The fifth annual Harvard Community Conference (HC2) held on Zoom Saturday, Feb. 5, once again showed the generosity of the speakers and the power of personal stories to connect us as a community.
“Being able to open up about forgiveness and the things you have had to do to either receive or find it, can be very eye-opening,” said this year’s host, senior Shey Bala, about her choice of topic. “As these past two years have been very tough, I feel like we have all found a way to forgive.”
HC2 began as the community service project of then-Bromfield senior J. Woolcock, who was mentored by Ellen Sachs Leicher and supported by the community organization Arm in Arm. Since then it has been tradition for the Bromfield underclassman who will inherit the project to speak at the current year’s conference and then to work with Leicher to organize the next year’s forum.
Speaking further about the topic chosen for her five guests, Bala said her inspiration came also from last year’s telling of her personal story on the theme of belonging, where she talked about her painful interactions with an old friend and the compassion she received from new friends. “Through that it got me thinking about forgiveness and everyone’s different experiences with it.”
Learning from forgiveness
Bala first introduced Jo Jayson, an artist, teacher, and author of “Self Love Through the Sacred Feminine,” who titled her talk “Learning from Forgiveness.” Jayson said forgiveness requires a shift in perspective to that of the person who has hurt you. There needs to be an understanding of the other person’s point of view, seeing how that person’s path wasn’t aligning with yours, and exploring what was at play, what might have been the disconnect behind the other person’s action. Understand that you’re “both souls struggling through life.” It’s hard to find compassion when someone has hurt you, Jayson said, but you need to “sit with that hurt and feel the disempowerment” and then in your own time, find empathy. Even a slight understanding can “loosen the grip of resentment” and enable you to let go of the hurt so that you can find peace.
A journey of self-forgiveness
Lauren Stoller is a sophomore at Bromfield with an interest in theater and music. She described a personal experience that sent her on a “self-forgiveness journey.” Early in the isolation of the pandemic, Stoller became friendly with “Suzanne” over social media and through texts. They grew close and Stoller confided in Suzanne, exposing her own vulnerabilities. And then Suzanne became manipulative and hurtful. Stoller stopped speaking to her but then began to feel guilty that perhaps she had hurt Suzanne by cutting her out of her life. To try to feel better about herself, she began journalling and made a conscious decision to be less negative about herself. When making a new entry, she read the previous one first and tried not to be so hard on herself moving forward. She began to see real progress in her entries, which made her feel better and better about herself. She took pride in this accomplishment. Stoller said not only does self-deprecation take an emotional toll on a person, it keeps them from forming relationships. “When you feel worthy, you can make a contribution to your community.”
‘Keep asking the questions’
“I would never have guessed, but I knew then she had listened for all those years,” said Linda Hoffman about her mother, whom she had felt was absent, physically and emotionally, from her childhood. When Hoffman was 9 years old, her mother, who had felt trapped by marriage and motherhood, went to college, got degrees in anthropology, and went on to be a lecturer and an author. Often she would be off doing field work for months at a time. Hoffman felt her mother was never there for her. It wasn’t until she was in a hospital room with her mother who was dying that Hoffman found a truth she hadn’t known. Filled with her own pain and indecision, Hoffman asked her mother’s advice, and her mother answered quickly, “Just keep asking the questions.” Hoffman realized in that moment that her mother had always been listening and that she had answered by trusting her daughter to find her own answers.
During that last visit, Hoffman made a promise to finish her mother’s memoir. She has recently published her own memoir, “The Artist in the Orchard,” available at the General Store.
Divine forgiveness
Being a presenter at HC2 has been on his bucket list, said Bromfield Principal Scott Hoffman, who has been in the Harvard schools since 1987 and is retiring at the end of the year. He said in both his personal and community life he has followed two pieces of advice about forgiving himself and others. One is Alexander Pope’s line, “To err is human, to forgive divine.” The second is one he took from a leadership group: “When the going gets tough, turn to wonder.” Wonder about what another person is feeling or why they have the opinion they do.
An early lesson in self-forgiveness came from Hoffman’s sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Brady. As a conscientious student, Hoffman totally lost it one day when he forgot his homework. Instead of the scolding he anticipated, Mrs. Brady put her arm around him and told him it was OK, he didn’t have to be perfect. Hoffman said he has often passed this assurance on to students.
While a basketball coach at Bromfield, Hoffman was reamed out by the father of his star player after a tough loss. Hoffman, feeling unjustly criticized, was furious at the dad, but he turned to wonder—could there be more behind this man’s behavior? His compassion paid off, as the dad explained and apologized the next week.
Hoffman finished with a tribute to his wife’s “divine” forgiveness. He said he can’t seem to remember to take his pen out of his pocket before putting clothes in the wash. His wife can’t turn to wonder, because neither of them can figure out why he keeps doing that. But she does forgive him—again and again.
Restorative justice
Lauren Morton of Acton is an organizer for Communities for Restorative Justice. She explained that the restorative justice process is voluntary on the part of both the offender and the victim. In the process, both sit in a circle along with others also harmed by the crime, a police officer, and community volunteers. The offender explains their behavior and feelings. The victim describes the hurt they have suffered, and the offender learns how their actions have harmed other people. Once the offender has accepted accountability and the victim has suggested what could be done to rebuild trust, volunteers help that happen.
Morton gave an example from 10 years ago that has been made public. It involved four boys who spray-painted swastikas and offensive graffiti outside a synagogue. The boys heard from members of the synagogue, as well as people directly affected by the Holocaust, how hurtful the action was. The boys ended up landscaping around the synagogue, visiting the Holocaust Museum in Boston, and doing work at a Jewish community center. Morton said that through the process of restorative justice, young people “get to repair the harm so they can forgive themselves.”
Again this year, HC2 was a gift to the town in providing a forum for thought-provoking, honest sharing of personal, though universal, experiences that help to build a stronger sense of community.
To view the conference, go to https://sites.google.com/view/arminarm/past-events?authuser=0.
