The Epitome of Grace

***Warning-trigger alert***

When I was younger, I used to be a rape crisis counselor. First off, let me just say that those women are amazing! Not only do they report to the hospital and act as a go between for the doctor and patient, but they are also required to follow the emotional roller coaster of the victims emotions in order to let her/him work through the trauma. For anyone who's been a rape crisis counselor, you know it takes its toll. It did on me.

I responded to a young woman one night--we'll call her Grace because she came to epitomize that for me--after she had been gang raped. During her retelling of the nights events, she wrapped herself in a fetal position, grabbing her legs, crying, 

 "Not again! Not again!"

I wasn't sure if she was reliving the gang rape or if she meant something else. In the process of me consoling her, she slipped into a different narrative and began telling me how she was repeatedly molested as a child. (Note: it is not uncommon for survivors of trauma to start talking about something else. It's their minds way of protecting them from the trauma that just occurred.)

Throughout the night, she shifted from past to present. I don't recall what I learned about her that night or in our subsequent group therapy sessions at the center, but I was present for everyone of her sessions where she shared her experiences. So I will recount her story here.

Her memory seemed kind of fragmented, but I realized later that she was 
sharing the information in the order she remembered or found out.

Grace came from a broken home. Her father was a drug addict, an alcoholic, and he was abusive to her mother. He was hardly present in her life, which caused her to seek out a father figure. She did so with her step father, a man who was also an alcoholic and an abuser. To her, despite the fact that he had hurt her mother, he had never hurt her. She was thankful for that because she found herself always afraid.

She recalled how she wet the bed for many years, thinking she was dirty and that something was horribly wrong with her. She talked about seeing a man, watching her in her room every night. She stated, 

"I'd jump out of bed and flip on the light, only to find it was a jacket 
swaying to the music of the ceiling fan. I'd go through this scenario five 
times a night. Then I'd ball myself up 
in the fetal position, wrap blankets completely 
under me, and put the pillow 
over my head so that I couldn't hear his 
fingers on the wall." 

Years later,  she found out those fingers were mice in the wall. Hazards of living next to a large field, she had mentioned. Every morning, she'd look through the doorway at her mother's reflection in the bathroom door mirror. She'd watch her put on her makeup, and she fantasized about being that beautiful one day. And then it happened. She'd wet herself, for no reason. She stated that she always asked her mom why she wet the bed. Her mother's response, 

"I'll tell you when you're old enough 
to understand adult things." 

Moving out of her house for three months was a great relief. No more bed wetting. Three months later, they moved back to that same home, and the bed-wetting resumed.

Her recollection really touched me, and I got the sense that she didn't receive the love she needed from her mother while growing up. She relayed many stories that made me believe this. Fast forward to the years of Carl. Carl was the stepfather I mentioned earlier. He was her third father by the age of 6.

She had a wonderful relationship with Carl. Besides him being abusive to her mother sometimes, he never hurt her. She finally felt loved. She recalled that she was sitting in his lap at the dining room table one day. She doesn't remember what set her mom off. It had something to do with the way he was holding her. What she did remember clearly was her moms response:

"If you ever touch her, I'll kill you!"

It didn't make sense to her until years later--that is, when he touched her, again and again and again, spanning four years of her life. Initially, she said she was in shock by what had occurred. She couldn't do anything. She froze in fear. "Everything happened so fast," she said. I recall that she made a similar statement when she talked about the gang rape. For her, she responded in the same way she responded to her trauma so many years ago because that was a coping mechanism for her. She detailed numerous examples of the abuse, and she shared the techniques he used to keep her quiet, mostly guilt and shame. At first, that worked, until that is, he realized she began fighting back.

So he switched tactics. He threatened to hurt her brother and her mother if she ever told. She had already witnessed him abuse her mother, seemingly almost killing her at times, so she knew he was capable of following through on his threats. She thought of going ahead and telling her mom because she knew her mom would kill him if given the chance, and then they'd all be safe.

But then, she said, "I remember thinking, what then"? 

