Leadership Tea
On Leadership Tea, we talk about what it takes to reach the executive level, and how to thrive when you get there. Powerful leaders share their journeys, insights, and triumphs in conversations with hosts Shelby Smith-Wilson and Belinda Jackson Farrier.
Join us every other Wednesday to be inspired by the unvarnished stories of amazing executives who know what it's like to be "the only" at the table and who have succeeded regardless. They have proven leadership experience in their respective fields, from international affairs to the private sector to academia, and want to help others create their own success stories.
Leadership Tea
Managing Professional Grief and Stress with Kimya Imani Jackson, PhD | S4 EP7
Kimya Imani Jackson, PhD, joins Belinda and Shelby to discuss the emotional impact of professional grief. Amid the government shutdown and massive layoffs, it can feel impossible to move forward. How do you begin to build a new career when you're feeling a profound sense of loss?
Kimya shares how she has found the motivation to pivot and reinvent herself throughout her storied career. And she provides science-backed strategies for processing professional loss and professional grief while simultaneously opening the door to new possibilities.
This conversation can help you if you’re experiencing professional loss, corporate grief, and a sense of overwhelm after sudden career-ending changes.
Also in this video:
- Practices that include the burden tree, daydreaming, and dream journals
- Holistic approaches to calm hyper-activated nervous systems
- How professional grief affects not just people who are leaving, but also those left behind
- Cultivating community through hobbies and maintaining contact with friends and loved ones
Find Dr. Jackson at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimya-imani-jackson-phd
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Welcome to the Leadership Tea Podcast, where we talk about what it takes to get to the executive level and what you need to do to thrive once you get there. I have the honor today of introducing our guest, Dr. Kimya Amani Jackson. Kimya is a dear friend of mine from undergraduate school. She's a performing artist. She is an evaluator of health professionals, and she's also a scientist. She has her PhD in behavioral health with a concentration on gerontology from Penn State. And her BA is in psychology from Stellman College. For years, she's worked on health disparities and health interventions and holistic medicine modalities. I'm really excited about this episode. Kanye gives us really concrete things that we can do to deal with stress and to deal with all of the changes and chaos that we're having in this moment. And she also talks a lot about pivots and how she looks at changing careers, how she balances being an artist and a scientist. It's a really great episode, and I know you're going to enjoy it. Before I go, I just want to remind you that we've opened up enrollment for the Leadership Lounge. The Leadership Lounge is our effort to create community and provide group coaching to leaders who really need that sense of community and a place, a safe place to talk about complex issues in this moment. If you're interested in enrolling, please go to stirringsuccess.com slash leadership lounge. It's just a little over five bucks a month, which is probably less than what you're paying for a cup of coffee, but it's really worth it. You're going to get the opportunity to work with me, Shelby, and a host of other leaders. I look forward to seeing you there. And let's get into this episode.
SPEAKER_02:So thanks again, Kemia, for joining us for this episode of the Leadership Tea Podcast. I want to start by asking you a question concerning the crisis that we're in right now as a country. It feels like every day something new, chaotic is hitting the airwaves. I'm interested in hearing from you from your perspective as a scientist, as someone who is focused on health. How is it that we can build the life that we want to have when so many of us are surrounded by people who are intent on destruction? How do you build in an environment that is focused on destruction? I think about this often.
SPEAKER_01:And hearing this question, I think about a conversation that I've had a couple of times with one of my friends who's an elder. She helps to remind me that this is not the first time in this country that we've been living in a time of chaos and uncertainty. Think about how dreams and aspirations and other things were created in a time when hope unborn had died. So if in those moments in history people were still able to see and imagine when people didn't have freedom, had been separated from families, had been separated from homelands, didn't know what day-to-day was going to be like. The fact that in those moments that dreams could still happen, that's what keeps me going. If I still have that nugget of hope, then that is where those seeds of dreams can still happen.
