Tag: Personal Growth

I am an ambitious man engaged in necessary dialogue

Charlie Phan
TCCS ‘20

A group of young men pose for a selfie after an AMEND session.
Participants of AMEND – Ambitious Men Engaged in Necessary Dialogue – including the author, far left. Photo credit: Winston Pierre.

When I attended UMass Boston as an undergraduate student, I was introduced to a young men’s group called Ambitious Men Engaged in Necessary Dialogue (AMEND).

I have been involved with AMEND since February 2014 when I attended my first event and met the founding brother of the group, Manny Monteiro.

Manny is a UMass Boston alum who, as an undergraduate, worked as a Peer Mentor for the Success Boston Initiative. While serving in this capacity, Manny felt there was more he could do in order to impact the lives of others and to give back to his community. With the help and support of former Success Boston Initiative Coordinator Liliana Mickle and Manny’s other mentors, advisors, and success coaches, his vision became a reality and AMEND was formed.

AMEND has been encouraging men to engage in necessary dialogue since November 2012 with its first ever session. Manny’s inspiration for creating AMEND was due to experiences in his life where he felt he was lacking masculine love, a desire of finding connections with other male figures, and to create a safe space for men to talk about topics and interact with each other in a way that might be seen as “unmanly” in some spaces.

Redefining masculinity in an age of toxicity

Many men might have been taught that it is “unmanly” to express emotions or to talk about their feelings. AMEND provides an opportunity for men to do exactly this – while learning, growing, and healing with each other in community. Manny succinctly summarizes what AMEND does with the acronym RICH BROS: Reflect, Inspire, Create and Heal (RICH) through Brotherhood Builds, Retreats, Outings and Sessions (BROS).

Some of the topics discussed during AMEND sessions included “Perceptions of a Woman,” “Define your Struggle,” “Masculinity,” “Social Justice,” and “Education.”

Read Grace Furtado’s article, “How did you manage to get a ticket?” about attending the The Massachusetts Conference for Women…

Many of these topics touch upon values of UMass Boston’s Transnational Cultural and Community Studies program, the graduate program in which I am enrolled. A matter of fact, one of Manny’s advisors is TCCS core faculty member Aminah Pilgrim.

The founder of AMEND, Manny Monteiro, is pictured with two of his mentors.
From left to right, Liliana Mickle, the “mother” of AMEND, Manny Monteiro, AMEND’s founding brother, and Professor Aminah Pilgrim, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and core TCCS Faculty member at UMass Boston. Photo credit: Merveil Meyitang.

As a part of AMEND, I was able to join a group of brothers who all share love for each other. I remember the first meeting I attended: I felt so drawn in because of the passion and enthusiasm of AMEND members and other event attendees for the topics discussed, and how everyone wanted to learn and grow as a group. I loved the atmosphere of the space and how the people who attended wanted to establish a community with each other.

One of my favorite AMEND sessions was called, “What’s your why?” During this session, we talked about our goals and future aspirations. Within the conversation, other brothers and myself talked about our dream-careers and what’s holding us back. As a group of predominantly young men of color, some of the barriers and roadblocks revolve around race, ethnicity, and gender. It was great to hear others’ aspirations despite what is perceived to be holding others back. In spite of these obstacles, I really admire everyone’s determination to achieve what they set out to accomplish.

As a group of predominantly young men of color, some of the barriers and roadblocks revolve around race, ethnicity, and gender.

I’ve also participated in sessions on the topic of fatherhood. We talked about fatherhood in a way that disputes gender norms. We resisted the idea that fathers are the ones who have to be “manly.”  We advocated that it is OK for fathers to show love and affection with their children.

What I most appreciate about the culture of AMEND is how people are able to share ideas that go against mainstream views of how things “should” be – in masculinity, manhood, and beyond. I also appreciate how men are able to express emotions of anger, frustration, sadness, and cry. As mentioned throughout courses in the TCCS program, “the personal is political and the political is personal.”

