TY - JOUR
AU - Watt, Phia, van der
AB - Abstract Community development workers inevitably engage with communal wounding, inflicted over generations by systemic oppression and deprivation. By ignoring this complexity and focussing on surface-level activities, we can unconsciously inflict new wounds. Or, we can consciously engage with the wounds and facilitate healing. The latter implies a complex process, because a journey into the heart of community implies that the workers look into the mirror of their own lived experiences and thereby becomes a journey into the self. Careful preparation of the workers is thus critical. The complexity of in-depth work with communities receives limited recognition in the literature; with the result that there is gap in research on the deliberate and systematic preparation of workers for such work. The aim of the article is to identify critical aspects of such preparation. A family support programme in South Africa was used as case study. The article suggests the healing journey of the workers (‘start-with-self’) as the basis of the approach. Increased self-knowledge is used to guide content and facilitation and protect workers from projecting unconscious issues onto participants’ processes, conflating the different journeys and compounding the fear-to-risk. The benefits of reflection/mirroring, metaphors, integrating the insider/outsider roles and ‘healing questions’ are discussed. The mentor plays a critical role. The article concludes that communal wounds cannot be allowed to fester; instead it is possible and critical to prepare workers to engage with integrity with intergenerational wounding, thereby limiting the unconscious inflicting of new wounds to the community and the worker. Introducing the journey Communities selected for community development interventions are usually those who have for generations been the target of different types of discrimination, inequality and hardship. Through deliberate and systemic oppression, layer upon layer of wounds have been inflicted and negative messages compounded – resulting in a loss of the true self (Freire, 1996; Van der Watt, 2017). This is aggravated by the disillusionment of an incomplete liberation and ongoing discrimination. The complexity of interacting with these communal wounds is hardly recognized in the community development discourse. A few scholars, Kaplan (2002), Westoby and Dowling (2009), Ledwith (2011) and Wheatley and Frieze (2011), express concern that even though community development mostly work in complex spaces, it attempts to engage through interventions that fundamentally deny or ignore this complexity. Cabrera (2003) found it puzzling that we spend millions of dollars to ‘workshop’ communities, who are haunted, immobilized and silenced by multiple layers of wounds. This was like doing ‘open heart surgery with a machete’. These communities wanted to talk about old wounds and nightmares and the projects we offer them so often lead nowhere. One-dimensional and quick-fix ‘solutions’, pre-set and standardized project plans and a focus on action and success do not allow for iterative, slow and open-ended processes, required to build relationships and engage on a deeper level. The reality is that thousands of community development workers (CDWs) all over the globe are interacting with these multilayered wounds. They are equipped with technical expertise, for example, to conduct a parenting programme. What they are not prepared for is that they will inevitably also interact with the messages that parents received about themselves through systemic and ongoing oppression, stigmatization and hardship. An activity to ‘play with your child’ may elicit the feeling that they have not been good enough parents all along. It is impossible to ignore the wounding. Even more alarming is the new layer of wounds that we may inflict in the process (Van der Watt, 2017). Without awareness of the wounds, the integrity of the intervention can therefore be undermined. When CDWs thus enter the world of wounded communities, it is the beginning of a complex journey. They accompany the community on a difficult journey of self-discovery. They are emotionally touched while engaging with the perpetual legacy of oppression and deprivation: adverse conditions, destructive and often violent life strategies and relationships, the loss of hope and the fear-to-risk new wounds. To ensure access and enhance cultural understanding, some organizations and institutions prefer to employ their workers from the communities in which they work1. This adds another layer of complexity, such workers are continuously forced to look into the mirror of their own lived experiences and socio-economic, gender and racial realities. Whether drawn from outside or inside the community, the workers’ journey into the heart of the community becomes a journey into the self. Hedican (2006) describes this as a dialectical process of self-understanding, where we not only watch others, but watch ourselves. We thereby reconsider our everyday experiences and the cultural milieu that has spawned us in new ways. As a result, CDWs hold several processes simultaneously (Kaplan, 2002) that of each participant, the group of participants as social organism, their own journey, the expectations and culture of their organizations or