This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Indira G. Wilson: Ladies and gentlemen, we invite your afternoon.

[0:06] DYANA VALENTINE: Risking and trying and failing a lot because I am excited about like what's possible right now.

[0:12] Indira G. Wilson: How would you define the term breakthrough for yourself?

[0:14] DYANA VALENTINE: Here's what I was talking about. I had to be real with myself because I'm talking about change in my life.

[0:21] DYANA VALENTINE: How would you define the term breakthrough for your breakthrough for yourself?

[0:24] DYANA VALENTINE: So if whatever pain I'm in, if I'm fighting with it head on, it's very unlikely that I'm gonna have what I would consider a breakthrough.

[0:35] DYANA VALENTINE: It's the transition where I start to acknowledge the value of the tension, the tension has got my attention.

[0:43] DYANA VALENTINE: Enough that I can step back from it and say, This is useful to me somehow because I was not paying attention to this problem.

[0:50] DYANA VALENTINE: This problem was running the show, and now I can step back from it and say, All right, I see you, pain.

[0:54] DYANA VALENTINE: Now do I have at least one more option than I thought I had yesterday?

[1:00] DYANA VALENTINE: So where that tension meets one more option than I thought I had yesterday.

[1:06] DYANA VALENTINE: If I can just rename the problem, that's my opportunity for a breakthrough.

[1:11] Indira G. Wilson: I know what you mean.

[1:12] Indira G. Wilson: What is your name?

[1:13] DYANA VALENTINE: I am DYANA VALENTINE.

[1:14] Indira G. Wilson: That's why I'm having so much fun.

[1:16] DYANA VALENTINE: I'm a college professor, and I teach teachers how to teach, students how to learn, and seekers how to find their way through the darkness.

[1:27] DYANA VALENTINE: This is the most important part.

[1:29] DYANA VALENTINE: And you are listening to the Afro-Existential Podcast on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[1:35] Indira G. Wilson: Bring the girl here.

[1:37] Indira G. Wilson: Welcome to the Afro-Existential Podcast, a podcast and audio play in one.

[1:42] Indira G. Wilson: I am one of your hosts, Indira G. Wilson.

[1:45] Blaine Teamer: And I'm Blaine Teamer.

[1:46] Indira G. Wilson: Now, creamy lung draw.

[1:48] Indira G. Wilson: This season we'll be presenting a brand new audio play entitled Pandora's Trunk, and a new interview series entitled The Breakthrough From Vision to Fruition.

[1:56] Indira G. Wilson: In this series, we hear from people who took a great idea and made it a reality.

[2:01] Indira G. Wilson: We want to know how they did it and how they got over the obstacles along the way.

[2:06] Indira G. Wilson: We hope that it helps and inspires you to make your great idea a reality.

[2:10] Indira G. Wilson: But before we go to commercial, here is a sneak peek of our next audio play, Pandora's Trunk.

[2:16] Indira G. Wilson: Pandora Washington is on a quest to find her birth mother.

[2:21] Indira G. Wilson: In this scene, she meets Sister Rosemary, who tries to explain to Pandora how she was seduced by the new minister of the first and last most faithful harvest and grains at Evanathic Church.

[2:35] Sister Rosemary: We shall begin now.

[2:37] Sister Rosemary: Matthew 15:11 says, it's not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth.

[2:45] Sister Rosemary: This defiles a person.

[2:48] Sister Rosemary: Matthew 15:11.

[2:52] Sister Rosemary: That what it do say.

[2:53] Sister Rosemary: He ain't lied.

[2:55] Sister Rosemary: He ain't live because that's what it does say.

[2:59] Sister Rosemary: Then Pandora, girlfriend, he didn't like it, did he?

[3:04] Sister Rosemary: He wanted me to taste his fruit.

[3:07] Sister Rosemary: He wanted me to taste his fruit.

[3:10] Sister Rosemary: Let me say it one more time.

[3:12] Sister Rosemary: He wanted me to taste his fruit.

[3:16] Sister Rosemary: And it was a strange fruit.

[3:19] Sister Rosemary: Oh, was it a mango or a tangela?

[3:23] Sister Rosemary: Word like no mango or no tangela.

