Doing What I Can, With What I’ve Got, Where I’m At

Pending

Written on - Not yet published to a wikizine

On Friday, November 13th, I’m holding a special teleclass that I’d really like you to be a part of, one way or another.

But first, a little background… (this is long, but important…)

The Summer That Just Won’t Quit

This past summer was a really trying one for me and mine. One of the events that occurred involved my now 16-year-old son and his girlfriend. Long, long story short, she ran away from home because she was being sexually molested by her step-father and verbally and emotionally abused by her mother. She is 15. She wanted to live with us. For all the obvious (and many not-so-obvious) reasons, that was not an option.

In one of those I’m-so-freakin’-proud-of-my-child-I’m-going-to-burst moments that make all the trials of motherhood SOOOO worth it, my son said to me, “Mom…I know what we can do. Safe Place came to our school last year and told us about their program. All we have to do is take her to Quik Trip (a convenience store in our neighborhood) because they have the Safe Place sign in their window. We just take her there and they’ll call Youth Services to come and pick her up and take her to the Youth Shelter and from there she can get the help she needs.”

So, that’s what we did.

The fine people at Quik Trip fed us, gave us free drinks and kept us hidden in their back office while we waited for Youth Services to arrive. When the van arrived, it was hard to let her go. We were all three crying, because we were scared for her, but we all three knew this was better than being on the street and homeless. You know what my son said to me in the car on the way home? “Thanks, Mom. This is the first time in a long time that I won’t have to worry about her being safe.” That broke my heart.

She lasted two weeks at the shelter before she ran away. Where’d she run? To us. Begged me to let her live with us, but I had to take her back to the shelter. I took her shopping, bought her toiletries and clothes since the only ones she had were the ones she went in wearing, and we all went to our favorite diner for dinner before we took her back. They had to physically remove her from my car while my son, daughter and I looked on, all four of us sobbing. We all got a personal lesson that day in how sometimes doing the right thing just sucks.

We thought everything was going to be ok for her when we got word that she’d been placed in foster care. She called us in late August to let us know where she was and that she was ok. But apparently, there were problems at the foster home, because she ran again in mid-September and spent nearly a month on the streets of Tulsa…alone.

Two weeks ago, we had the police at our door for the umpteenth time asking if we were harboring a runaway, and while we were talking to the officers, another patrol car pulled up in front of the house with her in the front seat. Finally, her grandmother stepped forward and petitioned for custody. That hearing is the first week of November. We hope this is good news for her…

Meanwhile, In Kansas City

Did you know that November is National Runaway Prevention Month? I didn’t, until Tracy told me the other day when she was telling me about her son, Ty, and the Boy Scout merit badge he was finishing up. (For those of you who don’t know, Tracy is my friend and fabulous assistant. She and her family live in Kansas City.)

Ty was creating a video about homeless kids in the Kansas City area, which morphed into the troop’s service project for November. In doing the research for his video, and because of Tracy’s connections being a CASA advocate (a Court Appointed Special Advocate for children), they hooked up with Jeff Matascik, a violence prevention specialist for Synergy Services who also heads up planning for One Homeless Night, a community-wide “sleep-out” that gives young people a glimpse of what it’s like to be homeless.

Boy Scout Troop #603 will be spending the night out in the cold on Friday, November 13th, and Ty is looking for people to sponsor him. Tracy asked me if I would be willing, and I said, “Oh…I’ll go you one better than that…!! Let me call you back.”

The Teachable Moments

You see, one of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn in my life is to be ok with what I’m able to do versus what I want to do, because I’m a “fixer”. God help you – don’t hand me a problem that you don’t want solved, because if it strikes that “fix-it” chord in me, I might mow you down in my effort to “help” you. It’s a character flaw of mine, I realize…I get tunnel-vision about some stuff…particularly kids, animals and social injustices of all kinds.

So, I consciously practice doing what I can, with what I have, where I’m at.

Can I fix my son’s girlfriend’s situation? No.

Can I wipe out homelessness in my city, much less my country or the world? No.

So, what can I do with what I have, where I’m at?

I can create a win-win-win-win-win situation by asking my good friend, Marty Marsh, to let me (and you, too!) pick his brain on the topic of Offline Marketing for Online Success on a special teleclass to be held the morning of One Homeless Night (Friday, November 13th.)

Marty and I get a win because we get to be part of the solution, even if we can’t solve the whole problem.
You get a win because you get to learn some marketing tips and tricks from someone who really knows what he’s doing and doesn’t go for all that yucky, hip-slick-and-cool hype we see so much of online, all for a just a small donation to sponsor Ty, Tracy’s son.
Ty gets a win because he’ll have more sponsors and that’ll (hopefully) make freezing his booty off that night a little more worth it.
Synergy Services gets a win because they’ll get support from outside the Kansas City area in meeting their goal of raising $80,000.
And most importantly, the homeless kids in Kansas City get a win because some people they’ll probably never meet in their lives (us) are giving a little bit that will actually help them a lot.

I believe in the collective power of one.

Click here to see Ty’s video and join us on this special teleclass. (If you can’t come to the call live, register anyway – we’ll send you the recording!)