SDYS Voices

SDYS Voices: Michelle Wolsky

Meet Michelle Wolsky, a psycho social clinician with our foster care services studying expressive arts therapy. She shared her first mosaic with us and how it relates to youth in foster care.

“This is my first mosaic I recently completed as part of my Expressive Arts Therapy graduate program. Made from left over scraps of glass, cut without using measurements, tracings or a grinder to smooth out the rough edges. Due to my lack of experience, the pieces are oddly shaped and jagged, some thicker than others and some scratched on the surface, giving the image a kind of rawness.

I believe this rawness mirrors perfectly our youth in foster care as they have all experienced abandonment, neglect or abuse, all of which have deeply wounded their psyches. Like the broken pieces of glass in the mosaic, they too have been broken and displaced moving around from one place to another.

And yet there is hope. I have witnessed that when these children are placed in permanent long-term homes providing them with a stable and loving environment, with time they are all able to flourish, even the most broken.

Their mistrust and self-doubt start to diminish and their big bright personalities begin to shine through. Over time they learn tools that help them to cope and to heal, they see that they are valued and that they belong.

The resilience of our youth never ceases to amaze me and I truly believe that they can make it through anything, as long as they have that consistent love and support to hold them together. Like the grout in this image, our foster parents are the ones who are there for our youth day in and day out, helping them to put back together all of their broken pieces, so that one day they too will be able to share their love with the world.”