SPEAKER_00:I love your reference to hope unborn. As you kind of inch yourself on this idea of hope, it also opens up space to think about empathy. How do you create space for empathy when at times we can feel like we're operating in a space that is filled with hate and filled with anger and judgment? How can we create empathy?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, empathy is about understanding the other person's perspective, even if we don't agree with it. When dealing with people that are kind of bent or systems built on destruction, I think one thing is like naming it and being like, that is not what I want to cultivate. I'm aware of it. So I like return it back to those individuals and systems and join with others that want a different way of understanding different people's perspectives, creating joy, creating other things that are a counterbalance to that destruction. Because we ultimately may never live in a society or world where empathy is going to be on the forefront. But I think there'll be enough people that are empathetic, are kind, that those worlds can coexist.
SPEAKER_02:As you talk about empathy not being on the forefront for everyone, it reminds me of something that Belinda and I talk about a lot. We always say community is clutch. Build your community, cultivate your community, facilitate community, whatever community means to you, be out there and do it because now is not the time to be isolated. You know, based on some of the comments that you've already made, given the chaos, given the destruction and some of the evil forces that we're seeing at play, how would you recommend that people cultivate community right now? It seems really difficult.
SPEAKER_01:It does. It does. It can be cultivated with other people that are within the workspaces. It can be cultivated with neighbors, it can be cultivated with people in your religious community in a time of like chaos and destruction. If there are hobbies or things that you enjoy that just give you space to breathe that are not related to work, that also may be a place to cultivate community. Because I remember talking to someone who was in a pretty destructive work environment. And they had their lunch break, which was like an hour and a half. They opted to take a master gardening class so they could get away, cultivate the earth, but also they cultivated community with other gardeners as a way to grow and build. So then they could take it, you know, and be in that workplace, but then they had cultivated a community of others that were trying to build and grow things. I think it's through work, through hobbies, through religious organizations, through people you went to college with. An email, a phone call. I have a friend, she lives on the West Coast, and I live on the East Coast, and we have a phone call that we've had every week for 10 years. We do phone visits. So you don't even have to be in the presence of other people. I mean, we have phones, we have text messages, we have Zoom. If you're a parent, you know, connecting with other parents. If, you know, you still have grandparents that are living or friends of your family, send them letters, start a correspondence that way to kind of build your community and find ways to keep continuity with it. Like maybe you talk once a week, maybe you talk once a month, but make it a ritual to support you during this time.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I love that. And this is an especially important time for community because many of our listeners are experiencing change and loss in the workplace. They are losing their jobs, they're losing their roles, the things that they thought they were building towards no longer exist. So I'm wondering how can people grieve what they've lost yet still dream at the same time?
SPEAKER_01:I'm just gonna offer a suggestion. So you've been on this trajectory, you've made all the steps, you've done all the right things, you've gotten all the accolades, both in the workplace, outside the workplace, and then it's ash. That is painful. That is so painful. So I think with the initial grieving part, if that means that there are days that you need to cry, you need to scream, you need to hit a a pillow, you need to go on walks, you need to watch silly television, get in the bathtub, you need to just be quiet to do that. Would also suggest is to create a burden tree. So a burden tree, it can be just a plant that you have or an actual tree that's outside of where you live, and write down on pieces of paper what those feelings come up related to that grief. You know, I did all this work and here I am. They expected me to be here on time, super present, and I got 20 minutes to pack my desk up and turn into my key. Just write it down, write it out, put it in that nature place, cry, drink some tea, hot beverage of some kind, because that's that's very good in terms of like being a part of the cleansing ritual. And once you've written everything out, take those pieces of paper and safely burn them. So it it kind of cleanses out that first part of grieving. So then for the dream stage, take that time to do something that not all the time as adults we give ourselves permission to do because you know we have to adults, take that time to daydream. Don't write anything down like lay on the floor, lay on your bed, sit in your favorite chair as the sunlight is coming through, listen to the rain, and just let yourself just let your mind wander and see what light comes up. If there's some things that show up all the time, have a journal or something to write it out. Maybe words are not the best choice. Draw. Don't judge it. Just let it be because the greed trajectory is not gonna follow a logical pattern. So that bird and tree, bird and bush, maybe something that you you come back to them because it's not one and done. Maybe it's something you do at night and have a dream journal by your bed. Or when you wake up in the morning, a ritual that also may help is something I've been doing for a while is a morning pages where you just write out three pages, you don't judge it, and something else to do is a gratitude journal. Also, maybe your dreams are not visual, maybe they're auditory. So you write that down as well. And maybe as you talk to your friends, you ask about their dreams. So you have a collective dream space as a counterbalance to what we were talking about earlier in terms of creating empathy and being a counterbalance to destruction.
