During collectively traumatic events art therapists sprang into action with pastels and paints.
“The true purpose of art is one of resilience, not pathology or the expression of mental illness.” Cathy Malchodi, PhD
Scraps of charred paper rained from the sky as Marygrace Berberian stepped out of the World Trade Center. At 7:45 AM, she stopped by the shopping concourse on its lower level to search for a gift for her brother. Marygrace wanted to celebrate his recent promotion as an NYPD officer.
Standing at the produce market in front of the towers, she looked up. By the time she purchased a large fruit salad to share at her morning meeting and walked to her office across the street, she was covered in hot paper fragments. The office receptionist stopped her and asked what happened, picking scraps from her hair.
“I don’t know,” Marygrace replied. She overheard a delivery man say a fire sparked inside the World Trade Center. Her heart raced and she was eager to tell others. Another person asked, “Did you hear that?” but Marygrace heard nothing. Her colleagues flicked on the news. Marygrace’s eyes glazed over, images from her morning, the faces she encountered in the towers, replayed. “Are you okay?” a coworker asked.
The whole building shook. Marygrace was on the 32nd floor of her office building at 120 Broadway when the second plane hit. The lights turned off and the emergency alarm rang. Disoriented faces wandered the streets and some of Marygrace’s coworkers convened at the corner of Broadway and Cedar. Marygrace knew they had to flee. “I knew because my dad was trained as an EMT, that you never stand around looking for an accident,” Marygrace told me. “You always try to get yourself out.”
She and her colleagues descended into a subway station, no longer manned by a train clerk. People jumped over the turnstiles and into a waiting train. Marygrace made it onboard just before the doors closed. A few minutes later, the train came to a screeching halt beneath the East River. The power went out and everything turned black. Marygrace peered through the window into the dark train car next to hers as people screamed and banged on the doors. Some passengers prayed and others began to pass out. The woman sitting next to Marygrace slumped over. Marygrace pulled out the fruit from the green market, and fed the woman mango, hoping its sugar would keep her conscious.
As Marygrace recounted this to me, she began to laugh. “It’s just so typical of me that I would just try to feed people as we thought we were gonna die.” Marygrace did what is in her nature: caretaking.
Marygrace is an art therapist and by 9/11, she already guided art therapy sessions for students with social and emotional difficulties. That afternoon, Marygrace was supposed to launch a program at a public school downtown to provide therapeutic arts for children from immigrant families. But, after tragedy struck that morning and she escaped from the subway, she collapsed in her bed.
Following the attack, Marygrace was surprised by her long-term psychological symptoms. About ten years ago, Marygrace was working at NYU when an explosion produced by a gas line forced the building to evacuate. Marygrace thought she’d responded appropriately, but her coworkers asked if she was alright “because I was completely robotic and just desensitized,” she recalled.
As Marygrace processed her own experience of the tragedy, she remained dedicated to supporting young New Yorkers. In the days following the terrorist attack, she heard from teachers and parents that they needed support, and she could see that the kids were overwhelmed. “I’m always like, ‘okay, how can I help?’ And that’s really what was the driving force for me.”
Marygrace started out as an art teacher after she received her Bachelor’s Degree in Art Education and Psychology from NYU. She taught kids living in Coney Island’s public housing. Students told her, through their art, about traumatic experiences they endured. “Everything I saw in their artwork was describing so much pain. They loved art. And they loved the time that we spent together,” Marygrace told me. But, she didn’t know how to respond. “That’s what made me pursue my degree in art therapy” and later her Masters in social work.
Marygrace was halfway towards earning her Masters degree when the twin towers collapsed. She put her knowledge to work just days after the attack, concentrating her school-based therapeutic care in Chinatown. She also spearheaded The World Trade Center Children’s Mural Project which focused on the most expressive part of the body: the face. Students created self-portraits that reflected their response to 9/11. Marygrace designed the project so teachers and youth workers could easily facilitate it. She utilized a common organization of therapeutic approaches: clarification, confrontation, and interpretation.
The adults started by opening a discussion with the students about the event and dispelled misconceptions. Children sometimes form inaccurate conclusions based on tidbits of information they’ve gathered. This can make children feel as though they are threatened even when they are not. It’s also important to acknowledge the sources children get their information from and assess the details’ accuracy. As a group, they acknowledged racial and cultural differences while emphasizing the common goal of peace. They brainstormed ways to respond to the attacks and rebutted anti-Arab sentiments. Then the kids began crafting their self-portraits and reflected with the adults.
