The following is a transcript of this episode. It has been edited for clarity.
Intro: What does being brave mean to you? For my guest, equity educator and author Rozella Kennedy, it means using our time on this planet to lift one another up, fight for the causes we believe in, and encourage future generations to expand on our life’s work. In the context of her forthcoming book, a celebration of inspirational women of color, Rozie and I talk about so much, including why she wants to include all women in the conversation about race, how we can cultivate hope in these challenging times, why Gen X is actually the greatest generation and how pickleball may be the thing that brings us all together. Welcome to More Beautiful, the podcast for women rewriting the midlife playbook. I’m Maryann LoRusso, and I invite you to join me and a guest each week as we strive for a life that’s more adventurous, more fulfilling and more beautiful than ever before.
Maryann: Welcome back, everybody. My guest today is the truly inspirational Rozella Kennedy, who also goes by the name Rozie, with a Z. Rozie is the director of impact and equity for Camber Collective, a global social impact consultancy. In addition, she’s the founder of Brave Sis, an online community whose mission is to build a culture of inclusion, celebration, cooperation, dignity and wellbeing. Rozie also has a book celebrating women of color that will be coming out soon. Hey, Rozie, thank you for joining me today.
Rozella: I am so delighted to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me.
Maryann: I’m going to start out by simply asking you what Brave Sis is all about, and why you decided to create it.
Rozella: In 2019, I had gone through a really difficult personal period, and I was trying to pull myself out of it and gain more accountability to myself and just a better process. And I was like, I’m gonna journal, I’m going to do a day planner, I’m going to be accountable. And I hated everything I saw in the market. You know, I am a black woman, and so it was either so very much not inclusive of me in the imagery, in the construct. A lot of, like, ponies and fairies and unicorns and flowers and does and doves, and I was like, what is this childishness? I’m a very sophisticated urbane person. And then the ones for black women and women of color tended to be really beautiful on the cover, but then you look inside, and it was absolutely generic. And I thought that was really insulting. Or worse, Maryann, they were the kind that were like, “slay your goals!” and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I was like, what is that? That’s awful.
Maryann: Arnold Schwarzenegger? I don’t know about that. [Laughs]
Rozella: Yeah—one was Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tony Robbins, like, guidelines for your life. And I was like, come on. And so, you know, it was like, if you don’t see what you want, you have to make it yourself. So I was like, OK, I’m gonna make my own journal, I’m gonna make my own day planner. And then on Christmas morning, 2019, I had this visitation by a spiritual force that said, tell my story, or tell our story. And I jumped out of bed and I was like, what just happened? And I was like, I have to create a journal that talks about women who’ve come before me. That’s when Brave Sis was born. It really became this thing of elevating women who’ve made incredible contributions in ways big and small, that for whatever reasons are not well enough known in the world. And then, you know, I included a couple of icons who everyone’s heard of as well. But it just started taking on this momentum of like, a way to memorialize and insert these women into our lives, and also help us figure out, what is the lesson that they have for us? What can we learn from these women, and how can they inspire us to have courage and be brave in our lives? Which I think we all could really use right now.
Maryann: So agree. So it started out with these planners, and now it’s an entire community, right? And you’ve got the book coming out. I love what you wrote on your website, that you founded this in 2019, like you said, but so much has happened since 2019. I mean, that’s like the understatement of the year, right? So has your mission or focus shifted at all since you began?
Rozella: Entirely. I mean, it’s shifted both in terms of my own personal self and the world. OK, so let’s start with the world. When I started, we were all…You know, I’ve always had lots of friends of all cultures, ethnicities, races, nationalities. That’s just been the way I grew up. Like you, I grew up in New York City, the most cosmopolitan place in the world. And I always liked to convene and throw parties and bring people together and celebrate all of that. So that was always part of it. And then of course, in 2020, we had the great shifts in our society. That’s when I launched the Kickstarter and I brought in like $25,000 from the Kickstarter. Second year comes around, like everything’s kind of swung back to the status quo—I bring in half as much on the Kickstarter, not as much energy, and it was really disappointing to me. This year, I think I found the right sort of middle space. So I think there’s been a lot of interest among white women who want to be better allies and really understand what that means to what I say is de-centering the default whiteness narrative. And what that means, Maryann, is…If you look at anything, if you look at a journal, if you look at an article, if you do a photo search, it’s always the same woman. It’s always a thin, blonde, white woman. And it gets really difficult to feel like you have to shoehorn yourself into the narrative. That interacts with my work thesis in my day job as well. How do we create more pluralistic norms, so everyone can find themselves in a given space? So that was the big idea. And people were very responsive to that. It was really exciting. I also at the time had a job that was not entirely speaking to my full self. And it also wasn’t very, you know, demanding in a way. And so I thought, oh, I’m going to do retreats, I’m going to do workshops, I’m going to do corporate training, I’m going to do all these things. And then last fall, I got the job I have. But the interesting thing is a lot of the work that I had built, I’ve now incorporated into my work at Camber. So I’m in this incredible position where the Brave Sis work and my work for Camber feed each other, they support each other, they interact with each other and they lift each other up. I feel extraordinarily blessed. I feel very, very fortunate to be in this position. So that’s how things have shifted. I mean, it’s like my intentionality and my reality caught up with each other and found each other in the middle. It’s a great, great moment.
Maryann: Yeah, that’s what alignment feels like, right? You hear everyone talking about alignment. But you are truly in it.
