who do you consider a leader?
the person who speaks the loudest?
the one with the quickest tongue?
the person who knows how to control everything?
lost an amazing friend yesterday… life is a weird thing. we are so wrapped up in ourselves that too many times it takes a tragedy occuring for us to appreciate other. you can talk to someone, work with someone, accomplish a million things with that person, but do you know how much you need them? do you recognize the intricate way that they are woven into the delicate fabric that is your life?
this woman was the kind of leader i want to be. it didn’t matter if folks had decades-deep histories that go back to times before i was even born, she was able to bring people together. never painted any one person, one agency, as the enemy. made folks act civil and talk to each other. fundamentally, she believed everyone was acting in good faith and she worked as though it was always just a matter of reaching resolution. under her leadership, we have taken steps i never thought were possible. maybe it’s only with this philosophy that bridges are able to be built. good faith.
she used her connections and her power to make other people’s leadership possible. i think it is a testament to who she was that i did not even realize how much we need her until she is gone— she never put her name on anything and led by supporting people. helped my youth crew and i navigate system after system so we could get what we needed. whenever we succeded, she never tried to control us or claim our work as hers. if she disagreed with us, she never silenced us. while other well-intentioned adult allies would tell us that our project ideas were impossible because of politics, she would come in and in minutes, make it all seem so simple. she would tell us what we had to do to make it happen and that if we did those things, she would extend her support and work on things from the inside. she always treated us with respect. always believed.
skill + respect + a pure heart for community… that’s the kind of leader i want to be. that’s jeannie wolff-rossi.
lost an amazing friend this week. don’t know what to do, except to study her leadership, lift her name up, and continue forward in her memory.
I am sorry for your loss.
Posted by Virginia S. Wood, Psy.D. on July 4th, 2009.
this is beautiful, cripchick. it’s just want i needed to start mourning- as of this morning it still hadn’t sunken in yet. i just read this with tears streaming down my face. man its so true about just now realizing how needed she was and so supportive of us. we spend so much time complaining when allies are not what they should be, we don’t really appreciate our amazing allies as much as we should. thanks for writing and posting.
Posted by Ryan on July 6th, 2009.
I am sorry for your loss as well and thank you for this tribute to her, and how you will be keeping her vital living going in yourself.
Posted by Elizabeth McClung on July 9th, 2009.