institutions – and the dynamic interaction between all of these. The nexus between wounded communities, the CDW and community development (theory, practice, training, organizations and general discourse) remains under-theorized and -researched. The field of community development thus faces some critical questions. Can we engage with integrity with deeply wounded communities? Do we perceive the possibility of inflicting new wounds through our interventions? How can we prepare our workers for such engagement? The aim of this article is to identify aspects that are critical for the preparation of CDWs to engage in multilayered and complex processes within communities – without inflicting new wounds or undermining the integrity of the process. I searched for critical elements in a communal healing approach, developed within the context of a family support programme in South Africa. Two aspects emerged: the journey with the families (for more detail, see Van der Watt, 2018) and the journey of the facilitator of the process (the CDW). The focus of this article is the preparation of the CDW. It starts with a literature overview and description of the case study and research methods. The findings are then presented, followed by a discussion and some closing remarks. This study is motivated by the dearth of research on the preparation of CDWs to engage meaningfully with deeply wounded communities. It seeks to advance practical ideas on how to prepare the workers and protect the integrity of intervention – thereby avoiding that new wounds are inflicted. Available maps and guidelines Healing is not an intuitive process. It requires a carefully-designed journey – in spite of the fact that neither the destination, distance, duration nor the condition of the road is known. The guide of this journey, the CDW in the context of this study, does not have the luxury of neat maps and guidelines for such an open-ended journey. They can, however, be prepared to anticipate and appropriately respond to treacherous corners, discern the invisible and embrace uncertainty. What does such preparation entail? I looked for guidelines in the community development discourse, as well as disciplines such as liberation psychology, intergenerational trauma work, conflict transformation, anti-bias/diversity work, social healing and transformative education. There are no complete frameworks on the preparation of workers available, but it was possible to put together a picture of the general direction of the journey, the dangers to be expected on the road, and attributes and skills required. The preparation of CDWs is embedded in a specific understanding of communal wounding and healing. Communal wounding encompasses the legacy of generations’ of systemic oppression, discrimination and deprivation, which eventually results in the distortion and loss of an authentic image of the self. Healing is described as ‘an ever-deepening knowledge of the deep structure of the self and the layered and multiple parts of who the person is’ – at biographical, transpersonal, cultural and spiritual level (Atkinson, 2011, p.100). Essentially, healing is thus a process of creating consciousness and thereby allowing the authentic self to emerge. Consciousness cannot be achieved idealistically or naively (Freire, 1996). Obscuring the self had been a systematic and deliberate project, over generations; unveiling the authentic self thus requires an equally deliberate and carefully-planned process (Van der Watt, 2017). It is almost impossible to intuitively and alone gain consciousness about the self. The outsider is critical to ‘break the circular flow of argument’ (Kaplan, 1996, p. 118), to question, doubt and challenge the self. The outsider supports the community to expose and face festering wounds, discover themselves in historical and social context, do critical analysis, regain imagination and embark on transformative social action. In addition, the natural reaction to pain and hurt is to block off or numb emotions, to strike back or to flee – to banish the unspeakable to the unconsciousness. Healing causes discomfort and often elicits resistance and feelings of loss, shame and guilt (Abrams and Van Niekerk, 2010; Watkins and Shulman, 2010; Zembylas, 2012). One of the biggest challenges of the healing process is to create trust, because the inflicting and compounding of wounds over generations damage the ability to enter into trusting relationships (Herman, 1997). For travellers to persevere with this journey, workers continuously have to establish and re-establish safety, energy and faith in this slow process. There are several risks and threats on this journey. The guide has immense power, and ample opportunity to use, abuse and misuse this power (Kaplan, 1996). Workers can become overwhelmed while sharing so many traumatic experiences and feelings within adverse conditions (Serekoane, Sharp, Skinner and Marais, 2014). They need to walk the tightrope between friendship, dependency, mothering, playing the saviour, symbiosis, personal intimacy, professional distance (the detached and outside gaze of the outside expert), voyeurism, transparency and accountability (Freire, 1996; Brent, 2009, p. 16–17; De Beer, 2011). A journey with the community can only be described as an art. Workers need to understand the process and