The Art of Humaning Well with Amber Cabral

0:00:07 - Rachel Murray Hi and welcome to the she Geeks Out podcast, where we geek out about workplace inclusion and talk with brilliant humans doing great work, making the world a better and brighter place. I am Rachel.

0:00:20 - Felicia Jadczak And I am Felicia. We are super thrilled today to welcome the brilliant and insightful Amber Cabral to the podcast. So Amber Cabral to the podcast. So Amber is a sought-after speaker, author, inclusion strategist, and she's also now the host of a brand new podcast called Humaning. Well, we're going to talk about that, but we're also going to talk about really doing a deep dive into what does it actually mean to human? Well, how do we show up for ourselves so we can really fully show up for others? How do we process grief and how do we continue doing the work of being human in the workplace? So Amber brings her signature warmth and wisdom to this conversation. We get into some therapy and really just get into how do we make space for the messy, necessary and deeply personal work of growth. So we really can't wait for you to listen.

But before we get into, that you will have to wait.

0:01:08 - Rachel Murray Well, actually, or you just forward through this part.

0:01:13 - Felicia Jadczak We can't wait, but you'll have to wait. We need to get into it. As always, let's do it.

0:01:19 - Rachel Murray Yeah, yeah, I'm like who wants to start, I know.

0:01:23 - Felicia Jadczak What's going on?

0:01:38 - Rachel Murray Where to start, how to start. We can fill others, which we'll definitely get into in the interview, which I think was just so wise and we want to talk a little bit about like what does that actually mean for us and for you in the workplace, Like how can we make sure that our cups aren't empty when we are also trying to live in this world that we are living in? So, Felicia, what are some of your ways? Let me count them.

0:02:05 - Felicia Jadczak I mean, the reality is it's hard. It is really hard and I know for some of you you're like, oh, whatever, like go take a nap or go touch grass or whatever. But it is actually very challenging, especially for folks who are in. You know, whatever you want to call it, like equity work, social justice work, practitioners, dei work if you're still calling it that, whatever you're doing, it could even be HR right, or you could be just, not just anything people manager, like you're just out there in the world trying to say, if you're just showing up for a paycheck, it's gonna be hard yeah.

But you know, I think, especially for folks who are in sort of like the business quote unquote of supporting other people, it is very difficult sometimes to navigate.

How much do you give of yourself to somebody else and then how much do you reserve for yourself? Because that metaphor of pouring from an empty cup it's one we use a lot in our space too, where basically the idea is like if you're always pouring out, at a certain point you're going to go dry, so you need to take pauses, you need to take breaks, you need to take vacations or rest or whatever it's going to be for you to refill that cup or jug or pitcher whatever you want to call it so that you can still pour out for other people. And, depending on your personality and the work and what's going on, that can be really challenging, because sometimes there is a really great need and so it's hard sometimes to say, hey, hold up, I got to like not help somebody, or I can't do this right now because I need to focus on myself. If you consider yourself a helper, that's a really, really tricky thing to navigate.

0:03:41 - Rachel Murray Yeah.

0:03:42 - Felicia Jadczak And I know, rachel, like you're someone I love the way you just you're like such a fixer and you always want to like come to the solution. And you know, and sometimes it's like the solution is to not go to the solution yet because we got to like do our own work first, and so Amber talks a lot about that, but it's just such a pertinent thing to come back to, I think, in these days, because the reality is the world is worlding, and it's really really easy to get burned out, like it's almost impossible not to.

0:04:13 - Rachel Murray Yeah, and one of the things that we talked about for I mean for anyone who's working in the way we have traditionally been told to work, which is that sort of like nine to five, monday through Friday, or maybe even it's Monday through Thursday. Now, if you have a four day work week, that's great, but you know we talk a lot about like well, what does that actually mean to get the stuff done? Does that mean that we have to, like, show up between the hours of nine and five? Like how much of our time is dedicated to being in meetings versus actually getting stuff done? Like you know, I think there's a lot of questions around, like what is it that we are trying to accomplish? What are the goals? How are we doing it? Does it make sense what we're doing and how can we do it in a way that maybe is a little bit out of the box from the traditional ways of thinking? So, for example, you know we talk about this, so Felicia and I are on different coasts and it actually works out really well.

Surprise. What hosts so, and it actually works.

What I'm in California, felicia's in Massachusetts, and you know it actually works out really well because I'm a super morning person and Felicia's more of a not morning person, and so that does work out well for us to overlap in time. But a lot of the work that we do is asynchronous and sometimes I have a really tough time focusing on like a Tuesday. So but I got to get some stuff done. So you know what I find? That I have more mental bandwidth, energy on Sunday afternoons. So I take some time on Sunday afternoon and I get some stuff done. It makes me feel like I'm good for getting into the week and guess what? It's fine, nobody's going to freak out about it.

0:05:49 - Felicia Jadczak Well, you're your own boss, so it's definitely fine, it's kind of nice that way, yeah, but I mean, I think that's a good point and especially, as you said, we're on opposite coasts. We don't go to an office, we work from home. I think in today's workforce environment it's a really interesting shift because we saw this big shift, you know, a few years back of go hybrid, go virtual. Now we're seeing a really intense push for the return to office across the board and pretty much like a lot of different industries and especially in the federal space. And you know it's not always well thought out, but I was just thinking about it this morning because I had a bit of a slower morning and I just was sort of like mentally telling myself like oh, why do you always do this? Like you get up and then you don't get to work right away, like what's wrong with you?

Pre-inclusion gigs, or even when it was, you know, when we had our co-working space before the pandemic, when I used to commute in and if I go to the office, there was so much time that wasn't dedicated to just straight up working. So you go in. Depending on the weather, there would be maybe like shedding of jackets and boots or whatever, freshening up in the bathroom, getting morning coffee, talking with people. Sometimes I'd be eating breakfast. I'd scroll the news, I'd chat with folks. There was so much, just like little bits that add up where I wasn't tapping away like a robot. And you know, going to lunch we'd leave the space that we were in. I don't leave my house so much these days it's not the greatest thing in the world, but I'd leave, I'd go get salad. I'd come back, I'd take a walk, I'd go around, I'd meet people. There was just all of these moments that were built in that added to this idea of work but wasn't actually translatable to oh, I can track this hour as I did this or I accomplished this project or whatever it is.

And I think, working from home, what I've learned is that you're at least I'll say for me and you, we are so much more productive working from home than we ever were going into an office. Because you know, depending on whatever time it is, like I know, like you said, you're such an early bird. You wake up and you're like you're in it and you're working and you're doing it. And then you know, I got to tell myself you got to go downstairs and like go take a bathroom break and I'm like tapping away, and you know me, I love my data and I love tracking my hours just for me personally, because I want to know what do I spend my time on, and the amount of time that I actually work is so much higher than when I used to be in person.

So I think that's another aspect of it too, where, you know, we got these shifting sort of norms and requests and demands on our time, and we have to remember that, especially for those of us who've been working virtually, we're already operating for a lot of us at a much higher level than we were even, you know, a few years back.

0:08:46 - Rachel Murray So what I'm hearing is that you need to work less.

0:08:50 - Felicia Jadczak I know right, I'm hearing that too.