Rozella: I am in it, and I feel it. And sometimes I feel the portal, like, coursing through me, and I feel very humbled and really grateful. I deserve it because, you know, I’ve suffered through a lot of bad jobs and a lot of bad situations, a lot of toxicity, a lot of self doubt. Being a woman, period, going into our late 50s, etc, period, it’s challenging enough. So my thing that I want to say to people is when you see a light in the portal, go towards it and live in it fully. Don’t look back and don’t ask yourself why you deserve it. You just do. Do it. That’s my thing.
Maryann: That’s so true, and I’m so happy for you. OK, so as Rosie told me earlier, we’re going to bring the heat in this conversation. A little bit, at least, right? We’re going to talk about age and race and a lot of things that seem to be really highly discussed right now. And we’re going to talk about it in correlation to our lives right now, as women of a certain age. Rozie, in one earlier conversation, you told me that one of your missions is to flatten the divisions that we’re feeling really strongly right now in our country. And I have to say, to me, sometimes it feels so hopeless that we will ever get there. How do you personally stay optimistic and inspired to keep going when the world keeps tanking? [Laughs]
Rozella: I mean, I’m a human being. There are many days when I’m like, I’m not crawling out of this bed today. To be just really topical, when the Roe decision came down, all I could think about was not only how that was going to hold back so many women period and destroy and hurt so many communities and families…Really, all I could think about was like all the images they ever show of like “save the babies” are always a white middle class child with a beautiful lay out and kind of a Gerber Baby, gentle kind of sweetness. And that’s just not the reality for people, especially people who were not preparing to raise a family. It’s cacophony, it’s stuff everywhere, it’s loudness. It’s not good childhood education. It’s perpetuating so much harm, and I just was paralyzed. Maryann, I just felt it so viscerally.
Maryann: A lot of us did, yeah.
Rozella: I thought of family members, people close to me, that don’t have that Gerber Baby, middle class lifestyle. And I just felt so crippled. I felt absolutely debilitated and hopeless. And I reached out to some people and I was like, all right, y’all, today’s the day. I need a little help. And you know, I called on my folks. In my job, too. I spent so much time helping the team try to make our way through it and think about responses. And I wrote a few people I trusted. I said, today I’m feeling depleted. Help. And people did. And I think that’s kind of what Brave Sis is about, too. It’s like community and interdependency and seeing each other and caring for each other. So yeah, I just want to start by saying, you know, I’m human too, and I do feel all of the weight of everything. But then I also think back to people like…And you know, I made a bag recently, I make a little merch, just when I’m inspired to do so. And I made a bag with Fannie Lou Hamer, the great civil rights leader, this beautiful kind of cut out illustration someone prepared for me of her, and it has a quote of hers. And it’s just about being resilient and being strong. And I’m like, if this woman could be beaten to near death in a jail cell a few days after Medgar Evers was assassinated…She had an unconsented sterilization which they called Mississippi appendectomies back then, she was beaten to death, her daughter was denied medical care and died as a way of punishing Fannie Lou for her activism….If this woman could go through all that, I think the 20th of 20 children, very little education, real poverty, and all that violence, and still make a difference, who am I to feel bad on a given day and be like, ugh, I can’t get out of bed. Others, too. Chinese American women in the history, Japanese women who were in terror during World War II, obviously all of our indigenous sisters and all they’ve gone through. When you start to look at what these people went through, and how they managed to still make a life that was dignified and made a difference in the world, that lifts me up, too. And that’s a gift I want to give to people. Get out of your head for a minute and get into history, and just try to hold on to something to keep you going. You know?
Maryann: Yeah. The woman who owned my house that we bought here in San Francisco, she and her family were sent to internment camps. And their neighbors got together and they held onto the house for them. Talk about community.
Rozella: That’s beautiful.
Maryann: Yeah.
Rozella: That’s beautiful. I mean, we need more of that. I like to be optimistic. I think maybe we’ve reached the societal tipping point or something closer to it around people’s sort of individualistic, fatalistic, selfishness and self centeredness. And we’re starting, maybe, to come back. My husband, John, just read an article, I think in the New Yorker, about how pickleball can save America.
Maryann: Oh gosh, don’t get me started on pickleball. Do you like pickleball? [Laughs]
Rozella: I have not done pickleball. I have not experienced the pickleball. But I hear it is a sensation. And what I think is so interesting is that my older sister has become a big pickleball player. And she’s so youthful, but she lives in a senior thing with her husband. If I think of them, like, interacting with people who probably don’t watch the same TV news channels as them and don’t have any things in common, but they’re playing the sport together…You know, we used to be like that as a society. People got out and got out of their heads and did things together and were communal. So I’m hoping, I’m hoping, I’m hoping, Maryann, that there’s still a grain of that left, and that we can get out of this toxic death spiral.
Maryann: I really hope you’re right. I do.
Rozella: What else can we do? If we don’t hope that, what are we going to do?
Maryann: I know. I mean, I love the way you want to include all women in this conversation, all people in this conversation, right? Whether it’s about race or what’s going on in the country politically. And you say you want to create an inclusive sisterhood. Why was that important to you? Because you did face some backlash from women of color, right?
Rozella: Yes, I did. I mean, people are people. And you know, I think the thing is—I say this in work, too—like, we don’t have to be binary about it. If I’ve created something and you don’t like it, go create your own, right? The backlash wasn’t, like, obscene or extreme. But in human nature, we get 100 things that are thumbs up and one thumbs down, and we just keep thinking about the thumbs down, right?
Maryann: [Laughs] Right.
