Women Moving Forward

For nearly forty years, Susan Bash Van Vleet has been conducting groundbreaking workshops that have helped thousands of women worldwide deal with personal blockages to moving forward in their personal and professional lives. Now in a compilation of articles gathered from her popular Women Moving Forward newsletter sent to workshop graduates over the last twenty years, Van Vleet shares valuable knowledge, personal stories, objective opinions, and up-to-date research that will appeal to women from all walks of life. Van Vleet, founder and president of a consulting firm that specializes in the areas of change management, diversity, communication, team building, project management, and leadership, offers a plethora of information on a wide variety of topics that include violence against women, motherhood, health care, workplace issues, mental health, and aging. Included is feedback from workshop graduates who provide diverse perspectives on her teachings and newsletter topics. Women Moving Forward shares a collection of articles gathered from years of newsletters that continue to this day to provide time-tested advice, guidance, and empowerment to women around the world.

For nearly forty years, Susan Bash Van Vleet has been conducting groundbreaking workshops that have helped thousands of women worldwide move forward both professionally and personally. In her latest guidebook, Van Vleet presents twenty-seven innovative concepts that will help women live with intention and create a happy existence. Van Vleet, founder and president of a consulting firm that specializes in the areas of change management, diversity, communication, team building, project management, and leadership, offers concepts and a series of exercises that lead women through a step-by-step process to finding purpose in life, creating and intending to make positive changes, learning self-love, and shunning negative thought processes. Included are worksheets that help women identify past emotions in order to transform current relationships, the signs of addiction and co-dependency, and the differences between certain types of behaviors. Women Moving Forward shares theories and thought-provoking assignments that guide women to identify a purpose and build a better, more fulfilling life.

Let's be honest, moving with God can be scary. As women, it becomes even more challenging because of the many, many hats we wear. Even though it can be scary at first, when God is walking with us, it makes things easier. These hats that we wear and the transitions we go through can be difficult to navigate. We're mothers, daughters, friends, sisters, wives, working professionals, and so much more. "Woman on the Move" is meant to be a guide to help you on this journey. With personal stories, Biblical connections, and reflection questions, this book will encourage you to become all you are meant to be and more. Don't stay where you are. I'm challenging you to move. Move with purpose, move with authority, and move with God's guidance and love. Let's do this together, girl!

“Women Moving Forward: Narratives of Identity, Migration, Resilience, and Hope is an excellent example of ethnographic inquiry, revealing the normative behavior of women within specific cultural boundaries, while also illuminating the individual transcendence of norms in the quest for self-realization. The stories in Women Moving Forward are each unique in their depiction of culture and mores and allow the reader to catch a glimpse of the lives of women in various parts of the globe. Despite their variety, however, the stories are united in their core as they each validate the very human need to hope for a future that is fulfilling and, at least to some extent, self-constructed rather than imposed...this book cannot be missed.” Associate Professor Beatriz González Robinson, Ph.D., LMHC Vice President for University Planning and Chief of Staff, St. Thomas University State Coordinator, Office of Women in Higher Education Fellow, American Council on Education “These are the stories that find voice in the human spirit. The simple, yet deeply moving narratives of everyday people who share an extraordinary experience – uprooting themselves from their native lands to seek the centuries-old dream of a better life in the United States. A new language, new culture, new political system. With opportunities to grow nearly offset by deep-seated prejudices that cause more than one to question the wisdom of their life-altering decision. Yet all persevere. All prevail. So, ultimately, these are the stories of everyday heroes (though none might admit to it). Pioneers, following the great American tradition that says, ‘You are welcome here, and with hard work and patience, you too will realize your dream.’ They hail from Cuba, Jamaica, and elsewhere, but each has made a new home in a strange new place without sacrificing their cherished traditions and values. And they and their adopted land are the better for it. So sit back and enjoy these twelve humble, yet beautiful tales. Raúl Fernández-Calienes and Judy Barr Bachay have given us a treasure.” Brother Herman E. Zaccarelli, C.S.C. Formerly Director, Educational Conference Center, Kings College, Pennsylvania

