STORIES OF COMMUNITY RESILIENCE
Episode Description
Advertising and marketing thought leader, Romayne Perera, speaks with Ruhee Meghani. Reflecting on Romayne’s life experiences – of migration, self-care, and community healing Ruhee & Romayne discuss the impacts of community on collective healing and intergenerational trauma.
Episode Transcript Available – Click here.
Romayne read somewhere that emotional generosity is the key ingredient to all human relationships and this has been her obsession since. The practice of emotional generosity is particularly important for Romayne, who understands that those in the communications industry are responsible for how messages are distributed, received and acted upon, as well as how they are amplified, managed or quashed. In her work and in her community, Romayne strives to make people feel seen, safe, understood and appreciated; because that’s how we can contribute to protecting others’ resilience.
Follow Romayne’s Work: LinkedIn
Ruhee Meghani is an inclusive facilitator and public speaker with over 12 years of teaching and facilitating experience. To support others in their learning journey, Allied Collective was founded to solve the need for impactful, inclusive, and accessible training. Today, Ruhee combines these insights with years of experience in teaching to provide clients with engaging workshops, training, and facilitation.
Follow Ruhee’s work: Allied Collective LinkedIn Instagram
Transcript
Note: This transcript is automatically generated, and may contain errors.
Ruhee Meghani: Thanks for listening in. You’re tuning into the Stories of Community Resilience podcast by the Community Radio, 3ZZZ. And today I’m interviewing someone really special. But before we get them on the mic, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we live, the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung people of the Kulin nation, also known as Melbourne, Australia, and I pay my deepest respect to the elders, past and present. Sovereignty has never been ceded, and this was and always will be Aboriginal land. You’re listening to Ruhee. My pronouns are she and her. I’m the founder of Allied Collective, Australia’s first inclusive facilitation and wellbeing agency. I’m also a yoga teacher by passion and I’m so glad you’re tuning in today. With me today I have Romayne Perera. Romayne is a thought leader in the advertising and marketing space who is besotted with imparting authentic values, driven, emotionally generous and informed leadership. So without further ado, can you please introduce yourself, Romayne, to us and tell us who Romayne is?
Romayne Perera: Absolutely. First of all, hello and thank you for inviting me to speak with you today. It’s an absolute honor to be here, speaking with you and being able to share my story, which I am coming to understand to be more and more useful and vital for other people. So it’s a wonderful encouragement to be able to share my story. So where do I start? I have been in Melbourne, for over 35 years. My family migrated to Australia in 1987. I was four years old and it was jarring for all of for all of us, to say the least. And I don’t think I realized that until very recently. So it’s been this incredible exploratory journey for me as to finding my place not only here, in Melbourne, Australia, where we migrated to, but also understanding my place at home, which I still fondly hold on to as Sri Lanka. But being sort of disconnected from that and trying to fit into this. It’s been it’s been a journey and I think it’s been a conversation that has come up more and more frequently for my family and I as to this understanding of belonging and where we belong. So that’s really helped shape the story for now. And that has had an impact and a bearing, I suppose, on how I, how I have gone about what I’ve done in my time here. We came for the opportunity of moving to a, more economically stable, peaceful country. But I’m understanding more and more that that also came with a cost. So of course there’s opportunity. There’s amazing opportunity. I’ve done so much here that I wouldn’t have been able to do in Sri Lanka, but there is a cost that has come with that as well. And that cost has been losing community, losing my voice to a degree because there was a whole process around assimilation in coming to a new place.
Romayne Perera: …and understanding that I’m breaking that down and working out how to how to fit in. So sorry. This has been probably a bit of a long winded answer, but where I’m at now is I’m an advertising and marketing professional. I have been in the space for probably coming up to 20 years in various levels and experiences, and it’s really a space that I think I to this day, I think I fell into and I knew I needed to do something around communications. My aim when I was when I left high school and embarking on my university journey was journalism. That’s what I had on my mind. And some way down the track that got lost and I fell into the communications field. It’s been an interesting experience also in that I have struggled, as I said, with with finding my voice and communicating it adequately. And there have been comments throughout my career that I’ve been too quiet for this industry, like, how are you surviving? Like “you should have excelled or progressed by now, within the industry. But you’re very quiet.” I’m, you know, and there’s just been a lot of that feedback, and it’s only recently that I’ve actually stopped and really thought about it and thought that there’s nothing negative about being quiet. You can move through the world quietly and still have an impact. And so that is what I’m trying to do. I don’t need to have an opinion or a voice about everything and anything. I would rather reserve that energy and put my voice towards where it’s needed, which is what I am trying to do presently.
