46. Our Wild Minds: Creating Sanctuaries for gifted and BIPOC adults! Meet Kaitlin Smith
Kaitlin Smith, MSW is a Boston-based scholar, facilitator, and founder of Our Wild Minds which offers online community and programs that help gifted BIPOC unleash their natural gifts. Kaitlin is also a PhD student at Harvard in History of Science where her research interrogates the history of mind sciences and intersections with African American Studies.
When Kaitlin Smith and I sat down to unravel the complex world of giftedness and twice-exceptionality (2e), our conversation ventured deep into the heart of what it means to be labeled 'gifted,' particularly for those navigating the dual challenges of exceptional intellect and being part of a minority. Kaitlin shares her battle against the stereotypes that sought to undermine her journey during her studies in psychotherapy. This episode promises to be a beacon for anyone who's felt too intense, too passionate, or simply too much for the mainstream narrative.
The path to self-empowerment is often obscured by the fog of cultural misconceptions. A moment of stark confrontation during Kaitlin's psychotherapeutic training brought the issues of race and identity to the forefront, leading to the creation of Our Wild Minds. This venture seeks to celebrate and uplift gifted and BIPOC adults. Our discussion peels back the layers of cultural competency, urging a move beyond broad-stroke assumptions to embrace the unique stories that shape every individual's experience. Join us as we confront these issues head-on, championing the rich interior lives of those who don't fit comfortably into society's predefined boxes (or dare I say stereotypes).
Our final thoughts cluster around the creation of sanctuaries for underrepresented voices, specifically black adults in the gifted community. Kaitlin shines a light on the Our Wild Minds Community and the Black Brilliant Circle, spaces designed to offer refuge and fellowship for gifted adults of color. Inspired by the work of Dr. Joy Lawson Davis and Dr. Donna Ford, these platforms offer twice-weekly calls, networking opportunities, and a guided journey to help members navigate giftedness and racial trauma. By sharing these stories and resources, we hope to offer a tapestry of support that recognizes the full spectrum of giftedness, fostering inclusive environments where intellectual and emotional growth can thrive.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
https://www.facebook.com/ourwildminds
https://www.instagram.com/our.wildminds
TRANSCRIPT:
Nadja Cereghetti Host 00:02
Hello and welcome to Gifted Unleashed, where we talk about the gifted and twice-exceptional brain and how it affects our thinking and experience of the world differently. There are a lot of stereotypes and stigma around the term giftedness and I'm here to challenge those. I'm here to raise awareness and to have a conversation around the topic of what it means to be a gifted and 2e adult. Common experience among gifted folks is that they feel out of place. They don't quite fit in. They are too sensitive, too intense, too emotional, too overexcitable and too deep thinkers about the world and about themselves. So if you have been called too much of about anything, then this show is for you. My name is Nadja. I'm too loud, too colorful, too bubbly, too bossy and I love to talk too much. So welcome to my world and I'm so happy you're here.
00:50
Welcome to another episode of Gifted Unleashed, the podcast for gifted and twice-exceptional adults. Today we have Kaitlin Smith on the podcast, and Kaitlin and I we met during a course of intergifted offered by Jennifer Harvey Salin, and you know, if you've listened to the podcast in the past, I'm a huge fan of Jen and Jen is a big part why this podcast is off the ground. So Jen offered a course and Kaitlin and I were part of the course and stayed in contact and even met at Seng in the summer, and this podcast episode has been long in the making. So pleased that Kaitlin and I finally got a chance to sit together virtually and have a conversation what she does in the gifted space and what she offers, and that's what we're going to talk about today.
01:41
Welcome, Kaitlin, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast. I'm excited to do that and it has been such a long time in the making. We've been talking in the background I think we've met over a year ago probably, and we've met in the summer, but we didn't really have time to speak in depth. So actually I'm excited for you to be on this show today so we can talk a little bit more together in private and for the public and, yeah, get to know each other and I'm really excited to hear more about you. Thank you so much.
Kaitlin Smith Guest 02:19
I'm so excited to be here and chat more with you.
Nadja Cereghetti Host 02:22
I just want to start by listening to your gifted story. I feel like every gifted person has a gifted story. How did they uncover this topic and how did they learn about this? Why it's important in their life, and, I think, especially people working in this space. That usually gives them their why and I think that's very interesting to hear. Would you like?
