Holy Spaces
Written By Heather Velvet Johnson
There was a day in November 2014 when my classroom felt peaceful.
I would even dare to say holy.
One afternoon after many English classes at the shelter (or rather kids hanging out in my classroom) the room was finally empty except for one.
Gana* stayed after all became quiet and choose worship music from my iPod to play.
The room was illuminated by autumn’s golden hour and somehow in the chaotic space of the shelter, I felt peace descend.
I could have gone home but Gana soon fell asleep with his head on my desk.
One of the shelter workers came in and brought me coffee so I stayed as the shadows grew long, wanting to give Gana space to rest.
I’ve often thought about that day, even years later, how sometimes giving someone space to rest is all they need.
Years later and I’m back at the same shelter doing counseling with teens.
I’m starting over, trying to establish trust with kids who have never had anyone trustworthy in their lives.
One teen, Baatar*, has been the most challenging. Until recently his body language screamed,
“Why are you even trying? Just give up because you’re wasting your time and mine.”
I had felt so much pressure to perform, to prove myself as a counselor and to see big changes, inadvertently bringing my need to see results into the counseling room.
But recently I’ve noticed a shift.
Instead of striving to show competence I’ve started to instead simply do things that Baatar enjoys or wants to do.
Today that was taking a nap.
Baatar has often come in half asleep and I feel like I’m talking to a wall.
But after doing things together the past couple of weeks without an agenda I feel like his wall has gone down, if only by an inch.
Rather than a power game of resistance and giving up and letting him take a nap because I’ve run out of ideas, I intentionally gave him the option of a nap and rather than feeling like I was wasting my time felt like giving him a safe peaceful place to rest was the most productive thing I could do.
Instead of deciding what he needs, I’m trying to actually listen to what he wants, and maybe giving him this kind of time is more important than any intervention.
He helped rearrange the hanging lights and choose a sound on my sound machine to listen to.
Before closing his eyes he breathed a loud sign before quickly falling asleep.
And maybe I’m making too much out of nothing but the sigh seemed to say
“Finally I can let go.”
When people hear about the work I do they imagine that I’m carrying heavy stories of trauma and hearing a lot of pain.
But actually I rarely have deep conversations with the kids
And except for bits and pieces I don’t hear the details of their trauma
Instead the trauma is carried in their lack of trust and thick walls.
We don’t sit and have heart to heart conversations (yet).
Our time is spent building playing games, giving them choices, doing art and speaking positive words to them that they may have never heard
And in this last session, taking a nap.