Read Zainab Salejwala’s article, “Using a faucet is a privilege” about the Flint water crisis and human rights in America…

The emotions and experiences of the people who come to these events are real and personal. If any of the men who attends an AMEND event is overwhelmed with emotion, they are welcomed to let out any emotions they have. They are in a safe and supportive space to do so. If a person says something that goes against what society might view as how a man “should” be or how they should feel, AMEND has created a space for those men to feel comfortable sharing these experiences they might be viewed negatively in other spaces.

One of the biggest things I love about Manny and the culture he has started through AMEND is the group’s commitment to reflect, inspire, create and heal (RICH) and the commitment of learning and growing together through our retreats, outings, and sessions.

Looking ahead

For the future of AMEND, Manny has big visions. He wishes to turn AMEND into a non-profit organization and find a physical space that will further facilitate providing support to young men. He even wishes to eventually provide housing for young men with housing insecurity.

I am excited to see what happens next. Manny is man who is dedicated to giving back to the community and who enjoys helping others.

In my future with AMEND, I hope to further engage with brothers in upcoming events. I hope to incorporate the knowledge and experiences I have gained in the TCCS program thus far in future AMEND sessions as we promote learning, growing, and healing while engaging in necessary dialogue on topics such as gender, sexuality, masculinity, education, social justice, and many more.

 

How Water Taught Us to Laugh

Allie Richmond
TCCS ’19

A color photograph of sunset over a still body of water with trees on the horizon line

Water laughs. It giggles and gurgles in streams and brooks, and whispers amusement in creeks and springs that quietly trickle through dense forests and down rocks with moss. Water delivers unexpected bursts of joy on the drops of light rain that mysteriously wash over the earth as the sun shines on. It creates a patchwork of glittering diamonds in the sky. It cackles, as the rain turns heavy and pitted, as the wind carries it down faster in a deceivingly loud breath of life. Then it coos in contentment as smooth, crystalline water. Sweet and soft like the giggle of a child, revealing tender enthusiasm for bright days and warm dives below the surface.

Beguiling laughs lap the shoreline of the great coasts, the water tantalizingly immense and mysterious. Familiar up close, but further out and deep below, it continually shocks and startles – pulling one in closer to see more. Waterfalls pour over cliffs and outcroppings delivering hearty, bellowing larks that can be heard long before and long after they are seen up close. Water laughs in joy and sadness. It sarcastically scoffs at our meekness, leaving us cold as ice, sharp and judgmental – or, clear and concise. Water speaks of its amusement in many tones. It carries the echoes of ages, the most beautiful face to ever laugh without wrinkling up in the way humans do. We are unable to experience joy as profoundly as it does. But yet, it still shares with us, and encourages us to try.

I grew up next to a lake. It laughs a lot. In the wind it has short and clipped laughs, but these deepen into rolling gasps when the rain begins to tickle it. I use to listen to this laughter and join in as a child. I grew up and began to recognize each melody, when the water wanted company in its joy and remained still or playfully rambunctious, or when it had a private laugh, with rough bursts in high rises, and cutting falls in the sound waves, leaving it too difficult to join. So, in times of shared companionship, I would sail out on the still morning waters when the lake remained sleepy enough to only ripple in thoughtful acknowledgement, and interpret my own quiet laughter; the little inklings of dreams and thoughts that produce hidden smiles that dance at the corners of my lips.

I learned that people should be treated with the same observance and sincerity that the waves demand in their wake.

In times of reckless joy, the waters swelled up in waves curling like daring smirks, and I would swim deep and strong with a fiery soul or ride the waves at outrageous speeds to feel the bubble of nervous and excited laughter rise from my chest with each goal gained. I learned that all people take after water in this way. We exert certain tides to fit our moods. I learned that people should be treated with the same observance and sincerity that the waves demand in their wake. Water taught me to laugh, and how to laugh with others. It taught me to experience joy in many forms and to appreciate the ways in which life and feelings are expressed.

A hand-drawn image of a goddess-like human with an orb, clouds and plant-life surrounding her.
Allie Richmond 2018

The waves on the lake are where I found my playful spirit. The waves were also the ones of my warmest childhood memories of home. I still hear the lapping of the ripples along the peaceful evening shoreline, the sound similar to the sound of a puppy contently licking up water from her bowl. I still see the last glitters of sunlight fracture and dissipate along the rolling surface allowing slivers of clarity that reveal the swimming fish below. I still overhear the tingling laughter of my sisters as they splash in the shallows. Where the water is a warm with a welcoming smile after a long day in the hot sun. We were so young and charmed by life; the water reflected our soft naivety.