While art supplies can’t stop the bleeding, they can help heal invisible wounds, the ones that leave scars across the brain. Long-term effects of trauma manifest psychologically, through inattention and intrusive thoughts, and physically, through an overactive stress system and behavioral changes. There is no single path to managing these symptoms, but processing the trauma, rather than avoiding it, is a vital step. Art therapy opens the conversation about trauma in a nonverbal, non-judgemental, and creative way. Crafting a trauma narrative using an artistic medium enables the artist to integrate the traumatic experience within the entire story of their life. Therefore, they can view their trauma as a single experience instead of a defining aspect of their existence. Psychological wellbeing relies on one’s ability to process experiences to form coherent life narratives and interpretations of the world.
When someone depicts their trauma through art, they are able to take control of the narrative. They create something that is their own and reclaim power over an uncontrollable situation. Therapeutic techniques that target trauma utilize the power of control to help the patient reframe their experience in a way that allows them to establish a sense of authority. It is beneficial to use an interest, such as art, as a building block towards resilience. This provides the patient with a sense of confidence, self-efficacy, and control. Artistic representation gives the experience meaning beyond what the individual went through. One can create something new, something their own. The product is everlasting and allows artists to immortalize loss.
What we experience informs our self-image and art is created through our own lens informed by trauma and self-image. Art helps us understand ourselves and can help expose thought distortions. This means we can examine thoughts that are permanent (such as ‘I’ll never be happy again’), pervasive (‘I always ruin things’), or too personalized (‘this is my fault’).
In psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk’s novel, The Body Keeps the Score, he discusses how people internalize trauma. “If you come from an incomprehensible world filled with secrecy and fear,” he writes, “it’s almost impossible to find the words to express what you have endured.” Trauma is stored in the body, it is not represented through words. Young children often lack the verbal skills to communicate complex emotions and adolescents do not want to discuss their trauma. In fact, avoiding conversations about the trauma is a characteristic response in traumatized people of any age. Dr. van der Kolk also wrote, “In order to recover, mind, body, and brain need to be convinced that it is safe to let go. That happens only when you feel safe at a visceral level and allow yourself to connect that sense of safety with memories of past helplessness.” One of the therapeutic powers of art is that it relaxes our body’s stress response system. Our heart rate slows and levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, decreases. This state of relaxation provides a safe foundation for difficult trauma discussions to unfold.
Christina Hoven conducted a study following 9/11 that showed that the children who attended schools close to ground zero had lower rates of mental health disorders. Researchers hypothesized this to be the case because mental health initiatives, such as Marygrace’s mural project, were focused in the neighborhoods surrounding the twin towers. Researchers also found that a family member’s direct exposure to 9/11 had an even stronger impact on the child’s mental health than if the child themselves were directly exposed. Also, the children who experienced one or more prior traumas were more likely to develop mental disorders. These findings exemplify the importance of mental health care, the emotional well-being of parents, and the number of traumatic experiences on a child’s ability to display resilience.
Much like Marygrace’s therapeutic art initiative following 9/11, she envisioned ways to promote resilience during the Coronavirus pandemic with art. Her next mission is called The Parachute Project, a global art therapy initiative aimed to enable introspection, healing, and growth during the age of COVID-19.
I arrive early at Public School 321 in Park Slope on a March afternoon sunny enough to convince me winter is behind us. Standing in the school’s lobby, I watch a handful of parents strut through the front door to sign their kids out early. Then, in walks Marygrace, wearing glasses with thick, flared frames that compliment her dark hair. Hunched over, she hauls in armfuls of reusable bags filled with acrylic paints, chalk pastels, disposable face masks, and other supplies. She plops the bags down on a bench facing the courtyard, where she settles in and catches me up on her chaotic commute. She pulls out a mask and some markers from her bags and begins drawing a large orange and yellow sun on the center of the mask. As she adds the sun’s rays, she tells me about her two daughters.
The eldest, Madeline, just published her first story in her high school’s newspaper and the youngest, Ella, is a student in the class Marygrace came to visit that afternoon at PS 321. Her purpose this Friday is to guide a fifth-grade class through the mask decorating process central to the Parachute Project. “Don’t be cringy” Ella ordered her mom before school.
