Widening the Welcome
Jun 7, 2014 18:44:05 GMT -5
Gelquie, Stephanie (swordlilly), and 4 more like this
Post by Poldon on Jun 7, 2014 18:44:05 GMT -5
I'm putting this here because I just want to say it, not particularly to anyone or to start a long discussion, but because I'm happy and hopeful and want to be able to point to it as to where I was. I'm sure some people might not agree with my ideas, but I also am flawed and I am trying to help things improve. I don't want to get involved in conflict.
This morning I had a really fun experience. One of my friend's grandfather, who is a reverend (does not working at a church anymore make him retired?), gathered together a number of people he invited to participate in a group centered around supporting people with mental illnesses and helping people to be more inclusive and accommodating of a wide variety of people in general. Or something like that. I think it's being called Widening the Welcome. Or at least it was a phrase they used several times with capitals when written.
Me and several of my friends were there (we all have illnesses of some sort, but are high functioning and typically people probably wouldn't notice.) as speakers about our experiences. There were people from about a dozen different churches of several denominations around the area, someone from Arizona's Child Protection Services, someone from a Catholic hospital, a transsexual with a long history of working with people with mental illness, a few parents and a couple of people from other cities in the state. There were about 20 or so people.
We started off going around the circle introducing ourselves, for the people representing churches this also tended to involve talking about what they church currently did (several of them mentioned having family or gender neutral bathrooms, for the LGBTA.) and what they wanted to work on concerning accommodations for anyone with mental or physical conditions. The rest of us talked about our experiences and shared our thoughts on things. It was a very open, friendly and thoughtful environment.
I talked about knowing and being friends with and working with numerous people with mental illnesses of various kinds, mentioned that I know a lot of people online around the world that suffer socially and otherwise, often while their parents don't know or understand or in some cases are even unhelpful. My friends mentioned being surprised at how passionately I cared about people. One of my biggest concerns is how many people who have mental illnesses but are high functioning are often misunderstood, being thought of as and told that they are lazy, dumb, bad or otherwise needing to 'get over' issues that aren't actually understood because they outwardly appear almost 'normal', causing a lot of pain, depression and anger.
Some of the others cried while sharing their stories, my friends also had some pretty awful things to tell. I've never experienced a mental hospital, especially when the doctors think the child is faking the illness and don't even have the right diagnosis because they assume and don't pay attention. I won't share all their personal stories by myself.
Anyway, the second part of what we did was to split up to three tables and discuss between the tables and the room what we want to accomplish as a group, brainstorm what our priorities might be, talked about forming a common language to talk about things, about healthy ways of thinking and creating harmony, not division, and so on. Lots of foundation stuff. I shared how I felt about categories and boxes, and how I don't like them. Some people think boxes are necessary because otherwise everyone's lumped together, but I think there are alternatives. Instead of groups and boxes, I like to identify people as all related, some are more different from me than others, but we're all part of the human condition. I think we ended up calling it "relational identity". To understand someone you have to get to know them and be in a relationship with them, not list off a bunch of boxes you can fit them into.
We also talked about the difference between people being different and people judging one another by their differences, or placing themselves into hierarchies because of differences. Someone mentioned how it's like the old idea of getting rid of racism by being colorblind. It can be just as suppressing as the racism itself if you don't allow people to be who they are or want to be and force them all to be the same. I summarized our idea as working to get rid of racism, not get rid of race. There were other aspects too, this one just stuck out in my mind. The point was that we want to include everybody and still let them be themselves. To listen and learn from one another and to disagree in love.
We talked about more things, I don't remember them all now, but it made me happy and hopeful, and to see that so many people from so many places were getting involved in trying to improve things was awesome. We already scheduled another meeting for next month, and I pray that this is the beginning of some real help for a lot of people who need it urgently. There's a fair amount of awareness out there already, but as my friend's mom said there's really little to no actual help for most of what people like us need. She's struggled constantly to support them and to provide for them when so much has worked against her. She had to pause halfway through because she burst into tears. She pushed to help the people who are in need of it NOW.
