THE COURAGE TO CHANGE
A Teen Survival Guide
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
The courage to change : a teen survival guide
ISBN 1-896764-41-X
1. Violence in adolescence--Canada--Prevention. 2. Violence in adolescence--Pictorial works. 3. Juvenile delinquency--Canada--Prevention. I. Zosky Proulx, Brenda II. Leave Out ViolencE (Association)
HV9069.C68 2001 364.4’0835’0971 C2001-901854-1
Copyright © 2001 Leave Out ViolencE Youth
Book design and layout by Stephanie Martin
Cover photographs by – from left to right, top:
Maureen Rodriguez Labreche; Joy Futerman; Joel Silverstein
Bottom: Maureen Rodriguez Labreche; Maureen Rodriguez Labreche; Beth; Patricia
Printed and bound in Canada
ISBN 1-896764-41-X
Second Printing
Third Printing
Second Story Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative.
Published by
SECOND STORY PRESS
20 Maud Street, Suite 401
Toronto, ON
M5V 2M5
www.secondstorypress.ca
This book is dedicated to the memory of Daniel Rudberg. It is also dedicated to the youth of the world who have the courage to speak out and thus bring positive change into their own lives and the lives of others.
THE GOVERNOR GENERAL’S MESSAGE
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1
FEELINGS
Chapter 2
SELF-IMAGE
Chapter 3
HOME
Chapter 4
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Chapter 5
SCHOOL
Chapter 6
BULLYING
Chapter 7
DRUGS
Chapter 8
RELATIONSHIPS
Chapter 9
GANGS
Chapter 10
SEXUAL ABUSE
Chapter 11
INTOLERANCE
Chapter 12
YOUR TURN
Chapter 13
AND HERE’S WHAT THE ADULTS SAY . . .
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CONTRIBUTORS’ NOTES
DONORS
The stories and poems in The Courage to Change: A Teen Survival Guide are written by remarkable people. In these pages, youth speak with great honesty about the ruinous effect of violence in their lives. They also speak with hope and courage.
Reading about their experiences, we wonder at the ability of the human spirit to endure hardship. But these young people did more than survive. They rejected brutality and used their deep understanding of suffering to become wiser and more compassionate.
In the Synoptic Gospel according to St. Thomas, there is a profound statement about human nature, “If you find out what is within you and you bring out what is within you, what is within you will save you; if you find out what is within you and you do not bring out what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.”
This guide for teenagers is all about believing in the possibility for change and finding your real inner self. Every young person whose story appears here has struggled, but they have also persevered. Their determination to learn from the past shows the path to true growth and well-being.
I hope that everyone who reads The Courage to Change: A Teen Survival Guide will dedicate themselves to finding personal peace and bringing it to others. I send my warmest congratulations to its contributors and my best wishes to its readers.
Adrienne Clarkson
TWENTY-NINE YEARS AGO, in an act of random senseless violence, Twinkle Rudberg lost her husband, Daniel, to the anger of a fourteen-year-old boy. Daniel Rudberg intervened in a purse-snatching incident in Montreal and died instantly from stab wounds. The incident changed Twinkle Rudberg’s life. While initially dealing with her own feelings of being victimized, she eventually recognized that the boy was a victim as well. In 1993, she founded Leave Out ViolencE (L.O.V.E.).
THIS BOOK IS ABOUT COURAGE, change and survival, words which have been key in my life. In order to survive, I had to find courage within myself. Leave Out ViolencE was founded because of the path I chose in answer to the greatest challenge of my life. The choices that have affected my life have been dramatic. They started many years ago when my parents were looking for a child to adopt and I was their choice. How fortunate I was; I grew up privileged and life for me was happy and fulfilling. I was married to a beautiful man, Daniel, with whom I shared a wonderful family. He absolutely loved life.
Then one Saturday night in September of 1972, he made a choice that affected many lives forever. None of us believe that violence will ever touch our lives. Someone else, yes. Me? No! It never entered my mind until that Saturday evening. We were on our way out to dinner with friends when we noticed an elderly lady being attacked by a teenage boy. Daniel went to the aid of the woman and then chased the fourteen-year-old boy and cornered him in some bushes. The boy had a knife and stabbed Daniel to death.
I thought my life had ended along with Daniel’s. After many years I came to realize that I had a choice to make. I could be continuously angry, bitter and vindictive; I could give up. Instead, I chose life. I began to look at the life of the boy who had killed Daniel, and became aware that he had been a victim as well. He was often alone and isolated, and had become involved with a gang, with drugs, and with violence. I grew increasingly aware of the proliferation of youth violence and I knew that I wanted to do something to change this alarming trend. I wanted to hear what youth had to say, and to know why their culture was so focused on violence. I wanted to give them a voice.
