Healing Across Generations: Dr. Amy Alexander on Trauma, Identity, and Empowering Communities of Color

0:02 All right, hello everyone, welcome back to the show. We have Dr Amy Alexander here. She is the founder and CEO of Legacy Consulting and, yeah, let's get this started. So can you give me a brief gist, or a brief summary of who you are, what you're about and what your message is overall? Yes, good morning and thank you so much for having me. So I am a veteran of public school. I worked in public education for about 30 years. I left that space last year. Around this time I was an eighth grade US history teacher for almost a decade.

0:46 I was a elementary school counselor for a few years and I spent the majority of my time in that space as a high school counselor as well. I worked in mental health as a clinician. I worked with adjudicated minors doing individual and group therapy, psychoeducational groups with them, and also I worked at a local walk-in crisis center, which was very eye-opening. It gave me a very different perspective of the mental health world, how to access services and the obstacles that exist in getting people the help that they need.

1:31 I've also worked a lot in the space of trauma. Kind of before everybody was a trauma expert In the last like I don't know seven to 10 years. I've been looking into trauma for the last probably 16, 18 years, particularly as it relates to communities of color and specifically to the Black population. When I started there was hardly any literature, any research on trauma in the Black community and we're talking about generational trauma, trauma that's passed on through family, through culture, collective trauma so that is the space in which I operate Some things around secondary trauma.

2:22 There was a lot more literature on survivors second and third generation survivors of the Jewish Holocaust, as well as more information even in regards to the indigenous population, with the Holocaust on indigenous peoples and as well I used information on sexual assault survivors. There was information and research on that that I used to kind of piece together my research regarding trauma in the black community.

3:07 I've since started my company Legacy, maybe about three years ago and I've been fortunate enough to be in spaces with educators, with nonprofit workers and staff, with business people post COVID-19. And it is just overwhelming I'm an energy person and the energy of these folks who are really suffering. I think COVID brought a lot of mental health issues that we were kind of ignoring and thinking we could just push through on our own to the surface and now a lot of folks don't know how to deal with this trauma, with the anxiety, with the depression that they're experiencing.

3:50 So it's really moving and it's actually encouraging and gives me energy to be able to go into spaces and let people know that it's OK, that this is normal, that they're not defective right, that they're not, as some people say in past generations, crazy, that they are human and that these feelings that they're experiencing, these thoughts that they're having, are human things. So it is, you know, a blessing to be able to kind of provide people relief in that space, and I enjoy that.

4:32 So what got you introduced to trauma and what got you here's a better way of phrasing it what got you first interested in learning about trauma. Interested in learning about trauma and kind of begin to develop approaches or begin to push in the direction of actually helping people who deal with trauma and to learn about generational trauma. Well, let me say this I saw a quote I'm very into mindfulness, you know, when I do workshops I have people just kind of settle into their space and kind of try to push away the stressors and the you know, the things of the day that we bring with us and I read a quote that said we're not human beings having a spiritual experience, we're spiritual beings having a human experience.

5:20 I think, to answer your question, my interest in history and my years as a history teacher and my fascination with just kind of how people behave right in certain spaces and certain times brought me to the idea of trauma, in addition to my own personal experiences. I identify as a Black woman. I was raised by a white woman who is my mother. She's since passed, but I saw, I lived the experience. I'm 55. I'm going to be 56 next month. That happened in terms of race and discrimination are so far in the past, but they're really not.

6:08 My mother was a white woman having a black child. In the 1960s she was spat on, prohibited from entering certain places and spaces like a local amusement park had a swimming pool and when the segregation laws, when they were forced to desegregate, they closed the pool, they just shut it down, put other rides there. My mother, in her defiant space as a probably 25-year-old woman, took her Black child, me, into that pool. So she said we're going in there and, as you can see, you know, some people might not see my Blackness, but things like that, things like people asking my mother and me did I get my job because of affirmative action?

6:57 As if my qualifications and my abilities weren't enough to earn me a place in a professional space, things like being underestimated, things like seeing my students underestimated and not being encouraged to take the more rigorous academic courses, to not be permitted by some type of gatekeeping to challenge, you know, some type of gatekeeping to challenge themselves in those spaces where they were probably very capable but just not given the space and the encouragement to do so. I mean, there's so many things that cause trauma going into schools and this is one of the reasons why I had to leave.

7:40 I do not agree with policing children. I do not agree with policing children in spaces that they are required by law to be in, such as school. When they come in, they're yelled at to you know, turn their phones over, take their hoods off, walking through metal detectors having their effects, their personal effects, searched as they enter this space. This is not education, this is indoctrination, this is control. And so all these things have kind of helped me to see that there's a connection when people say, well, why is everything about race?

8:21 Or why can't you all you people, let go of the past? Like slavery was hundreds of years ago, but slavery, what happened then, has been passed on. Those reactions to what happened to so many of our ancestors the torture, the disrespect, the inhumanity, right of how they lived and existed has been passed on, of how they lived and existed has been passed on because the fears, the reactions to those things when women, black women, saw their men being mutilated and beaten and even murdered in some cases, that reaction to seeing that means we're now going to try to protect our men because we've seen the horrors of what can happen if we don't.

9:05 And so that doesn't change that. In fact, when it's unaddressed and not even acknowledged, it becomes more a part of our culture, more embedded in who we are, so much so to the point that we think it's normal and it being the things that we, for instance, let's talk about a little bit risk and protective factors. A protective factor during the days of enslavement is keeping your mouth shut, not talking to people about. You know possible plans to escape, or what have you amongst black folks, or what have you amongst Black folks Today?

9:49 We kind of are closed mouth about the things that we need to be expressing and we need to explore because now I'm good, I can handle it, I can take care of it, I don't need to share my business with a stranger who's paid to listen to my problems. So now it's a risk factor because we are not addressing the things that we need to address collectively, culturally, historically, in order to be able to start the healing process. Yeah, you're so right about that, you know, because I see this all the time, a lot in the academic environments too. You know, I usually am one of the only black people there that asks for extra help from the professors and the teachers and opens up about problems and I always wondered why other people didn't do it and your explanation it definitely helps.

10:36 To emphasize it's sad and you know it definitely needs to change, to kind of move this forward how do you think generational trauma has maybe influenced your life or your legacy? And again, mind you, if you have a family or anything else kids, I'm not sure. Wow, that's powerful. That's a powerful question. I think it's hopefully made me more sensitive to other people's experiences, even the ones that I haven't had academic piece but everyday work of hearing, and I call my students, my babies, hearing my babies' stories, the things that they've endured, the things that they've overcome.

