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Starfire brought in L.A. based social innovator, David Hsu to talk about the impact social isolation is having on American life at our last un-conference event. His presentation, “Profits & Purpose in the Age of Isolation” highlighted some of his findings shared in his e-book Unthethered: https://www.readuntethered.com. If you haven’t read Untethered yet, it’s an incredibly impactful (and quick) read.

This podcast is a conversation with David Hsu, Linda Kahn, Jack Pearpoint, and Jo Krippenstapel, centered around the theme of social isolation and the universal drive for human connection. We dig into ideas around who is leading the effort to become a more tethered society, the greater impact that comes from doing things one-on-one, and how we might all begin to reach for a future of belonging in small, practical ways.   

We hope you enjoy!

“The more people understand their lives and part of their purpose as reaching for belonging, for themselves for their communities, there will be all sorts of innovations. ”

— David Hsu

 TRANSCRIPT:

Katie: Why do you think some people avoid the topic of social isolation?  

David: I think talking about social isolation forces you to deal with the reality that they’re all human problems, and human problems -- human dimensions are sometimes the most painful to confront.  

Linda: I think it’s because it’s so complex. People want it simple and it is so multifaceted and complex that there are no easy answers.  

Katie: So that’s Linda Khan and Jack Pearpoint, who both joined us for this podcast. You’ll hear from Jack next. Jack and Linda are long time advocates, presenters, movement builders of inclusion. They are inventors of person-centered approaches like PATH, MAPs, Circle of Friends and their ideas have really revolutionized the way that we tell stories and convey ideas when it comes to inclusion. 

Jack: And we are all looking, we have been trained to look for the 15-second-quick-fix and that’s not going to work. That’s not the nature of this issue, this is a human scale problem of global proportions. Which of course then shuts us down, until you sort of cut right back to well, actually it’s just the two of us and we can start right here right now. And it doesn’t matter where you start.  

David: Yeah, a lot of people in my world like to rush to policy or what can we do to raise awareness? As if awareness alone is something that changes things. 

So I think talking about social isolation, at least for me, clarifies that solutions lie in humans coming together and translating whatever we come up with into action. 

And that sounds vague but thinking about the ways in which people are isolated can help access I think why at root some of these issues like opioids, or suicide, or recidivism are such hard but I think solvable issues.  

Katie: So it offers a sense of clarity on a multitude of very complicated sometime personal issues but it kind of pinpoints something.  

David: Yeah and for me I mean I the people who have made a big impact on me, they sort of see that everyone is part of the solution and I think that a lot of the time we define problems in ways that make it seem that there are special people in society who can’t be a part of the solution and I just I want to fight against that. 

This is why with social isolation which is in many respects can be a health issue. I’ve seen in America us increasingly medicalizing it. And I want to go in a slightly different direction because I think we need more leaders not fewer, more specialized leaders.  

Katie: Ok, and that gets to your point of like policy and awareness, right, but what you are saying is it’s really more about people who are the most marginalized, vulnerable and isolated are the change makers actually, they have the answer.  

David: Yeah they are the real change makers. A lot of people that I work with through LA kitchen are people who are off the streets, have recovered from addiction, are home from 20 or 25 years of incarceration and its not a profound mystery to think why these people have a super well developed sense of the power and value of human connection because they’ve lacked it. Or they have against their choice been isolated from the community.  

Katie: Yeah, and I wonder if we can segue into the conversation around people being wasted, that people are being wasted. 

Jack: We have developed a society that throws people away and doesn’t even notice. 

And that doesn’t sound very good, we don’t think of ourselves aspeople who do that - but we’re doing it. And struggling to come to terms with that, so it’s a fascinating challenge that we’re all working on. And the way you have to come to terms with that is in a conversation with somebody who has been exploited. And that’s anybody anywhere, and the leadership for this change is not going to come from systems. If we figure this out, and I think we can, leadership is going to come from the margins. It’s going to be all the people we have systemically excluded, when we slow down enough to listen to them. And one of the, I think one of the most exciting capacities that whether its ex-offenders, or people who have been through residential schools and other institutions, or people with disabilities, if we make a space where it’s safe and we slow down enough to listen. They teach us to slow down and listen. And boy do we need that right now. 

So, there’s actual enormous unrealized capacity to resolve some of the most fundamental issues in our society, by slowing down to listen. And its available to any and all of us next door, around the corner, over coffee.  

Katie: So now you’re going to hear from Jo Krippenstapel who is also around the table for this podcast. Jo is one of our mentors here at Starfire. She has inspired many many many of the changes that we have made in the last ten years. I do want to apologize for the quality of audio you are about to hear from Jo, it isn’t the best but she has a lot of great things to say so listen up.  

Jo: One of the other ways that I think it connects is how universal this experience is of being untethered. Right, it’s not just “they” are untethered- it’s we are all untethered and for us as a society of people to make space to have those conversations about “what are the gifts of people who have been previously devalued?”

If I’m only tethered to people who are exactly like me, then I don’t have any way of making a stretch to people who have been homeless or imprisoned or come from another country. This is where it starts to come together. 

Linda: So that’s a really interesting point, and another way to think about who are your people and where are you spending time? Because it’s another way of noticing, who's missing? Who are you not connected to? Where are the people of difference? Who else do you know? How are you spending your time? When you think about who are your people, if you’re not tethered to.  

Katie: Yeah and I’d like to bring it into more of a definition around tethered that you offered in the primer, you talk about connection as a mixture of strong and weak ties and I loved how you held up weaker ties as actually the most important. And why I loved that illustration so much is what we see in people’s with disabilities lives who we talk to is that their weak ties are often minimal if not null. And that while they might have family, they may have moderately strong ties. A lot of times those moderately strong ties are staff, people who are paid to be in their life, or they’re other people with disabilities. So that’s the picture of isolation it’s the picture of segregation as well. So you know, the weaker ties why are they valuable, why are you saying that they’re indispensable?  

David: Yeah I honestly can’t remember where I learned the language of not being able to access worlds beyond your own but I like it because it’s often the weak ties that help us travel more, further. And in very practical ways, you know you think about searching for a job, searching for romance, searching for belonging and our families, our closest friends are important but they often only take us so far. If you think about highly networked highly powerful highly influential people they are people who have amassed an extensive networks of weak ties that they activate when they need to.

Everyone needs that network of weak ties. 

But I think there’s another part of it that is a little but more hedonistic, sort of pleasure-centric, which is just that - this is other people’s research, but at the end of life, a lot of the time when we think back on our lives, there are small moments of intimacy that we experience with people who we may have met once, maybe on our travels, maybe … who knows where. But who help us to feel human in a way that can last a lifetime and I think that’s extraordinary and it’s a thing that happens through weak ties often. So there’s this saying in sociology, the strength of weak ties like weak ties have outsized strength in human communities.  

Jo: What I love about this notion of weak ties is at least to me, it makes the whole effort more approachable. If you say “Gee, I notice you’re a little weak in the most intimate friends category why don’t you get three next year?” I kind of get anxious. But if you say, how about a dozen weak ties, over the next couple of months. I can start to feel some energy about that, feels very doable, feels a little interesting. Really feels different to me.   

Linda: Because it’s then about the power of showing up, of starting to discover, ok so let’s look at your neighborhood and your community, and what do you care about and where are you hanging out and starting to discover what people’s interests are. And just places to show up and hang out whether it’s become a regular coffee shop or something that you join because it's interest that you have, there’s weak ties.   

Jack: And that makes it very, very doable because anybody can do it, it’s not that difficult. So one of the terrors you know “in the dark of the night” issues of what’s happened to the work of many people - its been industrialized by many people. Not here, not at Starfire. But the pressure to, ok we need numbers we need them now we need them reportable with stats. And we’ve commodified the very thing that we were trying to do. Not we have but -- it has been done with well-intentioned people trying to figure it out... But the pressure to do it faster, do it more for less, those kinds of pressures are enormous and the pressure to not do that is enormous.  

David: I mean I still think -- I still care about doing it at a bigger scale.  

Jack: Oh yeah  

David: Faster, improving it I just think we can do that one-on-one, it just requires that everyone be a part of it. There’s lots of ways of to do that and mass storytelling is one of doing them. What I think is more critical than the scale at which we recruit is kind of the desire and a belief in bringing people in and showing them how useful whatever they bring is.  

Linda: I think one of the things that’s really exciting about the way David thinks about this is just people stepping into some action and responsibility. Thinking about so what can I do about this?

What’s my contribution to the very problem we have? I think that’s pretty interesting because you need the contributions and the solutions of everyone, including the people the most impacted. 

And so I think trying to make this everyone’s issue is really interesting. 

Katie: What I want to pull out a little bit more is this idea that who are the leaders of this movement? That yes it requires all of us and yes it requires the marginalized and it requires those who aren’t typical leaders. But it does require it does require leaders at the top also. And that’s part of your work David right is to talk to business leaders and to talk to philanthropists.  

David: Yeah I mean I definitely have an interest in engaging resourced people, but it’s mainly out of an interest to help them understand what types of leaders they should be supporting. Rather than thinking oh me as a philanthropist, I’m the answer to society. It’s much more as you scan the landscape which good philanthropist is like doing all the time, you can recognize Starfire. You can recognize the kind of work they’re doing.  

Jack: And when you make the kind of transition Starfire is making, which is incredible, courageous and wonderful you lose some of your traditional backing.  

