Opal Jones and Julie Lock

[00:02] OPAL JONES: I'm Opal Jones, 47 years old. Today is October 9, 2023. We are recording in St. Louis, Missouri. I'm with Julie Lock who is my colleague.

[00:17] JULIE LOCK: My name is Julie Lock I'm 68. Today is October 9, 2023. We're recording from St. Louis, Missouri, and I am with my colleague and mentor, Opal Jones.

[00:31] OPAL JONES: Aren't you cute? Well, you know, I'm going to. I know we have some questions we wanted to get to, but I'm like, first, how are you? 68 years old?

[00:43] JULIE LOCK: I know, it's unbelievable, isn't it? You think of yourself in a certain way, and then you get that mirror check and it's all over. Well, no, the wrinkles can't hide.

[00:52] OPAL JONES: There is no mirror check. Honey, you look fantastic. So I want that recorded into posterity.

[00:58] JULIE LOCK: That's great. That's great. Yeah. Well, I might be in a protected group for the first time in my life now, too. You know, if. If being a smart aleck, it could be protected. That would be a whole other. Having a little rascally, rascally quality to my personality could be protected, you know?

[01:16] OPAL JONES: But you know what? You are so vibrant as an individual, which I think makes you great at your job, but it just. It's hard to imagine you as 68. But what is 68? I mean, time. Age may be a construct. I don't know.

[01:33] JULIE LOCK: Yeah, I would say as a 68 year old, it's not. I mean, yes, we absolutely know it is. But the ways in which I experience starting to be invisible in certain spaces, social spaces, or the attention I used to receive based purely on looks or what I assumed to be looks. It's really important to remember in the space of our humanity that different kinds of attention fade, and then other kinds of attention can come to the forefront. Sincerity. Authenticity. Authenticity. Recognition of insincerity. Getting a lot more clarity on kindness and energy. Those reads from people, you're very good at that. You know, that's part of what makes you good at your job, too. And you listen to your gut. You're a very authentic person, and people can experience your energy, and, you know, I can feel your energy from, you know, 6ft away from you.

[02:42] OPAL JONES: Wow.

[02:42] JULIE LOCK: So I think that's good. And we don't have the opportunity in our jobs to talk about those qualities in ourselves. You and I only get to do that when we're grabbing lunch or having breakfast and being human beings together and women together and female leaders together. We can drill it down and be a little more intimate.

[03:04] OPAL JONES: Yeah. It's been lovely to me, to have you as that friend and sounding board over these years?

[03:12] JULIE LOCK: Well, I feel the same way. I could jump into, you know, where we're probably initially first going to be headed related to the missions of doorways and food outreach. But I remember the day I met.

[03:25] OPAL JONES: You, which was when?

[03:26] JULIE LOCK: It was when we were grabbing lunch with Mary and Cheryl.

[03:31] OPAL JONES: Wow.

[03:31] JULIE LOCK: In that we were trying to make a leadership group, you know, very pre pandemic. But you were getting your mba.

[03:38] OPAL JONES: Wow.

[03:39] JULIE LOCK: So you'd already told me how long you'd been at doorways. I'm not gonna, you know, fill in the blanks on your story, but I. My recognition that I need to pay attention, you know, in your space, was already there. Plus, you're cute as a button.

[03:59] OPAL JONES: Well, I'm blushing. They can't see that on the recording.

[04:03] JULIE LOCK: But what do you think about that? Where are you in terms of making meaning out of the history, the long history in which you've been at doorways and where you started and where you are? Do you make meaning out of that, Opal?

