‘A healing journey’

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This article was published 19/05/2017 (3093 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

By the way the teens rushed the stage, Billie Schibler knew the concert she planned had been a smash hit.

Just look at them, Schibler pointed out later. Look at the way they clustered around the show’s star, Robb Nash, for autographs. Look at how they blinked back tears as they talked to him, or asked him to pose for pictures.

It was real, that connection. Teens are judicious in their affections; they don’t bestow that kind of excitement on just anyone. As CEO of the Metis Child and Family Services Authority, Schibler knows that all too well.

So the buzz, on that rainy Tuesday afternoon at the Park Theatre, gave Schibler reason to smile.

For the first time, the Métis authority had gathered its youth in care for a concert, to share a simple message: hope.

It’s all in the delivery. Nash is a Winnipeg musician, who ditched the commercial circuit years ago. He became a hybrid rocker-motivational speaker, performing at schools and on First Nations across North America.

As a speaker, he is kinetic, a lanky 6-5 tornado of energy. He leans on his own story — he nearly died at 17 in a devastating car crash — to drive home his message: one of healing; one of acceptance; and one of survival.

No, he tells kids, bad things don’t always happen for a reason. But you can make choices in how you face them, and pain always comes with strength. He talks about the gifts they have, even if others don’t always see them.

After concerts, youth hand him their suicide notes, saying they no longer need them. Some ask him to autograph scars from self-harm, which he signs with his name and a promise written with a Sharpie: “This is my last mark.”

So as youth clustered around Nash after Tuesday’s show, Schibler had reason to smile. For these teens, living in foster care and many struggling with their own pain and trauma, Nash’s messages hit very close to the heart.

That is why, for the first time, the Métis authority brought them together for a special concert. In so doing, it signalled a new direction for how it hopes to support its 1,317 youth in care: more community, more connection.

The idea came to Schibler in January after she watched Nash perform in a televised mental health special. She was so impressed, the next day she told staff she wanted to find a way to connect Nash with their youth.

It meant taking kids out of school for an afternoon, but Schibler believed it was worth it. She’d watched as her own kids tacked obituaries and photos in their rooms, memories of friends lost to suicide, gone far too soon.

Now, she wanted to find a way to catch youth struggling with that pain, to show them a path forward. But she knew it had to happen in a way kids could connect to organically; it couldn’t just be more of the same.

“They need to hear the message coming from someone like Robb,” Schibler said. “These kids have been social-worked to death, for the most part. They just want to be able to figure it out, but they need some help.

“There’s a time where we need to step back,” she added.

At the Park Theatre, that meant letting Nash do the talking. He does not shy away from painful topics; he described his own struggle with suicidal thoughts after the car crash. He talked about addictions and loss.

That frankness, Mitch Bourbonniere thought, was key. A veteran social worker, Bourbonniere works with youth in care through what’s called action therapy, an approach that combines community work and simple friendship.

“I wasn’t worried about the kids being triggered because we talk about this stuff all the time,” he said. “We’re dealing with suicide. We’re dealing with sexual abuse or drugs and alcohol. Gangs, sexual exploitation, all of it.”

“I’ll tell you why I think today worked,” Bourbonniere continued. “Kids have radar for who is genuine and who isn’t. Myself and all my kids felt that this guy is the real deal. He’s genuine. His heart’s in the right place.”

Watching from the edge of the room, Jainna Cabral was moved; once, she was a youth in care, too. Today, she is a program director at Voices, an advocacy and support network for kids and alumna of the foster-care system.

In one of Nash’s songs, Cabral said, the singer says it best. In the tune, called Trouble Child, there is a lyric that epitomizes the struggle of many kids in care: “You never heard me crying,” Nash sings, “so I screamed.”

To Cabral, that line hit home. “We see a lot of kids screaming.”

Beside her, Jessica Edwards nodded. Now 30, Edwards was taken into care as an infant; in 1992, she became a permanent CFS ward. Today, she is a student at Yellowquill College, studying First Nations-centred social work.

In that work, she can bring a wisdom earned from experience. Jessica transitioned out of care at age 19, but with few family or social supports, she struggled. Events like Tuesday’s concert, she thought, might have helped.

“I think it would have given hope,” she said. “I didn’t receive these messages as a child, or as a youth, or even during my transition period… I wasn’t able to work on myself. I didn’t understand my emotions and my feelings.

“I thought, ‘I’m just a pissed-off teenager, and nobody else is going through what I’m going through.’

“The experience at an event like this is that we’re all here, and we’re all safe. It’s a healing journey.”

That healing journey was something of a test balloon; now, Schibler is planning to hold a similar, bigger event in September. For that one, she’s invited other CFS authorities to bring the kids in their care, too.

Events like this are not a neat solution for the pain of many youth in care, she knows. But in connecting youth through something special, in reaching out and being proactive, advocates and caregivers see a bright future.

“This, to me, is on the right path,” Bourbonniere said.

“I believe community will also save people, so when we bring people together like this? The more community events you have, the more it becomes a community.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca