February 23rd, 2026 (Continued):
The others went around and there was still tons of talking that I had to listen to. But near the end of the table where Zach A and Ahwahn sat, a guy who looked like Robert Mugabe came in and sat in the off to the side seat next to me, writing in his journal. He finally went up to speak after I was done.
“Good morning!” - Doctor Roberts
“Good morning!” - Everyone in unison
I remember when this team was much smaller, now we are a team working together and now you’re experienced, your energy you to the table, I’m so pleased about that. Yes, I'm not on the board anymore, but in the background and I want IIW to succeed. I mean what you do so well. So impressed to hear the reports from each one of you planning your day and your week. And so to me, that's a reassurance that the things are going ahead as normal as possible, even in these difficult times when normal is really dark times. So my task today is really to be present and be attentive to your needs. And tons of time, we have about…” - Doctor Roberts
“All the time that you need.” - The Latinx lady
“That's actually half an hour.” - Doctor Roberts
“Okay.”- The Latinx lady
“My task was really to look at, how do we continue to care for you? Individually? And for me, that means you are the person, your mind, your body, your spirit, and your vision. And what does that mean when you look to break it down? All of you leaders, you have a team that you're carrying about. And so in that case, you plan ahead all the time on how the week is going to go individually. And so I want to spend time today trying to have a reflection, and you have me redefine my own mental state as a teacher. Mr. Benn and I, I really will be working with your team and your other programs. I quite more regularly. But when it come to your tasks, some symbols, mission to me was come on the members take care of themselves. So I'm going to focus on the role of the mind, particularly attention, the thought processes that go on in our minds, so the mind in terms of attention, memory, and to be able to remember things that you organize yourself to attend to and how those happen in your day. But the most important level, also to understand that along with the mind, we also have emotions. emotions that are continuously, flooding our system. Sometimes very intentional when you are aware of what you're thinking through. other times, and this is where it gets very tricky. Because we are there at a time where we are, are triggered by so many things that are very intrusive, especially with what's happening in our clients. You know, many of you come from within refugee immigrant communities. So the people that you work with, these are part of your community, their experience is also your experience. As a team, you may not build the refugee community in general, but your work is involving content, awareness, planning that's continuously triggering. So once we do that, how do we take your emotions from fear to confidence. to manage- manage chaos, you know, to stay organized. Those are important pieces. My third piece will be to talk about sleep, especially in the quality and quantity of sleep, and how these are core pieces and how you do your work. So I be very organized trying to stick with it. Mind and thought process first of all… With your tasks, you have work that is defined for you every week and every month. I won't get a sense of idea, just help me understand with a show of your hand. And when you start off your week, and your day as an individual, I know you all have iPad, you probably have a system of how you organize yourself, but let me get an example of how do you organize your brain to open up each day and the execute and task for the length, for the 8 hours or 10 hours depending, or if you're going to be at the airport waiting for guests in day going to go. But how do you have your brain to stay organized and then focus? Take hands?” - Doctor Roberts
“It's a question?” - the Afghani man
[laughter]
“ So I should say I don't want to believe me…” - the Afghani man
“I mean, I guess I will start by saying that maybe I don't do what I think I should be doing, but I think always just being grateful of, like being able to come into work. I mean, sometimes it is a little difficult to come, not. Well, I don't want to say it's difficult. I like being here. But, you know, sometimes things get a little difficult and you might not be so willing to show up or whatever. I think just being grateful,” - September 10th birthday
“You know grateful to be here.” - Doctor Roberts
“Yes. And to be able to help.” - September 10th birthday
“It's kind of a little bit of what she said. Being grateful is definitely key. I feel like we live in a world that is not perfect, so it's common to expect the unexpected. So every day that goes by, there's new ideas and new topics that come up and we adjust our days based on that. But rather it's a good adjuster or a bad adjuster, I feel like we should always be grateful even in uncomfortable times like these.” - Wun Wun
“So anticipating the imperfections over the life around us, it's like preparing the brain to be disrupted.”- Doctor Roberts
“I think everything happens for a reason, either it's a good reason or a bad reason, so you just have to, like, go with the flow on what happens.” - Tia
“So go with the flow.” - Doctor Roberts
“We have to just control our emotions. So if we have like a lot, sometimes we do have a lot of stress, sometimes we do have a lot of work. So we have to work many hours, so we have to just control our emotions and be thankful and just do what you are to do, you know.” - the Afghani man
“So I would understand, it would be tasks occurring focus on getting things done…” - Doctor Roberts
“You know, like, mentally, I sort of just exist in like a state of chaos, but I've been doing it so long that the chaos is sort of become a pattern, and I realize how to harness it in in a functional manner, but you know, I just believed in what I do. I think it's important. So I use my emotions to drive me, to get the things done that I need to get done, just because I feel that what I'm doing is good, and it makes me feel good to do it.” - Edgar
“So do we expect chaos?” - Doctor Roberts
“Yeah!” - Edgar
“But have meaning, you know what you're doing?” - Doctor Roberts
“Yeah!” - Edgar
“Because what you're doing is a mission for you.” - Doctor Roberts
“Yeah, it's it's, you know, the chaos it's still completes something.” - Edgar
“You know, so I've had a similar thing that’s helped me a lot is reinforcing that what we are doing is a difference in helping people, like, just focusing on helping our clients, like these are things that we can get control versus everything going on. I start. It feels when we can't do anything about that, what we can always come here and help our clients and try to, you know, help them get to whatever I do.” - Ahwahn
“Yeah, existance is sort of an absurdity, especially right now. It's just highly absurd. So it's almost like we're living in a car. And you really never know what's gonna come out around the corner and you almost laugh at it, but sometimes it's terrible, but you just you really don't know what to expect. We think that, you know, there's patterns or there's some sort of meeting or there's reasons, and then stuff just sort of just happens. It said it's like one of those tricks in a cartoon where they make you think something, you see something there, and then they just pull the rug out from under you.” - Edgar
“Thank you!” - Doctor Roberts
“Um, yeah, I also think right now, I feel so frustrated by everything that's going on, and so and a lot of it is out of our control. We're just at the mercy of what our parent agency or what the, you know, this new administration is doing. So I think it's important for me every day I come into work, I'm just like, what can I focus on and what can I control in terms of my work and what can I do to help people? And I'm not going to be able to control, you know, what the administration does next, but I can control how I treat my clients and my coworkers and so my goal every day is just to come in and do as much work as I can, by understanding, I'm not going to get everything done in a day and things we'll have to wait till tomorrow.” - Lillehammer
“Piss pissing yourself.” - Doctor Roberts
“Yeah.” - Lillehammer
[POST SPLIT INTO MULTIPLE PARTS DUE TO CHARACTER LIMIT]
