[00:00:00] Bonni Stachowiak: Today on Episode number 407 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Unpacking Resilience & Grief, with Chinasa Elue, Laura Howard, and Este Jordan.

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[00:00:14] Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

[00:00:23] Bonni: Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak, and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students. I’m joined today on Teaching in Higher Ed with three guests: Chinasa Elue, Laura Howard, and Este Jordan.

Dr. Laura Howard is a lecturer and educational developer in the English Department at Kennesaw State University, where she develops and supports graduate teaching assistants.

Dr. Howard also serves as the technology coordinator in her department, which includes supporting faculty teaching with technology. Her interest in educational development began in a faculty learning community.

She enjoys the collaborative nature of this work, especially the endless opportunities to learn and grow. Dr. Chinasa Elue is an associate professor of Educational Leadership and Higher Education at Kennesaw State University. She received her doctorate in Educational Leadership from Clemson University with a certificate in Policy Studies. She received her MEd in Educational Leadership from Valdosta State University and her bachelor’s in psychology from the University of Georgia.

Her research focuses on grief leadership, trauma-informed leadership practices in organizational settings, and support for the health and well-being of historically marginalized and underrepresented faculty, staff, and students across the P-20 continuum. Dr. Elue runs the research lab for the study of emotional intelligence, leadership effectiveness, and well-being of educational leaders. Dr. Elue also serves as a faculty success coach for the KSU Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.

Dr. Este Jordan leads the Faculty Success team at the Kennesaw State University Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. She is also a professor of political science. Her work supports faculty and their pursuit of success. She spends most of her time coaching faculty and campus leaders, facilitating webinars, and directing orientations, institutes, and retreats. Este’s passion is helping academics flourish based on the research that flourishing organizations are comprised of flourishing individuals. Chinasa, Laura, and Este, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

[00:03:17] Chinasa Elue: Thank you so much for having us.

[00:03:19] Bonni: I’m grateful for your individual and collective research and work and heart around the topic of grief and resiliency. I just love to have a start-out with just, what have you been hearing about this word, idea, concept of resilience? Chinasa, why don’t we start with you?

[00:03:45] Chinasa: Sure. It’s really interesting that in this particular time, the term ‘resilience’ is still being used to really describe how we should be navigating the current times that we’ve been in. As we’ve been in conversation, one quote that’s really been indicative to some of the conversations we’ve been having is from a programmer and a writer, her name is Zandashé Brown, and she talks about things that she dreams of.

When we talked about this quote, I’m going to share it briefly, it really hit home for us as we think about this current moment in time that we’re navigating. Zandashé writes that “I dream of never being called resilient again in my life. I am exhausted by strength. I want support, I want softness, I want ease, I want to be amongst kin, not patted on the back for how well I take a hit, or for how many.”

I cannot begin to tell you how much that quote resonated with us when we read that and began our own quest to do more research around resiliency and grief, especially as it pertains to our respective contexts that we’re working in. If we think about what we’ve navigated these past two and a half, almost three years now, with also the pandemic, and when resilience is used to describe that, it’s often, in this context, seen as being out of touch in a lot of ways because people are literally grieving.

They’re hurting. They’re beside themselves as we think about what our world looks like today and what we would hope it will look like tomorrow, but we’re not there. Resilience is, in a lot of ways, an incongruent term to describe our lived experiences right now.

[00:05:20] Laura Howard: I would agree with Chinasa there. I think that it’s certainly what I’ve been hearing from colleagues and from students around this idea of resilience. We’ve talked about, together, how early in the pandemic, in particular, we really heard educators and people from all professions really seize on this idea of resilience and like this, “Okay, let’s cling to certain values and traditions as much as possible in the name of normalcy and keeping it together during these difficult times.”

I think what we’ve realized and what we’ve heard from those we’ve talked to about our work is that not only is that not possible, it wasn’t possible then, it’s certainly not possible now even as we’re seeing changes around pandemic-related, for example, issues like mask mandates changing, things like that. It’s still not really possible, and it might not even have been that great, in the first place. This idea of integrating care into the work that we do as educational developers, but also as teachers, as colleagues, becomes more and more important.

