I just came across this mental health recovery program who help kids with trauma and they have a whole section for LIFE SKILLS.
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I was SO HAPPY to see that. I wish I had that as a teenager as I was bounced around from group home to foster care to residential treatment to running away in-between.
This is what I needed, in addition to the emotional support and validation and recovery tools, I needed life skills.
I had to learn mine the hard way - by being thrown out there in the world and by doing. By trial and error. By being driven by desperation to "make it" and take care of myself.
Those early years were hard after age 17 being an "adult" and on your own. My entire 20's were all about learning how to be a part of working society.
One of the first things I learned was how to go under cover. In the morning I'd put on my make-up and my "uniform" and my game face and would go to work and use all my smarts and willingness to just learn and do a good job and keep the pay check coming.
I played a role. I faked it until I made it. I dare not breathe a word of my real self for fear they'd kick me out of mainstream America and put me back down with the disabled. Broken. Wounded. Shattered.
I had no idea back then that anyone who was willing to put the work in deserved to be there.
Back to the Life Skills program I just saw on this page http://www.stvincentshome.org/programs-and-services/life-skills-program/.
Here's a list of what they teach in LIFE SKILLS:
Life Skills includes:
- post-secondary education planning
- interest inventories
- access to Career Cruising web-based programming
- a variety of vocational assessments and planning
- educational advocacy and self-advocacy training
- transitional planning
- work-based learning and school-to-work opportunities
- career guidance, employment assistance and job maintenance skills
- resume writing, job applications and job seeking skill development
- independent living skills: personal care & safety, money, home and food management
- social skills development
- driver education
- experiential learning
- community linkages
- relationship building
It took me a lifetime to learn all that. I'm in my 50's now and I forget to give myself credit for all I've learned and how far I've come. I was so busy trying to catch up with the rest of the world and the 'normal kids/young adults', I never stopped to celebrate and honor the many milestones I passed. I thought they were no big deal, like that was all stuff you should be doing anyway.
Not realizing you were neglected and not connected and were dealing with complex trauma on top of trying to manage every day life as a working single parent going to school at night, you tend to just focus on how you're still not good enough, rather than admiring my efforts and accomplishments.
It's hard to celebrate when you have no one that would show up because you're estranged from 'family' and staying isolated out of fear of getting hurt. I didn't deserve to celebrate but deep down I was too lonely to celebrate alone.
No one is born with Life Skills. They are taught. And for some, there was no one there to teach it and if you had to learn on your own, high-five to you for trying and doing the best that you can.
With the internet and the Wellness and Recovery movement sweeping the nation, it's much easier these days to educate yourself on these things, find answers to questions, groups of kindred spirits to join.
It's not just the learning of the skills that's important, its the connections you make along the way and engaging with other teachers and peers that turns out to be the missing healing factor we didn't think about when we were too busy just "trying to make it on our own" and our coping skill to keep us safe was to isolate.
But in the long run, isolation, that warm, comfy spot that's just right, where we are safe and all alone, turns on us and becomes our prison and our barrier to heal from our connection-trauma.
It's something to think about. What I resisted the most, is what I desperately needed the most.
I now have this essential need met in the wellness and recovery community. I can be "all of me there" and can finally come out of the closet with my true story and I have much to share.
At this point in my life, I've surpassed the "just making it" point and am living the wellness and recovery lifestyle that supports me to be all that I can be.
This blog is my way of giving back. A lot of people helped me along the way, most of them don't even know it because I just modeled them at work. They taught me well. But they couldn't have taught me unless I was there and I got myself there. So kudos for me for feeling the fear and stepping into my work anyway.
I'm so blessed to work in the field that all my co-workers are my friends and supporters and those relationships have replaced the absentee family that used to be my only connection to others. I was stuck for years, decades, just focused on the non-relationships I had instead of making new ones.
That's all changed. I focus exclusively on my present and future ones. I don't even think about the past ones anymore.
But I digress, as I often do, being a writer and all, I tend to go on and on.
But I try to make it interesting along the way. This is me. This is who I've grown to be.
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