David: Yes 
 
Katie: I think that’s kind of what I was going to is this idea that there are a lot of Executive Directors in place right now, who have been in that role for however many years, they are not going to change their model or shift their financial structure to do something risky, to change their model to be more impactful. And to give leadership to families like we’ve learned how to do at Starfire, and to give leadership to people with disabilities to do projects cool projects in their neighborhood. The executive directors that we know, a lot of times, say excuses more that have to do with putting the onus back on people with disabilities to say it’s their choice to be with each other, you know they deserve this day program or workshop because what else are they going to do? 

Jack: And we surveyed them and they say they like it.  

Katie: Yes, the data shows...that they’re all happy.  

David: That’s a really interesting point, there’s a lot of lying in the world of impact and in non-profits. In having, I mean I try to study big non-profits that are doing the kind of work that we all care about but seem to be doing it on a huge scale. For example, there are non-profits who I will not name like in LA who will serve huge numbers of people who are coming out of prison, and huge numbers of seniors and things like this -- and their annual reports look amazing. Right? And then the more you sort of learn and talk to people and dig you know there is some muckraking that is appropriate I think in this world. Impact, there are a lot of lies that are told about large scale impact. There are so many dysfunctions in our mass like mass-style interventions. Whether it’s for hunger or aging or mental health services, or any of these kinds of things, where well intention folks we end up creating solutions that still waste just only en mass. For me it’s slowly seeing this and connecting the dots and I think people who have worked over the years and decades in disabilities probably have the most powerful ways to help people understand this. 

So I think there are people who work one and one also, we shouldn’t be unfairly or inappropriately modest.

Or we can say oh it's messy it's not so tangible the impact. But I think when you consider the amount of lying that takes place, we should stand firm about tangible proven impact at the scale that we’re doing. We should also understand and be able to tell the story of how one to one work does have this amplifying power. And I think that -- I’m still in the process of figuring out how to do that.  

Katie: I'm glad to hear the struggle is still alive and well. And that there are still no answers yet but we’re doing the right work and that’s what’s important. One of the things you say in Untethered is that “We are reaching for the future of belonging,” we’re reaching for that. So you know you talk about how old ways of belonging need to be remade. Let’s talk about what’s emerging and how people can like somebody said here show up, all we have to do is start showing up. What are those patterned ways of living together that need to be encouraged? 

Jo: I think the local movement is very hopeful and when people experience it, it feels fun. You get such an immediate sense of something’s really different about this than my usual pattern. 

So there are so many examples of local: local food, local beer, local everything, right? When we lean into that I think we will start to tether ourselves to people who aren't exactly like ourselves.  

Katie: Lean into local, I like it.   

David: I mean for me reaching for this future of belonging is all about reaching. I love this T.S. Elliot line which is, “For us there is only the trying, the rest is not our business.” 

The more people understand their lives and part of their purpose as reaching for belonging, for themselves for their communities, there will be all sorts of innovations.

It feels weird to name certain things because they’re so infinite. Like they come to they come to life in so many ways, which is why it’ s beautiful. It’s about this overall pattern and it’s about this sense of chaos that we are trying to create. The best kind of chaos. People just trying things.  

Linda: It does have to do with the courage to engage. It involves some introspection. And then there does need to be ‘what’s my local action going to be?’ Including noticing when the future we’re leaning into is here. There will be moments where people experience belonging, and we better notice those too, it’s not out of our reach. It’s living now as well and being able to share those stories and notice the experiences and understand how did it happen. It always takes courage to do that, so I’m often thinking about stretch and courage and being honest to notice when I haven’t done it.  

Jack: If we just make a space, and it’s -- it is scary I agree. You mean I’ve got to meet new people? Yeah. But it’s not that difficult if you go for loose connections. If we make the assignment: by tomorrow morning by ten am you have to have a best friend for life, we’re not going to do very well. But there are an infinite number of loose connections, we don’t even have a clue how many there are out there. It is beyond our limited human capacity to even imagine. So anything goes if we make the space. I think my metaphor for it is we need to get our fingers in the dirt, dirt is universal, and you don’t know what the wonderment will be yet. And next time it will be a different array of goodies. But there are always goodies.  

Katie: And Jo, when you’ve said before this is finding new ways to spend time together, and it’s deciding to spend time together. And then it’s finding new ways on how to spend time together. I just love that simplicity there. It’s powerful. Jack, Linda, David, Jo, thank you so much for spending this time together, I really appreciate it.  

This is Carol Combs’ story of “awakening” – told live at our BYOB(reakast) event. Carol shares how her family went on a journey over the past year to step out of comfort zones, invite people in, and start connecting by starting a community quilting project in her neighborhood.

TRANSCRIPT: If somebody were to tell me ten years ago that I would be sitting here sharing the story of how our story went from “I” to “we” I probably would have chuckled a little bit and been like, what are you even talking about?

So ten years ago my son was born and he was born into a world that wasn’t made for him. He has a plethora of diagnosis that we received at an early age. And with that came a big long list of can’ts and won’ts and nevers and it was extremely disheartening. What I have discovered over the last year and a half/two years is I thought at the beginning I had this “we” thing down, like “oh this is us and we’re doing it” and what I have learned is that it was more “I” that was doing it, “we” was just a collective term, of well it’s me and the kids and we got this.  

We said no to a lot of things because the older Grayson got the more aware the more barriers we were facing. The more that we worked with our providers the longer the list of can’ts and wonts grew and we kind of isolated ourselves.

We said no to a lot of things because the older Grayson got the more aware the more barriers we were facing. The more that we worked with our providers the longer the list of can’ts and wonts grew and we kind of isolated ourselves. So it was very easy to say no to going out and doing things, because there were those barriers: there was a lack of understanding, there were stairs, there were comments made, “What’s wrong with him?” and so it was very easy for us to close ourselves off and kind of give into this notion that his good life consists of providers and services and that’s it. He doesn’t have a long life expectancy so we are just going to kind of say here you go, here’s these people who are going to help you and we isolated ourselves.  

And looking back and kind of reflecting, I gave into the notion that we were bound to this life of commiseration and sadness. So over the last year and a half I was introduced to what happens if you say yes to more, what happens if it’s not just Carol doing these things it's you all doing these things. You all being me and the kids and whoever we ask to come and have a seat at our table.

I did not realize the power of saying yes and I didn’t realize the power of connections, or what I was missing until I started saying yes.

I did not realize the power of saying yes and I didn’t realize the power of connections, or what I was missing until I started saying yes. So we said we are going to go along with for this journey and see what it’s like. And you know what’s the worst that can happen? People will tell us no and that’s ok. So I started thinking about what can we do to get out into the communities what are the barriers that we are facing, what has kept us from going forth and making those connections in our community.  

 And as I made this list I started seeing that there are ways to overcome it, all I had to do was ask. You have something that you are willing to share with our family we want to do a family project. It is fortunate to have Sandy here today, I’ve known Sandy for nine years and she has always been one that says “what can I do to help, let me be a part of things.” And I’d be like “no.” I was afraid to let people into our world, I knew I was struggling with the diagnosis, and how to overcome those barriers and I would say no because it was just easier to say no, it was a way of protecting our family from people walking in and out of our lives. And it was a way of protecting those from what I felt at the time was sadness of the diagnosis. Thankfully Sandy was always there and she was always kind of “what can I do, is there anything I can do?” 

So we started thinking about our gifts and our abilities as a family, that was something that I had never really done before. And we recognized that Grayson has the gift of bringing people together and looking back over our journey that is something he’s always been very good at. His older sister she is extremely creative, very artsy.

So we said “yes” and started discovering our gifts.

And I asked Sandy I said “we are thinking about doing a quilt project. So she said “well I know how to sew.” And we started collaborating together, and saying what does this quilt look like, how can we make this ours, how can we get our community involved.  

And we started hosting these Sew and Play events. Each week they grew, some weeks it was just us and that’s ok because in that time we developed these relationships that are so deep, and I learned about Sandy and some of our other friends. I learned things about them that I never knew before and it was because we had come together, it was because I invited them to our table and they said yes. And I started discovering that we have the same Christmas Eve tradition, that we all have this special like sparkle for Christmas. I discovered that we had people showing up who had always kind of been in our life but we never like invited them to come to things and they started showing up. We stepped out of our comfort zone, we invited people, people said yes. 

We stepped out of our comfort zone, we invited people, people said yes. 

We have this beautiful quilt that documents kind of our summer, of growing and learning about our community and connecting. And we still have some pieces left to add. This quilt means the world to me. I can tell you the stories that were shared the day each of these quilt panels were made. We all worked together on these quilt panels. We met over thirty different people in our community. All because we were like, we’re going to learn how to sew together. And we are going to tell stories and we are going to gather around once a week and just let people discover Grayson and discover us. And just be open to more.  

So our latest event was a Christmas caroling event, we held it in our neighborhood right outside on our front lawn practically. It was definitely a big step for us. So I was looking at pictures and the first picture for our family project and it was just the kids and I. And this year we rounded out the year of a picture of the kids and I and about twenty other people from our neighborhood, from our community, from our past. That we didn’t even realize were following our story and they said, “Oh they’re doing a caroling event let's show up and support.” We’ve allowed people into our circle and we have discovered that those connections are so so so important, it’s made a huge impact on our lives and it just has made life better for us.

We’ve allowed people into our circle and we have discovered that those connections are so so so important, it’s made a huge impact on our lives and it just has made life better for us. 

It’s a brighter life. Because we can now go out and we’re not alone and I realized that all along it was me doing these things and I wasn’t letting anybody else in. And the moment I started inviting people to our table and the moment they started saying yes we shifted from “I” to “we”. We broke that association of we are bound to a life of commiseration because Grayson’s different and it all started with a single stitch. 

If you liked Carol’s story and would like to meet other families who are at the center of a connected community, let us know!

