US consumer confidence rebounds in January
2021-02-08
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. consumer confidence posted a gain in January, helped by a rise in expectations about the future. The Conference Board reported Tuesday that its consumer confidence index increased to 89.3, a rebound from December when it had fallen to a reading of 87.1. The January strength came from a rise in the expectations index, which measures feelings about the future path of incomes, business and labor market conditions. The present situation index weakened further, likely reflecting concerns about the resurgence in Covid-19 cases.
LONDON (AP) — A painting by Winston Churchill that is a piece of both political and Hollywood history is coming up for auction. Christie’s auction house said Monday that the Moroccan landscape “Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque” — a gift from Churchill to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt — is being sold by Angelina Jolie next month with an estimated price of 1.5 million pounds to 2.5 million pounds ($2.1 million to $3.4 million). The image of the 12th-century mosque in Marrakech at sunset is the only painting Churchill completed during World War II. It was bought in 2011 by Jolie and Brad Pitt, who split in 2016, and is being sold by the Jolie Family Collection.
Elise Jordan has placed a $20,000 price over her head and is preparing to go bald to benefit cancer research.Jordan will join more than 100 other Notre Dame students who have volunteered to have their heads shaved this week as a part of The Bald and the Beautiful fundraiser sponsored by the Sophomore Class Council.Proceeds from the event, which raised over $26,500 last year which the Council hopes to double this year, will benefit the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, a national non-profit that supports pediatric cancer research, Service Commission member Erin Pankiw, a sophomore, said.“I’m so nervous. There have been times this week when I look in the mirror and realize I’m not going to have my hair,” Jordan said. “But I know that it’s going to be going to a better cause.”Jordan made the decision to go bald after her friends in the Class Council who organized the event last year asked her to, she said.“A majority of last year’s event was males, so this year we wanted to give more opportunities for girls to participate, but just because females are more attached to their hair, it’s a harder thing to ask them to do,” Pankiw said. “For someone to do what Elise is doing takes a tremendous amount of bravery and compassion and confidence. I couldn’t think of a more confident person than Elise.”The daughter of a family physician in South Bend, Jordan said she has been “touched by cancer in a variety of ways ever since [she] was a little kid.”When her mother shares her daughter’s story with her own chemotherapy patients, they are moved and find strength in it, Jordan said. Some are even planning to have their own head shaved with Jordan, whose audience, among supportive classmates, family, and friends, will include children from Memorial Hospital’s pediatric oncology ward.Jordan said the faces of those children in the crowd that will get her through the emotional event.“I’m hoping I can stay strong enough not to cry,” Jordan said. “If I do get emotional, it’s probably going to be more looking at the faces of cancer patients being there and knowing that I’m doing this for them.”Jordan, whose hair runs about mid-way down her back, said she can’t remember her last dramatic haircut. While raising pledges from individuals, churches and small businesses in her hometown South Bend has been her main priority, Jordan said going bald will also be, for her and her peers, a lesson in vanity.“For me, it’s just hair, but for a lot of people it’s not just hair. For a lot of people, it defines the way they view themselves,” Jordan said. “What I’m realizing is that at the end of the day, it is just hair, and you can live and do without it.”As for her self-proclaimed lofty fundraising goal, Jordan said she thinks it’s “attainable.”“I want people to know that you don’t need to shave your head to become involved with this cause. You can help in so many other ways. Make a little donation or just be there to show your support,” she said. “The sum of little things isn’t little. Everything makes a difference.”And while she admits that her confidence will come in handy as she braves her new bald lifestyle, Jordan is adamant that it doesn’t require any super powers.“I think anyone can do it,” Jordan said. “Honestly, anyone has what it takes.”The event, which kicks off Wednesday night and will wind down Saturday afternoon, will include meals sponsored by Fiddler’s Hearth, as well as hairdressers from Salon Rouge offering hair extensions and opportunities for students to donate hair to Pantene Great Lengths, an organization similar to Locks for Love that uses donated hair to make wigs for cancer patients, Pankiw said.Thirty players from Notre Dame’s football team have also signed up to have their heads shaved Wednesday night, followed by 25 Welsh Family residents who have signed up for hair extensions in support of Kelsey Thrasher, a Notre Dame student and cancer survivor.“This is an event for everyone,” Pankiw said. “Everyone is going to be affected by cancer at some point in their lives, if they haven’t already experienced it. This is a tremendous issue that our generation needs to take responsibility to find a cure.”For Jordan, whose date with the clippers is scheduled for Thursday night, the hair lost will be insignificant to the support gained.“I think if it were easier it wouldn’t be worth it, because the sacrifice is what makes it special,” Jordan said.And with a bald head, she plans to make her message loud and clear.“This is what I want people to know, especially kids battling cancer,” Jordan said. “There’s so much more to what makes you a beautiful person than what is on top of your head.”