Rozella: Like, someone wrote me once, sort of like, why are you including other women besides black women in this dialog? And I was like, well, that is what I want to do, that is what I set out to do, that is who I am, and that is what I’m doing. And like, you can go create a closed space of solidarity and a safe space for having your own reflection. Go do it. This is what I’m doing, so don’t come in and tell me what to do based on who you are, because you’re not me. And I’m old enough now that I don’t really listen to people telling me how to be. So yeah, there was some of that backlash. And then also, conversely, I don’t want white women to approach this from a place of guilt and sadness and self-flagellation, either. What’s the joy in that? Just come into the space with humility, saying, oh, this is a story that is not about me, so I’m gonna listen and learn and grow. But this is really cool. For once, it’s not about me. That’s it.
Maryann: I don’t know if you’ve seen the new series Julia about Julia Childs and how she started a PBS show.
Rozella: No, not yet.
Maryann: It’s really interesting, because she was at an event, and Betty Friedan came up to her—you know, The Feminine Mystique writer—and she sort of shamed Julia Child for having a cooking show. She said, your show is setting women back, you’re screwing up what we’ve accomplished for you. And Julia Childs almost quit. She almost quit her career because of what Betty Friedan said. And somebody finally told her, like, look, this is what you’re doing, and it’s not harming anyone. You’re doing you.
Rozella: Absolutely.
Maryann: I found that really fascinating. And I do feel like as Gen Xers, we were kind of caught in between this, you know…You’ve got to stand up, you’ve got to be a feminist, and you can do everything, you can do it all, you can raise children, you can be a feminist, you can have a fabulous career. And we got very confused.
Rozella: I mean, it’s just nonsense, because I mean…so I could go really deep here, we’re not gonna go that deep, but it is capitalism. [Laughs]
Maryann: It is, all of it.
Rozella: Because it really is sort of saying, this is the way you’re going to be. I have two wonderful daughters who are 21 and 24, and my 24 year old, a Gen Z to the max, just watched The Devil Wears Prada this weekend. And she’s like, Mom, that movie is so toxic. She was like, it’s all about the male gaze. The actress, you know, she attends all these things, but she’s still stuck with the boyfriend who doesn’t support her. And there are all these fatphobia jokes, and all these, you know…And it’s true, we have gone through such a societal change in how we even expect to be with each other. And it was just so interesting for me to think about this idea of like, each generation thinks that they are 100% right, and everyone else is completely wrong. And if we just stopped having the male gaze, the baseline white gaze that only sees things through one prism, you know, the sort of capitalist thing of, I’m marketing to you, who you are and who you’re supposed to be and what you’re supposed to get value from…You know, I’ve been reading about disability issues now, and there’s an ableist bias, too.
Maryann: There is, yeah.
Rozella: Just stop telling everybody what to do and let people just find their own bliss.
Maryann: Well, Beyonce, right, she got really shamed by that community, because she had the word…I don’t want to say the word on this, but she had a word that a community said was not appropriate. And she rewrote her lyrics, as did…Was it Lizzo?
Rozella: Oh, Lizzo, probably. And I mean, God, you know…I was thinking of a Missy Elliott song in which she, you know, uses the M O R O N, right, and I was just reading that you can’t do that. And it’s like, dang, that rhymes so well in that rap. But no, you can’t do that. I think it mostly comes down to admitting that we’re all a work in progress, and just having the humility to stop feeling like, you know…Somebody today just wrote me up and said, well, you should do this, and you shouldn’t do that. And I’m like, you know what, I really thank you for your concern, but I’m actually getting professional advice on this.
Maryann: Yes. [Laughs] But you know, it’s so interesting. This is a whole other podcast topic, this cancel culture, and we could go on for hours about this. Like, we’ve all become almost paranoid about all this stuff. And also, I tell my kids, look, there is a learning curve for everybody, but especially someone my age. I can barely remember my name some days. Some of these words are so ingrained in me, it’s like, just give me one minute to just catch up here. [Laughs] You know?
Rozella: It’s just being generous and recognizing we’re all on a journey. Now, that does not excuse…
Maryann: The big ones. We’re not talking about anything really bad. [Laughs]
Rozella: No, but like bad behavior, blind spots, right? Like, we do this all the time. I did it last week. I made a mistake. I was making jokes about my ex husband in France, right, and…
Maryann: Isn’t that allowed, though? I thought that was allowed. [Laughs]
Rozella: Well, you know, I was sort of talking about how poorly he’s aged and all that stuff. And I was like, on a roll. You know, I was kind of feeling myself. And someone said to me, you know, Rozie, that’s a little insulting towards, you know, people who are follicularly challenged, et cetera. And I was like, you know what, you’re right.
Maryann: Is that a new thing, now? Follicularly challenged?
Rozella: No, he didn’t say it that way. [Laughs]
Maryann: For bald? [Laughs]
Rozella: Yes, pretty much, pretty much. And you know, some men go through these massive heads of hair and then they’re in their 60s and it’s all gone. It’s like, who are you? I don’t recognize you. But that’s cool. I mean, you know, we all shift. But I had a knee jerk reaction of, oh, well, you know, I mean, I guess, but I was just playing around. And I had to check myself, because I was like, whoa, I just did something that like, if somebody else did that, I would be all like, whoa, what have you done? And so I said to someone afterwards, I said, you know, we’re all a work in progress, and I’m sorry.
Maryann: I’m noticing a lot more jokes now at men’s expense. Like, I’m hearing on TV in the movies like a lot of penis size jokes. And I’m thinking to myself, imagine if in a movie, they made fun of women’s breast sizes. We would be up in arms, we would be going crazy about that, you know?