BYOB(reakfast) live storytelling event is supported by our friends at Contemporary Cabinetry East

Sean Barnes is the owner of Ladles Soup, a family-owned restaurant specializing in soup, sandwiches and salads. Sean moved here recently from Charleston and he was looking for a way to get more involved in the community, when he met Emily. The story he shares is about the relationships that he formed with Emily as an employer and how it woke him up to a whole new idea of what it can mean to be a boss.

He told his story at our BYOB(reakfast), a storytelling event held at Starfire monthly.

TRANSCRIPT: In March, I moved up here to Cincinnati with my husband from Charleston, South Carolina. We started this franchise company in Charleston, South Caroline in 2007 and we have 13 nationally. We moved to Ohio because one of our friends decided they didn’t want to own the store anymore. So we took over the market, moved our entire life up here, bought a home even. Fell in love with the city it’s great. Met Emily with Chris, he came in and asked for job opportunities. My first initial response or my first thought because Emily has cerebral palsy so she’s actually in a wheelchair with a controller. So my first thought was, well I mean I would love to but there’s no job here for you in this industry because you have to stand up all day, and you have to be able to reach certain things. And I’m just thinking like it’s not going to be, I’m not going to be able to give her something because she does not have the ability to perform the task. So then Chris said she really enjoyed social media. I was like ok well maybe there would be something there. So I thought about it and we hadn’t had anybody overseeing our social media except for my step-dad because its family owned and operated.  

So he runs the Facebook and Instagram and everything. So we really wanted to entangle ourselves into the Cincinnati community since we have no roots here. So I thought what better way then to be involved in a community organization such as Starfire. So I asked him if we could let Emily take over. And then we figured out that we would do this program called Emily’s choice. Which really helped us out too, she could come in, she would try the food, she would try like the half sandwich and something off the menu and she would create this combination. And then she would take it home and try it and I would request that she would send me a rough draft of her feedback of the food by Friday. At first it was like three sentences of the food and then four of like personal experiences throughout the week.  

So we had to kind of cater it as it evolved, and we had to be like you can’t say that this is horrible, you know, because you’re working for the community, so you have to like I mean as much as you want to say it you have to say it’s delicious or not my personal favorite but..., so we started catering that and I told her we could throw in a segment too where she could talk about her week. And when Emily comes in on Mondays she comes in at 1:00pm because that’s her lower her down time and she comes in. The struggles at the beginning were like talking to her because she doesn’t communicate back unless like she will but normally she’s in her tunnel vision of Instagram followers, and she’ll follow all these people and she’ll look at them and I’m trying to have a conversation with her and Its kind of difficult sometimes to hold her attention. I found myself like halfway through it feeling like a butt one day because I was being more stern like hey listen we have to get this done. And I just felt bad because I was like oh wow I hope I didn’t talk to her badly and make her feel bad. 

Then the coolest thing was when we went to see A Star is Born with Lady Gaga, because that’s what she wanted to go see, and that same showing there were four other people with who were disabled, and they came in and they were mostly in wheelchairs. So the people there trying to fit five people with wheelchairs, automated wheelchairs in there at one time. And this one girl, was sitting next to Emily and this is when I saw her personality shine through. Because normally her personality is through text and its you know like she hasn’t really opened up to me but she was sitting there and this one girl halfway through the movie, right next to her, starts snoring. And I just see her look at the girl, turn her head to the right and turn back and like roll her eyes, and I was like *laughter* I was like, because she’s really getting into the movie. So I don’t know it was really funny. I really love working with her she’s a fantastic human. The cool thing is I told Emily at the start she would get paid for her service per store, so each store that we open her pay would increase and it will add an extra percentage. It’s pretty cool, we are going to continue, we love Emily.  

BYOB(reakfast) live storytelling event is supported by our friends at Contemporary Cabinetry East

Rosalyn and Mary Beth share their story of how they came to see the importance of living in the moment.

Here's the story of Rosalyn and Mary Beth's project together, done in collaboration with Starfire. Rosalyn and Mary Beth came with their team from Envision to learn from Starfire how to build connections through creative projects in the community.

Thanks to funding from the Greater Cincinnati Foundation

TRANSCRIPT:

Rosalyn: It doesn’t matter what color you is God made you in a different way. 

Mary Beth: Or what country you’re from, or what country you’re from or what religion you are. Everybody’s different.  

Rosalyn: Yeah 

Mary Beth: We’re all alike, disabilities, colors, skin, we’re all God’s children. Ros and I were involved in the community inclusion project which was a great chance to give Ros $250 to throw a party. We went to the west side brewery & company. And what we did, Ros invited a lot of people, she’s a library girl, so all her library friends were invited. I invited some of my friends and my family. We’re getting ready and a quarter after seven we’re thinking what’re we supposed to do. The party was supposed to start at seven, we didn’t know if people were going to show up. It was the coldest day of the year, and it was snowing and what we learned, what I learned is to live in the moment. So in that moment what we did was we decided we’re in this room, they have Pandora, we decided to dance instead of be nervous and wait for people to show up. Didn’t we Ros? 

 Rosalyn: Yeah we danced.  

Mary Beth: So anyway, a quarter after seven I see my daughter coming in with the Skyline dip and everyone started coming. So Ros was on. 

Rosalyn: Yeah.  

Mary Beth: Which what did you do then? 

Rosalyn: I said hi to them, hi. And I hugged them, I missed you and happy to see them.  

Mary Beth: And these are people she sees periodically but maybe once a year. The cool part is one person, was specifically Ros’ friend. And she was from the library and she came out on that cold night and Ros was so pleased to see that she showed up.  

Rosalyn: Yeah *laughter* Yeah.  

Mary Beth: it made her feel really good especially to see Laura.  

Rosalyn: We know each other, a long time ago. And I said hi to her.  

Mary Beth: About five years you’ve known her.  

Rosalyn: Yeah I’ve known her five years.   

Mary Beth: Through this experience we’ve learned, like I said, live in the moment. If one person showed up we still could have had fun. We could have gone to the bar and invited people to come in. There’s always a way. You know not to get upset or nervous about things that we don’t have any control over because things like that always happen. Ros through this, one of my friends has invited her to do lunch so they are going to go to lunch together. She now has a gift, her plaque to give to her friend Suzy whose her best friend at the library who couldn’t make It that night. One other thing, all her friends got to get together and meet each other and that was the positive.  

Rosalyn: Yeah we talking, about different stuff.  

Mary Beth: To sum it up I would say back to the live in the moment thing, not to be nervous or stressed, take a deep breathe. We can’t change things how they’re going to turn out and things always work out. It’s changed Ros and I were she’s a lot more friendly, of course she’s very friendly anyway, but she feels loved, that’s the main thing. She knows she's loved, and it was her gift to the community. She picked for those plaques to be made which was a beautiful thing. Right Ros? 

Rosalyn: Yes, yes. 

Mary Beth: Ok that’s pretty much it.  

Audience: Thank you.

Rosalyn: You’re welcome. 

BYOB(reakfast) Storytelling Event is sponsored by Contemporary Cabinetry East

“I hope, wherever you come from, 
there is someone who holds your story. 
Someone who remembers you when you 
were knee-high to a grasshopper.”  
–excerpt from “Who Holds Your Story” by David Pitonyak  
 
As a writer, I tend to notice, document, hoard interesting bits of human lives into my brain, and save them in a private stock pile like a squirrel. Small notes in my phone for later, scrawled reflections or observations in the margins of agendas, notebooks. In my phone is a running tab on observational human behavior that I found interesting, troubling, curious.

There was the man at the YMCA who swam wearing multiple gaudy gold rings and splendid gold chains tangled in his thick, salt and pepper chest hair. Back and forth in never ending breaststrokes, his jewelry would catch the sun in the overhead pool skylight and glint across the lanes. 

There was the exasperated mom I overheard in a coffee shop lamenting to a friend that her daughter was going to lose her full ride if she didn’t get her shit together and get over that eating disorder phase.

The single mom at the airport force feeding a breakfast sandwich to her three children, alternating bites like baby birds in a nest as the TSA line inched up. 

The post on a neighborhood Up For Grabs Facebook page offering used, natural deodorant, with the disclaimer that it caused a rash. 

While these anonymous observations are collected innocently for no apparent reason, other than what it shows me about the curious nature of humanity, there’s a distinct difference in documenting lives of people we know, people we support, people we provide services to more intimately. 
 
One of the more challenging conversations we’ve had at Starfire over the past year is the importance of storytelling and the delicate line we must tow in telling someone else’s story. The question of “who holds your story” tugs at me and is especially important for nonprofits to consider.  Are we crafting people’s stories to fit our own purpose? How do we, as nonprofit leaders, as social media marketers, as fundraisers and donor relations professionals and grant writers, as public relations professionals, share a story that is honest and truthful and respectful and genuine?  How do we tell the truth of the matter, give real life context, without violating the depths of someone’s personal experience with trauma or pain? 

Furthermore, should the holder of someone’s story be a human service organization? Is a family’s story held sacred when it’s also needed for grant reports and to leveraging funding? Where is the line? How do we know if we’ve crossed it? 
 
Starfire uses “a secure online database powered by University of Cincinnati Center for Clinical & Translational Science and Training” to document and measure the outcomes of our work. That’s how we put it in grants. Of course, this is important to do: is what we say we are doing getting done?  Are people with disabilities becoming more connected to the community?  Are people with disabilities finding jobs? Are creative projects being launched?  Are we taking people with developmental disabilities lives seriously with our time together?  But there’s also the real story of our work that documentation simply cannot tell. Things like: spontaneity, intentionality, beauty and creativity. Or the opposite – intolerable experiences like getting tangled up in “service snafus” or emergency respite or litigation. 
 
