This has truly been a journey. It has been amazing actually volunteering with my kit in the community to see how people interact with it. It was great to see how Connect and Express worked with women survivors of sex trafficking.The first thing I noticed was that the women were fully engaged despite one's intellectual or developmental abilities. Many of these women had endured severe drug abuse or had severe PTSD and were in varying levels of recovery. I noticed that having a tool that was visual, symbolic and verbal was really useful given the diversity of women and their abilities.
Each woman got a small basket and went shopping based on the theme. I really liked that they needed to get up and get active. It was empowering for them to choose what images and words they wanted to use to represent themselves or their situation. Throughout our sessions, we addressed various themes, such as their childhoods, their relationships with their significant others, relationships with their pimps, their vision for their future and more. They used the figurines to color their family members, their children, their pimps and process their situation.
Women had to choose squares that immediately resonated with them. They often had not fully thought out why they chose a particular square, it just felt right. Once they had the square on the board, they needed to figure out why they chose that square, how it fit into their lives. In those moments of needing to explain why they had intuitively chosen certain squares, I felt that some of the real work happened. Needing to flesh out and more fully process some of the imagery that they had chosen was an important exercise. There is an element of impulsivity and intuition with the process of choosing squares and then an important time to process how it all fits on the board to a witness. Explaining ones board was a great time to develop insight and receive validation. They often said that they liked to see parts of their lives laid out in front of them, as it gave them more perspective and an objective lens on their situation. They used the images, the figurines, the blank space on the board and the "I Feel Statements."
The fact that there were feelings and images to choose from in some ways gave them permission to express those feelings. They didn't have to be vulnerable and state the feeling, they could just grab it and put it on the board. Some of the womens boards were jammed packed with everything they have always wanted to say and others were more minimal and cautionary. Each woman went at her own pace, following her own comfort . Each woman shared her board with me or with the group. Each board was colorful and interesting and kept others attention with both words and visuals. Each woman allowed me to take a picture of her board. I wrote notes for each womans board, based on how she described it and what it meant for her. These notes and pictures were then kept by her individual therapist to reflect on throughout their therapy journey. It was a great experience.
Comments