Rozella: That’s awful.
Maryann: Yeah, so it’s the same thing. I think it has to go all ways, even though the white male patriarchy has been in charge, right? But I still think maybe we should be sensitive all around. Who knows? I mean… [Laughs]
Rozella: It’s just getting away from binary thinking and the zero sum game, right? Like, if this, then not that. No change can stick unless it starts from within, right? And so it’s this idea of, oh…I just read about this woman, Polly Bemis, who was born in China and brought over in the black market to San Francisco and used as a sex slave. She somehow managed to escape and move to Idaho, and became like a business owner and married a big burly mountain man and was considered like the beloved Dwyane of the community. And actually, her little town in Idaho just erected a statue to her memory last year. Nobody’s heard of Polly Bemis, except in this little town. And so it’s like, when you read that, as a black woman, I could go, wow—you know, I’m pretending to be young—this was dope. This is so cool. I didn’t even know she did all this stuff. I feel encouraged. Now I’m gonna go out and make a donation to the anti trafficking thing, because I’m down with this, right? Or, I could be like, oh, wow, I had no idea that, like…I did, but you know, I had no idea that Chinese American people went through all of this, because we didn’t learn it in school. This is cool. I want to learn more. If I’m Chinese, I’m like, wow, I feel really deep in my heritage, and I’m really grateful to this person. If I’m white, I’m like, why is it that our society didn’t teach us about these people? What can I do to ensure that these stories get known better? And then each single one of something happens internally. Either you flip and open your expanded idea about what’s valuable and what’s relevant to you, or you reaffirm your sense that you actually are relevant and you come from a lineage of relevance. Both are really important. And when you do that, I believe you see people differently. You have more real empathy, it’s not performative. It can stick, because it’s coming from within you. It’s not something mandated or, you know, some checkbox thing. Then we can do what we do. Like, being together as real women, stripped away from our differences, and be vulnerable, and do that amazing thing that women do, which is like when we share and we’re like, oh my God, my heart and your heart, our hearts are together. And then we have the energy to change the world. So that was always my sort of image, right? You start with the circle, then this community, then the global. And I think without that internal reflection and reconciliation with your own blind spots and biases and failings and things you never learned and willingness to learn, then nothing else really sticks. It’s just performative. It’s just performative, and that’s harmful.
Maryann: What we didn’t learn in school is a lot. I will say that. But let’s talk about a term for a second that is sort of circulating. It’s called intersectionality, right? And it’s this concept that inequalities based on class, race, gender and other identities are intersected. They can’t be separated because they’re complex, right, and they’re intertwined. I feel like younger women like millennials and even my kids’ generation are addressing this more and more, and our generation doesn’t seem to kind of be aware of it. Do you think it’s something we need to talk about more?
Rozella: I do. And I think it’s one of the things that’s hard. Again, like we were talking about our generation—and I really do firmly anchor myself in Gen X. Some calendars want to put me in Boomer, but I don’t think my affect is the Boomer affect.
Maryann: No, you seem Gen X to me. [Laughs]
Rozella: Yeah, I think so. And also growing in New York in the whole punk era, that was very formative.
Maryann: Yeah. [Laughs]
Rozella: [Laughs] But I think one of the things is…I’ve been thinking about this a lot, in terms of generations. If you think of the generation before the Boomers, right…Actually, I’m gonna answer this in a different way. Hopefully this helps. I think back to my grandmother’s generation as a black woman, right? Her generation was like, please don’t lynch us. Literally, right? My mom, who was a teen and young woman in the 50s moving into the 60s, she was like, please give me a job and let me be in society, right? My generation was like, give me a seat at the table. And our kids’ generation is like, we don’t want this table, we want a different table, get your damn table out of our face, right?
Maryann: Right.
Rozella: So when I think about that, I have a touch point to all of those four generations. The sort of Boomer, give me a seat at the table kind of thing, or give me a job, it was so much about just being able to be a whole person in society, both from the perspective of race and the perspective of gender slash sex, right? It’s like, you know, just let me have a job where if I get pregnant, I don’t have to quit my job. It was just literally that level of like, let me in. And so when you’re coming in that place of let me in, you’re in the survivalist mentality. You’re not thinking about all the factors that contribute to your challenge, you’re just trying to get through that challenge, get that job, get that money, wear that power suit, be that person, right? Next generation comes along, the door’s been a little more open, you have the chance to explore what’s behind the curtain a little more, a little more privilege. In a good way, you have a lot more ease. You’re like, I see patterns here, and I’m curious about these patterns. I’m recognizing the patterns. I don’t have the energy, but I recognize patterns. I’m gonna. like, make note of the patterns. Our kids are like, I see the patterns, I hate the patterns, which is changing the patterns now. And that’s progress. That’s good. If we could all, again, look at it in the arc of history rather than like, this generation was better than that one…It’s like, we all build upon what came before us.
Maryann: It’s almost like you’re describing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Like, each time a need gets fulfilled, you get to expand upon it.
Rozella: Truly, 100%. I talked about that….Yeah, it’s interesting, because when you talk with younger people today about all the different types of intersectional identities and triggers that can hold people back, it’s very true. I mean, our system is deeply layered with just, let us find more ways to be inequitable, and let us find more ways to only provide opportunity to this one narrow band that we think reflects the Founding Fathers. We don’t even know, really, we weren’t alive. [Laughs]
Maryann: Right.