Kaitlin Smith Guest 02:47
to share. Yeah, absolutely, I appreciate the question Well, I guess I should begin when I was in elementary school. I was fortunate in a lot of ways in that I was identified as gifted when I was very young. I had the opportunity to begin Montessori school when I was very young, a little bit younger than I think is typical in the states. In the United States where I live, I was two years old when I started and just about to turn three, and there were some changes that happened in my family around where we were going to live. We were planning to move to one community and then needed to sort of switch gears last minute and, as a result, the school that I was going to go to another Montessori school ended up not being the school that I could continue at indefinitely, and so I suddenly needed to kind of switch gears into attending a conventional school, and that led to some challenges because I, prior to that, been learning in a mixed age environment in a Montessori school where there was a lot of latitude and room for me to pursue more challenging work or in certain areas, and to make a long story short, I ended up being advanced a year and I guess in the course of that process in the more conventional school, public school and in the course of that process I ended up being tested for the talented and gifted program that was offered in my school district and then ended up participating in that programming. So I think that may have been the first time that I explicitly received the gifted label in my educational journey, but strangely, I think that I largely forgot about it in a way, or I forgot about that label, and I think that in general, when I was told that I'm gifted or that this framework or this label might relate to me and my life in some way, I think it was really framed as something that was solely about my academic performance and that it didn't necessarily have anything to do with other dimensions of me that would sort of endure into my adult life. And I think that, after having some of those early experiences, it wasn't until many years later that I found myself returning to these themes.
05:19
I would say that a major watershed moment for me came when I was training as a psychotherapist, about 10 years ago now, and I, in short, received some critical feedback from some of the people I was working with and training with. I can maybe elaborate more on this later in our conversation. But I received some. I had some really challenging experiences during that time in which some of these individuals, one in particular, told me that I was way too intellectual to be a therapist first of all, which I think is disconcerting on a number of levels. I think there's a lot to unpack there, but in addition, there was also this notion that I was also somehow too intellectual to be an emotionally healthy and authentic black woman and there's a lot to unpack there as well.
06:17
And anyway, that was absolutely a watershed moment for me that got me thinking more about what's going on here. And I would say that in the years that followed those experiences, I had other experiences that again prompted me to think about this concept of giftedness and that included some personal relationships that I had, like a particular romantic relationship, and some of the dynamics that developed between me and that person led me to think more deeply about what is it about? The way that I operate and the way that my mind works. That feels like a departure from the ways that a lot of other people around me operate. So those experiences were among the experiences that got me thinking more deeply about adult giftedness and that it's not merely an academic label. There's a lot more that I could say about this, but I want to pause and have a conversation.
Nadja Cereghetti Host 07:13
Yeah, there's so much right. We have so much to share. I want to ask you right here where did you make this connection between this giftedness and I guess first it was about the intellectual and then you realize there's more to it than the intellectual. Is that where this whole process went, or did they train you on giftedness in the program?
Kaitlin Smith Guest 07:37
No, Definitely not. I think it would be wonderful if this knowledge was shared more in the course of training. I should also note that the mental health field in which I trained was clinical social work. So in my experience and perhaps this is changing and I just haven't caught wind of it but my sense is that discussion around intelligence has not necessarily been foregrounded in that area of the mental health field.
08:10
I do know that for some people who train a psychologist, they may learn more about intelligence testing and different forms of intelligence, but so I'll kind of leave it to people who have trained a psychologist to speak to that. But in the clinical social work field it was definitely not something that we were talking about at all, and for me it was just striking that amongst the people I was interfacing with in the course of my training process, there didn't seem to be a ton of curiosity around the different ways in which people may move through the world, where I guess their mental proclivities are concerned, and not just around their traumas and their personalities, but also where people's intensity, complexity and drive may be concentrated and how those things manifest differently in different individuals. I feel that there was not perhaps enough conversation around those topics at that time, yeah, so that felt like a missing piece for me, and I ended up going on a journey to learn more about it.
Nadja Cereghetti Host 09:23
I love how you call it a journey. I call it a rabbit hole oh, amazing. And so, basically, you started this journey for yourself and probably realized you know you're not the only one and there's something that you need to bring into the world. And so do you want to share a little bit more about this journey and speak more about, you know, these key interactions that you had and what what shed light on onto that?
Kaitlin Smith Guest 09:55
Yeah, yeah, thank you for asking.