Once that decision was made, magic happened. I gathered a group of concerned citizens and we decided to go out on a limb and do something for the youth of our society. We realized that we are all responsible for the future of Canada’s children. It was because of the nature of Dan’s death and the triumph of positive choice that the Leave Out ViolencE organization was started in 1993.
The youth that I have had the great privilege to work with and speak to across Canada inevitably ask me if I feel that Dan’s death was predestined. Though I can’t answer that, what I do tell them is that a path was put in front of me and I chose to follow it. When we choose life, when we choose to help others, we risk failure, and sometimes we do falter. But every time we bring someone into the light, it affects all of us. I feel deeply blessed to be doing this work. I thank every young person who has touched my life; they make my heart smile. I have huge admiration for their courage to change and their ability to survive the challenges put in their paths. Bravo to all of them!
Twinkle Rudberg
President and Founder of L.O.V.E
THE YOUTH who produced this relentlessly honest book are part of an exciting adventure in social change. They are teenagers who have decided to reject violence by lifting their lives to a higher ground. Now they are helping others to do the same. Their straight-from-the-gut writing and photographs, plus their own hard-won insights, are the tools they use for personal, and then social, change.
First, the teenage authors examined the troubling issues that brought conflict into their lives — family stress, lack of self-esteem, drug abuse. Then they looked for positive, creative solutions. In the process, most found themselves wanting to draw a line in the sand and say no. No more using violence — physical, verbal or emotional — against themselves or others to solve problems. The cycle of violence must be broken. It does not work.
Leave Out ViolencE (L.O.V.E.) is the grassroots organization that underwrites this unique process of social change. The first L.O.V.E. program began in 1995 in the basement photo labs of Montreal’s Dawson College with fifteen teens who had experienced violence. To date, approximately 10,000 children and youth have been exposed to its programs across Canada.
L.O.V.E. seeks to stop youth violence, targeting both the individual at risk and the community at large. Through L.O.V.E.’s programs in local colleges or in their own schools, teens who have been perpetrators and/or victims, or witnesses of violence (including assault, substance abuse, bullying, self-mutilation, domestic violence) are given access to the skills, support and sense of purpose they need to reject violent behaviour. In the process they build self-esteem and a sense of community.
L.O.V.E. fosters cultural change in the community by training these young people to become skilled teachers of nonviolence, and to recruit and educate other youths, thereby expanding the movement of nonviolent youth activists across cultural and racial boundaries. Our youth go out into the community and use their multi-media tools to promote nonviolence in schools and community groups, as well as to conferences and youth organizations. They speak about their own experiences and lead discussions on violence prevention. What truly makes L.O.V.E. a dynamic and powerful organization is that the youth who were once the victims and perpetrators are now the people at the forefront advocating change to their peers and the broader community.
Finally, they produce a biannual newspaper, One L.O.V.E., and an exhibit which tours public and private buildings across Canada. Their first book, l.O.V.E. Works!, was published by Stoddart in 1998. In 2001, they will begin to do TV broadcasting as well.
L.O.V.E. allows our youth to transcend barriers and change people’s perceptions. In doing so, they change the course of their own lives. The skills they gain in literacy, critical thinking, public speaking, group dynamics, technology, leadership and community-building are in turn used to help thousands of other children that conventional methods just don’t reach.
The message transmitted through all of our programs is clear: violence, no matter what the media and others say, is not cool. Appreciating your own unique qualities, doing what you love to do, and helping to improve society along the way, however, is super-cool indeed.
Brenda Zosky Proulx
Co-founder of the L.O.V.E. Project
Getting past the confusing, sometimes clashing feelings of anger, loneliness and frustration that we live with can seem impossible. Very often we think that we will drown. Our writers in this chapter express both their hope and their despair.
Do you hear me?
I need to know;
I am going to go mad.
Listen, listen, please;
help me.
I sit here crying
for your help,
but do you hear me?
Because I really need
to know.
I never remember what my fights are about. They just start and stop the way the sun rises and sets.
Sometimes I cry for nothing. Well, it must be for something; I just don’t know what.
I fought with him, I swore at him, but I never spoke to him. I never asked him why. Maybe it would have saved me the guilt and the hatred towards him afterwards. I can’t change the past; I can only change the future. I’m tired of being angry all the time.
I build a wall
around me, I lay
it brick by brick until
it passes my head.
