jordan owens
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jordan owens ~
You're not the mama of the group. You're the fun girl of the group, and that's okay.
My name is Jordan Owens. I work at the Sexual Assault Center. I am a statewide training specialist. I work with college and university professionals providing training about sexual assault, how to support survivors, trauma, things like that. You can find me at Jordan, be my name underscore on Twitter and Instagram.
how do you show up in community?
How I show up in community is an advocate. In more than one sense. So before I was a trainer, I was an advocate at the sexual assault center. And so just always making sure I'm able to educate when I can take an advantage of those teachable moments. But I also show up as the fun one. In the friends, I'm always the goofy one. I'm always the optimistic one. So, I hold those two, roles in a pretty good way.
how does your identity inform and impact your work?
The fact that I am a young Black woman on a team full of non-Black women definitely informs my passion projects at work, I have a lot of freedom to choose what populations I train, what content I add in my trainings, and I'm always gonna be the one that chooses to do Black communities, right? Like I said, I work with colleges and universities, so one of the first projects I wanted to do was like an H B C U consortium, where we get all the HBCUs in Tennessee together, get some training on sexual assault and trauma, and then create a support group with all of them. So that's always gonna be in the forefront of my mind. And Black outreach isn't necessarily on my job description. It's not a part of my job, but I always make sure that it is my job, and I'm happy to do it in any way that I can.
And also, me being the fun one, I'm always gonna make sure that my team is not taking things too serious. I work with a lot of ex perfectionists or people that are fighting perfectionism, and that's definitely me, myself. But I think always reminding the team, like, we need to laugh, we need to have light moments in the midst of all this work we're doing with trauma.
tell us about your happy place?
My happy place is most definitely on somebody's plane, on the way somewhere out of town. I love traveling. Traveling has become my favorite form of self-care. Because one, I live at home so I can afford to do these things. And I'm taking advantage of it cause I don't have any kids. And two, it kind of just, I've been living in Tennessee my whole life. I went to college in Tennessee, outside of Nashville, but I've been in Tennessee. So it helps me to, you know, to see the world and ground me. My job can be kind of stressful sometimes. So, just knowing, getting out of Tennessee and knowing, you know, the world is much bigger than what you got going on. It really grounds and centers me. So that's my favorite form of self-care right now.
And I'm also getting much more comfortable with my natural hair and trying to learn what she likes and what she doesn't like. So during this quarantine, I've been doing a lot of hair experiments as well, lot of hair care. So those two things really make me happy. And candles.
what do you love about collaborating with Black women?
So my favorite thing about collaborating with Black women is just, it's like a breath of fresh air. Being in that space for me is really affirming. And one of my favorite things about life is sisterhood and friendship and how having good community can even increase how long you're gonna be living. Um, so I just, I love that. I love how it's like, "no, we didn't grow up together, but we all kind of grew up together." like no matter what side of the country you are on, Black people got a lot of similar things from childhood that you can talk about and relate about. I think a lot of missed opportunities come when we, like intergenerational collaboration. You know, I feel like I can connect with the millennials all day, but like when we get to that older generation sometimes how they think about things or their ideologies really clashes with some of the younger folks. And I would love to bridge that gap and kind of, you know, learn a little bit more from each other if they are ready for that. You know, people gotta be ready for that.
As far as allies and what allies can do, I think leave those spaces alone. Leave the Black spaces alone, and work more in their own spaces. So, I feel like sometimes allies can force a lot of stuff, put them, insert themselves in situations that they're not needed in. Work on what you got at home, work on your family, work on your friend group. I think that's sound advice that any ally or accomplished could benefit from.
what advice would you give to your younger self?
The advice that I would give to my younger self is this, I actually have two pieces of advice. The first one, You don't have to meet everybody's needs and make everyone happy because that's not your job. The second would be, um, have a seat. Sit down and reflect. Pay attention, focus, hone in on some things. Don't just stay on the go all the time because you're gonna wear yourself out. So I think my younger self was definitely missing boundaries with people, as well as lack of focus, lack of noticing how important rest was. And so I would just let her know that girl, there's gonna come a time where you're gonna be forced to rest a a 2020 quarantine, and you gonna trip the first month and a half, you're not gonna know what to do. But just, it's gonna be fine. You're gonna sit down and try to journal. It's gonna be torturous, but you're gonna pay attention to your body. You're gonna stretch more. You're gonna be at a slow pace and it's gonna be great. And you're also gonna cut off toxic men when they need too much from you.
You're also not gonna be that friend that's the helper that's trying to meet everybody's needs, cuz you're not the mama of the group. You're the fun girl of the group, and that's okay.