Learning to Count

And the living room smelled like cardamom spice.
And the air wrapped around us like a hug.
And we danced in bare feet.
And the song on repeat.
And the little girl laughed and reached for my hand.
And hot pink daisies and a bright orange dress.
And nothing was familiar.
And everything was familiar.
And the sun got jealous and tried to come in.
And we spun in circles and fell on the floor.
And for an hour I could remember.
And for an hour she could forget.

Kindness

"Before you now kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend."

-Naomi Shihab Nye

Waste Not

R., a nine year-old ball of energy with red string in her dreadlocks and hot pink sneakers, came to my walk-in hours for homework help. She needed to erase a paragraph she had written on crocodiles, so I opened a pack of brand new neon erasers and told her to pick a color. She chose yellow, but instead of erasing she held it in her hand and stared at the page. “What’s wrong?” I asked her. “It’s too new and pretty,” she told me. “I can’t use it.”

I reached back into the desk to open the pack back up. “Here,” I said, handing her a second neon yellow eraser. “This way, you can keep one new and pretty and use the other for erasing.” I thought to myself, “problem solved.”

But R. still sat there staring at the two erasers in her hand. “No,” she said. “I just don’t want to waste it. Do you have an old eraser I could use?” R. looked around the desk and found an eraser that was much less bright and shiny, which she used that to erase her paragraph. “Did you know that you can save the eraser crumbs by squeezing them back together. I’ve made five new erasers that way,” she told me.

"I didn't know," I told her, "but thank you for showing me." I don't know what it's like to grow up in a world where erasers aren't taken for granted. I don't know what it's like to learn not to waste because wasting is not an option. I don't know what it's like to carry that feeling with you for your whole life. There are so, so many things that I just don't know. 

Self Care in a Coffee Shop

Who Run the World

S. is a twelve year old in my girl’s empowerment group. Her new years resolution is to quit smoking. She wants to learn what she can and can’t do with boys. When she grows up, she wants to have blue eyes. We are working hard on self-esteem.

I did my first home visit with M. yesterday. She lives with her five grown children and one grandchild. Her goal to is to ride the bus to the grocery store and to be able to shop and pay for her food. She barely leaves the house because she speaks no English and has never had any formal education. She doesn’t know what numbers mean. But she sits at the table and practices eagerly. By the end of our session, she was able to hand me the right number of beans to match index cards with the numbers 1 through 5.

A. goes to high school and loves to draw. She used to draw more when she was younger, but she had to stop because she didn’t always have the right supplies. Now she can start again and is signed up to take art class next semester in school. She has never seen watercolors before. (I bought a pack of them to show her next week.)

I’ve been reading up about refugee women. An international report by the United Nations states: “Refugee women continue to be disproportionately affected by physical and sexual violence and abuse… International laws, standards and policies on this issue abound: the problem is that they are inadequately implemented.”

These women have been discriminated against because of their ethnicity and their gender. In addition to the violence they have experienced outside of their homes, some also face abuse from their husbands or other family members. Many were never able to receive an education.  

And yet, the refugee women I have met here are some of the most kind and motivated people I have come across. S. is endlessly inquisitive and wants to learn all she can about the world. M. refused to let me start our therapy session until I had eaten all of the homemade bread and tea that she prepared for me. A. is humble about her work and asks my opinion on what colors to use. In my role as an occupational therapist, I often act as an educator. But even more often I wonder who is teaching who. 

Transitions

Down the street from the Life Skills Clinic is a medicinal garden. I stumbled across it the day before my first day of work here in Salt Lake City’s Immigrant & Refugee Resettlement Program. The garden is sleepy and covered in snow and is set in a background of mountains and fields (much different from the North Philly street corner that I am used to). I put my hand through the icy cold to find there were still remnants of lavender and sage that will make their comeback in early spring.  It was a small comfort, something so familiar in a place that in many ways is so different from what I know.

                        

I am experiencing my own form of culture shock, having just moved to Utah five days ago, where the woman sitting next to me on the airplane was shocked to meet a Jewish vegetarian. She explained to me some of the intricacies of the culture of Latter-Day Saints (I was surprised to learn people of the Mormon faith will not drink coffee) and warned me not to expect men here to treat me as an equal. I am unpacking and resettling in my own small way, thinking about how this is just a small fraction of what the people I will be working with must be experiencing in their own lives, having fled from their home countries because they were not safe places for them to live.

M., a Somali woman who moved to Salt Lake City eleven months ago, used to store her clothes in the oven. She didn’t know what it was supposed to be used for until her occupational therapist showed her. When we visited her house yesterday, her daughter told us how she had baked a chicken last night. M. has also learned to write her name, and proudly showed us her notebook where she had been practicing.

M. was referred to occupational therapy from Utah Health & Human Rights (UHHR), an organization which works with people who have been victims of torture. These people have experienced trauma so severe that their symptoms manifest in everything from depression and anxiety to OCD, PTSD, and whole body pain. But the remarkable thing about these people is that they are resilient, the director of the UHHR told us yesterday.

At the Life Skills Clinic, there is a basket-weaving program started by group of women from a tribe in Thailand. They meet every Saturday to weave and are in the process of starting their own non-profit organization, so they will be able to sell the products that they produce. The Karen people, my supervisor told us, rarely present with mental health issues because they have formed such a tight community to love and support one another. 

It’s hard to turn my brain off here because I am always thinking about the stories I am hearing from the people I work with. When I’m not paying attention, I find that I tend to focus on the struggles they have gone through and continue to face. And I have to keep reminding myself that they are finding the things that remind them of home, the pieces of culture that are familiar and make them human, to hold them together. And even if I am the only insane person digging for lavender in the snow, I know that I can do the same.