Internally we wrestle with how to share this work – the behind the scenes work of Community Builders, the brave first steps in creating a project, and the new work of supporting families leading creative projects in their own communities. We send emails and newsletters and produce Annual Reports, produce videos, lead trainings, launch podcasts, and write blogs. We make a commitment each time: to honor each person’s story truthfully, delicately, and with the expressed permission and participation of those sharing their lives with us. Because these stories don’t belong to Starfire. Sure, our fingerprints are all over the scene, but they aren’t stories that we as a nonprofit organization can hold. These stories are held by people – as ordinary as you and I, stories that are held by moms and dads and brothers and sisters, coworkers, neighbors and friends. A snapshot in time celebrating the struggle of making something good, something more, happen together in the world. 

Related Posts:  

Case Files and Memories 

Beer   
 

This past December, the Trump administration announced that they will be revoking 25 legal guidance documents that interpreted and explained a wide range of federal laws, including a guidance letter written in 2016, protecting the civil rights of people with developmental disabilities. The administration stated that these letters "improperly went beyond explaining existing laws, and instead essentially created new rules." We don’t know quite yet what impact this will have on our work in the state of Ohio to move more disability services toward integration, but it is assuring that the existing legal framework is not impacted by the letter's revocation. Certainly, it also doesn’t change what our mission is at Starfire. In any case, attention to this letter by the Trump administration took me back to this story published almost exactly 4 years ago by the NY Times:

The ‘Boys’ in the Bunkhouse: Toil, abuse and endurance in the heartland. 

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The story exposed the abuses done to a group of a few dozen men who were employed at a Henry's Turkey Service, a turkey plant in Iowa, for more than 30 years:

"Their supervisors never received specialized training; never tapped into Iowa’s social service system; never gave the men the choices in life granted by decades of advancement in disability civil rights. Increasingly neglected and abused, the men remained in heartland servitude for most of their adult lives."

The story is horrifying to read. The "bunkhouse" where they lived conjures images of Willowbrook, though almost 50 years after Robert F. Kennedy described that institution as bordering on a “snakepit,” and as “less comfortable and cheerful than the cages in which we put animals in a zoo.”

One man with developmentally disabilities was forced to work while he received chemotherapy treatment, “I threw up at my house and I threw up at work,” the article quotes him saying. Another got handcuffed to his bed at night. Another died getting lost in a snowstorm, trying to escape the only home he had. The house was so cockroach-infested it made eating an indigestible task, "many men ate with one hand over their plates to block the roaches falling from the ceiling." They rose at 3 a.m. for work, enduring what most could not imagine for even a day, and for 3 decades of their life took home sub-minimum wages for their efforts.

I read the article while pregnant with my first daughter and the images were so graphic and heartbreaking that it took me weeks to finish the story. I found myself asking again and again....How could this have happened in 2014? Almost forty years after deinstitutionalization in our country?

... Iowa’s governor at the time, Chet Culver, acknowledged that “every level of government has failed these men since 1974.”

If there is to be any consolation, the horrors these men went through informed and strengthened the call for radical changes in the disability service system across the country. The story of these men from Atalissa was the spark that brought flame to a deeper issue: the ongoing segregation of people with developmental disabilities in the workplace, home, and in day programs. While abuses like these are an anomaly, the root cause - isolation and segregation from community - was still alive and well in our country.

The same year the story hit newsfeeds (one month later to be exact), the Obama administration expanded efforts to crack down on "unnecessary segregation in employment systems" for people with developmental disabilities. President Obama then took further action with an executive order to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour for workers employed under certain federal contracts. The message was that people with disabilities rights are being violated, and that Congress and the nation must do more in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to support people with disabilities in the community, rather than in the forced segregation of institutions. 

Soon states such as Ohio or most recently in Utah, became the subjects of class action lawsuits led by civil rights organizations.  The lawsuits followed the guidelines set forth by the 1999 Supreme Court ruling Olmstead, or Olmstead v. LC. This civil rights decision was based on the ADA, and stated that people with disabilities have a qualified right to receive state funded supports and services in the community rather than institutions when the following three part test is met:

1. the person's treatment professionals determine that community supports are appropriate;

2. the person does not object to living in the community; and

3. the provision of services in the community would be a reasonable accommodation when balanced with other similarly situated individuals with disabilities.

As Olmstead moved throughout the country in the form of lawsuits, a legal guidance document was written in October 2016 by the Obama administration. This is the aforementioned document that was rescinded during the announcement by Jeff Sessions.

Here's an excerpt:

A core purpose of the ADA is to “assure equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency” for individuals with disabilities. The integration mandate of Title II of the ADA is intended to allow individuals with disabilities to live integrated lives like individuals without disabilities, including by working, earning a living, and paying taxes. The civil rights of persons with disabilities, including individuals with mental illness, intellectual or developmental disabilities, or physical disabilities, are violated by unnecessary segregation in a wide variety of settings, including in segregated employment, vocational, and day programs.

Of course, especially if you've been following our blog for years, it's true that Starfire’s shift came before any lawsuits or pressure from the state. We were fortunate to come to our own realizations. But while others saw our transition out of day program into an integrated model as too costly, time-consuming, and radical, this clear direction in the 2016 legal guidance document from the White House and the DOJ was a beacon of support for Starfire.

Perhaps the momentum toward integration has taken hold, and many programs, families, and people with disabilities are on their way out of the outdated models that segregate people in facility-based settings. Certainly, forty years after deinstitutionalization and the IDEA, almost thirty years after the ADA, and after far too many days of people's lives spent in isolation, people with disabilities deserve an all hands on deck approach to moving each person out of institutional living and into community life. We cannot forget.

“We’ve learned that true safety comes from a form of love or a form of affection and care. It’s a shared obligation, it’s a reciprocal relationship.”

In this audio you’ll hear a conversation with Tim Vogt about the subject of safety, love, and the ‘spell of certain magic words.’

TRANSCRIPT:

Katie: Can you start us off and talk about what does safety get sold as in the service system today?

Tim: They’re selling us an idea of safety that nothing will ever happen to us. And what they’re doing is they’re trying to provide a cover for families and communities to say, “Great you’ve got it take care of it thank you.” We just kind of believe that there’s a balance. That there are some services that can provide some degree of safety. But we just don’t believe that that’s the only form. And that’s where we have the question of well, “Who’s got my back? Who’s making it more safe for me and with me?” And the thing we think about at Starfire it’s a great quote is that safety comes from the presence of many capable, caring glances. We need to be in the presence of a bunch of people that know us and see us and love us. And that’s

Actually what keeps us safe it’s not the locks on the doors it’s not the security systems it’s not the management requirements of the Medicaid system or the policies of the group home or the day program or the segregated farm that says they’re going to do this that or the other. None of those things actually provide true safety.

K: Yeah, I mean if we all wanted to live in the safety that people with disabilities have to live in, which is the safety of basically the State and policies, it would look like a military state. You know, it would look like people going, patrolling up and down the streets and us having to lock our doors at a certain time and all of us being sort of trapped in this really sterile, scheduled out environment and nobody would want that.

T: It’s always safer with more people.

K: Yeah.

T: So that’s the design of Starfire’s work that’s intentional. That true safety comes from a form of love or a form of affection and care. It’s a shared obligation, it’s a reciprocal relationship. I look out for your best interest because I care about you. And you look out for mine because you care about me.

K: So… in front of me is a book called christmas and purgatory and I’m going to read a quote. It says, “Some of mankind’s most terrible mistakes have been committed under the spell of certain magic words or phrases.” This book is filled with graphic and disturbing pictures of an institution. I’m bringing this book into the conversation because it shows us the worst of mankind of what can happen when we follow the lure of ‘safety’ over community.

 IMAGES FROM CHRISTMAS IN PURGATORY

T: Well, the book Christmas in Purgatory has always been powerful to me because it is, as you put it, graphic. And it’s also kinda interesting, at least from my perspective, some of the pictures rhyme with the pictures I see even today. In services for people and in the form of our services. It’s not as bad, so that book shows people naked in rooms with dozens of other people without any kind of toileting or any kind of cleanliness. It’s a really horrific kind of doral kind of essay on what was happening to thousands and millions of people with disabilities. But if you took just the form of it, people in rooms without much purpose, you’d largely see that very much alive today. The same pattern is still happening in day programs and workshops and group homes for people with disabilities. That’s really, I think very dangerous because it’s almost like it’s repackaged, it’s the same pattern but it’s got some new color to it and then we buy it. We’re giving them a version of the Christmas in purgatory support system which is here’s some walls that will largely keep out the monsters that we’re telling you that live outside of here but they’re still sitting there in a room with each other doing nothing that leads them outside of those walls. We’re not in the presence of these safe, caring, loving glances. We are at the real kind of mercy of the wardens of the institution, so to speak.

K: So are you saying that we haven’t designed anything really new out of the institution? We just kinda designed smaller, prettier institutions when we closed down places like Willowbrook?

T: That’s my perspective.

K: It seems like the intentions are maybe better this time around.

T: I think we are evolving. Like I do think that people are trying to recreate somewhat of a better mousetrap. It’s just still a trap and now we’re stepping into a space in time where our our laws are starting to say, ‘Well are these kinds of places the same as the institutions?’ and people are largely saying, ‘Yeah, they are in function and in form.’ So it doesn’t matter the intention of whether or not, it’s still based on a design and that design is still based on some assumptions that people with disabilities are a them, are a collective group of people. And that’s a dangerous thing because then everybody’s identity is lost. Most people with disabilities that I am aware of and hear about and talk to are in real danger of having no purpose as a citizen of their community. They are simply a client of nonprofits and governmental services and their entire purpose is lost to the world. And I think that’s a big danger that I think Starfire raises and says: ‘What about this person’s purpose? Why was this person born? And what’s the role of the family in a community to discover that, and what’s the role of the support system, service system to nurture that experience?’

