President & CEO's Message
Crisis Center of Tampa Bay: The place where you can talk about all those things that can't be talked about
He stood in our parking lot, a tall man, handsome, well dressed, his hands hanging at his side. He said it was the toughest thing he had ever gone through. He said he was a warrior, trained to push through the pain, trained to endure almost any ordeal, trained to achieve his goal no matter what the cost. He lifted up his head, looked at me and wiping the grief from his eyes went on, "But nobody trained me on what to do when your baby dies!"
He filled me in on some of the background, how he and his wife knew the pregnancy was high risk, how they took extra care and extra precautions, refusing to belief that their love and joy wouldn't triumph in the end. But in the end, only a few hours after she was born, she was gone. Her tiny heart just stopped and there nothing anyone could do to bring her back.
Since that day three years ago it was as if his life had come apart at the seams. He and his wife divorced, he lost his job and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't let go of that moment when he briefly held her wriggling body in his hands, admiring every wrinkle and crease in her flawless skin; when he knew for the first time in his life true love.
I asked how he came to the Crisis Center. Pointing to our building, he said, "Because someone told me that this is the place where you can talk about all those things that can't be talked about!"
His words flooded me with memories. A whisp of a boy being dragged by his father up the stairs to our counseling office; the pathetic cry of a crack addict as he called from a phone atop the Skyway Bridge, threatening to jump if we couldn't do something to ease his pain; the shocked, bewildered look of a woman stepping out of a squad car as she headed into sexual assault services. And I knew, that that someone was right: the Crisis Center is where you go to talk about those things that can't be talked about when life turns upside down and pain breaks through your every defense.
The Crisis Center is where you go to talk and where help, hope and healing are waiting, waiting because of you to make tomorrow a better day.
- David Braughton
