Cats, Dogs and Mice

By Yohanna Abdullah

It is pouring cats and dogs and mice and I am in my cosy home office waiting for the rain to abate so I can make my way to Club HEAL’s Pasir Ris East (PRE) centre. I love being in this bomb shelter of a centre at what used to be my home town and is currently home to my sister’s family. Pasir Ris somehow have for me a resort air and this is not lost in PRE.

I am at this clean and spacious centre once a week to conduct Expressive Arts – arts sessions – speech, drama, dance, music, poetry which give space and opportunities to air our feelings, thoughts and ideas in a safe, relaxed and fun atmosphere. In the process, we showcase our natural talents and share musings which we had kept largely to ourselves. We have Expressive Arts once a week at each of our three centres.

The rain has abated and I should make my move soon. My little grandniece Fatima Azahra is at home, taken care by my mum and dad. I love looking at children as they go about the business of play with both concentration and abandonment. This  heady mixture is how I feel when I am writing my thoughts and trying to capture them as they flow, feeling ALIVE.

Stay true to your feelings and thoughts and you don’t have to censor them to yourselves, even as you choose to say or admit to others or not.  If you can’t be true to yourself who can you be true to?