[04:21] OPAL JONES: Yeah, I do. So, I mean, I've been with the agency for 15 years, but I think that's an evolving process because the more I understand about the mission, the less I understand or the less I know. I understand about the mission and its significance and what it means to other people in this community. I mean, so much has happened in 15 years. How long have you been around? At least eight now, right? Yeah. So much from the way we treat the disease to the way our clients show up and the different challenges they have. Just my own evolution as a person. I was, you know, when I started at the agency, I was seven years out of being a stay at home mom. Not when I started. When I got in this role, actually, seven years out of being a stay at home mom, I was the CEO of Doorways. So I was young ish. I like to, you know, ish. We'll just leave it at that. So I've been, as a middle aged person, making meaning out of both my life and my history here. You know, I had small children then. You know, I was learning the ropes at doorways. I started at the front desk, and then I was managing program, and it was like, you know, drinking out of this fire hose and understanding all of the complexity of life and the challenges our clients have and just trying to reconcile that with my own day to day. You know, I was married and then I wasn't. And there's, like, all of these different things. And now my children are grown and then doorways has grown tremendously, as you know, and is providing so many more different types of services and, of course, being at the end of our most major initiative, the building of the Jefferson Avenue campus. Now I'm starting to look back and to think about what my legacy is at the agency, how long it makes sense for me to stay there while I don't have any plans on leaving. It's like I am. I'm trying to reconcile all of those things in my brain because I have been there a long time and we've achieved these wonderful things, and it's just a natural time to reflect 15 years into this journey.

[07:00] JULIE LOCK: Wow. My goshen, that's so much. Congratulations.

[07:05] OPAL JONES: Thank you. Thank you. It's, you know, for the team that's worked on this, and, you know, I always like to give credit to the entire team because I'm the front person and, you know, everybody. Oh, Opal. And you've done these amazing things. But as we know, there's been dozens of people who worked on the project, raised money for it, planned it, made it what it is. Wanna make sure that they get credit for all of their contributions before the staff, in particular, many of my direct reports are in their sixties or knocking on the door. And, you know, this is their legacy. This for me, you know, there's a recognition that the building of this campus may be the greatest thing I do in my career. Even if I go on to leave doorways to something else, make more money, have more fame, whatever the case may be. You know, it's interesting to be in this place in time.

[08:10] JULIE LOCK: Yeah, it really is. Some of the things that you've talked about and brought up are also so important to me. I had to remember that when we moved back to. When I came back to St. Louis, I had a three and a half year old. And so I was. I started to work part time at Trader Joe's. Right. What an amazing journey. And now here I am, eight years into getting to work for an organization like food outreach. And I do think about these big markers, you know, what meaning do we make out of all of our choices, including our professional choices? And I absolutely know. And, you know, we can talk about mission and what. And whether or not we felt a real personal calling to our organizations. I know I did. You know, I can launch into that if, you know, if I should talk about that.

[08:59] OPAL JONES: Yeah, why don't you talk about that? Because it's like, mine has not been this kind of straightforward path. But I'm just starting to realize that in life, like all of these different forces may have been working together to put me in this place and time here. So I'm interested in your story.

[09:22] JULIE LOCK: Yeah, I love that. Well, after working part time at Trader Joe's, I got to work for a large university in St. Louis and really grow and learn development and learn cultivation and stewardship and all these really important things to my current profession. But the other single most important job choice I had made in my life was to be at IBM for eleven years and at IBM because I struggled with everything. Being organized, suiting up every day, learning how to work in a very male dominated environment, experiencing the language that I heard, language directed at me, the treatment of me, sometimes in private space, you know, in a one on one or in a larger setting, conference rooms sometimes it really took my breath away. And you have to get, you kind of have to get out of that and grow and mature in order to see that socially. I was limited in certain ways and seen in a certain way and to.

[10:39] OPAL JONES: Put words to it, because I think sometimes when we're a young woman or young people, we don't have the words to identify what is happening to us and to call it out. But you gain your voice as you get older.

