As a group, we identified that we did not want to replicate many of the toxic practices we'd seen modeled in cores on campus. In our other experiences, toxic practices ultimately led to environments in which people were not able to get to know one another deeply, and subsequently unable to form supportive communities around experiences that affect daily living on campus. Given our desires to form and facilitate a supportive community, it was necessary to proactively address issues that hindered our past and present attempts at community building. In response to this desire, we did an activity that posed the questions:
- Why am I here?
- What do I need from this group? What are some tangible ways to fulfill my needs?
- How do I deal with conflict?
- What’s something that people often misinterpret about me? How do I want this action to be interpreted?
These questions were meant to get the group thinking about how we interact with others and practicing the vulnerability and critical self reflection necessary to accomplish the mission of Collective Breathing, recognizing that conflict is an inevitable reality in groups.
Mirroring Rohd's assertion of the difficulty of (re)establishing dialogue, especially in conversations about pain, marginalization, and oppression, I recognize that the group was plagued by and had to fight against silence in the face of difficulty/conflict.
In response to the question of "how do I deal with conflict" almost everyone in the meeting responded that they do not address it, shrink back, talk to people outside of the situation, and ultimately never find voice for conquering the issue in the space that it exists. The group felt this was an unfortunate reality, but ultimately a representation of who we are and unsubject to change. We come into Collective Breathing with our relationships, conflicts, all aspects of our personal and Colgate-related lives that have in many ways taught us not to be vocal about what hurts us. Yet if we are unwilling to open up in conflict (with ourselves or others), ultimately we are replicating a culture that stifles honest dialogue, and harming our ability to develop a collective meant to facilitate healing from this very culture. Having read Rohd's explanation of this inability to dialogue as the most difficult part of the community creating process, I see that an unwillingness to change the habits with which we come into a space will result in the exact same spaces that we critique and attempt to run away from. In order to do different work, we have to be willing to be different people. We have to be willing to be dialoguers around our difficulties even if, or especially if, not addressing conflict has become essential to us.
This collective is not necessarily a safe space in that it allows us to practice what makes us comfortable, but that we are able to have support in addressing the very cores of who we are and critiquing how these cores have become. Our workshop this week with Poppy Liu was mostly focused on writing. Most of the writing we did did not have to be shared, but on one occasion we were able to practice speaking to and through our issues and relationships to ourselves, to campus, and to the outside world. Sharing our writing is an act of refusing the silences that we've become accustomed to. It's another assignment in our work as re-dialoguers. In the foreword to Theatre for Community, Doug Paterson said that "we make each other through dialogue" (xii). What we are able to talk about reflects what we are able to be. As we share our work throughout the process in collective breathing, we bring ourselves to collective being.
Mirroring Rohd's assertion of the difficulty of (re)establishing dialogue, especially in conversations about pain, marginalization, and oppression, I recognize that the group was plagued by and had to fight against silence in the face of difficulty/conflict.
In response to the question of "how do I deal with conflict" almost everyone in the meeting responded that they do not address it, shrink back, talk to people outside of the situation, and ultimately never find voice for conquering the issue in the space that it exists. The group felt this was an unfortunate reality, but ultimately a representation of who we are and unsubject to change. We come into Collective Breathing with our relationships, conflicts, all aspects of our personal and Colgate-related lives that have in many ways taught us not to be vocal about what hurts us. Yet if we are unwilling to open up in conflict (with ourselves or others), ultimately we are replicating a culture that stifles honest dialogue, and harming our ability to develop a collective meant to facilitate healing from this very culture. Having read Rohd's explanation of this inability to dialogue as the most difficult part of the community creating process, I see that an unwillingness to change the habits with which we come into a space will result in the exact same spaces that we critique and attempt to run away from. In order to do different work, we have to be willing to be different people. We have to be willing to be dialoguers around our difficulties even if, or especially if, not addressing conflict has become essential to us.
This collective is not necessarily a safe space in that it allows us to practice what makes us comfortable, but that we are able to have support in addressing the very cores of who we are and critiquing how these cores have become. Our workshop this week with Poppy Liu was mostly focused on writing. Most of the writing we did did not have to be shared, but on one occasion we were able to practice speaking to and through our issues and relationships to ourselves, to campus, and to the outside world. Sharing our writing is an act of refusing the silences that we've become accustomed to. It's another assignment in our work as re-dialoguers. In the foreword to Theatre for Community, Doug Paterson said that "we make each other through dialogue" (xii). What we are able to talk about reflects what we are able to be. As we share our work throughout the process in collective breathing, we bring ourselves to collective being.