YWCA Women of Excellence: Mary McDonald
What inspires you?
People. Those who came before me and those who will come after inspire me to make my music during my time and contribute a movement to the symphony. My mom inspires me to work hard, choose a positive attitude, now and live my purpose, and be true to what I know is true.
What advice do you have for others?
Listen and observe. You will speak and act with greater clarity and intention.
What is the greatest lesson you have learned on your journey?
Ego is the destroyer of community. Community is human connection. Human connection requires humility and vulnerability. Only by casting aside ego can our individuality shine.
What does your vision for our community look like?
Community for me means the breaking down of barriers, divisions, and separations of any kind. We must connect across neighborhoods, across industries, across identities, across disagreements. Connection and community is not uniformity or homogeneity. It embraces and celebrates diversity and difference without status.
What does "Equal - Powerful - Unstoppable" mean to you?
Let me start with, at my core, I am a math teacher and a proud nerd. Describing these three words led me to thinking of Newton's three laws of motion. Equal: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Powerful: Force is the product of mass and acceleration. Unstoppable: An object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. There are seemingly unstoppable forces of power that have historically served and been served by inequity. But we know there is an opposite and equal force to balance the power, that serves equity. We are this force and we can be as unstoppable. We must avoid the effects of outside forces that try to slow us down or change our course. We must be massive and grow our movement. We must accelerate and ignite our people to join this movement. And we must collectively join to meet the forces of injustice with equal and opposite but truly unstoppable forces of love, mercy, service, forgiveness, community, healing, and peace.
