Susan
Welcome to Who We Are Inside, a Cupid podcast. I don't typically start with an introduction in this podcast, mainly because I'm impatient and I don't find them to add much to my listening experience. But this episode needs an introduction because it is the first two-parter that we are doing on this podcast. And so if you haven't listened to part one of Mario Brown's episode, I highly recommend you start there. Mario really talks about how we need to consider ourselves as human beings rather than human doings, and how we navigate balancing those two in this crazy life with all of its surprises and to-do lists and obligations. How do we slow down and lean into being a human being? In this part, part two, we really shift to focus on how we can actually support those people around us that we love by leaning into human being and not human doing. And we also go with Mario on a journey of unlearning what he thought a man should be, quote unquote, and how he learned that it's not socialized norms that are really important for human connection, but it's leaning into vulnerability no matter who you are. I hope you enjoy. So I wanted to read you something that I listened to kind of as we're thinking about this and just get your thoughts. So you said, you and John were talking about, again, this sort of idea of fear and vulnerability and how do we sort of get there. And your response, I thought, was just so lovely. I want to share. You said, “I'm always learning. This thing is a journey. I put my foot in my mouth all the time. But part of the courage needed in order to grow is to be willing to make mistakes, to admit what you don't know, and to have the humility to be corrected when we need to be. That's part of being human. And I think that's the most important thing that we can probably help each other be nowadays is just be human, tap into our humanity, and just be cool with it.”

Mario
Who said that?

Susan
It was Dr. Mario Brown.

Mario
That was pretty dope.

Susan
Yeah.

Mario
So now I'm thinking about home, right? Well, let me back up a sec. Yesterday, I was in a small cell group at my church, Bible study. And the cell group that I'm in, it's a men's cell group. And I love, I identify, I'm a Christian, Baptist Christian, right? And I love men's Bible studies because we, even without knowing it, we are seeking to be counter-hegemonic. And we are seeking to be counter-culture of what society says men must be, right? And some of the things that you read, they reminded me of this journey I've been on, this struggle as a man to unlearn all the misinformation and to learn what it truly means to be a man in the context of being human. And that means my feelings, owning them, not being afraid to express them. And I said, I'm thinking of home because one of the hardest places to do that is at home. Children have expectations. My partner, my wife has expectations. And my feelings get hurt sometimes. And at times I feel as though I have no recourse. But then I have a group of believing men like me, right? And we talk about dismantling those old ways of being and creating new ways of being from our faith perspective, right? And it doesn't mean that I must become now some, you know, kind of a wimpy guy. But what it does mean is that I can embrace every divine part of me and not be ashamed of it. And society will say that, okay, well, you know, you're either being this or you're being that, you know, they put names, you know, all of it connected to phobias, right? And I don't think that's what it is. I think it is a new way of learning a new way of being and a new way of being whole in whatever spaces and in every space. So, yeah, I appreciate you reading that. That, wow, that's all I can say. That came out of me. I don't believe it. But I do believe that there is, how can I say it, embracing all the different parts of my identity and allowing all of them to live in this one body simultaneously and not chop myself up. I've spent most of my time chopping myself up and as a father with my two oldest boys. And I would like to think that I was a good dad. But in retrospect, I know that perpetuated the lies and perpetuated all the myths on my boys. You know, they played sports and all that. It was always, ‘get back up, get back in; don’t cry’ yada yada. And then with my daughter, I did the same thing, petting her. You can cry. And the messages were always opposite and different, you know, until I began to learn something different. And then I began to do something different. Yeah. So what I do believe is that we're all beautiful and humanity is a beautiful thing. And somehow we have to reintegrate it back into all of our spaces, you know. And I'll say this, the last thing I'll say on that is that I think we owe it to the people that we serve. So I'll go back to being educator, go back to being health care person. We owe it to our students. We owe it to our patients or the people that we care for. Yeah. And we owe it to one another.

John
What about people who are in places where they can't necessarily be themselves, where a man has to be, quote, a man, you know, like in the in that type of, you know, where they're being pressured to be that type of person. Because I know there, I feel like in our society, there are still places that are like that.

Mario
Absolutely. Yeah.

John
Maybe, maybe not with us, maybe in someone who's in high school still, or maybe somebody who lives in a different part of the world.