SPEAKER_02:You've given so many actionable pieces of advice. I really like the idea of having a dream journal. Belinda and I talk a lot about journaling, but I've never really thought about it in that context. Usually it's just write down how you feel or write down, you know, what you're thinking in response to something that has happened. But I haven't really thought about it in the context of dreaming. So I really like that idea. And something else you said about creating a burden tree to grieve that. Wow, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna put that into practice. You know, something you said about the fact that people have been given a few hours in some cases to pack up their careers. It's like, how do you how do you do that? How do you pack up, in my case, 26 years of service in a matter of five hours? Like what what does that mean in practice? And I think it hasn't been emphasized enough, this process of grief for the people who are departing, but also for the people who are left behind, this notion of corporate grief, you know, where organizations are not being given the space to grieve everything that is happening to them because they're so busy trying to keep up with new instructions and new guidance and new regulations that they haven't had an opportunity to grieve as a community. You know, the stress that women are feeling, particularly right now, me as a paramenopausal woman, I don't need to bore you with all the details. You know, as a you know, health professional and scientist and expert, like you, you know what I'm going through as a paramenopausal woman, but I'm just wondering, you know, that coupled with outside stresses, what scientific or artistic or holistic advice do you have for our listeners? Again, particularly for women. Because we're, you know, managing so many things that are being thrown at us right now. What advice do you have?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yes. The onslaught of stress and being pure menopausal, it is a lot to carry. So, first off, I feel like I I just have to say this up front that I don't think health is on a binary, it's a spectrum. So it's not either healthy or sick. What's been pivotal for me with the stress of being paramedopausal is that it's a grief process and a process of new at the same time. So being in that in-between space, that we can appreciate the past and not try to hold on the past into the present because it opens up a new future. And and I think with parametopausal in particular, I'm glad that more people are more open about it and honest about it. So it's not kind of in the shadows anymore. One way I have personally dealt with stress, and then also reading literature about it as well, because stress, what it does to the body, is we hear all the time work on your nervous system, protect your nervous system, get your nervous system calm. So we all know about the sympathetic part of the nervous system, which is like revving you up and like preparing you for an actual like threat and to get you out of the way that can show up as fight, slight, freeze, or fawn, or a mixture of all of those things. And then the parasympathetic, which is supposed to bring rest and restore you. But with stress, parasympathetic part of the nervous system never really fully gets to engage. So you're always flooded with adrenaline, your heart is pumping more, you develop a hyperproduction of cortisol, which is a stress hormone, which can increase your experience of high blood pressure, heart disease, anxiety, depression, and things like that. So ways that I've taught to different holistic practitioners about how to deal with stress, one is laughter, whether it's laughter in your family, watching your favorite stand-up comedian. I mean, even before I got on this podcast, I was watching Issa Rae's awkward black girl that I always crack up with. Another way to deal with stress that I found is self-touch. Like even giving yourself a hug has a benefit. I am a tea drinker. Hot drinks actually like help to bring you back into a state of ease. Taking a nap or getting some sleep, which I know is a little bit more challenged when you're in perimenopause. Something to consider is taking magnesium, which may help. So magnesium either taking it or an epsom salt bath. Other smells that may be helpful in terms of at least with sleep, which will help with stress reduction, is the smell of lavender. If you can get lavender oil to put on your wrists or other parts of your body, that can help with sleep as well.
