Episode 72: Celebrating Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) at Home with Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie
In this episode, we were joined by Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie. Dr. Hinds is an Adjunct professor in the Department of Political Science and an Educational Developer, specializing in Anti-Oppressive and Inclusive Pedagogies in the Office of Teaching and Learning, at the University of Guelph. With over 20 years of experience in education, Dr. Hinds is committed to creating equitable, inclusive spaces. Marsha’s work bridges education and activism, focusing on the importance of identity and cultural understanding. Her insights on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) extend to engaging children in meaningful conversations, helping to build a foundation for respect and empathy across all ages. Don’t miss out on this important and interesting episode, where we talk about the ways families can support the principles of EDI in their home and beyond!
To see more of Dr. Hinds work or get in contact, find her on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, or email her at [email protected].
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie is master advocate with Operation Safe Space Barbados, a group working to provide safe and affordable legal services to women and girls affected by gender-based violence. Reach out to Marsha on X, Instagram or by email if you have the capacity to assist in this work.
Transcript
Healthy Habits, Happy Homes Podcast
Season 7, Episode 72
Guest: Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie
Marciane Any (0:05)
Hello, welcome to the Healthy Habits, Happy Home podcast hosted by the Guelph Family Health Study.
Tamara Petresin (0:14)
If you’re interested in the most recent research and helpful tips for healthy, balanced living for you and your family, then this podcast is for you. In each episode, we will bring you topics that are important to your growing family and guests who will share their expertise and experience with you.
Marciane Any (0:31)
Our quick tips will help your family build healthy habits for a happy home.
Tamara Petresin (0:45)
Welcome back to the Healthy Habits, Happy Homes podcast. I’m Tamara.
Marciane Any (0:46)
And I’m Marciane.
Tamara Petresin (0:47)
And today we’re excited to have Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie join us. Dr. Hinds is an adjunct professor in the Department of Political Science and an educational developer specializing in anti-oppressive and inclusive pedagogies in the Office of Teaching and Learning at the University of Guelph. With over 20 years of experience in education, including working with neurodivergent populations in communities living with disabilities, Dr. Hinds is committed to creating equitable, inclusive spaces that foster mutual respect and reject colonial hierarchies. A Barbadian Canadian intellectual and advocate, Dr. Hinds’ work bridges education and activism, focusing on the importance of identity and cultural understanding. Her insights on equity, diversity and inclusion extend to engaging children in meaningful conversations, helping to build a foundation for respect and empathy across all ages. Welcome, Dr. Hinds.
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (1:36)
Thank you so much for having me. It’s my pleasure to be here.
Tamara Petresin (1:37)
So, to get us started, can you just tell us a bit about yourself, your current role and how your education and experiences led you to where you are now?
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (1:44)
Sure. So, I come out of a family of very strong women, the descendants of Africans removed from Africa and redistributed in the Caribbean. On my paternal side, my great-grandmother was one of the first substantial landholding women. I always want to say that. I always want to invoke her presence because I think, particularly through my paternal foremothers, I have learned a lot about grace and resiliency and independence but also living and being with and in community. On my maternal side, which is where my Canada story starts, and again, a lot of the story of displacement and replacement of African populations, is bound up in sorrow. And sorrow, in a sense, is where my Canada story starts because my maternal grandmother died when my mother was only 14. Her sister had come to Canada. She is one of the Black women upon whose backs the healthcare sector in Canada was built. She was a nurse. And so, my mom came to join her sister. And that’s kind of where our Canada story, like I said, starts right there in Scarborough. Can’t not say that. And so, through my journey, I think one of the most important things that I learned, though, is that money is not happiness. I mean, I grew up in, as I just described to you, a family who had the affluence to travel, to have homes in multiple places. But then because of some of the other complexities of our family life, which I’ll get into a little later, I quickly learned that money alone isn’t happiness. You need more than that to be able to raise healthy children, have healthy families, that kind of thing. And so, during my teenage years and early 20s, well, I fumbled through those, so I’m not going to make it sound glorious. But at the same time, I think there was, as much as I was fumbling, this desire to rebuild myself and education became a huge part of that rebuilding. Education gave me a goal. It gave me hope.
And so, I always say, you know, I’ve done every degree, every certificate that there is to do. I have an associate degree. I hold a bachelor’s with a major and a minor. My associate degree is a double major. I’ve done a master’s degree and completed that with first class honors. I went to PhD, completed that. But it just wasn’t about the paper. I learned very early that good teachers save lives. And I think I’m where I am today because I had teachers who were able to replicate a family environment within school. And there are many, I think, Black individuals who have kind of the same story.
Finally, I want to say that where I am now, in the role that I’m doing now, I’m a constantly evolving person. And I think that that is very important in being a good human. I think those of us who get stuck and who resist looking and reshaping are the ones of us who, unfortunately, in our living, do harm to others, whether it is intentionally or unintentionally. And so, I think coming out of all of that, last thing I want to say about myself is that I am constantly evolving. And I’m grateful for the capacity to be able to do that.
Marciane Any (5:22)
That’s beautiful. I’m sitting here just, like, she’s so cool. I just love how genuinely and proudly you speak about where you came from, who you are. And it’s beautiful. We’re very excited for this conversation.
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (5:36)
I appreciate it. As I was going on, I was like, oh my God, Marsha, are you going to take five minutes to answer this question? [laughter]
Tamara Petresin (5:44)
We love it. We love it. Yes, you clearly come with so much experience. Like, yeah, how wouldn’t it take five minutes to answer that when you have so much knowledge and life experience? So, we’re grateful that you’re bringing that with us on this episode.
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (5:54)
I appreciate you.
Tamara Petresin (5:55)
Thank you.
Marciane Any (5:57)
Can you define what equity, diversity, and inclusion means and how families can introduce these concepts to children in ways that are age appropriate and meaningful?
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (6:09)
Sure. This question, I think you’ve been kind of peeping into some research and reading that I’ve been doing recently because I’m reading Taiwo (Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò) Elite Capture and really thinking about these words and what these words have come to mean and how contentious they have become. Trying to think about my own positionality as I continue to do this work, my own philosophical moorings. What I’m coming up with at this point in time is that whether you call it affirmative action, whether you call it anti-racism, whether you call it equity, diversity, and inclusion, what we are getting at with these concepts and what I would like us to teach children and to continue to think about as we ourselves as adults reflect is that what we are aiming for is a different world. That’s at the base of all of these terms and terminologies. That is what we’re asking for. We are asking for a different world. If we think of it in that way, then we understand why these terms become contentious very quickly because there are many people, unfortunately, living in our societies with us who benefit from the world the way it is now. They don’t want the changes that some others of us want.