“Drs. Judith Bachay and Raúl Fernández-Calienes present us with another outstanding volume of narratives that provide a much needed forum to share stories of the global movement of women towards empowerment and the securing of their human rights. Each of the twenty-three chapters’ authors share different aspects of the issues and challenges women have or will encounter as they “move forward.” The diversity of the stories reflects the diversity of the authors. As examples, Ariela Agosín discusses the progress Chile has made in recent years towards providing women with a voice. Katariina Juliao provides the reader with a comparison between the United States and Finland as to the evolution of women’s rights using examples from politics, education, and the workplace. Many of the authors explore the new difficulties and prejudices faced by women and/or their families who have migrated to foreign countries to escape the oppressive conditions in their homelands. Others reveal to the reader through first-person narratives, the intrapersonal conflicts experienced by those who are “moving forward” but fear the loss of their heritage. Women Moving Forward: Volume 2 delivers what the editors promise: a scholarly forum for the development of an intersectional perspective that extends our awareness of how women are moving beyond victimhood. This is a book that both inspires and challenges the reader!” Nancy Borkowski, D.B.A., C.P.A., Associate Professor and Dean of Academic Affairs, South University (West Palm Beach, Florida) “Women Moving Forward-Volume 2 is a cornucopia of issues and ideas, offered by diverse voices that lay the ground work for new ways of thinking and meaning making. Judith Barr Bachay and Raúl Fernández-Calienes are opening up spaces for an intersectional analysis that includes the unique experience of women. This is a must-read for social workers, academics, and human rights activists who want to learn about and from women who are claiming their place in every aspect of the world arena. I can't wait to meet and learn from the authors of Volume 3!” Carol Heinisch, M.A., M.S.W., Social Worker, Jefferson County Public Defender’s Office (Denver, Colorado) “This is a weaving of stories that speaks centrally to hope, fortitude, resilience, identity, and compassion amongst women. Within these writings is a central theme of finding meaning in adversity, promoting advocacy and justice, and fostering dignity in the human community through access and opportunity. Robert Coles posits, what we need is a respect “for narrative as everyone’s rock-bottom capacity, but also as a universal gift, to be shared with others.” These writings are a validation of our experiences and journeys to overcome struggles as women. Yet, narrative alone is not enough, as many of us know who have taken on these challenges of transforming communities and systems. Change occurs through the actions and resolve of individuals who courageously take on these issues. Assuredly, in this text, you’ll find this scale of synergistic energy as well. L. Sunny Hansen uses a poignant metaphor that “we are all quilters on this planet, seeking to understand, value, and connect with each other in a sustainable future free from violence.” Identifying where you fit into this “quilt” is, in part, what the authors writing here want you to examine. Urging you into identifying the essential role you might play in “sewing” together a better future for all humanity.” Heather Zeng, Ph.D., Human Resource Development Consultant / Career Counselo, (Freemont, California) “Significantly real world, unrelenting, and ultra-compelling are but a few defining indicators to describe these writings. This discriminating collection expresses the decisive dimensions that embody grassroots to global settings. From the evidenced shared aims of humanity reflected in the versatile matter-of-fact life experiences to the clearly conveyed urgent need for immediate involvement, these treatises are foundational to halting and de-fragmenting the variant layers of widespread colonial and post-colonial systems of injustice. To arrest this worldwide convention of minority-majority dissent, cultural hegemony, warfare, gendered suffrage and the socio-economic-politics against civilization, will require a revolution of sorts. This integral text establishes a wide-ranging view towards that negotiation and resolve and further presents a medium of critical reasoning to execute social reconstruction to dismantle the inequality that wrongly saturates macro to micro communities. No matter what societal position validates your being, this profound volume is a must read.” Arnold Munroe, Ed.D., Visiting Assistant Professor, Educational Studies Department, University of Central Florida (Orlando, Florida) “This book illustrates the profoundly personal quest of “women moving forward” despite the burden of geopolitical place, structural and cultural constraints, economic hardship, and gender. The whole balances a celebration of localized and personalized advancements with a portrait of daily struggles for justice. Women write of finding strength in their families, ethnicities, culture, and spiritual beliefs, while confronting unequal footing in personal and professional spaces and private and public places. This work offers inspiration, as well as critical assessments of what women have endured, what they are enduring, and for what they are striving.” Patricia Widener, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Florida Atlantic University (Davie, Florida) “This uplifting book engages with the dilemmas and joys facing all those women who, at some time in their lives, have had to cross borders of one sort or another. The United States is the point of arrival for most contributors, and their earlier experiences—as immigrant, refugee or displaced person, as educational or health migrant, or as seeker after freedom and opportunity—emerge vividly from every page. The rich cultural diversity of this volume extends to Latin America, Jamaica, Palestine, Africa and Finland with a series of thought-provoking tales of sorrow, hope and, particularly, of faith. Interdisciplinary contributions include fields as diverse as traumatic exposure, second language acquisition and human trafficking. Women Moving Forward provides an essential source—not only an inspiration to those women still forced to follow similar paths but a necessary stimulant to evoking understanding, sympathy and support from those whose way has been less traumatic. It will be rewarding reading for all.” Brenda Bolton, University of London (London, England, U.K.)

