Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and to being an Anti-racist Organization
While our team is working on creating our official written statement, we’re sharing here the emails that we’ve sent out in support of the Black Lives Matter movement…
Sent: July 1, 2020
Did June 2020 feel like an intense month for you? On top of several months of COVID-19 shelter in place orders, we had thousands of marches, celebrations and protests across the country fighting for the lives of Black people. This past weekend, many Pride celebrations highlighted messages stating that Black and Trans Lives Matter, while also celebrating and standing up for the rights of every person in the LGBTQIA+ community. It’s heartening to see that Black, Brown, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+ and other marginalized communities are finally being heard and supported, but we have a lot more work to do.
As a team here at The Women’s Vitality Center, we are making commitments to be more intentionally diverse, equitable and inclusive. We’re having important conversations about privilege and implicit bias and the systems that perpetuate racism in our society and in healthcare specifically. We’re looking at history (“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” is a great book/movie), listening closely to different people’s lived experiences and recognizing the importance of standing up, speaking out, questioning norms and being an ally. We’re educating ourselves (for example, our whole team is reading the book “So You Want To Talk About Race” by Ijeoma Oluo) and we are also in the process of hiring professional facilitators to help us deepen this work.
As part of my personal commitment as a leader and looking at how race shows up in and around our business, I took a pledge during a great online town hall that I attended a couple of weeks ago called Re-Imagining Small Business (if you are a small business owner interested in making real change around racism, this was a great free webinar: https://helloseven.co/townhall-2/). This pledge is a 5-step action plan to talk more, learn more and do more to become an anti-racist organization.
Also in June we supported the Black Women’s Health Imperative with a donation. BWHI was founded by a group of Black women over 35 years ago and does so much important work today in the world of health and wellness. As they say on their site “What if all Black women and girls enjoyed optimal health and well being in a socially just society?”. That’s a mission I’m proud to support and a world I look forward to! If you are looking for a great organization to support, learn more at https://bwhi.org/.
If you have been feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, anxious or stressed out with everything that is going on these days, we’re here to help! Our next workshop is a great free resource to help you get grounded and come back to your center so you can show up fully in your life.
5 Keys to Reduce Worry, Stress and Anxiety
The live event will take place (via Zoom) on Monday, July 20 4:30-6:00pm Pacific. And if you can’t attend at that time, a recording will be sent afterwards so go ahead and register now…
More info and sign up here—> https://womensvitalitycenter.com/building-emotional-resilience
You have so many amazing gifts to share and we’d love to support you during these challenging times!
Take care and stay safe,
Dr. Amy and The Women’s Vitality Center Team
Sent: June 7, 2020
I hope you’re holding up ok over these last two weeks, on top of these last few months. Between the many impacts of the coronavirus and the protests to fight for Black lives, this is such a significant moment in history and I know it’s all weighing heavily on many of our hearts.
The virus, and our response to it, has changed our world in ways that many people believe will be permanent shifts. I hope the same will be true after this worldwide movement for fairness and equality. The horrible tragedies, the obvious injustices, as well the explicit and implicit bias that Black people experience every day in this country are unacceptable, and it has to change.
I want to share with you that I am opening my eyes to the fact that not being an overt racist is not enough. I’m listening, reading and educating myself so that I can do better, both personally and as a leader. I realize now that silence is not acceptable and it’s important to speak up, even if we don’t always know quite what to say. We all need to be proactive about making the world a more just and equitable place for all.
The Women’s Vitality Center team knows that systemic racism, widespread inequities, and implicit bias affect the health and wellbeing of not just Black people but all of us. And we commit to doing our part to remedy these problems. This is not a one-time task – it is an ongoing process of listening, learning, reflecting, and taking action.
We are having conversations about race internally and we are creating regular diversity, equity and inclusion meetings in order to continue to do this work as a team. We are committed to finding the way forward with new levels of awareness and new actions that will allow us to better serve our patients and our community.
Along the way, if there’s anything you feel that we can do better, please don’t hesitate to write to us at support@womensvitailtycenter.com and let us know. We believe that every human is vital, and that everyone has the right to experience vitality in their lives. We’re committed to working towards that in all the ways that we can.
Take care and stay safe,
Dr. Amy and The Women’s Vitality Center Team
