Three Great Things and One Hard Thing
Have you ever heard how our brains tend to stick like Velcro onto negative thoughts and experiences, and positive ones slip from our grasp like butter off a hot Teflon pan? The metaphor comes from a neuroscientist named Dr. Rick Hanson.
That idea has been stuck in my head ever since I heard it in a podcast months ago, partially because my behaviour confirms it daily. Maybe you relate?
This week was an excellent example—three BIG, exciting, long-awaited things happened at Open Homes, but my brain is stuck on a really challenging experience with a guest last week.
We had to turn away a refugee claimant due to his behaviour. It sucked. He had spent 2 weeks in quarantine and was just about ready to go to his host home. His hosts had prepared his room, talked with their kids, learned a bit about his culture and language. It would have been a great host home, and still probably will be for another guest someday. The kids were even learning some simple Arabic phrases!
But one red flag had become two….and then three…and in the end he eliminated all his options with us due to his poor behaviour and angry outbursts. It was a profoundly disappointing and exhausting week.
(Mood. /Reminder to myself to keep the expectations a touch more reasonable.)
We’re debriefing the experience and learning from it, and we did get to work with a really fabulous interpreter and cultural guide through the whole experience. We also got connected to a great mental health shelter in town, although he didn’t end up consenting to stay there.
Refugee claimants are people. And people are complicated. Sometimes people make choices that are not in their best interests, especially when they’re dealing with mental health issues and trauma, but they have the right to make those choices for themselves. And their choices have consequences.
That’s certainly a lesson I learned while working at 541: respecting people’s dignity and not patronizing them sometimes means calling them to better behaviour. And sometimes, after many chances and conversations, a line needs to be drawn. It’s a heartbreaker every time that we’ve had to ban someone from the café for a season or revoke their bathroom privileges because they were endangering themselves or others. You can’t force people to make good choices. All you can do is give them the information and support to make their own choices, and offer plenty of grace along the way.
Thankfully, this man has basic English, understands the bus system, and can certainly advocate for himself, so he’s going to be okay. But it was hard, and I wish things hadn’t ended the way they did.
(Got to deliver a mask made by an Open Homes community member to a new guest, along with a welcome card from some kids.)
That leads me to the first BIG, GOOD announcement:
Good thing #1
After 2 years of building support and the guts to make the jump, the time is here: I’ve officially left my job at 541 Eatery and Exchange and gone full time with Open Homes/IAFR Canada! I’ll miss my coworkers at 541. Their resolve, boundaries, sense of humour, creativity and compassion during a pandemic that has hit members of our community very hard, and willingness to fight for our friends have been amazing to watch and participate in. But I am excited to get to give my full attention to Open Homes and to have the time to give it all I’ve got.
More hosts! More guests! More intentional and robust training for new volunteers! More church partners! And above all, leaning more deeply into this vision of creating communities of belonging with refugee claimants.
I will need to keep building support, so if you’re reading this and you’re not a donor yet, but you’re interested, please reach out! Or maybe you have a friend who you think might want to invest in this work. I couldn’t do this without all of you standing behind me.
(It’s so key to connect guests to other community supports, and the Refuge medical centre is an amazing support for newcomers in Hamilton. It was great to learn from Terri, though it made me angry to hear of the unsafe situations many newcomers are working in during COVID. Look into Amazon’s compliance with COVID regulations and respect for worker dignity…it’s not good.)
Good thing #2
We just found out that we were awarded a $15k Pandemic Response Fund grant from the Hamilton Community Foundation!! This money will…
Allow us to pay for new guests’ quarantines so that we can safely receive new people
Fund interpretation and translation so we can make our gatherings (even online ones) as accessible as possible
This is huge for us!
GREAT thing #3
And the best news of all…our friends who have been separated from the rest of their family for more than 2.5 years FINALLY heard that their Permanent Residency has been processed! It’s just a matter of time now before they get to have a big, joyous reunion here in Hamilton. Our friend has supported his daughter, who needs 24/7 support, by himself for 2.5 years now, while sending money back to support his family in Yemen and learning English. Suffice it to say that Yemen is not a good place to be right now.
We are going to have such a party when the rest of the family gets here!!