Event Date: May 9, 2020

This month's Reimagine Candlelight Vigil is co-led by the creator of The Vagina Monologues, V (formerly Eve Ensler). Join us for a night of breaking down taboos and honoring all we've lost.
At this month's vigil, featuring V - formerly Eve Ensler, activist and author of The Vagina Monologues - we will honor mothers and mourn lives lost to gender-based violence.

Reimagine has been hosting candlelight vigils throughout the pandemic in order to break down taboos and hold space for all that we've lost. At this special Mother's Day vigil, we will mourn deaths resulting from gender-based violence and acknowledge the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on women and girls.

V (formerly Eve Ensler)

When we think about people over the last century who have truly tackled challenging topics and taboos, we would definitely put V at the top of the list. V has been named one of Newsweek’s “150 Women Who Changed the World” and The Guardian’s “100 Most Influential Women.”

V is the Tony Award-winning playwright, activist and author of the Obie Award-winning theatrical phenomenon The Vagina Monologues, published in over 48 languages, performed in over 140 countries. Her plays include Lemonade, Extraordinary Measures, Necessary Targets, OPC, The Good Body, Emotional Creature and Fruit Trilogy. She starred in her one-woman play, In the Body of the World, adapted from her memoir. Her most recent book, The Apology, about the death of her father, has been called “transfixing,” “revelatory” and “cathartic.” Her writings appear regularly in The Guardian and TIME Magazine.

In September 2020 and amidst the pandemic, V presented That Kindness, a play based on stories and interviews with frontline nurses. The play premiered with a cast featuring Rosario Dawson, Marisa Tomei, Billy Porter, and Rosie O’Donnell.

V is the founder of V-Day, a global activist movement which, over the course of more than two decades, has raised over 100 million dollars to end violence against all women and girls -- cisgender, transgender and gender non-conforming. She is also the founder of One Billion Rising, the largest global mass action to end gender-based violence in over 200 countries, and co-founder of the City of Joy, a revolutionary center for women survivors of violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Dr. Jeannie Blaustein is the founding board chair of Reimagine End of Life. Jeannie has spent her professional career as a psychologist, pastoral counselor, educator, and community leader supporting people in the work of having difficult conversations about love, loss, and conflict. Over the last 15 years, Jeannie’s work has gravitated toward the field of end of life, and in particular, the work of palliative care and advanced care planning, perhaps the most difficult conversation we must each have with our loved ones, yet by far one of the most important.

Molvia Maddox is first and foremost a mother – a nurturer. She works as a Change Management business consultant. Naturally empathetic, she constantly strives to understand how people can best be supported to achieve their potential and embrace change.

Dr. Su Yon Pak is the Senior Director and Associate Professor of Integrative and Field-based Education at Union Theological Seminary. In this hybrid faculty-administrator position, she envisions, creates, and oversees the curricular and co-curricular work of the Office of Integrative Education including field education, clinical pastoral education, chaplaincy, and ministerial formation. She is also a spiritual director. Her life and research passion include: contemplative traditions, the elderly and spirituality, chaplaincy, women’s leadership, criminal justice, and integrative and critical pedagogies. Dr. Pak’s publications include: Sisters in Mourning: Daughters Reflecting on Care, Loss, and Meaning (Co-edited with Rabbi Mychal Springer, Cascade, 2021); “Is Any-Body There?” in Religious Education (2021), “Cultivating Moral Imagination in Theological Field Education” in Asian and Asian American Women in Theology and Religion: Embodying Knowledge (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), “Coming Home/Coming Out: Reflections of a Queer Family and the Challenge of Eldercare in The Diaspora” in The Journal of Theology And Sexuality, and co-authored Singing the Lord’s Song in a New Land: Korean American Practices of Faith (Westminster John Knox, 2005). Photo: Mohammad Mia

Aditi Sethi, MD, is a hospice and palliative medicine physician who has spent the last 10 years working in an inpatient hospice setting. She trained as a death doula and is co-founder of Center for Conscious Living and Dying, a collaboration with Cassie Barrett, a green cemetery operator. She is also an Indian devotional and American folk musician.