Anyway... I really have hope for the moment. There's a lot of people around the world who are suffering and need help and inclusion, and I will try to help whom I can.
This morning I had a really fun experience. One of my friend's grandfather, who is a reverend (does not working at a church anymore make him retired?), gathered together a number of people he invited to participate in a group centered around supporting people with mental illnesses and helping people to be more inclusive and accommodating of a wide variety of people in general. Or something like that. I think it's being called Widening the Welcome. Or at least it was a phrase they used several times with capitals when written.
Me and several of my friends were there (we all have illnesses of some sort, but are high functioning and typically people probably wouldn't notice.) as speakers about our experiences. There were people from about a dozen different churches of several denominations around the area, someone from Arizona's Child Protection Services, someone from a Catholic hospital, a transsexual with a long history of working with people with mental illness, a few parents and a couple of people from other cities in the state. There were about 20 or so people.
We started off going around the circle introducing ourselves, for the people representing churches this also tended to involve talking about what they church currently did (several of them mentioned having family or gender neutral bathrooms, for the LGBTA.) and what they wanted to work on concerning accommodations for anyone with mental or physical conditions. The rest of us talked about our experiences and shared our thoughts on things. It was a very open, friendly and thoughtful environment.
I talked about knowing and being friends with and working with numerous people with mental illnesses of various kinds, mentioned that I know a lot of people online around the world that suffer socially and otherwise, often while their parents don't know or understand or in some cases are even unhelpful. My friends mentioned being surprised at how passionately I cared about people. One of my biggest concerns is how many people who have mental illnesses but are high functioning are often misunderstood, being thought of as and told that they are lazy, dumb, bad or otherwise needing to 'get over' issues that aren't actually understood because they outwardly appear almost 'normal', causing a lot of pain, depression and anger.
Some of the others cried while sharing their stories, my friends also had some pretty awful things to tell. I've never experienced a mental hospital, especially when the doctors think the child is faking the illness and don't even have the right diagnosis because they assume and don't pay attention. I won't share all their personal stories by myself.
Anyway, the second part of what we did was to split up to three tables and discuss between the tables and the room what we want to accomplish as a group, brainstorm what our priorities might be, talked about forming a common language to talk about things, about healthy ways of thinking and creating harmony, not division, and so on. Lots of foundation stuff. I shared how I felt about categories and boxes, and how I don't like them. Some people think boxes are necessary because otherwise everyone's lumped together, but I think there are alternatives. Instead of groups and boxes, I like to identify people as all related, some are more different from me than others, but we're all part of the human condition. I think we ended up calling it "relational identity". To understand someone you have to get to know them and be in a relationship with them, not list off a bunch of boxes you can fit them into.
We also talked about the difference between people being different and people judging one another by their differences, or placing themselves into hierarchies because of differences. Someone mentioned how it's like the old idea of getting rid of racism by being colorblind. It can be just as suppressing as the racism itself if you don't allow people to be who they are or want to be and force them all to be the same. I summarized our idea as working to get rid of racism, not get rid of race. There were other aspects too, this one just stuck out in my mind. The point was that we want to include everybody and still let them be themselves. To listen and learn from one another and to disagree in love.
We talked about more things, I don't remember them all now, but it made me happy and hopeful, and to see that so many people from so many places were getting involved in trying to improve things was awesome. We already scheduled another meeting for next month, and I pray that this is the beginning of some real help for a lot of people who need it urgently. There's a fair amount of awareness out there already, but as my friend's mom said there's really little to no actual help for most of what people like us need. She's struggled constantly to support them and to provide for them when so much has worked against her. She had to pause halfway through because she burst into tears. She pushed to help the people who are in need of it NOW.
Anyway... I really have hope for the moment. There's a lot of people around the world who are suffering and need help and inclusion, and I will try to help whom I can.