Yeah, I think it's time to get out and touch grass, I will say, given that we do work on opposite coasts, part of my working approach is weather related, so when it is cold and icy and snowy, I really literally do not leave the house. Now it started to warm up a little bit, although I think this is what we call here in Massachusetts. It's false spring because we are supposed to get some snow tonight. It's starting to get there. We're seeing glimpses of it, and the other thing that I do and I think you know it's something that you sort of take as optional because you live in a very different environment than I do but once it hits warm weather in my area, I do tend to try to take three-day weekends because I really want to take advantage of the warm weather while it's here. And so, to your point, maybe my Monday to Friday is a Tuesday to Friday or Monday to Thursday, and then really just carving out that time so that I don't feel guilty about not working or getting online late or whatever it might be.

0:09:53 - Rachel Murray Yeah, and it's getting the work done and it's different from busy work too. I think that that's really easy to. It's the thought work. It's the hard stuff, and finding the time to really do that is it takes a lot. You can't do that on an empty cup, you know no no, I mean, you know back in well.

0:10:12 - Felicia Jadczak So anyone who knows anything about how our industry has evolved over the last few years knows that there was a huge demand in 2020, obviously, and then, you know, into 2021. And I got super burnt out and I would just wake up and like start crying because I didn't want to go to work and I was totally empty with my cup. So I had to take time and actually build it in and allow myself that space to refill. But I do think that there's, you know, another layer to all of this, Right, Because this is just sort of like where are we working? Are we commuting, Are we doing this, Are we doing that?

But then it's also there are some major, serious, you know shit that's happening, going on right now and that's super distracting. And so, no matter what work environment you're working in, we also have to realize that it's super easy to get distracted, and I don't want to position that as like a bad thing, because it just speaks to as we'll talk about with Amber the fact that we're humans and we're not robots. We shouldn't just get up and sign on our computer or go to work and tippity-tap all day and shut it down Like we are going to be impacted by what's happening, and if we weren't, honestly that would be really disturbing. So you know, like that's another, that's another part of it too, and I know you and I've talked a lot about that and we struggle with it.

0:11:29 - Rachel Murray I guess I don't know for you, Rachel, but like for me, on a daily basis, basically Like we need to be super productive and tippity, tap away and be like robots. That's why people are working toward having robots do all the work. Yeah, and we don't like that. Yeah, I mean it's, you know it's. I mean, or maybe that is going to be good, right, and then it frees up humans to do things that don't require us to act like robots. You know it.

Just, it depends on all how, like the economic systems shake out in this. Whatever new world order is going to be and I will say, for those of you who are interested in this topic, I think we will be talking about that. I mean, obviously, a lot of people are talking about the future of work and AI and how that impacts humans, right and work, and so we are giving that a lot of thought, because that absolutely influences this work too. Maybe we will have time for our cups to be full and so that we can focus on things that are going to be more meaningful and more creative. I don't know, I'll put that energy out there.

0:12:40 - Felicia Jadczak We'll work alongside our robot buddies and it's going to be great, as long as the robots aren't creating art, music and culture. I'm here for it.

0:12:48 - Rachel Murray Let them do the boring stuff, or maybe they will be right, but like that I mean, look, to be honest, I mean a lot of the music that not to sound like an old, but you know, a lot of the music with all the auto-tuning and everything is heading in that direction anyway. But there is still a lot of art and music that is created that is human, more human-focused. So I think there'll probably be space for both. So let the robots create their art, we'll create ours.

0:13:16 - Felicia Jadczak It's going to be great. It's going to be great as long as we can still create too, if that's my name, absolutely, absolutely.

0:13:22 - Rachel Murray I think we have to yeah.

0:13:25 - Felicia Jadczak Robots or not. We'll talk more about this in upcoming episodes for sure. So if you're like I want to hear more, don't worry, we got more for you, but we need to get to Amber, so let's get into it.

0:13:34 - Rachel Murray Yeah Well, welcome to the show, Amber. Well, hello Amber, Welcome to the podcast. We're so happy to have you here.

0:13:43 - Amber Cabral Thank you, I'm so happy to be here.

0:13:47 - Rachel Murray Yay, so we have so much to dig into. Yeah, there are so many ways that we can get this party started. So, I think that one of the best ways to maybe get it started is to talk a little bit about sort of what you shared recently on some of your channels. And so, as we all know, the world has been giving us a lot of wild energy over the past. X number of you can go back however far you feel.

0:14:10 - Felicia Jadczak Yeah.

0:14:10 - Rachel Murray And also for you personally, and you shared that you had some personal loss and you talked about the messiness of grief. We'd just love to hear how you come to understand that the ways that we typically try to find ways to cope as a way to process grief aren't particularly helpful.

0:14:25 - Amber Cabral If you can talk through that, yeah, you made that question sound so beautiful and it is such a messy, messy, messy question. Yeah, so you know, when I lost my father at the beginning of 2023, so, first of all, the losing of my father was complicated because my father actually I now know that he passed in December of 2022, but he was not found until 2023.

0:14:51 - Rachel Murray So, like, it was the end of the year.

0:14:53 - Amber Cabral Right. So there was this like window of time that he was just there Right and his landlady, who I'm still in touch with Becky's amazing she, you know made sure that the police got in touch with me and all of that. So I found out on the 5th of January, but I think he actually passed closer to right around a couple days after Christmas, and so just that processing alone is like okay, I lost my dad here, but I actually lost him here. But, like you know, so there is something very strange that we do with dates, and so I remember, even just coming from getting the information and the information alone, feeling really complicated. And then you add in the feelings of losing a person, and so I, you know, we watch TV, so you see, grieving, you think you are doing it right because you know you cry or you don't, or you're to yourself, or people are showing up and they're feeding you things or whatever, you know people trying to get you out the house, like I thought I was doing it but like I could not contain grief the way that I thought I could. Like you know, 10 days of bereavement I'm, you know, thank goodness I didn't have a real job, because I would never have, that would have not remotely have come close. And so I was in this perpetual state of like, okay, I'm okay, I can do what I need to do and I can work and I'm fine. And then, like the smallest disappointment would send me into, like this complete unraveling of tears and so, yeah, I at some point had to own that I needed to just surrender, like I got to let the grief do its thing, and it has taken me on what I think is a really beautiful journey at this point, now that it is 2025. But again, I lost my dad at technically the end of 22. You know, this has been a ride and so, you know, I have unraveled in front of clients. I have, you know, I cried through a TED talk that I fortunately was able to do a year later.

But, like, there was a lot of like, really difficult moments in that, and the thing that I feel like I walked away with is that we do not make room for our humanness.

We make decisions about the way we should be, decisions about the way we should be, and we try to choose those things as we are on the journey, whether that's grief, whether that's job loss, whether that's having a child, whether that's. I also had a hysterectomy, so surgery, like you know. There was a lot of things that I felt like these are just notches on the life belt and these are the ways that I navigate them, and my humanity was like absolutely not, absolutely not, and, by the way, you're not taking care of yourself and also you're not sleeping, and also you know, and I was just like, what is this? And so, yeah, that's the answer, for that is, I'm in a really great place now. It is a very unpredictable place, but losing my father and trying to grieve in the way that the world told me I was supposed to really put me in a position to learn a lot of really valuable lessons about the way life is supposed to be lived.

0:17:55 - Felicia Jadczak So, yeah, yeah, thank you so much for sharing. I know it's what you said I think really is so true. It's the humanness of it and the humanity of it, and a lot of times we feel like we have to show up in certain ways, so we lose sight of the humanity because we're trying so hard to be something.

And I don't know if this is also just a byproduct of sort of I don't know what you want to call it like internet culture or, like you know, TikTok, influencer culture, where we always see ourselves in the screen and so there's a sort of extra awareness of what are we looking like or what are we saying how are we showing up? So I just really appreciate that compulsion. It sounds like I'm just getting back to the basics of it.

