You can't know the ripples you create

"All that you touch, you change."

Ever feel like your efforts are simply ‘not enough’? Perhaps someone else could be doing a better job? I get you! At the end of a busy week it feels a good moment to remind you of the difference you make in this world.

There are ripples in our work and we can’t know the impact of all that we try. All we have is small glimmers, the long tail of our interactions long after we’ve left.

My friend sent me this photo the other day. Her daughter had asked her to send it to me, to share her latest stone stack - a game I’d suggested simply as an alternative to throwing the rocks off the cliff (to the people below on the beach). This is no life-changing story, but it made my heart swell to think of the small ripples - a new game shared, a smile exchanged, a moment together that made us both feel good.

We can’t know the potential impact of our actions, especially when we work with young children and their families. We try to track targets, but a lot of the most valuable stuff is the intangible.

• The mum I ran into ten years after our work together, who said that the style of interacting we practised together still supported her conversations with her now-teenage boy.

• The dad I bumped into in the car park who said his family still feel glad of that early support, how made sense at an important time for them.

• The mum in a coffee shop, who I thought had stopped contacting me because she didn’t value our work together, when actually she said it had made such a difference that she didn’t need me anymore.

These glimmers of impact are only possible because I live on a (relatively) small island where we run into familiar faces. If you live somewhere bigger, you have to imagine the people out there, who still hold you in fond regard, value the early support you gave them, even though you may never see them again.

Maybe you think you’re not making much of a difference, or that your efforts are futile. Because you can’t always see the progress. But change is happening and your actions are powerful.

As the great and wise Octavia E. Butler reminds us:

All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you.

We need change, both big and small, and you are a part of that. Trust in yourself, in your efforts, and the ripples that span out quietly from every one of them. You may never know the impact, but you can trust and imagine.

Sending you love and appreciation for all that you do.

Bryony Rust
SaLT by the Sea