October 2023 Community Update!
Dear Community,
Happy Fall! The temperature has finally started to cool down here. Feels great to have a cup of coffee and wear a sweater in the morning.
I wanted to take a minute and thank you all for the deeper collaboration and mutual respect and support I’ve seen happening across the site. These have always been strength areas for us, but you can sense them becoming stronger. It is lovely to see. Our community is becoming more aligned and more effective across the board. And, what’s great is that it is done with joy! People *seeing* each other, celebrating one another, and lifting each other up. I’m so proud of us, the work we do, and the way we do it together.
Thank you all for modeling what it means to build real community!
H
Happy October (my favorite month!) and happy last quarter of the year! Do any of you have plans over the next few months? Please share in the replies and tag me - I’d love to hear.
I’ve been thinking about how we can continue to strengthen our leadership core and have been collecting feedback from leaders from all spans of time and experience in roles. From your signals, I have been creating posts to address opportunities to help your peers (and vice versa). These posts have discussion questions so please hop in and contribute your thoughts or ask questions yourself. This is an open learning environment!
Exploring Methods of Leadership Collaboration
Leadership and Recognition Incentives
Speaking of fostering leadership, I’d like to shout out to SparklingSeaShells who was featured in this month’s Spotlight. Please swing by the post after reading this update and give her some love.
Laiba
In Academy News, we have a new ambassador in town! @Clarisse29 joined as an ambassador for the Content Development and Marketing program. Additionally, we removed the academy sessions elective as it was not popular and took a lot of time to maintain. We believe the efforts of academy leaders are better dedicated to other initiatives that support trainees. In exciting news, the academy team in collaboration with @Soulfullyabutterfly has been working on creating a new academy course based on personal/collective development that is in alignment with the requests we have received for new academy courses. So look forward to a launch soon.
In the teen sessions news, 6 teen sessions (mindful mondays and fantastic Fridays) are being maintained weekly thanks to our dedicated hosts. It has been incredible seeing teens work hard to get closer to their goals, to celebrate each milestone they reach, a milestone thread was created.
Lastly, I have launched a forum post/discussion series on cognitive distortions. You can expect to see posts on different cognitive distortions. The goal is to identify these faults in our thinking, learn about how to tackle them and hopefully improve the quality of our thoughts over time. Sign up to be tagged here.
Obs
In Group Chats news, we have a new Group Support Ambassador! @Suryansh to oversight Teen Leadership & Development and continue to oversee Chat Support project. Both Group Support & Chatroom track leaders working hard on scaling up and bringing more discussions to the community to foster learning and more support for all. In the Exploration Garden front, we made some changes to help all explorers and participants to connect and explore effectively.
In the Listener Community front, we rolled out a Listener Support Request form to meet some specific needs and demands of our listeners. It was an effort to simplify the request process with minimum efforts. As well as updated the training forms for Chatroom Mentor and Chat Support to equip them with better understanding and knowledge of the role.
Other than that, we are working on a bunch of projects and we will keep you all updated on them. One of them is we are finding a way to appreciate and recognize our ATL efforts to support the teen community. If you have any ideas or suggestions on it, please send me a message to share.
SoulfullyAButterfly
This month, we have several feature updates now live. These include a change to the forum UI, a new way to showcase Community Alerts on the dashboard and forum pages currently on the sides instead of the notification bell, and a profile page update which showcases forum posts. The Training Page for listeners was also updated, making it easier for listeners to gain information about their progress, training as well as growth and leadership opportunities all in one place.
The 7 Cups Community Playlist is now also live! Thank you to everyone who has helped suggest songs that celebrate our diverse community. Big shoutout to @Mahad2804 has helped us curate the playlist.
Lastly, the research opportunity with the researchers at the International Psychoanalytic University (IPU) is still live. They are conducting a research study to understand the effect of a Systemic Therapy inspired Growth Path or Listener Training on mental well-being. Systemic therapy focuses on relationships between people and the patterns of interaction within the systems that impact the well-being of the individuals within the system. If you are interested in trying this therapeutic opportunity, you can find more information and sign up here.