cunning of communal wounding. They have to separate the manifestations resulting from the original wounding (such as mistrust, denial, masking of emotions or an obsession with the wounding experience and/or the oppressor) from reactions related to the healing process. This requires sensitivity, intuition, empathy, rigorous analysis, sufficient confidence to maintain control (without being too assertive or anxious to achieve a set outcome) and the ability to keep the ego in check. They need a sense of the intangible and mysterious, while having a perception of the whole (Herman, 1997; Kaplan, 2002; Watkins and Shulman, 2010; Atkinson, 2011). Most scholars and practitioners agree that the workers’ most critical weapon on this journey is self-knowledge. For Soal, we are our ‘own best tools’, which can only be sharpened through ‘an exploration into self’ (2008, p. 9). Self-reflection constantly challenges our inner attitudes, prejudices, expectations, baggage and denials. It prevents relationships from descending into dependency. It can limit unnecessary expectations of self or community and discomfort with emptiness. If we understand our own motivations, can we empty ourselves and the process can evolve with integrity (Fopma, 2002; Kaplan, 2002; Ledwith, 2011). There are thus fragments of maps and guidelines available to support the guide on this complex journey. What remains missing is the translation thereof into practical approaches to deliberately and systematically prepare workers for this venture. Conceiving a healing journey: the research setting The research data emanated from a family support programme developed in rural areas in South Africa. The participating families have been the target of multiple types of oppression (black, women, poor, unemployed and with low education levels) and have for generations been deprived of the dignity of quality education, basic services and economic inclusion. The aim was to support families to care for their young children with greater ease and gentleness. This was carried out through a healing process with adult family members (for more detail on the approach, see Van der Watt, 2018). The facilitation team comprised four facilitators and me, as programme developer and mentor. The facilitators were recruited from the communities we worked in and they shared the participants’ history of discrimination and socio-economic deprivation. I grew up in the same area, but our country gave me a very different history: ‘I am white, went to university to obtain a professional qualification and have not been the target of multiple forms of oppression and stereotyping.’ We deliberately used this multifarious reality as an opportunity to challenge assumptions and increase consciousness – indeed a profoundly dynamic and emotional journey. The approach was iterative, every step taken was informed by the previous step. The facilitation team met weekly to reflect on the previous week’s sessions (content, methods, stories and feelings elicited), to debrief and to develop the next session. In addition to programme documentation (reports, proposals and sessions), I kept a detailed programme journal of each week’s team meeting over a period of almost 7 years. The journal was structured like minutes (detailing feedback, planning and administration), but also included descriptions of feelings elicited during the week’s work and the meetings, as well as our struggles to overcome racial, cultural, language, educational and power differences within the team. It comprised direct quotes from team members and summaries of events, deliberations and joint insights. All team meetings were conducted in English. Each team member received a copy of the week’s ‘instalment’ for comments, corrections and input – and it became a treasured record of our joint journey. It was also shared within the organization. The study is qualitative and a reflexive methodology underpins both the case study and the data analysis. Reflexivity allows us to reflect on our own history and the structural forces that are shaping our actions, feelings, values, identity, unconscious assumptions, omissions, multiple realities and possible fabrications (Finlay, 2002; Etherington, 2007). The programme journal (see above) was the main data source for a qualitative thematic secondary analysis, which entails the use of already produced data to answer new questions and/or develop new social understandings (Irwin, 2013). Whereas the focus of the programme itself was the development of a healing approach for families, the focus of this research is the identification of critical dimensions for the facilitation of such a process. The case study was not designed as an academic research project, but as a community development programme. Even though the data were in the public domain, I protect the identity of the facilitators and the programme. The journey: a joint venture into the self The point of departure: start-with-self We as facilitation team realized that we could not expect participants to embark on a process of creating consciousness and change, if we were not prepared to walk this road ourselves first. Working with our own healing would help us to recognize anxieties, be gentle with the fears of others and retain enthusiasm for the experiences of each participant. The idea of