Terrysa Guerra

Life often leads us in new directions. For those who have worked in social justice, change is always happening, but personal change can be overlooked. In this episode, Terrysa Guerra, Co-Executive Director of United for Respect and a proud Texan, reflects on her leadership journey. She talks about how experiences like perimenopause and moving to Joshua Tree helped her redefine herself.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever felt that everything in your body was screaming for a timeout, but the music continued to play and you kept dancing? Well, you're not alone. Hi, this is Shonda Causer, and you're listening to Cause Reaction, the podcast. And in this episode, I'm talking with Teresa Guerrera, co-executive director of United for Respect and a proud Texan. She reflects on her evolving leadership journey and how life changes, including a relocation to Joshua Tree, which allowed her to reinvent herself in the wilderness. Then the new journey through Perimenopause has awakened the past, her journey from Brownsville to Austin has shaped her values, and what remains true are her morals and her ethics. Let's jump into the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Hi.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Thank you for having me. Of course, I'm excited to dig into who you are as a person. I know you as a badass organizer and a leader in your care in like your community and someone who reps Texas Hard, but that's not why we're here. And that's not how people know you. Tell me how you describe yourself to the people who are listening. Who are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Yeah. I'd say, you know, my name, my name's Teresa Geta. I am, I do rep Texas Hard. I feel really proud of where I'm from and how I grew up. Um I'd say that I I describe myself as a as a sister, as a friend, a loyal friend. I am someone who shows up, has your back. Um I'm a dog mom or dog roommate, really. Um and uh and you know, I you know, I I'm a Libra uh too. I really embrace that persona as well. Interesting. Um yeah, yeah. Uh I could be indecisive sometimes, but um overall, um, I think I'm just someone who's I try to be kind, I try to be generous, I try to show up for folks the way I'd want them to show up for me. And um yeah, there's there's I don't know if there's anything more to me than that.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

That's interesting. You didn't mention anything about your career defining who you are.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

You know, I think it's because it's not that it doesn't define me. I just think it's secondary. And maybe, you know, earlier in my life, and definitely my 20s, my 30s, that's how I define myself. I was like, I would define myself as an organizer, a operative, as like that's how I led who I was. And something shifted for me where that's not what I lead with. I lead more with like what I how I really centered myself. And and I think like the the the sister, the friend, the person who's loyal, who show up. Uh, I think those are all traits, by the way, that are like transferable to being an organizer. I don't think I don't think it's one or the other. It's just how how I lead now in life.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Right on. Well, you may have heard from my other interviews. I'm mostly curious what's keeping you up n up at night?

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Um definitely uh perimetopause, probably night flashes or hot flashes, um, telting and turning. Um, I, you know, I think I want to say the state of the world. Um, and that's true. It's not like I don't think about it, but um when you know, if I'm being real, it is the fact that I'm in my mid-40s. It is the fact that I my body is changing, my mind is like changing, my hormones are, and I'm experiencing it in just in real time. And I guess I didn't really expect to experience it when I sleep, but I I certainly do. Um, so that's what's keeping me up at night. But I want you to know I do think about the state of the world on a day-to-day basis.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Like secondary, like like secondary, how you think about uh your career?

SPEAKER_01 4:52

I think so. I mean, I feel so bad saying that. It's weird. Um, but I I I don't know what's shifted for me in the last few years, but yeah, it is. I I think it's you know, I think what it is is that for the first couple decades of my career, it feels like I put that first. Like I treated my body like really badly. So, you know, I'd stay up and do the work, get up early, I'd eat crap food, I wouldn't take care of myself. And it it just felt like I didn't like put myself first. I didn't take care of my mental health, my physical health. Um, and that's not how I want to live now and moving forward. And so I feel bad saying that those are the things that are secondary to me, but you know what? They are.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

I think that's fine. I think that's all that's all right to say. Uh I guess you said that something shifted for you earlier in the conversation just a moment ago. What shifted for you to get there, Teresa?

