LCF Sr. VP of Programs, Masha V. Chernyak, sat down with Shiree Teng to discuss her latest Brown Paper, Healing Love: Into Balance. Shiree Teng has worked with LCF for almost a decade—helping us dream, re-imagine, and support our grassroots Latino nonprofit community. Shiree is a healer, organizer, and a visionary movement leader. She has taught us that love is the greatest force in the universe. And that to authentically love yourself and others is a sign of a true revolutionary.
Masha: Let’s start with the most important question… how’s your heart, Shiree?
Shiree: My heart is big. It’s pumping. It’s happy. It’s calm.
Masha: How did you get here? With such a big, open, calm heart? What have you learned about taking care of it?
Shiree: My heart has always looked out for me, but I didn’t always look out for my heart.
In my 20s as an organizer, I abused myself. Then in my 30s I was decompressing, then running nonprofit organizations, taking it on my chin working in philanthropy. I was not good to my heart. But my heart was always good to me. I didn’t trust it. I didn’t know how to treasure it. I didn’t know how to listen to it. I always doubted myself a lot. Am I doing the right thing? Am I pleasing people? Am I smart enough? Do I sound smart enough? Do I look okay? So, I spent a lot of energy fighting myself inside for a long, long time. My heart was not rested. It was full of unrest. So, it took a lot of practice to get to here.
Masha: Wow, Shiree. You’ve always pushed me to trust my gut, my intuitive sense of knowing. Thank you for sharing that struggle.
Shiree: Yes, it’s taken a long time to develop this heart muscle, to really trust my heart, more than my mind. But now, I don’t trust my head anymore. I choose my heart and I trust my gut. My gut will tell me things that my head can’t. I think in this society, we’re not taught to trust our hearts. We are taught to take care of our mind, to treasure it, value it in that all that matters. That’s wrong.
Masha: For all the organizers in their 20s, 30s, 40s who just lived through a pandemic, through so much pain, suffering, exhaustion. What advice do you have for them in this moment of chaos and rebirth?
Shiree: My first message is to live, live, LIVE like there is no tomorrow. How do you want to spend your last day on this beautiful planet? LIVE IT! Do it now. Second, our work is never going to finish in this life. Our work is generations long. Bring harmony to your heart and your body now. We may fix a few things in this lifetime. We might even be able to serve a few more families and babies but the work of justice and liberation is long. Don’t rush. Third, we got to live in that freedom and liberation that we want for the world. Because we have no business talking about freedom and liberation, if we ain’t about it.
Masha: Do you have a personal practice, Shiree? Something that helps you live in that freedom. To be in that personal liberation?
Shiree Teng: Yes! I do lots of things. First, I sleep. I go to bed no later than 10 at night and I sleep until my body wakes up. It’s a privilege to be able to sleep. So, sleep people, sleep well. And healthy food, that’s my medicine. I also meditate for 20 minutes a day. I meditate until I am silent, where I am letting the thoughts pass me by like clouds in the sky. I want to work with people that I respect and love. If I can end my meetings and zoom calls with a genuine “I love you” then I am living my freedom. If I don’t feel that, I question why I’m working with you. I ask myself what is one piece of trash that I need to compost today. Reflect on what is the trash in my life is a personal practice. Lastly, I want to say what’s on my mind, my heart, my gut…and not hold on to those things. If I really feel something, I’m going to say it now. I’m not going to attach my personal worth to it. I need to do it to stay in integrity with me. I’m going to tell my truth, and wherever it goes I’m good with it.
Masha: That’s amazing, Shiree. Were you always a truth-teller?
Shiree: I think I have always been a truth-teller. But I wasn’t always successful at letting the truth come out in ways that people can understand. Early on, I was very scared to speak up as I didn’t speak English. I was made fun of a lot by teachers, by my classmates in a little town called Arlington, Massachusetts. My school was pretty much all white and I was an 11-year-old Chinese girl. When I learned English, I was very much into pleasing other people because I wanted to be liked. So, a lot of times, I held back. I wouldn’t say anything. I was also not an honest person to myself. I paid a lot for it.
When I was an organizer, I was fierce. I was loud. I had a big voice. But it wasn’t always about my truth. It was about the movement, the organizing, the wins, the campaigns… I suffered sexual molestation from a “comrade” in the movement. I stuffed it down for 25 years before I came out with my own #MeToo story. So, I have not always been this way. It’s been hard getting here. But I’m here now.
Masha: First, I want to thank you for your first Brown Paper—“Measuring Love in the Journey for Justice”. It was such a gift to the world, to our LCF community, and to me personally. You reminded us that love is not a “feeling” but an action. That love must be our main ingredient in our collective work towards liberation. And that yes, we can and absolutely must measure it.
Tell us more about what inspired you to write chapter two? Why now? What’s the purpose?
