I would agree that maybe the best way to navigate today is to be offline, and just turn off the TV and do something else all day. (Especially if you’ve already voted.) Of course, some of us will be working, and might need to be online a little bit, so the resources shared in the…
This is a little treasure trove of good information. “Over on Reddit, teachers are weighing in with what they’ve seen over the years and what provoked them to report suspected abuse or toxic home life. Many educators noted similar themes: acting out, avoiding going home, hunger, and a change in student’s appearance.” If you’re a…
Again, I get that this sounds ridiculous to talk about an individual’s mental health in terms of what they offer in terms of productivity, and not in terms of them just being a human being and having value.
It sounds ridiculous because it is ridiculous. But, it is also the language of business. Look, your employer only started offering things like flu shots and health screenings because sick employees don’t get much work done, and cost more in insurance premiums, not because the company suddenly started caring about having healthy employees. That’s the reality.
It would be nice if employers did these things, and wanted to also invest in mental health resources, just because it’s the best thing for all of us as individuals and as a society, and likely some employers do. Others won’t get involved until it benefits them.
So, we speak to them in the language they understand. Because we need the money, the “investment”, now. We can’t wait for the whole world to agree that they need to do it because it’s the right thing to do.
Too many people will go without while we wait for the perfect solution. We have to take the imperfect for now.
Every survivor has the freedom to choose how, when, and in what detail, they want to share their story. You can ask for more, but you also have to respect the survivor’s choice to not answer. They don’t owe you that. The only time it’s really even appropriate to press for details if you’re a criminal prosecutor trying to help the survivor bring the abuser to justice.
Outside of that very specific situation? No, we don’t owe you anything. You can support a survivor without knowing all the details. In fact, respecting their boundaries around what they decide to share, is one great way to support them in their healing. They’ve already had too many people not respect their boundaries.
When I compare my personal experience to the overall statistics, again I can see where it is also kind of all over the place, because it’s individual. In some ways, I’m doing pretty well, in others, not so much. None of us are exactly the same, or living with the same circumstances. So as global as this pandemic is, the effects have been incredibly diverse. That person you are working with on a Zoom call, the medical professional, the person taking your to-go order, that teacher your kid is learning from, or even those kids and their parents are all dealing with any multitude of impacts that we know nothing about, and probably never will. The one thing we do know, is that they are being impacted.
We would do well, as a society to take advantage of this very obvious opportunity to learn that we are all impacted in different way by events, and to take the time to listen to how someone who isn’t like us, is impacted. This is a great time to understand the large scale of the world and all of the different experiences within it. Maybe we could at least settle for understanding that our own individual situations, are not representative of everyone. Not even close, in fact.
I really like the way Melissa ends the post below: “We are so often focused on the destination that we fail to see how much we are actually accomplishing. We don’t give ourselves credit for the wins, no matter how small they may seem and we certainly don’t give ourselves grace on the days…