start-with-self thus became the point of departure and guiding principle of the programme, because it can: … take away the fear for our shadows. It is then unlikely that we will be overwhelmed in a session. While preparing for a session, we always have to check which shadows [in ourselves] might possibly be triggered through participants’ stories. We have to work with these issues before the session. This should be a routine activity and part of all preparations. The team developed a visual image of the start-with-self approach (Figure 1). Everybody (participants, facilitators and mentors) starts with the journey into the self (Block A). Facilitating another’s journey needs additional skills (Block B). The mentor requires yet another set of skills and attributes (Block C). Being a mentor in this process thus does not depend on professional qualification: it requires a willingness to undertake the journey into the self (Block A), and from this experience learn to accompanying others on a similar journey (Block B) and, in turn, support facilitators walk with the communities (Block C). The start-with-self approach Figure 1 Open in new tabDownload slide Figure 1 Open in new tabDownload slide Self-knowledge (Block A) was thus not a mere add-on to theoretical and technical training (implicated in Blocks B and C); it was the starting point and heart of the approach. It was embedded in a specific understanding of the social, political and economic history and current realities of all involved. By bringing these to consciousness, transformative action could be planned and reflected upon – without inflicting new wounds. We implemented start-with-self by creating case studies and role-plays from our own life experiences. The following incident illustrates the concept. We prepared a session on how childhood labels manifested in current relationships, attitudes and behaviour and each one of us had to look for personal examples. One facilitator brought up the painful memory that through some misunderstanding with her Grade 1 teacher, she failed Grade 1. Our deliberations helped her to realize how she had accepted the label of ‘stupid’ and how this affected her life. She always doubted her intellectual ability and had little courage to take risks, out of fear for another failure. She bravely used this story as case study in her sessions. Most of the participants also failed some grade and many dropped out of school early. Realizing that their facilitator had a similar experience, made it easier to dislodge their shame and tell their own painful stories. In addition, whenever this facilitator shied away from a challenge, another team member would remind her of the label: Do we see a Grade 1 teacher around here? This became a general metaphor to confront old labels and the fear-to-risk. Participants constantly feared that they would die of HIV/AIDS and that their children would be left destitute. This led to the making of memory trunks, in which each participant placed critical documents and objects that could serve as ‘memories’ for the children. The team first practised this by making our own trunks. The making of family trees turned out to be unexpectedly difficult and emotionally demanding. All had to face some (denied) wounds in the family. One facilitator suddenly announced that she was stuck, she never told her son that her husband was not his biological father. Should she capture the lie or the truth on the family tree? She also had to decide if she was going to tell her son, because she realized that hiding the real identity of the father or keeping my child away from his family might cause a lot of suffering and pain for him one day. Similar scenarios occurred in every session with participants and we believed that our personal experiences helped us to handle these with greater empathy and insight. Another aspect of start-with-self is the potential for modelling. The facilitators could discern what type of facilitation would work for them by consciously reflecting how they experienced my style of facilitation and questioning (or ‘digging deeper’ as we called it). After a particularly exhausting ‘digging’ session within the team, which led to discovery of ‘mask’ in the team, we were all in awe about the cunning ways in which we hide our pain and deepest emotions. We also contemplated the skills required to recognize and deal with the mask – and the dangers of not noticing it. This led to a discussion on how this had been playing out in their groups and the following conclusion: [The facilitator should not] take hands with the secret weapon of the pain: the mask. If somebody uses jokes to hide the pain (the mask of the clown), the easy thing to do is to joke with this one. But this destroys all hope to help this person, because the facilitator then communicates with the mask, not with the person. The pain is then not only hidden by [the participant], but also by the facilitator. Start-with-self not only created an empathetic curiosity in each other’s stories and emotions; it enhanced motivation and enthusiasm: This programme is in my blood. It flows out of me and started to impact on my relationships with my relatives and the community. I am often asked to take on responsibilities above my age or educational status in my community. To work with your personal problems in this