And I'm wondering too, because you kind of mentioned you know, like there's obviously a million different ways to process and deal with grief, and it probably is an evolution as well. And you know, I know, for people, especially those who've lost close ones and loved ones, it's not something that you sort of like get over at a certain point and then you move on with your life. You just learn how to live with it. But a lot of times when, whether we're dealing with loss or anxiety, stress, whatever that might be, a lot of us are like okay, what's the quick fix? Like how do I just make myself feel better right now? It could be short-term stuff, like go take a walk, using a meditation app, taking a nap, but there's also that balance between there's deeper work that's needed to really grow, heal, understand what's going on, and I'm just curious how that balance has looked like or what that process has felt like for you in this past couple years.

0:19:24 - Amber Cabral It's been interesting, like you know. I think, like I said, the biggest lesson that I feel like I got was to surrender, and surrendering is ugly and messy and like inconvenient and like you don't know when it's going to happen to you. Now. The good thing is that most people are forgiving and can give you grace. The tricky thing about grief, though, is that because, to your point, we have these containers around it that we're given from society or TikTok or whatever social media engagement looks like for us, people don't always know that it's grief that's doing it. So I had this moment with a client client I had had for years and years Like I'm sure that I am still somewhere in their stuff because I worked with them forever and we had a moment I was on a call with them doing a training with some of their senior leaders. It was the second part to that training. The leaders had some homework that they were supposed to do, and they just like weren't doing it, and I was like what is up? Like I know, y'all you know, and they were like giving me I mean, for lack of a better answer like BS, answers Like this is not real, like you're like oh, I don't know if I'm doing inclusion right, someone should come like watch me. You know I'm like, what do you mean? Like you know.

And so, as I was kind of listening to them, there was just this like overwhelming disappointment. And I was at work. You know what I mean. Like I was at work, it was not convenient, it was not. I did not see that coming.

And you and the next thing I know I was in tears and I'm trying to articulate like I know you, I know this organization, I know the work that I've done here, I know how y'all show up. I want real answers for why you are not doing what you can do. I've taught you these things, we've done these things before, and what that was was, yes, me saying I'm not seeing the level of accountability here that I am used to. It was also me being like why isn't anything working? Nothing's working, nothing's working.

I know that this should be working. I did it myself. It should be working and at a time when you're grieving, that's what you want the most is you're just like I just want things to work, I want things to be familiar and accessible and all of that. You got to kind of let all that go, though it is literally. For me, it's been a major unraveling and a need to just fall apart to get to the place of understanding. Oh, I have really been neglecting my health. I have absolutely been making myself sick by doing this and that I shaved my head for a reason.

It took me years to get to the decision to do it, but, like, after all of that, after what the grief did to me and what it forced me to face, I was able to admit the ways that I wasn't doing what I needed. So, like, of course you did the work, of course it should be working, but it's not because you haven't done what you need to do for you and we underestimate that part that, like you can put all the pieces on the walls, you can make it all look beautiful and fantastic. If you are the one walking around in it and you haven't done the work you need to do on you.

Very soon the unraveling will begin. You will be shocked and appalled and confused and in tears and it will still be grief. But it will also be you having to have the reckoning of like, oh yo, I'm not doing what I need to do for me and some of us don't get to that, but like, that's the thing that I got to. That changed all of it. I mean, especially in a world where, like DEI was suddenly like unraveling, I'm like, ok, god, like seriously, you're just gonna like shut my whole career down. You know what I mean, like what's up, you know, and that's not obviously just about me, but it was a part of the things that I had to face around, like how I was propping things up while I was still not okay.

0:22:58 - Rachel Murray Wow, there's so much that I I have like 14,000 thoughts in my head as you're talking through all of this, because it's you know, we're talking about how you're showing up for yourself while you're also showing up for other people and you're trying to help them go through their journey. While you're trying to go through your journey, and then, meanwhile, as you pointed out, like there's this backlash that, yes, of course, we've seen it obviously intensify this year, but, yeah, as we both have, as all three of us know because we've been in this space, it there's been a backlash for a couple of years now, and so we're experiencing that and and so it's like, okay, how do you actually like?

how much of this is therapy? You know where people are actually like experiencing their emotions for the first time, especially in this like white supremacist, patriarchal culture that does not appreciate any sort of like emotion being shown, unless it's a particular emotion, right, which is anger in a particular way presented by a particular person. Yep, so it's like so much to unpack.

0:24:07 - Amber Cabral It is.

0:24:08 - Rachel Murray And I want to sort of get to this next question that we had, which is around. You talked a little bit about how you sort of came to this realization that a lot of the folks that maybe are doing this work to support it, we're doing it in a way that sort of produced some sort of guilt or shame.

0:24:26 - Amber Cabral Yes.

0:24:27 - Rachel Murray And I want to talk a little bit about that. You know we talk a lot about that as like no guilt, no shame. Nobody's perfect. We're all trying to figure it out, but there was a lot of that right that people were holding into this and then they're like oh, I feel so guilty, wait, it's not working.

Okay, fine, I'm going to just lash out. And fine, let's, I'm going to be, I'm going to just lash out and that's where we are today. So now you're taking this kind of new approach, this feeling, so I would love for you to just talk about this approach of you know, which I think I'm going to just be on. I'm sure that you have always had this approach of genuine empathy, you know, and connection.

0:25:01 - Amber Cabral I'm better at it now my boyfriend, if he were here he would laugh at you Like Now my boyfriend, if you were here, he would laugh at you like empathy. That is not a real thing. So this is such a great question so I want to go back to. So to your point about the guilt thing. It's not popular to say, but a lot of people have been writing the guilt. A lot of people have. You know. Folks felt we were stuck in the house, we were isolated, we were forced to do nothing but watch whatever the TV gave us, and it was not a whole lot, it was the COVID numbers and how sad that was around the world, and it was whatever piece of news that your local broadcast could get a hold of. And then George Floyd happened and we all had that and that was a horrible, horrifying, terrible piece of news. But we all experienced it. And we experienced it at a time where our idea and connection to humanity was so, so prickly right. We were so concerned about ourselves and our identities and just like what humanness meant. And so people wrote that. Now I want to be clear for a very short time to get people's attention. Guilt makes sense when people feel it. You do want to go. Hey, you feel that thing, let's figure out what we can do about that, right, but what you don't want to do is try to keep people in that space, because it is exhausting and people will hit a point where they are burnt out, they are over it and they will destroy whatever came from it. And that is where we are now. And so there are a lot of folks who jumped into the game that took advantage of it, right, and didn't necessarily give people the resources that they needed to know how to navigate difference, which is really what equity work should have been focused on.

I was definitely trying to do the work that way, but at some point it all was DEI, you know. So, okay, great, amber, does DEI the way I do it? No-transcript. And it was about the time that I was working on my TED talk and I kept saying that, you know, I wanted my TED talk to be about allyship, but I didn't want to say the word, and so Ted was like wait, what you know? And so we go on this journey and my talk ends up unfolding exactly that way.

