In February, I had the opportunity to sit in on Alison Szarko’s (@GlobalSelfLoveClub on Instagram) self love workshop at the Holland Project. For three hours, we dedicated ourselves to learn how to manage stress and burnout, all the while being vulnerable with each other. When we think of self love, oftentimes we think about doing face masks, and running bubble baths. While these are beautiful forms of taking care of yourself, the idea of self care also runs much deeper.
Alison Szarko, a doctoral candidate at UNR, who has been studying behavioral psychology, practices ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) which has been used to help many manage burnout and stress. Self love from an ACT perspective means practicing “value based living”, which means, “1.)identifying what one truly wants their life to be about or what’s truly important to them, and 2.) once one knows what matters to them, giving them the psychological tools they need to pursue value-based actions, even in the presence of unavoidable or hypothetical stressors.”
“I work in the process improvement department at Renown, and our big focus is productivity, but we constantly forget about the human factor and the human element that goes into productivity,” Szarko said.
“Everyone is burnt out. It’s not an individual problem, it’s a cultural problem because we’re all moving too fast now,” she added. “So I guess the big takeaway is reminding people that we’re humans and not robots and we need rest, and we need time to reflect, and also that work is just one part of our life but it's not an entire part of our lives.”
After the workshop, I was also able to speak with Alisha Funkhouser, the director of education and youth programs at the Holland Project. I started off by asking her how the volunteer driven all ages venue survived through the pandemic.
“It’s been tough, a big part of Holland is music and shows,” she said. “It really forced us out into the community even more so than before. It’s kinda helped us learn how to pivot, and become more flexible with things and I think we’ve become stronger coming out of it. We are working with a lot more communities that we’re really grateful to be a part of now. The pandemic really showed us what the needs were in the community, and the communities that maybe weren't being served. So I think that it kinda helped us in that aspect, [to] figure out what we could be doing and what we could be doing better.”
With pivoting in mind, I also asked what new additions were being added to Holland.
“We’re doing a lot more things with younger kids now which is cool. Before it was mostly like older teens to young adults but yeah it's been nice to be able to bring in some of the younger kids into the fold and provide things for them to be able to do and get involved and introducing Holland to them at a younger age. And then, with that obviously you have families that are now becoming more and more involved which is really cool to see. I love that kind of stuff.”
A Spring Kid Craft camp for the last week of March is an example of attracting younger patrons.
“Also something that we are always thinking about even pre-pandemic but I think even more so as the city changes so much and so rapidly is just like considering our neighborhood that we are physically in,” Funkhouser said. “Who are the people who are in this neighborhood, who need this neighborhood, and making sure that we’re doing things that are supporting them and supporting the neighborhood vs like taking from them you know?”
“Our main goal has been to provide access. Access to arts, access to music, access to workshops like we did today to people of all ages,” Funkhouser said of the Holland Project. You can find their updates @hollandreno on Instagram.
Funkhouser who was raised in Reno said there was no equivalent when she was growing up.
“It was hard to find anything to do as a young person that wasn't just like loitering at a casino or like trying to go see a band at a bar that I’m not allowed to go in you know? Or like convincing my mom to drop me off at someone's weird basement to go see a band play. I think the main role of Holland is again providing that safe space for people to feel like they can come get involved, feel like they are accepted and a part of it. Whether that's like creating their own event and bringing community together or just coming and being a part of something.”
I genuinely loved every part of the self love workshop I attended, and I truly appreciate the act of accessibility when it comes to sharing mental health resources.