S5E14: Elevating Black Voices

Juliette: . . . which speaking of food, Liese is my local and favorite foodie. She makes the best anything you can possibly imagine.

Liese: I personally think it's better when we tag team, but . . .

Juliette: We do love to tag team.

Harjit: I love a tag team.

Lina: I love it.

Harjit: Everything should be done together.

Juliette: Agreed.

Harjit: Love it.

Lina: Well, hello, everyone. Welcome back to "Bundle Of Hers." I'm very excited for this episode today. I'm here in the studio with Harjit. You all know her. You all love her. And with very two special guests. I'll just let our two guests introduce themselves.

Juliette: I'll go ahead and jump in. My name is Juliette Friedland. I am a native to Florida, but I've moved to Utah about two years ago. And so I work in healthcare. I'm a network manager for the state, specifically for the Medicare market. And that's a little bit about me.

Liese: My name is Liese Rodger, and I actually am from Southern California and I moved to Utah to go to school about 14 years ago. I thought it was just going to be a couple of years, get in, get out, but here I am. I don't work in healthcare, but I actually work within finance. Spent the last 11 years doing finance, and specifically, I am a commercial banker.

Harjit: I'm so excited.

Lina: Yeah. Thank you both for being here. The theme for today, we just wanted it to be a storytelling experience and just share your stories, your identities, and what you have to give us today.

Juliette: Liese, do you want to take that away first and I'll jump in after you?

Liese: Yeah. I mean, I think just as far as . . . When Juliette and I were discussing about what things to talk about, what was really important to us was telling our story, was telling black stories. Being able to learn about black figures, but I think also being able to, as a black person myself, understand how my story contributes to black history and how my present is going to be a part of history.

So as a black person, it's important to embrace the past, but as part of my identity, making sure that I'm making myself a part of that history as well.

Harjit: Liese, I really loved that you said that black history is your stories, the stories of black people and black individuals now. I think that's such an important point to bring up because a lot of times when we think of history, we think of the past, but everything is built upon the past and we are the present moment. And we're living in a world that is currently impacted by all of us.

So honestly, American history is built on the backbone of black people. So I am appreciative that you both are here to tell your stories. I think your voices shouldn't only be heard on this month. It should be heard all the time, every single day, because we know that this country would've never existed if it was not for black people. So we're so thankful you're here.

Juliette, could you tell us a little bit more about your experiences?

Juliette: I would say that mine are similar to Liese's, but at the same time, one thing that we really wanted to emphasize is that the black experience I think too often is painted kind of as a monolith. We are two different people. We do have two different backgrounds. And for me, it's been very interesting going from one side of the country to Utah.

And one thing that I'm hoping to really shed light on today is my experience and how it's changed being in Utah and what that looks like versus what it was like growing up, because it's a very stark difference. It's nice to be able to appreciate the successes, because I don't think that's something that we really got to talk about when I was growing up.

And I think there's also a lot of fixation on, I guess, making sure that we're kind of appeasing to the masses. Unfortunately, you lose a lot of successes and a lot of pain in that as well. You're kind of bulldozing both of those experiences. So it's been interesting to see change, I guess, as I've been in Utah versus Florida.

Harjit: Can you tell us a little bit more about that, Juliette?

Juliette: Absolutely. So in Florida, I'm obviously a very racially ambiguous-looking person. So out there, I think it was a little bit more of a safe space. Everybody is some kind of a person of color, some kind of POC. And so I think a lot of the differences I saw, especially when it came to my family dynamic, may have been with my mom versus my dad.

So there are certain areas in Florida that are still pretty segregated. It is still the south, but you see a difference in how my mom would be treated in areas that are predominantly Jewish versus areas that my dad couldn't really go that were predominantly black. But I always kind of had a pass everywhere I went. For the most part, though, it's much more culturally accepting.

So leaving that environment and coming back to the West Coast, I would've thought that that's something that would carry with me, especially leaving the South.

And then honestly, I think the first time I really was exposed to either blatant or overt, even covert, racism was in Arizona. And that was just kind of a shell shock.

