Happy Hanukkah!

Challenge Day

Today changed my life.

I got the opportunity to participate in Challenge Day, and honestly, this is going to be hard for me to describe. I feel light and happy, and I can’t stop smiling. Something inside me actually feels different. I can change the world. 

What is Challenge day? What do you do?

Okay, if you’ve never watched If You Really Knew Me on mtv, this is for you. Challenge day is a program to ‘demonstrate the possibility of love and connection through the celebration of diversity, truth, and full expression.’ and ‘Our vision is that every child lives in a world where they feel safe, loved and celebrated.’. Does that make sense?  Anywho, it was fantastic. The day is an emotional roller coaster. You basically start with a bunch of games and stuff, and everyone has to jump and scream and dance. There’s a lot of dancing. We all learn to hug, and get to know each other a little bit. We play games, theres some activities where you listen/talk in a circle.You learn about your ‘balloon’ where stress goes.  After a break, we got randomly numbered off in to groups. There were 5 students and 1 teacher in my group, and thats the average. This is your family for the day. After talking for 2 minutes, and then listening to Jen and Everit, we dud an activity called ‘If you Really Knew Me’. This is when the first tears start coming out.  Personally, I sobbed like a baby all day long. But you tell about your life, saying for example (this is part of mine, no worries!) If you really knew me, you’d know that I had to make all new friends freshmen year, and I never felt good enough. The beginning of freshmen year, I became bulimic.’ And then for 2 minutes, I tell my story. Part of the deal? No talking. No one is broken, so no one needs fixing. Just hugs.  It is absolutely amazing. After that we had lunch with our families and hugged everyone, and then did a few fun activities, before starting something called Cross the Line. 

Cross the Line is so intense, it’s almost scary. Everyone stands on a line, and Jen reads something like ‘Cross the line if you have ever been judged because of the color of your skin”. If this applies, you cross the line and face everyone who didn’t, and we send each other love with the i love you sign. I can’t even describe what is like to live in that moment. It was personally a very hard activity for me, and a lot of people were surprised at who crossed the line at what. There are people you thought you knew so well, that cross for things you never expect. A teacher I really look up to, Ms. H, went with us, and she crossed for a lot of things and then just broke down. We all hugged her and gave her love. Everyone just breaks down. But guess what? Nobody’s alone. That’s one of the amazing things I learned. I am not alone. After Cross the Line, everyone met up in families, and talked/hugged/cried it out. It was amazing.  There were many more awesome things we did. I apologized to people that I’ve hurt in the past, calling them names and talking behind their back. It felt fantastic. It was probably the best thing to ever happen to me. 

I’m basically high on love right now.