Ruhee Meghani: Thank you for sharing that. And there’s so much power in that quiet as well. And there’s this concept of quiet power, and in times where a lot of. I’m sure migrants listening to this will relate to that experience of finding the concept of home assimilation, but then also being not enough or too much when it comes to everything and anything, especially women in the professional workspace and women of color, to be very specific. So thank you for sharing that. And I’m sure a lot of listeners will be able to resonate with that experience. So diving deeper and we talk about this concept of resilience, and there’s so much in your lived experience that we’ve had conversations in the past that tie around this. What does resilience mean to you personally?
Romayne Perera: I think in its simplest form, and I’ve thought about this a lot. It’s resilience is knowing yourself, honoring your limits and setting your boundaries. Because resilience, like most things that we’re coming to understand, we talk about productivity, we talk about positivity. We know there is a maladaptive application of those. What we assume are positive traits but applied in like anything in excess becomes toxic. So resilience to me is a very interesting concept. I think it can it can be detrimental if it’s not balanced with a really healthy understanding of yourself and your limits, and knowing where to draw a line. Because, my God, to be resilient all the time is a massive ask. So yes, I think it really is about understanding your situations, your limits and your boundaries and protecting yourself.
Ruhee Meghani: Absolutely. And there’s so much in that. Right. And the burden of resilience, especially on women and women of color, because not only do you have to be resilient with, you know, regular challenges, I guess no challenges are regular, but life’s unique challenges. But then also the added mental load cultural load that comes with that lived experience. So from your point of view and your lived experience as a professional woman of color, what are some deliberations you’ve had when it comes to generational resilience? As you said, you’re still kind of, you know, deliberating over that concept of home and finding your space. What reflections have you had on that concept?
Romayne Perera: Thank you. That’s a great question and a good segue into into like a lot of things I’ve been exploring. I think first and foremost, it wasn’t until very recently that I understood my place and really sort of held a mirror up to myself and honored the experiences I was experiencing that I couldn’t quite articulate or or put into a box, if you like. So during the time of Covid, which was a global test of resilience, it offered me an opportunity like I’m sure it did for a lot of people to reflect on, what are you putting your time into? What is this version of myself? Am I just going along with it? Do I understand enough about myself? How am I showing up? And it was only when I was asked the question by the right people, that I had to sit there and understand my role as a brown girl in advertising a brown girl in society. As I mentioned earlier, when we first moved here, I was four years old and it was just easier to assimilate because I think it was the shock of being in such a new environment, and a choice being made for you as well. And that’s not a slight on my parents, on anyone or anything like that. As I said, the opportunities I’ve had here have been so incredible, that I will always pay heed to those, but I think it is interesting when you then have to adapt to this new situation you’ve been brought into.
Romayne Perera: And I know it’s it’s something that my parents have also had to adapt to themselves, and arguably that’s more difficult. They came here as young adults with two young children in the 1980s. Wild. They left behind, their beloved mothers, and both their fathers, both my mom’s dad and my dad’s dad had both passed away within a year of each other. And they left this community, this amazing, loving community came here with their two daughters and we were faced with like a very stark, individualistic society that we then had to work our way through. So generational, sorry, generational resilience also, has been something that I’m deeply concerned with and understanding how I tap into the resilience of my parents. I know there’s a lot of talk, especially within ethnic communities around intergenerational trauma and the fact that our parents don’t perhaps speak about their experiences. And we’ve taken that on as a real, injustice to ourselves in helping us to understand where how we have landed, where we are, how we react to things, how we adapt to things.
Romayne Perera: But and while I absolutely, 100% agree that that needs to be explored to an extent, I’m more I’ve just I think as you go through life and day by day, week by week, year by year, I don’t know. And I think as you get older too, you just soften and you start to understand other people’s experiences, as opposed to getting on your high horse and having an opinion about everything, which I’m very good at when it comes to my family. Um, and you just understand that everyone has different experiences, and so I’m trying to spin it now and understand what resilience looks like, in its most healthy form. And I’ve been speaking a lot to my parents about it And my mum said something interesting, which was that resilience doesn’t come out until it’s tapped into, and there are challenging situations. There are situations that are more challenging than others. But I think in being completely vulnerable, I would say that every day is a challenge. Like, you don’t know what you’re going to encounter. Um, and we just have the it’s a privilege to be able to utilize tools and tap into community to help help build that resilience. That’s why I think resilience is such a communal responsibility as opposed to an individualistic responsibility.
