Circles in centers
When we opened the doors at Healing Circles Langley in 2015, we were so moved by the number of people who walked in wanting to be of service. What little training we had to offer at the time was for how to host healing circles of eight to 10 people with volunteers as a host and guardian. We developed agreements between us for how to keep circles safe, warm, and meaningful for all.
Hosts were wary but willing. We weren’t asking them to be wise, just welcoming. They didn’t have to teach, but listen—and, after all, there would be two of them in every circle if a challenge arose. But we also wanted to offer circles of two, an invitation to people in our community to be listened to one-on-one when they most needed it. People could show up at our door for any reason—typically when they were holding curiosity, loneliness, illness, grief, overwhelm, or depression. But with such an open-ended invitation, volunteers were afraid that no amount of training could possibly prepare them. They worried that they would say the wrong thing, wouldn’t be enough, or wouldn’t know what to do if someone violent or suicidal walked in the door.
One Saturday afternoon, I experienced that fear myself when I answered a call from a woman who was despondent over a recent cancer diagnosis. As a cancer survivor, I had been speaking with cancer patients for nine years, but there was something in the way she spoke about her despair that deeply concerned me. I was afraid she would commit suicide before her doctor’s appointment on Monday, and that I wouldn’t be able to stop her.
A week later, I met my hero, Rachel Naomi Remen, and her first question to me was not “How are you? ”but “What’s the most difficult thing you’ve faced since you started Healing Circles?” I told her about the call and how fearful and inadequate I felt before finally being able to calm the caller down and ask what she needed.
“Diana, in that moment, she didn’t call her doctor, or her son, or her friend down the hall,” Rachel said. “She called you. In that moment, you were only asked to be you, to be the best version of who you are.”
During the afternoon panel, after asking my permission to share the story, she elaborated, “Diana, you are a karmic yogi. You want to be of service.”
Turning to the audience, she continued, “I’ve thought about this for a long time. How would you prevent a group of karmic yogis from moving forward on their deepest impulse? How would you stop them? You probably couldn’t tempt them with wealth or fame, but there’s something that would stop every single one of them, and that’s the fear of doing harm to someone else.”
Returning to me and my story, she said, “When you said to yourself ‘I don’t want to harm this person’ what you feared silenced you somewhat and got between you and why you were born. You have a karmic connection with this person. You are exactly, in the most mysterious way that you can never know, the perfect one to help. You don’t feel like the perfect person, you think you don’t know enough to be the perfect person, you can think of eight people you could refer this person to who would be better than you, but somehow or other, the universe has put her on your doorstep. So the question is: Do you trust the universe or not?”
The story had a happy ending. I did know how to calm the caller down and provide what she was asking for.
She did not commit suicide. Months later, she came in person to let me know she had made it through her treatment. She returned years later to talk about a recurrence and again after her treatment succeeded a second time to let me know she was OK.
Today, Healing Circles Langley has more than 20 volunteers willing to give time each week to listen to their neighbors. Over the ten years of offering circles of two, there have been only a handful of times when hosts felt like they might not be up to the task. Yet each time, the right person with the right training and the right heart was there. The connection was made and the circle continued.
Please note
At Healing Circles, the foundation of our circles is built on the authenticity of those who host them—with each host bringing their unique voice, personal perspective, and lived experience to the space. Healing Circles hosts and guardians are independent circle organizers. Their statements, opinions, and impressions are their own and do not represent the views of Healing Circles Global or Commonweal.