So even going from that to Utah . . . because it's a different type of a storyline here. Arizona is a little bit more, like I said, overt with it. Utah, it's kind of more of a . . . I hate to say ignorance, but it really is. There's just a lot of lack of understanding, lack of knowledge. And it's very much a bubble, and that's so wild to me because Florida is not that way at all.

So Utah has been interesting because you see examples of in North Ogden where in 2021, they wanted to do the opt-out of Black History Month. I mean, the fact that you can choose to potentially opt out of an entire demographic of people, again, to appease the masses, what makes people feel more comfortable, you're getting kind of into that white fragility area. And that's, again, something I've never been exposed to.

I've been exposed to where it's been very brushed over, kind of similar to what Liese said. A lot of the education that I think we've had to do has either been from our own families or on our own maybe in college. It definitely wasn't from when we were growing up.

I don't know. Liese, what are your thoughts on that?

Liese: Yeah. I mean, I feel like my initial experience in Utah was a little bit different. I moved here to actually go to BYU. I'm not actively Mormon anymore, but I had transferred because I had joined the Church while I was in California. I moved to Utah and I thought that I was coming to BYU to "be with my people." And it was quite a slap in the face with some experiences that I had where I realized that I thought I was coming to be a part of a group, but realizing that I was not accepted at all within that group.

I've had some terrible things said to me, some things that I think made me very insecure throughout my 20s that . . . Yeah, it messed up a lot of things for me, dating-wise, even with friends. It was very, very difficult.

But I think over time, I've had to find who I am and really embrace who I am and make my identity what I make it versus what anyone else expects me to be. And I think that is what's really hard being a person of color in a predominantly white area, is the fact that you do need to assimilate. You can't be too much yourself. It's not acceptable. No matter how much people want to tell you that it is, it's not. Because when you are, they don't accept you.

I feel I need to be careful in how I word this. See, and here I am, I'm doing it again. I'm appealing to that. But part of that is understanding, I think, that people can be very quick and very defensive when they hear that, like, "No, no, no, I accept you. I know you for who you are." And the reality is most people don't.

Most people are not okay with you being loud about the things that are important, about being loud about the things that don't impact them that mostly impact you.

And so it has definitely been a wild ride going from feeling like I was fully accepted, but that meant abandoning who I was. So it was at the expense of myself. And then as I embraced myself, then I was abandoned by the people around me.

But I think in that journey, it's been a beautiful thing for me to find my tribe in a way. There are people that are in my life who are white who are so loving and supportive of me and they want to bring me out of me.

Yeah, I think that's what's been the biggest struggle, is being able to understand and know what are the places and the areas and the people that make it safe for me to be myself and for me to be unapologetically black. And understanding that I have to set this boundary for myself, that if you can't handle it or if you don't like it, that's your problem, not mine.

Harjit: Liese and Juliette, I just want to say that we talk a lot about identities and doing our best to be the full version of ourselves because it's the best for our health, but we also realize that environments aren't safe to do that. But it seems like you both had this journey of coming into your power. And I think that is very significant and beautiful.

And I just want to appreciate and recognize that, because I think it's difficult for people, especially in Utah, which is a predominantly white state, and also where I think psychologically everyone kind of goes into this mentality of, "We follow one another," rather than, "This is who we are. This is our uniqueness," just because I think it's culturally taught. It's really difficult sometimes to be here with that.

Lina: You both brought up really good points about finding that power when you do find the people that accept you for everything that you are, for everything that you identify with, and that you feel that you don't have to change yourself or change bits of yourself for. And that gives you power. That gives you love. That gives you a sense of, "Okay, I can be myself in those spaces." And we've definitely recognized kind of the importance of that in our communities.

Juliette: I definitely don't think it was something that happened overnight probably for either of us, and honestly, any of us actually. But I know with my personal experience, I remember having such a tie to my culture being young. And then when I felt I was kind of forced to strip myself from it, it's painful. Sometimes you don't realize how painful it is until you try to go back down the path of finding yourself.

And it's a beautiful process, like you said, but at the same time, I think you really realize just how traumatic what you've been through really was.

I remember when I first really started to want to straighten my hair, for example, a lot of the comments that you get with that, or just code-switching, in general. To Liese's point, especially when you're in a professional setting, there are certain things that just aren't professional.

