June 17, 2025 • 29 mins
Morgan opens this episode with a heartfelt tribute to Ruby Bridges, honoring her courage and legacy as a trailblazer in the fight for educational equity. Vanessa then leads a thoughtful lesson on the power of mentorship—how to step into the role of a guide while maintaining healthy boundaries that sustain both mentor and mentee. Whether you're looking to uplift others or seeking guidance yourself, this episode offers wisdom on building meaningful, balanced relationships in mentorship.
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Episode Transcript
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(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 trains. They'll need ideas one.
Thing 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.
(01:02):
Welcome to self-care School everybody.
Sorry I wasn't ready for this episode but I'm ready y'all.
Welcome to self-care School is aweek 10 day 2 it is teaching
Tuesday. We are excited to learn life
saving skills. Listen, if this is your 10th
week, congratulations y'all. If this your first day,
congratulations. Either way you are welcome.
(01:25):
Here we are girl Trek. We are a million strong.
We are marching toward our health, this most fulfilled life
together in solidarity. You belong here.
Consult your doctor. All of that, all of that, y'all,
this celebration week, we're so excited.
Let's get started. We start as we always do, by
going out on our front porch forall solutions.
Start on black women's front porches.
We are the daughters of And Vanessa, I love what you said.
(01:50):
We are the sisters of. It actually makes much more
sense to say that for today, we are the sisters of Ruby Bridges.
We are the sisters of Ruby. Shout out to Ruby Bridges who is
still alive and vital with us today.
If you don't know Ruby Bridges name, maybe you are young.
Maybe this is before your time. She was a pivotal figure in the
(02:11):
American Civil Rights movement. In 1960, at just six years old,
she became the first black childto integrate an all white
elementary school. It was in New Orleans, LA.
She was escorted by federal marshals amid intense protests
(02:31):
and threats to this baby's life.Ruby Bridges like quiet bravery,
and her posture and her confidence inspired and awed the
world. The news couldn't get enough of
her. Photographers, painters, artists
through time have made beautifulpaintings of her.
Her courage and dignity under pressure has helped pave the way
(02:53):
for how we have fought for our civil rights and our freedom.
So listen, today we're going to do something to help us with our
balance. I want you to stand flat footed
and we're going to do something called alternate nostril
breathing. And essentially you're going to
close one of your nostrils, yourso raise your right hand up.
You're going to close your rightnostril with your thumb.
(03:18):
Just do that and you're gonna breathe with your left.
Hopefully, if you're not congested, you're gonna breathe
and then you're gonna use your ring finger.
You're gonna lift up your thumb off your right nostril and
you're gonna use your ring finger to close your left
nostril. OK, I'm just giving you those
explicit instructions because we're gonna have one of our
sisters at Afro Yoga Queen. She's on Instagram.
(03:40):
I found her to be really compelling and she's going to
guide us through this meditation.
It's just about a minute and it's it's opposite nostril
breathing. So she'll guide us through and
give us the instructions again. Here we go.
Our bodies are made to balance themselves out, so if you're
feeling a little off balance today, you can start or restart
your day with balance. Let's do some breath.
(04:01):
Take your right hand, bend your peace fingers, so your peace
fingers in towards your wrist. Because our ring finger is our
earth finger. It connects to our balance when
we balance in relationship to the earth that holds us up.
So you have your hand position here, you have your thumb, you
(04:23):
have your ring finger available.close the thumb side, inhale in
through the ring finger side. Pause at the top, close the ring
finger side. Exhale out through the thumb
side. Pause at the bottom, Keep your
(04:44):
hand here, Inhale in through thethumb side.
Pause at the top, close thumb side, exhale out ring finger
side. Keep your hand here.
Pause. Inhale in through ring finger
(05:04):
side. close ring finger side. Exhale out through thumb side.
Oh that last exhale felt good. I hope y'all feel imbalanced.
Shake it off. You can rewind that anytime and
find your balance. Let's go to the driveway for our
audit. Are you there?
(05:25):
VI am here. Thank you for that, y'all in
your driveway. We're going to do just a few
quick questions to get us grounded for this episode.
We are going to today learn two life saving skills.
We are going to learn how to become a mentor and we're going
to learn how to create boundaries within that
mentorship so that we are becoming a lighthouse and not a
(05:48):
lifeline. And before we do that, I'm going
to ask you a few questions. The 1st, and this is a step
forward. Step back.
Like always, if you model self-care in a way that your
daughter, your niece, or a mentee could imitate, take a
step forward. If you have thought about being
a mentor to a girl in need or a role model, but haven't acted on
(06:11):
your thought, take a step back. If you've taken time in the last
week to have a conversation witha young person about the current
political climate and what's happening on the news, take a
step forward. If you have a mentor in your
life who has helped to guide you, take a step forward.
(06:35):
If you do not have a friendship with one woman at least 10 years
older than you, take a step back.
If you have a friendship with one woman at least 10 years
younger than you, take a step forward.
All right, y'all look around, see where you're at.
(06:56):
Mentors create intentional connection, they give feedback,
they have presents and they create intentional time.
So that's a little bit different.
And already in our families, we have nieces, we have little
cousins, we have people who we can be mentors to and not just
(07:17):
role models because we can have closer relationships with them
at work. Morgan, we can find younger
black women and we can give themadvice.
One of the things I, I watched aclip that was talking about
mentors often being from outsideof our communities.
But this woman was saying, but we actually do need mentors from
outside of our communities when we're talking about work,
(07:38):
because 70% of your trajectory in work has to do with the
relationships that you build andthe proximities that you have to
other people. And she was saying that because
so few leadership positions in our workforce are still to this
day led by Black people, if we rely only on Black folk people,
(08:00):
mentors within our networks at work, then we sometimes actually
cut ourselves off from the network opportunities that we
need. And so she was actually making a
case for that within our work communities, we often do need to
seek mentors to be outside of our race because we and that
that, and she was telling the people who are outside of race
they need to be mentors because it's a responsibility for us to
(08:20):
createspace so that people can ascend.
