Tara Roberts
on Underwater Storytelling and Diving into the Depths
“I don’t know how the universe matches parents and children, but my mother was perfect! I loved reading and she had access to books. She would go to conferences and come back with boxes and boxes of books. I remember reading some of them late at night, under the covers in my bed with a flashlight, disappearing into other worlds.”
That is how Tara Roberts’s story started: with a borderless imagination and a profound connection to the fantasy world, yearning after Madeleine L’Engles’s heroes, Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Which. They invited her to go out and save the universe:
Growing up, she realized that there were very few girls portrayed as heroes in these stories. This frustration led her to become an advocate for women and girls, championing their bold achievements. She is a Rolex National Geographic Explorer of the Year 2022 and the first African-American female explorer to be featured on the cover of the magazine. She edited several books for girls and published her own pro-female and socially-conscious magazine ‘too bold for boundaries’. Tara spent a year backpacking around the world to collect and share stories about young women change agents.
However, she noticed another obvious absence: black characters in her childhood stories. When they were portrayed, the main focus was only on pain and tragedy. A distorted narrative that emphasized only the struggle and trauma.
A visit to the National Museum of African-American History in Washington DC enlightened her: the narrative of African Americans can be told just like a song: “With a reframe and a crescendo, with an undine that acknowledges the pain, but then moves beyond it.” Such an inspiring story was the one of a group of predominantly black scuba-divers, “Diving with a Purpose”, who decided to start searching for the lost shipwrecks of Africans that were enslaved and brought over to the Americas. They did something that was never done before: they put a different lens on the story of African Americans, but one of hope and possibility that allowed deep wounds to heal. Tara joined the brave team on a quest to discover sunken slave shipwrecks and to “storytell” what’s painful “in a loving way, in a way that allowed the possibility of closure”.
Reimagining and reframing the story of Africans in the Americas in a way that “brings humanity, empathy, nuance and complexity to their human journey” turned it into a National Geographic podcast called “Into the Depths”. It finally answered Tara’s core question: “How can telling the lost history of the slave trade help me, as a Black American woman, figure out where I belong and to whom I belong?”
Discover Tara Roberts’s answers for Inspirators and “the transformative power of storytelling” in understanding your past:
Thank you, Tara, for being an Underwater Storyteller!
#INSPIRATORS QUESTIONNAIRE
Name: Tara Roberts
Company / Institution: Tara Roberts
Title: Explorer and Storyteller
Website: https://www.tararoberts.me/
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertstara/
Country of origin: USA
Country you currently live in: USA
Your personal definition of Regeneration: I don't know if I thought about that word in any way other than literally to regenerate, to come back into some sort of state of being. Whether that is coming back from death, regenerating just the ways cells regenerate, or an energy of renewal. But, regenerate is not yet a word that lives in my lexicon very much.
Main business challenge you face: I'm not facing a business challenge, as I'm not really running a business, but a project. It is not a business per se - what we're doing right now is building a team aligning around purpose and having this thing live in the world in a way that feels powerful and good. So, there are always challenges while building up infrastructure in a way that makes sense.
Main driver that keeps you going: The ancestors, the work, the feeling, the urgency that it is time for us to have a new conversation inside of this space. Feeling like it's time for this to live in the world in some way. That's what keeps me going. Then, the idea of finally and properly and fully and officially honouring the ancestors, the millions of people who have died and who've never been acknowledged for their sacrifice. It's not in their sacrifice because they didn't choose to do that, but just acknowledging them for what happened and honouring their lives.
The trait you most value in others: I value compassion, I value listening. I value people who can get stuff done that feels right. I value creativity a lot. That’s what I think makes the world go round in an interesting way!
Passions & little things that bring you joy: Little things that bring me joy... Eating a really ripe, juicy mango. That brings me so much joy! Similarly, eating a pomegranate, I have fallen in love with breaking it apart! It can take you like 30 minutes just to get through it and I love pomegranates! I've come to really like walking in quiet, beautiful places where there's silence around, where there's nature and ideally, there's some water. That brings me a lot of joy! Also, I get joy in moving my body. I enjoy dancing like no one is around and getting on the dance floor with the music loud. It really makes me feel good!
The #inspirators who determined you to take the regenerative path:
Well, I would say who pointed out the path for me, extended a hand and invited me to be a part of this is Ken Stewart, the founder of Diving with a Purpose and Youth Diving with a Purpose. He is just so passionate about this work, and he has been the one who's created this pathway for all of us! If not for Ken and his vision of the world, none of this would be happening. So I feel very inspired by him!
