This Is My Syncopated Life

In this episode, Dr. Charles discusses honoring her feelings and recognizing when an apology is due.

The Cost of Unshakable Clarity ​When you operate with high-level performance habits, unwavering mental toughness, and a razor-sharp pattern recognition lens, you don't just navigate environments—you expose them. ​In this episode, we break down the quiet panic of institutional systems that demand compliance but collapse under true accountability. From navigating the high-pressure corridors of publi...

Witness my human performance plan in motion. Coach caught it...I been knew it! Are there any of Miss Ericka's former coaches listening? I will tell you where and when. 👀 📚 When The Rabbit Got The Gun https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H9FH1VQ3?lv=shuf&bestFormat=true&dplnkId=af4eb27a-61b9-44c2-9e0d-29ae63e0ed7b&social_share=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cso_cp_apan_dp_085PF68KPQ524W29V6AY&channelId=704&ref_=cm_sw_r_ff...

A totally unscripted reality of what a Black woman endures through the eyes of her daughter. Dr. Charles does not mask her devotedness to the love of her life, Miss Ericka. These are frank conversations between a Black woman and her adult daughter - who lives at the intersection of love and misunderstanding. #HERstoryInMotion #Autism #Neurodicergence #hiccup #syncopation

Miss Ericka (@coacherickaruns) is an extremely wonderful human. And I am very proud of her. I would not take no for an answer. I would not allow the world to shrink my lovely baby girl. So I raised her to be excellent. I didn't say perfect. But I said excellent. And through her "excellence" she was able to overcome the labels that the world tried to attach to her. This is her first podcast. I want...

All week, I have been purging my spirit of the injustices that I endured all year. Truth? It felt GREAT!!!! I use my podcast to heal. Perhaps something I say may help you on your journey to mastering your greatness. You don’t need me to tell you that you are great! Greatness is innate. Define yourself, for yourself. Otherwise, you will be crushed by other people’s fantasies of you and eaten alive....

You don't check your humanity at the door when you go to work. You don't surrender your right to dignity because somebody has a title, a position, or authority over a process. And you certainly don't become less deserving of respect because somebody has decided that your questions are inconvenient.

When Does Ethics Enter the Argument? We teach ethics. We publish codes of conduct. We establish procedural rules, institutional policies, and standards of professional responsibility. We expect researchers to follow ethical requirements, preserve the integrity of their findings, and resist the temptation to distort evidence to produce a preferred outcome. But when does ethics and moral reasoning e...

You know the song, Latifah's Had it Up to Here , ~Queen Latifah This is where I am. You people are ill-mannered. And so it's been said.

Why is it that institutions extract the brilliance and labor of Black women, only to toss them aside when accountability knocks? In this raw, unscripted episode of This Is My Syncopated Life, Dr. Patrice M. Charles strips away the polite corporate fiction to audit the 11th-hour political scramble, the hypocrisy of institutional preservation, and what it means to stand fully sovereign when the mach...

The audacity of me... to call out their audacity . Today I’m talking about pride — the kind a Black woman is not supposed to have. And what happens when a room decides her pride is a punishable offense? Same room. Same sentence. Same pride. The pattern survives the costume change, y’all — so it’s not the room. It’s her. And I’m telling you this as her — it’s my story. T&T: Truth and Trust. Tha...

"My view of myself is not hers. I can understand hers better without submitting to it." This week Dr. Charles had a breakthrough — and she's bringing you inside it. Today she tells the world the things she wishes she could tell her mother, Mother Charles: the woman who bragged "mi hija es una profesora," who called her daughter "my cross to bear," and whose one kr...

Who cries for the Black woman? This morning, a federal agency told Dr. Patrice Charles — in writing — that nobody is coming to protect her. 47 days after she asked for help, her complaint never left their desk. This is why we don't carry these charges further: the doors that are supposed to be open for our complaints STALL. Stalled doors are how complaints go to die without anybody having to s...