So. Oh, that's interesting.
You know what it reminds me of? Remember I used to be the park
Ranger. Used to be a park Ranger.
Y'all laughed. At so that's a seriously no job.
Oh yeah, maybe uniform everything.
At the Martin Luther King Centerfor Social Justice in Atlanta.
Shout out to Atlanta. And one of the things like when
(08:43):
we were studying all the talkingpoints was giving tours of the
birth of Martin Luther King's birth home.
One of the talking points was that like right there on Auburn
Ave. that it was black people ofall different stations in life
and all different classes and all different levels of
education all living on the sameSt.
Because on one side it was all shotgun houses.
On other side, it was like thesereally big, big, like stately
(09:04):
houses. And so Doctor King grew up with
like the head of the school system next door doctor on the
other side. But then he had plumbers, he had
electricians, he had everything.So a kid growing up on that
street really could get mentoredfrom a career perspective
because segregation, right? But after segregation, the
(09:24):
doctors, the lawyers, the schooldistrict people moved to the
white neighborhoods and there really is not proximity to, to
like high earning jobs because once you make that money and you
can, you aspire to the greatest,you know, in quotes, then a lot
of people think that that is outside of our community.
And so it, you know, it's a complex topic, but I really like
(09:46):
it. And then the last thing I'd love
to say, Vanessa, is I'd love to introduce the concept of
apprenticeship because I, I think that is maybe another lane
too. You know, you have a role model
who is your right from a distance aspirational.
You have a mentor who's side by side helping you navigate and,
and an apprenticeship is really about upskilling, like really
(10:06):
mastering the skills, like working side by side with
someone so that you master the skills.
I saw this young girl who was sewing with her auntie and she
was just paying close attention and I was just like, it's so
beautiful to see this kind of hand off so.
So yeah, that's such a good one.No, I love that edition.
That's so good. And it's important because and
(10:28):
Renata kind of framed some of these statistics on yesterday's
episode. But I want to re emphasize here
that black girls are 6 times more likely to be suspended than
white girls. Morgan, 40% of black girls in
high school say they've considered suicide. 40% of Black
(10:49):
girls say they rarely or never feel seen or heard by adults in
their lives. Less than 20% say they have a
mentor that they trust. And yet, on the flip side, the
CDC lists mentorship as a protective factor for youth
mental health, especially for youth of color facing systemic
(11:11):
stressors. And so it literally is a life
saving skill to become a mentor to somebody.
And I actually want to bring in this interview.
It's 3 minutes long, y'all. So I hope that the sun is
kissing your skin. I hope you're outside.
And we're going to just hear from some mentors and some girls
from a program called Stars who talk about the intricacies of
(11:32):
what mentorship is doing in their lives.
So let's listen. Mentorship is so important for
black and brown women because wehave to.
See ourselves. In a different light, and for me
it was really important because I didn't really grow up seeing a
lot of positive influences outside of TV in my community
and it meant the world to me. When I did.
(11:54):
Find mentors who look like me. That could share the.
Experiences that I had understood where I was coming
from and allowed me to blossom in my amazingness.
I met Miss Londo 3 years ago when I was unfortunately in a
situation that caused me to moveout the house and I needed
somebody who was going to be somebody that was there for me.
(12:19):
She became family and after thatI just been with her ever since.
We do a lot. Just recently we had
Thanksgiving dinner and she cameover to help me cook.
But other things that we've done, we've been on trips to the
college tour, introducing her toeducational and career
opportunities. We have been on different
activities such as going to the movies and just spending quality
(12:41):
time together. It was so important for me to
mentor girls in the Black and brown community because I come
in from a place of lack of resources, not seeing Black
excellence in my community, especially and women.
I just wanted to be that representation and I wish that I
had that when I was younger. And so me being able to be in
that position and just helping somebody, and I'm a woman of
(13:02):
color, it's powerful to dynamic the.
Best thing I would say about having the mentor is someone
like that could relate to you orknows the struggles that you've
gone through. Alex understands me the same
because we've gone through some of the same struggles about
being the same color and how it had affected our life.
(13:23):
Representation matters and kind of piggybacking off of what she
said earlier, kind of having someone that you could relate to
and just having that sort of representation is really
important. A challenge that often comes up
when working with a mentee, a lot of times at the beginning is
getting them to open up to you and trust you in the 1st place.
Building that trust with your mentee is kind of a challenge,
(13:44):
but once you get that trust thenit's it's really nice.
As for my past experiences, I'm not much of a person who will
open up and tell you about my emotions, so having my mentor is
someone I trust and so I open uplike more.
To my mentor, mentorship for me helped guide me when I didn't
(14:06):
have the money to afford counseling or therapy.
That mentorship step right in and assisted me and along my
journey when I was having struggles, when I didn't
understand academically, when I wanted to give up, my mentor
pushed me and assisted me and onhow to adjust just different
things in my life so that I can continue to stay focused and
reach my goal. First of all, there is something
(14:28):
about the voices of those young girls that just reminded me so
much of my own self. And I didn't, I was trying to
think about this. I was like, who were the mentors
in my own life growing up? And I had some women like who
just really saw me and really modeled for me.
(14:49):
And I wanted to lift up. I was going to ask you who was
some of your mentors at the beginning of this episode?
But you, you named right off thebat, Miss Martha.
So I just want to uplift Miss Martha.
And maybe there's another mentorwhose name you want to lift up
right now. But I was thinking about this
woman, God rest her soul, her name was Murphy Rain.
