I’m convinced that you will have what you need in life. You
may not get what you want, but what you need will come and it will come right
when you need it.
Tuesday night I met with Shayna Israel, Co Executive Director of Elements, an
organization dedicated to “uniting LGBTQ womyn of color,” and I got exactly
what I needed. I got an interview with a phenomenal young woman who is passionately
pursuing her dreams. I got an interview that reminded me and I hope reminds you
that pursuing dreams are not in vain. I
got an interview that reminded me and I hope reminds you to dream bigger, that impossibility
ought not take up residence in our minds and hearts, and that you need not
money nor an office to organize, mobilize, and actualize.
Phreedum: Talk to
me about how Elements got started.
SI: We started as a group
of friends gathering pretty much every weekend. We’d meet up, go out to parties
and events in the LGBTQ community, drive to someone’s home, sleep over, carpool
to a spot for Sunday brunch and we’d have conversation and cry.
Phreedum: Cry?
SI: Yes. There
would be about 20 of us women of color with degrees and experience all across
the board conversing and crying. There
were lawyers, designers, writers, educators, clinicians, computer specialists,
and the like sitting in some coffee shop or restaurant having conversation and
crying about the schism between the women we get to be and don’t get to be and
really us just wanting to be whole. We knew that we had enough know how in the
group to heal ourselves and be whole women but we weren’t really tapping into
what we could really offer ourselves and other women of color in the LGBTQ
community.
Phreedum: Twenty
women is a lot. How did this go from the coffee shop conversation and crying to
an organization that’s working to host its 4th annual conference for
women of color in the LGBTQ community?
SI: When one
of our coffee converse and cry weekends wrapped up I found myself reflecting on our
conversation and a retreat I and some of the women in the group attended a few
weeks prior. I sent an email to these women and suggested we have a weekend
retreat where we could all identify the needs of our community, self assess
what we could do individually and collectively to meet the need, and how we could work individually and collectively
to meet needs we could not fulfill as a group. The retreat was in August 2008
and by April 2009 we organized a conference with goal being to provide a space
for women of color in the LGBTQ community to heal and become whole. The
conference had four different tracks, 12 different workshops, and a “keynote”
artist if you will, who talked about her journey as a multiracial lesbian
activist. We later found out that we
were the only conference for this population in the Mid-Atlantic region.
Phreedum: Wow
that is pretty huge. I imagine there have been other huge moments for you as an
entrepreneur?
SI: I got to go
to Tel Aviv for an international youth LGBTQ conference. I was the only woman
and only person of color from the United States at this conference that the
Israeli consulate in Philadelphia sent me to because of our work at Elements. I
think this sticks out as such a huge moment for me because here I am working
with a great team of people in Philadelphia to increase visibility, to say that
women of color in this community exist and have things to offer and have needs,
and I go to an international conference and find that the need for the work
Elements is passionately doing is needed and is needed beyond
Philadelphia. It was one of those moments for me where I was reminded there is
a bigger picture and Elements is part of that bigger picture.
Phreedum: How
does the work you do through Elements change the lives of others?
SI: We unite,
network, and empower self identified women of color in the LGBTQ community. We
work really hard to create a space for these women to gather, heal, and feel
empowered to create the change they desire knowing they have a host of women
who are committed to their wholeness. Sometimes the space and healing occurs at our
conferences, sometimes at our biweekly gatherings at the William Way Center,
and sometimes at someone’s home over dinner.
Phreedum: What is
it that people just don’t get about the work you do?
SI: That I and
all of us at Elements are volunteers. I think people see the drive, professionalism,
organization, and excellence of our work and think that we have passion
motivated by pay, but we don’t. We have passion period.
Phreedum: What
inspires you and keeps you motivated to do this work?
SI: The
actualization of my dreams and deepest desires. In fact, I have to dream
bigger. I think if I am really honest
90% of what I have dreamed of is already before me or is within reach. I used
to take pleasure in imagining what is possible but most of what I thought was
possible is actually now my reality. The progress that I have seen is what pushes
me further. If it weren’t for the progress I probably would have stopped.
Phreedum: I like
to think most people carry around words of wisdom that helps them to stay
focused and keep moving forward. What words of wisdom do you carry with you?
SI: In a magazine
interview Demi Moore once said “Don’t let your wounds make you become something
you are not.” I’ll never forget when
those words resonated for me. I was on the bus reading her interview in
Harper’s Bazaar. She was talking about a time when she was afraid of not fully
being herself. I think for a good portion of my life I would hold back. I knew
I had something to offer but I was afraid of being too loud or being too
visible. I didn’t want to cause problems.
Part of this I believe was some resentment I had toward my parents for what
I can now say they didn’t know and what I saw others get from their parents. I
was becoming angry about these two things and I’m not an angry person. I was
making my wounds who I was and I think reading that interview and what she had
to say really freed me to be who I am and not who my wounds suggest I become.
Phreedum: What is
the best thing about being a woman?
SI: Women have an
amazing capacity to hold. Women constantly expand to take in and take on and do it well. Women constantly make room and make it work. I have always been
in awe of our ability to do that and extremely grateful.
Phreedum: If you
were a color in the rainbow what color would you be and why?
SI: Indigo. It’s
the deepest blue and it’s mysterious. I think there are things in my life I
have discovered and the mystery is gone. However there are things I am
discovering, will discover, and things I may never discover in this lifetime
but are there to be discovered nonetheless.
To learn more about
Shayna and Elements please visit www.ourelements.org
or follow Shayna @ShaynaSIsrael
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