Members of the Notre Dame community questioned what it takes to become a community of healing for victims of assault during “A Time to Heal” dinner Thursday. Paul Kollman, the acting executive director of the Center for Social Concerns, said the healing process is messy, unpredictable and rarely linear. He said four simple terms can describe the healing process: surviving, remembering, voicing and waiting. Kollman said surviving was not something to be taken for granted because to survive a trauma like sexual assault is to be violated at the very core. He said it is often the end of the world that existed before the assault. “Sometimes surviving can be self-administered, sometimes not,” Kollman said. “What is supposed to have been the most loving, free and intimate of physical interaction becomes abusive, violent and un-free.” However, Kollman said the work of a healing community cannot focus on just surviving. Instead, the community must consider the process of remembering. “Of course being a healing community means moving beyond surviving and to remembering,” Kollman said. He said this remembering is part of why surviving a sexual trauma is never really over. The memories are always there, just under the surface, Kollman said. “Memory is an ongoing editorial process, by which we bring aspects of our past into our present awareness,” he said. “It seems common that people who undergo sexual violence have involuntary moments of remembering what happened to them, so the ghost structures of previous damage haunts the imagination.” While Kollman stressed that remembering is an important part of the healing process, as well is voicing what happened. “Healing almost invariably involves voicing, or telling what one has undergone,” he said. This process usually begins with the survivor as the first audience, through journaling or self-reflection, Kollman said. The second audience may be a peer or counselor. “We need peers, who by the grace of God had gifts for such welcoming listening,” he said. “Learning to be people … of a helpful sort, patient [and] non-judgmental … learning to be those kinds of people is the work of a lifetime.” Lastly, Kollman discussed waiting and how healing takes time. “As communities composed of people who have suffered sexual violence, we need to learn to be patient with those whose healing is underway, but not as instant as we in our temptation might want.” Dr. Rita Donley, the associate director of the University Counseling Center, said trust is also a major component of a healing community. “[In a healing community], believe what you hear,” she said. “We don’t want to believe this could happen to us, our roommates, our siblings, our friends. [Instead], we engage in blaming the victim, because we want to push that pain away.” Donley said often times victims themselves push their pain away by concealing their experience. “Often, people don’t come forward right away and they try their best to just shove it away and go back to being a student, athlete, anything they can to just shove it away,” she said. Yet the victim continues to question the experience with five questions. “What happened to me? How did this happen to me? Why did this happen to me? Why did I act the way I did and how will I act the next time I feel the way I feel?” she said. Sometimes victims enter into a state of self-blame, she said. “There is a reason people engage in self-blame,” she said. “When you are the victim of trauma, it is the ultimate experience of being out of control.” Donley said to become a true community of healing, members must suspend judgment by not labeling survivors of sexual trauma, being patient and being there to witness their support. She also said instead of addressing self-destructive behavior as bad, students should express concern for their friend and reaffirm that they stand behind them in their struggles. “I have been privileged as a psychologist to be at the beginning of a patient’s journey and many steps along the way,” she said. “While I see pain, I see amazing resilience, strength, courage, beyond anything I have ever seen.”
