Patching Cracks

Before coming to Big Sandy, I worked with kids in a mental health facility. Most of the kids were pretty ordinary but had abusive or difficult upbringings. The result of their terrible life experiences was often a great deal of anger and dysfunction.

It was a difficult job because we worked with kids that lived at the facility. Their parents weren’t there to care for them, so we had to fill in the best we could. The hardest part of the job was that we had to deal with clients at their worst. It became very easy to shift our mindset from one where we were helping a particular kid heal and grow,...