Lita (00:01)
Lita goddess of growth here, thank you so much for joining me.
- Can’t decide if I should be purchasing more t-shirts at this time or cardigans layers. I switch between being really hot to temperate. Layers have become important. I continually remember the aunties of old
purchasing their cardigans from stores like BHS, ⁓ &S, and always telling us as children, young people, carry your layers. The choice for materials have changed. Polyester kills me.
But here we go. Podcasting is something I enjoy doing, but I have been struggling. My brain does not work in the same way or perceived right way. I suppose I expected to be able to capture my thoughts, sit down and share them. But often I find I have a whole conversation with myself.
come to record and the capture is just not the same. So I want to do something a little different and when I say a little different I have prepared some kind of a note but I struggle even always with my notes. I hate scripted material, I have used them on occasion, I try to do bullets and I just get so
Yeah, I start writing essays when I’m supposed to be doing bullets, but here we go. And because of the way I create, the way I think and process.
I’ve come up with a new idea and I’d like to use this space to launch it under empowerment diaries and this will be my very own chamber a chamber of clarification my very own clarification chamber excuse me
if there is a bit of a muddle. That’s just how my brain works. But often I have these conversations with myself and it helps me get a lot clearer as to how the system works. I hope I can get into the flow as I was in my mind and the reason for me sharing it
in this podcast environment is because I’m sure there’s others that have these thoughts flowing through their minds and in an attempt to connect the dots maybe together we can come together with a better understanding maybe even a few resolutions.
I took to them some notes and how the thought process began and hopefully next time I can just come on raw and share the thoughts as they come.
I was thinking about a hairdressers that I was in. It was the second one that I’d found in my whole lifetime that was able to do my hair. Unbelievable, I’m sure, to many. When you are a black woman reliant on black hairdressers, not many of them know how to do hair. They taught how to do
processes and you will have some that’s good at braiding, good at relaxing, good at colouring. Many of us prefer to go to male hairdressers because there’s this idea that they will dress us how a man would like to see us. But on this occasion in my early 30s I found a hairdresser’s owned by a woman.
same heritage as my own. She was born in Jamaica, I wasn’t, but same heritage. And the first time she did my hair I felt amazing. I went on a Saturday, I was waiting for a while. I’ll talk about that on another podcast. Many of us have had to wait many hours have we not to get seen to be placed in a chair.
And as I sat there waiting, she was looking after a young woman, mixed race woman with long hair and complimenting on her and her hair and so I believe the young woman was a model and she had got into acting of sorts. And the hairdresser was complimenting her and guiding her, find a good man, make sure he has money, make sure you buy your house.
keep something for yourself like really great advice. I sat in the background listening and nodding and agreeing and affirming and so forth. Today I’m drinking tea, bit of sugar in. Most days I don’t have sugar these days because yeah my lifestyle I need to change what it is I’m doing.
Excuse me. So it was my turn to go into the chair at which point I was asked, you know, what do you do for living? What’s your aspiration? These are my words, not hers. I explained I was working in the NHS. I was trying to put some money aside so that could buy my own home. And believe you me, the woman that was giving so much advice and guidance to the person before me went silent.
She prepped my hair with the colour, left me whilst the colour was penetrating. You know, she did my hair, did a good job. I think actually I remember her telling me to come back for treatment. That was it. There was no guidance, no motivational tips, none of it. Silence. Not long after, I remember going to see a house near Bromley.
that was going through probate. Couldn’t afford that and a few months later I branched out, stretched my search and then I found my home in Royal Tumpridge Wells, my first purchase.
My thoughts took me on to this debate about diversity and equality, the US clamping down on schemes, saying that it’s not fair. I also note the companies that have reduced their own schemes in the UK and around the world for fear of the wrath of the Trump administration. Little do they know.
that actually, in my opinion, a lot of these schemes encourage us to mask the realities, the realities of what people really think of others. Legislation has been put in place for companies to showcase how diverse they are. But in reality, often,
The legislation has encouraged covert behaviour and tokenism.
There is a silence when asked about the ratio of people of colour in a company that’s focused on diversity being at the bottom of the ladder versus those that are at the top. And it’s not just people of colour, we’re talking about women also.
No matter the measure, we will still find in most of the cases the white man or at least a man at the top of the pyramid.
