2022: A (Personal) Year in Review

Image Description: A wooden table is adorned with green, yellow, and blue lights. The words “Happy New Year” are spelled out with Scrabble tiles. The year 2023 is displayed below them, each number carved out of white wood.

Sitting in my home on the last evening of 2022, I can't help but take a moment to step back and look at the year that was. 2022 was…interesting. Up, down, surreal, and interesting. For me, 2022 was not only my 40th year on Earth but one big ass learning experience.

2022 was a year of me trying to find my creative spark again while grappling with swallowing the hard pill of why my spark was gone.

2022 was the year that I began taking my mental and emotional health more seriously and learning how to process generational and personal trauma.

2022 was the year I started my lifelong journey of addressing codependence in my personal and professional lives.

2022 was the year I began learning about and recognizing how much harm codependence has caused me in relation to family members and co-workers who have not addressed their codependence.

2022 was the year that I decided to take a hiatus from being an in-house anti-racism trainer and facilitator for companies and organizations.

2022 was also the year that I decided to make that hiatus permanent once I realized how much better I felt not doing anti-racism work as an in-house employee with no autonomy or support.

2022 was the year that I had to sit with myself and mull over if I wanted to work in human resources anymore after realizing how my codependence was interconnected with how angry and powerless I've felt as an HR "professional."

2022 was the year that I began figuring out what being an empathetic, human-centered, boundary-oriented HR "professional" looked like and putting these lessons and ideas into action.

2022 was the year that becoming the HR "professional" I need to be to maintain my mental and emotional health and well-being was met with more jeers than cheers, not just from other HR "professionals" but many people in power in organizations I worked for.

2022 was the year that vitriolic emails, comments, and messages from HR "professionals" expressing their anger with me holding the field of Human Resources accountable for the harm that it perpetuates and upholds outweighed the "hate mail" I received from every other field.

2022 was the year that more Global Majority HR "professionals" and HR "professionals" of color tried to silence me, chastise me, and tell me to leave the field of HR "if I don't like it" than Global Majority folx from any other profession and occupation.

2022 was the year that white "professionals" got angry with me when I would no longer engage in "debates" with them or accept connection requests from them on LinkedIn and my social media channels. How angry did they get? So angry that a group of them collectively reported everything I posted for three weeks, intending to get me banned from multiple platforms for "hate speech." And they almost succeeded, too, with me having to have numerous discussions and go through various appeals with LinkedIn and Instagram safety personnel.

That's a lot of sh--, ain't it?

Real talk? Sure, all of the above happened this year. But I find myself on December 31 healthier than I have ever been. I'm happier. I've had more joy between sorrow and pain this year than I have in years, and that joy has outweighed the pain more than ever. Nothing's perfect. There's still a lot of work to continue doing to take care of myself and to continue healing. But even amid the healing and work ahead, I'm the best version of me I've ever been.

Sometimes you need a year of transformation and intention-setting to set up the next stage of your life. For me, 2022 was that year. If you're going to have a transformational year, having it be your fortieth year on Earth ain't a bad time for it to happen, y'know?

I hope that if you're reading this and 2022 was a struggle for you, there is a light at the end of that tunnel and hope on the horizon. I know it's not always easy to find that hope, to embrace joy amid pain, but I wish you nothing but forward progress in 2023. I hope you can do what you need to process the trauma and pain of 2022 and the years past and begin a new journey of health and joy in the coming year. And whatever your journey looks like, I hope you have people to help you when you stumble on the path because I know from experience that the path is full of rocky terrain.

Out with the old. In with the new. Auld Lang Syne. Drink responsibly—all that jazz. Make it home safe.

Here's to (hopefully) less B.S. and more joy, growth, and the energy to live as authentically as we can in a beautiful, ugly world.

Adios, 2022. Salud, 2023.

Monday's Opening Thought: December 6, 2021

This week’s opening thought, for employers and recruiters: Put the salary and all of the job duties in the job posting. Seriously. How are we still talking about this, especially when we’re in the midst of the “great resignation” (*cough* people leaving harmful work environments because they know they deserve better treatment than what they’ve received at work, including but not limited to ambush workloads and low salaries *cough*)?

There’s no excuse for not having the salary and clearly defined work duties present in your job postings. None. Are you afraid that the salary and workload of the role don’t align and that the truth will turn off candidates? Well, sounds like it’s time to re-evaluate your job descriptions, which you should be doing annually anyway, to ensure some level of equity in pay and job duties.

Don’t waste a candidate’s time with salaries that are way below your local salary analysis averages for the role you’re trying to fill.

Don’t waste a candidate’s time with a list of job duties that leave out the messy bits of the position you’re trying to fill. Quit ambushing people with “other duties as needed/assigned” after they accept the role you lied to them about.

Why would you want to start your relationship with someone with lies and disrespect?

Monday's Opening Thought: February 8, 2021

This week’s opening thought, for HR folx, recruiters, and hiring managers: If you’re interviewing candidates for any position in any organization, at some point in your interview process your interview questions must ask the candidate to share their personal understanding of anti-racism. You also need to ask questions to get an understanding of their personal work around dismantling their connections to white supremacy, as well as their views on being a part of an equitable and inclusive workplace that is a safer and braver space for more than just white cishet staff. And if your white applicants or non-white applicants with privilege give answers to these questions that are toxic or show an unwillingness to unpack their white supremacy?

They do not deserve to move on to the next round of your recruitment, qualifications be damned.

There’s enough racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, ableist white people and non-white people with privilege who harm others daily in our workplaces. We don’t need to hire any more. None of us do. We all need to normalize making being a hateful uncaring person an automatic exclusion from being in the running for a job. Qualified or not, skills do not trump hate, intolerance, and a lack of interest in being a better person. Recruit and hire like you actually want decent people to work for you.

Oh - and while I have your attention, take some time real soon to address the fact that those who can do something about it haven’t done anything about the racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, ableist white people and non-white people with privilege who harm others daily in our workplaces. Get on that.

Monday's Opening Thought: November 23, 2020

This week’s opening thought: Every place I’ve ever worked I have had to deal with sending out emails to staff and receiving feedback. Not real feedback, though. Staff members email me not about the content of the email but about a missing comma, typo, or recommendations for how I can “word things better” for “professional impact.”

Guess the race of the staff members who regularly send me these emails. Go ahead. Guess. I’ll wait.

Perfectionism and professionalism are both branches of the white supremacy tree, white people. And from what I can see y’all don’t “correct” one another anywhere near as much as y’all correct BIPOC folx, Black and Brown folx, about their words or actions.

Perfectionism.
Worship of the written word.
Only one right way.

All three of those things are why white people send the kinds of response emails they send to me and other persons of color.

All three are characteristics of white supremacy workplace culture.

Y’all need to spend more time on dismantling your racism and ceasing your urges to uphold white supremacist ideals and less time on pouncing when you see a missing comma or a typo from a Black person in the workplace. Don’t you have something else to do? Like your jobs?

Monday's Opening Thought: November 17, 2020

This week’s opening thought: If you work in human resources or recruiting and the thought that you work in a white supremacist field that is meant to maintain the status quo of white supremacy in labor and industry doesn’t pop up in your mind like ever I would like to kindly request that you change professions as soon as possible. You are more than likely unconsciously (consciously for some of y’all?) contributing to the oppression of others and taking a passively active role in creating hurdles for people to thrive and succeed. Just because these fields were created this way for these purposes doesn’t mean we have to keep that oppressive sh— going. It’s the 21st century. Do better. Be. Better.