Book Therapy with Minal Bopaiah

Real Self-Care

Season 1 Episode 3

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0:00 | 37:17

After nearly two decades in the nonprofit sector, Sarah has watched the landscape shift toward what she calls increasing negativity - and it's taking a toll on even the most dedicated changemakers. 

The founder of Brand and Board joins Book Therapy to discuss how social justice work has become harder, not just tactically but emotionally. How do we practice self-care that actually aligns with our values instead of just checking boxes? And what does it mean to plant seeds for change when immediate wins feel impossible? Real Self-Care by Pooja Lakshmi becomes our guide for this essential conversation about sustainable activism and authentic boundaries.

Minal

I'm Minal Bopaiah, your host of Book Therapy, the advice podcast for book lovers. My guest today is Sarah, who is the founder of Brand and Board, a consultancy that works alongside nonprofit leaders to maximize board engagement and brand effectiveness. She's worked with nonprofits for nearly two decades and is also a serial board member, having served on a variety of nonprofit boards. Hi, Sarah.

Sarah

Hi, Minal. Thanks so much for having me.

Minal

Oh, my pleasure. I am so excited to have you today. If you don't mind, I want to start just by reading your question as you wrote it in. Is that okay?

Sarah

That's great. I appreciate it.

Minal

All right. So you wrote, I have worked in the sector, in the nonprofit sector for 20 years, and lately it's hard not to get discouraged at the seemingly increased meanness of the world. world leaders, repeated injustices of every kind that encourage exclusion over inclusion, board members behaving badly, nonprofit leadership acting in ways that don't encourage authenticity and transparency. As a consultant, I'm committed to helping nonprofit leaders find a way to progress beyond whatever their challenge is. But sometimes I think, can we really make progress against the mean machine? I like that phrase, the mean machine. Tell me more about where your question is coming from or what you really mean by the mean machine.

Sarah

Yeah, yeah, thanks. It's sobering to hear that again to some degree, but I appreciate you rereading it. It's the idea that there is always going to be in the work that we do around social justice, there are going to be people who are throwing hurdles up around that. And sometimes that is affecting not just the work getting done, but those who are doing the work. And since I work so closely with nonprofit leadership and boards, I can see that they too are starting to flag a little under the pressure, as all of us are. And, you know, we've moved into a much more polarized world than when I started this work 20 years ago. And so I'm really thinking a lot about how do I continue to carve a path towards impact without letting sort of the emotional anxiety weigh the work down?

Minal

Yeah, so that's a big, big, big question. Tell me a little bit about what got you into the work, like what motivates you to be in the work? for the nonprofit sector? And is there a particular nonprofit sector that you're dedicated to? Or is it just any sort of social change work?

Sarah

Yeah, yeah, I would say at large, it's very much any social change work. And it It really, I think, was ingrained in me in an early age. I also had some schooling that was very much, in my formative years, a school whose motto was non-cibi, not for oneself. And that really made me think a lot about what does it mean to, you know, quite honestly, come through a life of a lot of privilege. And so therefore, what's my expectation of myself in terms of what I need to be doing in the world and how I need to be doing it? using my voice and my skill set in a way that advances agendas that are important to me.

Minal

Yeah. Okay. Tell me more about that. Tell me more about what is your philosophy around work and what you do? And are they separate? Is this a career or is this a vocation? Yeah. How much of your identity is tied into it? Tell me more about that.

Sarah

Yeah, that's a great question. You know what? I think it is vocational. And I think originally I might have thought it was a career, but I think it's vocational. I started my career working in advertising, so very much the opposite of kind of what I'm doing now. And yet the skills that I use in strategic planning and strategic thinking for nonprofits is very much the same. And As I was developing that skill set, I found that every time there was an opportunity to work with nonprofit organizations while I was working in the private sector advertising world, I was much more drawn to that than the work I was doing in my day-to-day life. And so I made the choice to make this move, as I said, about 20 years ago. And the longer I have been at it, the more I realize it is what I am supposed to be here doing. I am supposed to be helping move impact for organizations around as best I can with the skill set that I have. And I don't pretend to have the skills that many executive directors have or CEOs or terrific board chairs or program directors have. But my niche and my contribution to sort of the advancement of mission-driven work is through the expertise that I bring in my own way. So I would say originally I might have thought of this as a career move, but I love the word you used, vocation, because it has clearly become more and more vocational the deeper I've gotten into it.