11:32 You know parents working through addiction, parents who are incarcerated, walking through violence, you know, to get to school, to get home. I've had students who were shot on their way to school. I've had, or you know how they come back from. That moves me. It makes me wonder how the human spirit, how people, especially Black folks, spirit, how people, especially black folks, have such power to overcome. And I've had, you know, students who are, you know, living in poverty, of all races white, black, who are living with addicted parents, who are living with you know, just situations and circumstances that I do not know how they have managed to get to the place where they're at.

12:32 And that has moved me Seeing my mom struggle, seeing my mom rejected from spaces when I was a little child because she opted to have a Black child and to stand, stand firm on that. Even when her family members rejected her, they said you can come, but don't bring that Black baby and my mother, you know, to family events and things like that. She said, no, you know, if I can't bring my child, then I'm not going to be in those spaces. I think there's such a myriad of things, even my own life as a student.

13:14 All the way from I was so happy and proud. I remember being in fourth grade and I read to the level to be in the highest reading group. Now, when I look back at that as an adult, yeah, that was great for me. But what about the other students? What about that? There could have been preconceived ideas about their abilities. Why are you in the low reading group? Why are there even distinctions in that? And that's something that bothers me about public education, the division, the kind of tracking like you're good enough to be here and you're not, and that followed me even through my doctoral studies. I was looking around, thinking you know that imposter syndrome like why am I here?

13:55 I'm not smart like these other people and I am. And it turns out that I might actually be more intelligent. And to have my students kind of walk with me through that journey and see the parallels right of what they're experiencing in high school and what I'm experiencing as a doctoral student, as a Black woman. Those things stay with me and they make me want to be better and they make me want to try to understand why education, why the systems in this country are not willing to change. And I understand that. I understand that, that the majority wants to hold on to power, that people don't want to change, people want things to be status quo and and that holds a great percentage of people in this nation back.

14:47 And, yes, we can point to people like you, we can point to people like me, we can point to people like President Obama and Henry Louis Gates and all these successful Black folks, but those were pretty much outliers, because the system was not set up for us to succeed. The system was set up for us to be in the background. And I aim honestly to change that, because I've been wounded and I've seen other people who have been wounded and who might not reach their potential because no one is there to tell them that they don't have to live in that space, they don't have to live down to the expectations of others, and I just think that's important.

15:33 I think all those things can be traumatic and that's the insidious nature of trauma right Is I can go through something, a similar or same situation that somebody else goes through, and I can be traumatized by that, and the other person might not be. It depends on our lived experiences, on our systems of support right On our character, on how we see ourselves, those protective factors that we employ to kind of help us work through trauma. So I think there's just so many things to learn about it. It's fascinating to me, humanity is fascinating to me, and history plays a part in that as well.

16:16 So you know you raise a lot of good points. You know you raised a lot of good points. I think this is when we begin to talk about you. So what was your life like when you first got into college, when you were pursuing your education? What was your goal regarding internships? What was the game plan when you came out? What was the attack plan on finally going against this generational trauma and beginning to create better access and availability to the majority of Blacks in America?

17:01 Well, I think it started way before I was conscious of it. All the things that I've just mentioned to you and there's myriad examples I can give you being disinvited to birthday parties when people's families found out I was Black, not being able to participate in certain things, being shunned. I was being prepared, I think unbeknownst to me, for those moments I had the power, in certain spaces, to speak up for others, to speak up for my students. So I don't know that there was a moment. I don't know that there was one thing, an event right that set me in that space.

17:45 But a life of living got me to that point of observing, of being curious. And I remember saying to my dissertation chair, a great woman, a great scholar in trauma, dr Lisa Lopez-Lievers, that I'm just, I don't think I'm as smart, I'm not, you know, as these other folks here. And she said Amy, you're curious and that is a level of intellectual capacity. You know that you want to know. And I discovered that when I got into my doctoral program.

18:25 I was like research, who likes to do that? In my head it was like sitting alone in a space by yourself just walking through different results of statistical evidence and data and things like that. But research is fascinating. That's how I find out things, that's how I come to understand myself. I think when I got to be a counselor, even as a classroom teacher, I saw disparities. I saw who was able to get into the early language, you know, world language courses, and language was tied to math and math was tied to English.

19:06 Like if you could get into this class, then you could be in honors English and you could be in advanced geometry and you could be. And so what were? I might be good in English and I might not be good at math. Why can't I be in the advanced English and you know, and kind of hone my strengths, rather than being penalized for not being good in everything? Considering that Black folks started from behind the finish line, I mean behind the start line, right, progress is different for different groups and individuals. We can't expect people who started, you know, on third base to advance at the same pace as somebody who started on first base.

19:49 Somebody who gets to second base and maybe started on first base is making advances. Right, they might not be on third base like the person that they're you know in that space with. And I think we judge folks in that way, like if I get a C on a trigonometry test, that's good for me. I'm not good in trigonometry, I know people that are, and so they get an A minus and they're disappointed in that. But I think a lot of folks of color, a lot of folks that come from poverty, regardless of race, are not given those opportunities and I don't think that's fair.

20:33 I think that that's not what America projects itself to be, what it's declared itself to be, and I think we just sit in systems that were developed hundreds of years ago because it's comfortable, because it gives the same people the power. And most systems don we want to know about trauma engaged. You know interventions and pedagogy and things like that. But maybe they just want to fulfill a mandate by a system. You know that's regulating them. I don't know that there's sincere change.

21:14 You know desire to change. I have a sincere desire to change systems and so I do that, the ways that I am capable of. And again, going back to I know I'm long winded, I'm sorry Going back to your question, I think I've been preparing for a lifetime to move into the space, to build my own kind of courage and determination and my recognition of my own power, that I can speak up for myself and for other people. So I think honestly, too, the doctorate that doctor in front of my name gives me more credit, if you will, in some circles.

21:58 So I have the space to be able to say this is wrong and we're thinking in wrong terms. Yelling and screaming at students, wanting them to not explore their creativity and their individuality, is not education, it's indoctrination. We're not doing them any favors and, again, that's why I could no longer stay in that space, because I saw a system that was harmful to the people that I desire to help and I feel like I can do different things outside of that system in order to advance those ways of thinking than I could inside of it. To be honest, I have now is where do you think that deep curiosity within you came from?

22:47 Were there any things you did as a child that may have helped to foster that curiosity? Did your mother ever do anything with you? Do you remember doing anything ever to foster that? Yes, wow, you're really great at this. You're making me dig deep. My mother did. She was 21. Well, she was 20 when she had me. I was born in April, but she turned 21 in May. So a young woman right An adult, yes, but still young in that space, and for that I think she did amazing things. She took me to museums, she read to me, she took me to the library.

