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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

leche, zine, mala, support, charlottesville, cultural humility, artists, community, mother earth, pandemic, people, clients, initiative, issue, feeling, life, services, women, programs, mental health

SPEAKERS

Tenisha Alston, Meesha Goldberg, Mary Garner McGehee, Sarah Howorth, Andrea Mayfield, Sri Kodakalla, Elizabeth Irvin

Mary Garner McGehee  00:03

Thanks for tuning into Charlottesville Soundboard. I'm your host Mary Garner McGehee. Soundboard airs every other Saturday at 6am on WTJU 91.1 FM and also comes to you as a podcast that belongs to the Virginia Audio Collective. This week we're talking about the people behind tw o local women centered organizations. First up, we're going to hear from Sri Kodakalla and Meesha Goldberg. They're two artists of the Feminist Union of Charlottesville Creatives who just edited a new issue of the zine, MALA LECHE. This edition of MALA LECHE is called Fever Dreams of Mother Earth, and it features all kinds of art about our planet and climate change. And in the second half of the show, we talked to Andrea Mayfield and Elizabeth Irvin of the Women's Initiative about mental health in Charlottesville, and their mission to radically increase people's access to it. I'm gonna hand things over to our Assistant Producer Sarah Howorth, who spoke with Sri and Meesha.

Sarah Howorth  01:03

On this episode of Soundboard, I talked to Sri Kodakalla and Meesha Goldberg about the second installation of MALA LECHE: Fever Dreams of Mother Earth. MALA LECHE is a quarterly radical art zine featuring the work of women identifying, non-binary and genderqueer artists and writers from Central Virginia. 18 talented individuals created MALA LECHE number two based on environmental activism and human connection to Mother Earth. If listeners are interested in seeing the zine in person and in color, they can head over to the exhibition at Studio IX until May 1st. Could you both start off by just introducing yourself? You can include your name pronouns, your interests or your job and especially your role in creating the zine and anything else you'd like to add.

Sri Kodakalla  01:47

I'm Sri Kodakalla. I go by the pronouns she/her or they/them. I am a local artist that does mixed media work, and I have a studio based in McGuffey Art Center, and I'm the co-director of the Feminist Union of Cville Creatives.

Meesha Goldberg  02:01

My name is Meesha Goldberg. I'm a multidisciplinary artist and farmer in Barboursville, Virginia. I grow my own food, I paint, write poetry and perform artwork too.

Sarah Howorth  02:17

Can you both or either one of you just start off by telling the listeners a little bit about MALA LECHE?

Sri Kodakalla  02:24

So, MALA LECHE is a hopefully quarterly radical art scene featuring the work of women identifying, non-binary and genderqueer artists and writers from Central Virginia. I initially, when we started MALA LECHE, it was kind of focused more toward Charlottesville, but we've kind of like branched out further because we have a lot of artists and writers that are super talented. And we wanted to like make sure that we're supporting the network because there aren't very many opportunities to engage in like print media, and MALA LECHE is creating an opportunity for that. And MALA LECHE was started, our first issue was back in December. And it featured about 13 different artists from Central Virginia who just kind of submitted anything that they felt like couldn't be shared in mainstream media or like, in the newspaper, any articles that they felt like they wanted to share any visual works that they felt like were a little too politically charged. And we kind of selected through them and put it into this awesome print zine. And for the second issue, we kind of like came into it with the intention of creating a theme that artists could work toward a prompt that could kind of like, engage them in a different way, kind of get them to create more dialogue with community. And Meesha was the perfect person to do that, especially with her focus in environmental activism.

Meesha Goldberg  03:55

I first saw the call out for the first issue as it was being put out, and Ramona had invited me to submit, and I loved seeing that there was a request for work that would not be published in other arenas. And I had a poem about roadkill and I thought, "Oh, this would be a perfect place for this." After that poem was published in there, Ramona, who is the other co-creator had a rooster that showed up at her door, and that she was panicked about what to do with it. And so, I take care of chickens and roosters, and said, "Oh, I could rescue him from your place." And so that kind of deepened our relationship. And she ended up writing a story about Roosty in the second issue. So I like to think that we became involved through art and through the animal world too.

