On the second Saturday of every month, a group of volunteers in Victoria head out in public to offer what co-founder Bernice Rahm calls “gimmick free listening.”
Rahm spoke with People First Radio about the project, called Sidewalk Talk.
“We’ve had people tell us about how their partner is in the hospital and they’re not gonna come out. And what does that mean for this plan that they had for their life, and what’s next?” She said.
“We’ve had people talk about difficulty in finding community, difficulty in finding like friends and people to talk to.”
Rahm says people are experiencing a need to feel heard that goes beyond groups conventionally associated with higher rates of loneliness like elderly or single people.
“There’s something that’s happened in our society and culture with the way that we’ve been programmed that we don’t quite understand how to be with people to just see and hear them,” she said.
“We’ve had this programming of…I want to help you, I want to like fix you…oh, this is your problem. Let me tell you what to do. And that actually prevents someone from feeling the relief of just being like, acknowledged and validated and seen.”
Rahm says the listeners check in with each other beforehand to make sure they have enough capacity to be there, and there is a lot of communication to help people who might be affected by a story shared when out volunteering.
She says listening is a practice.
“ It’s not a take a class one and done and you’re an expert.”
Rahm says she’s been living and playing with different versions of relational practices for several years.
“ One of the things that I’ve come to discover is we have a bit of a wonky understanding of the word community,” she said.
“It has become kind of synonymous a little bit with like, go somewhere, pay for a thing and then leave.”
She says her idea of community really solidified when she heard that there had to be an exchange of people doing things for each other.
“The way I’m practicing it in my life right now, I absolutely love it when someone says, ‘hey, I’m painting my living room. Do you wanna come help?’ I’m like, yes, I absolutely do wanna help. And then it’s like, ‘hey, I’m moving this heavy thing. Do you wanna come help?’ Absolutely I wanna come help. And so in like the, in the micro aspects of our life, it’s actually being with each other in tangible, practical ways to help us actually live our lives.”
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