Category: Creativity

A Late Mother’s Day Salute

By Tammi Pitzen, Executive Director of the Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County

I am late with my Mother’s Day blog posting this year. It seems that along with all of you, it is taking me longer to get things done because my brain is filled with all things COVID-19.

I actually think a day to honor our maternal influences is not enough…we should have at least a week.

So, with that thought in mind, here is my Mother’s Day blog.

This year, I believe more than any other year for me, has highlighted the many, many roles our Mothers fill for our children and in this world. For me as a mom, the last two months have proved to be more challenging than when my child was a newborn. In those first few months of his life, I remember being sleep deprived and tired. I remember being scared that I was not doing “it” right. I remember a lot of private tears in the shower.

Well, in the last two months I have spent a lot of sleepless nights in worry. I have questioned whether I was doing “this” right.

There have been more tears in the shower as I tried to muster up enough steam to fulfill all the roles that I had shared with my “Mommy Tribe”, his teacher, and my son’s coaches. I have worried about my productivity at work. I have worried about whether I am giving enough to my child, to those I work with, to those in the community that I work with, and to the families and children the Children’s Advocacy Center serves.

Somewhere in those tears, I decided to give myself some grace. Instead of trying to be perfect, I lowered some expectations. For me the bar was set at “Do no harm”.

Now I recognize that seems pretty low. But when I set it that low for myself, I actually felt an energy surge. I was able to do more education opportunities for my son than his school was able. I was able to create some memories with my son and my family that I hope will bring smiles for a few years to come. I focused on making sure my son’s mental health was not being compromised by isolation.

What does all that look like? Well, it looks like camping in the yard. It looks like cool crafts. It looks like giving my child purpose by increasing some of his chores. It looks like hiking or taking long walks through our neighborhood. It looks like a chalk drawing on our front driveway. It looks like baking and cooking together. It looks like watching and discussing movies together to find hidden life lessons. It looks like practicing social skills. It looks like relaxing some of the rules when we can. It looks like creating structure and routine around distance learning for school and chores.

Most of the moms I know have become teachers, guidance counselors, and coaches in addition to their regular roles of meal-planner, referee, household manager, and nurturer. Some of us have added working from home, dog walker, and home sanitizer. And having to do so in isolation.

What can we do for ourselves? To keep us moms going? My mommy tribe has upped our text game. We check in on each other. We social distance in the driveway. We social distance in a parking lot. We remind each other to take care of ourselves. We plan for when we can bring our kids and our families back together for our regular gatherings. We give each other grace. We support each other as we all do what is right for our families, with no judgment when someone else does it differently.

For some families, there is a lot of added stress. For some children, food insecurities become even more prominent in their life as they miss the breakfasts and lunches provided to them at school. For some moms, stress is mounting as they try to figure out how to manage without an income, without knowing what will happen after the “goodwill” brought to us in the form of a stimulus check, mortgage payments put on hold, or rent delayed.

I am worried about children who were not safe before the pandemic. I am worried about children who have been put in unsafe situations because of the pandemic. I am worried about the Mommas feeling like they are failing at this homeschooling, stay at home, keep their family healthy with little to no resources nightmare that has become our hopefully short-term reality. I also know that, if experience is any indication, we will all come together through this and help those who need our help. If you fall into one of the above-mentioned worries….please ask for help. Jackson County is full of good people who want to do “good” and help you.

This has been a “Mother’s Day” to remember. What will you remember?

I hope you remember that it is okay to feel sad. It is okay to need help. I hope you remember to extend yourself some grace as being a Mom is hard, but it is really hard during a pandemic. I hope you remember it is okay to love being home with no outside influences. It is okay to feel whatever you are feeling. I hope that you remember that perfection is not attainable and that your child does not care about “perfect”.

It is okay to ask for “do-overs” – I do that all the time. Remember that really, at this time, it is okay to use up all of our energy on being okay and making sure our kids are okay. There is no one way to do this parenting in isolation thing. We don’t have a reference for parenting like this.

