The Answer to Healing Youth
Summer 2016. I’m standing at the front of a bus that’s barreling down a dark highway in Peru. There’s a mic in my hand and the game is Hot Seat. My heart is racing. I hate this.
I look out at the 30 pairs of eyes staring at me and only me. Days ago we were complete strangers. For some, I was still a stranger.
The questions came and went. What are you most afraid of? Have you broken any hearts? What’s the wildest surgery you’ve witnessed?
Hard questions. But in the grand scheme of Hot Seat, an icebreaker game designed for others to get to know you fast, they were “gimmes.” Did my new business school classmates think a medical student wouldn’t have savory stories about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll? (I was an MD MBA student at the time).
And then it came. A question that paralyzed me. Why do you care so much about marginalized youth?
I felt like the consequence of an abrupt slam on a brake pedal. Time raced forward but my mind was yanked back, deep into its memory bank.
I saw my younger self, a first-generation immigrant who endured racial and socioeconomic discrimination well before understanding what those terms meant. I saw my older self, an adult who is happiest when standing with community against injustice.
My reasons were strong but my ability to speak them as words, as something besides “because it is who I am,” were weak. The answer I gave was uninspiring. Pleading. Soft.
Now, three years after that nighttime bus ride, I’ve found the words I was struggling to vocalize.
Why do I care so much about marginalized youth?
I’m embarking on a journey to bring moments of joy to marginalized youth. Moments to feel valuable, moments to be creative, and moments that cultivate new relationships and protective factors that can help youth develop a life changing sense of purpose and ability.
I’m out to prove that wholehearted joy is the missing ingredient to the mental health, physical health, educational, employment, and human outcomes our youth desperately deserve.
Join me on this journey to enable marginalized youth to live their best lives. *Share* a joyous experience you would want a group of 5–10 young people to have. My goal is to receive 20 ideas and then to make them happen.
