Episode 66: Race + What We Don't Say with Celia Hilson and Lauren Selfridge

EPISODE OVERVIEW

This week I'm sitting with Celia Hilson, who's returned to the podcast after joining me on Season 2 (Episode 28). Celia is a relational therapist, social justice educator, and intuitive narrative coach fostering cross-cultural understanding. She helps clients to heal through remembering and reclaiming lost parts of identities.

Celia has joined me over the past few months not only as my friend, but as someone who I recently hired as a social justice consultant for the podcast. As you know, we've been in the midst of a racial justice movement, and in the midst of a pandemic, all that the same time. It's been a really challenging, powerful period for our world. During this time, Celia and I recorded a special conversation talking about race. We created a two-part series of episodes, and this is part one of that conversation.

In this week's episode, Celia and I explore the origins of our relationship as friends and social justice educators, and how our racial identities impact how we relate to one another and to the world. Celia shares about her evolving relationship with ancestral, intergenerational trauma and what liberation looks like. She also shares her perspectives on worthiness and building cross-cultural relationships of trust. I hope you enjoy this conversation as we explore some of the themes that are necessary to address in our cultural evolution towards racial justice.

“I had a felt sense that there were a lot of elephants in the room stomping around all the time. It’s like i was feeling this inner earthquake.”— celia

Highlights

Exploring the root chakra of survival, groundedness, trust, and safety
How Celia and I began our friendship and social justice teaching journey together
The radical shift our culture is going through as the US racial justice movement unfolds
The unique relational challenges that can arise between Black women and White women
How what we don't say can create discord and distrust
Celia's experience of holding back certain things out of caution for being construed as an angry Black woman
My privilege of not fearing that people will associate any of my personal deficits with my Whiteness
How internalized oppression can keep us from being in deeper connection with one another
The ways we can experience our own worthiness (or not) depending on learned cultural stories around race
Why the phrase "color doesn't matter" negates Celia's lived experience of racial trauma
Celia's evolving relationship with her ancestral, intergenerational trauma

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