There is a hard sentence going around the internet: no one is coming to save you. It usually arrives shouted, with a whistle and a cold plunge attached. When Dr. Yemi Penn said her version of it to me, it sounded completely different. It sounded like relief.
Her version goes like this: the person you have been waiting on is already here, and it is you.
I have been sitting with that for weeks now. This whole episode is really one long unpacking of that idea.
Listen or watch the full conversation
Prefer Apple Podcasts?
You can also watch the full episode on Facebook if that is where you usually hang out with us.
Why this one hit me differently
I have spent a lot of my life waiting. Waiting for the right time, the right permission, the right person to finally notice.
Here is the part I did not plan to say out loud on my own show. For years my existential OCD kept me locked inside a version of reality where everything felt one step from collapse. I did not call that a story. I called it the truth.
When Yemi described the realities that hold us hostage, I recognized mine instantly. And she did not try to fix it. She got curious about it with me, which turned out to be the whole point.
Meet Dr. Yemi Penn
Dr. Yemi Penn is an engineer by first profession who became a researcher, keynote speaker, and filmmaker. She holds a PhD, and her research looks at how cultural trauma moves through communities and across generations.
She hosts the podcast Decolonising Trauma and describes herself as a Cultural Alchemist. In 2025 she received the Nancy Millis Award, given to people recognized in the top five percent for the impact of their work. She is also creating a documentary that continues her own story of childhood trauma.
She is not a clinician, and she is careful about that. What she offers is lived experience and years of research, not medical advice.
What struck me most is how she works. She does not hand you answers.
How they feel is they remember who they are, because I become a mirror for them.
Dr. Yemi Penn
Find Dr. Yemi Penn at:
- Website: yemipenn.com
- Instagram: @dr.yemipenn
- LinkedIn: Yemi Penn
Why we wait for rescue in the first place
I asked Yemi the obvious question. If the rescue was always going to be us, why do so many of us wait anyway?
Her answer was four words long and it flattened me.
‘Cause we don’t want to disappoint ourselves.
Dr. Yemi Penn
Waiting is safe. As long as the rescue is someone else’s job, you never have to find out whether you could have done it.
This is where her version parts ways with the shouty version of this idea. Nobody here is calling you lazy. She is naming a fear most of us have never said out loud.
Rebellious curiosity, the method underneath all of it
Yemi’s whole practice has a name, and it sounds more aggressive than it is.
Rebellious curiosity is asking the question no one is willing to ask, and having the courage to answer as radically honest as you can without blaming anyone.
Dr. Yemi Penn
That last clause is the load-bearing one. Without blaming anyone, including yourself.
Most of us manage one half. We ask the hard question and then hand out blame for the answer, or we skip the question entirely because we can guess where it leads.
She came to this honestly. She spent her first career as an engineer, living on fixed answers and tested certainties, before becoming someone who works in far less measurable territory. She described the shift as learning to live in the tolerance, in the plus or minus of a calculation rather than the number itself.
The story that might be keeping you company
Here is the question of Yemi’s that I have actually been using on myself since we recorded. When a story about yourself keeps resurfacing, ask how it is working out for you.
Maybe this story that you seem to not like is actually keeping you company.
Dr. Yemi Penn
Some of my oldest beliefs about myself are not sticking around because they are true. They are sticking around because they are familiar.
Part of Yemi’s research asks where those stories come from in the first place, and often they did not start with us. Sociologists use the term cultural trauma for what happens when a group feels marked by a terrible event in a way that reshapes its shared identity going forward, a framing laid out in Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity.
There is also research on how this travels down through families. The American Psychological Association has pointed to findings on the intergenerational effects of historical and collective trauma, including work on possible epigenetic transmission, in its resolution on trauma recovery.
Yemi’s lens on this is her own, and she does not soften it.
A decolonized lens says black and brown people are not synonymous to trauma. And I know that might be hard for people to take, but that’s what decolonising is: what’s the other story that we don’t know?
Dr. Yemi Penn
Get specific, or you cannot work with it
So how do you start telling your real self apart from the inherited script? Yemi’s answer is refreshingly unmystical. Name it, and refuse to be vague.
Don’t make it general. “Yeah, I grew up in a dysfunctional family.” No, what is the dysfunction? Be specific. Is it about money? Is it about your relationship with food? Get very specific on what that is, because then you can work with someone.
Dr. Yemi Penn
You cannot work through something you keep blurry. I think about how often I have described myself in terms so broad there was nothing to actually grab onto.
Vagueness feels protective. Mostly it is just a good hiding place.
What if you have no time for any of this?
I put this to her directly, because so many of you are parents or working jobs where your calendar is not yours. Inner work can feel like something other people can afford.
Her answer was not a five-step morning routine. It was subtraction.
I used to set myself a rule of, I need to cook five meals a week. I cut it down to three. Break a few rules, bend a few rules.
Dr. Yemi Penn
Not another practice stacked onto your day. One of your own quiet rules, removed.
I do a version of this with walking. Some days it is around the block, some days it is 45 minutes through the city, and I have finally stopped punishing myself for the difference. If that lands, you might also like why rest can feel so guilty.
Being your own rescue does not mean being alone
This is the part the shouty version always misses, and it is why I wanted this conversation on the show.
Yemi talked about being witnessed, about what it does to a person to finally be seen and believed. She pointed to the Zulu greeting Sawubona, which carries the meaning of I see you, and she was open about still learning its full response.
Being your own rescue is not the same as doing it in isolation. It means you stop outsourcing the decision. You can still be held while you make it.
And she left us somewhere kind. She pointed to what Tarana Burke and Brene Brown said best, that you are your best thing, then added her own turn: it counts even with the shadow parts, and especially with them, because working through those is where the gold is.
I do not think she means love every part of yourself today. I think she means you can stop treating pieces of yourself as the enemy while you work.
Key takeaways
- Waiting protects you from disappointing yourself. Naming that fear is usually the thing that gets you moving again.
- Ask the hard question, skip the blame. Rebellious curiosity only works when the honesty is not pointed at a villain, including you.
- Check whether the story is keeping you company. Familiar is not the same as true.
- Subtract a rule instead of adding a practice. When your time is not your own, removing a self-imposed rule is the realistic move.
People also ask
What does “no one is coming to save you” actually mean?
It means the decision to change your situation is yours rather than something you can wait for someone else to make. In Dr. Yemi Penn’s framing it is not a scolding, it is a release, because the person with the most power over your life is the one already living it. It does not mean refusing help or going it alone.
What if no one is coming to save me and I feel stuck?
Start smaller than you think you need to. Name one specific thing you are stuck on rather than describing your whole life as stuck, then ask whether the story you tell about it is actually serving you. Support still matters here, and a therapist or counselor can help you work through what surfaces.
How do I take responsibility without blaming myself?
Separate the pattern from the verdict. Responsibility asks what you will do next, while blame asks whose fault it was, and only one of those moves you forward. Naming what happened honestly is not the same as deciding you are the problem.
How do I know if a belief is really mine?
Name the belief as specifically as you can, then ask whether you arrived at it yourself or watched someone else live it first. Beliefs that came from somewhere else tend to feel like unquestionable facts rather than opinions you formed. Getting specific is what makes the difference visible.
Before you go
What stays with me is that Yemi never once told me what to do. She asked better questions and then let me sit in them. She would rather be a mirror than a guru, and that is exactly why any of it landed.
If this is your first time here, the podcast page is a good place to start.
This conversation goes to some tender places. If you need support, you can always find real resources at the Mental Health Resources Hub.
Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and this is not medical advice.
Much love. Good vibes. – Ky
Full transcript
Here is the full conversation, word for word, if you would rather read than listen.
Read the full transcript
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (00:00)
It’s the reason why you can be driving down a bridge and you can feel it shaking and you’re like, uh-oh. But the engineers would have done the calculation for that tolerance. Where I decided to live, which is why I don’t think it’s much different to being a cultural alchemist, is I live in the tolerance. I live in the plus minus two to twenty percent.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (00:17)
Hey, what’s good everybody? Welcome back to The Vibe With Ky Podcast, the show where we talk about mental health and ADHD and the beautiful chaos of being human. I’m Ky, and I’m really glad that you are here with me today. So, listen, we spend so much of our lives waiting, waiting for the right time, the right person, the permission, the rescue. And every now and then, someone points out that the person you have been waiting on to save you might actually already be here. That person
might be you. That idea sits at the center of this episode today, and it’s it’s equal parts freeing and terrifying. That’s exactly where my guest lives. Dr. Yemi Penn is an engineer by first profession who became a researcher, a keynote speaker, a filmmaker, and the host of her podcast Decolonizing Trauma.
In 2025, she received the Nancy Millis Award, given which is given to people in the top 5% for having impact of their work in the world. She has a real gift for making heavy academic ideas feel like a talk with a friend who actually gets it. So here’s what’s in this episode for you today. Dr. Yemi explains what she calls rebellious curiosity, asking the the question nobody wants to ask.
And answering it honestly without blaming anybody else. She breaks down how to tell your real self apart from the inherited story that is oftentimes running the show. And on top of that, she also offers a question that honestly stopped me cold. One where one you can ask about any story that you keep telling yourself. And that question is this: the question is: how is this actually working out for you?
There’s also this moment in the episode where Dr. Yemi, Dr. Penn describes the the version of reality that holds you hostage. And I told her the truth. Ma for me, years, years have of have hold hold me down. My my existential OCD it’s locked me into exactly that. always one step from everything just falling apart. That’s really been something that I had struggled with in my life.
And what she said back to me when I brought that up, it honestly it reframed it for me. And I’m really glad that she did that. And it I I left this conversation feeling lighter and and and just more heard, you know, about about being a person that that I had been waiting on. You know what I’m saying? So with that said, my friends, I think you’re gonna enjoy this episode. Please sit back, relax, and enjoy my chat with Dr. Yemi Penn.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (02:46)
My friends, I am sitting here with Dr. Yemi Penn Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I appreciate you.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (02:53)
I’m excited likewise. I’m excited to see what we cook up together.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (02:57)
Yes, absolutely. I’ve been sitting with one phrase of yours all week as I was prepping for this, and that is rebellious curiosity. I love this. Most of us were raised to treat curiosity as something polite, something that you raise your hand for, but you bolt the word rebellious onto
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (03:19)
Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (03:19)
it.
you know, the two were always meant to live together, which
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (03:24)
Mm.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (03:25)
I really appreciate it. So in what ways did rebellious curiosity first show up in your own life long before you had a language for it?
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (03:33)
I should have known. I should have known that your ability to ask questions that would reach my inner soul with with just
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (03:38)
Ha ha ha.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (03:39)
I love good questions, hence the rebellious curiosity.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (03:42)
Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (03:43)
when do I feel I probably did it? I I would say way early beyond the time I even remember. So I’m gonna say my younger years, and we might talk about my lifespan because it’s very, it’s very
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (03:50)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (03:55)
sketchy. I I actually don’t know the timeline of my younger years, but a memory that I probably would have.
Would be it would have been the equivalent of seventh, eighth grade, year seven, year eight. This was in Nigeria,
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (04:06)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (04:07)
and my mum in particular, but my parents had decided to put me in boarding school. And I I like to make it clear because my British accent can give the impression I went to boarding school like what Prince Charles and Harry did. No, no, it’s not like that. It’s the scene of survivor
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (04:21)
Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (04:24)
where there is no helicopters or anyone coming to save you. So that was.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (04:27)
Yeah
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (04:28)
Nigerian boarding school. And I think my first act of rebellion was after year seven saying, yeah, I’m not going to survive in this or I don’t want to survive in this. So I would write letters to my mum incessantly, who at the time had relocated back to the UK with three
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (04:44)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (04:45)
of my younger siblings. And I would do everything to say, yeah, I don’t, I don’t want to be here for five years. can you can you send for me?
