Leadership Series for Navigating Struggle, Uncertainty and Crisis, Part 2: Nurturing Relationships with Rev. Pat Bessey

A shout out to Joany Grady, who goes above and beyond the call of duty. Joany comes in weekly and makes sure everything is in order for Sunday morning. Over the summer she would put little bouquets of cut flowers throughout the church. This week it was decorated for fall. What I learned from her is that her previous career was as a floral designer, so she is enjoying having a place to do something she loves, and we are the recipients of her creativity. Don’t you just love that! Oh, and did I tell you that for two years she decorated the Victorian Mansion parlor for Christmas.

This was the second week of the series on non-physical needs based on the work of Paul K. Chappell… it is A New Peace Paradigm: Our Human Needs and the Tangles of Trauma.

Paul sees trauma as a teacher. In his book Cosmic Ocean, he lists seven factors that increase trauma:

Cause – trauma increases when an injury is caused by a human being.
Intimacy – trauma increases when an injury is personal and intimate.
Age – children are more vulnerable to trauma than adults.
Helplessness – being unable to protect ourselves or those we love from an injury increases trauma.
Unpredictability and Period of Time – living in a dangerous and unpredictable environment for a long time increases trauma.
Rupturing of Trust – betrayal or an incident that damages our trust in human beings increases trauma
Lack of support network – lack of counterbalances increases trauma. (counterbalances are loving and trustworthy human beings in our life to counterbalance the trauma by those who hurt us). pg 45One essential step is learning how to meet our need for nurturing relationships in healthy ways, which is the second non-physical human need on our list.
Nurturing relationships consist of
• being listened to,
• respected, and
• treated with kindness and compassion.

The foundation of nurturing relationships is trust… a vital way to nurture each other and build trust is by giving people our attention. Trust, attention, and other aspects of nurturing relationships are so important. Trust may mean different things to different people —particularly across differences.

Researcher and educator Brené Brown emphasizes the importance of breaking down the concept of trust into specific qualities and behaviors so that it can be more easily understood.

Brown offers the acronym BRAVING to share qualities that contribute to building and sustaining trust in relationships with partners, friends, family members and co-workers: