Get over it, those who are not in it tend to say, but when you’ve experienced something traumatic, you don’t ever get over it. When I speak of hard topics and am met with resistance or indifference, I repeat this like a mantra. You don’t get over it.
I’ve seen kids wither under the rolling eyes of adults who don’t want to hear it, who are afraid to address it and deal with it and help fix it or just listen.
Trauma is not some awful hangover that dissipates by first morning light. Trauma is a bad tattoo that stains a person’s skin with an unwanted scar.
It must be nice for those weak enough to dismiss school shootings and suicides and sexual assaults and domestic violence because they can, because it’s not close enough to home for them to have to address.
Get over it is the easy way out, the path of least thought, the path of someone else’s problem, the path of Let the teachers handle it, the path of Not my child. I’d like to say I wish it wouldn’t always fall on me, a teacher whose job is to teach, but no. I’m not that kind of human. I embrace the hard stuff when a student comes to me and drops their invisible baggage on my desk because too many others told them to get over it. I embrace it not to be a hero or because I know the right answer, but because I want to show them I’m listening and watching and willing to help carry their load so that it’s not as heavy for them.
This is one of many reasons I wrote On the Edge of Then and Now, because I’ve had these kids in my classroom; because once upon a time, I was friends with these kids when I was their age. I was the friend who listened, even if I couldn’t help; the friend who held their hands when they were dismissed by adults who insisted they were making things up or exaggerating or seeking attention or didn’t have enough proof.
I was the one who held them when they cried, who helped them carry their frustrations, just like I do now as a teacher; a teacher kids can count on to hear and see and know their struggles when no one else seems to have the time or the energy or the tools.
I wrote On the Edge of Then and Now to help give kids agency and confidence to speak up for themselves until they’re heard, to never give up hope that things will get better and their struggles today will not define who they are and will make them stronger than they know, just like Becky, who survives a terrifying assault and seeks her own safety when adults insist ‘nothing really happened,’ and Cade, who survives years of abuse at the hands of his dad, and still chooses to hope that love doesn’t require bruises.
On the Edge of Then and Now deals with heavy topics silver-lined with hope for a better tomorrow because that’s what kids need to know. Life is not rainbows and unicorns, but it’s also not insufferably, eternally, dismal. My book won’t help you get over it, but it will help you get through it.
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