Sheltered From the Storm

The other day I happened to be in a school working with young people of a wide range of ages, from K all the way to grade 11. One of the things that kept catching my attention was seeing young children who I could tell where hurting. With a couple of them, it was obvious by their mannerisms and actions that they were really feeling the weight of life, it showed. Of course, this reminded me of my own daughter, and the struggles she began to face in middle school. I wondered as I looked at and prayed a quiet prayer, where they beginning to feel what LaLa (Lauren) felt. Was life beginning to close in on them in ways they couldn’t understand, as it did for my daughter? Was the barrage of pressure and questions and trying to find their place and fit in becoming too much for them? Could they not find the right words to tell their mom and dad or someone else that cared for them as Lauren couldn’t? I begged, please dear God, help them!

Then I wondered how many other hurting kids I had seen whose signs of pain were not so clear. In our families’ lives, Laurens signs were first perceived as the normal (is there such a thing) struggles that young people face growing from childhood to adulthood. I remember Lauren going into Sixth grade as a little girl, my little girl, and coming out the other side as a full-blown teenager. For LaLa though it was more than that, much more. In the post How Did My Daughter End Up on Heroin there is a 5-minute video that gives an overview of what happened in Lauren’s life that would eventually take her life. There is also an article called “The Summer of Driving” that explains how we finally understood what was happening to Lauren, but we simply ran out of time.

While I know trauma can have damaging effects on people’s lives, we all understand that. I do not know why some kids, like my daughter, can be broken by what seems an average life. She had her struggles, she lost a grandfather she loved very much at 3 years old. She slept with his shirt by her pillow for a few years. She always felt she was not good enough. In many ways, she was a perfectionist. She tried very hard to fit in but just could not seem to find her place. A noted addiction specialist Gabor Mate says it this way  “The question is not: Why the addiction? The question: Is why the pain.” He also says in his book “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction” that all people are wired differently in how they respond to life and the things that happen. We all have different levels of how sensitive we are to live’s events. As a result, we are affected differently.

I think the instinct for all of us is to want to shield our children from hurt, pain, and discomfort. I remember a time when Lauren’s twin brother Evan was very young. My wife Nereida and I had signed Evan and Lauren up for a summer day camp. They really did not want to go but we felt it would be good for them to be physically active for a week. It was a Basketball camp, neither of them really wanted to go. On the morning I dropped them off, Evan did not want to stay. I think Lauren did not want to stay either, but she was holding back to see how it played out for Evan. He grabbed my leg and begged me to take him home. At that moment I wanted to pick him up, hold him tight and go home, but I knew it would not have helped him. As I write that I realize that many years later there where many times when Lauren begged me to take her home when dropping her off to a treatment program, the post “The Dangers of Being Alone”  tells of one such story.

The answer is not to shelter our children from the storm, it is to help them build the skills necessary to face the difficulties life often brings. It is true that we are all different. We all respond to the trauma of life in different ways, but we can all learn how to manage it in ways that work for us.

Council on Prevention and Education: Substances, C.O.P.E.S., is one organization that is doing that around the world. Based in Kentucky the mission of C.O.P.E.S. is to build family connections and relational skills. I believe that that is the biggest component of recovery treatment that is not being addressed today. You can see a collection of incredible stories about how C.O.P.E.S. is changing lives here.

I wish life was not so hard on our kids, but there is hope, we can help.

This weeks featured image is by Brooke Shaden, I am unaware of the title.