Read Zainab Zalawala’s article, “Using a Faucet is a Privilege” on the Flint water crisis and human rights in America (3/1/18)…

As I grew a little older, my parents brought us to the cabin – a little two room shack nearly indistinguishable from the trees around it. Here, I encountered the babbling creeks that brought the girlish laughter of teenage years. The excited and bubbling laughs that also flow in a nervous and shy manner. The creeks lead to a large muddled marshland full of unsure twists and moody pools of mucky waters. Here I realized that not all laughs are playfully shared, some are exerted in fear and trepidation. Laughter in the face of uncertainty, learning to compromise softness for tough determination not to let the sludge soaked bogs, ambiguous and changing, slow down my travels to a complete halt.

In the river waters I learned to create my own laughter and enjoy the movement of aging.

The low and slow laugh of the swamps, the kind that make one shudder, often give way to more level currents. The clogs of mud shift and become open rivers where laughter flows with strength and self-assurance. In the river near the cabin, my sisters and I would float along with the loud and boisterous laughter that makes all that touch it join on the rush of energy. We played in the rapids and waded into the deeper pools that swirled in determined delight. Life for the laughing river is fast-paced and constantly looking forward. The belting amusement of river rapids is consuming, direct, and incredibly influential. In the river waters I learned to create my own laughter and enjoy the movement of aging.

The year I moved to college, the tides changed completely. Luring laughs guided me to the coasts where laughs were different. Salty, with an undertow of ancient knowledge. The tidal pools swelled around me, teeming with lively giggles of deeper intuition that bespoke of the depths hidden from the shallow interest of curious eyes. New life, mixed with old experience, the ever-changing tides that mysteriously transform the landscape and renew the shores all the while dependable in its coming and going.

In these enticing grins left on the wet sand, I found my passion for life. Laughter became deep and rich, shared with the hopeful intellectuals and vibrant minds.

In these enticing grins left on the wet sand, I found my passion for life. Laughter became deep and rich, shared with the hopeful intellectuals and vibrant minds. The memories of many lives washed into our collective bay of understanding, just as the deep trenches of the ocean collect the remnants of old empires and ages, and I learned to share laughs to collect experience. I came to entertain the idea of temporary chuckles of immense understanding with temporary moments in time, and to extend my smiles curiously with passion and power.

Water collects our laughs. It categorizes each tone into natural music so that the earth can laugh and play as we do. We, in turn, learn to laugh again from the babbling brooks and whistling white waters. It is a cycle of happiness and joy that brings life to that which is empty. Just as water feeds the land and makes it grow lush and green, we grow up with laughter guiding us through the dark and the light. It feeds our souls and allows us to flow with the tides and currents of our lives.

A hand-drawn and painted image of an ethereal woman of the clouds being blown to the shoreline
Allie Richmond 2018

Foundations of family grief, growth and resilience: Learning from intergenerational legacies

Ester Rebeca Shapiro Rok, PhD
(aka Ester R. Shapiro)
TCCS Core Faculty and Associate Professor of Psychology

This current spring semester, I am on sabbatical from teaching. My fourth in nearly 30 years of teaching at UMass Boston, this sabbatical will definitely be my last before retirement.

In 1994, I published Grief as a Family Process: A Developmental Approach to Clinical Practice.  Twenty-five years later I am completing my forthcoming book, Culture, Families, Grief and Growth, at a very different time in bereavement studies, clinical practice, and my own life.  Following Bluck et al (2014; Shapiro, 2018), I draw on intergenerational reminiscence as time travel both to complete my book and to respond to challenges of my own and my family’s evolving family lives.

Like my own optimistic-immigrant family, I believe in the complex, contested past as a renewable resource in facing new life challenges.

As a scholar of the intergenerational life course, and deeply appreciative of the complexity and contingency of our interdependent selves, I am especially interested in life course transitions as opportunities for creative transformation, identifying existing and new resources even in harsh environments under adverse circumstances.

