The Making-Visible Story
“Understanding someone’s suffering is the best gift you can give another person. Understanding is love’s other name. If you don’t understand, you can’t love.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh,”
Adriana Arizpe and Annie Mahon met in 2015 at the Opening Heart Mindfulness Community in Washington DC, where they practiced mindfulness together in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. They both benefited personally from the practice and were able to recognize their own suffering, which awakened an awareness in them regarding the suffering of others, specifically vulnerable communities here in the United States.
As a member of the Latinx community, Adriana had a keen awareness of how mindfulness communities could turn attention toward stereotyping, prejudice, injustice and discrimination that exists everywhere. Annie had some experience working in racial justice circles and doing her own internal work.
Adriana often shared in sangha about cultural differences between Mexico and the US, along with her personal struggles and achievements. This sparked an idea in Annie to extend an invitation to the larger mindfulness community to learn about and discuss justice and biases led by people from the community who experience directly the effects of discrimination and oppression. Adriana brought in the awareness that conversations about racism rarely include Latinos.
So together, they decided to find a way to bring attention to these issues, starting with Latinx issues. They created a new, online sangha: Making-Visible: the Invisible Latinos. The 2018 launch of this powerful program opened with five video calls about the Latinx community, curated and led by Adriana, and produced by Annie.
Making-Visible was so successful that the program was extended indefinitely. Activist leaders from each of frontline communities continue to share their inspiring stories in a mindfulness webinar setting in order to educate and inform and grown our understanding, compassion, and skillful action.
Sessions are in English, Accessible,
and Co-Led by Adriana Arizpe and Annie Mahon.
Translations can be turned on when watching our webinars in YouTube.
Adriana (she, her, ella) is a Mexican woman who has lived in the DC area for 10 years. She has degrees in Communications and Gastronomy and is an executive in media, research, marketing and communication. Adriana has been practicing mindfulness since 2014 and has extensive knowledge of relationships and cultural contrasts and a special interest in how Latin-American culture contributes to US culture as a whole.
Annie (she, they) is a white, Armenian-American, ordained (lay) in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh, founder of Opening Heart Mindfulness Community, Circle Yoga Cooperative, and DC Yoga Week, and founder and treasurer of the Pink House Foundation, a grant making organization supporting the development political and social capital for marginalized groups in the US. She has been a student of mindfulness since the early 1990's.
Other contributors
to Making-Visible
Rachel Switala, Web and Email Support
Don Rombach, Realtime Captioner and CART provider
More about us
Making-Visible is an eye opening program
funded by YOU — thank you!! — with small grants from
Opening Heart Mindfulness Community
and the Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation.
All Making-Visible webinars are organized by
Adriana Arizpe and Annie Mahon.
Dear Friends,
In lieu of fees, we ask you to consider making a donation. 100% of the offerings help offset costs for operations and guest speaker fees. All monies beyond those costs to back to these communities in distress.
with love,
Adriana & Annie
Continue the Conversation with us
While we are continuing to learn and ask questions ourselves, we are happy to discuss with you privately about any questions or comments you might have about the Making-Visible movement. We would be happy to hear from you.
Accessibility:
As of April 29, real-time captioning will be provided for all Making-Visible webinars.
Thank you to Don Rombach for providing us with this service!