Contemplating Care
This weekend, I had the incredible pleasure of hobnobbing with the world's most interesting thinkers. Seriously, pals, I mean it. Open Engagement brought together people who tirelessly shoveled inspiration into my mind, body, feet, arms, ears, nose...ooof. I hope I can protect the thoughts these artists laid out for my feasting, protect them from the speed and the weight of everyday worries.
My weekend began with my participation in the Care& Pedagogy Panel, organized by Carmen Papalia and Kristin Rochelle Lantz. If there was no one else there besides these two, I would still have enough inspiration and love to last a lifetime. Of course, since I am one of the world's luckiest gals, there were more people who opened themselves to my ideas and shared their own, expanding my perception of reality tremendously. I am overwhelmed by Heather Zinger. She joined the panel sharing her experiences with care during a residency (which she is midst of) at the Roger Moris Cancer Center in Fargo, North Dakota. Her authentic vulnerability is beautifully accessible. After listening to her a second time today when she presented specifically on this project, I found myself so filled with love and inspiration that I very nearly sprung from my chair towards ideas in my own mind. That is someone I never want to lose touch with, someone who can communicate her authentic love through her work so effectively that it nearly flings me into action. It was a tremendous conversation.
I could write more about each person and I could write a tremendous volume on everyone else, but it really wouldn't be fair. Promise me something. Ok. Ready? Please spend some time on Open Engagement's site. There, just go down that awful little internet rabbit hole where you discover incredible thinkers by clicking on links. If there is no link, just search them. Please? I'm hoping that you'll join me and together we'll spring into a manic state of creation and love.
While preparing for my part of the panel I drafted some rough ideas in a haphazard fashion. If you are curious, go ahead and glean them below and if you want to chat (oooh I hope you do! email me email me email me!!), I would be besides myself with joy.
I have never been in a traditional educational setting that justified a predictable hierarchy. For three years I worked in hospice, and then for three and a half years I worked in an institution that claimed to provide 'job training' for 'people with disabilities'. My personal academic training is in research. I seek data.
My first impressions of the sheltered workshop that I collaboratively co-created Project Grow in was that it was an ideal canvas for experimentation. The sad, stifling, oppressive, and disgusting treatment that I saw brought up an unexpectedly optimistic realization. The treatment, the conditions were so disturbing, it was almost as though we were dealing only with raw materials. We could make anything we wanted out of it.
What do I mean by 'we'? I mean who ever chose to witness it. At first it was only myself, Natasha Wheat, and 8 adults who 'the system' (this includes the state, the institutions that sheltered them) has deemed incurable and unproductive and placed them in a small room with coloring books. Over the years, each day exposed a new discovery, new data, each day brought more witnesses and therefore more collaborators together.
This time at Project Grow, provided the ideal framework for me to weave together my experiences/thoughts/revelations including those from my work with people facing the end of life, and my life in academia. The labels that have for so long been used as chains for the people housed in the institution, automatically inspired me to adopt a new celebration for ambiguity. All boundaries were blurred. Care came in the form of authentic awareness. Caremeant listening to the possibilities of the moment and to the ideas inherent in those around me, whether explicitly expressed or not. All was responsible for the experience of pedagogy. As a witness and a participant in an experience everyone holds a sliver of reality, a limited but beautiful perspective. It is up to each individual to offer that perspective and as a community it can be woven together.
The system Project Grow deliriously functioned within for a time, relies on hierarchy and relies on labels and relies on biases.
I struggle currently whether I personally am ever going to engage an institution again.
My experiences have unearthed a really beautiful and intuitive way of working, caring, and being. Though, on dark days, I wonder whether there is a place for this anywhere? Or whether it will always be met with a violent defensiveness?
Picture used with much gratitude from Chiron Studies's facebook page.