Hannah/Anita, Basia/Berta my paternal great-grandmother, and Yache/Yochebed, saying goodbye at brothers’ & fathers’ gravesite before immigrating to Palestine & Cuba
“Three Daynofska Sisters” – Rubezhevich, Poland (1928). Hannah/Anita, Basia/Berta my paternal great-grandmother, and Yache/Yochebed, saying goodbye at brothers’ & fathers’ gravesite before immigrating to Palestine & Cuba.

The three sisters, my paternal grandmother and great-aunts, photographed in 1927 (see photo above) at their father’s and brother’s grave, were commemorating a family loss at the moment they were launching their migrations, one step ahead of the coming Holocaust.

From them, I learned that in times of desperate need, we look harder for inner and outer resources supporting survival and sometimes, unexpectedly, the new learning directs us to thrive through what we call “resilience.”

Looking back on my 65 years of life and nearly three decades as a university professor at UMass Boston, most recently as part of the TCCS community, I feel very fortunate that the formerly bookish girl I once was ended up a teacher and perennial student among students and colleagues both of whom teach me so much.

As a Cuban Eastern European Jewish American immigrant and the first in my family to graduate from college, I had no idea how to prepare for the life of learning I avidly pursued.  I did so against the wishes of my immensely practical family who had survived two World Wars, the Holocaust and the Cuban revolution through an unwavering commitment to family loyalty, material security, and a cafeteria-style choose-what-you-like approach to Jewish values.

The TCCS program’s transdisciplinary, community-partnered approach that centers on the questions we want to ask, the honoring of knowledge gained from lived experiences, and our striving to better understand the workings of inequality towards enhancing social justice, have changed the way I write about both societal inequality as a factor and culture as a resource in promoting grief and growth after a loved one’s death.

*   *   *

Unexpectedly, I am writing this narrative from Hollywood, Florida, where I am taking my turn to accompany my frail, elder parents and support their caretaking team.  My 86-year-old mother, Sara (pictured below), is considered a miracle of science by her cardiologist: She has advanced Alzheimer’s disease and a severe heart condition.

Three Shapiro sisters and their mother, Sara – Hollywood, Florida (2018)
Three Shapiro sisters and their mother, Sara – Hollywood, Florida (2018).

Too frail for heart surgery with much of her past no longer accessible, she preserves her deepest habits in her generosity and loving-kindness. She is cared for at home by an affectionate, dedicated team of Latinx-immigrant caretakers whose long hours deprive their own daughters of their mothers’ time.

My 88-year-old father, Jaime, is also present. An old-school Cuban exile patriarch at war with his inexorable aging and anyone who reminds him of his vulnerabilities, he works hard every day to remain in control of the household, the family business which he shares with his 91-year-old brother, and his own precarious health.

My father was born a year after the 1928 photograph of my relatives in Rubezhevich, Poland. Consistent with Jewish custom, his Hebrew name is Nachemie/Consolation, honoring his mother’s deceased father.  My grandmother, Basie/Bertha, and her family left for rural Cuba in 1936, sponsored by her sister, Hannah, who was by then married and financially successful.

I was always an avid listener to my family’s stories, and I don’t think it was accidental that both my sisters and I all became family therapists working in Boston’s Latinx communities.

I drew on these family stories from the beginning of my “journey of inquiry,” that is, as a young woman defying my family’s patriarchal script and as a student of socio-politically contextualized family life course transitions.

I was interested in studying the multi-layered developmental processes that facilitated or impeded gender equity.

Completing qualitative studies of gender traditional and non-traditional families and of the adult life-course transition in becoming a first or second-time parents, I graduated from UMass Amherst in 1979 seeking to understand how our family relationships influence who we might become. Working with feminist scholars across disciplines, I learned to appreciate the societal forces and family choreographies guiding our interdependent selves, even while working as a clinical psychologist in a field emphasizing individual experience and biomedical diagnosis. (DSMII, focused on Freudian categories of psychopathology, was being replaced by DSMIII, focused on biomedical diagnosis alongside a “remedicalization” of psychiatry.)

