Today I joined an online community’s morning social. This community provides different activities for their members but one of their highlights is the accessibility to being in company of other respectful and supportive people.
The morning social included a set of agreements prior that had to be accepted, most of them around privacy and respect. Aside from this, the way the social developed was in the form of “shares”. Each individual, if up for it, would have an approximate amount of time (timed by the volunteer host on the day) to express anything in their mind – from deep thoughts, to a song, or simply a story or personal reflection. While opening up about whatever layer chosen to be spoken of was fascinating, the interaction of others was equally so.
During this space, in which a person has a certain amount of time to share their thoughts, people are allowed to raise their hands and move their fingers often in sign of agreement or support, their hand on their chest in sign of understanding, feeling or comforting, perhaps even a way of saying “I feel that, I see that, I hear that”. The respect within the community was to admire, I experienced what we should be experiencing on a day to day. The concept of consent and most importantly, that sharing doesn’t mean you’ve got permission to comment of an individual’s thoughts and go-throughs. What I mean by this is, aren’t we used to responding when someone shares their thoughts or an experience or their feelings? Don’t some people diminish the value or importance or over-exaggerate and perhaps even make the commentary worst than it is. Often times, it is the response that we get that affect us more than the problem itself, and the ability to share shouldn’t be confused with the ability to take on other’s opinions on our experience.
It was a great way to acquire new learnings not just to work on my active listening skills but to understand the way a contemporary supportive online community can work. A different structure model, a true safe space in which its format seems to have very happy and trustful members.
The study of the effects of online community groups within the cancer caregiving field has been poorly explored and while there are some published papers on the effects of online community groups for cancer patients, there is little information available on how such can effect their respective caregivers positively. This would therefore make my research efforts useful – as per say, if I were to choose an online video/audio community in which the format was similarly to the one explored earlier, I would be exploring an emerging field with fresh research that would benefit its stakeholders directly.