Scenarios ran through her mind. Should she tell her mom, risk her mom killing him, and possibly going to prison? Who would take care of her and her brother? The drug addict, alcoholic, abusive father who abandoned them? The grandmother who got way too heavy handed with a drink in her hand? Or would they go to foster care because there was no one suitable to take care of them?

So she said, "I did the only thing I knew that would protect 

my family, that would keep us together. 

I kept quiet. 

And he kept attacking, 

chipping away at my soul."

As you can imagine, the room was in tears. It was later that we learned that they had moved once again, prior to the abuse starting, and she miraculously quit wetting the bed again.

Years later, her mom finally got the courage to leave her husband. He still carried out threats as a way to keep Grace silent. They later moved to a different state. She was awkward, scared of her shadow, nervous around boys, and she tried to pretend she was "normal." She tried to block it all out so no one would know.

She said that she went to her mom one day and asked about why she wet the bed. She finally felt old enough to understand adult things. She didn't remember her exact age, she just knew it fell between her learning that

her father raped her mother, and that's how she was conceived, and 

finally telling her mom she had been sexually abused 

for years by her mothers previous spouse. 

It was then that she found out she had been molested by a babysitter when she was five. It happened over the span of a week. She stated,

"When my mom finally told me, it was like someone flipped 

on a light switch. All of these memories 

of the incident came flooding in. 

Life kind of made sense." 

She realized later that the incident occurred in the same bathroom she used to watch her mom get ready for work in. She said she didn't remember her mom pressing charges against the man, but she knew it was true because she saw the police reports. Grace's lawyer told her mom that she only had to mention the incident occurred one time instead of the five times it did occur.

As a result, the young man blamed it all 

on watching pornographic movies, 

and he got one year probation, had 

to stay away from minors for a year, 

and then his record was sealed 

since he was a juvenile.

He was from an upstanding family. And no one but the parties involved and their extended families knew, until she divulged it in therapy.

She struggled with everything that happened to her growing up, and she thought she must have been a very bad girl for God to allow so much pain in her life. She felt constant shame, and she always felt dirty by what had happened to her.

And then there was the gang rape that brought all those memories flooding in on her at once. She fell in and out of depression and suicidal thoughts. Despite all she had been through,  she just wanted to help others. She wanted to be for someone else what she needed all those years ago.

One day, she came in visibly rattled. Her hair and clothes unkempt. Her eyes darting back and forth. She couldn't sit still, like her skin was crawling. When I asked her what was wrong, she broke down in tears. It was hard to understand her at first, but she ended up relaying that she found out information that completely altered her life.

She said that her grandmother accidentally slipped and divulged that

the man who had molested Grace 

when she was five also raped her aunt 

and his own sister prior to abusing her. 

What really made it difficult was that the whole reason the young man was babysitting her was because her aunt had been grounded and couldn't watch her and her brother that week. So her aunt, his prior victim, recommended that he babysit her niece and nephew.

Grace felt like a pawn. Her first response was to hate her aunt for what she allowed to happen because she recommended a rapist as a babysitter. In our later sessions, she had calmed down a bit, and, in a way, she felt like a martyr for a cause.

She relayed that she understood the stigma that society placed 

on rape victims, and she knew the two girls were afraid 

to report it to the authorities. Somehow, the stigma didn't seem so bad 

for a child tainted by abuse, so Grace 

was inadvertently served up as a martyr. In being molested 

and reporting it, the subsequent rapes 

of her aunt ceased. 

She was, 

in effect, 

their salvation.

She went on to report that most of this information came out because her attacker had recently died. Her aunt was still friends with his sister, and that's how she found out. The next thing she learned completely unhinged her:

He became a softball coach, 

was a supposed "pillar" of the community, 

and they named a ball park in his honor.

She stated she was repulsed when she found out, and she was in the bathroom for awhile, hurling, wondering about how many other lives he robbed. How many young girls didn't come forward because of the culture we lived in? How many girls didn't report because they feared not being believed because they were accusing a pillar of the community? How many girls might have been saved had her mom told the judge five times instead of one?