[10:52] JULIE LOCK: Yeah. And I now, as an older adult, especially in my sixties, you know, you wake up every day and you think, oh, yeah, okay, the Runway is getting shorter. So what am I going to do? How am I going to make a difference? What impact am I really going to make? And while I know I have impacted people's lives over time, which is vitally important to me, I really pay attention to being at food outreach and instead of being recognized as, you know, you don't have to take looks seriously, but how I looked in my thirties or forties is different. So I've got this gift of knowing when I had the opportunity to compete for this role. And I really felt I took it very seriously. Phone interview number one, in person number two. Group settings three and four. I wanted, I felt clarity about what I'd learned and how much I had to grow. And so I brought that to my interview process. But while I knew I could talk about, I'm comfortable with conflict, I'm very comfortable with disagreement. I know how to manage and I know how to lead and I know how to influence others and I know how to build relationship. And really, you know, our roles partly are to build relationships very quickly. You have to know how to work the room, all these different settings in which we have to be because of our roles. I also knew that I had not been aware of food outreach and its unique and critical role. And as soon as I found out about it, went on the website, because my volunteering had all been in a public school district in St. Louis and in a homeless boys house in St. Louis. When I kind of picked up my head and started to pay attention, I knew that I was being called because of my dad's. The way my dad had to choose to die. There was this beautiful, poignant, turning everything over. My dad had to choose to go into hospice with his cancer, knowing, essentially, he was going to have to starve to death. And I'm also old enough to have lost people to AIDS. And so the combination of my dad having to bear witness with my family and my mom, to my dad choosing to really, over a period of almost six months, starve to death with cancer and have that knowledge of how AIDS can wipe out a person's whole second family, I just. I paid attention. I just felt like there's few times in life other than death, children, maybe marriage. You've got to be present. And so I really took it. I took it very seriously. And I wake up every day not only celebrating the responsibility of that, but knowing that I'm a part of something that's. That elevates our humanity every day on behalf of the people we serve. Yeah.

[14:11] OPAL JONES: And that's right there. That's amazing. And it's the intangible. It is the thing. It's the way you get compensated.

[14:22] JULIE LOCK: Yeah.

[14:24] OPAL JONES: When the other compensation is lacking in nonprofits. And it's such a reward to be privileged enough to do this work.

[14:36] JULIE LOCK: Yeah. It really is.

[14:37] OPAL JONES: To not just be selected, but to endure it, to thrive in it, to all of those things. Cause it's so hard. It's like, don't know that anybody knows how hard this work is unless they've done it. You know, working with marginalized, homeless, HIV populations, all of the things that we do. And there's a beauty in it. But some of that beauty, I think, is because we triumph through it.

[15:07] JULIE LOCK: Yeah. You know, and that's so interesting, Opal, because I'm a couple steps removed, typically, from the experiences of our clients. Not only that, but more importantly, on any day, in any moment, I can never understand. Never understand what any of our clients go through, not only related to public health crisis and disinvestment, but the trauma right there. Trauma and anything that they might experience in a given day. And so I have to be so thoughtful about what I don't know. And being a student in this space and bearing up in the responsibility for that. That every day I've got to learn and then be responsible for people feeling safe, you know, different issues that you and I know we've got to also invest in related to the larger framework of running an organization and protecting the agency. Yes, absolutely. Protecting the mission of the agency so that it can continue to thrive, serve more people. It's such a compelling. It just draws me in all the time. And even though I need breaks.

[16:21] OPAL JONES: Well, who doesn't, right? So what do you think then? Your legacy will be not just at food outreach, but just, like, over the course of your career.

[16:34] JULIE LOCK: So. Well, yeah. Isn't that over the course of your career? And what is it?

[16:38] OPAL JONES: Because it all. It's all building blocks to these moments, right? Like I said, these different things help to guide your path here. And you drew upon those lessons, learned to do a great job where you are. What do you. As you are. Like you said, that Runway is shorter. And you look back through the 40 years you've worked or whatever, what do you. How do you sum it up?

[17:04] JULIE LOCK: Yeah, I don't. And I don't think about it as work. I think because I've always taken myself more seriously in the kindness space, like, paying more attention. Look at me.

[17:14] OPAL JONES: You know.

