Finding the healing moments

Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while and leave footprints on our heart and we are never, ever the same.

Anonymous

One of the biggest challenges against the war on alcohol and drug abuse is always fought on the field of prevention. Do all of the efforts to reduce addiction and the pain for many families really help? Year after year we continue with prevention efforts, but there is always more to do.

Sometimes you don’t know if your efforts make a difference. Sometimes you wonder if anyone is listening. However, once in a while you get a sign that someone was listening and that your efforts are appreciated.

Many years ago as a director of an alcohol and drug abuse treatment program for the U.S. Army, I remembered all of our efforts at prevention as well as treatment. As part of our prevention efforts we spoke to many groups of people and especially to students in the local schools. Teachers would call us and ask if we had anyone who could come to the school and present information about alcohol and drug abuse as well as interact with the students. Rather than sending just one person to present I would usually send a team of three or four people to not only talk about alcohol and drug information, but also to share their stories when appropriate.

One particular request came from a local junior high school. For some reason I decided to go with the team that morning and to help with the presentation. We had a group of students who were seventh- and eighth-graders for about an hour and a half. When the presentations were over, I asked the teachers to help us to evaluate what the students got from the time we shared together. However, my request was a little different from the typical feedback. I wanted the teachers to wait for two weeks and then ask the students who attended to write on one side of a piece of paper what they liked about that morning’s presentation and on the other side of the paper what they didn’t like.

For a while I forgot about the students’ evaluations. I was getting out of the military at the time and I was busy with out-processing, preparing the program for a new director and getting ready to move. Like many others at the time, I was also soul searching over the Vietnam War.

The day before I was discharged a package arrived from the junior high school. The students sent me their evaluations complete with a designed cover and a letter. All of their comments were on sheets of white paper except one. Their comments were overwhelmingly positive as they expressed their appreciation for answering their questions and how honest the presenters were about their lives. Most of the papers had very similar themes. However, in the middle of all of these white papers there was one blue sheet of paper. It attracted my attention not only for the color, but also because of what the student wrote and how the student wrote it. Some of it was written in print, some of it in script, and the further down the page you read the larger the size of the writing as if the author was trying to find a way to show his enthusiasm beyond using mere words.

This paper was sent to me in 1976. The original paper is in my office today. I do not know who sent me this paper. I do not know where this seventh- or eighth-grader is today, but I do know that I was in the right place at the right time. I know that I made the difference in the lives of two people that morning and that the healing moment was created for both of them. I know that the healing process began that morning for that student and that the healing process also began for me.

For those of you who often wonder if your efforts make a difference, I hope that you too get an old blue sheet of paper.

Robert J. Ackerman, Ph.D.