Ep. 5 – How My Black Daughter Changed My World by Showing Me Hers
This week, COMPOSURE author Kate Purmal is joined by her daughter, Mariah Driver! This mother-daughter conversation is a special one, full of insights on identity, race, privilege, and the many ways the intersection of those pieces of who we are affect the way we show up in the world — and the ways the world treats us in return.
This conversation touches upon the business and the personal — both in Mariah’s expertise as a leader in the field of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and in her personal relationship with her mom. She and Kate discuss, candidly, the many ways their relationship has changed and grown through the difficult conversations they’ve had over the past year about how Mariah’s identity as a black woman affects the ways she navigates her own life.
Read Why Black Trauma Matters: The Emerging Opportunity for Racial Compassion — The COMPOSURE Blog ➞
The episode also provides insight into the uniquely challenging experience of being a member of an “out group” in the business world and the many discomforts that come along with not feeling a sense of belonging. Mariah shares from the many lessons she’s learned throughout her time as a DEI leader and gives advice to anyone who is struggling to find ways to mindfully support members of the BIPOC community in the workplace.
Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for clarity.
Drew Tweedy
Hey and welcome back to the COMPOSURE Podcast. I'm your host, Drew Tweedy. So... listen, I know I say this just about every week, but I am especially excited to share with you all the episode you're about to hear. This week, a conversation between COMPOSURE author Kate Purmal and her daughter, Mariah Driver. Mariah is the Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Webflow, where she designs systems and experiences that enable everyone to show up authentically and grow to their full potential.
Through all her work, Mariah seeks to question, reimagine, and redesign the systems and practices that surround us to ensure that all people can access equitable opportunities and build a better world. Mariah's work is grounded in her training and research in social scientific methods, Critical Race Theory, and organizational psychology. Mariah identifies as a black, disabled woman, and the proud mom of her 12 year old Chocolate Lab, Callie.
This conversation between Mariah and her mom is a powerful one. They revisit difficult conversations they've had over the past year about identity, race and privilege, and all the ways that the intersections of those pieces of who we are affect the way we show up in the world — and the way the world treats us in return. Their relationship — as a white mother and a black daughter — has blossomed through the increased levels of understanding, compassion and empathy that have resulted from these conversations. And I can say definitively that COMPOSURE would not be what it is without the contributions and courage that Mariah has shared with her mom. She's had an immense effect on this work. And on a personal level, Mariah and Kate are an incredible example of the very real rewards that come when we truly invest in better understanding the experiences of the people in our lives we care about most, no matter how difficult or uncomfortable it may be to get there. There's so much wisdom in the words you're about to hear, so I won't keep you waiting any longer. Here's Mariah Driver, and Kate Purmal.
Kate Purmal
Hello, Mariah, thank you so much for joining us, my sweet daughter. Mariah, when I first started working on COMPOSURE, it was really from the perspective of a female executive who started out in the tech industry in the mid 80s, with a degree in software engineering, being the "only" one in the room most of the time, and the only woman, of course. And really, my experiences with that, and recognizing that there are so many others that face similar challenges and the unique, the unique dynamics that exist because of being the only. So when I was starting to write, I wasn't really considering the impact of intersectionality despite having you and Cole, my biracial children. And so I wanted to go to this moment that we had, about a year before my book was published, where you really brought that to the forefront, and you really helped me deepen my understanding of the impact of intersectionality. And how important it is to include that as best I could as a white woman in the work that I've done. So with that, maybe I'd start by asking you to read the post you did, the day that my book was launched, if you'd be so kind to do that. And I'll try not to cry.
Mariah Driver
I can absolutely do that. And I bet you will cry if I had to put my money on it. Hi everyone, my name is Mariah. And I am the proud daughter of Kate Purmal. And I'm thrilled to be here. When I wrote the post that she is referring to and the story that she's referring to, I was writing a LinkedIn post and I just felt so stuck because none of the words that I had wanted to say fully felt like they fully encapsulated what made me most proud of her for writing this book.
And so I when I feel like I'm lacking the words to capture a feeling, I turn to storytelling. So here is the story that I shared.
