Episode 062: What if as a kid someone said “You are not broken”? - Conversation with Eye to Eye Co-Founders David Flink & Marcus Soutra - Part II

The second part of an illuminating conversation with David Flink and Marcus Soutra, co-founders of Eye to Eye, friends and pioneers in education equity for neurodivergent folx. The group explores how a story of neurodivergent shame and trauma can shift to feeling like the story of surviving, how the pain stays with us but the reaction of a listener can layer over it, and how we can to begin to heal old wounds. Furthermore, what does it actually mean to be cool or to be a role model people want to look up to? To learn more about Eye to Eye, visit www.eyetoeyenational.org 

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Flink names that in all these schools, there’s an adult who believes that giving young people room to tell their story can change the world. This was before research supporting depressive symptoms go down, self esteem goes up, that this work works. They are saying yes to a young person—and we are the adults now, and we can say yes to a young person. The day Flink met Marcus, his life changed. They were introduced by a professor. And then they had this whole momentum when they all met—and that’s how it started rolling. There are kids right now that are hearing this message on this podcast, through Eye to Eye chapters, and it’s unprecedented, and there are all these other hidden players that make this all possible. Kessler names that the value and the meaning of the story changes when you participate in these kinds of movements, though it doesn’t change the story itself. Kessler’s story started with a sense of being a fraud and was shame based—it wasn’t until he met Flink and Marcus and everyone at Eye to Eye that he started to see the impact of his story. It changed from a fraud story to a survivor story, there was worth in that all of a sudden. We’re grown ups, we made it—when Kessler turned 40, there was this thing that he felt like “he did it! I survived! I didn't know if I was going to do this!” And now he’s one of these old ND people, and he can remember when there weren’t CDs—there’s a part of who he is that’s entrenched in meaning that wasn’t there before. Eye to Eye creates those stories—taking high school and college students with neurodivergence and pairing them with jr high students to tell their stories through art. We have to mask—may the next generation not even know what we’re talking about when we say mask. After a generation of talking about what’s right with kids, there are schools where kids don’t have to wear masks, not like they used to. This daughter who started with Eye to Eye when she was 8, and now she wears her story with pride. How different is your life, when you don’t have to wait until your adulthood to change your narrative?- The environment in and of itself, is changing the story. Isabelle names that developmentally, that junior high age range is around the time our limbic system is storing the most vivid memories then, because they are the firsts and they help us start to make sense of our identities (see "reminiscence bump" info below!). Now imagine that the message you’re getting at that crucial developmental stage is there’s something right with you, that you’re okay, that you can be yourself, and just how contagious that is in a space, not just for kids with learning differences, but also neurotypical kids, everyone at that school. And that when you then retell your story, it doesn’t alter the original experience, but it creates a layer on top of it, and you keep adding those layers upon layers—which rewires the memory. That is actually trauma work, and can only happen in relationship, where you have someone listening. The brilliance of the Eye to Eye model is that it’s deeply relational, it includes these hidden networks and built upon near peer relationships. Kessler also points out that Flink and Marcus are actually cool. These are not people you’re feeling a sense of shame around, you’re seeing them and going “how cool are they?” Marcus agrees, they're the James Dean of dyslexia. There’s a way to normalizing it, and making it okay. Flink and Marcus held hands and took the leap—early on, thinking, he was thinking: “I am professionally neurodiverse, there’s no going back”—there was a fear in the beginning, how are people going to receive this? Finding other cool people who were willing to tell their stories and keep doing it, keep doing. Early on it did not feel as cool as it did now. Flink has a thesis on Kessler’s thesis—“it is always cool to own who you are.” That's what you see when you see Eye to Eye’s young people. Kessler met them at a time when they were really lucky where they had received kids responding to them, mirroring back to them—“your story matters!” If you visit any one of their sites, people with different races, cultures, backgrounds, who are proud of their brains. Proud of themselves. Everybody deserves the right to be proud of who they are, regardless of their background and intersectional identities including neurodiversity. Would Flink and Marcus self-describe themselves as cool? Flink names that talking about trauma sits with you—it’s great to talk about problems in huge public forums. Flink, still has nightmares, including this past week, about what happened to him at school. That’s experience is what’s in front of him able to fully embrace these compliments. Kessler was complimenting something about his essence, he thinks everyone listening is cool because they’re taking a chance. He’s still working on it. He knows that an exclamation point does not go into the middle of word, but it takes something from him to make that correction, and it takes something for him to not be judged. Marcus names how much they're showing our age by using the word cool, and Marcus is a huge Neil Young fan, the song "Keep on Rocking in the Free world," the idea "there goes another kid who will never get to be cool…" there goes another kid we let go as a society, we don’t get to engage in the community, fall in love, be your full self, that’s something—that another kid made us feel validated and cool. It’s not that we set out to be cool (or Fire, or Werk..we are clearly old), it’s that there was a reaction and a response to our stories that made us feel connected and like we weren’t alone, and that changes how you feel about yourself. This makes Isabelle think of What Not To Wear (see link below) the old Bravo makeover show that while on the surface dealt with fashion faux pas, really had more to do with instilling confidence and a sense of self—and she remembers someone saying “you either wear the dress or the dress wears you” and it's like that with brains. Side note, if you can’t take the compliment at the moment, save it in your pocket for a rainy day, just hold on to it, you don’t have to let it in yet but don’t lose it either. So maybe it’s like wearing our brains instead of letting our brains wear us? Kessler sums it up: what it feels like to have a sense of confidence and mastery, what it feels like to belong, what it feels like to have a community, and matter, and have worth. It’s impossible to embody all those things and not be cool or fire or feel your worth. Kessler asks, if everything were gone tomorrow, what would Flink and Marcus want the legacy of Eye to Eye to be? Flink names that they are committed to the next 25 years as much as they’re summing up the first 25, and it boils down to it, young people are not broken. Your brain is beautiful, your story matters, and have the courage to share that with the world. Marcus adds that “no statues,” we are not designing a movement to be remembered, if they’re forgotten, it’s fine, it’s more that it was a spark that started and built up the movement—we want students whose voices are even more squashed, if we helped to make a generational shift to make it a different world for them, and that this is a beautiful part of diversity of human experience, and we need to understand that if we’re going to meet people where they are. Marcus would like to also be remembered for being at least a little cool, and helped facilitate the stories of others. It's less about remembering Eye to Eye and more about about the impact of a changed world. 

What about the adolesecent/Jr. High period being one of such vivid recall?

To learn more about Eye to Eye, visit www.eyetoeyenational.org 

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Cover Art by: Sol Vázquez

Technical Support by: Bobby Richards

Special Thanks to: Marcus Soutra and David Flink, co-founders of Eye to Eye, for their honesty and heart, Sabrina Odigie for her logistical wizardry, and Philister Lukacevic, Eye to Eye Director of Marketing and Communications for his patience and help in getting these edits and materials out there!