And I do believe in the statement there's a time and a place. However, there are certain characteristics of being black that specifically are deemed unprofessional. And why are they unprofessional? Because they're different. Not necessarily because it's truly an unprofessional characteristic to have.

Even the first time I had my hair curly at work, I was sweating, and I ended up being right because the vice president of my company asked to touch my hair in the middle of an entire market staff meeting and proceeded to touch it anyway.

I mean, what are you going to do when you're a brand new employee, fresh out of school, and the vice president is, "Wow, what an intriguing hair you have"? It's very much demoralizing.

And then it makes you question . . . I don't know. Then even after that, that's a story in itself, but I had multiple comments I ended up getting from her. And it was so bad that . . .

A lot of the time, you don't see people of color go to HR. And actually, a lot of universities are even making platforms to combat that. I know that Penn is doing something similar, UCLA. The Ohio State created an anonymous platform as well to allow for different, either employees or patients within their medical center to be able to report when they do experience and see racist behavior.

A lot of people want to chop it up to, "Well, you have HR. Go talk to HR then." But there's fear of retaliation. There are a lot of different fears. If it comes back to your team . . . Say you have a small team. I have a small team. If I report something, there are only three other people. And if I'm the only person of color, which I am, it kind of makes it pretty obvious.

So to have those platforms where you can have a space and validate our experiences, whether they're positive or negative.

But in terms of what happened with my vice president, it was so bad that my teammates actually reported it to HR. And I remember when my manager pulled me aside because it circled back to him and he said, "How could you not tell me this was happening?" I mean, it was a form of harassment. It went on for about two, two and a half months.

You feel at a loss of words. You feel small and somebody that far above you and somebody that you want to particularly look up to, too, because a woman in a high-ranking role like that, it's interesting.

So I think touching back to the major theme of today in terms of really elevating and honoring the black experience, it's recognizing things like this, but it's also recognizing the successes of what is coming out of it.

Things like what, again, UCLA are doing, or UPenn, or The Ohio State, recognizing that there are changes that they have the actual capability to do, and that it's not done yet. There are still more successes and more advancements to make and pushing towards that.

Harjit: Honestly, these are the things that make it so hard for people to speak up and speak out, is that fear that their very survival . . . Finances is a means of survival, and that's cut off from you, and that's being done for thousands of years. I think that is what is something that we all need to look within ourselves. This is the type of work we all have to do.

Liese: I mean, I think there are plenty of negative things that have happened, but there are also plenty of positive things as well. I think, like Juliet mentioned, it's important to look at how things have changed.

Well, I haven't been down to BYU in a while, but a friend of mine was kind of being highlighted and it was a dinner being hosted and she brought some of us, other professionals, to go. It was a women in business event. And so we had an opportunity to speak with undergraduate women in the business school and sit with them, answer questions, just network.

First of all, I think a huge win was just the fact that in the room that we were in, when I went to that same event 12-plus years ago, we maybe took up a third of the room as far as the number of women in the room. So that was great that the whole room was now full.

But another thing that was really awesome to me is that I could count on two hands the number of black women who were in the room, where 12 years ago, I was the only black woman in the room.

Harjit: Wow. That's amazing.

Liese: It made me actually start to tear up because I'd never been in spaces where I wasn't the only one. It's those types of things that I think the good that's come out of it for me is being able to push for representation.

And if I've always had to be the only one, it's kind of one of those things where it's a bit of a burden sometimes, but I'm okay. I'm okay being the one that if I go into a room, someone else who is coming behind me can look and see, "Someone looks like me." I think that's very important.

There's a financial firm I used to work for. I sat on the diversity board and I was also helping with recruiting. And one thing that they were always asking me was, "Well, why can't we find any diverse candidates, or why are they always leaving after a couple of years?"

I'm like, "Well, you haven't shown them that there are opportunities for them past a couple of years, because everyone that is in a position that's at that level or above does not have skin color like mine. To people like me, it looks like, 'Well, if we want a management position, we've got to leave. We've got to go somewhere else.'"

One thing I do want to touch on . . . mostly it's just the importance of listening to stories. A few years ago, there was a man I dated and he was white. We got along, things were great, but it was very difficult to explain to him my experiences as a black woman, especially when things would happen in real-time, when we would go out to eat.