I don't actually even say the word until the very end of the talk, because what I wanted was people to understand that we us uncomfortable and sit with that and be like, oh, I don't like that, and not rage out, but instead be like hey, can you help me understand how you got to that perspective, because I think there may be something in there that isn't quite right. You know, like we need tools to be able to say, yo, I don't think this is fair, because I understand the implications of that for everybody, not just oh, I mean, that's unfortunate, that that's happening to those people over there, which is a lot of what we've done. And so the work that I am doing now I'm calling humaning. Well, but it has equity at the center. But it is asking us to be equitable with us first. Like, are you good? Like we're asking people to run out here and be allies to people, but like have you been an ally for you? Have you been empathetic for you? No-transcript of the.

I'm still overworking. I still haven't, but I'm gonna take a bath tonight. You know I still haven't taken a vacation, but you know I'm going to acupuncture on Wednesday. You know we're still doing that. And it's like no, you actually, to be good at this, have to be okay, like you have to actually drink the water and you have to actually sleep and you have to actually take the time to work on the relationships that sometimes feel really complicated, you know, in your household or with your family, because if you don't do that, you are literally pouring from an empty cup and you're trying to show up and be an ally for who? You don't have anything, but we've been operating with these like stunts and shows. So of course, you get, you know, the blue bracelets, for you know, after the election, or you get the black squares, or you get, you know, I mean there's all forms of this.

You know, now we've got people like literally coming out saying like, hey, I'm still here for DEI and I'm like, since when was an announcement the way to do this right? Like, but we're getting that because that's the, that is the thing that we have the energy for. We're not thinking about the fact that, like, we are asking people to run constantly and now we also have the benefit of social media. So I also have to have a stream of what I am doing so that it's validated. So when you check me out and decide if you're gonna hire me or not, you have somewhere you can go and like scroll, so I have to also record myself doing the things.

Of course you're gonna get manufactured things. Of course you're gonna get content that's useless. Of course you're gonna get information that's wrong. Everybody's gotta make a highlight reel, and so that's where we are, and what I'm trying to do with the work that I'm doing now is help people like understand that, like if we could just get back to like humaning, like being intentional about connection and taking care of ourselves and understanding that I have to fill my cup so that I can show up and make the impact I want. If we can get back to that, then we can do all of the things we'd like to see happen around equity. But if we are not going to do that, all of it is performative and checking the box, and I don't want to do that anymore.

0:31:17 - Felicia Jadczak Oh, amber, so much, so much to dig into there, but yeah, my answers are so long and I'm so sorry.

0:31:23 - Amber Cabral I love it. Your answers? Are they're perfectly timed.

0:31:27 - Rachel Murray I'm using perfect very intentionally right now.

0:31:32 - Felicia Jadczak Rachel knows that I have a tendency to get long-winded as well, so I'm here for, and I'm not. That's not a pejorative, that's just saying you are not long-winded. It's your brain. You know you get going and you get thinking.

0:31:42 - Rachel Murray But we wanted all of the words.

0:31:45 - Amber Cabral Exactly. Thank y'all. Y'all are sweet.

0:31:47 - Felicia Jadczak Yeah, so if you see me just aggressively nodding while you're talking, just know I'm here with you.

But yeah, so all of that plus one to everything, a lot of the places we could go from there.

One of the things that was popping into my mind as you were sharing was just that point around, especially for folks who are doing this work whatever you want to call it right Equity work, humaning, dei, whatever, coaching, whatever it is as you noted rightfully so, there was this swell of people who suddenly had an access point into this work because it is work, and that's the thing I wanted to kind of pull out right Like it is work, and I think a lot of people don't view it as work.

Oh yeah, no-transcript ignorance around what actually is the work to be done, or sort of like willful ignorance, where you're like I know I could be doing more, but I don't want to, but I want to showcase that I'm a good person, and so I think that you know all that is just again like I think a lot about how it really is so important for those who are in this work to hold space for themselves, because sometimes it does feel like, oh, I'm just going to take the bath or take the vacation or whatever. It doesn't feel important, but it is really important.

And the tools, I think is a hard one because, unlike some of these other industries that are out there that are, like, really highly regimented or have a lot of, you know, certifications or sort of a process or a history around them DEI, equity, social justice it's a huge space and there's a lot of places to work into there, and I think that's also been a challenge for a lot of people because it's like well, what are the tools?

What work do I have to do with myself? And you know, communication is one thing that comes up a lot, I think, because a lot of the work I think does tie back to how are we actually talking with each other and how are we calling people in or calling them out. And sometimes that's where you really see that breakdown, because there's that defensiveness or people you know have a bad discussion where it was handled poorly, and so I'm just curious in your experience I'm sure you've come across a lot of this, and so how have you seen it be helpful to maybe like, are there signs of like miscommunication where you can sort of like look at it as like a red flag warning, or are there tools or strategies that you've seen work well when you've been having, you know, conversations or trainings or whatever it might be, with folks who are not necessarily equipped yet to be at that point in their journey, yeah.

0:35:02 - Amber Cabral So I think the first thing that's really important and I usually open most of the courses that I train with this is like it's work, like it's actually work. It's you know you're going to feel things, there's going to be discomfort, you know there's. You know this is not, it is actual labor. They make it seem like there are these little inconvenient things that trickle into our life that we can brush away, but like this is actual labor. And so most folks, I think, given the way that we live, particularly here in the United States, are missing a lot of tools. We're missing, you know, most of us can't have a tough conversation with our parents and you would think I'm going to go to work and talk to my boss, the person who cuts my check Like how am I going to do that? You know we don't have the tools, we just don't. And what I do think a lot of equity practitioners could really benefit from is like making sure that those tools are embedded in the way that we do do the work, and that hasn't necessarily happened.

It's the part I love to focus on and so, to answer your question, when I encounter it, we are going to go through it, but I tell you on the front side hey, this is hard, you're going to feel hard things. And when I get to certain places where it's tough, I ask okay, wait, is this discomfort or is your safety at issue? Because if we're having a safety matter, we can address that. We got to focus on that. That's got to get resolved. But, like, if you're just uncomfortable, I mean, come on, that's like part of it. You know, and we have deluded ourselves into believing that like we can do all of this, like beautifully impactful work around connecting with people and being better to the world, and like having inclusion be a part of our workplaces and communities, without feeling icky sometimes or uncomfortable sometimes. Let me tell you, I had this moment where I was like this is a perfect, perfect, perfect example of like how people end up. They are, you have put yourself together, you've got everything buttoned up, it is neat and tight, and you show up in the workplace and, all of a sudden, you are feeling things Absolutely not. This is the way most folks will react to that. In reality, though, you gotta be prepared to feel the things, regardless of if you put yourself together or not. You've got to have the tools to navigate that, regardless, in the moment that really pronounced that for me is I have a godson.

I live in Atlanta. I have a godson here. It was his birthday. One of his friends was in crisis. We were concerned about him. We could not find him. He was missing.

We are like driving around to all the places trying to figure out where this young man is, and he was sending text messages that were clearly distressful. So we're like super worried, like wait a minute, where are you? You know he is fine. Let me not hold anyone in suspense in that way, but in the moment we're like what's going on? We end up going to his family home and I was remember it's my godbaby's birthday party, so I'm dressed.

Okay, I'm nice, I got my nice fancy, you know expensive sneakers on. I'm, you know earrings and jewelry and all that stuff is happening. I'm fancy and we pull up to this young man's family home and it is, I mean, completely no grass in the front yard, very much impoverished. You know no carpet. No, you know, just, these are folks that are living in extreme poverty and I'm standing there in $2,500 sneakers and I had to literally command myself and remind myself A why I am there. Right, because what happens is we feel guilty and then we shrink, and then we just want to throw something at the problem to make it go away. No, I still need to find where this little boy is, and so I, in that moment, had to take a second and go. Okay, I am standing deep in my privilege, literally in these folks' lawn that has absolutely no grass. These people, I mean like if I gave these folks these shoes, you know what I mean, like it was.