Though the Chinese economy has grown in recent years, causing some fear that China will threaten America’s economy, a Saint Mary’s professor said China’s growth should be viewed in a more positive light. Richard Measell, professor of Business and Economics, said China has recently surpassed both Japan and Germany to become the second largest economy in the world, increasing growth around 10 percent annually. “China, before the 1980s, was a really poor country,” he said. “[About that same time,] they put in more of a free market economy with less government control, and they let free enterprise flourish in some areas. From that, they have really grown. They’ve really had three decades of very strong economic growth. “ Measell called the feat “remarkable.” “It’s not unusual that underdeveloped countries would have pretty good growth patterns,” he said. “But for China to do it for so long, and for the growth to be so strong each time, it’s quite remarkable.” But Measell said some critics, especially in the United States, find China’s growth threatening. “China gets picked on a lot by politicians,” he said. “Campaigning, they say, ‘Our jobs are going to China and our younger generation is going to owe all this money to them.’ So, [China is cast] in a villain-type way.” Skeptics worry that as the economy in China increases and the United States economy struggles, more jobs will be outsourced overseas, but Measell said there are benefits to China’s economic increase. “[Americans] benefit a lot [from the growth] because we get relatively lower-cost items,” he said. “It’s sort of a win-lose thing. Consumers win because they get lower-cost items made in China, but then the workers in the United States who could be making those items, or who might have in the past, well, those jobs aren’t here and those goods are made in China instead. “ Measell said Americans must come to terms with this reality and view the situation in a positive light. While some jobs are being lost, others are being created. “On the one side, the production for American companies is overseas, and that helps China, but those companies need other people to be [in America] to sell the items, and run the company,” he said. “So that creates jobs here.” Additionally, Measell said when China’s economy is strong, it encourages consumers to buy more American luxury goods or goods from Europe, helping to aid both struggling economies. Measell said critics also worry that this strong economy will encourage China to reconsider helping America with its national debt. “China has about 8 percent of our national debt, and [critics are] always concerned about whether China will keep on lending us money because we have a big budget deficit problem … and it seems like China has been a little bit more cautious about that,” Measell said. “But we’ll have to see how that goes.” With such success for so long, others worry China will see an economic crisis similar to Japan’s in the 1990s. Measell said he hopes this will not be the case, not just for America’s benefit, but also for the world’s. “I’m hoping this will be another good year for China, and for people to realize that that’s a good thing for Americans,” he said. “Even though China’s economy is the second largest in the world, compared to the whole world, it’s still relatively small. If China does well, they’ll help out the rest of the world. They’ve been a positive force that way.”
Four people with Notre Dame connections will be honored tonight at the South Bend Alumni Association’s 26th annual Community Hall of Fame banquet. The banquet, held at the Century Center, will recognize nine members of the community, including journalism professor and South Bend Tribune reporter Jack Colwell, former Notre Dame football player and NFL chaplain Anthony Johnson, former Notre Dame Alumni Association director Charles Lennon, and Women’s Task Force founder Joan Lennon. According to the South Bend Alumni Association’s website, the Hall of Fame’s primary goal is “to publicly recognize individuals whose achievements and services have distinguished both themselves and the South Bend community.” The requirements for eligibility hold that candidates must have “resided or worked in the South Bend community for ten or more years” and that they “must have notable personal achievements and/or made notable contributions at the local, state, national, or international level.” Colwell, a professor in Notre Dame’s Journalism, Ethics and Democracy program, said that he was “surprised and honored” by the nomination. “Personally, I think it’s a high honor, especially when I look at the names of the people who have been inducted over the years, like [University president emeritus] Fr. [Theodore] Hesburgh and Knute Rockne,” Colwell said. “It’s a very distinguished group of people who have served the South Bend area, and I’m really honored to be included.” Colwell currently teaches Advanced Reporting and Persuasion Commentary and Criticism at Notre Dame, in addition to writing a weekly column for the South Bend Tribune and contributing to the Howey Politics blog. “I started as a police reporter for the Tribune and then did general assignments before covering politics,” Colwell said. “I began writing a column which is political in nature, but concerns itself more with community issues and problems and not just hardcore politics.” Colwell said the award honors his profession beyond his individual contributions. “I accept induction as an honor for the right kind of journalism, the journalism of colleagues I worked with for so long at the South Bend Tribune,” Colwell said. Johnson played on the 1988 national championship team and led the team in scoring with 35 touchdowns during his four years at Notre Dame. He went on to play professionally and now serves as the team chaplain for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Charles and Joan Lennon worked with the Notre Dame Alumni Association during Charles Lennon’s time as director and both volunteered extensively in the community at organizations including the city’s Redevelopment Department and the Women’s Task Force of St. Joseph Regional Medical Center.
