Episode 42:
Creating Presence and Collective Resilience
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Episode 42 Description
Dialogue and Design is the sister company behind the Yes! We Rise Podcast, and in this space, we have a beautiful opportunity to listen to incredible changemakers working to build a brighter future with their communities. We love sharing stories and strategies that help build a sense of belonging, collective resilience, and community transformation.
In this episode, Christine looks at the different types of resilience, focusing primarily on inner and community resilience and how they weave together in a powerful and supportive way. Hear about mindfulness and stories of resilience around communities we have the privilege of supporting, and discover how loss led to innovation, future economic development, and ecological preservation through the Clinch River Valley Initiative.
Welcome to Yes! We Rise.
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Key takeaways
Resilience and an inner calm
Resilience is the ability to bounce back, or hopefully forward, from a struggle or disturbance, and there are different kinds of resilience. It is also learning to thrive and utilizing difficult experiences as a means of growth and transformation. There are three different areas of social resilience that we’ll focus on in this episode, including strategies to expand each:
- Inner Resilience – growing individual or self-resilience
- Home Resilience – including your home and the people and environment you live with and in
- Community Resilience – a collective or a larger group such as your town, neighborhood, or organization
A core piece to developing inner resilience is focused on being in the present moment. When we drop into the present moment, we can let go of what we may be ruminating on from the past or worry and anxiety about the future.
This presence with yourself is mindfulness and it is known to increase focus, attention, self control, and compassion. A simple and powerful way to drop into this presence and develop your inner calm is through breath. Take a deep breath, ask yourself:
What is making me come alive at this moment?
What helps me tune into this present moment?
What brings me joy?
The power of listening to facilitate change
The fascinating thing about inner and community resilience, is that they often go hand-in-hand. They are about having a relationship — relationship to self, relationship to community, relationship to nature.
At our sister consultancy Dialogue and Design, we work with communities, either at a community or regional level, but at the core, we work with individual community members, and that’s where our heart is.
When folks are working as a community to create the change they want to see, they need to know they belong. To provide this, we emphasize the importance of listening deeply.
Community members are the best guides and advisors for their own lives and their communities. Local leaders know what they want to create. We focus on providing a safe space for folks to share their ideas, to connect with others, and to find tools and resources to make those ideas a reality.
Real life community resilience
Two primary geographic areas we work in are Central Appalachia and the Chesapeake Bay. One project is the Riparian Consortium, which supports forests and streamside ecosystems to promote clean water and provide animal and plant habitats along waterways.
Another is the Solar Workgroup of Southwest Virginia, which started in 2016 with three core initiators: Appalachian Voices, University of Virginia College at Wise, and People Incorporated. The Solar Workgroup believes in not choosing solar over coal, but utilizing both. It is exciting to see progress that is happening in these projects, including the first two school districts in the area have decided to go solar in 2022 in Southwest Virginia!
There are 10 community resilience strategies we have identified, and some of these include centering women’s voices and incorporating new leaders. Equity and justice need to be at the core, along with planning for the future while honoring the past. At a bigger scale, our foundational belief is that resilience is built on the local ideas of local leaders.
A project near and dear to our heart is around the Clinch River in Southwest Virginia, which has some of the highest levels of biodiversity on the globe. It is a region historically dependent on coal for power, light, and the tax base.
An incredible community made up of people, committees, volunteers and more formed The Clinch River Valley Initiative (CRVI) in 2010. Their initial vision was to “be a global destination based on its unique biodiversity, natural beauty, cultural attraction and outdoor opportunities” by the year of 2020.
This is another project where tremendous resilience has been demonstrated in creating a vibrant region through collective planning and action. Today, the Clinch River State Park has been created, the Clinch River Youth Summit takes place, and there is now an Ecological Center on the Clinch River.
What makes the CRVI so successful? The beauty is that it is not owned by one entity, but by everyone.
Notable quotes from Christine
“The more we tune in to that sense of what brings us joy, and what helps us come alive, what brings us to the present moment, that’s what’s gonna sustain us in the long run. That’s going to be what gives us the energy and the motivation to continue our journeys.”
