Racial Truth + Transformation with Dr. Gail Christopher

Kelly: We would love to hear from your voice, who you are and your pronouns. And maybe a little bit about. Who you are and where you’re from.

Gail: Hi. I am Gail Christopher. And my pronouns are she/her. I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. That’s where I was born and raised and I came of age during the civil rights era. And so I think that that really helped to shape my view of the world. I was born with a chronic condition called glaucoma. And it’s very rare. Most people get glaucoma after they get to be 60 or 70 or 50 or, you know, later in life. But there is such a thing as congenital and it is just very, very unusual. But as a result of that, much of my childhood was spent interacting with the medical world. I think by the time I reach my 20s, I had had 20 plus surgeries on my eyes. And that really did help to shape my understanding of health and well-being. A lot of people call me a visionary. And, you know, I have to smile. You know, that that would be ascribed to me, someone who grew up legally blind in many ways. And but I think it reminds us that when we see the world and through many eyes. My parents were working class African-Americans. My mom grew up in a small town in Alabama. She was the only one of those 14 children to get a degree, a four year college degree. Now, the interesting thing about my mom’s story is that she went on to become listed in Ebony magazines, one of the most 100 most powerful women in America. She actually graduated from college the year I graduated from high school. And it had taken her 10 years of going nights, working days and going nights to college to do that. So her drive and her determination, I think, became a part of me on an unconscious level. And I want to certainly honor her image, Emma Loucille Minor and her memory for that. Dad grew up in Virginia, Richmond, Virginia, and he and mom, met in Cleveland. And dad could not tolerate being closed in in any way. And he found a way to fulfill himself by being a truck driver because he could be on the road a lot. And the dad was one of the most loving human beings in the world, unconditionally loving. And that was, I believe, his gift to me. So I thank my mom for the grit and determination and drive and intellect. And I thank my dad for his compassion and loves.

Aurora: Dr. Gail, you have had an incredible career shepherding leadership roles, you know, at Kellogg’s Foundation, leading and supporting change on multiple fronts. You have this incredible article on your perspective around COVID. Would love to have you share with our listeners. What is it that we’re being called to look at? What is it that we’re being called to understand as we are all impacted by the first pandemic that our generation has seen?

Gail: The article – It talks about this opportunity to help us move beyond denial. You know, denial is a comfortable psychological tool. We can pretend that something isn’t. When, in fact, it really is. And in so many ways, this country has been in denial about our structure of racial hierarchy, our structure of a hierarchy of human values, that it values some people more than others. And it’s that structure that misplaced misrepresentation of our humanity. It shows up in every single system. And this pandemic, which is shut us down, literally forces us, I believe, to not only see the fallacy of the way we devalue people, but to also see that we are interdependent and interconnected as humanity. And that is, to me, the opportunity. I talk about racial healing and I’m really talking about not just anti-racism, which isn’t a phase of the work, but I’m talking about not what we’re against, but what are we for. We need to be for asserting our and I’ll use the term sacred interconnectedness as a human family. Not only are we connected as a human family, all of nature, all of life is woven together in these mysterious and awe inspiring ways. And so but this moment in a very pragmatic, straightforward way, we have to pull the covers off. They’ve been called off and we see that. These these central workers that we have ignored, the grocery store clerk, the young woman who accepts our children and the child care center, the sanitation worker that picks up my garbage from in front of my house once a week. These essential workers, their livelihood, their health, their way of being, their presence is directly related to my capacity to live and thrive and function. So this moment for us as a nation is a great opportunity for learning and understanding. And I believe moving forward together as a people, I call upon our leaders, anybody that has a microphone to deliver this message. You know, we may be being forced to physically distance. But more importantly, we are being called to understand and value our connection and our inter interdependence economically. Healthwise, if if a disproportionate number of African-Americans and brown people, Latino people, immigrants, older people, if they are dying or becoming desperately ill, their needs are going to overrun the medical system. And that’s the only system we have. And so this this vulnerability, this health inequity matters. It matters to my life. Now, that’s a pragmatic assessment. I’ve been trying to do this from a spiritual place my entire life. But this is the first time, you know, you can talk about these things in the most concrete, pragmatic way. People can be driven by self-interest. You know, they don’t have to be driven by a deep sense of altruism. They can just be pragmatic and practical and they can say, wait a minute. We’ve got to fix this. So that’s a long answer to your question. But that’s what I’m trying to say in that particular article.