If I’m talking to children in an age-appropriate way about this concept, the first thing I say to them is that this concept is not new because it helps us to situate the concept in the work of several forefathers, foremothers, ancestors who have been doing this work, particularly in the case of the Black community, since the rupture of the Middle Passage. Ever since we have been traumatically plucked, kidnapped out of Africa and replaced in the new world as Black, nonhuman, dehumanized individuals, the work of seeking equity, seeking space and place through understandings of diversity and inclusion has been happening. I think it is important for us to start there with children because it helps them to understand almost these concepts as kind of the ground, like, earth that they walk on. It’s not airy-fairy. It’s not a fad. It’s not “wokeness in 2025”. It’s actually just like the trees and the earth. It is an essential part of our well-being. I think it is also important, then, to talk to children, too, about how we get the world that we have today. We get that world through the enterprises of capitalism and colonialism. Sometimes we talk about those two things as if they are so separate, but they aren’t. Capitalism and colonialism are two sides of the very same coin. Each needs the one and the one needs the other. And so explaining to children how colonialism and capitalism use difference in people to then create hierarchies, to then create who deserves love and care and affection and housing and government services and who does not, I think it’s very important because then what we’re doing is we’re setting up kind of an intellectual scaffold that we can return to during the child’s maturation in a way that continues to be age-appropriate. But I think if I were talking to a two-year-old, I would highlight that the concept is not new. These concepts are not new and that they’re built on making difference a bad thing. And if I was talking to a 12-year-old, I still would be saying that these concepts are not new. I would add more information about some of the people who have fought and lived their entire lives to create a different world. And I would be talking about capitalism and colonialism, how we need to change our world so that everybody becomes a fully constituted important human being who has the right to access at least enough to be able to eat safely, have water that sustains us safely, have a house, a warm place to be without it being too expensive to do so. And then you can see how we can continue to add and add on the concepts.
Marciane Any (11:04)
Wow, again, beautifully said. And that brings to mind, when I was a child and my parents were first bringing up these conversations, that was my first question. I was like, “well, why did this happen? Why would someone be that callous mean to do all of these horrible things to people that look like us? And what did we do?” And that was what they said, they benefited. How easy it is to just get someone for free labour or to keep treating someone badly for your own benefit. It takes a lot of work to do that introspection, to be better, to do better. And a lot of people just don’t want to do it. And so, I think that’s a great way to say it to a child. Absolutely.
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (11:52)
And one of the things that I also want to mention too, because I know that when children are young, we help them to understand these complicated concepts by saying, “oh, well, bad people do these things.” And I’ve kind of been moving away from that in my practice because it sets us up as good people or bad people in the world. It makes children believe perhaps in some way that we can identify through some means what bad people look like. So again, badness gets conflated or latched on to being homeless or having an addiction issue. And so, what I now say is that “good people do bad things,” right? And so that is why we all have to continue to live our lives in a way that is introspective, hourly, almost minutely, daily, because what we are doing is making sure that in living in a conscious way that we don’t become that good person that does a bad thing. And so that’s kind of one of the ways as well that my messaging and thought around these issues have changed a bit to make it more real and to make each and every one of us responsible for the outcomes that we’re getting in the world.
Marciane Any (13:24)
Absolutely. What are some common challenges or missteps that families might encounter when introducing EDI concepts and how can they address or overcome them?
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (13:33)
Kind of what I was saying before is a common misstep, framing it in such a way to our children that bad people are the separate people in the world, that perhaps they have horns or some identifiable thing. That is a common misstep that people meet. And so, we definitely have to step away from that and help children, like I said, to be critical. “You are a good child. You are a good human being, but you just took your brother’s cookie and ran with it. So, let’s talk about what made you do that. Let’s talk about the fact that you can still be a good child, a child that I love with all my heart and still be a child that needs to work through, ‘why did you take your brother’s cookie and run with it?’ You can be a good child from a home where you do not see men be violent to women, but you go to school, and you see your friends doing something different and, in that moment, you join them, and you do it. You’re still a good child, but how can we unpack what you felt? Was it pressure? Did you just not think at the moment? Did it feel funny? Did you consider how the person you were doing it to felt?” So, I really think building that space for all of us to be good human beings who can err and who can, like I said at the beginning, continue to evolve into something different. Because then we teach our children from very early that we all have the capacity for good and bad. And we all do. And what we are hoping and what is important for equity, diversity, inclusion, indigeneity, accessibility is for us to lean into that capacity that we have to do good and to do different. And so, I think that is one of the things.
One of the other things, well, two, that I’m going to mention here, is that when you start to really become reflective and critical about the world and about making a different world, it gets uncomfortable “generationally” in a family. Our ancestors and our foremothers and fathers came up in a very different world. A lot of them are traumatized by that world. And so, when we start to do something different within our immediate family, one of the things that comes up is “how do I do this work in my immediate family and still help my, you know, to keep my family together?” Because now the concepts, the beliefs, the approach to the world is going to be different. And that is one of the things that I’ve seen become, you know, something that really needs to be negotiated in families. And I think that’s where, if I’m honest, psychotherapists come in, psychologists come in, because they have the tools to be able to help families to manage those kinds of things.
And the final one that I wanted to mention was really just the capacity for families to have difficult conversations, which is something that is missing across our world. I mean, you just have to listen to, I’m sorry to do this, any politician talking about anything. And we know that we have a difficulty in this world with having a difficult conversation. So, you know, I think that comes down to the family level too. Again, you visit grandma’s house, or you visit grandpa’s house and something happens. And obviously if you’re training your child in a particular way, when this thing happens, the child is going to have a reaction, right? And so how do you then teach this child to be able to manage their discomfort, the age differential, respect and care in a family? So, I think that it starts as an idea conversation, but it becomes something differently along the way. And so just, you know, making sure that we’re not having the conversations in such a separate way: this over here is the idea conversation. And this over here is a respect conversation. And this over here is a conversation about setting boundaries and teaching a child to speak up when it is not uncomfortable. And then at some point we bridge all of that together as one set of skills about just being self-aware and being a good human.