A hint or starting point for companies or professionals that are taking the first steps in the regeneration journey and an honest piece of advice for young people who lose hope:
I would first say: follow your curiosity. Sometimes, it's hard to know what to do, especially in this world of all the options that there are and with the pressure of wanting to be successful in some way. I just had a call with a young woman that I'm mentoring through NatGeo, she's a NatGeo Fulbright Scholar and she hasn't been able to get additional funding so far. This sent her into a tailspin of depression even though she could keep doing what she was doing without the funding. But the pressure that she's really feeling is to look good in the eyes of her community and to show that she's doing the right work and that what they've invested in her hasn't been for nothing. She's got all this pressure on herself to succeed and she's only 23. I am much older and this is just falling into place for me now.
All you can ever do is keep following your curiosity. Having patience with yourself and with the process and... trusting. But it will all unfold in the way that it's supposed to unfold and it might not unfold in a way that looks a particular way. I always thought that I was supposed to have a big media company. That's what my big dream when I was 23 was and I tried to do that. And it did not work out. I wanted it to work out. I went into some deep debt. We put out a magazine, but it didn't last long and it didn't turn into this big company. I thought I was a failure for a long time because it didn't work out the way that I wanted it to.
So, I feel much compassion for folks who are trying to figure it out and trying to make it work. Here is a bit of advice: stuff works out the way it is going to work out for you. And you never know what the purpose is or the experiences that you will have. I would say that the magazine that I tried to start really was a grounding for this work that I'm trying to do now. There's a way in which I have been through the fire of bringing together a team and learning how to work with a team. My main point is to continue to follow your curiosity and be patient with yourself and the process. You should lean in and trust that it's going somewhere.
Books that had a great impact on you & Must-reads for any regenerative professional:
Enola Holmes book series (Granted Enola is a privileged English girl from a wealthy family but, she’s also facing the sort of gender inequity that existed at the turn of the century in the 1900s. To me, she is such an example of girl power and being fearless!)
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron (It's a lovely book about how to really tap into your creativity and it's basically a workbook that gives you activities, quotes, and ways for you to grow as an artist. I think it's been a book that has nourished me in a lot of ways.)
Sark Books (Sark has what she calls juicy books and her art is beautiful. It's also self-excavation and guided journal prompts that give you activities to complete in order to reach your own creative expression.)
Heal Your Body by Louis Hayes (It maps any sort of unease in your body with the mental and emotional connections to that and then it gives you affirmations to say, to get through.)
Music that makes you (and your heart) sing: A song that is really moving me right now is Beyonce’s Break My Soul Vogue Remix.
Places you travelled to that left a mark on you:
Back in the day, India and Costa Rica were very impactful places for me. Most recently inside of this project, I would say, South Africa, Benin, and Mozambique have been very impactful. Those are a few examples of places that have really shaped or changed me in some way.
Reasons to feel optimistic about our future in 2030 and Reasons to feel pessimistic about our future in 2030:
The work is happening out there. It's an amazing time to be alive and to be focused on global change. It feels like somebody said this to me once and I just loved it. I've used it over and over and over again: “It feels like the world's gravity has been turned off and systems that couldn't change, that have never changed, that people thought would never ever change, are shifting by the second.”
It's miraculous and magical what's happening, and we still have a long way to go if the work is around equity and inclusion for all people everywhere. We have a lot of work to do. But there is a listening in the world. Now there is momentum, and it feels like there is a solid base.
I always think about this around what has happened with women and girls’ equality and rights. And I think when I started this work way back in the day, it was small initiatives, where there were voices here and there. At that time, it was a slow push with the work, and then eventually those voices began to cohere in more solid ways. Then this began a snowball. That's what it was. It started out as this little snowball, and it gained more and more volume to it. Until eventually when it started to roll down the hill, it became so big that it couldn't be stopped. And that's what it feels like today. That's the place that we're in around gender equity. It's governments, its businesses, it's entertainment, it's around the world, in villages, cities, and countries alike. There's an awareness, but not everybody is in that space. There's work happening and there's an awareness that women and girls have a right to be included and to be treated fairly. And I don't think that sort of ground was there before, and it can't be stopped. You know, there's a way you can't turn women back now. We are moving forward.
It feels like this is happening inside of race and ethnicity as well. There's something that's bubbling and that we can contribute to. I think that's already happened in the environmental space that's like the equity space. But I think we are getting to a place of acknowledging history, the past and really seeing who we are to each other in a powerful way and how we belong to each other and how we're responsible for each other and that it is much deeper to the colour of our skin, or our ethnic background, or our origin of country. It just feels like there's a new understanding of who we are as human beings together.
The #inspirator you are endorsing for a future edition of the newsletter is:
Ken Stewart, Diving with a Purpose
The quote that inspires you:
This quote upended me, it has impacted me. It is often attributed to James Baldwin, but we haven’t been able to find an actual source that confirms who originally said this:
“To be African American is to be African with no memory and to be American with no privilege!”
Your own quote that will inspire us:
