Michelle Kissinger 

Sometimes there just are not the words for what you're experiencing. And sometimes it's just a hint of something. And it took a poem that I wrote to get me in to see that something really essential formed in me at a time that I have always classified as dark, miserable, and I don't even want to talk about it. Well now I have something really positive to talk about.

Paul Meunier 

Hello, I'm Paul Meunier, the executive director of the Youth Intervention Programs Association. And I'm a youth worker at heart. How lucky am I, I have the privilege to meet youth workers from around the globe and learn their stories and share them with the entire world. I'm glad you're listening because together we'll learn how their life experiences shape their youth work. As you listen, I encourage you to consider how your experiences shape what you have to offer young people. Welcome to this edition of The Passionate Youth Worker. Hi, everybody. For this episode, we're joined by Michelle Kissinger from Pennsylvania in the United States. Michelle began her PhD program with the idea of researching how the Arts could be used as a strategy to improve self-awareness in leaders. She earned her doctorate degree in 2015 and has recently launched her own consulting firm called [ree-sheyp] your story (pronounced reshape your story). Her work focuses on how to use art with at-risk youth and for youth-serving organizations too. As you listen, you'll learn she's been diving deep into her own personal story for quite some time. So, Michelle, you are the perfect guest for The Passionate Youth Worker podcast. Thanks for joining us today.

Michelle Kissinger 

Thanks for having me, Paul.

Paul Meunier 

Your passion, as we've gotten to know each other, is so clear, it's your own self-awareness. And also helping other people gain a sense of self-awareness too. From your perspective, why is your own personal self-awareness so important to you?

Michelle Kissinger 

As I was getting deep into adulthood, I was discovering that I was reacting to things in a way that wasn't logical. And I just became so curious about that. And then my own learning about how identities are formed and how trauma impacts that and sometimes disrupts that just opened up these new avenues of understanding myself more deeply. And how what occurred to me as a youngster from an infant on was still showing up in my life today.

Paul Meunier 

Yeah, so you've poured your heart and soul into this. You have a timeline, you're kind of working on different ways to express and tell that life story in maybe different modalities. But what have you learned along the way about you and being so deeply self-reflective?

Michelle Kissinger 

One of the core things that I've learned really in this last couple of years, is I had a primal wound around being abandoned. And I'm still reacting to that wound and it shows up in really surprising places. Sometimes within my family, sometimes in the workplace, sometimes with friends. And that's the work that I'm at now is understanding that wound more, how do I go back and heal that so that I can be more present and personally responsible. And for myself, continuing to grow as a person, but also in my relationships with other people. That's been my big aha in the last couple of years.

Paul Meunier 

Just even saying you had a big personal wound takes a lot of courage because you're setting yourself up to be vulnerable. And I know we've talked about this, but you're willing to share your story. Can you talk a little bit about what is that deep wound, what is that your personal story that makes that such?

Michelle Kissinger 

Yeah, I can give you the highlights. And then if you want to ask any more questions you can. I was born in 1967 to a single mom. And she already had my brother and we had two different fathers, both of the fathers were absent. So, right from the get-go, there's abandonment there, right? And that, as a fatherless daughter, that haunts me still. And then when I was five and a half, unfortunately, my mother was in a devastating horseback riding accident which left her paralyzed from the waist down. And initially, I was absorbed into our very large and extensive family that was in the area, but that only lasted for three months. And I was abandoned at a hospital by family members who said they didn't care what they did with us, meaning the hospital staff, but they never wanted to see me again. And Paul, they never did. I never saw those folks that I thought of as my safe place again. I went into foster care, was in three homes of varying degrees of quality. And then was reunited with my mother and my brother for what would become three of the darkest years of my life. Very, very difficult. There were no supports, my mother's body was being healed to some degree. But I now know from looking at her records that she had no psychological supports to adapt to life without half of her body, to now being on the economic fringe because she couldn't work. And this was before the ADA was in place and the protections for people with disabilities were in place. So, that was a really difficult time. And then I was very fortunate though, near the end of that three-ish year window to be one of the first girls admitted to Milton Hershey School in Hershey, Pennsylvania, which was started in 1909 and until 1977, was all boys. And so family friends were keeping an eye out on me and said, this might be a really good place for her to go. And so, I did get to go. And I went there at the end of fifth grade and stayed until I graduated high school.

