Walking with Children
The Jumping Mouse Children's Center Origin Story
By Dott Kelly, Founder
Jumping Mouse Children’s Center
I.
Faith in the Process
Who knows when a story begins, and then how that story lands and becomes an activity?
The story of Jumping Mouse Children’s Center had a start date of its own: September 1, 1999. But an idea had been trailing me long before that. I had been working in a nonprofit whose founder had her own vision, and whose work had given me the confidence to really understand that what I knew internally might also reach its purpose externally; that maybe I could be with children in a way that trusted each child to show me the keys to his or her own healing.
I had gone back to school in 1991, after my 2 children were nearly launched. Since the age of 25, I had worked with children in a number of environments and trusted that relationship genuinely and intuitively. I needed some kind of ticket to be able to go where I felt called: into the one-to-one healing space with young children. My master’s degree would become that ticket.
Thinking I needed to build a tougher skin that could protect my own intuition, I expected to do my internship in a cognitive-behavioral agency. I applied to several and was accepted. Then I had a dream that entailed ancient processes. This dream might not have seemed connected to a decision of where to do my master’s internship. But I knew it was. It was deep and archetypal. I asked the founder of a non-profit whose mission was a kind of art therapy if she would supervise my internship. She said yes. I did my internship and then continued on—seeing 15 children weekly. The work of those kids brought me to what was inside me: this belief in children and their efforts to be known by someone. Between 1991 and 1999, I learned how to write grants. I became acting executive director of the agency, and I supervised the clinic staff. Previous experience gave me the knowledge, but I had had no confidence until those tasks were required of me.
In 1998, facing financial crisis, the founder spoke of closing down that agency. In an odd twist, I suddenly found myself with access to what funds remained in this nonprofit (about $14,000), and the non-profit’s tax identification number. These two items allowed me to continue on. In July of 1999, I knew I could bring something new into creation. I really didn’t stop to think about how. This faith in the process of establishing and nurturing Jumping Mouse has always been present.
II.
Trust in Relationships
Because of limited resources, I knew that this opportunity to continue a non-profit might only last a year. But that didn’t seem to matter. A year was worth it. I asked the clinic staff at the closing agency if anyone wanted to come with me, and two people said they would. One of them dropped out before we began seeing children on 1729 Spruce Street. The other was Catharine Robinson. Catharine became my partner in making this new agency, carrying the administrative responsibility of bookkeeping. She continued seeing children as her primary engagement.
It was a Thursday afternoon when I tried naming who this agency might be. I had learned so much about children needing to be remembered, to be carried in someone else’s mind in order to thrive. I had my adult books of names and meanings and symbols spread out. But nothing worked. All the words were adult intellectual words. I needed something that understood children. I gave up, wondering where else to look. An old teaching legend belonging to the Lakota Plains tribe came into my awareness called the Story of Jumping Mouse. It felt right to name this new agency by that legend.
The story is of a mouse who hears something inside. He asks about it and is told not to think about it; that it’s not real. But he must find out. He leaves his safe grounds and follows the sound from within. He comes to a river that marks the furthest reaches of mouse territory. As he wonders what to do, the voice of Frog (perhaps representing the Elder’s voice in the teaching) questions his intentions, and on hearing the truth in Mouse, renames him to Jumping Mouse.
Crossing the river is a common challenge in myths: a crossing to the unknown. This journey teaches Jumping Mouse many things, while his compassion and give-away bring him closer and closer to the inner sound he knows. By the time he arrives at the Sacred Land, he is in despair, unsure of where he is. But his trust in the journey and his hope of what he has heard hasn’t left him, even though he can no longer understand the purpose of his journey. Frog returns and tells him that because of his compassion, he is renamed from Jumping Mouse to Eagle, the one with the greatest sight. Jumping Mouse is given the capacity to fly over the land. This became the name of the new nonprofit agency, embracing the journeys children travel in reclaiming their own whole selves.
When I told a friend of mine, Janel Carlson, what I intended to do, she signed on as the first board member and president. Within a month or so we had a board of directors of four.
I had recently established dedicated space for my own therapy practice, where I was privately seeing children and adults. I created a schedule that would include Jumping Mouse. This infant agency needed to be tucked in for a bit, allowing organic growth that didn’t require the input of too many ‘relatives’ in order to develop. Catharine and I carried five children into my therapy place. The therapy room, located in my basement, had its own fully established sand play collection.
By 2000, I had begun a training program that allowed us to serve more children without yet having the income for therapist salaries. Our first group of three master level interns were all from the University of Washington. I made more copies of my house key. The main office was my kids’ old rec room, located on the main floor of my home. Many consultations took place at my kitchen table. I followed the guidelines of the universities the interns were attending, with a commitment of one full year from anyone who did their internship with Jumping Mouse. One of our first master level interns was Anita Fraser. Anita had a paid job and a master’s in special education. This would be her second degree. She chose to stay past her year, volunteering as a therapist for 10 years.
Jumping Mouse has trained master level interns from institutions which included University of Washington, Seattle University, Pacifica University, Antioch, City University and LIOS. Our training program allowed our services to remain untypically inexpensive.
This organic business model has been the heartbeat of Jumping Mouse and is congruent in its reliance on trusting relationships rather than a more objectively definable structure.
III.
Transformation & the Vision
In 2001, the acting president of the Rotary Club of Port Townsend, Lloyd Cahoon, heard about us. He himself wanted to shift Rotary’s focus to support one or two agencies, rather than supporting many, long enough to make a difference. When we met for lunch, the structure of our mission made sense to him. At the top of our connection was the urgent need in a rural community to serve very young children in a manner that was congruent with these little people. The Port Townsend Rotary agreed to go in that direction, and this club’s members became our first ongoing support for a number of years. They took on the responsibility of financing our training program. The partnership was about relationship and was fully compatible with the still infant Jumping Mouse container.
