Conversations inviting our invisible assets

[Randy Weeks]

Hi, ASG friends!

This post is about Asset Based Community, specifically the gifts of the community members of The Phoenix Place, in Amelia, Ohio. It's also about an Asset Experiment, in which we hope to uncover, name and share the sometimes invisible gifts of people in recovery from mental illness.

Mag Casarez, Director of The Phoenix Place, asked if I'd help her let everyone know about this workshop event they're presenting on February 5th at Clermont College.


FLYER AND MORE INFORMATION: WORKSHOP FLYER FEB 5 2009.pdf


The Phoenix Place and its members are gifts to everyone who experiences them.

John McKnight's message of Asset Based Community comes to mind in a powerful way when considering the services provided by this small and vital community center and the undiscovered community assets embodied by every person who participates in those services.

People in recovery from all manner of mental illness and related challenges come to The Phoenix Place in Amelia, and bring with them the tenacity, heart, emotional intelligence and life experience rarely encountered in a typical day in our so-called normal society. Some of them have been coming to this community center, in its original and other incarnations, since the late 1970's.

I had the pleasure of being a guest there for a short visit last week, in which we had some ASG style conversations about talents, possibility and recognizing ourselves and each other as assets.

In one of the conversations, we formed pairs and asked each other, "What's the talent I have or work that I love, that most people wouldn't know about me?"

Among the answers shared when we came back the larger circle were stories of painting, drawing, teaching creative writing, helping wheelchair-bound students on and off buses at school, cooking and more.

All of this from people who, in large part, are not considered employable in most traditional job situations and who come to The Phoenix Place to have connection with others who share in the challenges of recovering from mental illness and working to be functional and engaged in the community.

They come to make friends, to be friends and to end their isolation, which is the greatest challenge for anyone living outside the world of the social norm.

The power of their welcome, the energy of their participation, their love of helping anyone with anything, was inspirational and encouraging to me.

Back to the idea of Asset Based Community....

The gift is next to the wound, I've heard, and I believe that the gifts these members of our communities can bring to our neighborhoods and organizations are born, in part, from the life experiences of struggle, depression, isolation, social indifference and the challenges of being labeled different, difficult or unpredictable.

Here's one way the gift shows up in the room:

They know how to pay attention better than anyone.

For a world in which time and attention have become as precious as money and material goods, in many ways more so, the assets they represent to the world, the gifts they can offer, include a fierce ability to monitor and notice what's happening around them. They include the gifts of empathy, insight and emotional sensitivity. Having learned to be vigilant in noticing their own behavior in a room and the responses of that room's inhabitants to their presence and appearance, they offer a gift of attention and energy that can almost make a person uncomfortable at first, then appreciative of the genuine smile and curiosity directed at whatever is going on.

Mag, her board and a few of us she's invited to learn about the work there, are birthing a vision of creating work and opportunities for the members of the "club house" there, as people with Assets instead of Deficiencies.

The work is to loosen the knot of perceptions that accompany the old world approach to illness, diagnosis, recovery, etc. The triangle of tradition, in which there is someone suffering, someone or something to blame and someone or something who can help save the sufferer is the knot to be undone.... It's like the victim, enemy and rescuer triangle. The person in need and the system that can help him or her... those models have served the world for a long time, but they leave those they serve with the permanent label of "need" in one form or another.

To see them as assets instead of problems to be solved, could be helpful in so many ways.

This is some serious diversity work

To explore the possibility that these members of any community are assets, and to invite their gifts in from the margins of our communities, without attempting to quantify, codify and rank the possible "gifts" into something the marketplace already values, is perhaps the highest form of embracing diversity.

Why else has our culture been pushing for diversity in organizations of every kind, unless it is, ultimately, to welcome the unknown, the unexpected gifts, the invisible value that the differing backgrounds and life experiences can bring with them to the spaces into which they've been invited?

I think The Phoenix Place is one of the kinds of places where the magic of this highest kind of diversity engagement might be able to bloom into assets unexpected, undiscovered and very much needed in the world.

They, like every non profit organization, have to grow, have to find funding and justify the funding they already have.

They, like all non profits, are seeing funding cut.

Some of the funding can disappear because programs that provide space for socialization and a chance to end lifelong isolation aren't so measurable as other diagnostic, treatment and recovery programs.

Creating space to explore and name the otherwise invisible assets these members bring to the community could open new opportunities for not only program funding, but also for service and gifts to the greater community in need of those assets.

The event on February 5th is one way The Phoenix Place is connecting with community to invite more members into their space.

I think they can also benefit from the engagement of others who have worked through their own challenges with mental illness, disorders, depression and such.

What's the gift of your own life experience that has not yet been given?

Many of us leading productive lives, in all kinds of professions, have worked through the challenges of OCD, ADHD, temporary or longer term depression or other diagnosis. As a person working with the wound/gift pairing of the obstacles and blessings of ADHD, I can see that I have some contribution to a conversation about life seen and lived through that lens.

And as usual, I start to write a paragraph or two and go on to spill every thought I've ever had about a subject, its possible sub-topics, family pets and great grandchildren...

I have no background in mental health services. I'm just a lay person who loves what he's learned so far about The Phoenix Place and its community members.

If The Phoenix Place feels inviting to you, please consider coming to the workshop at Clermont College February 5th. I think they'll be more conversations and inventions exploring their approaches to recovery and community - and certainly the vision of discovering the assets of their members and how they can benefit businesses and other community organizations.

To our communities and the gifts we are to each other.

- RW