June 11, 2025 • 30 mins
Vanessa opens this episode with a foremother meditation honoring the wisdom of healer and legendary midwife Margaret Charles Smith. Then, a familiar voice returns—but in a new role. Our homegirl Sandria Washington joins, but this time she is being interviewed by Morgan.
Together, they explore the journey of adoption and the vital role of kinship care, continuing the podcast’s commitment to radical care. This episode offers insight, reflection, and guidance for trekkers navigating the complexities of family, legacy, and community-rooted healing.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
We are. Sick and tired.
Of being sick and tired. The disrespected person in
America. Is the black woman but still
like dust all right? Pretty girls in the VIP they
(00:29):
came with drain. They'll need ideas.
The revolution will not be televised, brother.
You are by the. New Joe John.
Even if you are not ready for the day, it cannot always be
night. Welcome to self-care School.
(01:05):
This is girl trek. We are a million women.
We are walking to increase our life expectancy.
We are walking to ensure that nowoman walks alone.
We are walking in the footsteps of the women who came before us.
We're walking for joy. We're walking for justice.
I am your girl, Vanessa. I am on the line with Morgan.
Are you there, Morgan? I'm here.
(01:27):
Y'all, it is week 9 and we are demanding care for the
caregivers this week and we are walking through a powerful week
of lessons about caregiving. So I'm excited to get into this
episode. I hope the sun is touching your
face. I hope you're getting some fresh
air. I hope you have laced up your
sneakers and that you are walking outside of your front
(01:47):
door. This is meant to be a walking
experience. It's meant to be 30 minutes of
radical self-care for you. So walk out 15 minutes will
remind you to walk back, turn around and walk back 15 minutes
and we're going to get into it. So before we get into the lesson
today, I want to ground us down like we have been for all of
these episodes in who we are thedaughters of today.
(02:11):
And today we are the daughters of Margaret Charles Smith, one
of the last great midwives of the Deep South.
We are the daughters of MargaretCharles Smith.
She delivered over 3000 babies in Alabama, on kitchen tables,
in bedrooms, on front porches. No hospital badge, no fancy
(02:33):
tools, just a warm leather bag, a quiet spirit and hands that
knew exactly what to do. She was called a granny midwife,
but she was a healer. She was safety, she was science
and spirit braided into one before doctors would touch black
bodies. She was the one we called before
(02:54):
there was access insurance or sterile beds.
There was her and women like her, thousands of them.
So let's take a deep breath in their honor and let's exhale.
Let's drop our shoulders. Let's unclench our jaw.
(03:15):
You're not standing in a delivery room, but you are
standing in a lineage of women who responded to every cry, who
were the first to show up and the last to rest.
Women who walked miles through the night, who boiled towels in
silence, who waited with you until the storm passed or the
baby came. Now I want you to gently press
(03:38):
your palms together at your heart, center thumb, right there
to your chest. This is how they prayed.
This is how they centered themselves before doing sacred
work. You may not be a midwife, but
you've caught what no one else would.
You've caught breakdowns. You've caught responsibilities.
(03:59):
You've caught the weight of generations, and you have held
it. And if no one told you today,
you are a healer too. So we're going to inhale and say
to ourself, I carry wisdom in mybones and then exhale.
I walk in the footsteps of power.
(04:22):
And today I want you to walk like you are carrying a story.
I want you to walk like someone's waiting on you to
arrive. I want you to walk in honor of
Margaret and the thousands like her who never left anyone to
labor alone. This walk is our offering to
them, our breath pair. This walk is for the women who
(04:44):
showed up. And today, right now, we show up
for ourselves. Welcome to self-care school
y'all. Let's walk.
Thank you for that. Listen, I know you're on your
porch. Please step out into your
driveway. We are joined for today's
conversation. We're going to learn 2 skills.
We're going to learn everything we need to know about adoption
(05:04):
and we're going to learn about something called kinship care
and the resources that are available to you for kinship
care. Before we start there, I just
want you to. There will be no stepping
backwards today. We're going to move forward and
then we're going to move into the conversation as quickly as
possible because our girl Sandrais on the line.
I'll tell you about in a second.I want you to take a step
(05:24):
forward. If you have a safe home and
maybe a safer home that has an extra bedroom, take a step
forward if you I'm pretty confident that you could pass a
criminal background check. And we talked about that.
Maybe you got your record expunged.
Maybe you are the, the kind of one in three that has never had
any, any interaction with the justice system.
(05:46):
But take a step forward if you feel like right now, you know,
you could, you could pass a criminal background check.
Take a step forward if your homeis safe.
Take a step forward if you thankGod, got a job right now.
And that ain't everybody. So love to you.
If you're not taking a step forward, we really do love you.
Take a step forward if you have some financial stability right
now in your life and take a stepforward.
(06:09):
If through your work around self-care, you have built the
capacity to love others, take a step forward.
All right, that's our self-care audit today.
If you even took 2, three steps forward, listen, maybe you
didn't get all five. You took two or three steps
forward. Listening because you are one of
the most qualified on this line to adopt.
(06:29):
So I'm saying we all got we all could get up in there and pass
this test. Y'all let's get started.