Evelyne
We are continuing to make strides in our projects. SPOT will be restructured and we will branch out into another initiative. We are also creating new quality checks for listening, which will be implemented soon. The Anonymous Evaluations Team is also adding a new mentor leader, @AcatalepticShadow! Shadow will be helping with the team operations and assisting with recruitment.
CheeryMango
With the recent launch of our new community, Religion & Spirituality, we have created additional community specific forum and moderation guidelines. Please note that with every comtmunity that we launch, we go through a learning phase and will make adjustments as needed to help better equip the community and its members with the proper support that it needs. If you have any suggestions or feedback on what kind of content that you would like to in the community, please feel free to reach out to me in 1-1.
After careful consideration, we have decided to discontinue the Support Plus community, which was initially launched in 2021 to provide additional support on topics not covered in existing communities. Over time, our community has grown and evolved, and we have expanded our coverage to include a broader range of topics and support areas within our existing communities. The full announcement can be found here.
A friendly reminder for all forum supporters, community mentors and community mentor leaders are asked to fill out the Subcommunity Leadership Check-In Form for the month of September so we can keep updated on what’s going on in your team and roles and see how we can offer our assistance.
Lastly, if you notice or experience any difficulties while using the forums, please help us to track and report any bugs in this thread. A gentle reminder when reporting bugs or issues, please give as much detail like time and location as to where it was experienced and include screenshots or any error codes so we can properly investigate it. Thank you for your continued support and here’s to what the new month brings.
@GlenM
Aww I love what you said about the increase in mutual respect, admiration and appreciation in the community~ it most definitely is the strongest suit of our beloved community, where we try treating each other with kindness, respect and gratitude. I hope our community continues to thrive on compassion and gratitude. 🤎
So many exciting things to look forward to, particularly eager to hear more about the new academy program, so far we have some really enriching programs that sure do add a lot of value to one's cups' journey/ experience as well. 🧡
Thank youu for the updates, team, everyone's working hard and together continually, always a gratifying *sight* this one is. 🤎
I hope the rest of this year treats everyone well, with more kindness, patience and lots of gentleness. Hold on tight, lovely people! 🧡
@GlenM
thank you for the update! so glad to be a part of the ambassador team!
@GlenM
Hi everyone! 😊 ❤️ Thank you for the updates as well as, all of the hard work.
*high fives* 😊 and *hugs* ❤️
@GlenM
Thank you for posting the Community Updates, Glen! 💜
ohh really nice
@GlenM. Thank you very much for your support and love for humanity. However, i am yet to be added to a team as a listener
Do you mean serving as a leader? Or serving as a listener in another capacity? @heather225 can help!
@GlenM
thanks for the tag! I've PMed you @Debbiluv
@Heather225
*high fives* 😊 nice catch! ❤️
@GlenM
*high fives* 😊 nice catch! ❤️
@GlenM @Heather225
Thanks for the update. H glad October is ur favourite month, coz today is my bday:p. Hope i am your favourite person😛 jk.
@BlueRivercares
oh an October baby!!!! i hope the special day treats you very well!
@Heather225 thank you H :)
@BlueRivercares
Happy Birthday! 🥳 big *hugs* ❤️ for the Blue!!!!!!!!
@SparkyGizmo thank you sparky *hugs back*
@GlenM
Thank you very much for the updates!
From my side, I wish to congratulate and underscore the community-centered vision and ongoing initiatives by @Heather225 and @Fristo to empower volunteers and strengthen their mutual bonds and synergy, with the aim of providing the best possible free support to those who come here in search of help with their emotional or mental health issues.
I also want to single out a couple of developments in the Community, that I deem important, which I notice from the places I serve in Cups: the success of the Communities' restructuring, and 7 Cups as a space of Flourishing.
