(from Fall Fundraising 2019 Newsletter #2)
We’ll continue unpacking our tagline, this time focusing on the second sentence, “Be a witness.” That can mean so many things – what do we mean by it?
Being a witness means being aware of our own experience and responses as we witness a baby (of any age). Can watching and noticing our own experience help us not project our experience onto the baby?
The intention to “be a witness” means reserving judgment and evaluation, at least in the beginning. It’s a commitment to not start with a polarized lens – of good/bad, success/failure, right/wrong, or progress/delay.
What if instead, the starting place in being with a baby is an assumption of “good enough” – good enough that we don’t have to keep asking the question. Might this open up space for more interesting, open-ended questions and possibilities?
Put another way, “being a witness” recognizes the value of seeing and being seen without feedback in the form of approval or disapproval. This absence of feedback as to good or bad does NOT mean a lack of presence, caring or responsiveness. It’s just not feeding into a default gauge of good/bad. How would it be to be seen and loved without being praised?
For the many of us who were not raised with “good enough” as a starting place, it can be challenging to confront and work through our reliance on an external gaze and gauge, and to learn to navigate our life from a sense of our own curiosity, values, and questions. (All of this said, there’s also a time and place for outside feedback.)
Being a witness might mean re-framing our role as parents and caregivers. Instead of thinking we need to entertain or teach babies, can we observe and be available for interaction? Can we be an advocate and a secure home base rather than a cheerleader? (Related to this, we invite you to read our thoughts on saying “good job” to a baby.) When we give babies this space, they’ll come to us to share their accomplishments, as well as their frustrations, failures and doubts – the full range of their experience.
Will you support Babies Project so we can continue to question and articulate how we can be in the world together – and what this means about being with babies?
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