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you that I've I think it was a lot of investment in who a lot of reflection, I'll say. I think living in Joshua Tree for nearly 10 years, being isolated, um, you know, only having access to being with nature and wildlife, and a lot of my thoughts gave me a lot of room to reflect and think about like what who am I gonna be? How am I gonna be? How am I gonna sur continue to survive the rest of my life? And I I it what it really did is open up, it opened up my eyes that like I was just not I didn't really get I wasn't really being who I was meant to be. I wasn't really doing the things that I loved. I think that I felt really boxed in as well. Like there's a whole side of creativity that I felt like I was really suppressing. Um and being able to think differently on like my mental health. I started seeing a therapist, or I mean, I've seen a therapist before, but really getting to see a therapist and talk to someone to have the tools um or develop the tools I need uh to really self-reflect and think about the different, you know, I think traumatic pieces I grew up with. Um, and then really using that to think differently about the relationships I had with like alcohol, with food, um, with my mom, with my family. Um it just uh I often describe it as like I feel like I had a flashlight in a dark room and I was really close to the wall, so I could only see a part of the wall, but it allowed me to keep stepping back to see the full room and what was going on.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

That's really fascinating because I think, you know, I am also a woman of a certain age, and I think about perimenopause that you just started sharing was another recreation moment for me, a profound one. Because I would say that you know, each decade of my life I've been someone somewhat different. My core values and you know, morals and ethics have pretty much stayed centered, but how I show up in the world shifted. But perimenopause um is hard for me. Uh and I've gotten to a place where I've I've recreated myself, but it sounds to me as I hear you, you're probably just entering this journey. And it's for those who are listening who are men, um, you know, you probably heard someone talking about this, but it does feel like another puberty. Right? You know, oh yeah. That's a great way to describe it. Like the unexpected things. And and and take a minute here. We live in a time now that people talk about this so cavalierly that, you know, um previous generations didn't have the the fortune to talk about what was going on in their bodies. And you know, they had to go to work and manage families, and um you probably they probably thought they were going crazy. Um yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

I mean, I think I think that's right. We were, you know, I just think it even about going through puberty, how it was something you're supposed to not talk about, right? It was almost shameful. You should be embarrassed, it should be like a secret. Um, and you know, I don't know if I even, I don't even remember having a lot of open conversations about it with my my friends at the time. Um and and now I think we're in definitely in a different world where there's more conversation about what's really happening with our bodies, more conversation about mental health in a way that you know was really stigmatized. I think in growing up in my community and my culture. Um and I I think the it's opened the door to have a lot more honest, transparent uh conversations, uh, not only with family, but like with my friends who are going through the same thing. And I don't feel so ashamed to say it out loud that this is what I'm going through. This is what I'm feeling. Sometimes I feel crazy. I've talked, you know, I've talked before about brain fog, that the way I feel like I used to communicate before felt so on point, felt so articulate, so clear. And now something all of a sudden it just feels like I struggle sometimes to formulate a clear thought and communicate that to people. Um and that feels like a that feels like a real like someone pulled the rug out from under me. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

That that that that resonates with me. But here's something that you share that I'm just curious about, and I wanted to like pull it apart. You had this 10 years in Joshua Tree, where you're like recognizing who you were, becoming someone different, being in nature, and like starting these shifts that I would say happened for me recently as my like perimenopause journey came to like the middle point. And so you sound like you did the work before you got into the hot flash moments. Does that that's what I'm hearing? Um, is that yeah?

SPEAKER_01 12:08

I think I think that's partly true. Like, I think I had um no choice but to do the work. Um, and I and I think uh I it sounds weird. I I don't know if I was in any other place, if I would have maybe recognized what was happening and what I needed to do. But living in one magical place, a beautiful place, and a place where you're you're isolated. When I say isolated, I mean that. Like there were times where I'd go a couple of weeks without even interacting with a human being um out there. Uh it was, and other than via Zoom or phone, um it was, it just it provided a opportunity and condition for me to invest in those things. Um, that I think has uh created a just a sort of better understanding or openness to what's happening to me now. Um, so so yeah, I think that's partly true.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

But Teresa, it's like I started the call by saying you're a proud Texas, you know, woman leader. Um what made you wake up and say, you know what, I'm gonna go live in the desert in California?

