Conversations with the Inspiring Andrea Rabold

Today we’d like to introduce you to Andrea Rabold.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Andrea. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I was born in Houston, TX, but primarily grew up in a small rural town outside of Houston. I moved there in 4th grade and graduated highschool there. I love and identify with a lot of my rural roots. I have a lot of fond memories associated with my life there, and I also have to share that I didn’t always have the support I needed there. So many times as a young person, I felt alone, unworthy and insignificant. I couldn’t be what my parents, my teachers, my friends or society needed me to be, and I couldn’t process the pain and the trauma that I saw in others and experienced myself. As a result, I made myself an internal target of the pain I couldn’t process through self-harm and self-hatred. My journey with mental health and an eating disorder has been a difficult one. Like so many others, I have spent so much of my life feeling powerless, inauthentic, and ineffective. No one ever deserves that.

Fast forward to who I am today: I am in the process of truly healing and finding peace, and it’s beautiful and hard, and I am filled with gratitude for my journey. I would not be who I am today without it. As I have translated my experience as a young person, I have become an advocate for young people. So many of my experiences happened because I didn’t have a safe, trusted adult in my life asking me how I was doing. I wish all young people can feel like they have someone to talk to. I want them to feel ownership of who they are…to love who they are and to know their power. I want them to feel seen…to become their purpose and their potential. This is why I do what I do for Mirror Image Arts and why Mirror Image Arts exists.

I started with the organization in 2009 as an actor in their first play. We toured all over Colorado bringing education and awareness to eating disorders. Something that clearly connected to my mind, heart, and experience. When the founder, Erin Jorgenson, handed me the custodianship to the organization in 2011, my heart was in my mouth. I had no idea what was in store for me, but I knew it was an opportunity of a lifetime, and I knew without truly knowing…how much of my life would be forever changed by the experience. It hasn’t let me down. I am a changed human for the choices I have made, the things I have learned, and the people I have met on the path to becoming an executive director of a nonprofit. I have witnessed the inspiration and potential that life has to offer. It was a bold choice then, and the journey has been filled with risk, fear, confidence, assertion, disappointment, love, pain and unimaginable joy. It has taken a lot for me to prepare for this journey.

Has it been a smooth road?
The path forward is very rarely straightforward, and someone told me once that if I don’t feel it…I’m not trying hard enough.

I learned how to be an executive director while on the job. I actually prefer to learn on the job. I think I am just a practitioner at heart. So I prefer to learn on the job, AND I also recognize that learning won’t feel good most of the times. The stakes are high and other people are involved and therefore impacted by your decisions, and…you still don’t know what you don’t know. Yet you still have to do the job, make bold choices, fail, and come back stronger. I guess I am describing resilience. I have really leaned on my resilience over my lifetime. I am so grateful that the culmination of my life experiences have helped me, but in the end…pain still feels painful. The only way to move forward is to truly know that we are all human and can’t get out of feeling pain. It’s how we also feel joy. But there is this idea of resilience that can help you get through. Make bold choices…it’s ok to fail…it’s how we learn as humans…it’s what you do after the failure that really defines you. Those words have held a lot of weight in my life.

Since I took over the organization, it has shifted and changed to meet the needs of the young people we serve. We haven’t always known who we are, but we have always held to the understanding that theatre is a powerful tool to unpack our humanity. So we kept going. Through granters saying no. Through running out of money several times. Through not being able to pay the paychecks. We kept going. Through figuring out how to make the business work. Through taking on the tough shit we face as humans like racism, poverty, and punitive systems. We keep going.

What I say to young women who are starting their journey. It’s ok to set out to do what is in your heart. Learn resilience and use it. Find your tribe…the people who can help you discover parts of yourself you didn’t know and love you for the parts you are afraid to love. Stay away from the shamers. It’s ok to believe in yourself. The shamers don’t let you feel that. You deserve to belong to yourself. Read Brene Brown. Ram Dass is also a good one. Read period. Grab desperately for perspective-shifting instead of insulating experiences so you can live life to the fullest and be there for others. To hold space for them and for yourself. Love to the best of your ability.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into Mirror Image Arts story. Tell us more about the business.
At Mirror Image Arts, we are working with young people to build social-emotional skills and resilience through theatre. We work in schools, community centers, and in the juvenile justice system.

Our vision:
1.) Help youth break free from the “School-to-Prison Pipeline” that has developed in recent years due to significant policy changes.**
2.) Give youth the skills and empowerment to positively impact their lives and their communities.

All of our programs are designed to focus on and strengthen positive rather than negative behaviors. We have intentionally designed our programming to take place over the course of months so that we have enough time to build robust, meaningful relationships. We feel this is vital as Mirror Image Arts works to serve as a positive role model for youth who may not have one in their lives. To do this, we use social-emotional learning to build empathy and understanding in young people so they can make better decisions when faced with difficult situations. The youth we work with are considered “at-risk” due to socioeconomic challenges, and many are dealing with the effects of complex trauma due to violence, abuse, and extreme poverty. Our approach uses proven methods to offer youth an opportunity to not just learn new techniques, but to practice them – through theatre – to be ready for real life.

Professional theatre artists facilitate all of our programs. These artists also receive training in facilitation, partnership practices, classroom management, cultural responsiveness, positive youth development, trauma informed care, and restorative justice.

Check us out at www.mirrorimagearts.org.

**The increased use of zero-tolerance policies and significant expansion of police (safety resource offices) in the schools have exponentially increased arrests and referrals to the juvenile courts (Advancement Project, 2005). While impacting many, these changes disproportionately ensnare a small subset of at-risk and already disadvantaged children, adolescents, and their families (Carter, Fine, & Russell, 2014; Justice Policy Institute, 2011). In short, this pipeline is “a disturbing national trend wherein children are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems (ACLU).”

Who do you look up to? How have they inspired you?
My mentors. Without them believing in me…I would not be where I am today.

Contact Info:

• Address: Mirror Image Arts
  3327 Brighton Blvd
  Denver, CO 80216
• Website: www.mirrorimagearts.org
• Phone: 720.295.9648
• Email: a.rabold@mirrorimagearts.org
• Facebook: @mirrorimageartsdenver

Image Credit:
Jamey Rabold Photography

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