My experience this year at the GYPS was pretty humbling.
Pregnant
I was 5 months pregnant at the time, and the temperature was about 105 degrees every day.
I was supposed to be a part of the facilitation team, serving as a coordinator and assisting in organizing the hundreds of little logistics that go into hosting 70 international youth with a variety of daily programs, meals and needs. However, I just couldn’t bear to be outside from about 10 am to 5 pm, which is really the bulk of the day. So I was restricted to the air-conditioned facilities and swimming by the river.
In previous years I had been a cabin counselor, and as a counselor, you are responsible, with your co-counceor, for your group of youth 24 hours a day. So there is a lot that comes up, and a lot of intimacy that develops because the cabins do a lot together in small groups. But this year, serving as a coordinator and in addition, being restricted in what I could participate in because of my pregnancy, I felt like I wasn’t getting a lot of opportunity to connect with youth and I was really missing that.
Authenticity
In previous years, I’ve often had the privilege of serving as a counselor, which meant I had a lot of private time with the young women in my cabin, which makes authentic connection a lot easier for me.
What I love about the youth at the GYPS, in addition to their incredible courage, is their absolute intolerance of inauthenticity. As well as their honesty about whether or not they want to talk to you. If they are not interested in talking to me, its pretty obvious. I don’t take it personally, but if I’ve been totally blown off by a youth, and especially if I strike out repeatedly with different youth in a day, I have to check in with myself and ask, “where am I really coming from right now?” I notice when I’m feeling comfortable in my own skin, the youth are drawn to me. Every summit I go through a process of peeling back any mask I’ve been wearing.
Swimming
However, swimming by the river turned out to be a wonderful way for me to connect with youth I’d never met before. I volunteered to give swimming lessons to youth who couldn’t swim. And although I swam through college and taught other physical activities for years, I discovered 1 on 1 swimming lessons are very intimate and required building trust.
Hair-Braiding
Another opportunity for connection that spontaneously arose was hair-braiding. I have braided a couple of youth before at summits, and one young man approached me and asked me to do cornrows in his hair. From there, word got out that I could braid and suddenly I had more requests for braids than I could possibly fill because each one takes a couple of hours. But it was nice because the art-studio was air-conditioned, so I would set myself up in there and the youth wanting their hair braided would come find me and I would do what I could while they sang, rapped, and made art all around me.
Slow-down
It was hard for me to feel the value in my own time and presence doing the things I was doing at the summit. It taught me a lot about the value I place on being in positions of leadership and keeping busy.
Just kind of sitting around, or giving swimming lessons and hanging out at the river with youth challenged me to feel my own value in a different way. I had to be reassured several times that I WAS contributing to the summit, just by being present with the youth.
Its been humbling, but a powerful lesson. The lesson is: sometimes, the best thing to do is just hold space for what is there, and what wants to arise.
Creating a Global Village To Explore Issues of Race and Displacement 