A lot has changed since I last updated. I have moved across country, and now live back in the southeast again. I have taken a job as the Assistant Director of an office on a university campus! I once again back at a university which I am happy about, despite leaving so many dear people behind at my last place of employment. I miss them much but it was time to move on to new different and bigger challenges. I work in multicultural affairs once again as a diversity and social justice educator, something that is my calling. With my experience as an outdoor experiential educator, I often utilize these sometimes different arenas to create interesting results! Well, I guess that's mostly it.
Today is National Coming Out Day. That's quite exciting. My office had quite a number of events today to support this day, put on by one of the wonderful graduate students that work in my office! They were all done so well! I am so happy and proud to be a part of this office.
This is also a day that is quite important to me. People who identify as LGBTQIA are a group that are often marginalized, and sometimes even marginalized within their own group. I have been a member of this community in one way or another for a long time. For this reason, and others, it's really important for me for folks to support members of the community. If you don't know very much about the community I encourage you to reach out to someone you trust and learn something! I will put myself out there and say you can feel free to contact me and I would love to help you to understand so that you too can help in some regard to support this and other marginalized communities. Being an ally is an amazingly powerful thing.
As an ally you work to support, understand, learn and share. An ally can be an immediate member of the community or culture, or it can be someone who is not a direct member of the culture, but as an ally you can become a supporting member of the culture. It is important to push yourself to learn, and one of the best ways to do this is to put yourself in uncomfortable situations in order to learn from them. Many of my situations of most growth have arisen from these sorts of challenges. Go on. Push yourself!
Be easy folks.
See you soon.
