Letter from Tracey Hurd

— Sunday 24th June 2012
Dear Friends,
I hope this note finds you enjoying the summer!  Though our WomenExplore Lecture and Discussion Forum series ended in May, we have been very busy. I want to share some good news, update you on our spring work, and let you know about some transitions, including my decision to resign as Executive Director and move to a new role in WomenExplore.

There is much good news to share.  Just this week WomenExplore Lecture and Discussion Forum was named a 2012 Top Women’s Empowerment Nonprofit Organization by GreatNonprofits.org.  We are so honored!  Thank you to those who nominated us and wrote the reviews that resulted in this recognition. 

This month, we welcomed Clark University junior, Maya Allen, as our summer marketing intern.  She is pursuing a degree in Management with an interest in Social Entrepreneurship.  Maya is creating a series of flyers for our series and contributing to other marketing efforts.  We are thrilled to have her with us; she will be studying abroad in London in the fall.  You can see a photo of Maya on our WomenExplore facebook page.

The construction and composition of our Spring 2013 series, What Does This “Wild and Precious Life” Demand of Us?  is well underway.  We wove the words of Mary Oliver into our series title and one of the session titles.  Take a peek at www.womenexplore.org for more about the series so far and for news about upcoming planning meetings.  We would love to have you there!

The fall series, Living with Secrets and Lies, awaits us with promise.  This fall there will be some changes!  We will gather at our new time 11:30 am – 1:30 pm for the Forum, with 10:00 am – 11:00 as the meeting time of the open community support and discussion group.  

In May I gave my notice to WomenExplore and my time as Executive Director will close at the end of July.  I will return to my work as a psychologist, going back to school to gain clinical training that will complement my doctorate in developmental psychology. 

I have loved you all and being part of the WomenExplore/TOP community. 

I will miss being the director, but I am completely confident about the future of WomenExplore!  Work is underway to ensure that there is a smooth transition during the steps that will lead to finding a new director.   I am delighted to remain among you in a new way, as I shepherd some promising, almost-finalized initiatives linking our regular WomenExplore forums with Continuing Education Units (CEUs) and graduate course status.   I am happy to have this responsibility in my new role as Resident Scholar, WomenExplore Lecture & Discussion Forum.  Emmy Robertson will also serve as Resident Scholar, collaborating on these efforts and serving with me as co- faculty for the course (which is pending final Lesley University approval).

I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to have served as your director and to be in the midst of such wonderful, intelligent, intuitive, and inspiring people.  You make WomenExplore the treasure it is.  I look forward to seeing you in the fall, supporting the next steps of WomenExplore, and being part of the unfolding story that we are writing together.

With love and best summer wishes,

Tracey

Tracey L. Hurd, Ph.D.

Executive Director

WomenExplore Lecture & Discussion Forum

formerly the Theological Opportunities Program

Reflections on Change: Writing the Narrative of Who We Are Now

by Tracey L. Hurd
Executive Director

“The past, present, and future walk into a bar.  It was tense.”

This season’s theme, Change as a Constant:  Adapting, Surviving, Thriving seems linked to the above joke, which circulated widely via facebook circles last week.  Change can be difficult, in part, because it precipitates our active wrestling with our past, present, and future all at once.  It’s a price we pay for being our own keepers of time. 

Mary Catherine Bateson offered many ideas about change when she spoke to WomenExplore Lecture and Discussion Forum.  In the mix of her time with us she said that here in the United States we tell older people to “go play” or “have fun.”  She mused about how this message chafes against the messages of productivity that have guided our lives up until that point.  We are people that feel compelled to be productive, to contribute, to be at least part of the action, if not essential.  “Go play,” can feels more like “get out of the way” than an invitation for fun. It can feel like a message that says, “you are no longer useful or essential,” and Mary Catherine encouraged us to challenge that message.  Speak up and out on issues, she said.   And to listen to others-- then our words are more likely to be heard since they will then be part of the discussion.  Sarah Roche-Mahdi of CODEPINK, also implored us to speak out, particularly for peace.  She modeled the freedom that can come by standing authentically with one’s values.  “Not everyone likes us,” she said, “but we stand firmly for peace.”

And what does this mean for women?  Many of us have been caretakers, with lives marked by the lives of others.  Struggles, milestones, transitions of others have been as essential to our beings as our own.  Speaking out has been something practiced on behalf of others- to support our children or other loved ones.  For generations, women have bracketed their lives not only by their own past, present, and future visions, but also by those that they hold and keep for others.  It’s a continual dance of interdependence, adapting to changes, surviving as necessary and thriving in turn.

Mary Catherine Bateson challenges women.  She calls for women to choose authorship of their own lives.  Relationships are key, but only an individual woman can compose her own life.  The past is with us and the future is upon us, but in the moment of now, we write the narrative of who we are.  This means giving ourselves permission to summon the past scripts for how we are supposed to be, and making conscious choices to either use them or throw them out.  To the woman who says that she is so mired with an identity that is serious and informed that she wishes she could turn off NPR and do something more frivolous, Mary Catherine Bateson says, “go ahead-- make that choice.  You can choose to play.”  To the woman who wants her good ideas heard, but feels marginal and ignored, she says, “meet others where they are, listen, and then engage in conversation.  Other will be ready to listen to you then.”  Composing a life is about paying attention to the past, present and future at once.  Change is inevitable, but how one adapts, survives, and thrives can be shaped by our individual authorship.  And as Mary Catherine Bateson says, “it [composing a life] is something any woman can do.”

