Happy Holy Week!  Today is the day: Richie’s Easter play is upon us! I am so excited for the performance and feel honored to direct it alongside Richie once more before my time at Emmanuel is through.  The main goal of the performance is to have fun, enhance connection, and spread joy, which I know will be achieved. Stay tuned for my performance recap next week!

Last Wednesday we had our third session of the caretakers art group, which was centered around self care. I facilitated a self-care warm-up called the “feelings mandala”, in which we spent time identifying 3-5 feelings we had within us at the moment. Then we assigned a color to each of our feelings and spent a few minutes drawing how these feelings were sitting with us. This warm-up was a quick way to check in with ourselves and understand how we were arriving into a space before we moved outward toward others. A couple members voiced to me that they really enjoyed it and want to keep doing this practice on their own.

Then we had a discussion around self-care and the small acts of self care that we already perform, which we may not identify as such. While the group members discussed, I wrote down the acts of self care that people identified.  By the end of the discussion we had a robust list of small acts of care. I then led a demonstration of how to make a zine (a booklet made from a single piece of folded 8.5×11 paper). We proceeded to make “self-care pocket guides” with our newly-folded zines.

This activity was a hit and such a fun way to observe everyone’s unique take on the pocket guide. This was my favorite session so far.  The group felt engaged and dialed-into both the conversation and the activity. As the weekly sessions progress, I feel more confident and present in a facilitative/leadership role. We will be pausing the group’s sessions this week for the performance of Richie’s play, but I am excited to see what next week’s session will bring.

–Alex Shoemaker