Minal

And what would the impact be on you if you stopped doing good things?

Sarah

Yeah. You know, that's a great question because I feel like in some ways it is tied to identity, right? So there is a part of me that is it's important to my identity to be in a position where I am trying to advance the causes that need advancing in the world in which we're living, right? So it's hard to imagine not doing that. And if I weren't doing it as a, you know, let's call it a day job. I mean, I certainly have done enough board service and volunteer work in my life and mentoring, which is maybe another way to also advance this on a more individualized basis. So I think I'd be finding a way to work around that if I couldn't do it because it's hard to imagine life without it. It's such a fulfilling part of what I do.

Minal

Yeah, well, so one thing I tell people my consultants when they come to work with me is I want you to imagine that like your, your ticket to heaven is written. Like it's written short of like committing murder or like doing something really egregious. Like you're in, you don't have to do any more good deeds to get in. Yeah. Right. Like your, your ledger is full. It's totally in the black. You're in the clear. Now, what do you want to do with your time on earth?

Sarah

Well, there's the easy answer, which is spend more time with my family. That's kind of a given. I think a lot of folks feel that way. You know, one shift that has been happening, which might sort of peel away at the answer that you're posing in that question, is mentorship has become really important to me. And so there's the idea of doing the work, but there's also passing on things that might be helpful to others who are coming up in the world. I am sort of in the whatever chapter I'm in in my career, but I've definitely been at it for a while. And I find a lot of reciprocity in mentorship because there are still things I need to learn. I mean, I hope that I am on my deathbed with a growth mindset. But I think the other place, if I were to stop doing kind of the day-to-day work that I'm doing, would be how do I Support those who are moving into the space so that they can have whatever benefit of the, you know, career I've had to help inform their journey along the way. Am I cheating by answering it that way?

Minal

So I'm noticing that all your answers have to do with helping others. And I guess the better question is, what if I tell you you can't help others for a year, what would you do?

Sarah

I'd read.

Minal

Right? Because, well, it gets a little bit tricky, I think, in the social change sector. I think when people come with their identity tied that they must be having a positive impact, it becomes very difficult to adapt and adjust properly. to feedback or to like the reality on the ground.

Sarah

Yeah.

Minal

Right.

Sarah

Say more about that. That's interesting to me.

Minal

I, how do I want to say this? I don't, I think as women, we are trained to think that we have to, that we're not good enough until we're at a point of burnout or until we've set ourselves on fire. And I think in a world that is really mean, the most radical thing you can do is to say that actually I'm going to just do something because it centers my joy. And not in a selfish way, but I just, you know, there's that quote, you know, you can always tell... the people, I'm going to get the quote wrong. And so I'm going to paraphrase it. You can tell the people who are living for others by the look of, by the distraught look on the face of the others. Like you, when I think when your identity is very much tied to helping other people, you don't know how to sit with yourself. Right. And you don't know how to sit with your own stuff. You don't know how to sit with your own powerlessness.

Sarah

Right.

Minal

And not that that excuses anybody being mean like that, I understand, is stuff that impacts us. But I want to see a world where women don't constantly have to set themselves on fire to feel like they're good people.

Sarah

Yeah. Yeah, I hear that. It's interesting because one thing we haven't talked about, which I feel is a little bit of a topic of the moment, is self-care, right? Which... I have to practice that in order to preach, right? Like, I really do have to practice that. So it's interesting to think about, like, what's the role of self-care in identity, right? So like being with yourself, whether that's, you know, meditating, exercising, reading, seriously, and how all those things play into that definition of, I don't want to even say avoiding burnout, but, you know, the way you said it, which I really appreciate, which is just being with yourself, being alone with yourself and your thoughts. Yeah.