If you're from Seattle, y'all, maybe you remember Murphy Rain,
but Murphy Rain Morgan originally started the drill
(15:11):
team that I was involved in and she was older at the time.
I was young, so I don't know howold Murphy was like in her 50s
or 60s or something, but I remember 1, she was kind of fly
for her age and like I just was like, I really admired how like
she moved, how she put herself together.
And then two, she was really dedicated to us and she did
something that really changed mylife.
(15:32):
The very first trip, it was actually the second trip I took
out of the state of Washington because my first trip was go see
Smitty in Houston. But my second trip ever out of
the state of Washington, I came here, Morgan to the DMV.
We landed at the Baltimore airport and it was Murphy who
took me there. She brought me and my friend
Jennifer into A to a drill team competition.
(15:52):
And it was it changed my life because I thought from that
moment, I want to live on the East Coast.
I remember stepping off the plane.
I remember the humidity hitting me.
I remember the smell in the air.I remember seeing all of the
Black people, and it shifted to my understanding of the world as
a Black girl who had grown up inSeattle in a predominantly white
community. Even though I was in a Black
(16:12):
neighborhood there, it was a predominantly white community,
and I didn't even understand what it could look like or what
it could be for Black people to live and thrive in the way they
were doing in Maryland and in DCwhen we came here.
And I just was so overwhelmed bythe experience that from that
moment on, I had a totally different aspiration.
And it was because Mervy invested in me and took me on
(16:33):
that trip. It was just a small all thing,
but it meant so much to me in mylife.
So I just want to thank Murphy. And when we were listening to
that interview, I was just thinking, I know that there is a
woman who's going to be moved just by this conversation to
think about. And we're going to talk about
how you can become a mentor and how you can build the trust that
they talked about in that relationship in just a minute.
But I just, I'm just praying to God that a woman out there
(16:56):
connects with a little girl likeme to really help them.
I have 3 solidarity spotlights for this episode, but I want to
do 2 of them right now because they are both out of the city of
Chicago. And the first is someone from
our community who did follow that formal route, Coach Robin.
And Coach Robin is a longtime organizer in the girl trip
community, and she started taking girls out, walking and
(17:19):
mentoring them trekkers and training.
And it was just Coach Robin having a belief and a vision
around young girls needing mentors and how The Walking and
mentoring on the trail could be really effective extension of
what she had already learned around being an organizer and
girl trek. So I just want to uplift Coach
Robin on this episode. And then the second person I
want to uplift. I don't know if you recall
(17:40):
meeting her, but we both met herbecause she was a part of the
Asena retail program that we were involved in.
And her name is Kelly Fair, and Kelly is a home girl.
You can check her out on Instagram.
But she's the founder of Polished Pebbles and they're a
mentorship organization based inChicago.
They've helped over 20,000 Blackand brown girls build
communication skills and confidence and career pathways.
(18:02):
And so I just want to uplift Kelly and Coach Robin both out
of Chicago, doing amazing work around mentorship.
I do remember. Her.
Yeah, I do remember her, ma'am. We've had such a storied
experience. Yes, and we've learnt, we've got
had the pleasure to learn from so many people.
And I just remember thinking wow, this woman, I just remember
(18:23):
immediately thinking some peopleare like called into their
purpose and she was really called into that purpose in a
really beautiful way. Some statistics, Morgan, some
additional statistics. Young adults who have had a
mentor are 55% more likely to enroll in college.
They are 78% more likely to volunteer themselves regularly,
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twice as likely to end up holding a leadership position,
46% less likely to use drugs, 27% less likely to begin
drinking alcohol, and 53% less likely to skip school.
But the benefits Morgan, they flow the other way as well.
Studies have shown that mentors themselves have higher life
(19:07):
satisfaction, have an increased sense of purpose, have lower
rates of burnout, especially in high stress fields, and they
have strengthened leadership andcommunication skills when they
themselves become a mentor. So those are just some more some
encouragement around there. So I want to give another shout
(19:28):
out here. In 1896, y'all two of the most
powerful Black women's clubs in the United States.
One was led by a woman named Josephine St.
Pierre Ruffin and the other was led by a woman named Mary Church
Terrell. And they merged to form, This is
the predecessors to the precursors to Girl Trek.
(19:50):
They merged to form the NationalAssociation of Colored Women,
which is still going strong today.
At a time when black people werebarely one generation out of
slavery and that and when white suffrages were actively
excluding them, they decided to form their own clubs, and Mary
Church Terrell coined the model of their club lifting as we
(20:11):
climb. And she said, we are lifting as
we climb. Onward and upward we go,
struggling and striving and hoping that the buds and the
blossoms of our desires will burst into glorious fruition ere
long. So I love that quote, lifting as
we climb. I just want to shout out and
just uplift Mary Church Terrell because the glorious fruition,
(20:33):
she said of her dreams. I was like, that is girl trek.
We are the glorious fruition. And I'm so proud of us for
continuing to lift as we climb. So you.
Did you did such a beautiful episode of her on Black history
boot camp? Mary Church Terrell?
I encourage people if you be if if you be tweaking a little bit
after the after self-care school, you like I got to listen
(20:54):
to something else. Go listen to that episode of
Mary Church Terrell. And now want to just uplift
another mentor in my own life. He's legendary in the California
streets, Southern California streets, especially the UCLA
community. It's Benny Blades.
I was a young freshman college student in California trying to
(21:15):
navigate and I, I just was struggling so bad, y'all.
I was trying to be out in the streets, trying to be out
partying, trying to figure out how I pay for stuff, working a
full time job. And Benny, very early on, Morgan
got a hold of me and he was justlike, all things are possible.
And this UCLAUCLA community, it's going to be your community.
He was for a long time the president of the UCLA Black
(21:36):
Alumni Association. And he poured into me so much
for me to even believe that it could be possible for me to be a
part of that community. And it wasn't just me.