[17:14] JULIE LOCK: You know, I'm gonna cry. It's paying more attention. In those moments where, you know, like this, I bear witness to this person really treating the checkout person at Chinooks poorly. And what am I gonna do about that? Am I gonna remain silent? Am I going to try to be an agent of something? Decency. Not decency. That's a ridiculous word. I guess paying attention to acknowledging the suffering and the challenges of others and sometimes managing to be in a space where I can just stay calm and be kind. And it's my preference to think nothing brilliant will be on my. Whatever it is, my urna for my little ashes or my body when I donate it. So I honestly, I take how often I can be kind very seriously and stay calm in order to do it, because it happens at work that's unfolding all the time, every single time. How many times do we hear our names? It's just like being a mom. Mom. Mom. Opal. Opal. Julie. Julie. And that magic. Have you got a minute? It's never a minute.

[18:21] OPAL JONES: No.

[18:21] JULIE LOCK: And our friends and our family and our neighbors. So every. Have you got a minute? Can either be a yes or a boundary. I'm not able to do that right now. I'm. You know, I'm giving my best to you. But can we, you know, all that, like how. How we show up.

[18:40] OPAL JONES: Yeah. So it can be draining also, right?

[18:43] JULIE LOCK: Yeah.

[18:44] OPAL JONES: To constantly give emotional support. You know, I worry about that with our staff, who particularly work on the front lines with residents. That's really exhausting.

[18:57] JULIE LOCK: It's huge. It's huge. Well, how do you think about it for you? How do you think about legacy? And, you know, I mean, really, when it comes down to it, you know, I.

[19:09] OPAL JONES: Followed our founding president, and so obviously, her legacy of over 20 something years, building the organization. I mean, she was a lion in the field. She was known. She was known at the national level and so forth as this just great person who built this organization and who reacted at a time at the height of the AIDS crisis. So, you know, when I came into this role, it was never, I'm going to be that.

[19:44] JULIE LOCK: Right?

[19:44] OPAL JONES: How could you be that? It was. I will tell you, part of the reason I applied, it was twofold. It was, you know, there were a few people who whispered in my ear, you know, you could run this place. Right. You know, but it was primarily because I didn't want anyone to take doorways from us.

[20:08] JULIE LOCK: Yeah.

[20:09] OPAL JONES: What I knew was the spirit of that agency, how important it was. Cause leadership can make or break a place quickly, you know, and if the community doesn't have trust in you, in that nonprofit, it's going to go away. And I was just like, we have something special here, and I don't want someone to come in and spoil us. And so that was my primary motivation. And so when I got into this role, I was young. Like I said, it was seven years out of being a stay at home mom. I didn't really. It took me three years to even really fully understand what the job was, how you make it work for you and the organization, what levers you pull, and all of that. So I just wanted to grow it. I didn't have a real plan on how that might be done and just to serve people. But now I see it differently. Eleven years into the role, I know that my job was to be the bridge from the old to the new. It was to take us out of the 20th century into the 21st century. It was to take us out of all of these legacies, some of which held the organization down because it was the way we always did it or, you know, it's what the founders said we should do. And it was to create the infrastructure to allow us to respond to HIV and any special needs kind of support that the agency may do in the future to future populations to position us to do that and to make it strong. And so I'm really clear on that now that that is what my job was to do and that that's what my legacy was, was to transform doorways into a place that is going to respond to the needs of marginalized people in the future and have the resources, the space, the talent there and the community, the credibility in the community to do that.

[22:26] JULIE LOCK: That's so compelling. You know, and I think one of the other things that we should acknowledge is that these sister agencies have been together for 35 years in this region, and we're the only agencies continuing to do this work. There's such a critical and unique role in which the agencies reside in this region. I think that's really important.

[22:49] OPAL JONES: It's a real interesting story how they all got started. We. I'm not entirely sure about food outreach, but, you know, just from doorways, from my understanding, you know, back in the day, in the mid eighties, when there was an organization called St. Louis effort for AIDS, they were figuring out how they were going to respond to the AIDS crisis. And they helped out in many different ways, getting people to medical care and all these different things. But then housing became such a critical need because, as we both know, at that time, when folks were shunned by society, they get this diagnosis, and then they couldn't. Nobody in the family wanted to take care of them. There was nowhere for them to go. And so doorways was birthed out of St. Louis effort for AIDS and became, you know, a sister agency in that way. What was you all's founding story that.