Paul Meunier 

During those times, you describe them as dark years. And this abandonment issue clearly would have an impact on any young person. What were you like when you were younger? I know you talked about wanting to withdraw and kind of go inward. What was that like?

Michelle Kissinger 

Yeah, my experience, both in foster care and then within this reunited family that just didn't have the tools was the best thing for me to do was to be silent and be invisible. To not make waves to not attract any attention. I say I was in three foster homes, two were just short-term emergency placements. Most of my time in the Pennsylvania foster care system was with one family. And they were struggling, they were struggling very much and to survive in that environment in that house, was to be silent and unseen. Because to be seen and noticed brought harshness and a very harsh kind of discipline, shaming, those kinds of things. And then with my mom, back with my mother and my brother, we unfortunately lost my brother to an opiate overdose when he turned 33. So, he was already gone from us. Substance abuse had already taken hold of him. And he was just so remote, and we had been separated for too long. We just, there were six years between us when we couldn't connect. And my mother was just lost in her own physical pain because she had chronic pain, but just struggling to figure out how does she keep herself in this little boat with two children and afloat very much alone. And there's a lot of intergenerational trauma that I've discovered which explains why we were just so isolated. And we didn't have help. We didn't have family coming around to support us. It was very lonely, very, very lonely. I have one very clear memory of being about eight or nine years old and walking down our gravel driveway, looking around at the other houses and thinking to myself, if the ground opened up and swallowed me, no one would miss me. That's how isolated and lonely I felt at that time.

Paul Meunier 

I'm sorry to hear that. That sounds like it was awful rough for you. And now, I get to know you and I realize you're kind of an outgoing person, you like to talk, love to share your stories. At what point in your life did you transition away from being silent and unheard to being willing to speak up and reclaim yourself as a person?

Michelle Kissinger 

I can pin that down is when my first marriage fell apart unfortunately. I have talked with my own children, they're all adults now, how I can see so clearly that I had a great deal of trauma work to do on myself, as did their father and I won't talk about his story because that's his story, not mine. But both of us came into a relationship with a lot of baggage and difficulties and things that we didn't understand about how our own difficult childhoods would affect us as human beings. And we were married for 13 years. We have three fantastic kiddos. Love them very, very much. But coming out of that, the only detail I will share about my ex-husband is that he was a pastor at the time. So, when I said this situation that we had going that seemed intractable was not going to work I lost everything because my home was the parsonage. My church was my husband's congregation. And my family because of the way I grew up was all his family. So, when I said I think I need to do something different for myself and really for my children as well everything fell away. And I was back to having nothing. And I just thought I have to rebuild. I have to rebuild this, who am I as a person? What is this life I need to have? I was starting all over with just like bits of rubble, literally bits of rubble to rebuild something. And it's been quite a journey ever since then.

Paul Meunier 

Wow, it took that long for you to just claim yourself as a person and have an agency in your ability to kind of stand on your own.

Michelle Kissinger 

Yes.

Paul Meunier 

It goes to show, wounds, how deep they can be and how long they can last and how difficult they are to overcome.

Michelle Kissinger 

That's right.

Paul Meunier 

You're so smart, Michelle, and you seem to have this ability to have both EQ and IQ. That's what I think of when I think of you with your doctorate degree and doing all this research. But yet, you're so tuned in to your emotional side of things. But I'm curious about your education. Was school hard for you when you were younger or did that come pretty easy despite kind of your stressors in life?

Michelle Kissinger 

Yeah. So, elementary school was very difficult but I was so traumatized by what was going on, I was almost mute. And I had been, by fifth grade, put into special education because I just wouldn't talk. I wouldn't engage with the teachers and things like that. And they just didn't know what was going on with me. Then in end of fifth grade, I go to Milton Hershey School, and I blossomed, I really blossom there. They have a fantastic program, free of charge for children from economic disadvantage. It's a fantastic program. And I really flourished there. And then I went to college. And I just flamed out, completely flamed out. So, I went from like, the top 10% of my high school graduating class feeling, you know, pretty confident about my intellect and my academic abilities, and then just totally ran off the rails my freshman year in college. And I failed out. Well, I didn't fail out technically. I was so unnerved by it, I dropped out. I just dropped out. And I had a full ride. I had a full ride scholarship that I walked away from. I just wasn't ready, I wasn't ready for that environment, the topics that I was tackling. And then it took me a while to get back to college. And I loved it. I really, really enjoyed it. I went to a fantastic little women's college in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Alverno College. And they did such a great job preparing me both intellectually and spiritually. It was fantastic. My MBA, not too difficult, had a great school that I went to, but that was pretty easy. My PhD really challenged me, particularly the original research. But I enjoy it very, very much, learning new things, stretching my mind, all of that.

