32: Yanique Redwood, on Breaking the Rules, Taking Care of the Stayers, and Leaving Well
“We can thrive on less money than we think. That string is often what keeps us in places we shouldn’t stay in. It’s a tough thing to believe, and I didn’t believe it until I went through it myself.”
Yanique is the author of White Women Cry and Call Me Angry: A Black Woman’s Memoir on Racism in Philanthropy. I’m a huge fan of Beyoncé. I have been to all her concerts except Coachella (but I have watched it repeatedly on Netflix). I love a good meal, whether it be Jamaican, Indian, or Thai. It’s the curry for me! My favorite way to spend an afternoon is curled up in my bed talking to friends and family, reading a book, or watching a movie.
“I can leave a situation, even if it’s not good for me, even if it’s toxic, and recognize the humanity in the leaders and the people who I may have left behind.”
Additional Quotes:
I used to wake up with my computer, 5 a.m. on my lap, in bed. Without that work to do, I had to find other ways to wake up. It started with waking up to hydration, drinking water before getting out of bed, stretching, moving my body, exercise, eating something nutritious, a thing that I skipped a lot, walking the dogs, meditating, using the Headspace app, journaling.
We can thrive on less money than we think. That string is often what keeps us in places we shouldn't stay in. It's a tough thing to believe, and I didn't believe it until I went through it myself.
Leaving well means knowing what is nourishing to you, knowing what is values aligned. And when a container, whether that be a workplace, a relationship, whatever the container is. when that container can no longer hold you.
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This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.
Transcript:
I can leave a situation, even if it's not good for me, even if it's toxic and recognize the humanity in the leaders, in the people who I may have left behind.
This is Leaving Well, where we unearth and explore the realities of leaving a job, role, project, or title with intention and purpose. And when possible, Joy. I'm Naomi Hattaway, your host. I will bring you experiences and lessons learned about necessary endings in the workplace with nuanced takes from guests on topics such as grief, confidence, leadership, and career development.
Braided Throughout will be solo episodes sharing my best practices and leaving well framework. Expect to be inspired, challenged, and reminded that you too can embed and embody the art and practice. of Leaving Well as you seek to leave your imprint in this world. Yanique is the author of White Women Cry and Call Me Angry, a Black woman's memoir on racism in philanthropy.
She's a huge fan of Beyonce and has been to all of her concerts except Coachella, but has watched it repeatedly on Netflix. Yanique loves a good meal, whether it be Jamaican, Indian, or Thai. It's the curry for her. Her favorite way to spend an afternoon is curled up in her bed, talking to friends and family, reading a book, and watching a movie.
Yanique, I'm really excited for this conversation. I'm curious to know if you can share a bit about we're going to go right in real deep. Can you share a bit about the complexity involved in your decision to leave based on if you want to go here based on the identity and status of your former boss. Yeah, absolutely.
So my former boss, I think people know by now, is Ibram X. Kendi. He is a celebrity author, author of Stamp from the Beginning and How to Be an Anti Racist. And I couldn't pass up the opportunity to work with him at Boston University. And It's complex. That departure was complex because the right wing media has been after him and lots of other scholars who are working on issues of racism and anti racism, and they've been digging around for stories, right?
And I didn't want my departure to feed into any of that. Their motivation for their critique is quite different than my motivation for leaving. And I just didn't want to be a part of that. And so when I left the organization, I did tell the truth, right? I was leaving for some personal reasons, for some political reasons, but I didn't say everything.
And I'd like to talk about that as well today, like that it's deeply personal. When you leave what you decide to share and what you decide not to share. However, when the media storm came out about the center, and the reporting seems so one sided, right, I just felt like I needed to say the full truth.
About why I left. And so that's the complication here, working for a celebrity, a celebrity author, the media storm around that, and then kind of my own integrity, my own loss, and then my own care. For the people I left behind, so all of that had to come together in this departure. I, I saw resonate with with what you've said around the complexity about having to braid it together.