"Just about a month ago when my mom launched her book. What I am most proud of my mother for is not the decades of work and research behind her book. What I'm most proud of is the work she did on a single night when her pen was down. Her laptop was closed and she was sitting with me under the stars in beautiful Santa Barbara. That night I recounted an experience I had with a white woman, someone close to our circle of family and friends who said that I was intimidating and threatening. We had a quick back and forth about whether this should be taken as a compliment or with any weight at all, before I finally turned to my white mother and asked her a question that would forever change our relationship. And her book. Mom, do you think she would have said this about me if I wasn't black? She started to respond, honey, of course not. And then stopped herself. She saw in my tear filled eyes, something that would forever impact the trajectory of her writing, her work, and her impact on the world. She saw in me, she saw me yearning for her to see me not as mother but as the world did. And in that moment, she learned a lesson that no one could teach her but her black daughter that no matter how much she willed the world to see and value me for what I did and thought and wrote and said, the world would always see me as black. They say that good art is born out of driven out of an ill designed world. And this is true of COMPOSURE, whose heart and soul is the beauty, it creates space for in the context of the broken world it was written in, instead of writing about the world as it should be. rid of every -ism and full of fairness, my mom confronts and writes for the world as it is for white women like her and black women like me, and everyone in between. COMPOSURE guides readers to a place of resilience and authenticity, by working through, not around the real experiences of trauma, microaggression, self limiting beliefs and so much more. To my mother, Kate Purmal, thank you for seeing me and writing the book that sees me to in big and small ways. It's no coincidence that you celebrate your book launch under the stars and beautiful Santa Barbara."
And that was what I shared. I think you made it through without crying.
Kate Purmal
I'm tearing up a little bit, you know, I've read it a lot. You know, Mariah, the thing that really stands out to me whenever I read this, or when I hear you read it is that there was this protective part of me, as your mother, that has always wanted to protect you from the microaggressions in the world. And I think that the big breakthrough for me is this end, if I can't protect you, I want to fix it, right? I want to either protect you or fix it or try to comfort you and the big breakthrough in that statement. And something that's been really important to me and stuck with me in the work I've done with BIPOC women and men is that need to be seen, and the need to be seen and heard, and to have my heart break a little bit for for the things that are really happening and not to pretend like they're not, or wish they're not. That really is how I transformed internally in that way that's had a profound impact on my work.
Mariah Driver
Yeah, yeah. And I think it's a lesson that I think we are forced to confront and learn, again, and again, as allies for any marginalized identity group, and kind of historically underserved identity group is that as much as we want to say, show up as your full self, and do these things that have worked for me as someone who does not belong to the group that you belong to, and, you know, show up as your full self, and don't worry about what others think of you and you know, to make people feel better by saying, the world doesn't see you that way, or the world sees you as equal. It erases that experience in a way that I think, isn't the intention of the person who was trying to comfort you or make you feel better or kind of fix the situation for you, but just willing it away.
But I think that it's something that we, especially as people who are trying to empower others in the workplace, need to be cognizant of, the fact that naming these dynamics, and the fact that the color of your skin does impact how people will respond to you in the workplace. So saying, what's worked for a white man, when it comes to speaking up and raising your voice and, you know, taking on new opportunities and being really, really visible and being really loud, won't work as effectively for a black woman because of the ways that that triggers fear and intimidation, and because of the color of her skin. And so I think that it was a perfectly timed conversation for us to have and one that I don't know that I had the words for or I even understood until that night either. Going into writing this book for you, I think that it helped you see what folks don't always want to see, which is that the world is going to see me and treat me as a black woman differently. No matter how I show up, no matter what I do, and no matter how much we will that to not be the case. So the best we can do is kind of name that dynamic and work through it, not kind of around it.
Kate Purmal
And I think creates that awareness for those who want to be allies to know that inclusion, you know, this, the idea of creating inclusion involves recognizing where inclusion doesn't exist, and trying to bridge that and until you're able to confront that reality, I don't think you can be inclusive, right? Until we know, which is my next question, what some of the unique ways that black women experience the work world that are differently than how me, as a white woman, even being the only experience it until I understand that I really have no way of supporting you fully. So I'm curious about that. How do you see the way you experience the world differently from me and or other white women and white men?
Mariah Driver
Yeah, I think that's a good question. I first want to say that I identify as a black woman, but I can only speak from my experience, as you know, with the various intersections that I hold with the various privileges that I hold, even as a black woman, that impact how I show up, and that definitely affect my experience in the workplace, in different ways than other black women to me, so even the fact that I'm lighter skinned, because I'm biracial, privileges me in certain ways that darker skinned black women do not benefit from in the workplace.
So I just want to preface by saying that I can speak from my experience, both as a black woman but also as a diversity and inclusion leader who has been measuring and trying to observe and trying to solve for the dynamics that are both overt and covert in the workplace that affect black women. So from a personal standpoint, to answer your question of what are, you know, how do black women experience the world differently from non black women, let's just use white women as the comparison because again, that differs from the next women and women who are disabled.
But for black women, I think, most often what I have found is that black women, especially in tech, are just acutely underrepresented. And this also applies to other industries as well. But I think that right now, as a white woman working in tech, it would be very rare, in my opinion, to find a white woman working in tech who does not work with a solid number of other white women. And if they don't, they should leave the workplace because there's simply no excuse for that at this point — it's 2021. But I will say that I think, as a black woman, I can count on my fingers, the number of times I have been on a team with one other black woman at least. And I think that's maybe maybe less than four in my entire career. So I think that's the first point is that on my immediate team, it is very rare that I am in a meeting with another black woman, it is very rare that I am on a team with another black woman. So I am often the only in the room.
