About 1975, I began to focus on overcoming institutionalized prejudice when I stumbled into my first Reevaluation Counseling Teachers and Leaders workshop. Harvey Jackins, organizational founder and workshop leader, told the workshop participants that if you only work on your personal hurts without examining how you participate in the systematic mistreatment of groups of people, including your own--for example how I might participate in the mistreatment of people who are Jewish while at the same time mistreat myself and other females because of the internalized conditioning from sexism--that it was like digging yourself out of a pile of manure with a teaspoon while a big steam shovel comes and dumps another load on you. Harvey had my attention. I had a big pile of manure (distress or hurts) to dig out of and I was interested in whatever would speed up that recovery process.

At that same workshop, Harvey did a demonstration with a woman of African heritage. He asked her "What is just great about being a woman of  African heritage growing up in the United States?" As the question was designed, as she began to talk about what was great, many of the things that were terrible floated to consciousness. She began to cry, then wail. The work that she did that day awakened me to the impact of racial discrimination toward people of African heritage. Though I was twenty-eight, I did not understand how different groups were impacted so deeply by both blatant and subtle forms of discrimination.

After completing this emotional work, this woman of African heritage looked bright and shiny as people often do when they have experienced emotional release. Harvey then asked her tell us what she expected from us as her allies. She began by telling us the story of a Presbyterian minister who wrote during the time of Nazi Germany something that went like this, "When they came for the union organizers I didn't stand up, when they came for the gays and lesbian I didn't stand up, when they came for the Jews I didn't stand up, and when they came for me there was no one left to stand." She then went on to say, "You be there for me when the lynch mob comes for me and I'll be there for you." In my heart, I said I would. The personal growth that came out of keeping my commitment set me on this journey.