Transforming grief through legacy work
On the AATH Jill Knox Peace Through Humor Fellowship
For Part 1 of our spring tour, the Colorado Springs chapter, see Being made by place.
Dearly beloved Enchantable readers,
There is this thread of my work that I wanted to tell you about today. I came into it accidentally after my mom died, and I am really glad that I did.
My mom died both suddenly (overnight coma) and slowly (sixteen days of ICU and hospice, sixteen very, very long days) during the terrible time of the pre-vaccine pandemic of January 20211. We were in the deep grief in the wake of her sudden death when we received a message:
“I have been looking at the organization Jill was involved with. Amazing work. I would love to arrange for a grant to be made in her honor.”
My dad and I were sitting around the kitchen island, where we would often sit as a family. She wasn’t there anymore - but here she was, as we received this message from my dad’s friend2 who worked with a foundation and could arrange the donation, which was generous. We were stunned by the gesture.
What do we do with this? We pondered. How do we do the most to honor her memory and legacy, to use this gift in the best way? It was a beautiful problem to have.
We sat and brainstormed, and came up with the idea (I am pretty sure the initial idea was my dad’s, in all of his genius) of bringing folks from the peace studies and peace education field into the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor (AATH) Humor Academy, which my mom was actively involved with since its inception.
Thus, the Jill Knox Peace Through Humor Fellowship was born.
The fellowship promotes peace through humor by bringing in scholar-practitioner-educators from the peace studies/education fields to the AATH Humor Academy so that they can bring more humor into their peace work, and bring more peace into the therapeutic humor world. The fellows attend the annual AATH conference, which includes a one-day Humor Academy immersion, and then meet monthly throughout the year to study and develop projects as part of their Humor Academy training.
What is AATH?
The Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor (AATH) is an organization of professionals of all sorts - health care workers, educators, writers, lawyers - who integrate humor and play into their work for its healing and transformative benefits. The annual conference brings this community together to share research and ideas, and most of all, laugh together. It’s a positive and supportive atmosphere, and about the whackiest group of people you could ever meet. You get the sense that these folks stand out in their day-to-day lives, but in this group, at this conference, they’re just at home and free to be their weirdest, goofiest selves.
The community was really important to my mom, a big part of her life. She started going to the conferences in the 2000s when she was still teaching. After she retired she began dedicating more time to the organization, joining the board, serving as conference chair, and eventually serving as the president. She was very involved in the Humor Academy (HA), the organization’s professional development program, from its inception, which is why we had the idea for the fellowship to be linked with HA.
“Tell us about your mom,” the fellows asked.
She was a teacher by profession, and used humor in her classroom as a way to connect with students, which brought her to AATH. After she retired, she wanted to help other teachers use humor and offered professional development workshops on the topic. She loved flamingos and the beach. She loved clothes and style, and was one of the uniquely stylish and put-together people you could ever meet. She loved to laugh and was the life of any party or room she walked into. She loved her family and she loved being Daphne’s Gaga (grandma) especially. And one of her goals in life was to promote peace through humor.
As AATH president, her term theme was Humor for Peace, and she started hosting a peace luncheon at the conference as a way of integrating peace into the organization. The idea for the fellowship grew from the work she was already doing to weave peace into AATH, and to get AATH members to see their work as peace work.
Now this is the work continues through the fellows. We have welcomed two fellows to the conference every year since 2022. Our peace fellows come from Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Kenya, and their peacebuilding work takes many different forms, from education to community-based and humanitarian work. Just by being present in the organization and bringing their perspectives, experiences, and passions, the fellows are contributing so much to the organization, and at the same time are receiving new ideas and tools from the Humor Academy to take into their work and communities.
Peace through Humor? What does that mean?
In our presentation on Friday, we shared the following example to help people think about building peace through humor:
When you…
…use humor to de-escalate a conflict or prevent violence
…use humor to bridge a divide
…use humor to nurture relationships and build community…
…you are building peace through humor!
Then we invited people to think of an example of how they already build peace through humor:
“One way I build peace through humor is…”
During our panel on Friday, I was asked the question, “How do you use humor in your classroom?” I laughed and said, “I don’t know…just by being myself!” To be honest, I don’t think of myself as using humor so much as trying to create a classroom environment where joy and happiness can be present - which certainly includes humor. And we do a lot of seemingly silly icebreaker-type activities, which to me, are the glue and foundation that keeps us together. They can seem light and fluffy sometimes - like the rendition of Rock-Paper-Scissors-Egg-Chicken-Flamingo, which Ara led us through during our session - but these are the moments when we laugh together and act silly together and get to know a little more about each other, which is the stuff of building community. Some of the best learning moments are the moments when we are laughing together (see Mary Kay Morrison’s book Using Humor to Maximize Learning for more on this - Mary Kay is the founder of the HA and one of my mom’s BFFs). This is part of building a culture of peace in the classroom.
In the Q&A, one of our fellows noted that humor does not always equal peace. Humor can be harmful and hurtful or even used to stoke the flames of violence. But humor can be used as a tool for peace, to build community, to promote resilience in the face of adversity (one of the themes the fellows spoke to yesterday), to heal and promote reconciliation.
My relationship to all of this has changed over time. My role began as selecting and supporting the fellows, who have now become colleagues and friends. At these conferences, I have mostly been here for the fellows, and the past two years we have done panel presentations together. I always have Daphne with me, so I don’t usually get to attend many sessions (I barely got to attend our own session, when she was having a hunger meltdown, and I had left all the snacks in the room. Perhaps more on this another time - the struggles of trying to be a professional mom and dragging my child to I don’t know how many conferences in her almost 6 years of life…). As such, I don’t get a chance to soak up as much of the conference as I would like. This year, we attended a Lego session together, and she colored quietly while I listened to some plenaries. On Saturday, I got to attend sessions while my family watched TV with her, which was like a mini-vacation.
People sometimes think because of my involvement in this, I am an expert on peace and humor - which regrettably I am not! I have attended many of these conferences at this point and should probably know more than I do. But somehow this fellowship program has come into existence, has been greater than anything we could have imagined, and has become part of my life’s. Getting to know our fellows has been the greatest gift. They are all phenomenal people doing incredible work in the world to build peace, and they inspire me endlessly with their passion and dedication. This work happened to me, and I am so glad that it did.
My mom loved this conference community, and there is so much of her here. The fellowship has gone beyond anything we could have imagined to continue her legacy and passion for humor and peace. The peace through humor fellowship ended up being a meaningful way for us to move through our grief, a way to continue my mom’s legacy. The fellows have become part of her continuation, and the fellowship for us has become a way to transform grief by continuing her passion for building peace through humor.
Suddenly I realize I am in this for the long haul. What started as continuing my mom’s work has slowly become a part of my work. This has become a community, a fellow family, and we are all a part of AATH. Three years into the fellowship, I am realizing that I am not just here for my mom or the fellows - I am here for me, too.
It has grown so much since that conversation around the kitchen island, and we are grateful.
With love and care and laughter,
Stephanie
P.S. Next year’s conference is May 1-4 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Consider joining us! Sign up at AATH for updates.
I wrote more about this in my essay Become a Vessel:
Who shall remain anonymous by request