09:58
I think that that particular watershed moment that I identified earlier, that I experienced during my psychotherapeutic training, was a big one for me. There's so much to unpack related to that experience, but I think that for me one of the things that was most striking was just this, this basic notion that somehow I, from the vantage point of this particular individual, who was a white woman, who I don't actually believe that she was a therapist, but she had produced doctoral level research on psychology and was teaching and mentoring people in the context of my master's level training program and just the sheer notion that my intellectualism had to be pathological because in her estimation or in her imagination, when a black woman is being truly herself, she doesn't show up that way and therefore there must be some sort of underlying deception at the heart of my way of being. That was just incredibly difficult to, not just to hear like it was very traumatizing and difficult, but it was also. It was so challenging to respond to you because this person truly believed that she was just right. She was just so right about this and that her opinion couldn't be challenged and she was also in a in a position in this institution like tenured and just had a level of seniority that made the situation really intimidating for me.
11:38
One one part of the story that I haven't shared yet is that this person also then went so far as to tell me that if I couldn't align my way of being with a more authentic personality or like way of responding to the world, ie being more angry from her perspective. She felt that I wasn't being angry enough and wasn't being loud enough and wasn't just showing up in ways that she thought I ought to be based on a stereotypical understanding of what a black woman does. This person literally told me that she wouldn't feel comfortable allowing me to graduate with a master's degree that I was working toward at that time If I couldn't adopt this correct persona in her imagination. And yeah, because I guess, from her perspective, when you're becoming a therapist, you're the instrument and you need to be finally tuned in order to attune to your patients and show up appropriately and I think, on some sort of basic level, I think that makes sense. I think that at least embarking upon a journey where you learn to observe your own reactions and assumptions is really, really important, and I think that's true of coaches as well, even people who aren't therapists.
12:54
But this was the situation in which I think it was really clear that her basic assumptions about the world and who black people and black women in particular are in that world and must be in that world and, by extension, me couldn't really be disentangled from that training process and her responsibility as the person training me and as an experience.
13:19
It just brought into focus so many questions, some of them personal, but also just other questions about what are the ways in which these dynamics are playing out across our society and world and what are the ways in which people are being manipulated and gas lit.
13:38
What are the ways in which people are being urged in one manner or another to abandoned themselves and bullied out of knowing what they know about their lives?
13:50
Anyway, after having these experiences and others, I embarked upon a journey to think more deeply about the role that giftedness has continued to have in my adult life and the places where it's intersected with other dimensions of my social identity, so as a black person and as a woman in particular, and that eventually led to me starting a business called Our Wild Minds, which maybe we'll chat a bit about more later, but through this business I am focused on supporting BIPOC and adults so that's a black indigenous and people of color in befriending and operationalizing their natural gifts, which is absolutely something that I'm still continuing to you know, to do and learn about. So I'm not positioning myself as some sort of supreme authority or something ridiculous like that, but I think that that really challenging and awful experience that I had really initiated me into this path of learning and development and I've been really excited to invite other people into that so we can learn from one another and help one another achieve our goals in the world on our own terms.
Nadja Cereghetti Host 15:06
Oh, and congratulations on your business and I love, love, love the name Our Wild Minds. It's amazing. Thank you so much. So much goes through my head right now. You know, like people, I think maybe this person even thought she had your best interests at heart. Why didn't you even do a help you or something, I don't know, and so offensive? Yeah, I think you're right. Just forcing you to mask, pretend to be somebody you're not and just living up to prejudice and stereotypes? Yes, I may.
Kaitlin Smith Guest 15:49
Something, something I'd love to just quickly say to Rith on what you just said about this person potentially having positive intent, as she was offering these unsolicited perspectives to me, and this prompts me to think about the framework of cultural competency. That's a framework that you've encountered very much in your career. No, please share more. Here in the States there's a lot of conversation about the concept of cultural competency, which is a framework that is often used in the mental health field and in other fields as well, I think in the education field too but it's a framework that's often used when professionals are being trained in a particular field or modality, and it's all about sort of helping people cultivate the capacity to engage across difference and engage with people whose identities might their social identities might diverge from their own. So that can be around race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, class, all kinds of areas.
16:58
And in the mental health field, when I was training as a psychotherapist anyway, there was definitely an emphasis on cultivating cultural competency and at the same time, there was also a lot of criticism from people who were suggesting what does it mean that we're encouraging people to believe that you can somehow just master what it means to engage with people from a particular group as though people don't have interiority and also as though there are certain traits that you ought to be looking for in your dealings with people who hail from a particular group.