The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences (CEEES) underwent a major rearrangement this year by adding environmental engineering and environmental earth science majors and removing a previously offered environmental geosciences major. Dr. Elizabeth Kerr, director of undergraduate studies for the College of Engineering, said the department takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the environment. “The new environmental engineering and earth sciences curriculum merges environmental earth systems, chemistry, hydrology and water flow and transport into a unique interdisciplinary curriculum focused on the environment at a range of scales,” Kerr said. Previously, an environmental concentration was available through the CEEES department, but it was relatively unknown, Kerr said. Environmental Engineering associate professor Dr. Joshua Shrout said because of the obscurity of this concentration, the CEEES department needed a restructuring to publicize its offerings. “The idea for some change in environmental engineering has been on the table for years,” Shrout said. “It became clear over time that we were a little bit hidden, so we needed to change that.” Kerr says the program’s merits should be more well-known. “We wanted to make it so students knew we had this environmental portion in our department,” she said. “We have faculty that are very strong in these areas, and we really wanted our undergraduates to be able to benefit even more from those strengths.” Students participating in the environmental engineering program will obtain an accredited environmental engineering degree, Kerr said. Also, although housed in the College of Engineering, students participating in the environmental earth sciences program obtain a science degree, she said. Dr. Jeremy Fein, director of the Center for Environmental Science and Technology, said the two disciplines often coincide. “There’s a lot of overlap between environmental engineering and earth sciences,” Fein said. “Because of that overlap and because the College of Engineering had more of an established graduate program, it was combined that way.” Fein also said the environmental earth science degree offered through the CEEES department differs from the environmental science degree offered through the College of Science in that it is more specialized and focuses specifically on earth sciences, or processes that occur near or at the surface of the Earth. Students graduating with a degree in environmental engineering or environmental earth sciences will be prepared for a variety of fields, Shrout said. “Many issues pertain to water, air and soil,” he said. “Protecting human health, cleaning up contamination [and] preventing contamination are some of the things that environmental engineers do.” The Environmental Engineering and Environmental Earth Sciences programs are open to all students entering the CEEES department with sophomore status in the fall of 2013 and future years. Although there are currently only 16 environmental engineering majors, Kerr said the CEEES department soon hopes to have upwards of 30 to 40 students enrolled between the two programs. Those who graduate with these degrees will be prepared to look at environmental issues from a big-picture perspective, Fein said, opening up important career goals in their futures. “Graduates can also go on and contribute to policy,” he said. “We’ve had graduates go on and work for senators and congressmen, educating them about global climate change and things like that.”
Fall break will be a bit more than rest and relaxation for six Saint Mary’s students who will go on pilgrimage to Peru. Assistant director of Campus Ministry Regina Wilson said she will lead the students as they visit a group of Sisters of the Holy Cross, the communities these sisters serve and an impoverished parish. It is an important distinction that the trip is a pilgrimage rather than a service trip, Wilson said. The difference in emphasis is subtle, but the focus of a pilgrimage is seeing the experience as a spiritual journey of faith, she said. Wilson said this focus comes about by recognizing the people they encounter as fellow pilgrims in a spiritual sense. “Each and every moment we recognize that the people we go to meet are fellow pilgrims on a journey of faith in their own lives,” she said. Wilson said, accordingly, a significant aspect of the pilgrimage is interacting with everyone in the communities they visit. “As pilgrims, we go to meet people and to experience the ways their lives are holy and thus, the ways that we might meet the Christ that is revealed in their holiness,” Wilson said. “Of course, this doesn’t mean we won’t be doing things, but we hope to be doing things with the children, youth and elderly of the community – to have interactions with them about their lives.” Wilson said she and the students prepared for the trip during hour-long meetings once per week this semester. They read a book about pilgrimage and Pope John Paul II’s book “Ecclesia in America.” Junior Kristen Millar said the weekly sessions centered upon assigned readings and discussion of aspects of poverty and solidarity. The students also learned about Peruvian history and culture. “[The sessions] helped us to recognize in ourselves why we are going and helped to prepare for experiences there,” Millar said. “The readings also helped us to understand how we fit into the community in Peru.” The Holy Cross sisters, who live and serve in Lima, will bring the pilgrims to visit a group of women the sisters serve and minister to in Matucana, Wilson said. The group also will visit local religious sites, including shrines to St. Rose of Lima and to St. Martin de Porres. The group will visit a parish in northwestern Peru called SantÃsimo Sacramento. Sophomore Madeline Harris said Fr. Joe Uhen, a Notre Dame graduate of 1980, is the pastor of this parish of approximately 30,000 people who live in extreme poverty. Harris said the group will work with the parish’s staff to create bags of food for local families. But she said she most looks forward to spending time with the parishioners themselves. “Just talking to them and hearing about their life experiences compared to my own will be an amazing experience in and of itself,” Harris said. Wilson said Saint Mary’s Campus Ministry sponsors pilgrimages exclusively to places where the Sisters of the Holy Cross live and serve. In the past, the office sponsored a pilgrimage to Monterrey, Mexico. A grant called “Women’s Call in Church and Society” made possible this year’s pilgrimage to Peru, Wilson said. Saint Mary’s received funding from the Council of Independent Colleges and the Lilly Endowment, Inc. “The grant’s purpose is to help students with vocational discernment,” Wilson said. “Campus Ministry has developed this particular way, the pilgrimage experience, as a way for students to look at questions of identity and vocation.” Millar said she is most excited about meeting the Peruvians in the communities they will visit. “I can’t wait to experience the joy that they have and learn about the problems that they are facing socially and economically – and hopefully share a little bit of myself with them,” she said. The pilgrimage is about experiencing solidarity in shared faith, Wilson said. “We are hoping the students meet Christ in the encounter with the people they meet and the holy places they visit,” Wilson said. “And that it is an experience of communion and solidarity in another culture.”