Benny has legendarily been a guidance counselor at Santa
Monica Community College and he has mentored.
So he mentored Tasha Han, one ofmy closest friends, and he just
poured into us. He threw the best parties.
(21:57):
He did. We did the Mammoth ski trip and
he really built community in theuse of the Black Alumni
Association. And shout out to all the Black
alumni associations at PWIS who are helping to kids to navigate.
They do such a beautiful job, including hosting an incoming
week before school starts for all of us to actually come, all
of the black students to actually come on campus so that
(22:19):
we can help to get acclimated. And I want to especially lift up
that work right now because it'sthe work that is intentionally
under attack with the DEI conversations that are happening
in higher education. That and in fact, a lot of
schools this year, Morgan last lost their ability and their
funding for the separate graduations that they were
having for black students. But at UCLA, that black student
(22:39):
graduation meant almost more than the other graduation for
the regular, regular graduation.Yes.
So there's some. That's such a good example.
Thank you for bringing that intothe conversation.
The conversation. Now I want to teach Morgan.
There's a really popular best practice framework out there
around mentorship. It's called the 4C's of
mentorship. And I want to share it with
(23:01):
everyone out there because this is where right now, today, you
can picture a young girl in yourecosystem, picture a young girl
who could use some encouragement, could use a
conversation like the one we just had.
And there's four things that we should all practice in terms of
mentorship, the 4C's of mentorship.
(23:23):
The first is connection. It means to build trust and
safety. And what that can look like is
consistency. A consistent call, a weekly
shared walk, a weekly place to connect, whether it's weekly or
monthly. But building trust and safety
through consistent connection with a young person in your life
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is one of the first C's to mentorship.
The next C is clarity. Set expectations and goals.
Be clear upfront. Here's what I can offer and
here's what I cannot. It protects the both of you.
I talked about this a little biton the episode when we were
talking about parenting advice, Morgan, my experience of being a
(24:07):
big sister in the Big Brother Big Sister program.
And I didn't have those expectations or that clarity in
the beginning of the relationship and it caused the
relationship to unravel. But now I understand that I
could have just been super clearat the beginning around what I
could offer and it doesn't have to be overwhelming.
So the first C was connection, and that's the second C was
(24:30):
clarity. The third C was compassion, and
the fourth C is commitment. It means that you consistently
show up even when you have thosetough conversations.
It means sometimes that you can even give it space to breathe
and then come back to it. It's about the rhythm.
It's about not ghosting people and just being real.
So commitment is the last C for mentorship.
(24:50):
I love that. So after you're practicing the
four CS, here's some guidelines and boundaries for us all to
consider in terms of how we can show up so that we are really
helping to guide but not overpowering The Loveland
Foundation. Morgan, they put out a study and
they said over 65% of Black women who served as mentors said
(25:11):
that they themselves lacked the space to process their own
emotions while supporting others.
And this a little bit goes to the conversation we were having
yesterday about the savior complex, right?
And about just understanding howwe can show up for somebody, but
that we cannot carry somebody else's healing.
And so that's not what mentorship could be.
(25:33):
And so I, I'm calling this the lighthouse method.
It's how we can be a lighthouse to somebody, but not necessary a
lifeline. A lighthouse lights the way they
show the path, but they also provide opportunity for that
person to show up as their very best self.
And so I've created what I call 5 practices to help people so
(25:54):
that they can exactly be that, so that they can be that
lighthouse. And the first practice is to
stand still. And what does that mean?
It means you don't chase, you model.
The second practice is to shine steady, to keep your word and to
be a mirror, to keep your word and to be a mirror.
(26:17):
That's for me, it's shining steady.
The third thing is don't drown. Protect your own peace.
Make sure that you yourself, when you have a mentee, are
having a person that you can process what you are
experiencing. Have a person that you can talk
through things with. The next practice is really
important is to trust her vesselor his vessel, even if you're
(26:41):
going to mentee a young man, to trust that they can steer their
own ship, to trust that they canmake choices, that they can mess
up and that they will rise again.
So don't hijack their journey. And then that last practice is
to really live and speak in truth, to name when things are
hard, to name when things are uncomfortable, and to name what
(27:03):
you are experiencing. I was reading, Morgan, that one
of the biggest mistakes that mentors make is that they
themselves are not authenticallysharing their own hurdles and
their own challenges with their mentee because they're trying to
create or present some sort of facade that is very polished and
very like, this is what I want you to aspire to.
But actually, the best mentorship relationships are the
(27:25):
honesty of you opening up the bill to say this is what it
really looks like in my own lifeand in my own experience while
I'm guiding you. And then that actually is a good
transition into the last solidarity spotlight that I have
for today. It is an organization called
Brown Girl's Dream. It's an intergenerational
mentorship network for young Black women navigating media and
(27:48):
life and legacy. All right, y'all, thank you for
walking with us. Thank you for being in community
with us. We're going to close out this
walk with a little bit of celebration, a little bit of
powerful words, and see you tomorrow.
I know about Community. Roslyn Cash and Rosalind Cash
was a strong woman of spirit anda wise woman.
(28:11):
And when I was 16 years old, I met her in Jamaica.
We had this big Film Festival. She said, what do you want to
be? And I said, I want to be a great
actress. She said.
All right. All through.
College, you know, she was thereto support me.
Virginia Capers, when I was chosen as one of the top 10
(28:33):
college women by Glamour magazine.
We had to meet a woman that was making it in the field that you
wanted to to pursue. And I met her and she had just
won the Tony for Raisin. She met me.
She stayed with me until she died.
(28:54):
Sidney Poitier, my first movie piece of the action, you said,
Shirley Ralph, I expect great things from you.
And Maya Angelou looked at me and said about me.
Cheryl Lee, Ralph. When I.
