by Rachel Price
AWBW Staff Member and Facilitator
Albuquerque, New Mexico
When I found out in January of last year I was pregnant with my daughter, it felt like perfect timing. I had been working for A Window Between Worlds (AWBW) for a little under half a year, long enough for me to know I was in my dream job. (My journey with Windows really began back in 2018, when I became a Facilitator while working as a case advocate for a domestic violence service provider.)
Having a full time position working from home for a livable wage, with an organization whose mission I believed in, was life changing.
For the first time I felt like I could start living and stop simply surviving. Start being in my life instead of just trying to get through it.
The fact that life happens in the moment was something that took time for me to learn. It sounds obvious when you say it aloud, but for me it wasn’t intuitive – I was always living in my dreams for the future or dwelling on my regrets from the past. But life is now. It isn’t the moment that’s just passed or the one that’s about to happen, it’s this moment.
And this one.
And this.
In the months leading up to my daughter’s birth, AWBW worked with me to come up with a plan for my maternity leave. I wasn’t the first parent on staff, but I was one of the first to become a parent while working for AWBW in many years. Because I was living and working out of New Mexico, the paid leave benefits the state of California provided employees didn’t apply to me. AWBW having fewer than 50 employees meant we didn’t qualify for FMLA protections, so if AWBW wanted to provide parental leave benefits and protections for all of its employees, we needed to create a policy of our own.
In light of this, AWBW’s Executive Director elected to create a new policy that would provide significant financial support to new parents in the form of four consecutive weeks of leave paid at 100%, plus an additional eight weeks of protected leave. The Board of Directors approved the policy and by that summer AWBW had a Paid Parental Leave policy. The first sentence of the policy reads, As a reflection of our values, AWBW is committed to supporting parents and their bonding with new children by providing paid leave to their employees.
As I reread this sentence now, I’m reminded of how much it held for me then. Four whole weeks with my newborn child! Twenty-eight spacious, abundant days! It seemed like such a gift, and it was. It was the gift of time.
As a Windows Facilitator I knew the value of A Window of Time. I have a poster hanging in my office, a relic from my days facilitating virtual art workshops from home, that reads:
A WINDOW OF TIME
This is
A SAFE SPACE
to authentically express
IDENTITY
HOPES
DREAMS
EXPERIENCES
TRUTH
– – –
This is an invitation
to enjoy the process
BREATHE
OBSERVE
PLAY
– – –
There is
NO RIGHT OR WRONG WAY
to participate or
CREATE
I love this poster, because it reminds me what it means to hold space for someone to create, express themselves, or just be themselves. As a Windows Facilitator I knew I could create a Window of Time for someone just by being with them in an authentic way. Listening intently, playing joyfully, or even just sharing the same, safe space. I couldn’t have anticipated how impactful it would be when that same space was held for me.
During those first 28 days of my daughter’s life on Earth, those first four weeks of my life as her mother, we got to know each other. We spent whole days doing nothing but being together. Whole days just loving each other. Listening intently, playing joyfully, breathing the same air. Nothing more. And it was everything to me.
by Rachel Price
AWBW Staff Member and Facilitator
Albuquerque, New Mexico
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A Window Between Worlds (AWBW) supports hundreds of direct service organizations across the country to incorporate creative expression into their work with trauma survivors. With this blog we uplift the voices of our art workshop facilitators and participants. We invite you to take in this perspective, notice what resonates and explore how it may fit into your life.