We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alyssa Johnson, Esq. a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Alyssa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

My work really evolved as I did my inner work. In 2013, I quit my job in DC and started addressing childhood trauma. Prior to that point, I had practiced law and worked in corporate America. When I left DC, I swore off law and lawyers forever because I was disenchanted with the legal profession and its heavy emphasis on profits over people.

Around 2020, my heart changed and I felt an inner nudge to go back to the legal profession in the capacity of working with lawyers on topics related to well-being.

At that point, I had spent 7 years in therapy working through trauma due to growing up in an unloving home. I started teaching lawyers trauma-informed tools to help them navigate their legal practices and daily lives.

Since then, my lawyer well-being work has shifted and now I concentrate on emotional intelligence, the neuroscience of productivity, and aligning one’s legal practice with their menstrual cycle. These topics are all ones I’ve spent years studying, and I’m passionate about helping lawyers find ways to enjoy their Lives more.

I’m also a fierce advocate for racial literacy and specifically working with White people to address our race-based trauma. This aspect of my work began in 2015 when I started volunteering for a nonprofit that works with kiddos who are in the child welfare system due to abuse or neglect.

I live in Austin, Texas, and the majority of people in Austin are White, but the vast majority of kiddos in the child welfare system are Black or Brown. They are disproportionately represented in the child welfare system. The only reason for this is because Austin is racist.

Due to the absolute crisis situation we’re facing in Austin in terms of the disproportionate number of children of Color being in the care of Child Protective Services, the nonprofit I volunteer for strongly encourages its volunteers do to race literacy work.

I had a very stereotypical White woman response when I started my race literacy journey: I cried, I froze, I told myself (and everyone else) that I wasn’t racist. But I kept at the work and eventually those emotional responses were healed.

It wasn’t until 2020 that I learned that White people have race-based trauma. I knew that people of Color had race-based trauma due to White supremacy, but I hadn’t ever heard that White people have it, too. When I learned that, everything clicked into place for me. I’d already been addressing childhood trauma for 7 years at that point and I could then see the parallels between healing childhood trauma and healing race-based trauma.

I started speaking out about White people’s race-based trauma and I’ve been teaching, writing, and speaking about it since then. It’s now a core component of my work. It’s absolutely crucial that White people address our race-based trauma in order to dismantle White supremacy.

So my lawyer well-being and racial literacy work has been created over time as I’ve done my inner work and come to see where people need additional support and education.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Part of what I do involves working with lawyers and legal organizations on topics related to lawyer well-being. This includes expanding emotional intelligence, the neuroscience of productivity, and aligning one’s legal practice with their menstrual cycle. I provide individual coaching and organizational teaching on these topics.

I also facilitate race literacy discussions with White people, not just White lawyers. I teach White people how race-based trauma moves through the White body and how we can calm ourselves and heal our race-based trauma.

I also teach the history of White supremacy and how we got to where we’re at today. I focus much of my efforts on working with White women as the way race-based trauma moves through our bodies is different than it is for White men. We also have a different role that we’ve played in the history of supremacy. Historically, we’ve never stood with people of Color (especially women of Color) in issues of supremacy. But we’ve demanded that women of Color stand with us when it comes to reproductive rights, and we’ve also demanded that women of Color soothe us and make us feel better when we’re agitated. I work with White women to address these inconsistencies in our behaviors and start to understand what we must do to stand with women of Color in order to dismantle supremacy.

For my race literacy work, in addition to the work I do in my own business, I also work with The Opt-In™, which is a B Corp company that helps visionary leaders stay relevant through cultural strategy. The Opt-In focuses on building race literacy and cultural competency skills of leaders and organizations through an integrated curriculum and coaching approach. Aurora Archer, co-founder and CEO of The Opt-In, and I hold race conversations at companies around healing separateness between women of Color and White women.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Consistency, vulnerability, and transparency have helped me build my reputation within the market.

The legal profession often demands that lawyers appear perfect and know everything. This simply isn’t possible and it leads to feelings of imposter syndrome, anxiety, and depression. I’ve been very candid about my own struggles with depression due to child abuse and it has helped other lawyers feel safer sharing their own mental health struggles.

Sharing my race literacy journey also helps other White people start – or continue on – their race literacy journey. As White people, we know nothing about racism because we don’t experience it. But supremacy teaches us that whatever we think is right and that we can disregard whatever a person of Color says if we don’t like it. This is absolutely absurd and completely twists the truth in a very grotesque way.

As White people, we often don’t know what to say when someone says something racist. And we don’t speak up out of fear of getting it wrong or making it worse.

So I’ve been very candid about the mistakes I’ve made in my race literacy journey, ways I’ve been – and continue to be – racist because of supremacist conditioning, and how I need to change in order to be racially literate. It has helped other White people feel safer taking their next steps on their race literacy journey.

People who act as if they know everything, have it all together, or have a perfect life (or business) are inauthentic to me. The reality is that Life is really messy and the pieces I center my business around are often rooted in trauma, which, by nature, is messy and hard to navigate when you’re in the throes of it.

The more I share the realities of these experiences, the more people trust me.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I made a major career and Life pivot in 2013 when I quit my job, sold my condo, and left DC. The legal profession tends to push lawyers into a certain career path, which generally leads to financial success and career prestige.

I couldn’t follow that path. Repressed childhood memories started coming back and I had an emotional collapse. I couldn’t work. I could barely function as my trauma was running the show.

It was quite a few years before I felt solid enough to work, but I knew I would never practice law again as I didn’t want to go back into that environment.

I had to spend a lot of time healing the personality construct I had created around being a lawyer and what that entailed. I had to learn to love myself for who I was rather than the accolades I was receiving or the number of hours I was billing. I had to be OK walking away from a career that was almost certainly going to bring financial stability and prestige, and trust that who I am is enough to make it in this world.

There were times when it was really rocky and I felt like a failure. But I’ve done so much healing around those parts of me and now I love who I am. And I can see how my career and Life pivot put me on a path that’s exactly right for me; it’s enabling me to live fully in alignment with my heart. I feel on purpose now in a way that I never felt when I practiced law.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.alyssajohnson.love
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/alyssajohnson78
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lawyeralyssa/

Image Credits
all images were taken by Valeria Ortega