Exhale volunteers Jackie and Danielle joined our Director of Programs, Jovida Ross, at the UC Berkeley Service Fair on Wednesday, September 7th to recruit new volunteers for our next training.

Our award-winning volunteer program is currently recruiting new volunteers for our next training, scheduled to begin Sept. 21.  APPLICATIONS ARE DUE SEPTEMBER 10TH.   Check out our listing on VolunteerMatch for more information on how to apply.

Read more about how Volunteers Lead the Way at Exhale on the VolunteerMatch blog.

The answers they’ve found so far are shared in two recent videos,  “World Pieces: The Neuroscience of Conflict” and “Finding Empathy“.

Emile Bruneau reminds us that “people fail to empathize with each other when they are in direct conflict.”  He offers an alternative definition of empathy from your typical “stepping into someone else shoes and thinking from their perspective” to “stepping into their shoes and thinking from your own perspective.”

Rebecca Saxe points out:

“If you want to understand how people change their minds, the answer will be in how they change their brains.”

Key points that help bridge transforming oppression work with conflict transformation processes include:

• People in conflict are not as sympathetic towards the suffering of their adversaries. ..If we’re going to heal old wounds, the first step is to bring empathy back online.

• People treat each other differently depending on how much power they have…People with more power tend to have less sympathy to other people’s  suffering.

• Asking people to leave their histories at the door and come together to work on common goals as individuals tends to work better for the dominant group.

• In one study, people from a targeted group were more favorable to the dominant group, after given a chance to be heard.  The dominant group showed more empathy towards the targeted group after being compelled to listen.

Emilie poses the most important question to drive future research:

“Can we train ourselves to empathize more with someone from a different group?”

We highly recommend you watch both; and consider the questions:

What are the implications of these findings for the U.S. abortion conflict? And, what kind of research questions should  the Pro-Voice movement ask so that we can learn more about how to transform the abortion conflict?

Thaler Pekar has been writing about the ethical sharing of stories in a series of blog posts; and her insights offer critical thinking for our community members and the advocates who seek to have access to our stories.

In a two-part series in PhilanTopic, Thaler outlines the concept of Ethical StorySharing, in Part 1:

Because stories are powerful, and because they are wholly owned by the person who shares them, we have an ethical obligation to use story in ways that do no harm. Whether we are asking for stories to better understand an organizational challenge, to use in our organizational communications, or for an advocacy campaign, our goal should be to empower, not exploit…

The need to refrain from treating story as a commodity goes beyond nonprofit and advocacy work; it should inform all your work with narrative. True narrative intelligence respects the sharer of the story and recognizes that his or her story is a unique part of them that cannot, and should not, be taken and shared without permission.

In Ethical StorySharing, Part 2, Thaler gives more advice to advocates who seek to work with stories:

Thinking about the stories you’re not hearing is critical to the ethical use of story. Do you have a responsibility to seek them out? Also, do you plan to label and publicly present the stories you do gather? And if so, how will the context affect the way the audience perceives those stories?…

Or you may be working with a stigmatized population, in which case you have a special responsibility to protect the sharer of the story. For example, you have an ethical obligation to share any knowledge you may have about what could happen to the person, personally or professionally, if they decide to share their story. Might you need to provide for the person’s safety? Does the person sharing his or her story understand how s/he could lose control over the context in which the story is shared, especially in super-public places like YouTube?

In “Working with Stories,” on the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Thaler writes about the concept of empathetic engagement, first described by Sam Gregory of WITNESS:

Develop and engage a keen sense of empathy. Consider what people physically and emotionally need in order to share their stories. Make certain that people are in no way coerced into sharing a story, and explore and protect against any possibilities that the teller may be stigmatized, or even harmed, because he or she has shared a story.

Remember that each individual wholly owns his or her stories. Personal stories are not commodities, to be taken from one person and given to another, in exchange for reimbursement of some sort…Remember, too, that the audience is a partner in the story sharing. Create conditions favorable to the listener fully receiving and making sense of the story.