Minal

Yeah, well, and the best book I've read about self-care is actually called Real Self-Care by Pooja Lakshmi. And it really debunks the myths of self-care. Like self-care is not about manicures and pedicures. It's not about a wellness retreat. It's not even necessarily about mindfulness. Definitely not about yoga. What she talks about is that self-care is... living according to your values. And so you need values clarification and then you need activities that enforce your values, right? And maybe that's yoga for somebody. Maybe that's Pilates for another person. Maybe that's walking in nature, right? It is not doing the task. It is making sure your tasks align with how you want to live, right? Mm-hmm. And the other part of that is then also realizing the spheres of control, right? That it's only your job to take care of yourself and to live according to your values. You can't control other people, right? But if you live according to your values, what other people do becomes their mess to clean up, right? You're just kind of like that. That's on you to like figure out what you're doing, like why you're being so mean. That is not mine to hold or to clean up. And I think sometimes in the social change sector, because of the emphasis on community, the other part of this book, so the first part is about values and the second part is about boundaries. And that's what I'm getting to is like, I think in the social change sector, there's because we talk a lot about communities, there is this false implicit belief that not many people are aware of that being in community and healing requires a breaking down of boundaries. And that's not true. It's actually the exact opposite. And the reason it's the exact opposite is because systems of oppression are have often impeded on the boundaries of marginalized people, whether that is women in the household or at work, colonialism, disabled people. What systems of oppression do is that they say that what you need and desire is less important than what the superior person needs and desires, right? That's how some marriages are set up. That's how, you know, and even in colonialism, it's not just that like, the British invaded India and geographically crossed boundaries. They psychologically crossed boundaries. They came in and then said, you are now a British citizen. You answer to us. You should aspire to be like the queen and the royal family, even though you never could be. It's a total psychological warfare, right? And so boundaries are actually the key to self-care and healing, the key to building community, right? But most people... in an effort, particularly in Western countries, to get past the loneliness and the isolation of our cultures, end up crossing boundaries inappropriately. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah. And so like they're trying, but it's not like, that's not actually gonna help it. That's gonna make it worse. And the more you can learn how to have boundaries and to know what is in your power, what is not, what's your stuff to clean up, what is somebody else's stuff to clean up, the more sanity and like healthy community you're gonna be able to build.

Sarah

Totally tracking with that.

Minal

Right? Yeah. And so like, you know, The mean machine, like the question then is like, where are you powerful and where are you able to take agency? And where is it like other people's stuff? And that other people's stuff, how do you hold them accountable in a way that's not shaming them, but also not brushing it under the table, right? And more importantly, like the boundaries thing too, it's important to say that boundaries are what you do when somebody crosses it. It is not you controlling other people. It's not, you know, which... Meaning it's

Sarah

like your own personal definition of boundaries.

Minal

It's your own personal, but your definition needs to be like, if you are going to spew transphobic sentiment at the dinner table, I'm going to get up and leave. Like, I'm not going to eat with you then. It's not, you need to apologize, right? They should. I'm not saying that, you know, but you actually can't control what somebody else is going to do. Yeah. Right. It can't become a mechanism of controlling other people's behavior. It's a mechanism by which you decide how you're going to respond when other people cross your boundaries.

Sarah

Yeah. Yeah. That makes a ton of sense to me. I'm going to riff on it and sort of take it a little bit sideways. So I have a fairly faith-based practice as part of my life. It is with a dogmatic institution with which I do not agree with all the dogma. And yet I can access what is meaningful to me. And I think kind of to use your metaphor, like I set the boundaries of where I can align with this and where I can't. And it doesn't mean I can't be a member of that community. I can just be in the space that holds me that for in my personal definition of boundaries makes sense. Yeah.

