Transitions

Jackie's Rambling Book

Hello!

This week’s art group was full of conversation. A major topic was that of moving, transition, and feeling displaced. Con brought this topic to the group because she has spent the past few weeks moving to a new house and felt that the Positive Directions group members may relate as they will be moving soon too. Peter and Paul Community Services has been working on transitioning some of their programming to their new Community Campus – the former Little Sisters of the Poor site at 3225 N. Florissant Avenue. The emergency shelter transitioned over there this summer and the transitional housing programs will move there sometime this fall/winter.

A few of the group members expressed concerns about moving to the new building. They shared about feeling unsafe in the neighborhood, feeling institutionalized and restricted, fear of being targeted by police because of their race, and feeling dismissed in conversations with staff about moving. It seemed that many of these feelings were rooted in fears of the unknown and of losing security and stability. The other group members shared similar experiences and tried to validate the feelings of the others.

We transitioned to talk about the Rambling books after a little while. Each of us shared our books with the group to help Con catch up on what she had missed. It was nice to hear about each member’s experience with the book making process because we’ve been working separately for the last couple weeks.  This conversation lasted the rest of group, so we didn’t get to hang the books in the windows. Adelia believes the project will be done in two weeks. Con thinks they will be up in four weeks. We made plans to continue with it next week. The saga continues…

<3 Jackie and Yemisi