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when i hit my 20s i started to feel & #39;guilty& #39; about not having a core friendship group from school. this arbitrary measure of whether you & #39;did school& #39; well enough.
the more i unpack the things adolescence taught me, the more i accept that schooling is its own complexity + coming-of-age was a whole other lifetime.
it& #39;s funny, in the context of working w/ children + young ppl, i completely centre their experiences of change inside and out of the education system + all the things that both limit and stimulate healthy growth, but didn& #39;t apply the same grace to my child-to-teenaged self.
often the schooling experience outside of its educational value is shouldered off as a blip &/or rite of passage alongside learning the curriculum, but these are some of the most vital years of our lives. this is where we start to really look at + analyse ourselves & each other.
it took a long time for me to be comfortable in calling my schooling experience traumatic. it sounded too abrasive. too overdramatic. then i step into the therapeutic space & draw parallels btwn the issues i& #39;m dealing with now and the genesis of these things in the playground.
we& #39;re in some sort of schooling system ages 5-16, then another 5 years after that if you choose to. that& #39;s most of our vital years spent within the education system and everything it brings. i really don& #39;t think it& #39;s spoken about enough outside of youth work spaces.
i love my friends. sometimes i feel like i have none because of this arbitrary measure, or because it took me a lot longer to learn how to create friendships. but honestly, it& #39;s ok to not have had this in school, and esp. if you had a traumatic schooling experience.
