Project Clothesline

We went as a family to the Project Clothesline at J's university tonight. He will be writing a paper on it. We explained a bit about it to the girls. J talked to C about having good friends. I talked to A about the colors of the shirts and what they meant, and how some people are still very very hurt and angry about the sad things that happened to them and some people have moved on to forgiveness. She can read well enough to read most of the shirts herself, so I had to help pick and choose which ones she read, and what parts. A great deal of hurt is often expressed in very strong language. I made my shirt, and then A asked to make a shirt. She said C hits her and it hurts her. She kept insisting on making a shirt for being hurt by C. I tried to explain how it was different, but I couldn't. I couldn't make myself qualify her pain, tell her that her pain was less than other people's, that it wasn't as "real" as other women's pain. The (rather rare) occasion of being hit by her sister was traumatic enough to make her really want to express it with all these other women, so I brought her back to make a shirt, too. She wrote that her sister hits her and it hurts her feelings, and then she drew a sad face and a fist coming towards it, and then wrote that she hates it when her sister hurts her. Then we put it up. And then we talked to C about how much it hurts A when she hits! (And I need to talk to A about not hitting C, either. They don't hit each other often at all, but apparently it's still too much.) G just ran around and babbled and asked for "Up" in the carrier or in arms, and ran around some more, etc.