Episode 2: Holiday Phillips

What will it take to build a wiser, kinder world? That’s what sociologist, teacher, researcher and coach Holiday Phillips’ work is all about. In this episode she talks about her own cultural upbringing, growing up in an almost entirely white community in London as the daughter of second-generation immigrants. Her mother’s family is part of a small tribe of Indians called Parsis, her father’s family is Guyanese. Holiday reflects back on the op-ed that she wrote about performative allyship that went viral and gained her thousands of new followers, while in hindsight she says she would have written something different today. In this interview she shares many great insights about racial justice, really connecting with one another and staying true to yourself. She thinks about past and future generations, especially now that she is pregnant with her first child. Finally, she opens up about the mental and physical transformations during pregnancy and her valuable experiences with being a stepmother. A week after this chat, Holiday gave birth to a healthy baby.

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Motherhood

“I don’t know what kind of mother I’m going to be, but if I know that my baby feels loved by me and his dad and feels accepted by who he is and he feels safe, then I know I’ve done a good job.”

“I want children to fundamentally trust that the world is a good and safe place, because I believe that it is and if we are constantly reminding them of the dangers of things, the world becomes an unsafe place for them, but for most of us the world is a good and safe place and most people are good.”

“One of the greatest things that we can do as parents is to bring up children with strong emotional skills and feed resilience and compassion and that’s up to a huge contribution to a better and more beautiful world and that’s silent work.”

“I’ve really found pregnancy the most amazing experience of my whole life; I’ve loved to body changes; I love all the new curves and the juiciness and emotionally I felt it made me feel stronger and more resilient.”

“My vision for 25 years’ time would be that we return a little bit more to that idea of where “it takes a village to raise a child” and where we’re more doing it as a community.”

Racial Justice

“I think that the movement around anti-racism is incredibly powerful and needed and I have a huge amount of respect for people that are working towards a more racially acquittal world through this one path of anti-racism but I also recognize that it’s limited because it’s a very Western perspective. Because there are so many ways of power; spiritual power, indigenous power, natural power and what we all talk about is really about economic, institutional and political power.”

“Your perspective is always limited, because you can only see things through your own eyes and that’s why we have to listen to different people and challenge our assumptions.”

“You need to have a look at where you have power, so that is what you can do, rather than assuming that everybody needs to be a campaigner or a philantrophist.”

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