Minal

Well, I think you might really like this book because the author actually talks about having sort of in her search for purpose and like meaning joined a cult. basically, and then came out of it. And that's what this book talks about is, um, you know, a lot of this book is from understanding that like that cult was sort of focused on wellness and wellbeing and like all those things, but there was very sort of cult like dynamics going on. Um, and because she was a doctor, the cult was sort of using her as a spokesperson to validate what they were about while keeping information from her. And so, um, But this idea of like values and boundaries really came out of that experience that like all the like shiny trappings of self-care with like, you know, with wellness gurus and candles and all that thing didn't mean anything because the values weren't aligned in the organization and for herself, right? And so I think that that is really important because I think with more traditional faiths, if my experience so I grew up with parents who were very like what I call omni-religious like they were just like super into God and like we had all the books about all the religions and even though we were Hindu we worked a lot with Mother Teresa like you know and we had books on Islam we had books on Judaism we like we really my father particularly read the gamut and What I sort of remember from that childhood is that if you get down to most of the religions, if you really study the text, and if you talk to the people who are more spiritual or mystical about it rather than dogmatic, there is room in almost every religion to say, following your own moral compass is more important than following the instructions of a teacher or an institution. Right. Yeah. And so I think that that, that gets to that idea of values too. Like if your moral compass is not aligned with what you're doing, that is when like anxiety, depression, harm, you know, like you're doing structural damage to your own integrity. Right. Yes. And so I think that there's room, I think in, without outing your religion or anything, because I don't want to get into a big conversation about the pros and cons of any one religion, I'm sure there's room for you to live according to your values without having to feel that it's betraying any core beliefs of that religion.

Sarah

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I will say, I'm really... This was kind of a watershed moment. At the point at which one of my kids was to be confirmed in said church, he said... I can't go through with this because I'm really comfortable with my relationship with God, but it's the structure of the church I'm not quite sure about. And I was like, good on you. Like, that is what I wish for you. And that is, I think, I mean, like, leave it to an eighth grader to teach you, like, boundary setting, you know, but I just thought that was a good example of, like, how do you hold the spaces and the structures in a way that, you know, to your point, aligns with your moral compass. Yeah.

Minal

Yeah. So do you feel like you have... Enough for the mean machine or do you need more? Is it still going to chip away at you?

Sarah

Yeah. I feel like that is, you know, if I look down the road realistically, right, not optimistically, I feel like there's more coming. So I'm open to any other suggestions that you have.

Minal

So I think from... The one thing I'll say is that, I mean, this is from my religion or spiritual practices, like the Eastern religions. So the way I differentiate between Eastern and Western religions is the Western religions do a lovely job of talking about love and forgiveness. The Eastern religions talk a lot more about truth and detachment. You know, and I think there's something for both. Like the Eastern religions actually don't talk a lot about forgiveness. And I think it's kind of missing that. I think there's something in the Western religions discussion of forgiveness that's valuable. But I think the Western religions get so, the way that they are presented to lay people in terms of almost like getting points to get into heaven makes them very attached to things.

Sarah

Yeah.

Minal

right? Attached to their goodness, attached to their actions, attached to the outcome of their actions. Eastern religions, I think, are like, listen, this is one big cycle. The wheel turns, you know? It gets good, it gets bad, and it repeats again, right? And not just on like, you know, an individual scale, but like a global scale, right? Like the pendulum constantly swings. And What the Eastern religion says is that it's not your job to get the pendulum to land in a particular place. Liberation is really becoming detached from the pendulum and from the circle. And I think in these days, I think we have a very long journey ahead of us. And I think it's very important to understand that you can't be attached to the results right now. They're too small. You know, there's that expression like the wise man plants seeds. for which he'll never sit under, right? We are in one big relay race between generations. And the only thing we can do is run as best as we can to hand off the baton to the next person, right? To plant the seeds for what the next generation needs, not for our own like ego satisfaction that something good was done, right? And that I think is a difficult, it's a difficult thing to do, but I think it gives you a lot of, Once you can do it, once you can understand that my job is really just planting seeds and I'll never see them grow, one, it makes it really clear why the practices that allow you to take care of yourself and experience joy are really important because it's not going to come from the result of this work, right? Yeah. But then two, it gives you, I think, more stamina for doing the work Because you understand you're part of something much bigger. Yeah, that really resonates. And so I think when things are particularly mean and nasty and exclusionary, the question for all of us to ask ourselves is, who do I want to be in this world, regardless of whether it works or not? Right? If we can get... Detached from the results, it's like, you know, it's like, who do I want to be independent of the results?

Sarah

Yeah, that's great food for thought.

Minal

You know, and it's hard. It's very, very hard. But I think it makes sure that you're doing things for the right reasons.

