Reflections on my Year at Take Back The Halls

05 Aug Reflections on my Year at Take Back The Halls

When I first began working at Take Back the Halls (TBTH), I thought I understood the impact
of this kind of work—I was prepared to help students navigate their emotions, build healthier
relationships, and recognize cycles of violence and harm. What I didn’t anticipate, however, was how
deeply the curriculum would turn inward, reflecting back parts of myself I hadn’t fully recognized or
learned how to tend to. While giving me tools to share, TBTH also gave me a mirror, and more
importantly, a community, through which I began to understand the complexity of my own emotional
world. The curriculum at TBTH is designed to meet young people where they’re at. Through
strategically crafted curriculum and conversations, we talk about boundaries and emotional regulation.
What struck me early on is how honest and real the conversations became—sometimes painfully so.
After a few weeks, many students weren’t afraid to name how they were feeling, even if the words
weren’t polished or the emotions too raw. In guiding them through these processes, I began to feel a
quiet shift in my own emotional processing.

Each week, as I prepared lesson plans and guided students through scenarios involving conflict
resolution or grounding techniques, I found myself questioning my own patterns. Why did I
sometimes shut down when I was upset? Why did I over-explain myself when I felt misunderstood?
Why did certain kinds of confrontation make my chest tighten or my stomach sink? The curriculum
asked me to reflect alongside the students I was working with and over time, I began to notice that
the very practices we were introducing to the young people—breathwork, naming our emotions,
identifying needs, noticing triggers—were exactly the practices I needed for myself. It was humbling
to realize how often I operated on autopilot when it came to my own emotional responses and how
often I reacted rather than responded.

Many times while being in class with the kids, something would click—like realizing that my
tendency to emotionally withdraw during conflict wasn’t just a quirk of personality but a learned
survival mechanism. Or that my discomfort with vulnerability had less to do with who I was and more
to do with the ways I was taught to protect myself growing up. These moments were sometimes small
and subtle, and other times they were deeply confronting. But in every case, they left me a little more
open than I was the week before. What made this learning even more meaningful was the team I
worked with. Many of the other staff members had been with TBTH for one or two years longer than
I had, and their presence was foundational to my growth. There was a kind of emotional fluency in
how they held space, how they processed difficult moments, how they modeled patience not just with
the students but with themselves. Watching them—and learning from them—was like being shown a
very necessary map. Many conversations with my team come to mind where they had helped walk me
through some of the dramatics happening in my life at the time and they never attempted to ‘fix’
anything; rather, they listening, offering reflections that enabled me to trace back certain responses
from relationships and interactions earlier in my life. That kind of insight—offered with care, not
judgment—made space for me to feel safer inside of my own reactions.

It wasn’t just about becoming more aware of my emotions but about learning how I had learned
to feel, and what systems and stories shaped that learning. Working for TBTH helped me understand
that self-awareness isn’t just about monitoring your reactions, but about working through the more
intricate and precise questions that pinpoint how my emotional responses manifest in certain
behaviors that shape my external environment, moving me from isolation to connection.
Emotional growth isn’t linear, and healing doesn’t always feel smooth. The same compassion
I tried to hold for the students—when they showed up guarded or reactive—I learned to hold for
myself. At the end of this year, I don’t feel like a new person, but I feel like I can identify myself better.
Not because I’ve “fixed” myself or arrived at some finality of being but because I’ve become a bit
more introspective on my emotional responses and how they manifest. I’ve learned how to sit with
discomfort and still stay in relationship with others and with myself.

Sukhmani Mandair