part of the Capital City Community Coalition, which we can talk about as well because that is an amazing organization. I know the players and that is so important. I know the players and they know me.
When something is going on, I can make a phone call, I'm like, "Listen, I'm seeing this, let's get together and see what we can do about this issue." I have no problem talking to parents because we speak the same language. Not just because we share an identity, but because I make sure I speak their language. I do that work. Those conversations are really easy conversations and they actually strengthen the rapport between me and that family, me and that client.
Dr. Butler: The strength of speaking that same language. People who are listening, this is not about you now then talking [unintelligible 00:27:59] with this or that or Ebonics, so on and so forth, what is talking about is being able to see one another in a way that you can communicate and hear one another. A lot of times, what I think I hear you saying is that, "They know that I have their best interests at heart and that we can work together to come to a common good or a good end to whatever this situation is." That's very important.
Counselors don't necessarily understand that. I think they think that in some regard, especially the new counselors coming into it, that, "All I have to do is show up with my counseling skills and we're good to go." Not recognizing that there is that gap that you have to feel in order to be able to connect.
Dr. White: Yes. Counseling skills is the easy part.
Dr. White: You have to do the hard work for counseling to be successful.
Dr. Butler: Wow, that's really good. We're coming up on a good time to do a break. Why don't we table this and then we'll come back and talk a little bit more about loss and grief. I know that people are hungry right now for what we're talking about because you dropped more than a couple of mikes today. We're going to take a break and we're going to come back. This is the American Counseling Association, The Voice of Counseling. I'm Dr. S. Kent Butler. We're here with Dr. Ebony White, and we'll be back in a moment.
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Dr. Butler: This is The Voice of Counseling. This is Dr. S Kent Butler. We're back with Dr. Ebony White. Dr. White, we left off with talking about how counselors create community for themselves and go into the community and they participate. What is it that's really important for them to understand that when I talk about creating community, that people can see through you when you come in with all kinds of fakeness and they can see through you when you're not necessarily putting their best interests at bay or at heart or whatever?
How do we get people to recognize that they need to forget about all the notions or the preconceived notions about how they're going to come in and fix things and actually come in and work with someone to help make the changes that are necessary in that community?
Dr. White: Absolutely. First of all, we have to let go of those old notions or the old model of counseling where you have to come to me to get healed type of situation. We know that healing has existed within community for a really long time. Making people come to you, it really is a power play. It stretches further than the level between counselor and client. We know that we have to be egalitarian in client, we have to realize that we both are bringing expertise to this relationship.
In our multicultural counseling classes, one of the ways that we teach that helps to put a dent in implicit bias is immersion experiences. That means that I have to really get to know and get within the community in which I work. I always say, if you hang your shield and if you're working in a community and you've never been to a city council meeting, you're not doing your job. If you've never been to a school board meeting, you're not doing your job. If you're not involved with at least one community organization, you're not doing your job, because how can you know how to situate your client's issues if you don't know the situation. Right?
Dr. Butler: Yes. I've had that assignment, where students were to go immerse themselves, and they were kicking and screaming into that. It was hard to get them to just go to a church that was outside of maybe their experiences, and really go in and engage, because it was always about, "Oh, how will they see me? Will they expect me? Will they respect me?"
It's like, "Well, it's how you engage. It's how you enter in." If you enter in in a way that they can see you and know that you're there in it to win it, then you're going to be okay. If you go into it with all the stereotypes that I heard about these people and I go into this whole thing, then I'm not going to ever be comfortable being around those people because-- I said, "Those people," I didn't mean it like that, but-
Dr. White: That's how they mean it. That's how they see it, like, "How am I supposed to be with those people?"
Dr. Butler: Right. When you go into those spaces, then if you can't enter in authentically, then you're not going to be able to find a way to make a difference because you're too busy worrying about yourself. If you're worried about yourself, you can't be worried about what's going on for your community or your client.
Dr. Butler: How do we transition this into loss and grief? Can you tell me a little bit about your practice and what you do and how is the best of Ebony White in the situations when working with clients who are suffering from loss?
Dr. White: It's interesting. I always presume that my clients have experienced loss. Loss can be loss of a person, loss of life. It could be loss of a job, loss of relationship, loss of identity, loss of income, loss of mental health, loss of direction, loss of purpose. [chuckles] Whatever it is. I'm always presumptuous when it comes to that. Many times, people are coming to me in the midst of their grieving process and they don't even realize that that's what they're doing, that their grieving.
Dr. Butler: Let me stop you and ask you a quick question. Could that ever be misinterpreted? You said that you always presume, could it be something that shouldn't have been presumed?
Dr. White: For me, it's not because why are you here? There's a loss. There's a reason why you're here. There's a loss there. I really focus a lot on identity and identity development and daggers to identity and things. There's some type of loss anytime people are in my space, whether that is-- A lot of my teens, especially last year, they lost their school experience. That was huge for them. A lot of my teens lost their academic identity. They went from honor roll students to C and D students because they did not know how to learn in a virtual space. Now, they're like, "Am I smart? What's going on?" That loss of their academic identity. They lost connection in relationships. They got to see their friends every day and now they don't. Or they were athletes and they lost a whole season of football or a season of wrestling. What does that mean for college and being recruited? I don't think I'm being negatively presumptuous given the population...
