Secondary Trauma

This is kind of a schizophrenic entry. A lot has happened in a short amount of time and it's difficult to keep up with writing about.

When working with vulnerable kids who live in chronic trauma, there is no option but to experience secondary trauma as a result of trying to help them through these things that are so awful to us, but so normal to them. Most of the time, my efforts fail because I only have a peripheral influence in the kids' lives and their families, no matter how broken and terrible they are, have more of an influence and can make the kids make decisions against their best interest. Last time I went to a counseling debrief, my counselor was like "You've been talking for 10 minutes and *I* need a counseling session. You need to come more often than once a quarter." I will try to go monthly so I can process all the weight of this collective trauma. Sometimes I feel like it's may be worse for me than them because they only carry the weight of their lives, while I carry the weight of all their lives. Also, I can see the multiple paths their lives may go with the wisdom of age, but they are kids and they can only see the immediate future, maybe only 24 hours into the future. It's so much harder to see them make bad choices that will effect their entire lives when I have also seen the outcome of other kids' bad decisions. If they have not seen the same outcome, they just don't even make the connection and it's impossible to convince them of the possibility of something bad or worse happening to them.

OK, this week has wrecked me. First, on Saturday, I met up with Yvonne, Gabby and Willow. Yvonne’s mom took off with her new boyfriend so now she is staying with her older brothers and their pregnant girlfriends. Willow’s mom has totally left her to her own devices, yells at her all the time and refuses to pay for her school, food, etc. My sweet little Willow already has 2 tattoos at age 15, and is dressing like a little hoochie. I want to get this kid into a home, mine or Baan San Rak, as soon as possible to keep her off the streets and safe. I love that kid so much it hurts and to see her going down this road toward something bad rips my heart to shreds. Gabby is 4 months pregnant already, so I’m going to see if she wants to go live at Compass 31. And then there’s Billy, bouncing around from place to place, his aunts not providing him shelter, just occasional money and I want him to get into ZOE if he can. My heart just breaks for these kids who have already fallen through the cracks of society and have nobody to fight for them. After they left Taw Saeng, they were off the radar of those guys. Nobody follows up with them, nobody makes sure they are safe, nobody listens to them and tries to help them. They all just want to gloss over their problems and say “mai ben rai.” I hate that it all falls on me alone. I hate falling into the “white savior” trap. But what other option is there? Ning and Faa are in Chiang Rai, Ahna is in the states, Field is in Lamphun, Inna, Rob and Judy are in Canada. That only leaves me who cares about these kids having a future that doesn’t involve jail or prostitution.

At least we got their applications for GSN (aka GED) filled out yesterday. I’m gonna continue working on that with them and get them going on classes so they can at minimum finish high school. Poor Willow, she said “I just want a family that will send me to school. I just want to have family who will give me a home and feed me. Why won’t my mom do that? I’m just a kid. Why do I have to take care of myself already?”While we were at the center, I was telling them about counseling and Willow said "Can I do counseling? I think about killing myself all the time."

Tonight, I saw Somchai, Nellie’s brother who I helped get a scholarship to go to Achewa high school. I am so proud of him, he has really fought hard to get where he is at. He finished GSN for 9^th grade, and even though it was really difficult for him to get through first term, he’s sticking with it in regular school. He really values the scholarship and has dreams for his life. At first, he just wanted to get food to go, but I convinced him to sit and talk to me, and it ended up being over an hour in the end. I am so glad, because he really opened up about his struggles with school, with having his family not understand him, not understand that he has homework to do, and how hard he is trying to just get passing grades. He always had like  3.7 before when he was just doing standardized tests, but now with homework, his grades are dropping because more is expected of him. The poor kid, he even said that when his mom yells at him, she won’t listen to him and it makes him cry. This 18 year old boy is telling me that he cries when his mom yells at him. He is such a sensitive soul.

He is doing such good things though and is such a strong Christian. He started a cell group on campus with some of his Christian friends and they meet every Friday to pray and worship together. He’s teaching himself guitar so he can go play and sing at night bazaar to make money for his future. He has such ambition and such drive. It blows my mind. He is the first person in his family to study this far and he is facing such battles. I have to say, in his place, I would probably give up. I don’t know if I could stand up to all the pressures he is under from society and his family. I prayed with him and he said he felt better. He said he never talks to anyone at home, he’s so uncomfortable and nobody understands him, he just saved it up to tell me. I told him I’m going to really make an effort to see him once a month and check in with him and that if he ever needs to talk, he can call me whenever. I really pray that he can persevere and finish high school and go on to college too. I want to see him succeed in life and make his way out of this cycle of poverty. If anyone can do it, it’s Somchai.