Listen, when you see looks and you've seen looks your whole life, you're able to recognize them. It may not be on his radar, but it's on mine. And I don't have to work very hard to see the looks. I would kind of mention it occasionally and he would say, "No, no, no, that's in your head. That's not what they meant. They're not looking at us like that." I'm like, "Really? Because this is how people look at you when they don't approve. I've seen it a lot."

My experiences were often invalidated and told that I needed to give everyone else the benefit of the doubt. How I feel and what I experience and what people tell me, what's going to convince you that that matters and that it's real? And it never did and we eventually broke up, and that's probably for the better.

But then after everything happened in 2020 with George Floyd, a friend of mine sent me a screenshot and it was from his Twitter. He had tweeted something along the lines of, "I think it's so important to listen to the experiences of black people. And I'm going to read a book from a black author every month. I really want to learn. I want to understand this."

Harjit: That's a big eye roll, like, "Dude."

Liese: No, but for real, I think it's important to say, "Listen, it's never going to click for you when you're just trying to learn from strangers." People say, "I want to do the work. I want to listen. I want to be able to help." You're only going to make a difference if you're listening to the people who are around you, because it's your own communities of where you have the power to make that difference.

It's not a matter of, "Oh, I donated to the NAACP." It's like, "Okay, but are you aware of how that impacts your community? Are you aware of how that impacts your neighbor? Are you aware of how that impacts your girlfriend for goodness sake?" I think it's one of those things of understanding that.

The work starts with listening to the stories of the people who are already in your life. Fine, read whatever books you want, whatever documentaries, but that means nothing to me if you refuse to listen to me and you know me.

Harjit: I think about this a lot. I'm just so grateful that you're putting up this point because I think a lot of the times what happens is people are not even able to have those conversations in their day-to-day because there are a million reasons. "Oh, I don't need to talk about that. I'm scared . . ." blah, blah, blah. But we are connected as humans through communication. So how is it that you're going to care about this now when you're not caring about it within your day-to-day experiences?

And I think that's a radical act. The radical act is loving and listening to the people in your life. And it's about also trying to understand them. I think a lot of people lack that quality. That is where I think true transformation happens. Just listen, especially to the people in your life.

Liese: I just also want to note because I'm sure probably the question that usually comes next after that is, "How? How do you do that?" But it's really quite simple. Please don't do the things that are instructed in the book "White Fragility." First of all, if you're reading that book, throw it away. I don't think that a white person is qualified to tell you what the experiences of a person of color are and how you're supposed to communicate with a person of color.

It's going to be weird for you and it's going to be weird for me if you walk up to me and you're like, "You're black. Tell me what it's like to be black." No, that's just not how humans communicate. So that's not going to work.

And so what I mean by listen is that if you want to know what it feels like, don't tell me how I should feel about it. Instead, maybe say, "Oh, wow, that didn't occur to me. Help me understand that." That's it.

It's how you go to bat for things that are hurtful, especially when there are people in your life. When people like to say things like, "Oh, I have friends that are black," I'm like, "Are you friends with them, or do you just know them?" Because how you treat them is not friendly.

Juliette: And let's be honest, a lot of us are tired. We don't have the capacity. But I would rather someone ask than make an assumption, because what do we say about assumptions? So for me, I'd rather people ask. But I will say there is sometimes a time and a place and there are better questions to ask.

So one thing I wanted to hit back on that kind of bridges off of something that Liese said . . . So when I moved here, it was at the top of the pandemic and we were on lockdown. The first day that we were allowed to go to our pool, I went upstairs and it happened to be the day of the George Floyd riots nationally. And I remember feeling so isolated, so alone. I'm in a state where I know really no people of color. I had met Liese once at that point, but I hadn't seen her since.

And I was up at this pool and I actually had no idea that there was a riot currently happening in Salt Lake. I just assumed that there wasn't representation here, honestly. So I didn't think there would be anything.

I had a guy come up to me. A very nice gentleman, I will say that. But there I go, making excuses. I know that there was no malicious intent with this, but it just shows the ignorance in the state.

So he had that audacity to ask me, "I can't imagine what you must be going through today." To even open a statement up with that in terms of what's going on.

