Hope

Dear Community,

This has been a very tough time for many of us, especially for our African American members, listeners, and leaders that have been suffering for far too long. Like many of you, my mind has been in a state of turmoil over the last 10 days. I feel like I cant keep my footing. I keep slipping. I work hard to get to a good place and then before you know it Ive fallen again. I imagine many of you are deeply suffering right now. My heart goes out to you.

I think many of us will be slipping and falling for a while, but we will keep getting up. It may take us a little longer to stand back up after getting knocked down, but we will keep getting back up. I believe, with time, itll be easier for us - arms locked - to stand up, keep standing, walk, and then run. For now, though, I understand, that it takes a lot to simply get back up.

I owe a lot to our African American community. They have had my back many, many, times. Ive had African American supervisors who have looked out for me. Theyve helped me when I was clumsy. They worked patiently with me to help me better understand things. Ive also had the honor of mentoring African American clinicians in largely white settings. Ive seen these young professionals struggle due to systemic racism. They were kind enough to also let me into their world. They gave me the honor of walking alongside them. They helped me see what they see. And what they showed me was not all pretty. What they showed me was a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, a deep sense of community, and a lot of hope.

Yes, they helped me see hope.

15 years ago my twins were born 10 weeks premature. I was a very difficult space. I didnt think they were going to survive. I was in crisis mode. These young professionals had my back. They cooked meals for me, sent me encouraging emails, stopped by my office. They prayed for me and they prayed for my kids and my family. They helped me get through one of the tougher times in my life.

Im forever thankful for all of the lessons that they taught me. God knows I have much, much, more to learn. I still make mistakes regularly. I realize that I am in a privileged position. I see a bias here or something Ive missed there. I ask my African American brothers and sisters to point things out to me that Ive missed. I do not want to be a source of any increased suffering. I want to be a source of love, support, and hope.

I want 7 Cups to be a place of love, support, and hope for the African American community as well. We work hard to make 7 Cups a welcoming and inclusive place and know we have a lot of work to do. People still hide behind anonymity and say harmful, racist things. We make additions to our word filtering continuously where we add **** to any hateful speech, but some of them get around it. I am sorry if you have experienced any racism on 7 Cups. I very much wish we could eradicate it. We are working with some researchers and I hope that their efforts will increase our ability to predict racism and stop this language from being used in what should be a safe haven for us all.

I also understand that we need to recruit more African American therapists (12.5% of our US based therapists are African American). I am making it a priority and will update you all on progress in our next community update. If you have African American contacts that are therapists, then please refer them our way. We will do all that we can to support them and their work here on 7 Cups.

The African American community has taught me a lot about what it means to be there. What it means to show up and to keep showing up, especially when it is hard or challenging. Let me know ways in the comments that we can be there and show up for our community. These can be tech ideas (increase word filtering with these specific words), training ideas (increase training on these topics), or emotional support ideas. We will gather all of the ideas and ask people to vote and prioritize them. We will then get to work on implementing them.

The word that kept surfacing for me this week was hope. It seems like hope is important right now. Hope and the will to believe that we can work together, we can change, and we can make things better. Hope to point to a better world and hold one another accountable to make sure that we get there. Hope to have the difficult conversations and hope to know that we will be more empathic on the other side.

In the comments below, please highlight examples of hope that we can point to, learn from, and emulate. Point to people and leaders that are showing us the way. These can be articles, videos, or images. Id like to find the hope champions out there right now and amplify their efforts. At the end of the year, we can vote and select one hope champion and send them a plaque and nice card from our community to celebrate them and their leadership.

Im thinking of you all. We will focus here first with ideas we can implement to make a measurable impact. We will look to other examples of hope and generalize what we can to our community. In the meantime, please remember that empathy is what 7 Cups is founded on, and that now more than ever we need to band together in the spirit of compassion. I also want to remind you to take self-care whenever you need to, as I know its easy to forget in all of this.

I would also like to make a company and personal donation on behalf of our community. Post below or PM me with recommendations. We will send it to the one with the most upvotes or mentions.

Let me close with a few Martin Luther King Jr. quotes on hope.

The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood.

Everything that is done in this world is done by hope.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."

With hope,
Glen

*Ive had a few people review this post and mention to me that this post seems pretty US centric. I understand that feedback and it makes me realize that we need to have a way of highlighting events and issues that happen around the world so we can collectively better understand and help.