On Thursday, Dr. Mary Doak, associate professor of theology at the University of San Diego, gave a lecture titled “Consuming Women: Sex Trafficking and the Body of Christ in a Market Dominated World” as the final installment in Saint Mary’s Center for Spirituality’s fall lecture series. To begin the lecture, Doak introduced the context of a “market dominated world.” “We’ve entered the 21st century with global systems of communication and trade that are binding the world’s populations together more thoroughly than perhaps at any other time in history,” Doak said. “This global interconnectedness has the potential to advance the human community and to facilitate the Church’s mission.” She said this global trade, while being able to improve economies worldwide and offer new opportunities to those in resource-deficient areas, also facilitates the globalization of the sex industry. In this industry, she said human beings are transformed into instruments of revenue, where they are valued solely for their physical worth to others. “The markets demand for profit has clearly triumphed over human dignity and communion,” Doak said. “These sex slaves are not subjects in the market exchanges but rather are treated as objects in the market, exchanged by and for the consumption of others.” Doak said victims of human trafficking experience a reality of “non-personhood,” where they are objectified to the point of losing all relation to humanity in the eyes of their sellers. Doak cited the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as labeling the sex industry as the third largest criminal business in the world, and the fastest growing. U.S. journalists reported an increase in criminal gang activity in the trafficking business, she said, purely for the profit. “Criminal gangs in the United States are turning to prostitution, because it is more profitable than selling drugs,” she said. “After all, female bodies can be sold repeatedly in the same night, unlike guns and drugs … and at relatively little risk to the trafficker.” The rate at which human trafficking occurs rises with demand, Doak said. The demand is fed by sex tourists, those who travel to different areas specifically for that area’s availability of sex slaves. “Many sex tourists are Americans and Europeans,” Doak said. “It is also unfortunately the case that girls and young women are trafficked into as well as within the United States and Europe.” Due to the criminal nature of the proceedings, she said there are no exact statistics on trafficking in the United States. However, it is estimated women are forced into the sex industry at the rate of one every 60 seconds. Another major factor in the success of trafficking is the very young age of many of the victims. Doak said girls are often taken between the ages of 12 and 14, when they are easily manipulated through violence and the withholding of food, clothing and shelter. The Christian tradition has also contributed to the dehumanization of those in the sex industry, she said, by manipulating the truth about lifestyles of sex workers and representing them as women with insatiable lusts and greed for money or luxury,” Doak said. “Consider, for example, the Christian tradition depicting Mary Magdalene as a deeply repentant prostitute who must be … forgiven much,” Doak said. “[This] has functioned to create a powerful virgin-whore binary in which women are defined by their sexuality.” She said this dichotomy has created a Christian culture in which it is expected that women choose to save their virtue over their lives – a choice women forced into the sex industry are faced with every day. It is behind the notion of the “fallen woman,” she said, which has been applied even to raped women who have lost their virginity against their wills. Doak said this attitude prevents Christians from viewing sex workers as the victims they truly are. “Having been formed by a tradition filled with moralizing tales that condemn prostituted women for their wantonness,” she said. “It’s easy to overlook the reality of these women’s lives.” Daok said as Christians, we are called upon to look past these unfounded biases and open our hearts to those who need our love and assistance the most. “A Church that values social respectability, that seeks a facade of social harmony without offering serious opposition to injustice is a Church that offers more of the same of what we find in society,” she said. “When the Church’s mission is thus obscured … fewer feel their need for the mutual support that empowers us as a Church to live … more fully.” Responding to the world’s injustices to the best of our individual abilities will help to influence our communities and, overall, the world, Doak said. “It may be that the sex industry can never be totally eradicated,” she said, “[But] one of our greatest resources now is our global connectedness.” In addition to political, economic and activist campaigns against sex trafficking, she said more effort should be put into ministry campaigns to provide the women damaged in the sex industry spiritual support and acceptance. Sister Ann Oestreich, congregation justice coordinator for the Sisters of the Holy Cross shared the Sisters’ involvement in the global campaign against sex trafficking. She said Sisters around the world are working to promote education