Growing up, I spent a lot of time trying to work through my trauma and what I was going through by sitting with a therapist and talking through these feelings. I was never good at it. Sometimes, I wanted to put on my headphones and blast my music. Other times, I wanted to sit down and write or draw. Sometimes I wanted to walk through the 99 cents store and run down the candy aisle, counting all the different colors of my favorite candy. I needed community beyond my therapists. I needed to relate to others through something else. I needed to relate through more than just pain.
There are existing programs that encourage participation in the arts: Free Arts, Boys and Girls Club, and Art+Practice – to name a few. These programs must be found and do not offer the same flexibility/accommodation other systems-related programs offer, such as transportation, at-home visits, multiple locations, etc. These barriers limit youth and don’t allow for much room to explore beyond the traditional sit-down therapy.
Therapy was mandatory when I was growing up in the system, and it was something that didn’t work for me. I didn’t know how to answer questions. Can we look at pictures of my mom instead? Can I draw her with bright and happy colors? I wanted to let certain things out. I didn’t want to tell you. I wanted to show you. If there was a chance I could sit with other foster youth and just draw and talk about the colors on our papers rather than ask who they lived with, or who they missed the most, we could relate beyond our pain and upbringing.
I decided to dig a little deeper and found a vast amount of stories uncovering the healing power art can hold. This helped me understand art can work as an alternative to the current programs offered to foster youth. Art is healing. Words don’t have to be your forte. Sometimes anger looks like a triangle made from scribbles with a black sharpie. Sadness looks like a dance in front of your mirror, blasting R&B. These are ways to release. They sometimes work better than talking. You might not have the words for it, but someone else does.
There is a dire need for community and programs helping foster youth relate through more than just pain. Pain is familiar. It’s something we hang out with all the time. We carry pain everywhere we go, like a backpack, and we need something else. It’s never about completely ridding oneself of pain, but about finding the tools to navigate our hurt, to heal through it all, and to learn to live with it. Art can move mountains for people. Art has the power to hold our community together and heal.
To navigate our present and future, we need new ways to work through the places we’ve been, the pain we’ve seen, and the places we want to go. We need a community that explores beyond what is already engraved in the system, unlike therapy, which I am not discounting. It is just that there are so many different youth with different needs. If we explore beyond this, art can help youth navigate or push towards a new form of community. It doesn’t have to stop at art. It doesn’t have to be a ‘this or that’ choice. We need communities who can relate through more than just pain.