And I think that's 1 of the things that I appreciate about. Leaving well is that it does normalize the fact that all of those things should be, are held when, when we experience a leaving, you know, thinking about the people that we leave behind, the stayers, that's a huge part of it. And I would love if you're, if you're ready to just dive in also to the rest of the story, because I think so often we do craft.
The reason that we leave so that it makes sense for whether it's a board or executive leadership for media sake, but there's always there's always more to the story. Yeah. So I was recently in Budapest for a organization development program called iGold. And in that program, we are learning to use Gestalt therapy, really, and the origins of that and Translate that to organizations and we have to do case consultations and I bringing my case to my coach and I was freaking out because this was right after the media storm.
You know, the center is laying off half its staff. They have done nothing over the years with all this money. Like it was so sensationalized. And I was like, what, what am I going to do? What am I going to say? And I was taking notes and I was trying to sound profound and eloquent and all of this stuff. And my coach, I brought this case and he said to me, Place your hand over your chest, which I did.
And he asked me, what is most important to you right now? And out of my mouth came the people, right? The people I left behind who were, are phenomenal people who care about racial justice, who put in the work, who grappled with all of the dynamics of the organization. And the media representation was just not right.
It wasn't right. And so I wanted to care for the people by saying something in my op ed about how hard they worked, how much they cared about this work. And I just felt like I needed, I needed to say that. I needed to, like, come out of hiding in some ways about why I left. Which was. At the root about a difference in leadership philosophy, right?
And I am a very much a kind of collaborative, maybe to a fault. But collaborative leader and it was not the leadership style that the center adopted. And so it was just it was just not a good fit. It was not a good fit. And I knew that after about 6 months. And so I broke my own. I have so many rules about leaving.
I've broken all of them. All of them. Right. You can't leave 2 years. You can't leave a place without a lot of notice. You can't leave a place without a job. And this one, I broke that third rule. I had no job lined up, but I, I, I had to go. That powerful thought process behind having these rules, like who makes those rules anyway?
And I think that there's something so beautiful to, to know the more that we normalize that you can leave without having something else lined up. Of course, there's all sorts of realities and. Bank account considerations, whether you're taking care of a family, all those things that are, of course, important, but it keeps us held in places that are not for us when we have our own rules about leaving.
So I'm so glad you said that. Is there something that stands out as particularly helpful or powerful around your decision and how you then planned or implemented your departure? So I deliberated about this one, I just thought who leaves a job in within a year, who leaves a job or tenders a resignation in six to eight months.
It's just, it's just so antithetical to how I like to do things. And so I deliberated, I deliberated with my coach. I wrote all kinds of things. I wrote resignation letters and Toss them and started like it was just a lot of deliberation. And so I think that's part of it, right? Like being able to sit with, um, I talked to very few people.
My, my executive coach for sure. And my partner, my husband. And when I did decide, when I did decide, tendered the resignation, I wanted to leave well, which is why I love the title of this podcast. Um, I really wanted to leave well and, and even though I lost some control of that process, as soon as I articulated that I was leaving, there were a few things that I wanted.
I wanted to Talk with people in some sort of open forum and so really pushed for a time where everyone could gather because I was the executive director. So everyone could gather for me to share why I was leaving for people to ask questions for people to grieve together. And it was exactly that. It was a very tough moment, but I just felt like I'd gotten to work with such phenomenal people gotten to know people so closely and I just, I just felt like an open forum was one way to close.
Well, the other way that I felt was important to close. Well, was to construct a. List of the organization development opportunities as I saw them, I'd been there for 6 to 8 months. 1 of my specialties is, you know, organizational dynamics and so here are the opportunities that I see. Here's a time frame that you might look at this.
Here are some potential consultants you might want to use. Just really laying that out with a strong kind of memo to back that work and providing that to senior leadership. I, I felt like that was really important. And then lastly, because of the kind of Unexpected resignation. I wanted to give time, right, a little bit of time.
