Freedom to children… for their healing and growth

Last night, we had Gourmet Night. Among the participants, there were many fathers and mothers who have been not able to see their children due to divorce or separation and children who live with a single parent separately from the other parent due to divorce, too.

All the participants, no matter adult or child, are amid family abuse or those who have already overcome it. They all have experienced family-related pains, about which are difficult to talk with and hardly understood by other people generally.

The adult participants talk about Domestic Violence, abuse, love relationship, sex and family-related matters freely – they are sometimes a little bit beer talking. So-called perpetrators and victims talk together, and the participants get aware that the perpetrator-victim relationship is not simple as it looks, it can’t be simply said what hurts and heals a person, and that labeling the perpetrator and victim is meaningless.

Beside the adults talking, the children enjoy games freely. At a glance, the atmosphere looks not good for education. The situation looks stupid, crazy and shameless.

But, what rules the situation is the very basic principle that nobody can control or hurt someone else by power and nobody can deny sense of value of another person. Such principle is nowadays what you can rarely see in the real society.

In Gourmet Night, children learn how they make human relationships depending on their individual characters – the principle of autonomy at own risk. What is more, children have an experience that many adults respect and accept them as he or she is.

The experience in Gourmet Night makes children deepen understanding of the circumstance of adults, though they could not understand what happened in their own families amid the abuse. Then, the children can cultivate the sense of self-esteem and self-confidence. Of course, it takes a long time of six months, a year or more… Seeing the growth of children is a magnificent pleasure for me, and I am proud of being a therapist.

What happens in Gourmet Night may be difficult to understand for the people who live in the framework of common sense and difficult to use as a therapy method, because, in the society today, the human relationship relies on power controlling, no matter which the power of a role in a family, academism or administrative authority.