If you’ve ever struggled with confidence, this article is for you. This blog post isn’t written to give advice so much as it is to comfort and console and to lift our gaze up from our personal struggles to the bigger context in which they lie. It is a long post that might need more than one sitting to get through but the topic is worthy of the time invested. One doesn’t approach such a topic, so central to our experience of being human in the dominant cultures of the world, lightly or casually.
Thank you for this, Tad. I've been thinking so much about village-making these days. Reading your posts on the subject has helped me find a language for my own longing to "make a village". I was deeply saddened recently by a local news piece about a lottery-winning couple who decided to use their £5 million to build a mega-mansion for their private use here in Edinburgh. I know the article was supposed to make people angry about the "wealthy other"- it was mostly click-bait material- but the thought that came to me was, "What poverty of imagining." What if we could use that kind of wealth to build community- sanctuary gardens, holistic centres, setting up foundations, and so on- to serve the village? On the positive side, it made me ponder what I'd build, which gave some indication of purpose. More and more, my own vision expands to gathering folk, to "make village" indeed.
Your post also makes me reflect on all the ways in which we imprison ourselves in fixed ideas of what support consists of. We put so much pressure on romantic containers to contain, well, everything. So much pressure on the immediate family to provide for everything. So much pressure on ourselves to become our own everything. (This is maybe why I take my role of auntie so seriously- adding at the very least one more voice to my nephews' and nieces' village :-))
And so we need to revillage for us to come through with our gifts and have them believed in, as newborns do. Thank you for your insights.
And yet, we can create a space where this confidence can flourish. For me, though, it is much easier with children.
It was a time when Prince Edward County, VA, was owned and operated on all levels by white supremacists. In fact, so opposed to integration they were that they abolished the school district for five years, creating a private school for the white children, stealing all equipment, furniture, and books from the public schools.
I started teaching in this area seven years after the schools were reopened by then Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Not much had really changed. I set this stage so the story I am going to tell will make more sense to you.
It was music day, and I was looking forward to my weekly half hour to do work in the classroom while the children in this fifth-grade self-contained class were enjoying themselves at music. However, not five minutes after they left, they came storming back into the classroom truly angry.
“What happened?” I asked, and someone said, “You tell her, Bruce.” So Bruce, the class leader in such situations, indignantly explained. “She told us to shut up and sit our asses down. So, we told her, our teacher say no one talk to us this way. We leaving.” And so, they left this white teacher and marched back to our room. I said nothing about it, and we learned to sing “The fox went out on a chilly night” for the remaining music time.
EPILOGUE
Prince Edward County is, thankfully, no longer what it was. In fact, the first school I taught in has been converted into a civil rights museum, with my old classroom becoming an exhibit on the Free School Movement that educated many of the black children while there was no school for them (a former student designed the museum and chose that topic deliberately for my classroom).
Oh, you may be wondering, did the children get in trouble? The only consequence was the assistant principal sticking his head in the door to say, “Stop giving them Utopia.” Of course, as soon as he closed the door, the children all clamored, “What’s Utopia?” and we had an impromptu lesson. The music teacher never spoke to me again.
I’m appreciating the way you reveal this with both clarity and compassion, storytelling wit and grounded wisdom.
It breaks my heart to see so many folks -- particularly men I meet and mentor -- seeking and striving to affirm themselves. And to consider that I had the good fortune and saving grace to stumble upon mentors who instilled confidence in me, confirming my particular truth, touching my unhealed wounds and helping me understand the yearnings driving me...
I’m grateful to be able to pass it on and the need is great!
I very much look forward to hearing more from you on this topic. I lost my mum at 8 to cushings syndrome and was catapulted into a comparible journey to unearth good female role models. I have ultimately reached similar conclusions about the societal chasm that fails to provide these. With absolute certainty we need the village to help each of us find our vein of gold. It is for sure a poorer world without this. Thank you for raising the conversation Tad.
Thank you for this, Tad. I've been thinking so much about village-making these days. Reading your posts on the subject has helped me find a language for my own longing to "make a village". I was deeply saddened recently by a local news piece about a lottery-winning couple who decided to use their £5 million to build a mega-mansion for their private use here in Edinburgh. I know the article was supposed to make people angry about the "wealthy other"- it was mostly click-bait material- but the thought that came to me was, "What poverty of imagining." What if we could use that kind of wealth to build community- sanctuary gardens, holistic centres, setting up foundations, and so on- to serve the village? On the positive side, it made me ponder what I'd build, which gave some indication of purpose. More and more, my own vision expands to gathering folk, to "make village" indeed.
Your post also makes me reflect on all the ways in which we imprison ourselves in fixed ideas of what support consists of. We put so much pressure on romantic containers to contain, well, everything. So much pressure on the immediate family to provide for everything. So much pressure on ourselves to become our own everything. (This is maybe why I take my role of auntie so seriously- adding at the very least one more voice to my nephews' and nieces' village :-))
And so we need to revillage for us to come through with our gifts and have them believed in, as newborns do. Thank you for your insights.
And yet, we can create a space where this confidence can flourish. For me, though, it is much easier with children.
It was a time when Prince Edward County, VA, was owned and operated on all levels by white supremacists. In fact, so opposed to integration they were that they abolished the school district for five years, creating a private school for the white children, stealing all equipment, furniture, and books from the public schools.
I started teaching in this area seven years after the schools were reopened by then Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Not much had really changed. I set this stage so the story I am going to tell will make more sense to you.
It was music day, and I was looking forward to my weekly half hour to do work in the classroom while the children in this fifth-grade self-contained class were enjoying themselves at music. However, not five minutes after they left, they came storming back into the classroom truly angry.
“What happened?” I asked, and someone said, “You tell her, Bruce.” So Bruce, the class leader in such situations, indignantly explained. “She told us to shut up and sit our asses down. So, we told her, our teacher say no one talk to us this way. We leaving.” And so, they left this white teacher and marched back to our room. I said nothing about it, and we learned to sing “The fox went out on a chilly night” for the remaining music time.
EPILOGUE
Prince Edward County is, thankfully, no longer what it was. In fact, the first school I taught in has been converted into a civil rights museum, with my old classroom becoming an exhibit on the Free School Movement that educated many of the black children while there was no school for them (a former student designed the museum and chose that topic deliberately for my classroom).
Oh, you may be wondering, did the children get in trouble? The only consequence was the assistant principal sticking his head in the door to say, “Stop giving them Utopia.” Of course, as soon as he closed the door, the children all clamored, “What’s Utopia?” and we had an impromptu lesson. The music teacher never spoke to me again.
I’m appreciating the way you reveal this with both clarity and compassion, storytelling wit and grounded wisdom.
It breaks my heart to see so many folks -- particularly men I meet and mentor -- seeking and striving to affirm themselves. And to consider that I had the good fortune and saving grace to stumble upon mentors who instilled confidence in me, confirming my particular truth, touching my unhealed wounds and helping me understand the yearnings driving me...
I’m grateful to be able to pass it on and the need is great!
Wow! This is precisely the food for soul I'm needing just now! Thanks brother. I'll read the whole series as time allows.
Meanwhile, may I republish this here?: https://rword.substack.com/
Not the whole thing. but feel free to weave pieces into something you write <3 bless you for taking the time to share your appreciation.
I very much look forward to hearing more from you on this topic. I lost my mum at 8 to cushings syndrome and was catapulted into a comparible journey to unearth good female role models. I have ultimately reached similar conclusions about the societal chasm that fails to provide these. With absolute certainty we need the village to help each of us find our vein of gold. It is for sure a poorer world without this. Thank you for raising the conversation Tad.