Hey there, Jen here, and this is a happy bit. You know, we all tend to be most comfortable with people who are most like us.

And that becomes tricky when we're trying to connect with people of other races, ethnicities, cultures, religions, political parties.

But if we want to heal our planet and heal our humanity, we need to make this a practice.

Well, I grew up in southern Iowa in a place where it was, I feel like, 99% white at the time. And I have a story I want to share

about my grandma and some barn painters. I grew up in Southwest Iowa where it was 99% white,

99% Christian, 99% Republican, it felt like,

I don't think it was that high. I'm kidding. But people were very similar. It was a farming community

and we all just kind of lived in our little world, right? Well, my grandmother had some painters

come to her house to paint her barn, and they were from

Omaha, Nebraska, the big city, quote unquote, and here's the story. Now, I'm going to preface this by

saying I'm not trying to shame my grandmother. She had a certain experience growing up, and she was doing

the best she could, just like most of us are. So anyway, these painters were there

painting the barn and my dad was there. He's the one that relayed the story to me and my mom.

So the men were painting. One was white and one was black. And the whole time, my grandmother

wouldn't talk to the black man. In fact, she would talk to the white

man and she even went to so far as to say this. Tell your boy to put that ladder away.

Yikes, right? Yikes. So she dehumanized him. She made the assumption that the white man was in charge.

And then she used this language of,

boy, to further dehumanize the black man that was there painting the barn.

So luckily for her, the black man wasn't offended and just went about his business because she

was an older lady from rural southwest Iowa, And that story has stuck with me for a long

time. And it illustrates the racism that abounds even still all over our country and all over our

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