At ten or eleven, Chastity Lord read about a college student who was about to drop out, until she opened her mailbox and found her tuition inside, left by someone she never identified. Chastity decided then that one day she wanted to be that someone for somebody else.
In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Chastity, president and CEO of Jeremiah Program, which works with single mothers and their children two generations at a time, to talk about self talk, healing, and what history still has to teach today’s leaders.
Chastity grew up the middle of three girls in a low-income home, where the library was her babysitter and her mother had the girls write book reports. The mailbox story came from Carol Burnett’s autobiography, and it still shapes how Chastity thinks about the angels in our lives: sometimes the money, sometimes the tough conversation, sometimes the introduction.
Ron and Chastity dig into self talk as a leadership practice. Being in conversation with your own greatness, she says, means being honest about when you dip below your baseline, and healing is evergreen: a cut closes, but it still leaves a scar. She turns to Harriet Tubman, whose hardest step may have been telling someone else her idea, and to the unnamed people who walked through heat and cold during the bus boycott.
She also explains why the math does not math for single mothers earning minimum wage. Every mom at Jeremiah Program, across nine cities, is in college or headed there within six months, and the organization has published a report with the Urban Institute to put single mothers’ own voices on the record.
Tune in for Chastity’s Rondering, a question she asks herself as a leader, a spouse, and a parent: do you want to be right, or do you want to be effective?
Chapters:
- (04:02) - Chastity Lord on gratitude and a life her mother and grandmother couldn't have dreamed for her
- (06:57) - Carol Burnett's autobiography and the tuition money in the mailbox
- (11:13) - Ronness: why joy belongs in wellness
- (12:57) - History as an angel: Harriet Tubman and the courage to enlist others
- (16:08) - The bus boycott and the unnamed people who walked through it
- (17:22) - José Rizal, Juneteenth, and the revolutions that don't get named
- (18:50) - Asking each person what they need from the group
- (20:48) - Therapy, self talk, and being in conversation with your greatness
- (24:37) - Talking to ten-year-old Ronald
- (27:08) - Hurt leaders and the martyrdom in social impact work
- (28:38) - Healing is evergreen: the scar that stays after the cut closes
- (31:36) - Jeremiah Program and why single moms dream in threes
- (33:18) - Building the largest coalition of single moms in the country
- (34:45) - The Urban Institute report on what single mothers need
- (35:38) - The math doesn't math: minimum wage and the cost of being poor
- (40:25) - Where Chastity finds joy: car games with her son and trash TV
- (45:25) - Chastity's Rondering: do you want to be right or effective?
- (49:44) - It's not really about the phone: a parent's job is to keep you safe
Links:
Episode 115
