Igniting Our Passion and Our Place for Social Change | Global Connections Call Notes 5.1.2024

Diazina Mobley is an international speaker and practitioner who holds a vision for global healing, focusing on helping others to explore their passions and ignite them for the benefit of the world. Diazina is founder of Gifted Ones, Inc, a global movement that brings together visionary leaders focused on healing the world through self-development and love. Her experience as a clinical social worker, her personal experience with loss in her own life, and her empathetic nature has enabled Diazina to guide helpers and healers through their own wellness and healing journeys.

Diazina joined us for our May 1st, 2024 Global Connections Call. During our conversation, we explored the idea of embracing change and transformation, recognizing and addressing one's own trauma, building a global community through empathy and storytelling, and encouraging creative and unconventional means of fostering peace. Diazina shared her personal journey through trauma and depression, highlighting the importance of mental health and the need for those involved in social impact and peacebuilding to prioritize their own wellbeing. Together we explored the importance of community, ancestral wisdom, and personal healing in finding peace and purpose in a chaotic world. To view the 45 minute call recording, please click here. The following includes excerpts from our conversation.

Our Conversation:

Diazina: This morning I went to YouTube and I found a song that I've personally loved for over two decades.  I first heard the song before I gave birth to my son who was born a week after the September 11th terrorist attacks [in the United States].  I had no idea that Yolanda Adams sang that song to the President of the U.S. that following year.

I originally hadn’t planned to share this video, but with Peacebuilding, sometimes what we have to do is not very convenient, doesn't fit into our plan, but we do what we're called to do so I’d like to share this video. This is a Peace practice, really finding something that touches your soul and being present to it in the moment. How do you not share something like this video with our global community given where we are in the world and our respective countries talking about Peace?

Peacebuilding is about the here and now. It's about what is the vision of Peace that we have inside of each and every one of us that can be expressed. It can only be expressed when we choose to allow ourselves to do that. This is not about what is out there in order to ignite our passion and in order to be a Peace Warrior, a Peace Goddess, a Peace God. It starts here and sometimes it's not convenient.  

Sometimes it is two weeks of preparation for a talk and learning there's something else that can say so much more in such a deeper way in six minutes than you ever could. This is me. This is what it looks like for me to be in a space of visioning and allowing my life to be a living expression of what's possible through faith. 

Diazina started us with a reminder to let the conversation develop as a community, and shared with us a song from artist Yolanda Adams, a personal inspiration for her, which you can watch below:

 [YouTube Video - Yolanda Adams sings Never Give Up]

Diazina: My dear minister used to say that we are going to talk about whatever comes up at the moment. Often he would tell us that, “I can't wait to hear what I'm gonna say”. We know that it's not about what's on the paper, it's not about what we've rehearsed - it's not about what we think we are going to bring. It's really about opening ourselves up to what is true in that moment. That's not something that you can plan for.

For me, this is what it looks like for me to be in a space of visioning, allowing my life to be a living expression of what's possible through faith. It's not linear, it's quite cyclical and spirally and mushy and messy. It’s like the metamorphosis that we all learned about when we were kids about the butterfly and the caterpillar. We are told as children that the caterpillar comes in and becomes a butterfly, but as adults we know that in order for that butterfly to develop, the caterpillar turns into mush, it's Caterpillar soup! It dissolves completely! It's not a pretty process, and yet it's beautiful. 

For me, this is what the peace process is. Peace is a radical, revolutionary, evolutionary expression. Peace is not about rainbows and unicorns. Peace is serious business. I saw a bumper sticker and it said Power to the Peaceful. Yes, Power to the Peaceful! 

When I think about vision and I think about what I'm here for, I know I don't do it alone. It is a community. It is my ancestors. It's the people who have poured into me, it's the people who I have had a connection within this life, and also the people who I meet. I love to say I'm grateful for the loved ones known to me and the ones yet to be revealed to me. I'm always open to who's out there that is going to be in this process with me in the future.

[Though I had gone to school for social work] I had decided that I didn't want anything to do with social work ever again. These people were crazy. I didn't want to diagnose anyone. I didn't want to feel inauthentic sitting in my chair asking people about their feelings.

So fast forward. There is a calling that clearly brought me to graduate school, that clearly brought me into the things that I was doing, that I kept pushing away. That was to bring my full self and to be of service to the world. It took me 18 years to come back around to actually decide that I wanted to be a social worker, to decide that I did have something that I wanted to contribute. It had to do with my own journey with trauma, with depression and anxiety. When I started to share my story with people, even people close to me and I would tell them that I was living with depression, no one believed me. That moved me forward to telling more of my story because what I've come to realize was that there were more people who were hiding it. And we were doing a really great job of it, but we were suffering inside. If I am trying desperately not to let anyone know that I'm depressed, I'm using a lot of energy in that area that could be used in changing the world! 

So when that shift happened, it happened around the little girl from the photo I showed during grad school graduation. In 2006, we lost her just ten days shy of her 13th birthday. Five days before I was scheduled to take a flight to bring her down to me, I got a call saying that she was gone.

[In the process of my grieving] I would get into the shower and I would cry and scream and yell and be totally disrespectful with God. I would say, “You took my baby, I raised her from the womb!” I would say to God, “Show me now why I'm here or you take me too!”, and that wasn't dramatics. It was my broken heart, just the brokenness of my heart. 

