MESSAGES TO LAURA HUXLEY FROM THE STAFF OF COUI UK
Just days before her death, the COUI UK In House team of Teens & Toddlers Facilitators and Trainers were invited to send messages to Laura about ‘what Teens & Toddlers has meant to them.
Dear Laura,
While I have only met you a few times, I find myself completely in awe of your remarkable life and your beautiful vision for humanity. Some people live very big lives and they serve as an inspiration and model to many others. I feel very much that you have lived such a life, and it has been an honour both to meet you, and have somehow been of service to the ideas and visions that you have manifested in this world.
The Teens and Toddlers project is quite remarkable. I think the reason it is so amazing, and why it has such a positive effect on the young people who participate in it, is that I was founded from a point of love. Your belief in the potential of young people, in our need as a human family to honour and respect the next generation, and your belief in the unique contribution that all of us are here to make – has permeated the very energy that the Teens and Toddlers project expresses.
I believe the energy that an idea is born with permeates the manifestation of that idea, and flows through to all who come in contact with the idea. Your idea for Teens and Toddlers was and is beautiful. The beauty continues to manifest. Seeing the wonderment in a young child and how that can transform the toughest of teens is truly an experience of beauty. Through the project there is a healing force. The very real experience that the young people have in the nurseries is both healing and redemptive and it allows them to see a reality of potential in life, which allows them to sense that in themselves.
Of course this redemptive quality of love and beauty is also experienced by all of us who have had the experience of working with the project. And I know that many adults, not only young people, have also experienced transformation through their contact with the project and the beautiful ideas that it was founded on.
So thank you for your beautiful ideas. Thank you for dreaming them up, for holding and nurturing them, and for believing them enough to share them with others. Thank you for your inspirational life and for your service to the world. With deep soul love and respect, Dr. Andrew McDowell
Dear Laura
Although I do not know you personally, you seem to me to be a lady who has lived a life of your dreams such that you have sown the seeds of a wonderful garden of the heart that is now so established that it will live on to grow, blossom and flourish through the lives of the many it is nurtured by - teens, toddlers and facilitators like me. What an amazing difference you have made to the world and what better proof that dreams are worth having and making a reality! I wish you love and peace on your continuing journey and welcome your spirit and vision into my life and work. Namaste, Ann Collier
Dear Laura
I want to thank you for the bottom of my heart for your vision of Teens and Toddlers. I have been a facilitator on about 12 projects now ( I have lost count by this point) and every project brings me wonder and joy and enriches my life in some new way. I feel so lucky to have the luxury to be able to work with young people in the way we do. I have seen so many of them transformed by the experience. They have come at first often with anger, low self esteem and a palpable sense of alienation. They hate school and have often been badly let down by the adults around them. Yet all of these young people have been touched in some way by their experience at Teens and Toddlers. Their joy when their toddler dashes up to them when they arrive at nursery - the dawning recognition that their presence actually matters to this small person and in turn that they matter in the rest of the world also - the way they start to respond and blossom before my eyes when they actually get praise and affirmation from adults - the way that they slowly start to get a sense of how great they really are - how they start to feel good about who they are and to dream about how their life could be. It is like magic to me.
Sometimes of course, it’s not as easy to see the change in the young people and I think, ‘just what did they get out of it’? But just as with small children, I know that 'its all gone in' and that sometime, when the time is right, they will draw upon something that they have experienced at Teens and Toddlers and they will be different in their lives because of it.
Your vision continues to manifest and touches children, teenagers and adults every day here in England and its impact will go on and on. Thank you, Laura. With love, Janet Currier
I read about T & T's in America in the late 70's and appreciated the idea then, thinking it a brilliant innovation, rich with possibility. Years later (20 plus!) I heard about Teens & Toddlers in England and was given the extraordinary opportunity to join the swelling ranks of Facilitators and do my bit too. I recently took your idea of 'Ground Rules and Operating Principles' into a warring family where the police had been called after a 12 yr old attacked her mother. Simply by facilitating House/Ground Rules after two weeks the family were back on track and one of the rules 'to have fun' had already been enjoyed, in fact the family talked individually about how the new rules were working for them openly with each other, discussing areas of disagreement and with this new found respect one for the other, they were back on track. Hooray for the programme - it touches lives both within the confines of the programme and beyond as illustrated above. My thanks to Laura and Diana for the wisdom, insight and courage that it has taken to bring this forward to lighten the darkness of many peoples lives and educate that it can be otherwise! With kind regards and love, Belinda McLeod
Dear Laura,
Your vision of the Teens and Toddlers Programme has been so beneficial to me as a individual human being, a youth worker, a Teens & Toddlers facilitator as well as the young people I have worked with, delivering the Teens & Toddlers programme in London. I have seen young people (as well as my self) become more grounded and more trusting of self and others. It is so amazing to see the young people achieve the smallest of things, such as playing again with a toddler without feeling embarrassed by their peers; or the raising of their awareness and attitudes to life as well as being in a positive place of choice and change. Your work has enabled Diana to bring this wonderful programme to England, thus allowing other young people across the country to benefit from your vision. Thank You, Debra Viller
What Teens and Toddlers means to me: I remember Diana saying soon after I joined, that Teens & Toddlers is putting psychosynthesis into practice; taking it out into the world. For me, it is ‘love in action’. Teens & Toddlers is a magical way of allowing young people to discover a different way; another path to the one they are on. Yes, it’s about potential. The unique aspect of the programme is the learning and beautiful mirror teens gain in their relationship with the toddlers. I love the richness, breadth and, when it’s at its best, the depth of the programme.
