Recently, our Birth Equity team hosted our Family Connects Community Alignment Boards (CABs): Region C (far South side), Region D (South side), and Region E (North side). These meetings serve as a space to provide updates about the program, receive updates from the CAB, and facilitate discussions around broader system improvements for Chicago families.
At the time of the meeting, many changes by the federal administration were harming vulnerable communities and public health systems. This caused immense stress for our CAB members, who were directly affected.
As a result, the Birth Equity team created intentional space to pause, reflect, learn, process, and be in community with each other. Instead of the usual standing agenda items of previous CAB meetings, the group worked through a powerful grounding activity to guide.
The team asked the group a simple question: How is everyone feeling today? The answers varied: grateful, curious, blessed, overwhelmed, and motivated. As they moved through the day, many CAB members shared that they were experiencing stress, harm, confusion, and fear of the unknown due to the current administration.
CAB members were then walked through an activity centered around the Social Change Ecosystem Map framework by Deepa Iyer of the Building Movement Project. The framework identifies roles that people and organizations often show up in (such as weaver, builder, and storyteller) when they are responding to crises, participating in social change movements, or organizing collectively to advance a campaign or a cause related to equity, justice, and solidarity.
As CAB members were asked to reflect on their values, roles, and how those both showed up in their work, individuals discovered that they were taking on too many roles or roles that did not align with their values.
Most notably, CAB members, who worked in different fields, shared similar experiences. Many of these experiences were stories of feeling like they “had to” take on multiple roles, fearing that no one else would if they didn’t, despite being at capacity themselves. Or the needs of their communities were too daunting to allow themselves to take a pause in their work.
A common theme emerged from the activity: burnout. However, with each member who shared their story, a sense of relief was felt within the room. The activity reminded the group that they were not alone in their struggle. By the end of the reflection, a different theme emerged: Solidarity.
The activity then concluded with discussions on how members can let go of the roles they are not aligned with and instead allow others in their system to support the labor of those roles. Ultimately, the goal of CAB members was to identify how to better sustain their work without burning out by co-creating an ecosystem that reflects a more evenly distributed mental and emotional load.
Despite each CAB member showing up to the space with vastly different ecosystems, it was apparent that our struggles and work are interconnected. “We are all trying to bring about systemic changes, and all roles are equally important when actualizing that change. Knowing that, we must approach healing our collective trauma interconnectedly by shifting the idea from self-care to community care,” said Hailey Steele, Birth Equity Manager. “We each have a reason for doing this work, and now, more than ever, it is crucial to not lose sight of our North Star. Being in community, which calls for us to collectively process, heal, and support one another, is required to survive the unknown as we build towards the future we envision.”