Home isn't always the place you started out - sometimes it's a feeling you find later, in people and places you didn't grow up with.
I am delighted to welcome my second guest to The Quiet Mic: Michelle Brillouet, a London-based educator, coach, musician and creative, and founder and director of Clarity Hive.
Michelle and I are former colleagues, though as she's based in London and I'm near Manchester, we were remote collaborators. So while we're certainly not strangers, we never actually spent much time together in person. It was a work podcast we made together where we properly connected, and our conversation stayed with me, planting the seed of this one.
In this episode, we reflect on Michelle's family background and the path that shaped her sense of self - spanning Belgium, the UK, Haiti and the USA. Michelle grew up speaking French at home before navigating British and American identities as an adult. Meanwhile, I grew up speaking Hakka Chinese that gave way to English, moving between languages and versions of myself without ever quite naming it as that. It's quite interesting as Michelle and I are around the same age - and there's also a sense of transitioning from the analogue to the digital world, at the time of entering adulthood.
Michelle lands on home as something closer to a feeling than a place - the sense of being truly seen, wherever you happen to find it.
Part two is coming soon. Michelle and I grapple with questions of power and privilege together with diversity, equity and inclusion. The conversation is generative, not divisive - Michelle's insights throughout invite us to reflect and know ourselves better, ultimately to cultivate a sense of belonging.
Thank you, Michelle, for your openness, wisdom and trust.
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