Telling Women's Lives

Misty Gabriel Community Leader by Jess Jordan

As the sun peaked over the trees this morning, Misty Gabriel lifted her eyes from her downward facing dog and scanned her full yoga studio. The entire room breathed in unison to the sound of Gabriel’s voice, a gentle reminder to breathe in through the nose and out through the nose. Gabriel could feel her mind wandering to her impending responsibilities for the day, but she silenced it with her breath. In through the nose, out through the nose.

Gabriel finished teaching her yoga class with one final breath, leaning towards her studio with an open heart. It was only 7 AM, yet Gabriel had already impacted a room full of people.

By noon that day, Gabriel was elbows deep in research on food access in Winston-Salem. As a member of the Beta Verde team, an organization dedicated to producing local food and supporting local businesses, Gabriel works on concrete steps to expand food access in Forsyth County. The first step for Gabriel is simple: the Winston-Salem Shared Kitchen Project.

Through the Winston-Salem Shared Kitchen Project, Gabriel and the other members of Beta Verde aim to create sustainable opportunities for local businesses. In order to meet the needs of Winston, Gabriel holds community input sessions during which local businesses can share their thoughts and needs. She reviews and manages the funding in creative ways so that programs like this can be accessible for everyone in the community, regardless of their income.

On Saturday mornings, Gabriel takes a break from planning the shared kitchen space to work the Farmer Foodshare Table at Cobblestone Farmer’s Market. Here she encourages market goers to donate money or produce so that all of Winston-Salem can have access to healthier food options. Gabriel arrives at the market at 8:00 AM each Saturday to prepare for a day full of educating shoppers about food access and interacting with the farmers. Through this table, Gabriel connects people who grow food with people who need food.

Gabriel has found life to be the most meaningful when she cultivates her skills to better her community. Community, however, is a continuously changing concept for Gabriel. She and her husband have moved often for his job as a college basketball coach, which can be challenging. However, each move has brought a unique set of skills and the ability to adapt.

“Since we have moved so much, I sometimes feel myself itching for that change and that unknown,” Gabriel said. “As soon as I’m in a new place, I don’t waste any time digging in. Where are those places I want to eat? Where are those places I want to shop? How can I feel connected?”

Upon moving to Winston-Salem two years ago, Gabriel quickly found the Cobblestone Farmer’s Market as a place to shop and feel connected. She began shopping at there for local and sustainably grown food and developed a close relationship with the market’s founder, Margaret Norfleet Neff.

Food had not always been Gabriel’s top priority, however. Although long interested in food and health, she dismissed these as “hobbies.” Ten years ago, she graduated from Ohio University with a degree in design and marketing, but an unclear vision for her future. Gabriel applied her marketing skills to the business world, working for a year as a marketing coordinator in Ohio, but did not feel fulfilled.

“I felt in my gut that I wanted to do something with more meaning and that I wasn’t being fulfilled by my job,” Gabriel explained. “Once you start reflecting on how quickly time passes, you start to wonder why you’re spending any time doing something that isn’t meaningful.”

Over the next eight years, Gabriel used her marketing skills at six different jobs, ranging from sales associate at Kohl’s to marketing manager at an all-girls school in Raleigh. Although each experience was different, her passion for food issues grew. She found herself reading articles each night about the inhuman treatment of animals, statistics on excessive food waste, and food systems as a whole. When Gabriel attended a Leadership in Sustainable Food System Certificate Program at the University of Vermont in June 2014, she felt all the pieces coming together as she learned different ways food is grown, harvested, consumed and disposed.

“It just all started to take shape in my mind — this whole cycle of food systems, how it is all connected and what it really means,” Gabriel said.

Cobblestone Farmer’s Market in Winston-Salem has largely contributed to Gabriel’s exploration of food systems. Working at the Farmer Foodshare table connected Gabriel to local farmers and deepened her sense of community here in Winston. At the end of her first summer working there, Gabriel’s dedication and organized were noticed and the market manager offered Gabriel a job working at Beta Verde. This is where she channels most of her energy now, working with other community members on food projects supporting local businesses and community building through shared food spaces, like the Winston-Salem Shared Kitchen Project.