Understand that story begets story. Story is a contagion: By sharing a story, you will elicit stories in response. Keep this in mind, creating both the time and physical requirements that respect and enable a flow of stories.

In order to hear the real range of people’s complex experiences and emotions, you must avoid communicating that only certain stories are acceptable, welcome, and valued.  If you are too descriptive about the types of stories you want to hear, you may not hear anything at all.

Sagely, Thaler writes:

Refrain from starting a narrative project with a predetermined sense of the stories you will hear. When stories are elicited with honesty and benevolence (and they must be!), you will most likely be surprised, delighted, and frightened by what you hear. Commit yourself to the journey, not to the product.

Finally, in “Pro-Voice and Pro-Chaos” in PhilanTopic, Thaler describes how Pro-Voice is inherently a practice of Ethical StorySharing:

Being “pro-voice” means being anti-predetermined story. The people who work with and support Exhale understand that embracing reality is the only authentic choice for those advocating for sustainable conflict resolution and a more peaceful social climate. Imagine if more advocates let go of their fear of being surprised, contradicted, or losing control and looked to solicit and share stories that didn’t necessarily fit predetermined agendas. In their representation of the complexity of reality, the resulting stories might appear to be chaotic. But the odds are excellent that out of that chaos, profound insight would follow.

To learn more about Thaler and her thinking on Ethical StorySharing, follow her on Twitter: @thaler.

On Monday, May 2, 2011 in the New York Daily News, Kassi wrote in “Get Your Politics Off My Grief”:

Contorting rich experiences and complex emotions into partisan slogans shames women who do not “feel” within their political lines, separating us into distinct, sometimes-opposing groups that struggle to relate to one another. Pro-voice is an antidote to the alienating ills of America’s abortion culture.

Here’s a right I’d march for: the right to wail myself to sleep, to yearn for my long gone baby, yet to know that I needed to delay parenthood. Transcending heartache is possible as long as I keep my story unabridged – and out of the political sphere.

On July 28, 2011, Kassi went further, sharing more details about her experience with abortion in the Modern Love column of the New York Times.  Kassi shared in “A Lost Child, But Not Mine”:

With sobriety and a salary, I couldn’t stop thinking about the baby that wasn’t, a loss somehow made more painful by his baby that was. I spent my workdays browsing photos of his little girl, believing in some twisted respect that I was glimpsing the face of the child I could have had. On lunch breaks, I went home to cry in bed, longing for a paranormal miracle.

By the time I called him, his daughter was about to celebrate her first birthday. He was living at a halfway house in Boston, where my company was flying me for a conference. I harbored a secret motive to find out if he dwelled on the loss as much as I did, so I asked him if he would meet me….

THE heat of summer hung down on our shoulders when we hugged on the bustling street corner. As we parted, I walked up Gloucester Street toward the conference center; he headed toward the pickup truck he’d borrowed from a friend at the halfway house.

In the three years since, he has spent much of his time incarcerated for drug-related offenses. I wish I could share my sobriety, my degree and my career to rent that apartment for his little girl, but reality has finally sunk in: the abortion is mine alone, just like Jade is his.

These two articles demonstrate how each person’s story with abortion has multiple layers, with diverse ways to share about such an intimate experience.   Show your support to Kassi and follow her on twitter: @KassiUnderwood.

Laura Flanders, host of GRITtv, took a public stand as Pro-Voice yesterday.  In her latest feature she encourages her audience to “Spark a Movement that’s Pro-Voice!” Laura continues, “Talk may not heal all that ails us – and our politics – but it’s certainly true that where abortion’s concerned, we could do with less grandstanding about “gag rules” and more honest listening – and talk.”

Check out Laura’s interview above with Exhale’s Executive Director, Aspen Baker, and Natalia Koss-Vallejo of MTV’s ”No Easy Decision“; and give thanks to Laura in the comments for her public stand alongside all women who have had abortions.

