Ep. 0 - Introduction

Welcome to Mixed in the Arts! with Jisel Soleil Ayon. In this introduction episode, Jisel shares her mixed story, what you can expect from this podcast, and some quotes about perfectionism.


Links:
Brené Brown's podcast Unlocking Us - https://brenebrown.com/podcast-show/unlocking-us/

Her book The Gifts of Imperfection - https://brenebrown.com/book/the-gifts-of-imperfection/ 

Dr. Jen Douglas’ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drjenofficial?igsh=OXU0aWtqdXh0cjg2

Dr. Menije’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.menije?igsh=MW5ncXQwNmQ0Yms1aw==

Tabitha Brown’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamtabithabrown?igsh=MW16amtwOTlzbDE0OA==

Chapters

• 0:01 Embracing Imperfection
• 10:11 Embracing Afro-Latina Identity Journey

Transcript

Jisel: 0:01

Hello, this is episode one of Mixed in the Arts with yours truly, me, Jisel Soleil Ayon. In this brief introduction episode, I'll go on a hopefully inspirational rant about perfectionism, describe what you can expect from my podcast and share a little bit about myself and my own mixed journey. So get cozy and welcome to Mixed in the Arts. This is kind of a wild moment for me, because I have had the idea for this podcast for many years now At least six years, I think. I'm actually kind of nervous even recording this right now.

Jisel: 0:53

It's crazy, but I did that thing that so many of us do, where we talk ourselves out of actually taking steps toward making something happen for the plethora of reasons our brain tells us we shouldn't or can't. I would tell myself there's no point in starting a podcast because no one would listen to it. I would say, well, I don't have anything that meaningful or special or original to say, so why bother? Why would anyone want to listen to me? I'm not outstandingly articulate or funny or wise. Of course, there's always the classic idea of well, so many other people are doing it, so there's no way I could stand out and no way I could do it as well as others. And then there's the struggle with perfectionism. I never want to start something that isn't going to be immediately perfect, but in this season of my life I'm actively working on that for myself. This is the era of stepping out of comfort zones, forcing myself to take the first step on things that I want to do, even if that step is small and wobbly, intentionally working on, embracing and maybe even loving the discomfort of the learning process, remembering that everyone who we look up to, with great skills and long successful careers and many accolades and lots of accomplishments, did not do it all in one day or on their first try. This podcast is a huge practice in that journey for me. I know there will be a lot I learn about making a podcast and I know that it will start out maybe not so great and get better as I go. And that's okay, because everyone starts somewhere and I figured if this podcast has a positive impact on just one person, that would be totally worth it.

Jisel: 2:26

So while I'm on this topic and before I dive into what this podcast is truly about, I want to share some quotes I found about perfectionism and the learning process. This podcast is a passion project for me, but maybe you have some passion, projects you've been wanting to start, or maybe you've been having similar thoughts that are stopping you from just trying something new. Let these quotes wash over you and take with you whatever resonates, starting out with a sentence that I've basically made my mantra right now. In a rehearsal for Gun and Powder at Paper Mill Playhouse, our director, Stevie Walker Webb, said the speed of fun is faster than your fear and louder than your critic. Now I don't know who or where he heard that from, but it had me shook for the rest of the rehearsal that day. Half the room quickly went to write it down in our scripts. I found a tweet from a former heavyweight boxer, Ed Lattimore, that said embarrassment is the cost of entry. If you aren't willing to look like a foolish beginner, you'll never become a graceful master. That one also really cuts me deep. I normally hate feeling and even thinking I look foolish, but I want to start embracing it instead, even possibly having fun with it.

Jisel: 3:34

Many people know of widely renowned Brené Brown, self-described on her website as a quote researcher and storyteller, who's spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame and empathy. If you don't know about her, do yourself a favor and do a deep dive. She has many interviews, books, a podcast called Unlocking Us, because she is a depth of knowledge and wisdom and everything that comes out of her mouth feels so inspiring to me. In one of her books, called the Gifts of Imperfection, she says Perfectionism is a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought. If I look perfect and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment and blame.

Jisel: 4:18

Understanding the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism is critical to laying down the shields and picking up your life. Research shows that perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it's often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction and life paralysis. Healthy striving is self-focused how can I improve? Perfectionism is other-focused. What will they think? Ugh, seriously, that woman leaves me in awe with every sentence that comes out of her mouth. There's an old quote, most often attributed to the philosopher Voltaire, but it could have originated from Montesquieu or an unknown Italian philosopher, but it roughly translates to perfect is the enemy of good. And how true is that? If you never start something because you want it to be perfect right away, it never even has the opportunity to be good.

