More than just the closing of a home.
Well its spring officially, which means the weather is warmer, the sun shines longer, and I don't have to wear two pairs of pants to go outside anymore. With spring, usually comes spring cleaning. Miraculously my number of clients has increased, and in my opinion because most people don't just clean out from under their beds in the spring, but also any extra baggage they are hanging onto as well. I know I am.
The home that I volunteered in for over a year and a half closed in the middle of July, the last time I ever went to Aldea Maria Reina was June 22, 2011, that was almost four months ago. It was a really nice closing for us as volunteers and hopefully for the girls that spent anywhere from a few months to several years of their lives there. There was all the appropriate Chilean wonders of a Despidida, including soda, chips, cake and lots of reggeton music playing. The volunteers had planned a special closing activity. We bought all 30 girls that still lived at the home going away presents of journals, jewelry boxes and a pair of earrings. Each girl got this present and then we put up posters all over the living room, each one with a different girl's name on it. The girls then spent part of the evening walking around to everyone's poster and writing a small message or comment to remember each other by. It was sentimental and nice, hopefully they are things that they can hold on to in the future.
I realized in the last few weeks that I have some PTSD feelings to the closing of the home. I feel like I am grieving, as its been four months and not one day has gone by where I don't think about the home or the girls that lived there. I have seen a few of them since then in two other homes located in Santiago, a few girls were transferred together to these homes, so I visited there to say hi. For almost two whole years though I saw the same girls at least once a week, and now I don't know where they are living, how they are doing, if they are doing their homework, or being treated kindly, I don't know where they are sleeping or if their mom called them this week. I don't know how they will turn out and I haven't hear them laugh or seen them smile at the weird gringos. My guess is where they are living now there are no weird gringos to hang out with. At the end of the time at the home the girls were being placed in all different places to live, some being sent to other homes, some being sent to family members homes that could take them, some being sent home again, others got apartments with friends, or moved in with a friend, and yet a number of girls just ran away.
I can't really imagine what its like to feel that way, I know I have had some severe moments in my life of sadness, loneliness, depression, trauma, but I have never been abandoned by everyone I know, I have never been asked to move out of the only home that I knew, I wasn't passed from caregiver to caregiver and I certainly was never made to feel like I wasn't important enough that no one could afford to pay for me anymore. That's how I look at the situation, even if I am dead wrong and it makes people mad for me to say it, its how I look at it. I look at what was 60 incredible young women who were full of life and potential, beauty, wisdom, wonder, laughter, and insight, and I look at a world, a country and a community that sent the message to these girls that there wasn't enough money for them to live properly. The home closed for the same reason homes, orphanages, community centers, social support places, and non for profit centers close all the time, because there isn't enough money to support it any longer.
I have never been so connected to anything in my life. The home was not about me, it was a safe place for adolescent girls to be raised learning better values of life, yet I feel like they took something from me as well. They took the possibility of me knowing that they grow up OK, they took away the joy that I got in seeing smiling faces, and building strong relationships with children who needed a dependent relationship more than anything.
It got me thinking about love actually and relationships and how incredibly crucial the two are in the process and development of human nature. As shown in studies around the world and across cultures, babies that are not picked up, loved, and cuddled in the first two years of life die. They don't grow up poorly or have malnutrition or anything else, they die. Love, support and relationships are crucial in development. Its difficult as an adult to not have strong loving, supportive relationships, its extremely trying as a teenager, its dangerous as a child and its deadly as an infant. More than anything, these children need love and relationships.
I give a workshop to new volunteers at the agency and in it I show Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and we go through the pyramid of needs, at the bottom is food, water and shelter, and then you move up the pyramid until you reach the level of love, relationships and affection until finally reaching autonomy and free thinking at the highest level, I always ask the volunteers two questions, at which level do you think these children are and which level do you think is the most important?
It's been four months since I got to walk around the familiar grounds of the group home, and hear "Tia Meghan" being shouted across the yard, it's been four months since I got to plan a workshop on art, or practice English for a test, or sit and chat with my favorite ten year old while she played with my cell phone and asked me 400 questions. I can't write this post without crying. It's one thing to say goodbye to someone and then try your best to stay in touch, its another to be taken away from a group of people that were already fragile to begin with.
