Resources Mentioned:

Bealleka’s TEDx Talk on Radical Empathy

Meme about Shel Silverstein’s Giving Tree - the tree sets boundaries!

Episode 19: Chasing the Sun with Béalleka Makau

Her Bio:

Béalleka Makau is a Kenyan-born, California-raised, former professor of literature and cultural studies who specializes in Black maternal liberation narratives of the antebellum era. After a decade-long career witnessing the harmful impact of colonial, white-supremacist, hetero-patriarchy at universities across the U.S., she left in academia in 2015. Soon after, she experienced a spiritual rebirth that heralded her own liberation and claim of a name she had never heard before that reminds her to be her most authentic, aligned self. 

Béalleka has dedicated the past 5 years to healing, traveling, and working as an intersectional equity consultant. In 2018, she gave a TEDx talk outlining her radical empathy curriculum, which encourages us to unlearn stories we’ve been taught about who we are and what we believe we deserve. A lifelong writer, Béalleka has contributed to numerous storytelling shows as both a performer and production consultant. Her stories highlight the trauma of “peculiar intimacy,” a term she coined to describe the privileges and perils of white adjacency about which she teaches and writes in a memoir that explores her personal and professional reinventions. 

Béalleka currently assists others on their healing journeys via the Peculiar Intimacy Healing Institute, a.k.a., PI hi, which combines her academic training and transformative coaching experience, and 8 Star Sanctuary, which builds on the life and literature of Octavia Estelle Butler and provides virtual and physical healing space in northern New Mexico for the collective liberation of Black, Indigenous, women of color.

Connect with Béalleka on Instagram, LinkedIn and her website!