It Takes an...Ecovillage to Raise an Orphan

      SOL Magazine Issue # 7 Spring 2010.

      Helping very Wounded Children Heal

      By Regina B. Jensen,  Ph.D.

         "It is really a national disaster as the number of wounded and damaged children is growing, and the extent of the children's suffering is beyond our comprehension."                               Katya Gurkina

Waiting in line at the passport control in Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, the couple behind me was showing off pictures of their new baby boy, about one year old. "Isn't he adorable?" the mother asked with the exact same sound of adoration any biological mother would have. "We are here to pick him up. He is our third adopted child." Ah, I thought, while smiling and nodding at the photo of the beautiful little boy, with my psychotherapist's brain ever busy. How much I admire people who open their hearts and homes to little orphans, but even more so to the older children who are so much more compromised by the loss of their parents and have been frequently, at least in Russia, exposed to much neglect and abuse. I have sat through thousands of hours of sobbing and raging with adopted as well as biological children who turned into suffering adults, now trying to work through the early issues which seem to block them from a fulfilling life. My training in pre- and perinatal psychology did not help to lessen but only increased my concerns. There is now no doubt that even our circumstances around conception, gestation and birth have great and unacknowledged influences upon our development. (See also our article by Dr. David Chamberlain on Birth and Violence in this issue.) Add to a fragile foundation neglect and damage during early development and you have not only a personal, but a social recipe for disaster.

Of course my pained attitude about the suffering of children, even when adopted into the most loving arms, was not helped by the idea that in just a few minutes, I would be meeting up with Ekaterina Gurkina, Katya for short, the representative of the Kitezh and Orion ecovillage orphanages which I had come to explore. Although these communities should be the pride and joy of Russia, I knew I would nevertheless experience, first hand, a world from which most of us are far removed: the struggles of orphaned children. Russia has, according to unofficial estimates, between eight hundred thousand and one million orphans. Roughly ten percent of these, I was told, are orphans as we think of them, namely children who have lost both parents and no family to raise them. But here, because of the many dramatic social changes and the high rates of severe alcoholism, more children are orphaned because the state decides that institutionalizing them is less damaging than letting them live in social circumstances causing severe neglect, abuse and exposure to criminal elements.

I did not know then that only days later I would share the overheated night train cabin to southern Siberia for nine hours with a lovely married couple - both Federal judges working with international adoptions. Nor did I expect to come home to a case of a Russian boy on the news who was sent home by his single foster mother after she became afraid of his violent behavior. (30,000 adopted children are actually returned into institutionalized care, only compounding the damage these children are struggling with already.)

Being bilingual myself, and having worked with average adults traumatized by nothing but culture and language changes, I often wonder what people expect when they take older children out of their cultural and language environments without considering the exceptional additional trauma they will incur by losing their cultural and linguistic matrix to add further chaos and confusion to their already damaged inner worlds. I was not at all surprised by the boy's acting out, nor the - probably very well-meaning - adoptive mother's ultimate despair. Now Russia and the United States are in an uproar around this issue. All the while, Russia has had an unusually well-trained authority on its hands who could have helped to prevent such unnecessary suffering and international fray in the first place.

But I am ahead of myself - back to my travel notes. I was picked up promptly from the airport by lovely Katya indeed, and after a lengthy but pleasant drive, arrived at a most enchanted looking place by the forest's edge, my concerns about orphans wafting away on a mild breeze. What followed was an unexpectedly pleasant visit over homegrown herbal tea with Dimitry Morozov, founder of both ecovillage orphanages - Kitezh and Orion, the latter modeled after the first and still in the process of development. In his book Kitezh, Morozov had written: "Kitezh is a place of happiness and joyful refuge for Russian children who have been abandoned or orphaned...."

Kitezh is an exciting place, in stark contrast to the normally depressing conditions for such children in Russia. The Kitezh approach to fostering and educating children in a therapeutic community environment has already proven to be a real alternative to the Russian state system of orphanages and childcare institutions. Family, community, country - these are steps to knowledge of the world. At Kitezh a child takes those steps side by side with his parents and teachers, deriving support and inspiration from everyone. Kitezhans raise their children with an awareness of beauty in their natural environment and beauty within themselves.