Sandria, are you there? Y'all know Sandria from
Tuesdays, teaching Tuesdays and she usually does these beautiful
recorded interviews with us. Andrea, you are a celebrity on
self-care school. I'm so happy to have you on Live
(06:51):
with us, girl. I am excited to be here, not on
a Tuesday. Sandria, it's been a long
journey, girl. It's been a long journey.
Y'all know her formal credentials but let me tell you
her Girl Trek story. Sandria was one of the very
(07:12):
first founding volunteers of Girl Trek and so we call her an
OG with about I don't know, 40-50 other women.
And the reason we call them original Girl Trekkers is
because Girl Trek would not exist without once Andrea
Washington, particularly in in Chicago.
And then the second thing you should know about my girl
Sandria is that you shared with us in the first week of
(07:35):
self-care school that during orientation that you have gone
through your own deeply personaljourney around adoption.
So that's where I would love forthe conversation to begin.
Sandria, the first conversation I ever had about you was that
you joined Girl Trek because your your mother died
prematurely. Yes, so that is how I discovered
(07:58):
Girl Trek. My mother passed away the end of
2011. December 2011 and 2012, I was in
a bookstore, magazine shop, cameacross an issue of Heart and
Soul magazine, and there was an article that featured Girl Trek.
And it was talking about, you know, Women's Health, how to get
(08:19):
us moving. And I was like, oh, you know,
they walk, I can do that. So I'm going to do that.
And at the time, I was just really focused on my health
because I felt like the last woman standing.
Like I felt like my father had passed, my mother had passed, my
older brother had health issues,and I did not want that for
(08:44):
myself. So I was very motivated and
there was an urgency about me getting healthy because I wanted
to want to be healthy for myselfbut also just change the
trajectory of my family. So that's 2012.
But Fast forward 2018, I find out that I am adopted.
(09:07):
And so technically there is no biological DNA with the family
that I was raised with, but those health concerns are still
very much a concern because now it's a question mark of, well,
what is my family health history?
And so, you know, just going down that whole rabbit hole of
(09:30):
of questions. I'm I'm so sorry for your loss.
I'm really sorry you have becomean expert in black adoption and
I want to talk about that in a second.
But I just want to frame why this is a life saving skill
y'all, because we are. Our mission is to increase the
life expectancy of black women and girls by 10 years and 10
(09:51):
years. We can't leave the girls behind.
And so many Black girls are in foster care, so many Black boys
are in foster care. And then there is an epidemic of
isolation and loneliness, which is deadly.
And so this is a vital skill to figure out how to reconnect.
Something that's really strikingabout my particular story is
(10:15):
that my birth mother's family did not know that she was
pregnant. And so that was something that
she really, you know, carried inprivate, in secret, kind of
alone. And so Fast forward by the time
that we, you know, actually met and we were able to, you know,
(10:36):
talk about some of these things,it was just really, it's one of
those very, I don't know how to describe it.
I feel a lot of compassion around, you know, her situation
in particular because a lot of times when we talk about
adoption, we don't talk about the first mothers and the
(11:00):
experiences that they have. And so just hearing her say, you
know, that this was something her family didn't know, her
family didn't find out until I came back onto the scene 40
years later. Oh, Sandria, Yeah.
And so just thinking it's like all of these things that were
(11:23):
swirling around in in her world,you know, she's got this toxic
relationship and she's pregnant and all the things.
And, you know, I think about what that means for her, but
then I also think about, well, what does that also mean for me,
you know, as a baby, you know, in the womb and I'm experiencing
(11:43):
what she's experiencing. You know, I'm not just getting
the nutrients of the food that she's eating, but it's all of
her emotions and, and different things like that.
So the loss, when we talk about adoption as loss, you know, that
loss happens even before your, your, your birth into the world.
You know, that loss is even happening within the womb
(12:06):
because the emotions and the thoughts are are there and
you're in that environment, whatever environment that that
your your mother is in. And so, yeah, that was just an
interesting piece of the story. But I know her story is not
uncommon. You know, many women have had to
carry children and privacy and secret and and alone.
(12:30):
It's true, it's true. It won't round this conversation
out. Sandria, thank you so much.
When you say your daughter's up story, do you start with your
first mother? I do, I'll usually go through,
you know, her name is Sheila. And actually I, I kind of do it
both ways. So I'll, I'll start with my
(12:53):
mother who raised me, Alexandria, which is, you know,
how I got my name, Alexandria Sandria.
And so I'll start with her and you know, her mother, but then
I'll flip over to the other sideand, you know, I'm also the
daughter of Sheila. And so I kind of do it that way.
(13:13):
I love that sending love out to Sheila and her saucy self who be
out Stefan and all of the women,all of the women who have had to
make the impossible, I mean impossible decision to first of
all, to carry children in an abusive situation and the kind
of courage that it takes to do that.
(13:35):
And the women who cannot, we should give a shout out to the
woman who cannot carry babies inthose situations.
Whatever your choices, we love you and you're welcome here.
And then Sheila, I'm just, I'm grateful that our friend Sandria
found you. I'm grateful that you gave birth
to so many beautiful girls and that she has this big, vibrant
(13:58):
family and has a chance for moremothering.
I'm so grateful for that. If there are people out there
like the women in my Bible studywho are like, look, God has been
good. I have everything I've ever
dreamed of in my life and I have, I'm operating in a place
of true abundance right now. And I really want to share that
(14:18):
abundance with a child who may not have as much.