Keep the Momentum Growing: Your investment in Exhale means more influencers like Laura taking a public stand for a Pro-Voice future; and more opportunities for leaders like Natalia to share their stories. We need your partnership today to raise $15,000 by August 19th. If you’ve never given to Exhale before, your gift will be matched for a limited time, up to $2,500, by a long-time donor.

There is no better time to support the Pro-Voice Momentum!

As this exciting movement expands, we each have our own opportunity to grow the Pro-Voice message and keep women and men with personal abortion experiences at the center of their own stories. How will you use your influence to grow the Pro-Voice Momentum? What story would you want to tell?

Julie Davidson-Gómez

Susan Osborne

Jennifer Rudy

“Are all your board members this involved?” Deb, a donor in Seattle, asked me as we both waved goodbye to Julie, a board member who had just co-hosted a fundraising party at Deb’s home in November 2009.

“Yep!” I said.  “It’s very impressive,” she replied.

Impressive is a great word to describe the board service of Jennifer Rudy, Julie Davidson-Gómez and Susan Osborne.  Brought onto the board of directors as a cohort in 2005, Jen, Julie and Susan have recently left the board after successful completion of our maximum board term: two, three-year stints of service.  From their board member orientation to their transition celebration, their leadership has shaped what Exhale is today; and what we will become in the future.

Jen, Julie and Susan benefitted from the partnership of other board members (thank you Lisa Lepson, Talia Walsmith, Ellen Wu, Tulin Acikalin, Amy Moy, Cathy Schreiber and Jason Schultz!) throughout their service; yet as a cohort who came onto the board together and left together, their group has played a key role in Exhale’s growth and evolution from an organization primarily known for our direct services to one that is leading successful efforts to change the culture around abortion.

With this blog post, I write to acknowledge their service to Exhale; and to highlight a few of the key contributions that they have made towards solidifying Exhale as an innovative, entrepreneurial organization; and their impact on future board leadership.

Board Roles and Responsibilities

The role of a board member can be as expansive or as a minimal as an organization wants to make it.  Certainly there are laws and ethics guiding the role of the board, and traditional functions, but once the Executive Director has been reviewed; finances overseen; strategic planning facilitated; and fundraising successfully integrated into board roles and responsibilities, what other opportunities for leadership can board members provide to advance a social change mission?

Board performance is one-of-the most talked about and debated issues in nonprofit governance (especially among Executive Directors), and CompassPoint’s recent “Daring to Lead” report shows that Executive Directors have very mixed experiences with their boards.  Yet, CompassPoint’s paper on Next Generation Organizations; Beth Kanter’s book on the Networked Nonprofit; and networked models like the WikiMedia Foundation, for example, point to where board leadership is headed.

But, systems, process, ideas, and strategies don’t add up to a whole lot without leadership.  It doesn’t matter how much evidence there is showing the need for change, or how many expensive consultants tell a board what they should do moving forward, if the leadership isn’t there to endorse, encourage and enable change, then it’s probably not going to happen.

This kind of leadership – the kind that facilitated Exhale’s ability to grow and evolve – is the gift that Jen, Julie and Susan have given Exhale.  They joined the board five years after our founding and they were the right leaders at the right time to provide exactly what Exhale needed over the last six-years: a strong foundation to foster and grow an organizational culture rooted in Mission, Abundance, Excellence, Innovation and Self-Care.

The Practice of Organizational Culture

Putting words down on paper does not a culture make.  Organizational culture is a practice.  It is the values, assumptions, norms and behaviors that are shared and exhibited by people within an organization. Sometimes it is referred to as an organization’s personality, character or core identity.  An organization’s culture is reflected in interpersonal communication, leadership style, systems in place and traditions followed – it is the often-unwritten or unsaid understanding between people that creates the way work is conducted.

Exhale, with the board leadership of Jen, Julie and Susan, encouraged, enabled and endorsed the effort to advance our internal organizational culture.  Throughout their board term, our team of volunteers, staff and board changed our professional behavior with one another, assessed our decisions in a new way, strategized and planned from a different set of considerations, and identified potential team members – from funders to volunteers – with this new, proactive criteria.

