At our monthly team meetings, one of our crew members discusses one of our five values: strength, courage, commitment, heart, and trail-blazing. This is Karine’s reflection from this month’s meeting.
By Karine Chalifour, program director
I sometimes wish people could see what happens on a daily basis at YACC HQ. The level of commitment from everyone on the team gives me energy and makes me feel proud to be a part of what goes on here. Haters will hate, but we do everything with love, and in my book, that will always win.
We don’t do things half-assed, we simply don’t.
We are committed to having fun and laughing a lot. I would say there is not a day where I don’t have a good heartfelt laugh. Sometimes it involves a video on Facebook that makes me cry laughing alone in my office (sincere thanks to everyone who contributes to my laughter), but that is usually followed by Lesley laughing in her office because she can hear me laugh. These two minutes, even if distracting, are essential for my mental health. We are committed to being silly and light when needed. We are committed to bringing balance in our days that — let’s be honest — can have their fair share of sadness and hardship.
We are not perfect, we make mistakes, but it’s never because we didn’t care enough to put in the effort. We just recently worked on the biggest proposal of YACC’s life. We put in as much heart, passion, dreams, and knowledge as possible. In the end, we didn’t get what we had hoped for. We were disappointed, but it didn’t shake our commitment to finding ways to move things forward. We adjust, we get creative, we think outside of the box, and we take the next step. I guess in this case we had to stay inside of the box, but can look into redecorating (< this one is for Ceinwen)!
I love this time of year where everything starts bubbling at YACC. The Big Cancer Hook-up just wrapped, Survivor Conference is coming up soon, and Shave season is on its way — all while we are looking into the future of YACC and allowing ourselves to dream big, imagine, draw what the future could look like. We are committed to originality, difference, creativity, change, and evolution. We are committed to hard work, fun work.
We are committed to our community of YACCers. They are the driving force behind everything we do. We believe in the cause so deeply that setbacks can’t stop us. We still feel profoundly touched, inspired, energized by our community each and every day — either from a crazy amazing conversation in one of our private Facebook groups, or by an initiative taken on by one of our YACCers to help their peers in a show of how they have our back so we can continue to have theirs. We are committed to this beautiful group of people. A lot like how parents unconditionally love and care for their kids, we care for our YACCers and are fully and completely committed to offering them the very best of ourselves, every day.
To keep this up, I am committed to myself. Committed to be kind with myself, treat myself with love and respect, take time for me and the things I love, and strive to be the best I can be inside my heart. I am committed now more then ever to be happy for no reason, and for my happiness not to depend on the outside world. I am finding this is the only way I can be fully present and committed, authentic, and do what I love with people I love.
Tramps like us, Baby we were born to run.
