Emotional firefighting, CERES Fair Food

Emotional firefighting

30th August 2021

Emotional firefighting

Passing a cumulative two hundred days in lockdown we’re starting to get scratchy with each other at CERES.

We are, as my son’s kinder teacher would say, “not being our best selves”.

After the better part of seven months locked up the whole place is an emotional tinderbox.

With no downtime our relational fuel loads have built up like unmanaged undergrowth.

Time and again we’ve held off the ritual maintenance of celebrations, visits, milestones and memorials.

As two hundred days pass it seems like human spotfires are breaking out all around us.

Flare-ups happen in the most unexpected places.

We have no fire plan for this; everyone does their best with whatever comes to hand.

Shouting against the flames only seems to make them worse.

CERES’ emotional firefighters come to learn that kindness, patience, courage, vulnerability and regular time outside work best quelling the blazes.

They learn that even when it feels tiresome we need to refill our reservoirs with thankfulness and gratitude each day.

They find that putting old wrongs right with each other works like a back burn, taking fuel out of harm’s way.

They know if we do these things together we’ll be able to regrow what has been burnt once this is all over.

But if we don’t and we let the fire get too big and hot, we may not be able to recover what we had.

Over the next few weeks and months we’re asking you to write messages of kindness, patience, courage, vulnerability and regular time outside on your Fair Food cardboard boxes.

These messages and pictures remind us that we’re all going through this and that silly notes and hand-drawn rockmelons can occasionally be effective against emotional spot fires.

Have a kind week

Chris