My name is Leslie Bartholomew and I’m an Intensive Case Manager for the Garden Grove office in beautiful Southern California. I have been a Marriage and Family Therapist since 2011 and have been working with the unaccompanied minor and migrant family population for the past five years.
When I was given an opportunity to share a blog entry to commemorate Hispanic Heritage Month for Church World Service, I immediately jumped at the chance as I love to write, specifically poetry. Poetry has been a vice to process hard seasons in my life as well as feelings and emotions that have changed my soul to be the woman I am today. Working with this population has been no exception. With this I say it all: as much as I love psychotherapy, I fell hard in love with serving the unaccompanied minors and their families and intend to retire with this population.
I never knew my own family story, and once I began working with this population, I asked my mom questions and wanted to know how in the world we came to be here. My life would never be the same knowing this story, which was long overdue.
My parents came to the United States in 1975 at ages 20 and 24, with my older brother at six months old in tow. When I asked my mother why she decided to come to the U.S. with my father, she responded that she wanted us to have a better life. A life that Guatemala would not be able to give due to poverty and limited resources. My father’s history is unknown as he left us when I was 15-years-old, and my mom continued to raise us as a single mother. Her father—my grandfather—was a shoemaker in the neighborhood, doing what he could to provide for his three daughters. My grandmother was a stay-at-home mother and wife, supporting him always. My mother had bigger dreams for us, never for herself, and therefore she came with my father to California to earn more and provide a more comfortable life. My mother did not finish high school due to following my father, and my father didn’t have more than a sixth grade education as he worked to support his family as well. I never knew nor asked about this story until I worked in Pre- and Post-Release Services with unaccompanied children.
Hispanic Heritage Month is a reminder on how I identify very much as a Hispanic as well as American, thanks to my parents for blessing me a life here in the U.S. I now can pass along the story to my son, a U.S. citizen, who too is Guatemalan and very much blessed for being able to have the opportunities that the United States can give us so freely. I am beyond proud and blessed to have been born here in California, but my heart and compassion towards the mission of these kids and families to migrate here and what they must go through for a better life is something that I will carry heavy on my chest until the day I part from this earth.
With that said, I have written a few pieces to paint a visual picture of what it’s been like to experience these beautiful children and the strength, resilience and survival skills that make me very humble. Of course, money is always nice, but the connections and testimonies that these kids give me during a home visit assessment is something that I can never know what it truly is like. However, in my attempt to process and cry it out, I wrote these two poems.
Just Because was inspired by one of the children going to be reunified with their blood relatives after being in a therapeutic foster home in the interim after shelter care. She was a little girl of about 6-years-old, and in her goodbye to the office, she thanked us profusely because we allowed her to have her bible that she brought with her from Honduras, which was her strength. Journey to Midway was my rendition (as best as I can imagine it) of what the journey must have been like by this 14–year–old Guatemalan girl with an 18–month– old baby on her hip, who arrived on a charter bus alongside 90 other kids on their way to the next shelter. I had the privilege of being the clinician on call to gather some intake information. Trust me when I say that it was extremely hard to focus on anything other than creating a safe space for her to speak and meet her immediate needs as she told me her story.
I hope that my experiences shed some light on the kids we serve at Church World Service. They are the true heroes and reason why we do what we do. It has been rewarding, more than I can ever express.
Leslie Bartholomew is an HSPRS Intensive Case Manager with CWS. Learn more about the work of CWS Orange County and CWS’ Children Services program.