And I want and I need like the loving care of family as well.
And this feels like a good time.What would you tell that woman?
I would tell her, well, first, just from an emotional
standpoint, really interrogate your your reasons for adopting.
(14:44):
Like also like if if you're looking to feel some kind of
trauma of someone to love you orall these other things, like
that's not also fair to the babies.
Or if you think it's just going to be like, I remember this is
like actually one of my like growth areas in life.
But, and when I lived in Atlantaa long time ago, I was in my
early 20s, I became a big sisterin the Big Brother Big Sister
(15:06):
program. And I felt that girl so bad.
Like I just, I thought we were going to just like go to the
Atlanta Hawks game and kick it, have fun, go to the mall, get
some stuff. And like she needed like real
support and real mentoring. And I felt once I realized that
I was just, I wasn't committed. And then I stopped being her big
(15:27):
sister. And I just always reflected on
that because I was just like, wow, you really have to be sure
before you can make these type of commitments.
And I just really held that close to be just really careful
about the type of commitments I make and why?
Because I I had in my mind like all these fun things that we
were going to be doing, all these girly things we were going
to be doing. And it was like what she needed
(15:48):
was genuinely like time and careand like something that I wasn't
even had in my mind to provide. And so yes, you may be having
the abundance and you have a lotof love to share and you have
resources to support a child and, you know, create a family.
But if there is something, something additional within your
(16:11):
story. So if there has been any type of
fertility challenge, something like that, just making sure that
you have grieved over those circumstances and that you
really are sure that you know this child isn't coming to
(16:33):
necessarily replace something orfulfill a hole.
But really just making sure thatfrom an emotional and mental
standpoint that you are okay with whatever circumstances that
may have brought you to the decision of adoption.
For some women, you know, there isn't anything like that.
I even went to an adoption informational back in 2016, so 2
(16:58):
years prior to me learning that I'm adopted, I went to an
informational and to my knowledge, I didn't have any
fertility challenges. It was just something that I
felt led to do. But for those women, you know,
but I think that was just spirit, you know, again,
dropping a seed like you have a connection to adoption and I
just didn't know it, but I was considering it.
(17:20):
But again, just really checking in emotionally.
And you know, if you are at thatplace and you've maybe grieved
any losses or any, you know, if there was some hope around, you
know, naturally conceiving or anything like that, just making
sure that you you think about those things first.
Sandra, what's, what's the difference between between
(17:41):
foster care and adoptive care? So you can adopt through like a
private agency, but you can alsoadopt through the foster care
system. Typically aside from them being,
you know, two different types of, of adoption, typically
adopting through the foster caresystem is I guess the plain way
(18:07):
to say it is free. Whereas if you're adopting
through traditional means through an agency, that can come
with a hefty price. But either way, you still have
to go through some type of process.
But of course, an agent adoptingthrough a private agency is
(18:27):
going to be a bit of a more thorough process that you would
have to go through. But you can adopt through the
foster care system and go through that particular process.
Most things, whether you're going the foster care route or
the private agency route, you know, some type of
informational, right? So yes, you can have this
(18:50):
thought, this desire, but first step Step 1, you know, who can
you talk to? Go to an informational or set up
a meeting with a counselor, social worker, etcetera.
But get get the information first.
So once you're getting further into the process, you know,
typically there's things like home visits, you know, you're
(19:10):
filling out a lengthy application, they're doing a
home study. So they're really trying to see,
you know, who, who are you? You know, what is your home like
they're doing background checks.They might be speaking to other
people who know you. But yeah, there there's an
intensive process, as it should be, because again, you want to
(19:34):
place children with as much confidence as as you can.
And then once you do have the blessing of adopting or
participating in kinship care orparticipating in foster care,
what are the two or three piecesof advice once you have a child,
Sandra? Top of the list, I would say is
(19:57):
recognizing that adoption startswith loss.
And this is even if you decide to do something such as kinship
care, so someone who is already in your family, there's still a
loss there. There's still something to be
said about a child who is not everyday with the biological
(20:20):
parents. And so recognizing that and then
also recognizing, you know, there's loss on the side of that
child's birth parents, there maybe loss on the side of you as
the adoptive parents. So like we talked about earlier,
you know, if you were experiencing any type of
fertility challenges, just recognizing that there's loss
(20:42):
all throughout what we call the adoption constellation, you
know, kind of those three key sets of people and recognizing
that adoption is not a one time event.
And so sometimes people will argue, you know, should a person
say I was adopted or I am adopted?
(21:03):
And I tend to lean toward the AMbecause it really is something
that is with you through the life cycle.
So you as a parent have to be prepared to talk about adoption
and through the life cycle, you know it's going to look
different ways as that child grows.
(21:24):
So just talking about things in age appropriate ways, but it's
not a one and done. There's going to be emotions and
feelings that come up. There may be a time where your
child, you know, as they're grappling and trying to make
sense of their own adoption, youknow, that may shift the
relationship dynamics. And so just being prepared that
(21:47):
your child is always going to beadopted.
So even in a family full of loveand everybody has the same last
name and, you know, they're not treated any differently, you
know, any number of things, adoption is still that elephant
in the room. And so be ready to address that
(22:08):
elephant throughout your lives together.