Grace spiraled out of control over that year, learning other details in the aftermath of her more recent rape. She constantly lived in fear, and she started binge drinking.

It was heart wrenching to listen to her story over the year; however, she was a prime example of grace and forgiveness through it all, that is, until she found out it could have all been prevented if her aunt and his sister would have come forward.

In a fleeting moment, she was a martyr 

who saved two other teenagers from his abuse, and then, 

she realized it was all for nothing. 

That people only saw him as a softball coach 

who won trophies, 

a pillar of the community, 

a man who had a ball park named after him.

I moved a few months later and lost track of Grace. She changed her number, and no one could get in touch with her. From time to time, I'd ask my friends at the center about Grace. She finally went back to the center years later, and she became a counselor herself. It seemed appropriate because all she ever wanted to do was help people.

She is in no way over the trauma that occurred to her, despite years of therapy. Most days are good, but she still has triggers, just like so many other victims I know. But she takes each day one step at a time and tries to inch out into the world a little bit farther each day.

I just want to say, to all the Grace's out there, 

you are not alone! 

You are loved and respected by 

so many people, despite what the current culture seems like.

As teachers, professors, pastors, counselors, and humans, we have the power to help these women (or men) see that enough is enough. We have the power to change the culture so that other Grace's don't have to become martyrs.

Note: I understand that not every woman who claims to have been assaulted actually wasn’t.  However, based on my experience as a counselor, I think there are more true accusations than false.

That being said, how we respond 

as a society when people finally confess

 what happened to them is something we can control. 

When we immediately attack the victim because the man is a "pillar" of the community, we are preventing our mothers, our grandmothers, our sisters, our daughters, our wives, and our friends from being able to tell about what happened to them. We make them feel dirty and guilty with our victim blaming and slut shaming. We prevent these women from being able to heal and become the best versions of themselves in the aftermath of the trauma.

In turn, we inadvertently tell them that 

they don't matter, 

that what happened to them 

doesn't matter.

We need to get to a point where if we believe the accused, we don't attack the accuser. We never know who is really telling the truth, so we need to be careful how we respond to the topic. Whether we realize it or not, our feeds are filled with victims. They see our posts. And after seeing how we respond to someone we've never met, they may not feel safe telling us about what happened to them behind closed doors.

So all I'm asking is that, as humans, we be mindful of that. Forget the liberals. Forget the conservatives. For once, let's rule on the side of humanity! Let our actions speak volumes above the heard. Let our voices allow others to know we are here if they need us.

What I Learned as a Long Term Substitute Teacher

As the new school year approaches, it really has me missing my kids. I ran into one of them last week at the gas station. He was getting ready to leave for college. He was so excited to see me. He ran up to the car and gave me a big hug and told me how happy he was to see me again before he left for college. It warmed my heart.

It's funny how attached you can get to your students, even when they give you grief and attitude daily. As teachers, I think we all fail them unknowingly in big and small ways daily. But it's when we succeed that we are thankful.

I remember going in and feeling like they were trying to run me off. In fact, the principal told me that was probably their goal because they had already done so to three other substitutes in three months. They didn't want to listen to anything I had to say, told me I was just their substitute and not their teacher, and they didn't have to listen to me. They were burnt out and burnt up over people coming and going, and they didn't want to get used to someone being there and then have them leave again.

I struggled with their discipline problems because of never being in a high school classroom before. My only experience had been tutoring one-on-one in college, teaching CPR classes to an adult population, and teaching online composition courses. So, although I had some teaching experience, I wasn’t quite prepared for how that would translate to a high school, but I tried to do the best I could with the tools I had. I think we all do.

I remember I had asked for advice from a friend 

and former teacher, and she told me this: 

Sometimes, it's not about the curriculum; 

it's about meeting the students where they're at.

When I got to that point of wanting to give up, I tried a different approach. I wrote them a spoken word poem, telling them goodbye. I got finger snaps the whole way through, and then they sat silent for a while at the end. Some of them balked at what I said, but then, one by one, voices in the background said, “she's right.”