I perceive how the restructuring of the Communities is becoming more and more successful. How the new Communities are getting stronger. Maybe it took more time than expected (it's said that projects take two or three more time than initially planned) but I think we have arrived (or almost). A big shoutout to @tommy who has been making a tremendous effort, with so much intelligence, creativity and skill in dealing with leaders, that has accomplished a quantum leap in strengthening the new Communities.
In this line, I wish to focus also on the "Hobby Zone" area, which from the vision, leadership and hard work of @MistyMagic became such an important place in 7 Cups. I can attest that from the beginning of Misty's renewal, it became a greatly therapeutic side of Cups, as I have met Members there that I knew from other communities struggling with serious challenges, and here they were developing their "flourishing" side, motivated to create and share, and see themselves not as mental health patients, but as creative, empowered individuals.
The separation from the Hobby Zone of various parts, in the context of the Communities' restructuring, was controversial for some. Why dismantle a medium-sized community in parts while keeping huge communities like Depression Support, etc. intact? (in fact the size of HZ is genuine as it grew a lot recently, and its parts grew from zero, while DS, AS, etc. soccer-stadium numbers are old so now greatly inflated).
But, coming back to the success of the Communities restructuring, this proved to be a fruitful move, that is expanding the space created by Misty's vision to a new order of magnitude and impact as a place of "flourishing".
I know better the Poetry Community (as an avid reader), which has now a great poet CML @SoulfullyAButterfly and a terrific poet Forum Supporter @ComradeRuhi where our poets easily see and interact with each other, and has become a buzzing place exploding with self-expression and creativity.
7 Cups has proven such a good place to share creations and get motivation to create even more! Where people feel safe sharing creations they might not show to anybody else. A place of growing and Flourishing even way beyond the basic mission of 7 Cups, like a safe and cozy workshop, helped also by previous knowledge among their members, so they feel "we are family".
The same goes for showing crafts, paintings, gardening projects, and all kinds of creative projects in their respective Communities.
Already a wonderful success, I see great potential in this whole area, which seemed complementary, but proved of primary importance to strengthen the nature of 7 Cups as a place of human flourishing.
A great success of MistyMagic's vision and of the Communities' restructuring.
Some innovations and changes might take time to get to fruition, but if well conceived, might have amazing results in the end. And this is not the end of course, but just the beginning.
@HealingTalk thank you for this in-depth feedback - I feel it outlines our journey of restructuring our communities and ensuring therapeutic spaces very well.
And thank you for celebrating poetry with us! I've always loved celebrating the power of words and love connecting with others who value the magic of expression.
@SoulfullyAButterfly
Thank you, Soul, It is very reassuring that you see the same positive achievements and trends in our Community!
And congratulations on leading the so successful Poetry Community (among the zillions of great things you do here).
I think Poetry, in addition to its artistic value, which enriches our lives so much, is a great way of processing strong emotions, and so very therapeutic. I know people who benefited hugely (I am not exaggerating), from expressing their experiences and emotions in verses, in ways that made them bearable and even beautiful, so they could re-enter their minds as healing medicine. Poetry has the power, as the Buddhist saying goes, of "Turning poison into medicine."
I am a big fan of the Poetry Community you lead, and of all the work you do, always with your characteristic creativity, professionalism, boundless energy, and the highest quality standards.
You are a pillar and a powerhouse of this Community, particularly in moving forward with new and better things, and we all are very grateful to you for that.!
@HealingTalk your post has made me really emotional and I have tears in my eyes. Thank you for your thoughtful and inciteful words.
Your sentiments echo those I quite often receive about how Hobby Zone (and I love that you called it HZ too!) gives folk a place to release and share, and just get away and escape from their personal difficulties for a while and come together in a safe, compassionate non-pressure space. People tell me it is a place where they can relax and just put their feet up :)
But it is not just me, but a team we need to thank @EmotionsListener @Lou73 @SleepyShyCat @SomebodySpicy13 @TheToastGod
Listening - One Step At A Time!
