Advocate

By Glenna Rose

"Let's get something straight: Everyone is an advocate.

Whether you are speaking up for human rights, standing up for that one small kid on the school playground, quietly donating to food pantries, or restocking Little Free Libraries, you are an advoca

• Language: English
• Publisher: Glenna Rose
• Release date: Apr 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9798869323088

Book preview

Introduction: Who This Book Is for and How We Got Here

Let's get something straight: Everyone is an advocate.

Whether you are speaking up for human rights, standing up for that one small kid on the school playground, quietly donating to food pantries, or restocking Little Free Libraries, you are an advocate. Whether by word or by action, you are the voice of much-needed change. 

When I began my road to finding my voice as a victim's advocate, I had already learned many of the skills needed to do the work. I knew how to network and how to rally a crowd. I organized an international conference and served on multiple boards within my community and state. I'd spent time speaking to audiences, and I had even taken a class on grant writing. And I did it all for fun. 

Why?

At the time, I had no idea. But something in me said I would need to know these things someday. I felt the push to keep growing and expanding my skill set until that someday arrived. Today, my career is the perfect job I never even knew existed. It is more than a job—it is a calling. Even in the darkest moments (some of which I will share with you), I still love this work.

I have always been an advocate. I cannot remember a time when I couldn't feel another person's pain as if it were my own. As a little girl, I was repeatedly told to stop being so sensitive. Everyone said it to me: family, teachers, the old folks at church. And I tried. Trust me, I tried. But the world was (and still is) full of pain and suffering, and there has never been a moment when I could not feel the weight of every ounce of it. It isn't easy to describe, but my closest approximation to what it feels like is standing up to the wind in my early college days.

The wind in the rural state where I was residing was brutal, and I weighed less than one hundred pounds at the time. I would attempt to walk the hill from my dorm to the campus during some crazy storms. The gusts would cut straight through my clothes and into my bones as I climbed up that hill. To make it more fun, the wind would come in unpredictable bursts. Another blast would knock me sideways just when I thought I had my footing sorted out. On more than one occasion, I lost my footing entirely, and I would have to grab the closest stable object or human to stay upright. It never got easier or less terrifying, but I became adept at predicting what would merely knock me over versus what could blow me away. 

One difference between that wind and the emotional tornado of pain and suffering was the proximity to something stable to hold onto when it all became too much. As a child, I didn't know what, if anything, to hold onto when those winds were too rough, or if I should just shelter in place. I was raised by parents who were equally protective of me and my siblings while empowering all of us to conquer our personal dragons from a very young age. We were princesses who knew how to save ourselves. The problem was that I didn't know how to help others, and that was deeply upsetting as a child.

Frankly, I don't know that anyone in my neck of the woods had the wherewithal to identify a highly sensitive little girl who wanted to change the world but didn't know where to start. I lived in a community that was more focused on traditional gender roles, and changing the world was not listed as a top priority in the proverbial manual for future homemakers. And while homemaking is a beautiful ideal for many, it was not the road I was destined to walk. Instead, I stumbled through my inner storms of witnessing hurt and injustice all around me. Finally, when I became a real grown-up, I finally found my voice and began carving out my purpose-filled road.

My husband, Paul, was instrumental in both of these moments of self-discovery. He set me on the path to advocacy by cutting through the noise and honoring my ability to sit in the dark with people. Where others saw a liability, Paul saw raw, uncontrolled talent. After listening to me sob and rant at 2 a.m. about another wrong in the world I longed to right, his suggestion that I seek out some formal training as an advocate was the motivation I needed. He encouraged me to become the change I wanted to see in my world. Even today, when I sometimes get it wrong, he is there to help me figure things out and find my true north again. Without him, I would never have found my road, so if this book helps you, he gets the credit. (And if I fumble the ball, that is probably on me. But if you could yell at him instead, that would be great—I'm a little too tender-hearted for yelling.)

Welcome to the story of how I went from a loud little girl looking for her cause to a professional advocate focused on making her community a better place. In this book, I will share the lessons I have learned along the way, including what I have noticed are themes in the journey from baby advocate to seasoned pro. I sincerely hope you will recognize your own struggles in my stories and feel the support of a sister who came before you as you start to find your way.

I want to be clear: These are my recollections from where I stood during moments in time. I have worked hard to protect identities and respect the people involved. I have also tried to honor the fact that my experience might not have been the same for others. There is room for more than one person's interpretation to be valid in nearly every circumstance. This is an uncomfortable part of advocacy in all its many forms; every voice, and every opinion, belongs at the table and deserves equal respect even if—no, especially if—those voices come from a person we might not entirely agree with.

