My Little Valentine

It wasn’t My Funny Valentine. It wasn’t I’m a Little Valentine. Can I find it? No. So I will have more to say before I get to it.

It doesn’t matter as this is what I want to write. In group this week we made valentines. I said think of a loved one. Someone you wish to make a valentine for.

I have a paper here with a heart and at the top, it says, “Things I love”. You can make puzzle pieces and put in the things you love or draw pictures of things you love. You can put all the things you love about your favorite someone.

They were each given an envelope and a card form to put their design in the mail. Two of the women had children they had given up for adoption, due to their life happenings at the time. One had an open adoption with family, but one child was not in her life. That was who she made her card for.

Another person had no children and came in before a couple of times severely depressed. She was making a valentine for a cousin. It was beautiful. She didn’t talk much about it other than to say, she wants to wait to have children until she can bring them into a better world.

She went on to say how much she loved her nieces and missed them and hoped for a home visit on the weekend.

It is so therapeutic to include art in healing from trauma, grief, and loss.

The discussion was all about that. Things that may not have come up with me, without the art project. One male guest was making dream catchers I encouraged him to keep making them and contributed wiigob to his project.

He could use the cards to put his dream catchers on and envelopes to give them.

He had plans to give two dream catchers. One to his grandmother and one to his mother. He then shared that his grandmother told him that she hopes to see him straightened out before she dies. He shared that he plans to do that.

While he made them, he asked if he could give me one. I told him that I can’t accept gifts from guests. I told him a cute story about how I had told another resident who gave me something important to him by placing it in my sage purse when I wasn’t looking.

He showed me one that had white yarn on either side and said those are wings. He then said he had asked for feathers to attach to his dream catchers. I told him I may have some small feathers to bring in next time.

Even though I had told him the story about another, I also mentioned how I had to give it to someone else in need of that gift at the right time and I couldn’t keep it or I had to share it with staff at the agency.

So, guess what, that is exactly what I found on the running board of my truck when I went out to get in. The dream catcher with the angel wings.

My little valentine

So small and sweet

I will keep it all mine

Until I meet

Just the right one

Who needs it more than I

Will it be you son

Or will it be you hon

Either way, I just want to cry

And sometimes say why

Pain and hurt shouldn’t be

So much of ones life

The strife

Shouldn’t be for so many

Or even any.

I am finding a replacement for me

as at seventy

it is some days just too much to see!

~~~~~~~~

First published by Mercury Press in medium.com