After surviving a harsh internship experience in which my interest in socially-contextualized, developmentally-informed clinical practice was diagnosed as signs of a “borderline personality,” I was fortunate to continue into a postdoctoral training program at Children’s Hospital/Judge Baker Children’s center where faculty members in psychiatry, like Jessica Daniels — now the first African American woman President of the American Psychological Association — and many others remained focused on community-based, socially-informed psychiatry, psychology, social work and nursing as part of social resource/social justice and policy-oriented interdisciplinary teams.

I was fortunate to begin my immersive, challenging and deeply-rewarding learning from the greatest teacher – death – while I was still early in my career in my late 20’s.

I decided to focus on understanding grief and growth as shared life course transitions with special attention on supporting positive-shared development rather than predicting psychopathology.

I had learned from my psychiatric hospital internship to question imposed diagnostic categories in favor of person-centered lived experiences and a respectful, collaborative approach in working towards patient goals. I was supported by teachers and colleagues in the Judge Baker Children’s Center/Children’s Hospital Family Support Center and an extraordinary team focused on how economically-disadvantaged and racially-targeted families drew on social and cultural resources to cope with grief and transform their lives.

They gave me the courage to challenge Freudian and other imposed theories that predicted psychopathology for those that did not “decathect”/detach from the deceased, and to explore emerging sources of knowledge supporting a family-centered developmental perspective focused on who died, how they died, and how we go on with lives informed by loss and preserving family legacies that include culturally meaningful, continuing bonds that are both spiritual and psychological.

Now, at age 65, I write about this learning as a survivor of breast cancer, accompanying my frail, elderly parents and their generation through new forms of aging and death, and learning from my students who have experienced the many intersections of death and social inequality.

My life, the settings in which I practice and teach, and the field of bereavement care within psychotherapy, have been significantly and meaningfully-transformed since I began my studies.  As a teacher in both TCCS and our culturally-focused, social justice-informed Clinical Psychology Doctoral program, I think a lot about the sources of knowledge I carry with me which will cross generations and help my students find their own path on their own “journey of inquiry.”

I find that the holistic, social justice-oriented, transdisciplinary approach of TCCS meaningfully supports the challenging work of transdisciplinary synthesis and communicates new knowledge in highly specialized fields including bereavement, traumatic loss, and life course development embracing both suffering and opportunities for healing and transformation.

I was moved to discover that Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldua credits Carl Jung and his appreciation of cultural archetypes as foundational to her understanding of the step-wise movement from internalized oppression to personal and political transformation (Shapiro and Alcantara, 2016).

I bring this exploration into my TCCS course, Community Health and Equity, where we continue our intergenerational learning.

Within our TCCS and UMASS Boston communities, I appreciate our shared commitments/compromisos to accessible and impactful education, recognizing that teaching and learning in the service of justice expands opportunities for us and for generations to follow.

References

Bluck, S., Alea, N., & Ali, S. (2014). Remembering the historical roots of remembering the personal past. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 28(3), 290-300.

Shapiro, E. (1994).  Grief as a Family Process: a Developmental Approach to Clinical Practice.  NY: Guilford Press.

Shapiro, E. (2018).  Transforming Development through Just Communities:

A Life-Long Journey of Inquiry.  In Comas-Diaz, L., and Vasquez, C. (Editors) Latina Psychologists: Thriving in the Cultural Borderlands.  NY: Routledge.

Shapiro, E., and Alcantara, D. (2016).  Mujerista Creativity: Latin@ Sacred Arts as Life-Course Developmental Resources.  In Bryant, T., and Comas Diaz, L. (Eds.).  Womanist and Mujerista Psychologies.  Washington, DC: APA books.

The Feminine Nature of Knowing

Allie Richmond, TCCS Student ’19

Between the reaching branches and the sturdy trunks is the space where the light lingers on the crystalline morning rays. Bright and almost blinding with intense purpose, it seeks out the ice-slick earth with determination I often envy come Monday morning as I make my way to work.

It strikes me as strange, that winter is known as a dark time of the year. Without the dense foliage of summer months, and within the unburdened silence that hushes the clutter of noise, it seems so bright and clear, as though welcoming clarity of vision.

