My Rights & Responsibilities

I matter.  We all matter.

I get to be happy and I am responsible for my happiness. We all get to be happy. The US Constitution is the only of its kind with that explicit and inalienable right.

I get to be seen, heard and understood in my relationships. We all do. We may expect it.

I get to choose love.

My body is my own.

I get to make mistakes and forgive myself.  It is part of growing and learning.  It is being human.  I get to be loved despite my mistakes.  If my mistakes hurt others repeatedly or if the repeated mistakes of others hurt me, then I can choose to create a healthy distance in those relationships.

I don't owe anyone a relationship - romantic, platonic or familial. Nobody owes me anything either.

I get to choose my friends. Sometimes, they don't choose me. Ni modo (oh well), they can't all be home-runs.

Who I let into my inner circle is one of the most important decisions that I make. I deserve to choose well. I get to choose those few souls that have my best interests at heart, who love and support me, who are spiritual, honest, positive, and hopeful. In return, they will get the same from me.

Everyone else gets my kindness, love and respect, but no one is allowed to take pieces of my soul. I will protect my soul with my voice.

Dr. Pennebaker's Writing Assignment

Dr. Pennebaker did research on the health and mental health effects of writing and journaling.  Here is what he learned:

"People who engage in expressive writing report feeling happier and less negative than before writing.  Similarly, reports of depressive symptoms, rumination, and general anxiety tend to drop in the weeks and months after writing about emotional upheavals."

--From "Writing to Heal" by James W. Pennebaker

He found that college students who wrote coherent, organized and detailed accounts of traumatic events (big T and little T events) - for just 20 minutes over four days - were less likely to go to the student health center six months later as compared to the other writing groups.

Dr. Pennebaker's Basic Writing Assignment:

"Over the next four days, write about your deepest emotions and thoughts about the emotional upheaval that has been influencing your life the most.  In your writing, really let go and explore the event and how it has affected you.  You might tie this experience to your childhood, your relationship with your parents, people you have loved or love now, or even your career.  Write continuously for 20 minutes."

Empowerment & Voice

I teach an Empowerment & Recovery in Mental Health course.  I lectured for an entire class period about the nuanced meaning of empowerment.  Then I challenged students to examine their own level of empowerment in all of their life roles.

Too often we buy into the idea of empowerment, but less so it's application.

Too often we complain about constraints and expectations put upon us, but spend less time speaking up, using our voice to offer alternative solutions, to demand better conditions, or to ask for basic wants and needs.

This is not just abstraction for me.  It is how I've chosen to live my life wholeheartedly.  So I gave students an example of my voice.

Below is a correspondence between an employer and colleagues about the role of assessment and diagnosis in social work practice.  Let me be clear - I really needed a salary to support myself and my daughter, so challenging the status quo was risky.  It seems that everything I do is risky.  I would not live it any other way but My Way (by Frank Sinatra).

I started the e-mail chain by sending various resources as attachments.  One of these was the Department of Mental Health biopsychosocial child/adolescent intake assessment form. I informed the team that I would be training interns to use this form with all their clients/families for supervision purposes.  Then I got this response from one of the team members:

Hi Alejandra,
Thank you so much for sending the screener. I think that is something that we can implement agency wide and will help us document 

I do want to have a discussion, however, about using the DMH psychosocial assessment instead of our in-house tool. 

First of all, I feel that all programs under the same funding should have the same paperwork for ease of quality control. 

Second, I think that the DMH assessment, although very thorough, is not necessarily the right tool for short-term, time-limited, family based services particularly by inexperience 1st time interns. Having done the DMH assessment I found it that although it is very thorough, it is very time consuming. It used to take me about 2 hours to complete the interview plus about 2 hours to write up. Our tool covers similar ground in a brief manner. Because we want to keep their caseloads at 50% clinical time plus some macro outreach activities, we have to truly assess whether that is a good use of their time.  

Third, I'm not sure I would feel comfortable formally diagnosing clients, particularly by interns, as required by this psychosocial. Because of our solution-focused strength based orientation we have decided not to formally diagnose any client in the agency. [Your site] would be the exception. 

Executive Director, what are your thoughts about this? Maybe we can setup some time for all of us to talk. Please note I removed the interns from this discussion thread so we can sort out this issue.

At this point, I had some choices, I suppose.  The following was my response:

Thanks, --------, for voicing your concerns. I support a group discussion around the issue and I believe we can come to an agreement about this.

