Words of Inspiration

 Two of our STEP Committee members have recently had the honor of sharing inspirations to kick off our 2019-2020 DKG California Celebration and our 2021 Winter Leadership Planning Session. We wanted to share their inspiring words with you here.

2021 Winter Leadership Inspiration, written by Gloria Brown Brooks

THERE ARE SO MANY BRIDGES TO CROSS

I believe in the majority of the premises our country was built upon although many of them did not apply to me as a woman of color. 

I know that there are bridges now connecting our rights to the original premises.

America is making the connections, crossing bridges to help its citizens understand the beauty and worth of our country. We are available to make 2021 one of the best years. 

WE HAVE TO HELP EACH OTHER.

Starting now we can achieve the power-filled, equity based understanding to make 2021 better, for teachers, students, families and communities.

CROSS THOSE BRIDGES!!!

2020 DKG California Celebration, written by Lisa Mac Kenzie, Iota Omega

When Sue asked me to do an inspirational message to start our day today, I found myself thinking and reflecting on what I could possibly say to inspire others considering the state of our world right now.  Who am I to speak to inspire?  I’m not anyone important.  In fact, I’m non-essential.  I believe we are all considered non-essential right now!  

Then another crisis came to the forefront.  A virus much greater and much more systemic than the coronavirus.  RACISM!  It has lived through plagues, wars, and natural disasters.  I’ve always been able to see the good, but right now I’m having a very hard time.  Nonetheless, I’ll share my thoughts with you and see if together we can find the good.  

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “I have decided to stick with love.  Hate is too great a burden to bear.”  

My dad taught me that rather than give up in defeat or turn away from inequity and injustice, to feel it and in turn, do something about it.  When we are positively directed and hell-bent (his word), hurt can turn into fuel and that fuel can inspire.  That inspiration can make a difference.  That difference starts with me- acknowledging my own white privilege and educating myself and those around me so we can learn a better way.

When this is all “over,” what will we remember?  What thoughts and images will be seared into our brains and hearts?  Who will we be when you are no longer told to stay at home?

Will we go back to the same schedule we had before?  Will my job even be considered essential since I only work with kids who struggle academically socially and emotionally.  I wondered if I could go back and teach if I cannot touch and hold my students.  Will our work as educators be the same?  I certainly hope it will have grown and we will be better educators!

Like me, you chose a profession of working with children and youth because you wanted to help them become the best versions of themselves.  That means helping them develop self-awareness, social awareness, compassion, and the ability to make responsible decisions and contributions as a member of a world that still struggles to accept our shared humanity.

This novel coronavirus outbreak has put a mirror in front of my face, magnifying the inequities in our school systems—and in our society—that too many of us have allowed to exist without question.  Districts like New York City agonized over closing schools because officials had to confront an ethical dilemma: risk greater infections or put millions of children out on the streets, since many of them depend on schools not only for an education but also for food, and basic care, and some even for safe shelter during the day. For many, it’s the only place they experience kindness. The fact that closing schools presented such a challenge for districts nationally should be something that upsets us greatly.

We must teach our children about racism, not from a distance, but from our own hearts.  My adult daughter and I have had the conversation about what our ancestors did against the human race.  I can say, “Yeah, but,… my ancestors didn’t arrive until 1910.  It wasn’t me.”  Nonetheless, “we” owned black people as slaves and treated them with utter disrespect.  Beatings, rape, torture, lynching, ongoing terror; we sold their children to the highest bidders and owned them as property. 

I understand that while I have other fears, I walk without racial fear.  They don’t.  The world is not safe for them.  I don’t think twice about what I’m going to wear, or where I’m going to go after dark.  They do.

To this day white neighborhoods have better schools and access.  Black communities are largely poor, and their schools are disenfranchised because we have kept them at a disadvantage. We build prisons instead.  Then we find reasons to incarcerate them at astounding rates.

What this means to me is that I must wake up and own that I walk with great ease in this country.  What we’re witnessing today is the collective expression of the result of generations of repression and hatred and the inability to walk without fear.  This isn’t just about the senseless killing of one man – George Floyd. 

My responsibility, now and for the rest of my life, is to own up to it and recognize that this expressed pain is not directed to me as an individual but at the white race as the institutional power that continues to oppress people of color.

