December 2021 Newsletter (mailchi.mp)
Please click on link to read Blog Post.
Writer, Workshop Leader & Coach
By Maria Ramos-Chertok Leave a Comment
December 2021 Newsletter (mailchi.mp)
Please click on link to read Blog Post.
By Maria Ramos-Chertok Leave a Comment
November 2021 Newsletter (mailchi.mp)
Please click on link to view Blog Post
By Maria Ramos-Chertok Leave a Comment
October is Domestic Violence Awareness month. I’m compelled to write about it given the experience of my mother opening our family home in New Jersey as a shelter for battered women and their children. This was in the 1970s, before the idea of shelters for abused women was part of the social consciousness. The experience put me in close contact with people whose lives had been impacted by violence, a particular kind of violence done by someone who says they love you or someone with whom you are raising children or someone who lives in your home, often all three. It’s intimate violence: the perpetrator knows your weaknesses and insecurities and the resources you have or don’t have available. They know where you’d likely go to get away and they know the color and make of your car, if you have one.
By the time I left home in 1980 to go to college, I was ready for a new lease on life. I wanted to find out who I was without the daily sadness of knowing too much about the ways women got hurt. (And, yes, my awareness was focused on women because at that time there was not much public discussion about violence in same gender relationships).
Yet, two years later, I ended up in an abusive relationship. It lasted for three years, and at twenty-two I was engaged to be married to this man. The violence was largely emotional abuse: controlling behavior, extreme jealously, and isolation. Thankfully, we ended up at different law schools and the distance, combined with me having some space, allowed me to end the relationship during my second year of law school.
The irony of finding myself in such a relationship still haunts me. Yet, I see that my low self esteem was the biggest contributing factor. As an example, when he first asked me out I assumed it was a fraternity prank. It makes me sad to say that, but it’s the truth.
Self-esteem for women and girls is an issue that is getting airtime these days because of social media and the impact I has on self-image. But 21st century social media wasn’t an issue when I was growing up. The only thing I have in common with today’s young women is my gender, and like many girls today I felt deeply inadequate in areas involving my brain, my body, and my beauty. The standard of what I thought I was supposed to be came from television, magazines, movies, school, advertisements, my peers — essentially anywhere I received messages about what girls should look like or how they should behave. Apparently, my uber-feminist household was not enough to counter the conditioning of the forces at play around me.
So, in honor of domestic violence awareness month, please read something to further educate yourself, speak to someone you know who is in an abusive relationship, and donate to an organization working to end violence against women and girls. If you have boys and young men in your life like I do, connect to an organization working on promoting healthy manhood.
Growing up my mother had a sign in our home, “world peace begins at home.” So true. I’d humbly add, “World peace begins with you and me today.”
By Maria Ramos-Chertok Leave a Comment
I have a black and white photo of my Jewish great grandmother Sara in my office. It’s a professional photograph taken of her and her four children in Kharkov, Russia sometime around 1914 or 1915. I know because she’s holding a little girl, a toddler, and that’s my grandmother Faye. In the photo, Sara is somber, not smiling, certainly not joyous. She’s wearing all black. My guess is that she took this photo to send to her husband Max in America, who got her pregnant with their fourth child (my grandmother) right before leaving to pave the way for a better life for them all. “See us, remember us,” the photo says without speaking.
In the photo Sara’s eyes are gloomy – they droop slightly at the edges – they look like wells of sadness. I often look at her face and see myself.
The Jewish High Holidays happened in early September this year. Given the pandemic my family participated in Rosh Hashanah services virtually for the second year in a row. My husband, Keith, is the shofar blower for our synagogue and this year he used my office as the place to blow his shofar due to my desktop computer and zoom account. From her spot in my office, my great grandmother Sara “watched” the entire thing. I wonder what she thought seeing her great son-in-law: Proud? Astonished? Comforted?
The other day when I was meditating, an image of my grandmother Faye came to me along with the phrase, “think of me every day.” It made me sad to realize that I don’t allow myself to think about my grandmother every day due to the circumstances under which she died, namely alone – being transported from the hospital to hospice. The image of her being on a gurney or stretcher and being with one or two orderlies who didn’t know her and dying in an ambulance or hallway are too sad for me. Yet, her message was clear: “think of me every day.”