I was going through all of that, but what it reminded me of is that the work still exists. I still got to find him. I still got to talk to these police officers. I still need to make the connections and, more importantly, I need to assess really quickly what my role is in this moment and because of how I was perceived, because I did put myself together that day, because I did have on the quote, unquote, fancy things people automatically do what, assume you're the one in charge, oh, she's the one. Let me go talk to her. She seemed to have her stuff together and while I had this immense guilt around that, I still had a responsibility, and so we have to recognize that part of our humanity is realizing that whatever you dressed for that day may not be what you encounter, and your obligation and responsibility remains the same, and that's why your cup has to stay full. And it is always work.

Sometimes the work is I need to get out of my own feelings because we got to figure out where this child is. Sometimes the work is ooh, this is a really tough conversation. But if I don't have the conversation, this person is going to turn around and do this to someone else. Sometimes the work is recognizing that something is going on between two folks and you can step in and interrupt it and you, at every turn, are going to find yourself a little uncomfortable.

And for me, that moment was it right, because I could have easily been like, ooh, I don't belong here. Clearly I look out of place. I don't want anyone to feel bad because I'm like showing up with all this extra fancy dressed up stuff and these are not those kinds of folks at all. I don't want them to think I'm looking down on them. Ain't nobody thinking about that? We trying to find this little boy, and so we have to do a better job of recognizing that the labor is happening all the time and equip folks from that end. Right, great, you're in the loop. Get out of the loop. What really needs your attention right now? Where does the work belong? Because there's always work, and that's why we got to take care of ourselves in the process, so we can do the work.

0:40:49 - Rachel Murray Yeah, so funny, I feel it. I'm just reminded of that. Do you remember? Feel the fear and do it anyway. I feel like that's like what this is like Feel the feels and do it anyway.

0:40:58 - Felicia Jadczak Yeah.

0:40:59 - Rachel Murray You know like feel it and go it's totally. So we've talked about humaning well, a little bit, but I want to dig in to these pillars that you have that you have created. So let's talk through them. Talk through. What are these pillars? What is the humaning? Well, you have a podcast. It is beautifully produced as we talked prior to this conversation offline and yeah, what is it all about?

0:41:25 - Amber Cabral So humaning well is a, it's a resilience framework. What it's really intended to do is give people a bit of understanding about where we should be focusing, so that we are in the best position to be able to support, to thrive, to grow to, and this is not. You know, humaning sounds wonderful. Well, oh, we all want that, but this is, you know, it's labor, and there are elements to that that are really important. And so the four pillars of humaning well are health, wealth, relationships and growth.

Health is all the health. It's your physical health, it's your mental health, it's your emotional health, it's your, you know, like, are you okay stuff right? So not just the stuff we go to the doctor for, but absolutely that stuff too. But you know, it is also just having awareness of, like your feels. You know, where are you with that and are you managing those things effectively? Are you suppressing? What is that suppressing potentially doing to you? By the way, stop suppressing. Women do it a lot. That's why we have all the autoimmune diseases. Take it from someone who knows. But so that's, you know, the health pillar.

Then there's the wealth pillar, and wealth isn't just money. It is absolutely thinking about your financial well-being and like your income and like how you're investing and like having an estate plan and thinking about, like you know, the part of your legacy that will go on without you, and things like that. But it is also being thoughtful about, like some of the resources that we have, like time, things like that. But it is also being thoughtful about, like some of the resources that we have, like time, like time is a wealth thing, right, and so, you know, I try to make sure that I embed elements of that in there so that we recognize that wealth is not just money, like, yes, we live in a capitalist society, we have to, you know, survive and thrive, but time is also a part of that. Having the skills to communicate is also a part of that, and so wealth, in a broader sense than just money, is the second pillar.

The third pillar is relationships because, like, we all have them, you know. So how are you managing those? Are you speaking up? Are you challenging? Can you give feedback? Do you know how to receive feedback? You know, like it's the skills of being able to engage with people in relationship, whether those are business relationships or personal relationships or casual encounters out in the world. You know how are you able to navigate that?

And then the last pillar is growth, which is thinking about, you know how your life moves, you know so. Are you, you know, open to having, you know, new ideas shared with you? How do you receive those? Are you putting yourself in a position to get new information to evolve your perspective? Are you putting yourself in a position to have new experiences that you might not otherwise have exposed yourself to? It's literally the things that you know go into our brains and our bodies that help us to grow right, like, help me to be a better or different right, because sometimes we're different but not necessarily better. You know person.

And so I identified these four pillars when I started to think about, like, what do people need, you know? And so I kind of started writing all these things and, you know, as I was writing them, I was like, okay, I think I see some common themes, and so that's how we ended up with the four pillars of humaning. Well, and it's funny because I don't talk a lot about the four pillars, because I feel like they're so simple that people are like, oh, yeah, I'm healthy, and like, yeah, I'm doing all right with my finances, and then, oh yeah, well, shoot, I got some pretty good relationships and you know I'm growing all the time, you know. And so, because the words are so simple, I think people kind of see it as like this check the box. And then I also am cautious about people feeling like, oh well, where's the quiz so I can see which one I'm low in, so I can focus on that. And it's like humaning well is like literally the opposite of that.

What I'm asking you to do is be willing to lean into the work that is going to keep you the fullest, so that when it is time for you to show up and support, when it is time for you to be active in your community, when it is time for you to say the brave thing, you are not so mired in your own stuff that you don't do it. I need people who are ready, and I can't be the only one ready, and I know that being ready is work. And so what Humaning Well is asking us to do is like have better boundaries so that, like you, are not sleepy tomorrow because you stayed up on the phone all night because your friend didn't want to get off. You know, let's be more responsible about giving feedback. I had to give some tough feedback.

Today, someone sent me a text message and at some point she's like I feel like I only reach out to you when I need something.

And I was like, and that's true, you do only reach out to me when you need to, and I know that didn't feel good for her to read, but it's true, let's work that out. I don't want that relationship with you, you know, and so like, if we're willing to do that labor when the big labor comes, whatever it is right and I'm hoping, especially in this, given this moment we're in in the US, that there is going to be a big moment. But when the big moment comes, whatever discomfort that comes with will not be so individually, like personally deteriorating, because we've been doing the work all along. I've been doing what I need to do all along, and so that's really what Humaning Well is about is like having these perspectives and these four pillars and ways that we can be intentional about, shoring ourselves up so that we can be the allies, so that we can be the community members we want to be, so that we can have the kind of trajectory and impact that we're looking for without also having to be exhausted, depleted and overwhelmed in the process.

0:46:38 - Rachel Murray I will put that energy out there also. Yes, I have a follow-up question for you. As you were talking, I was first of all. I was thinking about how it's so funny in this particular medium that we're in this podcast medium, that we're in, you know, these health and wellness podcasts are like always the number one, right, so? In every one. I was looking for the answer.

0:47:05 - Amber Cabral What's the way to for us to be better and faster, smarter, whatever? How many mushrooms do I?

0:47:07 - Rachel Murray need to eat how much alcohol not?

0:47:07 - Amber Cabral to drink.