Dr. Butler: No. You've made so many connections just now, just with those words right there. I withdraw my question. Let's get into, again, the loss and grief. When you approach your clients with this mentality or this way of counseling, because again, I think that you have to be true to who you are as a counselor in order to meet people, because then that gets out of the way. Now you're just being Ebony in the room. All that other stuff aside, "I'm coming in, I'm not going to be all up in my head about what's going on here. I'm really here engaged to listen to you and figure out where we're going to go with this."
Dr. White: Absolutely. One of the theoretical ideologies that I subscribe to is reality therapy. It fits so well in my personality. Of course, I use a lot of African-
Dr. Butler: Oh, yes, I can see that.
Dr. White: [laughs] Yes. I use a lot of African principles in therapy too. I really like that very simplistic model of, "What do you want? What are you doing to get it? Is it working?"
Dr. Butler: If I were to plop you back in-- Where did you go to grad school?
Dr. White: For my PhD, Montclair State.
Dr. Butler: No, undergrad. I'm sorry. Where did you go to?
Dr. White: Michigan State.
Dr. Butler: Michigan State. If I were to plop you back in that environment the way you are now in terms of your counseling acumen, would you be the same counselor there too?
Dr. White: Given what I know now, I would be different there. Absolutely. Given my experiences now, if you put me back there now, oh, absolutely.
Dr. Butler: I'm talking as a counselor, if you were there now as a counselor, the way that you are a counselor in Trenton or in that area where you are right now, would you be that same counselor in that work environment?
Dr. White: Absolutely, and I'm going to tell you why, because I'm very intentional about the population that I work with. I'm still going to work with the people who look like me. I'm still going to work with marginalized populations. I know firsthand the damage of being in a PWI, what that can do to a person of color's identity, to a poor person's identity. Absolutely, I would be the same and I would still be involved in the community as well.
Dr. White: You got to show up. Wherever I'm placed, I'm going to show up. I love how you said that. Yes, I'm going to show up.
Dr. Butler: Nice. Loss and grief, I keep moving away from it, but maybe I'm losing something. Maybe there's something that I've lost that I want to stay away from. Loss and grief, what's the approach? How do you get people to really experience that and go through those stages of grief so that they can find healing?
Dr. White: I like the model of the stages of grief and I make sure I inform my clients that it's not a linear model, because some of my clients will say, "I thought I was over this. I moved on," that kind of thing. I'm like, "Listen, acceptance doesn't have to be a forever place."
I have a close cousin of mine that my nonprofit is named after and I can literally go years and be fine and not think about it. Then out the blue, I wake up and I'm just crying and I'm missing them. I'm like, "What is going on?" I just shifted back for a moment and that is okay, but I need to acknowledge it, I need to address it, I need to process it and know that that's a normal part of the process. I like to tell people that we never get over something, we just learn how to carry it differently.
Dr. Butler: Carry it differently. Yes. I think about that because I lost my mom almost 20- some odd years ago, 22. You're right, out the blue, I'll just wake up or I'll be doing something, a song will come on the radio or something and I'm boohooing. I'm a grown man and I'm like, "I'm not over this, no," because I think about my mom every day. How she hits me is different depending on the moment. Especially if a song comes on that reminds me-- I was at my mom's deathbed and shortly thereafter, a song, Fragile Heart came on by Yolanda Adams. To this day, every time that song is on, I'm just moist because it just brings me back to that room. You're right. I may be able to handle myself on a day-to-day, but every day, something could come in and interfere with that.
Dr. White: Absolutely. Speaking of that, something that I love to tell my clients and they receive it so well is I tell them that grief is a gift. Grief is a gift. Not to bring my interest in, but there's a TV show called WandaVision, and in it, Vision, he says to Wanda, "What is grief but love enduring?" Grief is proof of that connection that I had and also grief is an outlet that I get, because if I didn't have grief, if I didn't have tears, if I didn't have memories, what would I have?
Dr. Butler: That's very deep because what you're saying is that if we can accept our grief, we might be able to move on differently because the grief really showcases that we've had love in our life and we still do have love in our life or we have something that we don't have access to any longer, but it proves that we were there.
Dr. White: Absolutely. Because the only thing outside of proof, it's numbness, and still numbness, we know is not healthy. We know that it is debilitating, we know that it stagnates us, and we know that it dehumanizes us.
Dr. Butler: So it almost sounded like you're saying normalize grief.
Dr. Butler: Because if you normalize it, then you'll know that-- A lot of times people want to hide their grief. I remember there was a co-worker of mine one time who came to work one day, and I didn't understand it at the time, she lost a cat. She came in boohooing. Everybody at work was like, "What's going on?" I remember when it came out-- That was before I was a counselor. I'll be very honest about that. When she said that she'd lost a cat, I'm looking around, looking at my folks, and I'm, "She lost a cat."
