Advocating for Defence families

Update from the DFA Convenor

his week at DFA there is a growing desperation for some of our hairdressers to open and relief that some children are back in school. Our experiences at the moment are varied.

This week we listened to this Brenè Brown podcast titled ‘Permission to Feel’.

In it she interviews Dr. Marc Brackett. There is so much in this podcast but here I’m just going to focus on one topic.   Brenè reads out this quote from his latest book Permission to Feel:

It is one of the great paradoxes of the human condition that we ask some variation of the question ‘How are you feeling?’ over and over that would lead one to assume that we attach some importance to it and yet we never expect or desire or provide an honest answer.

Marc follows this by saying, “The problem is that we don’t want to spend time dealing with people’s feelings so we want people to say, ‘Fine. Ok. Good’ and we can move on… People don’t have the time for it so why bother asking and I think that’s something that needs to change in our nation, in our world.”

One of the DFA team shared how she has showed up unannounced at a friend’s house recently because her “spidey senses” told her that when her friend told her she was fine, she really wasn’t. She went on to explain further that “something tingles within you with people that you know that something’s not right.”

So this got us thinking and talking about how we want to be people who have time to listen to an honest answer and how to do that well. It’s a topic we are going to explore further because it’s one of the ways we are all going to get through this.

So this week I ask you to think about whether you have anyone in your life that makes your senses tingle that something may not be right and whether you can check in with them.

Take care,
Maree
DFA National Convenor

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