Mermaid Tails: Lessons Learnt from Niños

My Teachers. My Loves. My Friends. My Idols. My Rockstars.

Preciosa!

I used to work for an organization which helped teenage mums. These sensitive woman had lives too heavy to bare. Their past and their access limited their abilities. their context and their life trajectories preceeded them. They had a huge capacity to love and be loved that some never knew. This program was interrupting this cycle and preventing the next generation from suffering for the past. It protected, empowered and educated the women to put them in the best position for self determination; it supported and facilitated nurturing and the brightest start for the infants and children.

~ Love Day ~

nunca para jugar

My job was playing with the children and helping run a playgroup while the young women (some thirteen, some sixteen, some eighteen) attended parent education or schooling for their respective levels- which, included unsurprisingly a sixteen year old girl, reading at a 5 year old because she had never been taught.

You can't give what you've never received.

If you go down to the woods today, you're in for a big surprise

You can't lovingly nurture your baby when your own father used to pull you out of bed on Saturday nights, drunk, and have his friends he brought home from the take turns to rape you while you in your own childhood.

You can't judge people who use drugs or substances to escape their reality- if you've never lived in their life you can't begin to understand, and our world would be served with a lot more understanding and compassion more then judgments and fallacies.

Despite appearances EVERYONE IS DOING THE BEST THAT THEY CAN. When you know better you do better.

A very wise mentor to me, who also works with women who suffer the disease of substance abuse gave me an advice I take with me. To her clients which make their way to rehabilitation they have so often been discounted, distrusted, dismissed and devalued. This is what commences the cycle and this is what feeds it. So while she treats them with dignity, and she treats them with all the worth that any person who is BORN deserves, they often have never received this- from their parents, to society, to other healthcare professionals sadly.

My mentor tells them,

"I'm so happy you found drugs and alcohol"

Iti, Estonian Princess I met flippin' it on the beach:
"This is my favorite rock" after playing amongst the river all day.

Often the perception we have is that drugs and alcohol kidnap somebody's life, nearly destroy it. Instead of seeing this why don't we look at what life they had without these things? If you care to see, often there is trauma, abuse, exposure and unbareable heartache, impossible confusion, violence hatred and vulnerability.

My mentor tells the women,

"I'm so GLAD you found drugs and alcohol because had you discovered this mechanism to escape and something which withdrew you in order to survive everyday you may have lost your life."

They found this which worked for them for a while and then whether they are willing or not, something happens which means it ceases to numb them any longer and they are ready to take the next step and find something else that gives them a reason to live every day.

It's not weakness, it's not stupidity, it's a disease and until you live through it try to understand. No matter who gets hurt.

This is disease where all the parties are victims and we as a society need to help prevent the problem rather than add to it.

One Day on the trampoline, two of the beautiful children were playing. A gorgeous 3.5 year old boy who was charming and African with a stunning absolutely breathtaking little girl of 4 year old with Islander background.