Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast, Kelly here, and we are continuing our conversation with Kristen v. Carter.

We learned a lot from Kristen earlier in the week when she talked about what it meant for her to opt out of struggle.

But we go on to have a really powerful conversation about the stigma around depression, the choices that she made to fall back to the habits that she established when she was younger in her professional development,

how she continues to find a measure of joy in her professional life while balancing the

demands for being an only black woman, oftentimes in these rooms, and keeping her creativity going.

Let's drop back into the conversation.

All right, we are back with Kristen.

This has been such a great conversation, and I want to keep it going and kind of piggyback

off of something we talked about earlier in the conversation about being the youngest in the room.

And also this concept of you said, you know, you've got to be.

You talk a lot about being.

And so I really want to find out, one, how you came to that kind of philosophy. Like, how did you come to this? Like, I've got to stand up for myself, but be balanced and respectful. Because I think there's a lot of people listening who would love to know, like, how do you actually do that? It really brings me back to high school. So just to give you some background, just in Nugget form, I'm originally

from work, New Jersey, and I went to a boarding school called Groton School in Massachusetts,

and I was one of seven African-American students in my grade. And if you know anything about

private school, boarding school, things of that nature. It was such a challenge for me to find

myself at that time. So I was away from home between the 80s of 12 and 17 and really struggling

to find my voice. In one particular summer, my mom actually quit her job between my sophomore and

junior years of high school. And she just spent the summer really

putting me through an affirmation boot camp, an affirmation boot camp. So basically we read

W.E.B. De Bois. We read Malcolm X. We read all of these types of books. I ran two miles a day.

And then I also had to write papers. I mean, she really

had me in a very strict boot camp because I was really trying to find my voice at the time.

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