The Womens Conference
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My Grandmother's Lesson: Courage
- Family and Friend
- Work and Money
I remember the first time I went to New York to pitch my book to a prospective publisher. I stood on the busy sidewalk two blocks from the office, tears streaming down my face, a scrap of paper clutched in my right hand. It was a chilly spring day and I’d slipped on the stylish 70’s black overcoat that was a keepsake from my maternal grandmother who had passed away eight years earlier. When I put my hands in its deep pockets to ward off the icy air, I discovered they weren’t empty. I pulled out a handkerchief, a small piece of the candy she always used to stash away, a note she had scribbled to herself. In her familiar quivering hand she’d written two words: Mint. Apricots. It was a grocery list. That’s when the tears came.
It took me back to the day, soon after her passing at the age of 84, when we’d gone to clean out her apartment. I’d asked my mother if I could keep two pieces of her clothing: the tailored black overcoat, and the green and burgundy checkered dress that she often wore to Friday night Shabbat dinners. She had been known as an impeccable dresser. She was petite like me and very spiritual. But the similarities stopped there -- or that’s what I thought at the time.
My grandmother was raised in a deeply patriarchal Iranian culture, where women were expected to be supportive wives and devoted mothers only. Having influence beyond the sphere of family life was uncommon and looked down upon. My grandmother rarely spoke up in front of people, and sat in what I jokingly called, “the Siberia,” or most peripheral corner of our family gatherings. Even so, she was regarded as a wise woman. If she were asked for her opinion in front of others, she would deflect the attention, giving elusive answers. “Only God knows,” she often replied.
Her behavior felt too passive to me, as if she could not break out of the feeling of being invisible. I had had a vastly different experience than she did. I immigrated to the U.S. at the age of eleven, right at the start of the Iranian Revolution. During my first five and a half years here, my parents were stuck in Iran, so I lived with my older siblings. This early experience encouraged me to be self-sufficient, determined, and independent, while being raised in the U.S. afforded me opportunities the women of past generations simply didn’t have.
I am the first woman in my family who not only graduated college, but who also went on to graduate school. In our traditional culture, it is not expected that women will work outside of the home, especially if there is no financial need. I worked because I wanted to, and much to my family’s surprise, continued teaching part-time at the university until four years ago, when I left to work on a memoir. It was when I started writing about our family experience of escape, exile, and our eventual adjustment in the U.S. that the old notions of self-censorship and self-repression surfaced in my life. Who would care about what I have to say? I wondered, finding it hard to believe that others would even be interested in my experiences. That’s when I realized that my grandmother and I had more in common than I originally thought.
But the similarity didn’t stop there. When she was forty years old and her children were grown, my grandmother, unhappy about her minimal education, asked my grandfather to get her a tutor. He did, and she worked diligently for years on her reading and writing, until she felt confident enough to write correspondence and reach out to others. She had a real zest for learning that seemed to grow and flourish. In her 80s, she hired a tutor who visited her twice a week to work on her Hebrew.
On that day in New York, wearing my grandmother’s overcoat, I felt fully embraced by her presence. As I walked toward my meeting, I somehow knew I was carrying her essence -- all her dreams, joys, loyalties, denials, doubts, and disappointments -- within me. It was astonishing to think that my grandmother began to fully read and write at the same age as I was hoping to publish a book. Mint, apricots, it meant so much to her to be able to write those words, just as it means so much to me to write about her. I knew then that others would be interested in her story, our story, and that maybe she wasn’t so invisible after all. That’s when I realized that writing our family memoir not only impacts future generations, it also has the power to bring honor and heal the unfulfilled dreams of women of generations past.
Angella M. Nazarian teaches psychology in local universities and facilitates adult personal development seminars for women. Her writing and poetry have appeared in the Hufffington Post, MO+TH and Milllenium Literary Journal. Her new book, Life as a Visitor, is due to be released in Oct. of 2009 by Assouline Publishers.
Getting a Grip
- Life Balance
- Health and Fitness
Who knew that so many people cared about my weight? When I decided to go on the TV show, “Dancing with the Stars” last year, it was the first time I was in the public eye after playing my last tennis match in 2003. So many people started asking, “OH MY GOD, how did you lose all this weight?” Book publishers started calling my agent. They wanted me to tell my story about winning the weight battle.
Weight is such a big component in so many women’s lives – for stay-at-home moms, athletes, businesswomen. It doesn’t matter who you are. Meanwhile, since leaving tennis, I’d given a lot of talks to women’s organizations about eating disorders and how to keep food from controlling your life. So with all of this media attention, and my own interest in sharing this story, I decided to write a book, Getting a Grip on My Body, My Mind, My Self.
