this wednesday the "therapeutic art group" i've started at work had its first meeting. it's "therapeutic art", not "art therapy" because i'm not a liscenced art therapist. also, i feel things like glitter paint and salt dough christmas ornaments might have a place in therapeutic art, but perhaps not in art therapy.

anyway, i was really excited, but also nervous about the group. i've taught art a lot, but never with adults, and certainly not to homeless adults with severe mental illnesses and multiple drug addictions. but it was incredible. all i did was give everyone a giant, thick piece of white paper, some magazines, scissors, and glue, and tell them to make a "who am i" collage. i was afraid that they would mutiny, that they would see how silly and juvenile that idea is and refuse to do it, and then maybe attack me with the scissors. but they didn't! they starting looking through the magazines, cutting out applicable words and pictures. everyone kind of settled on a theme for their piece, and an hour and 20 minutes later when i said we needed to start thinking about cleaning up, they were genuinely disappointed. they said it was the most relaxed they had felt in a long time, that it was so nice to get to sit and be quiet and make things, focusing only on the task at hand. we then took a few minutes to explain the significance of what we had created, why we had chosen what we had. as they talked about having their children taken from them, about being prostitutes, about being in and out of rehab for cocaine and heroin addictions, about God and about family, they started crying. Well, three of the women did, anyway. And it wasn't just talking about their own pieces, people were crying as they listened to others' stories as well. it was so, so beautiful. after we were done, we all hugged. they wouldn't stop talking about how good they felt, and how much they're looking forward to next week. i couldn't, either.

when i got home, as we were finished up dinner, one of the asylum seekers (refugees) from cameroon came in, wearing a suit and grinning. his asylum had been granted that day, so he is now legally in the us, he can get a job and a driver's licence. after 8 months of basically not existing, having no income and no way to get an income, having no way to get home and no way to get his family here, after hours of interviews and hundreds of pages of paperwork, he has his asylum. to celebrate, i made him a burrito (uh, look, it's what we had, ok?) and sat and talked with him about the process and what he's going to do now. the next step, he told me, is to apply for his family to come over. he has a wife and three children, two boys and a girl. i asked about his children, and he got very quiet. they are 12, 6, and a year old, he told me. the youngest is a boy, and he left when he was just four months old. staring at his half eaten burrito, he said "but i don't know him. four months, that's it. now he is a year. i don't even have any pictures of him." i didn't know what to say, so i didn't say anything. i thought of my nephew, who will be visiting in a few weeks, on his 4-month birthday. i thought about how that might affect him, or the refugee from iraq who has a 2 1/2 year old daughter he hasn't seen in two years. "perhaps now they will come", the asylum seeker turned asylee said. "perhaps now i will ask for some pictures to be sent."