23:32 I remember getting my first library card. In fact I even saved my daughters I have two daughters and they're adults but their library cards when they get to write their own name on the little library card. My mom told me Amy, you can know anything that anybody else in this world knows if you have a library card and you can access those things. This was way before computers and things like that. So she did those things. She also I remember her telling me because I said nobody likes me and everybody hates me, and you know, I'm like I don't know, six or seven years old, and my mom saying that, amy, that is a cognitive distortion, um, but just, you know, saying all and every and no one and nothing, um, really are not accurate, um.

24:33 So I think she had a lot to do with my level of curiosity and my just way of thinking um about people and humans. I was born um, I guess what people would call today an empath. I remember. So we were poor, right, but I was always trying to help other people. I remember seeing people walking, you know, like in the rain or snow or at night, and I, you know, asked my mom to stop and pick them up. And she's like you know, I have an obligation to protect you and us, so I cannot just pick up strangers and things, but just having that empathy for other human beings, which I remember also being told that might hurt me in some ways, because people are not always good and don't always have good intentions and don't always receive love and kindness the ways that we hope they would, with graciousness and appreciation.

25:22 Sometimes they use that against you and manipulate and things like that. But she did try to give me a rounded experience and I remember saying to her when I got older that you know, you never really taught me about my Black heritage or you know where I come from, and she accepted that. She said Amy, you're right, I never did, not intentionally or consciously, I put you in spaces where there were Black women. But she said I also never taught you about your Irish history or any of that either. So there was that she didn't do that for any of my background and I think that too, just having to kind of navigate people asking me, well what are you?

26:14 And that was a question that I had my entire life and as a child I didn't even understand what people were saying. So that made me curious, like, what are you talking about? What am I? I'm human and I discovered that my mom wanted me. She would say Amy, you're just you, you're a human being. But that's not the way the world saw me, that's not the way the world categorized me, and I had to come to terms with that and I had to try to help her understand that, that I can't move like just Amy, because that's not going to be accepted in this world. That's really based on color and gender and a whole bunch of other things like spiritual beliefs and ethnicity and sexual orientation and gender identity.

26:59 I had to be a Black woman and I love being that. I wouldn't want to be anything else. But I think having to move and navigate those spaces that other people created and not being also not being limited to their idea of who I should be, moved me and made me think differently. I know I think differently than a lot of people my age regarding social issues and things like that. I would say I'm extremely liberal according to people, but I interpret that as being kind of in love with humanity wherever I find people, wherever they're at, because I want that grace and I'm still growing.

27:45 At almost 56 years old In fact, I'm able for the first time to kind of look at who I am because I had my daughter so young I say I went from being my mother's daughter to being my daughter's mother, with no room in between, at 21 years of age, to kind of see who I was and explore really what I thought outside of being in those roles. Right, my mother was at the time. She grew to be a conservative person, coming from a very liberal space in her youth, so I had to navigate those things and really try to figure out what I truly believe, and my daughters have also helped me with that.

28:30 People think that I'm very kind of sister soldier, you know very, you know just supporting causes that I believe in. But my daughters are probably even more so that and then they teach me a lot, and so listening to people also that we might not believe have anything to teach us. I don't think there's a human being in this world that doesn't have something to teach me. I don't think that I'm always the teacher. I'm willing to learn from anyone, and I think sometimes that gets lost in kind of the hierarchy of society and of education that well, you're just a freshman, or you're just an undergraduate, or you're just a high school student or you're just a person who doesn't have a degree.

29:17 No, you're equal to me in humanity. Right. When I'm in the school system, lot on like bus drivers, particularly in the elementary space, I relied on food service workers and custodians and security officers because they were in the hallways and spaces that I wasn't in and they would share. Oh, I saw so-and-so going into the bathroom with somebody else, or I saw so-and-so you know in the corner, you know crying or whatever, and these. So they were equally as significant in that space as I was. Though, when people walked in, they saw school counselor Dr Alexander and think that, you know, I'm somehow better than these other folks or more significant to the system, and I wasn't and I'm not.

30:03 So I think that's something that I hope to never lose, that I can get knowledge and I can learn from anyone, and I think that moves me also in these spaces of curiosity, because everybody has a story to tell and we just have to be willing to listen. Really, so let's sort of move on to legacy consulting. What story do you think legacy consulting has to tell? Well, I really didn't think of myself as a businesswoman, to be honest. I was in a system and here in the north in the northeast I guess, because I know educators in the south and other areas other regions are not as fortunate as I am to have been in a union, very strong union culture here I'm in Pittsburgh, pennsylvania, so union is like life here and being in that system where I was kind of collectively protected in some ways didn't afford me the opportunity or the need to kind of think outside of the system until again my last few years.

31:17 So legacy comes from a, first of all, the title of my dissertation, which is long but it starts out with examining the legacy of transgenerational trauma and I was looking for a name for my company. I thought legacy, legacy, what do I want to leave in this world when I'm gone, when I'm no longer here? And that is a legacy. The double A, because I have two capital A's in the middle of legacy and that's the difference of, I guess, my company. Like the name came from one of my former students who I had my first year as a history teacher LaShawn Renee Murray. She said I like the double like.

31:58 Why don't you make it two double A's in the middle to make it kind of distinct. And so that's where that came from, but also just what I've gotten from the people that I've encountered, the women there was a lot of single women in my neighborhood growing up, just seeing how they struggled, how they managed, how they were disrespected and disregarded in a lot of ways. And for my daughters and for my students, to make the world a better place and I know that sounds trite, but my space in this world, whether I touch millions of people or tens of people, I want to leave them better, or maybe more self-sufficient and more self-aware more self-sufficient and more self-aware let me put it that way than when I entered their space.

32:55 So legacy is a journey for me, an attempt to help comfort people in their spaces, but also in that comfort and in that knowledge, in that comfort and in that knowledge, help to move them forward, to be able to fulfill their purpose and to help and educate others while doing that. To face kind of a love and a motivation to be greater, yeah, and to bring others with us as we move in that space, because no one can do it alone.

33:41 I don't care how smart you are, how wealthy you are, how much power you have. We all need each other and I think sometimes the American spirit of you know that individual ruggedness and pushing on and that kind of sometimes gets in the way of us understanding that we all need help and accepting other people's help. We want to go all of us. It's not like just me, it's not just you, it's not just somebody else, it's all of us. It's not like just me, it's not just you, it's not just somebody else, it's all of us pushing forward together well, that's true, you know, and you know, um, I I would say too, that it's that aspect of working together that really leads to the success of a lot of people.

34:30 That term standing on the shoulders of giants, that doesn't come from, you know, just doing things on your own. So, you know, I, um, completely agree with that, and, again, forgive me if this might be a bit of a. There's probably an odd question I'm going to ask, though, but I noticed you have some tattoos. I like the tattoos quite a bit, and what significance do you think those tattoos have on your life and what you know? What meanings do you think were the most important ones? Well, I have on my hip a tattoo of Africa, the continent. I did do this DNA thing.