Writing the book was almost like therapy. I’d gone through so much. Looking back at myself in 1999 and 2000 – my stabbing in Hamburg, my father’s illness and then his death, and my subsequent weight issues - I wish I had some women to talk to. I was surrounded by men, who didn’t understand my issues with food. They thought, “What’s the big deal? It’s such a little thing to let have so much control over you.” I felt ashamed. I retreated into myself.
In tennis, you have to be so strong. You can’t let your opponents see your weakness. And in tennis, eating disorders are rampant. My friends & I would go out for dinner. They’d eat nothing. Then they’d go home and binge on potato chips, brownies -- anything. I know, because I did it too.
My eating issues were wrapped up with an identity struggle, with that question – “What do you want to do in life?” All of us want to make some impact. There are so many choices, but my entire identity was wrapped up in tennis. I’d ask myself, “Will anyone even like me if I don’t play tennis?”
At 30, I realized, I’m tired of lying to myself. I had to make this change with food and my weight; I had to do this for me.
How did I do it? I started to take care of myself first. I was the typical caretaker – worrying about my mother, my father, my coach. I had to be honest with myself, and
I had to do this – lose the weight -- for myself -- not for my job, my ex-boyfriend, my coach. I had to do it for Monica. When I talk to women, I say – “If you are happy being heavy, that is great.” I wasn’t. I wanted to be healthier.
Finding balance with food – and with myself – came with experience. As I got older, I thought, “Gosh, I travel so much – these European women, these Asian women – they eat all this stuff.” I realized I could do it too and still be in good shape. Since that realization, I’ve never restricted myself. I eat everything. I don’t have to stuff myself with pasta because I know this is not my last chance. I can eat it tomorrow, too.
Back when my trainers would tell me I couldn’t touch pasta and I could eat egg whites only, I would think, “Wouldn’t that pasta be so great?” Pasta became the forbidden food – and I wanted it so badly. In the end – I don’t believe in restrictions. To me, life without a piece of bread or pasta – it’s not worth it.
The lesson – for me – is to really be comfortable with who you are. In my profession I was surrounded by women sized 0. I’m 5’9” and I don’t have to be a size 0. I truly believe that in my 20s I would have understood that, had I had more strong, powerful role models.
One woman who did play that role for me was Billie Jean King. I talked to her for the first time when I played in the Federation Cup in 1996. She was remarkable for her sport, but even more for what she did off the court. She stood up for her beliefs. I was a two-handed forehand and backhand; I was a strong, grunting female. Talking to Billie about it, she would say, “Monica, be who you are.”
Billie, like others, has done so much for this generation. Hopefully I can give back in my own little way, and keep that giving going.
How I Became an Architect of Change
- Architects of Change
The Women’s Conference changed my life.
When I first attended in 2007, I already thought of myself as an Architect of Change, but The Women’s Conference deepened my understanding of the role. It showed me that you don't have to know all the answers; you just have to have the patience to listen, and the desire to help.
In 2008, as a senior at UCLA, I was chosen by my classmates to be Student Body President. I saw it as a way to be of service to my fellow students. Little did I realize that some of them needed help in ways I did not anticipate. But I found out. And I was shocked.
In the second quarter of my senior year, I was approached by several students asking for help. These were not the usual requests for event funding or guest speakers.
This was different. The students were homeless. They were sleeping in offices and classrooms. They went to the gym to take showers, and they ate food from student groups’ events. Many students asked if I could hire them to the student government because they had nothing to eat.
One student, Sabrina Tinsey, was profiled in the Daily Bruin for her struggles with homelessness. She spent much of her junior year going from friend’s house to friend’s house – but it was a never-ending process of looking for shelter. She explained to the Daily Bruin at the time, “Right now I’m in the process of packing all my stuff again and going. I don’t know where I will go. I don’t know where I will stay.”
Why were these students homeless? Many were homeless because their parents had lost their jobs in the recession. Some students were undocumented immigrants, who weren’t eligible for state loans or scholarships (as was the case for Tinsey). For those students who did receive financial aid, they often had to spend all of the aid just to cover school fees. There was nothing left over to pay for housing or food.
The disturbing fact that some of my fellow students were homeless inspired me to do something. I decided to host an event, inviting university students to camp out for one night on the UCLA campus. We charged each of the 350 students who attended $6, and we called the event BruINTENT. Essentially, we were Bruins in a TENT with the INTENT of helping our community. We signed up attendees to volunteer at soup kitchens; we made bag lunches to distribute on Skid Row; and we invited two homeless students to speak -- to educate the group about the issue of homelessness at UCLA.
