I am saddened by the meaningless circumstantial damage to many young lives I have come to care for over time. Kids whose dreams, if existent, are of far different colors and dimensions than most, due to the loss of, or abuse by, and inevitable loss of close blood family connection.
Even though, through adoption, many are part of a different or completely new loving family home, that prior unsettling circumstance seems a living, breathing darkness of anxiety, hampering each one's search for a state of reliable safety and peace.
Feeling like little silver pinballs being constantly smacked by the bumpers, they just get used to playing the game and temporarily filling whatever holes they fall into. Life and its occupants have become to them unreliable, harsh, and temporary in their angry, sometimes justifiably hardened, confused, and fearful young hearts.
When their current relationships begin to falter and crash, it is sometimes left to circumstance and the honor of faraway strangers to build and guard the fence around the edges of a potential spiral into the void, and here we are.
I was proud to be a treatment center employee, specializing in the well-being of adopted kids. I was honored to play a grandfatherly-type role to many affected by this unfortunately traumatic life start. It burned some, as I came to more fully understand what might have been, in these just-fresh commencing teen lives, had switches clicked another direction and left them less scared by life's most viciously uncontrollable tragic opening loss.
As an adopting parent myself, I found empathy in this field and renewed philosophical life choice battleground for the war to see what greatness can possibly become of these precious diverse charges, in each their way and in each their time.
Surrogate figures come to exist where I had spent my fair share of working treatment center hours. Many heroic brother, sister, and parental figures have and still walk beside me every day, and a few are uniquely blessed to be surrogate grandparent figures, like me.
The daily works of those successful parental figures I have observed are an exceptional art form unto themselves, and I smile in awe as a witness to the best of them. Ownership, Admin, Safety, Education, Therapy, even Maintenance all get involved in maintaining positive, yet firm and challenging, parent-like interactions with each child client. Trust, professionalism, and follow-through seem to be the greatest currency there. These are often knights of the highest order who, even well-paid, sacrifice much fulfilling their given task. The treatment family is not the only family these Knights love and bear responsibility for.
The best brother and sister figures tussle, tease, play sports, and sadly, are most often called to contain the sometimes brutal blind violent rages of trauma recovery, using only care, bare hands, and wisdom. Heroic is truly an earned word. Thank you for them, their fitness, and for radios.
It is the finest of these concerned young adults who are able to correctly contain, calmly remain, and under what can be brutally emotional output, maintain everyone's health and dignity to the best possible standard that ultimately last in this type of work.
If ultimately unable, impossible life or financial circumstance, distance, personality clash, or valid criminal charges tend to filter those needing a different cup of this proverbial tea or, when warranted, incarceration. It is not a profession for the angry, weak-spirited, unreliable, or ultimately vile and nefarious.
I had, in several programs, witnessed the smallest stand calmly before angry giants and giants tenderly hold the smallest from dire moments of self-destruction. I personally witnessed some few years back the heroism of a crusty, overweight special ed teacher vault the walls of a 6-foot bathroom stall, like an Olympic gymnast, to prevent a distraught teen in the process of slitting her own throat with a found piece of glass. Some are called by higher voices to react and serve.
This work may not last a lifetime for some; it can itself traumatize, but time served well by each one, I have come to know well or just in passing, is now held fast to my own priceless memories and certainly ultimately appreciated by all lives, increased of peace and by them effected.
For each of these good lives present, having sincerely made a stand for the future of so many or even one, to be a bit easier to handle, I bow personally, a sincere and heartfelt thanks for that valued time and courageous act of special service. Bless you and Carry on.
-Hermit King-
https://open.spotify.com/track/0rKSEFotSwCylMcmq7NOtF?si=jKt4lDiVR-easqjM75kGBQ
