Kelly: I know you know this, Aurora, but I have to be honest with everyone else. For most of my adult life I have been opting-out. I’ve had the privilege of opting out.
I felt like I had this comfortable…charmed…. lucky life. But looking back now I realize I was privileged, bored, I was numbing out. I fixated on working out and on what I ate…I drank too much — I was closed off from the world around me. I was more in denial of the world around me.
Something had to give. For me opt-ing in was about addressing the underlying issues in me. It’s about recognizing that as a white woman that the less suffering I can cause myself is the less suffering can cause others — and the more space and energy I have for compassion and love and connection.
Aurora: Yes indeed, Miss Kelly! And in this podcast, we ask those scary questions uncomfortable questions … of ourselves, of others. And we’re also forgiving wrong answers.
Kelly: And thank god you forgive my wrong answers, Aurora! There are so many things I never understood about being a person of color. Heck — there’s so many things I never understood about being white! And it really does help that with some tension we inevitably bust out laughing along the way…
Aurora: Yes we do.
Kelly: On this show, we speak with guests that range from healers to radical thinkers to change makers and all of these people are pushing not only the boundaries of society, but they’re pushing the boundaries of what they thought was possible within themselves.
Aurora: And we’re here for it. We bring our full selves to the podcast. I work very hard to not code switch and keep it very real. And we talk about the good. We talked about the not so good and quite frankly we talk about the baggage that we all carry because Lord knows I’ve got a closet full of suitcases that I have been unpacking.
Kelly: I brought my bags too.
[Real Thursday fades in]
Aurora: But we’re working towards being better people bottom line because honestly we can all opt in to this journey.
Kelly: And what a journey it’s been. We’ve been on quite a wild one together.
Aurora: Yes we have, Kelly. Do you remember when we met Kelly?
Kelly: Well moments. I have these glimpses of dinner parties at our mutual bestie Rhati’s house. And this mystical being would like breeze —
[chimes]
— through and kind of like throw her pixie dust on everybody and they would all be just like enamored and in love with her, including me and she would wiz out and then I wouldn’t see her for weeks. She apparently worked in some corporate place and I was like, “I wonder when she’s going to resurface again. I really like that person.” And then when she got out of the grind, Miss Aurora would come to yoga retreats with us and we would get to hang out and laugh and then I was like, “Well this person is – we have a soul contract now it’s going down.” I love hanging out with you. I love being with you. I love hearing what you have to say. I love your perspective. I love all of you.
Aurora : And I love you, Miss Kelly. And here’s what I remember. I remember – and I had not told you this story before – but I remember being – having a date night with all the kids and our mutual bestie Radhi and I think we had seven kids in tow.
[Children playing fades in]
And you know, it was a ruckus, right? You’ve got, you know, you’re trying to manage seven kids. Everybody beat everyone before the movie – get to the movie theater on time. I see Miss Kelly handling her business with these children and I bust out, looking at both of my kids going, “Holy macaroni, Miss Kelly’s Black. She’s a Black mama!” And my kids just looked at me and smirked and knew exactly what I was talking about. And I have been enamored with her ever since. I love her honesty. Your authenticity your ability and willingness to go there with me with others to help me understand and see things that you know quite frankly I make a lot of assumptions about. And I cannot thank you enough.
Kelly: Mmm, you know, you know our backgrounds are so different, but we can connect on such a deep level and I think something that’s paramount is that we both have fathers who were dreamers.
Aurora: Yes, we do.
Kelly: Tell us about your dad.
Aurora: Yeah, my dad. So it’s you know, it’s interesting as I’ve gotten older. It’s become harder for me to talk about my dad without getting emotional. But my papa, he’s special. He’s – he’s an incredible dreamer. It’s one of the most amazing gifts he’s given me. Because he was constantly thinking of ideas and new ways to build things, new ways to create things, new ways to create connections and impact. It was like his mind was always imagining something bigger, better, more fantastic. As a child who was constantly exposed to a person who you know allowed himself to imagine despite his environmental circumstances, despite the fact that he was a Black, you know, African American cook in the south in Texas and you know a factory worker. He just always allowed his mind and his stories to be creative and imaginative that I think always sort of, you know gave me hope.
[Guitar/Kalimba fades in]
And made me believe in the impossible. You know, one of the things he would always say to me is, “You know, baby, they can take everything away from you. They can take your car. They can take your house. They can take your money, but they’ll never take what’s in your mind and your ability to imagine and dream and never forget that.” And so I look at my life today, and I know that my life was paramount and was created by the possibility of my imagination by the possibility of my dreams and my dad is a huge part of that.
