Nobody on the road,
Nobody on the beach
I feel it in the air
The summer's out of reach
~Don Henley
I dig that song. Never gave much thought to the words until these last three months smacked me in the face.
I had such big plans for the Summer. I was going to get my work done quick, spend time with my kids, hang out in the yard with my wife and basically enjoy this part of the movie that is my life. I looked forward to long days of my kids chewing my ear off about Minecraft or the last fashion shift that would surely make me roll my eyes. I’m older now, I was excited to take it slow. The last five Summers have been spent traveling for the magazine or foster care in general, this summer was to be mine.
I didn’t expect to be stuck in May for three months.
I’m still a rookie in this world of editing and publishing. In terms of time spent, five years is just a drop in the bucket. I still have so much to learn, still prone to mistakes. And in May, I made a truly harmful rookie mistake. I got too close to a story. I let it get inside my head. And for that, I paralyzed myself for nearly 75 days.
I’ll explain, in case this is your first issue.
Misty Stenslie was a really big deal in the world of foster care advocacy. When I say big deal, I’m talking trailblazing big deal. She was the first chairperson of Foster Care Alumni of America, worked for Casey Family Program, testified before Congress, etc.. I knew her from her work and social media. She created the April cover. Her career was cut short when she contracted Lyme disease which led to early onset Alzheimer’s. She asked me to come to Minnesota to hear her story and relay it to you, the readers, before she would inevitably take her own life a few weeks later. I did my job.
What followed was a lesson that hurt, but a lesson I needed to learn.
In this job I’ve heard nearly everything. I’ve heard horrible tales of how some of us have come through the system and how we got there. Cages, locks on refridgerators, cruelty, neglect, if you can think of the atrocities, I’ve met the person they happened to. I’ve seen and heard some stuff. I met one of the women that was held hostage for over a decade in Cleveland. I have a friend who counts the homes she was in by the scars on her body. I’ve built up a tolerance for awfulness. A thick skin has coated me over the last five years. I have very few “triggers” (hot word of the year alert!). If I have PTSD, it rarely shows itself. I do have psych issues but I manage them. Very little gets all the way to my core. I have a wall of comedies in my office that prevents that from happening. Until May.
As explained by my go to Therapist, former Columnist, Dr. Kalyani Gopal, I hit a wall and PTSD could be at the root of it. If you’ve followed the mag for any length of time, you know how pissed off I am that a problem I have can’t be solved in 20 seconds. From what the Doc and I gather, the cause of my paralasis wasn’t the interview or Misty’s death, it was my inability to do anything to prevent and my lack of right to feel like I should intervene. Couple that with my own attempts to take my life as a teen and you have a recipe for disaster.
I first needed to learn that I had zero right to feel like there was anything I should do in the case of Misty. It wasn’t my pain to deal with, it was hers. It wasn’t my place to determine what should happen to her, it was hers. It is not my place to care for everyone. My job is to tell everyone’s stories in the hopes that it helps others. Though I have an insatiable urge to help everyone I can, it’s not my job. This sort of thinking can lead to a Savior’s complex and let’s be honest, I already think too highly of myself.
Next I had to come to grips with the fact that I in fact, failed to take my own life and that’s a good failure to have on my record. I wasn’t in the same situation as Misty. I was just a sad, lost kid who couldn’t see another way out. I was supposed to fail so I could go on to have this great life I managed to put together. Misty and I were not the same person. I couldn’t see that. I see it now. I imagine other alumni of care felt this way, in some respect, after her death. That’s one of the reasons I’m writing this. You aren’t alone if her death brought up all kinds of emotions you’d forgotten about. It’s ok. I didn’t see that over the last few months. It’s ok to feel all those feelings. It’s ok to confront what’s going on inside. It’s healthy to sort through it.
What isn’t healthy is keeping subscribers waiting while you do sort through it. This is a terrible job to let your emotions get the better of you. I left a lot of you hanging, waiting for the June/July issue to get to your email or mailbox. I apologize. I’m human isn’t a good enough response when you have a business to run and people who have paid you for a service. Rookie mistake.
On the Brightside, I think I’ve come out of the experience better than I went in. It was a rough few months, but nothing that compares to what Misty’s family must have gone through. Perspective is everything in life and I lost mine for a while there. I found it in time to put together a pretty decent last hurrah of Summer for my kids. While I would have enjoyed more time in the sun with the family, they went to the beach and had plenty of sleepovers. I even managed to break away from this computer long enough to take them to an amusement park one night.
Life lessons hurt because they are designed to prevent future pain. I hope that’s the case this time. I don’t like feeling helpless or unable to do my job. If I don’t feel this way for another 20 Summers, those will be 20 cherished Summers.
Enjoy the issue, it’s a great one.
Owner/Editor - Chris Chmielewski