Chitty Chats with Stacy

Qwanquita Wright
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[00:00:00] Hey friends, welcome back to Chitty Chats with Stacey. Today is super fun for me, uh, Miss Quankeeta Wright, and I, we've known each other almost a decade. Yeah. I can't even believe this, and what is exciting for me about today's conversation is that we know each other in a way that I don't know a lot of people, which is through the military, and we have these interesting paths as

And then this other piece of our life where we're just trying to add to the planet in all the best ways we can and decrease people's suffering any way we can. And so I want you to take a minute to introduce yourself and then girl, I got so many questions for you.

First, Stacey, thank you for this [00:01:00] opportunity, any opportunity to talk about what it is that we do, how we do it, how we Navigate through it ourselves on the career side and on the personal side of things.

It's always an honor and I'm definitely, uh, I'm definitely humbled by that. So I'm Quinkita Wright. I go by Q. I am a major in the U. S. Army, been in about 16 and a half years. Currently, I am at Fort Stewart, Georgia. I'm a director of an intensive outpatient program here and a director of the social work internship program here as well.

So, uh, two hats, but very interesting hats and just the opportunity to, to give to others in a profession, but most importantly for them to teach me as well of how to lead and how to manage and for me to, to see, to see myself, to see myself as a leader. So very interesting experience.

I love that. I want to talk a little bit.

There's so many places [00:02:00] we can go, but I want to talk about being a social worker in the United States Army, uh, because you didn't start there

in the United States. Not at all. Not

very many people do. And so, uh, let's talk a little bit about that. Where did you start?

So I started out as an interrogator. . So ,

same.

Same actually. I

like, oh, you know, started out as a 35. Mike, military intelligence community. I oftentimes tell people I'm not exactly sure. How, how I got to social work, but I will tell you the root of that was really one of my chaplains, right, who's not male bars, amazing, amazing person, and someone else that was worked in Essex that name is Rochelle Salas.

Um, and I think she may have changed her last name, but those two individuals actually came to me and said, we found the perfect job for you. And I was like, what? [00:03:00] Because for me, I was in the perfect job. And I was like, social work. And I laughed. I was like, I'm not empathetic at all. But here, but here, but here we are.

Yeah,

I love that. And so you went through the Military Masters of Social Work program, is that correct? Yes. Say more about that because we, we have a huge audience of people who are social workers and I just want to, people don't know this exists.

So the Army Social Work program, I went through, oof, 2014? So 2014 2015 when it was under Fayetteville State University, now under University of Kentucky. So 14 month program down in San Antonio, joint based San Antonio. Lots of information, lots and lots of information. Great opportunity to learn, to be, do some field placement.

And then I trained at now Fort Liberty for two years to get my, to get my clinical [00:04:00] license. And then I went on to now Fort Cavazos because all the names have changed. Fort Cavazos and there is where it all It all began. So amazing program, an amazing program. Any of your listeners can definitely reach out to me and I'll give you my personal email address.

If you don't have it to share it, it can reach out to me. I do my best to answer any questions, but it is definitely a phenomenal opportunity for the military to groom, mentor its own social workers. Love that.

And you and I met at Bullock basic officer leadership course. I'm what you call a direct commission.

No prior enlisted. And I met these amazing humans during this course. You were one of them who just like took me in and taught me some things. And I so have appreciated that in my own military career. And you and I are now part of this small group of Beehos, Behavioral Health Officers, and I feel like every day in the United States [00:05:00] military it's just this wild ride of You have no idea what's going to drop in your plate.

Is that kind of your experience as well?

That has definitely been some of my experience. Now there were days where, you know, I felt like I wrote out a list, uh, a task list of all these lovely things that I'm going to get done and nothing disrupted the day, right? Uh, and it was less of euphoria. And then other days, I feel like I wrote out what I was going to do and I never looked at the list besides when I wrote it down because there was always something going, always something going on, always something happening.

I think that's the, that's the thing that makes being a social worker in the military so great. Yeah, it's that there's always opportunities to challenge yourself, because again, you go back to, hey, you know, I'm planning all these things out and they, they're all happening to, I'm planning all these [00:06:00] things out.