Tamara Petresin (18:24)
Yeah. I can see Marciane is just, like, snapping in the background on the video. And I’m, like, yes, we honestly, like, I feel like I just don’t even want you to stop talking. [laughter]
I’m, like, I’m writing so many notes. I’m, like, I’m learning so much. And, like, it’s just the reframing, I think, too. Something that you said that really stuck out to me was these terms. And I feel like that’s a lot with EDI. It’s like, it’s this term and the meaning gets lost because it’s just like “EDI, EDI…” and it’s everywhere in these policies and things.
But then it’s just like the way that you boil it down to building this intellectual scaffolding in children. It’s about being a good human being. And it’s, like, we all have good and bad in us, too, not good versus bad. And I was, like, all these things are just, like, sticking out to me. And it makes so much sense. Another thing that stuck out to me was the capacity for families to have difficult conversations. And I think that that is definitely true. I think we’ve all probably experienced that within our own families and within our own lives. And so, I’m going to ask you, probably, a hard question here. How can families have those conversations, those difficult conversations with care?
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (19:20)
Yes. I think it, I mean, now I’m feeling like a sage. [laughter] I feel like in the last two years of my existence, you know, I always say the universe has a sense of humour. She really does have a sense of humour. And in the last two years I have had situations within my own family that have really crystallized a lot of what we’re talking about. And, you know, I think it’s important to say that because, I think, and rightfully so, people have very been tired of hearing the prof and the PhDs talking because it often feels as though it is some kind of inauthentic pontification. And if I ever sound like that, I have instructed all my friends and all my family to stop me from talking because, yes, some of what I say and think about EDI and the approach and all of these things comes out of the books and the theories that I read, of course, but all of it, much more of it comes from the experiences that I have had and what I learned from those experiences in a real human way. I don’t hide behind PhDs or titles or being an expert. This is my real message. It’s my real experience. So, saying all of that, what I’ve learned in the last two years is that having a difficult conversation in a family comes down to one, kind of, kernel, one, kind of, screw, one pivot, swivel, whatever. And that is if you love people and you want to be around those people, you fight for them and not against them. There are a lot of us who have been taught that a difficult conversation rests on having, again, an opinion against, a difference with, right? So, go back to, again, how we construct this hierarchical world, right? I think it is a result of that. So, the question then becomes, “I love this human being. I want to be around this human being. I accept that this human being is not perfect because we just don’t have the luxury of being perfect human beings. So how do I say to this individual, ‘I love you and I want to be around you, and you are important to me, and you are talking utter mash in this moment.’” And it is all and not one or the other. And then how do you create this space to work through all of that and then move on with that individual? And that is both simple and hard. Like it was a light bulb moment when I realized, okay, “what I’m doing here is fighting for this person, not against, right?” And to be with this person and to create the space that we need to move forward, we have to talk this thing out. But we have to talk it out with extreme love and care because this is the human I want to be with. Whether it has been one of my children, whether it has been my partner, that is just what it is. And so, I also think that I am a big proponent of safe access to therapy. A huge component, exactly because it also makes having these difficult conversations and that kind of thing more manageable, right? I think especially within the Black community, with everything that we face and everything that we experience, if you are serious about giving your child any kind of gift at all, allow it to be safe therapy for yourself. And everybody has to know what safe therapy is for them. But also having the kind of professionals that offer that is a gift. And I would say that all of us who are trying to create this new generation of thinkers and “be-ers” need to give ourselves that gift so that we are then able to negotiate fighting for our family, difficult conversations, and all of those pieces.
Marciane Any (23:53)
110 percent. I think all of the practicals that you gave, it’s just resonating with me. And I think there’s so much grace in what you’re saying. Because especially in these conversations, when you mentioned multi-generations, I’m like, absolutely. When I have conversations with my parents or my grandparents or if they were around, it’s a different experience. I can come in with my lens be really saying something. But at the same time with their lens, they’re also really saying something. Because we can’t just throw it out and be, like, “oh, that was back in the day. It doesn’t happen anymore.” Because it clearly does. There’s a lot of obvious issues that have been around for generations that are still not fixed. So, I think that the grace piece and the openness to even having professional help, which is still like a stigma in a lot of our communities, that’s the way that we can not only have these conversations, but just also heal in general. Because just like you mentioned, there’s a lot of trauma. There’s a lot of sadness. There’s a lot of hardship steeped in those conversations. And I think doing this also celebrates diversity and all the differences we have in our identities. Because it’s, like, “everything you’re bringing to the table is valid. And everything I’m bringing to the table is valid. So, let’s hear it. Let’s hold space for it. Let’s celebrate it. And let’s together say, okay, how can we move forward?” Because obviously, these issues are so interconnected and nuanced that we need all of these perspectives to move forward. So, I love that.
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (25:39)
We absolutely do. We spend a lot of time within the workplace, within the school environment, setting up strategic plans, setting up common goals and values. And within our family unit, which is really the base of our survival, the base of our existence. We don’t do any of that work. We just get up daily and we just roll down the road and we hope it goes all right. And we think that because we all live under the same roof, there’s a common shared agenda, as it were. And a lot of times, there’s not. A lot of times, you don’t have even the basis of something like what is love. Two individuals in that family have not sat down and really thrashed out what love means. But they say, “I love you.” And everybody is like, “okay, well, yeah. Like, on we go. Now we go buy a house.” Right? So, I mean, it’s no wonder when you think of it that way that a lot of families dissolve. Right? And I think that all of those, when we talk about building different families, one of the things that we are not taught in history is that at the point of emancipation, legal emancipation, as Rinaldo Walcott says, because I feel like we’re still not free as blackened bodies. But a lot of people don’t know that at the point of emancipation, one of the things that our ancestors did both in the Americas and in the Caribbean is that they became very intentional about who they would court. And what the history books capture, because a lot of them are written from above, and by individuals who are not within the community, what they capture is that, you know, “we were promiscuous people. We didn’t commit. We ran all around the place. We had multiple partners.” Well, I mean, I guess that is true. But what our ancestors were actually doing is pushing back against how their bodies were forced into relationships for the reason of reproducing a “slave population” during slavery. Right? And so, when they had the ability to resist just a man showing up at the door and saying, “master, send me to be your husband,” they resisted that. Right? So, people captured that as something that is bad. But really, what our ancestors were doing was going back to that piece where we take time to talk and take time to make sure that we all know what it is that we want so that the foundation of this family is unshakeable. That makes sense. That makes sense.
