How We Do the Work is the Work We Do

I love that quote but don’t always know how to listen to others or even myself.

I get so frustrated with all the talk of the evidence-based need for social connections for kids with high ACEs – and the total lack of connecting socially with parents, survivors, and communities.

It’s a major disconnect for me and I get tired of meeting after meeting about improving parent, family, and community engagement where family, parents and community members aren’t even present.

Seriously.

Sometimes, I look around the room and think, Did someone already say we should probably stop meeting until we have different people at the table and I just didn’t hear it?

Those empty chairs need to be filled!

I wonder if it’s rude to say it again or to suggest it be our top and only priority as a team before continuing on with the meeting or the work?

I’m suspicious of any talk or action items discussed that are for or about people who are not actually present.

Often though, this issue isn’t even addressed.

We talk about maybe finding research or studies or doing surveys – if only there was a way to know what parents think and want and feel.

Like listening to them?

Like asking them?

Like including and prioritizing the input and the intel?

Like inviting them in and making it safe to share?

I don’t know how or why we do this work without everyone. If we did these things at the start, first, from the beginning, before there’s a crisis for the family or the organization, the community or the initiative wouldn’t that be better all around?

People complain about having no way to reach kids who are 0 to 5 and I raise my hand and suggest, “Maybe the parents?”

Should that have to be said?

All I can see and feel are the people not in the room. And then, I feel my energy evaporate, dissipate, like I’m becoming invisible.

Why are parents and survivors and community members considered optional when making a trauma-informed change?

Aren’t they, aren’t we, all of us, the building blocks, the core and essential ingredients rather than the condiments to bring to the picnic table after the meal is planned, cooked, and served?

Maybe reaching the parents before the family is in crisis – when often families and systems are in an adversarial role would benefit everyone?

Maybe changing systems so that families have more trust, more reason to trust, despite the experience of being hurt, shamed, or further traumatized as is far too often the case for parents, survivors, and families – especially those already struggling would be a win-win?

But then, like now, I feel self-righteous and bitchy.

I struggle with being the person who feels the need to say all those things and worries I won’t be able to do so without shaming people or sounding like a jerk – without understanding the professionals who have made careers out of social work, helping, and change.

I will sound like what happens when “lived experience” comes to a meeting, I worry, seem off the rails, angry, emotional.

I shame myself or others.

And that’s not the goal or the work either.

How does one do this well?

I don’t want hurt or anger to take so much room in me.

Often, I try to disappear into a chair and not say or own what I know about childhood or parenting with ACEs, as that’s clearly not relevant. I  just try to pass and hide under my business card instead and be grateful for getting a paycheck and that people are at least interested in these topics.

And then, I leave a meeting feeling disappointed and confused, in others, myself, systems.

I feel like a little girl wondering how to be nicer, more of a team player, and maybe I just need to be more gentle, compassionate, and patient? But that doesn’t feel good either. I feel like there are vegetables rotting in my fridge because I know I have resources, bounty, good stuff to share and offer access to, that might help provide missing information, insights, or other survivors, parents, voices, community members who I could share if I felt safer and felt that they would be safe.

Can I take more initiative and be more direct without being offputting?

I want to say, “You don’t have to get a survey, there are five thousand comments online, survivor forums that are public, places you could learn a lot if you really want to know the issues, struggles, and barriers parents, residents, survivors face.”

But I hesitate.

I stop myself.

Maybe it’s too soon to say stuff like that? Maybe that’s the stuff for later or maybe it exploits other survivors and survivor professionals that won’t be treated well by these people at this meeting?

I’m torn and feeling lots of mixed feelings.

Maybe I need to prove myself more, seem smarter, more confident, more educated?

Maybe I need to protect others from these meetings, including myself?

Maybe I have an irritated look showing on my face, even though, in my heart, I truly believe we are all doing the best we can and I’m bringing the negativity?

Maybe I’m not approachable, accessible, or available? Maybe I’m not making safety for connection?

It goes on and on and on.

I have my own social issues, introversion, social awkwardness, that is with me when I wake up and has nothing to do with class differences growing up, or having post-traumatic stress, or parenting with ACEs. Or maybe it does. I can’t know what would or would not be inherently my personality if my life had been different (that ship has sailed).