@MistyMagic great work here Misty and way to highlight the great team working alongside you. I like the phrase, "they can come, relax, and put their feet up." This just relaxing with friends IS also very therapeutic. We've missed these sorts of things in the past. Thanks for helping us strengthen them!
@MistyMagic
Dear Misty:
Thank you for your moving words. You deserve all the recognition you might get. You created a big thing, maybe even beyond your expectations, that did so much good to so many.
And it’s expanding even more now, reaching more and more people who benefit from the wonderful experience of creating something and sharing it with others
I think in many cases it goes way beyond relaxing and forgetting your troubles, but also finding something meaningful when lost, getting recognition when feeling worthless, finding motivation when hopeless, creating something valuable when feeling useless, and helping to heal by processing emotions as I mentioned in a previous post.
I did post in the Healing Zone just for fun and relax, though. Many did.
But as told, I met there, and continue to meet in the HZ daughter Communities, Members getting all those invaluable healing benefits, people who I knew very well. I can’t give details nor names, but believe me, some came from terrible situations and HZ and their daughter Communities changed their lives. Literally.
While it is your brainchild and you gave its tone and created its stimulating modalities and spaces, many amazing people joined your team and contributed enormously to HZ success.
As two examples, I remember vividly the lovely “Amigurimi Fun” by @EmotionsListener (who has always been such a pillar of HZ) and the more recent amazing “Beatiful Butterflies” project by @Lou73 I congratulate also @SleepyShyCat @SomebodySpicy13 @TheToastGod for continue to support the Team. As well as the new leaders of Arts and Crafts, @Ralien and @WorkingitThrough2 and the amazing Forum Supporter of Reading and Writing, @LoveMyMoonflowers And past teammates who gave so much to the Community.
What an amazing team!
It has been such a great journey!
As I said in a previous post, I am certain that this whole area has a huge potential and it will grow exponentially as a place of healing and human flourishing for the years to come.
And you started it all, Misty!
Thank you so much for all your lovely words @HealingTalk and I am so glad you enjoyed 'Beautiful Butterflies' 🦋 as much as I did!
Hobby Zone is such a wonderful team and a huge round of applause to @MistyMagic for inspiring and driving it all, through all the changes, she is a truly wonderful leader.
@Lou73
'Beautiful Butterflies' is a masterpiece of what can be achieved with the Forum as a medium. It has so many levels of meaning! Really outstanding.
Misty is a true leader, with much vision and creativity, skilled in conducting projects, and capable of engaging and motivating people to fulfill great things.
Like you with the Sharing Circles...
In business management parlance, people like you both are called "intrapreneurs".
@HealingTalk thank you for highlighting all the work being done by Tommy, Misty, Fristo, H, ComaradeRuhi, and Soulfully. I appreciate you lifting all of them up!
Also, thank you for underlining the importance of these broader places where people can go and find shared interests and common ground. You are right that often times it takes a while for seeds to bear fruit. I like the saying that people and communities are like seeds that turn into plants - first they sleep, then creep, and then leap! Each one matures at its own rate and in its own unique way. 🙏
@GlenM
Thank you, Glen, for your kind words and continuous support! And for opening each month this space is where we are kept up-to-date, and get out of our holes to reflect on the community as a whole. (rhyme intended 😀).
Yes, I think those spaces are very important. Besides their "recreational" value, I have witnessed how beneficial they are to people's mental health, by "developing their healthy side", a great complement to confronting their problematic issues.
And how 7 Cups provides opportunities for personal development in those creative areas, in safe and encouraging ways that might not be available anywhere else.
A virtue of 7 Cups I didn't notice in the past, and as I realized it, I wished to share this with the Community.
@GlenM
Thank you for all you do to give us a place to reach out and get support as we are on this healing journey. It takes dedication and a determined mind to put in endless work hours to keep this site flowing. Also, to all that are a part of helping make 7cups an awesome place to be😊❤️
@GlenM Ok I read all the words, thanks for the update.