We focused on this effort because we wanted to create an organizational culture that was aligned with our values; and mostly, because we need every part of Exhale to be focused on one thing: achieving our mission. The culture in which we operate and do our business has a tremendous impact on our ability to flourish and grow; as an organization with a mission to change the culture around abortion, changing our own gave us first-hand knowledge and experience of what it takes to be successful.

Accepting the Need for Change

What was so bad about our culture that Exhale needed to spend years transforming it?

It’s nothing you haven’t seen or experienced before. We weren’t that much different from most other nonprofit organizations.  We operated out of scarcity, and the idea that there was “never enough” of what we needed to be successful.  We practiced personal sacrifice, putting the organization over personal wellbeing, and we watched people burn-out. We were afraid to take risks that could lose us the few assets and allies we felt we had.  We accepted other people’s ideas of us, that we weren’t organizers, advocates, or powerful change agents, and we apologized and tried to make what we did more acceptable and comfortable for others.

These practices aren’t unique to Exhale. In fact, professional consultants in the field and leaders with decades of experience gave advice that endorsed and promoted this culture.  This is what we were told was typical, and what we needed to do to raise money.

A-ha!

But Exhale wasn’t started to raise money.  We were started to move a mission.

This “a-ha moment” is when Exhale started the process to change our culture.  Jen, Julie and Susan saw that despite decades of experience, many nonprofit leaders never achieved their social change goals, and in fact, as much as they tried to hold on, they often lost more than they gained. They watched young nonprofit leaders burn-out and leave the field and they didn’t want the same for me. They saw that scarcity-thinking and personal sacrifice were not proving to be effective models of organizational culture, and so they gave Exhale the leadership we needed to try something different.

We began by letting go. We stopped thinking about money and what we needed to do or say to get it.  We refused to let it be our motivator. We accepted that finding funding without compromising would be more challenging, and we understood that our mission could live and grow without money.  Or even staff.  The risk for me was that I might lose my paid job as Executive Director.  This highly-intentional act of letting go was not your typical board response to fundraising obstacles.  What letting go gave us was a sense of freedom and possibility. It opened the doors to our own creativity and innovation, and our power to change the world.

A Culture that Works With Us, Not Against Us

If scarcity-thinking is the death of social change; then Exhale chose to Operate from Abundance.  If trying to fix what’s broken means advocates often lose more than they gain, then Exhale chose to Strengthen What Works.

Here’s what I mean: It’s common for nonprofit boards and staff to lament all the things we don’t have, money, usually being the biggest one, but certainly also time, or prestige. For example, “We can’t do that because we don’t have enough money,” or “we can’t take that risk because our funders might not like it.” This is called “deficit” or “scarcity-thinking” and it’s a focus based on perceptions about what a nonprofit doesn’t have or is afraid to lose.

But, what if instead, nonprofit leaders focused on what we do have?  What if leaders said, “We can do that because we have the smartest staff around,” or “We will take the risk because it will help us identify new risk-taking supporters” or “Let’s earn people’s respect by demonstrating the success of our strategies.”

Notice the difference in where the real power lies? It’s in all of us.  We already have it.

For example, for the vast majority of Exhale’s organizational life, we’ve had what many might say is very few resources – little money and few staff.  But, in reality, we are overflowing with everything we need: great ideas, passionate volunteers, a compelling message and mission, and a robust network of allies. Our organizational culture change from deficit-thinking to operating out of abundance means we always start with our strengths – what we currently have – and we make decisions from there.  When we find something works well, we do more of it, and then we focus on turning what’s good into something great.