By the time the class returns from their field trip to the Brooklyn Museum, their classroom is already set up with paint brushes and pallets, cups of water, and large sheets of paper covering the desks that were pushed together in groups of six. The students quietly file in and take their seats, flashing tentative glances at the guests in their classroom. Marygrace and her assistant Rohita Kilachand walk to the front of the room and talk about how the pandemic challenged people in different ways. They asked about how Coronavirus has been hard on kids and across the classroom, hands shoot into the air. One boy shares that wearing masks makes it hard to communicate. Marygrace and Rohita ask the students if they felt stressed during the pandemic. Nearly every hand raises immediately and after a few seconds, the stragglers also lift their palms. Marygrace and Rohita take this time to gauge the students’ understanding of the pandemic, keeping an ear out for misconceptions.
Collective trauma stirs up confusion, fear, and anxiety. Before we can process our emotions, we must first eliminate misconceptions about our reality that may exacerbate our worries. This is why Marygrace began the Parachute Project, much like the World Trade Center Children’s Mural Project, with an open discussion about the collective trauma: its causes, effects, and repercussions. Once a child grasps their reality, they can begin to understand and reconcile with their emotions. That’s when the students pick up their art supplies. Their task is to decorate face masks in a way that reflects their growth throughout the pandemic.
Some dive right into painting their masks while others plan their designs, sketching their initial ideas on the paper protecting the desks. Some students swipe paint right on their masks with the colors provided while others mix their own. One student sitting up front swirls up a shade of lilac, one that they associate with inner peace.
At the back of the classroom, I watch Zoe blot vibrant colors into the creases of a disposable mask. Her braids brush her cheeks as she works, and the sleeves of her white, waffle knit shirt dangle dangerously close to the black paint she coated the majority of the mask with. As the mask opens up, the folds expand to reveal the color beneath the overwhelming darkness.
I ask Zoe what she is thinking about. She gazes up at me through her rectangular glasses and compares her mask to a book. Looking at a book’s cover you can only form an impression, but once you open its pages all the colorful ideas come to life. I ask Zoe if she viewed herself in a similar way, and she agrees. There are many facets of herself—like her gamer and artistic sides—that not everyone sees.
Rohita circles the classroom, asking each student to share how they have evolved over the past two years. She prompts them to begin their statements with “I am now….” Then, for the final step, each student heads into the hallway to get their photo taken while wearing their mask. Marygrace encourages them to pose in a way that reflects how they feel. The photos, along with their corresponding “I am now…” statements will be published on the project’s website.
In the coming months, all the decorated masks will be compiled and attached together to create a massive parachute for public display. Marygrace chose a parachute because, when held with the strings hanging down, disposable masks resemble mini parachutes. Connecting the masks in such a way symbolizes the world coming together after isolation. Parachutes allow us to land safely, and this represents how people find stability during chaotic times. Decorating masks transforms what kids see as a confining and uncomfortable item into a piece of art. With the Parachute Project, Marygrace seeks to promote self-confidence, self-affirmation, and emotional expression through therapeutic art.
Over the past two years, COVID-19 ravaged the world, causing death, isolation, turmoil, and trauma. Collective trauma is a widespread experience of a tragedy that can result in traumatization. Various risk factors influence who is touched by trauma and how they respond to it. Protective factors for children, such as having support from a caring, consistent adult and access to economic resources, mitigate the threat of traumatization. How directly the child is involved in the event influences their risk of developing trauma symptoms.
Psychologist Lenore Terr conducted research on collective trauma in the wake of the 1986 Challenger space shuttle explosion to understand why the event was traumatic for one child and not for another. One of the people on board the Challenger was a middle-school history teacher named Christa McAuliffe. Some of her students had traveled from New Hampshire to Cape Canaveral to watch the liftoff in person. Other students on the east coast huddled together at school, watching the shuttle launch live on TV. Most kids on the west coast hadn’t yet arrived at school and only heard about the catastrophe after the fact. Dr. Terr studied the way these three groups of children responded to the explosion of the Challenger, and the death of all its passengers.
How close of a relationship the students had with Ms. McAuliffe helped gauge emotional proximity. Terr discovered that the level of personal engagement in the event impacted how children exhibited trauma symptoms. These symptoms differentiate who is traumatized and who is not. Her findings help us understand which children are at a higher risk of traumatization during COVID-19.
