The Power of Kindness by Dr. Brian Goldman

Author:Dr. Brian Goldman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2018-03-20T04:00:00+00:00

I decided to tell Theodore Fontaine that when I watched the Embodying Empathy demo, I got a flashback to the day I got the strap. As I told him the story, I was conscious of how trivial my childhood humiliation was compared to what Survivors like him experienced.

Still, he’s not just a Survivor but also the Indigenous elder on the team that has built Embodying Empathy to emotionally engage people like me. I needed to know what he thought of my free association. Far from being self-conscious, Fontaine heard my story with respect and then sought to forge a connection with me.

“I want to say something about the strap,” he says. “You’re not an Indian person, but the strap you experienced was probably the same kind of strap that we had, you know. They were made from the old tractors that had these huge straps that made the engine go.”

Fontaine uses my story to reflect on his own experience and connect it to mine.

“People including teachers at the school carried a six- or nine-inch strap in the pockets of their robes,” adds Fontaine. “Those were used commonly not only in the residential schools, but in schools where kids like you received it. It’s traumatic, you know. You must have been pretty young.”

“I was eight,” I reply.

“A lot of people don’t have an experience that lets them feel what happened to that little eight-year-old,” he says. “What you experienced is the main purpose of this project.”

Fontaine’s capacity to empathize with me is both astonishing and humbling. He thinks my highly personal reaction to the Embodying Empathy demo of an Indian residential school helped forge a connection to his suffering personally—taking it from my head and giving it to my heart.

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