Safety is hard to define until you're sitting in it

​At the end of our training yesterday, the group took time to reflect on our shared experience.

A woman spoke up. She said, I am often known as the woman with the RBF (resting bitch face). To be honest, I did not find that one bit confusing.

In the three days of training, I'm sure I never saw her smile. I'm even more sure I was never tempted to believe she liked being there.

Or that she at all liked me.

She went on to tell us, though, that she's a college professor. She teaches future teachers how to establish a safe classroom. She says she teaches about safe spaces and relationships in many areas of her life.

I want you all to know, she added, that even though I didn't become as open and vulnerable as many of you did, I felt the safety in the room that came from you all embracing it.

She said it may have been the first time in her life she'd felt the safety that she teaches.

I was moved by that a great deal. It's always my mission as the leader in these trainings to establish a safe place. Her words may have been the greatest affirmation I've received in that regard.

But I also related to her.

Powerfully.

Doing this work the past eight years opened my eyes to what safe spaces are. The more I defined safe spaces for the people I taught, the more I came to know how unsafe I felt in the spaces I inhabited.

The more I taught safety to others the less safe I felt myself.

And when I talk safety in this context, I'm really talking about freedom; I'm talking about feeling the freedom to be who I truly am.

I'm talking about sensing that you are a safe place to share the stories and the feelings and the thoughts that have become a painful burden after weeks and months and years and decades of secrecy.

Safety is alluring. It's contagious. It's tempting.

It tempts you to share who you really are more than it tempts you to become someone you think people want to believe you truly are.

I am reminded this week that there are a lot of books out there that define relationships and safe relational spaces, but until you're actually sitting in one of those spaces, you'll never truly know the definition.

I am thankful for all the people who show up in safety - RBF and all 😊 - because the reality is, that's often the most courageous gift we can offer one another.

Safety.