Friends,
Several years back our communities were gripped by a homicide, an incomprehensible loss of a young life, in an otherwise quiet and peaceful rural town. On the day the verdict was read, media outlets were outside the courthouse, snapping photos and relaying the most recent facts to all who had been following the trial.
I can’t quite recall where I was in that moment, but there was a television on and a reporter had thrust a microphone at the mother of the perpetrator and asked for a comment about the sentencing. The woman’s face was haunting – pale, traumatized and bewildered. Her four-word response has stuck with me all these years: “I love my son.”
I write this column and reference that tragedy not at all to take away from the loss of that beautiful life. Nor to draw attention to the person responsible for ending that life. I write rather, to reflect on the journey of those who love someone whom, for reasons we cannot know, has done something bad. Unforgivable, perhaps. And how painful and isolating it must be to continue to love that child or family member, in a community that recalls only who they were at their worst.
What struck me deeply about that mom on the news that day, and what resonates with me still, was the unconditional love for her kid. That’s what most of us feel when we become responsible for children, isn’t it? We see a future of hopes, dreams and beautiful moments. There will be accomplishments and milestones. We feel a protectiveness and love and we marvel at our heart’s capacity to hold so much emotion for another human being. And when that mother, with the microphone shoved at her that day expressed only that she loved her son, I wanted to hold her. Protect her somehow. Because I was afraid she would be vilified for knowing only what her heart knew; that, despite his horrific actions, she loved her child.
For many of us who work amongst people in crisis, we see the realities of when life doesn’t go as planned. Each February, when we hold our annual “This Is Home” fundraiser and sleep outside for 24 hours, many family members and loved ones come and share with us the stories of their people. Of our community’s people. Over the hours, in the often damp and bitter cold, a steady trickle of our local friends and neighbours, teachers, parents, youth, business owners and congregation members come and share with us their heartbreaking journeys of loving someone who has caused great pain in the very community where they live, where they were born and raised and where family members still reside. Stories of loving someone who sometimes they don’t like and with whom they have had to set painful but necessary boundaries, for their own health and wellbeing. And how lonely and isolating that is.
It feels sacred, the time that people share these experiences with us. Although many will drop a few dollars into our fundraising bucket and thank us for doing this work of modeling compassion, non-judgment and inclusivity for all people, it really is about feeling safe and supported to speak life out loud. With great courage and profound honesty, community members tell of loved ones who were mischievous and loving children, now navigating addiction and homelessness.
People who were good parents until substance dependency took hold. Community members who struggled with mental illness symptoms but were too ashamed to seek help, or trauma that changed someone into a now unfamiliar person. There are stories of incarcerated loved ones, the painful feelings of disappointment when someone relapses again and the feelings of the “elephant in the room” when out in the community. And the familiar theme throughout is the common feeling of shame.
It takes courage and compassion to foster unbiased and non-judgmental inclusivity within our communities. It takes leadership, openness and forgiveness to help and to heal. If we are genuinely to weave a strong cloth from the fibres of our people, perhaps we must ask if we are willing to see, speak of and share in both the beauty and the ugliness of being imperfect humans. Because we all are. Imperfect, that is.
Take good care of each other, friends.
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Andrea Charest serves as director at the Listowel It Takes A Village location.