Aurora: Absolutely beautiful. And, you know, staying on this journey, because I love the practical notion that says when those that we have not historically taken care of find them selves flooding our health care system. The impact is not only to them, but to all of us here. And for those in our audience who may not be as close to the impact that this is having on Brown, Black and immigrant bodies, can you share a little bit to sort of bring that understanding home to someone who walks out of there, perfectly quaffed lawn and home in suburban X, Y, Z city? And may not feel or see what is quite intuitive or obvious to some of us.

Gail: We have to understand that our health care system has been under-resourced in terms of our health care workforce for decades. That when you are in an emergency room or when right now you might show up in an emergency room or needing help breathing the resources to help you breathe are actually in limited supply. It doesn’t really matter what color you are or what jurisdiction you’re in right now. Generally speaking, across this country, the human resources and the mechanical resources to respond to the acute needs in the in the acute phase of this condition. Those resources are in under supply human wise from a standpoint of human resources. People need protective equipment. They need personal protective equipment to show up because every one of these health care workers, be they doctors or nurses or engineers or janitors or admission clerks, they are going home to their own families and they don’t want to take a virus, an extremely contagious virus, home to their families. So they need personal protective equipment. We don’t have enough of that to go around. And so every time a medical facility takes in another person, hundreds of people, if not thousands of people, are now at risk of being infected by this virus and they are at risk of taking this virus home if they don’t have the structures of protection in place. That is, as you said, the first time in our lifetimes, in this century or the last that we have faced a pandemic of this type that is so contagious and so virulent and puts us all in such a state of vulnerability. But the point is, it didn’t have to be this way. We could have been prepared as a country. We could have had the personal protective equipment stocked up for an emergency. We could have had these this this respiratory this acute respiratory distress is not a new syndrome. It is accelerated and it and made worse. Now, in this particular iteration of this virus. But we understand that these viruses impact the respiratory system. So there is no reason for us not to have the equipment in stock that is required for a population of our size historically. So preparations for an emergency I’m on I’m chair of the Board of the Trust for America’s Health. And we issue an annual report card, ready or not, which is about the nation becoming being prepared for an emergency and had the country listen to what is in that report. Over the last decade, we will be in a very different place right now. This is not a necessary moment. It is a moment that we must learn from and we must correct our behavior. I believe as a body politic, as a country, we have to have people representing us, making decisions that are prudent. You know, I’m head of household. So if I don’t have smoke detectors and fire alarms and all those fire extinguishers, all those things that are necessary for the safety of my household, something’s wrong with me. And I think we have to expand that metaphor. If our country is not prepared for an emergency. Why not?

Aurora: Absolutely.

Kelly: Yeah, I mean, and I just sitting here listening to you and I’m thinking to myself how non essential I am and how many essential workers I need in my own life. And knowing that our leadership. Has shown that they are not listening, not caring. Whatever it may be. I know how I have to vote in order to have a voice. And I hate to jump to like the punchline, but it’s like, what do I do? What do I do as a white woman living in the suburbs knows this is not right. Knows so much has broken. And hearing your plan of the last decade, and it’s like and we still don’t listen and we’re still not sure, you know, when we’re going to be mobile.

Gail: This should be a moment when we realize that in a democracy, there are certain things that a government is supposed to do. We have a government for a reason, and our responsibility as citizens in a democracy is to hold that government accountable and to step up and change that government when it is not responsive. So I think one of the things we all have to do in this moment in time, politics aside, you know, for the sake of the future of our country and indeed our world, because we are world we were world leaders. I think we have to say, you know what? There is a better way. I often say to people, you know, the qualifications for national leadership should include emotional intelligence. We should elect people who have demonstrated compassion and caring and humility and kindness. Not just empathy, but the ability to to feel the perspective, to hear the perspective, to take the perspective of others who are different from ourselves to pause and listen and be responsive. We can’t be the demos, as my daughter would say, we can’t be the people. If we don’t matter and this is a moment, you know, when Black Lives Matter emerged as a movement, some of the pushback was all lives matter. And so you got into this debate of, you know, were you saying our lives didn’t matter when you said black lives matter? I do think this is a moment that illustrates. The necessity of saying that black lives matter, brown lives matter, all lives matter. And all the ads matter because of who we are as a country. And so we have to I think the strongest thing we can do right now is listen to our inner guidance. We have to listen. And if we hear things that don’t just don’t align with compassion and understanding and kindness and love, then we I think we have to vote with our feet and say no tonight, truthfully. Now, you know, you can look at this on many different levels spiritually. We don’t want to give in to fear. You know, we want to stand in light and love and and know that that’s the healing force of the universe. But we also don’t want to do things that make other people more vulnerable and that weaken others. And so walking that walk of being a spiritually driven person and a conscious person at the same time, being a compassionate, caring person, I think that’s what we’re called to do and to be right now.

