I want to share an experience that my family had for the first time in June 2016, and which I think will become a fixture in our lives for the foreseeable future. I’m talking about an event called Family HEART Camp.
It is rather difficult to describe this experience briefly. It’s also hard to describe without sounding … well … maybe a bit crazy. People often exaggerate and use superlatives inappropriately. I am not exaggerating in what I will write here. It is not an exaggeration to describe our experience with HEART Camp as profoundly restorative - the most restorative week I can recall ever having. It was also deeply transformative, in ways I’ll try to explain here.
Background
Some years before we first learned of and participated in HEART Camp, we began studying and practicing Nonviolent Communication, also called Compassionate Communication, especially in our parenting. NVC is a large subject which cannot be easily encapsulated in a short article. All the same, I think I should give you a bit of the flavor of it, so that those of you unfamiliar with NVC will have some context in which to place the experiences I want to describe.
In practicing NVC, we are emphasizing human connection as a core value in our family. We strive to treat each other - parents, kids, and others - with love and respect at all times and in all circumstances. We seek to understand each others’ inner lives - what we’re all feeling, and what deeper causes are driving those feelings. We recognize that we all have the same fundamental needs, and that we’re all acting, all the time, to get our needs met. We work hard to establish a “power with” relationship - in which we work together to care for everyone - as opposed to a “power over” relationship in which some people issue instructions that the others must obey.
Especially if you’re not already experienced with NVC, you might have found that last sentence a bit … odd. It might strike you that we’re doing something unusual. I want to assure you that we are doing something unusual, and this is actually important to know, as it’s a big part of our experience around HEART Camp.
You see, what we’re trying to do - the way we’re trying to interact with each other - runs somewhat against the grain of common parenting practice in the US. It’s not my purpose in this article to delve deeply into the differences between our preferred approach and the mainstream. Suffice it to say that, although we felt strong conviction in our parenting choices, we also felt profound loneliness back in June 2016 when we decided to give HEART Camp a try.
A Day at Camp
We attended the instance of HEART Camp that takes place at a place called Abrams Creek Campground and Retreat in West Virginia. The facility has a lodge house, a campground, a number of cabins, and a long stretch of frontage along a wide, rocky, swiftly running creek. It’s wooded, peaceful, and isolated. We were four of perhaps fifty people who participated in the week-long event. Around half of those in attendance were kids younger than thirteen years old.
A day at camp is organized rather loosely in the following way. Following breakfast, everyone gathers into a circle. The circle is an important part of daily life at camp. During the morning circle, everyone, including camp organizers and participants, has the opportunity to offer things to the community. These offerings include all the pre-arranged camp programming, classes, and games, and also anything that anyone wants to offer. For example, I brought several ukuleles and offered to teach anyone who would like to learn. The bulk of the day consists of, well, doing whatever you find serves you best. You may choose to spend time learning about NVC, or painting, or playing capture the flag, or swimming, or making lunch for everyone, or napping in a hammock. In the evening, the circle reconvenes, and everyone is invited to share their experiences, celebrations, mournings, and anything that they want to share.
Kids in the Village
A striking aspect of the HEART Camp experience, as a parent, is the shift in the experience of “child care”. Let me offer a somewhat nerdy analogy:
In “normal” day-to-day American life with kids, think of the parents as forming the nucleus of an atom, and the kids as bound electrons zooming around in a cloud surrounding the nucleus. In HEART Camp life, the arrangement is much more like a plasma. The adults still form whatever groups they form, and the kids flow freely from one place to another, independently of the nuclei.
The effect this has on parents and kids is substantial. As a parent, I experienced several feelings in differing amounts as the week progressed. Early on, I felt a certain discomfort, almost a guilt, around not having my eyes on my kids at all times. “Am I unfairly burdening some other person with the care of my children at this moment?“, might have been a fair verbalization of what I felt. As time progressed, a deep, not altogether familiar, comfort set in. I realized that other people’s children were playing around me, that I was not at all bothered by this, that I was happily interacting with them, and that everyone else seemed to be having the same experience. Moreover, I realized that in this environment I, and everyone else, had freedom that we often don’t feel we have: the freedom to engage or not according to our own needs.
This, I think, was a direct consequence of having a large number of mutually-supportive families in the same place. Not only were we mutually-supportive, but we were all on the same page with respect to how we wanted to interact with each other, whether adults or kids. Because there were many of us, it was easy for kids to find people (often other kids, but not always) with whom to interact, play, and from whom to get help when it was occasionally needed. And, it was feasible for adults to spend time serving their own needs, which then made them able to joyfully serve the needs of everyone else, adults and kids alike.
It’s hard to describe the feeling this brings to a parent, especially a parent of young children. I spend much of my life nowadays with a background thread running, interrupting every few minutes, saying “Are the kids OK? What are they up to? Is there anything I need to protect them from?” To feel this process shutting down is a tremendous relief. To feel that time for yourself, no matter what you wanted to do with that time, is really and truly OK to take, and is not in some way selfish or letting someone down - it’s very hard to put into words.
We watched our kids and all the others blossom in this environment. The freedom they experienced at camp appeared to somehow bring out all the best aspects of their personalities. Behaviors that we find troublesome at home essentially vanished, and the kids seemed genuinely and deeply happy. In no way did they appear to want more from us as parents than we were giving them. Conflicts were infrequent, and when they arose there were always people at hand, their hearts full of caring and respect, willing to aid in resolution. Both of our kids talk often of the good time they had at camp, and they openly look forward to doing it again.
