To say that the YAV experience has been turbulent would be a bit of an understatement. From Orientation being one of the most disorienting learning experiences of my life to getting hit by a truck, a lot has happened over the past few months. I’m long overdue in giving everyone an update on how thing are going so here you go.

         First, a small piece on national orientation. It’s been so long since that week of rich and challenging community building that I struggle to remember it all. There are a few things that remain clear as day in Albuquerque. Key among those is the prevalence of white supremacy and the systems I witness all too often that keep it in place. Here in ABQ it is hard to miss the ways in which the Military Industrial Complex, Housing assistance, treatment of lands sacred to local Pueblos, the Doctrine of Discovery, and so much more effect people of color every single day. Even in trying to fully understand the extent to which white supremacy has affected generations of Native peoples is difficult to comprehend, especially when you retreat at Ghost Ranch, a Presbyterian retreat center located on lands originally inhabited by Ute and Jicarilla Apache, as well as the Ohkay Owingeh, Picuris, Santa Clara, and San Ildefonso Pueblos. Reflecting on the role of the church, the program, and myself in this larger community has been a constant and difficult struggle I imagine will likely continue for the remainder of my time here. As my site coordinator Luke would say “I invite you to sit with that struggle.”

             Other rather obvious struggles I’ve been dealing with have been the whole truck business. Funny enough, that morning we had a bible study on Genesis 32: 22-32. That's the one where Jacob wrestles an angel and gets a limp because the angel messes with his hip socket. Luckily I did have any issues with my hip, but I certainly developed a heck of a limp that day. In the following days and weeks I was inundated with cards, messages, support, and love from afar. It was so comforting knowing so many people were caring about me and I really appreciated it. Unfortunately there were plenty of setbacks to balance out things. For one, you really get a chance to reevaluate things when staying in the hospital learning how to stand up again. I found myself incredibly lonely and depressed, despite visits from my entire family and the constant outpouring of support from my community back home. Fear of missing out certainly took hold of me and I certainly felt some bitterness towards my housemates living a few blocks away from me. We barely knew each other, but I desperately wished to be with them, building relationships and the intentional community we had all committed to. Luckily when you’re young your body is apparently made of rubber and heals at an exponential rate. Once I was moved into the YAV house and my healing began moving at a lightning pace, that sense of community I longed for was fostered and flourished. Today, two months ago I was learning to stand without passing out. Now I walk the .8 miles it takes to get to work and go on hikes with my fellow YAVs. Progress is wonderful and I am so appreciative of my community here and afar.

            Speaking of my community afar, I feel like I need to do some reflecting on the community I left behind at Washington and Lee. I didn’t really process leaving that community behind very well during the summer and in the past few months of being a YAV, but I found myself today struck with an incredible amount of sadness and nostalgia for my W&L community. I don’t really enjoy reflecting on my departure from the institution but I sincerely miss my friends and the larger community therein. I see so many things happening from afar, both good and less than great that I wish I could still be a part of. In some ways, I see the growth I’ve made personally since leaving school and have an immense appreciation of the experiences I have been exposed to; but that does not lessen the loss I still feel today in having left that community behind.
I feel like I mention those things to demonstrate the complexity of the human experience I feel I’ve felt these past few months. There’s so much that’s happened that I’ve left out but at the moment feel I can’t do justice. I hope to be more diligent going forward reflecting on my experiences so I can better include readers in the community I have here in ABQ. Tomorrow we depart Albuquerque for Tucson, AZ and Agua Prieta, Mexico. Expect some reflections on that experience in the coming weeks. Until then, Love Neighbor, Love Enemy, and Love Self.

As I enter into the last 1/3 of my year, I’ve put together a few pieces of advice for future YAVs – but I think they also double as life lessons I’ve learned over the past 7 months.

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED.
There’s no such thing as a normative YAV year. Let me say that again – there’s no such thing as a normative YAV year! After knowing several fabulous women who have completed their own YAV experiences, I could not help but enter into my YAV year with grand expectations, and I don’t think I’m the only one that does this. Afterall, there’s a reason we feel called to do this program. We all have our own reasons, intentions, and goals for the year and these things tend to lead to having a certain level of expectations, whether we acknowledge it or not. However, in my experience, nothing’s turned out how I imagined – not my work placement, not our community life, not our intergenerational housing situation. These things have been challenging and difficult, even disappointing at times, but the unexpected has also been delightfully surprising and beautiful.

INTENTIONAL COMMUNITY DOES NOT MEAN YOU’LL NEVER BE LONELY……but it does mean you’ll have people to support you when you are.
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We arrived in Albuquerque seven months ago as independent individuals and as different as can be. I think we all thought to ourselves, what the heck are we going to do this year? But over the past few months, humanity has taken over and bound us together through the good and the bad. Today, I’m unbelievably grateful for this community, the strong women I get to see every day, and the ways in which we love and support each other. We aren’t a perfect intentional community, and often, we tease and annoy each other like siblings – but we always extend grace to ourselves and others and manage to make it through. There’s certainly times I miss my family and friends back home and the feeling of being truly known, but the beauty of intentional community is that we are all in this together. Each day, we chose to be here with each other, and we continue to learn how to be supportive and show up for our community members in the ways that they need. We can have honest and sometimes difficult conversations with each other and remain a loved and valued member of the community. We are going through real life together and that means we have good days and bad and that we are experiencing real emotions.

​BE PATIENT. THE CHANGE AND GROWTH WILL COME.

​I spent the first few months of my YAV year searching for that personal growth and change that everyone promises you will have. I was frustrated when my year wasn’t like all the alumni had promised at YAV orientation. We weren’t fighting over the dishes. I wasn’t making lasting connections with my students, who couldn’t even remember my name for the first few months, and we had way too much going on in our community life to even take a crack at discussing the many systemic problems in our world. How was I supposed to accomplish all my goals for the year and grow in the ways I wanted to when things weren’t going as planned? I knew YAV was intentionally designed to be challenging and that we were supposed to embrace the uncomfortable, but for some reason, I thought our challenges were supposed to look like everyone else’s.
I’m learning to let go and be patient. Life happens at the speed it’s supposed to. I didn’t always think that this was going to be a transformational year for me, but it is – just not in the ways I thought. When I envisioned my YAV year, I always imagined participating in protests, serving food to the hungry, and becoming really good at reading the bible every day. While I’ve done all of these things (okay, I’m still not great at reading the bible), these aren’t the things that I’m going to remember from my YAV year. Instead, the moments that surprisingly stick out the most when I reflect on the last few months are the everyday, mundane things that demonstrate how far we’ve come. From conversations we’ve had walking around the track in the evenings to the people we’ve met and formed relationships with, I’ve learned that growth and real change happen when you least expect it.

To read more from Julie, click here.