October 19, 2016

Dude, why do these kids parents have to suck SO FRICKING MUCH? Willow told me tonight that her mom told her to drop out of school and work so she could send her money and she can live in a dorm room on her own and do Goh Soh Noh. I can’t bear to see this sweet kid get the crap kicked out of her by life at the age of 15. I wish I had any power whatsoever. I would pick her up right now and never let her talk to her mother again. What a terrible person. I am so scared for this kid that she will get abused and trafficked. I hate feeling the weight of all these kids’ lives on my shoulders. Why is there no one to help them? It’s impossible for me to do it on my own. I have no power, I can’t do anything for them. Everything I try just fails. It’s all so hopeless and shitty. Her life is over at age 15. Her aunt will force her to work at her massage parlor all day and how long until she’s going to have to start doing “favors” for clients? What do we do? What do I do? Prayer is not enough. Action needs to be taken or else what the hell are we here for?

When the kids were at the office and we were working on their paperwork for Goh Soh Noh, Billy was like “Why are you working so hard to get us into school?” And I said it was because he’s like my kid and I love them and want them to have a good future. The whole reason I came to work at Taw Saeng was because I loved their vision for keeping kids in school and helping them have a good future. Now that they are not in Taw Saeng and I’m all that’s left of the staff that really cares about them, it’s up to me to make that vision reality. He was like “Oh, I thought it was because it was your job.” I said, well now that you are coming to counseling and stuff, it’s become my job but I didn’t start doing this because it’s my job, I started because I care about you and want the best for you.

Then, when I was driving him home, he asked me why I wasn’t around for a while but then when his dad died, I started tracking him down more. I said it was because I knew he had dropped out of school and out of Taw Saeng and I knew nobody was watching out for him, and that I didn’t want o see him end up like so many other boys in his situation. I have seen kids living on the streets and stealing to eat and doing drugs and end up in juvie. I didn’t want to see him go to juvie because I know he can have a good future. He said that when his dad died, he wanted to kill himself because he thought nobody cared about him anymore and he didn’t know who would take care of him now. I said that he has me and Joy and Mimi now and that I was working on getting him into ZOE so he would have a real family to stay with who would have him in real school and really love him and take care of him. He actually didn’t even remember me being at his dad’s funeral, not even when I showed him pictures. Weird, Ahngun didn’t remember that either about the whole time with her mom, at the hospital, at the funeral, at Wa’s house. She was in such shock she doesn’t remember any of it. Bird is probably in the same boat. Shock is a powerful thing.  

Updates:

Did a home visit with Jume for Willow. She now just wants to work and do GSN, and doesn't want to live at Baan San Rak cause she is worried about taking care of her grandpa and brother. I'm still crazy worried and stressed about her. 

Billy may go to another children's home. High likelihood after I did a home visit with the staff on Friday. They have to get final approval from their higher ups, but hopefully that will happen in the next couple of weeks. 

Yvonne has decided she will work at the coffee shop where she got a job and she will work til the end of the year and then move to live with her grandma in another province.

Gabby wants to go to school, but doesn’t want to go to Compass 31, she wants to live with her boyfriend’s family. So, I’ll stay in touch with her for the time being and see if I can at least get her to commit to school.

Chrysalis Camp: Transitioning from Child to Adult

October 10-12, 2016

When I was in college, I went on a retreat that my friend Beth invited me to called Chrysalis. It was during the time that my friend Kathryn was in the hospital with cancer and it had been the hardest year of my life to that point. Chrysalis was such a turning point for me and helped me feel surrounded by supportive people and grow a lot closer to God during that time. The thing I remember most about that was getting all these little personal gifts throughout the weekend and having no idea where they had come from. There was one time I got a box of Rugrats cookies with a note written on them that said “Hey there, Heather!” That was what my friend Beth used to call me, “hey there.” We used to watch Rugrats together in college (come on, you totally watched cartoons in college) so I was really excited to get this stupid little present and I couldn’t figure out where this stuff was coming from because Beth was working at a camp in another state at the time. At the end of the weekend, there was a reveal of who our secret sponsors had been and we also got a stack of letters from people close to us, like our parents, friends, pastors, that wrote about the ways they had seen God working in our lives and what their hopes were for our futures. It was such an amazing time and I wanted to recreate that for our teen girls so they would really feel loved and valued.

