May 2014: Cuban Art Therapist (who would have thought it!)...

[I've had this entry on draft mode since the night I read the call for papers on the last AATA journal. In essence: How art therapists grapple with cultural/diversity/identity. ]

To be quite honest, I am still naive (but getting better every day). I didn't think much about diversity or culture growing-up. I don't think most of us do.  Until it happened, I stepped out of the nurturing pockets I’d grown-up in. Quite possibly there had been some hints at it, but I was unable to recognize them for what they were. Everyone else was quite like my family...then again I did not expect to be isolated because of my career choices either. Singled-out on another front for not fitting the preexisting categories. Not a teacher of children. Not a "starving" artist. Not a psychologist nor a medical doctor (didn't marry one of those either).

Yes. All that is my last name...that part too. No you can't just shove some of it as a middle name. I don’t have one of those.  

Yes. Art therapy IS a thing (my student loans tell me I didn’t make it up).

Allow me to provide some further context... I’ve called this country ‘home’ since right before Andrew swept away most of South Florida and I learned what chickenpox was. It appeared that blackouts were not indigenous to the island. And soon enough my sister and I would catch our age equivalent peers’ growth rate thanks to kids meals (there wasn’t much awareness of it being hormones-to-go but it certainly helped). Eight years later, I was the first member of the family to attend a US college. But before that, I went home to visit the family.

The home of my youth, with old plaster paint chipping and cracking, and a patchwork of repairs everywhere. The furniture from my memories was all there (well, mostly) as was the wall paint.  The two story building I knew was mine thanks to an over joyous first-time dad permanently soldering my name onto the stair railing.

The red-dirt roads, the pothole minefields equivalent of a highway, and the now foreign speed signs in kilometers. This home was made familiar and comforting by means of the family we left behind. This home was foreign and obtuse by so much else. It happened in such a brief absence; this should have been a wake-up call. In many ways it was.

On one stifling hot afternoon I purposefully strolled across town (to get to the other side). A cat-call rose through the sounds of the busy main thoroughfare...something witty and quite accurate. To the effect of, she looks like a glass of milk..someone take her to the beach.  Couldn't figure out where it came from, and continuing on my way, it took me a minute to decipher through the language filter...Oh, right. of course that's what he meant... I no longer look like I belong.   

Fourteen years since -- and most don't question the apparent lack of pigmentation that reminds me I work indoors. In North Florida unless you’re a student and care for that sort of thing, bleachyness is just fine. Except of course when there's some sort of prolonged verbal interaction.  That's when you can see the gears starting to turn... 

It must have been my interpretation of the English language. Maybe, I let something slip? Surely, the cogs are  moving. Now they’re scrutinizing my features. Wait for it... here it comes...  (tho most times the conversations come and go and I don't get asked, which is just fine..they can keep mulling it over): What are you?

It is hard to plan for these questions. Harder still when you didn't see them coming because you didn't feel different.  And this is the question asked? Really? I guess it makes sense, something that is different calls our attention.  And I guess I'm not usually what people expect. [more on that later, maybe]

I am the new art therapist [it was 2007 and I had just graduated with a masters in art therapy, and I was hired to work in a forensic mental health hospital]. I’m coming-in to revitalize the “art” class that has adults coloring copies of outdated children's coloring books. Yes, I’m the one that threw away all the copies. I used them to test the art materials that were laying around pre-toxicity ratings and yes, I too found new homes for those items deemed too dangerous to have out in the open. I counted my scissors, numbered them also. Kept tabs on pens and pencils. Rules and ethical standards, I have those too.

With every new face (and sometimes with known ones I haven't seen in a while) I start from scratch. ... before they get to ask I volunteer: Hi. Yes, I do the cool stuff with the art.  No worries, you don’t need to know how to draw.

As witty as that sounded in my head that wasn’t what I said when I did the deer-in-headlights to the staff that asked the What are you question. In an instant the other truth came out: Cuban. Why?  

Too late. Satisfied with the answer he turned and left.

Commenting as he did: I knew there was something that was different about you.

And that moment of awkwardness passed. Only to be joined by others. While he was the first, he was certainly not the last.

Are you a magician? If I draw something for you, you can tell what I’m thinking?

In the career path I have chosen not much comes-by easily. Not even the art. In most cases this path takes you away from the place you called home and sets you on a new one. It facilitates self-nurturance through the visual arts but not without putting-in the time. As art therapists we are granted the empathy and patience needed to work with those who need it most and that too comes at a cost (one that we must be on the look-out for).

For most of us the most important questions will not get asked out loud, but they will certainly persist and rise to the surface:

Who/What am I?

What am I doing here?

Do I belong here? (and for how long)

I am an art therapist. If you’re pleasantly surprised or totally confused, lets talk about it so it doesn’t hang in the air and make it awkward to communicate. I hear these questions in myself (from time to time). I read them between the lines of questions from the students I have the pleasure to work with. And while I do not have the answers, I offer support so they find their own way, their own answers, because soon enough they will be on their own.

...and maybe they'll realize as I did, that there was never really any doubt.

An Art Therapist is who they were meant to be.