And I don’t think that it’s bad to have a collaboration between service system and families and community. It’s for me, from my perspective, it’s over weighted toward just the services system and then a person with a disability almost gets kind of sent to this place or places that are gonna serve them and if it’s just to captivate them and keep them safe in our building, the shared purpose becomes clienthood. It becomes we all are in this building because we all have some sort of need that’s been defined by our medical records or our doctor’s evaluation. So volunteerism could be we discover purpose together as citizens and that’s what would build that kind of safety net of relationships that well I look out for you because I care about your purpose and I care that your gift to the world would be missing if you weren’t here.

The biggest danger from my perspective is nobody’s talking about this. We say “it’s their choice to be segregated” and in that case let ourselves off the hook for even addressing the complexity of the issue. I think that’s why Starfire’s story is so powerful. It’s just more honest. We’re talking about the complexity of things versus selling everybody on the idea that we can solve all your problems.

The most egregious examples I have of people with disabilities being in trouble is where there were very few people looking out for them. There was a woman who was being prostituted. She had $100,000 a year in services and the services couldn’t stop her from being prostituted. Another person I know lit a cup in fire in his group home and spent two years in State Penitentiary. He again, had a big waiver, big bunch of money behind him that  the service system and a bunch of nonprofits, including Starfire. Both these cases lined up and said we’ll keep you safe. We had three people that I always kind of paired together that came to our dances and our outings. One young man’s mother shot him up with morphine then shot herself up. She’s still alive but she’s in jail for the rest of her life and her son is dead. Another young woman would come to our dances and our outings and her mom laid her down in bed and shot her in the head and shot herself in the head and both of them are dead. Another mother stabbed her daughter who was autistic and then stabbed herself and set the house on fire. All three of those people came to our outings and our programs. They all participated in our dances. They all went bowling with us.

And I’m sure it’s more complicated than any of us know. But my question has always been did we fail them by not bringing in more people into that story? By telling them that our dances and outings were gonna answer all of their hopes and dreams and fears, did we take away the complexity and did we let ourselves off the hook for actually inviting in those capable glances that would have said, “Hey it seems like you’re not doing so good, could I spend an afternoon with your daughter or could you and I take a walk and just talk about it?” How do we grow a safety net of relationships – versus services?

K: A safety net that looks more like love? Outside of the service system, outside of a volunteer saying, “Let’s go on an outing together and sort of not taking them as seriously as a true friend. When families can see that, ‘Hey my son or daughter is loved,’ that creates safety.

T: I think that if I fear being rejected, it’s largely because I’ve had that experience before right? And we know that people with disabilities are rejected a lot of ways throughout their lives. So are their families and if we don’t acknowledge that. Then we ask the question of how do we mitigate against that rejection? How do we build less rejection? That would be really good work but to simply say we’re gonna protect you from ever having to worry about rejection doesn’t actually get at the antidote to rejection. It just takes away the possibility of the hurt coming.

K: Let’s address the idea that people with disabilities often need support. Not every person with disabilities has the same needs or challenges but across the board there is a need for support that might look like a staff person, right? I think that what we’re saying here is not to say that someday that the community will replace every need for the service system. Is that right?

T: I don’t want anyone to ever think that a friend is going to replace paid support or a friend’s gonna replace family. However, we can’t think the service system is the sole system of support. We have to believe that some people can learn ways to support each other outside of services. So for example, if someone needs a feeding tube, that might lay outside the technical expertise or even something that would be unsafe. We wouldn’t want me to change someone’s feeding tube, I could easily cause an infection or harm to that person. However, there are lot of things we could do together that don’t require me changing a feeding tube. The problem is services own every aspect of a person’s life. I always ask families, ‘Were you trained to have a kid with a disability or did they just fall into your lap?’ They say we just learned. So family members are just citizens that learned the role of caregiver, so that means other citizens can learn. I just don’t like discounting the possibility that citizens can learn these things. So services have to be more creative and individualized so they can consider each individual’s design question. What is the design question that arises from this person’s life? Or their purpose. How might we help support facilitate that is an individualized design question? They also have to assume that someone from the community should and could be in this person’s life in a variety of different ways and the service workers have to own their own limitations.

K: One of the last quotes here in the Christmas at Purgatory book says, “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.” I think that is a big part of what we’re talking about. If we keep the same mindsets we’re gonna continue to pump out the same story, which is an old story of people with disabilities.

T: I think people can do what they want. If they want to recreate the outings or they want to recreate day programs. It’s a free country, right? Nobody can stop them, and yeah there might be people that say that’s a great idea for me or my family member. I mean those just aren’t the people we’re working with. We are working with people that say, “I thirst for a future and I believe in that future, and I’m willing to work with you.”

K: How should people change their mindsets about safety? What is the sort of underlying thing you think that needs to just shift?

T: I think they just have to start getting out there and meeting people. I think they have to start really believing that there are about thirty people out there that are going to be their future best friends that they haven’t met yet. And the only way to meet them is to start meeting them, and then the only way to get them to be best friends is to start investing in those people. And then just believe in it and act like you believe it and sure enough it becomes true.

K: Cool. Anything else?

T: It’s complicated isn’t it?

What does it look like when people with disabilities are connected to meaningful employment – in the community?

Listen to Christopher Kubik speak on the topic of integrated employment and ways he matches people with disabilities and employers so that they’re both the right fit.

TRANSCRIPT:

Christopher: For me personally, and I may not have enough experience to see this clearly, but I am very, very drawn to doing things that people thought were impossible. And for many people we work with their families or themselves personally were told at a young age, ‘you’ll never have a job.’ ‘You’ll never…’ A big long list of ‘you’ll never’s.’ That’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. 

So this summer was rough for us. A lot of people lost jobs. Because it’s their first job and you blow it on your first job. I remember being fired from the dairy corner down in Newtown.

And a lot of times the people we are working with, they’re adults that have not had a real job out in the community, that has nothing to do with disability, a typical job. Maybe real is a bad name.

Everyone blows their first job. You got to learn. Its okay. What do you do? Do you never work again? No. lets get another job and regroup and like go at it again now that we learned something. Were going to be able to design a better role next time.

Katie: Sometimes when you hear about employment with any marginalized group, it can create this deficit umbrella over them. “Oh, they’re unemployed so that means that they’re needy in some way.” So when you go to an employer, Chris, that narrative that this is a person who has a deficit, and they need you to give them a job to make their life better. How is that a different conversation through your work?

C: That’s a great question. The only reason we job hunt for people is because they have on their own said in some way, “I’m interested in that.” So we don’t prescribe a job as a solution. If you take it slow, and build it with being known first, then it can really be actually the culmination of who you are. But when it’s rushed and forced for an outcome, it can really backfire and have really long-term damage.

So when we come to an employer we say, ‘Hey, were looking in the neighborhood for opportunities for Katie to work, what do you guys do?’ And then I’ll ask, ‘What are some of the things that you guys are struggling with? Or what are parts and times of the week that suck?’ And then just offer solutions. It’s as simple as that. And then you can think about what if one of the people we are job hunting for can be the person that provides that solution. And what would that look like. And then we introduce the person were thinking are maybe a fit there. But its based on, ‘Will this help your business? Are you willing to have a trail period? Or will you hire this person and we will reconvene in 30 days?’

And talk about what’s working what’s not. What can we shift so it will work long-term. And small businesses, if the team is small enough, that is a really easy conversation. And they’re really open to that kind of experimentation. They’re not married to some org chart that they can’t stray from. They are able to look at the things in between and see opportunities. And that’s humbling to see business be like, ‘Okay, yeah lets try it.’

I know personally, a job has changed my life for the better. Of who I am and what I am capable of doing. And I see that with the people we work with. Their personality changes in positive ways. They gain confidence and are more comfortable in their own skin. This is a normal thing and it’s also shockingly happening with people who live with disabilities. We shouldn’t be surprised by this. What is a job besides the money? It’s people coming together around a  common mission and devoting time and energy in order to get that thing done. And so I think people should be included in that kind of thing.

The first time we sang happy birthday was right before the gifts. Jessica wanted to open them right away, before the food came. She got a butterfly necklace, a restaurant gift certificate, tickets to a play, a winter vest, and a coffee cup that read, “I love you a Latke.” The second time we sang happy birthday was at the end of the night, when our cheesecakes arrived and a candle was lit. “Happy birthday dear Jessica,” the 8 women sang in chorus around her.

“The Queen!” she interjected. We laughed and nodded our heads in love and agreement.

“Happy birthday to yooou!”

Then for reasons all her own, Sandy reached over and lit a new candle, on another part of her cheesecake, and with all the willingness and joy that only a table of friends could muster for their friend, the queen, on her birthday, we began the third and final rendition of happy birthday to Jessica.

“And many more!” Sandy concluded.

On the way home from dropping her off that night, my 3-year old daughter asked, “Mama, why did we have to drive Jessica home?”

“Well, because Jessica can’t drive,” I answered.

“But where is her mommy?”

Jessica’s parents both passed away 7 years ago, months apart from each other. Her mom was old, and she got sick I explained. So… she’s gone but now Jessica has other women in her life who care about her, like our family, and all the women who were around the table tonight, singing her happy birthday – 3 times.

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Kachelle said at first, she wasn’t sure about partnering with Danyetta - or Starfire. “In the beginning, I was just a little stiff,” she said about her early days working with Danyetta. “I’m not used to people.”