We have not been here before.

Remember your child will not remember this time the same way you might. They may remember this time as the time that you were the family hero keeping everything moving forward with very few resources.
Tips for making it through Covid-19 concerns while your children are at home
By Tammi Pitzen, Executive Director of the Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County

The Coronavirus has become a pandemic crisis impacting every aspect of our lives. Parents are being forced into the role of educator as our children are pushed into a home-schooling situation. To add to that stress, many of us do not know how long we will have a paycheck or a job, as so many industries are having to reduce operations or shut down completely. We are being asked to limit contact with others.

All of this is causing anxieties to rise in both adults and children.

Be mindful that your children are looking to you to see if they should be scared. Do not completely ignore what is happening. Answer your child’s questions in an age appropriate way. Develop a new routine so that your child can feel safe. Talk to them about taking the recommended precautions to stay healthy.

Additionally, do a daily “worry” check in.

With my child it goes something like this, “Let’s check in. Tell me something you are worried about today?” or “Are you concerned about anything today?” It is enlightening what you may find out. Many days those concerns have nothing to do with what is currently happening and many times it is something that a parent can address easily. The latter is great. It gives you a boost in your confidence level as a parent and your child is reassured that things are okay. Soon, you may find that your child is initiating the daily check in. “Hey Mom! Tell me how your day went? What made you happy today?” At my house, we change the questions up. Sometimes worried focused questions, sometimes feelings focused questions and sometimes activity focused questions.

Here are some ideas for activities that you can do to keep your child engaged and to help with your own self-care during this unsettling time:
- Read a book aloud. My child’s class has read-aloud time during the school day and it is something he enjoys. Pick a series and read together for thirty minutes a day.
- Do an art project together. Draw, make slime, finger paint, color—build with Legos.
- Write a “book” together. Develop a story line, take turns writing paragraphs, create illustrations. It can be a true or fantasy.
- Take a hike. Go someplace and enjoy nature together.
- Watch a movie or find a series on Netflix or Amazon Prime that is family friendly. Gilligan’s
- Bake or cook with your child. This helps to develop math, reading and survival skills.
- Teach your child to clean and disinfect.
- Play outside…basketball, catch, blow bubbles, hide and seek, take a walk.
- Play tic tac toe, board games, card games, or make up your own game.
Structure can help get you through this crisis and as a bonus the “together time activities” will help to strengthen family bonds.

Tammi Pitzen
Art and the Mother’s Touch

By Michelle Wilson, Development Director for The Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County

In honor of what would be my mom’s birthday this month, I am sharing a post I wrote three years ago on healing and the mother’s touch. This could have been written now, with the references to the stories shared at this center and the healing that occurs here. We now offer art workshops through our Building Bridges project and our therapists continue to offer a variety of types of creative therapies for hundreds of kids and teens each year.

I am looking at a picture of my mom a few years ago on a trip to visit my sister in Colorado. Beautiful flowers surround her and she has a relaxed smile on her face.

I am smiling back at her this morning.

My mother and the whole state of motherhood have been on my mind a lot this week. I read a story the other day about a premature newborn who was pronounced dead, then was put on his mother’s chest and started breathing. He is now 2 years old and thriving.

A mother’s touch is pretty powerful stuff.

My mom passed away a few months ago. I was blessed to be able to spend the last several weeks of her life with her, along with other siblings. During that time we talked a lot, when she wasn’t too tired, about the years we had all spent together and the years when life had us in different places around the country. I have lived far away since I graduated from college and always hoped I wouldn’t regret living so far from my mom once she passed away.

I have found, though, that I feel as if she and I were just as close as she was to my siblings living near her. We talked on the phone a few times a week and saw each other at least once a year. Our relationship was quiet, subtle, almost invisible because it was largely through phone contact. But it was powerful, like the touch of that mama whose love helped her newborn breathe for the first time.

It’s kind of like art, I realize, and the process of creating it. The product may be powerful, with its own energy surrounding it, even if the process of creating it was invisible to the viewer.