Our Real, Measureable Results   

Our organizational cultural practices produce real, tangible results for Exhale.  Look at how we approached the major financial challenges of 2010.  Last year, Exhale was at our lowest capacity with a huge demand on our services.  Yet, when the board and I looked at the problem, the first question we asked ourselves was: “what do we have that’s strong and effective that can help us get through this?”  The answer was our volunteers. Their leadership proved instrumental in getting Exhale through that time.  You can read more about their efforts on VolunteerMatch who featured a blog about Exhale’s volunteer leaders in celebration of 2011 National Volunteer Week.

Being a strength-based organization is one thing, but it takes real guts for board members to back up this idea with the nitty-gritty of budget decisions.  There is a practice in nonprofit budgeting that ignores the things that are working well and spends money on where the problems are.  I have seen nonprofits spend thousands of dollars on organizational planning process or staff retreats because there is one person who is causing problems and disruption. What if instead of letting the problem of a bad employee take up more space, they spent time and money investing in their top-performers? What if the staff person that shows up every-day on time, comes up with great ideas, and has excellent follow-through is rewarded with a trip to a conference where they get to represent the organization, be its Ambassador and have their leadership be witnessed and seen by the rest of the organization and it’s supporters?

Increased responsibility and more complex duties are rewards for top performance.  Exhale pays close attention to who shows up on time; who does what they say they’re going to do; who offers thoughtful advice and feedback to peers; and who comes up with good ideas that they take responsibility for pursuing.  We reward people with new leadership opportunities, and we give them more opportunities to shine. Check out board member Julie speaking on a panel as a representative of Exhale; and volunteers Claudia and Ijeoma who attended a conference on behalf of Exhale.

Most importantly, changing our organizational culture has made Exhale more effective at achieving our mission.  Within the last 12-months we went from facing one of our organization’s biggest challenges to celebrating in one of our most phenomenal successes.  It has everything to do with organizational leadership and culture.  Today, Exhale’s commitment to mission, innovation and creativity has placed us in the best financial position of our nearly 10-year history.

Exhale transformed our culture from one of deficit to one of abundance, from one that focuses on what’s wrong, to one that invests in what works.  This significant change required board leadership to endorse, encourage, and enable it to take place.   There have been days, months and years when it seemed this choice may have been the wrong one and our resolve was questioned.  It was Jen, Julie and Susan who had the organization’s back and reminded us that social change happens over decades, not in grant cycles.  Their leadership has been a gift; and in the ultimate practice of true abundance-thinking, they have transitioned off the board knowing that the culture they fostered is now one of Exhale’s strengths, a strength that will attract, excite and grow Exhale’s next generation of board leadership.

Thank you Jen, Julie and Susan for your board leadership and your contributions to Exhale’s past and future.

There’s nothing quite like a partnership with MTV to get the word out!

Months after we worked with MTV on their groundbreaking special “No Easy Decision;” months after the Pro-Voice community stood together in peace taking a public stand besides the young women sharing their stories through “16 & Loved;” and months after the New York Times reported on our efforts and helped share our story… the word keeps spreading.

Our message is out. If you have a personal experience with abortion, Exhale is a community that welcomes you with love and respect.

Now, let’s work together to make sure this message reaches the people who need it most: young women and men with personal abortion experiences. Exhale has been working with our technical partners to develop a brand-new online public platform that will engage our growing community of Pro-Voice peacemakers. We expect to launch the first phase in the fall, with more phases launched throughout the next year. You’ve probably already noticed some changes in the way we communicate with you, such as receiving email from Exhale, rather than just me. Thanks to the support of people like you who have helped to sustain and grow Exhale, we have been able to invest in new leaders and now, there are more voices, ambassadors, and peacemakers speaking for the Pro-Voice movement than ever before!

Our use of technology and social media is expanding along with the Pro-Voice movement, because we know how important technology is for our community of women who have had abortions.  Technology is critical to our ability to tell our own stories with abortion and be heard with dignity and respect.

We need your support with this next phase.  We are about to launch our new platform for online engagement with the Pro-Voice movement. To be successful, we need to raise an additional $15,000 by August 19th.  I’m hoping you will jump in.

Can you make a donation to Exhale today and accelerate the Pro-Voice Momentum?

