Advocacy 101 - The Appetizer

I said this blog was about encouraging advocacy- but haven’t written about it yet. Advocacy is easy. All it is is turning thoughts, knowledge or beliefs into action.
No magic, no special skill set required. It’s like cooking – with a recipe book in hand, and more or less the right ingredients, anyone can do it. Some of course reach the cordon bleu echelon, others hover at the Kraft dinner level. But in the end, it all works.

A word about motivation. Why advocate? Well, motivations will differ but mine was clarified by an article I read yesterday while sitting in the dentist’s chair (my least favorite place in the whole world). Frustration. Anger.Wanting things to be different. The article described how anger is viewed as a negative emotion – particularly for women to admit to. But it described the upside of anger and frustration– we all want the feeling to go away. This means we strategize how to not feel angry or frustrated and then act. And that’s better than feeling fear, because we are disempowered by fear. We avoid confrontation when we are fearful.

When angry or frustrated, we usually act - to either accept the situation or to influence the situation. We may act to voice our concerns, and that we would like things to change. We might even go so far as to be part of the solution to the issue.

The common theme is that by ACTING, we feel better. We feel we have done something to alter the situation, or how we view it. We might have made a difference. And that is a great feeling. Not as good as eating chocolate, but certainly up there.
And given the simplicity of acting – advocacy is not rocket science – it’s a great way to relieve frustration and anger at what we see, what we or our family members experience or go through that we feel was wrong, traumatic, counterproductive or avoidable.Tomorrow I will blog on the Kraft Dinner, Meat with 2 veg and 2 course meal levels of advocacy, provide some recipes and a few ingredients I like to use.