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By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color
It’s that time of the semester when students and faculty alike are exhausted. This time is always the point at which my students start to break down. Their absences are more frequent. Their requests to extend assignment deadlines increase. They start to panic about their final grades.
This is the time that exhaustion also creeps into professors’ bodies. We start to get sick. We hit snooze more often. We need extra shots of caffeine to get through the workday (and in my case sixth grade homework). Sound all too familiar? I am feeling more emotionally exhausted than usual, and when I considered the reasons, I realized that I could not point to one cause. What I realized instead is that I’m feeling the cumulative effects of a consistent stream of challenges, including macro and micro aggressions. Because there are so many, I chose a list format to catalogue them in this post. As a restorative to my own emotional well-being, I decided that a wish list was an appropriate way to remind us all how we might be/do better for each other.
I have one final wish, and this one is big. It’s my wish for everyone reading this post because it’s why I continue to stay in academe.
For those of you who have such friends, you know the deep gratitude I feel every day. For those who don’t (yet), keep looking because authentic, compassionate friendships are possible. And we need each other now more than ever.
Author
Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen the Mothering in Color series for WellAcademic.
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Stress is bad, folks. Like bad, bad.
"Okay," you're thinking, "I already know that." But do you really? Are you aware that prolonged stress damages mind, body, and spirit? Sure does. I'm talking:
I could go on, but you get my point. Stress, though, isn't an issue without stressors - i.e., the stuff in our lives we perceive as maxing out our resources. Unfortunately, there are lots of those around, according to a recent American Psychological Association survey (and anyone who's awake). The top five: future of our nation (63%); money (62%); work (61%); current political climate (57%); and violence and crime (51%). Umm...yes, to all that. For academics, add to the list deadlines, grading, finding time to write, demanding students, those demoralizing comments from reviewer two, and service overload. That's the bad news. The good news: high stress and its negative consequences are NOT inevitable. There are tools - a.k.a. coping mechanisms - that when used correctly can reduce stress. In fact, you have one of these stress-busting tools with you right now. Your breath. Yep, that thing your body does mostly outside of awareness to keep you alive can also provide much needed stress relief. Consciously slowing and deepening your breath sends messages to the brain to relax which turns down the sympathetic nervous system's fight or flight response and turns up the parasympathetic nervous system's rest and digest response - exactly what's required to halt a stress spiral. There are several deep breathing techniques to choose from. Whichever you try, stick with it. Regular practice equals better outcomes. So let's all take a moment to inhale slowly for the count of five (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)...hold...exhale slowly for the count of five (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Now repeat for the next three minutes. Your body will thank you. In peace and solidarity, 
Joycelyn Moody - JMoody's Musings
I really hate it when my therapists leap out of their seats. I’ve had leapers before. I have a leaper now. Earlier this week, my therapist—first man in many years, a straight white guy at that—leapt out of his seat when I thoughtlessly uttered, “I’m seriously overcommitted.” He was on his feet in seconds, and I was kicking myself.
“You’re the last person I meant to say those words to,” I groaned. He was actually pacing. “I thought we were in re-cu-per-a-tion mode,” he chided. Stern voice. I scrunched lower on the lumpy sofa. I did wonder how I have gotten back to this place in my professional life again so soon. It seems I blinked and my calendar filled itself. Nah, I’m taking full responsibility. In August, I returned to campus from eight months off. Last November, I fell ill and spent the winter and spring of 2019 recovering. My current psychotherapist specializes in rehabilitation from physical ailments producing significant emotional and psychological effects. I’ve had the good fortune to be his client since February last. Besides my fall illness, I have a deep trauma from institutional racism I’ve endured, witnessed, and fought on my campus, so my therapist and I spent the past summer working on my return to campus and to teaching. Over the summer I also completed and submitted a book manuscript draft that had been long overdue. Because the manuscript had hung over my head so long, in August, I felt true liberation to wave goodbye to it, even knowing it’s eventually coming back with demands for many editorial changes. The send-off elated me, filled me with the illusion of “bandwidth,” the prize the project’s editor had held out as the plum for completion. The thing about my being overcommitted isn’t simply that I caved in to the illusion of having more time than I do, now that the book manuscript is momentarily gone. It’s that I returned to work (in a toxic workplace) already overcommitted. Besides probing psychotherapy these past 11 months, I’ve relied on cardio workouts, personalized gym training, and meditation to heal. In other words, the grandiosity of a professional calendar expansive enough to contain and accommodate multitudes flowed from all the endorphins aroused from both physical exertion and emotional quieting. I thought I had it made. In the meantime, though, two more things in my life of late have brought reality full slam into my growing awareness. One is my Bullet Journal: it’s known by some as BuJo®, founded by Ryder Carroll, and rooted in David Allen’s Getting Things Done. It’s a personal calendar-cum-diary system that works exceptionally well for me. My handwritten accounting of the things I’ve sworn to do and the dates they’re due is the first chronicle ever to shock me into no-ness. I literally see the price of yes will simply be too high. It’s made me able to recognize and utter to a therapist I knew would leap: “I’m seriously overcommitted.” It’s made me aware. The second thing that’s happened is the accumulative effect of my daily meditation practice: I’ve gained a higher level of self-awareness through this means, too. Not enough yet to keep me from becoming overcommitted, I hear you saying with me, but I’m thrilled by the insight itself and the self-compassion it inspires. Insight. Self-compassion and hope. Let him leap. Awareness is its own reward, and, like Robert Frost, I have miles to go before I sleep. Until next time, 
By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color
If you’re looking for a post to help you get your new school year off to a smooth, positive start, this isn't it.
