The Power Of Safety
“Attachment Figure—someone who provides a safe haven where the other can be deeply seen and feel safe and secure.” – Dan Siegal
When COVID19 hit the United States last March, I had a flood of messages from my network to make sure I was safe. Family called to check in. Friends started group text messages for support. My coworkers at the time reconfigured our peer support program for veterans and athletes to go virtual to protect the safety of those we served during the crisis. What I saw and witnessed was a village of people rushing to support everyone I loved.
Attachment figures in your life (relationships) are one effective way to create emotional safety. Whether you’re 10 or 45, we need people in our lives to support our emotional health. If there’s something we all learned in the last year it’s that deep and intentional relationships provide a protective factor against uncertainty and fear. Even now, we need those relationships to continue providing structure and stability to move us away from the ledge of fear and anxiety.
COVID19 offered another outcome – moments of reflection – which ultimately created Rainbow Labs. Working in youth development, peer support, and mentoring over the last 11 years I saw the immense benefits of relationships. Youth and adults who had support networks went from merely surviving to thriving. George Valliant, a researcher at Harvard, even went at great lengths to prove that “Happiness is love. Full stop.” I wondered, where did this fit within my own queer and gender nonconforming (QGNC) community?
Unfortunately, the QGNC community experienced a huge loss to leadership and mentors during the 80s. By the end of 1990, over 307,000 AIDS cases were officially reported but unofficial reports estimate to be one million. These were future leaders of our community, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, and even mentors. What AIDS left in its wake was a smaller group of strong individuals to carry our whole community forward. What they achieved has had lasting effects driving the way forward for my generation of QGNC individuals to build on their strong foundation. What comes next is expanding the support services for our community and activating more individuals in our own community to give back.
When I read back in July of 2020 the stats around QGNC youth I was shocked. High incarceration rates, mental health challenges, dropout rates on the rise and much more. Coupled with this was that for every 5,000 youth mentoring programs in the US only 5 focused on QGNC youth. We were seeing the challenges to youth in our community, but one of the longest held (evidence based) solutions of mentoring simply wasn’t reaching our youth. This is where Rainbow Labs came into fruition.
We took a year to get to where we are which is now launching our first ever iteration of our youth mentoring program – One Bold Summer. Countless hours of our board, program design team, and QGNC focus groups is bringing it to life. We cannot wait to share more as this is one step to creating not only a better future for QGNC youth but for the whole QGNC community. It’s a community legacy that I cannot wait to take part in.
Jacob Toups
Founder