Mario
This came up in the Bible study last night. One of the guys asked a question, we were talking about forgiveness versus revenge, right? And most of us have been taught revenge, right? And one person asked the question, what if someone is being bullied? How do you teach them? The art and the principle of forgiveness when they're in a hostile situation. And there's no easy answer there, right? But now I come back to my love ethic. I think modeling, teaching, and also advocating for, you know, this, we used to talk a lot about being an advocate and an ally. It seems like we don't talk about that a lot anymore. I'm not sure why. But I think that that's one thing, going back to giving each other permission to be human, that if I am in a position of said power, you know, based off of whoever, who I am or whatever, then it's kind of my duty to make sure that the atmosphere and the space is not hostile to people that may not necessarily walk the way I walk or look the way I look or talk the way I talk. And that might ostracize me, right? But that's where the courage comes in. You know, the other thing that's liberating about this whole idea of just being, is that you don't, the liberating part is freeing myself from the slavery of conforming to how you think I should be. So that was another thing that came out last night was that you get to, how do you know? Well, you know when what used to bother you no longer even bothers you. You don't even have to think about it or process it. It's almost like you can laugh in its face because it just really, so that's transformational, right? You're not who you because you've been practicing long enough and now you can share that with other people and you can help other folks that may need your help at a time. So I totally get what you're saying when I'm sitting, I like to smoke cigars going all the way from church now to the cigar and you know, we're sitting around there blowing smoke and you know, it's all macho and all this it used to be. I mean, you know who the fastest demographic of cigar smokers are in America? Women. So the cigar bar is, you know, it's not the man's cave anymore. It really isn't. But the point is, is that, you know, that's one of those spaces, right? And so, you know, there's a certain way of being in there, but I'm grateful to the fact that women are in there because they change the whole dynamic. You're not just gonna sit in there and fart and cuss. You're gonna try to be a little more mindful and respectful and if you don't, you're gonna get told about it. So, you know, but to your point, I think that the more that we walk this thing out, right, the more that the theory becomes a reality, we change the space, you know, we begin to change the atmosphere. And yeah, again, I'm going to come back to this podcast, to what Cupid is doing. And I think it is about changing the atmosphere on our campus, right? It's making these stories and making these things accessible to everybody and giving people permission and the courage to do this.

Adriana
When you were talking about ally, it reminded me about bystander training, right? When you see something, you need to act on it. And that goes back to being just and finding justice too. So, one thing that I struggle sometimes, especially with students and nowadays, especially with all the mental health issues, is that some young people or even older people, they struggle to ask for help. And how can we be good neighbors, good bystanders, and notice this signs earlier, that somebody is in distress, somebody is struggling. Especially when you have students who are under a lot of pressure, they have to study, they have to take exams, they have to pass, they need to be successful, they are always being expected to be functioning at their higher level. So, how can we be mindful and look for the signs so we are not being bystanders? We are kind of preventing the situation to happen.

Mario
And now we've even gone from just not being a bystander to being an upstander, right? We have these upstander trainings. So, I know in the School of Pharmacy, and I'm questioning this, the jury is still out in my mind as to if this will work or not. But a lot of the schools are embedding psychologists.

Adriana
We have one.