Jisel: 5:10

I just saw an Instagram post today that at the top said output of a perfectionist colon, and then it was blank, Blank and that just hurt to look at.

Jisel: 5:23

That was really painful. Along that line, Adam Grant is an author and professor. As an organizational psychologist, he helps people find motivation and meaning and live more generous and creative lives. He says perfectionism isn't just impossible, it's a counterproductive goal. Perfectionists are more likely to burn out and less likely to embrace new challenges. Success depends on high standards, not being flawless. The target is not perfection, it's excellence. Well, read me for filth. Why don't you Adam? Adam Osborne was a British author, software publisher and computer designer, who is attributed saying the most valuable thing you can make is a mistake. You can't learn anything from being perfect.

Jisel: 6:08

A cartographer named Michael Law attributes perfectionism to fear. With his quote at its root, perfectionism isn't really about a deep love of being meticulous. It's about fear Fear of making a mistake, fear of disappointing others, fear of failure, fear of success. Dr Jen Douglas says in her Instagram bio that she quote teaches perfectionist women to let go of external expectations and be content. She says perfectionism is an avoidance tactic. It promises us that if we use it, we will avoid feeling negative emotions, rejection from others and feelings of failure. The problem is it doesn't work. She says when we engage in perfectionism, we are trying to avoid any discomfort Discomfort of doing it wrong, discomfort of being thought less of. What happens. When we start to overcome our own avoidance, we get to live the life we want.

Jisel: 7:00

I took a deep dive into her Instagram and could spend at least 10 more whole minutes just reading you more of her perfectionism quotes of gold, but I'll just link her social media in the show notes. Another perfectionist coach with a great Instagram page is Dr Menije. I actually don't know if I'm saying her name right, so I apologize if I'm not. She says perfectionists are emotionally dependent on the outcomes. Any imperfect outcome can trigger emotions of shame, guilt, anxiety, worthlessness and imposter syndrome. Overcoming perfectionism is learning to detach from the outcome while showing up authentically and courageously. I, as Giselle, hear all these quotes and get really inspired and excited, while simultaneously knowing that I'm being read for filth. But then living these quotes is a whole different beast. I am going to give myself grace when I forget these things, and I hope you do too. Hey hi, quick interjection from editing.

Jisel: 7:56

Giselle, I'm sitting here editing this section and hearing all these quotes again, as I meticulously go through for every little sound and detail that I could possibly fix or change or rerecord, and then it hits me that I am literally trying to sit here and make it perfect as I listen to these perfectionist quotes. It's ridiculous. So I just thought that was funny. And another reminder, and another moment to step back and go hey, Jisel, hey, it's fine, stop, no one's going to notice the things that you're noticing, right?

Jisel: 8:30

So anyway, you can always come back to this episode as a little reminder. Thanks for coming to my tech talk. So okay, here we go, right. So what can we actually expect from the rest of this podcast? Well, good question, thanks for asking.

Jisel: 8:43

In short, you'll hear conversations with mixed-race creatives. Each episode, I'll sit down with people who identify as mixed race and we'll chat about life in and out of the entertainment industry through the lens of mixedness. I like the word creative because it can encompass such a wide array of people and disciplines and, at our core, all humans are creative. So, while the guests on this podcast will very often be fellow performers in theater and film, you'll hear from different types of people across a variety of disciplines. You might be wondering what made me want to start this podcast. Well, I started this because I want to amplify and give a platform to mixed voices and stories. There's a certain type of healing when we talk about our stories and share them with others. I want to foster a deeper sense of community for mixed people. Whether you're a fellow entertainment professional or not, I hope this podcast can serve as a reminder that none of us are ever alone. Some general fun facts about me or, really honestly, just normal facts. At the time of this recording, you might have seen me in the Waitress Tour as Jenna, or on the Philip Hamilton Tour as one of the Schuyler sisters, or on TikTok doing who knows what. I have been performing professionally for the last five years now. I'm a bit of a Disney nerd, a crafter, an escape room enthusiast, a lemonade and fried calamari connoisseur, and cat mama to my fur baby Figaro, who is at this very moment attempting to scratch his way into the closet where I am recording this episode right now.

Jisel: 10:11

But what's my mixed story? Well, let's get into it. My mother is African American and my father is Mexican. My mother was an Air Force brat who moved every two years growing up all over the world. My father was born and raised in Mexico. They made me and my brother, who is three years younger than me. We grew up in a decently diverse area of Southern California. We didn't grow up entirely immersed or anything in either African-American culture or Mexican culture. My mom was separate from African-American culture during her childhood because of living overseas and because her family was the only Black family on the Air Force Base during that time, so she was ever only around other white families. My dad is an immigrant who had to navigate and do his best assimilating and then navigate raising children in a different culture. My close friends in elementary through high school were a pretty well-rounded group of ethnicities who never made me feel like an other or like I needed to be someone. I wasn't, but what I will say is that I spent all of my prepubescent and adolescent years wanting to look whiter.