35:12 I know some spaces of where my ancestors came from on the continent, but that's obviously significant to me because of the kind of disregard in terms of the greater society and history of the African diaspora and how Black folks got here, where we come from, our language, our cultures, our tribes that our ancestors were in. That's really significant and important to me. I also have and you can't see it, but I have a tree kind of on my chest and it's a woman.

35:53 The tree trunk is a woman, which represents me. The leaves coming out from the top have my daughter's names in them and then I went back and got the roots and they're on my stomach names of the people that, the women that are significant to me in my life that have passed, including my mother and my aunt Both of them died of breast cancer a number of years ago my grandmother, obviously, and then other women, sojourner Truth, fannie Lou Hamer, truth, fannie Lou Hamer, forgive me if I Coretta Scott King, maya Angelou, I mean so many women I wish Shirley Chisholm I'm trying to think of, did I?

36:45 I said Fannie Lou Hamer, I can't think of the woman now, of course, harriet Tubman, phyllis Wheatley the lynching woman that's terrible. Ida B Wells Barnett, and I can't even think of all. But the roots are those women because, dr Betty Shabazz, I've never met them, any of them, but they have had some influence in my space because of the hard work that they did, because of the hard work that they did, of their willingness to share their journey and their knowledge. So I'd say those are extremely significant. I have a tattoo here on my hand that's Aries.

37:26 I think I've grown to. I was raised like, oh, don't do that, that's the devil's. You know that's of the devil and I'm talking about astrology. Do that, that's the devil's. You know that's of the devil and I'm talking about astrology. And I've come to understand that there are useful things in astrology, that around humanity, like, we have certain things in common, depending on the zodiac sign under which we were born, and Aries is the first of those and it's a fire sign and it represents kind of where I started, because it's almost the opposite being born to a poor white single mom in the 1960s in a space where they put her out of the hospital, they threatened to if she didn't pay her bills Just the kind of like, almost opposite of what my birth sign is, and to be able to grow into that.

38:16 And I think that's a lot of people's experience we have. There's like opposing forces right that that we are trying to navigate and figure out internally. And I believe that's true of every black person, because we are Americans but we are like James Baldwin, my favorite author we are Americans but we don't get to understand truly what it's like. We live in America but to be an American, to be accepted in that space wholly and fully, is still a dream. We're still working towards that. So the tattoos are really personal and I know people look and say, well, why would you do that to your body?

38:58 I think of it as art. I think of it as things that I can carry with me, where I don't need like a wall to put it on, or to go to a space of a museum to be able to see it and experience it. And I just, you know I'll probably be getting tatted, you know, until I leave this earth, because there's so many more experiences and so many things I want to put on me. And actually let me show you. I just got this one not too long ago. As you can see, it's the name of my company with the legacy yes. And I just, yeah, I just love the artistry of the tattoo artist and they take that at least the ones I've experienced very seriously and it's just they're moving in their creativity and in their space and I just, you know, I really just love the whole process of figuring out what I want to put on my body and where I want to put it and the significance.

39:52 So any day I can go in the mirror and say or look at my arm like I did this the little girl born of a poor, single mom who was spat on, who wasn't given a chance to even graduate from high school A lot of people thought I wasn't even going to graduate from high school to be here in this space. I can be proud of that and I can be proud of that with the people who have helped me, which includes my students and their parents, my family members, my daughters, people like you, and just recognizing the gifts that I have, because I didn't for a long time. The gifts that I have because I didn't for a long time.

40:37 I noticed on that arm tattoo the A's. They look a bit different. You put I's in between to add to the style Interesting. They are the eyes of Heru, and I could show you this other tattoo. It'll be upside down because it's. Let me see how I can get that to you. You see it. Oh, I see it. Yes, but there's a lot of African symbolism Is there? Let me turn that around. And there's a scarab beetle and the eye of Heru. That's what's in my. I have like four logos for legacy so I had to choose which one I wanted and I might get the other ones on me at some point, but, um, they're all representative of kind of spiritual existence and based in african culture.

41:25 I couldn't tell you the specific country out of the 54 countries in Africa that these come from, and maybe it's multiple ones, but that is, yes, that is, that is what it's and that's an again, that that, that heritage is in all the, the logos of legacy. So, yes, significant in that way, and it also strikes up conversations with people who might be genuinely curious about things that they haven't been taught. So I get the opportunity to say, yes, this is like an African symbol of spirituality and of peace and love of humanity, and so it's cool. It does a lot of things outside of just being art on my body, and I almost say just because that's really significant as well of being art on my body, and I almost say just because that's really significant as well of being art on my body.

42:13 It helps spark conversation and build relationships and spread knowledge. So you talked a bit about your Irish. Well, I don't know too much about the Irish heritage, but you have a very interesting mix of cultures. When you first started to maybe get into meeting lots of Black women, I think you were talking about your experiences with white people. But when you first were introduced to more Black people, perhaps in Pennsylvania, was it a culture shift? Was it different? It must have been better to some of the people, right.

42:55 Well, there were Black people. My mom and her sisters were raised in a part of Pittsburgh called the Hill District and it's pretty famous. Actually Lena Horne had moved here for a while. A lot of the jazz folks would come here and Lena Horne, I think, is one who dubbed a space in the Hill District the crossroads of the world, because there were so many artists and entertainers who came here and even made Pittsburgh their home for a short time period is where my mother came from. Now, not during that time, but after, and it was still very heavily Italian-American, jewish American I'm also Jewish as well in my heritage, not in my faith and Black folks and some poor white folks who and once they started gentrifying the Hill District which now there's like PPG Paints Arena there and other things that they built, and people had to kind of disperse and they went to different neighborhoods.

43:57 But my mom was immersed in Black culture. I didn't believe her. When she was younger She'd tell me me and your Aunt Sandy were like two of the only maybe four white people in our high school. And I looked at after she passed away. You know, I was going through her things and I saw her high school yearbook and I said, oh my gosh, she wasn't lying, so she had a knowledge, I think, that most white folks didn't have of black culture back then and she was around black folks. As I said, a lot of her friends were Black people, so I don't know if it was as much of a shock. I think there was some things that I had not experienced as a Black woman coming into that space perspective and my experience been accepting of folks in their community, right when we think of people who, in my mind, maybe have not indulged so much in their Black heritage, like, let's say, tiger Woods, identifying as whatever he identifies as.

45:03 I think it's cobblation. That thing, black folks still are very accepting and welcoming. And so, yes, there have been some bumps in the road in terms of, you know, I remember Kathleen Cleaver, the white wife of you know, the ancestor, eldridge Cleaver, a very powerful civil rights movement, being in the Black Panther Party, saying, you know, light-skinned people were suspect back in the 1960s, like if you were light-skinned and in that movement, you know, people looked at you kind of with a side eye because what are you doing here?