And maybe there are things I have not even considered, that what I know, in life, as well as from research, is the stuff that makes people feel icky or uncomfortable when discussed and I should keep it in my diary or on my blog and not share it face to face or in meetings?

I honestly don’t know.

But I know I craved honesty, community, and people to relate with as a child and as an adult in crisis, with ACEs and when healing and parenting. I know that and remember that, and honor that even when there’s doubt.

It’s so ironic because when I was in crisis, I did not do much advocacy work because I didn’t feel whole or heal enough to do so, as though, until I reached a certain point I had no business saying anything to anyone. And now, it’s the opposite, sometimes I don’t feel as though I can speak to the issues because some things are no longer present tense and others know more, know better and have faced harder.

Our movement, is just beginning to finally address all types of ACEs, those who have developmental trauma and toxic stress, from historical trauma, racial trauma, and structural oppression or who had wonderful family and home lives but were hurt in the community and systems because school, healthcare, the criminal justice system, were places where trauma happened rather than healing.

I’ve had advantages, privileges, and things that have made having high ACEs easier than those who have more.

And I’ve burdens, barriers, and obstacles that have made healing and parenting and life harder than it would have been without ACEs.

There is no single story of ACEs. There are ACEs in the community, ACEs at home, and those who have one or both or some blend of each.

We are not one person, one story, one concept.

We are so many and so varied – both.

The work can be complex. I cycle and cycle and cycle.

If, when, where and how to speak – if at all?

If, when, where and how to write instead?

Is it better, easier, wise to say little or nothing?

So, often, as of late, I am quiet and then maybe I stew, steep, steam after meetings. I wonder about myself and about others. I wonder about the nature of the work.

I toss and turn or Twitter, vent one-liners. I reach out to other advocates who are powerful changemakers and seem less angry, more effective, comfortable and able to work collectively.

They bolster me up, remind me of the long view, the long game and the good that is happening.

I need to learn from them, borrow their hope, their skill, their patience, and perspective. They are eager, excited, inexhaustibly hopeful.

I need to rest more, find my own way and path that feels comfortable and less like a battle. I ponder, course correct, and stay open.

I know I’m not the only one who feels as I do and that being a survivor professional is challenging.

There is a lot to wrestle with and work through.

For each of us and all of us.

Finding one’s voice is challenging. Using our voices can be hard.

Feeling like a token is never something says as though it’s a feel good thing or an aspiration. It isn’t. But it’s better than being invisible and we were that for a long time.

Social change is often resisted because it means thinking and doing things differently. And feelings. Those can all be hard for all of us. Finding ways to be present in spaces that were so long off-limits is not easy.

The truth is I’ve been working with and through these tensions for my entire professional life and it might always be with me.

If I’m doing social change work, I feel I should be writing more than nothing really happens without stories and that writing moves people more than policy change.

But when I’m spending all of my time writing, I feel like that’s a naive way to effect change, that it’s just navel-gazing and sharing from a single and skewed perspective and can never be inclusive, can only be limited and that really more active change is needed in bigger communities and systems where people gather.

If personal stories I shared, I worry that there aren’t enough statistics. If statistics are shared, I worried about the stories and voices they drown out and that they are too abstract and remote.

Who am I? What do I know? How to do this work as myself?

How to grow and change with time, experience and age?

I can’t speak for others but must speak for myself.

How to hold the balance.

And also learn to listen more and better.

Self-doubt can be tireless and constant. And also, instructive. We should question what we do, why we do it and how, at least sometimes.

But silence, the desire to turn in, to swallow feelings and words, is also always a red flag I no longer ignore. It doesn’t have to mean stop but can be a trail marker advising a need for a change in course, direction even is still scaling the same mountain.

That’s where I’m at of late, not sure where and how to best use my experiences, talents, time or how to harness my energy, anxiety, irritation and turn it into a force for good.

I’m often uncertain, always learning, and know deep down in my bones that stepping into conversation, community, and even the most vulnerable feelings, makes for change is eventually clarifying, healing, connecting, and beneficial.

I can do that in words and in writing.

Even if I resist and have much resistance within myself, I know leaning in and moving towards others is healthier because what we can do, figure out, create and change is always better when done together.

So it’s back to work.