way was really worthwhile and participants … also enjoy it. I like myself much more. I am less scared to try out new things. Crossing risky bridges Very early in the programme, we recognized one of the most debilitating legacies of systematic discrimination: the courage-to-risk anything that might result in new wounding. This is accompanied by a tendency to hide difficulties and setbacks. We deliberately sought ways to balance what we called the fear-for-failure and courage-to-risk dilemma. We decided to conduct a feasibility study in areas where we wanted to recruit new families and this was the facilitators’ first experience of research. They returned deeply despondent from this venture: the idea of research was a mistake, research was meant for people with high education and the whole thing was a failure. After hours of (painful) reflection it emerged that the data they collected were actually very good. The problem was that the news was bad: it was not feasible to expand the programme into that area. The disappointing outcome was turned into personal failure. We realized the need to redefine ‘failure’ and ‘success’. We thus started developing tools to cross risky bridges. Continuous reflection and metaphors were useful. When somebody sensed a fear-to-risk, she only needed to ask: Do we see a Grade 1 teacher around here? Another strategy was to avoid the usual assessment concepts of success, progress and failure, by asking ‘healing’ questions instead. What labels and shadows jumped into the plan? What triggered them? Were there any projections? Did I follow the desire of the false self? Was the risk too big? Was the timing right for introducing this idea? What is the message participants are sending us? Thus we embarked on unchartered roads. The capacity to report and reflect without fear gradually increased. Approximately a year after the research, the facilitators conducted a new session for the first time. During the subsequent reflection session, they declared the session a flop. Guided by our healing questions, problems were named and analysed without undue emotion. At no stage did the facilitators try to hide what happened or consider themselves as ‘the flop’. The change was significant: at the beginning of the programme, they would have reported the session as a success. Without the quality of this feedback we would not consider adaptations as necessary or possible – and we [would] simply have repeated the ‘mess’. The fear to face the self started to crumble, which can be discerned from remarks such as: I have a problem to approach the office [white male manager] assertively. Some shadow makes me ask for things as if I beg. I cannot record good enough: [I have a] problem to distil and to write fast enough. I am projecting my anxiety on the team. Another interesting observation was that the fear to say something positive about oneself decreased. This often seemed to be a bigger challenge (and cultural taboo) than saying something negative about the self: I help people without being over-protective, as I used to be. I am more assertive with my groups. I managed to identify issues endangering the programme fast – and acted fast. Looking at old landmarks through new eyes We noted that many of the stories participants were telling, were not told for the first time. They were probably told and retold many times around the fire, over generations. We called it the same people stirring the same soup in the same pot, forever. An outsider or witness is needed to hold the mirror from new angles. The outsider has to create sufficient safety for participants to look into the mirror and confront the false images, to understand how their image has been distorted by the messages of oppression and deprivation. We discovered that it is tricky to hold the mirror. Through conscious reflection, especially considering feelings of discomfort or relief within the team, we started to learn how to hold the mirror with gentleness, respect – and firmness. Not-looking is not useful either. This was a big challenge within a team comprising mixed races, languages and cultures, as well as different levels of education and organizational power. There are several descriptions in the journal of how we fought racial/power/cultural assumptions and fantasies, while at the same time trying to distinguish these from growing consciousness, confidence and courage – and the fightback associated with healing. A facilitator, for example, objected to a new activity I suggested. She claimed it would be culturally inappropriate, an argument rejected by one of the others. My question whether there was maybe a personal reason or fear behind the objection elicited an aggressive accusation of racism and abuse of power. When these words were spoken and on the table, it became possible to stop all pretence that we argued about methods and activities: we had to go back to the cunning games of racism, internalized oppression, power and assumptions – and separate them from personal fears and doubts. These were tough moments for all, but each such event helped us to recognize the undercurrents faster – and gave us the terminology and energy to counter them. Linked to this is the insider/outsider dilemma. As an ‘outsider’, I could be tone-deaf to certain nuances and since I was clearly from the oppressor group, it