While the pandemic impacted everyone, some people’s lives were more devastated than others. Those who were closest, or most directly impacted by the virus were at higher risk of developing trauma symptoms. Some people heard about the deaths through the news, while others grieved the loss of a loved one. Some parents lost their jobs during the pandemic and the stress placed on parents can transfer onto children. Some people were better equipped to adapt to COVID-19 restrictions than others. For example, a student who shares a room with a sibling, doesn’t have access to the internet, and has a parent who has no choice but to leave their child alone while they are at work experiences difficulty attending school and receiving attention. A student who has their own room, a laptop, and stay-at-home parents faces fewer barriers to continuing their education and accessing support from an adult. Emotional proximity to the pandemic oftentimes comes down to socioeconomic status and access to resources.
The word “trauma” entered our vernacular and lost meaning after being overused. In order to understand trauma symptoms and how they surmount to a diagnosable disorder, we refer to the current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). This manual lays out five primary criteria that make up a diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Criteria A focuses on exposure to something harmful and out of the ordinary human experience. Criteria B lays out symptoms of intrusion. These Include recurring thoughts about the trauma such as flashbacks, reenactments of the event, and repetitive dreams about the experience or related themes. Criteria C discusses avoidance symptoms. Traumatized individuals often avoid discussing the event, isolate themselves, or repress memories of the trauma. Criteria D concerns alterations in mood and cognition. Traumatized individuals may develop negative self-esteem upheld by erroneous beliefs that they are to blame for the trauma. Depression and anxiety are commonly experienced alongside PTSD. Finally, Criteria E focuses on alterations in arousal. The HPA axis, which modulates the body’s stress response, can become dysregulated following trauma. The limbic system, a group of brain structures that control our emotions, can also function in maladaptive ways. For example, the amygdala, a part of the limbic system that identifies threats, becomes overactivated. Therefore, resting anxiety levels skyrocket. It is possible to exhibit some but not all of these post-traumatic symptoms, however, the patient must meet each of the five criteria to be diagnosed with PTSD.
Trauma is internalized and manifests itself in symptomatology in many different ways. Therefore, it can be difficult to place individuals in the strict diagnostic boxes laid out in the DSM-5. Diagnosing children with PTSD can be difficult because children oftentimes respond differently to trauma than adults do. “So much of the DSM is really based on adults and the way that adults present symptoms, and then it’s sort of modified for children,” said Dr. Karen Mathewson, a child and adolescent psychiatrist who treats patients recovering from trauma. Diagnostic criteria for PTSD fail to consider the impact of developmental stages on post-traumatic symptoms. It can be harder to diagnose young children because they may not display typical PTSD symptoms. PTSD is not the most common diagnosis for kids who have experienced multiple traumas. Children often show symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and conduct disorders in which trauma could be at the root. Externalizing disorders, in which symptoms are observed, can be easier to diagnose than internalizing disorders where the patient must express their internal state to uncover symptomatology. In the case of PTSD, which comes with both internalized and externalized symptoms, “it’s not diagnosed as readily or as easily because it’s harder to have the conversation with [young children],” said Dr. Mathewson. “That’s not just with PTSD,” she continued. “That’s with lots of different psychiatric diagnoses.”
Mental health professionals who work with and study traumatized youth created an unofficial alternative diagnosis that recognizes how trauma disrupts development. Dr. van der Kolk and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network suggested Developmental Trauma Disorder to be incorporated into the DSM. Dr. Mathewson tells me a new diagnosis such as Developmental Trauma Disorder “could be helpful to include because I think it captures more of how trauma affects multiple domains of development…rather than just looking for those specific symptoms” in the current PTSD definition.
The pandemic also impacted how readily PTSD could be recognized in children because it became harder to identify traumatized children while they isolated at home. Children from abusive or unstable homes faced particularly detrimental risks. Even prior to the pandemic, the most common setting where children face abuse is at home. However, referrals to Child Protective Services (CPS) decreased during COVID-19. To understand how these realities co-occur, I spoke with Dr. Mathewson who suggested the drop in referrals could be attributed to greater difficulties in recognizing signs of childhood neglect or abuse because students weren’t physically in school. School workers frequently act as the first line of defense against adverse effects following a potentially traumatic event. Adults working in schools interact with the same students almost every day and, therefore, can assess changes in each child’s behavior, cognition, and appearance. A few warning signs to look out for in children are changes in their attention span, increasing oppositional behavior, worsening academic performance, and not coming or coming late to class.
