Palo Alto Online: Sidewalk Talk hopes to expand to Palo Alto
Four women sat outside Gunn High School last Thursday with a simple goal: to listen.
The four women, who all work in the mental health field, are part of Sidewalk Talk, a San Francisco organization founded by two psychotherapists who believe that taking the simple act of listening to the streets can both improve mental health and build community.
Sidewalk Talk first launched in San Francisco in May. Co-founders Lily Sloane and Traci Ruble, along with 28 trained volunteers, set up chairs and "free listening" signs in various public spaces throughout the city, offering to listen to anyone passing by. Their goal is not to act like a professional offering solutions, but instead empathizing and "trying to relate from a place of purely being in it with them."
"It's all the things that you would want if you were having a bad day," Ruble explained.
Ruble said some people in San Francisco stopped to talk because they might have just received an upsetting text message. Others shared that they had existing depression or other mental illness and were seeking treatment for it.
"I think that sometimes when you think about mental health, there's a reaction to what that actually means and even when we say 'destigmatize mental health issues,' I don't know that people actually understand what that means," Ruble said in an interview. "But when you actually sit down and listen to people's stories and you get that we are all people, we all have a story to tell … that really helps raise the bar of consciousness of people."