Rotary also gifted Jumping Mouse itself with a Christmas present every year as well as gifts for our enrolled children. They decorated a tree for their Christmas party, and when their party was over, the gifts and the tree were royally escorted to the therapy space in my basement. Gifts included our first big puppet collection, our computer, therapy dolls, and art supplies, among other things. United Good Neighbors was also a key support in our early years, addressing the commitment we had with HeadStart to serve some of their children and families.
An absolute requirement in building Jumping Mouse was to build trustworthy connections with other county agencies. Any community needs to understand the services being offered in order to create and sustain teams that come together around the persons who are being served. To that end, I met monthly for lunch with Rotarians; I met with Kiwanis; with other service clubs. I was asked to do trainings with library and school employees, Head Start, Guardian ad Litem, and our sexual assault center. I traveled to regional universities: Antioch, Seattle University, Evergreen College, Fielding, to train in this play therapy model that wouldn’t rely on behavioral outcomes as its primary goal. As reluctant as I was to do public speaking, these connections were building Jumping Mouse from a private small process into a publicly recognized service agency for young children and their families. We also brought in team processes that might include schoolteachers, Department of Social and Health Services, and our domestic violence and sexual assault center. Relationship—human to human—is essential in anyone’s efforts to bring greater dialogue and awareness within its community.
By 2002, with one therapy playroom, we were too crowded. The Unitarian Fellowship Community offered to lend us a room with the condition that we closed up for weekend Sunday teaching. The high school woodworking shop made us a close-and-lock cabinet that kept our miniatures in place but off limits. We stayed there for about two years, until even with this added space we were limited in numbers we could serve. We brought together our options, and the board chose to look for a home to buy. Catharine and I had our specifications, which were met at 1809 Sheridan. The house was inexpensive because it was badly in need of repair. The community came together to rebuild this space. Many volunteers were from service clubs. Others who might be walking by came in and stayed to help. We signed a mortgage in 2004, and by 2006 the clinic house was paid off. To this day, Jumping Mouse Children’s Center conveys the care from this community’s actions.
A crucial aspect of growth in a small non-profit is its transformation from an individual’s vision to an ongoing community-propelled agency. The vision remained its core. 2005 held that transformation—of hunting for the means with which to stabilize Jumping Mouse financially. I moved out of being executive director and remained as Clinic Director. Catharine moved away from administration and continued as lead therapist. We hired our first administrative crew. We continued to grow our training program. We would expand our services to 40, then 45 children weekly. We became inundated with calls for care. Jumping Mouse needed to build a narration that could be understood publicly, of waiting lists, of seeing children long term, of not utilizing federal dollars.
In 2009 Catharine initiated Securing Connections, a program to serve the parents and grandparents of the children being seen. All of this growth maintained the connection to the heart of Jumping Mouse: its children and their capacity to mend. And being public, we quickly took on the professionalism of filling a much-needed gap in community services and became a part of a network of services.
Our clear story has been about what it takes for children to be found, from the inside out and not from a set of behaviors that each child comes with, like a list of ingredients. The Jumping Mouse mission has continued its commitment to each child’s self over any external demand that would define the work itself. As children’s needs mounted and Jumping Mouse became visibly present as public service, children’s needs mounted. Referrals came in from the hospital, the schools, the courts, and importantly through parent recommendations. It became increasingly necessary to remain committed to one child at a time rather than ‘saving children’, and to sustain the language that guarded this vision.
IV.
The Domain of Children
In 2014, a man who truly wanted to remain private asked that I walk his land in the county with him. He owned about 15 acres and a home he’d built. He said he wanted to put Jumping Mouse in his will; that he saw children on this land. A year or so later he died, and Jumping Mouse became a landowner. This man’s dream rests in the means his land brought to Jumping Mouse.
One goal has always been to keep our agency close to children’s environments, namely schools, and to be close to bus lines for the single parents who may have no other way to get their child to therapy. After much soul searching, we sold the property and bought the house next door to 1809 Sheridan when it came up for sale. The new home was remodeled by a retired contractor who worked primarily alone for a year, creating two additional therapy playrooms, two consultation rooms, and larger offices for administration and clinicians. That space has held the depth of Jumping Mouse since this time.
With the additional rooms, we could increase yet again in numbers of children served. In a matter of 3 years, we increased from 40 children to 80 and then to 90 children a week, conscientiously holding one child at a time, for as long as it takes, and fundraising for families who couldn’t pay. We hired more therapists and increased our training program. The mission of Jumping Mouse held.
In 2016, we created a pilot project at what was then Grant Street School. Teachers came to discussion groups early in the morning, before their classes. That project led to funding coming to Jumping Mouse to establish a therapy playroom in Brinnon. Two therapists began working in our first outreach program in 2018. That work continues today and has been expanded. Opening a dedicated space in Chimacum Elementary followed. Jumping Mouse remains inside the school programs where children spend many hours.
There has always been an underlying strength, a faith in the support required in walking with our youngest community members at Jumping Mouse. When this agency needed something—more room, help with remodeling, toys, hiring, an entire addition—offerings have come. People have stepped up to drive our children from county areas. People offered spaces in their homes when our training program brought interns from across the water who would need to spend overnights here to carry out their child sessions. Perhaps working within the domain of children and their full-on openness has been the gateway to an agency’s well-being. Believing that an organic agreement will remain attached to its core beginnings keeps those roots alive. Trust in the process of working with many hurt children is essential to the larger health of the therapists and administration.