That Lady…
That Lady is now my title, a title of the highest order. Queen? Empress? Goddess? Hell no! I am “That Lady” and proud of it.
Thank you, Tim, so much for telling me of this magical title. Thank you more for telling me about Callen. Thank you for every hard, moving, frustrating and loving thing you do for each boy.
I began this response on January 25th the day I read the open letter. I have tried to complete it to publish it. I am responding to this moving open letter with apologies because it is so late.
I live with Lupus. I get an IV monthly. The medicine’s side effects steal 4 to 6 days from me each month. And sometimes the medicine doesn’t work, at all. It hasn’t worked this month so I’m in bed. Only 7 more days until my next infusion.
I am not complaining, only explaining.
I rarely got up for almost 5 years until this new medicine began to work 8 months after it began seeping into my veins. Life can be hard. Mine is better now than it was last year at this time.
And life sings to me after reading this open letter! I read it often, almost every day. I find it healing.
This is a letter about heroes.
Callen is my hero.
I’m humbled and happy that Callen read my letter and that I have a picture of him reading it. When I was in bed for 5 years feeling awful and questioning my existence, I found I wasn’t afraid of death but of having lived without a purpose in life. Truthfully, some of that was self-pity. But not all of it. Lupus, that nasty wolf, stole my career, my children, most everything. I’ve learned to live creatively but the last 5 years were hard.
Now, if I were to die a minute after I publish this, I will die happy and content because I fulfilled my purpose by writing to Callen. That can be my one and only purpose, my forever purpose. It is enough. He is reading my letter. He knows I listened. He knows I care. I feel blessed.
I have wanted to write to the boys since they began publishing their stories but I know that they are fragile and lovely and hurt, torn to shreds by other people, people they love. I didn’t want to write and unintentionally hurt them in any way. I was afraid I might. And then I read Callen’s letter and while he isn’t me, he is enough me that I felt compelled to write. I felt myself in him because I am sick with an illness that won’t be cure and I was raped at 17 and I had PTSD. Once, I didn’t want to live.
More importantly, by the time I read Callen’s letter, I knew, too, that he is safe because I have learned to trust you and your work with them. I know you love them, are present to them and that nothing that shouldn’t get to them will with you as guard.
St.Michael the Archangel has nothing on Tim Barrus. You know what your work is all about: them. And you do it without excuse.
I believe others want to write, to help and may be apprehensiveness, as I was. Or wary. I noticed that Heather asked about tweeting. I have seen several responses from Todd Hannula offering help. I am so happy to see you are now giving us another concrete way to help by providing a link to:
so we may all help if we want to help. I see Solitary Cook reading and recommending. I see my friend Camille Wilkinson responding. I see alto always advocating for you and the boys. And others I read caring responses from including Shawn White and Sherry Caris, to name too few.
Desmond Tutu is my hero. (Click on the above link for those reading and confused.)
I can’t even imagine that anyone could watch and read their work and your’s and not feel overwhelmed with empathy but I do understand, sadly, that people will watch and read and some won’t feel a thing. But some do care deeply, not just me
When I worked with abused kids trying to get their stories out I was appalled that the stories of predators were stories of parents, usually. My kids were from birth to 10. I don’t know what I thought before. That someone patted a kid quickly on the top of their clothes? The stories are ugly and dirty and guilty and awful and the kids internalize all those things and blame themselves. Why is Callen’s dad out of jail when bail should be prohibitive? His parents tried to kill his soul. There should be no bail or separation from the general population in prison, either.
What a brave kid to make that outcry! No one helped. No teacher. No doctor. He helped himself. That’s gutsy.
In order to tell their stories, I interviewed the doctor who did the intake exams, the detectives who investigated the cases and the CPS workers, social workers and the interviewers and the group leaders. I wrote the kids’ stories. I wrote their stories to help raise funds and awareness. I wrote stories that I learned to hear only when I was next to a trashcan because they made me vomit. I wrote their stories which made any horror film I’d ever seen seem beautiful and inviting. I cried and felt dirty and wanted to hunt people down.
I learned to like hearing the detectives’ stories most of all because they didn’t spare me a detail. I think, at first, they did it on purpose to dare me to listen. Listen I did. And I wrote.
And here’s the thing: every damned story was deemed “too hard to hear” and might “run off donors” or “put off families” and so every story was trashed.
That’s what the detectives truly wanted me to know: the kids never had a voice because their stores never got out.
You, the detectives and I know that the only way to ever stop this is to bring the secrets, the kids’ stories, into the light, to spare no detail. People will listen. They won’t even believe what they hear! I mean Callen’s story…who can hear that and ever be the same? Only those without empathy or those hiding.
Grown up means showing up.
People fear their child will be abducted by a stranger. An awful thing but that’s as likely as a lottery win. My neighbor’s kid, when she was 4, walked into a room with a life size, cardboard cut out of Darth Vader and said, “I can’t go in there because I see a stranger!” and finally, I got it. Her great uncle had sexually abused his daughter and spent time in prison and she was afraid of Darth Vader. Kids don’t even know what the word “stranger” means but we preach not to let one near them. She’d only run from Darth Vader and he wasn’t going to be at her school or at her church teaching her. And Darth was cardboard.
We must tell our kids the truth. Their bodies are theirs. If they feel “funny” about the way someone looks at them or touches them or gets too close: speak up. They have a right to say no to anyone, even Daddy or old Uncle Steve or Mom. “Don’t kiss me on my lips!” is OK to say to anyone at any time. And they need to yell it. And parents need to step up and parent even when it doesn’t feel good. Even when they won’t be popular. Even when they fear it will hurt the family name. We are as sick as our secrets. And our secrets are killing our kids.
When I moved on to to train people working with kids to “know” the abused and the abusers, I taught that 90% of abusers are known to the child. There are studies I can cite somewhere in my crowded office. I will dig them out if anyone disbelieves. Fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, teachers, pastors: these are the abusers 90% of the time in the U S of A. And we hear Amber alerts, which are great for their purpose, but are usually put out on a parent of the abducted child. WAKE UP!!
We don’t hear our kids who are hurting, alone and afraid because we don’t want to hear them, because we are not listening! We don’[t want to lose our innocence but what about theirs? Just because we have them doesn’t give us the right to use them for anything, especially as a shield against life. More especially not as a sex toy to show you are in power.
The kids must come first.
So I am grateful to you Tim Barrus because you teach the boys to use cameras and words and more to create and to tell their stories. You let them work to gain confidence and strength. And you tell their true stories, hiding nothing. Now they tell their own stories here on Medium.
Empathy. It’s too rare a thing. Their stories, their lives are more important than any parents’ ego.
If we ever want to rid our world of child sexual abuse we have to look at it, see it, we must see the child and know him and love him and admit our part. And yes, we all have a part in it when we look the other way, when we defend an offender by ignoring a child. We are to blame, not the child. S/he didn’t cause the abuse or any illness derived from that abuse or any behavior born of that abuse or borne of his need to eat because his embarrassed asinine family kicked him out of the house.
Thank you for giving my friend Callen a voice. He is using it now. It is a beautiful voice! Now he has a chance to heal.
Callen is my hero.
Trig is learning empathy and because of empathy he stayed. Trig is my hero and a born leader, I suspect.
Simon is my hero. And poor Worry is, too…and I know I haven’t mentioned them all but I stand amazed at what they face and am in awe of each of them.
Each boy is my hero.
Thank you for giving them the only thing that will heal their souls: their voices.
You are my hero, too.