I told them that in my heart I didn't really want to leave, but I was getting migraines daily from having to raise my voice to quieten them down so that we could have discussions. I just couldn't keep on that way. So we had a mature talk about things. We talked about how our behaviors affect other people as a whole, how the constant talking was preventing other people from learning the material.

And then I told them the Old Testament story of Sodom and Gomorrah, of how the story popped in my head on the drive home the day before. As I drove down the road, I didn’t necessarily think of the story in the sense of what happened; I thought of it in the sense of how Job tried to save the cities if he could find 50 righteous men. Each time, he kept reducing the number, and each time, God agreed to save the city if Job could find men worthy of salvation.

So we decided on an optional essay to help me make my decision of whether I should stay or go. The first question was whether they wanted me to stay or not and why. I told them they could say whatever they wanted to, and there would be no retribution. It wouldn't have been right to ask them to be honest and then punish them for doing so. The second part of the question dealt with worthiness. This is where the idea of God saving the city if Job could find 50 righteous men came in. This story, for me, spawned the opposite thought. What if just one student thought he or she wasn’t “worthy” of having someone care, of having someone want the best for him or her? So I wanted to know if they felt worthy of teachers or people caring about them and loving them. I felt as if even one kid said no, then I'd stay for him or her. I wasn't surprised to see more than one kid say they didn't. As a teacher and as a person, if even one child feels that way, then we have failed that child as teachers and as a society. I let them know that no matter what their situation, they were all worthy of being cared about, and they were all worthy of reaching their highest potential. I think we often get caught up in the cycle of life, and when bad luck runs amok, our human nature is to think we have somehow become unworthy of good things. The last part of the question dealt with what they could do to be better students. Many of them wrote that they could pay attention more and quit being disruptive. Others said they could use their leadership skills to apply peer pressure and let the disruptive students know they were hampering their ability to learn.

I read through paper after paper, poem after poem. Kids putting their heart on the page saying they understood if I left, but they needed me to stay because I was someone who finally cared about them. It was an emotional night, the most honesty I had seen from my kids thus far.

Until that week, I felt the kids would be glad to see me go. One of the administrators and the guidance counselor pulled me aside and said they heard a rumor about me leaving from the students. My kids had expressed to them that they were upset I was leaving. I told the administrator that I hadn’t made a determination yet. I told her about the revelations I had on the ride home the night before, showed her the poem I wrote them, and told her my plans for the optional essay. She thought it would make a difference, that I might finally be able to reach the kids on a different level.

The next morning, after a night of crying while reading those essays, 

I walked in and everything was erased off my board except one thing my students wrote: 

(Insert Name of School) ❤'s You!

My heart melted. I had already made the decision to stay, but that note solidified it for me. We had discussions, and, for the most part, my kids did a turn around. I was finally able to make a difference for some at least. I think they changed my heart more than I changed theirs. I realized my methods were wrong, that we needed to find common ground and respect for one another. In the future, when kids got loud and were talking over me, I just stood there and stared at them. Then a student would say, “Hey, she's trying to talk,” and the room would go quiet. It made me smile inside to know that the student finally felt strong enough to stand up to her peers. That was progress.

And then, my students would show up four and five times a day. I'd have to kick them out of my class. One week I couldn’t get them to show up, and the next week I couldn’t get them to leave. When I asked why they kept coming so much, the reply was, "You didn't leave us Miss Williams. We love you."

My friend was right. 

It's not always about the curriculum. 

It's about meeting the students in the middle so you can find 

a way to teach them and them be receptive. 

It's about letting them know we are all human 

and all make mistakes, 

but it's how we learn from those mistakes that defines us.

It makes me sad to know that I won't be there day one, taking all the things I've finally learned, and being able to use those things to challenge them to be better students and better people. Because see, as someone in a humanities field, that's what it's all about. It's not only about teaching literature, grammar, and how to write essays; but also it's about teaching them how to use those tools to be better members of society, to learn how to become empathetic individuals, to learn how to finally find their voice.

#shoutouttoallthoseteachersfindingtheirway