At the beginning of the day, I found out that there was a mass shooting in Wilkinsburg, near my home.

Instead of heading in to the office, I went to the Women and Girls Foundation’s Crossroads Conference and sat and listened to women speak candidly and vulnerably about a variety of crossroads that they had moved through in their lives. It was moving, sobering, sad and uplifting…and of the 19 speakers at the conference, not one speaker discussed being part of the LGBTQIA community. Though there was one speaker who spoke about becoming Muslim, there was no other mention of religious diversity, and multiple speakers referenced the Christian god. The Women and Girls Foundation clearly needs to search harder to bring more diversity to their speakers in these areas. (I was also disappointed by how many of the speakers’ success stories seemed to hinge on marriage.)

The keynote speaker, LaToya Ruby Frazier, was amazing. Her stories of growing up in Braddock were sobering, raw, and bitterly ironic given the current gentrification of the area. If you want to see her TED talk, it is here.

In the afternoon, I participated in a visual journaling workshop and created this:

It is all related, somehow. I can’t yet piece it together.