I think that would be my first rebellious act because I was seen as the good girl who didn’t question authority. And
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (04:58)
Right.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (04:59)
and so the fact that I got curious and then rebellious to go against the grain from a cultural perspective in a decision
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (05:05)
Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (05:05)
that obviously appeared to be final was probably my first act that I can remember. And and but I think it’s been subconscious in a lot of my actions over the decades, and I only gave it language a couple of years ago.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (05:17)
I love this and I love your story and before we get even deeper into this conversation, I want the people that are watching and listening right now to know where they can actually stand in a room with you because this upcoming September, you’re speaking at the largest Transforming Trauma Conference and the link for anybody that’s interested is gonna be in the show notes for this.
For
the people that are going to be in the room with you during this moment, how would you describe the kind of person who walks out of that room changed even slightly by hearing your story, by hearing you speak?
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (05:50)
gosh, my gosh, I’m having goosebumps everywhere. How they feel is they remember who they are because I become a mirror for them. So a lot of my work, and I don’t want to just use words for the sake of it, is I I’m still learning very much though, is decolonial. I don’t want to be the thought leader or the teacher or the keynote speaker or the workshop facilitator who tells you what to do. I want to embody.
What I am experiencing myself, so that I may be a reflection for you to be your own guru, for you to be your own teacher. So they will leave that space remembering who they are, what they’re capable of, who they are before the diagnosis, before the acronyms were given to them. And hopefully they will start to uncouple. Like they might look at me and say, Yemi, that was great, what you did was great. But what I always do, and this is going to be a spoiler alert, is when people come up to me and say,
Yemi, you’re just amazing, your life story. And I said, for you to witness that brilliance in me is because it exists in you. You cannot
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (06:47)
you
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (06:48)
see if it so that’s what they leave with. Would they leave with the remembering of themselves, but purely because I am I’m a reflection of them and vice versa.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (06:56)
And so let’s talk about what they’re seeing here because you as a reflection aspect because you started out as an engineer, which is a profession that is mainly built in my opinion, built on fixed answers. It’s built on on tested certainty. And today you call yourself a cultural alchemist.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (07:17)
Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (07:17)
Now
those two worlds don’t usually don’t usually share a table. So how did the engineer in you make peace with the work that can’t be measured on a gauge?
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (07:28)
so I’ve just got this download. And even though engine and you’re right, engineering, there there’s a there’s a little tolerance, very little tolerance
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (07:36)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (07:36)
of where you can get things right or wrong. It’s the reason why you can be driving down a bridge and you can feel it shaking and you’re like, uh-oh. But the engineers would have done the calculation for that tolerance. Where I decided to live, which is why I don’t think it’s much different to being a cultural alchemist, is I live in the tolerance. I live in the plus minus two to twenty percent.
Now, depending on how you see things, you think that’s small for me, that’s huge. You build a whole bridge
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (08:01)
Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (08:02)
and you’re telling me it can shake while I’m driving. Let’s
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (08:04)
Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (08:05)
figure out what’s in that tolerance. Where can I go? And I’ve just taken that into the element of cultural alchemy, which sounds very, obviously very different. And it is and it isn’t. But I figured out whilst being an engineer and working on transformative projects, because that’s what they were called, transformation projects, was I’m in the business of people.
We’re all
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (08:24)
Mm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (08:24)
in the business of people, even in AI, in any of that. And I thought, well, okay, how can I have bigger impact? And I found out very quickly than rather be this solo engineer or project manager, my impact in the world could be significantly more if I decided to focus on the people element, regardless of their job title.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (08:43)
And you’ve had quite the impact on the world, my friend. In 2025, I’m going to brag about you for a second.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (08:49)
Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (08:49)
In 2025, you receive the Nancy Millis Award, which recognizes the top 5 % for the significance of their impact. Now, recognition like that can feel like either a finish line or a starting gun, depending on the person.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (09:07)
Hmm.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (09:10)
Why did that award land differently than you expected it to?
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (09:14)
Is it even is it is it normal or natural for me to blush? Okay, I’m gonna need to sit with that emotion.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (09:19)
Ha ha ha!
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (09:20)
what did that mean? I mean, I’m just impressed that you’ve you’ve done the research and I and I I also thank myself for being open and sharing it. When when I got told that I got that award, and I talk about imposter syndrome, imposter syndrome came to visit me
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (09:34)
Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (09:35)
because
My version of imposter syndrome is if I can do it, it can’t be that big a deal. So, right, we can we can we can belittle it. Like I’m like,
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (09:44)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (09:45)
yeah, I did it because of this and because of that. Even when I got a first class in mechanical engineering, despite failing in in what we call A levels in the UK to get to I like it, it it was I was still telling people, I only got a first class because I strategically figured out what questions they were going to ask this year because they hadn’t asked it last.
So I would give excuses, and that was the same for this. So I got this medal, and I’m like, yo. And I started thinking, is it because I’m A, B, C, D? And and you know, I now know how to get down the imposter syndrome spiral quickly. And it was, no, yeah, because you worked hard, because you spoke about things in a way that a lot of researchers don’t do. And it it was probably the first time, now that you ask me, and I think, that I that I thought.
you deserve to be here. You deserve to be amongst the greats. And and there’s still work to be done because one should not wait to get the medal to
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (10:34)
Yeah, sure. Yes.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (10:39)
know that.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (10:39)
Agreed, agreed. It’s funny that you mentioned that because it was, I it was 2024. I was recognized by JCI USA as one of the 10 outstanding young Americans. And I’m in this room at this ceremony and the imposter syndrome took over my body. I’m in this room with 900 other individuals that are, know, one was like a military veteran, another was a
a
woman who’s helping underprivileged parents get school supplies for their children, like these people that are doing these really significant things, and then me. And so like I was in here, I’m like, I don’t feel like I don’t know if I deserve to be here. But then I kind of had I kind of reminded myself that I do I worked hard to get here. I worked hard to get to this point in my life. And I should be proud of that.