Ruhee Meghani: I love that so much. I’ve got about a million questions coming to my mind, but I love that concept of. So tell me more about how do you start to reconcile that idea of, you know, moving from that collectivist to the individualist and then again, starting to explore or re-explore not just generational trauma, but also generational resilience and generational wisdom. How were you reconciling that? You know, you’re talking to your parents and that’s amazing. That is so good to have that knowledge. But then also doing that whilst living in a very individualistic society. It’s where where our worth is tied to our productivity all of the time, you know, where, um, where questioned of who are we outside of our work, of our worth, of our value. So how do you reconcile that?
Romayne Perera: That is an astounding question, because it is. It is such a difficult thing to do. And I think fundamentally, it’s another thing that my parents said to me yesterday actually is like resilience also can come down to how you’ve been brought up. And for me it was around patience, composure and an ability to deal and heal with dignity that’s been imparted a lot. and sometimes that is also detrimental because in trying to preserve this dignity and trying to heal quietly and and individually or just within a small collective group, you can still get stomped all over. And it’s happened time and time again and it’s it’s not okay. But when it is just in your nature to heal in this way, I don’t think you should go against that. So there are like a multitude of, I think, complexities that we have to constantly negotiate as to this, you know, living in an individual society, individualistic society, when you have come from a collectivist society. So but I think at its very core, we know that’s what we came from. We know that’s what we need and we have tried, um, and I shouldn’t speak on behalf of my family, but I’m just talking about that experience in that there have been a lot of times where we each have done things individualistically and I did it for a very, very long time, and I thought I had to do things in a certain way.
Romayne Perera: And I neglected community, and there was always something hankering inside me that needed me to to reach out and find it. I always thought it was to do with me going back to Sri Lanka and spending time there, and I still want to do that, but that is not the I attached a sense of belonging to that for so long, until I started exploring that notion of belonging and understanding that what makes what makes me belong. And it’s family, it’s friends, it’s purpose, it’s community. And when you have that, you can belong anywhere. Mhm. You don’t need to belong to a defined space or country or location. And I think just and I honestly think it’s getting older as well. Like you just mellow out a little bit. Suddenly the burnout and the burnout is a it’s a negative effect of resilience if it’s not managed. And I was I was sick of just a constant feeling of anxiety or feeling like I wasn’t where I was supposed to be and just being quite, catastrophic in my thinking about everything. And it just got to a point where that was exhausting and it bored me, really. And I thought, you know, we talk about these concepts of self-care, and just self-care starts with being kinder to yourself, going easier on yourself and and also recognizing and giving in to what you’re used to. Like I am not I don’t want to exist individually like Individualistically. I want community, I want a group of people who I can lean on and lean into and offer the same absolutely for them. So it has been a massive process to get there, and I don’t know that I’ve balanced things, um, to perfection. I don’t think that that concept exists, but I know I’m actively moving towards doing that. So being able to be here with you today is a massive it’s just a massive step in the journey, being able to lend my voice here, um, when I haven’t in so many other circumstances where I maybe should have. But I don’t think I’m getting more comfortable with this concept of it not being a should have. But when the time comes, it will be the right thing to do.
Ruhee Meghani: So I love that so much. And stories have so much power. It is truly how we shape and view the world and also change it. And I love that what you said earlier around deal and heal with dignity. I love that and I would love to dive more into that. But also what you said around, you know that self-care and not wanting to be in I don’t want to heal alone. And I’ve said this so many times before we’ve given been given such a narrow perspective on wellbeing and self-care. You know, it’s a very individualist and a very narrow perspective on what wellbeing should and should look like. But we cannot heal in isolation. We cannot be well in isolation because healing and wellbeing is collective, is in community. It cannot exist in silos.
Romayne Perera: Oh my goodness. Absolutely.
Ruhee Meghani: Tell me more about how we deal and heal with dignity.