Aurora: And and speaking of what this moment is calling us to do. You are also leading us into another moment of transformation with the truth. Racial healing work that you have not only penned. You have shepherd it. You have are propelling into motion. And we’d love for you – If you could talk to us a little bit about what that journey has been and what are you hoping we embark on as a country? For our collective evolution and healing.

Gail: OK, first of all, thank you for the question. And I feel like I’m talking with two kindred spirits so I can really, you know, I. Yes. Yes. I can really just peel it back. I believe that everything starts and ends with consciousness, you know, and that we win when we recognize that we are made in the image of the divine. The divine is a creative force, as are we. And so we have dealt with the symptoms of racial hierarchy. We have the civil war dealt with the symptoms of it or the results of it. But we’ve never had a concerted movement to change the consciousness of this country. And so in our society’s racial healing and in truth, racial healing and transformation, I’m really focusing on eradicating the belief, the false ideology of a hierarchy of human value. Because if we don’t uproot the consciousness that that gives rise to the out picturing of a society that is hierarchical it will just reform. And I mean that literally re form or recreate itself. And so we’ve worked on through litigation, through legislation, through war, through all these different tangible means, saying no to racist. But we haven’t said yes to a new idea of our sacred interconnectedness as a human family. And that’s why I take a little issue with my colleagues who really, you know, dance on this this pinhead of anti-racist work, because the consciousness, the unconscious does not hear the modifier. It hears the subject. And so that’s why I say it’s got to be, like I say, healing. And I say healing. Not from US deficit frame healing is the natural process of life and evolution. Our bodies are are designed to thrive and to exist and to serve us as long as we need them. And they heal themselves every single day. Healing is a glorious, positive frame. It is not a deficit frame. And so the modifier may be racial in this case, but the focus, the word is healing. We as a country need to heal by changing our consciousness and by embracing our interconnectedness and embracing the miracle of life itself. My training as a holistic doctor just left me in awe of how the immune system is simply unbelievable in its ability to protect us and to heal us. That is a conversations that that’s missing from this COVID moment. When I talk about truth, I talk about I want people to face the fact the past, you know, come to grips with it. Acknowledged that it has no place in the present or the future in terms of this idea of racial hierarchy. Allow us to heal from the harm that that has caused and the harm of that is evident in the weakened immune systems and the vulnerability of so many to this horrific pathogen of this virus. So allow people to to acknowledge and honor that this is harmful. This is dangerous. We as a country cannot afford this. It’s evident right here. I did a speech at the Helsinki Commission recently, and as I was writing it, I remember the last line said we’ve got to in racism before it kills us all. And when I wrote it, I thought to myself, why did you say that? And now that COVID has appeared, I realize that’s why you said it, because it does have the power to destroy us. In ways that we never could have imagined. So truth, racial healing and transformation is it is a national effort for this country to replicate the idea of truth and reconciliation that has happened in over 40 countries around the world. Now, we don’t say reconciliation because that implies or it connotes coming back together. And we were never together. This country was founded on the premise of a hierarchy of human values. And so that’s why I don’t say reconciliation. We say transformation. Right. So we need to face the facts. Heal in myriad ways and then transform. And we as creative human beings, as the embodiment of the principle of divine creation. We can do this. The first step in the work of the communities that have engaged. They start by envisioning what America is like when we have, in fact, jettison the belief and hierarchy of human values and replaced it with a genuine value, equal value for all. So we don’t have standardized tests. We have standardized investment in education. But more than that, we have equitable investment. So we put more money where it’s needed most, where it’s needed least, which is what we do now. You know, hospitals. We have more equipment in communities. We have more testing available for the most vulnerable communities. Not like now, where Black communities in St. Louis, Missouri, couldn’t find a test for COVID-19 anywhere. All the tests went to the suburbs, but the death rates, a hundred percent of the deaths were in the Black community at one point. In St. Louis. And not a test to be found. And so when we envision the transformation, it’s grounded in an honest reckoning with what we have to fix. And that is it is in our collective interest to do it. It’s not. We’re fixing them. We’re fixing us as a nation. So.

