Trailercast Episode 079: Community
Welcome to today’s episode! Today let's talk about community, about witness, collaboration, and adulthood.
This past week I attended the Onsite Workshop’s Leadership Academy in Nashville. It was a reorienting, extremely vulnerable experience that, no exaggeration, changed me. I came in to the retreat as this little 10 year old girl new to therapy and left as fully grown, fully capable Elyse. It’s mind boggling to think I’ve been in therapy for 24 years. Also mind boggling, I realized I tend to allow myself to vanish in the midst of my fierce desire to protect those I love. My time at Onsite pushed me to allow the community around me to see me. To allow people to come to their own doors at the end of their work and to not lose myself in it.
Eden, my daughter, is so much like her mama when she says “I can do that myself.” She can. She can do SO many things herself. Maybe you, like Eden and I feel that way too.
“I honor that. And … do you want to do that by yourself? Just because you can, do you want to?”
“The invitation towards community requires even more boldness, bravery, vulnerability, surrender, laying it down, because there is so much more power in being witnessed by a group of people that are for you, that are healthy and available to do the work alongside you.”
Community showed up in even more ways this week. After Onsite, I came home to host my own Weekend retreat with five women from around the country. These women showed great bravery and surrounded by one another are able to move towards healing together. I also launched the Radical Wellness Collaborative and have been dreaming with a team of women who are all on this mission with me to care for people’s mind, body and soul.
Today, as I bask in this sense of community, I remember something Jill from Onsite casually told me. She said, “adults cannot be abandoned”. We can grow up and use the tools to learn how to do things differently. So let’s do this differently!
How can you use the tools you have to live your life differently than when you were a child?
Some announcements
I want to continue the work I do at Weekends, so I am going to take Weekend’s to you! I am working on figuring out a way to do this so that you listeners can experience that. Will you do me a favor and tell me where you are so I can find the cities that have an interest in that? Email me at hello@elysesnipes.com or tag me in a photo with the city you live in as the location.
Also, if you haven’t yet, take a look at my new project … Radical Wellness Collaborative.
We are offering group work, where you can heal and grow in community and you can do it all online!
Cheers!