might be difficult for facilitators/participants to share certain stories. As ‘insiders’, though, the facilitators could fail to recognize unconscious matter (such as the normalization of hardship during apartheid) in each other or their participants. It took some time and conscious efforts to turn this dilemma into an asset: we actually had both views and if shared wisely, the emerging picture was so much richer. The outsider can also act as witness and catalyst. One of our sessions included an activity to explore the impact of our racial past and participants had to relate personal experiences with white people. Some of the stories were too painful to tell. We tried to overcome this by making a role-play out of the situation: I acted as this white person and they could shout or cry whatever needed to be said at me. These stories were often suppressed and festering for decades – and sometimes over generations. The release of energy was immense. Separate the different journeys A significant danger of engaging in a dynamic network of relationships is that it becomes difficult to separate the journeys of the facilitators from those of the participants. We concluded: If a participant tells a story and it hurts me terribly, I must tell myself immediately: now she has stepped onto one of my shadows. I must not give my things to her now. If I want to cry, I must make sure I cry for the participant – and not for myself. Under no circumstances am I as facilitator allowed to transfer/project my pain and shadows onto the story of the participant. A facilitator reported how upset she was when a participant talked about a label she got as a child. It was not a particularly negative story, the facilitator had no similar experience and on face-value it did not deserve such strong reaction. With the team’s support, a suppressed but clearly still powerful memory started to surface and we again realized how easily: all the sadness about our own labels can suddenly jump out and make us react. We then start stealing the participant’s sadness. This ‘understanding’ might make her happy at the beginning, but later on she will realize that she was cheated and no healing will come. It was a struggle to distinguish between the anxieties of the facilitators and the discomfort caused by the healing process in the participants. An example was the facilitators’ reaction to absenteeism. Participants would engage deeply in one session – and the next week they simply did not attend. The facilitators would be devastated, immediately doubting themselves: what did I do to make participants cross; was the session boring; did I say something wrong? They interpreted the participants’ behaviour as a personal rejection. We concluded that participants were indeed communicating something, because all actions are messages. Our challenge was to listen carefully and understand the message. What made it more complicated is that the facilitator’s style or the session content/methods could indeed have chased participants away. But it was also possible that participants felt too exposed after opening up during the previous session and only needed some space for integration. We thus paid constant attention to signs of conflations and projections and devised strategies to counter these. We co-facilitated when a facilitator felt she was unsafe with a specific issue. We could obviously not prepare for each and every shadow that might jump out. But we could learn to sense these faster and have a range of tools ready to react appropriately. Facing the abyss – or ignoring it? The deep wounding of the communities we worked in was obvious and indisputable. We made the choice to engage with these wounds. After all, we were working with the topic of child-rearing, where the transfer of the wounds from generation to generation is acute. Still, when we struggled to find appropriate responses, the question always emerged if it would not be better to leave the wounds festering. But we always came to the same conclusion: we could not ignore this abyss just because we might become scared. The participants deserved an intervention that acknowledged them not only as ‘parents’, but as persons with a history and all that this might entail. In any case, there was no other option. Professional counselling and social services were simply not available. It was our responsibility then to approach this task with utmost care and integrity. We had to stay true to the guidelines we set for ourselves: start-with-self, no feelings of failure allowed, rigorous reflection and mirroring and a quest to allow the authentic self to emerge. We also learnt to trust that the growing consciousness and collective wisdom of the team and the participants would protect us from undue harm. An example of this spirit came from a discussion on the impact of our approach on timeframes and cost-effectiveness: It takes time to tell stories, analyse them and decide on action. Poor analysis equals ‘wrong diagnosis’ – and the ‘wrong treatment’ – and the killing of something. Will it be the quality of the programme, the spirit of the facilitators and/or mentor or the soul of the community? This shows deep concern for the self, the community and the integrity of the process. It was made possible by the conscious and ongoing care taken to prepare the facilitators