Children as Trees

By Julia Crawford (right)

Just before the start of the Bhutanese refugee therapeutic movement and visual art session, the mother of a young boy who attends our sessions regularly began to tell me that her son had been hit by a car since our last session. As she told the story, her 7-year-old son buzzed around the room, whistling and dancing, exploring and touching every interesting thing in the room. He seemed to keep an ear open to hearing what his mother shared and he became particularly intrigued when his 10-year-old sister came over to contribute to the story. Her eyes welled up as she explained what it was like to see her brother in the hospital. Upon seeing this, he quickly came over to tease her for caring about him. Both children have already experienced a great deal in their short years.


Their family is from Bhutan, but their parents became refugees before they were born. They were born in Nepal and their father passed away some time after. They were relocated to South Philadelphia where they now live with their caring mother and other relatives. They work hard in school and they love to sing, dance, and play. Many of the other Bhutanese refugee children have similar stories to tell. In their short lives their roots have been transplanted, some have witnessed extremely violent acts, some have lived in refugee camps for all or most of their years, some have lost beloved parents and family members, and still others have experienced great hardship since arriving in South Philadelphia. Despite all of this, the children are resilient.

Throughout our movement and visual arts sessions we have been building on the metaphor of a tree: If a tree’s roots are strong it can survive and grow through a storm, heal its own wounds, and even thrive after being transplanted. Every tree has a story, just as every child has a story. The depth of its roots reveal its sturdiness, the rings of its trunk reveal its age, the notches and knots in its bark reveal the adversity it has survived, and the colors of its leaves reveal its ability to adapt. I brought a tree trunk to our third session for the children to see, feel, smell, and experience.

As the children shared what they saw in the tree trunk they began to share pieces of their own stories. They remarked that the trunk of the tree had bark that was like their skin and they noticed that this trunk had a deep cut in its side. This made them sad, but the children encouraged one another, “sometimes, even when trees get cuts, they are able to keep growing.” In so many ways, these children are like the trees that are able to heal themselves and keep growing. The children then shared something they had learned at school, “trees take in bad air and turn it into good air.”

I asked if they are ever like a tree in this way, “do you ever take something that is bad and turn it into something good?” A nine-year-old boy adamantly and nonchalantly exclaimed, “Yes! All the time.” I asked him to tell me about it. He explained his resourcefulness, “like when a toy breaks, if a wheel comes off your truck, you can use the wheel for something else, you can play with it differently.” Resourceful and creative ideas for how to adapt when things do not go as planned quickly became the hot topic of the day.
Later that same session, the children were creating self-portraits using markers, fabric, furry materials, and lots of glue. Two older boys commented on a young girl’s self-portrait telling her that it looked nothing like her. She proudly said, “No it doesn’t, but we can be creative, remember?” Taking the cue, another child got some fuzzy material to give himself a mustache on his self-portrait. The buzz around the room was that it was okay to be creative, to imagine something new for yourself.

Imaginative hopes for the future began to show up in the self-portrait artwork. As a BuildaBridge Artist on Call, I come to each session with the children to be like a mirror that reveals the creativity, hope, and resilience that is already within them. Their creativity has blossomed and we know hope fills them because they smile and they laugh, they work together and are enthusiastic to know more about the world. But their hope depends on the nurturing of their creativity and resilience.

Only the children can grow their roots. Their creativity and resilience determine how deep and sturdy their roots will grow to be; how they will solve problems in their life and how they will recover from challenges that will arise. My role is to water the roots, to push in nutritious soil, and to stand alongside the trees like a caretaker in order that they might continue to grow. These children are deepening their roots and growing upwards, their trunks are strong and their futures are full of possibility.