Aurora: I was just going to take a pause there because. That was so clear. And it reminds me of we and this is why we talk about remembering because on a spiritual level, not in the practical plain of what we’ve all experience and lived at the core of who we are. The essence of who we are, the divine essence of who we are. We all come from the same place.

Gail: Absolutely.

Aurora: We have practically in this realm forgotten that. And have created these hierarchical structures that have kept us not only separated among ourselves, but have kept us separated within ourselves.

Gail: Mm hmm. Beautifully said.

Aurora: And so. The vision and the process of getting us to that. And how can we participate and or support because we know that this is. You’ve been at this work for a long time. It is just in the process. Hopefully at the end of this month, being introduced as a legislative entity, moving itself through the process. What can we do? Who can we. Right. Who can we call?

Gail: I think you can call your congresspersons for sure. And the the office of Congresswoman Barbara Lee is taking the lead on on moving this work forward. And her office is open to support and letters of support from across the country for sure. Organizations, systems, people. That is one thing. The work is going on in 14 places in the country funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. And you can visit the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Web site. There’s a section called Healing Our Communities, which then takes you to these local places that are implementing the work of the Association of American Colleges and Universities has campus centers, I believe. Now they’re up to 30 campus centers. And those campus centers are always in need of support, as is the association. We’d like to see all of our nation’s college campuses committed to doing this work, to bringing up the next generation in this new consciousness. There are, I think, maybe one hundred libraries around the country that are doing this work within libraries, within communities. They are they are reading more expansive stories about our history that reflect the stories of our diversity, which which is a beautiful thing. You know, the framework for TR, she starts with narrative change and libraries are an important part of that as our humanities councils. And then we go to the racial healing work, the actual bringing people together. And I offer training for facilitators of of a very compassion focused approach to that, which is what I call our arts racial healing. And you can visit my website and I this was in-person training until COVID. And you can also, I believe any philanthropic organization can support this work. Any of your community foundations, you can step up and say, you know, I want this work to be done in my community. If you can afford to support it and make a donation to a community foundation, they can get it going. That’s happening. And with Community Foundation partner, there’s all across the country, the Buffalo Community Foundation, the Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo is a wonderful example of that. So there are many touch points for connecting to this work. It if we are successful in creating a commission level at the level of Congress, it will still be driven by local communities and multiple sectors. Because this is this is our work. This is the work of the people of our country. The other thing I would say is women in particular, we have to set the new standard, the new level of expectation to say that we want to be a country that reflects compassion, that reflects emotional maturity. That reflects the love that we’ve all been given, the grace that we’ve all been privileged to experience. And I don’t care what your name is. I can feel your spirit as a leader. And I want to be led by someone who makes me proud. And so my call to action, particularly to women, is to is to is to call for were the best. That’s within us to lead us and to lead the world.

Aurora: That’s it. I want to take a moment with your expertize as a holistic doctor. A phenomenal leader, a leader who leads with consciousness and spirituality at the forefront of her decision making. I’d love for you to share the – when we talk about healing – And I love how you framed it – I’d love for you to talk about it in the context of healing for people of color as compared to healing for white people.

