Connecting on WILPF Politics and with Each Other: Healing Relationships

WILPF members Marge Van Cleef and Joan Ecklein relate to each other. Photo credit: Darien De Lu,

by Darien De Lu
WILPF US President

May 2023

How are WILPFers connecting with each other? In today’s world of isolation and individuality, relationships can be helpful and healing! Many of us are fortunate to have a geographic branch in our area, which might hold events (including meetings) where we "talk politics" – WILPF politics that identify the interconnections among issues and that help direct our work to organize activities that influence resources and policy. This approach not only helpfully assists us in seeing the patterns of influence and dependency between issues and interests – in what might otherwise seems to be a world of isolated crises and events – but also, by working supportively with each other on "WILPF politics," we build human relationships.

There are additional important ways to connect our WILPF work and our lives.  For example, we’ll be glad to return to another important and traditional one in May/June of 2024 – our national WILPF US Congress, planned to be in-person in Minnesota.

I want to talk about other ways we can build both our personal relationships in order to increase our political effectiveness. For the encouragement to do so – and to embrace trying to practice a healing-centered style of relationships and leadership myself – I am indebted to Shawn A. Ginwright and her article in Nonprofit Quarterly, "Healing-Centered Leadership: A Path to Transformation". In his article, Ginwright acknowledges that many nonprofit groups (like WILPF) are sincerely seeking solutions for social change. He also identifies some widely shared myths about how social change works. And then he outlines how we can be doing better by improving the nature and quality of our relationships with each other.

Close Relationships Built Over Decades

WILPF members understand that the goal of ending war and all causes of war is a long-term goal. Of course, we undertake projects that last only several months and campaigns that may go on for a few years. Yet we’re in for the long haul! With the closeness and consistency of branch membership, we seek to encourage continuing relationships among our WILPF branch members. And with our triennial WILPF Congresses and numerous national committees, WILPF members meet and work together for decades – celebrating our successes and regrouping after defeats. Yet sometimes, as in most human relationships, those decades-long relationships can be quite difficult!

I may be irritated by the way Susie always wants to bring the discussion back to her pet issue or by way that, when Thelma starts to talk, I’d better settle in because she always goes on and on. Any of myriad individual patterns can get under my skin. Maybe it seems just too difficult to make the effort of self-examination to see why certain behaviors bother us – and why we just tolerate them, rather than taking the personal risk of (gently) raising an objection or concern.

Yet now we have a better understanding of how our lives are shaped by traumatic experiences.  In these trauma-filled times, it’s very easy to sink into hopelessness in the face of the current political landscape. So it can be a comfort to cling to a known issue! We might not realize that we’re acting out of what may well be an unconscious but formative personal or even historic trauma. As feminists – female and male – we may find ourselves filled with outrage at the discounting of so many women’s personal authority in making decisions about their own bodies and their lives. Yet will that outrage be a source of energy to work for a better world? Or will it boil over into a rage makes us reactive instead of responsive – leading to failed strategies and tactics?

A Healing-Centered Approach

Ginwright offers us a key to healing. He explores the personal and political transformations possible through a healing-centered approach, affirming the power that comes when we strengthen and deepen our interactions by working to heal our personal and shared pains.

We are all human, and we can learn so much by cultivating receptivity to more of the broad humanness of those we work with. We can do this with small steps – starting with the self-reflection and awareness that allows us to be notice the specifics of whatever situation or interaction we find ourselves in. What are our own feelings about it, and what are the responses of those around us? Keeping an eye on our political goals, we can take the time and space to find a way to speak or act that might open up – as a group and as individuals – the possibilities of healing. By looking within, by being sensitive to others, by speaking thoughtfully, bravely, personally, truthfully – we can begin to discover the ways harsh and painful experiences have shaped us and others. That discovery can lead to steps toward healing.

Ginwright also talks about the way our culture and society pushes us to be addicted to speed, action, doing, quick responses. From my professional work in substance use treatment, I know that addiction is almost always connected to trauma. We find ourselves pressured to rush forward in a hasty world – and we may have become addicts! Yet Gandhi spoke of haste as violence. As WILPF members working for a caring and nonviolent society, this world of acceleration is not the world we seek to build!

In our community organizing we might succeed in gaining a policy "win", but at what personal cost? How much does my daily email glut pull me away from individual relationships, family, and even civic involvement? I see our enduring personal and political connections in WILPF as being a potential place where we can consciously seek to support healing relationships. Our goals, for which we are working, meeting – even laughing and crying – together are both based on and propelled by the transformative changes that can arise from healing.

We can start by practicing both self-examination and empathy – by seeing how much we are like others – and different. I hope you’ll take a thoughtful risk, to both be compassionate and yet go beyond tolerance of differences at your next branch or national committee meeting. It is in extending ourselves in relationships across differences that we model a world in which very different cultures, societies, and people can live together peaceably. I’m seeking to practice this compassionate, curious, and healing-centered approach – which works with our differences. I hope you will try it.

If you’d like to find out how to connect with your local branch or to become part of a national committee, please contact me! President@WILPFUS.org, 916/739-0860 (please call after 9 am Pacific Time!)