Blog

February 28, 2018

My Year of Waking Up – Series: Part 4 of 5

My Year of Waking Up:  “Change the narrative by listening deeply to others”

My past ‘year of waking up’ was not only enhanced by Bryan Stevenson, author of “Just Mercy” and my gym pal and local high school teacher, Eddie Stead as I described in the introduction to this series but by many others I was fortunate to meet throughout 2017. Each person has granted me the gift of awareness, courage and hope. They’ve helped me examine my own privilege and be more aware of the racism that affects the daily lives of so many in our country. I’ve been encouraged by Bryan Stevenson’s third charge to us, “change the narrative by listening deeply to others”, because it has the potential to transform how I approach just about everything.

A few months back, I had a candid conversation with King County Councilman, Larry Gossett, and his Legislative Aide, Larry Evans. Though our conversation was about WithinReach’s key role in helping develop a coordinated Help Me Grow network as part of King County’s innovative Best Starts for Kids Initiative, it quickly it veered toward health equity. After describing the work of WithinReach, Larry Evans asked me to consider a parenting scenario he had recently witnessed between an African American Mom and her young toddler. In the scenario, a young Mom interacted with her toddler in what might have been seen as too harsh, and included a tough warning to her daughter about potential consequences of her behavior.

Larry offered me a huge gift, he asked me to wait until he was completely done, before I responded. In the end, he asked me how I would have interpreted the scenario, and how my organization would have approached this family. With this, he opened the door for me to explore my bias based on my own upbringing and experience as a parent, instead of feeling defensive and jumping in with what I thought was right answer, “Oh, we would treat her like any other Mom…our organization really cares about diversity and equity …we’re not biased”.

We talked openly about the filters I apply to the world based on my white privilege, and the assumptions, I might have made about this Mom and her children. We talked about institutional racism and how it keeps families in need from being served, or even seeking help; and we talked about how WithinReach is truly committed to the health of all families and yet, we are only beginning to understand what health equity means, and how we can play a role in making it a reality.

Larry Evans’ gift – inviting me to pause before responding – offered me the opportunity to listen deeply.  As most people who know me will agree, this isn’t my strong suit, I am always ready to respond, and most often do.  At the end of our time together, we all agreed that Bryan Stevenson is right, listening for understanding is key to creating a different dialogue; and the only way we can do that is to extend open, non-judgmental invitations for important conversations to happen.

<< Back to Part 3                                   On to Part 5 >>