IMPORTANT LCDM NEWS!

Dear friends of LCDM all over Peru and the world! It is with a deep sense of gratitude that I write this entry today, hoping that all of you are well, and finding the things that make your lives full and enriching. After noticing a few important changes in my kids and community, and being confronted with a couple of financial and personal dilemmas at the beginning of this year, I decided to invest a lot of time observing, asking, listening, thinking, feeling, and creatively thinking again and again.  After doing all that, conducting an impact survey among my kids in April, and holding group meetings every weekend with them to assess their current situations, I have decided to suspend all official LCDM activities indefinitely.  (Ya viene esta entrada en espanol)

If you have been following our blog these past years, or if you have been a volunteer with us, you know of the many efforts we've made to keep our little impossible project alive. It has been tough financially, but with help from family, and many friends from Peru and the world, we can proudly say that LCDM has been a home, shelter, refuge, resource center, and a place of complete light, laughter, healing, learning, friendship, opportunity, exchange, creativity, and possibility for 4 years. I could not thank each person who has supported our efforts enough for making a donation, for volunteering their work, for sending an encouraging email when I needed it most, for letting me recruit volunteers through their sites (Steve!), for donating a performance, for lending me their spaces to host a fund raiser, for attending our fund raising events, for helping us stay alive all these years, and most importantly for believing in our work and for being able to recognize the value in it, and in the people we work with and for. You are true friends to me and will forever live in my love, gratitude, and faith in the infinite capacity human beings have to be extraordinary.

After carefully evaluating the impact surveys and all the information my kids shared with me during our meetings, I can sincerely say that my kids and the girls at CAS are better. On our fourth anniversary, I can rewind in my mind to August 2007, see my neighbors' anguish, and desperation, and my kids roaming around scared without a safe place to go to. Then I fast foward quickly to now and can very clearly see the progress made and all the improvements experienced by my kids. Lots still needs to be done but in important areas/ways my Mina De Oro kids and the CAS girls are better and on their way to healthier futures. The girls at CAS shared with me in May that their new director is improving many things within the shelter from the food they eat, to their access to education and services, to visits to health providers, to outings and activities, and more. Obviously, we were thrilled that our friends at CAS started the year on a healthier note and are on their way to better experiences.

When I look at my kids now and see them more confident, better informed, taller than me :), growing closer to each other every day, connecting and interacting with other people in healthier ways, still facing challenges and difficulties, but feeling accompanied and with sources to go to when decision making time comes, I feel proud, very proud of them and grateful to have been part of their healing process, of their integration as a solid unit of many friends, of their growth, and their continuing path towards healthier lives. I am convinced today that one of our greatest contributions to my kids' lives has been connecting them meaningfully to each other, and helping them see the value each adds and brings to their circle and community. My kids and I are tied for life and we are committed to keeping our friendship robust, for-ever young,  and enriching for as long as we live.

I hope that every volunteer/friend who spent some time with us in Chincha also feels this strong connection to the lives and well being of these kids and girls. The kids certainly remember all their friends who came to share a bit of living and learning and laughing and creating with them. You can often find the kids telling their friends about the time Nacho and Borja put together a soccer world cup among quinchas, or when Lucila and Jason came to our Qori Sonqo bringing music and puppets, or when Jose taught them how to weave and juggle and do the lotus flower position, or when they saw the ocean for the first time, or when they saw Roger ride around La Mina in his beat up motorcycle for the first time, or when a whole circus of friends came to Mina De Oro to light up la cancha, or when Clelia and Sergio brought their Gotita de Mate to our lives, or when we closed the streets to do our festival, or when Ming brought theater to CAS, PH and our house, or.....SO many moments, so many people, soooo many lives connected...thank you each and all for coming to Mina De Oro and giving my kids that moment with you they will cherish and tell about for ever.  I promise you, the workshops and activities might be suspended for now, but not the relationship, not the communication, not the growing together, not the finding ways to bring opportunities and alternatives to my kids from wherever I am and however I can.

As for me, as you know, my partner Andy and I have been working in Peru on a purely voluntary basis since 2007 and are presently back in the US looking to work for a salary again, gain more skills and knowledge, make more friends, raise desperately needed funds, and spend meaningful quality time with our loved ones who have been generously sharing us with the kids in Peru for the last 4 years, and supporting our work in different ways.

My dear friend and perennial LCDM volunteer ABEL is now staying in my house in Chincha and on the weekends spends the afternoons playing the guitar with the kids, listening to them, and sharing music and advice. He has been with LCDM since its inception and is a loved and trusted friend to my kids as well.

This could easily be a very long entry but I will end it just by saying that I have always needed to feel wellness as a collective shared reality and have always found it necessary to make all of my personal and professional experiences foundations that one day would help me make integral well being a collective experience. I live in that effort and whether I am able to financially keep LCDM open or not, I will continue to work and exist in a daily commitment and effort to bring creative anti-violence and integral health and wellness education to all, including myself.

There is something in the eyes, something so profoundly intimate that shifts when a person feels loved and valued. An internal beaming light decides to turn on and begin a process of healing, of connecting meaningfully, of receiving and giving. I am a MUCH MUCH better person today and I thank life because all these 4 years I have seen beautiful eyes once pale and shattered, shift, light up, hope, believe again, trust, and connect for ever to other beaming eyes. Thank you for your support, thank you for your faith in our work, thank you for your friendship! We are not done yet but will need to pause at this point to rest, gather strength, friends and resources and start again.

Please receive my love and sincere desire to feel you happy, light-hearted, optimistic, faithful, open, courageous, creative, determined to listen to your most internal voices and to follow your own direction, and to fall utterly in love with all the possibilities to love and make the impossible possible every day! Share yourselves—extraordinary people are waiting for you out there every day!

 Love and gigantic abrazos, Mayten (Ya viene esta entrada en espanol)