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What if the shortest path from fear to trust is a conversation you’ve been avoiding? Mary sits down with anti-racism educator and Interracial Sisterhood Coalition founder Karen Fleshman to explore how intentional, story-driven friendship across race can heal divides, strengthen workplaces, and change what power feels like between women. We begin with honesty—Mary naming her background, blind spots, and worries—and move into the systems that keep us apart: redlining and “greenlining,” segregated social networks, and the profit motive behind polarization. Karen shares her pivot from preparing young adults of color for the workplace to preparing workplaces for them, and why solidarity starts with empathy, consent, and practice.
Together we unpack how trauma shows up in the room—fawn, freeze, fight, flight—and how white women’s historical conditioning fuels silence and scarcity. Karen offers grounded guidance for receiving hard feedback without defensiveness, reducing emotional labor, and repairing when harm happens. We get practical about beginning interracial friendships: choosing opt-in spaces with clear community agreements, minding our energy and body language, sharing rather than interrogating, and letting connection grow at the speed of trust. Along the way, nature metaphors help us see the stakes: monocultures are fragile; diverse ecosystems—and diverse networks—are resilient, generous, and honest.
If you’re curious how to expand your circle without making it weird, this conversation gives you words, frameworks, and first steps. You’ll hear a fresh take on solidarity, an invitation to self-compassion as a strategy, and resources to go deeper, including retreats, a membership community, and reading that reframes history with clarity. If this moved you, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review—we read every word and it helps more listeners find conversations that build courage and connection.
You can find Karen HERE.
Karen's LinkedIn
Books mentioned in the episode:
Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden from Us - Anna Malaika Tubbs
Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation - Silvia Federici
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