[3:27] Sister Rosemary: As far as I know, low!

[3:30] Sister Rosemary: I did go.

[3:32] Sister Rosemary: I said it was a strange fruit!

[3:34] Sister Rosemary: And I just wasn't like a conquat or a papaya or a persimmon.

[3:43] Sister Rosemary: And what?

[3:45] Sister Rosemary: Like a conquat was a NATO!

[3:48] Sister Rosemary: And I would be a liar if I said it was like a me and oh my god!

[3:56] Sister Rosemary: And can I get an A-man?

[3:59] Sister Rosemary: If it was like no persimmon, I tell you what, Mohan!

[4:04] Sister Rosemary: The kind of fruit you want to have at night in the afternoon as a flag!

[4:12] Sister Rosemary: Yes!

[4:16] Indira G. Wilson: And we'll be right back after a brief commercial break.

[4:22] Indira G. Wilson: Hello again.

[4:23] Indira G. Wilson: And welcome back.

[4:25] Indira G. Wilson: We're kicking off our new interview series, The Breakthrough from Vision to Fruition with a friend of mine and a friend of my mind, DYANA VALENTINE.

[4:34] Indira G. Wilson: She is an educator, motivator, and self-proclaimed instigator.

[4:39] Indira G. Wilson: And I had a chance to talk to her about her work and her most recent breakthrough.

[4:44] DYANA VALENTINE: I have taught at Santa Monica College for 16 years last week, believe it or not.

[4:50] DYANA VALENTINE: I teach student success.

[4:51] DYANA VALENTINE: So I teach students how to go to college, I teach them how to navigate different kinds of life and study skills.

[5:00] DYANA VALENTINE: My favorite three conversations to have is helping teachers delight in their craft, helping students navigate this incredibly exploitative and oppressive system of education and helping my peers, my favorite people in the world, helping them make sense to themselves so that they can help the world be a better place.

[5:20] Indira G. Wilson: You mentioned once before you felt like you were an accidental business person.

[5:25] DYANA VALENTINE: I think when I said accidental, what I meant was aside from jobs that I worked for an organization or a company, the very first time I ever got paid to speak on stage, the very first time I ever got paid to help an individual, the very first time I ever got paid to stand in a classroom and teach, the very first time I ever did teaching work, in all those cases, they were someone else outside of me valuing my work and saying, I'd like you did that really well.

[5:56] DYANA VALENTINE: You seem to enjoy it. Can I give you some money to do it over here for us?

[6:00] DYANA VALENTINE: That's how my business started as an independent contractor, which is really what I've done for about 20 years.

[6:05] DYANA VALENTINE: It was like being discovered over and over again in a certain kind of way.

[6:09] DYANA VALENTINE: And so then once someone saw me and identified me and said, what you're doing is actually worthy, and there people recognize this as a service and will give you money.

[6:40] DYANA VALENTINE: My individual transition talks with amazing humanitarians and beautiful people, it's really solid.

[6:48] DYANA VALENTINE: I have been doing it long enough with hundreds and hundreds of people that I feel very good at it.

[6:53] DYANA VALENTINE: I feel like a practice within my scope, I feel great at it.

[6:57] DYANA VALENTINE: And those kind of have found a sort of happy plateau in a way.

[7:04] DYANA VALENTINE: But the curriculum development stuff and taking the student success content that I've created and actually trying to gift it to organizations, gift it to teachers, gift teacher training, mentor teachers, just on the side for free.

[7:19] DYANA VALENTINE: I've done enough of it for free.

[7:21] Indira G. Wilson: Right, right.

[7:22] DYANA VALENTINE: In a way.

[7:27] DYANA VALENTINE: Someone said, You've given us a lot of content.

[7:29] DYANA VALENTINE: You've really helped our organization.

[7:31] DYANA VALENTINE: We'd really like to pay you out of the grant.

[7:34] DYANA VALENTINE: How would you feel about that?

[7:35] DYANA VALENTINE: And I said, excuse me.

[7:37] DYANA VALENTINE: Yes, please.

[7:39] DYANA VALENTINE: I would like to get paid for that.

