9am Is Too Early for Hate Mail

When a hateful voicemail message hurtled out of the clear blue sky to explode on Tanya’s sunshine-y Saturday, we knew that the kind of hate we fight against had come right up to our doorstep. This wasn’t ODEIB’s first experience with shameful hate mail, but it was the first time that we had been targeted with a message of explicit violence.

We were all shaken up, there’s no way around that. In that numb moment of pain and bewilderment, the crew decided to process and heal together by talking through our emotions and reactions. And we knew we wanted to document that process for you, our listeners, in order to model the way that we draw on community and self-care to sustain ourselves in the most harrowing moments of DEI work.

We’re making sweet lemonade with some pretty rotten lemons today. Tanya said it best right on this episode: “We're gonna take that hate, we're gonna hug it and love it, and we're gonna turn it into love and education for the rest of the world. This is how you turn obstacles into opportunities.”