Moving Forward After Such Unimaginable Tragedies...

What a tragic day last Friday was for the many families in Connecticut and beyond.  As I began hearing the early details about the children and adults who were murdered, I cried.  As I heard the ages of those children, I cried again.  And when I saw their faces on the news, I cried once more.  The reasons behind these tragedies are never fully understood and this one won’t be either.  Anger, insanity, violence, hopelessness and fear are all actions included in events like this.  The individual who did this needed help but apparently did not find it.

Here at the Tennyson Center for Children, we face similar emotions on a daily basis.  The difference here is that each of our staff is continually working to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.  We work with children and their families who have been abused and neglected in horrific ways.  We work with children and their families who have some very serious learning disabilities.  We work with children and their families that are dealing with some serious emotional issues.  More importantly we continue to work with these children and their families to help them overcome their challenges.  And often times we have tears of joy as we watch these kids leave the Tennyson Center for Children with skills learned so that they can deal with their challenges out in the sometimes cruel world.

I observed some pretty amazing “normal” things around here this past week.  I saw kids running away from here not realizing they were running away from somebody who truly cares about them.  And then I observed kids saying thank-you for a door held for them.  I observed kids having emotional outbursts and screaming horrible things.  And then I observed kids politely and confidently interacting with adults.  I observed adults who were obviously tired and frazzled who still demonstrated incredible patience and kindness to the little ones who frazzled them.  I overheard a comment from one of our staff saying “regardless of his actions, I KNOW he will be OK - and he is so cute!”   I visited with volunteers who spend many hours here as reading buddies, tutoring, helping teachers in classrooms, bringing meals to our cottages and wrapping Christmas presents.  And as I slowly drove past 3 youth treatment counselors standing near a child that had walked a block off campus, one of the counselors gave me a “thumbs up”, assuring me things were OK.

Like the school of starfish that were left washed up on the beach when the tide went out, a man came along and began placing them back into the ocean one at a time.  His friend commented “There are millions of those starfish out there - that won’t make any difference.”  The man reached down, picked up and placed another starfish back into the water and replied “It makes a difference to that one!”

We work, we play, we laugh, we cry, all the time remembering that the kids are watching us.  We believe we can “make a difference for that one!”

Rod Witte, President & Chief Executive Officer