breaking the cycle

I’m starting a new project that focuses on the individual stories of the people I’ve met in my everyday life. I’ve been fortunate — finding myself in situations where I have met the most remarkable people from simple encounters — conversations with strangers. Some of these conversations have led to friendships that have now spanned more than 25 years. From meeting a remarkable Armernian music professor who was driving me in his cab in San Francisco, to a beautiful Romanian friend who once had to leave her two children behind to come to the United States, without speaking English, to make a way for her husband and children to start a new life. These stories are about couregeous, amazing people who have lived through some of the worst situations and come out the other side with stunning attitudes about life — and an openness to share their experiences and friendship with me.

Lunch with S

(I do want to warn you in advance that this first story is really hard — there is violence in it that is really unsettling).

I drove southwest to a part of Grand Rapids I only visit for dental appointments, which drives me insane to go that far to get to the dentist but I’m lazy and haven’t bothered finding a new one. This time I was heading to Bob Evans to have lunch with a woman I met in the waiting area of Lemmon-Holton Betty Ford Breast Center for my six month follow-up mammogram. Her name is S and I was so moved by our brief conversation in the waiting area that day that I asked if she might like to grab lunch some time. She gave me her Facebook contact — such a smart way to approach sharing your contact with a total stranger. I’m not in the habit of checking the Facebook Messenger, so I need to be more diligent if I continue to make acquaintances with strangers in lobbies.

The weather was dismal on the day S and I were meeting for lunch — the typical dull gray sky made even more unbearable with cold winter rain. It was depressing. I was a little nervous to meet S because I was scared we wouldn’t recognize each other again. Fortunately we both arrived at the same moment, both of us hurrying toward the restaurant to escape the soggy chill. We both laughed at our coincidental (and for me punctual) arrival. S looked really nice, her dark eyes with a warm shine to them, and I relaxed. S was easy to talk to — or actually she was comfortable talking to me. It almost felt like I was a reporter interviewing her on her life. Her story seemed to bubble out of her, beginning in a very natural easy way — as if we were old friends catching up on our lives over lunch — something we did together all the time.

It wasn’t very long into our lunch that I realized, looking at this woman who seemed to glow, how incredible she really was. The word survivor hardly begins to capture the essence of who sat in front of me because not only had she survived the most unimaginable things I’ve ever had someone tell me (in person!), but she went on to talk about her good fortune in life, how blessed she was. Her words flowed out of her and I was glad that I didn’t really need to talk too much because I was dumbstruck by the things she was telling me. We began with the mammogram since that was how we met. S was getting hers for medical clearance so that she could qualify to be placed on a transplant list for a kidney. Two years earlier she had gone into the hospital in absolute kidney failure and was incredibly close to dying. She actually said, at that point in her life, despite having seven children, that she was ready to die. She was in such an unhappy place and had given up and pleaded to God just to let her go. After that, she said she went crazy. Like really crazy. She said she had torn off all of her clothes and was ranting like an insane person and was put in a psychiatric part of the hospital for a week. She didn’t recall everything that happened that week but she ultimately realized that she wrestled with the devil and wrestled with God until she was restored to herself again. She said she had always believed in God — as in she had always gone to church, had religion in her life, but she kind of lost faith that God could let happen to her all the horrible things she had suffered through.

When S was 4 years old she was molested by her mother’s boyfriend. One night she remembers she cried and cried and cried. Her mother was asking her what was wrong. Her mother’s boyfriend had sexually assaulted her and threatened if she told he would kill her, kill her mother. So she cried and her mother kept trying to console her. The boyfriend grew more enraged as she cried. Her memory stops and picks back up the next morning when she woke to find the walls of her room covered in blood. Her mother had been attacked by the boyfriend and was so severely injured that she was hospitalized for a few months. The kids were moved to foster card.

