Mimi Savage: Be Of Service...Share...Give

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Jayne Amelia talks with therapist Dr. Mimi Savage.
In this episode Mimi describes her upbringing: "My parents are not who I am. My mother's a white woman, my father's a black man. I am born of the two of them, a melange, a mixture. But I had to find my way. And it's not just about race. As I say this to your listeners, everyone needs to find their way. And it's foster care, it's psychiatric units, it's the world, it's the women on skid row whom I've become very close to, many of those women. It's all of us finding our way. We have to have empathy, but we have to be careful about owning other people's stories. So that's what I mean about I have my biases and to check myself to do my own work around that. I usually do it through some sort of art practice. And how is it that I can be of assistance to others? There was a point in my life, it was a difficult point in my life where things just were all falling apart. And I remember I made a promise to the gods that if I could get through this and I've never really shared this with anyone publicly that I really, please help me get through this. And my goal is to just be of service. And also trauma. Trauma from foster care, trauma from wherever the trauma comes from. When I was on skid row, everyone there had trauma. And I thought at first that I wasn't as connected to homeless folks, but it turns out I found out I had a lot in common with them. Really? Again, I wasn't conscious. So I think part of this is also becoming conscious. Becoming conscious and being authentic to oneself and how all of that is part of healing. Yeah, that's what I discovered on skid row that I was very much akin to all the women that I was working with there."

Myriam Savage, Ph.D., RDT/BCT is a registered drama therapist and board-certified trainer. Her alma maters include Lesley University, Cal State University LA, Princeton University and The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, NYC. She has developed drama and expressive therapy programs in acute inpatient units for children and adults for several years and facilitated neuro-diverse populations, homeless women, adolescents in residential rehabilitation and children in educational settings. Dr. Savage is a core faculty member of Counseling & EXA and founding faculty of UCLArts and Healing Social Emotional Arts (SEA), a manualized professional development program that instructs on therapeutic uses of the expressive arts. She is founder/director of SoCal Drama Therapy Center, mentoring an international student body of professionals earning RDT credentials.
Serving as Education Chair for the North American Drama Therapy Association (NADTA) (2019-2021), she devised the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Initiative, coordinating NADTA outreach to HBCU’s in order to positively affect Black diaspora inclusion and education within drama/expressive therapies fields.
A recipient of a Drama Therapy Fund Professional Research Grant, her published work and conference presentations focus on adoption from foster care and intersections of identity using narrative inquiry and novel narrative arts-based digital media interventions. http://www.SoCalDramatherapycenter.com

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/mimi-savage-phd-rdt-bct-b0179931/

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