She's Still There
/When was a time in your life when you felt the most hope?
That's the question Chrystal Evans Hurst asks in her new book She's Still There: Rescuing the Girl in You
I haven't read Hurst's book but this premise resonates with me. I've just moved house with my family, back to a place where I have grasped for hope and held hope and lost hope in equal measures. I'm at a career crossroads, juggling the hot potato of what it is I still want to be when I grow up. So I'm taking Hurst's advice. I'm going to go find that girl and rescue her.
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There are a couple iterations of Kendra who had a lot of hope.
The first I can remember is Young Kendra who spent a lot of time with her grandparents. They really were the most loving forces you could imagine. Doting, good-humored, and completely enamored of their family. Also, they thought a heaping bowl of Rocky Road ice cream was a totes appropriate pre-bedtime snack. I spent countless afternoons and overnights at my grandparents' houses. I felt secure and loved and could not imagine a world that would be so cruel so as to eclipse the warmth of my grandparents. I only have one living grandparent now. I called my Granny today. She wasn't home. But it still felt good to be able to call her. A baby step in my rescue mission.
Another Hopeful Kendra can be found in Recent High School Graduate Kendra and the summer that followed. An idyll, that season. I was so glad to be done with the drudgery of high school, the negativity and sadness that had clouded my purview for the last few years prior. Also, I was still working at Dairy Queen and you CANNOT BEAT full access to a walk-in cooler with whole vats of boulders of Reese Cup goodness. When I think about visiting that Kendra, it's honestly hard to imagine how unobstructed her view was. She wouldn't know how she'd have her heart shattered in the coming year. She would think college would be all about studying interesting topics and taking study breaks to watch 80's rom-coms with her roomies. And yet she'd probably still tell me something valuable, which is, to pursue that which interests me, and to try new things even if it's uncomfortable because otherwise how will we ever grow and how will we ever figure out what we want to be when we grow up?
I usually resist notions of having to rescue ourselves because it sounds unnecessarily dramatic. However, I understand Hurst's urgency in that for so many of us, we've buried that person along with our hope. We've become jaded. We've forgotten what it is to believe in our ability to THRIVE rather than merely survive.
And you? Do you have someone you need to rescue? What will he/she say to you when you find him/her? She's still there, and so is he.