Level 1 for a girl at La Europa is dedicated to Emotional Safety. Through a series of assignments, the girl learns not only about wellness and nutrition, but also to recognize and understand where her emotions come from. The goal is to become emotionally honest and learn what it means to have trusting relationships. These goals are correlated to the hardness of a lobster’s shell. When a lobster outgrows its shell, it instinctively sheds its shell and the membrane inside forms the lobster’s next shell. However this can be a very risky process, because the lobster is subjecting itself to being tossed against a coral reef or eaten by predators. In other words, it is risking its life in order to grow. As humans we are guilty of continuing old habits or staying in a rut, staying in a bad relationship because it’s safe; nothing can happen to us. On the other hand, if we’re willing to make ourselves vulnerable and take risks, we’re able to grow.
Each week Miya and I have a 60-minute session with her therapist. For the past two weeks she and I have discussed what emotional safety means to each of us and how we’ve each contributed to “emotional unsafety” between us. This has been an eye opener. Yikes, actually verbalizing what emotionally safety meant to me gave me pause. Then we focused on trust. When Miya’s therapist asked her about trust, Miya stated she wasn’t really sure what “trust” felt like, but thought it was the same thing as love. Her answer really pulled at my heart strings. It made me feel sad to know she hadn’t felt trust, but also helped me to understand why she periodically told me sometimes she trusted me and sometimes she didn’t. If she equates trust with love, then there must have been times she felt more love from me than others. It also helped me recognize that the tribulations over the past year put us in a vicious cycle. Her acting out, me taking away privileges and monitoring her every move because I didn’t trust her, just made her feel I didn’t love her, and then she continued to act out. It also told me that when boys pay attention to her she feels love and why she puts more trust in them than she should.
It’s overwhelming to see that this process is going to take baby steps, but I count them as baby steps in the right direction.
On a more uplifting note, she has received positive leader for the past 3-consecutive weeks, which awards her added privileges. She loves her Fashion Design class. The assignment for that class is to design and make a Lady Gaga outfit. The girls will then model the outfits during parent’s weekend in April. She wouldn’t tell me much about the outfit she is designing for herself, because she wants it to be a surprise. During one of our calls Miya said, “Mom the only thing I will tell you is that the skirt is lime green!” I had to laugh because I was not at all surprised, since that is the color of her room. She went on to tell me that one of the other girls is making her outfit out of potato chip bags. In explaining this to me, she said, “Mom we had to eat 2 bags of potato chips the other night.” To which I replied, “Oh you had to huh.” “Yes mom. It was mandatory!”