Rozella: And it’s just like, we have to reject that narrowness. And earlier I said I can’t stand when people say you should do this, you shouldn’t do that, but I think we’re at an existential moment for society where we just start looking at each other as collaboratively useful to each other rather than in conflict. So I am a short, 59 year old, dark skinned, black woman without intergenerational wealth, and I am that person every single day. And I get to navigate spaces where I have all of the agency of a wealthy white woman because I’ve been enculturated in that community, and that’s how I learned to be an adult. And unless someone openly strips that identity from me, that’s what I lead with. But as I walk down the street, and you don’t know me, and you don’t hear me speak, and I may not be dressed up nicely, I may just be in sweats, you write your narrative about who you think I am. And it’s usually a narrative that is the entire opposite. When I’m in the south—because my husband works a festival in Charleston, South Carolina—I have to be dressed up even to go to the supermarket, because otherwise I will be treated like I was someone’s maid. And I have had that. I’ve had people come up to me and say, do you clean houses? And I’m like, excuse me, I’m the maestro’s wife. Literally. So like, I know what intersectionality is because I live my identities every day. But I’m fortunate enough that my station in life, from time to time, offers me a reprieve from having to be. But I am never 100% relieved of those identities. I think that puts me, Maryann, in a position of privilege where I have to use my platform to say those things and to get people to see those things. It’s the blind spot. And you shouldn’t be punished for what you don’t know, but let people who have more awareness help lead you to deeper knowledge. I want to share a story real quickly—I know we’re like going all over the place, but you know, it’s life.
Maryann: [Laughs] It’s OK.
Rozella: A girlfriend from college, I love her to death. Jewish woman, young woman, from New England, right? Love her. We’ve been friends forever. She once asked me, how come it’s bad to say Barack Obama is articulate? Why is it bad to say? Now, I could have been the person who was like, F you, I’m never talking to you again. I’m so insulted, get out of my face, I’m not your Google, go Google it, you know. But I was like, we were friends together in freshman year. I’m gonna tell her. So I took the time because she’s my friend. It wasn’t labor to me because we’re in a relationship.
Maryann: I’m glad you took the time. That’s great.
Rozella: Oh, I mean, first of all, I’m a generous person that way and I’m always willing to find a solution. But also, this was like, my dead-ass friend. And I said to her, you know, to some people, it seems like you’re implying that it’s surprising to you that an African American person could be well spoken and intelligent, and it’s just very jarring to people. It’s like a phrase you shouldn’t use. And she was like, well, thank you for telling me that. And then when George Floyd was murdered, she was living in Florida. And she was so incensed, she went to her local mayor’s office—I think Aventura—in the pandemic, and she said, I want to know what you’re going to do to make sure that that doesn’t happen in our community. No, she called them first, and they put her on hold, they gave her the bum’s rush, and she did not let go. And she said to me, I didn’t let go, Rozie, because I understood that what was happening here was not different than what my grandparents experienced when they fled the mother country in Europe. And I said to her, I want to thank you for being an ally, for putting yourself in there. And she says, no, Rozie, I want to thank you, because you helped me see the similarities, you helped me understand. And that’s what it’s all about. That’s what my life is all about.
Maryann: I mean, I can understand where it becomes exhausting. And again, I’m so glad you took the time. It’s a good friend, you know, you gave her that. You’re so generous. But I can understand where it would be difficult to kind of face this all the time. And as you know—I mean, I’m thinking about Dave Chappelle and how he told white womens just shut up and listen—I feel like white progressive women in particular have been criticized for making the conversation of race about them and for not being brave enough in their allyship, or for speaking on behalf of women of color without completely understanding these issues. And then there’s a whole topic of, you know, racist feminism, which could be another whole podcast episode. [Laughs]
Rozella: [Laughs] That’s a cocktail hour podcast episode.
Maryann: Right? So Rozie, for white women out there who might be listening and whose hearts are in the right place, but maybe they’re not getting it completely, what would you say to them? What would you encourage them to learn more about?
Rozella: Yep, this is the thing. It is not a transaction. This is what I work on in work as well. Like, we’re a consulting firm, we got a project in—I’m making this up—Rwanda. And we gotta go work with a medical group to figure out what kind of vaccines are going to be best adopted, what’s the messaging we have to do…If we don’t have people on the ground in Rwanda who know us and who can trust us, or who we can partner with who are trusted, who can put us with the people who know, we can’t do the project. We can’t just parachute in and be like, hi, you’ve never met me before. I’m here. I have money. I need your knowledge. Let me buy your knowledge. You just can’t do it. You don’t get trust. You might get a superficial outcome, and if you get a good outcome, it’s not going to be sustainable. So this is what I say to white women, or anyone— straight women trying to understand LGBTQI+ or Christian women trying to understand all of the things that are outside of their realm of awareness—don’t treat the people like the free encyclopedia. You know? Ask them, say, you know what, I need to learn more, and I don’t know where to go. If you have any suggestions for me about how I can do my education and grow, I appreciate it. But if you’re not down, if you’re tired, I get it too. I just wanted to let you know that my intentionality and my goal is to be a true ally and to be a better person. But you can’t buy it off people. You don’t know what that woman is dealing with in her life. Right? There’s a word for that…I just learned it and I forgot it already. It begins with the letter S—I’ll text it to you. But it’s this idea that other people are living an entire life that is not visible to us, and they’ve got context and issues and lived experience that you may not even see on their face, and it’s all in their head. So don’t assume that they’re available to you just because you are coming in with good intentions.
Maryann: That’s so true. And you can’t even get into someone’s world completely, ever.
