Towards Understanding and Healing

This week we started TUH (Towards Understanding & Healing) training. We are being trained as facilitators while also experiencing how it feels to be a participant in dialogue and storytelling. The training so far has been immensely interesting and challenging. We have talked about the strengths and weaknesses of storytelling and the ethics of storytelling. We also spent part of today hearing different definitions of reconciliation and discussing our own beliefs about reconciliation.

Besides the academic side of the training there is also a very personal side to it. Our facilitators/trainers want us to experience telling our story so that we can be better facilitators. A lot of people in my class are nervous about telling their stories and so it has been a challenging and emotional two days. Tomorrow is when we will be giving a chance to tell our stories or as Maureen said, we will have a chance to jump right into the fire. The way we will tell our stories is through a bead exercise in which we will choose different beads that speak to us. These beads will be used to represent a moment or event in our lives and with these beads we will make a bracelet. After making these bracelets we will be given a chance to share with the group about our beads and what they represent for us.

I am personally excited and a little bit nervous about the exercise. I’m excited because I think it will be a great experience and will teach me about how participants feel so that I can be a better facilitator, but I’m also nervous because I don’t know what stories and experiences I want to include on my bracelet yet. Additionally, I am nervous because I know tomorrow will be difficult emotionally for the whole group. This trip has been such a roller coaster of emotions for everyone and I know that none of us expected this trip to be challenging emotionally as well as academically. However, I am willing to go through the up and down emotions because I know I am a part of something special. We have been told by so many people here that they appreciate the commitment and passion we have shown as a group and I know that all of us are leaving this trip having gone through a difficult but rewarding personal journey.

To end, I would like to finish with two quotes from today that stuck with me because I think they give you an indication of some of the ideas we have talked about today:

“My biography becomes my biology”

“We are not thinking creatures who happen to feel, we are feeling creatures who happen to think”