And literally that everything that could be unplanned is what happened during the day. That's the interesting part about. Getting to wear the uniform and do what we do, and I'm sure everyone sees my little, uh, my military things behind me, getting to, getting to do it on both sides, getting to do it in the uniform and then out of the uniform.

Very different, but still feeds into who we are, who we've become. Love that.

So in the 10 years, 10 ish years that you've been doing social work in the military, I want to just talk a little bit about mental health stigma. Uh, I'm certain that you've had some of the same experiences of me, as me. Oh, people just lie.

Mental health, you just tell them everything's good. And then you're like, oh, you were good yesterday and today you're suicidal. Like, tell me more. And so I just am curious about your own experience. Is mental health changing? Are you seeing more people come in? Are you seeing more honesty? What are your [00:07:00] experiences as far as mental health in the military goes?

I think it depends on when the person entered the military and now conceptualize mental health. Again, we're human, so we all have the ability to change our thought process processes. I think the stigma has decreased. It's a decrease because it's more it's more talked about across society. It's more spoken of right where people are more open.

You'll see stars coming about their own challenges. So I think that has helped the military within itself. So I think we still have work to do, not only on the military side, but also in just society, right? Kind of addressing what are the cultural barriers to mental health, what are the financial barriers, ethnic barriers, gender, because all those things start to feed into the stigma that we now have about mental health.

So we've done a lot of work, right? Not only [00:08:00] the military, just society as a whole has done significant work with trying to take away this stigma, but again, it's a stigma. So you're never truly, in my personal opinion, you're never truly going to get rid of the stigma behind a lot of different things because it's a lot of different factors that drive that.

Yeah, love that. I appreciate you saying all that because it leads into this other piece of you. And I think this is really important. A lot of times, people just sort of label us as one thing or one role, and that is definitely not you. And so you have this entirely different way of impacting the world, which is your own private practice type thing.

Uh, consulting group. I mean, you can call it what you call it, but focusing on self, right? Which I'm guessing has developed from a lot of your own experiences in breaking generational trauma, racial trauma, [00:09:00] inequity, all that kind of stuff. And so I really want to dig into that. Tell me more.

Oh, focusing on self.

That's my baby. Yeah.

For our listeners, you can't see like her lighting up and this like fire just started burning inside of you and I can feel it when you go to your website and you read that like it is a spiritual journey that you are on and connection with this. Is that a fair? Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah, I want to hear all about it. Tell me how this was born. Tell me where it comes from. Tell me what self means.

Absolutely. So, focusing on stuff, I'll tell you, right? So, the initial idea behind focusing on stuff started in 2015 when I was first an intern at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, really trying to figure, figure, figure things out, no clue on kind of, you know, A little lost in what I was doing in the profession to be completely transparent there.

And so [00:10:00] myself and my colleagues, we kind of noticed some short shortages, some gaps among the female population that has some sexual trauma. And so we really wanted to create, create those. So that's where it initially started focusing on self. And we made self stand for something else. And there's an article out there on it, all those great things.

But as I kind of went across. The military installation and installation. It's something that we just kind of kept going from our days at Fort at Fort and Liberty, but the focusing on self right now stands for something very, very different. And I was going to change the name, but I felt like I had branded.

There was a part of me that felt like I branded that name. Like I branded that name and it felt so, so close to me as I took that journey with the people that I saw, but also the people that I started out the profession, profession with. So now focusing on self stands for security, empowerment, love, and fulfillment.

I think those are the things that make us, make us whole. And so there's so many components to who we are, right? Someone sees us. [00:11:00] But they don't truly know what it took for us to get there, to now sit in a chair, to now sit behind the mic, to now stand before an audience, and it took moments of us working through feeling insecure, moments of us not feeling empowered, moments of us Feeling unloved in moments of us wondering what in life brought us fulfillment.

And so it was a definitely a spiritual journey. Definitely a spiritual journey for me, and something that I felt like this is my opportunity to pour into other people. And that's that. That's my goal. My goal is to, to pour into other people, but also understanding that I must first pour into myself and I must show up, right?

Secure, empowered, love, and fulfilled to also then pour into others.