I started as Webflow's first black employee and the only black woman working there for a bit of time. And it actually didn't even occur to me that that was the case because I had been so used to working in all white spaces, where I was the only black woman so it didn't even at that point, it hadn't even crossed my cross my periphery or radar. So I think that's the first point is that unlike white women, black women are often the only more often than not on their teams. I also will say that unlike white women, we very very, very rarely have had the opportunity to work for a black woman. So I have never had a manager who is a black woman or a black man for that matter. I've never had a black manager ever in my career. And I think that is also a different that also impacts your experience and something that I can't even quite understand what that would be like. And so I think even thinking about that, if you are a white woman to put yourself in the perspective of had I have you know, what would it be like if I never have worked For a white person, or a white woman in my entire career, you know, that's I think very rarely have white women experienced that in the workplace, especially in tech.
And then I think lastly, just in those overt ways that it impacts your experience, things that you can see, things that I can observe and name. And the covert ways that it impacts my experience as a black woman are a lot harder to even recognize, I think, because recognizing the ways in which your identity as a black woman impacts how people treat you in the workplace or the opportunities you're given in the workplace. It's traumatizing to recognize those things, because how do you recognize those things and then reconcile your place in that environment.
For a long time, actually when I was not working in a DEI role, because now that's kind of my job is to actually recognize those things. But for a long time, I didn't even... I couldn't name it. And partially because I think it was a survival mechanism to not see and not accept that maybe this was due to my race. Because that's a difficult thing to accept, especially in a workplace where you want to believe that you're on this team, and that you're given opportunities, and that you know, people believe in you.
I find that expressions of frustration, of you know, if I disagree with someone, I often find that it's perceived as more combative than if I was a white woman. So I often observe dynamics in the workplace, where if a black woman pushes back on something, just as a conversation, a dialogue, discourse and negotiation, that there tends to be this feeling of combativeness or defensiveness that I don't see when it's an interaction between two white women or two white men. And I think that there is something historically and systemically about the perception of black women as angry as threatening, that is triggered when a black woman raises a concern, raises the contrary opinion.
So knowing that and having observed that, and even internalized that whether or not I was conscious of it enough, I very, very, very, very intentionally will preface any kind of disagreeing opinion or, you know, controversial statement, or any pushback with a lot of kindness and warmth and a reassurance that I'm on the same team, because I don't want to be perceived, I'm kind of trying to almost put out that flame that I expect to, to raise and kind of explode the minute I push back on something and kind of step out of the box of being this complicit woman in that space. And I haven't, I think that is something that, particularly with white interactions between black men and women and white women in the workplace I've seen, really affect the feelings of trust and kind of partnership for black woman. So I guess those are just a few things I would say about that experience in the workplace.
Kate Purmal
It sounds like you are expressing a tremendous amount of awareness that you carry with you in every single moment of the workplace that many white women and certainly white men don't carry with them, because they don't have to. There's something interesting that I've experienced in working with some of our clients who are very senior, one of them was a very senior black woman. And, you know, throughout her life, she's had to fight to get the opportunities she's had and to not be marginalized, and to not be have bias and get in the way. And that's happened since she was young.
I mean, she tells a story about wanting to join the debate team and the debate team was chosen by the teacher, and everybody who was chosen was white. And so she went to the principal and said, Wait, I put my name in the hat. How was this done? How are these people chosen? And she ended up getting on the debate team because there was bias there and the principal's like, okay, there shouldn't be bias so he was able to make that happen, but that's the norm for her.
She feels as though the only way she gets what she wants in terms of advancement is to be rather aggressive about her needs. And that then triggers as you're saying, this perception, or this bias of the angry black woman. So there's a lot of catch 22 in here, there's a lot of you almost can't win. And so I'm curious, you know, we're talking about the experience in the workplace as it is. And yet, we would hope that there would be systemic change in the work environment to allow or to eliminate this bias and create greater equity and inclusion. How do you look at the need to, you know, our work is around working with the individual to make them more resourceful, even in difficult environments, versus working with institutions to eliminate bias? How do you look at that balance? When you look in the work environment?
Mariah Driver
Yeah, I think the the word that you say, to describe that is balance, which I think is really important, because I think oftentimes, we position whether it's in DEI work, whether it's in social justice work, or racial justice work, especially, we position the change we need to do personally, whether that is for people, you know, non black people who are trying to become better allies, and kind of do the work of of addressing and understanding and undoing their own internalized racism and racist ideas and beliefs.
We create this binary between the personal work and the systemic work. And you constantly see kind of this negotiation between those two things, and really what it is is a balance, right, because systemic work is going to take time. And as someone working at a, you know, an early-ish stage startup where we have luckily been doing this work proactively even I can say, it's gonna take us a long time to get to the point where we have a work environment that I can confidently say, is fully equitable, fully inclusive, and as diverse as it should be for the world we're working in and serving.