I reflected on the very first jobs, my job search after completing my degree in business. And I remember going to a recruitment agency and the woman, I cannot remember her name so long ago, but she was really in awe at the fact that I had a degree. I started my degree a couple of years after I went into the workplace. In fact, I’ve worked
for many years before doing my degree. But office roles, I had a couple of years experience and I also continued working in office environments whilst studying my degree. So whereas some were leaving without the experience, I had it on my CV. And this woman was confident, given my skills, that she would be easy, she would easily place me into a role. And bless her, she did send me forward.
to interviews. But there was this one interview and I cannot remember the name of the company, very plush offices, I went as a personal assistant to a director and in those days they always told you when you go you know you have your pleasantries be polite manners etc if they were to ask you what your five-year plan was be prepared for that be ⁓ accommodating to any
extra responsibilities and duties and so. And I remember going to the interview and sitting down and usual interview process and he had asked me questions almost as if he was pivoting me to another role. And he happened to call, which I learned was his wife. She stood at the door and they were talking with each other about these roles that he
had put to me that I could be interested in developing into. And she stood there, yes, yes, yes. But there was just something a bit off about the conversation. And even today, as I reflected on it, I still can’t fathom what it is I missed. But I know I missed something crucial. Today at 51, I question why she did not come into the room. There was no formal handshake or anything.
She stood in the doorway talking to her husband. They spoke to each other, laughed. It was almost like they were sharing a secret joke. I left the interview, the recruitment agency, the agent asked how it was. said it sounded really great. They were offering me different roles and what have you. Anyway, that was the very last time I heard from the agency. No more jobs were given to me to interview for.
I probably called once or twice to see what was going on. She herself didn’t speak to me and they hadn’t anything on their books apparently. Early 20s.
And then I can’t tell you how many months after because I took on a role as a personal assistant in a chauffeuring company. Learned a lot there.
The universe was showing me don’t look at trappings. That was a place I learned there were so many men out there driving fancy cars, Lamborghinis and all sorts. These were all leased items used to transfer princes, sheiks and what have you across London. So we look at these people thinking that they have and a couple of the guys unfortunately didn’t even have their own home. Right.
broken relationships because their hours are so long. They’re out most of the time trying to make a living as a chauffeur.
However, I did get a job for an auction house as a personal assistant. And when I took on the role, it was an ex officer that had recruited me. And I remember a woman, mixed race from another building had been tasked with coming to meet and greet me to let me know how the role works because she was a personal assistant as well.
And she let me know how privileged I was to be in such a position because there was very few people of colour in the role.
The role itself, I didn’t stay long, probably about a year. And in that time, I remember creating an event as I was tasked for others to come and look at the unit that we were looking after. And another ex-police officer had come in and in front of me had questioned when it was that the auction house had started letting people like me in.
Even to this day, no one has actually come to apologize or say anything or even to address what it is I heard. I couldn’t believe it myself. But I got through it.
So we think about the blockages that we experience in our life.
and a lot of us still find our way through. And it’s easy to project out and say, it’s because of racism, it’s because of the employer, it’s because of the environment or whatever the reason is, the government, what have you. But then we go back to our parents and we see our parents, those that have abandoned their children or those that keep their children, but for one reason or other bully them.
create scapegoats in the family, give others preferential treatment. Our parents actually prepare us for the outside world, the world that we enter when we’re looking to others to provide us with work and an income.
And I will say often when I hear about racism, bullying, abuse, I always say look to the home because often these things started in the home. When we listen to how people in slave environments, prison environments, and they get overseers to carry out the work.
the master. The overseer is carrying out the abuse.
Having the prison guards whip prisoners, beat them to the pulp, blind them, kill them, even today.
We are people that have come together to carry out punishment on behalf of others. Some of us are doing it for ourselves. So if we have that layer, emitting out punishment, what can we expect from anyone else that doesn’t identify with us as if it was themselves?
Equal treatment, in my opinion, only works if we acknowledge that we are all different, that we are all in this world living in different worlds. There’s a part in our education that’s often missing. The missing part, in my opinion, is the aspect of time and season. We are all on different channels. We are all in different cycles.
and some of the cycles overlap. So there is this presumption that we’re all in it together. But the better picture, there is an illustration I’ve seen in my lifetime over the last few years. I believe on social media where you’ve got a race and you have one person with a lock holding their leg to the track. Different things stopping people from getting to the finish line.
And that is the reality of life. We all are on a track, but we have different things that we’re here to The Complexity of Equality and Self-Actualisation through, to learn, to process. Meaning that actually the finish line is different for all of us. In fighting for freedom for women, there is this monolith given and it’s expected, you’ve got free ⁓ freedom. You’ve got your rights now.
