Episode 1 of Season 2 invites listeners to consider whether they bring empathy, compassion, patience and humility with them into the legal profession and into their professional relationships - and if not, why it may be time to change.
Myrna invites listeners/lawyers to reflect on what they offer and what they don't when engaging with clients, the courts and each other.
Published: May 16, 2021
Episode Summary:
Episode 1 of Season 2 invites listeners to consider whether they bring empathy, compassion, patience, and humility with them into the legal profession and into their professional relationships - and if not, why it may be time to change.
Episode Notes:
Myrna invites listeners/lawyers to reflect on what they offer and what they don't when engaging with clients, the courts and each other.
Myrna: I’m Myrna McCallum, Métis-Cree lawyer and passionate promoter of trauma-informed lawyering. Welcome back to The Trauma-Informed Lawyer podcast season two, folks. As you know, I believe that law schools and bar courses are missing a critical competency requirement in their curriculum: trauma-informed lawyering. Becoming a trauma-informed lawyer will, among other things, challenge you to critically reflect on your personal behaviors, beliefs, and biases; call on you to positively transform the way you approach advocacy; guide your practice to avoid doing further harm to others; and ask that you commit remaining open to learn new and old knowledge you didn't know you needed before beginning your career. Your education starts right here, right now. Transcripts for season two have been generously sponsored by the BC Law Foundation.
I started this podcast May 22nd of last year as this pandemic passion project thinking, you know, I'll create a few episodes, answer some questions that a lot of folks seem to have—they’re coming to me, asking me all kinds of things but often quite similar—I thought, you know, I'll just do a few and it'll be cool and then it'll go away and that is absolutely not what has happened. It has sort of snowballed into this thing that is greater than me and has brought forward all these beautiful, wonderful people with these profound perspectives who’ve taken the time to share with me and share with you, and I just feel incredibly honoured, and humbled, and grateful, and shocked.
So where are we now almost a year later? Taking stock, well, this podcast has been downloaded almost 30,000 times. 30,000 times, wow! Of course, it's most popular in Canada which is fantastic 'cause this is my home, but not far behind is the United States, the UK, Northern Ireland, Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Germany—amazing. France, Slovakia, like holy smokes, my mind is blown. I'm going to take a screen grab of the world map that shows where this podcast has been downloaded. I do that every now and again because it just blows me away, it'll blow you away.
Anyways, thank you so much for subscribing, for listening, for giving me your time, and your thought, and your intention, right? Intention. I think we want to find a better way to do what we do. We want to amplify and prioritize wellness—wellness for ourselves, wellness for each other, and of course improve the experience of people who come to us for advocacy, for support, for a decision, for justice, whatever that is, right? I'm really hoping that this podcast and the voices that are amplified in this podcast give us all some inspiration and momentum to continue to move forward into the mystery, into a place that we haven't been before, into a place that I believe has got to be better—better than where we've been.
So in that spirit, I have decided to call this podcast episode “We Cannot Give What We Do Not Have”. For those of you who've taken training sessions with me, you know I talk about that all the time and as I was thinking about this episode; where did that come from? How did that enter my stream of consciousness because I'm not that brilliant, and so I had to Google it and, I don't know if this is accurate, but this is what I've seen repeatedly: Marianne Williamson. We know her from having—well she's got a podcast right now, she just interviewed Gabor Maté by the way—but we also know her from some poetry, and from a course on miracles I think that she's written—I think that's the title of her book or her course. She wrote a little thing and it goes like this:
“We cannot give what we do not have. We cannot bring peace to the world if we ourselves are not peaceful. We cannot bring love to the world if we ourselves are not loving. Our true gift to ourselves and others lies not in what we have, but in who we are.”
Yeah, think about that for a second, right? Our true gift to ourselves and others lies not in what we have, but in who we are. It's a powerful truth, and I think about how it applies to us in this profession. I think that in order to create a safe space for people when they come to our offices, or they come to our firms, or they come to our interview rooms, or they come into the courtroom—in order to create a safe space for them, we need to be a safe space. We need to bring with us a little patience, humility, and empathy, but if we do not possess these things, we cannot offer these things. I just invite you to think about what you have, who you are, what do you offer when you walk into a room.
There was a time when I didn't offer any of those things because I wasn't even any of those things for myself. I'd say a childhood full of abuse can do that to someone—make you very disconnected, disinterested, disengaged, dissociated—which is exactly what I was and all of these things that I talk about, particularly in training sessions around empathy, and patience, and practicing humility, and understanding what it takes to become a safe space for people—I had to learn all of those things. They didn't come naturally to me and sometimes I still feel like I'm really struggling to learn these things. And of course, you cannot go to YouTube to figure out “How do I become humble? How do I become patient?” I mean, who knows, maybe there is a video on YouTube that you could just enter those words and up will pop a video. If so, lucky you, maybe, but what I often say to folks who ask me, “How do I learn these things?” my advice is simple: surround yourself with people you want to be like.
I know that's a real challenge right now given, you know, this pandemic and we're not through it just yet, but connect with people you want to be like; observe them, observe how they communicate, how they engage, how they communicate boundaries, how they maintain those boundaries, how they command respect just by being who they are. I am really good at observing people and I was fortunate enough to have met several lawyers who exemplified humility, and patience, and empathy, compassion, kindness, and dare I say some of them were quite loving human beings, and just by watching, witnessing, observing, I began to learn all of those traits. I'm still a work in progress as we all are, I suppose.