Gail: Oh, kay. That is a powerful question. And it really has driven in many ways my own journey. You know, I I was gifted by a brief relationship with my first born child. Her name was in Intiyanu (sp?) And Intiyanu (sp?) means noble spirit, literally. And so she came into our lives only briefly and left when she was three months old. But it was through the experience of giving birth to her and losing her that my eyes and my being, you know, were opened to the power of love and the pain of loss. I learned that there was a phenomenon called infant mortality and that it was a common experience for women of color. And I committed myself then to finding a way beyond that so that I would, in fact, have healthy children subsequent to her birth and passing and that I could help others to do the same. And that journey, I remember praying, actually asking for to be shown what was true healing. What does it mean? And I think my life has unfolded in answer to that question. The thing about the human body is that we are self healing, self regulating, self maintaining, self regenerating the embryo creates the human body by dividing itself. So that means that all the wisdom, all that is necessary for creation of the fully blown trillions of cells within the human body. It’s all there from the beginning. That’s that’s just mind boggling when you think about it. Right. It does. It divides itself and becomes us. And so this this idea of health is our natural state. But when we are attacked or perceived that we are attacked, when we are denied our grace and our full humanity. Either in interaction or in the environment by the poisons that we breathe or the poisons that we eat or the noises that we’re exposed to or the fear that we live with. All of these things trigger the innate stress response within the human body. And we know from studies of Holocaust survivors and generations, we know that this is also passed on from generation to generation. You can not enslave a people for centuries in the most cruel and barbaric ways. You can’t decimate and annihilate and commit genocide on native people, on on countries that have been colonized by us all over the world. You cannot destroy and take the lands of indigenous Mexican people without that having been internalized in some way in the systems of being. And so when we see the chronic disease burdens today, it’s not because there’s something inherently wrong with people of color. It’s the cumulative effect of both the lifetime today and I believe past generations, if you will, have had have carried the weight of this. But we have survived and thrived in spite of it. And that is a miracle. It is a miracle. And so when we talk about healing for people of color, for me, I think it needs to be a change in consciousness. You know, one of the programs I’ve developed is called the Body Owners Workshop. Most of the things I’ve done my life have come from inspiration. You know, I’ve awakened and with the thought or the idea. And I felt like, OK, my ancestors are telling me to do this. And so the body owner’s workshop came very clearly. And I put it in place many decades ago. And I kept asking myself consciously why body owners write what other people would say, why body owners? And then it just dawned on me with clarity recently was like because we do not own our bodies because these were not our own. And so the first step for healing for us is to shift that relationship. And truly own our bodies. In all that grace and all this splendor and all their beauty and all their capacity to heal and be healed, but that the enemy without and the enemy within is the stress, the distress of exposure to chronic chronic stress. And that it takes many names. They call it allostatic load. They call it weathering. You know, they call it the founder of stress, called it distress. But in any case, it’s a demand to adapt, to adapt in the face of threat or perceived threat. And that demand drains our energy and it takes away from our ability to heal, which we should be doing all the time. And it makes us more vulnerable. So we have to start with making sure that the energy is there for healing, that we minimize or counterbalance the stress with with affirming, loving, embracing, engaging, positive dynamics. That’s a long answer, but I hope it was helpful.

Kelly: Oh, yeah. Drop the mike. Dr. Gail. And so many points you are connecting for me. And I’m not of color, obviously, and I always kind of would say that our country I’ve figured out that our country is built on trauma. But you help me figure out that our country’s built on trauma and denial. Yeah. And part of that as a white person or a white bodied person is like is part of our trauma is denying our own trauma to see it in somebody else. We if we’re denying our own hurt and we’re denying our own needs. Because it’s you know, that that’s how we’re used to operating. Then we’re we’re we’re gonna deny your enemy. We can’t see your needs because we can.

Gail: It’s true. We are disconnected. The cultural motif, if you will, the ethos is one of denial. People who immigrate here from places like Mexico, even Africa, they fare better on health indicators – the first generation. But once they become what we call Americanized, then they’re more vulnerable to American diseases. And some peoples attributed to the foods that we eat. And, you know, and then that’s part of it. But I think it’s also a reflection of the cultural shifts, the value shifts, which is embodied in your own stories. You know, as you as I read them, you know, when you when you are chasing something outside of selves that you’ve been told that that’s that’s what matters more than anything else. That’s what matters. Right. Not family, not love, not connection, not inner guidance, not inner voice. You know, not kindness. It’s not compassion. You know, when you when you take on a dynamic that’s driven by competition and by hierarchy and by money, it it it it takes away from us and it takes away from our ability to see each other. Albert Einstein said this, and I’m sure he borrowed it from some indigenous group that he interacted with. But but he talks about the need to see ourselves in the face of the other. When I look at my grandson, I see myself right. And I am just my heart is just blown open. You know, I just completely stopped. We got to have more of that kind of quality of connection so that when I see someone else’s child, I feel that it’s not just my grandson, but I need to see see myself. I need to see life and loves, you know, all around me. And that’s a cultural shift. That has to come. I think it will. I do. But it’s because we decide to make it that.