Intervention could entail discussing concerns with the caregiver, referring the child to healthcare professionals, or notifying CPS. As mandated reporters, youth workers are required to report suspected abuse or neglect when they have reasonable cause. For example, one of Dr. Matthewson’s patients depicted troubling motifs in her art at school. The art teacher referred the child to the school’s counselor who then referred the student to Open Door, a Family Medical Center which is dedicated to providing healthcare to families with a low socioeconomic status. That is where Dr. Mathewson met this patient.
At five years old, Dr. Mathewson knew she wanted to be a pediatrician. Years later, she remained dedicated to her childhood dream and concentrated on child psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medical School. During her residency in Psychiatry at NYU “I really saw how much trauma contributed to the symptoms that the patients were demonstrating,” Dr. Mathewson said. “I really became interested in [trauma], in part because it seemed like sometimes that was not really being addressed.”
A trauma-concerned approach to medical care is relatively new to medicine. In 1994, The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study uncovered the negative long-term effects of trauma experienced at a young age. The ACE study surveyed and scored hundreds of children based on their exposure to negative events and legitimized the profound effects of trauma on young people. For Dr. Mathewson, the study explained: “how important it is to take into consideration people’s life experience…and how that can really influence a person’s development of an illness.” The study found that almost ⅔ of children reported at least one ACE, and more than one in five reported three or more ACEs. This leads to the key finding that the more ACEs a child has, the higher their risk is for medical issues: ones that transcend the psyche. Traumatized individuals are more vulnerable to a slew of health concerns developed later in life such as chronic heart disease, liver disease, and cancer.
The predominant thinking for years was that children are resilient and bounce back after a potentially traumatic experience. However, children are not born resilient. Rather, they are raised that way, and fostering resilience is a dynamic process. Children need outside support to effectively cope with negative life experiences. The primary factor that leads to resilience is having strong relationships both within and outside the family unit. A variety of other genetic, personal, and environmental influences also impact one’s ability to become resilient. But, not all children have access to such resources.
Dr. Mathewson favors a multi-layered approach to reducing childhood trauma. She advocates for focusing on at-risk families, such as those with low socioeconomic status. She suggests implementing community-based programs in the home and at school. These programs could teach social-emotional skills, promote social norms against violence, and intervene during an ACE. Art is one tool to do just that.
Treating victims of collective trauma with art therapy is nothing new. In fact, art therapy was born during the tuberculosis pandemic of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Thousands of people infected with tuberculosis left their families and lives behind to isolate in sanitariums. Since ancient times, people considered the isolation of contagious individuals to be the most effective defense against spreading diseases. But, it wasn’t until the middle of the 19th century that dedicated facilities for housing contagious people arose.
The sanatorium movement developed quickly between 1900 and 1925 as tuberculosis spread, ranking in the early 1900s as one of the top two causes of death. The disease spread through bacteria in the air, slowly destroying the victim’s lungs. As more people faced isolation in sanitariums, health professionals sought out ways to support them.
In one of these tuberculosis sanatoriums, British artist Adrian Kieth Graham Hill treated a small group of patients using a range of art exercises designed to help them process their feelings and ward off isolation-induced boredom. Drawing and painting helped patients find a sense of freedom. Hill coined the term “art therapy” in 1942 and wrote about its genesis in the book Art Versus Illness published in 1945. Around this time, artist Edward Adamson also promoted creativity as a means of managing emotional troubles while working as an art director at the English psychiatric hospital called Netherne. Adamson researched the link between artistic expression and emotional healing. His work brought art to multiple mental health facilities.
As the field of art therapy developed, it became increasingly connected to the education system and childhood psychotherapy. Practitioners across the globe implemented art therapy in educational environments. When students practiced therapeutic art they displayed greater resilience levels. Participation in art therapy correlated with higher confidence in problem-solving abilities and an improved attitude towards problems.
Art reveals the inner life of a child. Through their artwork, we can tackle questions of mourning and healing. Art also provides insight into how other interventions can be best utilized. Not only is art therapy treatment itself, but it also informs additional dimensions of care. Patient intake meetings look different for children than for adults. Young kids can’t verbalize complex internal struggles, especially regarding their trauma, the same way adults can. Therefore, doctors use non-verbal strategies to understand the child’s condition.
