What brought you joy in 2023 and the start of 2024? You may be surprised by my answer. I co-organized and co-moderated a workshop on COVID for the Nashville Alliance, bringing together supporters and questioners of the public health response.
COVID? Really? Aren’t we done with that? The answer is no, in at least a couple of ways.
First, my friends and family members came down with COVID this winter, and it was no fun. And for those with weakened immune systems, they are still in danger from COVID.
Second, people are still hurting from it, either from having “long COVID” with brain fog, sleep problems, loss of smell, and other symptoms — or from the toll it’s taken on their work, education, or relationships with loved ones.
And that second aspect, which one might call the collateral damage from COVID, is what the workshop was all about. We didn’t “litigate” arguments about whether vaccines, ivermectin, or lockdowns were effective. We instead opened our hearts a bit and listened with genuine curiosity to those on the other side.
You can read more about our experience in this beautifully written summary that one of our participants put together.
For me, the workshop was the proverbial “icing on the cake.” I’d been working on the national level with two other Braver Angels moderators, Leslie Lopato and Lincoln Earle-Centers, to create the pilot for this workshop, which has now taken place in Connecticut and Massachusetts as well as Nashville, Tennessee.
The joy of working arm-in-arm with a questioner/critic of the public health response (I’m a physician supporter of the public health response) to organize and moderate the workshop in Nashville was incredibly meaningful. We emailed or talked on the phone and on Zoom almost every day in the month leading up to the workshop and became friends.
While Braver Angels already had a template for conducting the workshop based on the Red/Blue structure, we had the chance to refine the questions that were asked to make the pilot stronger. For example, we encouraged attendees to come to the workshop equipped not so much with facts as with stories about how COVID had affected them personally. When participants shared their strong emotions and tears, we realized we had accomplished our goal and moved the conversation from “us vs. them” to a place where we could uncover the humanity, and humility, in each other.
Our time together provided the groundwork for future dialogue on how we can restore trust in public health via the larger Truth and Trust in Public Health Braver Angels initiative, of which these workshops are a part. (For a deep example of this work in action, check out Episodes 8 & 9 of the Braver Angels podcast A Braver Way.)
As we finalize our pilot process and move forward with these workshops throughout the country, we want to hear from you if you are interested in organizing a workshop for your community. You can email Lincoln Earle-Centers at learle-centers@braverangels.org.
We invite you to consider taking a leap of courage to attend more Braver Angels events this year, and train as an organizer, moderator, or debate chair. You might just reconcile relationships with loved ones, make new friends in unexpected places, and find the joy you are looking for in the year ahead.
