Tiny Lights (Souls I am Grateful for)

Someone recently asked “Why did you write a children’s book?”

That question made me take a look back at the work I’ve done in my life. Way before I began my teaching career I worked for 6 years as a play therapist with preschool kids who were homicidal and suicidal. Before that I spent six months working nights in a residential treatment program for teen girls. That was before the 30+ years as an elementary school teacher with kids of all sizes, delights, and heartaches.

Although I planned to save them each in one way or another, they instead taught me what it really means to be resilient and to heal and grow from the inside out.

This poem is dedicated to them all, and so is Your Tiny Light: The Divine Light you Carry.

Thank Goodness

I once knew a 5-year-old who maintained a catatonic state in public.

On a surprise visit to his home, he ran head-on into me, coming around a corner screaming. 

At that moment, his worlds collided, and he knew I knew. Thank Goodness I could now pop bubbles

over my face and understand that while peeling them off with great

fanfare, he might be able to crack into the smallest of smiles.

I once knew a 4-year-old who was never spanked but held off an overpass when he was naughty. 

I eventually understood that he often had to be restrained with his back 

to me to accept any arms ever going around him. 

Thank Goodness we found a way to turn that into a secret

hug while the havoc he kept reliving was painstakingly chipped away at.

I once knew a 6-year-old who covered herself in warm saliva and hid when

told she’d be turned over to her father, a stranger, rather than the

safe new family who had already inscribed her name in gold on the wall.

I thought I could write an affidavit to the court to save her, but thank Goodness

the stranger’s 5 a.m. shootout with police that day saved her, if not him.

I once testified in court against a man chained to a table who wanted his

daughter back. Thank Goodness she didn’t have to be there because

my bones went soft as I told him, along with the whole court, how her healing mattered

more than any of us, while he sat growling and

rattling his chains at me.

I once worked from 11pm-9am in a home for teen girls. 

I was told my #1 job was to get the laundry done while they slept. 

Thank Goodness I learned quickly the real job was to be on nightmare watch every night, 

which required me to sit scared for hours in the dark and 

listen more carefully than I ever had before in my life.

I once knew a 16-year-old who ran away and was found two weeks later living

under a porch with some cats. She came back, but she missed it. 

Thank Goodness she finally aged out of required care so she could begin the hunt

in earnest to find a better place to miss and, 

maybe someday, to belong.

I once knew of an 8-year-old who hid in a pile of bodies to remain undetected

by soldiers. My heart broke for us both because even if I couldn’t fathom

why that had to happen, I somehow understood how he could do it.

Thank Goodness he lived to tell his story.

In my social work days, I thought that I would take kids with “disturbing”

behaviors and somehow make them “normal.” Thank Goodness I learned that

by the time I reacted to their reactions, I had already missed that they may

be having the right reaction to disturbing situations.

The best I could do was to bear witness to the trauma they were forced to

witness, suffer, and endure. We learned together to follow their reactions

to find the specific definitions of their “normal,” and it was always clear how,

while pushed to the brink, their spirits worked overtime to devise creative

plans to save their souls. I worked overtime to make my

required “treatment plans” reflect that.

But I never saved anyone. Any saving that happened came from inside them. 

I only hoped to never get in the way. 

Thank Goodness these young saints saved me from thinking that I was anything but 

normal for how I’d faced the hands dealt to me that had drawn me into this work in the first place. 

They proved to me how inner wounds go to miraculous extremes on our behalf, even in our dreams,

 to point us toward healing if only we have the stamina, luxury, and opportunity

to follow their lead.

dena parker duke @tinylightswrites A tiny light