Sarah

Well, and it goes back to authenticity, which is really, I mean, to me, this is 90% five percent of being in the work to begin with is about doing something that feels authentic and you know to your earlier point values aligned

Minal

yeah

Sarah

that resonates

Minal

oh great okay

Sarah

so thank you by the way thanks for that conversation i wrote there i mean aside from writing down the book i just wrote plant the seeds and i can sort of see how like that could become a really nice mantra going forward just you know, as a way to be detached from the outcome and also continue to think of like almost investment in the work in a different way.

Minal

Yeah, well, the story I often tell along with this is one from my mentor, Janetta Betch-Cole. She was the first African-American woman president of Spelman College. And then she became the president of Bennett College. And I think she's the only person to be president of two HBCUs. both of which were for women. And when she was at Spelman in the 80s, in like 1987, I think, like around then, the Black Lesbian Alliance got up during a town hall where, you know, she was the president. She was running the town hall and asked for her like endorsement and like, you know, to validate their existence. And she did it right on the spot. And then the next day, she got a swarm of emails from parents of the students because Spelman College, like a lot of HBCUs, are very rooted in the black church. And the black church, particularly in the 80s, was very homophobic. And she got a lot of backlash for that. 30 years later, Spelman was the second HBCU to admit transgender students. And the first was Bennett, which is where she had served after Spelman. Right. And so like that's sometimes how long these things take. They take 20, 30 years. But it matters that she used her position as president to plant the seed for it to become acceptable. to think this way, right? And so I think like this work is long-term. It is not short-term, you know, growth. And so that's why I think you have to do what aligns with your moral compass without expecting to see the results while you're there. She had been long gone from Spelman by the time this happened.

Sarah

Yeah, yeah. It's a great story. Talk about planting the seeds.

Minal

Yeah, exactly.

Sarah

Slow growth 

Minal

Slow growth. And it's more about being, you know, to be very cliched, you know, being the change you want to see. You know, not try to impact it, not trying to force other people to comply, but being the change you want to see and then sort of waiting for people to catch up.

Sarah

Yeah, that makes sense to me. Yeah.

Minal

Great. Well, thank you, Sarah. So, okay. So we talked about Real Self-Care by Pooja Lakshmi. I think given her experiences with like sort of pseudo-spiritual groups and coming out of it, she's also a medical doctor with a degree in psychiatry. So she has like really great training to talk about what works, what doesn't. And why, like, you need to have somewhat of a values-based and boundaries-based and philosophical approach to self-care. I highly recommend the book. I actually have nothing bad to say about it at all.

Sarah

It makes me want to ask how you found it.

Minal

I think it was on NPR. It was one of NPR's best books of the year. And also, I am particularly fond of... it is very rare for me to see South Asian women who are in this space about wellness. Like there's a lot of people who are steal from South Asian culture, like yoga, mindfulness, meditation, right? So anytime that there's like a South Asian who's actually in this sphere, who's doing it, I always want to check them out. So when I came across it on NPR, I was like, yeah, no, I need to check this out. And it turned out to be one of the better books I've read on the topic. So highly recommend it. Awesome. All right. Are you ready for your rapid fire questions? I am. Okay. What's your favorite book of all time?

Sarah

So we chatted earlier this week. I told you this is an impossible task. The way I approached it was thinking about what's really stuck with me in the last several years, like in a gut-punching kind of way. And so I'm choosing Solito by Javier Samora, which is... Are you familiar with that book?

Minal

I am not. That's a real wild card. Yeah.

Sarah

It's the memoir of one young child's crossing from El Salvador to the United States without his parents. He is a poet. He wrote it in his 20s. And it's really clear he remembers every painstaking detail. And for someone who works a lot with immigrant organizations, this really It was so eye-opening to the immigrant experience in a way that, you know, quite honestly, I'm shocked at myself for not understanding even better. But just beautifully, beautifully written, tough read, and really, really powerful.

Minal

Oh, I think that's a book a lot of our listeners are going to want to check out. Thank you.

Sarah

They might, sure.

Minal

Would you ever want to write a book? And if so, about what?

Sarah

If I were allowed to swear on your podcast.

Minal

You are. You are.

Sarah

Hell no, That is so terrifying in and of itself when I hit send that the thought of actually doing that writ large in the publishing world sort of freaks me out. So no, the answer would be no.

Minal

I kind of love that you do that though. That's awesome. That's like such a great, like I would love it if a friend just sent me a list of everything they read. That would be great.