When S was twelve she was raped by her sister’s boyfriend. She told no one. She started using drugs. Her husband, who she has known since she was young, also was using drugs and was involved in a gang. She had her first child at 15. She lived in a rundown town in eastern Michigan where gangs were prevalent and gun shootings were common place. Her mother died and her life continued to ride off the rails. After her second child, she ended up in the hospital from an overdose and nearly died. She dreamt of her mother. In her dream, her mother was ashamed of her, admonishing her for what she was doing with her life and her failure in being a good mother to her two girls. S stopped using after that. She thought her husband had as well. She tried to get her life straight and wanted her husband to do the same. She didn’t know that he was not only still using but selling drugs and deeply embedded in gangs. They lived like that for years and S was miserable but stayed clean. Her husband had gotten involved in music and was working and trying to make his way into the music business. One night their house was shot up with their kids inside. That was it. They packed their car with all of their belongings and moved to GR. Her husband knew someone through music and they decided the only way out of that life was to physically leave it. She said that their world would not allow for them to stop living the life that they were in so they had to move out of that world completely.

At first the kids were really unhappy in GR. There is a strong hispanic community in Grand Rapids, but unlike their old town, the Mexicans in Grand Rapids spoke Spanish and they did not. Her kids were rejected by the hispanics because they didn’t speak Spanish and they were rejected by the whites because they were Mexican. They also had moved to a really rough area, S laughing as she told me this. Compared to where they had come from, Grand Rapids didn’t come close to the poverty they had experienced. They relocated to a different part of the city and the kids started going to school at City Middle and City High, one of the top schools in the state — an excellent public school with an IB curriculum. Her daughter, so tortured by not fitting in, not belonging, started making short films. One of her films won a contest and she was awarded 25,000 in educational money. They were flown to New York to be presented with an award and have her daughter’s film played. While in New York they toured NYU, a dream her daughter hopes to achieve. She is currently a senior and has applied to multiple schools, receiving an amazing scholarship at DePauw University. I’m skipping an important part in this — S’s kidney failure.

Two years ago, after S wrestled herself back to life, after the hospital, she was unable to work. Put on dialysis, she was unable and too unhealthy to work. Soon they lost their housing because they couldn’t afford the rent. Since she was then deemed homeless, she was ineligible to be put on a transplant list. The couple, who took their vows after thirty years, had to seek separate housing temporarily. A friend of S’s allowed her to live with her, but she was required to be on the lease to be considered — homed — I guess — the opposite of homeless. And so it goes. So far all of her tests have come been okay except for a stress test (ironically in the office of one of my husband’s partners). S thinks it was due to the close timing of her dialysis and they are redoing the test at a time that would be more sensitive to her treatments.

You can see why I didn’t have much to say during all of this. S said that after her experience in the hospital she decided she would tell her family about the rape when she was twelve. The one person she could not tell was her sister, who had a child by the man who had raped her — who S said was shot anyway so I guess that was not a concern any longer. The only reason she couldn’t tell her sister is because she has been estranged from her for years and doesn’t know how to reach her or has tried to call her and can’t reach her. I was a little dizzy at this part, my eyes and S’s welling with tears.

She says she has never been happier in her life — despite the kidney thing. She feels that God is working his way through her, talks and directs her, and she is following his plan. He wants her to write a book, which she has started by dictating to her daughter. They have put it on hold for awhile due to the rigor of senior year, but she’s not worried — she knows it will happen. She is also designing jewelry which she hopes to sell. She says that since her daughter won her prize she has been to some places that she felt she never “belonged,” speaking with people that aren’t really “her kind.” She says this all with awe and disbelief. Her eyes shine and I can’t get over how young and fresh she looks.

She told me that her younger children do not want to have kids early — they can’t imagine it. She never realized her son was especially smart but apparently the teachers at City Middle say that he has remarkable test scores. I’m looking across at her and all that I can think is — Oh My God — she broke the cycle — I pray for her that she really broke the cycle.