SPEAKER_01 13:26

So uh someone someone asked me this recently too. Um or actually they asked why I stayed. So um, you know, when I decided to move, I I was going through a lot. Um, I was in my early 30s. I was, you know, I think I'll just admit here, I was like just relying a lot on alcohol. I was eating like horribly. Um and I also you know had a a partner at the time um who I you know was really like I was trying to understand my my relationship to my relationship, if you will. Um, and also I feel like my career wasn't going anywhere. I was burnt out um on what I was doing here in Texas. I was exhausted, I was tired. Um and we one summer we had a bright idea to move to Joshua Tree. And uh and within like six weeks, we made it happen. Um, probably I'll say six to twelve weeks, we made it happen. And we moved. I've never lived outside of the state of Texas in my life. Um, I know I didn't have any family in California, I didn't have any friends in California. Um all I moved to California with was with my partner and our two dogs. Um and when that didn't work out, it didn't work out within six months to a year, you know, the question then became why did I stay? And I'm sorry, what didn't work out six months to a year? Oh, sorry, yeah, my relationship. I see. Like I it quickly did not work out. Um, but then you know I land in this place, okay, like what do I do now? Should I stay or should I go? And why did I stay? And I ended up just deciding that this was an opportunity to shift the way I was living. It was an opportunity to start brand new. It was an opportunity to maybe disappear a little bit and say face on a relationship that I invested in. Um, it was an opportunity to reinvent myself. It was an opportunity to have access to freedom. Um, it was an opportunity to do something different. Um and I I that's why I stayed and like to that's why I ended up staying uh there and why it just and every year that went by, it just made more sense. Every year that I went by, it I, you know, I figured out a a new hiking path, a new way to exist. Um during the pandemic, you know, I think that was a really challenge, a real challenge. Um, but it was the best decision I made for my trajectory in my life. And I and coming back to Texas to Austin was the best decision as well for me.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Now is Austin your your homeland? I don't think so.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

No, no, no. Um I I grew up along uh South Texas, along the Mexico Texas border. Um, and and where I grew up was the the most southern point in Texas Brownsville? It's Brownsville, yeah. Um so Brownsville once about 10 years ago was called the poorest city in America. And um since then, uh there's a little thing called SpaceX that exists down there now, which is, you know, not great for the community. Residents there will tell you why. Um yeah, I grew up like 20 minutes away from the border where you can cross into Matamoros, Mexico, and then 20 minutes away from the Gulf of Mexico from South Padre Island. And so it was really unique to have this access of like going every Sunday to the beach, and then uh as I got older, crossing into the border and going into Mexico pretty, pretty freely and frequently. Um it was it's you know, it's mostly uh it's mostly Latino down there, mostly bilingual Spanish speakers. Um, and people who were who didn't have status um live there. They were they are neighbors, they are, we went to school with them, graduated with them. They took care of our our our grandparents, our family, our sick relatives. Um it was it was just a natural way of life down there. We were just we're just we were neighbors and human beings and community.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Are are your parents still in uh Brownsville area?