Rozella: No, you can’t. And you shouldn’t. It’s like when I was just in Paris. I was like, wow, these Americans aren’t even trying to speak French, which is, hey, it’s a hard language. I know how to speak it, whatever. But they were also so dang loud. They were just acting like they were in Disneyland.
Maryann: Always.
Rozella: And I’m like, you know, when I go into a culture where it’s not my culture, I’m quiet and humble. I’m not just acting like, well, I’m here, I bought this, so I get it. And that’s another problem we have right now. Everything’s like, I bought this, so I should have what I want. It doesn’t work that way with actual human beings, right?
Maryann: Well, that feels like entitlement, right?
Rozella: It is such entitlement. And, you know, I’ve cut so many people out of my life. You asked me how I go on. I’ve cut people out of my life who only want to squeeze my energy out of me for their own behalf. Like, I gotta get something back in a real friendship. And so it’s also like, how would you like to be approached? What would you like? Would you like for a Latinx teenager to come up to you and say, hey white lady, tell me what it’s like to be white.
Maryann: [Laughs]
Rozella: [Laughs] I mean, it’s just like, think it through a little bit. And so what I would say to women is that there are so many resources out there now. Anything by Ibram X. Kendi, or Me and White Supremacy. Rachel Cargo has a whole Patreon about self learning. There’s so many tools. And if you do my journal, if you do it in the privacy of your own home, you can experience the sort of shock and pain and sorrow in private. And then you can just step away and like, reconstitute yourself and go back when you’re ready. It’s not a race, it’s not a righteousness prize, you’re not going to get a ribbon. You’re just gonna be a better person, and you’re going to like yourself more because you’re not going to feel awkward and bizarre all the time, either. Or worse, shut down, because you can’t bear feeling uncomfortable. This is all the stuff we talk about all the time. [Laughs]
Maryann: Well, I was in a park one day when I first moved to San Francisco. And I’m five foot one. I’m definitely not a woman of color. I’m white. I’m Italian American. But I have medium tone skin. And I’d gotten really tan. And I was with my daughter, who was a baby at the time. And I was wearing sweatpants, just walking with her up and down what we call the lion steps. It’s an exercise place. And some white older man looked at me, and he started talking to me and telling me to leave. He said, is this your neighborhood? Get your kid off the stairs and leave. And it suddenly dawned on me that he thought I was, you know, Latina. And I was infringing on this white neighborhood. And let me tell you, I went off on him in Spanish. [Laughs] He didn’t know I knew Spanish, knew more than I thought I knew. But it was in that moment that I really truly realized that I had no idea. No idea what other people go through. And it was just sort of like a thunderbolt.
Rozella: This is why I love New York so much, and New Yorkers, right? Because like one out of seven people you meet is Italian, or Latinx, or black, right? And there’s more that unites us than separates us. It was only 100 years ago that people from Sicily were treated as if they were black.
Maryann: Oh, I know. I know. [Laughs]
Rozella: And the Greek, and the Baltics, too. I mean, people need to remember their history and not be so enamored of the great Wasp ideal that they don’t even know. Because that is really true. Like, a person can be othered so quickly. And conversely, the other day, I was like, somebody…I forget who it was, someone in Congress or somebody was just being so obnoxiously narrow minded and white patriarchal, like ridiculous, right? Like, somebody needs to go drop that guy in the middle of insert neighborhood, right, where he would be the only one and be othered and not know where to go to eat, what to do, how to get around. I’m glad you told him off. How did he react?
Maryann: He kind of just stared at me and walked away. I’m a little bit feisty, so when I do go off on someone, it’s like, stand back. Yeah.
Rozella: Yeah, yeah. No, he probably was like, whoa. That happened with my daughter. She told a guy off and like, she’s little too, and he just was literally like, whoa. And she goes, yeah, they always say “whoa” when they don’t have anything else to say. [Laughs] She was so proud of herself for winning the battle of “whoa”s or whatever.
Maryann: [Laughs] That’s funny. But how, Rosie, do you think having this inclusive community benefits all of us? I mean, it’s important not just for our own identities, but for the entire community.
Rozella: I think one of the things that it does is it helps us be a deeper human being, honestly, and really embrace the wonder of life and the world in a way that we’ve sort of stopped doing. And again, Maryann, don’t you feel it’s a little bit like we’ve stopped doing it? Because we’ve been sold a package of what meaning is supposed to be, what value is supposed to be.
Maryann: Absolutely.
Rozella: What experiences are supposed to be. All of it. And the fact is…You know, I don’t know. I mean, we grew up in New York City. I used to go to Feast of San Gennaro when I was a teenager.
Maryann: Oh, me too. [Laughs]
Rozella: I mean, I learned how to make zeppoles because I was just like, this is really great.
Maryann: You know how to make zeppoles? You’ve gotta come over and teach me right.
Rozella: Oh, I unlearned it, are you kidding? I knew it when I was 15 or something. But I grew up in East Harlem, right? So I grew up by Pleasant Avenue where they had the big Italian restaurants and the, you know, the things with the giant mortadella hanging. Those are like my earliest memories, as well as going to the bodega where the Puerto Rican guys sold chicharrones and cuchifritos. I grew up also going to Catholic school with German and Chinese second generation immigrant kids. I was very fortunate. You know, I grew up in a really pluralistic town, and that’s still what I sort of expect of the world. It’s so interesting, like, I think food can help us a lot as well.
Maryann: Totally, yeah.
Rozella: Like, eating together and learning. And dance, obviously. It’s our dance community that brought you and me together, our broader community.