Eric Gabriel, Misty’s husband, believes her biggest strength is her persistence. “She never just settled,” he said. “A lot of people in their jobs just settle in. For her, she was never satisfied with that. She still isn’t. She wakes up and talks everyday about having a bigger impact.”

Each day, Gabriel does make a bigger impact. She credits her good listening skills as part of the big reason she can help the Winston-Salem community and has enjoyed watching different parts of the community come together to help increase access to food for people who typically don’t have these opportunities. While Gabriel initiates the shared use kitchen space, Cobblestone Farmer’s Market and the Farmer Foodshare Table are also expanding to include a full week market and to include more farmers.

Gabriel also teaches vinyasa yoga at Dancing Dogs in Greensboro. For her, yoga is a holistic approach to physical wellbeing and aligns with her health values. Training to become a yoga teacher helped her move past her tendency to overthink and eased some anxieties she had about the future.

“One of the big things I took away from yoga teacher training is not to ‘should’ on yourself,” Gabriel said. “I used to be really hard on myself. Now I just keep trying to make progress every day and trust that I am going somewhere. I am moving.”

Becky Filar, one of Gabriel’s closest and oldest friends, credits Gabriel’s passion as her biggest strength. “When Misty gets excited about something, you’re going to know she is excited about something. And then she will make sure you get excited about that too.”

Gabriel’s longer-term goal is to open a holistic wellness center featuring yoga classes, nutrition counseling and a shared kitchen space. She hopes it can be a place where people come together to share a passion for food and healthy life choices.

“I still question every day,” she said. “Where can I go next? Am I doing enough? I think that’s natural for anyone who starts to feel passionately about something. I am always moving to the next step.”

Unfinished Business- Jessica Jordan

I enjoyed revisiting Anne-Marie Slaughter in Unfinished Business now that I have a bit more WGS knowledge. First, I appreciated how at the beginning, Slaughter recognized her experience is completely different than other women’s. She was able to step out of her own perspective, yet still try to make overarching insights that applied to our culture, rather than simply applying to the fast-paced career oriented women. One prevalent issue Slaughter raised is our views on caregiving in our society, for both the elderly and our children. She expressed her familiar view- that women can’t have it all- not because we are not capable, but because of the way society has constructed the roles for males and females. She explained how the male who leaves his family for a fast-paced and time consuming job is doing his duty as the husband, while the female takes over as the lead caregiver. People don’t think twice about these roles- they have been ingrained in our minds as “natural”. Instead, we think it’s odd when the male is lead caregiver at home, while also criticizing women who stop working to focus on their families. It seems we have created this unhealthy system of criticizing the mothers who leave their children while also criticizing the mothers who stop working to care for their children, when really we should be considering the reasons why females make these choices. Slaughter explored these concepts in her book and shed valuable insight on the caregiving attitudes in our society.

Farmer Jane Reader Response- Jess Jordan

Farmer Jane featured many impressive woman, but I was particularly impressed by Lois Ellen Frank and the way she created a new field of study based on her interests and experiences. She discovered a way to integrate her passion for food, photography and her appreciation for Native foods. I appreciated how much she supports local foods, with a food preference for local and seasonable foods that come from as close to her home as possible. However, I was most impressed by her leadership skills in starting the Red Mesa Cuisine to educate others about Native foods. I have never considered food to be a means of education, but it is such a powerful way to convey a meaning and history. For example, at a Red Mesa Cuisine event, Lois and other chefs served bison meat stew with bison from a member of the Intertribal Bison cooperative and also New Mexico Pueblo blue corn posole. Lois is bringing attention to Native foods and thereby Native people in America, which both do not often receive much attention. By demonstrating their quality and flavor, Lois can also demonstrate their cultural importance and make people care about them.

Furthermore, I was impressed with the way Lois trains her staff to be of “pure mind, body, spirit and essence so that we conscientiously feed people with a concern- with love like your grandmother would, and with the essence of sustainability.” I loved the way she talked about treating food with genuine concern and care for sustaining one another, because our treatment of food has now become completely removed from its source. We rarely think of the cow who supplied the meat for our hamburger and many of us turn a blind eye to the disgusting and inhumane practices of many large farms and food corporations. Lois Ellen Frank takes a different approach towards food and I appreciate her stance and her means of educating others through food.

