Although I had already begun to understand my relationship to Tapestry as genuinely inquisitive, the January 2019 training for new Tapestry mentors was the first engagement in which I took proper field notes. This account and many subsequent accounts are drawn largely from those notes, from which I have removed identifying or seemingly extraneous details.
With my pastor’s hat on, I would say that Hannah is a master of practices of hospitality. That’s not the wrong word here, but in the context of this study, I think it’s better to understand her preparedness and clarity as a space-making relational practice with an eye toward introduction and incorporation. Not just “you are welcome here” but “here’s how to belong here.” I believe she wants participants to know they are entering the labyrinth, as it were (see below).
I walked up the curving steps and saw three young adults, two Black and one Asian or Asian American, waiting outside the door of Stillwater. Just as I was starting to call Hannah, she opened the door. She welcomed everybody and then pulled me aside to ask if I would greet folks as they came in, which I was prepared for because she’d checked in with me previously.
Folks arrived slowly but steadily, and I pointed them in the direction of the conference room, noted the bathroom locations, etc. Hannah checked in with me again before she started the session and told me I should wait five more minutes to see if the last two registered participants showed up. One of them did.
There were two seats open when I came in the room. I sat on the side of the long table further from the door, about halfway down the long axis from where she was standing near a large pad of paper on an easel with a list of activities on it.
- Some were adopted.
- Some had parents who had adopted or fostered or had tried to.
- One young Asian or Asian American woman with a large patch of brightly dyed red hair mentioned that she had been in the area for a while now and wanted to start putting down roots.
- A white woman mentioned she had started an adoption-related student volunteering group in college because her very large university had “Quidditch but no adoption.”
- A lot of people mentioned getting connected with Tapestry either via a Google Search or through a list of opportunities for volunteering kept by their workplaces. I think one person mentioned they were encouraged to do volunteering.
After we went around the table using our circles to introduce ourselves, Hannah explained the list of activities on the chart paper. She said she doesn’t like to list times for the day’s schedule because they often go wrong. But she promised we would leave by three, have breaks, and eat lunch sometime, all of which turned out to be true.
Hannah and Sam almost always say “youth,” both singular and plural.
She then introduced a presentation about the core principles of Tapestry, describing how we would care for our youth “both biologically and spiritually.” To prepare, she started sliding a table into a central place up front.
I think I noticed this because it seemed novel in this tech-heavy crowd (including to me). Perhaps ironically, both Tapestry and I have mediatized it for sharing and analysis. In addition to these field notes from this spoken retelling, I have de-identified Tapestry’s “official” video version and my recording of a subsequent retelling at an October 2019 training. [link]
One person asked about if she needed help with the big LCD screen (or maybe just if we should look at it?). Hannah replied that no, this presentation would happen at a table.
She first took out of a blue backpack a 6-8 inch circular yin-yang disc, with a labyrinth pattern printed on it. She said that this training, and each meeting with our youth, would “start at a threshold,” and it would be good for us to “walk slowly with deliberation.” She said this work is about holding space, sacred space, safe space. And that like walking a labyrinth, we’d need to ask at the end how do we walk back into everyday life.
She then took out the second “symbol” which she told us we should see again. It was a black trash bag and it represented a “dark, scary time.” For this story and for the youth, the black garbage bag would be an “unfortunate foundation.” From here I started numerating the objects and principles as Hannah presented them:
- Box (small, white, cardboard?) – the youth feel boxed in, not in control. They’re always subject to rules and regulations, which serve both to protect them and to isolate them.
- Egg (hollow, it turns out) – Inside the box is memories, things that are important to them, but often those memories are lost or broken (here she broke the egg somewhat dramatically).
- Hope (the principles were written on little text tent placards) – Discussed in conjunction with …
- Red wooden or plastic heart – Your job is to be a “channel of love.” You’ll help provide hope through your relationship and personal spirituality.