The home that I volunteered in for over a year and a half closed in the middle of July, the last time I ever went to Aldea Maria Reina was June 22, 2011, that was almost four months ago. It was a really nice closing for us as volunteers and hopefully for the girls that spent anywhere from a few months to several years of their lives there. There was all the appropriate Chilean wonders of a Despidida, including soda, chips, cake and lots of reggeton music playing. The volunteers had planned a special closing activity. We bought all 30 girls that still lived at the home going away presents of journals, jewelry boxes and a pair of earrings. Each girl got this present and then we put up posters all over the living room, each one with a different girl's name on it. The girls then spent part of the evening walking around to everyone's poster and writing a small message or comment to remember each other by. It was sentimental and nice, hopefully they are things that they can hold on to in the future.
I realized in the last few weeks that I have some PTSD feelings to the closing of the home. I feel like I am grieving, as its been four months and not one day has gone by where I don't think about the home or the girls that lived there. I have seen a few of them since then in two other homes located in Santiago, a few girls were transferred together to these homes, so I visited there to say hi. For almost two whole years though I saw the same girls at least once a week, and now I don't know where they are living, how they are doing, if they are doing their homework, or being treated kindly, I don't know where they are sleeping or if their mom called them this week. I don't know how they will turn out and I haven't hear them laugh or seen them smile at the weird gringos. My guess is where they are living now there are no weird gringos to hang out with. At the end of the time at the home the girls were being placed in all different places to live, some being sent to other homes, some being sent to family members homes that could take them, some being sent home again, others got apartments with friends, or moved in with a friend, and yet a number of girls just ran away.
I can't really imagine what its like to feel that way, I know I have had some severe moments in my life of sadness, loneliness, depression, trauma, but I have never been abandoned by everyone I know, I have never been asked to move out of the only home that I knew, I wasn't passed from caregiver to caregiver and I certainly was never made to feel like I wasn't important enough that no one could afford to pay for me anymore. That's how I look at the situation, even if I am dead wrong and it makes people mad for me to say it, its how I look at it. I look at what was 60 incredible young women who were full of life and potential, beauty, wisdom, wonder, laughter, and insight, and I look at a world, a country and a community that sent the message to these girls that there wasn't enough money for them to live properly. The home closed for the same reason homes, orphanages, community centers, social support places, and non for profit centers close all the time, because there isn't enough money to support it any longer.
I have never been so connected to anything in my life. The home was not about me, it was a safe place for adolescent girls to be raised learning better values of life, yet I feel like they took something from me as well. They took the possibility of me knowing that they grow up OK, they took away the joy that I got in seeing smiling faces, and building strong relationships with children who needed a dependent relationship more than anything.
It got me thinking about love actually and relationships and how incredibly crucial the two are in the process and development of human nature. As shown in studies around the world and across cultures, babies that are not picked up, loved, and cuddled in the first two years of life die. They don't grow up poorly or have malnutrition or anything else, they die. Love, support and relationships are crucial in development. Its difficult as an adult to not have strong loving, supportive relationships, its extremely trying as a teenager, its dangerous as a child and its deadly as an infant. More than anything, these children need love and relationships.
I give a workshop to new volunteers at the agency and in it I show Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and we go through the pyramid of needs, at the bottom is food, water and shelter, and then you move up the pyramid until you reach the level of love, relationships and affection until finally reaching autonomy and free thinking at the highest level, I always ask the volunteers two questions, at which level do you think these children are and which level do you think is the most important?
It's been four months since I got to walk around the familiar grounds of the group home, and hear "Tia Meghan" being shouted across the yard, it's been four months since I got to plan a workshop on art, or practice English for a test, or sit and chat with my favorite ten year old while she played with my cell phone and asked me 400 questions. I can't write this post without crying. It's one thing to say goodbye to someone and then try your best to stay in touch, its another to be taken away from a group of people that were already fragile to begin with.
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