He's like, "I just have to ask. I was raised here in Utah. I'll be honest, we didn't have black history when we were growing up in school. I really didn't learn anything about it other than the slave trade. And I know about MLK, but that's about the extent. So that being said, I have to ask, where does racism come from?"

What a heavy question. "Oh, a black person. I'm so sorry. I don't know what you must be feeling today. Let me ask you where this all originated from." And I remember trying to keep a straight face and say, "Slavery." I mean, I've never been asked something like that until moving here.

And so though I very much encourage asking questions, there are some questions that I think you can do a little bit of the research. But that being said, I stand by Liese with that same statement of you can read, you can watch documentaries, you can watch movies . . .

And I'm a visual person too. I get it. Sometimes seeing something makes things a little bit more real and more impactful. Or even audiobooks, hearing it versus just reading it.

But it's one thing to listen to those stories or watch those stories or read these books, or Liese said the "White Fragility" books, and it's so different when you have someone who's accessible to you, who's maybe even open to you to having these conversations and trying to help move the needle.

If we have the capacity, we'll do it. Some days I do, some days I don't. For the most part, I'm a person that I will take that on because if I can say that I made a difference in one person's mindset, that's a huge win.

Liese: To add really fast, just even summarizing with both what Juliette and I have said is just make it a safe space. If you want to learn, you've got to make it a safe space.

Sometimes if I respond of, "I appreciate it, but this is just not something I want to cover today," then there's prying and there's pushing. It's like, "Why don't you want to talk about it? What's the matter? I thought you want people to understand." It's like, "No, these things are what makes it unsafe for me to talk to you. So if I'm drawing a line and there's a boundary, you need to respect it." But I think a lot of it comes down to making things safe.

The best lesson I think my mom actually taught me . . . She's like, "Liese, the best thing I can tell you . . ." And mind you, my mom grew up in South Carolina. She saw a lot of racism. And here's the thing. My mom is half white, half black. She dealt with a lot of different things from different sides. And so I think she gave me the best advice. She just said, "Don't engage with anybody who wants to tell you what you think and what you believe and what you experience. Only engage with people who are willing to listen to what you think and believe and experience."

My goodness, what a game-changer that has been. It's so easy to just cut people out once they try to tell you what you think, and you only just engage with people who want to listen to you.

Harjit: You all don't get to choose when you're uncomfortable and not uncomfortable. It's put on you. And people in privilege, they choose when they can be uncomfortable or not. And I think that's something that we should always remember.

The second thing is stories are meant to be a full version of a person, the good, the bad, like you had already said. And that's when you really see people genuinely care and want to know you.

I think when I first met Juliette, she didn't tell me her identities. We got to know each other and it came out naturally because that's how it should be.

It's important that we listen to people and understand them, but understand their full story and their pain isn't for our pleasure. People's happiness isn't for us either. It's really a connection that we form with others that's really important.

Juliette: And I think a lot of that too very much piggybacks off of both you and Liese. The listening is to understand. It's not listening to rebuttal. It's not listening to respond. And I think people think, "Oh, okay. This is my moment where I'm going to be an ally. I need to respond. I need to think of the next thing I need to say." You just need to listen.

And also the opposite. So you have two polar ends of that. People that listen to respond, and then you have people that don't know how because you're right, they're uncomfortable.

Though I can appreciate when someone can listen and allow them to be in an uncomfortable space, one thing I have experienced is people that will say, "I'm here for you. Let me know what you need," and want to listen. And so then I have the capacity to talk and to be vulnerable and to be open. And so I choose to provide insight into my experience and what I might be going through, and it's just met with, "I'm so sorry. But I'm here for you, whatever you need."

Well, you're here right now and I need you to be in this conversation with me. You may not be able to empathize with what I'm going through. If by my third sentence, you've repeated yourself a third time saying, "I'm so sorry, but I'm here, whatever you need," that's also in a way kind of invalidating too because now I just feel breathless. I'm trying to allow myself to be vulnerable, to be my authentic self, to take ownership of my self-identity, and give you a piece of that.

It's a conversation. You can ask just open-ended questions. "How did that make you feel? What are you thinking you're going to do next? What does this mean for you? Who else does this impact?" You can ask questions without necessarily being probing, but open-ended to let me express myself.