- Doll figure (initially lying on its side) – When you first meet your youth, they’ll probably seem broken and down. But “hour by hour” your visits will help them to pick themselves up (some mechanism causes figure to stand).
- Presence – Another “guiding principles” placard. Discussed in conjunction with …
- Wooden articulated figure – Your presence is the most important thing. You have what you need to do this work. Bring your full self. You don’t need to do or be anything special.
- Gloves – Warmth and compassion is how you’ll emotionally support your youth.
- Goggles – You’ll also help create a safe space. It will take time, but inside that safe space you each will try new things and show each other how to walk in a new way.
- Telescope – We want you to see new things. You should expect to be changed.
- Letters/cards in envelope – We know some of you travel a lot for work, but you can keep in touch with cards, etc. Let your youth know that you’re keeping them in your mind/heart.
- Recreation/re-creation – Guiding principles placard.
My notes say “I think here she told the story of someone who took months before she would start a meeting with anything other than ‘how much are you being paid to be here?’ and ‘how many other people do you need to see?'” This is a significant story, but probably came at a less ritualized time in the training.
- Paddle game -> Yes, there’s a serious part of this work, but show up and have fun. We want you to help your youth “feel normal.” No evaluation. No report.
- Caterpillar/butterfly toy set – The youth should be free to be themselves. To move forward and backward. Let them be who they need to be right now.
- Communion – Guiding principles placard, discussed in conjunction with …
- Interlocking, multi-colored gear-box toy – I’m a pastor in a Christian denomination and in our tradition communion is about togetherness. We want you to never feel alone in this work. There are many layers of support. We want to build an ecosystem.
This point in the final object / action underscores the impossibility of mutually exclusive categories. Earlier, Hannah talked about the mutual growth / gifts dynamic in conjunction with the principle of presence. But it’s relevant to the interconnectedness named by communion too, plus here she mentions hope as well.
- Water added to absorbent sponge – Water is also important in many spiritual traditions. If you keep adding drops of hope, some parts of you and parts of your youth will grow.
Hannah told us the artifacts that the youth find meaningful have provided learnings in their organization, like how the Cards for Hope program addressed how the kids weren’t getting much love during the holidays. Here she also mentioned the Foster Youth Experience.
After this we did an active listening activity, where each person told a short story about someone who was a mentor or guide or nurturing force to them, and then the listeners needed to draw it. My sketches (of others’ stories) were as follows: one of a “judgmental” but attentive grandmother keeping track of everything going on and trying to help make the experience a good one, one of a dancer who recently returned and though she couldn’t do everything she used to be able to do, her new teacher has gathered a company of dancers and helped them make strides together.
The attentive grandmother 
The nurturing dance teacher
Next we watched and engaged with some digital stories, an unsurprising but welcome addition to what I was already coming to understand as a day of multimodal pedagogy. I thought I had already seen at least a version of one of the stories in a collection facilitated by Storycenter and published by the National Center for Lesbian Rights , but as I review that resource and Tapestry’s training stories I see that I have that detail wrong.
In the column of my notes where I kept analysis rather than description, I wrote here, “caring, space-holding, spiritual practice, community.”
I was struck in the stories by the themes of labels (“I’m not static”), of the foster youth “support structure” so often failing, and of meds and therapy as a “trap.” Also the humanity of shared touch, conversation, and ordinary moments. The image of healing versus warehousing was powerful. It also seems fitting that the “adults who stuck with me” theme is big here in these stories: “My life was worth their time.”
In conversation with my neighbor after we watched the stories, she said these artifacts helped to “get a point across without saying it directly.”
After lunch we had the experience of having our circles be removed and placed within someone else’s world. We talked about this prompt for shifting our perspective, as well as the video I describe next, in pairs after the video was done. One of my conversation partners noted that he would “never have a dog.”
Next we watched a more dramatic video (ReMoved), still based on a first-person story, but this one acted out as a film. It captured the effect trauma triggering has on one youth + (foster) parent dynamic but ended on the note of hope, of finding something to look forward to and watching out for it.