So I think that's a great question is how do I think about the balance between that systemic work that we know has to happen in the long run, because it can all fall on these individuals both becoming better allies, and more effective changemakers. But also, the individuals in those groups kind of figuring out and empowering themselves to succeed within a system that is not designed for their success? How do you balance that work, and then the systemic work. And I think that it's necessary to continue to push for systemic change, while also recognizing that we need to dedicate time and resources to making sure that while we're changing systems, we're making sure that people are able to survive the systems long enough to succeed within them.
So I think that's where I even see employee resource groups coming in is that employee resource groups are not the solution. They're not going to, on their own, make a company more inclusive and equitable, we shouldn't, ideally, actually need employee resource groups. If companies are fully diverse, fully equitable and fully inclusive. The reason we need them is because these identity groups that are underrepresented acutely need spaces and need resources and need support additional support to navigate and succeed within companies that are not designed by people who look like them, and who are not, which are not designed to fully effectively support people like them. So in my work, I think of our employee resource groups even as that, that there's a systemic change that we're doing on a structural level within our organization. But then there's also these, these this work we're doing to empower individuals within the organization. To get the support they need to navigate the dynamics that we accept are there because they're underrepresented. They don't have equal representation and leadership. So they they're going to struggle with different things than a white man would in the organization. I think that's really what why blue this work is so important is truly because without boundaries without the ability without the tools to help you cope with the trauma that you experience. Oftentimes the insecurity, the Impostor Syndrome, you know, feelings, the self doubt, the lack of inclusion and belonging, the fear of showing up as your full self and, and how people might respond.
If you don't have the tools, and the ability and the support to adequately cope with all of that and navigate all of that in the workplace, it's inevitable as a person of color, or a member of an underrepresented or marginalized group. You can't survive in that environment for very long, it's exhausting. And it's traumatic. And it really takes a toll. And I think that you see that with the turnover rates within companies, especially as you go up in the ranks, for members of underrepresented groups, because the burden of representation becomes so much more heavy, the lack of representation becomes so much more prominent.
So all of these factors are compiling on one another and making it so difficult, it's you know, it's a job within a job to just keep going and to keep believing that you belong there, when everything around you is telling you that you don't. So that's why I think, you know, that's how I think about this work to empower individuals is to, you know, recognize and be honest about the fact that our systems aren't going to change overnight. And that's not an excuse for the systems. You know, that's not that's not buying those systems, time is time is up, they should be, they should be changing. And we should be investing in that systemic change. But we would be remiss to ignore the fact that we also risk losing diverse talent, while we are changing those systems, if we are not supporting those individuals.
Kate Purmal
Your words ring so true. We, as you know, we offer full scholarships for women of color, and any BIPOC person that's interested in our program, and in this last cohort we did, it was three quarters black women, one quarter non black women. And it was fascinating to me how different the discussion was. So the things that we saw that came up were and it really speaks to what you're talking about. But something even more weighty than that, which is most of the women are engaged in some level of initiatives around racial justice, whether they're serving in DEI like you are, or they're working on the behalf of the incarcerated or whatever, whatever. There's both in the for profit in the nonprofit world, there's a mix of all that. But there's a feeling, a sense of the weight of the task, and the weight of the time. And the trauma that's happening right now. Being something you can never let go of, it's like so the for the first time I've ever heard the word compassion fatigue, in a business discussion, and that has to do with that added burden of being the one that is the one usually, that is sort of tasked with attempting to create this, you know, monumental change. How do you deal with compassion fatigue? Or how do you see others deal with it in a way that's effective.
Mariah Driver
So there's another concept, similar to compassion fatigue, which is black fatigue. And I heard that term last year. And it was so validating, and it was really, really an important concept for me to understand, because I think that, similar to the compassion fatigue, there's so much emotional labor and legwork that goes into just being black in an all white space and making it comfortable for you and for the people around you. Which means that the truth of the matter is that it's not comfortable to be black person in a predominantly white space and to constantly be speaking about or naming racial dynamics racist behavior in the workplace, even if you observe it, because it just it honestly, it's more work for you to then deal with the, you know, the white guilt that comes with naming that in that environment.
And so I think there's just, there's a lot of, there's a lot of work that goes into what you said before, approaching every interaction with 10 times more considerations about how can this. How could this be interpreted given, and you know, whether or not you're aware of it or not, given who I am, what I look like what I represent, you know, how can in many ways, it's, I just want to be a member of this team that you feel and, you know, is a member of this team. And so, as you know, for a long time, in my career, I was just trying to fit in, I was just trying to prove that I was just as much of a team members, any of the, you know, white guys on my marketing team, and I was just, I didn't even realize kind of what I was doing at the time, but I was doing a lot of work to, to make my blackness smaller, and kind of mute my blackness, so that it didn't call attention to my difference in such an acute way in the environment, and to blend in.