Aurora: And that deciding is is critical. The question I have, because you’ve set out a vision for our transformation and healing as a nation. But I’d love to ask as a doctor with your wisdom what do you also see as the transformation for our wellness and health? Because our industry, the industry that you have set such a pioneering eye on it’s it’s having a moment of reckoning. So what would you share is your hope for the next evolution of our wealth, our health and our wellness?

Gail: Huh! We have stumbled into the idea of a pill for an ill. And it is not a holistic and systematic way of approaching healing and well-being. Our body is a miraculous system of interconnection and cross talk and and dynamic change that’s going on constantly. And so we have to have a paradigm shift in how we understand the body. And as far as I’m concerned, the first requirement is reverence for respect for really awe of the the workings of the human body. One place to start is the immune system. Now, I think because it was dominated by women and associated with the kitchen and the garden, the role of food and nutrition in health has been woefully misrepresented and and not understood and valued. But second only to the air that we breathe and the water that we drink. You know, our daily affirmation of our relationship to the world is through the food that we take in to our bodies from the world. And so I think that part of the paradigm shift after our increased reverence for the interconnected, dynamic workings of the human body, we have to have we have to put food way up at the top of the paradigm of interventions. It’s too far down. And I also think we have to understand that movement is the life. One of the things that having lost my baby girl is such an early age. I got a chance to see death right up close, you know, to hold her lifeless body and. I became committed to life and I understood that it is movement that is the hallmark of life itself. And so the sedentary lives that we lead make us ill. The human body was designed to move. And so we have to to understand that that’s an everyday need. And the more we move and the more we move in concert with how our bodies were designed to move, the healthier we are. So, you know, I think that the shift that has to occur is people taking ownership of their health, seeking medical help when they need it, but not thinking that our health rests in the hands of someone else. You know, our health is really in our own hands every day, every decision that we make and that we have the opportunity to make. If we don’t have the opportunity to access healthy, hydrated, nutrient dense, toxic, limited food, then we don’t have the opportunity to be healthy. We don’t have the opportunity for health equity if we don’t have the opportunity to breathe air that is clean. And that is revitalizing and high and oxygen, then we don’t have the opportunity to be healthy. If there’s nowhere for for for movement for walking safely, then we don’t have the opportunity for health. And that is those are the things that make up health inequity. And we do we have we have medicalised and pharmaceuticalize if you will our understanding of health. And I think that that’s a mistake. We’ve got to get back to appreciating that we come here with a body that is designed to be healthy and we have to learn how to support that. I’m not saying we don’t need medical intervention. We need it. But the research is very clear. Eighty percent of what keeps us healthy is not happening in the doctor’s office, is happening where we live, where we work, where we play, where we worship. It’s happening in our daily lives. And we have to I say now that COVID-19, has pulled the covers off, I say to people, you know, health is primary and all else is derivative. And so if we can become a country that understands that and values that, it’s part of the transformation that we have to create.

Aurora: Beautiful. Absolutely gorgeous. Thank you.

Kelly: So, Dr. Gail, what would your option be for our listeners today, what do you hope they opt in to do or feel or learn or explore?

Gail: I would say opt in to love and not fear. And sit with that idea. You know, appreciation and grace everyday and every moment that we can turn off the television, turn off the news, turn off the strife. And opt in to love and peace and the extension of that. To all those around us, through our meditations, through our conversations, through our interactions and through the vision that we hold, the consciousness that we bring to bear on creating a future, a future that is equitable and viable for all of us.

Aurora: You have just been tremendous, Dr. Gail.

Aurora:. Needless to say we were pretty stoked about this conversation. 

Kelly: And I think that’s largely because Dr. Gail so succinctly talked about this larger human community that we are part of…and I feel like that’s something you and me talk about all the time, Aurora.

Aurora: YES! 

Kelly: Thank you all for listening. Find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @the opt in.

Aurora: Music for this episode is by Jordan McCree. And the Opt-In is produced by Rachel Ishikawa.

Kelly: See you next week.

Aurora: Bye