However, the focus of Chrysalis is really God-centric and most of our girls are Buddhist, so we had to alter it significantly. Starting back in June, I wrote up a proposal for what the camp would look like and Joy and Mimi jumped right into planning with me. We decided to have the theme be Transitioning from Child to Adult and invited members of the Thai community to teach on different subjects.  On the Friday before the camp, 3 of the girls had to drop out for various reasons, which almost sent me into a tailspin since we had poured so much work into this camp. Luckily, Mimi and Joy know me so well, they talked me off the ledge and reminded me of some other girls we could invite last minute. We raced around getting their gifts bags ready and were ready to go by 5pm Friday night.

On Monday, the 10^th, we headed up to camp Mork Fa, about an hour outside the city. We had gotten our friend Jume to come help with the food because she is a really good cook and we were so excited to get to spend some time with her, so she and Mimi went shopping for food on the way up. As soon as we got there, the girls were so excited to play in the stream running in front of our cabins. The area is way up in the mountains and has 4 large cabins that sleep 15 people each. We were the only ones there during that time so it was nice and quiet. Across the stream are two covered sitting areas and a kitchen. There’s also a huge green field and a campfire site and nearby waterfall and bat cave.

The first day we started off with lunch and then gave out welcome bags to all the girls. They each got a journal, a pen, a reusable water bottle and some snacks. At this point, I was kicking myself because I realized there was so much I had forgotten to bring with us because of our rushing around on Friday. I hadn’t had time to double check everything and make sure we had all our paperwork. Thank goodness for Mike who was at the office and could take photos of our group lists and schedule and stuff and text it to us!

After lunch, we had some getting to know you games devised by Donut. We were so excited to have Donut come with us! We literally could not have pulled the retreat off without her. She has been volunteering for months with us at our after school program, Molding Stars (Baan Duang Dao in Thai) and I really wanted her to come with us, but she had a full time job at our foundation office and I didn’t think they would let her go. But, I talked to the Office Manager and she talked to Donut’s supervisor and finally they gave her permission to go! Then, of course, as soon as I got back she had gotten into seminary and was leaving for Bangkok on Oct 13 which was a total shock, so then I was really upset, but she was like “Don’t be sad! No way I’m missing camp!” So thank goodness for her, cause the kids LOVED her games and she was a huge asset for our discussion groups too.

Once we all learned each other’s names, we did a great art activity planned by Joy and Mimi. We used our arm to draw a tree and then decorated around it with all sorts of little artsy things that Joy brought with us. On each leaf, we were meant to write a skill or personality trait that we have like “reliable, responsible, inclusive, musical, good listener, etc.” It was cool to see each kid run in such different directions when their creativity was given free reign. They all are so detail oriented that most of them didn’t have time to finish in the time allotted.

After art, we had Mimi’s pastor, Pastor Tawat, come speak to the Christian kids about how to know God’s will for our lives and we had Chan, one of our volunteers, share the Gospel with the Buddhist kids. They both got a bit lost in the weeds and went a bit long, but I think it was still a good thing to have. After this, the girls got time to spend writing in their journals and answering discussion questions we gave them. Then, they got free time before dinner, which was delicious, of course! After dinner, the worship team from the COC church came up to lead worship with amps and drums and everything. It was fun, even though they sang new songs that most of us didn’t know.  Throughout the day, the girls had been getting little gifts on their beds while they were out of their cabin. It was the cutest thing to see them get so excited about these things and wonder aloud who had been giving them. They kept coming to me and thanking me and I was always like “Why are you thanking me? I didn’t get it for you!” hahaha

That evening, we had small discussion groups of 3-4 girls with 2-3 staff and talked about what love is, how does God show love to us, what makes us feel loved and how we show love to others. It was a really good discussion time for our group, and I think the other groups had a good experience as well.

We did some rearranging of our schedule the next day after realizing we had not built time in for going to the waterfall and swimming.  We thought that the waterfall was closer than it actually was to the cabins.

On Tuesday, we had an early breakfast, then some of the kids and I went on a hike up to see the bat cave, guided by the forest ranger. Then we hiked down to the waterfall where we were going to swim later in the day. They loved it and we easily could have stayed there all day. But, we had Win and Chu come teach about how to navigate growing up, what new responsibilities they will have and how to balance that with their relationships with friends and parents. Win works as our Prevention Director and his wife Chu is a social work and they are really close friends of mine. I am the godmother (by accident, long story) to their baby Cheewa, who is SUPER cute and now 3 months old! So, I got to hold him for a while during their session.

