Staff writer: Johanna Wagendorp
The girl in the locked teachers’ bathroom, trying to be quiet as she purges her lunch, or the boy who gets bullied for wearing eyeliner, pulling on a sweatshirt to cover the thin white lines on his arms.
For those who need a family outside of a family, Kalamazoo Community Christian and Celebrate Recovery programs offer a family outside of a family for teens and adults.
Kalamazoo Christian’s The Landing is a lightly god-centered teen group that helps teens face everyday life with a potluck dinner and a live band every Wednesday from 6 to 9 p.m. The Landing; a teen group that meets separately from the adults who are in Celebrate Recovery, offers kids the chance to tell their hurts habits and hangups in an open environment and seek friendship and support.
“There are many kids that deal with the loss of a family member, moving schools, balancing sports and homework, and low self-esteem issues. This is an opportunity for these kids to look for help from other kids who just might ‘get it’,” says Mackenzie Crandall, one of the longtime leaders for The Landing.
For people looking to learn how to see the bright side, those with a strong faith, and even those who don’t believe, The Landing and Celebrate Recovery are open to everyone who wants a hand up. It starts with 12 concepts—one each week—that apply to living a healthy life.
Many of the kids who started years ago have gone through all steps more than once, slowly learning how to teach healthier ways of thinking by example.
“The first idea is admitting that it’s okay to have something you struggle with,” Jaime Snow ’14 said. “It doesn’t have to be dramatic, like eating disorders or the loss of a loved one; learning how to balance things like school, sports, and home responsibilities is just as important.”
Snow, who has attended the group for 3 years, believes that the program does good for those who show up.
“I didn’t talk at all during my first visit,” Abbey Kleyn ’19 said. “but I think that it’s more about getting the ideas in your head than having to break your comfort zone immediately, and the people at the Landing try to make it as comfortable and caring an atmosphere as possible, especially for me because I’m in Middle School, and the High-Schoolers could have been mean.”
The kids split into two groups after making connections if possible about how that week’s concept can help them forgive, relieve stress, or help others. The boys and girls each get a leader of their own gender, and talk separately in small-group so that they feel more comfortable. If somebody is not okay with voicing their problem in front of a group, it’s easy to ask an older leader for a place to talk away from the crowd.
“What is said in the room stays in the room unless the person who said it talks about it somewhere else,” Cheyenne Kleyn ’15. “I think that that’s important because it lets you know that not everybody will be all up in your business, and sometimes not everybody is struggling with something that week that they want to get advice on… so we swap crazy fun stories!”
It is true that the entire meeting is not swamped with people’s problems; each week there is a game that lets teens be competitive. Sometimes there’s a break, where the group goes for walks through the bike trails behind the church, or just gets to hang out and do homework for the day.
To prevent each meeting from feeling long, there is also a break before small-group to get drinks, use the bathroom or call on a leader to talk in private.
“There’s always a positive end to the day.” Kleyn said. After time is up, the kids are released and can eat dessert and chat before they want to leave. It is often during these light and airy times that friendships are made.