Stick in the ground.

We recently spent time in staff training talking about the need to develop trust and safety in people by providing consistent responsive interventions. We talked about focusing on what the person needs rather than the behavior itself, to respond to the need. This need to feel safe or to connect might show itself in angry, in passive or in fearful behaviors. This call to a thoughtful consistent response is very difficult for the average person. We generally respond to behaviors rather than to another person’s needs.

Another challenge to responding to a person’s need is that we need to also be consistent with the expectations of the program and our own personal boundaries within a relationship. So there are natural “push backs” or conflicts alongside this call to consider need.

So, our staff team had some questions on how to do this. Our trainer responded with an image of a stick in the ground. Where we stay firm in expectations or the truth of the situation but respond with comfort and empathy.

Her images of a stick in the ground was about being firm in our stance even as we respond to the needs of another person.  This image reminded me of Willow trees. I have a personal history with Willow trees. When I was young, there was a grove of Willows close to our school, along a little irrigation canal. We would sometimes ride our bikes there and climb them or we would swing out over that canal hanging from the branches. Someone also once prayed with me and had a picture of me being like a Willow tree, and I liked that and have kept that prayer and their words over me for years. My oldest daughter and I have spent some sweet never to be forgotten times under Willows, one quiet time when we were waiting for her first baby to be born, my first grandbaby.

The Willow is messy though and I have been messy too. So this stick in the ground is an important image for me. I need this image of a stick in the ground because the focus is that it is in the ground. The upper parts of the Willow are images easy for me to hold, I am a responder, following the breezes in my life, and moving according to the needs around me. But the Willow has roots, deep down roots and those are very important. That person who prayed for me and talked about me being a Willow talked to me about the roots, he confirmed for me that my roots were good. That I was grounded. But I like the pretty part, the green, the sway and I am distracted by that. So I need to come back to the roots here. To the simple image of a stick in the ground. I need to remember truths and rightness with that clear picture of being grounded, a stick in the ground.

And so it’s once more back to boundaries and limits with grace and truth. Boundaries and limits with some give. And that’s the stick in the ground responding to a person’s need, staying strong but connecting to the world around oneself, a world that requires some flex with the solid ground in place.