With your support, we will reach more young women and men with our message of love and respect.  Our new online tools will seed and grow new Pro-Voice Ideas; leverage and expand Pro-Voice Innovations; grow and support new Pro-Voice Leadership; and strengthen the impact of our Pro-Voice Community so that our love grows more powerful than anger and hate.

“16 & Loved” wasn’t just a one-time project; it points the way forward, demonstrating the possibilities for transforming the culture around abortion. You know that Exhale has a long history of taking important risks and producing exceptional results: from the original launch of the talkline to our latest partnership with MTV.  Now is the time to take another leap and keep the momentum going. We are ready to do it again. Are you?

Please donate to Exhale today.

Aspen Baker

Executive Director at Exhale

About Exhale:

Exhale is an award-winning, national organization whose mission is to create a social climate where each person’s unique experience with abortion is respected, supported and free from stigma. Through leadership development, communications, and direct services, Exhale’s pro-voice movement is transforming public dialogue about abortion. Exhale has a thriving organizational culture that emphasizes mission, innovation and excellence.

About Exhale’ s Board of Directors:

Exhale’s Board Members are leaders whose volunteer service to Exhale is critical to growing and engaging more people and communities in the Pro-Voice Movement. We seek individuals to join the Exhale Board who have a strong personal commitment to our Pro-Voice mission; deep leadership experience; and powerful relationship-building and network-building practices.

Exhale’s Board is committed to grassroots, social change strategies; loves trying new things and taking calculated risks; and are achievement-oriented. Our board members are known in their personal and professional networks as early adopters of technological innovations; creative thinkers; diligent about follow-through; and as people who make things happen for the causes they care about.  We are looking for Board candidates who share these commitments, experience and professional practices.

Board Member Role and Responsibilities Include:

• Be a role model for Pro-Voice values and practices in their personal and professional networks, online and offline.
• Contribute an average of 12-hours per month over a three-year term, starting in Fall 2011.
• Participate in all board meetings (currently scheduled as quarterly conference calls); and participate in all organizational planning activities (typically one in-person retreat per year with follow-up activities); and other relevant meetings as needed/scheduled.
• Grow the visibility and effectiveness of Exhale and the Pro-Voice Movement through fundraising and movement-building activities that leverage your individual strengths and talents and meet the needs of Exhale.

 Experience and skills include:

• Ability to write, speak and communicate persuasively and effectively about Exhale and our Pro-Voice mission.
• Experience leading during organizational/institutional growth and change.
• Demonstrated success at building high-performing teams.
• Value learning, risk-taking, and facilitate collaborative environments that foster innovation and embrace challenges.
• Work independently and in close collaboration with a small team.
• A practice of self-care and ability to prioritize among competing needs.

If you are looking to contribute your leadership skills and experiences to an organization with high-standards for the performance of all its members, effective accountability practices, and the opportunity to lead in a growing field/movement, then a volunteer position on Exhale’s Board of Directors may be the right match for your talents and strengths.

To be considered for the Exhale Board of Directors, please submit a résumé detailing your relevant leadership experience  with a cover letter explaining what Pro-Voice means to you, and how you see your strengths helping to advance Exhale’s mission and vision in new ways. You may send these materials and address any questions to Exhale’s Board Recruitment Taskforce at info@4exhale.org. Applications will be accepted until August 31st.

Panel attendees also helped generate quite a bit of buzz on social media about the presentation while it was happening, and you can read some of their Tweets below:

Thank you to all who attended and helped us grow the conversation through social media and beyond! If you’re not already following Exhale on Twitter and Facebook, we hope you’ll join us there in the Pro-Voice movement!

Jovida Ross

By Jovida Ross, Exhale’s Director of Programs

I first came out as Queer when I was 17. At first I told a few close friends; when that went OK I told more people. Then I was out socially. I told my parents; moved in with a girlfriend for the first time; and eventually I became a leader in an LGBTQ organization.