I dread the beginning of a new school year, and this year is especially difficult (more on this later). I am known to go into depressive states until around October, when the realization hits that I have to let my beloved summer go and move forward—even if painfully—with the rest of the academic year. Summer is my F-A-V-O-R-I-T-E time of year. Unlike other seasons, I’m not bound by the schedule of my son’s school or limited by heavier traffic patterns on my usual routes or overwhelmed by an exhausting list of tasks for home and school. Though I teach a lot in summer out of necessity, I am privileged to be able to work mostly on my own terms. I actually have time to rest, exercise, write, and think. I consider myself a better mother in summer, but a more accurate way to characterize how I feel is that I struggle less with mothering. I make fewer mothering mistakes in summer. I am more patient, more forgiving, and more kind toward my child. I am less likely to say something I have to apologize for, and I am less likely to act in unkind ways. My number one reason for loving summer so much is that I have been able to more carefully take note of Nicholas’s growing up because of our long stretches of uninterrupted time together. He’s starting to imagine himself in college because he’s visited my campus so many times; with a little “encouragement”—really incentivizing—from me, he has broadened his summer reading choices to include actual literature and not just junk book series; he has had time to do some deep diving into learning about things he loves like roller coasters, cruise ships, and airplanes; and though still a work in progress, he is becoming more practiced working through his fears and trying new things. Not all changes over our summers together have been easy to negotiate, however. He is talking to me a lot less; he will no longer allow me to hold his hand in public; he says he has a constitutional right to his own opinion, which is not always an opinion I share; and his dad is now his go-to parent for advice. Times are changing, and I am writing this post to celebrate my son’s continued childhood and to lament what is most likely in front of him. The beginning of this school year marks a very important shift; Nicholas has begun middle school, which is simultaneously frightening and exciting. I am excited because he is excited about this next chapter. He is beginning to think about what being his own person means—our repeated message to him about being confident in his own skin and making his own decisions. Heading into next school year, Nicholas is deciding on a different path, and while this decision is literally about what being his own person looks like, it has come to mean something much more to me. Nicholas has asked to loosen the rules around his hair. Last year he asked to cut his hair into a Mohawk style and to dye it blue. I gave in on the former, but blue dye was and forever will be a hell no while he lives in our house. Our previous understanding was that he could do what he wanted in summer with his hair, but when school started we always went back to his regular hairstyle, which we call the “Even Steven” (also known as a “Caesar” or a “Regular”). For those unfamiliar with Black barbershop lingo, this is basically an almost bald shaved cut over the entire head. This summer he asked to grow out his hair into an afro. He also asked to renegotiate our agreement because he did not want to shave off his summer fro when school started this year. An afro on a Black child marks him/her—positively or negatively, depending on who’s doing the marking, and the bigger the fro, the more complicated meanings the fro engenders. To some (his dad and I are in this group), the fro is a visible marker of Black pride that connects the wearer to a political and cultural past and present. For others, it prompts fear, shame, disparagement, among other negative responses. We decided that Nicholas could keep his summer style. It is a visible reminder to me every day that my child is growing up, a sign of his growing independence, a marker of the (Black) pride he feels when he looks in the mirror. [By the way, the fro had a short life and has morphed into a high top fade. For those of you who know Nicholas, be sure to tell him how much you like his new hairstyle.] As this new school year begins, I must face that my child is heading into a new stage of his (educational) life and that the choices he makes as he grows older may have different meanings than before. Because racism too often causes the adultification of Black children, Nicholas will become more and more vulnerable to misperceptions related to how he presents himself and how he chooses to present his growing racial consciousness in what he wears, what he says (he's adept at code-switching), how he walks, what music he listens to, how loud he plays his music in public, and…a whole host of other choices. Imagine my fear that at such a critical time in his life—the beginning of adolescence—he has to figure out who he is within/against our current national context. I’m working hard to make sure that my fears don’t get in the way of us having fun as we navigate this exciting new journey together. He deserves to not feel pressured to protect me as I try mightily (and oftentimes in vain) to protect him.
