balance: Balance encompasses mindfulness, flexibility, gratitude, growth and authenticity. Balance means taking a step back for reflection, appreciation, and staying grounded. Though I do appreciate work, achievement and acknowledgement (all of which American society is heavily geared toward) it is important to me to make space for other core values, especially joy and community.
community: To me, community encompasses belonging and connection important to one’s identity, happiness and groundedness. Throughout my life, positive experiences with community have been extremely important to my well-being: I draw both peace of mind from being able to trust a support system and energy from genuine human connection.
joy: For me, opening oneself up to joy is vital to appreciating life. Joy can be drawn from the smallest moments to the grandest experiences. Excitement, youthfulness, adventure, exploration and imagination all fall under this value.
equity: To me equity goes beyond respecting, accepting and valuing all people towards striving to practice true allyship, fighting for each person to have space to speak, be heard, and thrive. It couples open-mindedness (in all respects) with the accountability to act. It is important to me because I feel it is every person’s responsibility to their fellow humans to recognize shared humanity and align their actions accordingly.
love: To love is to feel and act with care, affection, and acceptance; it is a best enacted with reciprocity. Ultimately, my motivation in life is love- to seek it out, cultivate it, appreciate it and grow in it.
“In the midst of despair...the feeling of love, the politics of love, the ethics and ideology and embodiment of love — is the only good option in this time of the apocalypse. What else do we have?” - Kai Cheng Thom (writer, performer, social worker, fierce femme, and notorious liar based in Toronto and Montreal, unceded Indigenous territory)
My Why
I highly value community and I devote my energy to cultivating the positive relationships and environments necessary for a thriving community. I am also learning how to navigate different communities and spaces respectfully and impactfully, especially in education. I work to understand, be comfortable with, and take responsibility for all parts of my identity; to listen to and resist the erasure of others’ voices; to engage myself and my practice critically and lovingly with an antiracist framework. Ultimately, I do these things because I want to validate and fight for shared humanity and sustaining relationships with the earth. Love is my most important core value, and I strive to have my actions, including those in leadership roles, be a natural extension of this.