1. I support your efforts to standardize the forms used by programs for quality control purposes. 

2. I am training interns to use the DMH form because I believe it is a reflection of good SW practice and these learned skills will be transferable to any setting in the future. I agree that a good assessment can take 2-3 hours. I believe that being comprehensive at the beginning saves a lot of time and misdirected/ineffective interventions later. I am training them to collect data for the assessment and then with my assistance during individual supervision, we can together come up with a short list of possible diagnoses.

For instance, if we are dealing with a student that I believe has moderate to severe ADHD and moderate to severe depression then I will move toward recommending that interns link them to services like a psych eval for treatment purposes because in my experience these students are at great risk for suicide. In this case, I think referral, family psychoeducation and advocacy make more sense as interventions conducted by grad interns than say, generic individual counseling.

I will train and supervise interns every step of the way - engagement, assessment, diagnosis, treatment planning, evidence based interventions, evaluation and termination. 

Another example is if we determine a student is depressed and one of his primary symptoms is irritability (most common symptom of depression among children and adolescents) then I would rather use a gold standard intervention like CBT and exercise than say, anger management counseling. 

Another example is if we determine the primary presenting problem is behavior problems and disruptive behavior (90% of children's mental health referrals) then the gold standard treatment is parenting and systemic or family therapy. The effect size of individual therapy is only .24 compared to .46 for parenting/family therapy. Also, some studies have shown that individual or group counseling may even make matters worse. 

I also support brief treatment and find that engaging families expedites child behavior change. Parents have a lot of power over child behavior. Also, happy parents-happy children, angry parents-angry children, depressed parents-depressed children. 

3. Finally, I believe that diagnoses give us an idea about how to intervene and choose evidence based interventions, whenever possible/available. I work in the paradigm of the recovery model where everything is done in the service of meeting the client treatment goals. I don't see diagnosis as a life sentence. I also do not see diagnosis as a stigmatizing label. I see diagnosis as a guide for choosing the most effective and efficient interventions.

I am also strength-based and practice (and teach interns) Solution-Focused Brief Therapy. I conduct (and train interns to conduct) a thorough assessment - both risks and protective factors. Last week, I gave them a personal resiliency checklist to use with their students to identify their own protective factors. I have both an informal and formal resilience scale that I use as part of my comprehensive biopsychosocial assessment. It is another potential for agency wide client data collection and reporting. 

I feel like I can work with students and their families to accomplish behavior change in 10 sessions or less, that includes 2-3 sessions for assessment. 

4. I want to share the framework I am using and training the interns to use: 

    The Levels of Intervention - Individual/Family, Organization/School, and Community. My goal is that their assessment, treatment plan and interventions reflect all relevant levels. 

    The Social Work Process - Engagement, Assessment, Diagnosis, Treatment Planning, Interventions, Progress Monitoring/Evaluation and Termination. This is our scientific process but not linear, rather I teach it as a circular process with Engagement (the relationship between clinician and client) as an important aspect throughout. 

    Mind-Body-Spirit-Soul - When we get to interventions, I will encourage them to use evidence based practices but also to privilege what our families say works and is important to them. I believe focusing on talk therapy alone may help kids to get a little better, engaging the body (exercise, sports, yoga, dance, etc) will make them feel even better, and engaging spirit and soul (if this is something that families value) will truly transform. 

Thanks for the communication, collaboration and opportunity to do this very important work. I am so impressed by your staff and team and the families with whom I get to work. I am having a great time and look forward to a further discussion in the near future. 

Alex

Fortunately, my voice (big mouth) did not get me fired.  Rather, the Executive Director offered me more hours.  And I would like to think that it is our voice, singular and collective, that leads to progress.  I don't know of any other way.

Empowerment, Self-Determination and Integration

Any attempts to control or coerce you can chip away at your soul, your mind-body-spirit-soul - because they are all connected.

Empowerment, exercising your say, is your soul's protection. Use your words! You have a beautiful voice!

Our mission, as humans, is to get or stay whole - integrated - to be at home in our own skin, wherever we find ourselves and wherever life takes us - whole in mind-body-spirit-soul.

Self-determination is the right to make choices about our own life and face the consequences of those choices.

It takes soooo much self-awareness and courage to be whole, truly a hero's journey.

We are not alone.  We have guides and support.  We can do this. Our life depends on it.  It is our birthright.