Yes indeed. I watch how this gentle man pours the tea and how softly he moves about his simple home environment. Does his quiet, centered nature reveal the effects of his early spiritual training in India? I leaf through a large, impressive book about his experiences in that land of spirit. Is this the same man who writes about the utter necessity to not only love and fully accept, but also confront the children and insist that they must change their negative program and worldview lest their early imprints doom them to a life of suffering and decline - maybe the same alcoholic decay to which some of their parents had fallen victim.

Dimitry, or Dima, as he is affectionately called, a biological and adoptive family-father himself, takes me around the village with its impressive school-house. Katya, who acts as his Moscow liason and helps with the difficult financial side of all this, is by our side. I can see the signs of growth: buildings in the process of completion, being erected clearly with the same joyous barn-raising spirit of our own American pioneers..."All together now!" The children have helped with all this, learning more than just the art of building log-houses in the process, I'm sure. We visit a few of the young families. One father tells us that, as a younger man, he had actually helped to build the very house in which his family now lives. When he returned to the village, he was able to make it their home.

A family in either of the villages ideally consists of the biological children of the couple and one or two adopted or fostered children. Each family lives in their own home, but the children's needs are discussed in daily meetings which concern themselves with all the children. The adults are committed to a process of self-examination which is exemplary. I think about the effort of so many ecovillages in the process of establishing themselves and their communities. Even without the demanding work of raising children and fostering orphans, one's process of inner growth and self-confrontation can be preoccupying in itself. But here, it is all done in the flow of community living and relating. They have learned much over the years, especially to not be idealistic, and about the need for endless patience and flexibility, coupled with the knowledge that children learn from challenges and commitments. In a village where children and their peers are allowed to be themselves, much feedback can actually come from those peers. But these are peer groups which are observed and guided, and any temptations to revert back to old, destructive behaviors are quickly confronted.

We have a simple, delicious soup for lunch, with bread and chunks of salt-pork, provided by the woman whose turn it is to attend to the kitchen duties. When I have to leave, I am pained by the moment when I extend two hundred dollars to help defray the cost of picking me up and returning me to Moscow. This proud man, who has left the lap of luxury to follow his difficult dream, ending up at times with worries about food for his villages, looks me calmly and gratefully into the eyes and says "Thank You, that is a lot of money to us". Even now, that moment brings tears to my eyes. Images go through my mind, of inane TV-Shows and empty-headed people with several shopping bags dangling from their arms with items they might never use. While here, every penny counts and the government does not seem to be able to appreciate the profound work being done for the healing of their nation and its future generations.

Where ARE all the well-meaning donors, with almost a million abandoned and abused children needing this kind of loving, committed community rehabilitation so that the painful and well-known generational transmission process is interrupted for good? Where are those wonderful movie stars who would like to support this kind of work and see it spread not only throughout Russia - but all over the planet? We have created so many more orphans by way of our thoughtless wars in the world, never mind the loss of parents from AIDS, starvation and tribal conflicts. I am sure there must be many people who have the resources to help spread this work of love like dandelion seeds on the winds of spirit. Then they would get to share the contentment of this man who must feel so very pleased knowing that most of the villages' children go out into the world to obtain higher educations. What makes a person step upon a path of so much self-denial so that they can be of service to others?

Now, relaxing in the car on the way back to Moscow, my eyes fall upon the first pages of Morosov's book Kitezh, where David Dean introduces him and his unusual approach to rehabilitation. Dean is no newcomer to this kind of work. He is well-known in his own right, having founded Raddery School in Scotland in 1978 for children with special needs. He pioneered many of the approaches I saw: the utter necessity of a natural environment, psychotherapeutic techniques, a working farm to provide food, outdoor education, drama, music. Dean has been honored in the UK and Russia for his extensive services to education. Now retired, he serves as an advisor to Morozov's eco-orphanages through the Ecologia Trust, which also accepts utterly necessary donations for them. David Dean writes: .

