Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Strength Finding
I really enjoyed Chapter 6 of Martin's book. Up until this point I was really struggling to get into her book. I was intrigued by her interest in finding commonalities in the strengths of African American elders as oppose to focusing on their suffering. I feel both subjects are equally important. Martin points out that we do not focus enough on strength and adaptability. I feel this to be relevant to our project on the homeless population. We often focus on their struggles and not enough on their strengths. This also made me think of our class discussion on phenomenology. I feel basing our research on commonalities will bring a new light to building on these strengths to make a better more supportive community for the homeless population.
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Jess--great observation. I serve meals on Thursday nights to people in the Parkside neighborhood through a program with my church and Wayside Food Program. Some of the people who come to the meals are homeless, and all are low-income and/or food insecure. It used to surprise me, before I got to know people, how many folks would come in and reply to my "How are you?" greeting with, "Great! I can't complain. Life is good!" or some variation thereof. They found hope in places I only saw despair, because I wasn't walking in their shoes. When I started listening, I began to understand that they saw themselves as so much more than "poor."
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