24/365: Repurposeful

Mural in paint and repurposed water bottles, Monarch Academy, Baltimore, MD

This week I've been learning about how to do education the way it should be done, if we really care about kids enough to understand how they learn and live best. All my training this month, in fact, has been about working most effectively with kids, which really means learning about how they experience the world and how we can help them make their way through the world. If this means setting aside the worksheets and charts and mastering paint and scissors and glue guns and glitter instead, I'm all in.

20/365: A New View

View from a courtyard, Corrales, NM

This weekend's training in play therapy gave me excellent theoretical grounding and practical skills in what I consider the best and usually the only truly effective way to work therapeutically with kids. It also affirmed what I've been doing so far, mostly winging it with help from books, DVDs, and consultation with other play therapists. I was surprised to learn that most therapists and psychologists, when asked directly, say they don't really want to work with kids. I suspect it's because kids don't usually talk openly or logically or coherently, at least not to relative strangers peppering them with prying questions, leaving us left-brainer adults at a loss and, I'll admit to this if no one else will, feeling kind of dumb for not knowing what to say or what to do when faced with kids who can't or won't talk about what's going on with them.

The key: communicate with kids in their "language," whether verbal or nonverbal, and be open to viewing things from new, unexpected perspectives. Watch them play to learn their language. Accept them for who, what, and where they are - if they sense that, you already have a good connection to build on.

Morning Commute

Sunrise, Highway 169 between Magdalena and Alamo, Nov. 2012

I never thought I'd be able to handle a rigid work schedule that requires me to be out the door by 7:15 a.m., let alone enjoy the commute, but this is a major reason I can and do. Thirty miles of rolling hills, open vistas, and sunrises and sunsets make for an amazing commute that I could never have imagined a dozen years ago when my 30-mile commute took me through Southern California suburban sprawl at, usually, a maddening crawl. I remember nudging along those clogged freeways thinking that someday, just maybe, things would be different.

How amazingly different, indeed.

Blue Ribbon

I summoned up the courage to enter some of my photographs in the Socorro County Fair, just for the fun of participating, and this photo won a blue ribbon! It's a remake of a color photo I took this past April; I just love the black-and-white/antiquing effect and think it makes this a much more interesting image.

This is my final week of leisure and freedom; next Tuesday I start working in my new career, finally, as a child and family therapist out at the Alamo Navajo Health Center (30 miles northwest of Magdalena). I'm excited about the possibilities and am also gratified to find myself coming full circle, in a way, revisiting and finally benefiting from my 1990s anthropology fieldwork on cross-cultural medicine. Upon launching this new career I'd wanted to jump into training on equine therapy, but since I'll be working mostly with kids my first priority is to get some good training in play therapy. What a great job, huh?

Hummingbird Medicine

Young female (I think) rufous hummingbird, Magdalena, NM, August 2012

Just outside my bedroom window a tiny messenger came calling this morning, perching quietly on the old peach tree for a good bit. She stayed long enough for me to get my camera, take a few photos, and enjoy the rare sight of a hummingbird at rest. Some people believe animals carry specific meanings and messages, so just for curiosity's sake I looked up what hummingbirds mean and found this:

What is hummingbird's message for us? First of all, adaptability in life's many situations and being able to "roll with the punches." If you have hummingbird medicine, you adapt easily to whatever situation you may find yourself in, and make the most of your new circumstances. You don't waste time looking back and wishing for "what was" for you are concerned with making the most of "what is." 

The second message is inner joy.... You take great pleasure in spreading joy and love and beauty to all around you, and have the gift of taking that inner joy into new and different surroundings.

So, be adaptable and nurture my inner joy as I move forward. Turns out to be a fortuitous message for today: I finally received my official license to practice therapy (under supervision for 2 years) and can now truly move forward into my new career! I start working part-time in Albuquerque on Tuesday, and will also interview next week for a more local job that seems both challenging and promising. Four years in the making, my journey begins a whole new phase. As busy as I'll be, though, I truly hope I continue to enjoy moments like this morning's, just watching a bird pause in its own busy life.

"Hope is the thing with feathers..."