So, yeah, I think a piece of it, too, is talking in our family all the time. And checking in. “Love meant ‘XY’ to you last week, what does it mean now? We wanted to do ‘XY’ as a family five years ago? Do we still want to do that now?” Because those are the things to, like, when we get comfortable with conversing with each other in that way, then it’s easier to say to someone, “Hey, how do you understand and process womanhood and how it is changing in our current world?” It’s easier to do that if you know some of the things that this person feels and knows than to just have a dry conversation about, “okay, how do you feel about the rollbacks of EDI across America?” And I mean like North America, not just the United States, because we’re doing it in Canada too. So yeah, we we’ve got to talk, we’ve got to have some core values. We’ve got to set down a mission statement. We’ve got to make sure that we make sense our families the same way that we do our businesses and our schools and other entities.
Tamara Petresin (29:49)
Yeah, that’s so true. And, even, I feel like it comes back to what you were saying earlier about how you really believe in introspection and every minute, every hour, every day, I feel like it’s the exact same thing. If we are constantly evolving and allowing ourselves to change too and thinking about these things and we also have to give that grace to our family and give that space to have that shared learning of, like, “okay well last week it was this but this week it could very well be different and that’s okay but let’s talk about it.” So, I feel like everything that you’re saying is just like so many gears are turning in my head and I’m, like, “this is incredible, this is incredible.” [laughter]
Marciane Any (30:23)
Honestly, I love it. I have so much to say. I’m, like, okay, I’m trying to hold it in, but, like, everything you said with, like, the marriage and everything or just coming together I was, like, “oh yeah my husband and I went through that, you know, just, like, ‘who is this man, where did he come from, what did he bring, you know, like is he willing to, exactly, is he willing to celebrate you and our family?’” [laughter]
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (31:00)
Oh my gosh, yes, you get to ask that, she has to ask that, they get to ask that, we get to ask that. Absolutely! If someone is coming to share the rest of your life, and they can’t even take time to be evaluated and interrogated, then you’re not serious, like, I don’t care how big the ring is. I don’t care how expensive the dress is. I don’t. You’re not serious. Let me, allow me to see your underside. Yeah. [laughter]
Marciane Any (31:28)
I’m glad he was open to that. He was, like, “okay, whose house? What next? What do I bring?” I love it. As we pivot to learning spaces, like, your work focuses on creating learning spaces that prioritize inclusion, anti-oppression and decolonization, can you explain what a learning space that prioritizes a decolonized perspective means and looks like?
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (32:00)
Absolutely. You know I like to boil these things down to two words, right? It’s a critical space and it is a student-centered space. Those are the two words that are again, like, we are talking about, the intellectual framework, and so how is that different from what we have now? What we have now is a system that, again, is a capitalist system and we establish that the capitalist system uses difference, and it creates, difference becomes the way that we divide and separate. So, if our system values a child who can sit quietly and learn the first time that a teacher says something then that becomes the model of a good student and any student that cannot produce that becomes a problem, right? And so, a critical student-centered space must first be willing to challenge and understand everything that we know about education and the purpose of education. So, I like Freire on the topic. Paulo Freire, bell hooks, has some very useful thoughts teaching to transgress, teaching community… Education, Frere tells us, and I agree, is a colonial enterprise and the only time that education becomes useful to oppressed and subjugated communities is when it is separated from colonialism. Factual. Accurate. Like, I believe that because, again, if you think of me as a Creole speaker, we were beaten in school for daring to speak our own language. We were chastised for being loud, you know, and so anybody that tells me that education is valueless, and education is always wholesome and healthy, “No. Absolutely not.” We have residential schools, we still have industrial schools, right? A big part of my work in Barbados remains to get our industrial school that is still operational in 2025 and doing harm to children closed. So, education is not valueless, and it can be quite harmful and so a person who is trying to push back against that has to, first of all, understand that and then think again about, “okay what does critical education mean? What does it mean?” It means education that people can challenge, question. They can disagree. They can have a model of how one story is told but then they can add to that model, expand that model. There are no experts, like, I said, I get up every morning and I evolve. I get up every morning and I’m willing to see a perspective that I have not seen before. The only expertise I have is that the expertise I have is to be willing to constantly know that I don’t know anything, right? And to try to learn as much as I can and then I sleep, and I get up and I do it the next day. That is what inclusive education that is accessible is, really is just education that does no harm.
Marciane Any (35:24)
I love that. Education that does no harm. As you were speaking, I was thinking about my
experience, you know, just younger. So, I’m originally from The States and I came here in 2021 and so you know my family is Ivorian, so, I was the first kid born in the US and got teased, “oh the little American,” and I’m, like, “yeah but I appreciate our culture. I love where we came from,” and, you know, something as simple as the food that we eat — not being able to bring it to lunch because everyone made comments about the way that it smelled. Or when my parents would come around, they would notice an accent and start to treat us differently or make comments about their accent and, “what did they say? I can’t understand you, x y and z…” Or, you know, when we’re speaking everybody in the Ivory Coast, you know, French is, like, the common tongue and then we each have our own dialects. We’d be speaking French but because we’re the Africans speaking French it’s not beautiful. “That’s not French.” But then someone else, you know, who’s not Black will be speaking it and they’re, like, “oh, it’s so pretty,” and I’m, like, “we just said the same thing!” And so very quickly, like, the age of six, you know, first grade, I noticed that school wasn’t as safe for me or wasn’t as comfortable for me as it was for a lot of my friends because I can’t just be “me.” I have to be on edge. I have to start changing, you know, who I am, how I speak. There’s a lot of just commonalities and colloquialisms and things like that that nobody else is going to get and nobody else is going to want to understand, and just the nature of where I was from, it’s, like, a very segregated community where my mom and I moved to. Different places within that State, but we noticed, like, “okay, this is the area that’s for Black people. This is the area that’s for, like, Latinx. This is the area for people who are white.” Things like that. So, I moved in different schools and most of them were predominantly white schools, and it just wasn’t safe. So, we had to have those conversations early on that, “Look. This is how people perceive you. This is what they’re going to think. This is what they’re going to say. You need to push past that, get this education, and, like, use it so that you can be in those high places that make decisions, and you can say, ‘enough is enough’.” Because clearly if there was a Black person in the room, like, we would have a lot more policies or safeties in place, you know, for our kids and things like that, so that just brought that to mind. And it’s things like that. I’ll also have conversations where some people are, like, “You’re, kind of, exaggerating. Like, it’s 2025.” And I’m, like, “no, you just get to move without thinking about these things. It’s your world, like, it’s normal for you to move, but, for me, I have to think and second guess and it’s tiring. So, yeah.