SPEAKER_01 18:31

You know, I I grew up with my grandparents. Uh-huh. Um and my mom was you know in and out of my life. But yeah, she still lives down there. She lives in uh my my the home that I sort of say is the home I grew up with, grew up in with my grandparents uh after they they passed. Um, but my whole family is from that area. Uh they they were born there. They I I'm a hundred percent sure my grandparents ended up buying land on the same land that they picked citrus fruit on growing up and cotton. Um so we're just we're we're we're deeply rooted in the uh farming community we grew up in.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

That is an amazing journey. I think um you you might describe yourself as a queer woman. Um oh man, I forgot that in the opening too, huh? Well, you know, it's it's who it's who you how you see yourself. That maybe that's maybe that's tertiary to you now. That's and so what I was just kind of thinking back on how you describe yourself and what I know of you, um, and to know how successful you are in terms of leadership and disrupting you know systems of power, um, and from which you you know started out, you know, coming up from the Brownsville area. Um, were you the first person in your family to graduate college? The first woman. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Yeah. I was the first woman. I it's I you know what I am very proud of my journey um and how I got to this point. And uh I think uh having an opportunity to get to go to a college and uh and my grandparents who you know I came around when they were retired. That's when I was born. They were already retired after years and years of work and uh the fact that they helped me go to college, they moved me into my dorm, they uh helped me, they took me, they took me everywhere that I wanted to go um in terms of like trying like sports, uh extracurricular activities. Um they, you know, they they only made it to the eighth and fourth grade. And my grandmother in particular had like broken English. Um, but but they were my role models. I looked up to them and they did so much for me to be able to be successful. And I take that role. Um, I'm I'm number two out of five sisters, but I take that role like very seriously, and um and I take that journey. Um, I didn't, I don't uh I I'm I'm grateful that I got to do got to accomplish what I got to accomplish.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

How did you, if you like to feel comfortable sharing with us, how did you come to live with your grandparents? Was it just you by yourself or all five sisters?

SPEAKER_01 21:44

Oh no. Um we've we're uh it was not me by myself. It was um so it was me and my older sister. Um we we have some gaps between uh me and my my sisters, like we're about 10 years old. Older than the next set of two. And then there's another like nine to ten year gap between my youngest. Um, and so overall, from us as the oldest and my youngest, uh, there's about like an 18 to 19 year gap. Um, so it was only me and my older sister at the time, and it the reason we had to live with our grandparents is uh, you know, I think I would just say like they they sort of pulled us out of a very um violent situation. Um you know, my mom was really young when she had us, she was 16 and 19 at the time. She had um uh she had already experienced like one violent marriage to our biological father, who was just it was just an awful, awful situation. And I'm I'm grateful that I was too young to remember what happened or the the stories they share with us. I'm too young to have like remembered it. Um but after after that, we were immediately put in a second marriage where it was also pretty violent and turbulent and unsafe. And um, and our grandparents um you know pulled us out of it. Um and I think and and tried to pull my mom out of it, and eventually she did get out of it. Um and that's how we ended up with them.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Could you imagine what are your parents, your grandparents still alive, Teresa?

SPEAKER_01 23:38

No, they passed in 2017, 30 days apart from each other.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Oh my goodness. How many years were they married?

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Oh man, so they were married in 45. So I think it was about 70 plus years.

unknown 23:56

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Yeah, yeah, it was a long time. I was curious if they might imagine or could imagine um one, the state of the world that keeps you up at night now, um, and your role within the the state of the world things. And we haven't really described, and I know you've been circumspect. Do you want to talk a little bit about what your career actually is and what role you play in social justice?

SPEAKER_01 24:23

Yeah, um, I um I'm a co-executive director of a national labor organization. We're we're similar to a worker center. We organize low-wage workers across the country um who work for the the biggest corporations, particularly in retail, um, Walmart and Amazon. Um we you know there is a lot of power that worker people uh working people have right now when they when they organize and have like move into collective action. And I think part of what the role we play is really softening the ground so that particularly unions can uh come in and unionize these these stores and shops. And so um that's that's the work I've been doing for the last eight years um that I've been with the the organization that I'm with. And you know, I think to your to your question about like can my grandparents imagine uh what I'm doing in this data world, uh, I actually think they can. Um yeah, I mean, I I when I was young, they said I was pretty vocal, I was pretty outspoken, I was smart ass. Um, and I was a like I I don't know how to say it, but just a just like a leader, like someone who was, you know, getting people on my side, leading them down a path. Um, they didn't know what path yet, but they I I don't think they would be uh uh surprised. We yeah, I don't think they would be surprised about what I'm doing and where I'm at.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