I'm really interested in having season two be an opportunity to amplify a lot of diverse voices. Season one was really focused on academics, I guess a couple police officers, lawyers—definitely, judges—of course. I would love to have season two still amplify all those folks because they are the folks who make up the legal systems that we all work in; they are the folks we think of when we think of justice. But there's another voice that I think we don't hear enough of and that's the voice of the survivor, and I want to hear their voices. I think we all need to because they are the ones who are going to help us understand how we can create safety for them when they come into our spaces. I think it's important that we understand directly from them where we’ve failed, where we've succeeded, and where we need to do better. They often come into our courtrooms, in our offices, and our interview rooms on their darkest of days and so wouldn't it be awesome if we could positively transform their experience to reflect a trauma informed approach and meet them with humility, and empathy, and patience, and a sense safety?
Things need to change. We need to do better and I'm not the only one who's saying that—many people are saying that right now. I was looking at a quote earlier today from the Supreme Court of Canada. In paragraph 1 of R v. Barton 2019 SCC 33, they say,
“We live in a time where myths, stereotypes, and sexual violence against women - particularly Indigenous women and sex workers - are tragically common. Our society has yet to come to grips with just how deep-rooted these issues truly are and just how devastating their consequences can be. Without a doubt, eliminating myths, stereotypes, and sexual violence against women is one of the more pressing challenges we face as a society. While serious efforts are being made by a range of actors to address and remedy these failings both within the criminal justice system and throughout Canadian society more broadly, this case attests to the fact that more needs to be done. Put simply, we can - and must - do better.”
I really hope that this podcast, and all the voices that contribute to this podcast, contribute to the collective energies in the world to do better for survivors—survivors of any kind of violence, but especially sexual violence. Somebody tells me quite often in my life that, “If you have a gift, you have to share it. That's what gifts are for, gifts are for sharing.” Given the response that season one of this podcast has generated, and the incredible feedback I've received, it's really clear to me that this is likely the greatest contribution that I can offer to our profession: to raise the voices of folks who are wiser, and more wonderful, and more articulate than I am—to offer a platform, to hold them up so we can all hear what they have to say, what their wisdom can offer us, so that we can go and do better for ourselves, for our colleagues, and for all the people who come into our spaces, whether it's in a criminal courtroom, or a civil courtroom, or a hearing room—we need to do better, we need to improve the experience of others. I invite you to think about what you bring to the work. If you are missing humility, if you are missing empathy, patience, compassion; it's never too late to learn new skills. It's never too late to take a relational approach to advocacy.
For those of you who've attended training sessions with me, you know that whenever I talk about humility, I always play this little clip by Nelson Mandela. It's an interview between Oprah Winfrey and Nelson Mandela. Nelson Mandela says, ‘You cannot make an impact on society if you haven't changed yourself.” I do believe that we need to change. I think now is the time, and I’m not the only one who feels this way. There is space for trauma informed approaches to decision making, to advocacy, to client engagement. Our processes—the way they were designed—I believe were never designed for people who are vulnerable, and hurting, and traumatized, and in distress, I think they were created for us: lawyers, judges—giving us a place to be seen and be heard. I don't know who designed it that way, maybe we did, but I think we need to remember why we're there. We’re not there for ourselves, we are there for others; others who can't find the words, or don't know the way through, or who need a voice and we’re that voice. If we’re truly committed to creating space for them, if we're truly committed to recognizing that it is their space that we occupy, shouldn't that space be a safe space? As we go into season two, I invite you to think about that very question: are you a safe space for people? Remember, you cannot make an impact on society if you haven't changed yourself. Have you ever heard that saying “hurt people, hurt people”? When I was a prosecutor, I used to see lawyers hurt people all the time and now that I have a better understanding about trauma—and particularly vicarious trauma—I can't help but wonder how many of those ones doing harm in the courtroom are doing so because they're so harmed themselves. I just think it's time for a better way, and I'm going to bet you do too because you're listening to this podcast.
Okay, so who knew that this first episode was gonna jump off and be so serious? I had no idea, honestly, I've been away for three months. I wasn't sure I was going to come back; I was terrified. For someone who's been quite introverted and likes anonymity, this has been a challenge but as a friend of mine up north has told me, “I got no time for being introverted.” Especially if this is my gift, if this is what I intend to lend to this profession. I hope you enjoy this season. We're going to have a lot of voices sharing wisdom and experience with all of us. Hopefully by the end of it, we'll have learned, and evolved, and understood, and embraced empathy because we cannot give what we do not have.
It feels good to be back, honestly yeah, it feels good to be back. I hope that you will come back for my next episode which I'll drop in a week as I celebrate the one-year birthday of this podcast. By the way, if you have any questions for me you can always find me on LinkedIn, Instagram @thetraumainformedlawyer and of course Twitter @theTILpodcast. Any questions, comments, you can find me there.
Thanks for listening and take care everyone. this episode was recorded on the traditional, unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh [Squamish], səl̓ilwətaɁɬ [Tsleil-Waututh], and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm [Musqueam] people.