Women Matter: International Women’s Day, Spring 2012’s Opening

By Tracey L. Hurd, Executive Director

We celebrate the start of our Spring 2012 series in just a few days. We will consider the topic, “Women’s Alternatives to Competition and Aggression,’ through film, prepared reflection, and discussion.  Sarah Roche-Mahdi will bring her history as a scholar, writer, feminist, and activist to reflection about her engagement with CODEPINK (originally called Code Pink Women for Peace).  We will view a portion of Anne Macksoud’s film, “Missing Peace:  Women of Faith and the Failure of War.”  And we will discuss together the question, “How do women deal with competition and aggression?  What strengths do women—in all their diversities—bring to these issues?”  We will name women as a focal point to our explorations and see how that opens doors to new understandings.    

We open our spring series on, March 8^th, which is International Women’s Day.  Though individually and as a group we have honored International Women’s Day in many ways, 2012 is the first year that we do so with our official name, WomenExplore Lecture and Discussion Forum.  This matters.  To name is to attribute significance.  Women matter and our name, WomenExplore, makes a focus on women visible.

International Women’s Day was marked for the first time in 1911 on March 19^th in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland. It was tied to political movements.  In 1975 the United Nations began celebrating March 8^th as International Women's Day and two years later (1977), the General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming a United Nations Day for Women's Rights and International Peace to be observed by Member States. 

Writers from the United Nations website ask:  “Why dedicate a day exclusively to the celebration of the world's women?”  They answer, “ In adopting the resolution on the observance of Women's Day, the General Assembly cites two reasons: to recognize the fact that securing peace and social progress and the full enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms require the active participation, equality and development of women; and to acknowledge the contribution of women to the strengthening of international peace and security.”

Just months ago, President Barack Obama and Secretary Hilary Clinton issued the US National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security.  It has many specific points about the importance of strategic continued attention to women.  They wrote:  “The goal is as simple as it is profound:  to empower half the world’s population as equal partners in preventing conflict and building peace in countries threatened and affected by war, violence and insecurity.  Achieving this goal is critical to our national and global security.” (Department of State, December 19, 2011)

Women matter.  Many gains have been made both by and for women.  Globally, International Women’s Day gives nations permission and encouragement to pause to consider “half the world’s population.”  WomenExplore gives all who participate similar license.  But we go one step further.  WomenExplore, as it was in TOP before, embodies the message that women hold great promise for the transformation of the world.  In our sessions, processes and mission we say:  Listen to women, let their words and lives speak.  Together we can understand and heal this world, always moving towards our better visions of it.   We both start and celebrate this on March 8^th, at 10 am at University Lutheran Church…there’s a great session, a small reception, and a seat for you.  See you there!

Spring 2012 WomenExplore: Join the Unfolding Story

By Tracey L. Hurd, Executive Director

The image of life as a narrative or a book unfurled captures me.  There is something comforting about envisioning us all as players in a grand unfolding, mutually held together by the weight of a solid book’s binding.  There’s progression, yes, a moving forward, but the option to go back – to return to page three—is ever-present, too.  Life as an unfolding story gently suggests a metaphor of life as change happening without true loss. 

Change as a Constant:  Adapting, Surviving, Thriving is the theme for the upcoming Spring 2012 Lecture and Discussion Forum series.  It’s the first full series that we will launch with our new name, WomenExplore Lecture and Discussion Forum.  It is a lyrical but unplanned coincidence: two changes at once.  The new series name provides a larger umbrella for the variety of topics that anchor our sessions and it names a focus on women that has been part of the program from its inception.  WomenExplore signals our progression, but the pages of the Theological Opportunities Program are held dear and intact.  We are one story.

I joined this narrative of change and continuity as Executive Director on the first of February.  Muna Killingback left for full time work at U. Mass, Boston, in the late fall.  Sitting on the board of WomenExplore, she maintains her close ties with this community and program.  I come here after years in primarily academic settings—as a former Scholar at the Brandeis Women’s Studies Center, program director at the Unitarian Universalist Association, and faculty member at Boston College.    The dual commitment to learning broadly about issues in the world today, and deep thinking about how those issues touch our own lives, drew me in.  I attended a session with a friend, and came back again and again.  I am honored to be part of a program that is so full of possibility and transformation. 

This spring’s line up is stunning.  There will be excellent lectures from leaders in fields presenting cutting-edge research that wrestle with chaos, journey, clutter, sensuality, grief, home, competition, partnering, aloneness and growth.  There will be shorter focusing presentations preceding the lectures, where we will learn about how these topics have taken shape in lived experiences of a participant of the WomenExplore community.  The focusing presentations and lectures, together offer synergy and tension.  Time for engagement, discussion and questions is therefore an essential part of each morning.

So much awaits us.  Come!  Bring a friend.   We have a truly wonderful spring series.  It will be interesting and engaging, and better with you there.  There is a place for you in the unfolding story of WomenExplore’s Lecture Series and Discussion Forum.