Short-listed for the Lambda Literary Award from the author of Cereus Blooms at Night. “A fascinating premise that gives voice to the queer-identified” (The Globe and Mail, Toronto). Jonathan Lewis-Adey was nine when his parents separated, and his mother, Sid, vanished entirely from his life. It is not until he is a grown man that Jonathan finally reconnects with his beloved lost parent, only to find, to his shock and dismay, that the woman he knew as “Sid” in Toronto has become an elegant man named Sydney living in his native Trinidad. For nine years, Jonathan has paid regular visits to Sydney on his island retreat, trying with quiet desperation to rediscover the parent he adored inside this familiar stranger, and to overcome his lingering confusion and anger at the choices Sydney has made. At the novel’s opening, Jonathan is summoned urgently to Trinidad where Sydney, now aged and dying, seems at last to offer him the gift he longs for: a winding story that moves forward sideways as it reveals the truths of Sydney’s life. But when and where the story will end is up to Jonathan, and it is he who must decide what to do with Sydney’s haunting legacy of love, loss, and acceptance. “The novel’s evocation of the light and sights of Trinidad, its tropical over-ripeness and the scary suddenness of night’s onset, are vivid. But most vivid of all is the sensitive, wise Sid/Syd, whose tragedy is to never have been loved the way she/he deserved.” —Toronto Star “Mootoo’s character-driven novel is rich in setting and slow in pace, inviting the reader to linger over its closely observed details.” —Booklist

â oeWomen Moving Forward: Narratives of Identity, Migration, Resilience, and Hope is an excellent example of ethnographic inquiry, revealing the normative behavior of women within specific cultural boundaries, while also illuminating the individual transcendence of norms in the quest for self-realization. The stories in Women Moving Forward are each unique in their depiction of culture and mores and allow the reader to catch a glimpse of the lives of women in various parts of the globe. Despite their variety, however, the stories are united in their core as they each validate the very human need to hope for a future that is fulfilling and, at least to some extent, self-constructed rather than imposed...this book cannot be missed.â Associate Professor Beatriz Gonzàlez Robinson, Ph.D., LMHC Vice President for University Planning and Chief of Staff, St. Thomas University State Coordinator, Office of Women in Higher Education Fellow, American Council on Education â oeThese are the stories that find voice in the human spirit. The simple, yet deeply moving narratives of everyday people who share an extraordinary experience â " uprooting themselves from their native lands to seek the centuries-old dream of a better life in the United States. A new language, new culture, new political system. With opportunities to grow nearly offset by deep-seated prejudices that cause more than one to question the wisdom of their life-altering decision. Yet all persevere. All prevail. So, ultimately, these are the stories of everyday heroes (though none might admit to it). Pioneers, following the great American tradition that says, â ~You are welcome here, and with hard work and patience, you too will realize your dream.â (TM) They hail from Cuba, Jamaica, and elsewhere, but each has made a new home in a strange new place without sacrificing their cherished traditions and values. And they and their adopted land are the better for it. So sit back and enjoy these twelve humble, yet beautiful tales. Raðl Fernàndez-Calienes and Judy Barr Bachay have given us a treasure.â Brother Herman E. Zaccarelli, C.S.C. Formerly Director, Educational Conference Center, Kings College, Pennsylvania

“Moving Forward arrives at a moment when inspiration, insight, and optimism are in short supply. Karine Jean-Pierre delivers all three in abundance.” —Stacey Abrams, author of Lead from the Outside “Karine Jean-Pierre illuminates her path to insider status so others can follow in her footsteps.”—Essence “Jean-Pierre inspires us to get involved in politics—every single one of us, no matter where we are from or who we are.”—The Atlantic Most political origin stories have the same backbone. A bright young person starts reading the Washington Post in elementary school. She skips school to see a presidential candidate. In middle school she canvasses door-to-door. The story can be intimidating. It reinforces the feeling that politics is a closed system: if you weren’t participating in debate club, the Young Democrats and Model UN you have no chance. Karine Jean-Pierre’s story breaks the mold. In Moving Forward, she tells how she got involved, showing how politics can be accessible to anyone, no matter their background. In today’s political climate, the need for all of us to participate has never been more crucial. This book is her call to arms for those who know that now is the time for us to act.