Romayne Perera: I just think it comes back to that concept of emotional generosity. I think we are all people existing together. You are not bigger than healing and dealing with dignity comes down to emotional generosity. I think anyone who doesn’t understand the power of emotional generosity, the need, the need for emotional generosity, because we all exist together. We are, whether you like it or not, we are very dependent on each other. We are experiences we think we have individually impact others, whether we know it or not, whether or not we want to pay heed to that. So I think imagining that you live individualistically in your own bubble with no impact on other people, is quite detrimental. It means that there is no accountability, no understanding or acknowledgement, and it’s also you’re kind of diminishing your own power as well because as individuals, we have the power to make people feel seen, heard, loved. And on the opposite side, you can just tear a person down. But through your actions and your inability to acknowledge a requirement, a basic human need for emotional giving. I think that’s where this crossover between resilience and trauma needs to be balanced out. And resilience can’t be a cloak for trauma. It can’t be a mute button for trauma at the same time. It’s difficult for a lot of people to talk about. So I think generationally we as a generation have grown up or have grown into self-help tools, therapy, those outlets for expressing and trying to deal with our trauma. Generations before us. We have to be respectful of what they can and what they’re willing to talk about, because experiences, experiences are individualistic. We have to honor that. How you heal then and how you deal with dignity, that’s where that comes into play, is balancing, balancing both.
Ruhee Meghani: Gosh, I feel like it’s this full circle moment where, you know, we’re talking about tapping into that intergenerational resilience and wisdom. And, you do wish sometimes, you know, I guess my parents, for example, understood the things or see things from my perspective, but also the language and tools and resources, like you said, that is privilege, that the fact that we have access to that at such a relatively younger age that they didn’t. And to be able to tap into our emotional generosity, which may I say, it’s just such an amazing concept. And for us to tap into that, to be able to use that as a channel to get some, generational wisdom from their experiences of resilience. So thank you so much. And I feel like that was such a beautiful way to tie all of those concepts together. If there was one thing you could share with the listeners today, what would it be?
Romayne Perera: From my experience, it would be to find your community. That doesn’t mean you actively have to go out tomorrow and start posting social posts or, you know, like doing a call out for community. But be open to finding community. Be open to finding people who allow you to be who you don’t have to make up a story for. Who will listen and lean on you as they will allow you to lean on them because it’s so important and it’s it’s validating. And there’s nothing wrong with requiring validation now and then and community leads to beautiful opportunities like this where we get to have a conversation on a mic, which I’m very excited about. But to be able to tell our stories and I think, if not that, then what are we all doing? You know, if we’re not sharing stories, if we’re not learning from each other and, and honoring each other’s experiences, I think there’s just a kind of way that we can all get through our days. Then just get through the way we’re living, and we’ve had a conversation, we’ve had conversations about this over and over again, but that this is where I wholly believe in resilience is community resilience. When there are systems and structures outside of your immediate control. Community resilience is how it’s it’s a it’s a method for getting through, for coping and supporting and encouraging each other.
Ruhee Meghani: So 100% and strongly, strongly relate and very much on theme with the name of this podcast as well.
Romayne Perera: It’s my advertising [laughter].
Ruhee Meghani: And my final question to you would be, how do we start to balance emotional generosity with emotional regulation and kind of looking after ourselves, you know, emotionally, how do we strike that? I know there’s again, that concept of balance is very subjective, but how do you personally navigate that?
Romayne Perera: I really try to practice active listening, as a key component of emotional generosity, because when you actively listen to somebody else, you are able to, I think, tap into your own reserve and maybe help this person. You’re maybe able to offer advice or a piece of wisdom, something that can have a tangible effect on them. And I think seeing that, I think that’s human nature. Like if you see that you can have a positive effect on somebody else, if someone receives a piece of advice or information gratefully from you. I believe that is such an amazing response to receive for yourself that can help you then regulate emotions so however you’re feeling at the time. If someone comes to you and they lean on you and you can offer them something to take away, I think that immediately regulates you as a human as well. And suddenly you feel better about the fact that you have contributed to somebody else. And I don’t think it’s a I just feel like that is how we are supposed to be as humans. Yeah, acting with a bit of kindness to give and receive kindness and then understand that concept.
Ruhee Meghani: That is such a beautiful note to end on. Thank you so much for your time, your energy, your emotional generosity, and for introducing us to this concept. It’s been an incredible pleasure to speak with you and thank you again.
Romayne Perera: Thank you so much. Thank you for the opportunity.
Ruhee Meghani: We’ll plug in Romayne’s details in the show notes. And thank you for listening in.
[End of transcript]
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