So I did not have to confront or deal with that, the weight of that difference in what that means for every interaction. So I think that, you know, fatigue, compassion fatigue, black fatigue, it all comes down to the burden of being different. And also on top of that trying to do a job and trying to earn respect and trying to be valued and trying to do, you know, contribute good work, while also proving over and over and over again, that you belong, and that to yourself, and to everyone around you. And so there's a lot of work that goes into that, both mentally, and otherwise, you know, to prove over and over again, your value, because everything in your environment, when you're the only black person in the room is telling you, you don't belong here, you shouldn't be here, and you're trying to convince yourself as much as everyone around you that you do belong there. And that's tiring.
Kate Purmal
You know, what's interesting to me is you actually work in a company that is pretty darn progressive as this goes there. It's a company where at the highest level, to the CEO, there's a very strong commitment to foster inclusion and, and equity and diversity in the work environment. It's also a company that... I mean, I'm your mom. So I have, I'm super proud of you. And I have that perspective. But I know that you're a very valued and respected employee, right. And you are seen as a key employee in the business, because of your presence, you're asked to, to speak and to, you know, host and events, etc.
So I'm curious about, and I think this goes into the concept of Impostor Syndrome is that there's something that either doesn't land or can't land on you in terms of just of recognizing or seeing yourself as other people in the environment see you. And yet, I know too, I don't want to even imply to you, which is what I was doing before on that evening that, oh, no, everybody sees you differently. Like I see you and I see how people react respond to you. And I don't see what you see and what you feel. And so I'm just curious how you reconcile finding success and accolades and rewards with this other part of you that struggling to belong and feel like you deserve to be there. How do you deal with that in a way that is positive and beneficial, if you have a way?
Mariah Driver
Yeah, that's a good question. This is definitely a code that I have not cracked. But I think that I have found that surrounding myself, whether or not these are people I work directly with but in any realm of my life I'm being really intentional about kind of filling the stands as I like to say like with the people who are I speak to you on a daily basis the coworkers I slack on a daily basis, the people I go out of my way to work on projects with the people I attend virtual happy hours with whatever these are the people who will constantly reinforce my value and make me feel like I belong. And so I think that part of what I have recognized is that I will never be in a workplace where every single person there believes I should be there. And whether that's because of my race or my gender, or just, you know, maybe it's just a personality difference, that I'm never going to work in a workplace where every single person believes and reinforces my value and my worthiness of being there.
And I will also never work in a position where I 100% of the time feel 100% confident that I am entitled to be there that I deserve to be there that I deserve, you know, that I am, I am competent enough to be there as an regardless of what the world tells me, because that's just my Impostor Syndrome voice that's, you know, turned all the way up, probably to keep me safe, and some kind of backwards way. So knowing that I can't change those two things, what can I do, is on a daily basis, making sure that I am increasing the number of people I'm interacting with who are going to reinforce good things about me.
People who are going to say, going to remind me that I belong, going to remind me that I'm valuable going to remind me that my work is important, going to challenge me, certainly not just people who are going to kind of be an echo chamber of my own beliefs, but will will challenge me in a way where I believe they're seeing me, and they're challenging my approach to something from a kind of business standpoint, and not my personal perspective on something, instead, they kind of seek to understand that, especially if they're not someone from my identity group. So I have been really intentional about making sure that I am recognizing, you know, whether it's people I work with, whether it's people I'm friends with, but particularly at work.
If I'm recognizing whether or not interactions with this person, do I leave them feeling better about myself more confident about myself more competent, more, you know, a higher sense of belonging? Or do I feel more like an imposter? Do I feel more self doubt, and for the people who make me feel more self doubt, as much as I can, I try to reduce the number of interactions, I'll move our live meetings to emails, I will move those to Slack messages, I won't, you know, totally ghost the person, obviously, because we're colleagues in many cases, but also, you know, we have relationships in some cases, and even the individual we talked about on that night was someone who, you know, white woman who felt I was intimidating, like these kinds of people who are going to be in my life and are going to be in my work environment, they can still be there, I can still have a working relationship, but I can just establish boundaries with them to make sure that you know, as much as I can, I'm not allowing whatever it is that they're creating, for me that is in that is increasing my feelings of self doubt, or unworthiness or a lack of belonging, or are dialing up the voice in my head that is saying, reminding me of the feelings of blackness like it feels louder in certain environments.
And you know, whether it's like I'm in the south, suddenly I'm like, okay, and not only am I the only black person in the room, these people seem like they're, you know, really conservative southerners who probably don't like people who look like me. And in those environments, I feel like my awareness of my blackness is through the roof. Whereas I can be in an all white space with a bunch of my friends, and it doesn't even occur to me, because there's no trigger in that environment, whether it's covert, or overt, that tells me, Oh, this is you have to be aware of this. Because just be aware of this because this might impact how someone treats you and you just want to have that on your radar for your own safety.