Empowered vs. Controlled

"Judi Chamberlin (1978) wrote about her experiences while in a psychiatric hospital in the 1960s:

The whole experience of mental hospitalization promotes weakness and dependency.  Not only are the lives of patients controlled, but patients are constantly told that such control is for their own good, which they are unable to see because of their mental illness.  Patients become unable to trust their own judgment, become indecisive, overly submissive to authority, frightened of the outside world . . . The experience [of hospitalization] totally demoralized me.  I had never thought of myself as a particularly strong person, but after hospitalization, I was convinced of my own worthlessness.  I had been told that I could not exist outside of an institution.  I was terrified that people would find out that I was an ex-patient and look down on me as much as I looked down on myself. (pp. 6-7)"

From Empowering People with Severe Mental Illness by D. Linhorst, Oxford University Press (2006)

A woman with mental illness writes about her experiences in a psychiatric hospital in the 1960s and yet the reaction provoked by this experience sounds like the same reaction of many non-hospitalized students and professionals today - second-guessing self-perceptions, profoundly doubting intuition, ambivalent about what to do, afraid to rock the boat, afraid of our own voice and desires.  The conditions of oppression, regardless of context, setting, or target, can provoke similar reactions.  We can choose a different reaction.

We can  . . .

• trust our own judgment
• decide what is best for us (despite social pressures)
• have a balanced relationship with authority
• face the world with confidence and respectful humility

Gabor Mate on Healers

What do you call those who try to fix in others what is unresolved in self?

What works in therapy?  What is the essence of therapy?  Relationship with the client.  Must have a proper relationship with self in order to have a proper relationship with client.

In order to be an effective health care provider, take care of your own stuff.
Speak up your truth.  Those that have ears to hear shall hear.

Dysfunction is not an expression of our true nature but a suppression of our true nature.

Organize - join together for support which makes life worthwhile.

Managing our Aggressive Drive

We all have an aggressive drive (all of us!) - built in when we were born.

1.  So how do you want it served up from others?

a.  Passive aggressively (consider that hiding our feelings in order to be polite does not dissipate the aggression, only channels it underground where it is expressed in some other way)

b.  Assertively (consider that it might be most respectful to self & others to state clearly what we want and need, regardless of what the other person might say or do)

c.  Aggressively (do what we want without regard for others and their safety - it may seem to work for a time, but this can come back to bite us and cost us in both the short-term and long-term)

If you chose b., then use your voice. Consider doing to others as you would have them do to you.

Conflict Resolution

"Conflict avoidance guarantees a certain sense of equilibrium but at the same time prevents growth and differentiation. Growth and differentiation are the offspring of conflict resolution."

Stay quiet and keep the peace?  

Or choose to use your voice and grow up into who you really are?


Szapocznik, J. (1989).  Structural family versus psychodynamic child therapy for problematic Hispanic boys.  Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 57(5), 571-578. 

Parental Love and Bossypants Book Review

(Warning:  This post contains graphic language.   It is not intended to be offensive and the profanity has not been used gratuitously. I enjoy curse words when talking about injustice and not people, but I understand that some people are sensitive about them.)

This is not so much a book review but a prescription.  If you haven't read it, read it.  If your daughter hasn't read it, read it to her at bedtime.  My daughter has the audio-book on her iPod and she has heard it half a dozen times.

I recently had lunch with one of my mentors.  She told me she had a party for her son when she sent him off to college.  She asked her mentor to say a few words at the party.

Her mentor said, "Son, you know that I am a social worker.  And mental health professionals will never go out of business because everyone wonders whether their mother loved them.  Son, I know you know that your mother loved you."

Tina Fey, Bossypants writer, also knows that her parents loved her.  She mentions this in her book and it's implications.  At Saturday Night Live (SNL), a male coworker once called her a cunt.

Her response: “NO! You don’t get to call me that. My parents love me and I am not the child of alcoholics who take that shit.”

Tina Fey is a funny feminist.  She is my daughters role model.  My daughter dreams of auditioning for SNL, moving to New York, working with Loren Michael, and doing improv because of Tina Fey.

I could not be a prouder momma.

When a guy in a car yells "nice tits" at 13-year-old Tina, she responds: "Suck my dick."

Normally, I would deem this content inappropriate for my daughter.  But she gets the irony of the whole situation. The underlying message of that story is: don't take $hit from anybody just because you are a woman (or from any other oppressed group) and stand up for yourself using your Voice (and humor if possible).

The fact that Tina Fey knew this at 13 is pure awesomeness.  If my daughter can learn this now from someone she thinks is funny and has a cool job (not like her "boring" momma - her words, not mine), then a chunk of my job is done.

