Hello
My name is Liz Mintzer. I am a family therapist and professor of Social Work here in N.Y.C.
I have studied and taught many different kinds of therapy and have certification as a licensed hypnotherapist, movement therapist, and a long time friend of finding a safe and trusting climate for my clients to find there feelings.
As a child, I lived in a family with four others siblings, I was the youngest girl.
My family struggled with crisis, underground communication, and a kind of sad silence, my parents relationship was fraught and angry.
As I began to study families, I found that children will find the most elaborate and creative coping skills, to assume roles, to deflect, or manage their own pain.
My role, since I can remember was family clown.
I learned it in the most organic way, and I found my humor, the way I used my body, improv, jokes, and silliness, yummy distractive silliness.
Today as a mother of three grown boys, I look back and know that humor, laughter, and the surprise of joy that can sneak up on a child, is nothing less than a wind that brings lightness and breath to even the most challenging situations.
My inner clown may have grown itself from the inside of my heart, inside out really, but today, it is a choice to find and share with others, to bring joy, to find the light hearted healing of laughter to those who may suffer, find themselves without community, or just need hope.
I was so deeply moved by a visit with a young child in a pediatric unit several years ago, a man who knew the art of pacing and joining and reading a childs readiness for connection. Who wore a simple red nose, and spread sunshine about the room, for the parents who sat by this sad and frightened boy, to the doctors that found themselves in touch with the art of reading a childs needs, taking up the space of the sterile room with a smile, a quiet moment to know this boy responded, slowly watching the clown move about, watching his boundaries, and find a way into this sweet childs heart.
When he left, the room was transformed.
I believe a little light, an inner smile, was seeded in the heart of a young boy with very little he could control, except the way he could feel, could think, could catch the joy where it was hidden before.
I would like to study, to use my skills as child therapist and a strong sense of the inner child in myself a radar for what makes a child let go, to find a special warm place in the heart, by the laughter brought by a stranger that cares.
I am studying now, reading whatever I can, and hope to go to visit with the elderly, a forgotten population, isolated in nursing homes, often without family or visitors.
I would like your help and feed back to learn and refine my skills to be ready for what feels natural for me, but needs clown knowledge to fuel it.
Please guide me to what you may know about New York City training, even if it is with a mentor.
I am eager, and committed to share my skills, my deeply rooted skills to clown.
I would greatly appreciate your feedback and contact.
You can call me at 917-273-6510 or email me at
aroomofmyown@aol.com
happy clowning to all.......
Liz