Why do we facilitate?
Flo & Thomas Vinton each share a personal story about becoming and remaining real-world facilitators over the span of a lifetime as Muse Circle evolves & expands its international online community.
Why do I facilitate?
by Flo Vinton
Life is hard enough without trying to go it alone, and I find that we can ease into it when we are there for one another.
That being said, giving support is no easy task. It takes a lot of inner work to give from a place that is neither judgmental nor transactional, but unconditional. Giving – like really giving – is an act of generosity with no anticipation of a return. Ultimately it fulfills the needs of both the giver and receiver.
How do we know when support is the receiver’s legitimate need and not just one’s claim of superiority over them? Sometimes giving is a given! (I give my breast to nourish my baby.) I have learned through a lifetime of experiences, 52 years worth to be exact, that I'm a natural giver, and with age comes experiential feedback from a multitude of receivers.
One particular example that I received from my adult children is that giving them autonomy as they were growing up did not always feel like a present, but more like a lack of presence from their mom. My defense mechanism of the Mother-Giver reacted dismissively, saying that no matter what I might have done, they would have wanted the opposite. I could have come up with all kinds of reasons to take what they said personally, rationalizing for example that complaining about my parenting was part of the human development process of detaching from one’s parents. But since I had been working hard on not taking things personally, I was able in time to take their comment with love and go inward to ask myself what valuable lessons I could learn in order to balance giving with what others wished to receive. Why was I giving my children so much space? Was I struggling to fit into their worlds, having been a “cool mom” when they were little but no longer the center of their attention as they entered adolescence? In other words, was I operating from my ego or from my deeper self? With the perspective afforded by time and personal work, I can now see that giving them space was crucial for their personal development and detachment. However, I noticed that my defensiveness came from my ego, which was so uncomfortable with the idea of letting them be separate entities. In retrospect, I could have asked them what they really wanted/needed from me over time, and I could have modulated my giving depending on my ever evolving capacity.
That brings me to a more recent experience I had when my life partner and I lived for a while with a family member to implement a system of in-home care. Their cognitive decline could no longer be disguised or denied. They "needed" help with basic activities of daily life as well as a renewed sense of love from their family after an intense three years of isolation during the pandemic. Meanwhile, our daughter was going through a challenging and transformative process of understanding herself and the way her brain and body work, while trying to receive care from mental and physical health practitioners. She found insight and gained tools about caregiving that she shared with us, including the importance of consent. She sensitized us to the idea that regardless of the state of the recipient of the care it is essential to make sure that they feel that receiving care is their choice. This approach is a very humane way of seeing things that makes a lot of sense but is not always respected.
As we devoted ourselves to the care of our dear elder, this advice was crucial for us to learn how to facilitate their understanding and acceptance of their limitations. We had to tell them they could no longer drive their car that sits in their garage, that someone had to prepare each meal and they couldn’t just eat ice cream all day and all night, and that a family member was going to live with them from then on. We empathized very much with their loss of independence as we left our autonomous artistic life in Hong Kong to come live and care for a conservative individualist who didn't think they needed anyone in their home. Consent became a principal agent for change so they could receive the care they definitely needed without feeling it was being imposed on them. We modulated care in a way that gave them as much control as they wanted along the way. They became grateful for the care we provided to them directly and for the long-term systems we put in place. We were all faced with a new situation that required dignity, fairness, and acceptance and created an environment in which responsible care became possible.
In short, I facilitate in order to create a space in which people can feel loved and cared for. They receive with consent, so they are empowered to do their part in allowing their higher selves to shine through the limiting patterns and programming developed over a lifetime from family, schools, institutions and society at large. They overcome their trauma and hard living at their own pace without my needing to retraumatize them or give them a hard time. In that space, people have the opportunity to be present to self and one another. They can express themselves in the way they dream of in the deepest parts of their being. I also facilitate in order to keep learning how to give and receive from a selfless place, dropping my self importance whenever I can, to serve myself, my family, my friends, and our communities fully.