That was two years ago. Today, Kachelle is an active part of her community in Lower Price Hill. Through Danyetta's support, week after week, she can now say she is building the life she imagined - filled with connections to the art world and opportunities to create with others. And because of her new friendship with Alicia, Kachelle has a job as an "artist in residence" at the neighborhood non-profit, Community Matters.

“I don’t think Kachelle realizes how much she means to me,” Alicia said, Community Engagement Coordinator from Community Matters. “I think she has a lot of power. I love seeing her every week. She lights up any time she comes and we’re doing art together.”

“I like to help people get together,” said Kachelle. “And I like Starfire and working with Danyetta. I don’t know what I’d do without this.”

Kachelle first connected to Starfire because she expressed wanting to get out of her house more and meet people her age who lived nearby. But her experiences at that time were working in a sheltered workshop, where she said she spent all of her time in the facility.

“I told Danyetta in the beginning that I like to get my hands messy,” said Kachelle. “I didn’t want the paint brush, I like to use my whole hand on the canvas.”

“When Kachelle told me she likes art, I thought about the ‘who’ first, then the ‘what,’” said Danyetta. “I knew Alicia from another neighborhood project I was involved in and reached out. It worked out nicely because Kachelle and Alicia care about the same things, and they’ve formed a friendship.”

Kachelle, Alicia, and Danyetta came up with the idea to create a space for artists in Lower Price Hill to engage, naming it “The Collective” - a weekly artist meet-up in Price Hill.

“We recognize that the word ‘artist’ can be intimidating,” continued Alicia. “So we’ve tried to develop projects everyone can take part in. It’s an opportunity to be creative and be a leader in your community.”

To learn more about why Kachelle's work connecting in her neighborhood is so important, check out our website. www.starfirecincy.org

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This story is part of our Story Series, “Time.” Subscribe and get a new story from our series in your inbox every week! 

backpack

excerpt from speech given at StoryFest breakfast held Friday, October 12th, 2017

Maggie, started school this year with a bang. With literal kicking and screaming and banging on things. What was designed for modern parental convenience, the drive up, open your door, and a nice friendly teacher would remove child from car seat, became a monumental battle each morning. Mostly, the experience left my daughter feeling like she was being abducted by strangers. Every. Single. Morning.

Being the social innovator that I am, and employing my Starfire design thinking skills, we quickly realized that if we parked the car, and walked her to the door, she no longer caused such a scene. There was still the dread of going to school, but much less abuse of the teachers.

The dread however, came to stop altogether and things started to change for her when she came home excitedly about a month ago.

“mama! Someone at school has my same backpack!”

“That’s wonderful! Who? Did you ask their name?”

“Beatrice!”

I gave a big smile. Maggie, having no idea, that I know who Beatrice is. That she is our neighbor in Madisonville, mere blocks away from our house, and that Beatrice’s dad, Shawn, is one of Starfire’s best connectors, and Beatrice’s mom, Missy, is one of Cincinnati’s best crafting artists with Happy Groundhog Studios.

Maggie and I spent the last few minutes before bedtime looking at pictures of Beatrice on her mom’s Facebook wall. Pictures of Beatrice at an FC Cincinnati event, at the pool with her cousins, at the Dali Museum with her brother… and a picture of her on World Down Syndrome Day. Her mom, Missy, wrote under that picture “I hope in the future that this doesn't need to be a special day. That all people are included and loved for who they are, and not forgotten or separated because they don't move as quick, because they look different, or because they don’t have the words to say what they want.”

I asked Shawn and Missy for permission before sharing Maggie and Beatrice’s story as we think about that budding friendship. Not because it’s extraordinary that two kids can become friends with someone who has the same purple backpack with stars. But because of the opposite side of the coin – what is lost when people with Down Syndrome, or autism, or cerebral palsy, or any disabilities, aren’t given the opportunity to feel that spark of friendship and welcome in our community. When they sharing ordinary places, when they aren’t known and given the opportunity to grow in relationship. What is lost when people with disabilities aren’t included, when separateness and isolation and anonymity are the dominant story arc of someone’s life.

But Starfire tells a different story. Our work is one person at a time by design, honoring everyone’s unique identity, but it has a rich multiplying effect in our community locally and nationally. The work of Starfire is impacting more places and more lives than at any other time in our near 25 year organizational history.

See videos featured at this year's Storyfest Breakfast event here:www.youtube.com/starfirecincy

How do you want to spend your time? How does the way you spend your time impact others? When is time with others “wasted”?

Listen to hear Tim Vogt discuss how time spent with people with disabilities should be valued as “sacred.”

“Time matters so much… We have come to understand that the time we have with people with disabilities is sacred. It represents their life.”

Full Transcript:

Katie: So, what does it mean to spend a lifetime with people?

Tim: There’s a great metaphor from C.S. Lewis in his book “The Four Loves,” where he talks about the difference between approach and nearness, and he talks about this in the context of faith and being close to God. But I think it applies, the way he describes it he says,

“I want you to imagine that you’re on a path, and your path ends at a village, and the village has a warm bath and a cup of tea and all your friends are there, and there is a fire and you’re in the mountains and you’re on this path and it’s cold and it’s rainy and your coming to this cliff, and you’re at the top of the cliff, and below you you can see the village where you are going, the baths and the tea and the friends. It’s waiting for you. But there is no way to get to it, you’re near it, you can see it, you can smell the smoke from the fire. But you can’t fly and you can’t climb down the cliff. The only way to get there is a five-mile loop that goes around the whole valley, and actually every step you take for a while is going to get you further from the village, but interestingly enough you’re approaching your goal more than you were when you were near it.”

The question really is about what’s the goal. And what it means to get there. When I think about what does it mean, especially in our work in Starfire, to help people grow towards each other, it means more than just being near. The path is actually the thing we have to keep going along. We have to travel that. And time matters there it might take longer, it will take longer. We can’t actually get closer unless we spend a lot of time together. Isn’t that a great metaphor?

K: It is.

T: Its really helpful to me

K: Yeah. Why do people have a hard time committing to a long-haul?

T: Well I’m really interested these days in what happens if we don’t have to commit to it but we just continue travel together. Because, time is just really interested in that, if we go 30 years in the future, and we say we’ve been best friends, or we’ve been married, or we’ve been great neighbors. We’d look back and say, what kinds of things did we do to keep that alive. It was things like forgive each other, and grow separately but come back together, and bring new people in to introduce and celebrate together. We’d have to do all these things that probably require us to be uncomfortable. But when we are in the future looking back, its easy to say: “Oh yeah that’s how it happened,” but it’s hard for us to see it that way. That’s why time matters so much, is that it’s the passing of time that allows all of that stuff to happen.

K: Sometimes more time does not equal quality time. So with Starfire we have actually started working less with people, we spend less time with people. And we out in more quality during the week more than maybe we did with the day program days.

T: It was just a way we thought about peoples lives and our purpose. Our whole purpose was to almost fill time, and now it is to invest it in that future story, that future goal. We have just come to understand that the time that we have with people with disabilities is sacred. It represents their life. And we spend a few hours a week building that life. A connected, vibrant, life with lots of friends who care about me.

K: So you’re saying that the goal you have in mind can determine the way you spend your time. And the goal that we have is different than keeping people safe and happy now it’s a full rich life.

T: Yeah, its some what of an understanding, and it’s something to own up to. We didn’t actually imagine the same kind of lives for people with disabilities than that we imagined for ourselves. And somehow we imagined that their purpose was a very finite, you know, existence. That was very much in the present of managing them or just keeping them safe and happy. When we started to say “oh we’ve been thinking about this all wrong. Each of these people have a unique purpose.” Then we had to, one come to terms how we assumed very little was possible for them. And once when we did that, we had to commit ourselves to what was possible. Then we had to understand that’s generally looks like a connected, included, participatory future. But, again its unique and wild for each person. So we had to design our services in a way that use time to get there. When we started to think about what that looks like, it takes a lifetime to build a life so we had to figure out how to invest our time and partnership with people in a sacred way that lead to that future. And allow the space for surprise and new relationships and affection to percolate.

K: So that’s that three hours that we spend a week instead of the four days.

T: Yup. So instead of four days its three hours of invested time, and the week in between actually really matters, because we become new over that week and the story becomes a little deeper. Week by week it gets deeper and deeper. Its approaches that vision of the future. It approaches that forty to fifty-year story. You can only chip away at that a step at a time, or a day at a time week at a time, you can’t knock it all out in a week or a month. It just doesn’t work like that.

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We don't say it enough, but without families, our work at Starfire would not be possible. Every connection made in the community, every new relationship formed, or job attained, families are the ones behind-the-scenes keeping those threads of connection together. In many ways, Starfire's story is the story of every family we support.

Families like Joy and Rosie Lawrence-Slater, who believe that every person has an important role in the community. The mother and daughter duo recently shared their hopes and dreams for Rosie's life when NPR's StoryCorps came to Cincinnati.

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We understand families are stretched thin. So when 81% of families support our mission by... providing transportation to community events, or following up with new friends to keep the relationship going, or coming to us with ideas for a person's future…we are in awe. That type of support isn't what's typically asked of families from support agencies like Starfire, and we know it's not the easy way. Because of this, it's the support we receive from families, more than almost everything else, that tells us our work is worth working for. 

This story is part of our Story Series, “The Spark.” Subscribe and get this series in your inbox every week! 