17:35
So I think there's a lot of complexity there and a lot to unpack, but I think that, with this particular individual I was describing earlier, who was training me, I think that one way to conceptualize what may have been going on there was that she had really clung onto this really narrow understanding of what a black person is and, instead of really making herself open to or opening up to what I was telling her about my experience and my priorities and my values, she insisted upon this narrow understanding in which she kind of preserved herself as the expert and wasn't open to having her worldview challenged or offended by her experience with me, that relationship.
18:28
So, yeah, I think that's. There's an opportunity there for people who may be thinking you were listening. How do I not fall into these traps? I think maybe one tool or one takeaway is to be open to what you learn in the moment in your dealings with people who are maybe caling from a different background, instead of clinging to some sort of ideology or like static conception of what women are like or what people of a particular group are like.
Nadja Cereghetti Host 18:57
Yeah, definitely. Thank you for sharing and also educating me. What I encountered or what I saw coming into this gifted space is, or what I didn't see, is a lot of black women, and I wonder why that is, and I have my own theories, but I don't know if that's something you have also thought about or is that something that I observed correctly?
Kaitlin Smith Guest 19:31
Yeah, let's see. Bye. I have a bunch of thoughts going through my head right now. I apologize.
19:39
I think that when I first kind of re-entered the I guess the world of gifted people who are connected around the world and the specialty people who support gifted adults, I had a very similar reaction. I thought, oh, I'm not encountering other black people in this space who are kind of leading and supporting others or creating containers for others. So that struck me as a missed opportunity that I've been inspired to respond to through my business. But as I've delved deeper, I've been really excited by the incredible work that various black women leaders in the field of gifted education have done and the kind of foundational, incredibly important work that they've laid. Dr Joy Lawson Davis is one of those people. She's here in the States, she's written a number of books and is just such an inspiring and lovely person. And then there's also Dr Donna Ford, who has also been a pathbreaking voice in the field of gifted education, and both of them have really illuminated so many issues related to gifted education for youth of color.
20:55
I feel like I've gained so much from engaging with their work that I've been able to think with as I explore ways in which we can create more networks of support for gifted adults who are part of communities of color. Yeah, so the way I'm thinking about it right now is that there are a lot of opportunities to port some of those insights from the gifted education world over into adult life, and my sense is that there's also a lot of room to just continue building upon work that's already been done and create new resources too. So it's exciting to be part of this, and I think there's a lot of opportunity for people to plug in who are interested in these conversations.
Nadja Cereghetti Host 21:37
Oh, thank you for sharing also your resources and for being that person you know to trail, blaze and create this community for black women and people of color.
Kaitlin Smith Guest 21:50
Thank you and I feel so grateful as well, because it's quite clear to me that I'm standing on the shoulders of so many people definitely the two women I just mentioned and a number of other people too.
22:04
This is just one specific example, but I'm currently a PhD student at Harvard, and when I first started I was searching the campus high and low for some sort of bust or statue dedicated to WEB Du Bois, who was the first black graduate. I was so excited to finally locate a bust of him in the Department of African and African American Studies, and he was someone who many, many, many years ago was talking about these issues. He wasn't necessarily talking about it through the prism of giftedness per se, but he was exposing these fundamental questions about how the intelligence of black people was being imagined, and he was in a position where a lot of people wouldn't listen to what he had to say, but he nevertheless kind of made himself into an example and has just left a lot of opportunities in his wake that didn't exist before. So all of that to say that I'm grateful to be able to stand on the shoulders of so many giants and figure out how I can contribute.
Nadja Cereghetti Host 23:15
Thank you so much, Kaitlin, for sharing all of your insights, and let's just talk a little bit more about what you offer for the gifted women in this space, like why reach out to you if you're a gifted and black person and join your program?
Kaitlin Smith Guest 23:33
Yeah, thank you, let's see. Well, right now I have two offerings. Probably that pool will expand in the future. But I have an online community that I've started called Our Wild Minds Community, and in the future I hope that we'll be able to kind of carve out space for additional communities of color. But we're starting just with black gifted adults, and this is a space that people can come to meet new friends, new contacts, professional contacts and just sort of get support in various areas of their life, ranging from personal to professional. So this is a great way for people to sort of get to know me and the kind of work that I do. And we offer twice weekly community calls at this point, which is just an opportunity for people to be in a conversation around a central theme and the themes vary by month over the course of the year, but it's an opportunity for people to forge new connections each time. And there's also a robust online community where people can meet people both across the world and close to them, and there's also an area where people can kind of explore different ways.