And then, of course, for me, youknow, I have to talk about
secrecy, secrecy and shame in our families.
And so just being honest and upfront.
So even if you have a child thatmatches the family, talk about
(22:30):
it make make the child aware that they are adopted at some
point. And I don't really have an
answer as far as like, well, when is the right time?
That can vary, but just make sure there is a time.
I think it's so important to thedevelopment, especially, you
(22:53):
know, as we talk about health and, you know, being a part of
girl Trek, people need to know their their background, they
need to know their roots and their history.
And when it comes to medical information, you know, what are
biological things that you may be susceptible to?
(23:13):
And so I think it's all just all-encompassing, but at the end
of the day, that person, that adopted child who eventually
becomes the adopted adult, they they really need to know the
truth of who they are. And so just making sure that
you're having those conversations, as challenging as
they might be, making sure that you do have those conversations.
(23:36):
Thank you so much Sandria for your story.
Thank you so much for sharing somuch practical advice around
what we can do before to make sure that we're prepared for
this awesome responsibility and opportunity and then what to do
after. It's really helpful advice and
and all worth considering very seriously.
So thank you so much and I know that it can save our own lives.
(23:58):
All right, family, we're going to do a quick solidarity
spotlight. We love to shout out black-owned
businesses, organizations, fellow activists.
And so today I would like to Vanessa, I'd like to give a
shout out to Sixto, our friend Sixto Cancel, who has an
organization he is the founder of, Think of Us.
(24:18):
And it's an organization dedicated to reforming child
welfare systems. And Sixto, as homework y'all for
self-care school, please go and watch his Ted talk.
It is beautiful. And it is about something called
the kinship care. And Sixto, who was a former
foster youth himself, discusses the real traumatizing
(24:39):
experiences of being placed in afamily that was so far outside
of his experience and his culture that it was traumatizing
to him. And he and then he also talks
about how transformative it would be to have something
called kinship care where peoplelike him could really be placed
(25:00):
for extended periods of time with family members.
And those family members, just like foster care parents are
compensated. Those family members are
compensated by the state. And so Sixto has worked
tirelessly to pass policy at thestate level and at the federal
level to bring this to life. His name is Sixto.
Like the number 6123456 TO Sixtocancel.
(25:23):
Like you cancel a subscription. So Sixto cancel.
And his Ted talk is called a foster care system where every
child has a loving home. I highly, highly recommend it,
y'all. So kinship care is now legal
across the United States. And what that means is that you
can apply to be the official caretaker of your cousin or your
(25:48):
niece or your nephew or somebodyor your grandchild.
And the Family First Prevention Services Act in the United
States, there is new policy called the Family First
Prevention Services Act, Y'all, it was enacted in 2018.
It allows for states to use federal funds for evidence based
prevention. And that includes kinship care
(26:10):
because kinship care, all research says that putting
children out of the foster care system and into the loving care
in homes of, you know, aunties and grandmothers and adding
resources to that scenario is a much, much better prevention
care scenario than putting them into an institution like foster
(26:31):
care. So it's been a full episode,
y'all. I want you to be encouraged.
I want you to consider looking into becoming a foster parent if
you have resources in your community where you could be a
safe place while families are sorting through safety
situations in their own lives, you could be a safe place for
(26:51):
children. It is a really viable option for
so many people and there is funding there.
I want you to consider if you are already practicing kinship
care, if you already have a niece or a nephew or a cousin or
grandchild in your home and you're caring for them thanks to
the work of activists like Sixto, there are now resources.
(27:13):
And then finally consider adopting and building your
family in the long term. So those are some of the ideas
that we wanted to share today. I want to close with a brother
named Joel Breville, BERVELL Breville Joel at Joel Breville
on Instagram. He is a truth speaker y'all, and
he talks about the power of lifting our voices across the
(27:35):
spectrums of public health. And we talked about if you're
advocating in hospital rooms, lift your voice.
We talked about last week, we talked about if you are involved
in the the justice system to lift your voice.
And today Sandria said if you are in the midst of or
participating in adoption or foster care, please raise your
(27:56):
voice and don't keep secrets anddon't be silent.
So I wanted to end with this notion that silence can be a
pre-existing condition. So let's listen to Joel on our
way out. Have a great day everybody.
What does racial bias in medicine look like?
As a first year medical student,I asked myself that question
every day, and the answer I found spanned centuries.
(28:18):
It showed up in the 1800s with gynecological experiments on
enslaved black women without anyanesthesia, in the 1900's the
Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and in 2019, when I began medical
school, those biases hadn't disappeared.
They'd evolved pulse oximeters, devices we use every single day
(28:38):
in the hospital, still do not read well on darker skin tones.
Black women continue to die at triple the rate during
childbirth when compared to white women.
And kidney algorithms like the GFR equation overestimate what a
patient's kidney functioning areif you're black, leading to
delays in kidney transplants. So I picked up my phone.
(29:01):
I started talking not to educatebut disrupt because silence is a
pre-existing condition too. One man reached out and told me
that he challenged the pulse oximeter reading, potentially
saving his life. Another woman said that she saw
(29:23):
my video and said that she should get her mold checked.
It turned out to be precancerous.