SPEAKER_00:I love that. And I'm a big fan of magnesium as a spray or you know, taking it orally, like it is really beneficial. And I just think that right now, with so much stress that we're all feeling, I mean, try and I appreciate all the options because I need to try a little bit of everything right about now. Right?
SPEAKER_01:And have one more. It it sounds a little like nature, because I know people are like walking their dog or what or whatever. Go hug a tree. Literally. If there are things going on and you're just like, I can't talk to anybody else, go pick out your favorite tree, go sit with it quietly, go talk with it. That's also a way to reduce stress because nature, by seeing nature, you see all the transitions, you know, and trees support one another. So, you know, another form of community that's here to support you as well.
SPEAKER_00:No, that really touches me. I'm actually reading right now The Secret Life of Trees. I'm fascinated by trees and their community and the way they communicate and the way they support each other and just the complexity of trees. And I I agree with you that there's just so much there when you are in nature that's kind of rejuvenating and really fills you. So we've talked about how people are experiencing change and they're experiencing loss. They're having to make pivots. And you are a person who has made a number of pivots throughout your life. Like you are the queen of pivots. I mean, it's something I admire about you. And so I'm just wondering if you could share a little bit about how you've navigated these pivots and then share a little bit about what you're currently doing, what you're currently facing.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yes. I am, I love that. I am definitely the queen of pivots in my life. I've always been a planner. At the same time, I think about Kenya as a young girl. I told myself that I was going to be a ballerina and a mathematician. I didn't know how those two things were going to coexist. Because I knew that part of my life would be as an artist. That also meant most likely that I would also have to have another profession alongside it to support myself and to support the art. I decided the way that I was going to support the art initially was to be a research scientist. And at one point in my career, I had a mentor tell me that he did not like me. He said I was too avant-garde, and that he was going to break me before it was all over. I was just like, it's fine. People that you work with, not everybody is going to like you. That is just the nature of work and being human. I needed to cultivate the skills of being able to pivot, whether it's a change in job, whether it is a change in career. Coupled with the fact that the dean at the graduate school I went to said to me that in your lifetime, you may have up to 10 careers. So to have up to 10 careers also requires the skills of pivoting. What I've had to learn and cultivate and still growing that muscle is deciding what skills that I wanted to have that may be able to fit in different fields to be able to make that pivot. So finished graduate school, ended up taking a postdoc, ended up being in the artistic community. That postdoc ended right when the 2008 crash happened. That shifted the nature of work and getting work. So I was just like, well, I have these particular skills. I like to learn. I am open. Being an artist, one of the skills is doing improvisation. So creating something that didn't exist before, looking in spaces that I hadn't thought about before. So that pivoted me into the medical education world, something I had never heard about before, using some artistic or acting skills, but also the skills of being able to evaluate, provide feedback, pay attention to nonverbals, all of those things. But then in the midst of that, move to another state, had to figure out okay, well, I have these skills and adding skills. So let me present myself in a completely different way, but still using the base skills that I have and knew that I would be able to cultivate what I need when I needed it, have those panic moments. I was like, okay, you're all right, you're gonna be fine. Talk to friends, be like, help me think about things that I had not thought about before. Knowing I have base skills, know that I have the capacity to learn, know that I may need to look in places that I had not even thought about or considered, check in with friends because they see me in ways that I don't see myself all the time. And now going from researcher, medical education, I've been a consultant, I've worked for artists, helping various aspects of their careers. I've helped people launch new health and artist things that they've wanted to do and have been thinking about. I've connected people. And now, you know, pivoting to being an electrician. So that's going to open up a different way of thinking and imagining. And again, cultivating skills. I mean, I said I didn't want a boring life, so that's what I got. And the pivot is part of it.
