Multimedia Ethnofiction Therapy: How to Start Your Own Group with a Trained Leader

Are you interested in starting a multimedia ethnofiction therapy group in Sacramento? Here's an example you might take inspiration from and perhaps start your own group. (No real names are used. This is ethnofiction creative writing therapy for mothers and daughters or dads and sons.)

Sara was beginning to understand why her daughter, Nefra, the creative writing therapist, insisted on the mother-to-adult daughter fireside chats, why she made housecalls. Nefra wasn't practicing clinical or forensic psychology any longer now. Instead she focused on painting canvases in pieces with other women, usually mothers and daughters, or fathers and sons.

After each parent and child painted a 12 by 12 inch square of a canvas, the dozen or so canvases were placed together and mounted on a gallery wall. Families worked together again on each project. In the background music rose, calming, ambient music. And those who didn't want to paint could write stories, poems, or turning points of life stories. Or they could video record oral histories and interweave them like in multimedia, sound, image, and text.

It was psychoanalysis, therapy, marriage and family counseling--creative writing, music, and art therapy--in the midst of suburbia. Nefra 's voice rose an octave. "All you want is a fast solution to hate and fear. Instead, I'm offering growth for health and wellness."

Her oldest daughter, Sara smiled. "That's because self-growth is more important to you than security. To me, self-growth is fast change, and fast change means stress. I'll take the serenity in security, in slow change. Take your time. Grow old along with me."

"Life is more than taking the edge off the pain," Nefra insisted. "It's growing past the pain towards the light."

"Do you understand, Tiff?" Nefra passed her a plate of veggies.

"Sure," the smart kid beamed. "Mom was so glad to see her long lost father at last--that she allowed her husband to screw her that night, and I was conceived."

"We don't say screw, dear. We say make love," Sara added.

Tif looked up for a moment. "No.... Screw," she insisted.

Sara blushed. "It would be different if I married caring men."

"And what about this scar?" Tiffany turned her face towards Sara.

"Well what about the scar you made on my face throwing that math protractor in my head?" Sara compared her scar to her daughter's.

"You shouldn't have said I was as ugly as my old man," Tiff sobbed. "Why'd you cut me down like that?"

"You put a curse on me," said Tiffany. "I can't remember what I did wrong for you to put a curse on me."

"You disobeyed me."

"Well, your cursed worked. I failed math there times. See my scar?" Tiffany gave Nefra a good look at the scar.

"I fell while climbing the schoolyard fence and split my chin open on the bars--had eight stitches."

Tiff came over and sat in Nefra 's lap to show her healed stitches.

"You fell over the fence because you lost your balance," Nefra said. "Not because of a curse."

"Well, she must have done something pretty awful in a previous life to have such a bad Karma," Sara said while she served Nefra tiny cucumber sandwiches. "It wasn't my curse. It was bad luck."

"There's no such thing as luck. Everything's random," Nefra said.

"Tiffany's a feeling type and doesn't believe me." Nefra 's voice hardened. "Neither do you, Sara. You use guilt or fear to control your kids, and you have them cornered."

Sara let out a guffaw. "Kids who kill are corned kids."

"What about Ben?" Nefra asked.

Sara placed a restraining hand on Nefra 's arm. She turned to little Tiffany to release her vehement. "The little friend you were playing with made you climb that fence, and the fence swung open. You lost your balance and split your face. Can't you see the curse? You and her had bad karma from a previous life. Your playmate was a jinx. Stay away from her."

"Will she bring me bad luck?" Tif asked Nefra .

"No, of course not, Nefra said. "Hey, Sara, how can you tell your kid such bigotry? You asked for therapy. Are you going to cooperate?"

"Now why'd you go and tell Tif that?" Sara nervously bit her lip.

"You'd rather I told her where babies came from?" Nefra said matter-of-factly as she nibbled on a prune pastry.

Tiffany slid over toward Nefra and curled up into a ball in her lap. "What did dad mean when he told me he should have flushed me out into the bay with the condom before I was conceived?" Tif asked Nefra .

"I wished you came to me first," Sara grunted.

"He meant if he had used birth control, you wouldn't be here," Nefra replied.

"And I'd be swinging free instead of marrying Andy, the sonofobitch," Sara said. "Five years of hell, and I'm afraid I can't make it on my own if I step out."

Sara turned on the radio to classical music. "My father loved the opera," she said. "He was a classical symphony conductor from Milan."

"Free to do what, make lopsided ashtrays?" Tif said, wise beyond her nine years. She lifted one of the ceramic ashtrays Sara had made in art therapy and threw it against a wall. "Why'd you call me horseface?"

"Why do I have to be dragged into these talks?" Sara cried. She began to run water for her coffee pot.

"The day I married Andy I wrote in my diary: Today I died. He found my diary on our honeymoon train ride from Paris to Istanbul. He gave me my diary back with tears in his eyes."

"If you died the day you married, then Tiffany must feel like she's risen from your resentment," Nefra told Sara.

"Mom," Tif whispered. "Why are you afraid to tell anyone you're a freethinker?"

"Shut up," Sara screeched. "Do you know how many times your great grandma had her ears boxed in Albany for just saying she's a freethinker? Beaten by total strangers in rural New York State in 1904? She told me as they were kicking her, she was screaming she was a freethinker and only looked like a secular humanist. They said she had the portrait of Thomas Jefferson printed on her face."

"Boy," Tif wheezed. "I wonder what it must have been like in the old country, I mean in a modern place such as Milan."

"What did your mother do?" Tiff asked Sara.

"She put on a cross." Sara could feel her throat closing up. "My mother sold cloth to the nuns. It wasn't the nuns who bothered her.

"It was the schoolkids she saw every day and their washerwoman mothers. That's why she dropped out of school in the fifth grade. Ten years later she quit her factory winding mill job to marry a janitor who later nearly beat her to death. She never could leave. She never felt she could support herself."

"The fear of being hurt never stops," Nefra said.

Sara rolled a cold bottle of apple juice over her forehead. "Aren't you going to tell me that it's time to get out of my own way? How many times have I heard that line on the radio?"

Sara held her juice bottle like a microphone as she paced. "When are you going to take responsibility and grow, Sara? Success is measured by the range of change in a person's life."

Nefra took charge with quiet assurance. "It's Andy's house and Andy's money. I mean--he's my husband for all these decades now. Prove to me that's not all there is."

"That's why we're journaling for health and wellness." The women and their adult daughters proceeded to paint the twelve pieces of one canvas of art, match the pieces (of a serene seascape or an aquarium with fish, plants, rocks, and waterfalls) together when done. The mothers and daughters or dads and sons enjoyed a combination of art and writing therapy for health and wellness.

In the background, classical music played at 50 beats per minute for serenity, thinking, and balance. Now, you too, can start a multimedia ethnofiction therapy writing, painting pieces of serenity in a group, perhaps creating 12 inch square canvases, writing, or with a camcorder producing life story video recording group right here in Sacramento.

To start, form your own painting or multimedia group here in Sacramento where each person creates his or her own piece of a group project. It works really well with mothers and daughters. And someone should try it also with fathers and sons or all members of a family....Or perhaps with a group of women or men who have a goal or an experience in common.