A few weeks back, Starfire received an email that reminded us of the importance of making room for "the spark" to happen. It was written by a mother, whose son Kyle used to attend our day program before it closed. Kyle would be receiving his Black Belt in Gumdo (sword fighting) that Saturday, and they wanted to share the news. His mother went on to write that without the initial connection that Starfire made seven years ago - between Kyle and Paul Korchak (Founder of the Cincinnati Taekwondo Center) - his dream of attaining a Black Belt might never have been realized.

"I like my martial arts training and I look forward to going to class each week. Each skill is hard at first, but it gets easier the more I practice. My classmates have helped me learn so many moves and they have been great teachers. Ms. Knarr is nice and encourages me to do more. I enjoy most of the things that I have learned. I like to be a fighter with good moves and kicks. I really like to combine my fighting skills to make special powerful moves which include; a power attack, flashing punch, and double kick. I don’t like sparring as much because I am afraid someone will get hurt, but I like to work with my swords, because it makes me strong and builds muscles."

-Kyle

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As part of Starfire's shift in those days toward more person-centered, community-based work - we saw that Kyle's love of martial arts might be a natural and meaningful entryway into community life, and spring him out of our day program. So, our staff invited Master Korchak to attend a PATH (planning session) that would focus on Kyle's hopes and dreams around the martial arts. Asks to the community in those days were something new, and often felt awkward. Will he come? Will he understand how important this could be to Kyle's life? Will he be confused and ask questions I'm not sure how to answer? Going about the ask itself was a practice in faith. But to our delight, Master Korchak accepted.

And then it happened. At the PATH, Master Korchak extended the invitation for Kyle to come check out his class, and Kyle was obviously excited. This was the best outcome anyone could have hoped for. Without anyway of knowing in advance that it would happen, there at the PATH we saw a "spark."

"During Kyle’s childhood he participated in a number of different sports: Swimming, soccer, and baseball, but all of them were segregated team sports and none of them has provided Kyle with the sense of joy and accomplishment that he feels with his Gumdo training. The bar is always being raised, there is variety, plenty to learn, and he can learn at his own pace."

-Jenny, Kyle's mother

Here's Kyle during his Black Belt ceremony.

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"It did not take long before it was clear Kyle’s interest in Taekwondo was becoming a passion.  Kyle was hooked, and it was exciting to see the joy his classes gave him! Kyle’s love for Gumdo and the martial arts has been transformational! Kyle has developed a passion for the martial arts, which has improved his self-confidence, given him purpose, to be the best warrior he can be, and has allowed him to grow in a community that accepts his differences. We thank everyone who has help make his PATH, a plan that came true."

- Jenny

Receiving an email like this one is a part of our story we don’t always get to tell. We often make room for "sparks" to happen, and they don't always ignite. And even sometimes when the do ignite, we don't see the whole story unfold because people like Kyle, his family, and Master Korchak have figured out a way to carry on that spark for years on their own- outside of Starfire's or some other service's support.

Stories like these take a measure of serendipity and courage to shift course and try something different. At first the different path feels riskier - and less sure-footed than the typical "disability story" would offer. It takes guts to shift perspectives from believing who someone is based on their label of disability, and instead build a new story of who they might become: a Black Belt, a classmate, a community member, a friend.

Kyle Vorhees.jpg

"I am very happy to receive my Black Belt and I will continue to practice what I have learned so that I can continue to learn more forms and skills.

-Kyle

And like martial arts, inclusion takes practice. It starts by making that first invite to the community, building a plan, then sticking with it year after year. Then, even when we've reached some ultimate goal - we continue going back to the fundamentals, inviting and building, knowing that with discipline and heart the rewards will pay out over a lifetime.

This story is part of our Story Series, "The Spark." Subscribe and get this series in your inbox every week! 

Close your eyes and think of a time you felt a "spark" with someone or something. Was it the first time you held a microphone? The time you met your best friend? Why is this idea of a "spark" important to our work in the community around people with disabilities?

Listen below to hear Tim Vogt's 3-question interview on this series' theme with host, Katie Bachmeyer.

Transcript:

Katie: So, tell me about a time you saw a spark at Starfire.

Tim: There was a young man that was coming here, Kyle, and he would walk around our day program, and he would walk in a very different way. He would turn his toes inward and make these sideways steps, and he would kind of walk around corners very intentionally. And, I remember, at the time we had a few staff who thought this was a really big problem – that he was acting strangely or it wasn’t appropriate. One staff, a guy named Jon, had noticed that this young man had kind of an interest in martial arts, in ninja-kind of stories. And Jon actually noticed that what Kyle was doing was not strange or weird, it was actually a form of martial arts.

So, the first spark was the noticing of that staff, saying, “Huh? I wonder if this isn’t just weird or this isn’t just strange or this isn’t just a behavior problem. What if this is an intentional clue into who this person really is? Maybe this is one form of communication of who they think they are and who they were born to be.” As a result, another staff started to invite in a local martial arts master to teach for the reason of cultivating this interest that was noticed with this young man. So, Kyle gets an opportunity now, because of these two staff, to be in the presence of somebody who could be a mentor, or a sensei if you will, to his unfolding or emerging identity around the martial arts.

A few months later, Kyle is having a planning session.  His family is coming and our staff are gonna be there. We’re thinking about who is Kyle. And, Bridget says, “We should be inviting Master Korchak, the martial artist that had been teaching the class. He should come and help us think about Kyle’s future.” So again, here’s the next spark, the idea that Master Korchak is not only here to teach about martial arts but he might come to a meeting to help us all imagine what Kyle’s future could look like. And he carries a really interesting part of it, which is this interest, a passion that Kyle has for martial arts. And he knows a lot about that, he’s dedicated his whole life and career to this. So, he’d be a logical person to invite in.

So, in the planning session, they started talking about martial arts and when it came up that Kyle was interested. And the whole circle, everybody in the room – the family and our staff kind of came up with the idea that there’s some Special Olympics classes they could explore around the martial arts and that’s a legitimate thing for people to think of. However, Master Korchak said, “I think he could do my class. I do it every Monday and I think he could come. He’s already good enough to be a part of that. It’s a self-directed journey for everyone that’s in the class, and Kyle’s got enough of an interest and enough of capabilities to participate.”

So, right there you see another spark: validation of Kyle’s passion by an expert in his field, and an invitation out of the disability world, or the special world, and into the regular world, the regular martial arts class. And that really helped that family, I imagine, that everything they believed and knew about him, which is that he deserved a full life and a community was actually true. That there was somebody out there who believed what they believed. So again, you see this fanning of the flames.

So this was 2012, when all this happens, and Kyle starts taking these classes, and we just received an email about a month ago that Kyle has his black belt in gumdo. And that’s actually a story that we’re gonna share next on this series. It took a lot of people to hold the flame of his passion. Kyle, himself, of course, insisting on a life that relates to martial arts. It was our staff, the paid people in Kyle’s life, people in the martial arts community, as well as it was his family. So, it was everybody kind of acting with intention and helping this thing to move forward.

That’s one path, is what happens when a bunch of people keep contributing in little ways over time. Also important to notice, is how very fragile each point along that journey is. Is that it could have been smothered by the doubt of a staff, the certainty of a staff, the doubt of the family, the fear of a community member, lack of ambiguity from Kyle about where does this even go, why invest in this. So, there’s so many places along the story where it could’ve all fallen apart. To us at Starfire, the biggest tragedy would be that a story like this would be lost. And, we actually think that this happen an awful lot. People’s stories get lost because we’re not fanning the flames, and we accidentally smother the points at which these kinds of stories and lives could emerge. So, we really believe that when you notice a spark, the key is to notice it and then to notice your own doubts or worries or concerns, and then to tamper those a little bit, and provide room for that spark to turn into a flame, to catch fire, to spread wildly in a way that would really ignite someone’s whole community, their whole family, their whole selves, their whole future.

Starfire Cincinnati Data Research

Data plays an important part in the fidelity and growth of our work. Tracking outcomes gives us the ability to share our success in a way that looks concrete, less subjective.

But data on its own is hopeless. That's why we have stories to back our outcome of "Maintaining connections." This data point looks a variety of ways, such as: lastingfriendships, connections to coworkers, or close neighborhood ties. The basic idea is that we are helping people with disabilities connect to relationships with people without disabilities by supporting them in a role that matters to them.

What roles do you have in your life, and how does staying with these roles help you connect to meaningful relationships over time?

This is part of our Story Series, “Staying.” Subscribe and get this series in your inbox every week! 

For the past 4 years, Michelle (see video below) has been meeting with a group of writers at a local coffee shop. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lDU8MDafI8&w=560&h=315]

"I like the people, the high energy. People in this group are easy-going and great. In the - 'nonjudgmental' - great." - Michelle Dunford, Write Me, I'm Yours co-founder

The group originally connected as part of Michelle's work with Starfire, where they did a writing project together. The project was to engage writers across the city by setting out journals at local coffee shops and inviting people to contribute. They called the project "Write Me, I'm Yours," which is now also the name of their monthly writing group.

"I'm always the first one there. Everyone has their own unique poetry style. I get excited and nervous when I have to read because some of the stuff I write about can be dark." -Michelle

A few things I love about this story.

1) They stayed in touch after their project was through. Working on something cool and interesting together gave this group of writers the gift of lasting ties to one another. That's why we spend a lot of our time doing projects just like Michelle's in our work as community builders, it creates bonds that span time.

2) The effort is completely community-based and driven by the writers themselves. Outside of Starfire's structure and support, without morphing into a "special needs" writing circle solely for Michelle and other people with disabilities, the group of writers made a commitment - to stay in each other's lives year after year, while Starfire stood on the sidelines admiring.