One other woman told me that sheused my video and spoke with her
doctor was able to move up five years on the kidney transplant
list. Change begins when truth is
spoken aloud. And so today, on my 30th
(29:48):
birthday, Gemini season, but also amid DI rollbacks, cuts to
NIH in HHS, this Peabody isn't just a trophy.
It's a reminder that truth is the most powerful form of
(30:08):
medicine that we have. Thank you.
We are. Sick and tired.
Of being sick and tired. The disrespected person in
America. Is the black woman but still
like dust all right? Pretty girls in the VIP they
(00:29):
came with drain. They'll need ideas.
The revolution will not be televised, brother.
You are by the. New Joe John.
Even if you are not ready for the day, it cannot always be
night. Welcome to self-care School.
(01:05):
This is girl trek. We are a million women.
We are walking to increase our life expectancy.
We are walking to ensure that nowoman walks alone.
We are walking in the footsteps of the women who came before us.
We're walking for joy. We're walking for justice.
I am your girl, Vanessa. I am on the line with Morgan.
Are you there, Morgan? I'm here.
(01:27):
Y'all, it is week 9 and we are demanding care for the
caregivers this week and we are walking through a powerful week
of lessons about caregiving. So I'm excited to get into this
episode. I hope the sun is touching your
face. I hope you're getting some fresh
air. I hope you have laced up your
sneakers and that you are walking outside of your front
(01:47):
door. This is meant to be a walking
experience. It's meant to be 30 minutes of
radical self-care for you. So walk out 15 minutes will
remind you to walk back, turn around and walk back 15 minutes
and we're going to get into it. So before we get into the lesson
today, I want to ground us down like we have been for all of
these episodes in who we are thedaughters of today.
(02:11):
And today we are the daughters of Margaret Charles Smith, one
of the last great midwives of the Deep South.
We are the daughters of MargaretCharles Smith.
She delivered over 3000 babies in Alabama, on kitchen tables,
in bedrooms, on front porches. No hospital badge, no fancy
(02:33):
tools, just a warm leather bag, a quiet spirit and hands that
knew exactly what to do. She was called a granny midwife,
but she was a healer. She was safety, she was science
and spirit braided into one before doctors would touch black
bodies. She was the one we called before
(02:54):
there was access insurance or sterile beds.
There was her and women like her, thousands of them.
So let's take a deep breath in their honor and let's exhale.
Let's drop our shoulders. Let's unclench our jaw.
(03:15):
You're not standing in a delivery room, but you are
standing in a lineage of women who responded to every cry, who
were the first to show up and the last to rest.
Women who walked miles through the night, who boiled towels in
silence, who waited with you until the storm passed or the
baby came. Now I want you to gently press
(03:38):
your palms together at your heart, center thumb, right there
to your chest. This is how they prayed.
This is how they centered themselves before doing sacred
work. You may not be a midwife, but
you've caught what no one else would.
You've caught breakdowns. You've caught responsibilities.
(03:59):
You've caught the weight of generations, and you have held
it. And if no one told you today,
you are a healer too. So we're going to inhale and say
to ourself, I carry wisdom in mybones and then exhale.
I walk in the footsteps of power.
(04:22):
And today I want you to walk like you are carrying a story.
I want you to walk like someone's waiting on you to
arrive. I want you to walk in honor of
Margaret and the thousands like her who never left anyone to
labor alone. This walk is our offering to
them, our breath pair. This walk is for the women who
(04:44):
showed up. And today, right now, we show up
for ourselves. Welcome to self-care school
y'all. Let's walk.
Thank you for that. Listen, I know you're on your
porch. Please step out into your
driveway. We are joined for today's
conversation. We're going to learn 2 skills.
We're going to learn everything we need to know about adoption
(05:04):
and we're going to learn about something called kinship care
and the resources that are available to you for kinship
care. Before we start there, I just
want you to. There will be no stepping
backwards today. We're going to move forward and
then we're going to move into the conversation as quickly as
possible because our girl Sandrais on the line.
I'll tell you about in a second.I want you to take a step
(05:24):
forward. If you have a safe home and
maybe a safer home that has an extra bedroom, take a step
forward if you I'm pretty confident that you could pass a
criminal background check. And we talked about that.
Maybe you got your record expunged.
Maybe you are the, the kind of one in three that has never had
any, any interaction with the justice system.
(05:46):
But take a step forward if you feel like right now, you know,
you could, you could pass a criminal background check.
Take a step forward if your homeis safe.
Take a step forward if you thankGod, got a job right now.
And that ain't everybody. So love to you.
If you're not taking a step forward, we really do love you.
Take a step forward if you have some financial stability right
now in your life and take a stepforward.
(06:09):
If through your work around self-care, you have built the
capacity to love others, take a step forward.
All right, that's our self-care audit today.
If you even took 2, three steps forward, listen, maybe you
didn't get all five. You took two or three steps
forward. Listening because you are one of
the most qualified on this line to adopt.
(06:29):
So I'm saying we all got we all could get up in there and pass
this test. Y'all let's get started.
Sandria, are you there? Y'all know Sandria from
Tuesdays, teaching Tuesdays and she usually does these beautiful
recorded interviews with us. Andrea, you are a celebrity on
self-care school. I'm so happy to have you on Live
(06:51):
with us, girl. I am excited to be here, not on
a Tuesday. Sandria, it's been a long
journey, girl. It's been a long journey.