I’ve been able to make space for the unknown and I encourage you to do the same.  There are millions of Americans struggling to eat and pay their rents or mortgages.   For the frontline workers, their most pressing concerns are protecting themselves and their families from the coronavirus as they care for others who are sick and dying.  

When we leave our homes and go out into the world in the future, will we see ourselves as vulnerable members of society?  Will we see ourselves as someone who needs to be protected from others so we don’t’ get sick?  I find myself wondering who and what really will be essential in a post-pandemic world.

The truth is that we don’t know the answers to these questions.  But what I do know is that how I see myself matters.  How you see yourself matters.  When I think about educators being considered “non-essential” it scares me.  We are often the only safe person for our students.  I wonder when the last time some of my students heard a kind word, received a hug, or felt okay to make mistakes.  We are absolutely essential!  In this post-pandemic world, what will truly matter most - what is really most essential - is who we are on the inside.

When we return to our “new normal,” we have to power to decide what that “new normal” can be.  We can make it one where we choose to heal with our words and our presence.  We can go out into the world with a firm intention to choose love over fear, division, and hate.  We can choose to show kindness, compassion, and empathy to others.  We can choose to step out of our own pain to help someone who is hurting.  We can speak up and stand up, or kneel.

Moving forward I hope that we will focus on being selfless rather than selfish; focus on less instead of more. Our society deems people non-essential due to the color of their skin or the creases in their faces, we have viewed others as non-essential based on their line of work, socio-economic status, or education.  The coronavirus has really leveled all of us in different ways.  But it has annihilated many of our black families and communities.  They, more than any, were hit the hardest. 

We each have different experiences sheltering in place.  Some complain about having to wear masks or stay home.  Yet many haven’t been allowed to shelter- those on the front line. Instead, every day they’ve experienced trauma at a level most of us cannot even fathom.  Who will be essential to their care and healing?  Who will be essential to the care and healing of our children when we are allowed to return to school?  It has to be us.  All of us! 

Tomorrow remains unknown.  Wondering about it too much right now isn’t going to change it. But it’s important for us to begin thinking about who we are and who we want to be.  

I can be one person who can begin to break this cycle of prejudice and racism by talking to the ones I love about my whiteness, white supremacy, white privilege, unconscious bias, and my racial history.  

We get a do-over about who and what we want to be “when we grow up.”  Well, I thought I had that figured out a couple of years ago.  But now that question is front and center in my mind again in a new and different way.  WHO do I want to be?

I encourage you to think about this, too; to make some space for it and sit with it.  While the future may feel uncertain, what will always be certain and essential is love.  Nurturing, healing love!  The love we have for ourselves.  The love we have for our families and friends.  The love I have for you, even though I may not know you personally.  It is essential.  Love is the one essential ingredient that our world cannot move forward without.  Not anymore.

So, when you leave your home, walk out with love in your heart.  Come out of hiding.  Share the weight of injustice.  Walk out with a view of our world as one filled with possibility instead of despair.  See the good around you.  Instead of wishing that things would change, choose to do what you can to make them better.  Walk out ready to share your love with others.  See love as an essential gift you can share with others.  After all, it may be your love that defines a moment in someone’s mind and heart and helps them in a way you never knew.  We can move humanity forward in our own ways, one human at a time. 

The Choose Love formula is even more of a necessity now than ever:  Courage + Gratitude + Forgiveness + Compassion in Action = Choosing Love!

Have the courage to raise your voice peacefully for equality.  The gratitude for the awareness and support you have now.  Forgiveness- this may feel impossible right now, but that makes it the most important to work on.  It doesn’t mean forgetting the past, but rather working on cutting the cord to pain and moving forward to enact positive change with your personal power intact.  

Above all else, compassion.  Be there for those hurting, offer your support, and raise your voice in love.

 We cannot always choose what happens to us, but we can always choose how we respond.  And we can always respond with love.  So, ladies, as we carry forward into the post-pandemic world, may we choose love, carry it in our hearts, and share it with others.  May we walk in kindness and remember that love will always be essential.  Choose Love again and again, even and especially when it seems impossible.