Free Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul on Tough Stuff by Jack Canfield

love you and respect you for being so strong and caring that you would risk not talking to him to make him face the facts and get better.” At that moment I knew I made the correct decision, and I said a little prayer that I would see my brother again soon.
    Tiani Crocker
    [EDITORS’ NOTE: We received the following update from Tiani: “Zach’s drinking is no longer a problem; it has stopped controlling his life as well as our relationship. He has since moved back to Washington, is attending massage school, and is focusing on his health and fitness. He has grown in amazing ways—he has a stronger, healthier connection with the entire family, and we are all proud of him. I feel blessed to have our relationship back stronger than before, but even more blessed to have him as a male role model for my son.” ]

Change
    T here will be a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.
    Louis L’Amour
    If change is a scary thing, then I can honestly say that I was nearly scared to death at the age of sixteen. We had to leave the only home and friends I had ever known and move. “We’ll all make a new start, Carrie,” my parents kept saying. Just because my parents had decided to work on their marriage and “start over,” I didn’t see why I had to give up everything.
    I pouted and protested until they sold the house, boxed up our lives and moved. Then I just shut up; I had no choice. But I didn’t give up. Purposely, I let my grades slip, didn’t join in any social activities, and, above all, I never admitted that anything was as nice here as it had been in our old hometown.
    That strategy didn’t last long. Not because I had tons of new friends or was won over by this new town they called home. It was because my parents began fighting, and they were fighting about me. “Discussing” is what they called it, but fighting is what it was. Loud disagreements followed by tension-filled silences were becoming the norm.
    Believe me, my parents needed to work on their marriage. They had separated and come back together so many times that I classified my birthday pictures as “they were separated that year,” or “that’s the year they were trying to work it out again.”
    I guess I was just tired of trying to guess if a slammed door meant my father was out of our lives again or just going for a walk to let off steam. Or if my mother’s smile was a happy one or the forced one she used to reassure me that “we’ll be just fine without your father.”
    It was bad enough that they kept splitting up. But I couldn’t handle being the reason for this dreaded occurrence. So I cleaned myself up, worked hard in my classes and began to meet friends. Things at home mellowed out, but I was afraid to think or feel anything that might cause so much as a ripple. It was my turn to be the keeper of the peace.
    Things seemed to be getting back to “fine,” until one night the front door slammed and my mother’s morning smile was the “we’ll-be-just-fine-without-him” one. I had been the best I could be, and it hadn’t been enough.
    At night, I crawled into bed exhausted with nothing to fill me, nothing to renew me for the next day. The hollow me crumbled in on itself.
    Then I met the little girl next door.
    I was alone on the front porch steps, trying to work up the energy just to go inside. The rhythm of her jump rope clacking on the sidewalk as she counted out her skips had a calming effect on me. Her hair was fanned out behind her and shining in the setting sun.
    â€œForty-eight, forty-nine, fifty,” she counted, half out of breath. How simple she made it all seem.
    â€œSixty-three, sixty-four . . . oh, no!” She looked over at me, distressed. “Look, the handle came off! Can I call a doover? I was skipping my best ever. The miss shouldn’t count. It wasn’t my fault it