Roy Exum: Ever Since Columbine

  • Thursday, June 11, 2015
Roy Exum
Roy Exum

I’m going to do something I don’t normally do today, so bear with me. I rarely plow a field that I just plowed, thinking there is no need to deliver the same message twice. Earlier this week I wrote about a 13-year-old girl who committed suicide by jumping out of a car, dashing to the edge of a bridge that crossed over a busy Interstate, and never pausing as she hurled her young self into the speeding cars below.

Stuff like that haunts me, it really does, because any type of suicide is final and with all the safety nets we have today, we must do better job of intervening before a tragedy occurs.

The story I wrote touched a lot of people, evidenced by the emails in my inbox, but one special reader was kind enough to share a solution and it’s simply too wonderful not to pass along.

First, I need to tell you about its author because the “back story” is dazzling. What you are going to read is from a blog called the “The Momastery,” where writer Glennon Doyle Melton regularly shares stories about “Truth Tellers” and “Hope Spreaders.” It turns out Glennon is “as real as rain,” and not because she wrote a New York Times’ Best Seller in 2013 called, “Carry On Warrior: The Power Of Embracing Your Beautiful, Messy Life” but instead because of the brutally honest “biography” she wrote about herself that lays her soul bare.

Tell me if this one’s real:

* * *

“For twenty years I was lost to food and booze and bad love and drugs. I suffered. My family suffered. I had a relatively magical childhood, which added an extra layer of guilt to my pain and confusion. ‘Glennon – why are you all jacked up when you have no excuse to be all jacked up?’

My best guess is that I was born with an extra dose of sensitivity to life’s brutality and my own nakedness. I didn’t want to walk through life’s battlefield of rejection, friendship, and tender love naked. So when I was eight years old, I made up my own little world called addiction and I hid there for decades. I felt safe. No one could touch me.

On Mother’s Day 2002, unwed and addicted, I found myself holding a positive pregnancy test. I decided to become a mother and vowed to never again have another drink, cigarette, drug, unhealthy relationship, or food binge. I found myself marrying a man I’d known for ten sober nights.

Twelve years later, I’m still married to that man I barely knew, and I’m also the mother of three kids, two mutts, a geriatric guinea pig and the two most majestic banyan trees you’ve ever seen. I’m also a Sunday School teacher, an award-winning blogger, a New York Times bestselling author, speaker, and the founder and president of “Together Rising” – a non-profit that serves women who need help getting back on their feet.

Underneath and on top of all that I’m a Recovering Everything. Every morning, I open my eyes and immediately understand that I am still that girl on the bathroom floor, holding that pregnancy test like a terrifying invitation, trying to decide whether to stay down on the cold floor or get up and walk.

* * *

Wow! While I am fairly certain you’ve never met anyone who went through something like that, I happen to know there is one word in the English language that contains the all the trials our “Lady G” overcame. It’s called Life. (I also know it makes you want to read Glennon’s award-winning book, which is available via Amazon for $14.40 in paperback.)

So how does this tie in with juvenile suicide? It turns out “Lady” G visited one of her son’s teachers over the puzzling math homework he was bring home. After the teacher got her squared away, the two women chatted for some minutes and a magical story was born.

I pray that every person who loves children will read what Glennon wrote in her blog. Teachers, coaches, playground directors, camp counselors … what if all of those who nurture our children would employ this exercise? What if you would share it with teachers you know? What if a ripple could become a wave?

* * *

FROM GLENNON MELTON’S “MOMASTERY”

Every Friday afternoon (my son) Chase’s teacher asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit the following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be honored. She also asks the students to nominate one student whom they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her.

And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, Chase’s teacher takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her and studies them. She looks for patterns.

Who is not getting requested by anyone else?

Who doesn’t even know who to request?

Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated?

Who had a million friends last week and none this week?

You see, Chase’s teacher is not looking for a new seating chart or “exceptional citizens.” Chase’s teacher is looking for lonely children. She’s looking for children who are struggling to connect with other children. She’s identifying the little ones who are falling through the cracks of the class’s social life. She is discovering whose gifts are going unnoticed by their peers. And she’s pinning down- right away- who’s being bullied and who is doing the bullying.

As a teacher, parent, and lover of all children – I think that this is the most brilliant Love Ninja strategy I have ever encountered. It’s like taking an X-ray of a classroom to see beneath the surface of things and into the hearts of students. It is like mining for gold – the gold being those little ones who need a little help – who need adults to step in and teach them how to make friends, how to ask others to play, how to join a group, or how to share their gifts with others.

And it’s a bully deterrent because every teacher knows that bullying usually happens outside of her eyeshot –  and that often kids being bullied are too intimidated to share. But as she said – the truth comes out on those safe, private, little sheets of paper.

As Chase’s teacher explained this simple, ingenious idea – I stared at her with my mouth hanging open. “How long have you been using this system?” I said.

Ever since Columbine, she said.  Every single Friday afternoon since Columbine.

Good Lord.

This brilliant woman watched Columbine knowing that all violence begins with disconnection. All outward violence begins as inner loneliness. She watched that tragedy knowing that children who aren’t being noticed will eventually resort to being noticed by any means necessary.

And so she decided to start fighting violence early and often, and with the world within her reach. What Chase’s teacher is doing when she sits in her empty classroom studying those lists written with shaky 11 year old hands  – is saving lives. I am convinced of it. She is saving lives.

And what this mathematician has learned while using this system is something she really already knew: that everything – even love, even belonging – has a pattern to it. And she finds those patterns through those lists – she breaks the codes of disconnection. And then she gets lonely kids the help they need. It’s math to her. It’s math.

All is love- even math.  Amazing.

Chase’s teacher retires this year – after decades of saving lives. What a way to spend a life: looking for patterns of love and loneliness. Stepping in, every single day, and altering the trajectory of our world.

TEACH ON, WARRIORS. You are the first responders, the front line, the disconnection detectives, and the best and ONLY hope we’ve got for a better world. What you do in those classrooms when no one is watching -- it’s our best hope.

Teachers- you’ve got a million parents behind you whispering together: “We don’t care about the damn standardized tests. We only care that you teach our children to be brave and kind. And we thank you. We thank you for saving lives.”

Love – All of Us.

royexum@aol.com

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