I think of Mom all the time now, dream about her. Her touch is still with me, subtle and powerful, reminding me to breathe every day and take in all that is around me. She invites me every day to choose life above everything and to enjoy every minute, every gift. At night when I put my son to sleep, we say goodnight to her and to the angels. I hug him very closely, wanting my touch to stay with him even when I’m not with him.

This week was a difficult one at the Children’s Advocacy Center. We heard too many stories of kids who have been hurt, most by family or extended family members. We talk to each other about how it affects us, all of these stories. And we talk about what we do to handle the stress and sadness of our work.

The thing that works, it seems, is staying connected – to life, to what we love, to the gentle touches of the people around us. I think of Mom to help me through. I decide every morning to choose life and gratitude, no matter what is happening. Her touch sustains me still.

So many of the kids and teens who come to us don’t have this kind of memory of gentle, loving touch. Most have memories of touch that harmed them. In the mentoring program and in therapy and in all of our interactions with them we try to give them something of what they missed. Something of the mother’s touch.

Through the art program we offer them a way to choose life in the face of sadness and despair. They create works that reflect their lives and their hopes. Through the touch of the brush to the canvas, they can experience something they may never have had. Through the kind words and support of their mentors and those who see their works, we hope they can begin to have memories that will sustain them, much like the memory of my mother’s voice sustains me.

I choose to believe that we can do this, help them create an internal voice and memory that will help them remember to breathe when life gets difficult.

I believe the mother’s touch is always there, something we can pass on to each other when needed, an invisible life force with a tangible energy all its own.

We can do it through kind words, art, anything that helps to create the energy that can sustain us, no matter what we face.
Summer Vacations, Kids, and Creativity

By Michelle Wilson

When school gets out for summer, families often find themselves needing to plan for children being home for a few months. When I was growing up, I spent most summers at home with my mom doing her usual activities and with my siblings, one younger and four older. We only had a few scheduled activities: a week of camp here or there and a family vacation or two. Beyond that, we were left to our own creativity for weeks on end.

And, of course, there were no computers in varying sizes and shapes to offer us inspiration or activities.

As daunting as this may seem to some of the current generation of kids growing up with screens in every corner of their lives, our family tried an experiment last summer to try to recapture that experience. We went completely technology free from the day school got out until the week before Labor Day. No screens of any kind were allowed except for occasional movies on the television screen and adults being able to check their phones for basic communication.

It was magical. What we all discovered was the wonderful reality that creativity is alive and well in everyone’s brain and spirit. We learned that everything could become a creative activity if taken with the right approach. Buying fresh food from the growers’ market and cooking together in the kitchen became a great family activity. Preparing a menu based on what was available fresh that day became a creative act. And discussions moved from more surface topics to deeper life issues as the sounds of the digital world were quieted and we had more time to spend listening to ourselves think and reflect.

Many studies have been conducted that show what we intuitively remember when we take a little time to be quiet: creativity heals the soul, helps us repair problems in our lives, mends challenges in relationships, keeps us healthier, and makes life a whole lot more fun if we let it.

And one of the very best things about creativity is that it is free. It comes without a battery or a chord to charge it. We do need to re-charge, but that happens most easily when we do things that bring us back to our true nature – being in nature, for one, or doing anything restful, relaxing, and playful.

This summer my family has not decided to go completely tech free, but we are limiting screen time of any sort to a very short amount of time. Technology, when used well, can help increase our creative ideas, help us learn new things, and help us connect with others in some pretty amazing ways.

But most of this summer for our family will be spent in ways that help our creativity blossom. We will do lots of walks, as much swimming as we can, create art projects, write a bit, read lots of books, play outside, build forts in the den, listen to music, fool around on musical instruments, cook and garden, play with our pets, and generally relax.

We will try to laugh as often as we can to keep those good, creative juices going and to keep happiness flowing through our bodies and house.