So my, my last day, my last official day was December 31st of last year, but. Provided a couple of months part time to just help, like, get people up to speed on that memo. And then what the path forward might be. And I felt like that was all I could do. Like, I thought that was A lot, and it was all that I could do because I did need to exit the organization and begin to do some work perfectly helped me to transition to my current life.
I've been an overworker for so long, and it was just the perfect opportunity to leave without a job to finally just stop and say to myself, why do you do this. What's what's at the root of this. unique. This is the moment. This is the opportunity you have to really wrestle with why you overwork and to then create a new, wonderful life for myself.
I love that. And I, I'm thinking about so many different paths we could take this. I am celebrating the memo and the organizational health recommendations that you put together. That is pinnacle to the work of leading. Well, I'm also celebrating your willingness to name that. There was some loss of control of the process once you set it because I think that is something we don't talk about.
We think that we can just button it up, put a bow on it, have all control. And then there is a loss of like, the minute you speak it. Becomes yours. So I thank you for naming that. I'm curious about your innate at the at the moment or in the past overwork and how you would describe. Maybe the intersection or the current relationship to change and transition.
Yeah, so if I had stayed at my previous, not the one that we're talking about, but the previous job, which was a beautiful place to work, beautiful board, beautiful staff, beautiful mission, I'm still overworking. Right. But it would have just been in a really nice place where it felt good. And then I got to a place that was not as healthy and overwork felt really different.
And I think that was the thing to get me to face overwork. And so in that transition, I stopped. It was really difficult. I don't think I've done anything that difficult. I remember saying to my therapist, if I could just get 10 hours a week of something while we are going through this, Kind of analysis of why I overwork, then I would feel a lot better if I, if I could just get like a little contract, then this would go better.
And she was like, unique. If you can afford it, you can afford it. Let's just stay with this, this. And she said, I want you to take this time that you have where you are not working on anything to really come face to face with why you overwork. It was so difficult, but she was very brilliant. She said, let's try to week segments.
So with two weeks, if you feel different in two weeks, we'll open up the idea that you can go and start to find work. And that worked. So every two weeks I was able to say, okay, I can keep going with this. And it just gave, I just such spaciousness that I've never experienced before to wake up differently.
I used to wake up with my computer and I would just pluck it from under the bed, 5 a. m. on my lap, in the bed. And without that, without work to do, I had to find other ways to wake up. It started with. Waking up to hydration. So just drinking water before getting out of bed, stretching, moving my body, exercise, eating something nutritious.
A thing that I skipped a lot, walking the dogs, meditating, uh, using the Headspace app, journaling, and then getting in the shower and doing the, you know, the getting ready. And then by 10 or 11, I was like, okay, I can open a book or open a computer. Right. And that was radically different for me. And it led to my decision.
That I would not work 40 hours a week again. It was a major decision. I was anxious about the decision, but I came to believe. That the 40 hour work week was the reason one of the key reasons why I could never find balance, and it was never just 40 5060. And so that transition, this, this abrupt transition, no job to follow breaking my own rule is what allowed for me to discover an entire new way.
Of waking up going to bed like I have new routines now, and I am just I'm just grateful. I'm just grateful. So, even though the job wasn't a good fit to even though the environment wasn't the one that I would have chosen for myself. It has led to. This life that I am just, I'm in awe. I'm so glad for you for that.
And I'm also thinking as you're listening to this episode, take one of the things that Yanique just said. Rewind if you have to take one of the things that Yanique just said and see about implementing that in your life. That's really powerful. We, we may have to have you on again to talk a little bit more about all of the things, but I'd like to shift and pivot a little bit to your book.
I would love for you to share lessons that you've learned in writing and how that has contributed to your healing journey for White Women Cry and Call Me Angry. So I started writing, actually not the book, but I started writing, um, seriously to process. The trauma that I was experiencing in the philanthropic sector in DC, it's a very white sector nationally, also in DC, and also very white woman dominated nationally, and in DC, and I had gotten to a point where I was traumatized.