Shiree: Two things: the positive feedback to Chapter 1 and then what happened to Sammy Nuñez. Both were the inspiration. I realized I couldn’t stop with this inquiry about what had happened and how I was feeling about it. I didn’t understand what I was feeling. But I knew whatever I was feeling, it was big. And I needed to get a hold of it. To put words to it, to share it. I turned that mirror inward, and it really helped me.
Masha:. I feel like I’ve already read Chapter 2 at least three times, but I’m a crazy avid reader. What about the folks who aren’t… If you were to pull out just 1 message, one thing that you really want people to take away from this next chapter, what would it be?
Shiree: Oh, that’s a hard one. I would say, go to the second to last page— the iceberg visual. It differentiates self-soothing and radical self-loving. Radically loving ourselves is very demanding. It’s hard work. It’s constant. It’s lifelong. And it’s fun. And it’s exhilarating. And it’s going to feel so good. Self-soothing is different.
Masha: What about the folks in the philanthropic sector who are rolling their eyes at more talk of love. The ones saying, “I don’t have time for this, I’m busy making change.” What would you say to them?
Shiree: I would say, look around. Money alone is not enough. I believe philanthropy is a pressure relief valve for capitalism. And these are good jobs. So, if you’re in philanthropy, know that. I have spent a lot of time pointing fingers at what needs to change. I’ve spent a lot of life in that space. I realized it’s just maybe 30% of the work. The other 70% is cleansing myself so that I’m ready to jump into the river and swim. I want to do something about it, and I’m going to start with myself.
Now, changing ourselves can’t be the only thing we do either. So, it’s got to be a balance. You know like in Shawn Ginwright’s book, The Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice. Reimagining Ourselves– one of the four pivots is to stop pointing fingers outside and look at what we’re doing. And if we don’t like something, change it, or get rid of it or leave it.
Masha: That’s right. I love that. I feel like the way social media has packaged what you’ve been teaching is surface level. It’s about vanity. But the love you speak of is so deep, so vast, so necessary. And I do feel a shift in the universe. All the ego-driven finger pointing hasn’t gotten us to the world we dream of yet. And looking in the mirror is where we begin.
Since your latest chapter is a lot about composting trash and being radically honest with ourselves. What are you going to compost this year?
Shiree: I’m going to keep composting self-doubt. You know, I still have moments of self-doubt. “Can I do that? Really? Like, can I really put together a team to do that big messy thing you’re asking me to do? Yes, I can.” So, I’m going to keep composting why I doubt myself. And that voice that tells me I’m not good enough. That I can’t speak, I can’t write. That voice is still there, getting smaller and smaller and I want to keep composting. I want to feel less and less of it this year.
And I haven’t always been a great parent. When my kids were young, I used to yell at them because I had a lot of trauma. That anger, that rage inside that I have not adequately processed and composted.
And this winter we started doing that, I started to tell them the rage that was in me, and why I was raging. My children really inspired me to be a better person. I need to know what all that rage is and what has it done to me. How has it fueled me? How has it held me back? And who am I today in relation to my own rage. I’m going to keep doing that work, Masha. I don’t know if I’ll ever finish. It’s important work for me…
And I want to keep telling the young women organizers in the movement… sharing my story. I think my own implicit participation in my own oppression kept me silent for way too long. I was not ready to get past my implicit behavior to say “no, that’s fucked up That’s wrong. I might be wrong too.” But whatever was happening to me was more wrong than my silence. I want to keep working on that to support young leaders in the movement and I will do that until I can’t do it anymore.
Masha: What’s your dream for 2023?
Shiree: If I can talk about love for at least 25% of my practice, I will be the happiest person. I am putting that out in the world. My son, Rumi, is helping me put together an Instagram called, Conjuring Love. I am going to build a web presence. All the support I have received has been so affirming, surprising, almost unbelievable. Thank you for printing this chapter for the Latino Nonprofit Accelerator cohort, and for giving me the gift of holding it in my hands.
Masha: I don’t want this to end Shiree, but I guess my last question would be, what do you love most about yourself?
Shiree: You know, that’s a that’s a beautiful question to ask me today. I love my energy. I love that I have matured into my boldness. I love that I have cultivated circles of amazing colleagues, friends, and lovers near me. And I count you right at the top of that list. I feel like that’s what makes me happy is my social connections with people who are badass, who are changing the world. We share so much. We don’t have to talk every day or even every week, but when we do, it’s right. It’s like, I never left you and you never left me totally.
Masha: Shiree, I love you so much. Thank you for the gift of your radical love and friendship. It has forever transformed me.
Curious to learn more about composting your own trash?
Read Shiree’s Chapter 2 for inspiration.
By: Masha Chernyak, Senior Vice President of Programs and Brand Strategy
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