Um I love that for you, oftentimes when I meet um social justice leaders, especially those who are at the C-suite ED level, they cannot disconnect their role from whom they are as a person. Um, and that seems to always come quite naturally to you, even how we met. We just started talking about our lives. Um, and our journey are not too unsimilar, except I'm I I I'm from the foothills of Appalachia area. Um, but similar stories of families have been there doing um, you know, farm work, tobacco picking for a long time. Um so that that resonates with me. But uh sometimes I'm I'm I'm trying to imagine um the world that someone born in the early 1900s as a person of color and the way that we get to have the privilege to lead um in 2026, it's quite a journey. Um and some of that is that there's a fight right now, right? Because many people want to take those, I don't even want to call them privileges, they want to take our rights away. Yeah, um, and so it's hard to disconnect from that role sometimes. But I think that we have to disconnect um if we're gonna be affected.

SPEAKER_01 27:27

I do, and and if we're gonna survive as people too. I mean, I think I I feel that particularly in my early days of my career, I I couldn't do that. It was live breathing, bleeding this work. And I, you know, I I I burnt out on it. I burnt out. I I remember there were times where I literally flew either on Christmas Day or the day after Christmas to some random small rural town in West Texas to collect some signatures um uh for an important ballot uh uh uh thing. And um and uh, you know, when I was young, maybe that was I was okay with that. I was like, yeah, sure, I'll do it. I was a go-getter, and it's not that I'm not a go-getter now. It's just that feels that feels like an awful way to leave my family. Um and um I couldn't imagine what they maybe thought. Uh, especially um maybe similar to our cult, we're maybe our families might be similar in the way that you know you don't stay in a hotel room when you're down when you're visiting your family, even if there's probably like 20 other people in the house and you don't like you, you know, you you eat the food that they make, uh, even if you feel like it's unhealthy or something. Like there's just like you don't want to offend them. And to leave in the, you know, in the middle of a holiday like that. I I don't they seemed okay with it, but yeah, I can imagine what they what they thought. And like to me, that's an example of what I don't like. I I don't want to do that again. I don't want to make people feel that way again. And and that that means like, you know, uh shifting a little bit about the way I thought about my personal life versus my my career.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

Yeah. I I learned to organize from like I guess some of them will be considered boomers, and I guess some of them would be silent generations. I guess those burn in the 1930s, you know, some some very distance between which in which I entered the working world, how they started, and so much of like the ask on the table of us, you know, was to dedicate our lives to the work, you know. Uh I'm even working with national labor unions, I'm not gonna say that which one, um, in the early 2000s, it's like, oh, well, you work two weeks straight, then you get a weekend off, and then you work two weeks straight. And I was like, oh, that's that's fine, but we're organizing people to have kind of, you know, a steady work life balance, but we're not offering that of ourselves because so much of it is wrapped in ego. Um, to be the one to make change is so important. And then you start to grow life, um, your life, your work life that way, as if you're like a pastor, right? You know, like you don't get time, like it's your identity, but that's not the case. Um, and then we get to like kind of a culture uh divide when you have younger, I say younger millennials who are wanting to go on vacation before the campaign, you know, in a couple of months, which is like unheard of. You can't go on vacation right now. We gotta kind of fight on our hands, and it's just like, no, we don't. And so I struggle, Teresa, sometimes with like, yeah, we need to have, you know, self-care and all these things, but then how do we win when we, you know, are kind of now social justice moved to more of a corporate, you know, style of PTOs and things like that. You know, it's more much more regulated. And then no one's gonna go on Christmas Day to get a ballot right now. You you can't, you're unlikely to do that. How do you sell how we started to where we are now?