Help me break the wall
so I can be free of myself;
help me understand myself,
help me to live.
INSTEAD OF JUST running away from your problems either by burning a spliff or jugging a forty down, use other options. Build your courage; believe in yourself.
I am lost. I wander. I do not belong. I am the lone wolf
with frost patterns in my eyes.
I don’t deserve to be seen. I don’t deserve warmth;
smiles are my armour, laughter my shield
Look hard and you might find what I have hidden:
Black flames that lick my bones
Soot that chokes me
Ashes that sting my eyes
Grey smoke of evil, I fear will creep out
A lifeless skeleton, brittle, haunted with sin.
But maybe somewhere inside is a tiny light.
A solitary flicker. A spark, a glow of courage and hope
That can be lit by love and forgiveness
That can explode into a burst of goodness
And smoulder the black.
Before you get mad, think about things you can do to relieve yourself of the anger and then, when you do get mad, try them out.
Past experiences of my life scared me, completely corrupting my mind and destroying my emotions. Violence has played a huge part in my life. Sometimes violence feels like the only way to get out your anger and frustration. You feel like you’re in a dark never-ending hole. But then you help yourself climb up; you use other options to solve your problems instead of just running away from them by either burning a spliff or jugging a forty down. You build your courage; believe in yourself. And once you accomplish these things, a light will come to you, because you’ll have climbed up out of the hole and into a better future.
Try to find out what the rage inside of you is about, what the root of it is.
Little girl – one of the most innocent things you can be. Now, as a teen, my heart and soul are full of anger and confusion. I hear myself yelling and punching. I fall to my knees, my body shaking as if a big heat wave was running through my body.
Once a child who had faith, hope and a dream; now the monster in the closet or under the bed, crushing the little girl dreams that I once had.
Dear Adult World,
You always complain about teenagers crowding your streets, shopping centres and parks. But where are we to go? Everything is yours, and nothing is ours – unless, of course, it costs money. Anything that I want to do costs money, but money is something I never have. I want some place to call my own, where me and my friends can stay for more than ten minutes without having to dodge security guards. And I wish that place were somewhere where what teens need was actually taken into consideration when it was being set up.
I just wish that for once adults took notice of how few options they’ve created for us, and finally took the responsibility to do something for our sake.
Try to find out what the rage inside of you is about, what the root of it is. Sit down by yourself or with someone you trust and have a conversation.
To control one’s rage is an art form. Before you get mad, think about things you can do to relieve yourself of the anger and then when you do get mad, try them out. Things that might work are: reading, writing, jogging, lifting weights, talking, sitting down, listening to music, breaking sticks outside to prevent yourself from breaking things.
We need to find that child in ourselves, to help keep that child alive in others and to share that goodness.
You have to understand that Change will not happen overnight. It’s a long and tiresome process. You literally pick apart your own psyche to try and understand yourself and the world around you better, because the world around you affects you. You have to release the constraints that are holding you back from understanding yourself.
And always remember that you are not the only person going through this, there are many others.
I once had the privilege of holding a newborn baby in my arms. I was fascinated by how this little one could be so perfect and pure This baby could not be anything but goodness and innocence in a blanket.
Later, when I was confronted by a person I hated, I looked at him, at his eyes, nose, lips; looked at the way he moved and spoke.
And then I imagined what he must have looked like as a newborn baby. I pictured him with tiny fingers curled into little fists. I imagined him with little feet and kicking legs, chubby tummy and delicate lips, soft plush skin and beautiful, trusting blue eyes. I smelled that fresh baby smell, heard the little noises, felt the fuzzy hair on his head. I looked back at the grown person and my hate melted away.
Then I felt a bit sad. Sad that this person, who once was a small bundle of joy, had seen too much of the darkness in the world and had grown up with a lot of pain and anger. I was sorry for this person, I prayed that he would one day find that soft little baby in himself: the little baby with eyes of innocence and little belly who only needed love and hugs to thrive, who gave only love and goodness (and dirty diapers) to all those who laid eyes on him.
You can’t change the past; you can only change the future.
We were all newborns once. All bundles of joy and innocence. Sadly, some people tend to lose a lot of that. We just need to find that child in ourselves, to help keep that child alive in others and to share that goodness. So I hope the next time you feel hate towards someone, you will picture him or her as a baby, and your hate will leave you. We need to stop hating.
It’s not always easy to accept what we see in the mirror. Sometimes our attempts to shatter these images are as devastating as the images themselves. Here the powerful voices of our writers discover the ways and means to take apart the destructive patterns and uncover new ways of seeing.
she stands