Author
Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen the Mothering in Color series for WellAcademic.
By Roxanne Donovan - Wellness
Welcome to August! The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and academics everywhere are freaking out.
In April, the three-month summer break seems like an endless expanse of time. You forget (again) how this break never ends up being as long or as leisurely as you expect. In this state of unfettered optimism, you plan an impossibly long summer to-do list. Of course I can finish four articles, collect data from 1000 participants, and redo six classes. No probs. In the stark light of August, those uncompleted (or even untouched) plans fill you with self-loathing and dread. Your stress level begins to rise higher and higher as the clock ticks louder and louder. The thing about stress is it hijacks the ability to plan and make sound decisions. This hijacking might explain why, when faced with too little time and too much to do, many of us double down. You know you’ve doubled down when you start convincing yourself you can still get everything done…in a quarter of the time. Like Ethan Hunt from Mission Impossible, you figure there is some secret combination of moves that will save the day. And it usually goes something like this: I just need to work more, write faster, sleep less. Sound familiar? Doubling down is a horrible strategy. It never works...evah! Okay, it might work for a bit. But, and this is important, it is NOT a sustainable strategy. Working at a frenetic pace without rest and recuperation reduces alertness, productivity, and performance. The exact opposite of what you want. Breaking the end-of-summer stress cycle requires admitting you are human. You have limits. And to work healthily, not everything you planned to do will get done. Yes, you must let some things go. This is hard...very, very hard. BUT it's much better on your stress level and self-esteem to admit your humanness now and develop a realistic plan. Waiting will only make things worse. I know what you're thinking: if I could plan realistically, I wouldn't be in this mess. No worries. I’m here to help. We can do this plan-making together. All you need to do is AIM. AIM is a simple triage process I use with stressed clients who can’t figure out where to focus their time. It requires placing each item on your to-do list in one of three categories– Acute, Important, or Minor. Acute All the items that have to get done this summer go in this category. Be careful not to confuse have to get done with want to get done or should get done. Have-to items are required for your job security/success and have non-negotiable due dates. Examples are an R&R with a hard summer deadline, a tenure portfolio due the first day of fall semester, a fall course prep. Important This category is for items that don’t have an immediate deadline but are important to your future goals. Examples are a major overhaul of a course you're not teaching in the fall, a grant proposal that you can submit in another cycle, almost-completed articles you can choose to work on now or later. Minor All leftover items go here – like those things you thought would be great to do this summer but can be done in the distant future, if at all (e.g., reading all the articles in your discipline’s main journal, organizing your file cabinets, starting a new research project when you already have several in various stages of completion). Your mission - if you choose to accept it* - is to prioritize your time so you complete all the acute items (at least) while still taking breaks, sleeping at least 7 hours per night, and spending time with family and friends. The trick here is focus. This means not working on anything in the important or minor categories until you've completed everything in the acute category. No matter how tempting. Stay strong. If you’re lucky enough to have time left over after completing your acute items, move to the important category items. And so on. If you aren’t so lucky, you will need to let the important and minor items go…at least for this summer. Again, this is not easy. It helps to have some self-compassion. Keep reminding yourself that you are only human, you are doing the best you can, and you are choosing to work in ways that maximize your productivity AND your health. Good luck! This tape will self-destruct in five seconds*. 
*For you millennials out there, these references are from the Mission Impossible TV show that aired a long, long, long time ago when tapes were still in existence.