Jisel: 11:15

Sleeping Beauty was my favorite Disney princess for her alabaster skin and beautiful golden, wavy hair. I dressed up as her for Halloween when I was like seven years old, complete with a blonde wig that we just set on top of my head. I seriously have a picture and it looks ridiculous. We didn't do no wig prep or nothing. You see like at least an inch of my hair from the hairline and then you can see all of my hair in the back underneath. I wish I could just share this photo with you right now so you could actually see this and visualize it, but I just why they let me out of the house looking like this and no one fixed my shit. I will never know.

Jisel: 11:55

I wanted to wear the cool Hollister and Abercrombie clothes all through growing up that didn't have my size and my mom refused to buy at that price point. Anyway, I idolized all the white kids in 2000s Disney Channel shows. When I got darker in the summers I could barely look at myself in the mirror because I thought I looked so ugly. When I was darker. I wanted my hair to be long, straight and flowy and I wanted to be able to run my fingers through it or be able to brush it dry or casually french braid it in cute ways. In fact, I hated my curls, so I got my hair relaxed every two or three months. I straightened it almost every day. Needless to say, my hair was so damaged Basically, to sum that all up, the internalized racism was real, but it wasn't really until college that I started to feel actively othered by those in my own communities.

Jisel: 12:44

Not that I had never felt that before. Up until that point it had mostly been my Hispanic side of my family making fun of me for not knowing Spanish, which was and is its own type of pain. But college was where I truly started to feel not enough of either side of myself, like there were clearer boxes for people than there had been before, but I didn't feel enough of anything to easily fit any box. I think that was one of the reasons why, after my freshman year of college, I started to embrace my natural curls, maybe to prove to people I was a quote-unquote real person of color. Maybe I don't know. At that point I had completely forgotten what my natural hair even looked like and I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen it, not to mention I could no longer deny how damaged and unhealthy it looked after eight consecutive years of putting chemicals and endless heat to it. I'd also never tried a protective hairstyle like box braids, and one time during freshman year, my friend Tab mentioned that she thought I would look really good in them.

Jisel: 13:39

I could not have been more averse to the idea.

Jisel: 13:42

I literally told her I would never, ever get braids because I would feel I looked too black and hate it. My heart breaks thinking about where that past Jisel was. It breaks thinking about how much I despised what I now find to be such beautiful things about who I am. It breaks remembering how much I felt I didn't belong anywhere. It breaks remembering how much I hated myself in that way. It breaks thinking about how nasty I spoke to that girl and most of the negative narrative I wasn't even consciously aware of at the time.

Jisel: 14:16

Well, something snapped my sophomore year because I made the decision to start wearing and embracing my natural curls. I can't even remember if there was one specific event that sparked it, and the hair was just the start of my bigger journey to love being an Afro-Latina. As curly hair girls know, it takes lots of trial and error to figure out what works for your individual curls and I felt a lot of shame that I was starting the journey so late and had so much to catch up on. Shame was a big theme for this time of learning to embrace and love my ethnicity. I even started out feeling like, when I explored aspects of Mexican and African American culture, that I was culturally appropriating my own cultures because of how much of an outsider I felt to them, how much of a stranger and foreigner I felt to them. But I knew I had to work through and pass these feelings that were just untrue, especially when it came to things deeper than my hair, like when a different friend asked if I would be going to black grad when I graduated which, for anyone who doesn't know, is a separate additional graduation celebration some colleges hold for anyone who identifies as black. The idea that she thought I would go felt preposterous to me because in my mind, no way was I Black enough to participate in that. I felt that people there were going to look at me like what is this girl doing here? That friend and I had a lovely moment where she assured me that me, being Black, was Black enough, point blank, period. That conversation was one of the first times someone iterated to me that there is no one way to be Black, no criteria to meet Me. Having Blackness in my blood inherently made me Black enough, no matter what I did. Now to answer the question you might be asking yourself no, I didn't end up going to Black grad, but that is only because I transferred out of that college. But I know that President Giselle would absolutely go without entertaining those same thoughts of not feeling black enough, and I count that as a win.

