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In the 12 years Lydia Littwin worked as an educator at a South Burlington art studio, she taught hundreds of children in afterschool classes and summer camps. But the adult students intrigued her the most: the retired professional feeling adrift in retirement, the man recovering from a catastrophic injury.

“They weren’t there only to learn art. Yes, they wanted to paint, but on the foundation of an entire life already lived,” Lydia says. While children follow an intrinsic desire to create, she explains, that’s often overwritten as we age by the obligations of adulthood—unless we have a wound that we hope art can heal.

“Yes, I was teaching them art, but I was also, informally, a counselor,” Lydia noted. A short while later, she realized having a degree would allow her to do more of the work she loved.

Now halfway to earning her , Lydia received the Vermont Mental Health Forgivable Loan. The program, managed by �й������� and funded by the state of Vermont, forgives one year of student loan debt for every year the student works in Vermont’s mental health field post-graduation.

A taste for art

Lydia and her older brother grew up on the campus of Deerfield Academy, where their dad taught English for 30 years. After graduating from Deerfield, Lydia earned a degree in Social Psychology from Connecticut College. When her dad passed away in 2006, Lydia moved to Vermont with her mom, who wanted to be closer to her extended family. “I fell in love with the state and never left,” she says.

She earned her Master’s in Art Education from Goddard College in 2011. While she recalls being interested in art therapy at that time, it was, and remains, an emerging field. Instead, she got her first taste of “art therapy” at Davis Studio, where she worked with the adult students who inspired her interest.

“One woman, retired from a fast-paced career, felt depressed when I first met her, and she told me she couldn’t even draw a stick figure,” Lydia recalls.

After several years of working with her in acrylic and oil paints, I was helping her curate solo exhibitions, and she started selling her work. For her, that process was about trying something new, making herself vulnerable, messing up, and then finding something she really liked. I got to watch this amazing transformation.

Around that same time, Lydia talked to two friends who were taking classes at Northern Vermont University (now VTSU), one for nursing and one for clinical mental health counseling. Both had qualified for programs that erased their loan obligations. “I said, ‘wait: you’re not paying anything?’ I jumped on it, too.”

Education to serve the community

The Vermont Mental Health Forgivable Loan funded part of Lydia’s time in school.

I’ve benefited from the �й������� program for the last two semesters, and I’m eternally grateful. I’ll get a degree that will open up more doors for me and that’s also extremely needed. Over the last few years, through COVID and beyond, it seems like the world has been cracking and breaking in a lot of places. I wanted to do something to help, and this feels like a way I can do that.

Lydia also jokes that her coursework comes in useful in her family life. “I live with a house full of boys—my husband, my 15-year-old stepson, and our 6-year-old son. I get to practice my counseling on a daily basis.”

Her busy family life also makes earning this degree more challenging than Lydia’s previous experiences. “The last time I was in graduate school, I had three part-time jobs in addition to my courses, and it was no problem,” she recalls. “Now, it’s really hard to fit in classes, internship hours and one part-time job in between school drop-offs and pick-ups, afterschool activities, while also trying to maintain some degree of a social life.”

On the positive side, Lydia speaks highly of her VTSU program, whose tight-knit student cohort includes people from their early 20s to age 70 with very diverse life experiences. Lydia appreciates the fact that she’s not the only midcareer adult in the group, and she also recognizes the valuable perspective of going back to school in her 40s. “It’s a lot of synthesizing what you know—and what you assume you know—with new information you’re learning and experiencing, especially through the internship portion,” she says. This academic year, Lydia has interned with the Kahm Center for Eating Disorders, and next year, she’ll intern with a private-practice counseling group.

As for what therapeutic setting she hopes to practice once she earns her degree, Lydia isn’t sure yet, but that doesn’t trouble her. “I’ve learned through my job and my internships that everyone, from private practice to community health centers to schools, needs therapists all the time. Everyone is understaffed. If I provide counseling under any circumstance, I’ll be serving my community, and that feels good.”