Awareness Weekend 13 was my first awareness weekend, and it was even more amazing than I expected it to be. Throughout the weekend, not only did I get to know my peers more, I got to know myself more at the same time. I gained a whole new perspective on so many things, and I learned so many lessons that I couldn't have possibly learned anywhere else all in 32 hours.
The guest speakers that we had this weekend were amazing. Hearing their stories made me really appreciate everything that I have and taught me to stop taking things for granted. Each guest speaker had such a powerful story to tell and each one really touched me. I also learned from them that one bad move can truly affect me for my entire life.
The parts of this weekend that had the greatest impact on me were student panel, cross the line, and community sharing. When student panel began, I saw four familiar faces get up on the stage. I knew a few bad things that happened to them, but I never knew their whole story. I learned so much about them, and it truly opened my mind and took away pretty much every part of me that has been judgmental. By the end of student panel, with over 24 remaining hours in the weekend, I already felt myself changed by their stories. While cross the line seems like just a fun game to many, it truly touched me. Many of the things that some of my peers crossed for truly surprised me, and many even saddened me. Even though it made me sad, in a way it made me happy, too. With the progression of the weekend, I began feeling less and less alone, which has always been a very familiar feeling to me. Community sharing is the thing that got me the most emotional. Hearing the stories of many people were quite shocking. I find this to be the even I got the most out of, though. Sharing my feelings with people and letting people into my life has always been a huge problem for me, especially face to face. I decided I would probably benefit from getting up there and sharing my story, and I sure did, especially by breaking the ice by going first at night session. I wasn’t sure what exactly I expected to get out of sharing, but I truly got a lot. It made me feel more accepted by my peers, because now I know that if someone likes me they’ll like me for me, all my now-known problems included. Sharing also knocked down many walls for me, and I find communicating to be a much easier task.
At first I was a bit nervous about family group, just because I knew I’d end up with people I didn’t really know. I ended up loving my family group #10 though: Kristen, Tamara, Raquelle, Allie, Nicolette, Drew, Brianna, Miles, and Peggy. I’d liked my family group from the first meeting we had, but at the end I really grew to like them so much more. The activity where we wrote three things about each other and put them into their envelopes really made me feel good. All the comments I got were nice, and I also got pretty many times, and that made me happy considering this weekend I wore no makeup and had my hair in a messy bun the entire time. The final group meeting with the candle activity and sharing how we felt about each other really touched me. Hearing all these nice things my group members thought about me made me feel so great about myself. Telling people how I felt also helped my communication skills, because like sharing things about me, I’ve also always been very bad about expressing how I feel about others. I feel as though I built a connection with these people, and I can definitely see myself being friends with these people.
Overall, I can’t even explain how much I got out of this weekend. I know for sure this will be a weekend I will never forget, and I look forward to the next three awareness weekends in the remaining year and a half of high school. This weekend, I gained a new perspective, opened my mind, learned so much about so many people, gained new friends, got so much off my chest, learned to open up to people, got a self esteem boost, had so much fun, learned to appreciate everything, and most importantly, I knocked down walls and built bridges.