Sarah Howorth  04:46

How did you decide on a name and theme for the second installation of the zine and would you mind describing the theme's importance?

Meesha Goldberg  04:54

Sri and Ramona had requested that I come up with a theme that had some ecological base to it. And so, I started thinking about Mother Earth as a way to like go off this theme of MALA LECHE as milk, as bad milk, you know, and continuing with this focus on women identifying folks and our common voice. And so, I wanted to represent Mother Earth. And in my own work, and philosophy, I think the more we can conceptualize Mother Earth as an actual entity and build that relationship where we have actual love and responsibility to our mother, and feel it, I think the more we'll be able to act from our hearts to actually solve some of the problems we have. So I just thought of, you know, the Mother Earth is sick right now. Just as so many of us are dealing with our fear and with actual sickness from the pandemic. So, I was visualizing Mother Earth, as in the throes of her own sickness, too, and us as her children finding ways to envision what is the medicine for our mother. Like, who is she? Like, how do we create this medicine without knowing who she is? So, I was really so enthusiastic about all the work that got submitted because it tackles that question from a lot of different perspectives that we're both kind of visualizing like this primordial, multi faceted, beautiful Mother Earth, and also dealing with the grief and with some of the ways that people try to deepen their own connection and like our pathway forward in building relationship.

Sarah Howorth  06:45

And was there a piece in the second MALA LECHE that really stood out to you both? And why was it so special to you? I'm sure all of the zine is, but if there was one in particular that stood out, I'd love to hear about it.

Meesha Goldberg  06:58

I really love the first essay by Kori Price, "Mama Earth Finds Herself in a Black Woman's Body." I mean, she just dives right in there of envisioning Mother Earth and naming the problem of what we're dealing and bringing, like love, ferocity, and grief to this present story. You know, she envisions Mother Earth as a Black woman. And then just creates this extraordinary turn saying that she wishes to be volcanic and explode all of the rage that she's feeling of her present abuse, but she realizes she can't. To explode is, to explode all of her rage, is to bring that destruction back onto herself. So she uses the power of art, of language to voice this predicament. And her eloquence is her tool. And it's such a beautiful statement of the artist who uses their art in a cunning way and in a deliberate way to subvert the norms in society.

Sri Kodakalla  08:09

Kori's - there was like zero doubt when we were like reading through the submissions that everybody was like, "Oh, yeah. Kori's is going first." I had the like, absolute pleasure of being able to hear Kori recite it out loud, and the power in her voice as she was like saying these words... I felt like it was so intentional in how she presented it. And then she was also speaking her own personal experience into existence. And that made me fall in love more with the poem because I recognized how important it was to her even though she was telling a story about something else. It was rooted in her experience. And I truly loved it for that. But another favorite that I actually had was Mica Rose's "On Feeling and Being in the Anthropocene." They created this pretty powerful imagery of the feelings associated with grief and anger and impatience toward what future holds and like how those feelings manifests in our bodies, and then how that reflects into how we interact with the world around us.

Meesha Goldberg  09:18

Yeah, because we really need to get in touch with these emotions like the rage, the grief, the mourning, the anger, the loss. The UN put out a report yesterday saying we're right on path towards like irreconcilable damage. And like, there's no way you could like say those words and really process what they really mean, you know, like irreconcilable damage. What does that even mean? So, I think that's the role of the artist right now. One of them is to bring that emotional intensity alive so that we can be in that place of the reality that we're in I look away.

