there's an activity I do when leading a training about violence, oppression or violence prevention. in fact, I just facilitated it yesterday... I believe it comes from a Paul Kivel curriculum. It goes like this:
Close your eyes for a moment, get comfortable in your chair, and imagine a place in the world where you feel completely safe. Stay with the first place that comes to mind... the most important thing is that you feel completely safe and unafraid. Think about what it feels like to be in this place. Without opening your eyes, look around in this place. What do you see? How do you feel? How does your body feel? What makes this place safe? This is a place you can go in your mind when you need to feel safe. This is your sanctuary - a place where you can be protected from anyone or anything that might harm you...
After a few moments of silence, I have the group open their eyes. Then, I ask them to draw their safe space. If the group knows each other relatively well, I ask them to share something about the visualization or their safe space. I ask, "how would this world be different if everyone felt completely safe?" How would they feel? What would they do?
The conversation basically leads itself after this. We eventually get to the point that feeling safe is a privilege... one that not many people don't have access to. One time when I lead this activity, a young woman left the room crying. I was told today by one of the participants, that yesterday when she was asked to draw her safe space... she drew a question mark.
What do you think about safety being a privilege? I'd love to hear your thoughts... or even better, where is your safe place? what do you visualize when you think of a safe place?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
2 comments:
It's a place that you and I know rather well... in front of the campfire at Red Cross Beach.
As to why... I think you understand without me having to vocalize it but it was the first place I felt truly protected and loved in the world. Nothing really bad could ever happen to us there. There might be ghost stories that as 8-year-olds gave us a fright but in reality, we always knew we were safe. We always knew that we were surrounded by caring people.
If I have a second place... it's the bottom bunk on the left when you walk in the door of Boone cabin (old school Boone that only exists in my head, not the existing cabin layout). That was my home away from home for so long as both a child and a teenager. In a rainstorm with the drops falling off the propped open window, there was no place better. There still isn't any other place on earth I sleep better. Not even my own bed now...
I'm sure neither answer surprises you. I'd love to hear your answers, although I bet I could guess pretty well.
Hey Jane- I finally checked back here and am happy to see you writing again. :)
As far as safety being a privilege, I wish it wasn't. I wish it was a right. I don't understand why it isn't. If you've read my LJ at all in the past 6 months, you'll know that we have a batshit crazy criminal neighbor upstairs in my building these days. And it's come to the point where I sometimes don't feel safe in my own home. I've even had to ask my roommate to be at home more at night, because it makes me feel better to have someone else there. But he, while sympathetic to my feeling of being unsafe, really doesn't get it. Because he's a big guy, and he just doesn't have to walk around afraid, you know? I sometimes feel that no one but someone who's lived her whole life with the fear that something might happen (and this is a fear I think many women feel) can get it.
Anyway, my safe place is the lake on which I grew up. I spent my formative childhood years in a cottage there, and was heartbroken when we had to sell our place. It was the sort of place where most of the families knew each other, where doors didn't need to be locked, and where it always felt restful. I was up there again this summer with my family for the first time in about 15 years, not in our old place, but in another one close by, and it has kept that feeling of safety, at least for me. It was really something to be able to feel that sense of my childhood, of nothing-can-happen-to-me-here, again.
Post a Comment