[00:06:31] Bonni: I was fortunate to be able to participate in a workshop that the three of you facilitated. We do have, in the show notes, a link to this Grief & Resiliency Workbook, which is such a great document to look through, either individually or with colleagues. Thank you so much for your gift that you’ve given to us. I recall just– I have conversations like this almost every week, sometimes two a week, and so we skip a week.

This is a regular set of conversations I’m in, but something about the way that you got us asking the question just really brought up a visceral– maybe that’s not the right word, but just a really strong reaction to me. You gave me permission to name things that I feel like I’ve been told, not specifically at my institution. I don’t want to be speaking about people who aren’t here to defend themselves.

I just feel this overwhelming sense that we’re not allowed to say the quiet parts out loud. So much of what I took away, you each have shared about, and Este, I’m sure you have some to add to this, too. Just what I really took away and I’m thankful to the three of you for is just what would be a normal response. Just a normal response to these kinds of things might be anger, fear, sadness, and it’s being told through lots of different channels and echoing that it’s not okay to have what would be normal human reactions to these sorts of things.

To me, the exhaustion that comes from that of thinking I’m supposed to be showing up in ways that are inauthentic to me, that’s really a lot of what the work is. That quote is just so, so beautiful. “I dream of never being called resilient again.” It’s like giving people permission to live out their actual reality and not have to fake it because telling people to buck it up, “Buck up,” I don’t know, it’s not been helpful to me, but I really felt a strong emotional reaction.

What have you seen as you’ve facilitated other workshops like this and then workshops on this kind of thing? How is my reaction to it similar or dissimilar to other colleagues that you’ve worked with?

[00:08:50] Este Jordan: I think it’s very similar. It actually makes me think about an article I read in January in The Chronicle of Higher Education by McClure. I’ll share the link with you at the end of this, but it was called The Great Faculty Disengagement. They were talking about what we’re seeing is that faculty are showing up but not really being there. They’re engaged, they’re there, but they’re doing as little as possible to meet expectations.

I think that’s indicative of your sentiment of feeling like we must need permission to not have to be resilient. Things are supposed to be, supposedly, back to normal, and we’re not back to normal. As we’ve done this, shared this work with others, there’s just this gratitude and this outpouring that comes as a result of giving permission, feeling like they have permission to acknowledge that we aren’t resilient.

I’m exhausted. I think everyone in this room is exhausted. Here we are. We’re two and a half years in, we’re still exhausted. It’s better to just be in a reality where people actually are.

[00:10:12] Laura: I think being in that grief space is really important for people. Bonni, when you’re speaking, those are, definitely, the feelings that you’re describing in reaction to everything that has happened during these past couple of years. I think you’ve asked if your response was ‘normal’ of what we’re hearing from other people. I would say definitely, yes. In fact, we’ve been so glad that the pandemic dirty words activity, in particular, seems to really have resonated with people.

I just want to circle back to this agency and power that people are able to access through sharing their own stories. That’s the activity, especially that people seem to have really enjoyed. You mentioned our talk earlier, our workshop that we did at a conference early year, and we did this activity where people identified pandemic dirty words, and ‘resilience’ was certainly one of them.

There were others. Everybody can share their favorites, ‘pivot,’ ‘new normal.’ Those kinds of things were upsetting to people. We just think that, in this case, language is definitely power. Let’s move away from this idea of resilience as a blanket emotion to throw over all the different things that we’re feeling now and call it what it is, which is grief, which is anger, and disappointment many times and just having to rethink our expectations of ourselves and our institutions and all of those different factors.

If it’s okay with the group, I’ll quickly just read a quote that really, for me, encapsulates so much of what we’re all feeling, have been feeling, what I’ve just mentioned, which comes from Hannah McGregor and her blog post on Hook & Eye called What Are We Talking About When We Talk About ‘Care’? About halfway through the post, she says, “In this moment of global and unequally shared crisis, the idea that intellectuals and experts need to model disinterestedness or unemotional objectivity is crumbling around us.

