Tag: relationships

Validation & the sharing of feelings

If you’ve read this blog before, you’ll know that I like to write about my feeeeeeelings.

I spend a lot of time thinking about everything. I find it helpful & important to give myself time for reflection and connection to my thoughts and feelings, and to get those jumbled-up words on paper & onto my blog. It feels like meditation to me, and helps me come to terms with what I’m feeling as well.

And sometimes, when I share those feels here on my blog, I end up feeling validated as well.

My heart was overflowing with looooove after my post on friendship, because as it turns out, my feelings are shared amongst the military spouse and general twenty-something-lady communities that I’m a part of. I was reassured by Facebook friends and people that I’m just getting to know that I’m not alone in my worries and sentiments. I was reminded that though it can appear as though some people make fast friendships based on certain identities, like religion, it’s not always easy or instant. A lot of what I like to write about, like this topic of friendship, is personal and close to my heart. Friendship is a personal thing, and the way it appears on the internet may not be what it’s like in real life. There are quiet, ever-present friendships that don’t need to be shouted from the virtual rooftops, and there are loud, exciting, I-need-everyone-to-know-how-much-I-love-this-person friendships that just need to be shared. And then there are some that are just in between. Different people get different things out of friendship, and that’s a beautiful thing.

It just felt so good to be understood and heard by others, and to give others a chance to let themselves be heard as well. Maybe I was even able to help them put their feelings into words, and for them to feel a sense of validation as well.

As with most blog posts, I don’t know where I’m going with a post until I’m writing it – definitely a metaphor for how I live my life – but with this one, I just wanted to express how grateful I am for this platform to share my feelings and to get validation back from it. We build relationships by being vulnerable, and that’s what I’m trying to do here. I am appreciative for all who make themselves vulnerable right back by reaching out or sharing their own thoughts. If you’re reading this, you’re awesome, I appreciate you, and thank you for being here.

wholly-margaret-endcap

Our Campus, Our Stories

As a Women’s and Gender Studies major at Wheaton College (MA), I was incredibly excited to be able to take the Violence Against Women course that is only offered every two years. It is taught by two amazing professors (one in the sociology department, the other in anthropology) who have basically made studying violence against women their life’s work. During the first half of the course, we read academic articles about the many different aspects within the overarching topic of violence against women. It is not an easy class to take, as the material is incredibly hard to read sometimes. However, the second half of the course is designed to make the students into activists that can make a difference on our campus. We are required to design a symposium week together as a class that aims to raise awareness about violence against women and the way it is manifested on Wheaton’s campus. Our symposium week (which is happening right now!) has included events about our school’s sexual misconduct policy, a visit from a local SANE nurse for our pre-health students, public art displays, and more.

For my group’s part of the symposium, we decided to make a video about healthy and unhealthy relationships. We surveyed the Wheaton community (students, faculty, and staff) and asked them to tell us about an experience from a healthy relationship and/or an experience from an unhealthy relationship. We received an overwhelming number of responses – half of which made us grin from ear to ear, and the other half which made us feel incredibly sad. We took these statements, edited them down, and chose about 30 healthy and 30 unhealthy statements to put in our video. We went around campus and asked students and staff to say these statements while we filmed them, with the understanding that these stories are not their own but that they represent anonymous experiences from the Wheaton community. The filming experience itself was powerful (for us and the actors) and we were all so grateful to the large numbers of students who were willing to participate in this project. I learned a lot about filming and how to use my camera in ways I hadn’t before, too. After many many MANY hours of editing (done by a group member and an awesome film student who volunteered to help, thanks Nico), we finally had our video.

We released it on YouTube on Sunday night, and by Monday night, we had over 1,000 views. The response from the Wheaton community and from those outside of it has been incredible! We are beyond happy with the final product and the story that it tells.

YOU deserve to be in a healthy, happy relationship, and our video can help you understand what that relationship can and should sound like. We have the power to change the narrative.

 

Please share the video so we can extend our reach throughout the Wheaton community and beyond. Thanks for reading! Margaret.