SPEAKER_01 31:26

Yeah, I mean, uh, you know, it's I'll also if I if I can just add another piece to this if you're moving with it. Um yeah, like I think also beyond that, like the um uh corporate style uh way that we have we're running like organizations and um uh who are doing this work who are you know trying to win campaigns. I also think there's this like also this sort of other invisible like pressure we put on people, but don't name. Like we're also saying, like either have a family, have children, or don't, or don't do that, right? Like spend time with your family, but this work won't let you do that. Um, as you said, take care of yourself, but we don't really oh this work won't let you do that because we have to, we have to win. I mean, I feel like there's like a million different pressures that we probably put on ourselves as people, but then we put on others as well. Um, but then we want them to just be the job and do be the work because this campaign is the most important campaign. This election is the most important election that we'll ever have, right? Exactly. And and it the fight is always going, is is there, right? Is always going to be there. And I guess I'm just wondering, like, I don't uh if if everything is political around us, if we're experiencing day to day in the way that we are breathing or the privileges or quote or rights, right, that we were talking about earlier, like how is it that we expect people to survive if this is the only like if we just expect them to win the next campaign and keep fighting every every day in this campaign corporate campaign style of of um of the way we were functioning currently. Um yeah, I yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:41

No, I was just agreeing with I mean, I don't know if I'm agreeing with you, but I'm inserting my opinion is that we we aren't winning in the ways that we could be. Um and the way uh how I come to learn community organizing was through the industrial areas foundation model and a lot of the work were led by community leaders who were strong volunteers and they participate in democracy. Um, you know, Solinsky wrote about the back of the arts, and those types of things existed for a long time, and that that made a lot of sense to me. So the organization only really had to pay for a handful of people, um but over the last I would say 15 years or more, you know, there's been a shift to um like you know, these foundations have taken interest in building their particular agendas and inflating cash into those um institutions, and you know, there's a there's so many institutions that I think should collapse and then form one. Um the strategies don't make much sense. Um, those people who work in those organizations, like this one guy who was a really good, you know, um charismatic person, you know, um, but he he couldn't really win a lot of campaigns. And he asked me for my opinion. He's what do you think I should be doing? And he was being very vulnerable. And I said, I think you should work in sales, you know, like you're a good salesperson, but a community organizer is something else. And I and uh there are a lot of salespeople who are community organizers, and there are a lot of organizations that don't really serve the community, but they meet these foundations and their goals. Um and then they make us set up these organ institutions that are not necessarily designed to win wins for the community because we actually didn't ask the community. We came up with a plan and told the community this is what they needed, and so the fact that we're not winning is because we haven't really been in relationships with people. So we're in a constant like stalemate, especially those who do progressive style organizing or stuff that are you know gonna be closer to the Bernies than it's gonna be, you know, to the other Trumps or things like that. So there's a lot of work to do. Um, and there's a lot of contradictions. And and so until we kind of reconcile, like who owns us? Yeah, um, we're not gonna make a ton of progress. But Teresa, we are coming up on our time. We've had a great conversation. I just I love that you have put yourself in Joshua Tree for 10 years. I love your journey from the poorest city um 10 years ago um to now it's X, and that you found some clarity um as we close out our time together. Um you're on your next journey now. So, like in 10 years, you're gonna have another post-menopausal story. What um words of wisdom, if any, would you leave um for our listeners?

SPEAKER_01 36:37

Yeah, I mean, I think the only thing I'd have to share with your listeners is to take care of yourself, invest in yourself, have faith in yourself, um, and uh do what you can to really put yourself first and reflect on how you can really have, you know, I think both the career that the career that you want and get to do the work that you love um and that you want to do, but also be able to really um take care of yourself as well.

SPEAKER_00 37:19

Yeah. I think I would say the way that you describe yourself as sister, dog mom first is a really important way to be reminded like who you are and how you describe who you are really leads your path. So thank you for our time today.

SPEAKER_01 37:39

Thank you for having me.