A little paper goes a long way...
8 years ago
In the late 1980’s, one of the support staff at work started showing me the heritage scrapbooking that she was doing and I was captivated and just knew that I had to learn this craft as well. Back in those days, the only real source for scrapbooking supplies were Creative Memories home parties and their offerings were meager, compared to what is available now. The only paper size was 8 ½ by 11” and came in pastel colors. A corner rounder? we were encouraged to trace around a nickel in the corners and then cut the round shape with scissors. I felt totally overwhelmed because I was clueless about design principles, color choices, etc. While I spent hours sitting at my kitchen table trying to create cards and scrapbook pages, I rarely completed a page or card. At some point, I put away my supplies.
I started doing heritage scrapbooks for my own daughters and niece and nephews so that family stories would be preserved and people like my father and great grandma wouldn’t be forgotten. In the process of this, I started realizing how healing it was to write and use family photos to illustrate the stories. I saw this impact my life the year when I was diagnosed with Breast cancer. During that year, one filled with a variety of new experiences (surgery, chemo, radiation, hair loss and more), I took a photo every day and journaled a couple of sentences about the photo. In doing this, my focus switched from looking back at my day to looking at the day ahead of me and consciously doing something that would make the day remarkable. I started feeling a sense of control rather than being a spectator. I started to recognize and value that the vision I had for what was ahead of me, greatly shaped my experience.
About 5 years ago, I started thinking about the teens I work with as a county case manager. Most of them have horrid past memories of broken promises, absent parents and trauma and were living in the moment, reacting to what was happening around them and expressing their hurt and anger in unhealthy ways. I started thinking about what scrapbooking had done for me and my Grandma’s intentional way of life. The first album I did with a client was with an immigrant family from Southeast Asia. The teens thought their parents were "stupid" to cling onto their heritage and felt that their parents values were outdated. The parents and I put together an album of their story from birth to now which was incredible. When we were done with the album, I made photo copies so each of the 5 children could have their own copy which they read. It didn’t solve all of the problems in their home, but the arguments were less frequent and less intense and didn’t involve the teens criticizing the parents for being "stupid."
The next album I did with a client was a three part album – early childhood, now and what she wanted her future to look like. Long story short: this child had loads of a baggage tied to years of hurt, abandonment, and rebellion. Our album project allowed her to capture the good times with her grandparents, gave her a forum to express her love for her mom that was coming out sideways and helped her make the connections between her abandonment issues and self destructive choices and behaviors. Again, not all of the problems were solved through the magic of scrapbooking but significant inroads were made.
I decided to come out of the closet and tell my supervisor what I was doing with clients and I found him to be amazingly supportive. He agreed to allow me to start a scrapbooking group with some of my teens, provided that I could keep the costs down. While that does present some challenges (most of the kids I work with come from low income single parent homes), I try to show them how, for example, a Kleenex box is a wonderful embellishment. The colorful designs on the outside make a great embellishment by just cutting it into a rectangle and rounding the corners. The Kleenex boxes that are a cube have an oval opening that makes a cute frame for a photo. I collected business cards at an art faire that were colorful and artsy that make great embellishments. Maps make a great background and are more "manly” as one of my boys has said.
The most amazing part for me is that scrapbooking is such a powerful tool in their self-discovery. Basically, I just need to stay out of the way and they take the risks and make connections as they work. Coordinated paper stacks seem to create a cohesiveness in an album project—and my teens are complementing each other on their hard work. It has been wonderful to see the effects of these complements—they are so much more powerful than years of therapy!
Speaking of therapy, we've even used paper during some of our sessions. The dry erase paper is perfect for writing down feelings too scary to share out loud...ones they want to share, but can quickly erase if needed.
I can’t say enough about the value of scrapbooking as a therapeutic tool for working with troubled teens. Two of my kids have started scrapbooking at home with their siblings and their mom. Before that, the only thing the families did together was argue.
It started out that the kids always went to school on Tuesdays because they wanted to be there when I picked them up for group. Now, all of them are going to school much more regularly than before (not perfect attendance, but much improved!). Parents report to me that home life is easier with less arguing and defiance. That assessment is subjective and hard to quantify but I think it is because of the work we are doing. For me, I see the improved attitudes and how they are starting to think about the future instead of just drifting in the moment.
Experiences