Sabine Vermeire: Weaving resilience after trauma
Sabine Vermeire, a psychotherapist and trainer at the Interaction Academy, is committed to children, adolescents, families and their caregivers. Her experience in residential youth care has led her on a search for ways to have meaningful conversations with youth who have had profound experiences and make new, livable tracks .
During a trip to Borneo, Sabine discovered a global tradition around beads that symbolizes and documents experiences and stories. This inspired her to use beads with youth in youth care. “Bead necklaces form a lifeline, where each bead represents a story,” Sabine says. Through this path, she helps young people get a grip and coherence on their life stories. Each important moment, both joyful and painful, is given a tangible place in their bead necklace, which helps them regain a sense of coherence and grip.
Sense of agency
Sabine explains that young people with traumatic pasts often feel they no longer have any influence over their own lives and relationships.
“When we collect beads together, step by step they regain a common thread in their life story,” she says.
This process not only restores their “sense of agency,” but also acknowledges their efforts to survive.
The layering and many facets of these stories helps them recover a richer, multicolored identity.
Recognition and meaning
“Many young people feel that everything happens to them without them having any control,” says Sabine.
Acknowledgement of their suffering is crucial.
Only when their experiences are noticed relationally and socially do they feel they have a place in society again.
The Stadsjuweel project responds to this by making visible the multifaceted stories of survivors of childhood trauma.
The City Jewel
The City Jewel project, in which children, youth and adults with childhood trauma work together to create a work of art, focuses on recognition.
The survivors create beads that represent their pain, resilience and sources of support.
These beads are not just works of art, but symbols of the stories young people carry with them.The project breaks the silence around childhood trauma and invites everyone, young and old, to participate.
The message is clear: “I am not alone.”
Sabine’s approach emphasizes the importance of acknowledging, giving meaning and making visible again their efforts to cope and their sources of support, thus making trauma no longer the only thing that defines survivors.
