UNDERSTANDING & BEING UNDERSTOOD
Nanci Luna Jiménez
President
P.O. Box 11837, Portland, OR 97211
P: 503.281.5570 | F: 503.281.5571
“No movement you are a part of will be any healthier than you are.” Although I first heard Lillian utter those words in February 1994 when I participated in her public “Understanding and Being Understood” workshop in Watsonville, California, they have been a guiding principle in my life every day since. At that first workshop, she helped me see that I was reproducing my pain in every aspect of my activism and life. Lillian offered practices, frameworks and an invitation to end oppression that centered kindness, compassion, and justice: values that I was fighting for in my activism but I wasn’t able to stay true to because of unhealed and internalized hurt from oppression. At the end of that 2-day workshop, I approached her and asked if I could work with her. Lil and I often joke that she greeted my request with a verbal pat on my head. I was 26 years old at the time and she was old enough to be my mother. She espoused being an ally to young people but her vision of an associate was “someone older and with more life experience.” In other words: not me. In part to put me off, she told me that I couldn’t work with her unless I was “doing my own work.” “It is unethical to ask people in the workshops to do what you have not already done yourself or are not willing to do,” she said. I accepted the challenge and then called her back 3 months later. At that time, I didn’t really understand I couldn’t do all “my work” in 3 months but I was on my way and assumed that was good enough. She put a few other hurdles up for me to jump and when I cleared them, she found herself saying “yes” to me tagging along.
We would both agree she was a reluctant mentor at first. She would tell me again and again: “I don’t know how to train you to do what I do. Just watch, learn and when you are ready to teach, let me know.” I hung up my own shingle so she could contract me as an independent consultant. She advocated with her clients to cover my expenses. I traveled throughout the US with her, wrote down and rewrote every story, every bit of teaching, everything I could learn from her. I studied and watched how she worked with individuals, clearly explained complicated concepts in ways that stuck with participants years later and could masterfully shape a story that not only taught but also regularly moved rooms of people to tears.
There wasn’t a group that Lillian couldn’t teach. “A good teacher,” she would say, “can reach a janitor with no formal education and a Ph.D. professor.” And while she could teach any group, Lillian identified first and foremost as an educator. To witness her work with teachers and administrators was nothing short of magical. Being an educator is in her bones. She got them. She saw them. She knew their struggles and honored their commitment to touch the lives of young people—rarely with the support of oppressive systems, more often in spite of them.
After Lillian was diagnosed with breast cancer, she closed down Lillian Roybal Rose Seminars for good. When she returned to work after treatment, she became my associate. All together we traveled together as mentor/mentee, colleagues and friends for 21 years until she retired in 2015. The consultancy I started when I was 26 as a way to apprentice with Lillian, has now grown into the Luna Jiménez Institute for Social Transformation (www.ljist.com). I am not alone when I say that I wouldn’t have the life I have: a rich, visible, bold, transformational life centered on social justice and racial healing, if I hadn’t met Lillian Roybal Rose and she hadn’t said “yes” to my request. I know the ripple effects of her visionary life’s work continue through and beyond me. Lillian makes appearances at LJIST retreats and “fireside chats” so that next two generations of Associates and Apprentices we are training know her, learn from her and so she can witness how her legacy continues. And continue it does.
Here is a link to the part of our website where we honor Lillian’s legacy: https://ljist.com/who-we-are/lillians-legacy/.
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