And that internally is the work that I had to do. like as you’re sitting here describing that story, I was like, I think I know, I think I know that
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (11:35)
Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (11:36)
that feeling. And I appreciate you and the work that you’ve done and that recognition is obviously well deserved. And on top of all of that, you host a show called Decolonizing Trauma, right? And
That title alone, I think makes some people either lean in or they’re gonna tense up, you know, when they hear it. So for the people that are hearing the word decolonizing in a mental health context for the first
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (12:05)
Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (12:06)
time, how do you explain what it actually means for someone’s inner life?
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (12:11)
There are a number of thought leaders, practitioners, scholars who are talking about this more. Like it’s been spoken about for a long time. I a lot of my work was off Linda Smith, who’s based in Aotearoa in New Zealand. And there so there are a number of definitions, but this is the one I like the most because part of my superpower is reducing complex language into something simple. It it doesn’t make sense
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (12:31)
Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (12:32)
if it’s all on these academic shelves if we can’t relate to each other.
For me, that the term I I like the most when I say decolonizing is to just move away from a dominant narrative. So if someone said this is what ADHD is, I’m just going to assume based on the language, and you know, I don’t know how far a lot of the listeners are in, but the the DSM, which is a diagnostic statistic manual, I think it’s it’s it’s basically the book
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (12:55)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (12:56)
that would come up with diagnosis like ADHD ADD.
A lot of it was based on a westernized, what we’re going to call a colonized form. It didn’t take into account
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (13:03)
Yep. Yep.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (13:06)
the global majority. And global majority is the fact that there are so many other cultures outside of what we call white. Now, I want to make this clear: you could be white and white appearing, and you have still not had your history taken in. And that’s what a lot of my research was. So the decolonizing part was.
I’m going to move away from the dominant narrative, the one that we’ve heard on repeat, the one that constantly gets the the interest. Doesn’t make it
wrong.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (13:33)
Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (13:34)
I want to know what the other part of the story is. So the decolonizing was:
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (13:37)
Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (13:39)
can I look at trauma a different way from what we’ve typically seen and heard in most Western countries? And and case in point, you know, and I know that it can be a topic can divide us, but people just lean in.
As a black woman in Australia, where I live at least half the time of the year, I’m living in a country that has the longest living indigenous culture. When I told my supervisors that I wanted to look at the transformation of cultural trauma, one of them automatically said, Brilliant, maybe you can study the challenges that black African women have in Australia. And I was like, whoa, whoa. The decolonizing lens that I didn’t know I was using was no.
You do know non-black people go through trauma as well, right? You
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (14:22)
Right. Right.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (14:23)
you do. So I said, I want to be agnostic to the colour. Culture does not mean colour. And that was already one, you know, one decolonized view that I was in this academic institution that assumed that based on that part of my identity, that’s what I was looking for. And so I my PhD was part documentary.
It’s, you know, if people looked at it, they would they would say, and I think I did get some negative feedback from because I made it very community based of Yemi, there aren’t enough indigenous or black people in there. That that that was actually the opposite of what I was trying to do, because a decolonized lens says black and brown people are not synonymous to trauma. And I know that that might be hard for people to to take, but that’s what decolonized in is what’s what’s the other story that we don’t know?
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (15:07)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, there’s this line of yours that kind of stopped me cold as I was doing my research for this. You say, the person we have all been waiting to save us is the one listening right now.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (15:23)
Mm.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (15:24)
That is beautiful. It is also a little terrifying because
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (15:27)
Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (15:29)
waiting is so much easier than acting.
I feel, why
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (15:32)
Yeah. Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (15:35)
do you think so many of us would rather wait for rescue than accept that we might be the rescue?
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (15:42)
‘Cause we don’t want to disappoint ourselves.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (15:44)
Yeah. I was afraid you’re going to say that. It’s true. Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (15:46)
And so I yeah, because we don’t, but
but let’s break it down so that’s even less scary. We don’t want to disappoint ourselves. I think also there’s a part of not wanting to feel alone. I think it’s a part of not feeling enough. that was it. Sorry. So this is something I’m also going to speak very openly. I’m in perimenopause every now and again I get a thought that disappears. And and I I love saying it publicly. I never want it cut out. When I’m on stage, I tell people because I show up as the full human.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (16:12)
Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (16:12)
But this
is the other thing that I and it’s just left me again speaking about perimenopause. But one one of the things we do is I think it’s easier, and we’ve also been trained to expect somebody else to do it. Whether it’s a government, whether it’s our mum and dad, even my kids, I say, kids, I know I know I I know I I I give the impression I know more than you do. And I think I do, but I don’t know everything. I’m still trying to figure this out.
I’m still like I said some dreadful things to my son the other day. And
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (16:42)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (16:42)
what I know with my work is that I need to reduce the length of time in which it takes for me to try to heal that wound. So if I say something that’s
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (16:50)
Mm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (16:51)
harmful, I don’t wait. If it’s if I can do it in three hours of saying it, I do it. I do whatever I need to do to come back. But I said I I don’t I don’t have the manual. I’m figuring it out. But what what
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (17:01)
Hmm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (17:01)
I do do now is make sure that I don’t try to subscribe to perfection. And I think that’s the other thing.
The reason
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (17:07)
Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (17:07)
why we get nervous about being the one we’ve been waiting for is because a number of us have been or have born have been born into this idea of idea of being perfect. And if you think of culture as we have it today, I mean it’s it’s softening a little bit, I think, but we we cancel people for what was said and done decades ago. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t any repercussions, but we we’re cutting people’s lifelines. Like so.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (17:33)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (17:35)
So the standard in which we have been born into, the standard in which we have engaged in, becomes the standard we put against ourselves. And the idea that we are then gonna be the one that needs to come and save ourselves based on all of that is terrifying.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (17:49)
Yeah, let’s dive deep into that that passed down cultural idea for a second because your research obviously looks into a lot of the cultural trauma. Like I’m talking
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (17:57)
Mm.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (17:58)
specifically about the kind of pain that gets
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (18:00)
Mm.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (18:00)
passed down before we’re even old enough to consent to carrying it in the first place. A
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (18:05)
Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (18:06)
lot of us inherit a script and we assume it is simply who we are.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (18:12)
Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (18:12)
So how do you help someone tell the difference between their actual self and the inherited story that seems to be running the show at times?