It was then that I understood, because I never had a pet in a way that she had a pet, that did that. Now, I had pets growing up and I guess when I was a young kid and we lost our dogs, there was something that went through me, but it never came out like tears, incapacitated, not being able to do anything. I had to really learn that and understand that from a perspective of what pet loss could mean or do to a person. Wow.
Dr. White: Listen, Dr. Butler, I have a dog, I've had him for 11 years, and let me tell you, baby, I do not even want to think about-- I'm going like, "Cancel Christmas." It's a different type of bond.
Dr. Butler: We're bringing a Maltese into the house next week for the first time for my daughter. I'm not terribly excited about what that might mean moving forward, but it is what we need to do for the moment. This brings us to self-care. We're running out of time. You're dealing with all this loss and grief. How do you take care of yourself? How do you not get so sucked into it that you lose Dr. White, lose Ebony?
Dr. White: You're asking me how I take care of myself as the therapist?
Dr. White: I used to have a very negative reaction to the term self-care because it sounds so individualistic. For me, my self-care is in community. I'm not one of those people that has a small circle of friends. You know how people say, "My circle of friends is this small." No, I have a lot of close friends and I'm blessed to have a lot of close friends, and so I try to make sure I stay connected.
Dr. Butler: You make sure they listen to this podcast. All these are numbers, you make sure they listen to this podcast. All right. I'm sorry to cut you off. Go ahead. Go.
Dr. White: Absolutely. I have my friends and I'm blessed to have my family. Sometimes self-care was going to my grandmother's house and eating her food, eating her good collard greens and all that, or going to my mom's house and getting into bed with her, or going to my sister's house and making her scratch my scalp. That's self-care. You ever had a good head scratching?
Dr. Butler: That's a thing right there. I'm going to tell you right now because this past weekend, my wife's mother had her two daughters with her and she was sitting there scratching their scalp. I'm like, "I don't know what that is, what it is, but I don't know, I can scratch my own scalp " but she was getting all in between the pieces of hair and stuff like that.
Dr. White: [unintelligible 00:46:03] and scratch. Listen, there's nothing like a good hair scratch.
Dr. Butler: I don't know what that means. [inaudible 00:46:08] I don't even know. We're going to have to talk about that. That might be a podcast in and of itself, the good head scratch.
Dr. White: Listen, there's nothing like it.
Dr. Butler: Okay. I've never had it happen to me. I have to defer to you, but it's a thing. It's definitely a thing.
Dr. White: It's definitely a thing. I have a workbook on my website where I talk about the power of connection, making sure you are connected first and foremost to yourself, connected to others, and then having that spiritual connection, whether that connection is this way, whether it's to the earth. Whatever your spiritual practices are, you have to make sure that you realize that there's something greater than you moving on your behalf.
Dr. Butler: You started off saying that self-care to you sounded so individualistic in that you were stepping away. You see it differently now. You were able to see it in a different way of helping you to stay in it for the most part. If you had another term, what would it be?
Dr. White: I have a quote that says, if we truly care for each other, there would be no need for self-care. Do you know what I mean? If I was in a space with you and my main goal was to make sure you were okay and your main goal was to make sure I was okay--
Dr. Butler: Wow. We see each other.
Dr. White: I see you. Sowa bona.
Dr. Butler: Wow. That's powerful, Dr. White. What's a takeaway for loss and grief that people who are listening today need to let sink in?
Dr. White: I'm going to say it the way you said it, normalize grief. That grief is not just natural and normal, but it is necessary. It's a necessary process and I truly believe it's a gift. It's a gift.
Dr. Butler: It's a hashtag now, normalize grief.
Dr. White: Yes, normalize grief. It's a gift. I'm thankful for it. I'm thankful for it being such a forever process. It's such a forever process. You don't end counseling because you now grieve and it's over, you end counseling because you say, "Okay, now I know how to carry this."
Dr. Butler: Now I know how to carry this. If it should ever come up again, I know how to work through it.
Dr. White: I know how to work through it, or if not, I know how to go back and counseling to get a tune up and go my way again. Yes, absolutely.
Dr. Butler: Very nice. Well, you have said more than a word today. I appreciate you coming and giving the public, the podcast listeners an opportunity to understand grief and loss, especially from your perspective because there's no other perspective but your own. You were able to talk about it in a way that I hope that people can gravitate towards and say, "Now, how do I personalize this when I work with my clients? That I am coming into this understanding that it's not about me, it's about the community, it's about how I embrace that and help people to move forward." Powerful words today, Dr. Ebony White and I appreciate you so much.
Dr. White: Thank you for having me. Thank you so much.
Dr. Butler: Thank you so much for being a part of this. This has been The Voice of Counseling from the American Counseling Association. I'm Dr. S. Kent Butler and my guest today is Dr. Ebony White. We've had a phenomenal time talking about loss and grief and some other little things, but how they all are interconnected because we are who we are and we do the work that we do because of the fact that we understand who we are and how we fit in the community. How that little puzzle piece fits in there. Thank you, Dr. White. Thank you all for listening. We'll see you next time.
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