imitators

Realizing that my last post was on December 21 of last year does make one wonder why bloggers fail. In my case, it's that I have quite enough writing to do, thank you very much, since I returned to work and am editing a few freelance projects as well.

Words are my constant companions and I often think that we use them far too much and act far too little. Last weekend at TRAC (camp for foster teen girls 12-15) was a case in point: Some behaviors already ingrained in these girls as survival skills are bound to impact them negatively througout their lives; yet, there are no models to imitate, only adults who use lots of words on them, words in streams and torrents and trickles in efforts to modify their behaviors.

But we are (certainly until we're in our twenties) far less verbal than adults believe. Our mimetic receptors, especially those of kids who've been abused or neglected, wchich have been so powerfully used at a young age by viewing things children shouldn't see, also are what motivate us at a visceral level to imitate what we saw. It's a way to process what we saw, what was done to us. And it's read by the verbal adults as behavior to be talked through. Does that work?

Once kids are in the system, there isn't much for them to receive visually. Who can they imitate on a daily basis to overcome their survival behaviors? Is it possible to create lives for them where they can watch and learn something positive, something that will take them beyond their current behavior? Certainly neither characters in the media or manyof the adults paid to care for them are in a position to overtake or replace those powerful mimetic visuals. Instead, we adults tend to go on spouting words that may or may not have any meaning for them.
O for that big house on that ranch where foster kids could come and be safe enough to lay down their survival behaviors one at a time, imitate ways to act/do/be that could serve them in their lifetimes, learn them well eonough to become those who teach them to others--by imitation, not words. By doing and being, something beyond and complementary to therapy (therapy is a great thing; it's just most of the time, it entails more words).
"Flipping eggs for the orphans" and all it entails is even more necessary than it was when I was nineteen. Beautiful kids, for whom my heart aches.