“Academics insisting on a business-as-usual adherence to traditional notions of rigor look more and more and more out of touch. In the spaces of the university, our classrooms and our conferences, and our associations, calls for care are being sounded everywhere. Those of us who teach at universities and colleges are suddenly unavoidably being reminded of our students’ humanity and our own in the context of institutions that are invested in us becoming a little less human so we can be a little more efficient.”

I think that’s something that we really want to keep at the forefront of this work is just seeing how we can proceed in light of everything that’s happened with more care going forward.

[00:12:59] Bonni: That’s such a beautiful example, and that’s a gorgeous piece of writing. I’d love to have each of you share maybe would’ve been some of your pandemic dirty words that have shown up a lot for you that get that visceral reaction from you.

[00:13:16] Chinasa: Sure. I’ll pick us off by just saying and I’ve seen words such as “We’re in high-flex mode” or ”Embrace the unknown or the uncertain,” things around those contexts. I think in a lot of ways, again, it negates the fact that people are saying things from an out-of-touch perspective. If we are really honest with ourselves, we have to acknowledge the fact that people have experienced various types of loss throughout this entire season that we’ve been in this pandemic and before that.

I think about the loss of normalcy, the loss of relationships, the loss of, I guess, our belief in leaders or how our institutions once were, and to be frank, people are exhausted. When I hear high flex or to build back better, I think it really discounts the fact that people are operating from an empty cup right now. They are utterly exhausted. There’s extreme compassion fatigue.

There are so many things happening around the world that are really tapping into reserves that we didn’t even know were present. In a lot of ways, we’re trying to make sense of an ever-changing world with no tools really readily available right now because everything is drawing at our attention from multiple vantage points. Those are the words that come to the fore for me as I think through that.

[00:14:28] Bonni: Thank you.

[00:14:31] Este: I don’t have any additional ones to the ones that were already said.

[00:14:35] Bonni: Is there anyone that stands out to you where you remember hearing it for the first time and doing one of those, “What kind of …or made you really have a strong emotional anger?

[00:14:46] Este: For me, it was ‘back to normal’ at the beginning of this year when I’m a faculty coach or from the big things I do, and I know people aren’t back to normal.

[00:14:57] Bonni: Laura, you talked a little bit earlier about, what is this normal that we speak of? Is that really what we should be aspiring to, back to normal? What are some of the concerns to you, Laura, that rise up when you think about someone prescribing that the ‘cure’ here is getting back to this past normal state? What are some of the themes that you draw up in you when you think about that?

[00:15:24] Laura: I think that’s a great question, Bonni, and just incredibly problematic. I think the pandemic and the social unrest and the things that have been happening, the racial reckoning, I think all of these things point to the fact that normal is not good. It’s not good for us. It’s not good for our students. There are new opportunities here to move in directions that are more inclusive, more equitable.

That’s what I really think we need to be focused on in this moment as we move forward or as we continue on. It’s not about getting back to things that weren’t so great necessarily for groups of people before. I think just keeping that in mind has really got to be key. One thing, I can give you a specific example of something I’ve seen in my own department, for example. We have continued to have virtual meetings for our faculty meetings and for our committee meetings.

I think that’s a really positive thing that’s come out of all of this. It’s so much easier for faculty with disabilities, it’s so much easier for faculty who want to be involved in different groups but might be teaching, for example, a part-time faculty member who is in– We have a designated block that we keep open for department meetings and committee meetings. Part-time faculty are often teaching during the times that departments may hold for department meetings and committee meetings, and so they’re not able to be part of things.

When we have virtual meetings, they can be recorded. They can be easily rescheduled and moved if need be. More people can attend. It’s better for the environment not to have cars on the road. It’s safer for people. It’s better for people with disabilities. I think this is just a really good thing that’s come out of all of this that we’ve seen that wasn’t normal before but now, it’s something that’s happening as a result of this that’s better for everybody.

