// Intention vs. Impact//

Happy New Year, fellow allies!

I did my best to stay away from social media over the holidays, but you know Kelvin couldn't keep from sharing the “highlights” with me. I was not amused when he sent this text:

Dear God, please no. He laughed while I just shook my head. Too soon!

Then, on the first day of 2022 we found ourselves in urgent care with our youngest—who ended up being totally fine and had the audacity to wake up the next morning acting like she hadn’t just given us a serious parenting scare.

We were grateful to have multiple people in our lives to call for on-demand medical coaching as we debated between visiting the ER or urgent care for a possible head injury. Fortunately, the girls’ grandparents were over watching football (Go Buckeyes!) and they stayed with the older girls while we got Maya checked out.

What happened, you ask? She and her sisters were rough housing too hard on the couch.

We heard the dreaded thud of a child’s skull hitting something it shouldn’t have, a few seconds before she started screaming and a giant goose egg began appearing above her eyebrow. We walked out of urgent care grateful that our baby was fine, grateful for accessible healthcare, and grateful for the teachable moment waiting for us at home.

The girls had been warned twice to settle themselves down a bit before Maya took a headfirst dive into the couch armrest. One had heeded our warning, but the other two…well they are nearly impossible to slow down (can you relate?). I can still hear a sad little voice as we rushed her sister to the van, “We didn’t mean too! We were just…”

They were just being kids.

Just having some fun.

Just playing.

They didn’t intend for anyone to get hurt.

Intentions matter little when the impact is harmful.

This is a foundational understanding when it comes to allyship. As allies, if we cannot get our minds wrapped around the fact that we can cause harm even when we don’t intend to, we are dangerous to our friends and family of color.

That’s a hard truth worth repeating.

Of course, we would never set out to harm others—that’s not what allies do, after all. Unfortunately, it’s a matter of when, not if, we hurt someone along this allyship journey.

And, until we can stand in such a situation fully willing to allow impact to matter more than our intentions, we are putting our community at risk.

We risk hurting those around us, not just with the offensive words or actions, but in the aftermath as we move the focus away from the pain we’ve caused when we center our intentions rather than our impact.

This results in:

• The harmed person’s pain going untreated at best and unacknowledged at worst
• A toxic social dynamic in which a harmed person may feel obligated to comfort the very person who harmed them
• A lost opportunity for the person causing the harm to lament, repent, and repair the relationship
• A loss of trust

🚩Pro-tip: If you catch yourself saying, “I didn’t mean to...” in an apology or explanation, that’s a red flag that you could be centering your intentions rather than your impact. The correct move is to first address the impact and then evaluate whether mentioning your intentions is even necessary.

We are constantly looking for opportunities to teach our girls this valuable allyship skill here at Casa Corbin and I would encourage you to do the same—although I don’t recommend making an urgent care trip part of your lessons if you can avoid it!

Here are three ideas for teaching your kids about the important difference between intention and impact:

1. Holy emotions, Batman! Sometimes we can slow family life down enough to have conversations about our emotions. (If the emotions are of the BIG variety, definitely wait for things to cool down first!). Talking about one’s intentions with their words and actions versus their actual impact on another’s emotions is probably the opportunity that arises most frequently.
2. I told you so! Sometimes we can replace the scolding and lectures (tell me I am not the only one who defaults here) when a child’s disobedience leads to less than desirable circumstance with a calm, logical discussion about intention and impact.
3. This one involves books, because of course it does. Sometimes we can use read aloud time to ask our kids questions about what’s going on in the story. Did the character mean for that to happen? What were their intentions? What was the actual impact? Which is more important?

Family life really is a treasure trove of opportunities to learn about and practice allyship skills. And the goal around here is to practice like we play—loving wholeheartedly and fighting for connection at home so that when we go out into the world, it’s simply the way we show up in others’ lives.

Speaking of loving wholeheartedly, have I mentioned lately that YOU were one of my favorite blessings of 2021? Thank you for giving me a reason to get words on the page and being a place where I can comfortably show up as myself.

Jamie