The choices that Tina Fey has made in her life and career - and the courage, honesty and wit that she is able to draw from to write about them - is a testament to her knowing that her parents love her.  Her core belief is, "I am loved."  This informs her whole life - her choices, paths, responses, reactions and relationships.

Tina Fey writes nuggets of empowerment with spoonfuls of laughter.  It makes you want to find your strengths and be who you are. As I read her collection of stories, I think she might as well be an elder teaching women of all ages about navigating life.

Reading Bossypants reminded me of a Taylor Swift song, Fifteen, that goes like this: 

'cause when you're fifteen and somebody tells you they love you
You're gonna believe them
When you're fifteen and your first kiss Makes your head spin round 
but In your life you'll do things greater than dating the boy of the football team
But I didn't know it at fifteen
When all you wanted was to be wanted
Wish you could go back and tell yourself what you know now
Back then I swore I was gonna marry him someday
But I realized some bigger dreams of mine
And Abigail gave everything she had to a boy
Who changed his mind and we both cried
'cause when you're fifteen and somebody tells you they love you
You're gonna believe them
And when you're fifteen, don't forget to look before you fall

When I first heard that song, I ran to my daughter to tell her that when she is 15, boys or men might try to tell her that they love her to get what they want.

I told her not to be so easily impressed and to tell them, "I know I am love-able.  My parents love me."

She made a grossed out face and rolled her big, brown, beautiful eyeballs at me, "Oh mom! You are so embarrassing! I'm not going to say that!"

"Okay, you're right.  That sounds dorky and you don't have to say it.  But I want you to think it in your head!"

Every night I tell my girl how much I love her and how lucky I am to be her momma.  I am grateful when she says I love you right back.

Maybe my love for her will predict the size of her future royalty checks? Not because she will think that love must be earned through achievement or money but because she will feel empowered to do exactly what she came here to do and that will bring her success. I will let you know how this all turns out in 20 years when I may be found writing to you from the South of France.

(Full disclosure:  That last line is not meant to imply that I am a proponent of elitism, materialism or our consumerist culture.  I am not trapped in that oppressive system.  I choose to drive an 11-year old Toyota Echo in Los Angeles, for goodness sake. I value freedom and relationships over money.  However, I was not being sarcastic about winding up in the South of France.) 

The Heart and Emotions, From 1628

Angina of Emotion

‘Every affection of the mind that is attended with either pain or pleasure, hope or fear, is the cause of an agitation whose influence extends to the heart.. A strong man who, having recieved an injury and affront from one more powerful than himself, and upon whom he could not have his revenge, was so overcome with hatred and spite and passion, which he yet communicated to no one, that at last he fell into a strange distemper, suffering from extreme oppression and pain of the heart and breast..’

Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus

W Harvey, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1628

P Taggart, H Critchley, P D Lambiase
Heart-brain interactions in cardiac arrhythmia
Heart 2011; 97:698-708


The link between heart and mind has been the subject of poetry and literature.  Now, thanks to neuroimaging and molecular cardiology, it is better understood scientifically.  

Express the emotion, out loud, in the open, appropriately, so it doesn't hurt you and those around you. Use your voice.  It is good for your heart.  

Sometimes we don't say it because we don't want to hurt others.  We can use our judgment.  If it is important, then saying it in a way that is respectful to self and others is not impolite or aggressive, it is assertive.

But what if that person is "more powerful" than oneself?  We are adults, we can use our judgment.  But this calls for developing (formal) leaders that are open to hearing questions and differences of opinion.  It also calls for the rest of us to assume (informal) leadership in certain situations.  I am reminded of an example in one of Malcolm Gladwell's books.   It was discovered that a Korean airline had a higher than usual fatal plane crash record because co-pilots declined to question or disagree with the pilot, out of a sense of tradition or respect for hierarchy, even when they knew they would die as a result.  Polite, maybe, but not safe for self and others.

Other times the risk of speaking out is more risky than not speaking out - on a physical, financial, emotional or social level.  You get to measure your risks.  You get to decide what you can live with and what you can't live with.  Just make sure you consider your heart, your rights, your thoughts, your feelings in the calculation.

No one matters more than anyone else.  So by all means consider the heart, rights, thoughts and feelings of others in the calculation as well.  I am concerned that historically oppressed peoples - women, people of color, adults abused as children - have learned to exclude themselves from this decision-making, negotiation and communication process.  At one time, it was a matter of survival.  Now it is a relic, a ghost of the past that lingers and can be vanquished.  It is safer now.  You are stronger now.  Take a small step at first with your freedom and power.  Learn to use it.  Practice.  Say it.  It matters.