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (38:34)
Absolutely. I we started by saying that, you know, a teacher saved my life, like that is no exaggeration. But the corollary of that is that teachers can also destroy lives. It is a huge position of responsibility, and I think that every educator who means no harm must understand that it is a huge position of responsibility. There are many parents who would say, “if I want my kid to do something I have to go and ask the teacher to ask my kid to do it,” right? Like it is a huge position of responsibility. The other thing that I would say, girl, I’m sorry to tell you but every “skin folk ain’t kin folk” and, so, we do have those black individuals in some positions of power. But, because Fanon (Frantz Fanon) tells us that you can have black skin that has a white mask on it, it is complicated sometimes, as well, and I think that, you know, for anyone who is holding a position such as the one that I hold where you are actually a gatekeeper standing between a harmful white western structure and the understanding of a subjugated community that there is an obligation and non-negotiable obligation to ensure that, in the way that you do your work, you are comfortable to that community. And I sometimes, unfortunately, see people who sit in positions such as mine who are not committed to that and you are right that it is it is very problematic because then the success that that our whole our whole community is supposed to get from that position they don’t get and that is problematic.
Tamara Petresin (40:24)
It really is it really is, yeah, and even just, like, mentioning too, I think, Marciane, you mentioned this earlier, too, people like to say “oh it’s just in The States,” right? But in Canada these things are things that happen here. And I think that that comes across a lot, right? That that’s an issue, you know, just south of us. But that is not the case.
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (40:43)
Some of the worst racism that I faced in my life is in Canada and the microaggressions are off the chain. Like, people will do things, and I always say, subtle racism cuts deeper than, you know, racism, believe it or not, where you know that they’re going to kill you because at least if you know that they’re going to kill you, you know how to protect your body but when somebody gets into your mind, it’s the same thing. I say with women and girls that I work with, emotional abuse is the worst kind of abuse. It’s the worst kind, because people don’t see it. It’s hard to explain, it’s hard to get people to recognize it. There has been a lot of work done around the racism in The States because people know it, feel it, they see the blood that comes from it. Canada, in 2025, we’re still trying to persuade people that there’s racism in Canada because of the subtleness of it, right? But every time you go to work and there’s someone who asks you, “so you’re a PhD?” and there’s someone who has the audacity, if you’re doing a document or something, to ask you if you know how to cite it properly. Wait, what? Like, oh, and then I spend the rest of the day, like, “but is this a micro … like what does that person… why would they, you know?” And I’m in my head, and so, this is a part of the reason why we find a lot of black professionals in Canada who are disproportionately affected by mental wellness leave, by sick leave, because that torment is, I would argue, as bad as, if not worse, than knowing that when you walk down the road in the morning your body is unsafe, because being black in Canada, your mind is unsafe because it is black.
Tamara Petresin (42:45)
I mean obviously you have a wealth of experience in the education system, like, you’ve been mentioning, and, as a teacher and all this, as well, some of your work’s also been with neurodivergent populations and communities living with disabilities, as well, so, can you just speak a bit on your experience working with these communities and also how EDI can improve accessibility to education for people with all levels of ability?
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (43:07)
Yeah, so the first thing that I would say is that it is not even working with these communities, it is working with us. Because I identify as undiagnosed neurodivergent. And so, a lot of the work that I have done in the educational space is with people that I understand because “I am them and they are me.” And, I think, the first thing that I always want to deconstruct which is, you know, a part, again, of the world that we are given that people who have disabilities are in some way undeserving and burdensome. They are not what we think about when we think about the people who produce, right? And, so, I always want to deconstruct that. I always want to challenge that very frankly. I always want to make space for us as neurodivergent people to understand that although we may need different things to be successful, different structures to be successful, we absolutely can be and I also want to help to teach others that, so that it doesn’t become our burden to continuously talk and remind people of that. I think that dignity is important. A person cannot learn and succeed where there is no dignity, and so a lot of my work has been also around getting the system to realize and understand that we need to create classrooms where everyone is safe. So, you know, wheelchair users, everybody, when we create a space, everybody has to see themselves in that space and everybody has to fit. If we have an individual who’s in a wheelchair but who is operating two grades above, they should be allowed to go where they’re operational. Like, we can’t just use a person’s presentation or the way that they don’t present as a measure of what they need and how they should be absorbed into our educational process. Like I said, it’s about each individual and what that individual needs. I am a big proponent of individual educational plans. I know that you know again, as many people agree as many people don’t agree, but what I think the individual educational plan does is that it makes us stop and consider the needs of a unique individual and it also enhances accountability, because once it is written it is a commitment. It becomes a contract, or it should become a contract between the providers of the education and the individuals receiving the education. It also helps families who need support with being able to advocate for their child to be able to advocate because sometimes those of us who are operating in the space take it for granted that everybody knows the language we know, is comfortable with the language we know, and the reality is, some parents are not. And so having a document, and I usually sit down and help as much as possible with the family to explain the document, all of these things I think then it puts them in a position to feel stronger and more able to confront what sometimes is still a very complex and scary system.
Marciane Any (46:22)
Absolutely! I love IEPs, as well. So, my job right now, actually, I’m Executive Director of the
Learning Disabilities Association of Wellington County, so, this is a conversation we have all the time. And I love that, you know, our learning spaces, well, you know, in a perfect world every space should be safe, you know, but for our kids and everything, the learning spaces should be safe, everyone should be treated with dignity. And, you know, we are now switching to the term, “learning differences,” things like that because it’s really not a disability. They think differently and they might need different supports, but these kids are intelligent. Like, they are very smart, they can learn and it’s just a matter of us, again, like, being willing to listen. I feel like listening is the thing that we stink at, like, as humans. We just need to listen, and we need to understand that if someone needs an extra support or accommodation or something like that, that’s okay. We actually do that in everyday life at home. You do what works for you to make your life easier so why is there a stigma when someone else has to do that same thing? We should be willing and open to saying, “Hey, yes, neighbour, fellow human, absolutely! What do you need?” And I love that the IEPs, you know, offer that accountability as well, you know, to say, “this is what you’ve agreed upon. we have had this conversation so let us move forward in that way.” So, I love them, too.