Why do I facilitate?
by Thomas Vinton
I realized one day that we find the sweet spot in life when our heart’s desire meets the needs of our community. I believe it was while reading Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak that I came to understand that fusing what I want and what you need might not only be mutually compatible but essential for both of us. Often, the nagging voice loops that have cluttered my mind for as long as I can remember might respond with something like: “How pretentious to think anyone would need what I have to offer at all!”
Twenty years after shifting careers from media production to group facilitation, I still sometimes ask myself why I facilitate. Let’s start with why I’m not doing what I was before. Throughout the 1990s I wanted to produce music, film, digital media, and eventually online content. I had to have my hands on the latest tools that would let me get stuff done on time so it could get out to the world and please my collaborators, clients, and hopefully an ever-expanding audience of fans. I always had a work-for-hire day job in a studio with high-end clients paying a premium for services that today most kids are expected to master before turning in their homework. My ulterior motive during that decade was to have a place where I could do my own projects after hours using state of the art equipment.
My strategy paid off in that I made decent money, got work on highly visible commercial campaigns for bigtime players and was able to boast about being on the cutting edge of new technology. The downside is that I started loving machines more than people, avoided handling personal and social needs, and developed all kinds of pain everywhere along the body-mind continuum. In the end, with work and family constraints, I never really took the time to develop my own art. By Y2K - that’s what my generation called the Year 2000 up until the Year 2000 - the tech market was crashing and I was officially and undeniably burnt out.
As the economy rebooted, I chose not to zap my P-RAM anymore. (That’s what we used to do to our computers when they’d keep freezing up.) I mean rather than using a shortcut to get back into someone’s posh digital workspace, I chose to make an edgy DIY CD at home for kids and start performing live in schools, libraries, coffeeshops, places of worship, and festivals. Having two young children at the time prompted me to combine my artistry with a family-friendly lifestyle. What I discovered along the way is that just performing for kids might not be enough to hold their attention - or mine. What I found lacking was a heart to heart connection, and to get it, I ended up teaming with my beloved to offer after school programs.
Approaching music and movement as a form of pure self expression without the need to perform or measure success became primary. I began to savor that special flow that arises when time stops, thoughts subside, and I am being simply who I am with you being simply who you are. To practice this approach daily for 20 years, embracing in time all the awkwardness that surrounds these crystalline moments, means doing the work it takes to find stillness within and intimacy with others.
Working responsibly with children over a long period develops a particular quality of presence, especially if one has personal sensory needs that include a critical need for a working level of harmony. Facilitating spirit-freeing music and movement activities requires hearing, seeing, and feeling a variety of potentially challenging sound clusters, colliding bodies, and a hell of a lot of drama. To be good at my craft required that I submit to creative processes that made me childlike myself in groups of adults and multigenerational gatherings expressing all manner of unprocessed trauma. Large group awareness training sessions, conscious dance workshops, drama jams, mindfulness training, and other modalities, most of which I attended in the company of my beloved, provided the catalyst for inner growth and interpersonal exploration my heart desired and what I could plainly see the world community needed.
Now, just as I felt cornered in my first career as a media producer, I recently found myself yearning to break out of the after school arts provider box. I have no regrets for having devoted myself to either of these phases, but I know that after 10 years learning how to produce and another 20 years learning how to bring a zen like quality to the expressive lives of children, it’s time for me to integrate all I have experienced and make things easier for people on a wider scale.
And here’s how that might look:
To make it easier (the very definition of “facilitate”) for you facilitators, coaches, teachers, social workers, organizers, and others to accept, embrace, and then let go of inhibitions or any other filters that keep you from just being you and finding intimacy with others
To lead by example as I produce - along with my beloved and beloveds - new, compelling, and relevant art that stirs my soul with the intent of stirring yours
To gather ancient and so far unthought of technology to bridge the perceived gap between natural wisdom and artificial intelligence
To ovulate and inseminate with reckless abandon inside our universal womb the wildest expressions of what it means to be alive
Let’s see what happens as this adventure continues!
We invite you to read about our plans at musecircle.substack.com and to subscribe to our newsletter.
Ahhh. My heart opens when reading this. I love the format of hearing reflections and stories from each of you. Thank you.