45:44 Like how are you benefiting from this? So, and that again is trauma, right, think about the times of antebellum and enslavement, when the master and the overseer pit the master's and overseer's children, who were, you know, part black in a lot of cases, against the other folks, the other enslaved people, the house, if you will, versus the field Negro. So that is a part of our trauma that we continue to try to work through as skin tone and skin color. But, yes, moments when, like, what do you? You know why are you here? But it is, it is just in my nature and in my soul and in my spirit and who I am, to be a Black woman Again, I cannot imagine being anything else and nor do I want to, but yes, I think writ large.

46:38 The Black community has accepted me. Once they get to know me and understand that process and my experiences and I also embrace my Irish culture that will be one of my tattoos. Culture that will be one of my tattoos. I will have a clover or some representation of my Irish heritage and my Jewish heritage at some point, because I embrace those too. They are part of me, they are what make me me. I don't sacrifice any part of my Blackness to embrace those. I am fully all of what I am. Excellent. And you know, I definitely agree with that, because my grandfather look, I'll say this in the Caribbean, like in Trinidad, there is a lot of things there and it's called colorism, yes, and basically he was very, very dark, yep, yep, and a lot of times when you're very dark, what they do is they'll say you know, this is a person that would work in the fields, this is a more lower class black person.

47:48 It really is a shame, because you see those types of environments. And he climbed up to the top because he learned russian. He became a biomedical phd in the university of the west indies. But it's idiotic because I see this and then I see other people in this same caribbean culture. They're trying to lighten their skin. You know purpose, like you could spend all this energy and effort getting an education and they're trying to lighten their skin. You know purpose, like you could spend all this energy and effort getting an education and you're going to spend that same energy lightening your skin. You know, and it's sad, it's sad. It is. That's an acknowledgement to how powerful trauma is, because that, of course, came from the Euro-based idea of peasants, you know, working out in the fields, right, and so they had darker skin, while the people who were wealthy stayed inside and were kind of more that, that what do they call it?

48:42 Ivory or or or I don't like that that very kind of pale skin, and that's not only in black culture, that that's in Indian culture, that's in Hispanic or Latino culture, and it is just pervasive and it's insane. You're right, it's idiotic that we subject ourselves to those things. But that's what drives me crazy among black folks. When we say, oh, you're doing a light skin thing, or you're acting real light skin or you're acting dark skin, we are perpetuating that slave mentality and that Euro-based idea of what beauty, physical beauty and acceptance looks like, and we need to, in my opinion, really move away from that and understand our beauty, regardless of the hue of our skin, that we are connected, we're all worthy, regardless of our skin tone or texture of our hair or eye color or all the things that we kind of place value on.

49:43 Don't even get me started with the hair problem. Get started, go ahead. No, you probably know more about this, but I think it's more interesting with black women, especially in work environments. They're always encouraged to straighten their hair and I think there's this misconception that having a certain hairstyle might affect your opportunities. Well, you know, I'm in one of the top universities on the planet pursuing a master's degree. I've worked at General Electric as just a bachelor's major. Look at me. It's sad when you see Black women especially, I've heard some of them have never even seen their natural.

50:23 They just keep it straight all the time. It looks like that. I don't know if you went through that because you're biracial. I did. Hair is an important part of every woman and when you're talking about colorism, I've done workshops on that the brown paper bag test, the comb test. If this comb can go through your hair without getting caught, then you can be in our group and our. And again it's black people versus black people because of the trauma that was perpetrated on us. Um, you know, in earlier times, the, the nose test, where you had to stand against the wall like with a shadow and see how big your nose is or your lips, um, in order to enter certain, you know, elite, black, elite Black clubs or organizations.

51:13 But yes, I have. And somebody I remember being in middle school or high school and I said well, how did you know I was Black? I don't remember the rest of the conversation, but the young man said because of your hair. And I said, oh, okay, and I wear my hair natural today. Sometimes it's just out and it's just wild and uncombed and things like that. And I remember a woman when I was an adult saying something about having a beautiful face to me. You have a beautiful face, I just don't know about your hair. It was an older white woman and I did not know how to respond to that.

51:53 But hair is a big thing. Now I don't go through the same. I've never had a weave, I've never had braids, I've never had like a wig or things like that. But so I don't go through the same things as a lot of black women and other women of color in terms of my hair. But there have been struggles. And I've other women of color in terms of my hair, but there have been struggles and I've, you know, in the last, you know, several years, accepted my hair, my texture and I embrace it. It's me and it's sad for me that it's taken me to my 50s to get there. But yeah, there has been that aspect of my evolution. Now, when it comes to legacy consulting, now I think you know we really emphasize the legacy portion, but when it comes to consulting what types of people or companies, what is your ideal target audience?

52:47 Well, I think I really enjoy working with educators because I lived in that space for so long and I think I have an understanding not only of being a classroom teacher but also being a school counselor, which are two, and not only a school counselor at the high school level but at the elementary level, and those are two different jobs, if you can imagine. I know it's the same title school counselor. However, in elementary school there's different aspects of counseling that one has to employ and work in, as opposed to high school. So I really like educators. I also enjoy working with people in the violence intervention space, in the nonprofit space.

53:29 I've done work with people who work for the cities, city workers. I did one with Augusta, georgia. I've done them with DHS, the Department of Human Services, here in the Pittsburgh area, people who serve people. Right, I love working with them because, just by nature, we don't take good care of ourselves, we don't take time to speak to ourselves, to be tender with ourselves. We give and we give and they give and give and they serve their community and they serve other people nonprofits and so they need, I believe, filled up and I can come into that space and let them know again that this is not strange or weird, that this is not weak, to need peace, to need time to relax, relate, release, as they say.

54:29 And I can support them in those spaces and I think I understand it because, no, yes, I actually am on. I do violence intervention, I'm on a board that deals with that, but I have never done their job per se. But I can relate because teaching to me is service, being a school counselor to me was service to humanity. So we have those things in common so I can kind of draw on my experiences that are parallel to some of theirs and help them to just be in a space of safety, of acceptance and understanding, so that they can rejuvenate and go out and again do what they love, which is serving their community.

55:16 You know so, schools, nonprofits, like I said, even city workers, people in corporations. They are confused about trauma, about, you know, the kind of shifting culture of business, of professionalism. A lot of people are opting to stay home these days and do work from home if they have that choice, and so the people that are in those spaces that physically are in like business offices and things like that, they're still bringing a whole bunch of the stuff that they experience as human beings to work. They're still bringing a whole bunch of the stuff that they experience as human beings to work. In my younger years it was like, well, that's work and that's home and these things are separate, you don't mix those.