Tamara Petresin (47:56)
Yeah, and it’s even almost like fighting that, like, rhetoric of who’s benefiting from this, right? From not having that accessible education? Like, it’s a step in that direction of, you know, like, fighting against that and challenging that, too.
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (48:10)
Who benefits from it are the individuals who get to hold positions because they have not fairly competed, because you take out the women and you take out the disabled people, you take out the neurodivergent people, you take out the black people, you take out the brown people, so at the end of the day it leaves a very small pool and that is the small pool that ends up with all the benefits. But if you if you put everybody back into the pool then, you know, we’re going to end up with different people getting different prizes, and I think that is one of the things that has been very uncomfortable about EDI programs, about affirmative action programs, about any program that we have had in the world at any point in time that has really created a fair competitive environment. Because now we’re hearing, “oh, we’re getting rid of all of that and we’re going back to a fair platform.” It was never fair. It was never fair. We have built this world on the back of exploitation and so, you know, EDI, whether you like the term or not or whatever, it has been the closest to fair, perhaps, that we’ve ever gotten. And watch it crumble. Watch it crumble because the individuals who benefit from it have been missing their advantages over the last little while.
Marciane Any (49:30)
Absolutely. I just feel, like, the echo of “yes, exactly!”
What are some strategies that parents can use if their child experiences or witnesses exclusion or discrimination outside of the home?
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (49:46)
So, I am always going to be my children’s biggest advocate, and what is at the base of being your child’s biggest advocate is belief and trust in your child. And I believe that there are a lot of children in this world who unfortunately don’t grow with that feeling of support and that, in itself, becomes trauma. My own children were very adept very early. They knew that I was in their corner, and they knew that I was going to do something about it and so it actually created a level of self-regulation in them. So, if it was a little thing they would say to me, “well, mom, this thing happened today but I don’t want you to do anything. I dealt with it. I’m okay.” If it was something that they felt they needed support with they’re, like, “well, mom, this one is for you but here is what I think you should do. Let’s talk to the teacher first instead of going to the principal,” because my children knew I was 100% in their corner. Like, “you tell me what is happening and I’m going to bring the infantry. We’re just doing everything here … to move, everything is going to shake up.” So, people say, “well you can’t be your child’s support like that because they will take advantage of it!” And then, well, no. I mean if you’re teaching your children to be self-aware, honest, authentic people in the world, they will actually develop that same mechanism that my children did because they know that you are there for them. And, at the same time, they don’t want to go from zero to 100, you know, all the time and this is a skill that you teach them to build and so I think that being there and speaking up for your child is important.
I remember Audre Lorde in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, she talks about an experience, well, experiences, where her mom’s reaction to racism that she faces is to be angry with her and it was actually a part of what destroyed her connection with her mom. And so, I think we have to be, I think, all of us as black individuals, have experienced that, or parents were hyper protective of us because they had no mechanisms by which to challenge this system. And I think that those of us who are parenting in this era have to be very careful that we don’t do that to our children, that we don’t become angry and upset with our children because of how disempowered we feel. I think that’s another important thing and, like I said, and I’m going to say again and shut up about it, therapy and being able to learn new ways, new approaches of parenting, you know, is very important. The way that I parented my eldest three is not the way that I parent my last one. And again, just that grace to realize, “well, I did it that way and at that time that was the best that I could do but it doesn’t mean that I have to do it now with the baby of the lot” and so, yeah, just to also give ourselves grace as parents to keep moving and doing something differently.
Tamara Petresin (53:15)
It’s just like that introspection thing, like, we started off the podcast talking about. It all comes down to that pretty much.
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (53:24)
Yes, EDI, and being a good human is about introspection, constantly. Yeah, that’s the magic.
Tamara Petresin (53:30)
Yeah, it really is, and even just how powerful it is, too, like, just by you being an advocate for your kids, how they learn that self-regulation, like, how powerful is that?
Marciane Any (53:39)
Wow! Absolutely incredible! Yeah, you know, you being your child’s biggest advocate. I was like, yes, my mom would move heaven and earth if I tell her something, so I always have to premise, like, “mom, okay, I don’t need you, like, to go in right now. I’m just sharing.” Or, like, “mama….
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (54:01)
My kids are like, “it’s okay mom!!” and I’m, like, “yes what what’s going on??” [laughter]
Marciane Any (54:10)
It’s so like freeing and empowering because you know you have someone who trusts you, who’s there for you, who’s your cheerleader and then you also feel safe, too, that, you know, when I’m, like, “mom! I got this,” she gave me the tools to feel confident enough to self-advocate because I saw how she did it. And I was, like, “you’re right.” I should be able to speak up and say that this isn’t right, or even speak up for others as well like she was always telling me, “do not be a bystander! You know how it feels to go through, you know, oppression, racism, all these things and so if you see that happening to someone else, please speak up.” Like, she would be mad if I didn’t, so I always did. And, you know, again, in The States where I’m from, I’m originally from Virginia, so I’m used to seeing confederate flags everywhere. Racism is very in your face, you know. When I moved to South Carolina we knew we were closer to home because there was a giant one on the highway and it’s, like, “all right, only 10 minutes away.” So, it’s very in your face. Yeah, so just growing up with that, like I said, I kind of appreciate it because I know exactly who I should be gelling with and who I should just stay away from versus it be underground. But because of that that has created this thick skin or this ability to identify it more easily, and so, if I’m going through it, or I see someone else going through, it’s easier to advocate. So, I appreciate that. Thank you for all the parents that have been, you know, advocates for their children we really appreciate it.
Tamara Petresin (55:55)
And kids learn through that modeling behavior, too, right? So, it’s really important.
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (56:00)
Absolutely. Absolutely they do and when we talk about these concepts and getting our kids to where we want them to be with these concepts, I think that’s something we have to remember. As much as we talk to our children, they learn far more by what they see us doing. Yeah, so if you’re going to tell your child to be a good human and then fly a confederate flag on the front porch, well I think the possibility is your child is going to end up being the human who’s going to fly confederate flag on the porch. Absolutely, right? Or they’re going to end up being a human who then has to do a lot of unpacking because of the double messaging that they got so I think that’s a big part of it, too. Like, it is what we say is important but what we do yeah is really the thing that will, you know, allow our children the space and the support to change and to grow into humans that can live in a different world than we did.
