RC Will Be Okay
Dear Tim [Jackins],
I’m just home from the raised-in-RC family workshop. It was incredibly reassuring to me and I think to many others. I know this might sound funny [strange], but it sort of felt like we could do this without the grown-ups. I know I am definitely a grown-up (Gill Turner and I are the two oldest people raised in RC) and that many of the others there were also, but it was an incredible event. We are a well-oiled machine [a group that works very effectively together]. Many of us had been together for years at the family work leaders’ family workshops you lead. Others were new to that particular group but had close relationships with many people.
There’s lots to keep figuring out about racism and accessibility, but I think we have a completely solid base that is not breakable. We know that closeness, big sessions, and understanding early material [distress] are the key issue for all humans. That is solid and ingrained in all of us. We did not have to try to remember that the young people were real people. They were just part of all of us and how we thought about the workshop and the world. We weren’t making an effort to be good people or good allies; it was just how things were ingrained in our minds.
I wish you could’ve been there. You would have been very pleased. And we have our children and the rest of our families with us. I am reassured that RC will be okay as things get tighter [more difficult] in society. I know you say that, and that you know it best because of your travels and your bigger perspective, but I now understand it in a different way for myself.
David Pechie and Micaela Morse did a fantastic job leading the workshop, and Tamara Damon organized it thoughtfully and thoroughly. The world looks a little different tonight.
Thank you for all that you’ve done to build family work and keep our attention on the early material and staying close to each other. You were there with us. And we did it without you.
Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, USA
(Present Time 193, October 2018)