Week five of Mission Thrive Summer culminated in the much-anticipated cooking battle, a half day competition between four teams, the Wolf People, Pandas, Elephants, and Pucks, in which each team’s lunch meal was evaluated by three judges.
Creating a safe space, breathing deeply, and focusing on positive thoughts isn’t easy. By practicing simple mindfulness techniques, students in Mission Thrive Summer learn to deal with stress and find healthy alternatives to cope with life’s challenges.
In addition to farming, nutrition, and healthy cooking, Mission Thrive Summer introduces students to important life skills including money management. During week three students learned that every penny counts.
Mission Thrive Summer participants concluded their second week by playing Rose-Bud-Thorn, an exercise in which they named their best and worst experiences of the week.
This week, 30 Baltimore City high school students began Mission Thrive Summer, our program designed to empower youth with tools for making healthy decisions.
Mission Thrive Summer crew leaders have been farming and training for the past two weeks, and plan to spend the next five weeks working alongside the program’s youth participants by leading, teaching, and mentoring them. This year’s team includes a former student participant and a few new faces.
Participating in Mission Thrive Summer built upon Mikal’s skills and developed his social side, enabling him to become a stronger communicator and supportive team member.
To conclude their Mission Thrive Summer experience, participants presented a community health expo this week at the Rita M. Church Community Center in Clifton Park.
As Mission Thrive Summer participants learned last week, the biggest culprits are soft drinks, such as iced coffee, sodas, and sports drinks. These beverages have been found to be a top calorie source in teens’ diets.
Life Lab is a life skills training aimed at helping participants in Mission Thrive Summer become productive citizens in their community. Sessions cover important parts of holding a job and being an active, leading member of a healthy community.
Healing is facilitated through safety, persistence, and trust.
Resources support us as we heal. They include reframing, responsibility, and positivity. “Making connections enabled participants to acquire and refine resources and skills that were essential in their healing journey. People also brought their own personal strengths to the journey.”
“Connection to others was an essential part of all the healing journeys.” Humans are social creatures, and even the most introverted of us need close relationships. Friends and family add meaning and value to life and help support us, in good times and bad.
When we experience relational trauma, relationships can feel scary, but reestablishing safety and trust in relationships is where the healing happens. (To be clear, we do not mean reestablishing safety and trust with abusers, but rather finding other healing relationships.)
“When safety and trust had been established, people were able to connect with helpers. The nature of the behaviours of helpers that fostered healing ranged from small acts of kindness to unconditional love.”
Healing probably means different things to different people, but one definition that emerged from the study is: “The re-establishment of a sense of integrity and wholeness.”
Healing was an emergent property that resulted from each individuals’ complex healing journey, a result of bridged connections between resources and relationships. “…they gradually found relief from suffering and began to exhibit emergent characteristics: a sense of hope, self-acceptance, and a desire to help others—the immediate precursors to healing.”
In varying degrees, “they were able to transcend their suffering and in some sense to flourish.”
Suffering is the ongoing pain from wounding.
There is some debate about whether people always experience suffering on the path to healing.
Wounding happens when we experience physical or emotional harm. It can stem from chronic illness or by physical or psychological trauma for which we do not have the tools to cope, or a combination of those factors.
“The degree and quality of suffering experienced by each individual is framed by contextual factors that include personal characteristics, timing of their initial or ongoing wounding in the developmental life cycle and prior and current relationships.”
Characteristics: How predisposed someone may be to wounding/how many tools and resources someone may have to deal with trauma/illness.
Lifestages: Developmental timing plays an important role in the impact of trauma — young children often do not have the same resources as older adults.
Relationships: Relationships can provide solace and support for those suffering, while lack of healthy relationships can prolong suffering.