After the session, we had games time which was basically water balloon games. It was fun and funny to see them trying to avoid getting wet and then just going for it. We capped it off with a makeshift slip ‘n slide made of tarps with soap and water for slipperiness. That was awesome; I haven’t played on a slip and slide in decades and I forgot how fun it was! After we exhausted ourselves doing that, we all ate some delicious lunch and trooped out to the waterfall to swim in the neck deep water at the base of the 100 foot waterfall. It’s pretty epic! We played for an hour and then headed back for showers and for our last teaching session, led by Mimi!

Mimi had taken some convincing to agree to teach this session, which was about how to move on from painful things in our past. She was so amazing, those kids hung on her every word. I was so proud of her for being so vulnerable and sharing her story with these kids who she barely knows. Later, when we asked the kids for their favorite parts of camp, almost every kid said that Mimi’s testimony was the highlight of the weekend for them.

After her session, we did more art with Joy, this time making origami heart envelopes where we put inside words describing things that we hold in our heart and talked about good things we hold and bad things we hold and need to let go of. The girls really liked this activity as well. After this, we broke up into our groups again and discussed the session of the day with the discussion questions we had written ahead of time. This was a great time of the girls opening up about stuff they face and have faced, a lot of it things they said they had never shared before. I really credit Mimi’s openness with opening the floodgates for this for the girls and showing them that this was a safe place for them to share and be heard and supported. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of kids who when asked "What was the thing that stuck with you most from this session?" their response was something about how God had helped Mimi or Chan through a really difficult time. This is from Buddhist kids too, and the thing that resonates with them is God's love and protection.

That night we had a huge campfire and roasted hot dogs and made s’mores. This was a first for basically everyone but me since, apparently, this is a distinctly American activity. Usually, Thai people eat ramen noodles around a campfire. SO WEIRD. Hahaha Everyone was skeptical that this would work, but thankfully Mike, Colby, Kayty and Nicole were there to back me up on this weird activity. The kids LOVED it, and the guys had sharpened a bunch of sticks to use for roasting. It was really fun. After we ate, we had some songs by the campfire and then we each wrote down things on paper that we have been holding onto that we wanted to let go of. When we first discussed this in our small group, I told the girls to spend some time thinking about things that they wanted to write down, and one girl said “I don’t need to think about it, I know what I want to write.” It was great! So, we all did that together and threw our papers in the fire and watched them turn into ash. It was very symbolic.

In the midst of all this, as I was making a s’more for a kid, Joy tells me to turn around and suddenly, there’s a cake and candles and people singing happy birthday. It was pretty surprising since my birthday was the following day, but it was cool that everyone was there and Mike said a really nice prayer for me too. We saved the cake for the following day since we were all hopped up on marshmallows, haha.

That night it was so funny because some of the girls were in the cabin and had gotten another little gift. One of the girls was like “who is this stuff from?” And I said “I don’t know, that’s not one of my responsibilities.” She was like “I still think it’s you.” And the other girls said “What!? How can it be Heather? She’s with us ALL the time!” Luckily, I had a secret weapon of Bella, Helen and Nicole to sneak in when the girls were otherwise occupied so they never figured it out since we all took turns doing the distribution.

Our final day, we had a great breakfast and packed up our stuff. Donut and I led worship that morning before we had a final art activity which was writing words of encouragement for one another and for ourselves. Each kid got two butterflies to decorate and write a note of encouragement for another girl and one to keep for themselves. Finally, we had lunch and gave them their goodbye bags. Each bag had a copy of Jesus Calling devotional book in Thai, a bracelet with a butterfly charm, a final big goodbye gift from their sponsor and letters from important people in their lives. They loved it so much. There were lots of tears and hugs and it was really cool to see. Finally, we drove them up to the sheep farm at the top of the hill and let them take photos with the lambs and art gallery and café up there while we packed up the bags. All in all, it was a great retreat and I think it had a huge impact on the girls’ lives as far as self-worth and self-confidence goes. Now they know that they have a support system in us of people they can trust with their stories and we will always support them through the difficult times in their lives.  

On our final day, Mimi told the girls that if they are ever in a bad situation, they can always turn to God and ask for his help. The following week when we did a debrief with some of the girls, one of them said “I have something to share! Mimi told us to pray if we were in trouble and God would help us. Last week, I was driving and there were all these checkpoints, but I left my ID card at home (she’s Burmese so she has to have a card that proves she is here legally) so I was really scared. I remembered what Mimi told us so I started praying and they didn’t even stop me! They stopped every other people to check their papers but they didn’t stop me! And it happened twice!” That was so awesome that she is already seeing God at work in her life. I hope this sort of trend continues.