Sri Kodakalla  10:02

So, we actually, we have an in-person exhibition that's up right now called MALA LECHE in Celebration of Community. And it's currently at Studio IX or JBird Coffee Supply right next to IX Art Park. And the exhibition itself kind of served as like a release party in some way for the second issue of this zine. But kind of the intention behind why we did that exhibition and why we coincided with the release of the zine was to create a physical space for people to recognize that the art that they see in this zine is very real, and it is very attached to people. And that the artists and writers who submitted works MALA LECHE had different visions for what their works look like. To some extent, this zine is very curated because we placed it into a narrative of how we want to tell a story around this theme. And then, like seeing the individual artists works up on the walls at like Studio IX definitely changes your experience of what those artworks are. And also, like, we're creating an issue that's completely in black and white. And a lot of these works are in color, and much larger than the space of this, like little zine. We've gotten so much great feedback, but I think the biggest, like feedback that I've recognized or noticed is that a lot of people want to participate in this in the future. And a lot of people have asked questions about like, "How do I get involved? How do I be a part of MALA LECHE?" And I think it's like opened up a space for people to realize that their art and writing has value, and that they can share a part of their journey with someone else. And then have it be acknowledged in this way that feels very, like community oriented, or like focused on inclusivity and less on curating like a perfect image of something.

Meesha Goldberg  11:58

I love seeing the response from the artists themselves of, you know, a lot of people are published or having their artwork displayed for the first time. And it's so gratifying but affirming to their process of self expression, and like the validation of their voices. And so I think that part of supporting the community of artists is like very rewarding to hear feedback on.

Sri Kodakalla  12:28

We're hoping that we're going to continue to do more physical exhibitions revolving around MALA LECHE. So FUCC, very, very recently, is now sponsored by the Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, or we're in a collaborative partnership with the Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative. And it's been a nice jumping off point to envision doing more collaborative opportunities around MALA LECHE that aren't just the zine itself, like doing poetry reading nights, like doing hosting workshops, like kind of creating more opportunities for the artists and writers who have been in our issues of MALA LECHE to be more connected to the community in a physical way. And it's really cool to be able to, like utilize the Bridge's physical space to create these opportunities for the community.

Sarah Howorth  13:17

One last thing, do you all have any idea what the next scene could look like? Are there any focuses or themes that you've been considering so far?

Sri Kodakalla  13:25

It's totally a secret. We do know what we're going to do next. It's just a matter of if the person says yes, that's all we can say. And we can also say that it is one of the things that we've been trying to do with MALA LECHE is kind of allow an artist or writer from a past issue to kind of envision the theme for the next issue. So, it is someone who is featured in this issue, and I can say that at least. So we're hoping that the next call for submissions will be released at the end of May, and then it will be open throughout the month of June. And then our next issue will be out in August. So exciting.

Sarah Howorth  14:05

That's really exciting. I can't wait to see what's next. And honestly, the fact that it's a secret makes it even a little bit more exciting too. Is there anything else that you would both like to add before we wrap up?

Sri Kodakalla  14:16

If people want to get a physical copy of MALA LECHE 2, we have physical copies outside the Bridge PAI in the Rad Press newsstands. And then there also at the McGuffey Art Center, at Millie Coffee Roasters, Second Street Gallery, Studio IX where the exhibition is, and then Visible Records. So there's a bunch of places and we're kind of hoping that as MALA LECHE grows, and as we're able to like support our artists better, we want to be able to distribute to more areas outside of Charlottesville.

Meesha Goldberg  14:49

I just have a lot of respect for what Sri and Ramona have envisioned. And I think it's so powerful that we have a community voice, which is like a chorus of our bioregion, and that we're speaking collectively to our vision of the world and our vision for the future. And so for this to be a localized ecosystem of artists is a very powerful act.

Sri Kodakalla  15:19

We put these issues together solely through fundraising efforts. And a big part of that requires community support and financial support. And we are accepting donations through our website and through the bridges website. So if you're interested in supporting future issues of MALA LECHE, or you can also see where your money is going. It's a big part of it is it supports our contributors. So every artist and writer who's in this scene receives a stipend for sharing their work with us and then a big part of the production of this issue is during layout and printing and then distributing Our hope is that like if we're able to raise enough money we're able to do in-person or virtual programs around MALA LECHE and like make this more than only a physical zine.

Sarah Howorth  16:07

Thank you so much for being here and sharing your thoughts with me. I really appreciate it.