Totally demoralized, not only by the experiences, the aggressions, the racialized aggressions, but also the pace of racial justice transformation that we, our foundation was really pushing for. And I thought I, I need an outlet to process this and started writing. I also started writing because I was thinking about leaving the sector.
Because it was so painful and I recalled this quote that's often attributed to Zora Neale Hurston, which is if you stay silent. They will kill you and say you enjoyed it and I wanted to be very clear when I actually thought to write a book that I did not enjoy this journey. I mean, there were parts of it.
I enjoyed people would say that I. Led with such grace and poise and probably looked good doing it, but it was painful and I wanted that message to come across very clearly because I knew that there were other women who had experienced exactly what I had experienced. And so writing for me was part of the healing.
I realized how much pain I was actually trying to avoid. There were some essays I didn't want to write. I thought, oh, I'm not going to write about that. But when I decided to write them, I realized, okay, you didn't want to write this because it's painful. I love writing. I love the craft of it. I love, um, I've always been a writer from a journaling perspective, but I love the process.
And so it was definitely part of my healing. And then to be able to use the period of spaciousness to bring it into the world, right? Like after turning everything off, doing some work with my trauma informed therapist, and then Feeling better feeling alive and saying, okay, now is the time to take this body of work that I had created between 2018 and 2021 and actually finish it, bring it into the world and feel some closure around that.
And to see how it's doing its work in the world based on the response is just, again, I'm in awe. Well, and I think I think the thing I feel so grateful to you for is not holding back in the book. There are so many pieces of your story and your experience that I know for myself. And I think that there are so many lessons about how to be better and how to do better.
I'm curious what you're walking towards and hoping for as people absorb your writing and your truth. So I'm learning how to hold complexity. It is a new muscle. My life has been very much, it's either this or this. And so, I hope people hold complexity when they read the book. I really was not trying to paint white women as these kind of evil characters.
Right? I tried very much to talk about, uh, especially in the essay, Nikki, kind of, The friendship that we were developing, who she was as a mom, who she was as a person, as a leader, what she was trying to do and where things I thought fell apart. And so trying to like hold all of the people in the book with, with nuance and complexity.
And, you know, as far as leaving, well, I think that's also a theme, right? That even as I was leaving this organization. I was holding its leaders complexity, right? Um, when I wrote the op ed, I was trying to hold what pain he must have been in to read these newspaper articles about him. So it's really moving toward being able to hold the complexity of people myself.
And it doesn't mean I'm going to tolerate Abusive behavior or misalignment of values. It doesn't mean that, but it does mean that I can leave a situation, even if it's not good for me, even if it's toxic and recognize the humanity. In the leaders in the people who I may have left behind and so send you muscle and I am, I am moving towards it.
My last question for you and we've covered this in so many words and across a couple of different paths, but what would you say succinctly that leaving well means to you. Leaving well means knowing what is nourishing to you. Knowing what is values aligned and. When a container, whether that be a workplace, a relationship, whatever the container is, when that container can no longer hold you and, you know, my, one of my executive coaches, I, we did some work together on leaving.
I just did not as an ad. I didn't want people to leave and she had to really help me think through a container can hold it. Some things and some things that can't and that's okay. Right. And what you choose to say when you leave is deeply personal. So being in deliberation about that and all the complexities and being an integrity.
As you, as you leave, and as you care for the people who you leave behind. Beautifully said. Yanique, thank you so much for you being you, your impact in the world, your book, and for being here today. Thank you. I'm so honored to be here with you. Thank you so much to learn more about leaving well and how you can implement and embed the framework and culture in your own life and workplace.
Visit naomihattaway.com. It's time for each of us to look ourselves in the mirror and finally admit we are playing a powerful role in the system. We can either exist outside of our power or choose to decide to shift culture and to create transformation. Until next time, I'm your host. Naomi Hattaway, and you've been listening to Leaving Well, a navigation guide for workplace transitions.