0:47:08 - Rachel Murray Wait, let me think, oh, we need dark chocolate. Oh, let me tell you, I am guilty as charged for listening to some of that stuff for sure. So I'm like I'm hearing what you're saying and and I was curious for, for curious, for people who are listening to this is there because there are these, really there are these beautiful pillars and I see how they're interconnected. But if someone was like trying to figure out, like well, how do I even start, would you recommend? I know this isn't should be prescriptive, but I'm just curious. Yeah, I can make a recommendation.

0:47:38 - Amber Cabral Great Love it, yeah. The recommendation is to start the place that you're the most uncomfortable. This isn't should be prescriptive. But you know, I'm just curious Like, yeah, I can make a recommendation. Great, love it. Yeah, the recommendation is to start the place that you're the most uncomfortable. Oh, I love that, that's the spot, that is it. The feelings thing. Oh, y'all are like oh, amber's so great at empathy honey.

0:47:55 - Felicia Jadczak No, no, no. Well, but that's because you've done your work in the uncomfortable space.

0:47:59 - Amber Cabral She is good at it now. But like you know, literally this week, even you know my significant other. He is very much like yeah, like you know, he has this saying he's like I teach you life, you know, you teach me life, I teach you love. Because he is like where are the feelings?

0:48:16 - Rachel Murray ma'am, like what is up Like where are the feelings ma'am? Like what?

0:48:18 - Amber Cabral is up, like you know, and he tells this story all the time. My first TED Talk, you know, like I mentioned my father passed away, you know, just before that, and so I had to go and I had to clean, you know, my father's home and all of that. And my boyfriend was like are you going to cry? Like you have not cried, like you lost your dad. Like what's going on? And he had said to me he's like, yeah, I'd already kind of decided that I was going to break up with you because you like didn't have feelings and I couldn't understand it.

And then you get to your TED talk and you cry through the whole rehearsal. And he was like ah, there, it is Okay, we can work this out. You know so like yeah, no that you want to talk about, like, where to start. It's the place that you struggle.

0:49:01 - Rachel Murray I love that so much. I'm going to I'm going to have my husband listen to this, because he's he's the one. He's so funny. I was just. We've been married for 15 years tomorrow.

0:49:13 - Amber Cabral Oh, that's amazing. Happy anniversary.

0:49:15 - Rachel Murray I don't know how we made it, but thank you and I just like. And then I mentioned the amount of time because I was just I realized sometimes he's really bad at receiving love you know and so I started doing this thing now. Where I'm going, you know I'm loving you. I'm loving you with my hands at you and he's just like feeling attacked when I did that the first time, Like what is happening?

0:49:40 - Amber Cabral Overwhelming, oh my gosh.

0:49:43 - Rachel Murray He was like can we talk about something else now? And I was like I'm trying to shower you with love, yeah.

0:49:49 - Amber Cabral That's where he needs to start. He needs to start with that. He had the same. He's got the same thing I had. I was like we just go get it done. I'm gonna feel the things, but I can feel in between the getting it done.

0:49:58 - Felicia Jadczak I mean listen. So I don't know. Rachel knows this about me, but I don't know if you're into true crime at all, amber.

0:50:04 - Amber Cabral Oh, for sure.

0:50:05 - Felicia Jadczak Great, perfect, all right. So, as you probably know, the true crime community has evolved a bit over the past couple, you know, decades or so, and one of the big points that comes up a lot is that people grieve in ways that we do not like always understand, and so a lot of times this has been an issue for people who got, you know, like wrongfully accused or judged or whatever, because people are like, oh, they're not grieving or they're not processing their feelings or they're not crying or they're not doing whatever it is in the right way.

0:50:36 - Amber Cabral So like kind of a little bit of that mentality, with your boyfriend being like she's not crying yeah, at the same time, like you know, let me be crystal clear this is a person who was like there. So he was like not only is she not crying, like I don't know if she feels it so like he was also.

0:50:52 - Rachel Murray You know he had pervades more about like the deeper, like yeah, he was just like hey, do you know your dad passed away.

0:50:57 - Amber Cabral Like I mean, like, mean, like if you got, did you get the memo? Like what's going? Hey, something should be happening here, you know. And like there wasn't for him it was like, yeah, I don't know that I expect you to be in like complete, unraveled breakdown, but like there hasn't been enough of anything. And even when I went back and talked to Becky, the woman that was my father's landlord her landlady is landlord like inclusive.

0:51:23 - Rachel Murray I don't even know. Oh, my goodness Land person, land person you can't even say, land doesn't even sound good as we're thinking about it. Wait a minute, there's a lot to unpack with it.

0:51:34 - Amber Cabral Yeah, no offense to anyone here with my language choice here, but you know that person that he leased his apartment from she and I have, you know, stayed in touch and she said to me, probably about a year after she was like oh yeah, you were completely numb. It was like almost like you. Just there was nothing. You were nice, you were friendly, you were polite, you were helpful, but like if I had run into you in a Walmart and had no idea who you were, I would have had no idea that you lost your father and like there was a disconnect like a pointed, like I can't feel that thing happening and I did not perceive it that way, but it was not just him. And so, yes, you're right, and let's also make space for what you just said. Everybody does not grieve the same. It is not always going to be tears, it is not going to look the same, you are not going to need the same things, but there should absolutely be something. And I just was like, all right, put it on the calendar, gotta go.

Gotta stay at my dad's house for a week. Need to unpack. Gotta do this. All right, how are we gonna move this thing? Wait, there's furniture here Like it was very much a. I need to get this done and out the way so that I can go memorize my talk, so I can get my talk done and then, once that's done, maybe I can figure out how I feel about losing my dad.

0:52:49 - Rachel Murray A lot of Virgo energy do you? Do you feel?

0:52:50 - Amber Cabral like Virgo rising. Here.

0:52:51 - Felicia Jadczak Yes, there we go, yeah yeah, I, as someone who works with ago, can feel that. No comment.

Do you feel like that was more of like a protective measure, like a defensive mechanism in your, your sort of like emotional body and sort of like a compartmentalizing it, because you were like if I allow myself to truly lean into and feel the feelings maybe that was like too scary for your body to really sort of handle at that point, because you had stuff going on and not think that's a good or bad thing. I'm just wondering if that was.

0:53:24 - Amber Cabral Maybe I don't- know, I don't even think it was intentional. Like I feel like when I go back to you, know that moment and process, like I can recant the phone call, like, like this is the way I found out my phone rings, you know, the gentleman on the other end of the phone goes hey, this is Officer blah blah blah from Snohomish County. Da, da, da, da da. And I'm like I just heard officer, and I was waiting on a call from an officer for something else. I can't remember what it was. And so I was like, oh, you're calling about blah blah, blah, blah blah. And he goes no, I said wait, where did you say you were calling from? So he repeats himself, you know. And when I heard Snohomish County, which is the county my father was in in Seattle Metro, I said oh, you're calling to tell me my dad's passed away.

0:54:11 - Felicia Jadczak You said that right, you knew right away Wow.

0:54:20 - Amber Cabral You're calling to tell me my dad passed away and he said, yeah, yes, ma'am, I'm calling, you know that, we've you know, we have you know your father. And I just wanted to know if you had any details, because sometimes people have made arrangements or plans or whatever, and so I'm like, oh yeah, he did. You know, let me get you this information. It was, it was a business call.

It was a business call. There was no, like nothing. There was no. I did not have any of the unraveling. I did not have any. I was not cloudy mentally outside of the fact that I was like, oh my gosh, how where do I put this on my calendar was how I responded. And my partner yeah, my boyfriend was like yeah, no, no, no, no, no, that's that right there. That's the wrong way to do that. So I don't know what the right way is, exactly, but that's wrong.