We donated the $4000 we raised from the April 16th event to Chrysalis, a homeless shelter off campus, as well as to a private grant set up to help the homeless students. What else came of the event? The school administration vowed to help the homeless students find housing.
With BruINTENT, I wanted to demonstrate to the student body that homelessness is not only a national or urban problem, it is our problem, here on our campus.
Now that I’m leaving UCLA, I look ahead to my next challenges, my next opportunities to effect change, and to pass it on. I’m going to spend next year as a CORO leadership fellow, learning about the public affairs arena and how to translate my ideals into action for improving my community and beyond. And then? A joint degree program in law and public policy. My commitment to architecting change is for life.
Join Us at The Village
- Maria's Post
The response to this year’s conference has been overwhelming, to say the least.
For those of you who experienced technical difficulties this morning with ticket registration, we are truly sorry. We doubled our server capacity this year in anticipation of very high demand. We received hundreds of thousands of simultaneous requests at 9:00 a.m. and it overwhelmed our servers. Thousands of people did make it into the ticket queue before the servers crashed and were able to fulfill their ticket requests over the span of the next two hours. Tickets to the main conference event on Tuesday, October 27 sold out shortly thereafter, as did tickets to A Day of Transformation on October 26.
Tickets are still available for Night at The Village on Monday evening, October 26 and the special presentation of The Minerva Awards during the Afternoon Session of The Women’s Conference main event on October 27. Night at The Village – The Place to Be, will once again transform the Long Beach Convention Center’s exhibit hall into a 160,000 square foot women’s village of inspiring interactive experiences, offering attendees the chance to “Meet, Mix and Mingle with Architects of Change.” Night at The Village will include a main stage program featuring Martha Beck, chef Paula Deen, and fitness expert and best-selling author Jillian Michaels; three “stagette” programs featuring Seane Corn, Kathy Ireland, Victoria Jackson, Mario Lopez and many others on topics relating to mind, body and spirit empowerment; book signings by best-selling authors including Candace Bushnell, Kate Gosselin, Caroline Kennedy, Sue Monk Kidd, Mario Lopez, Greg Mortenson, Dr. Mehmet Oz, and others; live music; and hundreds of vendors with products and services geared to women.
We are so pleased that so many women want to be a part of the conference community, and we expand our conference every year to reach more and more women.
So, join us at The Village! And if you are not able to join us in person this year, we will be bringing you the best moments with live and exclusive online features and interviews throughout the day on our website.
We hope WomensConference.org becomes your daily visited “Home for Architects of Change” 365 days a year.
Be Who You Are…An Architect of Change. Pass it On
- Maria's Post
The Women’s Conference 2009, like all of us, is embracing change – evolving and moving forward in new directions. This year’s conference is set to be our most exciting event yet with a terrific lineup of leaders, innovators and thinkers. The main day of the Conference, on Tuesday, October 27th, will continue to be a time when we gather to unite around a common purpose, explore issues that affect our lives, share our inspirational stories, and empower one another to be Architects of Change in our lives, in our communities and in the world.
In response to your enthusiasm, this year we’ve expanded the Conference to last two full days. Join us on the morning of Monday, October 26th for a brand new event -- A Day of Transformation, special sessions full of Tips & Tools for How to Become an Architect of Change. Following the sessions, we’ll host an expanded Night at The Village – with even more speakers, authors, shopping and entertainment. The Village is The Place to Be…Mix, Meet & Mingle with Architects of Change.
The impact of The Women’s Conference has extended far beyond our annual event in California. For millions of women, and men, who want the opportunity to engage and connect, we have created a new gathering place here online, where -- every day -- we can empower and inspire one another to be Architects of Change as advocates, mothers, artists, caretakers, teachers, friends or entrepreneurs.
We invite you to explore our new website – a Home for Architects of Change -- and let us know what you’re thinking about, talking about and doing in your own lives. We want you to join our conversation at “Our Kitchen Table” where we talk about the most relevant issues in our lives – family, work, life balance, health and public service. Tell us what you're talking about around your kitchen table. This is where we are all free to be who we are -- to feel it, see it, use it and to pass it on.
We hope you’ll bookmark the site so you won’t miss the timely blog posts, articles, features and videos authored by some of the luminaries who speak at the Conference, as well as other experts, writers and journalists. And, if you can’t join us in person at the 2009 Conference, you can experience the energy and inspiration of the two-day event here online with amazing speakers and exclusive online interviews and content. You can even gather and watch with your family, friends or colleagues – at home or in the office.
Whether at the conference itself, or here on our website, the message remains the same: Be Who You Are…An Architect of Change. Pass It On. Who you are is here.