Exercise in Writing Succinctly

Jess Jordan and Matt Fernandez

1. Most readers said the article “In Praise of Brevity” was biased.
2. Ticket prices rose $10 over the past year to $20-$25.
3. It is essential that she decide to make each semester in college productive.
4. On rainy days, students occupy most of the indoor areas on campus.
5. The beginning of the film provides necessary background about Gollum’s multiple personalities.
6. Marcel’s Cafe is no better than the wide variety of French restaurants in Seattle.
7. Anxious students tend to cram more words into sentences to impress their professors.

Jess Jordan Reader Response 3/20

This series of articles presented a few ideas that struck me as thought provoking. First, I agree that women are not any meaner to other women, they are simpler expected to be nicer. This is entirely true and I had never considered it before reading these articles. Our society expects women to do a lot of things, but we also put this pressure on men as well. Women are also expected to help more and are therefore considered “selfish” when they do not have time to help, whereas men are considered “busy”. On the other hand, men are expected to be tough and care for their families, often times suppressing their emotions in unhealthy ways. These ideas all surround us growing up, completely altering our perceptions of the world during our most formative years. We grow up watching our mothers care for us and then believe they are more caring and more nurturing. After all, these women cared for us for nine months while we were in their wombs! This point speaks directly to the article, “Why are there so few women in science?” This question is something I have pondered myself as an aspiring physician. I have heard many of the biological arguments, such as “female brains are better with people and writing and male brains are better at mathematics and spatial arrangements”, and for a while fell prey to many of those ideas. I believed I was not good at math for many years following a rough pre-calculus class in high school until I realized with startling clarity recently that I actually truly enjoy doing math. My misconception of my “weakness” in math was simply generated by years of bias that had completely shaped the way I viewed the world. Another important concept brought forth by that article is the portrayal of women in science. This was an idea also touched upon by the article about Harvard Business School, but focused more on women in the business school classroom feeling tension between wanting to be liked as a potential mate but also respected as a classmate or business partner. What is a woman’s role in a predominantly male driven field? The first and foremost thing I have noticed women do is mask their femininity. Why do women need to wear ugly loose blouses at many scientific conferences while males can wear sleek suits that still give them some essence of sexiness? The idea of a “sexy scientist” is one played out in some comedic movies and pornographic film; but in any serious movies, scientific women are portrayed as women who wear their hair pulled back with glasses, very little make up and bland clothing. Even worse, they are often depicted as boring, rude, bossy or simply uninteresting. How can we act as though women who are changing the scientific world are uninteresting? In movie, they often pull down their hair at the end and reveal that they had been beautiful the entire time, if only we had all noticed. It’s incredibly frustrating that this is the message we portray through media and stereotypes because we then perpetuate this problem. I spent this past weekend in a neuroscience conference and found myself talking to a woman from Brazil about her work studying the neural correlates of emotion processing in autistic children. Instead of focusing on the incredible and groundbreaking work she was doing, I could only notice that she was wearing a more “revealing” outfit that I deemed to be inappropriate for the conference. Here I was, perpetuating the stereotypes and judging a brilliant woman instead of praising her on her incredible work and I was really ashamed when I realized I was thinking in that way. Sheryl Sandberg pointed out that women need to recognize we can help each other without hurting ourselves, and we need to stop being so hard on each other and instead collaborate to find this equality that will then benefit everyone.

Jessica Jordan, NYTimes Profile: Dr. Gao Yaojie

Dr. Gao Yaojie was a gynecologist and AIDS activist in China, but now lives in exile in New York City. She traveled throughout China educating people about the spread of HIV and AIDS when government officials ignored the epidemic. She was also a trusted gynecologist to many starving mothers who could not get healthcare.

WFU Student Profile Leader

Student Profile: Rose O’Brien

Rose created the Student Association for the Advancement of Refugees to advocate and support refugees in the Winston Salem community. She organizes events on our campus and has created an ESL tutoring program with Syrian refugees. I worked with this organization as an ESL tutor and was so impressed with the work Rose does on our campus. I am excited to interview her and learn more about her passions!

-Jessica Jordan