Free Girls Like Us by Rachel Lloyd

severity or frequency of the trauma these girls were experiencing. Girls who’d been sexually abused by every male in their family, girls who were orphaned by their parent’s murder/suicide/death from AIDS who would then be abused in the system, girls who had only known the touch of an adult to be sexual or violent, girls for whom the concept of love, family, care, bore little resemblance to most people’s definitions. Girls who had long ago exceeded whatever could be considered a reasonable quota for pain.
    While my story was similar in some respects—violence, absent father, substance-abusing mother—I realized quickly that I’d been relatively lucky. For most of my early years, I had a mother who loved me immensely, who read to me every night, cuddled me a lot, and even baked cookies on occasion. It’s just that for a period of years, the wrong men, alcohol, depression, and a few other setbacks impaired her ability to give me that love (or to bake, for that matter). However, those formative years helped lay a foundation and a memory of nurturing that would be instrumental in my own recovery process. Some of the girls I was meeting had never experienced that sense of safety or love. Ever. There were no good memories, no modeling of safe love, no time in their short lives that hadn’t been chaotic, drama-filled, or painful. For other girls those memories of family and love were fleeting: Mommy brushing their hair before she started getting high, going to the park with Daddy before he got shot. Snapshots of happy times when they were either too young to understand what was really happening or in the days before some traumatic incident caused their world to fall apart. In listening to their stories, it was so clear how much the adults around them had failed them, how the family structures had cracked under the weight of a hundred external pressures, how the people that should’ve been the safest were often the ones who caused the most pain of all.
    It’s Christmas Eve and the GEMS drop-in center is relatively quiet. We’ve had our big party the day before and now there’s just me and a couple of staff members working and a handful of girls hanging out and chatting. Sarah wanders into my office. “Raaaachel, Raaaachel . . .” The girls always seem compelled to call my name several times even if I’m right in front of them, just to make sure I’m listening. Although Sarah’s often whiny, the way she’s dragging out the syllables of my name sounds a little more whiny than usual. “Raaaachel, can you make my Christmas wish come true?” She looks at me expectantly, all big eyes and need.
    I sigh, anticipating the request—iPod, cell phone, clothes, five dollars to get Chinese food—and mentally preparing my response, no to all of the above except for Chinese food and even then I wanted a receipt. It seemed like every day I’d leave the house with twenty dollars and come home with two and have purchased only a cup of tea and a bagel. I was constantly trying to figure out if you could somehow claim the daily random expenses of sixty teenage girls on your taxes. “Huh?” Sarah says expectantly.
    “I don’t know.” I’d learned never to agree to anything without first knowing exactly when, where, how much. “What is it, hon?”
    “Can you make me and my mom get along for Christmas?”
    Just like that. A punch to the gut. All of a sudden I feel sad, and a little guilty for assuming that her wish would involve some material item. She half smiles, showing me that she knows I can’t make this happen, but clearly wishing, wondering if maybe I could.
    “I’m sorry, honey.” I give her a hug. I’ve learned the hard way not to make promises about girls’ families, not to build up unrealistic expectations. It’s better to teach them how to be resilient, how to create a family from the people around them who are able to love them in a healthy way. Girls get their hearts broken more times by their families