And we will remember to be grateful for all of the time we get to have together, for the time we each have separately to do the things we enjoy, and for the simple fact that creativity lives inside each of us. We just have to give it room to grow.

What are your plans for the summer?

What is your creative spirit up to these days?
Celebrating Kids, Culture and Art

By Michelle Wilson, Development Director, The Children’s Advocacy Center

This spring we invited all of the children and teens in Jackson County to help us decorate our walls. We held an art contest and invited submissions of art that fit the theme “Celebrating Cultures of Our World.”

We received 102 beautiful pieces of art. Each one was created by a child or teen who saw the poster for our contest and decided to enter – each one created by a young person who wanted to create art and share it with others.

And what wonderful art they created!

We asked a few local “celebrity judges” to help us choose the top 16 pieces to display at our center. Thank you to Jim Collier (art patron and supporter of many art-based agencies in town), Brad Russell (Executive Director of the Rogue Valley YMCA), Kathy Mustard (owner of Mustard Press and member of our Advisory Council), Eric Strahl (Events Manager for the Craterian Theater), and Jamie Hutchinson (Family Meeting Facilitator for DHS).

These judges helped us pick the top 16 pieces which are now framed, matted, and ready to be displayed at the center. Another 32 pieces received an Honorable Mention because it was so hard to choose. And we have decided to display all of the work because it is all so filled with positive, joyful energy. We are going to fill this center with color and designs that celebrate not only the cultures of our world but also the bright energy of children and teens all around us.

Thank you to the Jackson County Cultural Coalition and an anonymous donor for making this all happen. Thank you to the Craterian Theater at the Collier Center for Performing Arts for hosting the show. And thank you to all of the kids, teachers, and parents who responded to our invitation and made sure we received so many beautiful pieces of art. Our staff members are already saying how grateful they are that we will have this art collection to bring light and healing to our center and work.

Art truly does heal. Creating it and sharing it with others really is a wonderful way to bring light to dark places and share our gifts with others. To everyone who made this happen ~ thank you.

Michelle Wilson
April ~ A Month to Honor Children

By Michelle Wilson

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month. It is a month to honor children everywhere, those who have been harmed and those we hope to protect.

It is also National Poetry Month.

For this blog, I want to share a poem by a woman I had the great fortune to meet and hear read her works many years ago, when I was a graduate student studying poetry. The poem talks of the meaning of life, of poetry, and the simple belief that children have in finding meaning in the world around them.

The poem is one of my favorites, and I think it is because it simply celebrates life through the eyes of children, in a way that reminds me to keep looking for good all around me.

Last week I stood in a park in downtown Medford, listening to stories of horrible abuse of young children and teens who live right here, in our neighborhoods and in our city. I stood with many other adults and honored the 707 young victims of abuse in Jackson County in 2015.

I took this poem with me, in my mind and heart. I held its simple reminder to believe in meaning all around me and in the wonder and certainty that all children have when they are born that the world is safe, a place of hidden secrets and delights.

I hold this belief that there is meaning in what we do – on behalf of children, on behalf of all who are hurt and suffering, on behalf of all of the families who come through our center needing help during some of the most difficult times of their lives.

Thank you, Denise Levertov, for finding me today with this poem, much like the young girls here found you, found meaning in your words. I offer this now in honor of this month celebrating the lives of children and the wisdom of poetry.

The Secret

By Denise Levertov
Planting Seeds and Watching Them Grow

By Michelle Wilson, Development Director of The Children’s Advocacy Center of Jackson County

Soon after Valentine’s Day, right after all of the red and white bows and hearts start to come off of the shelves, little signs of the coming of spring start to poke their heads out around us. Stores start selling packets of seeds to plant, in preparation for the warmer days to come and the anticipation of summer flowers and garden vegetables.

This is a great time of year to plan positive family time together.

You can start with a handful of tiny seeds sown in dirt-filled paper cups set in a kitchen window. Even very young children can help with choosing the types of flowers to grow or the varieties of vegetables to grace the table later in the year. Choose soil that is as rich with nutrients as possible to give the young seeds a good start, and read the seed package directions for information on what they need in the way of sun and water.

