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Category: Allyship & Leadership

My Earliest Messages on Diversity

My Earliest Messages on Diversity

Published February 10, 2016 by Liz

We have an activity in our GLSEN* Professional Development called Earliest Messages. Through it we explore our biases or acceptance of concepts around diversity based on the messages we received from our family/friends/teachers/society growing up. Because I’m often asked why I do this advocacy work and HOW it came to be that I’ve always thought diversity should be celebrated when I say, “I’ve always thought diversity should be celebrated,” I’m often thinking about the earliest messages I received.

Sometimes something brings back an early message in it’s entirety and I think, “Aha! That was it! That was my earliest message about…”

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Show Love, Take Action!

Published January 19, 2016 by Liz

Dear Kansas Friends,

People need your help. I’m begging for your help (and I don’t often beg). At the end of this post I will give you some concrete ways that you can help, but first, let me explain:

I awoke from a dream this weekend in which I was crying hot, angry, frustrated tears. In the dream my face was drenched in them and I couldn’t wipe them all away. In the dream I felt completely and utterly defeated because despite my every attempt to advocate for people, many of my own friends didn’t see many of my other friends as people who deserved the same rights and freedoms that they themselves took for granted. I was beyond frustrated that I didn’t know how to help move more people toward action. Then I woke up and I was still heartbroken and frustrated, because it wasn’t just a dream.

Today I have great news, though! News that makes me hopeful! There is a chance for you to show love and take action right now!

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Let’s Make it Not About Being Right or Wrong, but About Being Love

Published June 29, 2015 by Liz

I first saw hate up close and personal in my early teens. I intervened when a couple of guys from school decided it was a good day to beat up one of my best friends because they perceived him as being gay. Did you get that? They didn’t know, they just assumed, and they deemed him worthy of a beating because of it.

Something in me broke that day. I felt it snap, and as I jogged around the cemetery near my house that evening to shed the remaining adrenaline and anger from the fight, I lashed out at God. Yep. That’s right. Little ol’ teenage me was furious with God. Please let me explain.

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Books, Love & Hope!

Published March 3, 2015 by Liz

IMG_3261This book. Woah. It almost rendered me speechless. Almost. It also almost made me ugly cry on the plane a half dozen times. Almost. The fact is, Glennon Melton Doyle, author of Carry On, Warrior and my favorite blog, Momastery, superbly took all the feels straight out of my heart and put WORDS to them! WORDS! Brilliant, riveting, funny, emotional words that give substance to all the love I want to show to and share with the world and don’t know how to express!!

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Becoming an Advocate (Again)

Published September 18, 2014 by Liz

Originally published August 9th, 2013.

Society can break people. On the day I realized this, I was in a 6th grade classroom in Manhattan, Ks. It would be my first opportunity in life to look someone in the eyes and try to help them heal. I was a sparkly-eyed bilingual elementary education student teacher with dreams of changing the world, in what I considered at the time to be a diverse school. That’s when a 6th grade student, Francisco*, broke my heart.

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