Mary Garner McGehee  16:13

That was Sri Kodakalla and Meesha Goldberg. Check the show notes for a link to MALA LECHE issue number two titled Fever Dreams of Mother Earth. You're listening to Charlottesville Soundboard here on WTJU 91.1. FM and the Virginia Audio Collective. Both are a service of the University of Virginia. However, opinions expressed on this show are not the positions of the University. WTJU is supported by the Southern Environmental Law Center, protecting Virginia's air, water, and natural treasures and leading the way towards a healthy environment for all. Learn more at southernenvironment.org. In our next segment, you're going to hear from our Assistant Producer to Tenisha Alston, who sat down with Elizabeth Irvin and Andrea Mayfield, the directors of the Women's Initiative.

Tenisha Alston  17:05

We're here today with Elizabeth Irvin and Andrea Mayfield, directors of the Women's Initiative here in Charlottesville. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about the Women's Initiative and your mission? What sets the Women's Initiative apart from other mental wellness advocate groups in the area?

Elizabeth Irvin  17:22

Well, the first part I'll take, which is just our mission for the Women's Initiative is to provide women with effective counseling, social support, and education, so they can transform life challenges into positive change and growth. We provide these vital mental health services regardless of ability, of ability to pay, and really most of our services are free, serving more than 3500 women annually.

Andrea Mayfield  17:44

And our partnerships with area nonprofits, neighborhoods, and mental health advocacy groups are incredibly important to us. And we honor their work and their impact in the community. I think what sets the Women's Initiative apart is our practice and commitment to increasing access to care and infusing cultural humility into our work. Our commitment to increasing access includes offering culturally responsive programming, providing services in multiple languages, and partnerships with neighborhoods and area nonprofits, as I mentioned earlier. We also hold dear our commitment to cultural humility. Cultural humility recognizes the assumptions and biases that lead to health disparities and inequality. We know that racism and discrimination and systemic oppression interrupt life experiences and cause harm. And at the Women's Initiative, we are committed to cultural humility to foster diversity and inclusion and build authentic and healing relationships with our clients, the communities we serve and our colleagues.

Elizabeth Irvin  18:46

Specifically around cultural humility, it was a, it was a mindset shift from cultural competence and healthcare to cultural humility. So if you think about the previous round of work in our, in the healthcare, which has been predominantly led by white folks for a very, very long time, right? It's about understanding that you don't check a box and learn things about cultures and that makes you culturally competent, but you do a lifelong, self-critical reflection about your place in privilege and power and what that looks like in the way that you interact with folks. So there's three components to it. It is around self reflection, like critical self reflection for yourself. It is around power imbalances and mitigating those intentionally. And that's, that's in a system like an organization but it's also specifically about client and provider. And then the third is around institutional accountability and really trying to do systemic change. And so all of our efforts around cultural humility are actually looking at all three of those categories.

Tenisha Alston  19:44

We truly envision that this approach will improve access to our services to, to reducing stigma around reaching out for services and to, and ultimately to outcomes. What are some signals that women should look for within themselves that may indicate they would benefit from mental health care?

Elizabeth Irvin  20:06

Especially during this time, Tenisha, when so many people are feeling really overwhelmed because of pandemic, continued institutional and constant acts of aggression, and racism. I mean, the list of things that make it feel really overwhelming right now. I think everybody is actually wondering, "Am I okay?" And the bottom line is globally, we're not as well as we were. So what are the what are the signs that you yourself are at a point where you want help and help would be useful, it's when the other coping skills that you usually use aren't working. I mean, that's kind of the bottom line. So if your functioning has worsened, meaning you're not sleeping as well, you're not able to get your work done or your studies done, you're isolating where you used to reach out for friends because you wanted support, you now find yourself withdrawing from friends. I'm also in the mindset that like it really, it can't hurt to try, right? I think a lot of people think that it means you have to be, you know, quote unquote "crazy" or like that's only for people who really are in a way worse shape than I am. And I would say actually, kind of anybody can benefit from mental health and wellness support services, whether that's an individual counselor, whether that's a support group. And we have a lot of support groups, I think we'll be talking about later. Or it could not, it doesn't have to be clinical with an agency like the Women's Initiative, but it is, you know, maybe it's pastoral care at your church, or, again, maybe you have a, an Aunt that you always turn to, but it's about that that finding connection and feeling trust and building meaningful relationship around that.