So I think that that's definitely something that I've recognized is a way to navigate that tangibly, is to just surround yourself by people who really make you feel a greater sense and greater feeling of whatever it is you're lacking, whether that's confidence, whether that's the feeling of belonging, whether that's a even a acceptance of your of your true self, surrounding yourself, surrounded myself by other black women in an environment where I don't have to, you know, code switch, giving myself that outlet. It's really important. So I think that's something that's tangible and honestly within your control, and again, I have actually asked people who make me feel the opposite to start having our meetings async if that's possible, and obviously don't take this as the reason but it is Something that, you know, that comes up. And I think it's just I don't want that to impact our working relationship negatively. And oftentimes, it's the best way to make sure that I can effectively show up and continue to show up.
Kate Purmal
It's an element of self protection and self care, which I think is really, actually quite beautiful and astute of you to do. I'm curious about this: You come across, I know, as very competent, and very confident, and self assured. And I think a lot of people don't perceive you as having the need to be supported in that way. How do you let people know? Or how do they know that people who are close to you to do that with you? Do you actually talk to them about it?
Mariah Driver
Yeah. So I think that one of the things that I have done and started to be more vocal about because to your point, a survival mechanism of mine, for a long time was not needing help, like, just because I think that there have been times in my life when I have not felt like the help was there. And so whatever part of me then learned, don't need help. Because to survive, you need to be all the help you need.
So not asking for help was definitely something that I have had to kind of practice unlearning. And I think that it is true that some very few people in my life would assume that these are feelings I have. One thing I've started doing with my close friends is actually saying aloud to them. Here is what my brain is telling me. Um, and I actually have named this little part of my brain Beatrice, lovingly, she is the impostor voice. She is the anxiety voice. She is the self doubt self criticism voice, who is full of shoulds and full of criticism and full of you know, she's the one who, you know, you come out of an interaction, you're like, Oh, God, that was so awkward. Like, she's the one who's like in your brain, saying, like, oh, you should have said this, why don't you say this, and, you know, nothing, that the interaction is actually saying that, but she's saying that.
And she's also the one who is saying, you know, you need to be really, really, really nervous, or you should cancel this meeting. You're not prepared for that, you're not going to do well, it's not going to go well. This probably just trying to keep me safe in some kind of backwards way. And trying to keep me in a little box where we can control everything and not put myself out there not rely on people too much. So I've actually started with my friends to say aloud to them or, you know, over text or whatever. And here's the here's the thing that Beatrice is saying to me, and I think there's something really powerful that is come from naming those thoughts as Beatrice's thoughts because all of a sudden, it creates a little stop gap for both myself and my friends, to be able to combat and say, Now, Beatrice might say that, but we don't believe that's true.
Here's a counter narrative. And I really do think that's like saying, to people in your life, you know, here's a narrative in my head, and having them tell you, essentially, like, you know, they're like, Okay, Beatrice, good try, but I have the receipts for exactly why that's untrue. And, you know, we'll come with the, it's like going to court, they have their evidence, you know, they call up, I call up my witnesses against Beatrice's narrative and like all of a sudden, Beatrice disappears. So that's one thing that I've done is increasing my vulnerability with my friends being more open about it. And I think not as a like attention seeking device or anything else. But just as a practice, because I am trying to learn, practice new beliefs about myself, and I'm trying to practice new narratives about myself and I can do that myself, but it's a lot more helpful when at times, when Beatrice's voice is super loud, that I can go to my friends and get a little bit of assistance for them coming in with new beliefs and new statements about me or about a situation that kind of can combat and challenge that narrative of self doubt.
Kate Purmal
You know, it's also brilliant because it creates independence between you and Beatrice, you are an entity, she's an entity. It de-personalizes her a little bit for those that you're talking with. It's actually very much aligned with a core principle of the work that we do that of getting distance and getting dissociating out of yourself and observing things from the outside. So I think that's really brilliant and I'm going to start having our clients name their Beatrice.
Mariah Driver
We have Penelope. Penelope is one of our friends, they always have like these old woman names for some reason. But um, I think one of the beautiful things too is that a lot of those thoughts and self limiting beliefs come from, you know, your child, inner child who experienced trauma, and to learn things about themselves at a young age that they're trying to, you know, remind you of to keep you safe, even though your environments change. And so one of the things that I have found also super helpful about naming Beatrice is that, rather than saying, like, Oh, I hate that part of my brain, I can say, oh, Beatrice, I know you're trying to keep me safe, but I'm good.
But the situation has changed. Like, this is no longer second grade, in Mrs. Fox's class who, you know, may have been low key a little bit racist, like, this is a different, this is a different ballgame. Beatrice, you know, I love you for showing up. And reminding me of these things, but we don't need those right now. And so it allows you to also develop a bit of compassion for that inner child, which is often the source of those beliefs and those fears and those anxieties and those self doubts that really are just trying to keep you safe. Because it doesn't help to have resentment towards that, because it is still a part of you, even if you can kind of parse out that, you know, Beatrice part of your brain.