SPEAKER_02:You shared a lot of wonderful points in terms of having like a fluid mindset, is what I'm getting from you. Like being on a continuum of not getting stuck and improvising. There were several things that you said that I think will resonate with our listeners in terms of, you know, not being afraid to look at new spaces, using improvisation during this time of transition and reinventing yourself in some cases, and upskilling, I think, is something that's really important, something that Belinda and I talk about all the time. Like you can't just be a one-trick pony, especially right now as the markets are shifting. Everything that we knew as normal is not normal anymore. And I really admire everything that you've done to just continue making yourself better and just, you know, again, like recreating Kimia, but in your vision, in the way that you want to create yourself and in a way that builds the life that you want for yourself. It's really inspiring. We will go ahead and shift to our lighthearted part of the conversation. We call it lightning round, tea round. I forget what we're calling it this season, but it's a lighthearted part of the conversation. And I will start by asking you, what are you listening to right now?
SPEAKER_01:I've been listening to Afrobeats or Afro House, so music from various African countries. So I'll listen to that and I blow bubbles every night. So I'll listen to that and blow bubbles or play jacks, like the actual ball and jacks, because I think play is important. So the sounds of both make me really happy.
SPEAKER_02:You just brought back a childhood memory playing jacks. Oh my goodness. I haven't done that in since I was like eight.
SPEAKER_01:I need to get some jacks. I love that. Oh, yep. My bag with the with my boss jacks in it.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. I love that. Yes. I learned something from you like every like, yes, I need to play more, right? So um, we're also curious, like, what are you following right now? Like, is there something that's inspiring you?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, on social media, the person that I've I've been following her for a while, the nap ministry. Yes, that that speaks to me, you know, a great deal as a person that has been a planner, go, go, go, but like really understanding rest and why to rest at a very deep level, and not resting from pure exhaustion, but resting because it is earned just by being, and then constantly being asked to think about that at a deeper and more deeper level.
SPEAKER_02:I swear we didn't plan this, but I don't know if you can see my t-shirt. It says we need rest. It's from a it's from a retreat that I went to earlier this year. Who knew that it would be so prophetic? Here we are. Here we are. Here we are. Wow, Kimmy, I can't begin to thank you enough for everything that you've shared with us during this episode, just all of the nuggets. I've been taking down notes. You've given us a lot of actionable pieces of advice that I feel better now as a result of this call than what I did when we started. Seriously, it's just been it's been an up and down period for so many of us. And I just I really appreciate the authenticity and the genuine nature of your recommendations and everything that you've shared. I think it will be very beneficial to a lot of people. So thank you.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. Thank you both for having me. I really appreciate it. And if people just need to do rest right now, you know, just do that.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, Kimya. And for our audience, we'll be sure to connect to Kimya's LinkedIn. So if you have questions for her or you just want to know more about her, you'll be able to do that. Thank you so much. This has been just an amazing episode.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you.
SPEAKER_02:Thanks again for joining us for the amazing episode that we just did with Dr. Kimia Jackson. She is a treasure. She shared so many actionable recommendations that we can all consider when it comes to taking care of our mental health and these crazy times that we're experiencing. Some of the things that I plan to do are to create a dream journal. I'm going to create a burden tree for grieving. I'm going to remember to laugh and watch silly TV and do playful things to help manage my stress. And I'm going to continue cultivating community by picking up the phone and calling people or sending them letters and just doing the best I can day by day to manage what sometimes feels like an unmanageable situation. And I hope you all will do the same. We are grateful for your support, and we would love to have you join us over on YouTube. Please look for us, the Leadership Tea Podcast on YouTube. We hope you will leave us a review, share this episode, and any others that you found impactful with your friends, your relatives. We really appreciate the support. We really appreciate this community, and we look forward to sipping wisdom and stirring success with you again real soon.