And so yeah, it was, it was. It was a very complicated, you know, like moment there and literally he was and we were new and so you know he had seen so much of me and so you know, he had seen so much of me, but you know, and he had seen me emote and express in other ways. But like this thing happens and he's like, oh, is that how you do that? I?

0:55:26 - Rachel Murray don't know if I could be with that.

0:55:28 - Amber Cabral And so, yeah, literally he was like yeah, I would have left you if you had not cried at Ted, If that had not happened, I would have ended the relationship because there was nothing.

0:55:41 - Felicia Jadczak It was just-. Well, it goes back to your whole point of humaning.

0:55:43 - Amber Cabral I wasn't.

0:55:43 - Felicia Jadczak He wanted to see the humanity in you. Yeah, and I wasn't.

0:55:47 - Amber Cabral I was doing all the things, everything was running perfectly. You know, the systems are clicking, the lights are on, but I was not humaning. And oh, by the way, I was going to acupuncture once a week, I humaning, and oh, by the way, I was going to acupuncture once a week. I was, you know, doing pilates. I was getting, you know, a massage once a month. I would have my quarterly facial, like I was doing the stuff, but I was not getting what you should. I would go to acupuncture and my way of framing it would be like oh my gosh, at least I get to take a nap. That's not what acupuncture is for, it's not how that's supposed to go. So, yeah, there's, yeah, there is a difference. And he definitely, he's right.

0:56:24 - Felicia Jadczak I teach him life, he teaches me love, and so here we are humaning well together, beautiful for sure let's go back a little bit, yeah, back into the workplace, which I mean I don't want to say back to because it's all connected. Of course it is. But you know, if we go thinking about the work environment, of course you've had, you know, decades of experience doing this humaning work, mostly for big corporations, and what we're seeing right now, 2025, the workplace is evolving as we speak aggressively. Power dynamics are, you know, obviously more and more important than ever. And there's RTO, there's all this stuff happening at the federal level. There's, you know, oligarchs are just abounding in the US. Ai.

I mean, like I don't even know, like there's a billion things out there that are impacting the work, and so how are you seeing, you know, the wildness that is work these days intersecting with this idea of humaning well, yeah, I think we have to be intentional about it.

0:57:23 - Amber Cabral I've had a few people I was at another organization a couple weeks ago and you know, a young man asked me like oh my gosh, like with all of it. He listed all the same things you did, like with all this stuff that's going on like, how are we supposed to? If we still care about equity, how are we supposed to do this? And I tell everyone the same thing If it matters to you, you get it done. Equity exists because people do it. If it matters to you, you do it. And so you know, yes, this is a weird time. There's a lot of change. There's a lot of I mean unpredictable wild things that are going on in the world at this moment, and in the United States for certain, you know, like driving some of the global nonsense that we're seeing. But everything that we want to happen in this world happens because people do it, and so if you want it, you got to do it. And that means what does it look like for you when you look at your position in your organization? You know you sit in I don't know logistics. Are you taking the moment to say hmm, as I'm taking a look at the way that I do this process. It might be a bit more equitable if we who is going to sit on your shoulder and be like no, don't do that, like it's no one's doing that, like no one has the bandwidth for that? And so, like you know, I think the thing that we have to remember at all times is that we get a say. We get a say Now. Where we go wrong is when we are so depleted, so burnt out, so overworked, so stretched, tired, et cetera, that we don't have the energy to have a say. I'm just trying to make it through. Today. I'm going to do the process the way the process was told to me, so I'm just adhering to the guidelines.

What I'm asking people to do with Humaning Well is to be willing to say I want to be well enough that I can be a critical thinker in the places that it matters. I want to be well enough that I can notice the places, that I can push just a little bit and make a bit of a change, because whatever the world is doing, it has a lot to do with what the people are doing, and if the people want to feel better and we can help them feel better, and then we can help them understand that by feeling better, they can make a better impact. And, by the way, this is a little uncomfortable, but you're uncomfortable anyway, we might end up on a path that we would all prefer. And so, you know, I just, you know I could be wrong. You know, I hope not, you know, but you know, I just really feel like, yes, the world is changing, yes, it's different, yes, it's weird, things are very unusual and we are dealing with things that we have never had to deal with before.

But, at the end of the day, what the people do and how the people behave is what drives everything. So how do you want that to look for you and are like, oh, but the laws and the rules and I'm like, good people break bad laws, that's history, okay, it's been happening forever. So like, let's do the thing. No, we do not have the manpower, bandwidth or capacity to sit on everyone's shoulder and say, nope, don't do that. That is too close to being woke, it's not happening.

So, like, at some point, what does it look like for you to bring it to life? You might not be the one that can organize the march or whatever. It is right, like that might not be your role, but if you are sitting in I don't know talent acquisition, you can be intentional about what a slate of talent looks like and no one's going to sit on your shoulder and be like no, too many Asian folks made it into the like it's not happening. No one can do that. So we just have to make the commitment that we are unwilling to be bound by the information that we're being given and instead exist in the reality that is around us. But we have to be well enough to have the bandwidth to do so.

1:01:16 - Rachel Murray I hope that you are right. I hope so too. I hope that you are right. I hope so too. Can we say the word?

1:01:24 - Amber Cabral though, because I also feel like, how do we get the people to know?

1:01:27 - Felicia Jadczak I know, why are you? Telling people this and it's for free, and I'm like because I just want people to know it's important, especially in this era of, like you know, being in advance and, like you know, compliance and not and that's preemptively like giving away the farm and I'm like wait a minute, we need those cows.

1:01:42 - Rachel Murray It's so true and it's so hard because, you know, it's what's the only blessing of all of this. What some of my people like to say Mishigas is is like they're making it very obvious as to what is going on here, and so that's cool. So there is this. You know, felicia and I certainly have been talking about this a lot power dynamic, right. So we're seeing it, but what they're doing is, and what they've been effective at so far, I mean, granted, I still can't believe. It's like what it's been like less than two months and we're exhausted, right, like this is exhausting and it is intentional that it is exhausting. So it's like the spheres of influence which you were talking about is like what can we do within our own ability, knowing that we have to still operate in these broken systems until we can?

1:02:38 - Amber Cabral actually change them. Yes, the first thing you can do is decide to stop being exhausted. You get a say in that. You get a say in your exhaustion. If the news is kicking your ass, turn it off.

1:02:53 - Felicia Jadczak You can't fix it, so I do have a quick question on this point for both of you actually.

Because I fully, I hear you, I agree to a certain extent. Right, right, right. But I'll give you an example. So let me know what day it is, because who knows what's happening with time these days, but I guess it was last week sometime. I was like, ok, it's been a lot. I'm not going to look at the news. Maybe I was traveling, I don't remember, but I was like no news today and that happened to be the day that Trump and Vance like yelled at Zelensky in the White House.

And I feel like that was like a big news day, and then I felt very out of the loop later. So then I felt, to the point of our discussion today, guilt that I didn't know this had happened, and then, also to the point of what we talked about, I was like, oh, like, should I say something on?

the internet and like, like, are people judging me because I'm not posting on LinkedIn or Instagram or Facebook or whatever it is, and so like. How do we sort of like balance out having to put boundaries in place for our mental and physical and emotional well-being and not, I guess, like, or does it matter, if we like lose a point, that happens, that's newsworthy.