Paul Meunier 

You know, when you talked about dropping out of college, flamed out, as you described it, do you think that was still connected to the fact that you had these wounds that hadn't been put on the table and talked about and resolved and tried to put into perspective, was that part of what drove that change?

Michelle Kissinger 

I think absolutely it did. I went from really difficult situations to seven years in this wonderful, nurturing, profoundly safe environment. Well, it was congregate care, it was a residence, a residential school or boarding school so there is always some challenges to mash that many kids together. But on the whole, I had just a slew of adults looking out for me, supporting me. And then I went to a state university, Penn State University and the main campus with like, 40,000 students, and no deep connection. And I just was not ready for that at all. And was reacting to that sense of isolation and being alone and I didn't call it abandonment at the time but that's really what it felt like. You know, had I worked with somebody, a mentor, a little more closely at 16, 17, 18 years old, we may have figured out together that a more intimate setting, maybe at a satellite campus or a private college would be more suitable for me. But yeah, so then I just react to that. And rather than thinking, Oh, I'm just having trouble in this environment. I read it as I'm failing. I'm no good at this. So, I ran away from it.

Paul Meunier 

Wow. Well, I think about the work that we all do with young people. And these deep, emotional things that so many of them have going on is so built into their character and who they are and how they see themselves and why youth work is absolutely critical. Because the sooner we can get to young people and help them resolve that issue like you had, I feel sad, on a personal level, that there wasn't somebody for you. And I can't imagine being so hurt that you would not talk and people thought there was something physically wrong. And it really is I just don't want anybody to see me or recognize me because I don't feel valued enough for that. And I'm personally saddened by that. Michelle, I know you've been working so hard at telling your story, understanding it, making sense of it. And you even wrote a nice poem. And we need to take a short break but when we come back, I would like it, actually, let me rephrase that. I would love it if you read this poem because it so reflects who you are and your story.

Michelle Kissinger 

Okay.

Paul Meunier 

So, we'll be right back.

Jade Schleif 

No matter how you support our young people, The Professional Youth Worker, powered by YIPA, has your training and learning needs covered. Visit training.yipa.org, that's training.yipa.org to see for yourself, and then join the 1000s of youth workers around the globe who learn from our easy to access exceptional trainings. From our blogs to our podcast, The Professional Youth Worker is your go-to resource for tools to help you keep going, keep learning, and keep growing. Members enjoy free unlimited access to Live Online and On-Demand trainings, and a preferred discount pricing for our one-of-a-kind certificate course. Annual memberships are ridiculously affordable for individuals and organizations. Visit training.yipa.org today to learn more. That's training.yipa.org.

Paul Meunier 

Michelle, right before the break, I was kind of priming everybody for your poem that reflects who you are. And you so graciously said you'd be happy to read it. So, will you give it a quick read so we can all learn a little bit about this beautiful poem that you put together?

Michelle Kissinger 

I'd be happy to. Just a tiny bit of setup, I worked on this earlier this year. Those three years, that really dark time that I told you about, I was very curious about how did the younger me survive that? What was going on with her? So, get beyond the obvious tragic circumstances and the harmful things that were happening to me at the time, how is it that I could be sitting here today? How did I get through that? So, this is the poem that I ended up writing in trying to answer that question for myself. A modest country house, a cocoon for family reconstitution turned vinyl over gypsum tomb for the mother's fickle rage, the brother's junked-up apathy, the intruder's cyclical brutishness, a growing girl skirts the edges, espying her crypt mates silently, becoming inconspicuous, inoffensive, balling herself up armadillo style, fumes of despair and malevolence slither under her keratin shell, penetrating her bones, forever to haunt her dreams yet, an atomic bit of radioactive hope burrows into her core.

