Why I Stopped "Doing" DEI Work

It’s been a year since I stepped away from the DEI consultancy I co-founded in 2018 and stepped into my current service and life joy as an Energy Hygienist.

But I still occasionally get asked why I stepped away from the DEI space.

In hindisght, as challenging and emotional as the dissolution of the business was, at the core the most direct reason I can say I stepped away is actually not complicated: I was burnt out from living in a trauma response.

When 2020 came in like the (necessary) wrecking ball that it was, the world exploded and so did everyone’s nervous system, including mine.

And when the uprisings started to happen after the murder of George Floyd, the nervous system of every company also exploded.

Everyone and everything was in a trauma response (and mostly still remains in one TBH).

What this looked like in real time was companies who had categorized DEI work as a "nice to have", which mostly equated to checkbox solutions such as the celebration of cultural months / holidays, a yearly unconscious bias workshop and *maybe* having a DEI lead / ERGs (employee resource groups), now suddenly were all hands on deck.

Overnight, people and companies were posting black boxes on social media and talking about how they were ready for real change; how enough was enough and now they were listening; how they were now ready to do the "real" work.

At the time, it seemed like having a DEI consultancy was the perfect business to be in because seemingly every single company in America - and internationally - wanted change NOW.

They (primarily, but not always, white bodied individuals) claimed they had the budget, the time and the energy to put in the work despite the fact that absolutely none of this violence and inequality was new, especially not to black and brown folks. It was just now being broadcast in such a way that it couldn’t be ignored (and you would usually be shamed if you tried).

I could go into all the reasons why this is all so deeply problematic but I won’t because it’s actually not the point of this.

The point was that me and many other consultants in the field knew this level of urgency was not sustainable for anyone: not for the people doing DEI work and definitely not for these companies who had little to no capacity for the discomfort and long term deep change this truly required. They saw it as a sprint when we knew it was and always had been a marathon.

Despite in my gut knowing none of this was sustainable, I continued forth with my business. I was on endless calls from concerned leaders and DEI leads urgently wondering what they could do to help their culture and to help their black and other employees of color feel more included.

One might think that having a business as perfectly positioned as mine would have felt like a blessing, especially having been a start up and only in year two of being up and running, but as each day passed the more exhausted and on edge I became.

Because every day if I wasn’t talking to well-intended white people who in reality had no intention of doing that long term work (whether they realized it or not) or really putting the amount of money that was required towards it, I was talking to black and other employees of color about the trauma they were experiencing and the lack of resources they had to manage it or be supported in any real meaningful way.

And if I wasn’t on the phone talking to these people, then I was running various workshops and programs, talking on (virtual) panels, creating DEI related content, etc.

Almost every waking moment of my day was dedicated to some topic or conversation around DEI which is quite possibly the furthest thing from light or easy work.

My nervous system was at capacity and at some point I created a boundary that I thought would make a difference which was that I, who am also Black, would only work with the black employees and create healing spaces for them because it was too activating for me to talk day in and day out with white folks around the subject (and the Black employees were who needed the most amount of support).

Eventually, my business partner and I created further boundaries which included bringing on other DEI consultants who could help take on the workload we were receiving.

This worked for awhile but at the end of the day, it just wasn’t enough.

Why?

Because what I eventually realized was that nothing was ever going to be enough.

There was never going to be enough boundaries to protect my nervous system while I owned and operated this DEI business because the painful truth was that I had built a business rooted in my own trauma.

As a black person who grew up in predominantly white spaces and just generally in an anti-black society, I had incredibly deep racial wounds. I had never felt white enough for the white people or black enough for the black people (whatever either of those actually means).

I walked around with a wound of feeling deeply misunderstood and while I decided to major in African Studies in college, studied abroad in South Africa, joined the DEI efforts at my work and was just generally very outspoken around racism and injustices, I had not done any *true* healing around this wound on the level of the nervous system.

As most of us in Western society are taught to do, I had used my intellect for years to try to figure out and work through my issues but intellectualizing emotions and feeling emotions are not the same thing.

One leads to knowledge and sounding smart, the other leads to actual healing and up until 2020, I was doing the former.

And add being Highly Sensitive / Attuned to all this………..🆘.

And when I co-founded my business, this is exactly where I was. I used the consultancy as a channel to blow my own trauma through. I used all of the phone calls, workshops, programs and panels as a means of talking about DEI related issues which were essentially my own issues and wounds.

People would often tell me, "you’re so amazing" at this work and "you’re such a saint for taking this on!" And I really was good at it but not for all the reasons people thought.

Yes, I was trained in facilitating and coaching and have always been great at holding healing spaces but I myself was also an unhealed racially traumatized black woman.

My consultancy was my own personal stage for talking to the masses about these topics that I cared so deeply about and finally felt like I was being heard; however, what was really running the show was using my business as my own personal means of attempting to transmute the trauma that had been there my entire life and had taken to peak levels during 2020.

Obviously, this is the gift of hindsight as I didn’t know any of this and could not see it clearly at the time.

At the time, it felt like I was living my "truth" and in some ways I was - I was and still am very passionate about creating healing for black and brown people as well as creating a world where all beings experience true freedom (freedom of being, expression, loving, dreaming).

The difference now is that I am doing it from a much more healed and spacious nervous system where as before I was in a deep and ongoing trauma response that I was (unsuccessfully) trying to address.

And how often do we do that, ?

How often do we conflate our "truth" with our trauma?

Trauma is most certainly true as a part of our lived experience but it is not our *truth.* It is not our purpose to live out. There is a very subtle but incredibly important disctinction between the two.

And when we don’t have the distinction between the two or have the tools / awareness to examine and tend to our trauma at the level of our nervous systems, we run the risk of creating whole aspects of our lives centered around it, thinking we our living our truth.

We end up trapping ourselves in the very thing we are trying to be free around.

And that is why I had to get real with myself, take a step back and ask what my real goal and intention was behind starting a DEI consultancy?

When I realized that it was to bring accessible healing modalities to people, especially black / brown and other marginalized bodies, I had to ask myself, is there a way I can do this that actually supports me as well? That is sustainable and even joyful?

It took me some time to figure out what that looks like (Hello, Energy Hygiene!) and it will continue to be an ongoing / evolving journey but I know that focusing on ease, art and joy in conjunction with that intention is my path for the life I want and am creating and hope to inspire others to do the same.

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