There is a girl in my group who barely speaks English. She is small and timid.
She is quiet and she looks very scared.
Only God knows what judge in his right mind would send a girl like this to a lock up facility.
Last week I was asked to add her to the group.
We are almost halfway through the 10-week session. Usually at this point I do not add kids, but they told me she really needs it and asked if I would please allow it.
Okay. No worries.
Her first session with the group was last week’s big powwow.
She sat listening.
I wasn’t sure if she understood everything.
She seemed a little lost.
“Do you understand what we are saying?” I asked again and again. She nodded.
She seemed very overwhelmed.
Then again, I was overwhelmed last week, too.
As I drove up to Juvie this week, I was worried. I was also curious and I was hopeful.
I wonder what happened after I left?
I wonder if there was fighting.
I wonder how everyone is doing.
I wonder how today will be.
I know that the biggest of dramas can fade away in the blink of an eye with these kids.
I am actually in awe of that.
I try to learn to let go of things as casually as they do.
I arrive today and, of course, there is a scheduling conflict about the space for our session.
There are times that working in the system is one big conflict, but I ignore it , and I wait patiently.
“You are so cool,” one probation officer said.
“What choice do I have?” I say.
In the end, maybe I have learned more form these girls than I realize.
We start very late.
I lost the girl who had lice and her bestie.
She doesn’t want to come.
She doesn’t want to be in the group anymore.
Long ago I decided that I would not ask or beg to convince girls to come to the group.
If a girl doesn’t want to come, she doesn’t have to, but she is out.
I give the list to the probation officer and they go to get them for me.
The girls need to want to come.
I am sad that she, who had nothing to do with the reason people were upset with her, didn’t want to come back to the group.
How is it that the accusation of lice is keeping her away?
But, alas, I must have some boundaries.
Some choices are for the girls to decide by themselves and I can’t get involved.
I want to go to tell her that she had nothing to do with the lice.
But the rest of the girls walk in and I can’t.
I start with “How are you?”
“We are good!”
“Did you fight?” I ask casually.
“Everything is good,” they say.
“Really good.”
They are okay they say, as if nothing had happened. They tell me it’s about winning the war, not the battle.
I am confused.
“We need to get along ‘cause we want to do the program, Ms.! We don’t need to fight. We don’t need to like everyone. We just need to get along.”
They repeat out loud the things I said the week before as if it were their own words.
My heart is dancing.
It is all very low key.
Not heroic, so NOT dramatic.
I keep telling them how proud I am. I keep telling them that I am happy.
I keep telling them this is the way is needs to be.
And they say, “Ms., Stop talking about it. We want to move on. We are over it. If you keep talking about it, we’ll fight again.”
“Okay,” I say. I just want to tell you again that…”
And they are like, "Ms., let’s just relationship."
The movement of change is so fascinating to me. What they were saying was monumental to me. To them? Just one more day.
A lesson was learned, change happened, but the sea didn’t part. The sky didn’t fall.
They just decided to get along.
No big deal.
And suddenly last week seemed like years ago.
Everything was smooth and easy, just like that.
Well, Change, you never stop amazing me.
This week we are acting out situations.
We act out what happened with a bad ending and then we do it again the better way with better choices. The sweet girl who barley speaks English gives us a situation.
In it she takes blame for things she should not.
She takes the blame for a completely dysfunctional mother.
In her naiveté and innocence she tells us her crime and with way too much detail.
She tells how her sister made her shoplift, but she didn’t know how to steal so the cops caught her.
She talks about being weak. She talks about not understanding.
My heart breaks for this sweet child.
And just like that, everyone is on her side.
“Don’t blame yourself!” they say.
“This isn’t your fault!!” They cheer her on.
“You are the good one!” they add.
The same energy, the same intensity they had last week against the snitch, they are now using to try and encourage this fragile young girl.
And I think, Change, you are so sneaky.
Change isn’t about doing something new. It’s about doing the same thing, but with a different purpose.
It’s navigation.
I am so proud of these girls of mine. My heart is swelling.
Then in broken English she says,
“I want to be strong like you all. I want to be like you talk last week. I learn. I learn strong, to be!”
You will, I think to myself, you will.
We stand in the ending circle.
We chant. After every group chant, I tell her to say it by herself.
“We are amazing,” they say.
“I am amazing,” she repeats.
“We are beautiful,” they say.
“I am beautiful,” she repeats.
“We are worthy,” they say.
“I am,” and she struggles with the word “worthy”.
“Worthy,” I say to her.”
“YOU are worthy!”
And she looks into my eyes.
And my heart skips a beat.
My heart skips a beat, because when I look at her I sees her hope looking me right in the eye.