Leading—After Discharging and Deciding against Terror
After discharging a large chunk of terror and deciding to act against it, I am leading more fully than ever before. I greatly appreciate the many Co-Counselors who have helped along the way!
Two-and-a-half years ago, at a Healing from War Workshop in Poland, I began to un-occlude a memory of being abused sexually as a child. I’d been in RC for twenty-two years, and I’m not sure I would have remembered the abuse if I hadn’t been discharging at the workshop on some of the worst horrors inflicted by humans on other humans. Hearing so much in the news about sexual assault also brought back a memory of childhood sexual abuse.
In recent years terror—generalized, immobilizing terror—had been coming to the surface. I had simply wanted to disappear into a corner and vanish between the floorboards. Knowing a major source of the terror and discharging on it helped me decide to act against it. It also helped me lead more fully as myself.
I now lead a group of people who are ready to act against repressive U.S. policies and bring together people of different perspectives. (I live in a rural area in the Appalachian Mountains in the United States.) We have developed seven action groups on the following: the environment, electing women to political office, health care, education, face-to-face discussions with all people, immigration and humanitarianism, and civil disobedience and nonviolence.
The RC tools I use include “news and goods,” asking what’s been hard, listening pairs on No Limits for Women and Girls, and sharing highlights (for a closing).
The rule “no one speaks twice until everyone has spoken once (or has had the opportunity) and no one speaks four times until everyone has spoken twice” has been useful. I also insert pieces of RC theory.
I am pleased with how it is going.
Frostburg, Maryland, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of wide world change
(Present Time 191, April 2018)