about the sex industry, and how to combat it. The Sisters launched part of their local initiative a few years ago, intending to decrease the spike in sex trafficking associated with the Super Bowl, Oestreich said. “We really got involved in 2011 when we found out that the Super Bowl was going to be held in Indianapolis,” Oestrich said. She said the Sisters contacted more than 200 hotels in the area, offering informational pamphlets and free training for employees, to teach them how to recognize signs of sex trafficking, as well as who to contact to report and safely record such an incident. Although only 52 hotels accepted the employee training and 100 requested informational materials, Oestrich said it is a step toward the prevention and diminishment of sex trafficking. The Sisters have been using their financial investments in hotel chains to hold dialogues with leaders to increase awareness, and get more hotels to sign the Hospitality Industry’s Code of Conduct to end child prostitution and trafficking. Oestrich said the Inn at Saint Mary’s has recently signed this Code, making the public commitment against child exploitation in the sex industry. “We are proud, and we hope you are too, that both of the hotels on our campus have made this commitment,” she said, “and we are now reaching out to hotels on other college and university campuses and inviting them to follow the example of the Inn at Saint Mary’s.” Oestrich said the Sisters have also been working with Indiana’s state attorney general’s office to educate, spread awareness and prevent sex trafficking. She said they have been in contact with the South Bend Police Department as well. “All of South Bend’s policemen and women will receive training this November,” she said, “In addition, special victims officers from … other jurisdictions … will receive extensive training on how to deal with victims of sex trafficking.” Oestrich encourages students with an interest in trafficking prevention to contact her at the Congregation Justice Office by calling 574-284-5991 to find out how to become involved. She said Sisters of the Holy Cross are lobbying for stronger federal laws to prevent trafficking, and student involvement would strengthen the campaign. “We need to work together to see that each person is free and able to realize, experience and own their dignity as a human being,” Oestrich said. Contact Tabitha Ricketts at tricke01@saintmarys.edu
Shades of Ebony hosted the Sister Jean Roundtable on “Different Paths: The Intersection of Career and Family,” on Tuesday as part of Women’s Week.The group invited Iris Outlaw, Alyssia Coates and Christine Caron-Gebhardt to speak about their experiences balancing career and family life as females.Caron-Gebhardt, director of the Gender Relations Center, said there was one question that always scared her.“I remember the one question that always came up was, ‘Can a woman have it all? Can you have it all?’” Caron-Gebhardt said.Outlaw, director of the Office of Multicultural Student Programs and Services, said at the beginning of her career, she was working a full-time job, going to school and trying to maintain her home, which was busy with a husband and two kids. She said it was hard, but she pursued what she felt was right in her heart.Coates, who is the director of Office of Admissions Outreach and Engagement Recruiting, said sacrifices will have to be made, but that should not discourage women from pursuing all they want.“You are going to make sacrifices. I can’t say to you the choices that I’ve made aren’t sacrifices,” Coates said. “But you have to balance it with what’s important to you.“What is it that you really want to do and how do you want to express the call in your life to the rest of the world?”Caron-Gebhardt said some of those sacrifices relate to her kids, because she is not always able to be as present as she wants to be, which can lead to feelings of guilt. However, this journey requires women to be conscious of their hearts.“You have to be compassionate with yourself because you’re going to mess up,” Caron-Gebhardt said. “But if you are compassionate with yourself and those around you, it can be a journey that is going to be happy.”Outlaw said women can balance feelings of guilt by realizing that they do not have to compartmentalize each part of their lives.Each of the women said they always try to involve their kids in their work life.The panel agreed that the relationships women are surrounded by are of ultimate importance in achieving integration and balance.“I needed to seek those relationships that were going to allow me to be who I was,” Caron-Gebhardt said. “I have a sisterhood of women that are invaluable to me … I’ve journeyed with these women, and these women have journeyed with me.”Coates said it’s important to remember when pioneering personal experiences that there are women who have gone through similar experiences.“When you’re the first to do something … it’s very hard because there’s nobody else in your group that can help foster what you need to know … so it’s the people that come around you, the other women, … that speak words of wisdom to you,” Coates said. Tags: alyssia coates, career and family, christine caron-gebhardt, different paths, Gender Relations Center, iris outlaw, Shades of Ebony, sister jean roundtable, Women’s Week