I think just being really thoughtful and intentional about what we want to see ushered back in, it wasn’t really working in the first place, was that really coming from a culture of care because, now, we see the real need, I think, for having that culture of care baked into our institutions.

[00:17:41] Bonni: Chinasa, one of the dirty words that you brought up or you mentioned is ‘high flex,’ and that tends to be one of those words that means so many different things to so many people that I want to make sure we know what we’re talking about here. I know some of that has to do with flexibility. Tell me a little bit about what your definition of high flex means and why it brings up that reaction in you.

[00:18:09] Chinasa: Sure. For me, when I say high flex, I’m specifically talking about having extreme levels of high flexibility to accommodate the needs of your students and/or colleagues on campus. It brings up a lot of angst for me in this context because I know, in a lot of ways, we are being asked to do things that aren’t being offered to us at the same time. As a faculty member, as a colleague on campus, we’re being asked to bend over backwards.

We’re being asked to risk it all, come on campus, teach in person, do all the things, but then when we need a little bit of flexibility when our kids are sick or if we are not able to come because we’re not well, or we have an emergency, then we’re looked at as not being a team player. Where’s the high flexibility when it’s time for our needs or our crisis that comes up?

I think in a lot of ways, that’s where when we talk about having a culture of care, we have to remember how important it is to close the care loop. It’s one thing to care for your students, it’s one thing to care for your staff members, your community members, but what about those who are essential to your daily operations? How are you closing the loop to make sure that they, too, feel included? When you’re saying, “Well, we need to be highly flexible,” also, make sure that you’re mindful of the various needs that are arising in this current context that we’ve all been navigating.

[00:19:23] Bonni: Thank you for that. One of the questions, when we start talking about the pandemic dirty words, what we’ve been asked to do, we’ve been asked to respond in ways that are not– What’s the word I’m looking for? I was going to say ‘appropriate.’ It’s just like it’s an–

[00:19:39] Chinasa: Authentic?

[00:19:40] Bonni: Thank you, that’s the word. They’re not really authentic to the experience. When you talk about a culture of care, we wish, of course, that our organizations were getting better at this, but sadly, we can’t wait until that gets figured out. Some of this, we do need to start to have it bubble up a little bit within us, whether within us means as individuals or within us as a community of people who want to gather and begin to create change, not wait for it.

What are some of the ways? Let’s start small and then maybe we could get a little bigger, but let’s start small with ways that we might cultivate a sense of care. I know one of these is having to do with setting boundaries, but maybe we can start with boundaries. I think we’re doing bubble baths today, is that right? We’re kidding about the bubble baths. [crosstalk] Actually, let’s start there.

Would one of you share just about the less authentic self-care that gets prescribed to us? You can fix it all with one of the problematic times of self-care that you’re seeing bubble up here. Bubble, get it, what I just did there with the pun? Okay.

[00:20:53] Chinasa: I think a bubble bath is not going to solve our modern-day problems right now. It’s bigger than that. Going to get a scoop of ice cream is not going to do it either, it’s not the fix. I think people want to know that they are seen, valued, and heard. I think in a lot of ways when we talk about building care into the fabric of our organizations, people want to know that you see them, they want to know that you actually care, and caring may look different, right?

It may mean that if they have an emergency, as we’ve all been in this current context, and they need to run and go get their kid because their school is closed down, that you either, A, step up and cover the class or, B, make other concessions at the time. It means that if somebody’s lost someone during this time that you don’t expect for them to jump back into full throttle and get back to business like nothing happened, it means that you take the time to acknowledge their loss, that you sit with them, even if you’re silent, and listen to what they have to say.

It means that you’re intentional about the relationships and actually caring about your people because we know that in a lot of ways, it’s really easy to be mission-focused, but you have to realize that if you are not focused on the people that drive your mission, it’s still going to fail. You have to really be intentional about pouring into your employees, in your colleagues so that they can continue to thrive, and, in turn, it’ll still benefit the institution on the back end.