24:55
That giftedness has been understood as a concept, because I know that people often come into this gifted adult world or industry feeling kind of like what is all of this? Some of this resonates with me and some of it really doesn't resonate with me. So I wanted to create kind of like a journey that people can follow as they enter the community. That can help them think through what giftedness means to them and also what their goals are in the context of the community. Something else I should mention about the community is that there are kind of five components to the journey through the community that I'm offering. The first is focused on introspection, so that involves moving through the foundation's workbook that I was just sort of describing, which is all about exploring one's relationship to giftedness and kind of taking an inventory of one's strengths and also areas in which one may find vulnerabilities and may want to grow, and sort of using that as a template to navigate the community, because there are so many different areas to plug in and explore. The second component of the community is focused on connection, so I mentioned the community calls, which are currently happening twice monthly. We also are going to have some affinity groups forming, so opportunities for people to connect with people who have other identities that are similar to theirs, such as LGBTQ people and people who live in particular regions of the world, so I'm hopeful that that will expand more over time. And then there are opportunities for asynchronous communication via the online forum. And then the third area of the community is focused on learning. So there's a resource library where people can tap into various books and other media that other members have elevated as useful to them. And there's also an area where people can find study buddies. So maybe people are really passionate about a particular topic or they're enthusiastic about exploring a particular thing, even entirely independently, and there's room for people to identify what they're exploring and connect with others who they want to check in with them about those topics or engage in some sort of learning journey together. And then there's also an opportunity for all of the community members to gain priority access to any online courses that are offered within our wild minds and I'll circle back to that point in just a moment.
27:34
The fourth area of the community that people can choose to engage with is focused on manifestation, so kind of bringing one's visions into the world. So there's an area where people can articulate their goals and find accountability buddies. I hope that in the future we can carve out greater structure for people to gather and kind of hold one another accountable, but to start, we're just going to have accountability buddies and I'm excited to see where we can go with that. There are also areas where people can network with other people in their particular industries. So, yeah, people can make new connections. And there are also opportunities for people who are career changers and want to explore a particular arena, to connect with someone who has more experience and maybe set up an informational interview and related to that, there's also a mentor matching area, where people can indicate that they're seeking a mentor in a particular arena or that they are seeking a mentee in a particular arena, and people are invited to express that they're seeking both at the same time. Maybe they would love to find someone who can help them find their way in this one arena, but they would also love the support of someone in another, and they can do those things simultaneously.
28:51
And this notion of seeking a mentee or someone to sort of support, maybe coming up behind you or alongside you, is connected to the fifth and final component of this community journey, which is focused on giving back.
29:05
So that includes connecting with people, supporting people as a mentor in some regard, and there's also an opportunity to get involved with social impact projects, and one of the ways that I'm really excited to explore this in the context of the community is by having hackathons, where we sort of carve out a weekend.
29:27
I don't know just yet what the regularity of these events will be.
29:31
I'm kind of waiting to see how people feel about it and what the feedback is, but I'm really excited to have kind of like a hackathon weekend where people get together on Zoom from all over the world and split up into teams and have a central challenge or question that faces our community or people like us around the world, or some other social question or social issue that is important to people, that people have maybe voted on.
29:58
And then the teams kind of devise some sort of creative response to whatever the issue is and creates something, whether it's a prototype for an app or a piece of artwork or an idea for a program and how they would implement it. And then we come together and share our learnings, share our findings, and I'm envisioning this as a meaningful way for people to forge new relationships, friendships and professional relationships and also generate actionable ideas that we can then potentially decide to act upon as a community. So those are the initial offerings that are planned for the community, but I'm excited to see what I learn and what people are most excited about as we iterate on the platform.
Nadja Cereghetti Host 30:46
This sounds amazing and I have already a few people I'm going to send your way and I hope they bite. And I hope because I feel like these women are exactly the type of women that could use and offer support and like be, exactly, you know, engaging in this community. It's wonderful.