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (18:21)
Firstly, so I’m forty-four, about halfway through what appears to be a life within the Western world.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (18:28)
Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (18:28)
And I’m going to judge off the fact that I I, you know, I listened to the Angela Davis of the world, the Gabriel Maté the people in the transforming trauma space, and I know they’re still learning. So the first thing is let’s take the pressure off. It might take us
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (18:41)
Mm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (18:42)
a whole lifetime and beyond. So the way I look at things now is well, what can I do now to figure out what I inherited?
what’s mine, what I can let go of. First I can do it for me so I can live the most great, joyful, peaceful, liberated life. If you’ve got children or you’ve got nieces or nephews or generation that looks up to you, there’s also something really beautiful about acknowledging that you can pass on wisdom, even if you don’t finish whatever you’re trying to do. So I think that’s the first thing. Let’s take that pressure off that we might not get through all of it in this lifetime. But I think this is where rebellious curiosity is, is that every time something is uncomfortable in your life,
Or in particular comes up on repeat as a pattern. For instance, it could be a relationship. Why do I always go into relationships with these people? Why am I always the one that people take, you know, in the UK we say take the piss at? Why do people take advantage of me? Why does
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (19:31)
Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (19:31)
it feel like they do the like if you see things on repeat, get rebelliously curious and and just and and usually I say ask high quality questions and then be radically honest with yourself and say, Well, where does this come from? Without judgment.
like, well, because they see me as this. And then I say, okay, if we could not blame anybody else, including ourselves, but just say, what is it? Well, it’s because I’m too kind. Why are you too kind? Well, it was because I had a family member that was never kind. And so I promised, like
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (19:58)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (19:59)
if you got if you didn’t blame anyone else, just to begin with, and and don’t blame yourself, you can start to pick up, well, what is it that was an adopted way for me to survive that I did this?
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (20:09)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (20:10)
And then I mean, there can be other things. I mean, I’m about to do a conference in a couple of months on the GLP one drugs. And
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (20:18)
Mm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (20:18)
because I’m a researcher and I have used them, I’m a researcher and I you I’m I’m also a fitness instructor. I’ve owned the gym and I’m I’m in both worlds, and I’m also conscious that people have views on it. There are
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (20:28)
Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (20:28)
some things we inherit. So I say GLP one because
Ozempic was brought up for those with diabetes. My dad had diabetes. Now, this is this is biological. So we can also
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (20:38)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (20:39)
inherit biological physical traumas that manifest differently.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (20:43)
Right.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (20:44)
Sometimes we’re lucky enough. So if we can get curious about that as well. So when we find ourselves saying, why am I always overweight? Or why do I have an overactive thyroid and I can’t put on weight, also get rebelliously curious, but you have to look at it with a decolonized lens. We keep, and I always
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (20:58)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (20:59)
get this wrong.
Sometimes we don’t look at the root cause, we just look at the immediate symptoms, but we could actually go
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (21:04)
Mm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (21:05)
a bit further and say, Well, what was happening? Did I have an auntie? Was there someone in so it I I’ve said a lot there, but I’m hoping people can take what they want. Rebellious curiosity is asking the question no one is willing to ask and having the courage to answer as radically honest as you can without blaming anyone.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (21:26)
Yeah, one of the words that you had just mentioned in that response was letting go. what stood out to me is like in your works, you talk about freeing yourself from whatever version of reality is holding yourself hostage. I am someone that I have to manage my existential OCD where for years of my life, my brain
It
felt as though my brain was keeping me hostage inside of a version of reality where I was always one step behind or one step, one step, should say from one step away from everything collapsing is what it felt like. You describe your work as, you know, freeing people from whatever version of reality is holding them hostage, which is why the letting go statement stood out to me.
So when you’re, when you meet someone that’s gripped by a story that feels that real and that permanent, when you meet them, where do you even begin?
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (22:22)
I think firstly to acknowledge on the premise they agree, but it sounds like what you’re saying that the story is real for them. So I I rely a lot on aspects of liminal thinking. And there’s and in it there’s a belief system pyramid, which the base is reality. And it tells us to all acknowledge that nobody has a handle on reality unless they’re the all-seeing, all-knowing. And so
What we think is reality is actually our version of reality. It’s what we’ve experienced. And you know what makes it even more secure is if somebody else has experienced it as well. The minute someone else has experienced the same version of reality we have, we think that’s the truth. So I say let’s acknowledge that is the truth. And if there is an opportunity for them to hear anything else, I don’t say all the time, I say just note that there are other truths as well.
But for now,
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (23:07)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (23:07)
we’re not going to take away from the fact that this is your truth. The next question I ask, and I can’t remember where I would have learned this from. A lot a lot of the stuff that we all teachers recycled is how’s it working out for you? This this reality you’re in, like for real. It might be working well. And you know, I you know, I’ve got a particular friend because I mental health challenges, I I’ve witnessed it.
increase negatively in recent months and years. I’m seeing
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (23:32)
you
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (23:32)
it in my friends, I’m seeing it in myself. And so my self-care I’ve had to dial up. So when I ask someone how is it working out for you? I also have to acknowledge as I said to a friend and said, maybe this story that you seem to not like is actually keeping you company. Like you
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (23:49)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (23:49)
know it’s okay to just name it, right?
Like we don’t need
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (23:51)
Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (23:52)
to make anything good or bad. We just need to get to a position to say, well, how’s it working out for me? And the minute we can name it, then at least let’s just know that’s the truth. Like this story I keep saying of, I’m never going to be able to make it, or this is always going to be a problem. It’s giving you certainty to a certain extent. And in this stage
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (24:08)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (24:10)
of your life, certainty is what you need. I’m going to invite you to start exploring what other truths might be out there.
