Take your time
Invest in relationships, and stick around.
This past week, I have been in a small town for work. It’s just ‘up the road’ (5 hours north of here).
I don’t have the opportunity to travel there as much as would be ideal, however there are limits for funding and practical reasons. All of which means that I have to rely on phone calls, teams meetings and emails to sustain the work in-between visits. Again, not ideal, but necessary.
Five years ago, when I first started working in that small town, I was aware it was a long term commitment. I didn’t want to be a ‘fly by night’ practitioner who would start a service, build relationship and hopes, and then disappear. Even in the short time I’ve been providing services in this town, I have seen so many providers come and go. The town has the shadow of services past fading on the face of locked empty offices, waiting for new tenants to sign new leases.
When I run into clients in town, I sometimes remember the bright and energetic practitioner who first introduced me. I feel sad that she is no longer here to light up their day and track the rhythm of their life over the years since. She was a gregarious person who brought lively energy and easily built rapport with her clients. I used to slip in behind her wake, quietly smiling, reserved and observant. They genuinely loved seeing her face in town. She left years ago.
Yet, I am still here. Slipping into town. When I arrive I feel like I am adding another layer to the internal map of the town in my mind. Catching up with the same people who call that place home. Seeing their children who have moved from high school into their adult lives. Noticing the folder in the school classroom with the name of a student who graduated 3 years before, asking if his foster sister is still in town. Seeing the grandmother of a former client at the shop and recalling the time we celebrated a milestone birthday at the local RSL.
These are all the little threads. Threads that make a connection that goes deeper than the moment or the week. I know that I barely know the town or its residents, and I sometimes wish I could spend a good 6-12 months there just to start scraping the surface. Even with that, I’m sure it would just continue to go deeper and deeper, as all the networks of all the people became clearer over time.
These are the threads that sustain us. The small partnerships and friendships across community. The person who was once a teachers aide, who now runs the local cafe. The nurse who treated that head wound. The wife of the policeman who attended the scene. The builder who created the vision, bringing it to being. Every place where we gather creates these threads that connect us, and the longer we stay in the place the more we can see what is right here.
And what is right here is how hard it is to build trust. Even if rapport is built easily, and small wins occur in the blur of the new, it is harder to trust when the next magical practitioner presents. To believe that this time this practitioner will be here next year, and the next, to see it through. It makes the moment more transactional, more reserved, more tentative.
So now I try to promise less. To let time do its speaking for me. Staying in touch, checking in, turning up again. Investing in relationship, and the commitment of still being here. I may not achieve as much in the short term, but somehow it feels more important and meaningful in the long term.
It’s not all about what happens that changes from our support. Sometimes it’s about what happens when we continue to be there.
