Monday, September 6, 2010

Life-Changing Moments and How We Got Our Name

Life-changing moments can blindside you.

One of my
Defining-Moments happened 20 years ago in 1990. I remember looking into the the face of one of the girls who had come to our "support and education group for sexually abused kids." (Catchy title, huh?) This 8-year old had just asked a question about why the perpetrator (we call them Tricksters now) had done something particularly horrifying to her. She wasn't the only wounded child to share deep hurts that night. As I looked into the eyes of each precious soul, I knew the deeper question they were asking. The deeper question had to do with their own healings, their courageous journeys, and was it really true that they could survive and be more than shells of the horrible things that had happened to them? And could they reclaim the things the Trickster had taken from them?

"Did you know that you are a HERO?" I said to each one of them, ever so gently. I saw the briefest, gentlest flicker of hope in their eyes as they grasped that lightning bolt of strength that hit them as they switched gears from thinking of themselves as victims too far gone to ever heal and to replace them with the thought of being HEROES. That was one of the Defining Moments of my life.

The next morning, Jeanne Alshouse, administrator extraordinaire, called me to suggest the name of the group...HEROES, Great and Small. We had been searching for a name for several weeks. Most of them were dumb. We had held off on choosing a name until Jeanne said those perfect words...HEROES, Great and Small. So HEROES we became.

Even though we, the original founders, (Janet Baker, Jeanne Alshouse, Sandra Allen, Tina Bartleson), had been meeting for a few months already, that particular night was the night that HEROES began for me. When our "little group" started, the HERO Team saw the hurt and the confusion in our "sexually abused kids," because it was there. But as time passed we saw something else...the strength, the laughter, the purity and the innocence in these kids. We found courage in the most unlikely of places.

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