When the first green sprouts start to pop up through the soil, children and adults alike can’t help but get excited about the magic that is happening right in the kitchen window.

This is good time to either choose a good spot in the yard to transplant those seeds into a small garden or to pick out some clay pots (which you can paint yourself to add another creative step to the process) to hold the young plants as they grow and blossom.

When the flowers and vegetables start to come into full bloom, everyone in the family can celebrate the accomplishment of growing something together. Cutting fresh flowers and bringing them into the house is a great way to bring simple beauty into each day, and even kids who don’t normally like to eat their vegetables can’t help but try them when they have grown them from seedlings!

Once you start growing things, it can become an annual event, much like celebrating holidays or birthdays, only this event can last from late winter when you buy those first seed packets until late in the fall when you harvest the last vegetables before the cold weather really hits.

Simple activities that focus on beauty, nature, and good food are often the best ways to spend quality together as a family.

As we watch tiny seeds grow into small seedlings — then blooms — then into full blossom, we can be reminded to pay attention to the ways our children are growing each day. We can remember to nurture them with everything they need and never take them for granted. And we can celebrate each day with them, teaching them both the natural rhythms of nature and of strong, healthy family life.
Creative “madness” leads the way out of suffering

“You are only given one little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it” Robin Williams

By Michelle Wilson

Madness. That is one powerful word.

It brings to my mind images of people with bright twinkles in their eyes and infectious smiles that make you want to know what is happening in their thoughts.

Madness can also bring to mind images of people who have suffered a great deal of trauma and emotional upheaval.

It can bring to mind unsettling thoughts of those who can’t seem to move out of sadness, depression, anxiety, or constant fear and the feeling that the world is an unsafe and unpredictable place.

Poets and scientists have both made links between these two things – creative genius and emotional suffering.

Robin Williams was certainly a creative genius whose light and spark of energy lit up the world through his work and his life. His recent death brought me great sadness, as I know it did for many other people around the world. I continue to be grateful for what he offered all of us while he was here – for much too short of a time. I wish we had been able to watch his genius continue to grow and deepen for many more years.

“You are only given one little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it”

I saw this quote by Robin Williams soon after his death and it struck me. I think about the work we do at the Children’s Advocacy Center with children and teens whose lives have been altered by abuse and neglect, and I think about how the abuse affects them.

I have seen how the work of our team helps them move out of the feelings of sadness, depression, and anxiety, and I hope that it helps everyone who comes here feel that the world is just a bit safer, a bit more predictable, and certainly a bit more kind.

Creative madness – the kind that creates new inventions and dares to take risks and makes leaps between things that seem unrelated but that, when brought together, invite new ideas and actions – that is something this world continues to need.

We need to experience the genius that can come from suffering, as well as the genius that comes from just plain, old creative impulses.

I firmly believe that the way out of suffering and chaos can be found in the type of creative “madness” often spurred by the original acts that caused the suffering.

When we let ourselves feel deep pain and confusion – and when we support others in doing the same – creativity can open places that have been blocked and a healthy type of “madness” can give us the energy and impetus to move forward, make changes, and create new paths in our lives.

Great creative geniuses can help to create new paths that leave a wide road behind them for others to follow.

They can teach us, in ways large and small, about the inevitable new opportunities that come after defeat in the endless cycles of our lives.

Thank you, Robin Williams, for sharing your creative spirit with us.

I will remember this invitation when I feel troubled by sadness or grief. I will try to let the wild and forceful energy that comes from difficult experiences create in me a creative type of madness, the type that breaks down barriers and opens the way for something new, something better than I might have imagined before.

May we all remember this, and may we always help those amongst us who need our support in times of tragedy, abuse, and suffering.

Help us remember the creative genius that is there, within us all, just ready to be tapped.

Category: Creativity

What are your plans for the summer?

What is your creative spirit up to these days?

The Secret

By Denise Levertov