Maryann: That’s right. I think I mentioned to you that my grandma and her sisters lived in a like 99% black neighborhood. So I grew up with all these black aunties, like, surrounding me, and going to church with them. I grew up in Long Island, but so close to Queens, which is a melting pot, as you know, so I kind of miss that.
Rozella: It’s a shame that we live in these kind of sealed off things, because it’s so monoculturalistic and boring. I mean, it’s just so boring. I think that’s part of the problem is people are just bored and uninspired because we’re so siloed off from each other and everything. And you know, it’s not like Brave Sis is the answer to everyone’s problem, but it’s just like, another thing in your life. It’s like, oh, I just read about—let me open it and just let me just find someone for fun—oh, wow, I never knew Viola Davis said this, or Rosa Parks said that. Or, who is this woman Elouise Pepion Cobell from the Blackfeet reservation known as Yellow Bird Woman? Well, that’s cool. Let me check. What? She was the lead in the settlement that reached $3.4 billion, the largest ever class action settlement against the federal government in 2009. It was because Native Americans had been stripped of so much livelihood and lives and land. Like, we don’t learn about Cobell V. Salazar. And that happened in 2009. And so it’s like, you read that story and you’re like, oh, I’m really upset about this injustice. This woman with very little wind at her back was able to go all the way to the Supreme Court and make this huge change. Maybe I could write my school board to ask about X, Y, Z. You know what I mean?
Maryann: Yeah, totally, totally. You know, Rozie, we’re talking a lot about groups that feel marginalized right now, but I want to bring up age just for a second. I know, it’s not nearly as complex as all this other stuff they’re chatting about.
Rozella: It’s important to me.
Maryann: But More Beautiful is about women in midlife, so I’m going to bring it up. Do you think women of a certain age are left out of the conversation in our society? And is that a big mistake?
Rozella: Absolutely. I mean, once you no longer have childbearing, youthful age, you lose your value, right? And that’s another narrative that, thankfully, the younger generation is rewriting as they dismantle many, many other stereotypes. Did you see the Emma Thompson film?
Maryann: I thought it was wonderful.
Rozella: That movie was so courageous and amazing because it really was like, guess what, I’m over 50, maybe even over 60. My body is not like a hard body, I still have desire, I still have ideas, I still have a path that I’m on. And it was beautiful. And I don’t think that movie would have been greenlit four or five years ago. And so I do think that is one thing we can thank the boomers for in a way. There’s so many of them that they have, like, redefined what it is to grow older and not go gentle into that goodnight.
Maryann: Right. And they’re getting all these projects greenlit. They’re getting projects out there.
Rozella: So I think it’s really important that millennials and Gen Z’s don’t act like they sprung fully formed from their parents. Especially millennials perhaps—I don’t know enough Gen Z’s to know. But people shouldn’t act like that. Like, someone raised them. And so those people went through stuff to even be able to raise them. Have a little gratitude—again, like Brave Sis idea—for those who came before. And just because we may no longer be of childbearing age and may not be like the lithe sexy thing that you once wolf whistled at—which is nice not to get that, it’s nice to be able to walk down the street and not get like, verbally assaulted, you know—just because someone’s in a different phase of life, like, honor that and trust them, because you’re gonna get there too, if you’re lucky enough, right? I met a woman in Paris who was 75, and I, like, bowed down. Because she was like a boss sitting at the cafe, having her drink, eating her dinner, buying my dinner, living her life. Able-bodied, super solid, strong, smart. I was like, you are my role model. I want to be you in 16 years.
Maryann: Mhm. I love those older role models.
Rozella: She literally gave me wind at my back.
Maryann: That’s awesome.
Rozella: And she wasn’t sitting there like, let me be your old icon. She’s just like, hey, I’m living my life and I’m still kicking. I’m gonna keep going. Don’t let these other people define our value, for God’s sake.
Maryann: I also feel like in midlife, women are getting more involved. I don’t know if it’s a sign of the times and what we’ve all been through, but I feel like all the 40 ish, 50 ish women I know are getting involved in politics more and more. They’re volunteering their time, if they’re lucky enough to have time. What motivates our generation, do you think?
Rozella: It’s interesting, a friend of mine just posted something, and she’s like, does life really begin at 50? It feels like it. And of course, I met her when she was like 32. So I’m like, what? You’re 50? Oh, hell, I’m 59, I guess you are. I mean, that’s a hard question to answer. But I think one of the things that motivates us more is access to stories. There’s been a lot of documentaries recently, like there’s been a real kind of explosion of storytelling, especially about women and people who’ve come before, and there’s a lot of interest in learning about them. And so it just feels like there’s more interest now in telling stories of incredible women, particularly on these streaming services that have a little more leverage to tell stories. I do think the access that we have to blogs and podcasts and influence, people who are telling us truthful things, makes it easier for us to be curious about the world. In the past, you’d have to go to the library.
Maryann: Oh, yeah. I was telling my kids this. We went to the library. You remember how we did research papers? We had to photocopy pages in the library.
Rozella: Yeah. And have little cards.
Maryann: So, what can we teach other generations? Do you think we have anything distinctive as a generation that we can offer?
Rozella: See, when you say that, you sound like you should, right, but I’m gonna say that last night, I put on Pet Shop Boys’ “Western Girls.” East End boys and West End girls. And a warmth rolled over my entire body, it was like almost an orgasmic experience. [Laughs]
Maryann: [Laughs]
Rozella: Like, I love this. It’s a stupid song, there’s really nothing to it, but there’s something that’s just so much a moment in time. And here’s the thing I’m gonna say. I wrote my oldest daughter, I was like, oh my god, Pet Shop Boys just popped up. And she loves that song too. And she was like, oh, Mom, that’s so cool. So I think if we find snippets of culture or history that can resonate, that’s inspiring.
