White Privilege, Intersectionality, Reclaiming Anger, and Healing the Trauma of Oppression with Layla Saad

In this week’s episode, I had the pleasure of speaking to incredible author, speaker, and podcast host Layla Saad. This is the conversation you can’t miss. It was emotional, awakening, and healing for me and I know it will be for you too.

“I need to talk to spiritual white women about white supremacy” Layla Saad wrote in August 2017. She didn’t yet know that this blog would be read by millions and thrust her into anti-racism leadership.

In our conversation, Layla shares about the experiences leading to her own awakening. When she began to realize that as a black woman, she had been on her healing journey from the traumas of patriarchy… as as white woman. She faced the fact that her own internalized racism had been preventing her from fully claiming her identity as a black woman in the spiritual coaching space dominated by white women, and healing her whole self–which involved healing not only from the wounds of patriarchy, but from the wounds of racism.

This realization changed everything. Layla began to give voice to what she had felt for years, as a black girl and woman in a world married to white supremacy. She began to call on white women to become better allies to black women, women of color, and indigenous women by doing their own anti-racism work.

This movement heralded by her blog blossomed into a 28-day Instagram challenged Layla ran, walking her audience–mostly white women–through real-life curriculum of uncovering racist beliefs and behaviors from the UNCONSCIOUS where they’re hidden and thus DANGEROUS, and making them CONSCIOUS, so we can actively work on changing them. This challenge grew into a book, “Me and White Supremacy” that became available this week.

If you resonate with my work on healing generational trauma, you will understand that healing the traumas of racism is ESSENTIAL for this world that has been corrupted by white supremacy.

Just like with the work that I describe in “Patriarchy Stress Disorder” in uncovering and healing from internalized patriarchy, we must uncover and heal from internalized racism. As white women who share in the white privilege, we must recognize the power we have and use it in alignment with our values.

When we don’t, it means we don’t recognize our power, or it’s not in alignment with our values, or we’re not aware of our own internalized racist beliefs and behaviors. In my experience, it’s often all three.

Patriarchy Stress Disorder (PSD) has a lot to do with this. Patriarchy made us believe that we could only survive by attaching ourselves to white men who had all the power. Our healing and the healing of the world involves us reclaiming our awareness and power, and aligning our choices and actions with the benefit of all women. It starts by questioning and shedding light on our own unconscious racist blind spots.

It’s rattling. It’s uncomfortable. It’s vital and necessary.

I’m grateful for Layla’s work. I know you will be too.

Listen to our awakening and catalytic conversation and share it with your friends, follow Layla on Instagram, and get her book.

We talk:

• the ways media is centered on white woman’s perspective

• the danger of looking only through the lens of gender, and the whiteness of feminism

• ways in which we betray and marginalize ourselves

• white woman’s perspective dominating in the wellness and self-help spaces

• reclaiming anger as women and the potential for healing when we do

• how white women are allowed to be righteously angry in our current culture in ways that women of color are not

• how Layla’s viral letter to spiritual white women about white supremacy catapulted her into the anti-racism conversation and the intense experience of being thrust into this work

• the potential for harm and the need for self-protection for people of color, because white supremacy is always present

• the ways in which white people perceive shame as harm when really it is simply discomfort

• the systems of power and oppression and how our particular societal privilege affects the work we as women need to do to heal from patriarchy and racism

• how the power white women have is wielded against black women via social media

• healing ourselves from the lies we were taught as children that we didn’t know were lies

• the shame created by not seeing yourself in the mainstream

• individual and collective healing: personal empowerment projects of healing vs acknowledging the harm your privilege has done to others, realizing what you need to lose to balance the world, and making amends for the harm your privilege has caused

MORE ABOUT LAYLA:

Layla Saad is a globally respected writer, speaker, and podcast host on the topics of race, identity, leadership, personal transformation and social change. She is the author of the groundbreaking book Me and White Supremacy, and the host of Good Ancestor Podcast.

Connect with Layla:

Visit her website.

Follow her on Instagram.

Subscribe to her podcast.

Buy her book.

MORE ABOUT YOUR HOST:

Dr. Valerie Rein has discovered Patriarchy Stress Disorder (PSD) and created the only science-backed system for helping women achieve their ultimate success, happiness, and fulfillment by healing the intergenerational trauma of oppression. She holds an EdM in Psychological Counseling from Columbia University and a PhD in Psychology from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology.

Her bestselling book, “Patriarchy Stress Disorder: The Invisible Inner Barrier to Women’s Happiness and Fulfillment” has been heralded by Amazon reviewers as “the most important body of literary work of our modern times” and “perhaps the most important book of the century for women.” Her cutting-edge programs have helped thousands of women shift from survival to thriving and master the game of “How good can it get?” in their work and personal lives.

Dr. Valerie is a sought-after speaker and trainer at conferences and companies committed to setting new standards of excellence in their industry in diversity, equity, and inclusion, employee satisfaction, their physical and mental health, and creativity and innovation.

Would you like to have Dr. Valerie speak to your audience? She can share with them:

• Why despite having checked so many the boxes of accomplishment, high-achieving women are still dissatisfied, and why it’s not our fault.

• What secretly drains 90% of your energy and productivity and how to reclaim them.

• The missing piece to the upper limit problem and a solution that ends your big leap struggle.

• Why fighting against your inner critic, self-doubt, and anxiety backfires and how to turn your inner adversaries into your strongest allies.

• The biggest untapped resource of a woman’s personal power, why it is locked up, and how to set it free. PS It is also an instant antidote to stress and burnout.

And so much more…

Join us at our next FREE Virtual Retreat

The Thriving Experience on August 14-16!

Put your name on the waitlist and receive priority registration when it opens: www.thethrivingexperience.com

Check out what the participants have shared about The Experience on Instagram and Facebook under hashtag #thethrivingexperience

Download the First Chapter and book resources free and buy a copy of “Patriarchy Stress Disorder: The Invisible Barrier to Women’s Happiness and Fulfillment” — for you or someone you care about — here.

Join the conversation in Dr. Valerie’s FB group.

Ready to heal PSD? The next round of The Thriving Solution virtual program and The Thriving Circle year-long program both begin on June 22, 2020.

Check out the jailbreak stories of Thrivers who participated in the previous rounds.

If you’d like to learn more about this journey, schedule a call with Dr. Valerie.