I am grateful to Laura Huxley for her innovation, initiative and belief in creating this great programme. It can be challenging – for teens, toddlers and facilitators – and it doesn’t always work in the way we’d like. When the teens stay with it, they get it. We get the learning and healing too. It’s truly beautiful when the group is working as a learning community together.
The healing that Teens & Toddlers brings is what is special about it. It’s the moment a teen comes out of his or her shell, or a toddler and teen are so absorbed that they don’t notice the noise in the room they’re in, that are healing. A couple of weeks ago, a teen on one of my current programmes commented that she was surprised that she was still coming (it was about week 9). I reflected back her commitment. It was also a wonderful opportunity for me to praise her – something she clearly is not used to – and to notice how she’s surprised herself. The smile on her face was one of those memories I don’t want to forget, and what Teens & Toddlers is all about. Thank you, Laura Huxley. Caroline Sherrard
I have been so touched and truly grateful for having had the opportunity to work as a facilitator on the Teens and Toddlers projects since 2002. I have seen such amazing transformations in the lives of each of the young people I have worked with, and each one has been a gift to me. Your inspiration has touched my life in so many ways, I feel blessed to have the opportunity to continue your vision. Thank you for your gift to us all. Lots of love, Kamali Allnutt
Laura, I have been facilitating projects for four years now and every day is like the first: bewildering and magnificent. I work with teenagers because they help me connect with my inner teen and help me deal with my teen age nieces in a way that I never could have imagined. The teens provide me with role models that allow me to look at myself and bring me down to earth. A few months ago Diana showed us a video clip of you in the US with some of the projects you were involved in and this helped me appreciate how universal the concept is, seeing teenagers bridging that gap between responsibility and freedom, regardless of background. Russel King
I feel deeply grateful to you, Laura because: I see you as a person who followed your passion in life and for that you are a living inspiration for me. It feels as if you gave divine inspiration here on earth and certainly, in my own life. Not long ago, we were watching the video about the early Teens & Toddlers days and I noticed how you spoke from your heart. When my job with the teens gets tough at times, I remember the labour of love you gave. My work on the programmes is the most personal work I have ever done as a paid job. Sometimes I feel so personally challenged, while being watched by the teens. I find this work a privilege and a big personal challenge at the same time. My best wishes and deep gratitude for your big contribution, because it does include me too. Elisabeth Braun
Here is a little story for Laura, which describes one of the things I find so powerful and life-changing in Teens and Toddlers. Please give her my thanks for all that she has done for humanity. A few weeks ago, a Teen who had been causing some disruption in classroom time, asserted that she did not care about her toddler and then burst into tears. The whole group made a circle around her and tried to comfort her. Her indifference was masking a deep vulnerability which she allowed us to witness. It was moving to see how this vulnerability was respected by the other teens. At the end of the session she shared that she felt cared for.
Time and time again I see that a kind of alchemy takes place in Teens and Toddlers, whereby the toddlers put the teens in touch with their vulnerability, and the teens use this as an opportunity to heal their feelings of inadequacy. I think that this particular teen, like many others I have worked with, is starting to experience that she is loveable. She now wants to play with her toddler and take care of him and he in turn wants to be around her. Ziba
Having been a part of those Teenagers lives, even though for a short time, is and was a privilege - to be a part of their lives to show we believe in them and that they too have a potential they can work towards - to believe is all we can do, and to help is part of believing. Much love. Sahar
Dear Laura,
All I can say is, I wish you the best for your future travels and I pray you continue to sprinkle your angel dust to those around you! You have left a vision, a concept that has given inspiration to many young people and toddlers. You have invented a concept that, I believe, will have a bigger impact in years to come. Your heartfelt truth has planted a seed within a seed of the young people and from that place they blossom showing their true inner beauty. You are a marvel and a very precious soul. May you be blessed. Gary
Dear Sister,
Whilst in person we have never met, your be-ing has touched my life and
your work, created footsteps in which I now walk my own path of service. I thank you for the opportunities you've created through your manifesting vision. We sing a song in harmony and I watch with joy, it's notes awaken others. We live on and I am with you in the 'One Place'. Love James
Of Teens & Toddlers:
It has meant sunshine on cloudy days.
It has inspired hope, when I felt I had none.
It has energised when I believed that I was on my last legs.
It bought laughter to misery.
It allows me to recognise my potential. Laverne