Maryann: I know. First of all, the kids today love anything 80s and 90s.
Rozella: I know, it’s so interesting.
Maryann: But you know, what I think is so great about our generation and so unique is that we have one foot in the pre-tech age and one foot in the tech age.
Rozella: Absolutely.
Maryann: Like, we remember what it was like to be looking for a friend and have to go to their house and ring the doorbell. And if they didn’t answer the door, we’d have to go to the mall or go wherever they hung out. [Laughs]
Rozella: Or, you make an appointment with someone to meet at a certain place at a certain time, and you both show up on time. You don’t not show up, you don’t just back out. It’s true. I think what we can teach the next generation is that it’s just OK to like, live and find happiness, right? And to listen to that old song and just feel really good. And that it isn’t all this race towards success. I mean, we’ve done such a disservice with the whole like, you know, college admissions, brass ring, the way we’ve turned parenting into an obstacle course.
Maryann: Ugh, so horrible, yeah.
Rozella: I mean, I say that with two kids that are like, one graduated Ivy League and the other is in an Ivy League. So, you know, I have to be careful when I say things like that. But what I say to people is that we didn’t ask or tell them to do that. They just did that on their own. And we were shocked, and yay, all good. But I mean, we wanted them to have good education and be smart, interesting, curious people. We didn’t force a lifestyle on them. And I think that that’s something that we can try to help teach the youth, younger people: how to be playful. And I do think our Gen X people do that well.
Maryann: You do?
Rozella: I think growing up with disco on one side and punk on the other, and early house music…Thinking back to the culture, club culture—again, I’m being very New York centric, I know—I think we grew up in a time of a fair amount of ecstatic happiness and joy.
Maryann: The music was more joyful. It was more romantic. I felt like it just made you a little bit hopeful.
Rozella: And even if it was the dark stuff…I saw someone the other day wearing a Joy Division T-shirt, and I stopped her on the street, and I was like, oh my god, did you like Joy Division? They were so amazing! And I started telling her stories of listening to that original goth music on the radio, because there was this awesome station in Boston, right? And she was like, I don’t really know what Joy Division is, I just like the design of the shirt. And I just wanted to barf. I was like, take that shirt off! You don’t have the right to wear that shirt. Find out. Don’t be incurious. Don’t be performative and cop the cute shirt without knowing, you know, because even that stuff…The factory years were so bad in the UK, it was so miserable. But there was still a sense of like, we’re gonna make art, we’re going to be scrappy, we’re going to do what we have to do. I see that coming back now. I see the clutches of everything needing to be perfect and curated and purchased, the mall mentality, I see that stripping away with the young people. They’re more DIY.
Maryann: And then they’re more about experiences, I feel like my kids are, than about material things, which is so great.
Rozella: Yeah, it’s so inspiring. I mean, it does give me hope.
Maryann: Yeah. From your lips to God’s ears, as my grandma used to say.
Rozella: As mine said too. Exactly. Which is so great.
Maryann: I know, it’s amazing. So, one more question for you, Rozie. Tell our listeners out there why they need to be brave in midlife.
Rozella: Oh, yeah. Well, that was the original impetus of this. And our mutual friend Sunny was witness to the harm that befell me and how it really derailed me. And I was so low and I was so frightened and so traumatized and so triggered. And you know, I’d been forced out of a job, basically. And everybody saw the train wreck happening in real time. And then when it happened, it was just so shocking and so awful, and I was so low for so long. I was so fearful.
Maryann: That’s so hard.
Rozella: It was so derailing and devastating. And when I had that sense, that voice, say tell my story, the other image that came to mind was when I was in labor with my second daughter, and I was all alone in the hospital and labor came on really quickly. And I was in the throes of it. And I closed my eyes and I saw an ancestor standing there. So I had these two sort of out of body moments of this force telling me something. And what that voice had said was, be brave. And that’s why it’s called Brave Sis. Because it’s like, when you don’t have anything else, when you don’t have hope, when you don’t have a sense of self, when you don’t have encouragement, when you don’t see a way, all you can do is be brave. You just have to keep going. That’s what Fannie Lou Hamer did. She was just like, I gotta be brave, you know? And that’s our force. We gotta draw those behind us to get the bravery. We gotta rely on it. And then we have to push it out to those to come. Like that, to me, is what it all is.
Maryann: I love it. Well, Rozie, this was such a juicy conversation. Thank you so much. Can you tell everybody where they can reach you online?
Rozella: Yes. You can email me at hello@brave sis.com. You can go to www.bravesis.com. We didn’t even talk about my book coming out.
Maryann: Oh, yes. Please tell us about your book.
Rozella: Our Brave Foremothers. It’s like Brave Sis but with incredibly beautiful illustrations. 100 women, no calendar, no diary thing, but prompts, and it’s just incredible. I can’t wait.
Maryann: When’s it coming out?
Rozella: April 2023. It’s on Workman press. So if you go to ourbraveforemothers.com, it will also take you to bravesis.com. Everything points back to that website. But the thing that people could do most of all is follow the account on Instagram, because I put up new content, little snippets, a history tribute, every day.
Maryann: All right. Everybody, check it out, and I’ll put all the stuff in the show notes at morebeautifulpodcast.com. OK, thank you, Rozie. Have an awesome day. It was such a pleasure.
Rozella: Thank you. Let’s do it again.