[7:41] DYANA VALENTINE: Because there's something about doing that work at an institutional level that makes total sense to me as a practitioner.

[7:49] DYANA VALENTINE: I've done it for myself.

[7:50] DYANA VALENTINE: I've helped students with it.

[7:52] DYANA VALENTINE: I've helped my peers and my teachers with it.

[7:54] DYANA VALENTINE: And now if I could do it at the institutional level, just think about the number of people I could help.

[8:00] DYANA VALENTINE: I got discovered.

[8:01] DYANA VALENTINE: So I gifted my work for a couple of months, and I wasn't trying to get a job.

[8:01] DYANA VALENTINE: I wasn't trying to get them to pay me.

[8:08] DYANA VALENTINE: I was really just trying to get this content that I work so hard at distributed.

[8:12] DYANA VALENTINE: About six weeks ago, we had a casual conversation of what if we could support you and pay you out of the grant.

[8:18] DYANA VALENTINE: Would that be okay?

[8:19] DYANA VALENTINE: And I said, Yes, please.

[8:21] DYANA VALENTINE: I'm now training myself to say yes to money.

[8:24] DYANA VALENTINE: A whole new thing.

[8:25] DYANA VALENTINE: And so then I spent the holidays thinking, this can't actually work, Kenneth.

[8:29] DYANA VALENTINE: Is this gonna work?

[8:30] DYANA VALENTINE: Is this possible?

[8:31] DYANA VALENTINE: Did I just get discovered again at 52 years old, about to be 53 to do exactly what I've been doing for free for about 15 years?

[8:40] DYANA VALENTINE: This is perfect timing.

[8:42] DYANA VALENTINE: It's in a pandemic, my income has been down for two years.

[8:46] DYANA VALENTINE: Like I was really at this place where I was like, I have to figure something out.

[8:50] DYANA VALENTINE: And I honestly, Blaine, I thought I was gonna have to go outside my industry, go outside my get a new topic.

[8:50] DYANA VALENTINE: I thought I was gonna have to get a new topic.

[8:59] DYANA VALENTINE: So that was the difference between aspirational work or the idea that the work I'm doing is good, it's reasonable, it's useful to people, and then really insisting that I to myself, insisting that I find some people who could benefit from it and who wanted it.

[9:18] DYANA VALENTINE: I found someone who was receptive, we talked about it, and it was exactly the right place to be.

[9:24] DYANA VALENTINE: It was it's aligned with my values, and that took my aspiration into action, and that action led directly to this beautiful breakthrough.

[9:33] Indira G. Wilson: How would you define the term breakthrough for yourself?

[9:36] DYANA VALENTINE: For myself, a breakthrough for me generally comes at the nexus of accepting the crisis or accepting and acknowledging the value of whatever the tension is.

[9:50] DYANA VALENTINE: If the tension is within myself, if it's philosophical, if the tension is logistical, so it's financial, or it's access to a tool or resource that I need.

[10:02] DYANA VALENTINE: If the tension or conflict is emotional or relational, so if whatever pain I'm in, if I'm fighting with it head on, it's very unlikely that I'm gonna have what I would consider a breakthrough.

[10:17] DYANA VALENTINE: It's the transition where I start to acknowledge the value of the tension because it's given it's got my attention.

[10:24] DYANA VALENTINE: The tension has got my attention enough that I can step back from it and say, This is useful to me somehow because I was not paying attention to this problem.

[10:34] DYANA VALENTINE: This problem was running the show, and now I can step back from it and say, All right, I see you pain, I see you tension, I see you conflict.

[10:42] DYANA VALENTINE: Now, do I have at least one more option than I thought I had yesterday?

[10:47] DYANA VALENTINE: So where that tension meets just a little bit of potential, just a little bit one more option than I thought I had yesterday.

[10:57] DYANA VALENTINE: If I can just rename the problem, so the tension usually is built on some kind of lie.

[11:03] DYANA VALENTINE: It's built on something that says, I can't do it, I am not capable of it, I'm the one who's broken, the problem is me.

[11:10] DYANA VALENTINE: That's usually when I'm living in tension.

[11:12] DYANA VALENTINE: But when I get to that place where I say, What if it's not me?