And how we can
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (24:18)
Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (24:18)
just keep inviting them in day by day. And then, and I love daydreaming. Tricia Hershey, the Nap Bishop, speaks about napping and in one of her second books, daydreaming. I’m I’m a daydreamer. Like
I go to bed thinking about
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (24:30)
I am too.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (24:33)
what I want and I get the feeling. It’s something I also invite people to do. So a few, a few things there. But first, let’s acknowledge if it’s if it’s keeping you company. And if the person says, absolutely not, then we start to figure out.
What other truths exist within your experience?
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (24:48)
Yeah,
yeah. You’re continuing your own story of childhood trauma through a documentary, which is called The Mirror We Fear.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (24:56)
Mm-hmm.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (24:58)
Choosing to film your own healing is a radically different thing than working through it in private. Why did the camera feel like the right tool for this particular chapter of your life?
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (25:12)
Yeah. So we haven’t finished it. We’ve started it and we we were really looking to community to help fund it. I find that when community is involved, we’re more embedded.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (25:21)
Sure.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (25:22)
why film it? There’s definitely been some a lot of behind the scenes, probably a lot more needs to happen. But we we are living in a world where a lot is documented. I can’t I can’t lie about that. And every now and again when I go through my own personal guilt trip of how much are you gonna document in the public arena, Yenny? I
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (25:38)
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (25:40)
I take a decolonized lens and say, well, what’s the alternative? You’re just gonna keep on watching Netflix and everything else that only Hollywood people are allowed to pull out. What makes it
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (25:47)
Yeah, right.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (25:48)
okay for them to create a story or for somebody else to do a documentary? You know, let’s once again, you you really do have to strip yourself from the dominant narrative. That I that I am I am suggesting my contribution cannot be as impactful as a documentary that, you know.
And I forget what their company, the Obamas, have done. Like, people are
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (26:09)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (26:09)
doing films. You’ve got Ava DuVernay who’s recreating stuff on cast. Like, why can’t that be me? That’s
number
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (26:16)
Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (26:16)
one. Number two, it’s part of my Survivor mission. There’s an element of of control I would like. There’s an element of certainty I would like. And most of all, I’ve come to peace with the Survivor’s mission that I want to make this public so that.
Other people can heal and so we maybe don’t keep making the same mistakes. Maybe if we know someone has been harmful to a generation of children, that we don’t just assume, maybe he’s not doing that anymore. Like it’s,
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (26:46)
Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (26:47)
you know, and yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (26:48)
Yeah, there’s a there’s a book called The Body Keeps the Score by researcher Bessel van der Kolk. And he writes in this book, like in that book, he leans heavily on feeling seen and safe in relationships with others. And your work seems to live right inside of that truth, this practice of
this practice of witnessing yourself and being witnessed. In
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (27:10)
Yeah. Hmm.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (27:13)
what ways does being truly seen change what trauma is able to hold over a person?
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (27:20)
without feeling fully what’s the word? Without feeling fully formed enough to answer this fully. So I feel this would just be partial. And maybe future versions of myself will
Is it Zulu, or there’s another place where they’ve got this term? My husband and I say to each other, Sawubona And I think the response is ngokai. And I’m I’m hoping that your listeners will come in and write in comments and let me know how to pronounce it properly. But it effectively means I see you. And the response is in you in you seeing me, I see you too. Significant
put more eloquently, there is an and it’s it’s a it’s an African tribe that it said. I think that’s the epitome and other people refer to some people say Ubuntu. I think that’s the epitome of being witnessed. You know, if we go back and and once again this is relative to my story, so please forgive me for those who might think it’s it’s overkill. When George Floyd unfortunately lost his life in May 2020, I remember seeing a lot of media stuff. I remember seeing people I knew and loved
All of a sudden having outrage, and that was because it was captured, and I couldn’t stop crying uncontrollably. And I thought, what is this? And then it reminded me of little Yemi. Said, my gosh, I’m crying because now they see us. And it was, it was, I think it was more grief than anything, because it was like when little Yemi said, uncle’s doing XYZ.
It felt like nobody believed me because nothing was done. And that’s what that felt like. It felt like, now you now you see me. So that I do think there is healing in it. And I can only give this from my own personal experience and not necessarily anything that I’ve researched or have had access to. but but I also think there’s a danger of wanting to be witnessed indefinitely.
And I don’t think that can be done from the outside. I think it’s got to be
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (29:06)
Yeah,
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (29:06)
done from the inside.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (29:08)
yeah, yeah. I always like to give my audience some actionable items that they can use as soon as they’re done listening because I think that’s really important. Someone is listening right now
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (29:18)
Mm.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (29:19)
who is stuck in a reality they did not choose.
How would you coach them or speak to them to practice rebellious curiosity, let’s just say, in the next 24 hours? What’s a small thing that they can do to help that?
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (29:33)
The I’m just gonna give two things so that I can make it easy. The first thing, because part of the framework of rebellious curiosity is finding your spark. So even though, and I know you’ve acknowledged that they’re in a reality that they didn’t choose, is to just make sure they name it. Don’t make it general. yeah, I I grew up in a dysfunctional family. No, what what is the dysfunction? You make something general. We don’t we don’t know when we’ve worked through it. Be specific. Is it about money? Is it about relationship with food? Is it relationship with partners?
get very specific on what that is. So naming it is one big part because then you can work with someone. And I don’t know why, because I I do re I genuinely really do r rely on my team as I call my ancestors. Is I’m a practitioner of emotional freedom technique or tapping, E F T, where you tap the body. You know, it’s like an external
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (30:19)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (30:20)
I would invite you, especially if you’re lost, to just either tap any part of your body and people can go and you know, for some people it’s on the side of their wrist. I don’t know what’s tapping there. For some people, it can be on the chuck. And as you’re tapping, just on until it you feel calm, ask yourself out loud or inside, who do I need to be to create a thriving reality? And that’s a rebelliously curious thing, and trust the answer that comes up immediately.