“When we pay attention to what’s taking place in the present moment, we’re just noticing, or letting our inner witness pay attention to what’s taking place around us, without assigning any value to it.”
“Our thoughts are real, but they’re not necessarily true; thoughts are not facts. They just are the mind’s way of trying to protect us from a story that we might have invented or something that’s taking place.”
“Community members are the best guides and advisors for their own lives and their communities. Local leaders know what they want to create, and our role as facilitators and designers is to listen deeply.”
“Our foundational belief is that resilience is built on the local ideas of local leaders.”
“It’s really powerful when a group of people come together and say ‘we want to create something.’”
“It warms my heart to see not only the change that’s been made, but the relationships that have been built through people. People genuinely care about each other and they’ve been able to withstand some real struggle together because of the relationships that formed.”
LINKS/RESOURCES MENTIONED
Learn more about Dialogue + Design Associates and The Clinch River Valley Initiative!
Check out Yes! We Rise, Episode 37 for a beautiful example of home scale resilience, and hear more about Christine’s work with Frank Dukes on the Clinch River Valley Initiative in Episode 20 of Yes! We Rise.
Go to the Yes! We Rise Website and sign up for the newsletter to get your free downloadable guide to the three skills of building resilience.
The Yes! We Rise podcast features solutions-seekers, change-makers, and those creating a resilient future. We share stories and strategies to inspire action to build resilience and community transformation. To create change, people need to feel like they belong and that they are part of a growing movement. They need to know their voice matters and that they have the inspiration, agency and ability to transform their lives and their communities. They are the key to a resilient future.
From the Navajo Nation to the mountains of Appalachia, incredible work is being done by community members and leaders. Change is often sparked by inspiration: seeing what others have done, especially in similar situations and places. People see that when someone looks like them or lives in a place like theirs, and has created real, true and lasting change, change that will allow their granddaughters and grandsons to thrive — they begin to imagine what might be possible for them. No longer waiting for someone else to come and save them, they realize they are the ones they have been waiting for. But what creates that spark? What creates that inspiration? Learning through stories and examples, feeling a sense of agency and belonging, and getting fired up to kick ass creates that spark.
We Rise helps community leaders and members learn to forge a new path toward creating resilience and true transformation. One person at a time, one community at a time, one region at a time, the quilt of transformation can grow piece by piece until resilience becomes the norm instead of the exception. Together, we rise.
Links/resources mentioned
Learn more about Dialogue + Design Associates and The Clinch River Valley Initiative!
Check out Yes! We Rise, Episode 37 for a beautiful example of home scale resilience, and hear more about Christine’s work with Frank Dukes on the Clinch River Valley Initiative in Episode 20 of Yes! We Rise.
Go to the Yes! We Rise Website and sign up for the newsletter to get your free downloadable guide to the three skills of building resilience.
The Yes! We Rise is produced by Dialogue + Design Associates, Podcasting For Creatives, with music by Drishti Beats.
Follow Yes! We Rise on Facebook and Instagram.
Please rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast so we can continue spreading our message far and wide. Find our email list at the website: www.yeswerise.org. Thanks for listening.
The Yes! We Rise podcast features solutions-seekers, change-makers, and those creating a resilient future. We share stories and strategies to inspire action to build resilience and community transformation. To create change, people need to feel like they belong and that they are part of a growing movement. They need to know their voice matters and that they have the inspiration, agency and ability to transform their lives and their communities. They are the key to a resilient future.
From the Navajo Nation to the mountains of Appalachia, incredible work is being done by community members and leaders. Change is often sparked by inspiration: seeing what others have done, especially in similar situations and places. People see that when someone looks like them or lives in a place like theirs, and has created real, true and lasting change, change that will allow their granddaughters and grandsons to thrive — they begin to imagine what might be possible for them. No longer waiting for someone else to come and save them, they realize they are the ones they have been waiting for. But what creates that spark? What creates that inspiration? Learning through stories and examples, feeling a sense of agency and belonging, and getting fired up to kick ass creates that spark.
We Rise helps community leaders and members learn to forge a new path toward creating resilience and true transformation. One person at a time, one community at a time, one region at a time, the quilt of transformation can grow piece by piece until resilience becomes the norm instead of the exception. Together, we rise.