Hear you speak. It makes everything I have gone
through worth it. I know about community.
(29:19):
Why do I spend so much time giving back?
Why do I spend so much time working with the community?
Why do I spend so much time sharing the knowledge?
That I have. 'Cause somebody did it for me.
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 trains. They'll need ideas one.
Thing 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.
(01:02):
Welcome to self-care School everybody.
Sorry I wasn't ready for this episode but I'm ready y'all.
Welcome to self-care School is aweek 10 day 2 it is teaching
Tuesday. We are excited to learn life
saving skills. Listen, if this is your 10th
week, congratulations y'all. If this your first day,
congratulations. Either way you are welcome.
(01:25):
Here we are girl Trek. We are a million strong.
We are marching toward our health, this most fulfilled life
together in solidarity. You belong here.
Consult your doctor. All of that, all of that, y'all,
this celebration week, we're so excited.
Let's get started. We start as we always do, by
going out on our front porch forall solutions.
Start on black women's front porches.
We are the daughters of And Vanessa, I love what you said.
(01:50):
We are the sisters of. It actually makes much more
sense to say that for today, we are the sisters of Ruby Bridges.
We are the sisters of Ruby. Shout out to Ruby Bridges who is
still alive and vital with us today.
If you don't know Ruby Bridges name, maybe you are young.
Maybe this is before your time. She was a pivotal figure in the
(02:11):
American Civil Rights movement. In 1960, at just six years old,
she became the first black childto integrate an all white
elementary school. It was in New Orleans, LA.
She was escorted by federal marshals amid intense protests
(02:31):
and threats to this baby's life.Ruby Bridges like quiet bravery,
and her posture and her confidence inspired and awed the
world. The news couldn't get enough of
her. Photographers, painters, artists
through time have made beautifulpaintings of her.
Her courage and dignity under pressure has helped pave the way
(02:53):
for how we have fought for our civil rights and our freedom.
So listen, today we're going to do something to help us with our
balance. I want you to stand flat footed
and we're going to do something called alternate nostril
breathing. And essentially you're going to
close one of your nostrils, yourso raise your right hand up.
You're going to close your rightnostril with your thumb.
(03:18):
Just do that and you're gonna breathe with your left.
Hopefully, if you're not congested, you're gonna breathe
and then you're gonna use your ring finger.
You're gonna lift up your thumb off your right nostril and
you're gonna use your ring finger to close your left
nostril. OK, I'm just giving you those
explicit instructions because we're gonna have one of our
sisters at Afro Yoga Queen. She's on Instagram.
(03:40):
I found her to be really compelling and she's going to
guide us through this meditation.
It's just about a minute and it's it's opposite nostril
breathing. So she'll guide us through and
give us the instructions again. Here we go.
Our bodies are made to balance themselves out, so if you're
feeling a little off balance today, you can start or restart
your day with balance. Let's do some breath.
(04:01):
Take your right hand, bend your peace fingers, so your peace
fingers in towards your wrist. Because our ring finger is our
earth finger. It connects to our balance when
we balance in relationship to the earth that holds us up.
So you have your hand position here, you have your thumb, you
(04:23):
have your ring finger available.close the thumb side, inhale in
through the ring finger side. Pause at the top, close the ring
finger side. Exhale out through the thumb
side. Pause at the bottom, Keep your
(04:44):
hand here, Inhale in through thethumb side.
Pause at the top, close thumb side, exhale out ring finger
side. Keep your hand here.
Pause. Inhale in through ring finger
(05:04):
side. close ring finger side. Exhale out through thumb side.
Oh that last exhale felt good. I hope y'all feel imbalanced.
Shake it off. You can rewind that anytime and
find your balance. Let's go to the driveway for our
audit. Are you there?
(05:25):
VI am here. Thank you for that, y'all in
your driveway. We're going to do just a few
quick questions to get us grounded for this episode.
We are going to today learn two life saving skills.
We are going to learn how to become a mentor and we're going
to learn how to create boundaries within that
mentorship so that we are becoming a lighthouse and not a
(05:48):
lifeline. And before we do that, I'm going
to ask you a few questions. The 1st, and this is a step
forward. Step back.
Like always, if you model self-care in a way that your
daughter, your niece, or a mentee could imitate, take a
step forward. If you have thought about being
a mentor to a girl in need or a role model, but haven't acted on
(06:11):
your thought, take a step back. If you've taken time in the last
week to have a conversation witha young person about the current
political climate and what's happening on the news, take a
step forward. If you have a mentor in your
life who has helped to guide you, take a step forward.
(06:35):
If you do not have a friendship with one woman at least 10 years
older than you, take a step back.
If you have a friendship with one woman at least 10 years
younger than you, take a step forward.
All right, y'all look around, see where you're at.
(06:56):
Mentors create intentional connection, they give feedback,
they have presents and they create intentional time.
So that's a little bit different.
And already in our families, we have nieces, we have little
cousins, we have people who we can be mentors to and not just
(07:17):
role models because we can have closer relationships with them
at work. Morgan, we can find younger
black women and we can give themadvice.
One of the things I, I watched aclip that was talking about
mentors often being from outsideof our communities.
But this woman was saying, but we actually do need mentors from
outside of our communities when we're talking about work,
(07:38):
because 70% of your trajectory in work has to do with the
relationships that you build andthe proximities that you have to
other people. And she was saying that because
so few leadership positions in our workforce are still to this
day led by Black people, if we rely only on Black folk people,
(08:00):
mentors within our networks at work, then we sometimes actually
cut ourselves off from the network opportunities that we
need. And so she was actually making a
case for that within our work communities, we often do need to
seek mentors to be outside of our race because we and that
that, and she was telling the people who are outside of race
they need to be mentors because it's a responsibility for us to
(08:20):
createspace so that people can ascend.
So. Oh, that's interesting.
You know what it reminds me of? Remember I used to be the park
Ranger. Used to be a park Ranger.
Y'all laughed. At so that's a seriously no job.
Oh yeah, maybe uniform everything.
At the Martin Luther King Centerfor Social Justice in Atlanta.
Shout out to Atlanta. And one of the things like when
(08:43):
we were studying all the talkingpoints was giving tours of the
birth of Martin Luther King's birth home.
One of the talking points was that like right there on Auburn
Ave. that it was black people ofall different stations in life
and all different classes and all different levels of
education all living on the sameSt.
Because on one side it was all shotgun houses.
On other side, it was like thesereally big, big, like stately
(09:04):
houses. And so Doctor King grew up with
like the head of the school system next door doctor on the
other side. But then he had plumbers, he had
electricians, he had everything.So a kid growing up on that
street really could get mentoredfrom a career perspective
because segregation, right? But after segregation, the
(09:24):
doctors, the lawyers, the schooldistrict people moved to the
white neighborhoods and there really is not proximity to, to
like high earning jobs because once you make that money and you
can, you aspire to the greatest,you know, in quotes, then a lot
of people think that that is outside of our community.
And so it, you know, it's a complex topic, but I really like
(09:46):
it. And then the last thing I'd love
to say, Vanessa, is I'd love to introduce the concept of
apprenticeship because I, I think that is maybe another lane
too. You know, you have a role model
who is your right from a distance aspirational.
You have a mentor who's side by side helping you navigate and,
and an apprenticeship is really about upskilling, like really
(10:06):
mastering the skills, like working side by side with
someone so that you master the skills.
I saw this young girl who was sewing with her auntie and she
was just paying close attention and I was just like, it's so
beautiful to see this kind of hand off so.
So yeah, that's such a good one.No, I love that edition.
That's so good. And it's important because and
(10:28):
Renata kind of framed some of these statistics on yesterday's
episode. But I want to re emphasize here
that black girls are 6 times more likely to be suspended than
white girls. Morgan, 40% of black girls in
high school say they've considered suicide. 40% of Black
(10:49):
girls say they rarely or never feel seen or heard by adults in
their lives. Less than 20% say they have a
mentor that they trust. And yet, on the flip side, the
CDC lists mentorship as a protective factor for youth
mental health, especially for youth of color facing systemic
(11:11):
stressors. And so it literally is a life
saving skill to become a mentor to somebody.
And I actually want to bring in this interview.
It's 3 minutes long, y'all. So I hope that the sun is
kissing your skin. I hope you're outside.
And we're going to just hear from some mentors and some girls
from a program called Stars who talk about the intricacies of
(11:32):
what mentorship is doing in their lives.
So let's listen. Mentorship is so important for
black and brown women because wehave to.
See ourselves. In a different light, and for me
it was really important because I didn't really grow up seeing a
lot of positive influences outside of TV in my community
and it meant the world to me. When I did.
(11:54):
Find mentors who look like me. That could share the.
Experiences that I had understood where I was coming
from and allowed me to blossom in my amazingness.
I met Miss Londo 3 years ago when I was unfortunately in a
situation that caused me to moveout the house and I needed
somebody who was going to be somebody that was there for me.
(12:19):
She became family and after thatI just been with her ever since.
We do a lot. Just recently we had
Thanksgiving dinner and she cameover to help me cook.
But other things that we've done, we've been on trips to the
college tour, introducing her toeducational and career
opportunities. We have been on different
activities such as going to the movies and just spending quality
(12:41):
time together. It was so important for me to
mentor girls in the Black and brown community because I come
in from a place of lack of resources, not seeing Black
excellence in my community, especially and women.
I just wanted to be that representation and I wish that I
had that when I was younger. And so me being able to be in
that position and just helping somebody, and I'm a woman of
(13:02):
color, it's powerful to dynamic the.
Best thing I would say about having the mentor is someone
like that could relate to you orknows the struggles that you've
gone through. Alex understands me the same
because we've gone through some of the same struggles about
being the same color and how it had affected our life.
(13:23):
Representation matters and kind of piggybacking off of what she
said earlier, kind of having someone that you could relate to
and just having that sort of representation is really
important. A challenge that often comes up
when working with a mentee, a lot of times at the beginning is
getting them to open up to you and trust you in the 1st place.
Building that trust with your mentee is kind of a challenge,
(13:44):
but once you get that trust thenit's it's really nice.
As for my past experiences, I'm not much of a person who will
open up and tell you about my emotions, so having my mentor is
someone I trust and so I open uplike more.
To my mentor, mentorship for me helped guide me when I didn't
(14:06):
have the money to afford counseling or therapy.
That mentorship step right in and assisted me and along my
journey when I was having struggles, when I didn't
understand academically, when I wanted to give up, my mentor
pushed me and assisted me and onhow to adjust just different
things in my life so that I can continue to stay focused and
reach my goal. First of all, there is something
(14:28):
about the voices of those young girls that just reminded me so
much of my own self. And I didn't, I was trying to
think about this. I was like, who were the mentors
in my own life growing up? And I had some women like who
just really saw me and really modeled for me.
(14:49):
And I wanted to lift up. I was going to ask you who was
some of your mentors at the beginning of this episode?
But you, you named right off thebat, Miss Martha.
So I just want to uplift Miss Martha.
And maybe there's another mentorwhose name you want to lift up
right now. But I was thinking about this
woman, God rest her soul, her name was Murphy Rain.
If you're from Seattle, y'all, maybe you remember Murphy Rain,
but Murphy Rain Morgan originally started the drill
(15:11):
team that I was involved in and she was older at the time.
I was young, so I don't know howold Murphy was like in her 50s
or 60s or something, but I remember 1, she was kind of fly
for her age and like I just was like, I really admired how like
she moved, how she put herself together.
