Before reading Venturing Together, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. I had familiarized myself with Merge and its mission, and I was eager to learn more. The introductory chapters, however, described the state of our society and the dire level of need for community in our communities. I was, of course, expecting this background, but I did not anticipate the knee-jerk defensive reaction that I had to the information. As I read the descriptions of at-risk youth and their environments, I thought over and over, “That was me. I did that. I felt that way, and I turned out alright.” I didn’t want to fall into the category of “at-risk.”
If I’m being truly honest with myself, part of the dissonance in my mind was bubbling up from my position in society. I was an upper-middle class, Caucasian girl with two parents and everything I needed to be a healthy, normal kid. “At-risk” is a term that I immediately associated with the students I taught in a severely impoverished and crime heavy neighborhood. I wasn’t considering the relative nature of need or the universality of our culture’s problems — I did, in fact, share many of the obstacles that Bill Rossi addresses in his book.
As I matured to adolescence, I met a world where self-absorption was essential to success, and material and physical perfection were essential to self-absorption. Sensitivity was not an option, and the closest thing to community was when someone actually gave a person a second thought. The stage was set for me and a great number of my peers to fall through the cracks. I now know that while many of my classmates are studying at Columbia and Brown, some of them are on the very same corners as the inner-city kids that I thought were so different. Some of them didn’t even make it that far. They overdosed, died in car accidents, committed suicide, or went to jail. In the end, the disease in modern society doesn’t hit a wall when it gets to the suburbs, and painful experiences like death and disappointment are shared by everyone.
Fortunately for me, I found a way to navigate through the problems I was experiencing. Writing was my outlet, and it had been my passion since I was old enough to pick up a pencil. I wrote constantly, and, to be frank, it was what kept me from taking drastic action. I am aware of the fact that most people who suffer from PTSD and similar disorders find it hard to communicate verbally. In this fact, I see the vital importance of the approach. If I did not have access to a creative outlet, I don’t know that I would be where I am today.
