Our Woman of the Week is Rose Ansara, nominated for founding and leading an informal Orthodox women’s “think tank”. You see her here with her grandfather, as a camp counselor in 2017, and decorating her church with fellow parishioners. We asked her to tell you how she decided to take that step:
“I was born in Lebanon and grew up in Michigan surrounded by a big Lebanese and Palestinian family. I am cradle Orthodox, and both my mom and dad’s families have been Orthodox Christian for generations.
“My local parish in Grand Rapids, MI was a second home for me. As a young girl, and to this day, I was the one that had to be dragged out of coffee hour because, if I could, I would sit and chat with people for hours. I was an active member of my Teen SOYO and choir, and I was the only kid that looked forward to Sunday school. My admiration for serving originated from my jiddi (grandfather). What struck me most about his servant's heart is the way he unconditionally loved the church and its people. He had at least 30 Godchildren, most of whom were catechumens. After each service when everyone had left the chapel, he would tidy up each pew and clean out the candle tray. At the beginning and end of church, he would unlock/lock each door. He did this in secret until he passed away in the spring of 2015. His examples inspired me to devote my life and career to serving others.
“As a college student, I spent time learning more about Orthodoxy and its theological practices. I was thankful to spend my summers as a camp counselor for three consecutive years serving at 4 different Orthodox Christian camps across the US. I met and fostered relationships with young girls, teens, and adults ages 9-18. Through intimate conversations with them as bonds grew, I noticed a pattern of needs that were not being met for young girls and women in the church. While these needs varied, a common theme was the inability to address them within the church and the lack of mentorship/leadership of females in the church community that male peers did not experience.
“Fast forward to the fall of 2020, I found myself reevaluating and pondering what I once knew about the church. I realized I too had similar concerns as my campers regarding women’s needs and began asking questions that were then quickly dismissed. These questions addressed women’s mental health, their involvement in the service, body image, confession, sexuality, spiritual mothers, the female diaconate, and other topics. My search for answers became a destructive battle of confusion, anger, and shame. When speaking further with close female friends on the questions I had raised, the majority had like-minded thoughts. Some of these women had considered leaving the church. Others already had. It was something that weighed heavily on me because the God that I knew who is merciful and loving was assumed to be otherwise. I continued to sit in frustration, and I prayed about it for quite some time. Finally, I called up my lovely mentor Katrina Bitar and shared with her how I was feeling. I knew I needed to do something that was going to address and provide for these women’s needs. We had to start small and be intentional with every step.”
Axia!
Rose Ansara, our Woman of the Week, was nominated for her work as the founder of an Orthodox women’s organization. You see her here with Katrina Bitar at the 2014 Youth Empowered to Serve conference where they met, and a message from a member of her women's community. We asked her to tell you how she went about setting up a safe space for women to raise questions and support one another in their faith:
“In the spring of 2021, Katrina and I gathered a small group of pan-Orthodox women. We decided to host Zoom meetings for an hour once a month and had about ten women total. The women were a diverse group, ranging in age from 18 to 50 who were living in different states and working in various career paths. We adopted a think-tank approach to stimulate purposeful discussions that fostered an environment that allowed participants to share feelings and experiences about their upbringing in the church. The meetings were heavy but beautiful. With each meeting, a new need for women in the church was recognized. For some, it was necessary to process and grieve, while others would listen and reflect. I wanted to create a space for each woman to be authentically herself, and that is what every woman in this group cultivated.
“Over the next several months, the hour-long meetings became an hour and a half, our group of ten women became twenty, and our meeting format became more intentional. There are four key components that we now include in our meetings. These include building relationships, connecting with the community, compassionately discussing, and empowering action. We begin our meetings with a lighthearted activity that allows the women to get to know one another beyond their Zoom square. Then, we welcome a guest speaker to offer an open forum and knowledge on a specific topic. After the guest speaker, we send participants into small groups to intimately discuss and reflect on the content provided by the guest speaker. Lastly, we debrief as a group while creating strong action items to encourage these conversations to take place outside of our group of twenty. We quickly realized that we could not be a community stuck in our own echo chamber. It would be unfortunate to generate raw conversations and ideas without sharing them with others, whether they be family members, friends, or members of our own local parishes.
“As I reflect on this journey over a year later, I cannot help but be overcome with emotion and gratitude. I may be the facilitator for this community; however, this is an initiative that was nurtured with no ‘I,’ but a ‘we’. I too was and still am processing, grieving, listening, and reflecting. This group would not be what it is without each of these individual women. They are uniquely bright and wonderful in their own way. Every one of them offers something valuable to our community. At one of the first few meetings, I asked the women what they thought our younger sisters, cousins, goddaughters, and parishioners from the church needed and one replied: “something like this''. I pray for the courage and strength to provide this need until the need has been fulfilled."
As always, we asked our Woman of the Week, Rose Ansara (seen here in tulip fields near DC and with her snake plant), about her morning routine:
“My morning routine is determined by whether or not I wash my hair (my curly-haired friends, you know what I mean). If it is a wash day, I will wake up at 6:33 AM. However, if it is not, I will wake up at 7:03 AM. The alarm that I wake up to (if it is not the finch that is always perched next to my window- I named her Blanche) is the instrumental song “Agape” by composer Nicholas Britell. I specifically choose that song because every time I hear it, I imagine an amber sunrise gently crawling across the DC cityscape.
"Once my alarm is silenced, I will use a random number generator to select one of the 55 Maxims from Fr. Thomas Hopko’s list for me to apply to my day. After wrapping up my time for spiritual care, I will jump into a 30-minute dance or yoga exercise. Following my workout, I shower, get dressed, and inspect my sixteen plants to see if any of them are limping, in need of water, or have developed new growth. I am then found tiptoeing down my creaky wooden stairs in hopes that I will not wake up any of my roommates. Before I know it, I am driving to work with my queued-up list of podcasts, passing by the MLK Jr. memorial, National Monument, and Tidal Basin all before 8:30 AM.”
Thank you, Rose!