Paul Meunier 

That really is beautiful. And it does really reflect everything we've talked about. And your work on understanding you and your early years is to be applauded. We should all strive to understand who we are that well, because we can't escape our history. We can't escape what happened to us, it formed us, it shaped us, it turns on our genetics. And now we're a result of what happened. So, what a beautiful poem, thank you for reading it.

Michelle Kissinger 

Thanks for asking me.

Paul Meunier 

So, I talked before the break about how you just strike me as just highly intelligent person but you also have this absolutely creative side to you. And matter of fact, you and I first met because I ran across your website and I said, this might be creepy, Michelle, but I just love your website. You have a really artistic side, as it showed there in your poem, but also in just other types of art as well. Can you talk a little bit about your love and your desire for art and where did all that come from?

Michelle Kissinger 

Yeah, yeah, that just emerged just out of my own explorations of trying to find ways to express and kind of disembody in a way, what I was feeling, particularly the heavier things and get them outside of myself. So, like many people with difficult backgrounds, of course, I've pursued psychotherapy and have had wonderful therapists come alongside and walk with me for a while. But I'm still limited by language. There are sometimes there just are not the words for what you're experiencing. And sometimes it's just a hint of something. And it took a poem that I wrote to get me in to see that something really essential formed in me at a time that I have always classified as dark, miserable, and I don't even want to talk about it. Well now I have something really positive to talk about. And then I just started experimenting and doing different things, going to workshops, and I was having these fantastic experiences. And the very first one that just blew my socks off, was I went to a Metropolitan Opera broadcast. The Metropolitan Opera in New York, they do these broadcasts in cinemas all across the country, and I went to my first one, and it was Aida, and I'm swept away by the music and the grandeur and the pageantry, and all of that stuff. But then something happened in my brain. And while the music is washing over me and the lyrics, and I'm embedded and deeply immersed in the story, in the back of my mind, I started solving problems, like work problems, and I started thinking about people and all this other stuff happened. And that experience was the birth of my doctoral research. What was going on in my brain that unlocked that?  Being immersed in that art form, in that case, opera, unhooked my mind, untethered it in a way that I had never experienced. So, that was the beginning of me engaging with the arts, both intellectually and then practically, you know, in my own self-care and self-healing journey.  Well, it was kind of serendipitous. In 2022, would have been the end of 2021, I just happened to be flipping through job ads in my area and there was an art instructor job for a residential foster care program that's in my county. And I looked at my husband and I said, Really, there's such a job as this, you get to do art with kids in residential care, oh, my goodness,

Paul Meunier 

And now you've started your own consulting business or organization, [ree-sheyp] your story, pronounced Reshape Your Story, appropriately named. And you use art to help other people gain access to that moment or that deeper sense of self. How did you come about the idea that I should do this and try to help other people? Sign me up!

Michelle Kissinger 

Sign me up! And I did sign up. And I had a marvelous eight months in that art studio with those kids. Some, they were there for a very short time, others were staying for longer duration. And, of course, their artwork was of interest to me. But what was really fascinating was some of the developmental growth that I was seeing. Sometimes it was, I want to share you something because this is how I see myself, that's like more explicit. But there were other things going on. They were able to conduct themselves in that space because we had mutually-agreed upon rules of engagement in our creative space, to conduct themselves in a way that they were struggling to do back in their cottages, for instance, or at school, because I could, you know, was in the know, on everything that was going on behaviorally with them. That fascinated me. But then what was even deeper was connection was being built as we were working on the arts. And part of that was that I could step out of a authoritative role in the art studio and say, We're just co-creators together. You show me something, I'll show you something, let's experiment, you know, we could just ask questions and I think that was something new for them to have that kind of space. Because sometimes system-involved kids so much of it is it has to be regimented for safety of course. It was a different environment for them. I made the decision to leave in the grand scheme, it wasn't the best environment for me. And part of it had nothing to do with the program and how it was being run. It was that I was totally triggering off of these kids. I just identified with them so closely. That it was very, very challenging for me. So, I don't think I've wept as much as I did in that eight-month period, because I was just my heart was breaking every day for the kids. So, I was struggling to get that necessary objectivity that we need to have and distance. So, I had to pull up stakes and say this, I want to do this kind of work. I want to help kids with the arts, but I don't think I need to be the in-house person. So, pivoted and moved, I can bring workshops that are art-based that can go directly working with youth, or with their adult caregivers. But I can also help with program design thinking that's rooted in research and best practice principles around things like neuroesthetics and positive youth development, and developmental psychology. And I think there's something new and so much more we could be doing with the arts programmatically to help the kids in our care whether it's a community group, residential program, or what have you.

