Are You a Sheep…or a Lamb Chop?

Reclaiming Our Voice Through Play, Character Development, and Whole-Person Healing**

At growURpotential.org, we talk often about self-trust as a survival skill, and the ways community becomes fertile ground for our emotional, somatic, and relational growth. But today I want to explore something simple, playful, and surprisingly revealing:

Are you a sheep…or a Lamb Chop?

You’ve seen the graphic by now — a classic, quiet sheep on one side, and the bold, charismatic, glove-wearing Lamb Chop puppet on the other. One follows. The other speaks, directs, jokes, interrupts, and moves the story forward. It's a funny comparison…until you realize how much of our identity work mirrors this exact choice.

Because whether we show up as a compliant sheep or a fully expressed Lamb Chop often reflects our conditioning, our nervous system, and the roles we were allowed — or forbidden — to play.

And this is where character development and improvisation become sacred tools for Healing Healers.

Role Play Is Not Pretend — It’s Permission

Every Healing Healer knows this truth:

When we practice a new character, we practice a new nervous system. We try on courage. We rehearse boundaries. We experiment with voice, tone, posture, timing, humor, and truth.

This is whole-person activation — emotional, cognitive, somatic, relational, and creative.

In our workgroups, healing circles, and mentorship spaces, I watch people awaken pieces of self they didn’t know were allowed. Not because someone lectured them, but because someone invited them to play.

Play may look like childish behavior, but we trust Play is trauma repair in motion. And this matters because so many of us were trained to be sheep:

• quiet,

• agreeable,

• compliant,

• careful not to disappoint,

• careful not to be “too much.”

But Lamb Chop? Lamb Chop does not hold that contract.

Lamb Chop has agency, personality, defiance, humor, rhythm, and an endless supply of one-liners. Lamb Chop carries her own story. She doesn’t wait for permission to speak it.

And inside our Healing Healers ecosystem, we give adults the space to rediscover that version of themselves — the version that may have gone quiet too soon.

Healing Requires a Voice, Not Just Insight

Our ecosystem was built with one core truth at its center:

The system takes care of healers, healers take care of community, and everyone gets psychological safety and self-trust.

But psychological safety doesn’t only show up in quiet conversations. It shows up in movement, in creativity, in the courage to play with identity, in the willingness to repair rupture, and in the embodied confidence to try again after a moment of disconnection.

This is why we integrate:

• somatic training,

• narrative re-authoring,

• improv acting,

• character development,

• relational experiments,

• role play dialogues,

• and embodiment practices designed for whole-person expansion.

These are not extracurricular activities. They are nervous system retraining opportunities, anchored by the healing justice principles we live by.

A person who has only learned coping skills may still hide their authentic voice. A person who has learned role play and character freedom has practiced their voice in real life, so they have lived experience of their own power.

Wanna see? WE share freely:

The Sheep or the Lamb Chop Exercise

In our Healing Healer workshops, facilitators ask:

“What part of you behaves like the sheep — and what part behaves like Lamb Chop?”

The sheep often represents:

• the obedient self

• the fearful self

• the self that avoids conflict

• the people-pleasing self

• the self that wanders, hoping someone will come rescue it

• the self that internalized duty, guilt, or compliance

Lamb Chop represents:

• voice

• choice

• humor

• boundaries

• relational clarity

• self-trust

• the playful inner child

• the part that directs the story rather than reacting to it

This contrast helps us explore power, agency, identity, conditioning, and embodiment, often without triggering shame. We get to laugh, breathe, and examine our patterns with gentleness.

And when participants shift from “I am the sheep” to “I’m practicing my Lamb Chop energy,” something powerful happens:

The body remembers who it was before the world demanded smallness.

Improv as a Healing Justice Practice

In the Healing Healers Network, we use improvisation the way others use cognitive worksheets — not to fix people, but to activate the whole person:

• posture,

• breath,

• imagination,

• relational timing,

• emotional resonance,

• authentic expression.

  
  

Improvisation is not easy. It’s relational rehearsal. Improv Practice prepares us to:

• co-regulate in real time

• repair ruptures with less fear

• advocate for ourselves

• see multiple perspectives

• choose intentional tone and pacing

• practice the difference between reacting and responding

  
  

These are the very skills that make a Healing Healer effective in the field, in community care, and in private practice. This is why mentorship and capacity resourcing are central pillars of our ecosystem.

Character Work Makes Healing Visible

One of my favorite things about our community is that healing is not a quiet, hidden, internal process. WE all live out loud because love is vulnerable, and if anyone wants to roll around in actual care-loops, they must actually be willing to heal on a stage.

Healing is the journey, we don't graduate but we can step back and allow others to step forward into the circle. My own joy is the reality I have experienced for ten years now, my own posture is softer, freer, and secure that "I Am" the character in the story that's anchored in my heart. WE trust choosing an “I Am” statement changes the game.

WE unfold in pairs and in circles by practicing tone-matching, mirroring, boundary-setting, and multiple-perspective storytelling. Healing is not the absence of struggle, growing pains are real and unavoidable. But when your practice is sincere, it’s the presence of tools, community, and the willingness to repair the relationships we value that moves us into higher consciousness.

This is why our programs consistently earn trust from youth, therapists, teachers, mentees, and partner organizations.

People feel the shift.

People become the shift.

So…Are You a Sheep or a Lamb Chop Today?

Not forever. Not permanently. Just today.

Are you the quiet follower, waiting for someone to come find you?

Or are you the animated, hilarious, fully embodied character who knows their worth and narrates their own story?

Both versions of you deserve compassion. Both versions are welcome in our programs. Both are part of the healing journey.

But only one helps you practice the kind of self-trust that transforms communities.

And that’s why, in every one of our healing spaces, we’ll keep inviting you to try on characters, laugh with your inner child, tap into your somatic intelligence, and explore the truth of who you are when no one is asking you to be small.

Because you are not here to be managed.

You are here to be heard.

In honor of my children, who love me, despite my errors as a mom, who grow with me on purpose. In honor of my loved ones who circle me in affirmation. I speak into the work because I AM a healing healer.

In gratitude to Lamb Chop, representing Shari Lewis's own voice, a character that allowed a woman to express intelligence, humor, and even controversial ideas (like a female president) through a feisty vulnerable puppet. WE code switch, cuz sometimes we better. Real skill unveils hypocrisy, challenges norms, and teaches generations the power of kindness, curiosity, and self-belief.