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This Monday, May 23, Mary will facilitate.
Inclusion is both a community process and a community outcome.
OHMC is undergoing a process to help us ensure that our three sanghas are as welcoming as possible to all. We are dedicated to offer a safe, brave space for all who attend to feel welcome just as they are across the spectrums of gender, race, class, sexuality, different abilities, etc. You may wish to reflect back on your first experience of attending OHMC sangha. Did you feel welcomed? During this week, after sitting and walking meditation, we will ask sangha attenders to share their experiences and ideas in small break-out groups to identify ways to train our facilitators and improve our ability to welcome all people..
As I reflected on what I wanted to write for this week’s OHMC newsletter, I decided to share my personal experience with inclusivity. And times when I experienced only tolerance or even exclusion. For those of you reading who do not know me, I am a woman who chose another woman from another country, language and culture to be my life partner of 35 years. We, in turn, chose to adopt two infant girls from different countries, languages, and cultures. It all sounds so simple as I write this, yet it masks the deep family hurts and public prejudices we experienced along the way. To be excluded from Christmas dinner one year in France, for example.
Our professional lives in international public health took us to many countries to live. We delighted and thrived with the stimulation of living in diverse cultures. During the last few years of increased awareness, I have only recently come to appreciate how much privilege I enjoyed as a white, American, professional woman. I directed health programs that had considerable funding, primarily from USAID, the US government agency for international development. This privilege included the power to hire and, if needed, to fire.
My partner, now wife since 2012, worked in the same field and often our projects collaborated. ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ was standard fare even if we made no real effort to conceal our lives to our program staff, Ministry of Health colleagues, our girls’ school teachers and the wider expatriate community.
In many ways, we traveled under the radar screen. I recall vividly when my Senior Advisor from Boston arrived at my new posting to meet with USAID. The Ethiopian country program manager for USAID raised his concern that our lifestyle was illegal in his country. He expressed his worries about how it might affect the Ministry of Health relationships. Perhaps seasoned from previous introductions, my advisor quickly responded back to the program manager that he is working for USAID and that the issue he raised was illegal in a US government workplace. When I left after 5 years, the same USAID program manager had become a dear and trusted friend and colleague who honored me with a beautiful gift.
I know that many many more have suffered much greater events of exclusion than I have. Yet my experience has helped me to open my eyes and heart. I am filled with the desire to do what I can to make the spaces where I work, play and live more inclusive.
I hope you can join us this week to help OHMC strengthen its commitment to making our sanghas the safe, brave spaces we all deserve.