Don’t overthink it, write it down. Just start with those two things and
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (30:51)
Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (30:51)
the roll-on effect will come after.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (30:53)
Yeah, a lot of the people that watch my content, listen to this podcast, a lot of them are parents.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (31:01)
Mm.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (31:01)
A lot of them, like some of the sometimes I’ll have people on and they’ll I’ll see in the comments or they’ll write to me, they’ll be like, hi, this all sounds great, but I don’t have the time to do some of this stuff, you know, and big.
mindset shifts can feel like a luxury that they can’t afford sometimes. That’s what it feels like to them. In what ways can this work that we’re talking about today, I guess, fold into a life that genuinely feels like there’s no spare time in it?
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (31:31)
My response is going to be a bit unfair. I’ve been a single parent, effectively predominantly, for the past 19 years, to two kids with two different dads in a different country where there was no family. And yet I know there are people that even have less time than I would have had. But here’s what I am going to share.
You just do one thing you can do. You take away the rules you set yourself. I used to set myself a rule of I need to cook five meals a day, I mean a week. I cut it down to three. Break a few rules, bend a few rules. That’s number one. And I get it, that might be hard. If you can’t do that, then here’s the next thing. And this is where I’m gonna be unfair. Whatever you do not make priority for now is likely to show up in the generations that come after us.
If people watch closely, I’m about to put a post out that is highly vulnerable and it was a living embodiment of what happened with one of my children that I think was in direct response to a trauma response I had not dealt with. So
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (32:27)
Wow.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (32:28)
I needed to make time.
So it means I dance as a way to let to get rid of stress. It means there’s one little thing I do every now and again and and I tell my kids when I’m tired or frustrated, rather than just shout or yell and not say anything. I just do one little thing. So first let’s acknowledge you’re right. We live in in an ecosystem that makes it very difficult. We’ve got to eat the protein, we’ve got to do the exercise, we’ve got to look after our kids’ needs. Then there’s a partner. Let’s acknowledge how unreasonable it is. So bend a few rules.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (32:58)
I love this.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (32:58)
And then
figure out how important this is to ensure that nothing gets passed down in a different way to our children.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (33:04)
I can’t wait to see that post because I know people and this is why I appreciate what you do so much is because you are often vulnerable and open about who you are and the things that you experience. And I think that’s important in today’s world because I’m on record by saying that there’s a lot of content creators and influencers and talking, talking people that talk for a living that are just full
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (33:26)
Mm.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (33:27)
of full of crap.
And I don’t, I’m not a big fan of that. And I always appreciate the people like yourself that are just truly genuine sharing the story because people connect with that. There’s a reason that people connect with your story. And one of the phrases that you, that you, what are your go-to phrases I should say is this too shall pass, which is something that I’ve heard my mom say and my sister. And then whenever I would hear my mom say that,
especially on like a hard day of mine. Sometimes it felt like it either steadied me or it felt dismissive
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (34:00)
Hmm. Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (34:02)
as to how bad it truly
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (34:04)
Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (34:05)
was in the moment. So when you use that phrase, how do you use that phrase so that it comforts a person without skipping over the pain that they’re feeling?
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (34:14)
Mm. Such beautiful insight. So similarly, I’ve heard it in many ways. My husband is a a northerner from the UK, and you know, their their equivalent is or well, what do you do? It’ll be all right. And and usually it’s in the language. So I’ve I’ve always heard it as being quite dismissive. This too shall pass. Until one day I saw on you on Instagram, I think it was Tom Hanks. It was Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro, a few other other people within his generation.
And it was Tom Hanks. And he was like, This too shall pass. And he said, good times will come and they’re going to be
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (34:46)
Mmm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (34:47)
great and celebrate. And he said, This too shall pass. Bad times will come and they’re going to be hard. And this too shall pass. When he put the good next to the bad times, it really gave me context. And I love contrast, right? You know, I
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (35:02)
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (35:03)
love like you, you don’t, you don’t know your cold.
until you’ve been hot. It’s that it’s a contrast thing. So if I know that when I celebrate this big win and I’m gonna be speaking at the true, that that’s great and and that high might pass. So the this too shall pass made me feel that there is some sort of law in the world that says nothing is going to be forever and therefore to enjoy in the moment. And so, and I know this is long, but I hope people get it, because you know, the the you can’t always put tidbits.
So even when things are going horribly wrong, and Ky, I remember this so well. It was December 2025, and I thought, my gosh, I’m dying, but I knew it was the ego. I got to the point that I said, I can’t wait to find out what this lesson is here to teach me. Because I knew it would pass. I knew that that discomfort
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (35:47)
Yeah,
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (35:51)
would pass. Like I believe, I’m I’m an embodiment. I mean, that I’ve got pain to power mapping that says, just go back to your history and your blueprint.
Whoever it is that’s listening, you have a blueprint of when things were going really wrong and you got over it. It’s just life life and you didn’t you didn’t get the chance to celebrate. So this too shall pass is about every part of life. And if you can be really badass, you can always get curious as to what am I gonna learn from this?
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (36:17)
Yeah, yeah. I want to play a little game with you.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (36:21)
Hmm.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (36:21)
It’s called This or That. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to give you two choices. You can either choose one or the other or both or neither. It’s not deep, I promise. And so I’ll
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (36:31)
Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (36:32)
just give you two choices and you just go with whatever your heart, your gut, your brain is telling you. Okay,
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (36:38)
Okay, okay.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (36:40)
here we go. First one. The engineer’s blueprints or…
The Filmmakers’ blank reel.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (36:45)
Ooh, filmmakers blank reel.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (36:47)
Yeah, why’s that?
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (36:48)
Yeah. Because when people used to say to me, think outside the box, and then some guy said there is no box, I got very excited. Having a blank reel is just like, let me splash some paint everywhere.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (37:00)
Yes, I love this. Number two, a hard truth said with love or a gentle question that lets you reach the truth yourself. Yeah, why’s that?