And then two, she was really dedicated to us and she did
something that really changed mylife.
(15:32):
The very first trip, it was actually the second trip I took
out of the state of Washington because my first trip was go see
Smitty in Houston. But my second trip ever out of
the state of Washington, I came here, Morgan to the DMV.
We landed at the Baltimore airport and it was Murphy who
took me there. She brought me and my friend
Jennifer into A to a drill team competition.
(15:52):
And it was it changed my life because I thought from that
moment, I want to live on the East Coast.
I remember stepping off the plane.
I remember the humidity hitting me.
I remember the smell in the air.I remember seeing all of the
Black people, and it shifted to my understanding of the world as
a Black girl who had grown up inSeattle in a predominantly white
community. Even though I was in a Black
(16:12):
neighborhood there, it was a predominantly white community,
and I didn't even understand what it could look like or what
it could be for Black people to live and thrive in the way they
were doing in Maryland and in DCwhen we came here.
And I just was so overwhelmed bythe experience that from that
moment on, I had a totally different aspiration.
And it was because Mervy invested in me and took me on
(16:33):
that trip. It was just a small all thing,
but it meant so much to me in mylife.
So I just want to thank Murphy. And when we were listening to
that interview, I was just thinking, I know that there is a
woman who's going to be moved just by this conversation to
think about. And we're going to talk about
how you can become a mentor and how you can build the trust that
they talked about in that relationship in just a minute.
But I just, I'm just praying to God that a woman out there
(16:56):
connects with a little girl likeme to really help them.
I have 3 solidarity spotlights for this episode, but I want to
do 2 of them right now because they are both out of the city of
Chicago. And the first is someone from
our community who did follow that formal route, Coach Robin.
And Coach Robin is a longtime organizer in the girl trip
community, and she started taking girls out, walking and
(17:19):
mentoring them trekkers and training.
And it was just Coach Robin having a belief and a vision
around young girls needing mentors and how The Walking and
mentoring on the trail could be really effective extension of
what she had already learned around being an organizer and
girl trek. So I just want to uplift Coach
Robin on this episode. And then the second person I
want to uplift. I don't know if you recall
(17:40):
meeting her, but we both met herbecause she was a part of the
Asena retail program that we were involved in.
And her name is Kelly Fair, and Kelly is a home girl.
You can check her out on Instagram.
But she's the founder of Polished Pebbles and they're a
mentorship organization based inChicago.
They've helped over 20,000 Blackand brown girls build
communication skills and confidence and career pathways.
(18:02):
And so I just want to uplift Kelly and Coach Robin both out
of Chicago, doing amazing work around mentorship.
I do remember. Her.
Yeah, I do remember her, ma'am. We've had such a storied
experience. Yes, and we've learnt, we've got
had the pleasure to learn from so many people.
And I just remember thinking wow, this woman, I just remember
(18:23):
immediately thinking some peopleare like called into their
purpose and she was really called into that purpose in a
really beautiful way. Some statistics, Morgan, some
additional statistics. Young adults who have had a
mentor are 55% more likely to enroll in college.
They are 78% more likely to volunteer themselves regularly,
(18:45):
twice as likely to end up holding a leadership position,
46% less likely to use drugs, 27% less likely to begin
drinking alcohol, and 53% less likely to skip school.
But the benefits Morgan, they flow the other way as well.
Studies have shown that mentors themselves have higher life
(19:07):
satisfaction, have an increased sense of purpose, have lower
rates of burnout, especially in high stress fields, and they
have strengthened leadership andcommunication skills when they
themselves become a mentor. So those are just some more some
encouragement around there. So I want to give another shout
(19:28):
out here. In 1896, y'all two of the most
powerful Black women's clubs in the United States.
One was led by a woman named Josephine St.
Pierre Ruffin and the other was led by a woman named Mary Church
Terrell. And they merged to form, This is
the predecessors to the precursors to Girl Trek.
(19:50):
They merged to form the NationalAssociation of Colored Women,
which is still going strong today.
At a time when black people werebarely one generation out of
slavery and that and when white suffrages were actively
excluding them, they decided to form their own clubs, and Mary
Church Terrell coined the model of their club lifting as we
(20:11):
climb. And she said, we are lifting as
we climb. Onward and upward we go,
struggling and striving and hoping that the buds and the
blossoms of our desires will burst into glorious fruition ere
long. So I love that quote, lifting as
we climb. I just want to shout out and
just uplift Mary Church Terrell because the glorious fruition,
(20:33):
she said of her dreams. I was like, that is girl trek.
We are the glorious fruition. And I'm so proud of us for
continuing to lift as we climb. So you.
Did you did such a beautiful episode of her on Black history
boot camp? Mary Church Terrell?
I encourage people if you be if if you be tweaking a little bit
after the after self-care school, you like I got to listen
(20:54):
to something else. Go listen to that episode of
Mary Church Terrell. And now want to just uplift
another mentor in my own life. He's legendary in the California
streets, Southern California streets, especially the UCLA
community. It's Benny Blades.
I was a young freshman college student in California trying to
(21:15):
navigate and I, I just was struggling so bad, y'all.
I was trying to be out in the streets, trying to be out
partying, trying to figure out how I pay for stuff, working a
full time job. And Benny, very early on, Morgan
got a hold of me and he was justlike, all things are possible.
And this UCLAUCLA community, it's going to be your community.
He was for a long time the president of the UCLA Black
(21:36):
Alumni Association. And he poured into me so much
for me to even believe that it could be possible for me to be a
part of that community. And it wasn't just me.
Benny has legendarily been a guidance counselor at Santa
Monica Community College and he has mentored.
So he mentored Tasha Han, one ofmy closest friends, and he just
poured into us. He threw the best parties.