Tenisha Alston  21:36

And can we just get a general definition of mental wellness for this program?

Elizabeth Irvin  21:42

Well, it's an interesting question. I don't know if we specifically define mental wellness, but we work in a resilience model of care. So, I'm going to speak about resilience and what that looks like for us. It looks again, everyone goes through hard things in their life. And it's about how you have internal resources and external resources that help you not just sort of bounce back from hard times, but even kind of bounce forward and move move on in your life. So you're feeling overall sense of satisfaction in life, you're feeling connected, and supported by people in your life, you feel like you've got a sense of optimism and hope. And when I say these things, I just want to reiterate, we are in this the most unique time of our lifetimes, where which calls that into question for everybody. But in terms of getting up another day and saying, "Okay, I'm going to try again today, and might not go as well as I want, but I've got the resources, both internally and externally for support, if needed."

Andrea Mayfield  22:41

And an incredibly important part of the process is women defining mental health for themselves.

Tenisha Alston  22:48

What are some of the most common mental health challenges you see with the women who come to you for support?

Elizabeth Irvin  22:56

We most often are seeing signs of depression, signs of anxiety, often as a result of current or past trauma. Most of the clients that we serve have a history of intimate partner violence or sexual assault. And that can be part of what they're coming to talk to us about. It often is a relationship issue and something they're trying to work through and make decisions. And often that's compounded by life factors such as unemployment, housing instability, and, again, continued and systemic racism and the impact of that particular trauma.

Tenisha Alston  23:33

And we also see a number of folks that reach out to us for our non-clinical services or our our social support or Mind Body offerings. We have two programs in particular that directly address the needs of particularly vulnerable but resilient groups. Sister Circle is a program that meets the unique needs of Black women and People of Color in our community and Bienestar serves Latina women and the Latinx population. All of Bienestar's programs are offered in Spanish, and that's particularly attractive to some members of our community for obvious reasons. But both of these programs provide vital culturally responsive mental health counseling, but they also provide social support groups, peer support, neighborhood based education and outreach to offer the community practical ways to manage stress, promote self care and reduce stigma around accessing services. And then beyond Sister Circle and Bienestar, we also have core programming that anyone in the community can can join in, again, free of charge. Drop in groups like knitting circle, and yoga for self compassion, yoga for People of Color. Many of our groups are drop in and a really nice introduction to services, into the work that we do. So folks can go to our website, and they also can call our main office, but folks can go to our website and there is a page For a social support, mind body and all of our offerings are available on the website. All of these groups, by the way, are currently being offered virtually. For folks who are interested in all of the myriad programs that we have available, they can reach out via our main office line, or they're able to, to go to our website and see the whole slate of programming.

Elizabeth Irvin  25:23

And again, that website is www.thewomensinitiative.org. and our main phone number for folks who are listening is 434-872-0047.

Tenisha Alston  25:37

All right, thank you for that. Andrea, you mentioned how the dance group is like emerging out of COVID-19. And just like, how has COVID-19 impacted your program in other ways? Such an excellent question. Our commitment to providing access to mental health services motivated us to pivot to telehealth early in the pandemic. Telehealth allows us to provide services remotely. We've been able to offer uninterrupted mental healthcare to the community including individual counseling. The walk-in clinic that had been in-person is now the call-in clinic and virtual programs which we've talked about today. One of the unexpected developments that has occurred throughout the telehealth process has been our ability in some ways to expand our reach telehealth removed barriers for some people: transportation, childcare. And it made it easier for clients to fit sessions into their work schedule or family schedules. But that said, we know that pre-pandemic, there were clients that sometimes used their trip to our office as their time for self care, that their time away from family or work or other situations that they found stressful. So the next step in our pandemic recovery is providing services in-person. We're committed to taking a careful... and instituting a careful approach and instituting all necessary safety guidelines to keep clients as safe as possible. And for now, our services are primarily offered via telehealth. And we have administrative staff who are able to help clients navigate virtual programs for the first time. And we've increased our reach through digital channels as well throughout the pandemic. Sister Circle has as increased the number of times that they're offering their newsletter out into the community. Our appearances on local news and radio stations like this one are opportunities to reduce stigma around mental health and provide ideas to the public for managing stress during this incredibly unique and challenging time and supporting mental health at home. I guess as we come to a close, what are some of the local and state legislation that might affect how the Women's Initiative operates or the lives of your clients?