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (37:11)
Ooh, the last. I was like poetry. I don’t need
to explain. That’s beautiful. Yeah. Love that one. Yeah. Easy easily. Easily. ‘Cause I don’t
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (37:17)
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (37:21)
I don’t want to be independent or interdependent on anybody but myself. I I wanna be in relation, but I don’t want to
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (37:25)
Yes.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (37:28)
always find the truth from having to be me.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (37:30)
Yeah, yeah. Number three, healing out loud on camera or healing quietly in private.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (37:37)
Healing privately and quiet. Yeah. Quiet and private. Yeah. Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (37:40)
Yeah, that’s
fair. Number four, rebellious curiosity or hard won certainty.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (37:46)
rebellious curiosity. I was I was really open to maybe
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (37:48)
Yeah, yeah, I’d do the answer to that one already.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (37:50)
like tossing rebellious curiosity to the side, but yeah no, rebellious curiosity.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (37:54)
Yeah, yeah.
And then last one, the keynote stage or the editing room.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (38:00)
Or both.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (38:01)
That’s fine. There is no wrong answer. That’s perfectly fine.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (38:04)
I know, but I didn’t want to. I feel like that’s a cup out, but it’s gotta be both.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (38:08)
I love it.
I want to make sure that people can actually find you and keep walking with you after this. For the person that’s listening or watching right now, who is ready to keep going, where should they go to learn more about you, to follow you? How can they get involved with your work? How can they learn more about what you’re doing next?
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (38:28)
Beautiful. Look, I think Instagram is the best place, and the best
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (38:32)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (38:32)
way to engage with me is with the content that resonates with you. Mo Gawdat who was the ex-CFO or CEO of Google X, said one way to combat some of the non-positive stuff on social media is to feed it with positive alternative stuff.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (38:49)
Yes.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (38:49)
And so although we don’t want you to be on those platforms indefinitely, if you are on them and you see something that I post because I really I also tap into mass consciousness is engage with me there. I, in part of my decolonial lens, I don’t actually have many offerings, although I’m going to soon create an online liberate offering because that’s the thing people ask. I they want more of. And I I do need to listen and create that.
but I’d say Instagram. I’m also on Substack because I’m getting
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (39:17)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (39:18)
interested in writing more and I I write more deeply.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (39:20)
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (39:21)
So if you’re wanting that more deep, thought-provoking, conscious stuff beyond the little tidbits in on Instagram, then I say go there. And for those who maybe have never traveled out of where they are, if you don’t live in the UK, I really plore you to really look at the Transform Trauma Oxford Conference. There are so many other different people.
who will be there. And if you can’t be there in person, you can definitely watch virtually. I I really, yeah, I invite you to engage, engage with me there. I’m also on LinkedIn. I I tend to say I’m a little bit more wretched on Instagram and a little bit more than you’re on LinkedIn. But I also
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (39:54)
Yeah.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (39:56)
speak I speak a lot of truth. So definitely one way you can connect with me. And I’ve got my website, which I’m sure will be in the show notes.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (40:02)
Yes,
I’m going to include all of those links in the show notes of this episode. So all you have to do is click if you’re curious about that. I have one more question for you. And this is the same question I ask all of my guests. And that is this. If there’s one thing that you want the audience to take away from our conversation today, what is that one thing?
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (40:22)
It’s not mine, this is Tarana Burke and Brené Brown. The title of their book together. And I’m gonna say a bit more, but This is for you to remember. You are your best thing.
I promise you, I promise you, you are. Even with all the shadow parts, that’s that’s what makes it even more juicy. Because when you work through it and you alchemize that s***. gold.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (40:45)
Ha ha ha, yup.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (40:46)
So you are your best thing. Just keep giving yourself grace as you go through it.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (40:50)
I love it. love it. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I really do appreciate you. Thank you so much.
Dr. Yemi Joy Penn (40:55)
Thank you
for having me.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (40:56)
Okay, so let me tell you what I’m taking out of that conversation. Dr. Yemi Penn came in with so much warmth and honesty, and she held nothing back. She talked about being witnessed, about the imposter syndrome that showed up even after she had earned her recognition. And she never once told you what to do. That is what I respect the most about her. She she would rather be a mirror than a guru.
We covered a lot in this episode. she reframed what resilience really is. she pushed back on the idea that black and brown people are synonymous with trauma. And she named that that quiet fear of being the one who has to save yourself. But if you if you take one thing out of this episode today, let it be this the person you keep waiting on to rescue you is already here. It’s you.
In her words, you are the best thing. So here are a few things that you can try this week, you know, after you listen to this podcast today. First, get specific. Do not say, I come from a dysfunctional family. Name the actual thing because you cannot work through what you keep vague. The second thing is take one story you keep telling yourself and ask and ask the question that she said that you should ask. And her question was.
How is this actually working out for me? Ask yourself that question. And third, something I want you to try this week, look at the rules that you set for yourself, the the ones quietly crushing you. And I want you to bend one of those rules on purpose. If you’re listening today, if you’re listening to Dr. Yemi today and and you want more of her, which I wouldn’t blame you because what a treat, what a joy she is. the best place to find her is on Instagram.
and you can go deeper with her writing by subscribing to her Substack. and you can also check out her website, YemiPenn.com she’s also creating a really cool documentary that continues her own story. So keep an eye out for that as well. All of that information is going to be in the description of this podcast. And because this conversation goes to some tender places, just a quick reminder that you can always find real support over at the mental health resources hub on my website.
with that said, my friends, that’s where I’m gonna leave it today. If you want more from me, make sure you visit me at TheVibeWithKy.com and follow me @TheVibeWithKy on all of your favorite social media channels. Everything Yemi and I mentioned is in the show notes and in the comment section. So make sure you go check that out. With that said, my friends, thank you so much for watching and for listening. As always, much love, good vibes, and I’ll catch you next time. Bye.
Leave a Reply