for these multiple journeys. Reflections on the journey CDWs inevitably engage with the multilayered manifestations of intergenerational wounding in the communities in which they work. Kaplan (2002) notes that our mere presence, even without doing anything, has a domino effect on everybody and everything we touch. Without such awareness, we can inflict great damage, or simply waste time. Our impact thus goes beyond stated objectives and outcomes: we touch emotions and disturb set ways of survival and being. We, too, are touched. Guiding such a journey implies juggling an intricate web of relationships, self-images and life strategies – in a continuous process of being broken and re/built. We can try to avoid this engagement (as is to a large extent carried out in the current community development discourse) – or we can embrace this as an opportunity to find and facilitate healing from communal wounding. This study finds that careful preparation is required for this slow and open-ended journey, because it ventures into unchartered territory. Some critical aspects of this preparation are highlighted. The findings corroborate the argument of some scholars that the best way of preparing is to undertake a journey into the self first. By opening up repressed memories, it becomes possible to ‘participate without fear in the intense and extraordinary experience of another person’ (Grof in Atkinson, 2011, p. 253), enter deeper into the meaning of what participants say (and not say). It allows mutuality, reciprocity and deep and free-ranging dialogue to unfold. This argument is taken a step further in the findings: the journey into the self and growing self-knowledge is suggested as the basis of a community development intervention. The concept of start-with-self (as explained in Figure 1) proposes practical ways to implement such an approach. Workers look into the mirror to understand the forces that have shaped them and have robbed them of an authentic image of ourselves. When they subsequently hold the mirror for participants, they can sense the anxiety, bewilderment, mourning and relief. Because they have first-hand experience of the power of the mirror holder, workers can hold it with empathy, gentle curiosity and respect, and understand the importance to refrain from judgement. The healing journey causes discomfort. In this regard, the findings underscore the experience of scholars such as Herman (1997), Watkins and Shulman (2010) and Atkinson (2011). Over generations, life strategies and attitudes are established to survive, live through hardship and oppression and numb or mask pain. The healing process may expose these as obsolete and destructive, disrupting this carefully-designed equilibrium and elicit feelings of guilt, shame and defeat. This can result in resistance against the journey. Workers not only need to understand how the wounding was inflicted and what is needed for the healing process; they have to deal with the interplay between these. No wonder thus that Kaplan compares the worker to a guerrilla fighter, who operates ‘from the hills, mobile and innovative, striking at the heart of unconscious social assumptions and presumptions’ (1996, p. 115). Again, the findings suggest that the best way to obtain this understanding is through start-with-self. The facilitation of this process depends on a particular combination of personal traits in the workers, such as empathy, gentle curiosity and the ability to function without guarantees, timeframes and set outcomes. It requires a deep understanding of historical and intergenerational wounding and recognition of destructive survival strategies. Workers have to discern masked and projected feelings. A fine balance is required between guiding the process deliberately and consciously and allowing an authentic picture in each traveller to emerge. The danger is real that new false selves can be created if the mirror is tainted by the mirror holder’s ego, anxieties and desires. Caveats are to be expected, such as projections, conflations and the ‘kidnapping’ of participants’ journeys for the workers’ unconscious needs. They have to resist the urge to be a rescuer, liberator or saviour, which is aggravated when communities expect them to solve their problems and bring material gains (Serekoane et al., 2014). A high level of awareness of these unconscious motivations is therefore critical. Systemic oppression and discrimination deliberately deprive the opp-ressed of opportunities to excel and succeed. The findings highlight the debilitating legacy of this cruel strategy: the courage-to-risk becomes impaired and is superseded by the fear-for-failure. This is not acknowledged in the literature, but was experienced as a critical factor in the programme. Special attention was paid throughout to ensure that no activity could be interpreted as indications of ‘failure’. It would be devastating for a parent to get the impression that she was not ‘good enough’ – and this could result from as little as a suggestion to do something specific with her child. The facilitators learnt to sense the subtle manifestations of this phenomenon by paying deliberate attention to their own masked fears and resistance to new challenges. Another strategy was to ask what was called ‘healing questions’ and thereby avoid the more judgemental