Many years ago, I was involved in a search and rescue party. This was for a teenage girl who had run away from the private residential school, where I was working at the time. The school sat on 500 forested acres and was far from a highway and the nearest town. This young teen had grown up in a city and had very little experience in outdoor survival other than the few months she had spent with us at the school.

However, she was well-versed in surviving some pretty horrific living conditions. She came to us a few years after her mother, who was a prostitute and heroin addict, had left her alone at home for several weeks with mom’s newborn baby, no money, and very little food. She did the very best she could and fed the baby sugar water when the milk ran out. Eventually, she turned to a neighbor for help when there was no appeasing the baby and Child Protective Services stepped in.

Zara was one of the toughest kids I had ever worked with. She was streetwise, angry, and had so many deep scars from years of abuse and neglect that she trusted very few people in her life. Her decision to run away from the school came after a fight she had in the cafeteria with one of the boys. He was goading her about something personal which pushed her right over the edge. She grabbed a bottle, broke it on the corner of a table and threatened to cut him with it. At that moment, all Hell broke loose, and it took staff some time to get everyone under control and calmed back down again.

The evening she ran away, followed a counseling session with the staff psychologist, a day after the cafeteria event. Zara had reacted the night before, in the only way she knew how to react. She was raised in a violent home around violent people and learned to respond to conflict with violence. Our job was to try and help her to find more constructive solutions and responses to the stressors and conflict in life.

We searched for Zara into the night and finally found her hiding in some undergrowth about 6 miles below the school, in some rough terrain on the edge of a raging river. She was tired, cold and scared, had no food, and was only wearing a light t-shirt and jeans. The quickest way for us to reach her was to perform a swift water rescue. We tethered one of our staff members to a safety line and he slowly made his way across the rapids to the other side. Once he secured a second line to a tree, he fitted Zara with a lifejacket and harness, clipped her to the line with a carabiner and we pulled her across to safety as he followed closely behind.

Once she was safe on the other side, Zara broke down and began to sob. For her, this was not only a terrifying experience, but a transformative one. She witnessed a group of people who truly cared about her and her safety. There was no anger towards her, on the contrary, our response was one of concern, love, support, and kindness.

Read more in my Show Notes on my website at awomaninthewoods.com

Question of the Week:

Have you ever been lost? This can be the recounting of life experience where you were physically lost, or a time when you felt emotionally or mentally lost and were not sure how you would find your way out again.

You can email your responses to me at [email protected] or record a message on Speakpipe right through your computer or device. The URL for Speakpipe is: speakpipe.com/awomaninthewoods.

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