Staying in the game
Nearly 30 years ago, Joanna Bridger was living and working in a home for abused and abandoned girls in Honduras. Seventy girls lived there, ranging in age from infancy to 18. Joanna cared deeply about them all but held a special place in her heart for a 16-year-old girl we’ll call Stella.
Stella’s early years had been filled with hard to imagine fear and pain. So understandably, she could be prickly and guarded. But she was funny too. And she and Joanna shared a similar sense of humor.
One day, Stella let her guard down, opened up, and shared some painful stories about her past with Joanna. Joanna listened. Stella talked. And afterward, Stella told her how relieved she felt to finally get it all out.
Then she stopped speaking to Joanna. Completely.
For weeks, Stella couldn’t even look at Joanna. At the time, Joanna knew little about trauma. She didn’t understand how recalling painful experiences could overwhelm a young person. She didn’t yet understand how closeness itself could feel dangerous to a child who had repeatedly been hurt or abandoned. She only knew that a girl she cared deeply about was pushing her away.
Joanna didn’t ask for an explanation. She didn’t withdraw in return. Instead, she stayed. No matter how hard Stella tried to push her away, Joanna wouldn’t budge.
Then, several weeks later, a piece of paper slid underneath Joanna’s door. On it was a drawing of an absolutely hideous, misshapen man. Underneath it was the words, “Joanna’s boyfriend.”
Joanna recognized the handwriting immediately. And she burst out laughing. It was Stella’s olive branch - a teenage insult disguised as an invitation to reconnect.
Joanna found Stella and immediately asked where she met her boyfriend and what they talked about. Stella started making up the details and soon they were both laughing so hard that their stomachs ached.
The relationship was back!
Joanna couldn't have known it then, but moments like that would help shape the trauma and grief therapist she would eventually become. They would also teach her something she still carries nearly three decades later:
Sometimes healing begins with laughter. Sometimes it begins when a caring adult has the patience to stay even when a child pushes them away. And sometimes it begins with a silly drawing slid underneath a door.
Joanna has been part of the Life is Good Playmaker community since 2012. Through her work, she supports programs serving more than 5,000 children each year.
The Playmaker Project reminds Joanna that play is not separate from the serious work of helping children heal from trauma. Play is what makes that healing possible.
Today, Joanna still encounters children who believe that something terrible that happened to them has left them permanently broken. She knows that no game, joke, or activity, can erase what a child has endured. But she also knows the power of a caring adult who stays. An adult who is patient enough to wait. An adult who is curious enough to see beyond behavior. And an adult who is playful enough to find another way in.
That is what your support of the Playmaker Project makes possible.
You help people like Joanna stay in game. You help equip thousands of teachers, therapists, caregivers and other childcare professionals with the tools they need to build healing, life-changing relationships with children.
And you help keep something alive that trauma too often tries to take away:
The ability to trust. The ability to laugh. The ability to play.