Sarah

Well, it's also because I don't know if this happens to you, but inevitably someone says, oh my God, you're such a reader. What are you reading right now? Or what'd you read last? And I just go totally blank. So I started keeping the list and then I felt like I had to write a couple of things to remind myself what it was about.

Minal

Oh, that's awesome. What a nice practice. Okay, if you could invite an author to dinner, living or dead, who would it be and why?

Sarah

Another impossible singular choice, I will say. But so much fun to think about. So I actually, I landed on Ross Gay. Do you know Ross Gay? I don't. Okay, Ross Gay is also a poet, funnily enough, but he wrote two books. One was called The Book of Delights, and the other is called Inciting Joy. Okay. And he has a very different lived experience than I do. And he manages to find beauty in a lot of difficult things. And I'm sort of pursuant to the discussion you and I have been having that those books have stayed with me. And there's something about sort of how he's moving through life. That I thought would be really interesting. But can I can I tell you my runners up?

Minal

Yes, please. I feel like I should make this if you could invite like three people, three. Thank you. I know. But then you have to think about will they get along at the dinner table, too. So then it gets a little more complex. You know, I've read a lot of like the 19th century feminist writers and women writers. And I would really just the fact that they were doing that at a time when it was interesting. so hard like on a thousand levels and the fact that they could write the quality of the writing they wrote in that way I think that would be another group anybody in particular

Sarah

you know I was thinking about um Jane Austen and though she's not 19th century Virginia Woolf like there's a couple of people that were just like oh get get those people at the table and talk about being a woman writer yeah

Minal

I kind of I kind of would love to have like just a dinner that's women writers across the centuries, like Jane Austen, Arundhati Roy, like a couple of, you know, like, yeah. And just see how they would just all like what they would talk about and being a woman's author and what, what it was, how it's changed and how it hasn't in some ways.

Sarah

That would be actually a big round table. Like you wouldn't have to think about who would get along with who, because part of the firepower would be like just having the conversation.

Minal

And if you had to guess how many books are in your home?

Sarah

Okay, this is another tricky question because I'm kind of a library fangirl. And so I just like as a sociocultural institution and as someone who kind of thinks a lot about environmental impact, I just, I don't acquire a lot of books. Although I have to say I love publishing and I love independent bookstores. So there's some dichotomy there. So I think it's probably like just 30-ish or so.

Minal

Yeah, very Marie Kondo.

Sarah

Yeah, exactly. And the 30 that are here, they all have highlighter in them. You know, it's the ones I just had to do something with.

Minal

I can respect that. I tend to have a... Because I highlight a lot of my books, particularly the nonfiction for work, I'll buy them and keep them. But I do go to the library a lot for fiction because I don't mark those ones up as much. So I... I can appreciate the sort of sustainability practice around that.

Sarah

Yeah. It's interesting when you want independent bookstores to thrive and you love the library, I always feel a little bit in conflict about those two things. So...

Minal

They're opposite sides of the same coin. I think you're okay. And I gift a lot of books, so I think of it that way too.

Sarah

I gift a lot of books too, yeah. Oh, wonderful.

Minal

Well, thank you, Sarah. This has been a really great conversation. I appreciate your questions about The Mean Machine. I think a lot of people are struggling with them now. I appreciate your candor about... your own philosophy of work, your own relationship to your religion and spirituality. I think that's going to be really insightful for a lot of listeners. Please do check out Real Self-Care by Pooja Lakshmi, both you and our listeners. It's a really great book. I think you'll find a lot in there about how to navigate these times according, like when you cannot predict the future, in my opinion, the best way tool then is your own moral compass and to be in alignment when you can't predict what the outcome can be. And I think that's a lesson for a lot of our listeners. And thank you also for just sharing your love. Like these are two great new authors I've heard about and wonderful to hear. So thank you so much.

Sarah

And thank you for challenging me in some of those assumptions. I really appreciated the discourse and also the recommendation. And I will get back to you with my encapsulated review. It'll be on my list at the end of the year.

Minal

Add me to your list of people who get that. That would be great.

Sarah

Awesome.

Minal

Awesome. Thank you. Appreciate it. Have a great day. You too.

Sarah

Okay. Bye.