Point on the Path Professionals

Understanding Self-Harm as Embodied Communication Rather than an exclusively private “symptom of mental illness,” self-injury may be a form of deeply embodied and complex communication.

This is a little off from my usual posts— well for one because I’m writing it and not just sharing someone else’s post.

It’s Orange Shirt Day. I work with Indigenous Canadian children involved in Children’s Services everyday. And we still need so much reforming, it breaks my heart. 💔 The system tries. I see good people work so hard for children and try to find family, and work with struggling parents, but it’s not good enough for the kids. It’s just not.

Childhood is time-limited and we need to be faster to claim the stability they require: in families that will love them for a lifetime, yes- and with the support of community and professional run programs and services. These require money in the form of grants and better more stable funding at a level adequate to meet the needs.

The system causes secondary trauma because a bureaucracy is a s**t parent. S**t. And limited resources as the excuse to not provide well enough for the children in care right now— that’s not good enough.

I wore orange today to hold close to my heart the very confused foster child who thinks it’s their fault they are experiencing this reality; and the foster child who rages because they *know* it’s not their fault.

I wore orange for the child that never wants to leave fostercare because it’s the most stability they’ve ever experienced; and the 10-year old children in treatment facilities because they’ve “burned out too many foster homes.”

The resilience I see every day amazes me. And there is nothing over about our terrible systemic treatment of our Indigenous children.

Let’s remember those hurt so badly by residential school, but let’s not forget their descendants and those of the ones they left behind, because those amazing spirits are here right now.