1:04:01 - Amber Cabral Who do you owe posts to? Who do you owe posting to? I love this question for you, Felicia. Seriously, who?

1:04:08 - Rachel Murray do you owe it to? We talk about this a lot.

1:04:10 - Felicia Jadczak We do talk about this a lot. So I would say, really, at the heart of it, nobody Okay.

1:04:16 - Amber Cabral All right, so let's hold on to that.

1:04:17 - Felicia Jadczak Now do we feel the pressure, but there are other levels too. There are other levels because one of my roles is beyond doing this work is I am also a city councilor, so I do feel like I owe my constituents, but that's your job. What I think. That's your job, that's my job or a job, that's your job.

1:04:33 - Amber Cabral But we're talking about who do you right in terms of your consumption of news? Opposed to, the answer is kind of like nobody right. Okay, who is asking you if you know all the news?

1:04:45 - Rachel Murray no one, although rachel probably no, I am not not not to call no, we, but you're like have you seen what happened?

1:04:53 - Felicia Jadczak which is not a like you?

1:04:55 - Rachel Murray know, that's not real pressure. Right, that's not real. That's that. That is not real pressure. No, that's literally like oh my God, I had no idea that this happened. Did you know that, like weeks ago, and I was- like did you know?

1:05:07 - Amber Cabral Was there something that you could have done about what happened with Zielinski?

1:05:11 - Felicia Jadczak No, this is such good therapy because this is like this. Is it right? It's like these feelings of guilt, like, oh, me personally sitting in Western Massachusetts, if I only had tweeted out or read it out, whatever it is.

1:05:22 - Amber Cabral It would have changed everything. It would have changed everything. Oh my gosh, the world would be totally different.

1:05:26 - Felicia Jadczak FYI, we're in this mess because I didn't post on the internet when this happened.

1:05:33 - Rachel Murray And if we're talking about this from a purely capitalist lens, right, we're like, oh, we have to post because this is impacting our job. I will also say that many of our lovely other folks that are in this space post absolutely nothing and they have lots of clients, so I don't think that that is something that is a one-to-one, so I personally I also want to add let's just let's continue to blow this out, okay.

1:05:56 - Felicia Jadczak So we're clear that, like you know I had therapy this morning personally, so now it's business therapy, I mean. So here we are, so like no one's pressuring you to post.

1:06:06 - Amber Cabral It's not like super critical business, essential. The world will not fall apart. No one is expecting you to know all the news, like on the top of the news, nothing you could have done. You know, with the Zelinsky situation, all right, so we're, we're all clear on those. All right, so we're, we're all clear on those. All right. Now the opposite is now. All of the time that you did not use doing those things, would it? What would you have been better to serve yourself doing?

Would, you have been better if you were arrested? Would you have been a better parent? Would you have been a better spouse? Would you have been a better friend? Would you have been a better right, like if you had actually decided? Yo, i'm'm gonna not only not take a news day, I am going to make sure that I have the most fantastic, I don't know massage. I'm gonna, like I'm going to intentionally go to pilates and like focus on what it is that's happening. I'm gonna remember the playlist, because they always have the best playlist at pilates and I never remember what they played. Okay, so, like, I'm gonna focus on trying to remember the playlist at pilates. How have served you?

1:07:02 - Felicia Jadczak Oh, that would have been so good to fill up the cup to your point. Yeah, your cup matters.

1:07:07 - Amber Cabral So if we know good and well that the constant barrage of it's intended to make you feel guilty, you get to opt out. I am not participating in the energy exchange anymore. I'm not when I hit the wall, and I've had enough and I know enough. I am not participating in the energy exchange anymore. I'm not when I hit the wall and I've had enough and I know enough. I am going to remove myself and I'm going to do what I need to do to make sure that my cup is full, because if the fight was tomorrow, I would like to not be tired.

1:07:32 - Felicia Jadczak Mic drop. Yeah, I'm like, that is I got to write that down.

1:07:35 - Rachel Murray Well, Amber, it's been great talking with you.

1:07:38 - Amber Cabral And scene Amazing, we have to seriously remember that we get a say Like that's like the thing that I'm really trying to get humaning, well, to get you know, people to see, is that like you get a say in your own experience. And there is a reason. There are so many mechanisms put in place with the intention of trying to extract your ideas, your perspective, your attention, your energy. It is for a reason. And if you would like to resist, the best resistance you can do is make sure that you're good first. That's not to say you can't be concerned about this stuff, but make sure you're good first.

1:08:14 - Rachel Murray Well, and also I think you know, as far as, like, feeding the machine and producing content and whatever, like I think and I struggle with this too you know we write a lot of blog posts because we want to feed the machine, you know, and that's that's been. It's been shown to be helpful for us for that, so that's good, but also, like you know, maybe do less, but then what we do is higher quality.

1:08:35 - Amber Cabral Absolutely, absolutely. Listen, the posts that I write when I wake up at 630 and I'm like are the posts that get like five, six, 700 likes or like 2000 shares or like all of that? The posts that we schedule intentionally and like purposely, like curate, are like 22 likes, it's incredible. Honestly, you are better when you are passionate, when you have the bandwidth and capacity to show up in your humanness. So like lean that way.

1:09:04 - Felicia Jadczak Love it, even if it's such a reminder, all right.

1:09:06 - Rachel Murray This is great, this was amazing. Thank you for the work. Therapy, life therapy.

1:09:11 - Amber Cabral Everybody keeps asking me if I'm a therapist. I'm like no, I just realized there's a better way to do this.

1:09:17 - Felicia Jadczak A lot of this work, I feel like basically is essentially like I call it, business therapy, because you know that's part of the work, right? It's like accessing those feelings and especially in work environments where I think you mentioned this earlier like we're taught not to express emotion or cry at work or any of that stuff Right, and so the work of a practitioner is to draw that out, which is very much like a therapist, yeah that's true.

1:09:42 - Rachel Murray Thank you so much, amber. So final, I know that Humaning Well is like top of list for you, but are there any other sort of projects or ideas or movements that are giving you energy, that are exciting you right now, that you want to share?

1:09:56 - Amber Cabral Oh, I do have a friend. Her name is Amanda Miller Littlejohn. She released a book called the Rest Revolution and it has been a fantastic balm for me, so I do recommend her book. But otherwise, yeah, I think you know tune into my podcast, the Humanity Well podcast. It's every week on Wednesdays and you can catch it anywhere. Podcasts are. And, oh, I don't know when this episode comes out, but I am doing a learning series in March of 2025. So if you want to sign up and just kind of get a sense of like what Humaning Well is about and get some tools, I'm doing something every Thursday in March. It's free, it's. I try to give as much away as I can because I need us to be ready. So if you want to sign up for that, that's available as well.

1:10:37 - Rachel Murray Amazing. I think we did it, we did it. Yeah, thank you so much, amber.

1:10:43 - Amber Cabral Thanks for having me. Thank you.

1:10:47 - Felicia Jadczak All right, we did it. I got some free therapy out of this. It was great. We really hope that you enjoyed listening to our interview with Amber as much as we enjoyed our conversation with her.

1:10:57 - Rachel Murray Yeah, I really appreciated all the Virgo energy in that conversation as well. So, yeah, thank you so much for listening. Please don't forget to rate, share and subscribe it makes a huge difference in the reach of this podcast and, by extension, this work and visit us on YouTube, instagram and LinkedIn to stay up to date on all things, inclusion, geeks, and please stay geeky. Bye.

Transcribed by https://podium.page