By Heath Kull, President
The month of May at The Ranches is always a busy time. As we prepare for our two-week summer break and wind down the school year, emotions tend to run a bit higher than usual. It can be a difficult time for many of our residents as they face the uncertainty of returning home for the break. It can also be a time of great joy. This May has been no different and I want to share with you our great joy. Many of you have read articles in The Corral about our resident named MJ. She came to us a little over two years ago and was failing her ninth grade year in rather splendid fashion. In addition, she was angry, defensive and unwilling to let people in. In the two years since coming to The Ranches, we have worked with her and cared about her in a way that she was unprepared for. Slowly but surely, she began to open up to the staff and began to share her pain and frustration with the life that she has been given. Often times, her anger made it very difficult to see the beautiful and intelligent young lady beneath all of the long hair and attitude, but we began to see her talent. While conversations often led to her demanding to be discharged, we politely declined each time. Finally, our counselor had the idea to ask her to write about her feelings. Suddenly, a different picture of the situation emerged and all of us here at The Ranches were simply amazed at her writing ability. Gone was the anger and defensiveness and in its place were honest glimpses into the child that we had misjudged. She had reasons for her anger and defensiveness and she shared them in beautiful words that will forever leave their mark on all of us. To quote Conway Twitty, “All this tragedy should go into my head and out instead as bits of poetry.” Last year, at about this time, MJ shared with us a desire to become a writer. Since we had all read her writing, it was not a difficult decision to ask her to write for The Corral and for our Facebook page. MJ jumped at the chance to write for an audience and she has yet to disappoint us with her work. Whether she writes about an outing or shares her personal thoughts, each piece of work is done well and delivered on time. One of her pieces prompted one of our donors to write a personal note to us about her writing. MJ often reminds me that donors respond better to her words than mine, but it is now said with a smile that reflects her newfound self-esteem instead of the glare that we saw in her the first year. While I am very proud of her writing, I want to tell the other side of the story. During the time we have had the honor of working with MJ, she started taking herself and her schoolwork seriously. She came to us a semester behind, but she worked incredibly hard in the last two years and graduated in May with a 3.2 GPA – one year early. I had the privilege of attending her graduation ceremony and could not have been more proud of what she has accomplished. MJ is currently preparing for college and will receive scholarship money to fulfill this newfound dream. And while she still wants to be a writer and has already written a book about her time at The Ranches, she now wants to go to school to become a social worker. It is her hope that she will be able to change the lives of young people that have stories similar to hers. Whether she knows it or not, MJ has already changed the life of many people in her life, including mine.