Yeah, so part of these Chitty Chats is a lot of conversations with professionals. And what I always say is there's a human behind the professional. Absolutely. And these Chitty Chats are about having the [00:12:00] conversation with the human. And realizing that all those people who are on the stage, all those people who are behind the microphone, all those people who are sitting across the chair, are human.

And we really got to where we are because we're looking at ourselves. And our journey. And so in, in that, I want to know, what are a couple of your formative experiences that were like deep dives into getting to know Q? Hmm.

Oh, where do I begin? Um, I oftentimes think about this because I get asked that question like, how did you get here?

And I think it's such a, it's not an easy question to answer because there are so many things of how I got here. There are some ups of how I got here and then there's downs of how, uh, how I got here. But I think it was one day I woke up and I really realized. Like, okay, who, who are you? Right? You're not, you're not healthy, right?

You're showing up in front of everyone and you're doing all [00:13:00] these great things, but you're not truly, truly, truly healthy. And for me, my spiritual journey, right? Um, my spiritual life is of great importance to me. And I felt as if I had gotten too far away. From the foundation of things. I felt I had gotten too far away.

For me, I had gotten too far away from God and I could feel that distance and I could feel, you know, a tug, a pull that, hey, you know, there's some work for you to do. And so I like to tell people that I prayed this one prayer and I was very careful about this prayer. I said, Lord, expose me to me. That

gave me

goosebumps.

End. as such as I asked, right, it was done. And that mean I had to see a lot of things about myself that I probably had been unwilling to ever take a look at. And, uh, [00:14:00] what appeared to me, like when I, you know, when I went through things in life, everyone's like, oh, you're so resilient. Oh, you're so resilient.

Right, but really I was so avoidant. I was really avoided of things because somewhere along the way, and I don't know what part of life taught me to show up and put on a superwoman, a superwoman cape and always be that way, right? In the face of adversity, face of inequality, you know, grief, whatever it was, right?

You keep on your cape. But eventually life just wore that cape down and ripped it to shreds. And I had to let it go. And it was, and I also am very open about, I realized as I was out doing a very hard job as a behavioral health officer that I too needed to sit in someone's chair. I could not presume that I was healthy.

Yes, I was, I was doing great things in my spiritual life, but there's other things [00:15:00] that I needed to uncover. And I will tell anyone that's one of the best decisions that I made in my life was as a therapist to sit in someone else's chair. Sit in someone else's chair, but not only show up in their chair, not show up in a chair, not as a therapist, but as a human being who comes with lots of experiences, comes with their own challenges, um, own disappointments, heartbreaks, pain, whatever it was, but to show up as myself in that chair and allow my therapist to really see me and help me work and navigate those things.

Shout out to all the therapists that see therapists. I

mean, there's so much in what you're saying. So one, you can't have resiliency without your own trauma. Trauma and resiliency are two sides to the same coin. We always talk about resilience and we don't acknowledge the trauma. We're not really doing what we need to do.

We only talk about trauma and don't talk about resilience. We just stay stuck in that. And I appreciate that sometimes resilience equals avoidance. Right? [00:16:00] And one of the things I've experienced in the military is we spend millions of dollars on resiliency programs without acknowledging some of the trauma that our service members have really been through.

And until we acknowledge that and sit with them and hold that with them, that resiliency piece is hard. So I appreciate that. The other thing you're saying is, We, as therapists, don't ask people to do what we're not willing to do ourself. Oh, is that hard? It's real hard. It's very hard to be vulnerable in one moment with your own therapist.

And be a therapist for another moment, right? And that's kind of the human experience. And then the last thing you're talking about, which is probably the most important, I think, is that spiritual component.

Expose

me. What a powerful word. You are not screwing around. You're like, listen, Lord, expose me to me.

That is powerful, powerful stuff. [00:17:00] And my guess is there was a lot of peeling off the

layers. Oh, there it was. Way more than what I thought my prayer was going to bring. God shows up big. Big. Huge. And allows you

to be big. Yes. And huge.

Right? Yeah. This conversation makes me, and I was thinking about this this morning and I think I haven't thought about this in quite a while.