Choice Everywhere
The idea of a summer camp might bring to mind thoughts of planned activities, crafts, and games, with perky camp counselors trying to drum up engagement from the campers. I can recall experiencing a lot of discomfort in my childhood as teachers and other facilitators tried to cajole me into some “fun” activity or other, of which I preferred not to partake. An aspect of HEART Camp that stood out strongly to me is in stark contrast to those experiences: Everything at HEART Camp involves choice.
You have a choice about whether you want to show up to the morning circle. You have a choice about whether you want to participate in literally any activity on offer. If you show up for an activity and decide it’s not for you, you’re free to go do something else.
Even things that our society would normally describe as “rules” were full of choice. We set out community agreements about a variety of things, from swimming safety to how we would manage to get meals ready and dishes cleaned up. We established agreements within families about how we’d behave towards each other, for example whether and how we would keep each other up to date on our whereabouts. The terms of every agreement were negotiable. Everyone’s needs were considered with care.
Every person’s choice was fundamentally respected by every other person. If you were invited “Hey, come play capture the flag with us!” and you responded “No, thanks”, that was that. There was no cajoling. Everyone assumed that people were exercising choice to serve their own needs as best they could, and what’s more, everyone genuinely wanted everyone else to serve their own needs. Nobody would have wanted someone to play capture the flag if that person really wanted to do something else instead.
Human Connection and Support
This is perhaps the deepest, and most difficult to communicate point. It’s the point I hear most often raised by participants in this community.
The level of human connection we found at HEART Camp was beyond our normal experience.
NVC is about human connection fundamentally. It’s about listening to each other, empathizing, understanding what’s going on for each of us, and showing each other that we understand. It’s about a different way of thinking about human behavior. It’s about looking first towards what’s going on for each person, what he or she is feeling and needing, instead of making judgments about rightness or wrongness - judgments that often impede our ability to understand one another. One can read about these concepts, and watch seminars, and even attempt to apply them as we had been, without understanding them viscerally.
HEART Camp can be thought of as a language immersion program for NVC.
When one is learning a new language, one can spend a lot of time memorizing grammar and vocabulary, forming sentences, and translating things, and can even feel rather competent in the new language in this way. However, a fundamental change often occurs when one is immersed in the language, using it all day for everything: one begins to think in the new language. This brings about a much deeper mastery. No longer is the student constantly translating to and from the new language; these steps become unnecessary, and thoughts are simply formed in the new language.
Our experience with HEART Camp was very much like this. Although we were speaking English, everyone was making an effort to think in terms of human feelings and needs. After a few days of this, our experience of each other began to change.
Not only were we each individually thinking of each other in terms of empathy, but each of us also found ourselves surrounded by people who were looking on us with empathy and compassion. From this, a profound sense of support and community arose.
This may be hard to understand if you haven’t experienced something like it. I found the experience unfamiliar myself, which I think must be part of why it was so striking to me. Imagine being in a place where every person around you genuinely feels compassionately toward you - where everyone cares about your experience, and wants you to have what you need - where whatever you are feeling is OK. Imagine that you can trust that if you need to cry, or laugh, or rage, or be alone, or be hugged, or be carried, those around you will not judge you; No, in fact they will literally thank you for the experience of supporting you. Many of us have not experienced this level of trust and support in our lives, except perhaps with our closest friends. I’m telling you that this ethos permeated the environment by the middle of the week.
I witnessed this change happening in others and myself throughout the week we spent at HEART Camp. I saw people unwind and spill out their deepest fears, their deepest shames, and their deepest joys. I actively participated. I watched them cry and laugh in each other’s arms. And yes, I watched people literally thank others for the experience of supporting them. I can personally attest to this. I myself found great joy in supporting my new friends when they needed it. It was such an honor.
Gratitudes
HEART Camp tradition is to conclude the week with the exchanging of gratitudes. The practice is as follows: Everyone mills about in the main meeting area, approaching anyone they feel a desire to approach. Upon approaching, the one offers the other a short piece of colorful string, and ties it around the other’s wrist, and expresses whatever gratitude comes up, great or small. This often results in tears and hugs.
I remember offering a gratitude to one friend whose smile I had watched re-emerge throughout the week. I offered another to a friend who had sat with me and listened as I cried. In another case, I was overcome by emotion and was unable to do anything other than finish tying the string on and exchange a long hug.
Everyone left with wrists full of colored string; tokens of gratitude from our beloved friends, many of whom had been complete strangers to us only a week before. I personally found it very, very difficult to want to remove the string, even as time passed and the bracelet became progressively more ratty-looking. Maybe this year I’ll come up with a way to preserve them.
Returning to the Outside
Upon leaving camp, within hours I had an experience that starkly highlighted the contrast between the way of being with people that we had experienced at camp, and the way that people interact in the outside world.
We stopped at Five Guys to meet family, and as the group got settled I took the job of placing our order. As the young lady behind the counter asked for my order, I noticed her quickly blush and sheepishly look away. I realized after a moment that I had been looking directly into her eyes, and had asked quite genuinely how she was doing. Here I was, a complete stranger, just another customer among hundreds she usually encountered day by day, and I had expressed through my words and my body language an honest interest in her inner life. I realized how unusual my behavior had been.
Although it’s common for us to ask each other “how are you?”, it’s not common for us to actually mean it.
It probably needn’t be said, but I cannot recommend this experience strongly enough. As I’ve tried to show here, this was a hugely positive experience in our lives. The friends we made will be friends forever, and we will be back again and again through the years.