concepts of ‘success’ and ‘failure’. Gradually, the fear to be judged as a failure or inferior started to crumble. The self was no longer automatically equated with the effort/action: even if my plan did not work, I am still intact, fully human. The issue of insider/outsider is highlighted in both the literature and the findings. It is possible to elicit rich and detailed data through an insider perspective. However, if the insiders are too close to the life experiences of the participants, they might struggle to recognize what seems to be ‘normal’ as significant and thus fail to ‘make the familiar unfamiliar’ (Serekoane et al., 2014, p. 164). An outsider is useful to hold the mirror at new and strange angles. This links to the pivotal role of the mentor (Block C in Figure 1). The mentor holds the process together, cultivates a culture of reflection, ensures the safety and preparedness of the workers, brings an outsider view, becomes a witness, holds up mirrors for the team, and senses where unconscious material is surfacing in a destructive way. The mentor is ultimately responsible for the integrity of the process. It is hardly mentioned in the literature – apart from concerns that workers are left vulnerable without meaningful mentoring or supervision (Westoby and Van Blerk, 2012; Serekoane et al., 2014). The result is that we are not creating opportunities for mentors to emerge. Without mentors, we cannot equip more workers to facilitate healing in our communities. Mentoring should not be equated with ‘professional’: a qualification alone does not guarantee the type of mentoring argued for in this article. We are currently living in a world where polarization and stereotyping, coupled with alienation, conflict and hardship, seem to be growing conspicuously. In other words, the wounding of communities continues and the scale is frightening. We as CDWs and scholars cannot delay a conversation on if and how we are engaging with these wounds. The scale of the challenge is beyond what professional social work, counselling and psychological services can offer. Watkins and Shulman (2010) are further concerned that, while focussing on individuals and families, these orthodox services largely ignore the wounding caused by war, racism, poverty and violence. They therefore argue for the transformation of the professional counsellor and psychologist into the role of convener, witness, co-participant, mirror and the holder of faith – who facilitates communal processes of discovery, imagination, experimentation, transformation and dialogue to restore the humanity of individuals, communities and habitats. Their argument underscores the findings of this article: CDWs can become co-participants, mirrors and the facilitators of a journey of discovery and healing. They are there, where the wounding touches lives on a daily basis. We cannot let the wounds fester and remain ‘disorganized or unresolved’, allowing them to cumulate in successive generations and result in a toxic ‘absence of narrative’ (Crawford, 2014, p. 344). A journey worth undertaking? Our mere presence in communities has the potential to open up generation-old communal wounds. It seems infinitely better to do this consciously, than inflicting new wounds unconsciously. The article suggests that it is possible to prepare workers to hold various complex processes simultaneously. But this has to be approached with care, because it is complex to work with multiple layers of wounding in the self and others at the same time. Much depends on the preparedness of the workers to embark on a similar journey into the self. This can be illustrated by the excitement of a facilitator in the case study who reported that a participant who until then found it difficult to share in the group, suddenly opened up with a proud announcement: I used to chase my child away when he wanted to hug me. I just thought of getting dirty. Now I allow this and I enjoy it. I feel just like a white woman. The facilitators did not see anything remarkable about the last sentence: it was their ‘normal’. Yet, few remarks in the data have filled me with greater sadness as it truly captures the cunning and tragedy of generations’ of oppression and racism. It also emphasizes that a special type of preparation and expertise is asked for to bring this to consciousness – and to recognize the subtle layers of wounding. We can choose to walk away from this complexity and leave old wounds festering. This article concludes that we do not have the luxury of such a choice. Author Biographies/Email Addresses Phia van der Watt is a community development practitioner and currently post-doctoral fellow at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. Footnotes 1 The state-initiated Community Workers Programme in South Africa, for example, stipulates that all its approximately 3500 workers have to be recruited from the wards in which they work (RSA: DPSA, 2013). References Abrams , M , and Van Niekerk , D . ( 2010 ). 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TI - Prepared for a journey into wounded communities – and into the self
JF - Community Development Journal
DO - 10.1093/cdj/bsz022
DA - 2010-07-26
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/prepared-for-a-journey-into-wounded-communities-and-into-the-self-zYqnx9Rl3Y
DP - DeepDyve
ER -