Own Voice

Minuchin:  So you are acting, really, in strange ways, Gina.  You're acting as if you are six, and you're acting as if you are over 60, like your grandma.  

And both of your parents accept that, so it's not your fault.  It's absolutely your fault if you are running this household.  

But, Gina, you are caught because you are saying to your father the kinds of things that you think your mother wants to tell your dad, so you ampify Mother's voice.  

You are saying to your mommy the kind of things that you know your grandma and your father say to your mother.  

So you are just the voice of everybody in this family.  You don't have your own voice.  You are the puppet of the ventriloquist...

From Minuchin, S. & Fishman, H.C. (1981). Family Therapy Techniques. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA.

Voice, Mind and Body

Sometimes family members speak on behalf of other family members in a family therapy session.  Here is Minuchin's intervention to a family with an 11 year old daughter who is asthmatic:

Minuchin: ...Okay, I am talking about Pauline having a voice and a mind and then having a body. If Pauline has a voice and a mind, then she will control her body."

From Minuchin, S. & Fishman, H.C. (1981). Family Therapy Techniques. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA.

Empowering Voice in Family Therapy

Salvador Minuchin is the creator of Structural Family Therapy. In the book, Family Therapy Techniques, he presents excerpts from his family therapy sessions.  The following is his intervention as statement to a mother who has difficulty managing the behavior of her 5 year old daughter:

Minuchin:  She needs to hear that voice.  This voice is necessary.  You are afraid of your stern voice, but this voice is good.  At times it's soft and loving and at times it's strong, and she needs to hear both ranges.  She needs to dance to your music.

Coherence

“I want to be a witness to my delirium. That’s why I write, I must find coherence in this mad journey.” 

 --18-year-old Ekiwah Adler-Bel�ndez a “literary prodigy and cerebral palsy and scoliosis survivor.”

Check out the full article on narrative medicine and poetry's power to heal at "Mary Oliver Saved My Life" by Greg Cook.

There is something about coherence, making sense of things and developing understanding, that seems to be powerful, organizing and healing in the face of attachment disruption, trauma and illness.  Whether you write, talk, sing about it or act it out in a play - we strive to contain it, to put it into the form of a story with details - events and associated feelings - with a beginning, middle, and end.  It is a holy and powerful formula.  It is self-expression.  It works.  What's your story?  Come on, everyone has got a voice.  What do you want to say?

Pendulum Swings

I distinctly remember that in college, my attitude about speaking up was: "it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." I was firmly entrenched in what sociologists call "the silent ghetto" in the "back row of class".

I often say that, back then I was an amoeba of who I am today. It feels like the last couple of decades have been devoted to finding my voice and using it.

Different people, books, jobs and personal experiences helped nurture and shape the voice that I project today. And just as I espouse and advocate the value of open communication, including confrontation, I am discovering the literature about topic avoidance and concealment.

In the book, Chinese Conflict Management and Resolution by Ringo Ma, the author writes:

"Research on language difference also found that people in a culture where direct communication style is emphasized are more likely to adopt a confrontational style in conflict. In contrast, people in cultures where an indirect communication style is emphasized tend to be more silent and avoid saying no in conflict situations in order to maintain a harmonious relationship."

This has personal, professional and organizational implications! How do I raise my daughter? Speak up, use your voice, challenge discrimination and social injustice? Or "go along to get along" lest you become an outsider of the in-group that prefers indirect communication styles? I feel like I worked my way out of the old world ideas about a woman's place and voice. Yet, in some circles, old world ideas predominate. I love harmony and balance, but not at the risk of stifling my voice or your voice or her voice.

Storytelling

When I teach social work courses, I often invite social workers to speak to students.  I ask the professionals to tell their stories - talk about the client or the project that made an impression.   I ask them to cover the details - who they were and what happened, the feelings that came up, the questions and self-doubt that they struggled to overcome.

The Hero's Journey
Students want to hear the stories of the work and be inspired.  They want to learn from the experience of seasoned clinicians. Students want to see themselves in the story - cast as the capable and flawed protagonist, who faced with a challenge, struggles with external barriers and internal feelings of self-doubt, and overcomes by using time-tested and time-honored skills competently in the context of a therapeutic relationship. 

All the components of the social work process, including the theoretical framework and underlying rationale for interventions, are part of the story.