So just get on with it. You can fight, you can join the army, you can do engineering. It’s all open to you. This is what you fought for. I think the freedom fighters missed the point. At the end of slavery, there were some afraid to leave the plantation. They were worried that they would not be able to survive on their own. Many slaves left with nothing as they went on to build lives.
And it’s very easy to judge those that ended up in prostitution, starting whorehouses, starting liquor stores, deviant behaviour to make an income. However, when you’re starting from nothing, you have only what you have to trade to make an income to progress and go on.
And in asking for equality, we have to understand that there are some that want to do.
things, should we say, to make an income.
Equality should allow people a level of self-expression where so long as they’re not hurting another, they’re in a position to self-actualise, be who and what they are choosing to be.
Not every woman wants to go to work. Not every woman that has a child wants to return to the workplace and not every woman that has a child wants to stay home with children. And we now know there are men out there and we’ve always known there are men out there that don’t want to go to work. They’re happy to stay with children. They speak about this new man that is a stay at home man. This is in the West.
In other family dynamics the man would have been at home anyway, maybe outside doing chores or work, but he would have his eye on the household. Not every man has been able to find traditional work. So child care, cooking, caring is part of being a family member. In Jamaica
For my generation, majority of the men were taught how to cook.
Many I saw learning how to hand wash. There are skills that we all have been taught that the next generation haven’t because everything is on my machine. But men, generally speaking, can do most things around the house.
Interestingly in the West we have feminism, we have equality and somehow we have this set up where women, whether they marry or not, are responsible for the majority of the chores in the household even if they do the exact same hours in the workplace. And in the workplace with the exact same hours they’re still getting paid less. It is known
that in this economic crisis, more men have lost jobs than women. My suspicion is because women are paid less. And in that pyramid, there will be people of colour that have experienced more unemployment than others, depending on the role, of course, because if the employer sees that people of colour can do the work
and get paid less, they’re more likely to keep the role.
equality and diversity. The lens is wrong.
We need to teach that we don’t have a right to work.
We don’t have a right to the minimum wage. In fact, employers, I do believe, need to shift their lens. Why do they think they are doing the best for employees by paying the minimum wage or just above it, making them a good employer? Why isn’t the business model one where what the employee does is factored in?
to the cost of goods and services being sold. Why are employees seen as such a cheap commodity?
Why are we not paying a living wage so that employees are a great example of the company that they are representing and working for? Why is it okay to have employees that are remaining in poverty?
We’re nothing more than slaves in some of these corporations. And even at retirement age, we do not have enough to live sovereign lives.
Pride is misplaced.
Having the law like a parent, we were trained were we not. We start with our parents, the school system, that is the training. It’s not about the subjects. It’s the training, learning how to listen, learning how we can be steered towards what the society wants us to do.
Having that training, we learn not to challenge the structure as it is. The pill of diversity is one that’s easy to swallow when we believe people are doing things to address injustice. But on the ground, we see in offices where men are turned away from jobs.
I’ve personally heard one of my managers shout out he didn’t want any Leroy’s in his company. I was in my late mid 20s at the time.
There is a trend of getting cheap labour and of CEOs being proud that they’re providing income for others, not acknowledging that in this day and age many are not able to feed themselves or live the sovereign lives that they would like to. Divertity is one of the many distractions that encourages blank faces.
People do just enough to showcase how diverse and how equal they are. I think about the cleaner sacked for having two jobs over 16 years cleaning for others, two businesses, government bodies. Imagine.
She takes them to court and loses her appeal.
because apparently in the UK we have the work time directive. So the system tells you clearly they’re not intending on you finding freedom in a legal way, in a way that you find comfortable to do. They’re very clear on how they see you and how you fit into the system. It’s a pity this woman didn’t use her great skill and talent to acknowledge
There are some spaces and places that see us naturally as cleaners, comfortable in those positions, and they will be happy and willing to pay us handsomely to do those roles. She could quite easily have used that 16 years to go to private households or even start a cleaning company cleaning businesses, and she would have been paid more.
in those hours that she worked for two employers actually provided jobs for others also
more money less hours. We’re not taught early how to be sovereign. The main thing that people understand when they go to another country is to provide the services that the people in the country can’t or don’t want to do. There’s two ways to do it. Higher level education you’ll have that because the locals can’t afford internet or whatever it is that you’re
presenting or lower level services. In the rich world, many people don’t want to do manual work. Not all of us want to do it. But there were some that was doing that from where they were for nothing. They’re happy to come and do what people don’t want to do for a good enough income. More money earned than someone doing a basic office role.
but yet we will look down on them whilst they’re creating their space and time for sovereignty. Many a cleaner has purchased house not just in the UK but abroad, building empires and legacies for themselves, their children and families also.