When Dr. Mathewson meets young patients, she observes their behavior in her office where she has many toys available to them. “Part of it would be observing what they’re drawn to in the office and how they play with it,” Dr. Mathewson told me. She also watches the child’s behavior in terms of how they relate to the parent or caregiver. How does the child react when they are separated from their caregiver? Do they express anger or aggression towards the caregiver? Doctors can also observe what children depict in their artwork during intake meetings.
Doctors and art therapists tell me about childhood experiences of collective trauma, but I want to hear it from the kids themselves. I sit down with four students from PS 321 right after they participated in the Parachute Project. Gaia Pontiggia, Ella Hutchinson, Nina Adaime, and Teagan Murphey perch side by side on a bench in the front courtyard of their school. I can tell they’re a bit nervous to speak with me, but they’re all comfortable together, cracking jokes and whispering in each other’s ears. I learn they have been friends throughout the pandemic.
Waves of elementary-age kids flood out of their classes, bounding across the blacktop and bouncing basketballs. A group of boys, seemingly younger than the four students I sit with, begin to shriek, and the girls trade I’m-so-over-it glances. As members of the eldest class, they rule the school.
I ask about what it was like when they were in third grade and things first shut down during 2020. They each didn’t express much worry until schools closed their doors. That’s when the severity of the event hit them. Gaia recalls thinking to herself, “oh my, what a fascinating event,” and when she says this to me, the girls all burst out laughing. “Fascinating,” they repeat. After the initial shock of school closures, Ella, Marygrace’s daughter, says “I became emo,” which makes them laugh again in unison. After the girls get out their initial giggles, I begin to understand the emotions behind their laughter. “I kind of locked myself out of my whole family,” Ella continues. She doesn’t quite know why she isolated herself in her room. “I was kind of scared of what was gonna happen. I thought that even my family could get COVID,” she told me.
Gaia felt “panicked” because “nothing has happened like that before and everybody was wearing masks and some people wore full-on face coverings and I was like, ‘Why is everybody dressed up like this?’” Gaia recalls the TV blaring constantly while she stayed at home. “I got really scared because every day there’ll be something new on the news.” She didn’t know how to digest what she saw on the TV. “I did not talk to my family a lot,” Gaia says, “I kept it to myself because I was also confused and I didn’t know if I was to ask questions or not.” Teagan, on the other hand, told her parents when she felt frightened, “and after that, I wasn’t that scared anymore because I kind of knew what was happening.”
In the beginning, Nina’s parents didn’t explain what was going on “because they didn’t want me to get scared.” When they did open up to her, Nina’s fear intensified as she worried she wouldn’t see her grandfather before he died. Nina mentions that being stuck at home with her older sister, who is now 13, was “difficult because we were fighting way more than usual.” They fought about anything and everything.
I notice various symptoms of trauma in their behavior. Ella exhibited avoidance when she closed herself off from her family. Gaia’s panic signaled increased levels of arousal. The pandemic induced changes in Nina’s mood and behavior which manifested in frequent quarrels with her sister.
One thing the girls shared during isolation was a sense of loneliness. “YouTube was my friend and my Barbie playset was my friend,” Ella tells me. She didn’t spend much time with her older sister Madeline in the beginning because Madeline dedicated much of her time to her online school work. But, the following school year, “when we kind of got in the swing of things, I think me and my sister got a lot closer.” Ella says. “I’m kind of thankful for COVID for that because we wouldn’t have done that.” Ella also talked to Marygrace, her mom, about her anxiety, but it wasn’t until she returned to school and interacted with kids her own age that she noticed her anxiety decrease.
Nina also got lonely because her sister and parents worked online. Nina was “alone, doing nothing” each day until “I started calling with these two friends because my teacher recommended that we work together because we have similar reading pace.” Nina told me, “it ended up being really helpful for us.” Together, they were stronger.
Resilience takes a team. It takes support. Two years after the world shut down, we emerge from isolation to reconnect. In the coming weeks, Marygrace will accumulate the decorated masks submitted for The Parachute Project, some collected during her visits to schools like PS 321 and others mailed in from across the globe. She connected with schools around the world to capture the scope of the pandemic. For the final art exhibition, the masks conjoin, each reinforcing the next, tied together by thread and common experience. Together, they build something new. Something beautiful. Something that allows us to land safely.