55:57 But today I understand that we're human and we're taking our whole human selves everywhere we go. And that's related to education. We talk about educating the whole student, not just their kind of academic space, but their emotional space, their spiritual space, and that's not indoctrinating. I'm not saying like teaching them a religion, I'm saying accepting that they are all of those things. They are spiritual, they are academic, they are psychological, they are physical. So those people, in short, I know I went the long way around it, but people who serve people are who I really enjoy and that could be in any form. You know there's people in business who serve people, there's people in education who serve people.

56:41 So I'm not stuck on kind of the organization or the entity, but the desire to just serve humanity. I'm thinking of two big occurrences, whether that be BLM or George Floyd. When it comes to these big incidents, I've seen some of your LinkedIn posts I think you do talk about, forgive me, about the name, trayvon Martin maybe as well. How did those situations or those eras influence you?

57:21 What types of groups did you associate with or join with around those times? With around those times? Well, I think those incidents reinforced my idea of a police state. And it's not just actual law enforcement. Right, there's a police state in schools. We talk about the school-to-prison pipeline. That's real to me when I described a few moments ago about how students come into the building at seven o'clock in the morning. Some of these children are coming, or young people, from abusive situations where they got no rest, where they had to get up at five o'clock in the morning to get their younger siblings dressed and fed and out to school or ready for school.

58:05 And even horrific things there. You know adults who are supposed to be caring for them. You know beating one another. Or you know police coming to their homes. You know the night before three o'clock in the morning they're getting to school hearing take your you know hood off being screamed at, walking into a building at 7 am walking through a metal detector detector. It reinforced that this is not what human beings need to be more human. In my mind it also reinforced the idea that we need to discuss these things with our youth.

58:46 We need to acknowledge ignoring stuff is not going to make it go away. We need to address their fears. I don't know that I joined any groups or anything like that, but certainly my perspective was to be there for people who worked around me. I even had, like adults coming to me that worked in a building teachers, secretaries, food service workers saying I hear the kids talking about this and or or I'm feeling a certain way and I don't even know george floyd, I didn't know trayvon martin, I didn't know mike brown, I didn't know sandra bland or or um tamir rice, I didn't know. There was a young man here in pittsburgh area, antoine rose, the second, who was um murdered by police.

59:28 So, helping people to understand that there's trauma that we experience through other peoples and that's again the kind of evolution and the dynamic nature of trauma we're still studying that that we can be traumatized when we're not directly affected by something like 9-11. Let's say I wasn't there. I didn't know anybody personally who died in that event, but I was traumatized by that and it's OK for my students and other people to know that you can be traumatized by witnessing that level of of human disrespect and disregard.

1:00:13 And a lot of my students were Black males so they had an even more visceral reaction to those things because they're thinking that could happen to me, that could happen to my brother and Black moms are thinking that could happen to my son, that could happen to my husband, to my brother, to my father. These are things that we relate to in ways we don't have to know somebody and I told people that's okay that you don't know these people personally and that you have these feelings and reactions because it's a human reaction. So I think it brought me again even more into the space of trying to understand trauma, whether it be it's proximal and distal Right, so it doesn't have to be right in your space.

1:00:57 It could be at this point, with social media and technology and other countries, that we are traumatized by seeing like what's going on right now in Gaza. God help us now in Gaza, god help us. It's terrible the way that sometimes human beings treat other human beings in the pursuit of the maintenance of power in this social structure of hierarchy based on skin tone, based on how much money you have, based on your gender, based on where you were born. So it's, I think, propelled me to try to better understand just the badness of trauma and how we sometimes refuse to accept that we've been traumatized, even when we understand intellectually some ways that this is not my doing.

1:01:50 We understand intellectually some ways that this is not my doing. We still are ashamed that we feel because society, I think, puts such emphasis on thought and on logic. Right, but those things are not mutually exclusive. We can feel and think at a high level, at the same time and that's so true when it comes to generational trauma, do you think? One thing that definitely came to mind was definitely Black music. Black music as a whole massively pushes this aspect and idea, so much so that I hear a lot of the songs now like drill music.

1:02:33 The dance moves basically simulate killing people, like you know. It's insane, but what do you think? I think we talked a lot about, you know, white on black, but what about black on black issues like gang issues, these types of problems? Were you ever exposed to those types of issues as well, some of the issues that are usually celebrated or talked about heavily in music. Yeah, I mean, where I grew up, you know, I experienced those things. Where I did my, I was introduced to my like through student teaching. There's a school I did it in the city of Pittsburgh.

1:03:15 In fact, I was in the first group from my college, my university, california University of Pennsylvania, to go into the city as student teachers, and there were several different. So the students there were all crips, um, at least that's how they identified um, that were in gangs, the ones who were in gangs, uh, but there were also several different sex of s-e-c-t-s of crips. So people who lived on dallas had to walk across Bennett Street with a different group of Crips and they, you know, had to get to school and it was dangerous for them.

1:03:56 There was no busing because it was a neighborhood school and that was kind of the thing that drew people to. It is, yes, there's kids from the neighborhood, but the neighborhood had different groups of Crips on different streets and different areas of the neighborhood, so there was danger in that. A lot of times we compare also and this again in my and I know everything I see through a trauma lens. But I think it's important when we're talking about groups and Black on Black, let's go back to kind of what we were talking about earlier, which is the black Greek organizations or other black organizations like the Frogs and you know other like kind of elite black organizations that had these ridiculous requirements for entry and acceptance.

1:04:44 I am in a Black Greek organization but oftentimes I can see the parallels to gangs. Right you have, there are certain colors you wear in a Black Greek organization. There's certain rituals, right, that we go through. A lot of the men in Black Greek organizations are branded, which is, you know, clearly comes from enslavement. Whenever you know, slave owners and overseers branded their property in case they got away or ran away or were lost or something people wouldn't know who to return them to. So I think there's parallels in that also and this can get into, as you can see, a really deep psychological conversation and evaluation of Black people, kind of really being brainwashed into thinking that only I or only my group can be successful, only we can do this, only them.

1:05:44 They can do that which is divisive and that was the purpose of it. It was going back to the house Negro and the field Negro and we have Black folks. We have bought into this for a long time and still do. In many ways I think there's been great improvements. We've been able to gain knowledge and being able to kind of step back a little bit and see that these things that we've been made to believe about ourselves are not true and based on, again, the maintenance of power by white people who are perpetuating these notions and ideas. So I think that is, you know, culture and history are really intertwined right, we can see kind of almost the progress or the elevation of Black folks through our music, through our creative spaces, in visual art and performing art and in rap music in particular.

1:06:48 I think there was a moment when I was younger and my type of rap music is old school now, but like of KRS-One, you know, of just brand newbie and like just different entities, that taught us to think and to be proud. I honestly don't relate so much to a lot of the music these days. I enjoy J Cole and Kendrick Lamar. A lot of the other stuff I think is, you know, nonsensical in a lot of ways and I think a lot of the music we have now does perpetuate the kind of image of Black women as kind of Jezebel.

