"Human Connections Are Deeply Nurtured In The Field Of A Shared Story" -Jean Houston
I was at an outreach and I was surrounded by passionate champions for creating change in South Dakota. I was feeling in awe and inspired about how "on fire" they were for this cause of spreading awareness. About half way through this meeting one of the participants loudly exclaimed that she just didn't understand "why isn't everyone attending these trainings?!" I chuckled to myself, because I had that thought more than once since starting this process.
It took me a while to fully comprehend why others weren't beating down the doors and fired up about about sharing ACEs like I was. I mean what were they waiting for, how could they not see this was the answer to all of our community issues. Then it registered...I was asking them to look at their own past, maybe how they treated someone they cared about, and worst of all I wanted them to change!
You see it becomes easy on this side of the fence, because throughout the training process you get to examine your life and your decisions and come to terms with. I bet that most people see these flyers and it's easier for them to assume it doesn't "pertain" to them or it's for "those" people. When in reality they are probably a little scared about what they might learn at this training. You see when you start talking about understanding trauma, there is going to be a good chance that someone is going to make you feel uncomfortable and say some things that make you think...and well who has time for that! It is much easier to use the "garage door approach" and pretend that from dinner time to breakfast time that what happens in the world doesn't impact you.
So back to this meeting, I took the opportunity to remind them that not everybody was going to be at a place that they were ready to jump on the band wagon. That it might take more than one conversation to reach them. That ultimately it was important that we didn't stop reaching out...just because someone said "no".
I've gotten comfortable with being uncomfortable because that means change is about to happen!
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