Kate Purmal
And it's a very well intentioned part of you. And it's a part of you that if you didn't have growing up, you probably wouldn't be alive right now. Right? Yes, it's that safety part. So yeah, so appreciating that part is so important. I have kind of an interesting question related to this. So you know and I know, that your brother Cole is sort of the opposite of you. And...
Mariah Driver
He doesn't have a very big Beatrice. I don't know if there's any Beatrice in Cole's brain... maybe very small.
Kate Purmal
So here's my question. He's going through the world, just like you are — he's a man, but nonetheless, he's going through the world black just like you are. And so he's also encountering the same dynamics that you're encountering. And I don't quite know how it works for him. But my sense is, either he doesn't notice or he doesn't care. So I'm just curious about like, sometimes I think, Oh, it must be such a relief to be Cole, versus being Mariah, because you can go through the world differently. I'm just curious how you see that looking at your brother.
Mariah Driver
Yeah, it's definitely something I've always envied. And I think, I've also always envied his lack of anxiety, you know, his lack of any kind of body dysmorphia, or like, care about whether he exercises or what he eats. And all of it kind of stems from the same thing, which is that Cole's feelings, the source of his self worth and his self validation and his feelings of where he looks to answer the question of am I enough? Am I doing enough? Is not in the mirror. It's not external. It's not on social media. It's in himself.
He just has it, you know, he has his barometer. And there are times where he's like, Yep, I know I'm not doing enough, I need to do more in this area, or whatever. But I have always envied that about him. And I think that part of my journey has also been recognizing that while I do envy, that he kind of can navigate the world with a, an amount of confidence that I think, is worthy of being envied, I also think that it's, I would be remiss not to view my anxiety, my kind of imposter syndrome voice, my Beatrice voice as an asset and a tool in a lot of ways that maybe other people don't have.
And I think it's allowed me, number one to garner a lot more empathy for people who have who show up in a certain way. And in a particular environment, I think that it's allowed me to be a lot more effective in my job, because I understand fundamentally that you can have beliefs about or feelings in an environment that are not coming from any, you know, specific behavior or thing that anyone's said to you, but kind of coming from these internalized beliefs about yourself, that are still very much real to you. So it's not a matter of saying like, Oh, no, of course not. Everyone thinks you're doing a great job. And that can be very dismissive. Or like, Oh, of course not, no one's treating you differently because you're a black woman.
I understand that if someone feels like she's being treated differently because she's a black woman, that's how she feels. And it doesn't matter whether or not that person was actually treating her differently because she's a black woman. Because if she feels that way, that affects how she shows up, it affects how safe she feels and affects what she's going to ask for. It affects her communication. And her chances of success. And so I think, for me, I'm learning more and more how to use that as an asset.
But I will say that I think that my brother at a very young age decided, consciously or unconsciously, I'm just gonna do me and see how it goes. And, you know, it worked. It worked. People loved him for who he was. And so I think that very early on, he learned, Cole can be exactly who Cole is, and people are going to love it. And I think whereas, you know, I never gave myself or the world the chance to see how the world would respond to Mariah being totally fully Mariah just as she is. And so instead, you know, I learned, like, the world loves Mariah, if she excels in school, if she excels in track and field if she excels in cross country, if she shows up for every single one of her friend's birthday parties and makes them all you know, burns them all custom CDs for the drives to school. So I think that if she straightens her hair, so things like that, that I think for me, I learned that the world loves me if — Cole learned the world loves me, period, I am enough period. And I think it's both a beautiful, enviable thing.
Kate Purmal
It's ironic to me that you are really Beatrice and Mariah, right? The world loves you. And Beatrice, has Mariah showing up. Which is funny, because your brother used to call you, Bariah, which would be a combo of Beatrice and Mariah.
Mariah Driver
Yeah, yeah, it was Bariah for a long time, like, even like way after he actually learned to pronounce M. He was like, fully pronouncing M and still calling me Bariah. And it was purely because he knew it made me upset.
Kate Purmal
Alright, I have one last question for you. This one kind of cuts a little deep. And so we'll see how it goes. You know, this ability to be present and see you, is a journey for me, and I know it's a journey for you. And I feel, from my perspective, like we've actually made a lot of progress in the last year. And that the more work I do in this area with women of color, and the more the more aware I become of what the world's like for you, which is as a mother is really painful, but it's also important. So I guess my question would be, what do you see in terms of the future in terms of how our relationship can evolve in a way to be even more supportive of Mariah? For who she is?