1:07:43 But I also struggle with as a feminist, as a Black feminist, the idea that I fought for women to be equal, to not have to kind of use our bodies and our looks or our outer appearance to be advanced in spaces. And again my daughters reminded me that no, you fought for women to be able to do what they want with their bodies and with their minds. And so, even though it might not be the path that I would choose to take or choose for my daughters or other Black women to take, I stand with Black women who are sex workers, who, as long as it's their choice, right, if it's their choice to do those things who are, you know, including stripping and different things like that.

1:08:34 So that was an inner struggle for me. It was difficult because I'm thinking like why don't they want to do this and do that? It's not for me to figure out or decide what they want to do. It's for me to support them in their own choices and their own decisions and their autonomy. And that's the beautiful thing about it and hopefully, you know, people will vote in a way that continues women's autonomy, because it's being attacked in a lot of ways in political and social spaces these days, which is, you know, is sad for me. Very powerful stuff. Well, that's the part of continuing to learn, because I'm wrong sometimes or I'm not seeing the bigger picture and I have to be willing to listen to others around me who have a different perspective.

1:09:27 And so then I'm like, yeah, you're right, my daughters, you're right. I fought and stood, and still stand, for women to be able to make their own choices, even if they're not the choices that I would make. Do you see a part of yourself in your daughters? Absolutely, absolutely. I find them to be powerful beings, no-transcript.

1:10:11 They've both kind of created organizations and had events and different things to support Black women and Black causes and I am just so proud of that and it's on their own. It's not because somebody, because I or someone else said you should do this, it's because that's what's in their spirit and I love that. And they acknowledge that. They say there's been conversations in our home around history and Black culture and my older daughter likes to say to my younger daughter they're 12 years apart, so they're almost like they're like two only children in terms of their character and their thoughts, processes and things like that, but that everybody wasn't raised in a household like we were.

1:10:54 Everybody didn't have those conversations and those you know, kind of intellectual and spiritual explorations that we had. So we have to kind of understand where other people are coming from and their journey is different, where other people are coming from and their journey is different. So they, my older daughter, ariel, she says you know, thank you for being communicative and talking things out and helping us to explore those things as we experience them, because that really created a space for me and a way for me to affect other people and hear other people's stories. That's amazing. And as we continue on with this, what do you think is the future?

1:11:37 What do you think you know your kids are going to pass on? You know like? What legacy do you think your kids will have? Do you think you will be willing to give them this business too, or have them work in it? Do you plan on turning this into a family business? I would love that and I think there are spaces for them. As I said, they've both organized events around Black issues and concerns. The younger one did it several years ago. She's 23 now Amaya. She's named after me.

1:12:17 She's Amy A because I did not take my partner's last name when we joined together in marriage, so she has my name and her dad's last name, so Amaya. It was called Black Out Loud and she, you know, invited local politicians and there were college professors and different things like that that they brought in. It was her and a friend. She didn't do it all on her own, but just the fact that you're like 18, 19 years old and doing things like this, so far beyond what I was doing at that age.

1:13:06 And my older daughter is really great with social media. She's worked here for the local August Wilson Center doing social media. She's worked with Governor Shapiro on social media. She's an amazing person and has organized I don't even know what to call it. Her organization was in support of Black women and she held events where Black women could get together and share ideas. Again, that unity right, not the division. And I learned so much from those young women when I would go to those events and they had like even card games to help kind of explore feelings, things you know, like if you're getting together with your girlfriends and having drinks or whatever.

1:13:54 There's a card game that you know. Tell us about your youth and your history, you know, in school, or something that sparked conversation and thought and reflection. I met young women who were in their own businesses and various spaces, in their own businesses and various spaces. So, yes, I believe I mean my daughters could take this legacy much further than I ever dreamed it could be when I started it. So, and also my students, my former students. They're my babies and I think that there's even places for them, including the young woman who I said was my student in my first year. She helps me a lot in my, in my business, lashawn, and does so much and she has her own organization, you know the Thirsty Mind Collective.

1:14:41 So I see these women, these young women, coming through and wanting to give back and wanting to unify, to give back and wanting to unify, and they're doing it in such powerful ways that it inspires me again to move forward and to keep on doing what I'm doing, regardless of the obstacles, regardless of the roadblocks. And who tells me. I can't. I have like a whole. I have a whole nation of Black young women with me who propel me forward and who encourage me and who love on me and who see me. And talking about that more often. You mentioned a lot of fraternities, and I think the reason why I was smiling when you mentioned the branding was because that's a very, very popular thing, especially a lot of the one odd thing, too that definitely throws me off with a lot of these fraternities is the hazing rituals.

1:15:36 I joined a scholarship group that actually performed a lot of hazing. They would sleep, deprive us tons of stuff, but with some of these other fraternities they do it even worse tons of stuff, but with some of these other fraternities they do it even worse, like with the omega psi fives, the rotten eggs. Um, some of this stuff is borderline assault I'm just thinking back to that and they practice a lot of branding too. You know, um, the one thing I'm not too familiar with the sororities. Are you a part of the sorority or how did that work? Was it similar? on the campus of Howard University, I believe in the last several years and officially and I cannot speak, obviously, for Alpha Kappa, alpha the organization, the national organization, but there are anti-hazing movements and there are courses and there are requirements that people, advisors and such have to go through to understand how not to haze and that that is not acceptable behavior.

1:16:54 And the fraternities as well, in the last I'd say 15 years, very heavily providing an anti-hazing platform, because we've come to understand that that's not acceptable, that that is detrimental to humanity, to sisterhood and brotherhood. But yes, it was prevalent in the earlier days, in sororities, and I think in a lot of ways it was. I had to go through this, so you have to go through that. I don't know that there was a lot of reflection in how that came to be, as in the history of that and how closely it's related to enslavement and that mentality of bringing someone into submission through violence.

1:17:38 And again, I'm telling you, there are so many ways. This could be like an hours-long conversation in and of itself, but when I did my focus group, when I was doing my dissertation, a lot of the themes that emerged that were significant were control, violence, power, things like that, because that is the way. If you think about the way that, historically, black folks have disciplined our children, it's often through physical violence and punishment and because that's the way we were taught, we took the methods of the slave masters and slave owners and incorporated those because we saw that they were effective in a lot of ways.

1:18:27 Right, that is again a manifestation of trauma. We saw that they were effective in a lot of ways. Right, that is again a manifestation of trauma. We saw that they were effective in a lot of ways. And so that's the method that we chose to control our children. And I think we twisted love around because we wanted to protect them right from certain harms, like, if we talk about back then from being beaten or mutilated or disciplined in some way or sold off to another family to submit right. And so that was protection. Even today, you know, we don't want our children to, we don't want somebody, we don't want them to be subject to somebody else's control or discipline or violence against them.