• How did you meet and how did the relationship get started? - Engagement
• What did you ask and what did they say? - Assessment
• What did you think was going on with the client and their environment?  - Diagnostic Formulation
• What did you decide to do and why?  Did the client agree? How did you explain this to the client? - Treatment Planning and Theoretical Rationale
• What did you try?  - Interventions
• How did that go? What progress did the client make?  How could you tell? Did the client accomplish their treatment goals?  Did they feel better? - Evaluation
• How did you know you were done?  How did you say goodbye? - Termination

Invariably, however, most guest speakers felt compelled to discuss their work broadly and abstractly, listing duties and components instead.  It seems that we believe the language of academia should be formal, abstract, detached.

In Methods of Discovery:  Heuristics for the Social Sciences, Abbott notes that storytelling is used as a powerful explanatory method in research because...

• ...Narration seems persuasive precisely because telling stories is how we explain most things in daily life.
• ...Narration is the syntax of everyday understanding.

If it is good for research in the social sciences, then it is good for the training of social workers.

In Writing as a Sacred Path, the author notes that in ancient Celtic cultures storytelling was considered a service to the community.  Among the Dine people (Navaho), to be told a story is a great honor.

Stories are gifts.  Write them down.  Tell the stories.  Share your insights.  Use your voice.  I bet that writing and organizing our professional stories, with details and coherence, leads to professional efficacy and resilience.  I may have stumbled on a hypothesis for testing.

Whatever way your stories come to you is the right way.  --RL LaFevers

Reminder: If you have a voice, then use it.

The only thing I’m afraid of is - not doing what I came here to do.

One of my cherished mentors calls me a woman with cojones.

I tend to cry when I speak out. It's a little embarrasing sometimes - more for the audience, I think, than for me. Before an important speech, I often pray that I don't cry. My husband suggests, if it makes me feel better, that I warn the audience that I am very passionate and might cry. It's just that I do care so much about what I am doing and what I am saying that my heart opens really wide and I start to feel it heating up my whole body and the whole room. I don't even care if I come off as weak or naive or whatever. It's being cynical, jaded, despairing or apathetic that I want to keep at bay.

Columnist Connie Schultz reminds us...

"A lot of them are mighty nervous -- at least at first. They remind me of what I always told my children when they were scared: Act brave even if you're not, and the courage will come. Turns out it works at any age.

So often, a woman will approach me before I give a talk and tell me she could never get up in front of all those people. Whenever that happens, I remind her of what Gray Panthers founder Maggie Kuhn said: Speak your mind even if your voice shakes.

If you've never heard Kuhn's words before, you might have the same response I had the first time I heard it. It hits you, doesn't it? Right there. Suddenly, you have permission not to be perfect or polished or even particularly brave. It's not who hears you that matters. It's the speaking up that'll save you every time.

And here's the thing about that shaky voice. People will listen anyway. I see it time and time again as I travel the state and meet women who just can't be silent any longer. One woman in particular has wedged her way into my memory. She is a middle-aged mother whose son recently returned safely from Iraq. But he came home to a different mother. It isn't enough that her son survived. She wants all the troops to come home. And so she wears a T-shirt that identifies her as the mother of an Iraq War veteran, and she shows up at event after event, forcing herself to talk to rooms full of people she knows won't all agree with her.

"My voice is not real strong, and it usually shakes," she said softly as she grabbed my hand before speaking. "But sometimes. Sometimes, I think if I don't speak out? Well, I'm afraid I will lose my mind."

A few minutes later, she took the stage. Her voice shook that night, just as she feared, and she stumbled over her words a few times as she shifted from side to side.

But for the entire time that she spoke, her soft, trembling voice was the only sound in the room."

Chicana Activists - Rebels or Good Girls?

In the article, Using a Chicana Feminist Epistemology in Educational Research, Dolores Delgado Bernal "provides a forum in which Chicanas speak and analyze their stories of school resistance and grassroots leadership," in this case referring specifically to women who participated and organized the 1968 East L.A. School Blowouts.

She "asked the women how the social, cultural, and sexual realities of their lives manifested in the duality of 'good schoolgirl' and 'bad activist student.' "

"Their good schoolgirl behavior of speaking up in class, asking questions, and offering leadership to sanctioned student organizations was acceptable behavior (and even encouraged). However, when they practiced these same behaviors during the school boycotts, they were perceived as deviant. Their behavior had not changed -- others' interpretation of their behavior had. In other words, they helped me to see that their 'good schoolgirl' behavior that was so openly rewarded by good grades, student council positions, and respect from teachers was the exact same behavior that was unfairly punished when they used it to protest the inferior quality of their education."

If you have a voice, then use it.