(21:57):
He did. We did the Mammoth ski trip and
he really built community in theuse of the Black Alumni
Association. And shout out to all the Black
alumni associations at PWIS who are helping to kids to navigate.
They do such a beautiful job, including hosting an incoming
week before school starts for all of us to actually come, all
of the black students to actually come on campus so that
(22:19):
we can help to get acclimated. And I want to especially lift up
that work right now because it'sthe work that is intentionally
under attack with the DEI conversations that are happening
in higher education. That and in fact, a lot of
schools this year, Morgan last lost their ability and their
funding for the separate graduations that they were
having for black students. But at UCLA, that black student
(22:39):
graduation meant almost more than the other graduation for
the regular, regular graduation.Yes.
So there's some. That's such a good example.
Thank you for bringing that intothe conversation.
The conversation. Now I want to teach Morgan.
There's a really popular best practice framework out there
around mentorship. It's called the 4C's of
mentorship. And I want to share it with
(23:01):
everyone out there because this is where right now, today, you
can picture a young girl in yourecosystem, picture a young girl
who could use some encouragement, could use a
conversation like the one we just had.
And there's four things that we should all practice in terms of
mentorship, the 4C's of mentorship.
(23:23):
The first is connection. It means to build trust and
safety. And what that can look like is
consistency. A consistent call, a weekly
shared walk, a weekly place to connect, whether it's weekly or
monthly. But building trust and safety
through consistent connection with a young person in your life
(23:46):
is one of the first C's to mentorship.
The next C is clarity. Set expectations and goals.
Be clear upfront. Here's what I can offer and
here's what I cannot. It protects the both of you.
I talked about this a little biton the episode when we were
talking about parenting advice, Morgan, my experience of being a
(24:07):
big sister in the Big Brother Big Sister program.
And I didn't have those expectations or that clarity in
the beginning of the relationship and it caused the
relationship to unravel. But now I understand that I
could have just been super clearat the beginning around what I
could offer and it doesn't have to be overwhelming.
So the first C was connection, and that's the second C was
(24:30):
clarity. The third C was compassion, and
the fourth C is commitment. It means that you consistently
show up even when you have thosetough conversations.
It means sometimes that you can even give it space to breathe
and then come back to it. It's about the rhythm.
It's about not ghosting people and just being real.
So commitment is the last C for mentorship.
(24:50):
I love that. So after you're practicing the
four CS, here's some guidelines and boundaries for us all to
consider in terms of how we can show up so that we are really
helping to guide but not overpowering The Loveland
Foundation. Morgan, they put out a study and
they said over 65% of Black women who served as mentors said
(25:11):
that they themselves lacked the space to process their own
emotions while supporting others.
And this a little bit goes to the conversation we were having
yesterday about the savior complex, right?
And about just understanding howwe can show up for somebody, but
that we cannot carry somebody else's healing.
And so that's not what mentorship could be.
(25:33):
And so I, I'm calling this the lighthouse method.
It's how we can be a lighthouse to somebody, but not necessary a
lifeline. A lighthouse lights the way they
show the path, but they also provide opportunity for that
person to show up as their very best self.
And so I've created what I call 5 practices to help people so
(25:54):
that they can exactly be that, so that they can be that
lighthouse. And the first practice is to
stand still. And what does that mean?
It means you don't chase, you model.
The second practice is to shine steady, to keep your word and to
be a mirror, to keep your word and to be a mirror.
(26:17):
That's for me, it's shining steady.
The third thing is don't drown. Protect your own peace.
Make sure that you yourself, when you have a mentee, are
having a person that you can process what you are
experiencing. Have a person that you can talk
through things with. The next practice is really
important is to trust her vesselor his vessel, even if you're
(26:41):
going to mentee a young man, to trust that they can steer their
own ship, to trust that they canmake choices, that they can mess
up and that they will rise again.
So don't hijack their journey. And then that last practice is
to really live and speak in truth, to name when things are
hard, to name when things are uncomfortable, and to name what
(27:03):
you are experiencing. I was reading, Morgan, that one
of the biggest mistakes that mentors make is that they
themselves are not authenticallysharing their own hurdles and
their own challenges with their mentee because they're trying to
create or present some sort of facade that is very polished and
very like, this is what I want you to aspire to.
But actually, the best mentorship relationships are the
(27:25):
honesty of you opening up the bill to say this is what it
really looks like in my own lifeand in my own experience while
I'm guiding you. And then that actually is a good
transition into the last solidarity spotlight that I have
for today. It is an organization called
Brown Girl's Dream. It's an intergenerational
mentorship network for young Black women navigating media and
(27:48):
life and legacy. All right, y'all, thank you for
walking with us. Thank you for being in community
with us. We're going to close out this
walk with a little bit of celebration, a little bit of
powerful words, and see you tomorrow.
I know about Community. Roslyn Cash and Rosalind Cash
was a strong woman of spirit anda wise woman.
(28:11):
And when I was 16 years old, I met her in Jamaica.
We had this big Film Festival. She said, what do you want to
be? And I said, I want to be a great
actress. She said.
All right. All through.
College, you know, she was thereto support me.
Virginia Capers, when I was chosen as one of the top 10
(28:33):
college women by Glamour magazine.
We had to meet a woman that was making it in the field that you
wanted to to pursue. And I met her and she had just
won the Tony for Raisin. She met me.
She stayed with me until she died.
(28:54):
Sidney Poitier, my first movie piece of the action, you said,
Shirley Ralph, I expect great things from you.
And Maya Angelou looked at me and said about me.
Cheryl Lee, Ralph. When I.
Hear you speak. It makes everything I have gone
through worth it. I know about community.
(29:19):
Why do I spend so much time giving back?
Why do I spend so much time working with the community?
Why do I spend so much time sharing the knowledge?
That I have. 'Cause somebody did it for me.
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