This Is My Syncopated Life is heading into Season Five: New Season. New Stories. New Possibilities. This season, I’m sharing more of my story—including what led me to release When the Rabbit Got the Gun , the experiences behind it, and the patterns I could no longer leave unnamed. I’ll be telling it through the lens of Black Feminist Thought, in my own voice. And there’s another possibility on the...

What happens when a Black woman earns the doctorate but refuses to become somebody else’s idea of what an educated Black woman should look, sound, or act like? In this episode of This Is My Syncopated Life , Dr. Patrice Charles challenges the quiet bargain underneath respectability politics: the expectation that education shouldsomehow sanitize our language, temper our personalities, regulate our...

This episode tackles a painful but important question: what happens when another Black woman is not just disagreeing with you, but shrinking you. Dr. Patrice Charles breaks down how that shows up in language, behavior, and power dynamics, and why it matters for Black women’s freedom, visibility, and self-definition. Rather than framing the issue as simple jealousy or cattiness, Dr. Charles uses Bl...

What happens when a Black woman refuses to become what poverty, family, gender, and other people’s expectations say she should be? In this deeply personal episode of This Is My Syncopated Life , Dr. Charles revisits the life of her mother, Silvia Teresa Coulson—a stunningly beautiful, complicated, ambitious woman whose poverty became something family members repeatedly used to explain who they bel...

When a husband cheats, why does the other woman so often end up in the hot seat? In “Who Made Her Jezebel?” , Dr. Charles interrogates the gendered—and for Black women, racialized—storytelling that transforms a man who made a choice into a helpless victim of temptation while transforming a woman into Jezebel. Through Black Feminist Thought, accountability, vulnerability, sexuality, betrayal, and t...

They Don't Want The Smoke ~ They Want Your Silence: When Degradation Dresses Up Like Authority In this episode of This Is My Syncopated Life, Dr. Charles digs into what happens when disrespect becomes something deeper: degradation. Through Black Feminist Thought, personal experience, history, healthcare, leadership, and institutional power, she examines how Black women can be dismissed, discre...

Can You Stand the Rain? Everybody loves the sunshine version of a Black woman—the accomplished woman, the smiling woman, the agreeable woman, the woman whose brilliance asks nothing uncomfortable of the people around her. But what happens when the weather changes? What happens when she is under pressure, fighting for her dignity, naming harm, and refusing to shrink? In this episode of This Is My S...

In this opening episode of Season 4, we explore revelation, healing, and the beautiful complexity of becoming. “Our Lives Live in the Zigzag” invites listeners to rethink the idea that life must unfold in a straight line. For Black women especially, our power often lives in the unexpected turns, the detours, the pauses, the losses, and the moments that force us to see ourselves more clearly. This...

What happens when you stop asking whether you belong and start asking who created the measuring stick? In this birthday episode of This Is My Syncopated Life, Dr. Charles takes listeners through stories about performance evaluations, perspective shifts, Black Feminist Thought, invisible standards, good china, identity, visibility, and why some people insist on measuring giraffes using turtle ruler...

This episode is different. For the first time, I open the door and invite you into one of the most important stories I will ever tell: becoming Ericka’s mother. Before the medals. Before elite competition. Before coaching. Before the world championships. There was a little girl. And there was a mother trying to figure it out in real time. In this deeply personal episode, I share stories of Brookly...

How many opportunities have you eliminated before gathering enough information? In this episode of This Is My Syncopated Life , Coach Patrice explores the psychology of experimentation, adaptation, and what happens when people count themselves out before testing what is actually possible. Using a surprisingly powerful lesson from a routine eye exam, this conversation explores why clarity rarely ap...

Why syncopation? In this episode of This Is My Syncopated Life , Coach Patrice finally answers the question behind the title and explains how a word passed down through humor, memory, motherhood, and observation slowly evolved into an entire framework for understanding Black women’s lives. From childhood stories and lessons inherited from her mother to conversations about adaptation, interrupted r...