Mario
We have one too. So, when you think about it, we have two in our building. That's a good thing. And I've been thinking about how do we best partner? Because one person can't solve all the problems, right? Again, going back to being responsible educators and clinicians, I think it's incumbent on us to make ourselves available. And there's many more students than there are of us, right? I know in our leadership meetings, we talk about well-being and how do we do that? How do we create a better sense of belonging? And so, I think part of it comes to educating ourselves on the things we don't know. So, I don't know a lot about neurodivergence or neurodiversity, but I've been educating and I've been asking the students and the faculty and staff to educate us. And what I think is important when you have power is to distribute that power. And what I mean by that is, okay, so as an associate dean, I can suggest that people, students, educate us. So, what can we do to put on a forum where you can use your voice to actually, if you want to, not trying to call anybody out, but use your voice to be able to convey to us what it is that we need to know for you. I think that's one way to do it. And that can be done for anything. I remember we did one for Asian students when there was a lot of Asian backlash happening. And we didn't do it just with students or just with faculty. We did it with students, faculty, and staff together, right? Which brings me to another point, and that is that creating this real sense of community and belonging. So, we are just a microcosm of the larger society, right? The same way that we try to make sure that people get what they need and that they're not ignored to the degree that we do that in large society. We can do that within our own community in our schools. Last thing I'll say on that is that making myself available, right? I don't recommend this for everybody, but from day one I told people that my office is an open door, so you don't have to make an appointment to see me. Now, if you come to my door and I'm busy, I'll tell you. Come back or whatever, but anybody can come and see me, and we can sit down and talk about anything. And the other thing that goes along with that is that I've been transparent about things in my life, but given myself the permission to be transparent. So, once I was asked to speak for a director of a program on their executive, like they would do these executive sort of fireside chats, and I think the expectation was to talk about how I got to where I got professionally. What I ended up talking about, which was part of my story, is the fact that I'm now, I don't know what I was then, but 31 years clean in recovery, that I'm a recovering person, and that whatever your images are of a person in recovery, they probably don't look like this, and they probably don't have titles like this, but you need to know that recovering people are everywhere. That gives our students permission to be who are walking, carrying that burden, and it may give some of my colleagues that same freedom. So, I don't know if that really gets at your question, but I think that it's about modeling and, again, living a courageous kind of life, because ultimately, at the end of the day, what can really happen to me if I show up and be my real self? What are you going to do to me, right? I mean, yeah, we all have these boogaboos and these fears, oh, my God, you know, but I do have a fear. If I go home and tell my wife I lost my job, that's a real fear. I'm more afraid of her, you know, but, I mean, I don't think in today's society that that will happen, and if that happens, then, you know, I mean, then it wasn't meant to be, right? So, yeah, I think that that's how we do it, Adriana, is that we just be ourselves, and we allow, and we celebrate people being themselves, you know? We celebrate, you said it in the very beginning about celebrating small wins and milestones, right? It's the celebration and the recognition, and now I'm getting happy again, because the celebration and the recognition of just being human again, right? That's what we should be celebrating. Yeah, we should celebrate the, you know, $1.5 million NIH grant. Yeah, we should celebrate the article that was just published, and yeah, we should celebrate somebody was just appointed to this and that, but I don't think that we should just celebrate those things. We should celebrate who we are, you know, and celebrate birthdays and celebrate marriages, and so one of my colleagues, she was doing, we had the Board of Visitors come, and for her portion of her slides and her presentation to the Board of Visitors, she led off with, she was talking about belonging, and her slide had all the new members of the pharmacy community. They're all newborn babies, right? And that's where everybody's like, oh, you know, and there it is right there. Who cannot relate to babies, right? Yeah. And that just took some of the angst out of the room and reminded us of who we really are, right? And I love that, you know? So, you know, I'm a little, you know, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I love stuff like that, you know? Anyway.

John
Oh, yeah, baby's cool.

Mario
Baby's cool. I got two of a baby, right?

Susan
I was thinking about what you were saying, and what I was hearing was that we can we can do right by our students and supporting their needs, and not just our students, but our colleagues and everybody, through vulnerability, that we tap into our humanity through vulnerability. And so sharing your, you know, background, and celebrating that you are 31 years clean as a true celebration and not something to be hidden, I think is a vulnerability that is so needed. And I think that what we can do is show our own vulnerabilities. So I do check-ins with the first year students like every month, and usually at every one somehow, I talk about my therapist. And I just, you know, you destigmatize it. You say like, yes, yeah, I am, you know, the director of the PA program. One of the undergraduate students told me that, like, I was a big deal. And I was like, really? No one let me know that. But, you know, I think that I think we don't realize sometimes the power that we have, and how much they're watching us. And just by not saying, you know, if you really need therapy, you should go. But to say, yeah, you know, I was talking to my therapist last week, and she told me that I really need to work on this. And you just normalize it. And all of a sudden, they're like, oh, yeah, I guess I could do that. And the other thing I will do is I will bring up Dr. Lucilia Williams, who is a Cupid leadership member, who's not here today. But she taught me in her teaching that she always starts every class with two questions. Is there anything that anybody wants to celebrate today? And more often, when I've done it in my classes, someone celebrated like completing this crocheted little animal that they made, or celebrating winning their intramural sports game. And it just is this little invitation at the beginning of class to bring in humanity. And then she always asks, is there anything that anyone needs counsel on? And oftentimes, you know, you don't get a lot of response, especially because I think as graduate professional students, everyone is a little buttoned up. But I think what I've noticed is that even if I'm not having students say things out loud to the whole class, they may then feel comfortable coming to me afterwards and saying, you know, there is something I'd like to tell you about. And then the last thing I'll add is that in preparation for these didactic check-ins, I send out just an anonymous survey about kind of how things are going. But I have some open-ended questions. And I've had, even though the questions aren't directly about mental health, I've had some students express their concerns that way. And so then I can't address that student directly. But then I know I can remind students about all the resources that we have. And you know, if you want someone to walk you down to UCC, you just let me know, you know. So I think there, I think it's all about the invitation and the modeling, as you said, the vulnerability is key.

Mario
That's awesome. I think our students are dealing with a lot more now than probably any of us when we went through school, for sure.

John
You guys know way more than I do about that. I just make videos for the university.