[23:48] JULIE LOCK: We had in that space with doorways and St. Louis Heifer for AIDS? We had a handful of people cooking for their loved ones. And so from those six to eight people, after 35 years, food outreach depends on the work of about 1200 volunteers a year.

[24:07] OPAL JONES: Wow.

[24:07] JULIE LOCK: And I often think about, because a lot of our clients related to cancer, not just related to HIV, but a lot of our clients, based on how they look, where they live, who they love, continue to experience isolation, marginalization, even related to things like breast cancer, where you and I and many people we know have very, very different attitudes and awareness about that, but people are still shunned to based on many different things, including diagnosis. And so one of the things I love to pay attention to is that I'm a part of this board, you know, a 17 to 18 member board, a small staff of under 20, and 1200 volunteers and clients who are willing to come into this space to try to feel respect, you know, everyone is working on respect and care, kindness and dignity. And out of this space can come meeting an individual where they are and trying to see if nutrition and some other things can serve as guides for how they explore and look at their wellness.

[25:23] OPAL JONES: One of the things you mentioned kind of sparked something in me, which is that really, in addition to our missions, providing nutritional support, providing housing and all of these things, it's. We are creating a warm, accepting community for our clients. And then, like I said, it's donors and volunteers who look to belong to something, who want to make a difference, who want to help solve a problem but don't necessarily know how to fit in. But that's one of the ways in which they can give. And I think that that community of acceptance, particularly for the LGBTQ community and communities of color, that is almost as powerful as the roof we put over somebody's head because so many of our clients will tell you nobody in their entire world knows, and that has. Of their HIV diagnosis, and that has to be such a lonely place to be in that you're dealing with a chronic illness and whatever comorbidities and issues you have and your mom doesn't know.

[26:42] JULIE LOCK: Right? Yep. Your sister, your best friend, your cousin, your grandma.

[26:46] OPAL JONES: And in 2023, right?

[26:49] JULIE LOCK: Yeah.

[26:50] OPAL JONES: I mean, yeah.

[26:51] JULIE LOCK: Yeah. And then on top of that, I think one of the other things I pay so much attention to because I can only be in this body, you know, in this lifetime, is that I have to sometimes sit with much, much larger things that have happened and then boil that back, take that back down to the environment in which I work, like Michael Brown or George Floyd. And I am not throwing these names around. I have to. I am obligated not only as an individual, but in my job and in my role, I am obligated to think about that all the time. Or a 16 year old being hung on a fence, you know, in. Out west because he happened to love boys, you know? And so we can. We can look at this in so many different ways. I don't want to go into a mammogram van outside of my church because I'll be outed.

[27:49] OPAL JONES: Right.

[27:49] JULIE LOCK: You know, for going to get cancer treatment, you know.

[27:53] OPAL JONES: Well, I mean, and almost, you know, thinking about cancer or any kind of illness in quotation like that diagnosis, it's like the second something is wrong with you, so to speak, you are treated differently.

[28:09] JULIE LOCK: Yeah.

[28:10] OPAL JONES: You know, you're not a full person somehow, you know?

[28:14] JULIE LOCK: Yeah. That's really important for us to continue to look at. Wow. Yeah. Including and starting with mental health?

[28:23] OPAL JONES: Yeah.

[28:24] JULIE LOCK: Because you and I have learned over time in our roles that mental health impacts the people we serve, starting with.

[28:32] OPAL JONES: Depression and toxic stress.

[28:37] JULIE LOCK: Just the statistics we've been exposed to related to serving our clients. And then that something you said brought me back to this because you and I were raised in certain stricter constructs. The word service is such an older, you know, it's like saying polite or manners and kind of throwing that around. And yet, over and over again I see this story unfolding and individuals share with me all the time. They come back to food outreach clients as well. Clients come back because of how they've been treated. Clients stay in home delivery because of how their van drivers are speaking to them.

