When I took my IMPACT class years ago, I thought my biggest concern was safety. And it was, in many ways. My fear of violence really affected my life in a negative way. However, my biggest concerns could have been better described as:
- wanting to understand how to trust others in a way that was more nuanced than an all-or-nothing approach
- wanting to understand how I could speak up for myself without feeling mean
- wanting to feel –not just know– that my body belonged to me & I could dictate my experiences
- wanting to understand that previous bad experiences were not my fault & yet that they didn’t have to be repeated
Another IMPACT chapter recently noted that concern about safety was not the top reason why students enrolled in their classes. That initially surprised me, and I wondered if that could possibly be true for our students if we surveyed them.
I read the director’s email, and I noted that the top reasons for registrations in their chapter actually echoed many of my feelings and things I’ve heard in classes.
Listening closer to participants in recent classes, I noticed people talking about wanting:
- to be able to protect their families
- to heal from past hurts when they’d hit a wall with their progress
- to be more assertive in their professional & personal lives
- to be able to control their anger
- to not have to ignore homeless people & others on the street
- to have better relationships
- to not always be kicking themselves after a difficult conversation with things they wish they had said.
While I believe feeling safe is an underlying aspect of being able to address all of these other issues, I love and feel honored to be a part of a curriculum that people feel they can come to in order to address such diverse needs.