[A previous version of this post was published on this cite in 2017.]
Joycelyn Moody - JMoody's Musings
I have parents again. Don’t misunderstand: I’m exceptionally fortunate that all seven members of my immediate, formative family are still alive. Still, because my intersectional identity includes queer, I didn’t have parents in my 50s—not a father anyway. I’ve always had a sorta mom. I lost my only sister, 13 years my junior, in my 30s. I have two brothers still, having lost the eldest about 10 years ago. But all of a sudden, I have parents again. I think other lesbians, especially Black lesbians, especially middle-aged daughters of respectable, southern-born African American Protestant parents, probably know exactly what I mean.
When folks ask me in one way or another about my family connections, I generally reply, “My people don’t do lesbians.” Since most of the population where I live identifies as hetero, my answer often brings quiet, and then a change of the subject. My immediate family simply can’t accept queer identity and queer (self-)love. From 1994 until I stopped a few years ago, I pleaded with each of my four siblings for any one of them to denounce the incomplete “family” gatherings from which my partner-since-1997 and I have been barred. But they insisted either I was welcome if I’d “stop choosing” my queer lifestyle, or I “just should ignore Daddy.” Instead, I stopped fighting for a place at tables where my wife and I weren’t welcome. (My wise, beloved son had years before shown me how crucial this act of self-compassion is.) I dutifully continued calling my mother monthly, when my heart felt up to it. I sent her holiday gifts. I was there for her cancer surgery. Where my father had been, an abyss opened. Then, two days after my father’s eighty-fifth birthday, I suffered a health crisis. (He didn’t come or call.) Then, as part of my rehabilitation, I made a significant choice: I chose to study Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a scientific meditation practice focused on compassion, forgiveness, and awareness. I’m aware of righteous shortcomings critics of MBSR have made. But in seminar with me were a married couple: Latinx lesbians and, like me, critical race feminists who believe that syncretic meditation practices have a fierce role in collective healing. Recently, I went for a visit without My Dearest and stayed five days with my parents in the lovely suburban home where my partner and I are not welcome together. This time, parents and I were on our best behavior, for which I’m grateful—even knowing how different things would have been had Sweetness been with me. I’m thankful, too, my parents look good. Physically, they are not frail. My father gardens daily and plays golf several mornings a week. My mother’s graduated from her walker to a cane she half uses and on the wrong leg. Their daily energy shone remarkably. And yet, of course, in their mid-80s, their health is compromised, and they are each needful in their own way. I know some persons reading this post will feel me on the issues overt and implicit here. Issues like the weight of African American respectability politics and Black Protestantism. On the shock of seeing time pass on our parents’ faces in ways we can’t trace on our own. I know the choices I face(d)—to keep coming out as queer, to try to live authentically, to lose or loose the dearest of family—are choices some (Black) queer readers will have faced and will face again. Trust me, knowing we are legion keeps me standing. Despite my parents’ expressed feelings of anger, disappointment, rejection, betrayal, and sadness by my “choice of lifestyle” since the 1990s, and the fissures between us that keep deepening, to my astonishment, I now have parents again. Their lives slowing, they remain as vigilant as ever of their Presbyterian, respectability values. I, too, remain steadfast in my struggle for only relationships based on mutual respect and honesty. Honesty is what my coaching clients, graduate students, sister friends, lover, and son reveal they most desire. These people trust me most perhaps, and they mirror back to me what is most important in human relationships and within the individual person: fidelity, kindness, empathy, evidence of self-compassion. In my journey as a student of MBSR, I strive to offer lovingkindness to all. I strive to free myself from the burden, the weight of my own despair. I acknowledge the privileges undergirding the quality of health my parents and I enjoy, and I honor the family members who paved our way. I honor this day, the present, this moment, which is all we have. Until next time, 
Joycelyn Moody - JMoody's Musings
My December column about planning physical and mental rest included this sentence: “Folks, I am finally what not saying ‘No’ often enough, what being one soldier in a tiny army waging war against anti-Blackness, looks like.”
