Quicksand, a way out...
I was in a battle that lasted years. I wanted students at a boarding school to be safe from teachers who had been sexual predators. Statistically, people who prey on children are likely to be repeat offenders. In my 40s, I began reading research papers on sexual predators and descriptions of their seduction tactics. The lists I read in academic papers matched experiences I had that began when I was 15 years old.
Starting in 2010, I spent 9 years working to ensure that these boarding school teachers were permanently removed. In 2017, I published a book for teenage girls to help them identity predatory behavior called Get Savvy: Letters to a Teenage Girl about Sex and Love. Pre-publication, I was fact-checking details for the book and saw on LinkedIn that the teacher who had preyed on me was teaching at another boarding school.
With the help of reporters from The Boston Globe’s Spotlight Team, the same team that exposed priests who had preyed on children, we were able to force this teacher to resign. Again.
When I began, I had no idea I would fight this fight for 9 years. It was 12-10-2010 when I notified the school that they still had teachers employed who had sexually and psychologically preyed upon students.
During this fight, there were waves of news that knocked me over. Administrators and Board Members who, through lawyers, attacked me personally saying I was mentally unstable and had a personal vendetta against the school. I received letters telling me I would be sued for defamation. One teacher threatened to seek revenge if I continued.
I am a compulsive notetaker and a saver of letters, diaries and photographs. This meant I was in a rare position where a claim of “he said she said” was easily dismissed because I had over 80 seduction letters from a teacher written to me in the 1980’s. I also had friends who knew what happened, sat through depositions and confirmed the abuse.
Initially, the fight rattled me to the core. I was outraged. I was sad. And I was disappointed by people whom I hoped would see the light and truth and come clean and didn’t.
And then there was a moment, I don’t recall exactly when it happened, as the months and years of the fight continued and I spent more and more time angry, hurt, sick to my stomach.
I realized my own children were growing up.
When I looked too long at evil, and I am not the first to write about this, I got sucked in. It became a quicksand that I allowed to take over my thoughts, my words, my life.
I was missing the beauty of my family that was right in front of me.
It was then, during the quicksand days, that I developed a saying and a resolve and it was hard to keep— given the ongoing seriousness of the situation.
I started saying to myself out loud, “I will not give them my joy.”
I will not give them my joy.
I will not give them my joy.
What this meant to me was that deep within me, thankfully, there was a capacity to love and to see beauty. This capacity is what led me to fight in the first place.
I was able to extend my motherly love and sense of protection to children I didn’t know again and again.
And I was in danger of losing that ability within my own family.
I had to learn humility. I had to learn to trust other forces for good would help as well. They did. Eventually, I joined with other alumni from my school and other schools and we fought together, shared legal knowledge, horror stories, anger, tears and tenderness.
And still…
I had to remember my sweet, beautiful husband and children. The beauty of a day with them. I couldn’t afford to give up my precious time here on earth with them.
I fought to love them, to be present to them, to laugh, even when others were behaving in ways that I found unimaginable.
It was learning to pat my head and rub my stomach. To stop and breathe and not give the forces of evil my joy.
I found my smile again, my laughter and I let my love for my sweet family fill me with warmth, goodness and light. Again and again.
Over the years, this became a touchstone, a way of being in the world that I seek to return to each day. No matter what is going on. It is a blessing to be alive and to love. And there is a deep joy that is given us when we know this.
It’s important, essential, to learn how to let troubles go, to see the beauty in the garden, to make an evening gown out of flower petals, to put on a zinnia crown and sing and dance.
To part the seas and say, “I am thankful to be alive!”
I almost want to apologize for such a hard topic and yet this is life, these are the battle we fight. We are forged within fires that burn deeply. And within every single one of us is the breath of life, the spirit of the Creator.
When we can find it, re-find it, return to it, fight for it, there is a homecoming that no one can take away. Ever. Because it is an eternal gift of love.
This has been the most profound fight of my life.
Deliberately making time to be silly, to laugh, to say I love you, to be grateful no matter what has happened or is going on around you is an act of rebellion and I believe a way of living that will save your life.
It saved mine.
May Peace be with you.
Kathleen
PS I love this song “Queen Zinnia” that Liva sings to MissyAnn and Butter. It captures the rebellion to love life.
To hear Liva, our firefly, sing “Queen Zinnia” to MissyAnn and Butter, please click here.
To hear Liva, our firefly, sing “Queen Zinnia” to MissyAnn and Butter, please click here.