| What is your “Speaker Superpower”? | |
| If I were to describe a speaker superpower that I hold, I would say it’s the ability to reframe situations. We all have thinking errors that cause us to get stuck in limiting thoughts. We need to monitor those regularly. Even as counselors, we must be careful not to summarily accept all of the prevailing beliefs that we’ve been taught throughout our careers. So, in the same way that I help my counseling clients rethink their options for life, I help my professional audiences and counseling trainees rethink their approaches to counseling so they can be more culturally sensitive in their work. Unfortunately, African Americans and other Black people live under a cloud of negative race-based presumptions. Some of those presumptions come from therapists, too. Those presumptions include presumptions of guilt, presumptions of incompetence, and presumptions of deficits. I help my mental health audiences explore the things that limit their effectiveness with diverse clients, by helping them explore deeply-held erroneous beliefs. One of the keys to doing that is to help people think about the unseen, and more specifically about a person’s unseen past. Oftentimes we see and hear a person in the moment, which is good. Counselors are taught to do that. At other times, it is more important to look into that person’s past to get a glimpse of their experiences with historical, intergenerational, and race-based trauma to understand who they are today. I think we do a person a grave disservice by only looking at their immediate behaviors, symptoms, or problems. The real ain is under the surface and often in the past. I suppose that could be a second superpower because it requires knowing when to “time travel” into the past and having the instinct to know how to explore the past. I help mental health professionals develop their own “time travel” superpower” so they can be effective with clients of all races. | |
| How does your message empower others? | |
| My greatest joy is helping people develop new responses to life. This may mean new responses to their work, spouse/partner, children, faith, finances, food, or just about anything else. As human beings, we have relationships with everything. Some of those relationships are healthy, but many are not. As a counselor, my work is to help people develop new relationships and new responses to the issues of life and the people in their lives. Sometimes, I help people find new meanings to situations. Sometimes, I help people embrace what they’ve avoided. Sometimes, I help people step away from what they’ve embraced for too long. My audiences appreciate the opportunity to reframe what’s going on. | |
| What inspired you to start speaking or coaching? | |
| I have always been intrigued by human behavior, and it troubled me when I saw people getting stuck between their reality and their hope and faith. When I recognized–and eventually accepted–the call to ministry and counseling, I knew it was important to understand not just the heart and mind of God, but the heart and mind of people, too. I understood that effective ministry and effective counseling as a Christian counselor meant merging the two, integrating the realities of our earthly experience with the hope for a transcendent experience. Early in my career and ministry, I saw people giving up on goals or faith and abandoning their dreams because they were experiencing things they couldn’t understand. They had a disconnect between their expectations and their experience. They were struggling with what was going on in their mind and were trying to make sense of their faith in the midst of their situation. Many of my clients appreciate that I can help them sort through those things and not give up on things they value. | |
| What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received in your career as a speaker? | |
| Many years ago, a wise mentor of mine recognized my giftedness. She was seriously ill and didn’t know if she would make it, so she gave me these words of advice for the years ahead. She told me to write down every word that came out of my mouth. Initially, I thought that was over the top, but now, when I hear something profound come from my lips, I recognize that I need to pay attention to it as much as my audience does. And, sometimes when that happens, it’s extremely important to have a record of the wisdom or the insight of that moment. So, I have a notebook where I write down unexpected nuggets of truth when I hear myself utter them. I have also kept my conference speeches, sermons, seminars, workshops, and webinars from the past 30 years. The collection has become a treasure trove of wisdom! | |
| What are some of your most memorable moments or achievements in this field? | |
| In February 2024, The Georgia-based Transformation Training Tnstitute honored me with a Trailblazer Award in recognition of the work that I’ve done over my 30 years in this profession as a speaker, trainer, and leader. I was both honored and humbled, and I will never forget Sandra Phillips and the Transformation Training Institute for recognizing my work with such a wonderful award. | |
| How do you stay motivated and inspired to continually grow your influence? | |
