Stories Heal, Stories Connect, Stories Matter
Your heartfelt responses to Amy Ferris’s extraordinary post “I Matter” tell me I’m not alone in being moved by it. Amy’s plunge into the coldest, deepest wells of pain–her courage to swim around in those emotionally drenching experiences, then emerge to share them– and at the same time to share her liberation from the most…
Read MoreRecipe: Texas Head Start Chili
[caption id="attachment_3808" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Hatch long red chiles"][/caption]
I wouldn’t ordinarily post a recipe here–other than a recipe for using the 9 Ways power tools :-)–but I wanted to post this on Facebook and my fanpage has no place for posting word documents any more. So here you are. Something to warm your heart and tummy on a cold day.
Texas Head Start Chili Con Carne
Back story: I learned this recipe from the moms of children in my Head Start class in Odessa Texas, sometime around 1969 or 1970. It’s the real deal—no fancy stuff and minimal ingredients. We made vats of it for fundraising dinners. Head Start was new then and the name of our nonprofit organization, Greater Opportunities of the Permian Basin, reflected the Great Society’s ambitious intention. Head Start has proven its worth over the years and is one of the few Great Society programs still around; this recipe is equally durable.
There’s an easy way to make it and an authentic way. I find the easy way close enough to authentic in taste and texture that after you wrestle with the dried chilis once just to say you can, it’s not worth going to the trouble and mess again.
When I pulled the recipe out of my file on Christmas, 2010 to prepare it for friends, I noticed that the crumbling, yellowed, grease-spotted hand written recipe I’d used for years was on the back of the Planned Parenthood (formerly known as) National Executive Directors Council 1980-81 budget. So I thought I should digitize it for all eternity because life would be hell without great chili once in a while. And great chili is the one thing you can’t call and order for delivery in Manhattan—or at least I haven’t found any this good in the city yet.
Over the years, I’ve often made this chili for PP staff and volunteers. Once in AZ, it was central to brokering cooperation between the persistently competitive Phoenix and Tucson affiliates. In New York, every year I’d make it for the PPFA management team. And many times, I’ve shared the recipe in staff newsletters upon request.
The recipe is so simple that you’d think I’d have it memorized. In recent years, however, I’ve made green chile stew more often than this bowl of red. Thus I’m out of practice and thought it would be a good idea to look back at the recipe.
I start by cooking two pounds of dry pinto beans in a separate pot or crockpot slowly, with water and salt (and if you wish, throw in some garlic cloves), for several hours or until they turn very brown and the bean liquor tastes rich. You won’t need all of them for the chili, but as long as I’m cooking them I make extra for future purposes.
Read MoreRecipe: Texas Head Start Chili
I wouldn’t ordinarily post a recipe here–other than a recipe for using the 9 Ways power tools :-)–but I wanted to post this on Facebook and my fanpage has no place for posting word documents any more. So here you are. Something to warm your heart and tummy on a cold day.
Texas Head Start Chili Con Carne
Back story: I learned this recipe from the moms of children in my Head Start class in Odessa Texas, sometime around 1969 or 1970. It’s the real deal—no fancy stuff and minimal ingredients. We made vats of it for fundraising dinners.
Read MoreWant to Help Start a Girlution?
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My friend Tamara Kreinin (pictured here), who is executive director of the United Nations Foundation Women and Population program, sent me several e-mails during the last couple of weeks announcing that she was about to begin blogging. Seemed a little quaint that she was fretting about whether she was getting the art of the blogpost right, given that I get messages from e-consultants daily telling me blogging is already dead.
Well, you and I know blogging is alive and well. So all of you who can’t fit an entire story into a 140-character tweet or a text, please join me in welcoming Tamara to the international league of bloggers. I am delighted to cheer on the inspiring new girls’ movement she’s initiated by re-publishing her first blogpost as a guest post here at Heartfeldt. If you want to help the Girlution in the U.S. and overseas, check out the Girl Up website to learn how.
“Real” TED and TEDWomen: What’s Next?
I’ve been meaning to cross post CV Harquail’s excellent wrap up of the TEDWomen conference and the panel held in New York to discuss ways of fostering greater inclusion for women, people of color, and ideas that have not traditionally been chosen by the TED curators. Here is it is, full force and unedited.
My only additional comment is to suggest that the value of the controversy that emerged from TEDWomen has been significant. I hope that by raising consciousness we have opened up a path for gender parity in all such conferences and other “thought leader” events. Because after all, women do have at least half of the big ideas!
I’d love to know your thoughts now that the conference is over and we’ve all had some time to process it.
“Building on TED and the TEDWomen Conference: How Can We Make Conferences More Inclusive?”
We made a big start towards answering this question at our roundtable conversation after the TEDx636 NYC/ TEDWomen simulcast event. Our panel, organized by Natalia Oberti Noguera and sponsored by NYWSE, included Brittany McCandless (moderator), Adaora Udoji, Liza Sabater, Ritu Yadav, and me.
