Well, it really isn’t. It just doesn’t cost the participants any money.
The thing is, participating in our PeerCommunity CoCare Program takes commitment and courage. For those who really want a better life for themselves and their community, the program offers the opportunity to learn a set of powerful life skills and to put those skills to use in bringing about the healing of another person. And the participants do this for each other. No judging, no diagnosing, no labeling, no advice. Just Presence, Interest, Control, Perseverance, Focus, and Empathy. And those take discipline. The CoCare Sessions that take place in the LifeSpheres program consist of a Listener and a Teller.
To be a Listener, it takes discipline and the motivation to effectively help another human being. And some courage too. Here’s what Fr. Henri Nouwen said about Listening:
“To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements, or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, to welcome, to accept.
Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that, those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking their words more seriously and discovering their own true selves. Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.”
And, to be a Teller, it takes strong motivation to show up and stick with it, and real, deep courage to do that difficult thing… perhaps that most difficult thing for us all… to face ourselves. Not everyone is going to show up for this. Not everyone is ready. And, by the way, we are working on making this “co-care” work even safer and more accessible than it is already, so many more can reap the benefit. If we are to truly “Turn the Tide of Trauma”, we have to address accessibility challenges in whatever form they present themselves.
And so, no, we are not asking for money. We are asking for something much more profound, much more valuable. We are asking for commitment to a better life, a better community, a better world. We can reach huge numbers of people this way. We are leveraging the resource that is the traumatized themselves, and with that resource we are doing far more, with far less, far more effectively. And for those who don’t, won’t, can’t show up to do this effective and transformative thing, well, we have a plan for you… them… it just might cost you/them a bit. Stay tuned.
Well, I didn’t think that this blog post would provide a sneak peak preview or, at least, a hint about things to come from LifeSpheres. But there it is, that’s why, in its current form, our PeerCommunity CoCare Program is free, and will always remain so.
An important last word and a request: In case it hasn’t occurred to you, this is why we need partnerships and funding. More about this in a future blog post. For now, essentially, it costs money to provide our program for free. The amazing side-benefit is that your contributions to our work not only fund healing, but also the means to a living for people in communities who are underserved and trapped in the cycle of generational poverty. We are lifting them out of that trap too (the dual traps of 1. generational trauma and 2. generational poverty) because in those communities, it’s the community members themselves who are providing our program and we pay them for that. Make a donation and you are funding trauma healing and community economic upliftment. You can’t beat that! We do charge for the Program Facilitator Training, by the way, so your donation could very well provide a scholarship or multiple scholarships for those who cannot afford the training, to learn a fantastic marketable skill - how to implement the PeerCommunity CoCare Program. We do ask those who receive a scholarship, to do a work exchange for the training they receive.