I was afraid of papermaking. There I said it. It felt like it would be messy, and it required a lot of special equipment that I did not have. Frankly, I was also worried about having an attractive final product and I was not confident in my ability to follow through with such a measure. However, I can now say that my active participation in papermaking has left me a changed man. Once again, I was sucked in by the process of it all, watching something transform before my eyes into something that has form, structure and even everyday function, should I so choose. I think back to the reading on the Peace Paper Project where papermaking was described as a “a very experimental and forgiving process” (Canto et al., 2015, p. 153). Even now, I can look at my paper I have created and, though I was more engaged with the process than the actual product, if I so chose I could turn this paper back into pulp and make it again and again until I was satisfied with the transformation I saw. I think this is a beautiful metaphor that could be adapted to working with any number of populations or diagnoses.
However, for the purpose of this journal, I have chosen to contemplate the idea of using papermaking with adolescents who identify as transgender. I know that these persons may be considered to have a diagnosis of Gender dysphoria based on DSM-5 definition, but for the purpose of this assignment, I am choosing to use language that I believe exhibits more compassion and cultural humility. I was inspired by the case example in the Matott and Miller (2020) chapter on papermaking with a group of persons recovering from disordered eating. My thought in working with my chosen population would be something similar in regard to dismantling clothing, but it would be in concerns with gender identity. I would propose that we could use papermaking with clients old clothing that may no longer be gender-affirming based on their chosen identity. In this way, clients would be able to see a literal transformation and rebirth of items that may have held them captive in past identities and contributed significantly to traumatic experiences surrounding their own gender identity. I think this could be especially poignant during adolescence considering how individual’s bodies are experiencing significant change from processes of puberty as well.
References
Canto, A. I., Mcmackin, M. L., Hayden, S. C., Jeffery, K. A., & Osborn, D. S. (2015). Military veterans: Creative counseling with student veterans. Journal of Poetry Therapy, 28(2), 147-163. doi:10.1080/08893675.2015.1011473
Matot, D. & Miller, G. (2020) Papermaking. In Crawford, P., Brown, B., & Charise, A. Editor (Eds.), The Routledge Companion in the Health Humaninites (pp. 311-315). Routledge