This post offers my personal, subjective summary of the conversation and the actions steps that were recommended. As my fellow participants, organizers, and allies share their perceptions of the event and ‘next steps’, I’ll share these ideas and resources too.
Although our panel was diverse in terms of age, expertise, professional domain, culture, and racioethnicity, we shared the same over-arching goal: inclusivity and diversity not only at conferences, but also in the larger ‘world of ideas’.
Read MoreAmy’s Story: How I Learned I Matter
Sit down. Pour yourself a cup of tea and know that you are going to need some time to read author Amy Ferris’s story slowly and carefully. It will sear you. It will uplift you. I encourage you to write your thoughts about it here too. Thank you, Amy for sharing it.
First, here’s the cover note Amy sent to me, inviting me to post it so all of you could read it too, then her essay in full:
gloria:
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i wrote this essay about a week, week and half ago, on the advice of my amazing therapist. i have been dealing with such deep shame, deep doubt… and she helped me pull this up and out. and on the page.
righting my life. or … writing my life. as the case may be.
Amy's Story: How I Learned I Matter
Sit down. Pour yourself a cup of tea and know that you are going to need some time to read author Amy Ferris’s story slowly and carefully. It will sear you. It will uplift you. I encourage you to write your thoughts about it here too. Thank you, Amy for sharing it.
First, here’s the cover note Amy sent to me, inviting me to post it so all of you could read it too, then her essay in full:
Read Moregloria:
i wrote this essay about a week, week and half ago, on the advice of my amazing therapist. i have been dealing with such deep shame, deep doubt… and she helped me pull this up and out. and on the page.
righting my life. or … writing my life. as the case may be.
i’ve sent it to 3 people for both a reaction and their advice where to place it/put it. three amazing writer friends – two who are survivors, and one who just came out. they were – without sounding too bloated – absolutely amazed by this essay. they were so taken aback by my truth, my story… this piece.
i wanted to send it to you, after seeing on your blog that you are asking for stories.
this is my story.
it’s very painful.
it’s very raw.
it’s very liberating.
i am so fucking proud to have been able to write it, say it, share it, give it, open up an heart or two. make a difference.
i hope it saves many, many lives.
and i hope, deeply, more than anything, that my story gives women courage to stand in their truth, to tell their story … and that they too realize that their lives matter oh so much.
Shay’s Story: Struggling to Be Taken Seriously at Work
It’s been quiet here with the holidays taking people’s attention. And I’d just about run out of 9 Ways stories to tell. Then in the “what you need is there if you can see it” mode, Shay Pausa’s story landed in my inbox. Shay has a video production company, ChiKiiTV, and in full disclosure is currently making a new speaking reel for me. Trust me, if you have video production needs, hire her. She wrote to share how her experiences and feelings as a woman in the workforce matched my findings in No Excuses. Here’s Shay’s story:
Truthfully, I’ve never thought of myself as a feminist yet as I read your book and watch your presentations, I know that I am and always have been. I struggled from the time I entered the business world at 17 years old to be taken as seriously as my male co-workers. I made attempts to be unattractive so that my superiors would see that I was a smart, assertive hard worker. I was passed over for promotions and opportunities repeatedly. I was even once was told by the hiring manager that though I was the heir apparent, the executive team could not “picture” me in the job. They hired a man with 5 years less experience from outside the company. But I did not give up and I stayed at that company until I got the promotions. At a certain point, I brought up my concern that I was not being given deserved promotions based on my sex and age. I got the next one. What they feared even more than a smart woman who can call a spade a spade was a lawsuit.
Read MoreShay’s Story: Struggling to Be Taken Seriously at Work
Truthfully, I’ve never thought of myself as a feminist yet as I read your book and watch your presentations, I know that I am and always have been. I struggled from the time I entered the business world at 17 years old to be taken as seriously as my male co-workers. I made attempts to be unattractive so that my superiors would see that I was a smart, assertive hard worker. I was passed over for promotions and opportunities repeatedly. I was even once was told by the hiring manager that though I was the heir apparent, the executive team could not “picture” me in the job. They hired a man with 5 years less experience from outside the company. But I did not give up and I stayed at that company until I got the promotions. At a certain point, I brought up my concern that I was not being given deserved promotions based on my sex and age. I got the next one. What they feared even more than a smart woman
Read MorePower Tool #9: Tell Your Story
“Stories are medicine for our false isolation. A way to forge connection and community and help shift our course . . . the seed forms of culture we carry around within us.” ~Nina Simons, founder of Bioneers
Your story is your power and your truth.
My friend, the master storyteller and storytelling teacher Laura Simms, sees stories as a path to healing oneself and the world. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, told a story that changed how Americans thought about slavery and intensified support for abolition. It became the second best-selling book of the Nineteenth Century, behind only the Bible, itself a collection of stories.
In fact, throughout the writing of No Excuses and on the 9 Ways Blog, I’ve been most inspired by the stories of women, and men. They have moved me, mentored me, and taught me. I hopes their stories do the same for you when you read them.
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