Mariah Driver
Hmm, that is a good question. We love the deep cuts. I think that relationships, whether it's professional, whether it's personal, whether it's romantic, whether it's, you know, mother to daughter, and between a white person and a non white person, you know, and whatever spectrum of privilege you're on. For me, I would say that the most important thing to nurture that relationship and to get it bring it closer and closer to a place in which both people are fully seen and fully loved and fully heard is to, I think, continued to just establish a lot of trust, that you will continue to love each other and show up for each other and support each other.
Even if things get hard and conversations get difficult. I think that one of the helpful things that I have found from the white people and specifically white women in my life has been when we talk about race when I say something you know, when I open up about, hey, here's how, you know something you said or something you did made me feel invisible or harmed me in some way is to really be intentional about listening and not trying to make me feel better. I think that when we focus so much on trying to make the person feel better, we do things like what we've discussed, telling them, like the world doesn't see you that way.
Because you know, if the intention is to just make them feel better, in a way, you end up kind of erasing their experience altogether, because in your mind that's bringing them closer to feeling better. I think what really is is helpful is just to say, like, you know, I'm sorry, that sucks. You know, I say this to black women in my workplace all the time when they come to me about things. I don't say, I mean, I'm the head of DEI. And so people would often think like, my job is to make sure to convince people that everything is good. The reality is, that's not my job.
My job is to hold space for people and validate people when things are not great when they are having a hard time because of their identity. And just to listen and say I'm really sorry that happened and asking, What do you need from me? And I think before you assume what they need to hear before you assume what they need to do is just to really, really make sure you're centering their experience, as opposed to centering your response to it. And then I think just constantly asking yourself, Am I doing this to make myself feel better? Or am I saying this or doing this to make to support this person?
And I think that had more people been asking themselves that in the past two years of this kind of racial reckoning, we probably would have seen a lot fewer people reaching out to their black friends to you know, ask them like, what can I do to help? Because you realize in that moment that, you know, that in itself was not helpful. And that, you know, I think we do a lot of things oftentimes to assuage our own feelings of guilt and shame and discomfort. When we become aware of dynamics that are whether they're racist dynamics, whether it's just discriminatory dynamics, whether it's sexist, or homophobic, whatever any of the isms show up, that we're just really cognizant of how we respond, and that that response is centered on what's best for the individuals.
And if we don't know what's best that we're asking, rather than assuming. And yeah, so I think just creating space for these kinds of conversations, asking again, like, what don't I know, what can't I see? And what do you need me to hear? What do you need me to know? Or understand? And rather than, like, what do you like, rather than asking someone to prove something to you or show something for you just asking, like, what do you need me to understand? And that belief is, for instance, my answer would be you know, like that. You might see me, you know, you see me as your daughter, who you love the world sees me as a black woman. And I need you to understand that that like that's, that's it dynamic that you can never fully live in. But it is something that you need to understand. I think that question is really powerful.
Kate Purmal
Yeah, it seems like what you're saying is, I'm taking away a couple things. One is I can be more proactive in helping to guide that discovery between us. But number two, I can also be extremely careful about creating safety, extremely conscious about making it more and more and more safe, to really have those discussions which are uncomfortable, painful, beautiful, everything that they are, because clearly, for whatever reason our journeys are together, my dear, partly for that reason. So it's really an opportunity. I think, I feel really blessed to have had this opportunity to see you in a way and to begin to see you more. Because it's really, it's just really profound to have an experience that's so different in the world.
Mariah Driver
Yeah. So I think it's the openness and the embrace of being uncomfortable too. I think it's a big one. And I think when people feel discomfort, their immediate feeling is like Oh, something has gone wrong. But I think when it comes to these types of conversations, this type of work, that discomfort is not evidence that something's gone wrong in a reason to like, undo, undo, undo, you know, back away, back away back away, it's actually a reason to like stay in it, because that's where the real progress and change happens. It's an indication of kind of a turning point, or a moment in which the way that you viewed the world is fundamentally going to change, which I think is what we can all offer each other over time.
Kate Purmal
And it's what opens the door for the change that we need to see in the world. Because I know from my own experience, that the thing that has the greatest impact on my ability to be inclusive is to to compassionately experience, life, as you experience it, and as others experience it, and to be able to hear that and be present with it. Yeah, well, thank you, this was quite a joy, joyous moment. I think, as a mother, there's nothing better than to have a daughter that we can have. We have such interesting conversations about all kinds of things in terms of including how to approach this stuff in business, how to, you know how I should work with women like you in my practice, and I just am immensely grateful for the richness you bring to my life. Thank you.
Mariah Driver
I am grateful for you too. And this is probably part 14 out of 5000 of these kinds of conversations. And yeah, I'm just so proud of you for the work that you're doing. Both, you know, internally, but also the work you're putting out into the world and how how the work you're doing internally has impacted and really improved and just drastically affected the work that you put into the world and making it more accessible and empowering for more people. So I'm very proud of you for that. And thank you for having me.