Y'all know her formal credentials but let me tell you
her Girl Trek story. Sandria was one of the very
(07:12):
first founding volunteers of Girl Trek and so we call her an
OG with about I don't know, 40-50 other women.
And the reason we call them original Girl Trekkers is
because Girl Trek would not exist without once Andrea
Washington, particularly in in Chicago.
And then the second thing you should know about my girl
Sandria is that you shared with us in the first week of
(07:35):
self-care school that during orientation that you have gone
through your own deeply personaljourney around adoption.
So that's where I would love forthe conversation to begin.
Sandria, the first conversation I ever had about you was that
you joined Girl Trek because your your mother died
prematurely. Yes, so that is how I discovered
(07:58):
Girl Trek. My mother passed away the end of
2011. December 2011 and 2012, I was in
a bookstore, magazine shop, cameacross an issue of Heart and
Soul magazine, and there was an article that featured Girl Trek.
And it was talking about, you know, Women's Health, how to get
(08:19):
us moving. And I was like, oh, you know,
they walk, I can do that. So I'm going to do that.
And at the time, I was just really focused on my health
because I felt like the last woman standing.
Like I felt like my father had passed, my mother had passed, my
older brother had health issues,and I did not want that for
(08:44):
myself. So I was very motivated and
there was an urgency about me getting healthy because I wanted
to want to be healthy for myselfbut also just change the
trajectory of my family. So that's 2012.
But Fast forward 2018, I find out that I am adopted.
(09:07):
And so technically there is no biological DNA with the family
that I was raised with, but those health concerns are still
very much a concern because now it's a question mark of, well,
what is my family health history?
And so, you know, just going down that whole rabbit hole of
(09:30):
of questions. I'm I'm so sorry for your loss.
I'm really sorry you have becomean expert in black adoption and
I want to talk about that in a second.
But I just want to frame why this is a life saving skill
y'all, because we are. Our mission is to increase the
life expectancy of black women and girls by 10 years and 10
(09:51):
years. We can't leave the girls behind.
And so many Black girls are in foster care, so many Black boys
are in foster care. And then there is an epidemic of
isolation and loneliness, which is deadly.
And so this is a vital skill to figure out how to reconnect.
Something that's really strikingabout my particular story is
(10:15):
that my birth mother's family did not know that she was
pregnant. And so that was something that
she really, you know, carried inprivate, in secret, kind of
alone. And so Fast forward by the time
that we, you know, actually met and we were able to, you know,
(10:36):
talk about some of these things,it was just really, it's one of
those very, I don't know how to describe it.
I feel a lot of compassion around, you know, her situation
in particular because a lot of times when we talk about
adoption, we don't talk about the first mothers and the
(11:00):
experiences that they have. And so just hearing her say, you
know, that this was something her family didn't know, her
family didn't find out until I came back onto the scene 40
years later. Oh, Sandria, Yeah.
And so just thinking it's like all of these things that were
(11:23):
swirling around in in her world,you know, she's got this toxic
relationship and she's pregnant and all the things.
And, you know, I think about what that means for her, but
then I also think about, well, what does that also mean for me,
you know, as a baby, you know, in the womb and I'm experiencing
(11:43):
what she's experiencing. You know, I'm not just getting
the nutrients of the food that she's eating, but it's all of
her emotions and, and different things like that.
So the loss, when we talk about adoption as loss, you know, that
loss happens even before your, your, your birth into the world.
You know, that loss is even happening within the womb
(12:06):
because the emotions and the thoughts are are there and
you're in that environment, whatever environment that that
your your mother is in. And so, yeah, that was just an
interesting piece of the story. But I know her story is not
uncommon. You know, many women have had to
carry children and privacy and secret and and alone.
(12:30):
It's true, it's true. It won't round this conversation
out. Sandria, thank you so much.
When you say your daughter's up story, do you start with your
first mother? I do, I'll usually go through,
you know, her name is Sheila. And actually I, I kind of do it
both ways. So I'll, I'll start with my
(12:53):
mother who raised me, Alexandria, which is, you know,
how I got my name, Alexandria Sandria.
And so I'll start with her and you know, her mother, but then
I'll flip over to the other sideand, you know, I'm also the
daughter of Sheila. And so I kind of do it that way.
(13:13):
I love that sending love out to Sheila and her saucy self who be
out Stefan and all of the women,all of the women who have had to
make the impossible, I mean impossible decision to first of
all, to carry children in an abusive situation and the kind
of courage that it takes to do that.
(13:35):
And the women who cannot, we should give a shout out to the
woman who cannot carry babies inthose situations.
Whatever your choices, we love you and you're welcome here.
And then Sheila, I'm just, I'm grateful that our friend Sandria
found you. I'm grateful that you gave birth
to so many beautiful girls and that she has this big, vibrant
(13:58):
family and has a chance for moremothering.
I'm so grateful for that. If there are people out there
like the women in my Bible studywho are like, look, God has been
good. I have everything I've ever
dreamed of in my life and I have, I'm operating in a place
of true abundance right now. And I really want to share that
(14:18):
abundance with a child who may not have as much.
And I want and I need like the loving care of family as well.
And this feels like a good time.What would you tell that woman?
I would tell her, well, first, just from an emotional
standpoint, really interrogate your your reasons for adopting.