Elizabeth Irvin  28:04

In terms of state legislation, there's quite a lot at the state level that's happening around increasing access to care for mental health that really touches our whole safety net of providers across the community. And we partner with the Mental Health and Wellness Coalition to try to do some direct direct advocacy. Most notably, the recent legislation around the Marcus alert, you know, that directs from the state that all local communities will build an alternative response to police responding to mental health emergencies. And so that's just very directly going to support hopefully, our clients having a different perspective and experience and a safer experience when they are in need. In terms of local, there's there's not really local legislation. But I just want to name you know, we are located in the city of Charlottesville, we do receive funding from the city of Charlottesville, and are grateful for the recognition in general of mental health as an issue to take up seriously with, from the city government. In particular, Mayor Walker's had a primary initiative around increasing mental health care for the Black community. And we are a partner with Your Life Matters Cville, which is an effort that she spearheaded at the City Council and that it's being run and developed by Jackie Martin with Sentara. And that includes that we with Sister Circle have added an additional daytime support group and increasing wellness efforts at the Jefferson School. So the last thing I'll say about local advocacy or or state level legislation is in working with our clients who are healing from trauma, you have to recognize the impact also of the other parts of life and the what's called the social determinants of health. But it's really about, you know, how are you doing? How is your overall physical health? Do you have access to food, transportation? What's going on with your immigration status? What's been happening with policing in your Life? Do you have adequate housing? What are you doing and to build a safe space to win a protection around racism or feeling safe in the community when you experience continual harm? Those are the types of things that without state and city recognition of, first and foremost, and then addressing at a policy level, we will continue to fight for that as well.

Tenisha Alston  30:26

Okay, so what does the intake process look like and how can women get in contact with you guys?

Andrea Mayfield  30:32

We encourage anyone who's interested in counseling to reach out via our call-in clinics, and those days and times are outlined on our website, that www.thewomensinitiative.org. And we offer call-in clinic four days a week, it's free of charge. The first connection is with our Client Support Specialist, and there's just a brief period where she's working with clients in order to collect the information for a clinician to call back. And during the, the conversation with the clinician, there's a discussion about specifically what the woman may be calling in for - what sort of services she's interested in. That conversation may result in counseling, a plan for care that includes counseling services with us, it may include a plan for care with one of our community partners. If a client has adequate mental health insurance, then we have staff who are available and and ready to support that person and seeking private counseling services in the community.

Elizabeth Irvin  31:39

I think the last thing that I want to say is, again, just that recognition that this is an incredibly hard time for lots of reasons that we've already discussed. And one of the things that we're seeing is that people know they might need support, but they just don't really have the energy or the umph to make that first call, or do the thing that they know they need to do. But they're just like, "Eh, I just don't want to do it." Right? There's actually a term, we're languishing a little bit while we're, while we're in this phase of the pandemic. And I just, I just want to acknowledge that that that's a really normal part of... it's an, it's a normal response to this incredibly abnormal situation. So to not feel badly about like, "I know. I need to do it, but I don't have the energy to do so." And then, you know, just gently the next day, try again. And maybe reach out to a friend and say, "Help me set a goal that's really small that I can try and accomplish this week." And maybe that goal is I'm just going to look at the website, www.thewomensinitiative.org. just to know when are the call-in clinics. There's one on Thursday evenings. "Oh, that's after class. Maybe I'll call." You know, that kind of thing. So I just hope people can be gentle with themselves right now because it's really a hard time for everyone. And we want people to know that baby steps matter.

Mary Garner McGehee  33:00

Well, that does it for this week's edition of Charlottesville Soundboard, your source for news, culture, and community issues in Central Virginia. My name is Mary Garner McGehee. Our Assistant producers this week are Sarah Howorth and Tenisha Alston. Our theme song is Chioggia Beat by Morwenna Lasko and Jay Pun. This is Charlottesville Soundboard.