[11:16] DYANA VALENTINE: That's my opportunity for a breakthrough.

[11:19] DYANA VALENTINE: And if I can get just a little bit one step past that and say, I see you problem, either give it away, let like really literally delegate it, give it away to somebody.

[11:29] DYANA VALENTINE: Let somebody else hold the crying baby for a minute.

[11:32] DYANA VALENTINE: Anything that would give me a little bit of air.

[11:35] DYANA VALENTINE: So to me, that's where the breakthrough is.

[11:37] DYANA VALENTINE: It's right at that moment, at least in my life, where I can see the problem for what it is.

[11:44] Indira G. Wilson: Who do you think DYANA VALENTINE was pre-breakthrough?

[11:49] DYANA VALENTINE: And who is she now post-breakthrough?

[11:51] DYANA VALENTINE: It's almost like it's not so binary as it is cyclical.

[11:55] DYANA VALENTINE: So I would say that a lot of the work that I the personal work that I've been doing in the last four or five years has been deeply spiritual, has been about cultivating trust, cultivating faith, and having that nourish my resiliency and my ability to tolerate discomfort.

[12:14] DYANA VALENTINE: I'm really I do have a high tolerance for discomfort, but I don't really enjoy hanging out in it.

[12:21] DYANA VALENTINE: Maybe people do.

[12:22] DYANA VALENTINE: I don't think many people enjoy that, but I have had these long periods of feeling really conflicted and really struggling with my identity, struggling with what's possible, feeling like doing is worth money.

[12:37] DYANA VALENTINE: It's worth living a comfortable life to be of this great service.

[12:41] DYANA VALENTINE: I've but I've struggled with that.

[12:43] DYANA VALENTINE: So a lot of my own inner work has been circled around trust.

[12:47] DYANA VALENTINE: And it's not blind total release of responsibility kind of trust, but it's just enough trust to get me over the next hump.

[12:57] DYANA VALENTINE: Just enough of knowing I'm talking about the right things, I'm doing the right things, I'm just good enough of a person to deserve a little bit of a break or deserve a discovery.

[13:07] DYANA VALENTINE: Just that little whisper and even cultivating that little kernel of trust for myself within myself, not intellectual trust, but true, like all body energetic trust. But it's right now it's like a little tiny kernel. So before this most recent breakthrough, it was there and it was this little kernel. I knew I was supposed to have it having those conversations. I knew I was supposed to be giving away my content. I knew I was supposed to be giving my time. It felt free, it felt delightful. I didn't have any conflict on it. I wasn't even thinking about commerce. But what happened in the moment when someone turned to me and had that it's almost like what I say I do for clients. Like one of my clients said it was like I was living in a bottle of ketchup.

I was the ketchup, and I knew that I was in a bottle, and I knew that I was red, and I knew that I was tangy, but you just breezed along and you just read the label and it said catch up, and you said catch up out loud, and I went, I'm catch up. It makes everything so much easier. And I remember when she said that that was years ago. It was one of the first times somebody reflected back to me what experiencing my work was like. And I think that's what happened for me six weeks ago. Right, is that this really lovely collaborator who I was working with just turned to me and said, You're ketchup, we pay for ketchup in these parts, and I went, Oh, I'm catch up, and you pay for ketchup in these parts, and it was almost like the acknowledgement of myself, not just some dismembered service or product that I could provide.

But me and myself, this telephone call, I would like to give you money to make your life easier to support you, was literally on the cusp of feeling like I cannot do this, I need to change my whole career. Do I need to get a certificate in petroleum science or something? Like, what do I need to do right now? I was really at that point. Like, I do know what the funny thing is, Diana, I think change everything. I think you would have ended up getting into petroleum science and then giving the petroleum science away. Like you would have got the degree in like a year, and then you would have been like, Okay, I need this is great information, I need to give all this away, and you would have been in the same spot.