(14:44):
Like also like if if you're looking to feel some kind of
trauma of someone to love you orall these other things, like
that's not also fair to the babies.
Or if you think it's just going to be like, I remember this is
like actually one of my like growth areas in life.
But, and when I lived in Atlantaa long time ago, I was in my
early 20s, I became a big sisterin the Big Brother Big Sister
(15:06):
program. And I felt that girl so bad.
Like I just, I thought we were going to just like go to the
Atlanta Hawks game and kick it, have fun, go to the mall, get
some stuff. And like she needed like real
support and real mentoring. And I felt once I realized that
I was just, I wasn't committed. And then I stopped being her big
(15:27):
sister. And I just always reflected on
that because I was just like, wow, you really have to be sure
before you can make these type of commitments.
And I just really held that close to be just really careful
about the type of commitments I make and why?
Because I I had in my mind like all these fun things that we
were going to be doing, all these girly things we were going
to be doing. And it was like what she needed
(15:48):
was genuinely like time and careand like something that I wasn't
even had in my mind to provide. And so yes, you may be having
the abundance and you have a lotof love to share and you have
resources to support a child and, you know, create a family.
But if there is something, something additional within your
(16:11):
story. So if there has been any type of
fertility challenge, something like that, just making sure that
you have grieved over those circumstances and that you
really are sure that you know this child isn't coming to
(16:33):
necessarily replace something orfulfill a hole.
But really just making sure thatfrom an emotional and mental
standpoint that you are okay with whatever circumstances that
may have brought you to the decision of adoption.
For some women, you know, there isn't anything like that.
I even went to an adoption informational back in 2016, so 2
(16:58):
years prior to me learning that I'm adopted, I went to an
informational and to my knowledge, I didn't have any
fertility challenges. It was just something that I
felt led to do. But for those women, you know,
but I think that was just spirit, you know, again,
dropping a seed like you have a connection to adoption and I
just didn't know it, but I was considering it.
(17:20):
But again, just really checking in emotionally.
And you know, if you are at thatplace and you've maybe grieved
any losses or any, you know, if there was some hope around, you
know, naturally conceiving or anything like that, just making
sure that you you think about those things first.
Sandra, what's, what's the difference between between
(17:41):
foster care and adoptive care? So you can adopt through like a
private agency, but you can alsoadopt through the foster care
system. Typically aside from them being,
you know, two different types of, of adoption, typically
adopting through the foster caresystem is I guess the plain way
(18:07):
to say it is free. Whereas if you're adopting
through traditional means through an agency, that can come
with a hefty price. But either way, you still have
to go through some type of process.
But of course, an agent adoptingthrough a private agency is
(18:27):
going to be a bit of a more thorough process that you would
have to go through. But you can adopt through the
foster care system and go through that particular process.
Most things, whether you're going the foster care route or
the private agency route, you know, some type of
informational, right? So yes, you can have this
(18:50):
thought, this desire, but first step Step 1, you know, who can
you talk to? Go to an informational or set up
a meeting with a counselor, social worker, etcetera.
But get get the information first.
So once you're getting further into the process, you know,
typically there's things like home visits, you know, you're
(19:10):
filling out a lengthy application, they're doing a
home study. So they're really trying to see,
you know, who, who are you? You know, what is your home like
they're doing background checks.They might be speaking to other
people who know you. But yeah, there there's an
intensive process, as it should be, because again, you want to
(19:34):
place children with as much confidence as as you can.
And then once you do have the blessing of adopting or
participating in kinship care orparticipating in foster care,
what are the two or three piecesof advice once you have a child,
Sandra? Top of the list, I would say is
(19:57):
recognizing that adoption startswith loss.
And this is even if you decide to do something such as kinship
care, so someone who is already in your family, there's still a
loss there. There's still something to be
said about a child who is not everyday with the biological
(20:20):
parents. And so recognizing that and then
also recognizing, you know, there's loss on the side of that
child's birth parents, there maybe loss on the side of you as
the adoptive parents. So like we talked about earlier,
you know, if you were experiencing any type of
fertility challenges, just recognizing that there's loss
(20:42):
all throughout what we call the adoption constellation, you
know, kind of those three key sets of people and recognizing
that adoption is not a one time event.
And so sometimes people will argue, you know, should a person
say I was adopted or I am adopted?
(21:03):
And I tend to lean toward the AMbecause it really is something
that is with you through the life cycle.
So you as a parent have to be prepared to talk about adoption
and through the life cycle, you know it's going to look
different ways as that child grows.
(21:24):
So just talking about things in age appropriate ways, but it's
not a one and done. There's going to be emotions and
feelings that come up. There may be a time where your
child, you know, as they're grappling and trying to make
sense of their own adoption, youknow, that may shift the
relationship dynamics. And so just being prepared that
(21:47):
your child is always going to beadopted.
So even in a family full of loveand everybody has the same last
name and, you know, they're not treated any differently, you
know, any number of things, adoption is still that elephant
in the room. And so be ready to address that
(22:08):
elephant throughout your lives together.
And then, of course, for me, youknow, I have to talk about
secrecy, secrecy and shame in our families.
And so just being honest and upfront.
So even if you have a child thatmatches the family, talk about
(22:30):
it make make the child aware that they are adopted at some
point. And I don't really have an
answer as far as like, well, when is the right time?