Evening at the ranch, Magdalena, NM, June 2012

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
-Emily Dickinson (still my favorite poet)

A bird's song can stop a mind from writhing in darkness, and hope can keep a person moving forward despite setbacks and obstacles and doubt and fear. Ten days ago I finished my Masters program in marital/family therapy, three years and nine months after setting out on what seemed like a last-ditch effort to rebuild a life worth living. It was hard work, but the structure provided a sort of scaffolding and every success an essential block in a new foundation. I pause now to catch my breath and enjoy the summer with my kids, and to prepare for the next phase: living what was in the beginning a sketched-out dream sustained mostly, and sometimes only, by hope. I could not have done this alone and have so many people to thank for encouraging and supporting me along the way....

Rekindling Yin

Roses on a garden fence, Magdalena, NM, May 2012

A client was speaking a few weeks ago about shifting her energy from survival mode to growth mode after a time of serious disruption and reconsideration of every aspect of her life. I would liken this process to a severe pruning, perhaps by a natural disaster such as an epic hard freeze or shredding cyclonic winds, that reduces years' worth of growth to deadwood down to the ground. Devastating, yes, but also an opportunity to reshape, even recreate a whole new life. After more than four years of struggle I've emerged from a leveling hurricane of a divorce into a far better new life as a single mother, graduate student, and, in just a few more weeks, newly minted professional family therapist.

Larkspur (opalotype filter w/vignette), Magdalena, NM, May 2012

My client gave me a huge gift that day: the insight that during the hardest part of her "winter of the soul" she neglected and suppressed her feminine energy. She said she recently realized that surviving and rebuilding seem to require a toughness and assertiveness that aren't part of the repertoire of "being a girl" behaviors most of us grow up learning. So now, having survived and wanting more -- namely, to thrive -- she feels it's time to change course a bit, not to give up her toughness but to soften and in fact strengthen it with more "feminine" flexibility, intuitiveness, and heartfelt emotion. Her insight helped me realize I'd done much the same thing these past few years: getting tough to survive, pulling out of and away from unhealthy dependencies (which, a few years ago, described just about all of my relationships), and pushing myself through graduate school and internship into a whole new career.

Bee at work (opalotype filter w/vignette), Magdalena, NM, May 2012

God, what a process, and I did have to let go of and prune away lots of old stuff to do it right, and I don't regret that. What I feel now, though, is that in some ways I've perhaps become... not necessarily "too masculine" in any absolute sense, because we all fall in different places along that spectrum, but certainly more masculine than my core "self" might be. So as part of reshaping my life I will spend some time uncovering and nurturing my "feminine" side, my yin, whatever you want to call it, not to uproot but to strengthen what has emerged these past few years. At first this will need to be conscious; for example, shifting my body language from forward and aggressive to more reclined, relaxed, receptive... in emotionally safe situations, anyway. And playing more, whether in the garden or with my camera, and doing what feels right, like planting and photographing flowers and other pretty things. Listening, something I used to be really good at but feel I've pushed aside to "get my point across" and be taken more "seriously" (and we all know how well that works... )

My apple tree is bearing fruit this year; a good sign, perhaps? 

What I want to nurture and what I want to replace aren't in themselves good or bad; I'm really seeking to rediscover my essential, joyful self and allow it to fully emerge, finally. Allow, not push... support, not construct... Trust and accept, not direct....

Maybe I'll call this my Summer of Yin...

Days Like This

My Favorite Pumpkin, Magdalena, NM, Nov. 2011

Any day that starts with a few moments of sunshine in the garden is already a good day, and yet this day managed to get even better. The seeds sown during my past few years of slow, persistent, sometimes imperceptible effort and transformation have finally begun to bear fruit, and I saw it so clearly today when a client facing some pretty major challenges told me he was beginning to realize that no one is helpless, that even when he has no idea what to do he keeps trying anyway, and that whatever happens he will know he did his best and never gave up. He didn't get this from me or from a book or some spiritual guru; he found it within himself. What a daring journey to embark on, trekking deep into the wilderness of heart and soul; some days I feel like a sherpa, and it feels like a huge privilege that people ask me to walk with them during their travels.