My neighbor and I talked about impact of the video. One of his comments was about the challenges of keeping siblings with a larger age gap together in a single foster family. I hadn’t made the connection that similarly aged siblings are easier to place together.
Later Hannah told the story of the “teepee moment,” I believe to follow up on the issue of being with people who have experienced significant trauma and how they need to be able to be where they are.
I wrote in my interpretive column “sacred space, energy.”
In the story, a pair of mentors showed up where youth was sitting in teepee that caregivers had set up. The youth said they didn’t want to come out and have their time with mentors. They said “well, this is your time” and they sat outside the teepee and talked to each other. Within about 20 minutes, the youth came out and started engaging.
Hannah stressed common experiences too: “this is kind of like a life thing” and later “our stories sympathize.” On the subject of common experience, I think she talked about how all of us feel the need to try to earn love and stability.
After wrapping up our conversation about ReMoved and the transplanted life experiences activity, we took the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) inventory. Hannah very vulnerably shared that her high score was fairly high. Mine was quite low, which I recognized from my pastoral experience as both an asset and a limitation to empathetic presence to and for others. We talked a lot about resilience and about how caring adult relationships, even just one, can be a buffer to the effects of ACEs.
What followed this activity and discussion was a section on “how Tapestry works.” In particular, Hannah got very specific about the chain of relationships in mentor teams:
At the end of the training, Hannah invited us to return to the objects on the front table and see what new thoughts we might have had about them after the day’s activities. Later in my debrief with her while I helped her load her car, Hannah mentioned to me that this was the first time they’d used the guiding principles story at the beginning of the day rather than just at the end. She seemed pleased with how that went and I agreed that it seemed effective in establishing a common understanding. Didn’t need the practicalities in order to understand it. And there was people’s energy and focus to consider great change.
Other things that came up in our debrief:
- Hannah reported they’ve been mentioning my name in connection with wanting to acquire the artifacts of the Foster Youth Experience, since they are so powerful. She said they would like to see the exhibits at more cathedrals or large churches and thought I could be helpful with that.
- We talked about how it was Tapestry’s biggest-ever training with “really good energy.” She said sometimes it’s much quieter, especially in the small-group work.
- Hannah talked about a possible partnership or merger with a religiously affiliated healthcare network, a connection facilitated by a mutual religious leader acquaintance.
- We started talking about possibilities for a summer storytelling activity or camp. Hannah mentioned that transportation is the big challenges, plus mentor availability.
Data collection
- Field notes?: Yes
- Audio recording?: No
- Photographs?: Yes
Significant observations
- The choice to bring spatial theory to bear on my analysis seems consistent with the organization’s own awareness of its work. I wrote in my notes, “I’m noticing the idea of ‘holding space’ came up a lot, in terms of relationships, of processes/practices, and of the geography of the city.”
- I recognized in the guiding principles presentation the format of a Godly Play story, from the Montessori-inspired approach to religious education of same name. Hannah later confirmed the connection.
Interpretive insights
- I wrote at the time that I believed I was seeing on Hannah’s part a desire to help the volunteers in the room “make space to connect, to pay attention, to navigate silence and noise. They’re trying to help us find appropriate awareness of our personal ‘stuff’ and to trust that that too is helpful.”
- I don’t think I ever heard language like “trauma-informed system,” but I believe part of the enacted curriculum of the trainings is to help potential volunteers get comfortable with the idea of likely frequent encounters with signs and experiences of trauma—and to trust that they as individuals and teams (and the youth themselves) can be resilient to it.
Implications / reflections
- It’s hard for me to adequately emphasize my excitement about the role of digital stories and other media artifacts and storytelling practices as a part of Tapestry training. Similarly, I was very excited to recognize a faith-adjacent appropriation of Godly Play at work in this setting helping to form common culture and launch mentors on their own journey of formation as well as their ministry of presence with Tapestry youth.
References