Staying Grounded in Community

Update

As seems to happen, it's been about a month since I last wrote.  And a lot has happened during that time!  I led a 13-day delegation in Agua Prieta and Tucson (which I will be writing about next), celebrated my birthday in some fabulous ways, took some comp time to reboot, and caught up with the goings-on in Tucson.  For my birthday, I had a wonderful day off with Mike filled with breakfast in bed, lots of sleep, movie watching, and relaxation.  Then I went to another Read Between the Bars meeting and had wonderful pizza with some awesome people.  And to end the day, my fellow BLXers threw me a party complete with fudge as my cake, enchiladas, sangria, games, and laughing.  I must say, it was one of my best birthdays yet.

And through it all, I've been incredibly people-sick.  (That's a word, right?  Like homesick for people.  Well, it is now.)  Every other day or so, Mike or I will comment on the fact that we miss our friends and their energy, the comfort of familiarity, and their love.  But I have begun to realize that I can still have all of those wonderful things, it is just a matter of staying in touch and of reaching out.  For example, while my last delegation was wonderful, I was incredibly stressed out and frustrated at points.  Out of nowhere, I received phone calls, text messages, emails, Facebook messages, and letters from friends and family in Pittsburgh and Beloit.  It was as if I was sending out an S.O.S. to people and they were responding!  (So, in the future, my powers of telepathy probably won't always work, but you get the idea.)

And then, with the passing of my birthday, where I was able to catch up with people and receive many birthday wishes (many through the power of Facebook), and through an email asking for a mid-term review of my YAV year, I remembered the most important thing that I need: to stay grounded in community.

Staying Grounded in Community

"Who is your community (the people with whom you share your life as a YAV)?"  This is the first question on the mid-year evaluation for the Young Adult Volunteer program.  When I first read the question, I paused for a second.  I'd been feeling people-sick, like I said, and this didn't put me in the greatest mood to answer the question.  But, somehow getting past that, I realized that I have a large community that I learn from everyday and that is involved in amazing things!


In my life as a YAV, my primary community is the other YAVs, Emily and Catie, who are doing amazing work at their sites.  Emily is the School Garden Coordinator for the Community Food Bank's Food Security Center, and she absolutely loves it! She gets to work outside in the garden most days, using her hands to work the soil, and seeing the results of her work in the beautiful veggies and plants that grow.  She also gets to work with children and use her organizational skills to get things done.

Catie is a volunteer at Community Home Repair Projects of Arizona (or CHRPA for short).  She does various kinds of home repair for low-income families in and around Tucson.  As she says, "The SOOPers are here and it is a true joy to have them around. SOOP stands for Service Oppertunies for Older Persons. Work has been full of furnace work and toilet replacements, which I'm proud to say is what I'm doing alot of these days."  She continually comes home with paint, plaster, and who knows what, covering her clothes.  I have learned a lot from Catie and Emily about gardening and home repair and have found wonderful conversation partners in the two of them.

But that is not all of my community.  I have Mike, who is currently an AmeriCorps with Every Voice in Action Foundation, serving as a media facilitator with youth.  He has already helped out with a couple of youth videos and is just getting started on a series of poetry slam events in Tucson.  He's been able to connect with some great people in Tucson.

And then I have my wonderful BorderLinks community, who I learn from everyday and share the joys and sorrows of this job.  Everyone is coming from such different places with different interests and intentions, but we form a community of support and solidarity.

And I have the wonderful Read Between the Bars group that I was lucky enough to stumble upon one of my first weeks here.  Not only have I been able to connect the work with this group to my time at Beloit, but it has allowed me to connect to an outside community working for justice.  But my community extends even further.

And, this is the part that connects back to those Facebook birthday wishes: I realize now that even though people may be thousands of miles away, they are still a part of my community.  Hearing about Hannah's work at the hospital, conducting bi-lingual interviews and saving up money to go travel the world, or about Nate's adventure first as a Chinese delivery boy and now as a visitor to a monastery lifts my spirits.  Getting updates about Anna's end of service up in Moab, her future plans to work in Venezuela or Mexico, and rejoining the Beloit Community Choir, or about Laura's amazing work on her feminist blog and her job at the bookstore keeps me open and interested.  Hearing about the continued work of the Peace and Justice Club at Beloit, about the mission work at Waverly, about the individual lives and stories of everyone that I have ever come into contact with, connects me back, it grounds me.

In reality, I've written all of this to say that I find myself in the company of some amazing people.  Getting updates from everyone, hearing about people lives and the awesome things that they are doing (however small they may seem) reminds me how lucky I am to have the life that I have.  Thank you to everyone for sharing it with me!

(And by the way, I love snail mail!)