[00:22:10] Laura: I think collaborative decision-making can be really helpful here, too, when you’re working with colleagues or when you’re working with students, asking people to weigh in on or talk upfront about what their needs are, during the process of whatever you’re working on. I’m thinking specifically about something that happened this week, with someone I was working with, and we were receiving the guidelines, expectations for some work we were doing together.

It was really effective for me to write down what I needed from the interaction and then have that person write down what they needed and compare notes and see together how we could make, basically, something happen that changed the shape of what we were doing, that changed the nature of it, and we needed to decide together how to move forward.

In this particular instance, I was the one in the position of authority or power, and so it was really important for me not to just be like, “Okay, this is what I think this person should do,” especially because, in this case, there have been some just unexpected things happen and some emotionally challenging things happen, and I really needed the person to weigh in and talk about what was realistic for them.

I think the more that people can do that, ask those questions, and just allow people to say what they need to negotiate expectations with one another, I think that can be maybe a larger step we can take. In terms of just the smaller day-to-day things, just seeing about yourself for a minute is really, really important. We’ve all heard the cliche of “Put your own oxygen mask on first.”

I hate to bring a cliche into it since we are trying to move on from certain cliches in our discussion, but I do think that’s so important. We can’t show up for our students or our colleagues or our families if we’re not doing these things. As you know, Bonni, it’s not a bubble bath, it’s truly setting boundaries like, “I’m not going to work all weekend because I need to breathe.” I know, Chinasa, if it’s okay to mention you, you’re good about this. You’ve said to me before, “Sunday’s family, period. I don’t–”

[00:24:19] Chinasa: Yes, or the weekend, right? After 5:00 PM [crosstalk] on Friday, I shut it down, I don’t connect my email to my phone. Those boundaries are key because, at the end of the day, you do have to realize. I think one thing if we gained anything from this pandemic and the past couple of years is that the things that are important have risen to the fore. Gone are the days that people are willing to sacrifice at all for their position, they realize that they want more.

I think that’s indicative of what we’re seeing with the Great Resignation right now. People are leaving in droves because they realize that they want more, they deserve more, and they’re going after more, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I think, in a lot of ways, we have the opportunity now to really begin to re-imagine, what can higher education look like if we really do center those that work with us and those that we serve in a more holistic way apart from seeking enrollment numbers? All that stuff is important, but how can we make sure that we, again, are supporting and caring for others?

[00:25:16] Bonni: When I was an undergrad, which was many moons ago, I took a Sociology of Death class, and that’s one of those that still, I probably think about maybe even on a weekly basis, it struck me that much. Every week, they would have different guest speakers come in who were going through different types of grief, and one that was really memorable to me was a man who had lost his son, I believe it was a car accident, and the number of people who would try to fix this man and his grief because his grief, you realize, it’s actually a pretty selfish thing when we’re not able to sit with someone who’s grieving.

“Your grief is making me feel uncomfortable. Could you not, please do that? Let me try to fix you” and whether that comes from a type of a religious belief “Don’t feel bad. They’re in heaven now” is one that is a trope that comes up quite often, but it’s not restricted just to religious types of expressions of attempted comfort, which is really disguised grief that’s … someone else’s grief.

You’re reminding me that I saw how bad people were at it just in general, in a personal context, but now I’ve seen it showing up in organizational contexts. Laura, you said it earlier, we don’t sit well with people, and there are no easy fixes to “If you could just follow the rules and get everybody else to follow rules” that are constantly changing and aren’t often made with a firm-enough appreciation of the context in whatever edicts are being made.

I don’t know, Este, if you have anything that you’d like to add, just in terms of our tendency to want to have this quick fix “Could you get yourself together?” because those of us that are trying to do this better, this still is not going to be a quick fix. There’s no quick, little coupon I can give you or a little pat on the head that’s going to– This isn’t possible. We have to be better about, how do we sit with others? Yes, Este, I’d love to hear you share as well.