[15:25] DYANA VALENTINE: I know you're too right. I know you're too right, but I would say that's that difference, and it can be in a moment in a day. And I tell this story to say, even though I really do have quite a lot of confidence in what I'm doing, and I generally I don't offer something up to someone unless I feel pretty good at it, and I have exceedingly high standards. However, I can have all the confidence in the world, but if I can't see myself as ketchup and I can't identify myself or orient myself, it's very difficult to see through to inspiration. And I think certainly that's been impacted by the pandemic. I think that's been impacted by the crisis in the world. I just think it's I feel really beaten down by the violence that's happening in the world on many levels.

And so that was that was preventing me from seeing the breakthrough. But again in reflection, I recognize now that many of my breakthroughs that had to do with my forward facing service or business, most of those breakthroughs have had that catalytic aspect of I know there are some options here. I've just gotten to the point where I'm seeing that the problem is not me. And boop here's a little angel collaborator to say I'd like to give you money for that. And it's right I don't know how to describe it. I don't think that I didn't I didn't design this this process I think somebody's looking out for me. But consistently across the last 20 years of my career it has been the case that I've gotten to the edge of what felt like the darkest night of the soul but I had just popped my head out of it to say I don't think this is me or this is really all I don't think this is all mine. And then a little angel collaborator a real person pops up to say I'd like to play with you on that and oh PS and by the way we have some money.

[17:22] DYANA VALENTINE: So I don't want to say that anybody listening is this is all magical thinking. It's really not when you start to honor what you have confidence in by doing it. So there have been a lot of times when I've taken pauses or just sat back on it and not really not really shared what I was doing or not really tried to try to distribute what I was doing where nobody knew. Nobody knew. And then if I took a moment and said, oh I'm doing this thing over here and people went what tell me about that. Show it to me and I and it reminded me oh yeah you do have to you do have to acknowledge the craft. You do have to honor the craft right yeah absolutely and I think yeah I think my work right now is is in recognizing so I'm I'm dismantling a foundational lie right now.

That's a lot of what I do in my work in in agitating these systems that keep us from being able to really enjoy ourselves enjoy our work continue making art whatever it is that we're doing is and that was I think that was one of your questions had to do with with what this breakthrough taught me about myself. So one of the things it taught me and it was I cannot make it up so within a week of that contract being signed I had a call with a client and in the call with the client we found a lie. We found a lie that was underneath a lot of how she does what she does. And it had to do with freedom it had to do with what what you have to do to earn freedom or earn independence.

[18:50] DYANA VALENTINE: So I went on a walk on the beach which is another area that I'm trying to do more of trying to allow myself to experience joy but I went on a walk on the beach and I sat down and I was looking at the ocean and I said you know I bet there's some lies underneath this difficulty accepting money. I bet there's some lies underneath this idea that you can be a working artist who's who supports themselves. I bet there's a lie underneath this idea that you're getting too old to be hirable at a normal job. Because I've really been thinking a lot about day jobs lately. And I said, what is the lie? What is the lie? What is the lie? And it popped up right in front of my eyes, Blaine. So what I learned about myself, not not, is that I have a lie that I'm the only one that I have to do everything single-handedly, that there's never going to be a safety net, there's never going to be a buffer so that I can make a mistake, but I'll have some backup.

I have this thing that functions underneath a lot of what I do. And it's not that it's unfounded totally I don't have a trust fund. I don't have I don't have a lot of access to resources in a certain kind of way. But it is a bold faced lie that I don't have help. It is a bold face lie that these discovery angels have not popped up at every turn in beautiful parts of my career and my creativity and my ability to express myself creatively. It is an absolute lie. So if that's a lie, what is possible that the day before I was sitting at the ocean was not possible. That discovering of that lie was what gave me the little bit of air to say oh the problem might not be me.

[20:25] Indira G. Wilson: And we'll be right back after a brief message.

[20:30] Indira G. Wilson: Welcome back we are so excited about this new season and we have so many cool things lined up my personal favorite we have a new segment called It makes it easier to do what map with our friend Henri and he's always gonna keep it real and keep us grounded in what Afro existentialism is all about who told you that I saw on my bill that I was charged on my credit card the the use of the app that I had paid for the year previously. I was like, why am I being charged all over again? And I didn't guess read the fine print that said that this was an annual prescription and that each year you're gonna be charged $15 or $16 dollars or $20 for your annual prescription.