This month, I want to reflect on some of the ideas I crammed into that packed sentence. I’ve felt vulnerable since publishing it. The sentence has stayed with me; it’s crept into my driving quiet, and eased into my meditation. I feel like the image of “not saying no often enough” has me looking rough. My partner says I still look all right. But since Thanksgiving, I’ve had one respiratory illness after another, so I look and feel tired. Treating my chronic fatigue ironically adds three 2-hour training appointments to my week: I’m working out like a dynamo to increase my energy level. If I want to be a soldier in anybody’s army, I need more strength. Anyone who plans to fight against xenophobia and inequality needs a hella lot of strength. And a lotta big sticks. Thankfully, I’m not alone in this army, outnumbered though we ultimately are. Other minoritized faculty women—and our shrewd allies—are also fighting against race-based hatred. Sistah-soldiers share their stories of struggle and grief with me all the time. Most are overcommitted in the ways that led to my own need for deliberate rest. which is to say, they need rest, too. An insight I’ve had recently—and I realize I’m late recognizing this point—is that I keep forgetting that our army is tiny. I probably forget it because we are so mighty. We are powerful. But for all my own literal and figurative strength-training—physical therapy, home, meditation, massage, sister-friendships, and so on—I wore myself out trying to multiply myself on the job, trying to do the work of five faculty sistahs when I am only one person. There aren’t enough of us minoritized feminist academics. There are not enough faculty women of color to represent us in all the classrooms and boardrooms, on all the committees and platforms where we want our collective perspectives and issues to be raised. A friend reached out to me the other day. I’ll call her Sheila, though that’s not her real name. Sheila is a Black woman professor who desperately wanted to assist another mutual sistah-colleague of ours. Aside: Our numbers are so small that it’s actually hard to narrate this experience without worrying that I’ll inadvertently include some details that will reveal the identity of one or the other of these dear friends. In fact, that’s a worry Roxanne and I experience each time we publish a WellAcademic™ newsletter: will our anecdotes unwittingly disclose the identities of the professionals who trust us, given that our focused readerships are so small? I first became aware of progressive feminist research into this area circa 1995, and I’m discouraged that the demographics of educational institutions remain pretty much the same. It’s a shame that the minoritized women in the academy I know are separated by maybe four, hardly six, degrees. Many of us know each other by name and lineage. We are each other’s teachers, students, mentors, coaches, coauthors, and kin. Systemic poverty and racialized evil keep our numbers low. (One way of generating more of us would be the development of more pipeline programs like the African American Literature & Culture Institute. Call that self-promotion if you want, but I call it begging you to do what you can to replicate yourself, too.) Back to Sheila. She is a proud person who rarely speaks her stress levels, but in a recent phone call, her voice was strained and tight. Even more oddly, she actually ticked off out loud some of the faculty tasks almost overwhelming her. The year is young—it’s still January as I write this post—so I’m worried about Sheila, concerned she could be following me down the road to chronic fatigue. And now Sheila was calling on me to bless the fact that she’d agreed to support another sistah-colleague. Been there, bloody heart in both hands extended and determined to help. I both wanted to encourage Sheila for her willingness to help our sister and to throw up the STOP sign. How to move forward in moments like this is always complicated. Do we take care of ourselves? Do we care for our sistahs? No easy answers--only hard questions and harder answers. So, I offered Sheila a few suggestions for ways she might assist our other friend, a sister who—needless to say—genuinely deserves the support she was seeking. Sheila responded with gratitude but also with dismay. It was her groan that prompted me to reassure her she could relieve herself of the commitment; she could, in fact, she should, say no to our girlfriend this time because there aren’t enough of us. “You don’t have to do that for her now.” Saying no would be more than all right; it would be best. It would save Sheila to fight in our stalwart army another day. And saying no would help keep our numbers rested and ready. There simply aren’t enough of us yet, no matter how much we want to support each other’s projects, to assist each other in the work we do for the ultimate goal of exposing injustice and righting the immoralities of the institutions where we work. We educate our hearts out to produce an intelligent, informed, and righteous citizenry, but our numbers remain low anyway. We are not to blame for our small populations. A surge of relief surprised me head-to-toe when Sheila readily embraced this last suggestion. She’d already intuited we minoritized women faculty owe it to ourselves to say no even to each other from time to time. Such a choice is rarely simple in the injurious academy. Our socialization teaches it’s “selfish,” maybe “unsisterly.” Yet I don’t want another woman faculty of color ever to feel herself a doleful image of “not saying ‘No’ often enough.” Careful self-preservation will remain essential as long as there simply aren’t enough of us. Until next time, 
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