| I love the fact that I get to provide care on three levels. I provide direct counseling services to individuals and families who want help with their situations. Additionally, I provide continuing education training for counselors who want to be more culturally responsive to the needs of racially identified populations. I love that I have also been called to run a train-the-trainer program that prepares experienced counselors to provide training to other counselors, just as I do. The beauty of that is the amazing ripple effect. I get to work with clients, counselors, and trainers. Actually, I get to improve the lives of clients, improve the services of clinicians, and improve the training of those who are pouring into other counselors. It’s absolutely amazing to me that I’ve been chosen for this work, | |
| How does your brand reflect your core values? | |
| One of my core values is growth through struggle. I find it an honor to help people find purpose through their own grief and loss. Often, I will ask people to consider whether they are victims of trauma. Some people will readily acknowledge their trauma history. Other people will give it thought and determine that they are not victims of any trauma. Needless to say, the latter group feels very grateful that they have not experienced murder or rape or wartime violence. So they think they have not been significantly hurt or damaged. In reality, life is filled with loss, some of which is overlooked. I help counselors understand that Black, Indigenous, and people of color have multiple layers of trauma that is often unrecognized because they just haven’t had the luxury of taking the time to feel or heal. | |
| What do you want audiences to remember after experiencing your presentation or session? | |
| What I hope to do by the end of my career is to change the way people think about the trauma of racialized, marginalized, and otherized communities in particular, but also about trauma in general. Typically, we look at the “leaves” or the fruit of a person’s life. It’s like only seeing the top of a tree. We pay little attention to the trunk of the tree and we almost never think about its roots. If we expand the metaphor of a tree to a human being and their trauma experience, we will find that the roots are the feeding systems of our lives, just like roots represent the feeding systems of a tree. When there is significant trauma, those traumatized roots produced damaged fruit: broken relationships, depression, anxiety, fear, rage, relief-seeking addictions, and so much more. As Rumi said, maybe we are looking among the branches for what can only be healed at the root. For Black/African Americans, the roots are damaged by racism, discrimination, the Pandemic, microaggressions, criminalization, racial battle fatigue, and early death losses due to shorter life expectancies. And people can’t be blamed for that. They need support for healing. I believe in Liberation Counseling and decolonizing therapy. Those are big, long words that translate into a very simple statement: “I don’t want therapy to be an awkward misfit for Black people anymore.” The problem is not that Black people don’t go to therapy. The problem is that therapy was never designed with Black people in mind. So, we can’t blame people for not utilizing a system that doesn’t fit for them. Therapy is wonderful. (I don’t say that because I am a therapist; I say that because I have a regular therapist). I hope that my audiences of mental health professionals will commit themselves to doing the work that makes therapy beneficial, relevant, and culturally appropriate for all people. The point to remember is that you can’t have a diversity-informed practice without providing trauma-informed care. | |
| What has been your biggest learning experience as a speaker or consultant? | |
| I have learned to value my authentic self, and not to covet or envy anyone else’s training style or speaking style. If you try to be like someone else, you will rob the world of what you were uniquely created to give. Sometimes, it is hard not to compare yourself to others whom you admire. Sometimes ,when you walk into a room and recognize the amazing giftedness of everyone in the room, you can become intimidated and then dismiss or invalidate your own giftedness. I’ve learned that when I enter a room or walk onto a stage, my purpose has also just entered that room or walked onto that stage because everywhere I go, my life purpose remains the same, and I carry it with me. If doors open for me to be in any place, it’s because my purpose is needed there! And I have been uniquely created, called, and qualified to be in that space. Therefore I dishonor what has been gifted to me if I am attempting to be like someone else. I must be me! And I am so happy to be at a place in life where I can appreciate who I am and what I bring. Adopt that mindset and know your life purpose; you will always know why you’re in the room and you’ll never feel inadequate because you are comparing yourself to others. | |
| What advice would you give to aspiring speakers, coaches, or consultants who want to make an impact? | |
| Stay in your lane. Do not try to be a generalist. Know your niche and develop it. It is better to be amazing in a laser-focused content area than to be mediocre as a generalist. Following that philosophy will help you become a respected subject matter expert. | |
| Finally, how can people get in touch with you? | |
| [email protected] and on my website https://www.newseasons.training |