[21:17] DYANA VALENTINE: Was it a prescription or a subscription?

[21:19] Indira G. Wilson: A subscription. And yeah, it felt like a prescription of telling myself a bit. And so I happened to, I looked at my statement, I was like, what is that for? So I said, I didn't and I missed it by one day. I was supposed to, I was supposed to send them an email or something telling them do not renew my thing. So I had missed it by one day, so I felt like I shouldn't have been charged, even though technically I guess I should have been charged, because I was one day later. And so I was like, I am not paying $24 for service that even though I bought the app at $15.99. I never used the app for the $1599 one year that I did have. And so I certainly wasn't paying for another $1599 of an app that I didn't use for the first $1599. I called it.

[22:00] DYANA VALENTINE: Was it was it $15.99 or $24.99?

[22:03] Indira G. Wilson: I don't remember.

[22:03] DYANA VALENTINE: It was $24.99.

[22:04] Indira G. Wilson: I guess they give me the platinum package if you don't call back and tell them to cancel the whole package. And so I called my credit card company, and I was like, there's a um fraudulent charge on my credit card. I could tell from the woman's voice that I was gonna get the on baton response. I'm so sorry, sir. I can't make any changes to the bill at this time. You could if you really wanted to. And so instantaneously, I got into my my actor's guild, and I said, Well, I'm having some difficulty talking to you, miss. I just had brain surgery and was released today to come home. And I happened to see the charge on my account. The day that I was charged, I wasn't even awake yet from the anesthesia. I didn't wake up until the next day because the surgery was so long, they had to give me so much anesthesia. So I had no opportunity to call, Miss, to cancel the prescription or subscription or whatever it was.

[23:10] DYANA VALENTINE: Madness?

[23:11] Indira G. Wilson: And she said, Oh, I'm so sorry, sir. I had no idea that you, oh my God, you just had brain. I said, I think it was brain surgery. I really can't tell you, miss, because the medication I'm on. I really don't even know where I am, miss. But what happened to me? And she said, Oh, I'm so sorry, sir. I'm so sorry. What was the charge if you were charged? I was charged um $24.99 for a prescription or subscription. I'm not quite sure what it was. I'm on medication right now. I'm talking to you. But I did not want that. I did not want it. And she said, Well, well, what can I? I said, I I just have to catch my breath, miss. I I I'm really not supposed to be talking, especially on the telephone. I just like that charge removed from my credit card if that's possible.

And she said, Oh, certainly, sir. Certainly, sir. We're gonna remove that charge immediately. Oh, oh, miss, you have made my day, which I hope I have many more to go. And she said, Oh, certainly, sir. She said, Well, you you get some rest, you get some rest, and I I wish you the best recovery and and get well soon. I said, I can only hope so, especially now with the charge being removed. I can rest a little bit more comfortably. And she said, Oh, yes, sir. Rest, yes, sir. Get all the rest you can't. And I said, Oh, thank you, miss. I'm gonna have to go now because I'm I I I don't know if I feel a little queasy or something. And she said, okay, sir. Well, thank you. I'm removing the charge as we speak.

And I said, Thank you, miss. I appreciate that. And I hung up the phone and I said, Woo, wee! The envelope, please. I want to share the colour with you. I love the fact that you just had brain surgery and you came home and you looked at your credit card bill.

[25:00] DYANA VALENTINE: I left my credit card. Realizing I was a day late from calling. We are so glad you joined us for another episode of the Afro Existential Podcast. Please check out our interview with Hannah Shotis and Richard Lawyer from the Actors Gang Theater Company's Cruising Project in our next episode. And take a moment to visit us at our website, Afro EX Podcast.com for more fun and insightful content. Anything else? Please click subscribe. And check us out on Instagram at Afro EX Podcast. Anything else? Email us your comments or questions at Afro EX Podcast at gmail.com. Thank you to our guest, DYANA VALENTINE. Check out her website at DianaBalentine.com. And a special thanks to the brilliant Lache Tomlison who plays Sister Rosemary and her upcoming audio play, Pandora's Trunk. Anything else? I am Indira G. Wilson. And I'm Blaine Teamer. Again, thank you for joining us. And as always, have a great day on purpose.