Harjit: Yeah. Thank you so much for giving us those kinds of questions to jive off of. But I think, again, it's about being critical and that's how we should all try to approach this world, or at least I think we are always continually trying to. And I feel like for us it's for survival rather than for others, it's a choice.

We're "Bundle Of Hers." We're part of a medicine podcast. I will say everything you said is connected to medicine because we very much focus on storytelling. To understand everything, you need to hear a person's story. But what have both of your experiences been in healthcare?

Liese: An experience I had working with my gynecologist, there were some issues that were coming up, personal issue, and I had a couple that were just like, "No, no, no, it's fine." I was like, "I know my body. I know something is off." And it was like, "No, it's fine. Here. Just take this antibiotic." I'm like, "Okay."

Luckily, it took . . . let's see, within a couple of months, I went to my primary care doctor and I pretty much begged him. I said, "Listen. I've now been to four different gynecologists, all of which that are not listening to me." And he's like, "Well, they know what they're doing. Just wait it out."

I'm like, "No, I am tired of this. I'm tired of having to tell different people over and over and over again what the issue is and no one take the time to listen to me. I would like that area of my body to feel normal again. Right now, I don't remember what that feels like. So please, this is urgent." And I just begged him. I'm like, "I need you to please refer me to someone that you trust, that you can fully vouch for, that is going to help me."

There may be some listeners that may wonder, "What does that have to do with race?" As a black woman, especially when it pertains to gynecology, black women are not listened to. There's also a lot of fear from black women to go to their doctors because this was up until . . . I think was it the '70s? Black women were still being experimented on.

Harjit: And actually, they're still experimented on to this day.

Liese: I'm sure they are. These are things that black women grow up knowing about. And there is fear going into the doctor.

Harjit: Which is totally valid.

Line: Yes. One hundred percent.

Liese: And so when you pair my fear of not being understood or being prescribed the wrong thing or whatever it might be, coupled with someone who refuses to listen to me, then that's where it has to do with race.

And I'm not saying that my doctors are racist. I'm not saying any of that, but also within medical school . . . And mind you, I'm saying this just as someone who's a patient. I've never been through medical school, but in speaking with close friends of mine, how things are taught, studies that are shared, most of it is done in a way that benefits only the white race.

Harjit: Yeah. It's very colonized, for sure.

Liese: So I also have had similar experiences to Liese, but I actually want to focus on a story that's actually related to my mom. And I do want to also say that I do really appreciate you sharing that because I've been there with OB/GYNs as well. It's vulnerable for any woman, but specifically being a black woman, we are disproportionately affected. And not even just within that realm of healthcare, but across the board.

So a story that I want to share. When I was 8, I almost lost my mom, and it's because she is deathly allergic to penicillin. So she had gotten sick. She has lupus. And when she came back from one of her trips, she went to go see the doctor and he prescribed her amoxicillin. And she didn't know at the time that it was a sister drug. I mean, my mom has never been in healthcare and she'd never taken a class at that point that was related to pharmacology.

And so she had been gone for about a week on a trip. And my mom said, "I'm picking you up from school today." I was like, "Sounds good. See you." And when I came out, I waited and she wasn't there and she wasn't there.

My dad showed up about an hour late and I was standing outside of school by myself. And I knew in my gut something was wrong. My dad said, "Your mom is at the hospital. It's okay. We're going to go straight there."

And so we get to the hospital and they didn't know where she was. My dad was frantic. I'll never forget get the visual. Especially being a kid, certain things just hit you different.

So I remember I walked in and there was . . . We were in one of the major trauma centers in Miami. I didn't know what was wrong at that point. And then I just hear my dad talking to the nurses and he's like, "Her name is so-and-so. She's this tall. She looks like this."

And they're, "We don't know what to tell you." And my dad said, "I watched her get in the ambulance. This is where they told me she was going." My dad was really adamant, "Your mom is here. Your mom is here."

So we start walking the corridors. Well, I guess when they had taken her out of the ambulance, they had moved her on to a new bed, and she had gotten left in one of the hallways that wasn't one of the hallways that was actually actively being used.