[00:27:30] Este: If you’re going to ask me about the quick fix and I think that that’s where this thinking about it in terms of grief is really, really helpful. There’s no quick fix to grief, and so it helps to realize that everyone is going to be in their own personal place in response to what we’ve been through and are continuing to go through. With Kübler-Ross’ grief cycle, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, and meaning-making, we’re going to be going in between all of those phases at different times, and so there’s no fixing now.

It takes time. It takes giving space to people. I’ve been thinking a lot about space lately and how important it is to give space for people, for their own power to come through their own voice, to come through their own anger, to come through, to not be afraid of it.

[00:28:38] Laura: Este, you reminded me of something when you were talking about the grief cycle and the fact that it’s nonlinear, and we go back and forth. … this thing that my daughter said to me the other night. I was tucking her in for bed, and she said, “Mom, I don’t remember before the pandemic.” I felt like I had been plunged back to the first day.

It just did something to me, the fact that I’ve been thinking so much about professionally, “How do we navigate this?” and personally like, “We’re doing okay,” and trying to work together as a family through all the challenges it’s presented, and then when a little kid looks at you and says, “I just don’t remember before” and you realize how powerless you are in light of all of this, it was that grief.

It was just like a wave, and so I don’t really know exactly where that fits, but just the fact that we’re entering maybe a new phase, at least of the pandemic part, all of this stuff is still so important to recognize that people are still struggling and are just really at different– We’re not all at the acceptance or meaning-making phase, and so, how can institutions, how can educational developers keep that at the forefront of their mind?

[00:30:00] Este: I think, too, it’s important to realize that caregivers, in particular, and I think faculty are in that space because we are caring for our students in certain ways. Educational developers are caregivers. We are caring, in certain ways, for our faculty. For caregivers, there tend to be lagged effects because you’re so busy caring that you don’t realize where you are emotionally and what you need until time passes.

I found that with me. I actually felt, in my very privileged space, that I was flourishing during the pandemic, and now that things are easing up a bit, I’m crashing, and I think it’s that lagged effect. I don’t think I’m alone in that [crosstalk]

[00:30:46] Chinasa: I want to share, just from an intersectional perspective, that even the types of grief that we’ve experienced depend on the different dimensions of our identity as well. I’ll speak for myself as a Black woman here, as a professor as well, in that privileged position that navigating 2020 on, specifically, has been really, really difficult, not only for myself, but as I talk to colleagues in the field at large, who’ve had to navigate the context of showing up to work with a mask on after having witnessed countless murders happen on TV, to be frank, and then being expected to jump on initiatives and things like that to spearhead DEI, but then we see, about a year or two later, again, the attacks on those very same efforts that were being put into place years ago.

There’s something to be said here about the type of loss of trust, especially as it pertains to, “Well, we thought we were moving in this direction, but now actions are speaking louder than words at this point.” There’s that intersectional component of the grief that we’re seeing take place right now, both personally and then professionally in the workplace. I think from a positionality of loss when we talk about grief for death and dying in the workplace, at times, that’s seen as very taboo.

Nobody wants to come to work and be sad all day, so hence they try to push it to the corner, or they acknowledge it when you first come, but in a lot of ways, we have to understand that when you’re grieving, you don’t just put on your grieving cap when you walk out of the door. When you come in the office, your grief sits with you. I think when we think about, “How do we move forward in this context where we are able to acknowledge and then also provide spaces?” we have to become more comfortable with talking about grief in our workplaces.

We can’t let it be something that is just done when this situation happens. We should be more intentional about cultivating events and programming and workshops and different types of support so that people do feel that they have the types of resources they need on campus and beyond.

[00:32:45] Bonni: This is the time in the show where we each get to share our recommendations, and my first one is I’d love to invite people to go download the grief handbook that is linked to in the show notes and either go through it yourself or even better, I think, find some colleagues that you trust can have the conversations and not try to fix each other but sit alongside one another I think would be so helpful.

One of the resources that is linked to in there, I went on just a wonderful set of rabbit trails going and exploring the resources is a video by Tricia Hersey. I don’t know if it’s linked to directly, but I got there through the rabbit trail, and it’s called Rest Life. It’s just a beautiful thing. Some of the words that each of you shared earlier, I think, give me a little bit of a new confidence to both name how I’m experiencing but also to hope, in a way, for something that is new that’s not being prescribed to me in an unhelpful way if that makes sense.

