Red Cedar's Experiment with Fragrance-Free Seating

My Quaker meeting is working on accessibility issues related to fragrances, which some people (like me) have sensitivities to and which can also trigger or exacerbate migraines and asthma. It's been a surprisingly vexed conversation over the last six to nine months, and there are a lot of tender feelings. At our last business meeting, we talked about the issue for a long time, and I and at least two other people with sensitivities spoke. That was my first surprise: I hadn't realized I wasn't alone in this. It was so good to hear other people talk about having the same kinds of experiences I did, like being pulled out of worship to wonder if you'll have to move when a late-comer seems likely to sit near you. Or how hard it can be to address this issue in personal relationships. But how had I not known? Had I not been listening?

We clearly had other failures of communication as well. Toward the end of that conversation, one member said that this was the first time it had occurred to him that we were actually discussing a health issue. I guess he thought we'd been talking about preferences, or a more general wish to be environmental, to be as clean and toxin-free as possible. I was glad that people heard things that shifted their perspective, but I said to David later, "Where have we failed in talking about this if this is the first time people figured out it was about people's well-being?" It surprised me to learn that we had been, at least to some extent, talking past each other. No wonder feelings were hurt and progress was not made. I wonder if we have more clarity now and that will help us move forward.

Anyway, one thing we're experimenting with is designationg one-fourth of the meeting room as fragrance-free seating. This was a hard decision to make; it was actually minuted back in December and then held back from implementation because of strong concerns raised later. My concerns were pretty pragmatic: I'm not sure our meeting room is large enough for designated seating to be effective, and I was worried that people would think that FF seating solved the problem, so nothing more had to be thought about or done. I also was concerend about partial access--even if FF seating made worship accessible to me, what about the hallway, the library, the social hall, the classrooms?

Others' concerns were more spiritual; one Friend put it very well when he said he was not comfortable with having different Friends seated in different parts of the room, with setting off a separate group. Quakers have always been one body, he said, one community. He said it better; it was moving, and I thought he was not wrong. Another Friend was concerned that saying that only people who were FF could be in this seating area sent the message that some people were "pure" enough to be there and some people weren't.

We eventually decided to go ahead with FF seating, in a spirit of experimentation, and to discuss it again in about six months, after we've lived with it for awhile. This is not the only action we've taken. The Building & Grounds committee has been very pro-active, providing FF hand soap and informational signs in the bathrooms (I commended one member of the committee on the wording of the signs, and she looked at me funny and said, "Well, good. We got it from a link you sent us"). I'm attending a yearly meeting event at the meetinghouse this Saturday and was heartened to see that the organizers were asked to include a note about fragrance and accessibility at the Meetinghouse in their materials.

I sat in the FF seating for the first time on Sunday. I will say that, after one trial, it felt pretty crappy. On the one hand, it was the first time I've ever been in worship at the meetinghouse (which is 13 months old) and not had an exposure, so yay for that. On the other hand, for about the first 15 or 20 minutes (maybe not that long; maybe it just felt long), I was the only one in the FF seating. The other three-fourths of the meetinghouse was pretty well populated. I felt isolated and conspicuous; I also felt discouraged that there was not one other person in that room who had taken our conversations about fragrance so much to heart that they had stopped using scented products on Sunday mornings. It hurt my feelings. In my whole life, nobody but David and Scott, who are the two people besides my children who love me the most in all the world, has ever gone fragrance-free in support of my well-being. I don't know why. I do know that it would be like the best present I ever got times 10 if somebody did.

Eventually, two other women who are also sensitive to fragrances came in and sat in the FF seating with me, and I felt less alone and conspicuous but still set apart and visible in an uncomfortable way. We might as well have been wearing a sign saying THESE WOMEN HAVE CHEMICAL SENSITIVITIES! I had optimistically imagined myself camouflaged among some number of non-sensitive folks who were nonetheless fragrance-free. Alas, no. (One of the women's partners joined us at the rise of meeting; she'd been in another part of the meetinghouse during worship.)

That's just one day. I agreed to the experiment and I'll stick with it. It may get easier as I get used to it. Maybe we'll have a slow migration into FF seating as people experiment with unscented products, and it will get easier that way. It certainly seemed successful from the perspective of exposure and illness. Maybe even if I don't become emotionally comfortable sitting there I'll decide the trade-off is worth it; if I can't have both physical well-being and emotional comfort in worship, maybe physical well-being is the better part. Maybe it's good not to be too comfortable, and my discomfort will bear unexpected fruit. It remains to be seen.

This is not the blog post I sat down to write. Funny how that happens sometimes.