Monday, April 29, 2013

A Common Ground


Many people would classify me as an extrovert by my relative willingness to meet and converse with new people in unfamiliar situations. In regards to working at Clean and Sober, I carry this quality with me day to day, always making time to get to know everyone who comes into our office for intakes and those who are already present within our program. I have been blessed throughout my experience to find a majority of people who are more than willing to open their hearts and minds to me, illustrating the situations that have placed them in their own unfortunate circumstances.
Four weeks ago we brought a woman into our program who had been dealing with substance abuse for a few years, attempting to begin her early recovery journey after hitting rock bottom and ending up homeless. When I first met her, I did my standard "Hello! My name is Maura, nice to meet you!" while holding out my hand for the customary handshake greeting. She casually looked down at my hand, stoically looked back up at me and uttered one word- "Hi." After a few failed attempts to begin conversations with her that day, I began to lose a little bit of hope that I could form a relationship with her like I had with the rest of the residents at the program. The next week, I went to the program and was met again with the same resistance in engaging in conversation with one another, leaving me unsettled but very eager to find where we could connect. Little did she know, she had ignited a fire within me to find where our common ground would be, resulting in the forming of an art class for our program. One Tuesday, I came into the program with an art project to show the residents and have them participate in. The art project consisted of placing paint into different containers filled with soapy water and blowing them onto a canvas, deemed "Bubble Painting". When I arrived at the program, I tried to entice many of the residents into joining me with this artistic experiment, and one of the few people to agree was the woman that I had had such a hard time talking to. As we began to figure out the experiment, and ultimately fail at performing it correctly, she slowly started to talk and laugh more, gradually becoming comfortable both with myself and where she was living. Even though the "Bubble Painting" did not work out artistically speaking, it did work in bringing many of the residents together and creating a more family-like atmosphere within the program.
Fortunately, the art class is still thriving and becoming more and more successful each week, rallying up an increasing number of residents and steadily heightening the morale within the program. Through this experience I learned that an individuals' background can stand in the way of initial conversations, but that there is always a common ground that can be found and expanded on in order to create that necessary bond.

Maura Dunn - Clean and Sober - Sacramento, CA