Mario
Well, I love the fact that you check-in, that you do these check-ins. And I think that's good practice that we should all do. I try to remember to do that. I don't always remember to do it. But I think that it sets the tone and allows people to relax. You know, when we were going through the George Floyd piece, and I just say his name, but there were lots of things going on at that time. I think we all became very mindful that we need to check-in with our students and check-in with one another. And these things seem to go in ebbs and flows, that ebb and flow. And it seems like right now where, I don't know if it's ebbing or flowing, but we need to get back to that and remembering some of the promises we made to ourselves and to other people. In 2020, right, in 2021, 2019, because now it seems as though we're getting back to not caring until the next big thing happens, you know. Yeah. Which there seems to be some of that happening right now.

Susan
Yep. I did not mean to say that at the same time as you, but…

Mario
But it is. It's real.

Susan
Yeah, yeah. It's been a really interesting time, I think, to be an educator. I'm fairly new to this role, and I think about when I was in PA school. It was in 2010. And I am sure that there were world events going on that were horrible. And I also know that I didn't have a black box in my hand 24-7 to remind me of all the horrors going on. And to make me feel like my day-to-day was not important because I should be worrying about all these other things. Like, I only had to worry. I was very privileged. I was, you know, in my early 20s. I had no dependents to care for. And so I really only had to worry about school. And I feel like even for those students who probably match my same demographics, they have the whole world to worry about. And if they don't worry about it, then they're not a good global citizen. And so how do you balance the pressures of a professional graduate school, which is hard enough on its own, with all these other things? And I try to remind them of that. I try to remind them, like, I was so lucky compared to what you are going through. And all I can do is just listen, is just be willing to listen. And as you said, listening is, I think, the key. And truly listening to understand, human to human, as opposed to faculty member, administrator to student. I think that's really key, is like kind of flattening those power dynamics when you're having those vulnerable conversations.

Mario
Yeah, absolutely. So this is the year of dialogue and discourse. I really like the dialogue part more than even the discourse, because in dialogue we talk about listening, right? And listening empathetically and listening to learn, you know, so that I learn more about you and you learn more about me. And hopefully in that context, we learn more about ourselves. And I think, you know, I don't know, I would love to do more of that. You know, I piloted a interprofessional intergroup dialogue training and it went pretty good. And I would love to get to do more of that. But of course, we're all stretched really thin, right?

Susan
Now we're getting into doing and not being.

Mario
And there's the crux, right? Because, I mean, let's be honest, who doesn't sit around and think about more stuff to do, right? And yeah, and I do that all the time, you know. And they're all great ideas, I think, you know, anyway.

Susan
Well, as somebody who has a lot less experience in academia and who also has an abundance of ideas and not nearly enough time, how have you chosen your projects? How have you kind of tempered your doing in order to leave space for your humanity?

Mario
Wow. You know, really, how do you prioritize? So part of it is, you know, when it comes to work, right, there are certain things that must be done. You know, I have people that I'm accountable to. And so I have to be accountable. I have to do what I'm paid to do and what I'm charged to do and do it to the best of my ability. And then there are the side things, right? And I think that's where I have some choices. I think the difference with me today is making choices to do things that are going to advance my career. Building social capital or professional capital. Those are things that I used to. That was the number one priority. And now I do things that sort of bring me joy or that I think align with my passions or that I think will really have some type of impact. Yeah, some type of an impact to better all of us. And so I think that's where I put my energy. And then I do reserve some time for myself to do the things that bring me personal growth and joy. Like I say, going to Bible study or something, right? This desire to get back on my bicycle. And I'm determined. I'm going to make room and space to do that. Today, I wanted to throw my old beater bike out the garage and put it in the back of my truck and take it down to REI or somewhere and get it oiled and fixed up. And I guarantee you, if you all talk to me next week, I will have put my bike in the shop somewhere. That's the first step. So, yeah, I think for me, it's really being judicious about where I spend my time and what I put my energy into. And I think that, again, going back to sort of where I'm at in this date and time in my life, that probably guides what I do more. I have grandchildren. My grandchildren are very important to me. So I'm always negotiating with my son on getting my grandkids to Pittsburgh. And then when I know they're coming, my wife, we're planning on what we're going to do. And it's all around them because their joy brings me joy. And nothing will get in the way of that. So I just think that my doing now, I think, is more related to my being versus my doing being more related to external stuff or things that I think matter to you or the way that you view me. Not so much anymore.

Susan
So I think the thing that I'm going to take from this, I mean, there is a lot. But what I want people to kind of use as a mantra is I am a human being, not a human doing. I love that. I just wanted to, like, repeat it. There may be pin back buttons in the future with that on there to remind us all. So thank you so, so much for your time today. This was this was lovely.

Mario
Thank you very much.

All
Thank you. Thank you.