Paul Meunier 

What do you think art has the ability to do that say talk therapy doesn't? What's the difference?

Michelle Kissinger 

Yeah. I think the difference is, when you're in the creative space, it's not so on the nose, right? Talk therapy is very problem oriented. What do we want to resolve? What do we want to work on whether you're reaching back in the past or the future? Creativity just lets you get out of your head a little bit actually and have some other experiences. So, for adolescents and young adults, having positive experiences where they get to feel successful, or they overcome problems that might normally be very frustrating for them and they experience that. Or they have resolved some technical problems with some kind of artwork, the art is secondary to all that. They're actually building essential life skills in the art room or in the art program. And somebody telling me, you need to work on being more patient when you confront problems is very different than actually confronting problems and overcoming them with some thoughtful facilitative supports. Very, very different. And I saw those kinds of things happening with the kids in the art studio which just really, really got me going and got me very excited about pursuing this work further.

Paul Meunier 

I can definitely see that and I understand that, how beneficial that would be to a lot of our young people that don't like to talk, or don't like talk therapy, it feels too threatening, or they don't feel comfortable, or they don't trust, or they're just not the way that they go through the world solving their problems through verbalizing. Michelle, we'll list your website in the show notes so if anybody wants to check out your work.

Michelle Kissinger 

Thank you.

Paul Meunier 

But also check out just a really, really cool website. It was so cool that I had to respond and ask her about it. I'm going to ask you one last big question before we start wrapping this up. But you've been exploring so long and learned so much, what would you say and maybe this is too hard, but I'm going to do it and try to make it a little difficult, what would you say the biggest lesson you've learned about yourself is so far?

Michelle Kissinger 

I was asked this question recently and the word that sprang to mind was durable. This idea that I have such endurance, that I've been through so many things, and here I'm at age 56, I'm not shy about it, every year was hard-earned. That makes me so optimistic about this next stretch of my life. I'm curious to see what happens, where I go, who I meet, what I learn. So, that idea of being durable and inquisitive about the world are the things that I've uncovered about myself. And I'm grateful that I'm wired that way. And I've had opportunities to nurture both of those characteristics in myself.

Paul Meunier 

I'm really glad that they came out. And I think of you as a little girl, isolating, wanting to not be seen. And now I see you as so expressive and so willing to give back. It's just great to see you come this far. And I think the work that you do, your lesson sets the perfect example for young people and their ability to overcome just about anything that can be put in front of them. It goes to show the grit and the determination of the human spirit and your spirit feels like it's all over the place. It feels like it just kind of oozes out. And that's just a beautiful thing. And I mean that with all sincere respect. Your spirit is strong, I can feel it. I felt it from the first moment we started speaking. So, thank you for all you've done. And thank you for being a guest on The Passionate Youth Worker.

Michelle Kissinger 

Thank you so much for having me. It was a real pleasure.

Paul Meunier 

The pleasure was all mine. Before we go, you know we like to give our guest the last word. So, Michelle, what words of wisdom or inspiration would you like to leave with our listeners?

Michelle Kissinger 

Yeah, I really appreciate that opportunity. So, I know in our audience today, these are youth workers, caring for youth. And so, I would encourage everyone listening, if you don't already have a creative practice, whatever that is, music, dance writing, you name it, the sky's the limit, going to museums. Try to incorporate that into your life and pay really close attention to your aesthetic responses to those things. Because you may be really surprised what you learn about yourself. And if you have any influence over programming, get that conversation going internally within your program, whatever shape it is, and say how can we bring the arts more deeply into our model of care not only for our youth, but for our youth workers to help them sustain themselves more deeply, and handle the heavy emotional labor that we all carry, working up alongside the youth that we care so deeply for.

Paul Meunier 

If you would like to share your passion for youth work, we'd love to spotlight you as a guest. If you have feedback about the show, please let us know. Just visit training.yipa.org That's training.yipa.org and click on the podcast tab. This podcast is made possible in part due to a generous contribution from M Health Fairview I'm your host, Paul Meunier. Thanks for listening to The Passionate Youth Worker.