It gives me a sense of confidence to go, “This could be better but not in the way that they’re telling you it could be better.” That helps me when I resonate or I listen to the words, it helps me think about being able to set better boundaries for myself around that. It’s just really helpful, but I know, Chinasa, you actually have some things related and unrelated to share that come out of your work as well. Chinasa, I’ll pass it over to you next.

[00:34:13] Chinasa: Sure. It’s funny you mentioned Tricia Hersey’s work because I follow her work and am so excited to just know that her work exists. Tricia, she’s the founder of the Nap Ministry, and she really advocates for the fact that rest is a form of resistance. Pushing against these notions of the capitalistic structures that we all live and work in each and every day and to really embrace rest, to learn it as a form of life, and to embrace that wholeheartedly is something that I strive to do each and every day because I know, in this context where this resiliency narrative is being peddled, is really important to push back against that and take time to rest.

Another resource that I will offer is from Nedra Glover Tawwab. She wrote a book last year called Set Boundaries, Find Peace. I think in this context when we’re talking about resilience, it’s really important for us to think about, how do we set boundaries not only with our work but then in other relationships, as well, looking for ways to thrive personally, professionally, and overall so that we can continue to navigate the times that we’re in? There’s just so much that’s happening right now. If there ever were a time to really be intentional about taking care of ourselves and setting appropriate boundaries it’s now.

[00:35:25] Bonni: All right. Laura, what do you have to recommend for us today?

[00:35:29] Laura: A couple of things that have been really eye-opening to me during this time. One is the book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, and this is by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. This book was actually published, I believe, in 2019 before the pandemic, but it talks very much about being able to move through your emotions so that you don’t become stuck.

Then that is a different thing than saying, “Get over it.” That is a different thing than saying, “Come on, just be resilient.” What it’s really about is feeling them, acknowledging them, naming them, and then looking at the science as well that talks about the connection between our mind and our body and doing intentional, specific things to remove stress from our body. That is self-care, and it’s not bubble baths, either.

It’s exercise, it’s meditation, it’s writing, it’s getting things out. It’s a really great read and really relevant here. There’s also a TED Talk by Dr. Saundra Smith, The Seven Types of Rest That Every Person Needs. She wrote a book as well on this. There is a spiritual component. That may be appealing for some folks as well, but she’s talking about how all rest is not the same and making sure that there’s a balance on the types of rest that you’re permitting yourself in your life so that you can feel better and more balanced.

I’m just going to add one thing, which is new to me, just in the last few days, but I’ve been turning it over in my head over and again, it’s the idea of a reverse bucket list. I am occasionally an obsessive list-maker. I enjoy listing things out, and I think a lot about this concept of the bucket list. You hear people say, too, like they have, “Oh, I want to do 40 things by 40 or 50 things by 50,” or the idea of a lifelong bucket list where you’re like, “These are the things that I know I want to do.”

This idea of the reverse bucket list is actually the total opposite: writing down the things you’ve already done that brought you great joy. I heard it or read it referred to in one article I was reading on this as a nostalgia playlist, it’s really an exercise in gratitude, that reflecting on the things that you’ve already achieved puts the emphasis on your own success and agency and power and takes away this idea that you’re somehow not measuring up.

I think that can be interesting from a self-care perspective, but it might be as simple– maybe we need to make a reverse bucket list for COVID-19 and for the past two years. “Look what I did or look what I accomplished during this time.” Even if it was just holding down the fort, that is a great thing to put on your list. I think valuing things in a different way instead of giving yourself an endless to-do list is important.

I just want to just tag onto that a little bit to say that when I first heard this concept of a reverse bucket list, I didn’t get it, and what I actually thought it was, was making a list of stuff I don’t want to do anymore. It turns out that’s not what a reverse bucket list is, but I actually think that could be just as valuable, making a list of things that “I’m done with that. I’m done with trying to fit into a certain mold,” or “This is not making my life easier,” or I don’t know, “I trained my 10-year-old to do all of her own laundry.”