That can vary, but just make sure there is a time.
I think it's so important to thedevelopment, especially, you
(22:53):
know, as we talk about health and, you know, being a part of
girl Trek, people need to know their their background, they
need to know their roots and their history.
And when it comes to medical information, you know, what are
biological things that you may be susceptible to?
(23:13):
And so I think it's all just all-encompassing, but at the end
of the day, that person, that adopted child who eventually
becomes the adopted adult, they they really need to know the
truth of who they are. And so just making sure that
you're having those conversations, as challenging as
they might be, making sure that you do have those conversations.
(23:36):
Thank you so much Sandria for your story.
Thank you so much for sharing somuch practical advice around
what we can do before to make sure that we're prepared for
this awesome responsibility and opportunity and then what to do
after. It's really helpful advice and
and all worth considering very seriously.
So thank you so much and I know that it can save our own lives.
(23:58):
All right, family, we're going to do a quick solidarity
spotlight. We love to shout out black-owned
businesses, organizations, fellow activists.
And so today I would like to Vanessa, I'd like to give a
shout out to Sixto, our friend Sixto Cancel, who has an
organization he is the founder of, Think of Us.
(24:18):
And it's an organization dedicated to reforming child
welfare systems. And Sixto, as homework y'all for
self-care school, please go and watch his Ted talk.
It is beautiful. And it is about something called
the kinship care. And Sixto, who was a former
foster youth himself, discusses the real traumatizing
(24:39):
experiences of being placed in afamily that was so far outside
of his experience and his culture that it was traumatizing
to him. And he and then he also talks
about how transformative it would be to have something
called kinship care where peoplelike him could really be placed
(25:00):
for extended periods of time with family members.
And those family members, just like foster care parents are
compensated. Those family members are
compensated by the state. And so Sixto has worked
tirelessly to pass policy at thestate level and at the federal
level to bring this to life. His name is Sixto.
Like the number 6123456 TO Sixtocancel.
(25:23):
Like you cancel a subscription. So Sixto cancel.
And his Ted talk is called a foster care system where every
child has a loving home. I highly, highly recommend it,
y'all. So kinship care is now legal
across the United States. And what that means is that you
can apply to be the official caretaker of your cousin or your
(25:48):
niece or your nephew or somebodyor your grandchild.
And the Family First Prevention Services Act in the United
States, there is new policy called the Family First
Prevention Services Act, Y'all, it was enacted in 2018.
It allows for states to use federal funds for evidence based
prevention. And that includes kinship care
(26:10):
because kinship care, all research says that putting
children out of the foster care system and into the loving care
in homes of, you know, aunties and grandmothers and adding
resources to that scenario is a much, much better prevention
care scenario than putting them into an institution like foster
(26:31):
care. So it's been a full episode,
y'all. I want you to be encouraged.
I want you to consider looking into becoming a foster parent if
you have resources in your community where you could be a
safe place while families are sorting through safety
situations in their own lives, you could be a safe place for
(26:51):
children. It is a really viable option for
so many people and there is funding there.
I want you to consider if you are already practicing kinship
care, if you already have a niece or a nephew or a cousin or
grandchild in your home and you're caring for them thanks to
the work of activists like Sixto, there are now resources.
(27:13):
And then finally consider adopting and building your
family in the long term. So those are some of the ideas
that we wanted to share today. I want to close with a brother
named Joel Breville, BERVELL Breville Joel at Joel Breville
on Instagram. He is a truth speaker y'all, and
he talks about the power of lifting our voices across the
(27:35):
spectrums of public health. And we talked about if you're
advocating in hospital rooms, lift your voice.
We talked about last week, we talked about if you are involved
in the the justice system to lift your voice.
And today Sandria said if you are in the midst of or
participating in adoption or foster care, please raise your
(27:56):
voice and don't keep secrets anddon't be silent.
So I wanted to end with this notion that silence can be a
pre-existing condition. So let's listen to Joel on our
way out. Have a great day everybody.
What does racial bias in medicine look like?
As a first year medical student,I asked myself that question
every day, and the answer I found spanned centuries.
(28:18):
It showed up in the 1800s with gynecological experiments on
enslaved black women without anyanesthesia, in the 1900's the
Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and in 2019, when I began medical
school, those biases hadn't disappeared.
They'd evolved pulse oximeters, devices we use every single day
(28:38):
in the hospital, still do not read well on darker skin tones.
Black women continue to die at triple the rate during
childbirth when compared to white women.
And kidney algorithms like the GFR equation overestimate what a
patient's kidney functioning areif you're black, leading to
delays in kidney transplants. So I picked up my phone.
(29:01):
I started talking not to educatebut disrupt because silence is a
pre-existing condition too. One man reached out and told me
that he challenged the pulse oximeter reading, potentially
saving his life. Another woman said that she saw
(29:23):
my video and said that she should get her mold checked.
It turned out to be precancerous.
One other woman told me that sheused my video and spoke with her
doctor was able to move up five years on the kidney transplant
list. Change begins when truth is
spoken aloud. And so today, on my 30th
(29:48):
birthday, Gemini season, but also amid DI rollbacks, cuts to
NIH in HHS, this Peabody isn't just a trophy.
It's a reminder that truth is the most powerful form of
(30:08):
medicine that we have. Thank you.
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