Considering the places that I have been, the one place I know I always feel entirely whole, is where I hear the crunch of leaves under foot, and feel the filtered sunlight on my cheeks. I often seek out the woods and the quiet of morning walks to clear my own vision. Under the canopy my ideas sprout and take root, growing deeper and reaching higher, attempting to mimic the trees.

A hand-drawn image of a woman with tree roots and nature emerging from her head
Original artwork by the author

This past semester I spent a lot of time walking through the woodland paths near where I stay. Graduate school is by far one of the most intimidating experiences in my life. I confront my fears, doubts, and insecurities about my ideas, intelligence, and ability to understand with every lesson. I often worry that I am not grasping conceptual complexities, or not interpreting the nuances within the topics.

It is not a fear of the unknown, rather, a fear that I will reach a limit or an end to what I can know, or what I am capable of knowing. Of coming to a point of stagnation where I become unwittingly but definitively ignorant of what is beyond.

Recently, I have found comfort in several podcasts and books on self-care as a woman and how it is deeply connected to the cycles of the Earth. Many of these outlets explore the feminine power that is a part of Mother Nature. Connecting with Mother Nature is thus a way of connecting with maternal lineage and knowledge.

A figure of a woman stylized with bright, colorful organic lines emerging from her headOriginal artwork by the author

A podcast I listened to recently talked about feminine power and the connection between women and their mother’s lineage. This connection is called Motherlines in the podcast and describes how women have a special knowledge deeply connected to the natural world. It refers to the ancestral string of maternal knowledge that guides us and allows us to understand our journeys with the support of all the past mothers and women in our bloodline. This podcast opened my eyes and reaffirmed my comfort within the woods as a connection I have to my maternal lineage.

One of the speakers mentions the cyclical nature of the Earth. She spoke about how women heal and learn in a way similar to the seasons, and are connected to the cycles of the moon. The seasons of the year, express a continual circle of unending life, death, and rebirth. This gave me solace from my fears. It soothed my mind because, I rationalized,  if I learn in a cyclical way, I will never reach my limit.

Aiming for cyclical knowledge, where no scale can place boundaries of linear judgement, I am free. There will never be a final ending, but instead, many beginnings and endings that enable growth and rebirth without limit.

My fear dissolves.

A figure of a woman with the words "memory", "heart", "soul" and "past", "present" and "eternity" surrounding her
Original artwork by the author

“How did you manage to get a ticket?”

Grace Furtado, TCCS ’19 student

‘How did you manage to get a ticket?’

The surprised-filled phrase kept on repeating itself over the course of the week as I notified my coworkers that I would not be in the office that Thursday.

A billboard showing actress Viola Davis
Academy Award winning actress and producer Viola Davis spoke at the Mass. Conference for Women (photo credit: Grace Furtado).

I had heard about the convention for years but the price tag  – along with the time commitment during the work day – always made the event inaccessible. But thanks to the the generosity of “Strong Women, Strong Girls,” I was finally able to attend the nationally-known conference focused on the empowerment of women: The Massachusetts Conference for Women. At last, my opportunity came!

When the alarm rang at 6:00 AM that frosty December morning I excitedly woke up to get ready for the upcoming conference. As the Uber driver slowly turned the corner to come up on the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center swarms of women were walking towards the glistening building.

The opening speaker, Viola Davis, set the tone for the spectacular day-long event. New England-born, Davis passionately spoke about her rise to fame, the struggles life had thrown at her and how as a woman we all have the inner strength to become the women we dream ourselves to be.

An overhead view of the convention center with many tables, chairs and people inside at the conference
Hundreds of people attended the convention this past December in Boston, Mass. (photo credit: Grace Furtado)

Throughout the day over 100 speakers provided inspiration and tricks on how to navigate obstacles or be the best version of ourselves. Vendors ranged from Lancome Cosmetics to Harley Davidson and even Fearless Girl was on-set for anyone interested in a photo-op.

The star-studded event brought together women from all walks of life seeking a space to cultivate their network. Workshops provided tips on how to score that raise and one-on-one sessions showed us how to shake off the dust from the old resume.

After a long day of being ‘workshopped out,’ I happily carried my take-away bag filled with brochures and treats onto the streets of the waterfront. The day had been filled with innovative speeches, critical conversations and an opportunity for women to showcase their entrepreneurial spirit.