I reflect on the blocks we experience in our lives from our friends, our family, our associates.
We also have to remember that we have blocked others too.
It is a part of our cycle. There are times when I have really just distanced myself, protecting myself from any kind of pain or hurt, just cut off.
But there are blocks that on the surface make us believe that we are failing. Whether we are women, women of colour, whether we live in the north, whether we are single parents.
The education missed is that we all have our time and season. And if we knew that, the comparison wouldn’t hurt as much. When we attend a job, as I’ve done, five years promised a path to promotion, but it wasn’t for me. Always the verbal nods and the carrot, do this, do that, do that, took five years. And the promise of
getting married and all these things that I was planning at the time for me to finally leave a dead-end job, a job that was going nowhere.
We all need to be open to cleaning our lens. When we’re looking outside, we need to question inside. Why does that irritate me? What is it about what that person said that bothers me so much? When have I done that before? How has that situation affected me before? Why is it affecting me now? Failure is the path to success.
knowing our season even more so.
Today I am mapping out my journey of life. Maybe it’s something that happens in your 50s. You reflect, you look back and it’s a different kind of looking back. Years ago I reflected a lot on my childhood and it was like a horror movie continually replaying in my mind. I found emotional freedom techniques in my 30s and I can breathe.
But these reflections I’m getting is almost like a picture of life. ⁓ that’s why that didn’t work out. OK, so if this happened and that didn’t happen, gosh, what would life be like today? That kind of thinking. I’m mapping out my journey past, doing my best to be present.
One of the magnifying moments, my very own magnifying moments in my life, I will say it again, I’m sure I’ve said it on this podcast before, was my second marriage. It was the kind of weirdest of things, but each time I look at it, it was a blessing in disguise. He came into my life on my fourth year working for a company where it was really a dead end. I was being coached to
manage the team to be a manager and I was going through all these markers to proceed but there was always some kind of a block. Even though I was performing with the role had measures, quality check-in, even though I was getting my hundreds I was able to showcase doing that on a year-on-year basis which I wasn’t able to showcase in my first year. Still I was getting blocked.
and all the red flags around my marriage, his poverty, the likelihood that he wouldn’t want to stay in the UK, all of that. Those red flags acted as a energy to make sure, to help me make sure that our start would be the greatest it could possibly be. So I was in my apartment, the pandemic hit, and the first thing I thought was
how to make the best of the situation. The Monday, the Thursday before the Monday we were told to stay home and not return to work and work from home. I had an offer on my apartment that I had up for sale for about six months beforehand. And I decided, because I read my astrological chart, I decided, it said I would be working from home anyway. I had no idea what that would mean in real terms.
In fact the job I was in when it was advertised I was told by the agency that they were looking to split the working week so that employees could work from home but by September of 2019 the employers had decided that the pilot for working from home didn’t work out. Yeah I know interestingly by March we could all work from home that’s another story.
So I was reading my chart to say that, which told me I’ll be working from home and I couldn’t see how this would work. But come the pandemic, here I was working from home. And I took a leap of faith and decided I have a husband. Let me use my equity from my apartment and find any house, ideally three bedroom, that we could move to. And because I had company, I could really go anywhere.
I’d spent 11 years and a bit in Royal Tombridge Wells, very alone. And when people asked me, and truly, I really liked the area, I liked the aesthetics, I liked the walking routes, my apartment was beautiful, everything was nice.
the undertone, not so much so.
I slept there very well, but it was quite a lonely time and I did not realise how lonely I was until I reconnected with the man I decided would be my husband, following his tales.
So I was free up having a job to work from home full time at the time, know, pandemic March, no one knew what tomorrow would bring. And I was very fortunate to be in a role. Some people were on furlough. Some didn’t even have, if you remember those early weeks, we didn’t even know about furlough. think furlough must have come in end of March, April. Some people really did just lose their jobs, sat waiting to be called back to their.
working environments.
But throughout all the red flags and all the people that would say now I told you so, if I did not have my husband in place in the circumstances as they were, I don’t know if I would have been as ambitious enough or…
as focused as I was in those days. Because I already had it in mind that people were telling me that it was going to fail. They were commenting on his poverty. I was poor. Yes, I worked. I had a mortgage, but no job, no mortgage, no house, literally.