Tamara Petresin (57:02)
Yeah. For sure, and, I think, sometimes parents put that pressure on themselves. Like, you know, we’ve done a lot of episodes on a lot of different topics, and I think one thing that parents find really challenging is, like, they put so much pressure to, like, say the right thing, right? Like, to have these conversations, say the perfect thing and, like, you know, all that but so much of it is in just like daily life, like, the little things that you do, the good human that you are, that your kids do notice, and they do see that.
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (57:24)
That’s it, when you go into a restaurant and there’s a person servicing you, how do you behave? What do you say? What do you not say? That is what really teaches your child about how you feel about people, right? If you have one friend who is black and that friend happens to be, you know, your helper in the home, what are you saying to your children about people? Like, those things are the fundamental changes and nothing that you can say, adjust or change. It’s just a lifestyle.
Marciane Any (58:07)
Yeah, I want to shout out Tamara, because, like, your parents did a great job teaching you! She’s such an ally and she just listens and will say things, like, and I don’t even have to say it! She, too, is another person who I’m, like, “hey. This happened..” and she’ll be, like, “what happened? Where do I go?” and, so, they did a great job being a great example for you as well. So, thank you for being an advocate and an ally because it’s tiring to always, you know, fight and say something, so it’s great to have a friend who’s, like, “I got you.”
Tamara Petresin (58:44)
I always got you! Marciane’s my girl. We met when Marciane started her master’s and I started my PhD and there was something about her that I was just, like, I was drawn to you, and we worked on a research project together. And we have community advisors as part of that, community members, and they call us the twins and I’m, like, “we are twins! We are.”
[laughter]
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (59:04)
Amazing, yes! And I’m going to say and shut up that we always say in EDI work that any work is not just about communities who’ve been subjugated to– any work frees all of us because if we read Sharpe (Christina Sharpe) and Wallcott, you know, on slavery and the damage that slavery does, slavery doesn’t only do damage to black and brown communities. It also turns white communities into dominators and abusers, and, so when we are rebalancing the scale, we are rebalancing the scale for all of us to come to a humanity that serves all of us better! So, people say, “oh, why do we have to do this for subjugated people?” No. We’re not doing it for subjugated communities, we’re doing it for humanity. Yeah. We were all unfortunately co-opted in some way into creating that world and now we are freeing ourselves, whatever our positionality is. So, it is not just for subjugated communities.
Tamara Petresin (60:10)
Yeah, definitely. I feel like it comes back to, how you defined, like, when we asked you to give us a definition, because we love our definitions, you were, like, “it’s about changing the world; changing the world as we know it.” Like, that’s what’s coming back down to.
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (60:19)
Yeah.
Tamara Petresin (60:20)
I love it. Oh my gosh. Incredible. One thing, too, that keeps in mind, I feel, like, Marciane, you kind of hinted at this earlier, we were talking about the lunches and not being able to bring like your cultural foods into the school. And so, we just wanted to ask, like, how can families balance celebrating their cultural traditions with also encouraging openness and respect for other cultures?
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (60:38)
Yeah. So, I think what that is all about is understanding and accepting that each of us in the world gets to take up a bit of space. Right? So, I am always going to encourage my children to participate in St. Patrick’s Day and all the things. And so, then why are we offended when we spend a month recognizing and respecting Black history? All of us get to take space up. Right? And the more, you know, I think we ask ourselves how do we teach our children to be better at understanding EDI and some of these concepts? And the better question may be, how do we learn from our children? Because before we encourage our children to believe that flying a Confederate flag on our porch is okay. They don’t come to this earth with any of that. If you take a set of three-month old’s or six-month old’s or 12-month old’s and you put them in the same play area or whatever, they will play. They don’t care. Right? And if there’s one of them who has a bandaged leg or a bandaged hand, they will play in such a way that don’t hurt that one. If that one needs to be up against the wall, they will find a way for that one to be up again. Children don’t have the pretense that we as adults have. And so, I think that is also important for us to remember. And how we raise our children. If we raise our children only understanding and knowing and respecting their own culture, that is what they will learn and then have to unpack. If we make sure that our children and their experiences have balanced opportunities to play with different children, to experience different cultures, that is what they will learn. And so, I think it is important for us to, you know, we have our own cultures. We all do. There’s good and bad in each, all of our cultures. So, like, my children, because the Black community is so affected by hypertension and diabetes, I opted to raise my children as non-meat eating. And I explained to them, now there are dishes in our culture that are, you know, the fattier, the pork and the dah, dah, dah, dah. And I’ve taught my children to embrace and love their culture, but you can replace pork with fish. Like, you know, you can do that, or you can replace pork with some kind of peas. But, of course, I’ve taught them to embrace the culture. But what I’m saying is because we embrace the culture doesn’t mean that we have to take the culture in a non-critical way. We can, we can embrace our culture, and we can accept this was problematic. So, we’re not going to do this. And I’m going to explain why we’re not going to do this, but we still love our culture. So again, that piece around just being critical and committed to doing both of the things, of course, it is absolutely important to respect and revere culture, but it is also important to make sure that in doing that, we’re not just unconsciously replicating a dangerous world. So again, it’s work. You have to do the work.
Marciane Any (64:06)
Absolutely. You know, when you were bringing up the kids, it just reminds me, hate is learned, you know? I remember very distinctly, I had a friend who he was one of our neighbours and he was white, and we used to play. It was not a big deal. And then later on he tells me that he’s not allowed to play with me anymore. Cause I guess someone in his family saw who I was, and we weren’t allowed to play anymore. And that’s as a little kid. But then even in high school, two of my friends, they were both named Shannon, and they were very sweet. They were, like, “we’re having a sleepover or something, but we’re trying to protect you. We’re not inviting you, not because we don’t like you, but because our grandparents are incredibly racist. And so, you would go through a lot if you went there.” And it’s the South, too. They’re not afraid to hurt us. So, I was like, “thank you. I will not be going to your house,” but it’s sad because, you know, in those situations, I don’t know how the younger one turned out, but he didn’t have a problem with me until something was said. And then at least the older ones were like, “I don’t have a problem with you,” but it does start in the home, you know?
