In Beth's words...
Milwaukee is a city that will live on in my memory forever. It was my last speaking stop on this tour and I will soon be moving on to other places and experiences. Our day there was for me the most powerful one of the trip so far, if it is even possible to compare each and every one of these powerful days.
Over the course of 11 hours I witnessed more desperation, compassion, active caring and hope than I think I have witnessed in the prior 10 years. What an amazing city and what amazing people we met.
The day began at the Sojourner Truth House, named after a woman who helped so many to freedom on the Underground Railroad. This is a Safe House for women and their children who are themselves now being sheltered and protected on their journey to freedom from lives that I can only begin to understand and spent every moment learning to empathize with.
In a very small dining room, where we all sat shoulder to shoulder, 20 women, residents, staff and others who all share a common goal, we listened as Lani stood and as one resident later put it, represented herself and her journey with rigorous honesty, vulnerability, humor and sometimes tears. To say that all in that room where affected is way too simple.
What I witnessed in utter gratitude once again was how conversation, how sharing who we are with each other from our deepest selves, no matter how different our upbringings, our family histories, our current circumstances, or even, because it still seems to matter so much in this country for reasons that I have never been able to comprehend, the color of our skin, has such an immediate and profound impact on our lives and the lives of those around us.
Simple sharing, simple conversation. Not big corporate programs, not big fundraisers or televised events. Not parades or flags or bracelets or a day or month proclaimed for this or that, but simple honest to god, standing next to each other, looking in each other’s eyes, feeling each other’s pain, conversation. And the women there were the first to admit how strange and powerful it was to hear so much of themselves in a woman who was on the surface so different from them. How much they understood at the end of just 2 hours that they truly were not alone if the problems that threatened to crush them had also been experienced by others who seemed to live in such a different world.
And when we emerged from this locked facility, behind doors that are there to protect but also keep the world at bay, I had a much different view of my world and life and how I want to show up and represent myself in it.
After leaving this home, this stop along the way for women who have literally been taken down to the very bottom ground of their lives to be able to start the journey back up again, we drove around the city a bit. On the shores of a lake that creates its own weather patterns, is this very eastern feeling Midwestern town that is creating new patterns of its own for residents and visitors alike. The architecture of downtown is a wonderous mix of every style imaginable, new and old, with beautiful parks and vibrant universities and museums and gathering places where everyone mixes together to share the day. With churches and temples of every kind right next to each other, and two colleges weaving together in the same neighborhood.
It was quite a revelation to me growing up in Southern California where everyone seems to do the best they can to stay ignorant to much of the humanity around them, caught in the overwhelm I assume of too much and too many. Maybe too spread out and disconnected as well. The neighborhood of the Sojourner Truth house would not be described as a good area where I grew up, and probably would be avoided at all costs by the people I grew up with, and yet here it was, woven into the full fabric of a city that seems to me to embrace all.
Later that afternoon we traveled to our second stop, just down the road, where in a gorgeous YMCA complex, people of all ages have found a home ground in which to nourish their body, mind and spirits. And boy are they! We wandered around in awe of the amazing facilities that are available to everyone who needs them, and most importantly for the youth who are in such a transformational time in their lives. A health center bigger than any club I have ever visited. Swimming pool, media center, computer clubs, etc. etc. And most importantly, youth groups where teenagers are mentored by others in the community with respect and courage and more rigorous honesty. Where all of these young and budding adults have a place to share and represent themselves, to set goals for their lives and learn how to problem solve and relate to each other in non-violent and caring ways. It is truly the heart center of an otherwise very challenged community.
Lani spoke to a group of young women whose smiling shining faces were the greatest hope I could wish to communicate to this planet.
Young women who are at a critical juncture in their lives where one path could lead to the same Safe House that we had visited just hours before. 
The program is called Pearls for Teen Girls and the women who run the program are the greatest jewels one could ever have in life. 
Day in and day out they support these young women as they grow through all that life can throw at them, while also nurturing the girls to stand together and teach and support each other. And alongside them is other extended family,
other women in the fabric the girls are weaving at such a tender age, the aunts, the grandmothers, who also stand together to provide strong structures when the basic family unit is not itself healthy enough to do so.
And all in an atmosphere of fun and hugs and truth. And once again, it is all about conversation. About everyone taking the time to turn off the television or the Ipod, to step away from the computer or the cell phone, and talk to each other. To spend time looking each other in the face and seeing ourselves in each other. Laughing together, and playing together, and finding solutions TOGETHER.
I have been so touched by all that I have met along the way, even as a rather quiet bystander and simple witness to the enormous energy and love that Lani has shared unceasingly and unselfishly with all who cross her path. I have watched her grow through this experience in such profound and sometimes subtle ways and it has shown me yet again the gift that we all receive in our own growth and evolution when we can be there and share with others. I know that over the past many years I have attempted to live in service as much as I knew how, to honor others as I would wish to be honored myself, to respect others as I would wish to be respected myself, and the hardest part, to love others as I would wish to be loved myself. And I know at the tender and budding age of 51 that in many ways I have succeeded.
But this trip has also brought home to me in so many other ways that there is so much more that I can do. That there is so much more that I can share of myself with others, not just my time and energy, but of me. That I too can enter into a world of conversation and sharing of my experience that is so much deeper than I have ever allowed myself. And that I too can see so much of myself in others whose lives are so different from mine, on the surface, and learn so much from them.
And for this I will be eternally grateful … and to this conversation I dedicate the next 51 years! Here is to all of us representing ourselves to each other with compassion and respect and truth.
Thanks Lani from the bottom top and middle of my heart, and thanks to all of you along the way who have brightened my world in previously unimaginable ways.
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