1:19:12 So we do that to protect them from somebody else, but it's really detrimental to them in the same space. Am I making sense? It is a protective thing. It comes from a good space or a wanting to be good space, but it's really detrimental. But that's what we've been taught, and so we re-traumatize and pass that on through generations. Am I making sense with that? Yeah, and that's repassed on through a lot of these groups. Yes, I think more and more Black folks, especially Black parents, are figuring out that that's not the best way to discipline, that there are other ways that are effective, and that we don't have to perpetrate violence on our children to bring them into submission right as in police brutality, as in slave masters, as in.

1:20:04 When I was a kid and I did get spanking. I got physically disciplined in school, excuse me. When I was younger, because that was legal, we understood that to be acceptable. So we've put violence in order to manage or maintain control. That's a part of American history. That is a deep embedded part of American history. That is a deep embedded part of American history. So why wouldn't Black people, black Americans, also think of that in the same way? And again we're coming out of that. But that's what we were taught and so that's how we behaved.

1:20:44 Now that we know better, we do better, but that is a part of our history. Well, this has all been an excellent, excellent conversation. So I'm thinking here we could probably do a part two discussing the dissertation a bit more. But just to end this off now I want to talk a little bit about your business more closely. What types of products do you offer to maybe the average person, if you will? or are you strictly B2B when it comes to how you work?

1:21:25 At this time I am strictly B2B. I would like to expand. I think I'm trying to find how I can, because a lot of people ask me about therapy and I'm not licensed in the state of Pennsylvania. I'm not a licensed professional counselor. Now I stand with licensure because I think that's significant and important and I, when I was working on my master's degree, I did go and get those additional credits so that I could be licensed. But I am a certified school counselor and I didn't necessarily see the point in being licensed. I thought I'd end my career, you know, in the school system. I think about going back to get licensed. I do have the qualifications, I meet all of the requirements. It's just the fact of getting taking the test and passing the test that I have to pay for and I think, do I really want to do that at this point?

1:22:11 So I am capable of therapy. I've done therapy, obviously, in other spaces. That is not currently a service I offer. I'm considering that Consulting often takes me to other states and other places and I believe that a therapist has an obligation to be in a space. It's a commitment on the part of the therapist as well as on the part of the client, to be in a certain space in a certain way, and I'm saying to be present with that person on a regular basis, right on a schedule.

1:22:52 I don't know if I can commit to that at this point, outside of the licensure part. If I really wanted to just do the therapy piece, I would go back and get the license. But again, it's a commitment and I don't want to shortchange anyone by saying, oh, I have a, you know, a consulting engagement or I have a workshop or a training I have to do in Kansas City or, you know, in Augusta, georgia, or wherever, so I can't be there for you, I don't want that, so I don't offer that at this point. My life is changing personally and professionally at this point, so I'm exploring how else I can kind of spread out.

1:23:38 I do pro bono work. I just came from a local university where a women's group asked me to speak and I did that, and I just love that. Asked me to speak and I did that, and I just love that. Again, when I see people saying yes, yes, I've experienced it and just feeling free, I've been told that my trainings and workshops are almost like group therapy, because people are so relieved to understand and know that this is how they feel is okay, and I really, really enjoy that piece of it. Um, if, if, private groups would like to hire me or have me, I'm absolutely willing to do that.

1:24:18 Um, in fact, I would love that, and I'm working with a local, with the greater Pittsburgh psychological association now on an event to kind of um, serve the community around social justice and things like that. So, yes, I I do work with smaller groups that aren't necessarily, you know, the nonprofits, the school districts, the, the businesses. I just enjoy, like I said, serving humanity and particularly people who help people. So the business is is evolving and growing, as am I because, again, I was in a system that was very different from this part of my life for almost 30 years, so I'm getting acclimated as well and learning things, but I would love to offer those services Also.

1:25:09 I went back to school after my doctorate and became a certified sports counselor. So I do athlete mental wellness and working with I can do individual athletes as well as groups, and I'm actually doing a symposium on athlete mental wellness for the university with the Pitt University of Pittsburgh African-American Alumni Council in April next month. So I'll be doing that for their, their, their weekend event, their weekend event and I hope to do more with athlete mental wellness because I think again it's important because we have athletes placed really in a difficult space.

1:26:00 We expect them to be high performing and really tough all the time. But I have seen athletes in recent years a lot of Black women, but I've also seen white men and white women and black men acknowledging the toll that being expected to be almost godlike, like that god complex, has taken on them and their relationships and their self-perspective and things like that. So I really enjoy exploring that space as well. Excellent. And what is sort of the future of legacy consulting? What do you hope to do in the future, or hope to innovate in the future with this business of yours?

1:26:53 lot of money. I want to make a lot of money so that I can give to my community, so that I can help scholarships that are already started, so that I can start a scholarship fund, so that I can, like, help community centers become like, physically more just acceptable. I don't know the word, but some of these places are falling apart, you know, and so regulations don't allow a lot of things for kids to be able to come in and do, or more seasoned citizens in our community to be able to come and access. I would love to have money to be able to, you know, restore and figure out these physical spaces, to make them up to par so that they can be enjoyed in the communities that they're set in that need them.

1:27:38 I want to affect humanity, particularly the Black community, because that's where I come from, but all humanity really. I just want to make. I want to make these spaces better for people who need them to be better. I want to enlighten people in spaces where they feel accepted. I mean, I've had people come up to me and cry. I've had people say she has never said that. I've worked with her for 15 years and she's never said that to me, so I know that I have some gift in me and that's again a part of growing, because when I was younger, you know, people said I couldn't do.

1:28:18 I wasn't good at math, I wasn't good at science, technology, all the things that people value. So I thought I had no value. So I'm understanding that my value is offering people a safe. I'm understanding that my value is offering people a safe, nonjudgmental space to rejuvenate so that they can go, be great and affect other people, and so that's what I want to do. I want to have the freedom and money provides freedom to be able to do those things, to be able to give and not have to worry about, well, where's my client? You know, where's my next client that's going to pay me so that I can do the things that, that the practical things, the everyday things that sometimes get overlooked to help, to help my community.

1:29:05 Very well said. Now, just to end off the first part of this interview, are there any closing words? Are there any final words you'd like to say to the audience? Be empowered by who you are. Love who you are, even the things that aren't so great, even the things that you're trying to grow in. Love those, love everything about you, with the understanding that you want to grow and elevate and build on those things.

1:29:50 Yeah, ignore the haters. All right, very well said. Thank you again for watching and thank you again, amy, for being on the show. I will see you all next time.