It made me think of an experience in my life that definitely exposed some things about me that I didn't know, uh, was there. Uh, I lost back in 2021, I lost a very close cousin of mine, we kind of grew up as sisters, so super duper beyond close, right? People probably think we were sisters, we even looked alike.

Um, and so for myself, I don't think I moved through the grieving process very well. I think I did this thing of, you know, like I avoided it where everyone's like, Oh, I know this is tough for you. And I'm like, yeah, it is tough. Right. But then there [00:18:00] was something that one day I was sitting at my house in my room and I won't, and I won't forget this.

Um, and I think I was listening to Hold Us Together by her and Torrin Wells. And it literally like, It broke me. It's like something just broke inside of me and I was like, Oh my gosh, you never grieved. You just went on as if life kept going, right? You went back to work, you know, you did all these things at work, you did this, but you never set in your emotions.

And that's what I spent like months doing, but on the other side of that, I'm so glad that I took that time, even though I probably waited, but I took that time and I allowed myself to truly go through the grieving process. I think it helps me to show up in my own life different, but also in other people's lives different.

Obviously, it's not a perfect journey, so there's still things that God exposes me where I'd be like, Like I thought I had, [00:19:00] I thought I had like worked through that. Okay. So maybe, uh, maybe it was, you know, maybe I did step one, but I still have two and three and however many more to go. And that's fine. I'm human.

Like I've learned to step into my imperfections at this point. Right. That was, that was another part, right? Pulling the perfectionism layer back was a whole nother part.

Well, and such a vulnerable story, right? Grief is the ultimate love story. And when we truly love someone, that grieving process happens when it happens, it comes on when it comes on, and then it floods us.

And what a beautiful story where God is saying, hey, You got a deal, girl. And this is what you got to move through. And then that piece of perfection. I think that for me, when I do supervision with incoming social workers or new people in the field, there's this layer of like, I got to have my shit together.

I got to. And yes, you got to be [00:20:00] professional. And You also are human, like you have a life. And I think the more we expose that there's depths to us, which is one of the reasons I was so excited to talk to you today, because you are not just a behavioral health officer and you are not just this founder of focusing on self.

You are all the things, right? You are not just a woman in the military. You are not just a black woman in the military, right? You are all the things. And the more we really embrace that in people, The better off we all are because we each add, we add layers to this. And I think that is such an important part of the journey.

Okay, so one of the questions I ask a lot of people, which I know you'll have an answer for. Okay, how do you take care of yourself? You're listening to stories and stories and stories of lots of hard stuff. That's what being a clinician is about. And you're a director, you're holding space for all these incoming new social

workers.

So I'll start off again by [00:21:00] being very transparent and vulnerable. I haven't always done well at that. So I have found my way as, as I kind of was like, Oh, okay, you thought you did that. Well, you didn't do that. Well, so how do I take care of myself? One thing that I learned to do is to allow people to occupy space in my life that I trust, right?

People that make me feel emotionally safe, physically safe, to allow them to be close to me. I think for a while there was like this wall up, right? Because if you get too close to me, then you will see me. And I don't want you to see me because I'm afraid to see myself. And so I've had to practice. being honest and transparent with people in space, but also allowing them to be honest and transparent with me about what they see about me, that concerns them, allowing them to just.

Simply care. And then secondly, what I've definitely [00:22:00] done that holds me together every single day of my life. I am invested in my relationship with God. That's my number one, that I'm invested in that relationship, that I make I am intentional about having that time in my life, whether it's I am going to go walk my dog, and I'm just going to listen to one of my hot playlists, right, you know, or I'm gonna.

You know, I'm going to journal, I'm going to read some scriptures, I'm going to engage in some Bible study groups that I'm in there. I'm very intentional about, I'm very intentional about that. And thirdly, something that I learned to do is to rest. Like that thing was hard for me to take a break and not be guilty about taking a break.

Oh, like that's something I'm still working on because I'd be like, should I do something like, Oh, like should I be doing something? Oh, I love

this because rest. My [00:23:00] daughter called me. She wanted to come home from school one day. She said, Mom, all I want to do is come home and watercolor. And I was like, all the things are triggered, right?