[29:20] OPAL JONES: Right, right.

[29:21] JULIE LOCK: They stay and try and work with us in this trusted space. But volunteers, that old idea of service, how can you explain the power of that in a person's life? That person has to make meaning out of that. But it's true that there is something that draws me into that appealing notion of caring for. Caring for and with. And what that does to me and how I feel differently when I go home and how I feel the day I know I'm going to come back and just helping me get out of me and looking at that is still so compelling in the story of our humanity.

[30:12] OPAL JONES: Yeah. Well, there, there is something to me so beautiful about service, particularly working with your hands. You know, my two favorite jobs I've ever had is, of course, this one being the president of doorways, but also waiting tables.

[30:31] JULIE LOCK: Stop it.

[30:33] OPAL JONES: I can't. But so I think that when I'm done with my professional career and I have the money to retire, which is a long, long time for now, from now, I think that I will wait tables part time because I love to serve others.

[30:56] JULIE LOCK: Yeah. So I loved waiting tables. Well, I could make some fun of waiting tables because I was in LA and, you know, I could get it and in Beverly Hills, so, you know, well, that's a story for another day, probably when we do breakfast. But yeah, I love the rhythm and the pace of waiting table and that idea of just laying yourself aside and.

[31:17] OPAL JONES: Serving others and to make people feel good, you know, it's like you make them happy, you serve them, and it's like it's the mom in me, I guess. I love to put that food on the table and have everybody feel good.

[31:29] JULIE LOCK: About it and that rapid repartee, you know, that you can. I know I'm funny sometimes, you know, and so when people are waiting for their food or whatever, whatever it is. And you can, you know, work that a little bit. I love that. All right, now we have to. Do you want to jump into us together as women or do you want to stay here? Do you want to talk about how things have changed over time as a female executive or tell, tell, talk to each other about how you helped me get into bumble. Which one do you want to.

[31:58] OPAL JONES: Well, let's start up with the female executive, because I was, like I said, young, and I always saw myself as the kid in the room. I was 36 when I got into this role and had to grow into it to now I'm like the grown up in the room. But how was. So you only know things from your perspective, right? Because people will say, well, what was it like to be a female? Or what was it like? All I've ever been is a black female. I don't know what, you know, how a male might have been treated.

[32:35] JULIE LOCK: Yeah.

[32:36] OPAL JONES: How about you? Because you've had this longer career than me and where women's opportunities have changed over time.

[32:45] JULIE LOCK: Yeah, yeah. I've morphed and grown right from an environment where, because I started with typewriters, you know, and I can claim. I can claim that space working with all men.

[32:56] OPAL JONES: Well, I did too, but I was in high school, but we were using.

[32:59] JULIE LOCK: The typewriter and, you know, I'm a lot older than you, but, you know, and then what morphed into early piece season. I'm word processing, you know, so working with in all these different groups. But by the time I got into corporate life or by the time I saw myself in LA at a large museum like the Getty, I started to understand more about how economics and race still drive us and our positions for how we're positioned or not positioned for opportunity. And then when I redid my undergrad, I really had to take in, shut up as a white female and let other female voices guide you in certain ways, or at least pay attention to the ways in which, well, in my world, it was lit, to the ways in which other female voices, you know, indigenous, black, I mean, you know, just say, everyone needs to read everything Toni Morrison has ever written, in my opinion, you know, Jhumpa Lahiri and Louise Erdrich, you just read everything they've written, and that's just, they're not speaking on behalf of. But you have to start to take in your white. I had to start to take in my whiteness, you know, 25, 30 years ago. Yeah, hello. But now I can also kind of giggle to myself that being in your forties is one thing, being in your fifties is another. But being in your sixties, you better know a little bit more about who you are. I still came into my role with all the insecurity that I carry around, you know, 24/7 but I know that I can be in a space and say what I have to say on behalf of food outreach sometimes and feel much more confident about that than I could have 20 years ago. And I think a lot of that has to do with age taking in how people used to see me treat me, how I have to bear witness to how women have been treated around me, how men sit in a certain. It's not a construct. Yeah, that is not a construct.