We just happened to turn a corner and we found her on a bed and she was blue. I mean, I've never forgotten that image in my entire life. And she'd been hospitalized for about a week afterwards. My mom said the only thing she remembered . . . she remembered hearing our voices and she remembered hearing the doctor say to us, "She probably won't make it."

Harjit: That's so scary.

Juliette: It was terrifying. And especially since my mom is my rock. My mom and I are so close. And I remember the days to come when she was in the hospital and they were trying to nurse her back, just being afraid. She would say, "You can get on the bed with me." And I was afraid that if I touch her, she'd die. I was petrified. I will never forget that moment.

And again, kind of to Liese's point, what does this have to do about race? Do you think that would happen to probably a white woman? Probably not. Do you think that would happen to even a small child, especially a child that's probably not black? Probably not. And I hate to be that person that's making it about race, but let's be honest, that's not going to happen to my dad.

And one thing that she actually did when I was born, because my dad is Ashkenazi Jewish, is she put on my birth certificate that I'm Caucasian. She did it because she thought that it might give me a better future than what she had experienced her life growing up.

She grew up in the '60s in a super segregated time in L.A. And she's Creole, so it also didn't help too that she was of a lighter complexion. But it was something I didn't know for a long time that my birth certificate says that I'm Caucasian.

I'll be honest. I mean, I don't look Caucasian. Even if my hair is straight, I don't look Caucasian. But she was hopeful that maybe it would make providers treat me different than she was treated by them.

Harjit: It was really done for what she thought would be best for you because of her experiences.

Thank you both for sharing those experiences in healthcare and also sharing your stories. We're so grateful that we got to listen to the both of you, our platform is grateful, and we can never express enough gratitude. I don't think that there's anything we can really say to express how grateful we are that you were both able to come on the show.

Liese: If we have time, I just wanted to end with one thing.

Lina: Of course.

Harjit: Yeah, for sure.

Liese: I know we've shared a lot of our experiences that haven't been as positive. It is Black History Month and we are contributing to that history, and I know for me at least that means creating a better history. There are wonderful things that I've been able to see, lots of changes that have been able to be made.

So I'm grateful. I'm grateful for the people of that are in my life. I'm grateful that I have a diverse group of friends, but I'm also grateful for my friends who are white, who love me for who I am, who continue to want to pull me out of me, and who continue to ask questions.

I really do appreciate the people who are in my life, specifically here in Utah that have made that a safe space for me. I don't want to focus on all of my negative experiences and think that Utah is a bad place, because I'm still here. And so I think that in making the best of it, a lot of that has come from the people that have made that a possibility by being safe.

And I think really, ultimately, that's how we're going to change things, is working together, hearing the bad things, but finding a way to make them good things too.

Juliette: I totally agree with Liese and her thoughts as well. Obviously, I'm still here and I also have a very diverse group of friends and I'm extremely grateful for them, for the ones that are black, for the ones that aren't.

Truly, I love the quote that your mom told you, Liese. I think it's really important to allow people that don't uplift you . . . to let them go and to allow that room and that space for people that do challenge us to be better versions of ourselves and to truly be our authentic self.

I think I've been very blessed and I've gotten very lucky. And it does tie back to our overarching theme of today. Though we do have our traumas and our adversities, we also have our successes and black excellence.

And those moments of shining, like Liese being able to go and have people look up to her at BYU or a woman's lunch, those types of moments are really what we're here for. Not just the traumas in the past that we've been through, but also what is our future, what is our present, and the things that we can . . . successes, the ones that we have every day.

I just want to close by saying happy black history, black excellence, black pride month and every day afterwards, too, back to what you said at the beginning of the call. Not just this month. It's every day.

Lina: It's every day. Thank you so, so much, Liese and Juliette. I don't think that would've ended on a better note. That was so well said. Thank you again from "Bundle Of Hers" and for sharing everything that you shared this whole episode.

Thank you everyone for listening to this episode. I want to remind you all that you can listen to us on any podcast streaming wherever you listen. I guess we'll see you next time.

Harjit: Bye-bye, folks.

Lina: Bye.

Harjit: See y'all later, alligators.

Juliette: In a while, crocodile.

Harjit: I'm a mess.