Learn more about Teresa Graham Brett

I grew up in a bi-racial, bi-cultural family. My father was white and served in the Air Force. He was stationed in Japan when he met my mother. My mother emigrated from Japan with my father and older brother when she was 30. As a child, I lived in many places, Texas, Arizona, the Philippines, and Oklahoma. I was born in Tucson and now call the Sonoran Desert home.

Throughout my life, I felt as though I was straddling different worlds. The two worlds of my parents, my home life and the life I led outside the home. I look back at my life growing up and as an adult, and I feel as though I was often a chameleon that sought to blend in to the surroundings she happened to be in at that moment. I fought against that as well and wanted my voice to be heard. Life often felt as though it stretched between polar opposites.

I found a life partner who is also bi-racial and whose father served in the Air Force. We share many commonalities of our childhoods and perhaps that is how we came together.

Discovering social justice work

I spent six years working at the University of Arizona in programs serving minority and financially needy students. I then moved to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor where I served as co-director of the Program on Intergroup Relations for six years and Associate Dean of Students for four years.

While working at Michigan with intergroup dialogue programs, I discovered my passion for social justice and transformative education. It was a time of intense personal and professional growth for me.

Serving in my role with integrity meant that I had to commit to doing the internal work that I asked students to do. I began to confront my own internalized oppression, as well as those areas of my life in which I had privilege and served as an agent of oppression. Along with my colleagues, I was honored to be a part of many students’ journeys as they facilitated dialogues and were transformed in their own ways.

I went on to the University of Texas at Austin and served as Dean of Student and Associate Vice President for Student Affairs for almost four years. During my time there, I was proud to establish intergroup dialogue programs on campus, as well as be an important force, along with students, in establishing a center for women and LGBTQ students.

Parenthood!

My first son, Martel, was born as I was making my transition from Michigan to Texas. I began in my role as Dean of Students when he was four months old. Becoming a parent opened my world in ways that I could have never expected.

When I arrived in Austin and began serving in my new role, I felt a profound sense of loss. Leaving my son everyday was agonizing. I felt as though I was leaving my heart and soul at home everyday. I know that every new parent feels the same. Overtime, the feelings of grief and loss turned to anger and frustration. I also began to feel as though I was a fraud. I said countless times, my family is my number one priority, even while I work 50, 60, 70 hours a week.

I sought to create a model as the dean of students that integrated family and work. However, I never found a balance that felt remotely right to me. I no longer walked my talk as it related to my commitment to my family. In the very heart of my being I knew that the time I spent with my son was far more important than the money I made in my position, or the house we owned, the cars we drove, the prestige and power of being the dean of students at one of the largest and best public research universities in the nation.

Even though I had the opportunity to create and institutionalize programs that made a difference in students’ lives, I knew that these things came at a high personal cost to me and ultimately my family.

I knew that I needed to leave my position and create a different kind of life for myself in order to have the kind of congruence between my values and my actions that was necessary to create a life of integrity. I left my position and decided to create a consulting practice and see how I could live a life that nourished my soul. I followed my heart and began a most rewarding and challenging journey shortly after Martel’s 4th birthday.

In my work as co-director of the Intergroup Relations Program, I thought I had dug quite deep into my own socialization and past experiences to examine my own biases and prejudices, to root out internalized and externalized oppression in my thinking and in my actions. It was challenging and rewarding. Being a parent began this process at a much deeper level. In some ways, it did not even happen until after I left my position as dean of students.

As parents, we practiced attachment parenting and sought to create an environment for Martel that would meet all of his needs (especially as a baby) and that allowed for the greatest amount of freedom for him to explore and learn about the world. Just as I did when I wanted to learn anything new, I read voraciously any books and websites that helped me to understand how to provide for his needs and create a bond with him that would provide a solid foundation for the rest of his life.

Although it was a challenge to meet his needs from the time he was a baby until he was about two, providing for him in ways that were nurturing and responsive seemed natural and easy to me. It was not that I did not read books that challenged my notions of what parenting a baby could be like, but it somehow seemed easier. Once my son turned two and began to articulate his needs more vehemently, it became much harder. Societal expectations began to bear down on me much more directly.

I began to run up against my own socialization and acculturation. When I was working more than full-time away from home made it easier to push away my socialization as a parent and just be with him. Once I began to be home with him when I left my position, it became harder. My awakening as a parent that had begun at his birth became a full fledged immersion.

A new life

Over and over again, Martel and I came into conflict and I started to become the parent I did not want to be. I controlled many aspects of his life, food, media, sleep (to the extent that I could). He was angry and had many outbursts that society would say are typical of this age. But I believe now they were more symptomatic of my need to control his life. And, now that I was home with him (except for some part-time consulting work), my need to control became even more oppressive and overbearing.

As Martel began to approach the age where he would enter kindergarten, I began doing much more reading about various educational methods and approaches. I had leaned very early on in his life toward homeschooling. Though I had been very successful in school, I felt as though I had spent much of my adult life trying to find my inner voice and give myself permission to be who I really was. I knew that I wanted Martel to not have to spend half his life trying to undo what school could do to him.

I found, or more accurately, rediscovered unschooling, and radical unschooling as an option. Even though it felt right, it was much harder to implement than attachment parenting. In unschooling circles, this process is often called de-schooling. A process in which the parent (or child, if they have been in school) rids themselves of the harmful lessons learned in school.

In reality, it is much bigger than de-schooling. The cycle of socialization as it pertained to my beliefs about children had effectively indoctrinated me to believe that I knew what was right for another human being, and because he was small, I had the right to treat him with disrespect and disregard.

The process for me, in so many ways, really mirrored the work I had done when I was doing social justice work. I needed to examine the beliefs that our social institutions and our culture had instilled in me about what it meant to be a child. I began to see Martel in new ways.

Martel was a person with legitimate desires, needs, and experiences. Before beginning the process of unlearning my biases and prejudices, I diminished him because he was not an adult. In essence, I used the tools of oppression to discount who he was because I had been socialized to believe that adults had knowledge, experience and power and children knew nothing.

Though I did not think I believed in tabula rasa, I acted on that belief (and many more) and imposed my will upon Martel because I did not see him as the full human being that he was.

We had another son, Greyson. As my youngest son grows more independent from me, I have had time to explore those things I am passionate about through writing. I have combined my passions for social justice, transformational living, and respectful parenting. Writing allows me to continue my growth as a parent and embrace the kind of life that I am fully committed to living.

Being a parent has been a transformative process for me. It continues to be everyday. In writing about social change parenting, I hope to challenge the pervasive adultism within myself and in our society. Sharing my writing with others on this site, allows me to hold myself accountable and continue my growth and learning. I hope to inspire others on their journeys to look deep within themselves and create new parenting paradigms.

If you want to contact me, you can e-mail me at
tbrett @ parentingforsocialchange.com.

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