Eps 237: Nurturing an Anti-Racist Home Environment (and so much more) with Vivek Patel

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Today’s guest is Vivek Patel. Vivek is a conscious parenting educator who works with families to help create more harmony and connection in their homes. He has dedicated his life to spreading awareness and supporting change in schools. He’s worked with youth organizations teaching conflict resolution anti bullying and leadership through movement martial arts and dance. As a conscious parenting educator, he has written hundreds of articles and has 60 parenting videos, you can find his writing on Facebook, the meaningful ideas website and YouTube. We are discussing how to take current events and bring the learning into the home. Join us!

” Being anti-racist…It’s a mindset that we look at the world through that we analyze the systems that we engage in with, that we listen to language with, and, and everything from media and advertising to government systems to educational systems, the correction system, the legal system, the financial system, the housing system, everything.”

“ From the micro to the macro, being willing to look at those things and see look for look at and look for the inequities, to be willing to see them inside yourself and and other people and the systems and the anti racist part of it is to be doing something to actively change it.”

“When we lift up the people that are oppressed, all of us benefit from it.”

 “Conscious parenting is cycle breaking”

What you’ll hear in this episode:

• Why conscious parenting?

• Vivek’s activism journey

• What it means to be anti-racist

• From micro to macro, reflecting on self and systems

• The role of self-love and compassion

• The power of coming together

• Celebrating the discomfort

• Opening ourselves up for better relationships and interactions

• Our parenting relationship and our influence around topics of race

• Moving away from perfectionism and embracing the practice of becoming anti-racist

• Conscious parenting as cycle breaking

• Should we shield our kids from the pain of the world?

• Kids and fairness: leveraging their intuition towards acts of changemaking

• Why you need to do your own work, face our own fears and where to start

• Six relationships that drive change

• Modelling anti-racism for our kids

• Zooming in, zooming out, and condoning bad behavior

• Modelling our use of power, how we engage with power and why it’s important

• Control and consent in parenting

What does Joyful Courage mean to you?

You know, activism contains both joy and pain. I’ve been doing activism for 30 years, like I said, and I think that it’s the ability to embrace both of those things that makes it brings our power. A friend of mine recently asked “Vivek, how do I do all this self examination without being completely exhausted and in pain.” and I said, “You can’t really, we have to accept that part of this growth is part of the pain and then Can we find joy in embracing our pain? Can we find joy in embracing the whole of who we are? The pain of who we are the errors that we have, the mistakes that we make, you know, even you noticing that about the picture you had about the grandma, can you find joy in noticing that racist lens?” Maybe I’ll say racial lens to soften a little bit.

 And so that’s what I feel about, about joy. I think joy, one of my sayings is, I use the word happiness, but I think it applies the same one of my sayings is, “Happiness is not an emotion, it’s a foundation. It’s deeper, it’s something deeper than the dualities that we experienced, the variety that we experienced. The connection with joy is something that’s a connection with my deep self. It’s what I call the “ocean self”, you know, we’re all waves on the ocean. And there’s a Casey wave and a Vivek wave. 

I see all the different waves around. And I think that each of us as waves really are just different forms of the same ocean and so when I’m in touch with my ocean self, that’s when I feel the most joy. And the ocean self can hold my pain and can hold the transitory type of joy.

 And then courage. I think courage is an inward journey and an outward journey simultaneously. I think courage is the inward journey of really knowing myself, of being able to face myself, love myself, and also be very, very honest with myself. And the outward journey is the choices I make in the world, what I choose to say, what I choose to think, what I choose to learn, how it’s used to treat people. And what I choose to stand up for and who I choose to protect. 

I think that it’s that kind of combining of the inward and outward journey simultaneously from the experience of knowing our ocean self and our wave self. So put all of that together and you have joyful courage.

Resources: 

You Are Racist video

Schoolclosures.org

FB Page – Meaningful Ideas, Gentle Parents Unite
Meaningfulideas.com – writing
You tube – Meaningful Ideas
Weekly podcast – Gentle parents Unite Podcast

Gentle Parenting Patreon – coaching, meditation for parents, social justice education, live on Thursdays::::

Thank you BETTER HELP!

This podcast is sponsored by Better Help – online counseling anytime, anywhere. → www.betterhelp.com/joyfulcourage

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