Kaitlin Smith Guest 31:07
Can I just like to clarify something? This community is actually for people of all genders, just to be clear. So I'm starting with people adults who identify as black and gifted, and it may be that in the future, there could be other areas of this community that serve other communities of color. That's something that I would love to offer in the future, but I'm not there yet, so this is what I'm offering right now.
Nadja Cereghetti Host 31:37
So many thoughts and I think I know the answer. But I want to hear it from you. If I tell you know my friend who fits your profile for your community to go and join, but she doesn't have an official gifted diagnosis, never been to gifted school, I believe she might be the perfect candidate. Does she need to prove she's gifted or how can she enter?
Kaitlin Smith Guest 32:03
Yeah, thank you so much for asking that question. That's such an important question. No, how should I respond to this succinctly? There's so much to say on this topic, but in a nutshell, no, I want to welcome in anyone who resonates with this concept and sees themselves in it. And I think that if someone joins and they begin connecting with people and with the resources that are there and feels like, oh, maybe this isn't the right fit, or maybe this would be the right fit If this other dimension was included, I would love to receive that feedback and, you know, have a conversation about it and see what kind of support they're looking for, what kind of support they need.
32:47
And if someone decides, oh, this isn't for me, then that's fine. But I'm not remotely interested in attempting to tell other people who is gifted and who's not. I've been in spaces before in which I witnessed that dynamic and it really rubs me the wrong way. I think that intelligence is a mysterious and multi-dimensional and expansive thing and I don't think anyone should have the last word on it. So I yeah, I'm not on board with people who operate in those ways. Yeah, I think that anyone who reads my writing or has engaged with other materials related to adult giftedness and they resonate with it. They should feel welcome to participate. I'm also realizing, Nadja, that I didn't talk about the online course that I created, which I think you asked me about, but I didn't mention it.
Nadja Cereghetti Host 33:44
Please tell us more about your course, okay.
Kaitlin Smith Guest 33:47
Yeah, so I created an online course called Black Brilliant Circle and it is a six month journey through kind of what it is to be a gifted black adult that engages mind, body and heart or that's how I've envisioned it and I just recently wrapped up the initial run of the course and had a great time and learned so much from my participants and I can't wait to offer it again in fall of 2024. So I'll be circulating more information about that as that date approaches. But, in short, that course offered participants an opportunity to engage with a group of peers from all over the world Half were from the United States and the other half were from other parts of the world and we met twice monthly for six months and we're able to go really deep into a lot of material, and one of the key themes that we explored, among many, is the intersection of racial trauma and gifted trauma, and I can say if you'd like to hear more and I want to be cognizant of your time- Please go.
Nadja Cereghetti Host 34:57
I really want to hear more and I think it's very important to talk about this.
Kaitlin Smith Guest 35:03
Yeah, yeah, I know that there's some people in the gifted field who talk about the issue of gifted trauma, like Jennifer Harvey Salin, for example. We both know, and one of the elements that I've wanted to contribute to the conversation in the gifted field that serves gifted adults is the contribution of racial trauma and racism to the experiences of members of minoritized populations, like racial minorities, and I know that the story that I shared earlier about being framed as too intellectual to be an authentic black woman is one example that I think kind of brings this, this idea, to life, where there's the gifted element, where the person is encountering something that seems alien and other to them in the manner that I communicate and think and what have you. But then there's also this element of you know you're black and therefore all black people supposedly are a certain way, or to see a black person who's at once highly intellectual and and black, and I think that seems contradictory about that in a lot of people's imaginations and I think that that that dynamic it can be immensely traumatizing for a lot of people. So the story that I shared was just one example of that, but I think another specific issue that came up in conversation in the context of the Black Brilliant Circle course was just all of the violence against black people around the world and the pervasiveness of anti-blackness in general, and just how challenging it is to live in the midst of those dynamics and also be someone who feels very deeply and processes your experiences in the world deeply.
37:10
And I think, depending on someone's unique constellation of intelligences, their emotional reactions may be particularly strong and some people exhibit quite a lot of intensity in the area of existential intelligence. And that combination of forces can lead some people in directions that are just really hard to get out of and to just sort of endure, because it's not enough to just imagine that well, you know, we're just going to think happy thoughts and everything will be better, because we don't live in that world, unfortunately. So this course offered a space in which we had an opportunity to discuss some of those tensions and realities, while also exploring and envisioning, you know, the kinds of people we can become in the world we have and the ways in which we can contribute to reshaping the world within our own spheres of influence, such that more black brilliance can flourish in authentic ways. So in many ways it was a course that offered more of an invitation to ongoing learning and development for all of the participants, but I had a great time and I'm looking forward to welcoming the next group of people.
