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"Today I am going to tell you a sad story and a happy story. I don't tell this story to bring people down, but I tell it because there is a really important reason you need to know this.
I knew this family once that had a mother, a father, two boys and two girls. In all outward appearances to others, most of the time they seemed normal. What some knew, but most didn't was that this family lived in an environment of fear, punishment, and completely devoid of any love. The father molested one sister for years, the other was never sure because she learned a wonderful mental blocking trick. The mother and father beat the children daily till they had blood running. These children experienced every single deprivation that no human being should ever experience, and these children experienced it daily throughout their childhoods. They grew to young adulthood without any hope. No one helped them and no one saved them from the evil that was within their four walls.
Even worse, the boys never had a plane or a toy to comfort them and the girls never had a doll to hug and hold in the dark of the night in their beds when they finally escaped.
What happens to children that experience this kind of deprivation? I don't think it would be hard for anyone to understand that they rebel. They are often filled with hatred towards others who didn't help, and they often spend the entirety of lives desperately longing to be loved by others.
What happened to this family? One boy grew up to spend his life in prison. By the way, I forgot to tell you that this boy was rated talented and gifted and was brilliant in his mind. At age 46, he was hit by two cars crossing Macadam Avenue. He was by then a transient bum. The other boy spent his days wandering the streets and preaching the gospel at the top of his lungs. This boy was learning disabled and most likely, because of the shock treatments his mother had done on him when he misbehaved as a young boy. He died of leukemia at age 39. People think it was probably aids, such was his lifestyle then. The older girl abused her children and drank herself to death at age 50. The mother died of cancer and congestive heart failure at age 62 and the father who had brought all this havoc on so many human beings, still lives to this day with another wife and another daughter in australia. He is not allowed back into the united states because of the crimes against his daughter.
What happened to the younger girl? Well, she survived, with all the behaviors of this type of childhood upbringing. She lived an at-risk lifestyle. But, this younger girl hated that lifestyle but had no idea how to change.
But, she tried. She enrolled in classes and luckily for her, met one of the most wonderful women of her life. Her name was Grace Mclaughlin and she was a english teacher at PCC (Portland Community College). Although this younger girl had to open the dictionary 50 times the first page she read (because she had lived in such a vacuum her whole life) Grace never even acted as if that was unusual. Grace befriended her and probably for the first time in this younger girl's life, someone from 'normal society' saw some value in her.
It was one woman, one kind word that began an entirely new process for this young woman.
Then there were others that helped but this one woman was the one that made this girl feel as if it was just possible that she was a valued human being.
This young woman went on to get a bachelor's degree, carrying a 3.79 average most of the way. She went on to complete half of her master's degree as well as many other programs. She has 11 years of education beyond high school and although she had been a welfare mother while attending school, she never again had to use state help for anything.
That young woman was me.
This does not mean that I won't suffer life-long nightmares from what happened to me. What it means is I learned how to live with what had happened to me and instead of making it negative, I found ways to make it positive.
Many, many years ago, my brother who spent his life in prison used to say to me, 'Lea, you are going to outlive us all.' I always wonder why he said that. Now, I know. As I got older, I realized I needed to do something to protect some child or help some child who had experienced what I had experienced.
I began by refurbishing dolls and giving them to low-income children. I then started volunteering at the Donald E. Long school in detention with the teens and found out just how profoundly a doll takes the place of pain. These 16, 17-year olds don't care about barbies, they like baby dolls and they walk around with them and they cradle them. One girl wrote in my scrapbook, 'thank you for letting us come work on dolls. It was fun. Wish I had a mom.' what more do you need to know that this teen has a tremendous pain she is carrying around.
Life is pretty ironic. I hated going to see my brother in prison. Now, I go willing to work with the lifer club at OSCI, to get their help in obtaining funding for our teens. And they work hard to do that, because the men that are there who are trying to change their lives, know how important it is to keep our teens from going there. I spend all my time (up to sixteen hours a day sometimes) with the at-risk population (both adult and juvenile).
But, I can't do it alone. I have a dream and that dream is the circle of hope. I want the adult prisoner (who has the time) to make things for my teens and raise money for my teens through me as a medium to keep them out of prison. I want the teens to make things for the domestic violence children to show them they are loved and that they don't want these children to end up where they are and to complete that circle of hope, I need you, the general public, to help in any way you can.
No organization can operate without money. It has been a miracle we have come this far. We have two wonderful centers.
One is our fabulous resale shop where we teach youth job skills while teaching teens that just because you’re poor, you don’t have to look poor. Whether that be in your way of dress or whether that be how your home looks. Our shop is spotless, creatively decorated, and a warm place for our teens and for our shoppers.
Four doors down from that, we have our wonderful, beautiful, warm and creative independent living skills center and our eBay Center.
I can’t emphasize enough how we need your donations. Monetary and otherwise. Anything that we can't use in our programs, we sell in our resale store at the lowest prices in town, thus helping our entire community (5 out of 6 children in this area below the poverty level).
We need your help to spread the word. Tell others that we are working with teens and teaching them self-respect, the work ethnic (to gain more power and control over their lives), how to respect others and many others things that no one taught me as a child or as a teen.
WE HELP CHILDREN. We tell them that we don't expect to make them perfect citizens. We only expect to make them better citizens so they don't grow up to harm their children, or your children or grandchildren because they have carried so much hatred inside of them. Tell your friends that we show them one-on-one mentoring and treat them as if they are our own children. Tell them we love them as often as we can.
I invite you to come to our center and I invite you to open your heart and find some way that you can help me, who understands intimately, the thought process of our youth, to heal from years of abuse I suffered by knowing that I have helped some child, even one child, feel a little less pain.
If you find this cause a worthy one, please consider hope dolls for your charitable contribution."
And in conclusion, I have three questions to ask you:
Would you agree with me that teens are much different today than in your era?
Would you agree that most people are too busy with their lives and their own good works to get involved and particularly that most people do not want to be exposed to at-risk behaviors?
If the above two are true, then would you agree with me, that it should be the obligation of all of us to support in whatever way we can those people who will work with the most dangerous segment of our society to try to bring about some change so that our neighborhoods are safer?
If you do believe that it is all our obligations to help, then please consider hope dolls for your charitable contribution. We are a small grass-roots organization and we will never make it if we don’t have your help.
The number one industry in the state of oregon is the department of corrections. We are warehousing people and not getting to the root of the problem.
Help me, help them. Thank you for inviting me today."
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