Like, you need to stay at school, suck it up, buttercup. We don't do that. And then she came home, she watercolored for three hours. And I was like, what a gift. What a gift that she's learning how to rest in that moment. That was her rest, right? And I think, just like mental health stigma, I think a lot of us grew up in the hustle.

Right, we're all fighting to break these traumas and there's a piece of breaking that hustle. So when you say rest, what

does

that look like for you? So I'll tell you what I did last weekend, which probably comes as a shock to people who know me and hear this. Last weekend, I always have to work out, but anyway, last weekend, I just sat on my couch and I just read a book and I love reading and I realized as I read the book, like you got far away from the, one of the things that allows you to rest is [00:24:00] reading.

And I'm like, Oh, I got to get back. I felt this urge, this pull to like get, to get back there. Like I got up, I went to the library. I love a good library, right? I love a good library. Um, and I was like, you know what, how about I get back to the things in which I found so much comfort and peace in as a kid.

Like those things are still important in my life as an adult. So I get your daughter wanting to color, right? Because I feel the same way about reading. Like I could just sit here and read this whole book in like three hours. So I, I, I understand that, but I think we've kind of created a culture that like we can't rest and that rest equals being lazy versus like I'm resting because I need to regroup.

Like I need to restore. I need to be ready for the journey ahead. So I need, I need to rest. Yeah, love

that. Well, and one of the, one of the talks I do is really having adults set in. What did you do [00:25:00] for regulation growing up? Did you ride horses? Did you hang out with friends? Did you do sports? Did you read books?

Did you, and are you doing that as an adult? Because that is like wired into us. And if we're not doing it as an adult, we're probably not always really taking care of our little selves that need play, that need rest, all those things. What a great lesson. So here's a big question. How do people get ahold of you and

what kind of services do you offer?

So let's see. So people can find me at focusing on self. net. I do life and wellness coaching, individual family group. I do, uh, for large corporations. I'm pretty much, I will almost dabble in almost anything. Like my goal, people are always like, Oh, I feel like you always got something going on. I say, but I love this.

So it never feels like work, right? It's like, it's like almost like a hobby, right? I just, I [00:26:00] love everything about it, or people can email me at qwrite at focusing on self. net as well, even if they just want to chat, ask some questions, looking for some information, whatever, whatever it is, I feel like it's our duty when God has blessed us with something that comes You know, this is our passion is our purpose and we know it by the way that we walk in and the way that we talk about it, like, same thing, like, I knew, like, I knew this was your passion.

Like, when I met you at Bowling, I knew that we would be connected. I'm probably not connected to many of the people I went to Bowling with. No, I'm not, right? But you just know when you meet someone and you're like, wow, there's this connection. Cause there's a passion, there's a fire, there's a light that burns inside of someone that wants to do this and understand this is God's gift to them to now give to the world.

And so every way that I can share that gift and put it back into the world, the way that God put it inside of me, it's always [00:27:00] my honor and it's always my pleasure and I'll always, I'll always do it. Love that.

You are a lot like me in that way. I am a big believer that anyone who crosses the threshold of my office, who lands in my audience, there is a reason.

Like, God brought us together for some reason, whether that's for me to learn or them to learn or both. And I always feel that from you. Every time, girl, I've been watching you. We've been connecting here and there. Like, we're in this parallel life where we're just. Shining in the world and our rays land where they land and I appreciate knowing that you're on the planet I want to tell you that like it's this is a lonely road sometimes Especially when you know, you're walking in your purpose and not everybody understands it because sometimes it's a hard walk It is it is You know, and you're carrying a lot of different pieces, and I'm just deeply grateful that you are on this planet at the same time as me, and I get to be a part of, you know, knowing you, so thank you for taking the time [00:28:00] to chat with me today.

Thank you for having me, Stacey. I mean, keep doing what you're doing. We see you, right, your voice is out there. Keep sharing your voice. with the world. The world needs to hear what you have to say.

Well, right back at you, sister. I appreciate you on so many levels. Uh, thanks for taking the time and I'm hoping that some of these listeners reach

out to you.

Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. Bye

friends. Bye.