What is the special nature of the approach practiced by Morozov and those who have come to join him at Kitezh? It is, firstly, the de-institutionalizing of child care. Kitezh does not warehouse children for the convenience of the authorities; it is a truly child centered village of supported foster families where a rigorous education program flourishes together with a group and individual therapeutic process designed to empower the most disempowered of children and have them feeling that, at last, they have reached a place where they are safe, valued and where life, with all its burdens, can also embrace the freedom to play and have fun.

At Kitezh, the unlovable are loved and outrageous behavior learned on the streets of Russia’s towns and cities, because there was no other option, is tolerated, worked with and turned around. If this sounds simplistic to some ears then I am sorry but that is what happens there with very few exceptions. The very process of empowerment to which I referred becomes the child’s prime tool in marking his recovery as he learns to own the process of his own healing and growth. The foster family he has joined is not ‘administered’ from a distant social services office but supported and nourished on an hour by hour basis, year round, by others carrying out the same role for other children and enhanced by the dynamic presence of their natural children whose contribution to the process cannot be understated. Here the novice foster parent is taught by the experience of those who have practiced the art for several years. (Kitezh, 2008)

Dean's following statement is very true: "They now have tangible support for their innovative work from within Russia and in time will, I very much hope, make some positive professional impact on thinking and practice throughout the whole country." But one wonders, with a brilliant, hard-earned method which is proving its viability every day, why is the Russian government not making this kind of environment available for all its orphans? Instead, they now even waste precious resources arguing, even wanting to "send agents over to the US to check up on adoptive parents" at great financial expense when the much more sophisticated and proven methods are right in front of their proverbial doorsteps? The life-style and the environment is so simple, much of the work is done by the villagers themselves. The land, preferably close to a forest, is hardly prime Moscow real-estate. Surely, neither Russia nor any other nation on earth wants to doom their next generations to alcoholism, drug abuse or criminal behavior?

It is a pleasure to read in Dean's concise words what Dimitry Morozov is accomplishing, in Kitezh and now, the other developing village, Orion. I am thinking back upon a conversation I had with my friend Al here in Santa Barbara just the other day, when trying to explain their work and challenges. I said that people always remark upon my level of patience and tolerance, although I hardly think of it that way. It's just that I understand most of what drives people to do what they do. "But patience," I said to him, "isn't even a word you can apply to the work they do there with the children and each other. It's hard to absorb, the responsibilities they take on and the incredible care and love they share for these children who are so unable to give in return."..."Yes, I understand," he answered thoughtfully, "it is an act of grace, isn't it?"

Grace is a very appropriate word to describe the environment in which I found myself, and it might also explain indeed why and how certain special people commit themselves to this kind of work. Katya had given up a lucrative job because she was so inspired by Morozov's work. And he himself gave up a life of unusual comfort and recognition as a journalist and radio-host, including his house and summer-home, to invest everything he had, in time even his pension, in the effort and monumental task of establishing and maintaining Kitezh. "We were very scared in the beginning", he shares freely, "especially when they brought us the first two troubled boys....But we have learned a lot."

Yes indeed they have. Morozov knew instinctively that full access to nature would be an essential aspect of healing. "The children do not trust humans, who have so betrayed them. But they do trust nature. Its laws are inhuman." How true! But I wonder whether this very same nature in these children, just as in wounded animals, does not recognize right from their resistant beginnings somewhere deep inside, that they certainly are in the presence of something miraculous - a community which has come together to bless them...and be graced in the process.

* * * * * * * * *

A recent email note from Katya: "Nobody works with adoptive or foster families in Russia. There are few organizations which can train and provide psychological support for them. And Kitezh and Orion, although 'drops in the ocean', train prospective foster parents in Kitezh. But they need to also be guided and supported throughout their life. It is a terrible fact as well that many people are self-serving when taking children out of the orphanages, first and foremost thinking about the foster parents' salaries and government support. It is really a national disaster as the number of wounded and damaged children is growing, and the extent of the children's suffering is beyond our comprehension."

kitezhcentre@yandex.ru. Kitezh is 4 hours from the city; Orion is closer, about two hours from Moscow by car. It is Katya (Ekaterina Gurkina), with whom anyone wanting to be of help would be communicating at first, through Moscow, where emails and web-access are available.

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