There is a woman at Common Art who doesn’t like me. Well I’m actually not sure if she doesn’t like me or if I remind her of someone she dislikes, but either way, I’m now the target of her provocative remarks. This doesn’t necessarily offend me because I honestly don’t take it personally, but it does intimidate me. I am intimidated by the idea of offending someone so deeply that they show disdain for me. I have started to withdraw into myself while in her presence because I felt like I am insulting her by merely existing. When I began notice that I was withdrawing, I knew something had to change; I cannot properly serve a community if I am retreating internally. I do not want to disengage from the Common Art community, so I decided to nip this problem in the bud by going to my supervisors for advice.

Through some in-depth conversations with several of my supervisors, I learned that this was not an abnormal pattern of behavior for this particular community member. She provokes people, in part, because of her mental illness and also because she wants to push away others. By withdrawing from this community member, I was allowing her to alienate herself, which is just what she wanted but not what she needed. It can be presumptuous to determine what others do or don’t need, but when I say that withdrawing is “not what she needed”, I am simply saying that withdrawing is not the way I can best serve this woman. It is not what she most likely needs from me.

I believe that I need to respect the fact that she wants to alienate herself and that she may just not like me, but I also want to show her that I am there to support her despite her attempts to push me away from her. I have resolved to give her a wide, respectful berth but to still reach out to her every time I see her, even if it is to just say hello in passing. This isn’t about changing her view of me; it’s about imbuing her with the knowledge and feeling that she is worth care, despite her shortcomings or unpleasantness. I will not condone her provocative remarks towards me, but I will also not abandon her because of them. Maybe for me this is a lesson about learning to balance compassion for self and compassion for others. I invite you to look at your own lives where there seems to be an either/or contest between compassion for yourself and compassion for another, and practice exhibiting both.

–Briana Heller