But back to you. You might be walking a similar road as you begin your journey to professional advocate. You've been learning, expanding your skills, and growing towards something; you just don't know exactly what it is or all it entails. If you picked up this book, I suspect you are looking for whatever is calling to you. I don't promise I will lead you to it. You don't need me for that, anyway. My flavor of advocate may not be the same as yours, so remember to take my stories and examples and use the themes that feel applicable, and don’t be afraid to discard the rest. You won’t find your path by following directly in my footsteps. But I do promise that if you keep moving forward, you will find your path.

So, this book is for the underdogs.

It is for the people who see and feel deeply. It is for those who understand suffering, even when they have not personally lived a specific type of pain. It is for those who have stared into the darkness long enough to be unafraid of what they cannot see.

This book is for the strong ones.

The people who will say the words that others need to hear. The ones willing to take a hit for someone simply because they know they can handle it. It is for anyone with the courage to risk losing a battle here and there to win the war.

This book is for the dreamers.

It is for people who have walked through the wreckage of human violence and who can still see hope at the end of that suffering. It is for people who know we can all do better if only we try. It is for those who will sit with someone in the dark for as long as they need and then walk with them into the light. 

This book is for the advocates.

For those whose only weapon is their voice. The power they wield comes in the form of words and wisdom. The reward they seek is the healing in the eyes of people they have spoken for. 

That said, if you are looking for an instruction manual, this is not it. The work of an advocate is equal parts passion and knowledge. I urge you to find specific training to bolster your technical understanding of the role you have now or are looking for. Instead, this book is supplemental content intended to encourage you when you feel as though you have been forsaken. It is meant to remind you that while our advocate walk might not take us on the same path, we share similar experiences and can lean on each other for support when we feel alone. Advocates typically have two viable options to handle the fact that our every day is always someone else's worst day: sit down and cry, or laugh in the face of the monster. This book will do a little of both because gallows humor lives on, even in our memories.

This is the point where I tell you to consider whether this is a great topic for you to read about. Sometimes things hit us funny when we're not expecting it. If any of this book strikes you funny, I think it is a grand idea to set it down, find your favorite Marvel movie, and tune out for a bit, or whatever else gets your head back where you need it to be. Smart people know when to take a step back. For the rest of you silly geese, here we go.

This book is for the advocates. 

For the ones with courage.

This book is for you.

For those who have an ADHD brain, appreciate summaries, or are simply huge fans of the loyal asterisk, please note that the end of each chapter will have a handy-dandy summary. The intent is to get you thinking and help you do great things without getting too banged up from heart to soul… or sole.

***Advocate Tips for Staying Safe and Sane***

Everyone is an advocate.

Everyone was brand new once. Embrace being a baby advocate… you will be one of the old guard soon enough!

There is no singular path or set of skills needed. It is more important to take what you know and adapt it to the situations or people that need your help.

Someone will always think you are too much or not enough something-or-another. They are wrong, and you are exactly what the world needs right now.

There is no single way to become an advocate. Either we lost the instruction manual years ago, or no one ever drafted it. Write your own story, follow your own path. It will be the right one.

You will change your corner of the world.

1. The Gallows

This needs to be addressed from the giddy-up. I don't have the time or the patience for anyone to clutch their pearls; frankly, those of the pearl-clutching inclination probably don't have the patience for me.

That's fair.

Advocacy is work that takes and takes and takes… and then squeezes a little more from you. Whether you are working to improve a school system, fighting for animal rights, or organizing a union, pushing against the current is exhausting. The work moves slowly. The criticism and backseat driving are unrelenting. At times, every last one of us has wondered what the point of all this effort is.

You already know the answer. It's the right thing to do… we are here to change the world… unicorn poop and glitter will heal us! Blah blah blah.

I actually believe all of that.

But.

Sometimes—not always, but sometimes—laughter keeps me afloat. When weird stuff happens—things I can't make up, moments that are so off-the-wall crazy, so abnormal, and occasionally, so disturbing—all I can do is laugh (because the alternatives would be to cry or to take myself on a grippy-socks vacation).

So, I laugh. It's a pretty standard mechanism in advocacy work, and more prominently in frontline responder work. Before you judge any of us too harshly (I give you permission to judge a little if you really need to feel superior), I want you to know that laughter is a documented coping mechanism for dealing with traumatic situations.

This particular brand of laughter is called gallows humor. Basically, it is a coping mechanism for someone going through a tragic, horrific, dangerous, or even life-threatening event. You are laughing in the face of the monster you are staring down. To be clear, it is not laughing at a victim. That is another form of dark humor, and while it is sometimes incorporated (especially by law enforcement), it isn't the road I prefer to go down.

But you're the advocate, not the victim!

I give you another term: vicarious trauma. This is a fun way that our work in advocacy impacts our entire lives. Vicarious trauma is a term that some use interchangeably with secondary trauma. They are indeed similar, but there is a key difference I want you to be aware of for our purposes here. To illustrate,