So every morning before I went out that day, God and I would have it out. I would ask, “God, you take me now or you show me why I'm here!” I was determined that this was the only way that I was going to be on this planet if They, He, She, It, the Tree, Whoever, showed me why I was here. And with the same amount of force that I demanded an answer, it came to me in full force. This is why you are here, you are here to show others that they don’t have to be perfect to build peace.

So I began to share with others, telling them that I'm a depressed therapist. How can I tell people that I'm depressed? I kept worrying that I'm gonna lose my livelihood, but quite the opposite happened. I was showing that we don't have to be perfect. We don't have to be at some level of heightened awareness in order to make an impact in the world. I show up and I allow myself to be an example of what it looks like to be messy and yet to be powerfully impactful. 

There are no perfect people. If we have to wait to be perfect to create peace then we’ll have to wait until the next lifetime. What I’m working at is that I show up the way that I am. I do the things that I'm able to do. I surround myself with community, the community of people, the community of my ancestors, my grandmother and my little niece are here with me all the time. When I am sure that I can't keep going, I find strength in having someone share the impact that I had on them, even when I had no clue thatI was having an impact.

What would it be like to have that dream that has always been in your mind come to fruition? And if the dream is already happening, what would it be like to have it expand? What would it be like for you to have a team of folks that want to join you in this dream?

Some people are visionary, some people are doers. Are you a visionary? Are you a doer? If you're a doer, how do you find the person who has a vision that is aligned with you so that you can get to work? If you're a visionary, sometimes we float out there and nothing actually happens because we need to have that structure to bring our feet to the ground, we have to find other visionaries or other doers to help to bring it to the light. 

Discovery Time:

Community Member: How were you able to navigate all of that to your healing during your period of mourning? How did God show up for you during your lamentation after losing your little girl?

Diazina: The answer is I have no clue. I have no clue. It made absolutely no sense that I was still standing. I have witnessed in my life, as well as being a therapist and working with people that the things that make sense are not the things that are going to get us to where we need to be. It really makes no sense. What I do believe, though, is that when I was in that deep grief, this was the first time that I was fully in or fully out. That was my line in the sand. 

Before, I had this organization and I've been kind of doing things and talking to people about it, but I wasn't fully in, there was always something else. But in that time of grieving, somewhere in my spirit, I became absolutely sure that I didn't want to be here in the world if there wasn't going to be a reason for me to be here. And so I can't explain it. I can't put my finger on it. It's just the thing that you know. That's what's really brought me to the forefront to bring the visionary incubator together. 

The way that spirit shows up for me is in the little reminders. For example, butterflies - every time I'm in a space where I'm just not sure in my life, I will see a butterfly. Numbers too - I'm talking to someone and then it is 2:22, or my odometer when my oil changes due at 11,222 miles. I'm quirky, so that’s how the Spirit speaks to me. I find it in these places like this, that's how it works for me. Find the little things that don't take a lot of energy and claim it as that's the way that Spirit is speaking to you. 

Community Member: During your loss, you said you channeled your energy into your work in your community. How did your work in the community contribute to your healing, if at all?

Diazina: We're not broken, so there's no fixing that needs to happen. Remember that we don't have to be perfect in order to make an impact, and how we make an impact is through community. In my own head, when trying to figure it out myself, trying to hide the fact that I was imperfect, this took up so much of my energy. 

I'm a person who is always looking for what is here for me, because I don't just show up to places randomly. I don't think anything is random. I was hiding out and not telling anybody about suffering with my depression, but during this time, I learned through my clients. Every single client that came into my space was a mirror.  

What would happen when I started to commit myself to my own healing, I would have people that will come in front of me and be a mirror of me. I would be guided to give them that  therapeutic hold, but actually I would tell them the things that I needed to hear. So when we talk about people being a mirror, it happens therapeutically. When I was helping people to support them in their own healing, I was actually healing myself at the same time.

Community Member: I understand we don't have to be perfect to do impactful work, that one could be doing peace work from a place of trauma and not from a healed place. How can you tell the difference? How does the difference differ from imperfection and making an impact in our world?

Diazina: So the short answer is coming out of your own mind, not being “out of your mind”, but out of your own mind. If you are in communication with someone else, that's the first step. 

This was one of the issues that I had when I was studying social work. It felt like people were really coming into the profession not having addressed their own trauma and their own issues, though they were trying to come and help people because they too had been hurt. 

That's a lot of what we do with our Go Mental Health Initiative, healing and coming from a healing space. We heal in layers. What I noticed is that people who are doing work from an unhealed place aren't talking to people, they're not in communication with a community. If that person is doing things themselves, then they're just kind of like a one person show. They aren't doing it inside of community, with people who will really pick you up. I have people around me who help me to recognize where I might be slipping and sliding. It’s important to be around people who speak truth so that you can examine what’s going on for you inside.

Links:

  • Diazina’s organization that supports mental healthcare for mental healthcare workers, therapists, clinicians, and social workers can be found here - https://gogiftedones.org/

  • To learn more about Go! Gifted Ones’ Mental Health Initiative for supporting mental healthcare workers, the link is here - https://gogiftedones.org/#gomhi

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