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (65:18)
So, again, absolutely does. Yeah, absolutely does. And so, we need to make sure – I’ve been very intentional about my children being able to mix and mingle with everyone. I have been intentional. There have been days where I’ve packed food for my children to take to school and I’ve packed extras because they’ve discovered that there’s a child in their class who doesn’t have, and they want to take. And I make sure that I say to them how to approach the situation, things to do things not to do, because I’m teaching them in that way, how to be a good human. I’m teaching them not to judge homelessness as problematic. I’m teaching them, you know, to be able to offer support, but not in a way that comes over as paternalism. And that is the work, that is the work. But children are born with that more than we are. And so maybe sometimes it is taking the turn from our children instead of thinking that, you know, there’s all of this that we can teach them because we’re unpacking, but they have never packed in that way. And so, you know, that, again, is a piece of work that we have to manage and negotiate in the parental realm.
Marciane Any (66:35)
Absolutely. Before we get to our final question, T, did you have anything?
Tamara Petresin (66:40)
No, I was just going to say, that “unpacking, but they’ve never packed.” I was like, wow. Wow. That’s all I have to say about that. I wrote it down. I put a lot of stars on that, and I was like, yeah, that’s so true. Yeah. They have never packed.
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (67:00)
Yeah. Pretty much.
Marciane Any (67:01)
Yeah. Kids are amazing. This was such an incredible episode.
To close out the podcast, we’d like to give our families three practical take-home tips. So, considering the topics we’ve discussed today, what are three tips that you’d share with our listeners to help them explore and discuss everything we’ve talked about with their children and family?
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (67:23)
Healthy people beget healthy people and hurt people hurt people. I think that’s “takeaway 101.” And so, if you have never been able to allow yourself into a therapeutic space before becoming a parent, if there’s one thing that you want to do to be a good parent, be willing to enter that space.
If not for you, for your child, you can go to therapy. You can say, “Hey, listen, there’s nothing wrong with me. I’m perfect. I’m okay, but I want to be a good parent.” And if it’s nothing more that you’re willing to open up to that. There’s so many of us walking around with things that we need help with. And because we’ve been taught, and I’m not saying that it is not legitimate, right, especially in the black community, a lot of harm again has been done to us in the medical sphere. So, I understand why black people are afraid of hospital spaces, of doctor spaces, specifically of mental health spaces. We’ve had bad experiences, but we are now in a time where we have trained community members that can help. So, if nothing else, find somebody from the community and be able to offer yourself that gift. So that’s the first thing.
The second thing is like we just discussed: children are not coming to this world incapable of universal love. Children are capable of universal love to the point where that is why we as parents have to put guardrails around the people that they are with, because they don’t recognize unsafe, predatory behaviour because of that huge capacity that they have for universal love and being willing to please the people that they love. Right? And so, yes, we have to keep our kids safe exactly because of that, but also exactly because of we have to have the faith to understand that they are capable of creating the world that we want to see. And so, we have to, by our actions, support them in their journey and to accept that that journey must, and should look differently from ours if they are going to get a different world. Right? So, I’m not going to just give my girl child dollies and tell her that she has to shut up and learn to wear a dress to, you know, able to find a partner. Like, why would we do that? We’re not doing that. Because that comes from our world that is built on difference. That has no place in her world that is based on equality.
And the final thing, gosh, there’s, like, what’s, what am I going to give this last place and space to? All right. I guess I’m going to choose that we have to be evolutionary human beings. We have to give ourselves grace and love to be able to teach grace and love. We have to understand that. Like I said, people are always, they’re, like, “okay, so are you going to build us a resource about EDI? What should we do in our classrooms?” Like, I don’t have magic. There’s no magic in this role. What this role allows me to do is to think deeply and constantly about what it means to be a good human and to practice and to say, sorry when I mess up and, and to constantly just keep going and to constantly keep committed and to remember that, you know, this work is not mine. This work, like I said, has been happening years and years and years. We have to look differently at things that we think people may be doing, because they’re wicked or don’t know the better. Like, we just have to lean back a bit and lead with love. Like bell hooks says and writes about in a very useful and important way: it really is all about love.
Tamara Petresin (71:32)
That is so, so true. What an impactful way to end off there, too. And I’m, like, as you’re saying that last third tip, I’ve got a shout out my girl Marciane, too. Cause I’m, like, you do this for me. I was, like, you have taught me so much about what it means to be a good human because that’s how you live your life. Anybody that knows you knows that, like that’s how you live your world and how you interact with it. And, like, it’s such a powerful thing to just think about being this evolutionary human being and to be surrounded by people that live their lives like that. And like, what a gift that is. So that is, you are a gift to me Marciane.
Don’t cry. [laughter]
Marciane Any (72:05)
Oh my God, don’t make me cry.
Tamara Petresin (72:09)
We’re getting sappy. We only have a few more episodes of these left together and then.
Marciane Any (72:17)
I appreciate all that you said, T, I love you. And all of these tips are so great. I wrote them down and I was, like, absolutely. And if more of us just took the time to do that, whoa, can we imagine this change? Can we imagine how amazing this world would look?
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (72:41)
And I love what guys did there by taking it to love that is platonic because like bell hooks says, we spend a lot of time wrapping ourselves up around intimate love when some of us don’t even know self-love, platonic love. So, like, if you can’t start with, with those, which are the base levels of love. Intimate love is, is it’s unattainable. So, I really like that you underline that we’re talking about love in the broadest sense. Lovers as dignity and the capacity to hold people in imperfection.
Tamara Petresin (73:15)
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Oh my gosh. Thank you so, so much, Dr. Hinds. Like this is honestly an incredible conversation. You’ve shared so much of your knowledge and your expertise with us here on the Healthy Habits, Happy Homes podcast. And we just wanted to give you a moment, too, to share where everybody can find more of your work. And if there’s any special projects or anything like that you have going on that you want to talk about?
Dr. Marsha Hinds Myrie (73:35)
Yes, absolutely. I’m not a social media person. I’m still learning that, but I’m happy for anyone to reach out. I’m therealmarshahinds on Instagram. I’m Dr. Marsha Hinds on X. Of course, you can also reach me at my University of Guelph email, [email protected]
And I’m really just looking any of those people within the diaspora who are willing to assist women and girls in Barbados. So, we can talk about what that assistance looks like. So, if there’s anybody with capacity for that, I’m more than happy to have a conversation and you can reach out and we can have a discussion. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to be here. Keep up the work that you’re doing. And I hope everyone has a great rest of the day.
Marciane Any (74:24)
Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing all your valuable insights with us today. We hope our listeners feel inspired to apply these meaningful takeaways in their own lives until next time. Bye-bye!