OS for people with disabilities/long

[Therese Fitzpatrick]

Thank you Brigitt for mentioning the issue of touch.  I like to hear any
facilitator affirmatively mention that touching is not required.  Mention it
in passing, do not make it a major point. Just get the message to anyone who
needs to hear it.

I participate in a monthly experiment in community building at the Whidbey
Institute.  The sessions started out being a basic open space.  By the third
month, a minister had stepped forward to do invocations and prayers.  The
community was not asked if they wanted a minister doing opening prayers:  it
was imposed.  She did  a "marketplace" offering but it became the closing
circle.  The law of two feet did not really apply because people had to do
what she asked because she had co-opted the closing circle.  I am an open
minded gal.  I can take a prayer or two outside my own spiritual path.  But
you start to lose me when you force anything on me.  It really bugged me
that someone had used the marketplace to 'steal' the closing circle.  But
that wasn't the worst of it.  She had designed this process that involved
forming many different smaller circles, linking with circles, linking with
more circles and then bring us into one whole closing circle.  She asked
each person to hug everyone in each circle.  I had to drop out after the
first small circle.  I can usually hold anyone's hand (altho sometimes it
physically hurts to hold a hand for more than a few seconds) but I cannot
hug twenty people I don't know unless I am in just the right place.  I might
not be in the right emotional place from a history of abuse.  I might not be
in the right physical place because  all my joints are aching with
arthritis.  Sometimes it physically hurts to hug.  My hands and arms might
not be screaming with arthritic pain but sometimes a hug hurts my knees or a
hip.  I, basically, was not allowed to participate in the closing circle.
It didn't feel very nice, standing on the sidelines, watching the process.
Many times people made gestures to include me which reinforced my sense of
exclusion.    Having to remove myself from a process because of physical
contact is a part of my life.  It is quite commonplace for facilitators to
ask participants to touch each other without giving permission to not touch.
I am used to it.

Afterwards, I went up to this minister, waited a long time for my turn to
speak to her and I asked her if she would like my feedback on her design,
She said she would like to hear my feedback but after I gave it I was pretty
sure she did not, in fact, want to hear anything but positive feedback in
the form of compliments. I followed the rules of feedback.  I spoke about my
experience.   I told  her that arthritis made it difficult for me to do the
closing ceremony.  I told her that a history of abuse is another reason some
people have a hard time doing a lot of touching of strangers.  I told her I
had felt left out. I am pretty sure she didn't "GET IT" and it is probably
why I didn't feel like going to the community gathering last month.

There is one of these community gatherings tomorrow.  I am thinking of
going, I want to be part of a fine, ongoing experiment.  But I am having
some resistance because of that touchy hug ceremony.  If that minister had
thanked me for the feedback, if I had felt 'heard' when I reached out to
touch her with my words, I'd feel completely accepted.  As it is, I do not
feel that my different abilities have been embraced by this particular
ostensibly  open space circle.

I am glad if you are still reading this because I need to point out that I
have not shared this story just to talk about myself.  I am using my
experience as a real life example of how easy it is to disengage people with
different abilities.  It is so easy to lose people.  And a corrective
measure can be simple.  If I were to redesign that co-opted closing circle,
I would think about having people bow to each other and that as they bowed,
let the bow become a way of embracing and honoring the other person.  Inner
connections are, for me, much stronger than physical ones.  A bow would do
it for me.

Since I have written this much, I will add a thought about hugs in general.
People that like to do a lot of hugging are going to do it, usually as soon
as the closing circle is finished.  People that like to do a lot of hugging
do not need to be given permission to do it. They seem to need no
encouragement. It seems simple enough to leave the hugs to the people who
want them and thus avoid excluding the differently abled.

FYI, it always hurts me to link arms.  I wish it didn't but it does.

Thank you also, Brigitt, for using the phrase differently abled.  I had
slipped into 'disabled' because it was being used on the list serv.

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