[35:16] OPAL JONES: Right. And so it is interesting age plays a big role in all of this because I'll tell you, when I was in my undergrad, I'm sorry, back in graduate school, when you met me in the MBA program, it was probably 25% female, 75% male. And the young women would talk and immediately the guys would start talking over them. And as the old person there, I was 39 at the time and older than most of them in their late twenties and early thirties. I would have to interject and intervene sometimes and say, wait a minute, she was speaking. Or a couple of times they tried to talk over me. Your presentation, I'm like, no, this is my portion. It's like you had to put those guys in their place. And I don't even know that they meant anything or saw what they were doing. But as the observer who is now much older, you know, it was wild to see that play out in front of me. And then again, here we go. So that was several years ago. I just got back from a trip with the university with the same, not the same, but with a cohort of MBA students, about the same ratio of female to male. And we went on business visits and these different educational opportunities and the females hardly spoke up, except me, who, you know, is the inquisitive loudmouth, used to being in charge, you know, used to assert my voice and I thought, wow, how much of this, you know.

[36:59] JULIE LOCK: Yeah.

[36:59] OPAL JONES: Are we learning or perpetuating and, you know.

[37:03] JULIE LOCK: Yeah, well, absolutely. I think this, this is part of what I, what I always boil it down to. Are you used to being dismissed?

[37:12] OPAL JONES: Me?

[37:12] JULIE LOCK: No, no, what I'm, what I'm saying.

[37:14] OPAL JONES: Oh, in general.

[37:15] JULIE LOCK: In general. So now I've, I've, you know, right. Been around for this long. Are you used to being dismissed in every single possible iteration of a relationship? So the answer is yes, right? The answer is yes. And so the way in which you not only come to terms with that, but try not to. Like, in my thirties, I needed too much attention because of how often I was being dismissed. And the ways in which I tried to take up space were inappropriate sometimes, or interruptive or disruptive. Now I can sit with it and calm down first, and then either speak on behalf of somebody else a little bit, you know, do what you did and interject and, you know, be the boss.

[37:55] OPAL JONES: Yeah.

[37:56] JULIE LOCK: Or be the whatever in the room, or just sit and wait and then say, you may not speak to me that way. You know, whatever it is. I mean, there's so many iterations of this, but, yeah, I think it's sadly. Are you used to being dismissed? I mean. Yeah, for crying out loud, 40 years.

[38:12] OPAL JONES: Yeah. Used to being dismissed or taught in these cues, these subtle cues not to assert yourself in your voice.

[38:21] JULIE LOCK: Yeah.

[38:21] OPAL JONES: You know, because maybe that isn't lady like or whatever, you know, or what.

[38:27] JULIE LOCK: We'Ve been taught about men.

[38:29] OPAL JONES: Mm hmm.

[38:29] JULIE LOCK: In grade school. First grade.

[38:31] OPAL JONES: Yeah. That they are naturally in charge. They are naturally the one that's going to speak up, protect, and all of these things. Yeah.

[38:39] JULIE LOCK: That'll be a conversation for a different day.

[38:43] OPAL JONES: Well, we have been on a journey, the two of us.

[38:47] JULIE LOCK: Yeah. We really have. I'm so grateful that you're my mentor and my colleague.

[38:52] OPAL JONES: Stop calling me that.

[38:54] JULIE LOCK: No, I see you that way, but it's for good reason.

[38:56] OPAL JONES: Yeah.

[38:57] JULIE LOCK: You've counseled me, you know, several times, and in personal as well, so I really appreciate that. And I. We should be able to affirm each other in all those different ways. And we can. And we do.

[39:08] OPAL JONES: We can and we do. And I'm grateful to have you in my life.

[39:11] JULIE LOCK: I'm really grateful for you, too, Opal. I'm hugging you right now.

[39:14] OPAL JONES: It.