ANGEL FACES
This is awesome:
"Recently, twenty one carefully selected girls arrived from the United States, Canada and Mexico with challenges even greater than we had anticipated. At least half of the girls had burn injuries of over 60%, a few with 90% of their body surface, arrived with significant lack of mobility and trauma that brought those injuries (nearly too heartbreaking to share).  I’ve learned over the last decade of working with these courageous young women, the exterior injuries are only the tip of the iceberg. Social, familial and grief/loss issues are usually floating near the surface — hungry for solid education and tender loving care. This particular retreat was the most powerful in the connection we see with the girls. The compassion, love and support each girl showed toward each other (90% of girls did not know each other when they arrived) is something we usually don't see until the third day. It was clear to me on the morning after their arrival — they were bonded together."


Read the whole thing...


"I turned to my safest companion, my journal.  It was the only place where I could honestly express how I felt without the fear of being judged by people whom I no longer trusted.  Writing saved me from being swallowed by sorrow.  I discovered solace in composing poems.  The language of poetry gave me a way to transform my hurt and wrath into symbols and images that  I could control.  When my classmates snickered at me or whispered unkind names behind my back in study hall, I closed myself off from them by writing a poem and immersing myself in the soothing sound of the pen darting across the page."--Jodee Blanco, PLEASE STOP LAUGHING AT ME.