I am a fighter, a risk taker and often an angry person. I am a child of the Deep South and the North, filtered through a religious upbringing that has permeated who I am and the decisions that made me who I have become over time.
My father was deeply religious and blamed my decisions – the many that he strongly disagreed with – on my exodus from the Church. My transition towards being socially and politically progressive and taking actions that flowed from that process – from being part of ecological movements as a teenager to moving to Latin America as a young single mother to participate in political movements in Central and South America – challenged me to examine my beliefs and to fundamentally change. But also my exposure to other cultures and the growing understanding that class, gender and the color of your skin, greatly impact access to education, jobs and so much more, helped me recognize the deep seated roots of white privilege and how I benefited from my middle class status and from being white.
Fifteen years living in Latin America fundamentally changed me. I lost friends to violence, death became part of my daily existence and I discovered how much work can go into just surviving. I acquired an appreciation for the creature comforts that I took for granted (like refrigerators and washers – nothing like washing cloth diapers, sheets and jeans by hand and buying day to day what you would eat so that it doesn’t go bad, to learn!) I learned to appreciate life on a daily basis and to try to make each day and each decision count for something. After I returned to the US, I looked around at this society from a different perspective and realized that I was no longer only who I had been before and that I couldn’t and didn’t want to go back to what I had been before.
My passion to make a difference every day has powered my decisions and enabled me to fight for change, whether that be small or large.
My passion to make a difference every day has powered my decisions and enabled me to fight for change, whether that be small or large. My ability to take risks to implement my passions has led me through more than a few tough years but has also made me see that I’m a survivor. My anger to see so much that shouldn’t be – children suffering hunger, women dying from domestic violence, black men and women being incarcerated and killed because of the color of their skin, poor quality of education, American ignorance and insularity and so much more, powers me to continue forward each day and to work for change both in myself and in our society.