Gaea Logan and I have just returned from Sri Lanka
where we joined the Sarvodaya Psycho-Spiritual Healing Project team
already engaged in bringing help to the tsunami survivors. Our first
days were spent visiting the workshops being conducted in the villages
by the Sarvodaya counselors and other village resource people. The
workshops brought inspiration and pleasure to the survivors through
meditation, uplifting talks and games that were integrated into the
lesson of the workshop. They came together as communities to talk about
their struggles and to find hope.
Some villages were recovering more slowly than others and in more need
of the counselors’ services. One such was Pereliya, close to Galle in
the south. Here the village had been completely washed away and a train,
in which many children and adults had sought shelter, had been totally
flooded. The train remains in the village, a silent testimony to the
many losses sustained.
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One of the most heart rending villagers we met was a woman seven months
pregnant who had lost two children, a six month old baby and a seven
year old. She was terribly depressed and doubting her ability to
adequately mother her new baby. Since research confirms that mothers who
have been traumatized, have great difficulty mothering, working through
a translator, we offered her some EMDR therapy and a guided meditation.
EMDR is a technique that is very effective for trauma survivors. She
seemed to respond and her demeanor lightened.
Another village woman we met was overwhelmed by the task of caring for
her three children and the three children of her brother. Her brother
and his wife were both lost in the tsunami. Like many other families in
Sri Lanka, she and her husband had taken in the orphaned children, but
were now finding the task of raising six children to be too much for
them. They were in evident need of the support the Sarvodaya counselors
provide.
The counselors reported that the orphaned children in all the villages
were angry and lost. They asked for guidance in working with children so
that they could provide them with some relief from pain and anxiety.
Our task is to transfer skills to the 20 Sarvodaya counselors and to
enhance their knowledge of how to work with trauma and grief in
families. They taught us much about Sri Lanka as we listened to their
clients’ cases and helped us to understand the beliefs and practices of
the villagers. We engaged them in exercises in empathic listening and in
group work. Group therapy will allow them to treat more clients in the
same amount of time.
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We meditated together, wrote poetry, and drew pictures of incidents in
our own lives which we shared with each other. The counselors shared
stories of the effect the tsunami had had on their own lives. Many of
them were making ongoing sacrifices in order to help others. They were
living apart from their families for prolonged periods in order to stay
in the villages most affected by the tsunami. They struggled with the
pain this caused them and their families. We returned feeling greatly
enriched by our experience.
Other training teams are scheduled to go to Sri Lanka in November,
January, March and June, and Fall 2006 to continue the work. We are very
grateful to Sarvodaya USA who funded our travel on this trip.
Contributions will be gratefully accepted. Please send them to the
address below.
Joan Hogetsu Hoeberichts, Sensei
Heart Circle Sangha
451 Hillcrest Road, Ridgewood, NJ 07450 |