Jisel: 16:04

But back to the hair. During the COVID shutdown, since I wasn't having to look like my headshots for any auditions, I decided to get braids for the first time. Now, at this point, I was three years into embracing my natural curls. I was terrified. What if this showed me just how little I'd actually improved on loving my blackness? What if I found myself right back in middle school staring into a mirror, looking at my tanner skin during the summer and wanting to vomit? Well, I went, got them done, shared my fears with the woman braiding my hair and then, six hours later, she held up a mirror. When she was done, I started to cry. I thought it was so beautiful. I thought I looked beautiful, and it hit me in that moment that up until then in times I had felt beautiful. It was despite my blackness, and this was the first time I felt beautiful because of my blackness. It was truly one of the most emotional moments for me. I'm so, so happy and eternally grateful. I took that leap, even though it scared me so much. It was a huge step forward in my self-love journey. My hair is now named Tina to personify her, in order to create a deeper connection, and that was inspired by the queen that is Tabitha Brown, whose hair is named Donna. If you don't know who she is, definitely look her up, because she is sunshine and joy personified. I'll link her in the show notes as well.

Jisel: 17:29

Now, as far as I feel like I've come on my hair journey, I know that it truly never will fully be over. I know I still have a long way to go because, if I'm being totally honest, I have moments where I think maybe I want to straighten my hair, just to do something different. And it still scares me to straighten my hair because I feel like I'm going to kind of get sucked back into the for lack of a better term addiction that I had with liking straight hair and wanting my hair to look straight. Like a part of me truly fears that whenever I straighten my hair again, I will see it and love it so, so much that I will start to slip back into straightening it way, way too often and I just will not do that damage to my hair. So, out of fear, I really don't straighten my hair anymore, not even out of a wanting to have my hair look healthy and be healthy, mostly just fear. So it's honestly a goal of mine that someday I don't feel this way, I don't feel a fear of straightening my hair and that I can just, you know, maybe twice a year straighten it. It's still healthy, but I just enjoy a different style and I go back to loving my curls.

Jisel: 18:40

But alas, for now I am still nervous and scared that I will like it too much, especially when people start to compliment you know, you know curly girls, when you straighten your hair sometimes and then you get more compliments on your hair because people are like, oh my gosh, that's so pretty, you look so pretty, your hair's straight, that's so pretty. And then that gets into your head that narrative and that happened all through growing up for me that like, oh well, people like my hair better when it's straight, I get more compliments when it's straight and that starts to seep in subconsciously. But anyway, I'm going on a slightly different tangent here. But the point is I have a long way to go, even though I've come very far, I'm proud and there's still work to do and the beautiful part of life is that those two things can absolutely exist at the same time. I'm sure I'm missing things here and there, and I know that my journey is far from over, but I'm pretty sure that I've caught you up to date on all the big stuff.

Jisel: 19:35

I've stopped using the phrase half black, half Mexican, which is how I always used to describe myself when someone asked me what I am. I would sometimes say Blacksican, to be silly, and while I still like that one now, I mostly say I'm black and Mexican or Afro-Latina, because I am not half or part anything. I am wholly me, and the words we use to describe ourselves have power. If I had heard a podcast like this when I was in middle school or high school, maybe I would have started my self-love journey sooner. Or even just if I had talked to someone else who shared that they struggled with the same things. It would have been so eye-opening to hear someone else who struggled with what I felt was something I was entirely alone in. And of course, I could coulda, woulda, shoulda until I'm blue in the face.

Jisel: 20:20

But the point is now I want to be a resource for the young me's that come across the podcast. I want to be for others what I didn't have. So listener, hi Hi there. You are not alone and all that you are is so beautiful. You are enough. Your power lives in your uniqueness and you are magical. Thank you for going on this journey with me. It's hard to believe this podcast is now officially outside of my head and outside of my notes app. I can't wait to share more stories and welcome you to my guests. We're going to have some fun here. I think you know, and if you don't, keep that to yourself, so get your butt back here when the next episode drops, because I think we're just going to have a really nice time together. You all, okay, if you like this podcast and are excited to hear more support by leaving a review and or sharing word of mouth can really go a long way.

Jisel: 21:29

The cover art is by Madeline Ashton and the theme music is by Austin Deadman, so thank you to both of them. Follow me on all of my other platforms. I'm on Instagram and TikTok at JiselSAyon. That's J-I-S-E-L-S-A-Y-O-N. They will be linked in the show notes as well. When you follow, you officially become a Jiselly Bean. So come on in. The jar is warm. Thank you also to Rachel for that fan name. I've also linked the things I talked about in the show notes of this episode, as well as the podcast's Patreon page. When you become a member on Patreon, you'll get exclusive benefits and ways to interact with the podcast, so go check that out, and thank you so much again for listening and supporting. I am so excited to share more with you here on Mixed in the Arts, where we are blended and brilliant, so I'll catch you on the next episode. Bye.