We were lucky to catch up with Clarissa from Beckoning Adventure recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Clarissa, thank you so much for joining us today. There are so many topics we could discuss, but perhaps one of the most relevant is empathy because it’s at the core of great leadership and so we’d love to hear about how you developed your empathy?
Empathy is a tricky thing… because it’s easy not to exhibit empathy at all, I would argue it’s one of the toughest things to choose to incorporate into your life.
When I met my husband, I never thought our love would hurt anyone, we fell fast for each other and quickly developed a relationship. He is a beautiful dark skinned man, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and I am an almost transparent woman from South Africa.
We each speak 3 languages of which English is both of our third and incidentally the only language we have in common so one could say language and communication was always a struggle.
We also had massive differences culturally to discover at the most inconvenient moments and overcome, but the hardest challenge we ever dealt with was the resentment from complete strangers about our interracial relationship.
Both our families had their own qualms and definitely encouraged us to maybe let this one go… but the strangers were cruel, we heard every slur you can imagine whispered as we walked by and at times shouted right into our faces.
Other times it got physical, we were hunted down, threatened with heinous acts and we even survived a mob throwing bricks at us while shopping for baby items when I was 8 months pregnant and 2 weeks away from delivering.
We lost our home, having to flee the country to the United States, with a newborn baby and 3 suitcases to start our lives over from scratch.
I am not sure how familiar you are with the immigration system here but we had to wait 2 years before we could even apply for a work permit without which you cannot receive a social security number and after which you start with no credit which surprisingly is worse than bad credit.
We were lower than low, and when we thought it couldn’t get worse, we saw new depths as we became homeless while waiting to be permitted to work.
8 months we were homeless, we had to learn an all new form of resilience, and climbing our way out of that was near impossible, we were turned away at shelters and received more insults than assistance.
Now, we had to endure less racial remarks since our move but that was replaced by immigrant slurs and insults, and sometimes people confided their hatred to me when they thought I was one of them, my skin tone and appropriate amount of English covered me so well they didn’t know they were outing themselves to their self appointed enemies.
We persevered, seeing the worst of humanity, and enduring their wrath.
Years went by and we rebuilt, slowly, not completely, but still, only to have a diagnosis for our beautiful son, non verbal and on the spectrum.
Again, we saw the worst of humanity in the form of ableism, new slurs and remarks.
When you get to the underbelly of society, and see how deeply disturbing it is, it’s especially easy to develop a calloused attitude towards everyone.
Empathy, is hard.
Putting someone else’s experience ahead of your own is almost unnatural.
But you cannot have compassion without empathy, seeing the hurt people go through, the unfairness of most situations in life, the hands we were dealt, can help us put aside our own resentments and come to love and respect and even empathize with those we could have easily hated.
Finding empathy for those around us, is the easiest way to connect with others and become a stronger more positive and loving person, which will absolutely help you overcome any and every obstacle!
Without empathy, I would not have been able to fully live my husband who was hard for me to understand at times and vice versa, especially during tough times.
Without empathy I would not be able to fully love my child, who is an enigma wrapped in a mystery as he is not able to tell me how he feels or experiences the world around him.
Without empathy, we are isolated, without community and without the tools to love ourselves, as we also require the most empathy for ourselves.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I am a Travel Agent, more specifically a Certified Autism Travel Professional.
I fell in love with hospitality when I visited Disneyland Paris as a child, the cast members were so magical I wanted to be just like them.
I love travel more than most things, and I have done a lot of traveling over the years.
After high school I went to work on the most luxurious train in the world as I started on my hospitality journey and loved making vacations magical for those I served.
All these many years later, having a non verbal child who is on the spectrum, I realized we had to be more creative with our family travels and noticed a lot of families like ours we interacted with did little to no traveling because it was tough for their loved ones on the spectrum.
I started sharing my personal tips and tricks on social media and hey presto, people started asking me for help with their travel plans and so I started my travel agency Beckoning Adventure.
We share information on social media, and book trips for families of all sorts of different backgrounds and with many different needs.
I mostly specialize in Disney and other family destinations including my home, Africa, but I can really assist with most things travel related, even if it is just recommendations for luggage or soap to keep mosquitoes at bay.
I am continuing my social media journey, and booking more trips, but I am also looking forward to assisting more families as I am also attempting to learn American Sign Language.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Grace – as an over thinker with anxiety, I had to learn the hard way to give myself grace, learning new skills and doing things scared requires a lot of grace.
Listening – I am still working on this, but listening to others, and especially to your own gut/intuition, that can be difficult when making tough decisions.
Eagerness – an eagerness to learn and grow and to be better tomorrow than I was today, without a willingness or a drive there is no way I can even get out of bed in the morning.
Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?
I believe in outsourcing.
Sure, if there are tasks that you aren’t great at and it’s not something you hate, go ahead and learn how to do it.
However, if it’s something that you hate, get help with it, get someone smarter than you that loves that task as much as you love what you do and delegate that immediately.
Nothing is more draining than learning a skill or practicing a task that you hate for the sake of feeling more accomplished or well rounded and it can have the most negative effects on the rest of your duties.
When I have given up in my life and looked back, I mostly quit on myself whenever I spread myself too thin doing mundane tasks I couldn’t stand.
If it sparks joy, do it… if not… let it be!
Contact Info:
- Website: beckoningadventure.com
- Instagram: @beckoningadventure
- Youtube: Beckoning Adventure
- Other: TikTok: @beckoningadventure
Pinterest: Beckoning Adventure