On Yom Kippur I decided to attend services in person, having received a ticket to be part of the 25% capacity, fully masked experience. I sat in the second row alone, not surrounded shoulder-to-shoulder like in years past. At one point in the service a congregant approached me and asked if I’d be willing to hold the Torah during Yizkor. I was not immediately familiar with that part of the service, but readily agreed to the honor. “Sara was supposed to do it, but I don’t see her,” he explained, wanting to let me know why he needed a last-minute replacement. As Yizkor began, I was called to join the Rabbi and handed the ancient Torah scroll. As the Rabbi began speaking, I understood that this was the part of the service (done only four times a year) where we remember those who have passed on. Yizkor, in Hebrew, means “remember.” We recite the prayer to strengthen our connection to our departed loved ones, helping to elevate their celestial souls.
When the prayer was over, the Rabbi turned toward me to receive the Torah. I carefully placed it in her arms and returned to my seat. Only then did I fully appreciate the significance of “Sara” not being there and me having to stand in for “Sara,” my great grandmother’s name. I was overtaken by the beauty of that moment, overcome with a true sense of the divine.
Yizkor, remember, remember my grandmother every day. Yizkor, I stand in the place of Sara-with-the-sad-eyes.
I am my ancestors’ wildest dream, and I was sent up there to Yizkor, to remember that.
In my heart, I now see Sara smiling, her eyes aglow as she watched me holding the Torah on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year.
By Maria Ramos-Chertok Leave a Comment
I was talking to a colleague several months ago about her frustration with her organization’s lack of meaningful engagement on racial equity. The nonprofit she works for is talking about racial equity but not walking the talk. They have created the requisite Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) committee. The Executive Director has sanctioned the Committee’s meetings but has given it no real power. The group wants to do something meaningful, but the organization is moving slowly, or not moving at all. Sound familiar? I feel like I’ve had variations of that same conversation every week for the past year.
At the end of our chat, I suggested that she encourage her entire organization to read and discuss the book me and white supremacy (2020) by Layla F. Saad. The interesting thing is that when I made that recommendation, I had not read the book. A few days later, feeling the hypocrisy, I pulled it off my bookshelf and began to read.
Prior to that day of reckoning, I had not read the book because, as someone who identifies as a person of color, I felt the book was not written for me. I also felt that I understood white supremacy after twenty years working as a diversity/cultural competency/multicultural/anti-racist trainer. Beyond that, I think of myself as someone who loves (and has loved) black and brown people, lived with black and brown people, has (and had) intimate relationships with black and brown people. How could this book be for me?
Regardless, I read me and white supremacy in order to lend credibility to my recommendation.
A mere fifteen pages in, the author writes:
“This work is for any person who holds white privilege…this includes persons who are biracial, multiracial, or white-passing People of Color who benefit under systems of white supremacy from having lighter skin color than visibly Brown, Black, or Indigenous people.”
My mother is a white Jewish woman, and my father is an immigrant from Cuba. My skin is several shades lighter than my brown-skinned father’s. I have certainly benefitted from white skin privilege. This book is for me, I realized. And so, the twenty-eight-day challenge took root.
I journaled each night and confronted myself in ways I had not previously done. One of the most moving chapters for me was on white exceptionalism. As the author explains:
“[w]hite exceptionalism is the idea that you are somehow special, exempt, above this, beyond this thing called white supremacy. That white supremacy is what those other white people do, but not you. It goes hand in hand with white superiority and the belief that you have already done some antiracism work, you have already shown you’re an ally, so you do not need to keep showing up and doing the work.”
Yes, that is how I felt.
Reading it has been a deep and meaningful journey, one which does not have an end point. The daily inquiries offered important opportunities for reflection where I could no longer hide behind my person of color status to avoid looking at the ways white supremacy has impacted my mind, my identity, and my heart.
The book is a gift that keeps on giving: A few weeks ago, I referred a client to me and white supremacy (Day 3) on tone policing when she discussed her frustration when management responded, “we want a positive culture within the organization” in response to a black woman voicing a concern. It came up again days later when another client (this time a white woman) shared that she was told she’s “too emotional” about racial equity.
My colleague never did ask her organization to read the book and my two clients are still frustrated with their organizations’ tone policing. But organizations are made up of individuals and as Adrienne Maree Brown says, “The small is all,” which I understand to mean that our individual lives and actions are microcosms that make up the larger landscape, so taking a meaningful step to read and learn is bound to have ripples on those you touch, including your co-workers.
If you haven’t yet read the book, now’s the time. Read it alone, read it with friends, read it with family, but please do read it and recommend it to others (and my final request: buy it from your local independent bookstore).
(August 2021 BLOG POST)
A graduate of UC Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, Maria was a fellow with the National Hispana Leadership Institute, where she attended the Center for Creative Leadership and Harvard School of Public Policy. She received her mediation training from the Center for … Read more...