Each of those steps brought a new coming out process: mustering my courage, taking the risk to speak my truth without knowing what response I would get, and living with the consequences. I’m fortunate that my experience has been overwhelmingly positive, with very few instances of shaming or overt discrimination.

Yet still, every time I find myself in a context where people assume I am straight, I face the question of whether I should come out yet again.

As ESPN contributor Mary Buckheit recently told NPR:

Most people think of a person’s coming out as one momentous day, or one unnerving phone call home, or one blurted sentence, even. But the truth is you come out a thousand times.

People who live the realities of socially and politically charged experiences (like sexual identity, immigration, abortion, and many others) hear lies, stereotypes, and insults thrown around about people like us. And we don’t know how others will react when we do share our own experiences. “Coming out” is a continual assessment of risks and rewards, and, when we go for it, it takes courage and resilience to step forward.

Among the great rewards are the trusting relationships we gain when our risk-taking is met with caring support. With each coming out experience, my sense of community expands. These networks add to my sense of strength, and my ability to come out, yet again, the next time around.

I see this mixture of risk-taking, courage, and community reflected in the stories of the undocumented immigrants who are stepping out of the shadows to share their experiences.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas came out as undocumented (and gay) in the New York Times yesterday, with a heartfelt piece describing his experience.  In his video, he talks about his own personal “underground railroad” of teachers, bosses and friends who have helped him navigate his status along the way.

As word of Jose’s courage spread online, #undocumentedimmigrant was trending on Twitter. Inspired by his story, many of those tweets were spontaneous disclosures from individuals of their own undocumented status.

Jose himself was inspired by the activists from the Trail of Dreams. They are students who were brought to this country as children. They grew up as undocumented Americans. In 2010 they walked from Miami to Washington, DC, to share their stories and to advocate for their ability to participate meaningfully in society, and advocate for the DREAM Act.

These DREAMers also drew on networks of love and support that buoyed their activism. Before going public with their immigration status, they connected with each other. They built organizations and communities that were invested in and inspired by their leadership.

Felipe Matos and Carlos Roa of Trail of Dreams, Laurie Ignacio of Presente, Jovida Ross and Katie Stack at Netroots Nation

I recently met several of the Trail of Dreams activists. I was particularly touched that many of them are Queer identified, and are informed by coming out about both of these experiences that become identity.

These undocumented students are taking big risks to tell their stories. Many of them are facing very real consequences. And they speak anyway, to reclaim and humanize their stories. While they have a political goal (building support for the DREAM Act), they also have a more fundamental human goal: to communicate their dignity.

As a listener, I have learned from connecting with the DREAMers. I appreciate the risks they are taking to share their stories, and I believe their courage will bring more understanding to the conversation about immigration.

As Jos Truitt writes on Feministing:

When a political issue becomes personal, when people understand it not in the abstract but as impacting real people, they’re able to empathize.

While I don’t have direct experience of living as an undocumented immigrant, I know a little bit about how it feels to live in the middle of a cultural firestorm, to have my body and heart targeted, politicized, and misrepresented. I also know what it feels like to be heard, supported, and loved; how powerful it is to speak my truth and to experience how people around me adjust, learn, and grow in response. I know that when this connection happens, we treat each other better, and gain strength together.

Women who have had abortions also take risks when they disclose their personal stories. They risk reprisals from loved ones, faith communities, and employers. And, though abortion is a common experience (1 in 3 women will have an abortion in her lifetime), it takes real courage to “come out” about this experience.

It takes courage every time a caller picks up the phone and speaks to an Exhale counselor. Or logs on to our private online space to talk with other women. Or tells her story through digital media, or on MTV.  However she chooses to share her story, we acknowledge her courage, and meet her with caring support. One by one, we build relationships and learn together, as each experience is unique.

I am working to grow the Pro-Voice movement with Exhale because I believe in the transformative power of empathy. I believe our liberations are fundamentally connected. I believe that when we share and listen to each other’s personal experiences, we are better able to create communities where we are all respected, supported, and free to thrive