So whereas he had and still has a house, no mortgage to pay, no rent to pay, owns that right, in my opinion, he’s richer than I am.
But reflecting back at that time, I was so adamant that I didn’t want to lose what I had built up. I looked for a home and found it within, it must have been a couple of weeks because by April I had found this house and I thought I was going to be moving by the end of April. But because of the pandemic, solicitors had us delayed until the September of 2020.
but the bio was in place, I was ready, everything was ready, we were just waiting for solicitance.
So in truth, had I not had this idea that I was setting up a home for myself and my husband, who knows if I would be here now. It was a risky move. I saw my home online. I didn’t actually see my home in person until the day of exchange, the day when I sold my apartment and bought this house.
I’ve also reflected whilst I was in Royal Tumbewich Wells, I went to the &S there and there was this woman, know, the sales people that give you little tasters as they do and she offered me a taster and I heard her accent and I knew immediately that she was from London. I was born in Hackney, I had schooled in West London and I think she was from Croydon, that’s right.
and I heard her accidently immediately we connected. White woman, she was probably about 40 ish and she asked, you know, how are you finding it here? These are my words because I can’t remember verbatim what she said, but I’ll give you the message. And I said, you know, it’s fine. It’s my first purchase and I like the walks in the area and so and then she opened up to me to say.
She missed London, she couldn’t afford to buy in London. I think that was the conversation. Neither of us could afford to purchase in London. She moved to Crowborough. She said when she moved in, her neighbours basically blanked her. She’d say hello, they’d ignore her. She started going to, I think it was a Pilates class and a couple of women she managed to speak to outside, they welcomed her. But finally she’d go to the class and then people just wouldn’t talk to her.
And I thought, wow. See, as a black woman in Royal Tumbidge Wells, I often pass people, said hello, said good morning, and most people would have a little chitchat and so mostly they wanted to know if I was a nurse, if I was a teacher, all of that. Couldn’t imagine a white woman going to an area and being ignored because she was a Londoner. I found we had more in common.
more to connect than our respective environments that we’re living in. As my family would say, it just goes to show.
This thing is not about race, actually, our colour. And when we start being honest about time and season, about our paths, we will come to understand there’s more things on a different level that we need to focus on for our mental freedom, physical freedom, spiritual freedom, creative freedom.
Until we do, we’re going to continually come across those that attempt to block us, stop us from expressing ourselves, stop us from attempting to be the best version of ourselves.
also understand the importance of sticking to what our inner self desires. Because had I thought about racism each and every time I moved, in the many times I moved since leaving home at the age of 17, my goodness, I wouldn’t have housing. I do remember many a time being admonished by my
male cousins as to locations I’d chosen to live and I chose them because of budget, looking at the train line and so I’ve lived in Plumstead, Woodwich where of course young Stephen Lawrence lost his life and I’ve always caused worry and the stance has always been ⁓ it’s because you’re a woman that’s why you’re able to do that even moving into Royal Tumbrish Wells
One of my couple, a couple of them actually, but one of them in particular had a conversation with me. And the stance was, ⁓ it’s because you have a vagina. That’s how you’re able to live there and no one bothers you. It wasn’t that no one bothered me, but it was always on the undercurrent. Always on the undercurrent. But their blockages didn’t stop me. I’m here in a little village in a house. I have been
going through a bit of isolation but I do have a couple of neighbours that do check on me, neighbours that have become friends.
time and season. Well this is the clarification segment. What can I tell you? I would like to say
even in those moments where life has felt as if it’s broken, that I’m failing like anything other, or I’m stuck.
When I get past that moment.
what remains I can often honestly say I am amazed.
Sometimes, if not all the time, we do need to go through the mud, the muddle, the confusion, the embarrassment even, the rejection, all of it, to get to this stage, to look back and realise what is for us and what is not for us. And it’s not about governments, it’s not about…
Our parents is not about our siblings, our cousins also. But we need to have a bit of.
energy, be brave to do something that’s different.
Thank you for joining me. My conversations with myself, I would say often, maybe they don’t necessarily make sense, but when you reflect back, you’ll notice that my thoughts often connect and connect to each other. The message being the same. Sovereignty is important. Tap into your time, tap into your season.
Thank you for joining me. You’ve been with Lita goddess of growth. Have a good day.
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