I just hit a point where I was like, “I cannot do this anymore. I do laundry for a lot of other people. You’re old enough to do your own.” Making a list of things maybe we don’t want to tie up our time could also help us find some joy and find some peace.

[00:39:18] Bonni: On a related note, there’s making a list to celebrate the things you’ve said no to, back to setting healthy boundaries.

[00:39:25] Laura: That’s a great idea. Yes, exactly. That could be a four-part activity that we could integrate at some point.

[00:39:32] Bonni: Oh, I love it. I love it. Este, what do you have to share with us today?

[00:39:36] Este: First is a couple of books by Donna Hicks, who writes about dignity. She’s written one about dignity and its role in conflict resolution. She’s written another one on Leading with Dignity. I first heard about this from my former colleague, Joe Buck, at Kennesaw State University. He brought it up in a webinar I attended. It’s really resonated with me because she talks about these 10 essential elements of dignity: acceptance of identity, inclusion, safety, acknowledgment, recognition, fairness, benefit of the doubt, understanding, independence, and accountability.

These are all things we need to apply to ourselves. In her work, she’s talking about it in terms of the dignity that we make sure that we confer to others and give to others. In our context, especially as academics who are overachievers and we’re always pushing the boundary about what’s even physically mentally possible to accomplish, we always want to accomplish that next great thing.

I’ll speak for myself. I got tenure and then I started six new research projects within a couple of months. This is just how we’re wired, I think, most of us. It’s important to think about our norm and our culture of behavior and overwork and productivity at the expense of self-care and to treat ourselves with dignity to recognize our needs and our wants and things that we just aren’t going to do anymore, Laura.

It’s important to treat ourselves with fairness, give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. If I’m tired, well, maybe I need to rest. Anyway, that’s a big one for me is this dignity work applied to ourselves. The second one is the book that came out I think about six months ago now that You Are Your Best Thing, and it is a collaborative work by Tarana Burke and Brené Brown. It’s an anthology about the black experience of vulnerability and shame resilience.

There’s so much in there in terms of just learning and listening and seeing but also, for me, that I took for myself, they talk about joy and joy as an act of resilience. That resonated with me so much based on the stories I’ve heard from my colleagues during these times and my own experience that this may have been a really difficult time and still is, and we’re struggling, but it’s through community, through support, through showing up for each other and carrying each other that we can create space for reclaiming that joy and claiming that right to joy.

[00:42:40] Bonni: Thank you so much. Thanks to all three of you for today’s conversation and for the way that you have both been so comforting but also challenging. This can get better but not the way people are telling us that it can, and I just so appreciate your work. Chinasa, you actually had mentioned some research that’s being done. I know this is not like– There’s going to be more to come in terms of getting to draw from the work that you’re doing. Just thanks so much for being here today but also just for your continued work in this area.

[00:43:12] Chinasa: Absolutely, we’re excited.

[00:43:14] Este: Thank you for having us, Bonni. We appreciate it.

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[00:43:19] Bonni: Thanks once again to Chinasa Elue, Laura Howard, and Este Jordan for joining me for today’s episode of Teaching in Higher Ed number 407. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you’d like to have the show notes show up in your inbox each week from the most recent episode along with some additional recommendations and related episodes that don’t show up in those show notes, head on over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe, and you can subscribe to the weekly update.

Thanks for being a part of the Teaching in Higher Ed community. We’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode. On Twitter, I’m @bonni208. I’d also love to hear from you as a reply to the weekly update if you subscribe. Thanks so much for listening, and I’ll see you next time.

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The transcript of this episode has been made possible through a financial contribution by the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE). ACUE is on a mission to ensure student success through quality instruction. In partnership with institutions of higher education nationwide, ACUE supports and credentials faculty members in the use of evidence-based teaching practices that drive student engagement, retention, and learning. 

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