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"Michelle is the glue that keeps the group together. Michelle is the core and things don't feel right when she's not there. There is no difference in how we conduct the circle. We don't censor or adjust the agenda. She's an integral part of the group." -Eva Lewandowski, Write Me, I'm Yours co-founder

3) They have some pretty amazing work coming out of their writing circle. Here's one poem they worked on together with Cincinnati's Poet Laureate Pauletta Hansel.

"As far as I'm concerned, although I do blog and write articles, I don't consider myself a writer. However, the writing circle has allowed me to tap into my creativity. But best of all, it's provided me with a close circle of friends that wouldn't have happened had this circle not existed." - Eva

Stories like this are at the top of our list - as beautiful examples of people coming together over shared passion, and making the most impressive commitment to one another: to stay.

p.s. A look back at 2014, when the "Write Me, I'm Yours" project was first led by Michelle!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3nSw7dGsDI&w=560&h=315]

This is part TWO of our Story Series, “Staying.” Subscribe and get this series in your inbox every week! 

What does it mean to "stay?" Why is this important to our work in the community around people with disabilities? Listen to Tim Vogt's 3-question interview with host, Katie Bachmeyer.

Katie: So, why is the concept of staying important to Starfire’s work?

Tim: There is a great quote by Wendell Berry, and he talks about the marriage vows and they are not for better and for richer and for health, they are for better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness and health. He says that in staying we learn something closer to the truth which is that not everything in life is happy, and not everything in life is great. I think people with disabilities and their families that I know, relate that there is a great joy in life, especially when they get included and supported and loved in a way that we at Starfire hope that they could be. That continues to be a struggle for them and their families. So, if we can think about staying in solidarity, and in fraternity, and in relationship with people, we can be with them in that struggle, and it can lead to some good things, but it could be tough, many tough days.

I also think that when we think about “staying” we think about that same quote reminding us that there’s going to ups and downs and it might be tempting to leave. Leaving is an assumption that somewhere else is going to be better, but staying seems to be an invitation and a commitment to making this place better or this life better or this relationship better. So staying implies, in the depth of that concept, that I’m not just going to get out of here; I’m not going to leave you or this place. I am going to be here. There are going to ups and downs and good days and bad days, but I am still going to be here. So I think staying through those good days and bad days, and through the struggles and through the joys, and paying attention to the closer you get to the truth of what life is all about, what inclusion is all about.

Inclusion is not all happy and fun; it means I accept you as you are. 

I believe you can do better, but I accept you as you are. And you belong already; there is no need for you to have to earn it or prove that you are valuable, more valuable than you already are, so the idea of stay relates to peace. It relates to rest; it relates to some sort of satisfaction, and it relates to time in a really great way that I chose to commit myself to people, or a place, or to an idea, in a way that just gives the long story a chance to unfold. People with disabilities have a really small degree of imagination of story and imagination around their lives. There is a very short story about disability. It fits in this box and goes here and these people go here and that is what defines their life. So it is not a very big story and if we can stay with people and help nurture and participate in their journey and struggle for a better life, then we can see that there is a better story. You have to stay to see that better story.

Katie: Is it important to talk about staying because that isn’t a common reality for people with disabilities for in their lives that people often do not “stay”?

Tim: Yeah, I mean, when we look at the people that we support and the people that we love and know with disabilities, we see a lot of leaving in their lives. You’ve got professionals that are in and out depending on their next job, or if they got fired or promoted or left. So, there’s this constant turnover. And if we’re being really honest, we hear that there’s a lot of absence of community and rejection sometimes for people with disabilities and their families. And, an absence and rejection is a leaving of sorts. Right? Like, you’re left alone. We’re outta here. We’re not gonna be with you anymore. So, when you’ve got a disability, you’ve got this turnover almost in your life. Your social stories are very short. People are in it for a few minutes or a few hours or a few weeks or months as professionals, they’re not really in it for a long period of time. So, the counter, the antidote would be staying, the people that are there for a long time.

There’s also just an interesting, I would call it a creative limitation, that people with disabilities and their families are inviting us into.

A lot of people I know who have disabilities can’t drive. And so, their mobility is limited. They might not be able up and move to a new city for college because college isn’t even an option. Or, they would lose their funding if they moved out of state. Or, the public transportation system doesn’t actually travel between cities, you know. So, the mobility of people with disabilities is really physically limited, and the options of moving about are limited. So, then if we’re asking the question, “How might someone with a disability have a good life?” one of the factors is we that we think the reality is they’re going to be limited in how they move about.

So, we would want to develop local networks and really have people who have stayed around them be part of the story, that would have known them for a long time. The last aspect of stay that I can think of that really matters is that staying relates to taking care of a place and the people in that place. So, there’s another great essay that Wendell Berry wrote about his family’s farm and the generations of his family that have taken care of that place. And there’s a, by taking care of that place, they’re taking care of the people around them and of that place too. So, people who take care of a neighborhood or take care of a block, or take care of a city; because they’ve lived there their whole lives, those are the kind of people who create a culture where somebody’s looking after the place and the people in it.

And, if we could have more people stay and own the caretaking of places, and root themselves deeply, they would grow big networks, and they would, over time, probably build a culture that was very conducive to the lives of people with disabilities and that culture.

 Katie: So, last question. Who do you think is called to stay? And, how do they do that?

 Tim: I think we’re all called to stay. However, I don’t think that any of us are required to stay. There are good reasons for moving on from relationships and places. You can’t afford it, or the person you’re committed to turns out not to be the person that you thought they were, and that’s dangerous. But, I think that the problem is that if we don’t leave the potential for staying open, then we don’t ever invest deeply. We don’t get to know the people around us because we’re already out the door. We’re buying this next house in order to flip it in five years, and move to a new place. So, why would we invest in each other? Why would we care about each other’s well-being? Why would we look out for our neighbors? Why would we bring flowers to the woman whose husband passed away across the street? Why would we, you know, get to know the kids on our block if we’re gonna be gone in a few years’ time? So, the temporary-ness that we start with is key. Or the permanency.

If we start with an idea that this might be a place that I stay, and we find out that it’s not, that’s great because the assumption was there to begin with, and we invested as if we were going to stay. I once met a woman who really challenged me on that. And she said, “I was a military kid. I had to move.” She said, “And, I’m still a military wife now.” And she said, “I still have to move.” And she said, “But every place I go, I invest like I’m gonna be there for the rest of my life.” That was awesome and beautiful.

She didn’t forego relationships, she didn’t create an absence in the neighborhood or in the families around her by assuming that she would be gone. She actively, intentionally said I’m going to invest, because I know I’m gonna be gone but I still need to take care of this place by investing in it as though I’m gonna live here myself. 

So, if I’m a person with a disability and I don’t get to move, but everybody around me is flipping their houses every five years, and everybody is of the mindset that they’re outta here in a few years, then quickly my condition deteriorates, and I could be stuck. And, instead of staying, I’m stuck. Everybody around me – no one knows me. No one’s built a great garden that I can be a part of. Nobody knows when my birthday is. And, I’m not a part of their world either.

Read the first part of our Integrated Employment Series here

Spencer's Job at Local Donut Shop

Danny's Job at his Local Pub

"It's good here. I like helping other people. I think it's really nice to see all my friends here. My favorite part of the job is making money."

Erika's Job as a Teacher Assistant at a Daycare

Mike's job at Custom Cabinetry Business

https://youtu.be/PcfX-hyPkg8

Chris' Job at Downtown Bike Share

Joe's Dream Job at the Zoo

Follow our stories and learn more about our approach to getting more people with developmental disabilities into the workforce where they can contribute!!

Instagram.com/starfircincy

Facebook.com/starfirecincy 

www.starfirecouncil.org

Douglas is going on his 3rd year as an employee at one of Cincinnati's most popular local establishments, Eli’s BBQ. He also has been working at Fireside Pizza for the past 2 years. Both restaurants are in/around the neighborhood of Walnut Hills, and that’s where Douglas lives.

When Douglas comes home from work – you can see the joy in the face, and the connection that has there now. He just glows," Paula, Douglas' mom.

Employment is an important part of life in America. "What do you do?" is one of the most common questions people ask when getting to know you. So when Douglas can answer back, "Eli's and Fireside Pizza," you can imagine how working this raises his status in any conversation.

Here's a glimpse of what Douglas' first year of employment looked like...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txWqXPweqzM&t=10s

Awesome, right? But... a job is still a job. A paycheck is nice, but relationships are what make life truly rich. When we can have both a paycheck and a social life, life finds its sweet spot. So after our Connectors at Starfire helped Douglas get settled in his new paid roles, the further step was discovering relationships.

Douglas' real, true interest "since he was tiny" is in movies. He might not share a lot in conversation, but when the topic of movies comes up, Douglas has a lot to add. So his Connector began reaching out to neighbors who like movies too. Now, several of his neighbors meet up bi-monthly (sometimes weekly) for movie nights (they all share a particular love for the Harry Potter series).

Slowly, these connections have started to show themselves in a "real community" way. This year, Walnut Hills held their annual StreetFest and as Douglas was walking there from his house - he bumped into Anne and Andrew (movie night friends) who were on their way there also. Immediately, they fell into conversation about movies as they carried on their way together to the festival. The simplest moments, like this one, can make all the difference in combating isolation so many people with developmental disabilities feel.

"It’s so hard these days to find real community – and here was real community right in our neighborhood!" his mother expressed. "To have these social connections – and to have that feeling that what he’s communicating is being received and understood – he’s really part of a group."

Before Starfire, Douglas’ life looked a bit different, and we’re so happy he and his family have joined us on this journey to build community around his passions and in his local neighborhood.

Check out Landlocked Social House, Anne and Andrew's Craft Coffee + Beer start-up on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/599834529/about