Welcome to the Tweed Trends podcast. Hey, Evette, what's trending today? Hey, I'm Evette, hey girl! And you are tuned in to Tweed Trends.
It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today. Let's talk about lived experience. Let's get started. Today I was in a conversation and a term came up.
And I'd never heard this term before. And who knows? I very well made the last person on Earth to even realize that this was a thing. But the term was lived experience.
I'd never heard this before. The concept isn't, isn't foreign. But I just never heard the phrase before. And so I was completely blown away.
And then it took me in the way back machine. It took me back to when I was in graduate school at the University of Charleston, better known as the College of Charleston. I was in the Science and Math for Teachers program. And in this program we learned about constructivism.
And if you're unsure of what that is, it's a theory in education that basically says that that individuals don't acquire the knowledge by passively gaining the information. But instead they have to construct the new understandings and knowledge to experiences and conversations and integrating new information with what they already know. Well, come to find out, Eureka, I was a constructivist. And I didn't even know it.
And I was a constructivist by necessity because the school where I was teaching, we didn't have enough books for everyone. And I thought it was crazy to think that I was going to have a book with a bunch of kids sitting around it and that one, work was going to get done and two, that that was even going to work at all. So what I did was I created activities for them to do where they had to work together. They had to discuss things.
They had to come up with a hypothesis and test it and that sort of thing. And little did I know it was constructivism. I was a constructivist. And so that whole concept, that idea that now here I am in this conversation today talking about lived experience and I'm like wait a minute.
Okay, I got some of them. And so if you aren't familiar with lived experience, here's the definition. Personal knowledge about the world gained through direct first-hand involvement in everyday events rather than through representations constructed by other people. It may also refer to knowledge of people gained from direct base-to-face interaction rather than through a technological medium.
It goes without saying that we've all been through hard times in our lives. Rain has fallen and depending on the level, that's all personal. I may see something as a thunderstorm. You may see it as a drizzle, but the bottom line is a hard time is a hard time.
You hear me? So you've got this lived experience that you've worked through or maybe you're currently working through. Then let's say somebody comes along and they don't know anything about your experience. They've never been there, but yet they come to you and they claim to understand what you're going through.
They claim to understand how you feel or are worse. They give you advice based on their own point of view. When I tell you that is a recipe for a disaster, if they're your friend, go ahead and plan on not talking to them for a while. If they're a stranger, watch out because you might get beat down.
When people are dealing with hard situations, the emotion is serious. And so you come along not having any experience with the situation and trying to then give your two cents? No thanks. Don't do it.
Please don't do it. If you have a friend that's going through something and you say you go to their house and chat with them and talk, if there's awkward silence, let it be awkward. Leave the silence. Don't feel like you have to fill that space with words.
Don't go in there trying to act like you know what they've been through. They could have told you the story 100 times over and I still guarantee that you don't have enough information to give free advice without somebody asking for it first. So you just sit there and you say a little prayer. You rock back and forth.
Sing a hymnal and do something. But don't give that advice. Don't make a comment. Don't try to make it seem like you're there in that spot with them because you're not.
You're an onlooker. You're looking at the situation. Yeah. Better yet, you know, I've got an example.
I was working at a male school. It will remain nameless as well as the principal. I will not call her name. But while I was working at the school, I had a miscarriage.
I informed the department chair of what had taken place and why I would be out for X number of days. And somewhere in that time period while I was gone, she informed the principal. I don't see where it was necessary. I had the days to use.
I was using them. Why she had to be on it? In on it, I don't know. But when I got back to school, when I got back to school, I was walking down the hallway.
And this woman, the principal, she stopped me in the hallway and she said, I know exactly how you feel. I've been there before. When I tell you that she ignited the Tasmanian devil inside of me, when I tell you that I wanted to drop kick this woman down the hallway so bad. When I tell you I had some of the worst thoughts in creation at that moment.
But I had to walk away. I acted like I did not see that woman. I walked right past her. I didn't say a word.
I went to my classroom and I cried like a baby. And as I cried, I went through a checklist of things. If you aren't this, then you don't know how I feel. If you aren't a black woman, you don't know how I feel.
If you aren't a first time military spouse, you don't know how I feel. If your husband is now to see, you don't know how I feel. And I went down that list and I'm telling you, it felt good when I got to the end. But, baby, do not give free advice when it has not been asked of you.
There are people out there that believe that you have to have a PhD, MD, DDS. You have to have some kind of letters behind your name in order for you to be the authority in a particular field. But I bet it's different with that because in a situation with a doctor, if I'm the one that has the experience with the disease, then you have the information from the textbook, we should be working together so that now you can create a practice that caters to the needs of the people that are like me, that are having the disease, that are having to deal with it. You know, we know the different complexities and nuances about what we're dealing with.
So we would be the best people to go to, don't just create a process off of what you think. And I say that because so often people who are in a position to help those in need, they end up offering solutions to their own lenses without even consulting, is this something that would be helpful? And I'm telling you, like, when my daughter's birthday rolls around, I don't go asking my mother what I should get her, I ask the kid her age. My mom is going to say, get her some undershirts and some underwear.
My daughter's going to be looking at me crazy, like, seriously, this is my birthday present. She's going to say, thank you, but she's going to be giving me the side eye, especially leading up to the next birthday, like, so what you're going to do now, mama? Bottom line, the idea of lived experience, know that it matters. Empathy cannot always replace lived experience.
People who've been through something know what it is like to deal with it, and therefore we need those people to share their stories. Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. Now, your homework is to consider writing about your lived experience, because we know that a lot of times communication is lacking in a lot of families, and so you may have a lived experience that nobody knows about. Why not consider writing it down and sharing it with somebody, or better yet, record it?
Why not? And that way, you're leading a legacy for your family. You're leading some gems, some nuggets about an experience that you lived through that you went through, and it may very well open people's eyes to maybe why the family is a certain way or why you do things a certain way. Just consider it, okay?
You know where to find me on social media, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at hevet. That's at H-E-Y-E-T-T-E, or just look for the hashtag, tweet trends. And that's the hashtag, tweet trends.