Nadja Cereghetti Host 38:26
Wow, thank you for sharing and I think, yeah, a space highly needed, especially in the current times that we're living in, and I know the political space also in the US currently. Yeah, thank you. I can just say thank you for what you're doing and I hope my podcast gets out to the people who need to hear this and who need your gifted brilliant circle and join and your community. It sounds amazing and like a wonderful safe space.
Kaitlin Smith Guest 39:04
Thank you so much.
Nadja Cereghetti Host 39:06
So if somebody wants to join, where can they find you?
Kaitlin Smith Guest 39:11
Yeah, the best place to go is my website, which is ourwildminds.com, and that first word is our like. O U R.
Nadja Cereghetti Host 39:23
And I will put all the links in the show notes. Also your social media so people can follow and just click and see what you're doing. Wonderful. A few last words. Is there anything you would like to share or anything that you wish you knew earlier, something you just want people to know?
Kaitlin Smith Guest 39:43
Oh man, I love that question. So many thoughts are running through my head. I'm trying to avoid offering an answer that feels cliche, but what's honestly coming to mind is just about the importance of being yourself. Yeah, it sounds very cliche, but I think what my experience has shown me is that the more that I have sort of embraced my natural proclivities and allowed them to kind of shine forth or allowed myself to lean into them in a way that's visible to others, the more satisfied I felt, and I feel like my life has made a lot more sense as I've simply embraced my natural proclivities more, instead of trying to tamp them down and fit them into other people's expectations and structures. Yeah, I'm thinking of whether there's anything else I would want to say to you.
Nadja Cereghetti Host 40:43
I think that that's brilliant because you know the square peg in the round hole right and especially even though you say you know you were identified gifted early on. But it's about academic achievement. It's not so much about how we perceive the world differently and only this connection we usually make much later in life, if we make it and if you know, like me, I've never been identified in school as gifted. We don't really have this concept here. So even like stumbling across this information was highly by chance, and so I was like, why has nobody told me this? Like now I know why. You know I've gotten all this feedback. You know 40 years of my life. You're too intense, you're too loud, can't you not just be normal? People also had expectations of you. Know how I should behave as a woman, or, you know, as a young person or indifferent.
41:47
Sometimes you're too young, too old, yeah, and I think, as you said, once you start understanding that what we're doing, what I thought what I was doing fitting into the societal norms was adulting, I was like this sucks, I don't want to be an adult if that's what it takes. But I realized like for other adults it's not as hard to fit in or it comes more naturally and, as you said, once you start being yourself, it's freeing, it's liberating and it's like, yeah, and once you do that, that's the first step. But then, connecting with others that are like my name, like you know, when we met in the summer, it's like instant. I don't know, it's hard to describe. It's like you go into a room and you don't have to explain yourself and you can just be yourself and you get married back.
42:46
And nobody told me I was too intense. Maybe they didn't say it to my face, like I just felt there was something in the air. I don't, I can really not describe it. It was just a special moment, walking into this room, surrounded by like-minded people, and I feel like, if you are on top, you know a black person going into a space that you're offered this intersection of being gifted and black. That might be very, very healing and empowering. And so, yeah, I'm cheering you on. Oh, thank you so much. I'm sending all my listeners who resonate with your message towards you.
Kaitlin Smith Guest 43:33
Yeah, Thank you so much, I so appreciate it.
Nadja Cereghetti Host 43:36
Oh, thank you. Thank you for sharing and I hope I see you maybe soon again and we'll wrap up now, but maybe you come back later and share a little bit along the way of your journey in a future episode.
Kaitlin Smith Guest 43:52
I would love that so much. That would be wonderful. Bye.
Nadja Cereghetti Host 43:55
Bye. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I want to say thank you for your time for listening. And if you want to be in the loop of what's coming next and when the next episodes are coming out, then first of all, subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening to, and, second, you can go to the website giftedunleash.com and subscribe to the newsletter. I will let you know when the next episode is dropping or if I have other news for you, so you will stay in the loop. So with that, I'm gonna wish you a wonderful rest of the week and I'll see you next time. Bye.