[Guitar/Kalimba fades out]
Kelly: I here that my dad was always a dreamer as well. He loved Walt Disney and his whole ethic and method of his madness. Everything he did and does its to the 3000th percentile. I mean anything from when he was young if he was into karate, he got a fifth done black belt. If he was into chess, he – he could be anybody in chess. If he was in a magic, he could do a magic show for you. If he was into helicopter flying, we had a helicopter and he flew it. I mean if he was in a Japanese, a Japanese person lived with us and we were learning Japanese. I mean there was – no stone was left unturned when it came to passion and kaizen constant betterment and he listened to all the Og Mandino and the Dale Carnegie’s and all of the old white dudes that built everybody up back in the day – and I did as well and Aurora did as well.
Aurora: I did.
Kelly: And he taught by doing not by saying as much or teaching really but just sheer will and chutzpa, hustle, and discipline beyond. I mean he still wakes up at four o’clock in the morning, he still works out every single day, he still journals every single day, reads every single day. Just constant learning, constant do better be better. And he passed it on to us in the form of you know, if you do your best God will take care of the rest and iIf you can get anything in life that you want, if you help others get what they want. And there is a level of a little bit of our own narcissism there, you know of like trying to get what you want and you know – he did the best he could with the tools he had every minute of every day and now he comes from such a place of – of presence and of not identifying with so many of those things that he used to identify with which is – again, he’s still learning it. He and my mom are still evolving and evolving together, which is a beautiful example. But I do have to say that there’s something obvious and very different about our dads.
Aurora: What’s that Kelly?
Kelly: My dad’s white.
Aurora: Hmm.
Kelly: And I don’t want to devalue his hard work that he did and I don’t mean to but he had a clear advantage succeeding in this life.
Aurora: That’s true.
Kelly: It took me some time and it wasn’t – it was a very not-so-distant past where I could get to the place where I could name that privilege and accept the ways that privilege works in my own life. I think for a while I wasn’t engaging with race or whiteness or white supremacy directly because that felt really vulnerable and really scary.
Aurora: And that there is a trauma response.
Kelly: Yes. It definitely can highlight the areas in my life that I need to address, core emotions that are toxic that I need to heal from my past because nobody gets out of this unscathed without trauma. That’s for sure. But what I’ve learned is that any person of color’s trauma is exacerbated in the United States, period end of story
Aurora : And that’s why – that’s exactly why, Kelly, we started this podcast because we need to be having these difficult conversations. We need to be understanding our differences, our similarities now more than ever. Because there’s so much at risk. Racism is rampant. The Health Care system is broke as all get-out
Kelly: The judicial system.
Aurora: The judicial system. I mean our academic system. Like literally every system we look at there is such an opportunity to dream and reimagine it.
Kelly: And the thing is this all of these all of these issues affect all of us, even the most privileged and the most white that have the most money. I’m sorry, but we’re all going to suffer white people too. We can’t stay in our little bubbles anymore.
Aurora: Girl, say it again. That’s exactly it and that is why we are just super excited to share with you. Our first season of The Opt-in.
Kelly: We have so much to share.
Aurora: So much!
Kelly: I mean so many great conversations with people that are just making it happen. Who are you excited to share?
Aurora: Okay, so I’m excited about every single one of them. But the one that definitely stirs my heart is obviously our conversation with Miss Robyn Diangelo, the author and incredible badass of White Fragility who literally was the spark that helped create all of this.
Robin Diangelo: We guaranteed that it’s going to be virtually impossible to talk to the average white person about the inevitable absorption of a racist worldview that we get from living in a society where racism is the foundation and the bedrock.
Kelly: I love her.
Aurora: Snaps, snaps.
Kelly: Yes. Yes. I can’t wait for our talk with Michael Rubin. It’s a beautiful relationship he and Meek Mill have. We talk about Free Meek, the Amazon series, Reform Alliance -\
Michael Rubin: When you see one of your really close friends go to prison for not committing a crime you realize, my god, this isn’t just about him. It’s really this broad-based issue that our country has then you know that’s kind of what led us to start the Reform Alliance.
Aurora: Yes. We have our conversation about the 10,000 White Women doing their work. I mean that one whew –
10 K WW: If you were socialized white, you were treated as white you were treated as normal and if you were not white, you were not normal.
[Theme music]
Aurora: You know, this is going to be an amazing, amazing ride, journey, trip. And I’m here for all of it and, girl, I am so here for it with you. Love you, Miss Kelly.
Kelly: And I love you my sister, Miss Aurora. We have a huge shout out to Jordan McCree of Philly’s own Ill Doots for our theme music and to our producer Rachel Ishikawa.
Aurora: We’ll be back soon with a new episode. Thanks for listening. We love you guys.
Kelly: Bye bye.
