Sisterhood Spirit Mapping Our Health, Wealth, and Inspiration

• In Event: Mapping the Long Haul: Cartographies of Mentoring Journeys

Abstract

Statement of purpose
As professors of color, we teach, research, serve, and advise students. This position has the potential to commodify the vestiges of our souls. Yet, our sisterhood sustains us as we grow in community, trust, communication, and relationship. We decolonize and unlearn harmful ways of research engagement by nurturing one another through reciprocity, self-care, balance, and rejuvenation. We reset through our relationships and feminist praxis, which open doors for growth, wisdom, and hope. The creative sisterly synergy produces understanding as we listen and support one another. Our femtorship humanizes our research and professorial practices as we share our histories, joys, pains, and truths. We share our stories and intentions, recognizing how the premise of our lives unfolds in empowerment by honoring our holistic souls. In this paper, we illustrate how, as a sisterhood, we design models of healthy living as soul work. We seek to explicate the following questions:
1. How is our health related to honoring our souls?
2. What does our health reveal about our living and working in the academy?

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
In this study, we use intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) and feminist theory rising from the ordinary, lived experiences of women navigating the hegemonic oppression of patriarchy (Ahmed, 2017). To resist levels of oppression, our feminist intersectional work addresses our everyday living. We view our models of health as individual and collective, as we take care of ourselves and others in academia. The wholeness and wellness of our mind, body, and spirit are connected with our histories and the pedagogy of our home (Delgado Bernal, 2016). This work explores our intersectional feminist health, empowerment, and spirit (authors, 2022). We view the personal as political (hooks, 1998) especially in this historical time, we must take care of our internal heart, transformatively thriving in our vitality and feminism.

Methods, Techniques, or Modes of Inquiry
Utilizing counterstories (Yosso, 2006), arts-based research design (Bhattacharya, 2013), and our intuitive, cultural, and collective knowing (Bristol et al., 2012; Delgado Bernal, 2016), this inquiry provides opportunities for our voices to counter majoritarian stories and visions of capital gain. We center our experiences and histories to strengthen our social, spiritual, and cultural survival and resistance (Solorzano & Yosso, 2002). Our work is in three stages: 1. Creation of health maps in virtual meetings; 2. Participation in dialogues, and 3. Meaning-making in written reflections. Our study is centered on the artistic maps and the storytelling of inspirational, introspective meaning and social agency.

Figure 1: Initial map.

Results and Scholarly Significance
Through our meaning-making and health maps, we produced counter-stories of hope, caring, and wellness amidst moments of pain and heartache in our personal and professional lives. We challenge majoritarian stories of academic commodification. We recognize our willful tongues of strength as we inherit the stories of our ancestors. As Ahmed (2017) notes, “...Those of us who arrive in an academy that was not shaped by or for us bring knowledges, as well as worlds, that otherwise would not be here” (pp. 9-10).

Authors

• Antonette M. Aragon, Colorado State University

• Christine W Nganga, The George Washington University

• Makini Beck, Rochester Institute of Technology