Day 4 - March 4th: Being a Facilitator/Mentor/Older Sister
These past few weeks have affirmed my work as a poetry facilitator for Pacific Tongues. Myself and my colleague Harrison Ines reflect upon our work in this organization every week. We reflect in order to better our efforts to make a difference within our community. We reflect to better ourselves as facilitators and mentors to youth poets. We reflect because action without reflection is just activism.
Lately, the youth I have been working with have broken open in the most empowering streams of consciousness. They have written the most liberating poetry in their own rights, in their own journey through spoken arts. To know that they trust me to be an active listener, trust me to hold space for them, trust me to hold them when the darkness is over whelming, trust me to guide the path to where this writing takes them. Lately, I have witnessed poets expose the most terrifying, honest, truths about themselves. Truths that they haven't felt safe sharing with anyone else. But somehow through this process of writing, they have found the courage that was always inside of them to share their words out loud, all shakes, all tears, all raw. I am honored to be the person they trust in those moments. I think back at my own experiences as a youth poet, and how my mentors Lyz and Melvin were that for me. I am putting on the shoes that they have left for me to semi fill. They are still big on me but I think I slowly learning how to walk in them. That these connections I am cultivating with these youth poets are more than just student and facilitator. It is a younger sibling and older sibling. It is family. I look after these young minds and hearts with all of my capacity. I may not be able to save them, hell I've never said I was going to. But I know that I can try my hardest to inspire them to create the change they want to see in themselves. So to any youth poets that are reading this right now, I say thank you. Thank you for letting be a small part of this journey with you.