I feel loved when…

Dear Griffin School Community,

If we haven’t had the chance to get acquainted yet, my name’s Louise and I’m the Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Director here on campus. At the end of 2021, when I was reflecting on my experience of the year, joining Griffin and having the opportunity to take on and shape this new role was at the top of my list of highlights. Thank you for being so welcoming.

Understandably, as we enter a third year of navigating a global pandemic together, stress levels are high. Questions come my way from individual students, whole classrooms, staff and parents, all of us wondering: what do we do with so much anxiety? How can we manage it better? What can we focus on? As a social worker pursuing my clinical license, and as a human wondering where to channel all of my own feelings as well, I’m constantly immersed in conversations with other mental health professionals about what can be done. And most of the time we come back to reminding each other that while it’s natural to want to control what feels out of control, it’s much more beneficial to move away from “how can I fix this?” and towards “who do I want to be in the midst of what I cannot fix?” My answer, on a good day, is that I want to be loving. And while that sounds good to most of us, it’s hard to know how to be loving. I’m reminded that one of my favorite writers of all time, bell hooks — who passed away while I was reflecting on 2021 — reminds us that love is an action.

I’m writing to share with you that in our Social Emotional Learning/Managing Stress Workshop this year, we’ve been talking about what love looks like and feels like, and together with those students and others I’ve come to know this year, we’ve created a list using the prompt, “I feel loved when…” and the list is so wonderful I couldn’t help but share it with all of you in the images below, as its own loving action during a time when it can be confusing to know what to do. I hope you know I’m grateful to have met those of you I’ve had the chance to, looking forward to meeting those of you I’ll encounter down the road, and especially grateful to the young people who are courageously sharing with each other and with us what makes them feel loved. Let’s listen to them.

If you feel so moved, I encourage you to take some time for yourself, grab a pen and paper, put on your favorite song, and complete the sentence “I feel loved when…” as many times as you’d like to until the song is over. We’d love for you to share what comes up here (submit anonymously as many times as you’d like to!) so that we can learn more about what makes you feel loved, and then create something even more powerful together.

Warmly,
Louise