Ever since I became a social work educator, my students have consistently opened my eyes, humbled me, and shared beautiful tidbits about the world in so many different ways. Something I try to teach them, and most intentionally with my first group of students, was the practice of integrity. I did not just emphasize doing what is right always, yes that, but more importantly embracing thy self as a whole. This means that I have tried to teach all of my students to be grateful for every component of who they are and the experiences they’ve lived, even those dark and hated parts. It is the shadowed parts of ourselves that manifest the deepest level of empathy for our clients. If we social workers cannot love who we are, then we cannot empower our clients to do the same.
We all have been through one type of hell or another, and we don’t have to self-disclose what that all entails. Usually I found, clients and research participants too, could look in my eyes and know I empathized, without me ever sharing why. For some reason, our clients sense things about us. I think it might just be our nature as people. They can sense us and especially when we are being inauthentic. Integrity is one of our core values for good reason, and we need to tap into its strength to enhance how clients uplift themselves. So I made sure and make sure to teach that concept to my students. The first course I ever taught was intended to be a simple space for students to process their field learning. I was allotted both the time and flexibility to give them non-mandated readings to promote integrity. They received some of my favorite hip hop lyrics, poems, Dr. King’s ‘I have a dream’, and more. The 11 of us worked really hard, and toward the end of the semester the students were creating the integrity work-sheets. I have been really blessed and not just with that group, but truly most of the students I’ve taught are world movers and world shakers. They’re an accomplished set of people and I could write volumes on what they are doing, but I won’t. That is probably a breach of their confidentiality anyway. I will say that I might have started off trying to teach them to embrace who they are, but typically that gets switched around and they remind me to love myself as I am. I do hope that my past, present, and future students learned/will learn to make their own noise, at the least, from me. One thing I always share with students, is “The Book of Qualities”, by J. Ruth Gendler. This book personifies each emotion and as mentioned in a previous blog, we personify the emotions that we feel. In poetry we talk about inanimate objects as being personified, but for some reason there’s not a whole lot of direct attention paid to personification as a people-oriented conceptual framework. In truth, it’s not always bad to personify our emotions, we simply have to discipline the emotional states that cause harm. For example, if you are feeling jealous, don’t put another person down because of your own insecurities. The person on the other side has feelings too. If you are feeling greed, don’t go and steal from someone. However, if you are happy, you should most definitely smile and share that light with others. So how does this relate to doing you and integrity? Relationally, this blog is simply encouraging you the reader, to be who you are. Be grateful for every single thing that has ever happened to you and use that energy to make the world better. Do what you love. Spend as much time as you can with the people and animals too, who make you feel good about you. Instead of looking in the mirror and identifying your flaws, sit back and see the beauty that is you. Remember that contrasting realities, manifest into appreciation. Our moon would not be so beautiful, nor could we even recognize its cyclical nature, if its brightness was not illuminated by the dark. Love all of you. Make decisions that promote self-love and happiness. Be and do you. This is your obligation as a living being gifted with life. In closing, today I wrote a poem about Pluto. It's actually going to be one of my first performance poems here in Cleveland, next week. Part of me is performing poetry. Right now I’m telling all of you, not to let people decide who you are for you, unlike Pluto. Be a planet if that’s what you want to be, no one has any right to say otherwise.
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