I love this picture. If you look closely, you can see the signs, "FOR RENT", "MOVE-IN SPECIAL", and "ONE WAY". I was looking though old pictures tonight and came across this one. I used to work in one of the roughest areas in this part of the state. It was sort of infamous... I'd tell someone where I worked - in terms of the cross-streets - and their eyes would always get really big as if I had told them I was going to vacation in Baghdad. The truth is, I felt like something of a voyeur as I drove through that part of town each day. Everyday I'd pass by this house, look at the prostitutes sitting at the bus stop in front of Church's Chicken (I even saw one whisked away by some strapping young john on a 10-speed), the young mothers walking down the street, barefoot, talking on their cell phones that were all lit up like Tokyo, with their toddlers, naked except for a diaper, stumbling along 10 feet behind them, and the group of guys playing basketball in a court surrounded by a chain-link fence that would all pause and make eye contact with anyone who stopped at the light just a few feet away. I never felt physically threatened but more that nervous hyperawareness you have when you are so totally out of your element. It's funny how I went through school believing that my family's history of dysfunction and adversity somehow gave me the birthright to truly empathize with what others are going through.
The truth is, I was pretty sheltered from it. My parents were young, undereducated, and poor. Yet they, themselves, were intelligent and somehow inherently possessed the ability to raise a child that only knew of the problems in my own backyard and beyond because they carefully chose the words to tell me. I never witnessed any of it. There may been sickness, addiction, abuse, neglect, and even loneliness that spread through my aunts, uncles, and cousins, but my memories are of laughing and music and my mom's unique ability to completely break out of character and do something so off the wall and funny only to sternly announce after about 8 seconds, "Okay that's enough. " My childhood was good.
I don't pretend to know how to heal people or fix them. My goal in life, as a parent and professionally, is not to help others get rid of their adversity. My life never taught me how. As far as I know, all the same problems are there (except my parents are now educated, living well, and strangely are much more financially stable now that my sister and I are on our own). What I was was taught was how to live in spite of it. Whenever I'm face to face with someone who is seeking professional assistance with some aspect of their daily lives, I look at them and try to imagine what their ears must have heard and their eyes must have seen. Did they hear screaming and threatening words? Did they see someone they trusted betray them in an unimaginable way? I can't undo those things. No one can. I can only try to help them find the things in life that are okay - things that are good and don't cause pain. Find the resources there to keep living. Maybe, by default, they will begin to live without the adversity that once consumed them. That's even better. I want to bring hope - the kind of hope it takes to look at your drug-raided, boarded up house, and think, "Well..let's just put it up for rent and see what happens!"
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