Dear Friends,

I received an email a few years ago that I pulled out again this week. It was from a girl in my high school class. In it, she said that our friendship had saved her life. At one point, she recounted being so miserable that she had thought of doing something crazy to stop the pain. She thanked me for being kind to her when others in our class treated her as an outcast.

I remember her as an angry, intense, balled up young woman who wore strange clothes and wild hair. I can still see her boney hands covered in rings. I can't say that I liked her. It's more like I felt sorry for her. I knew she needed a friend. Until I received her email, I hadn't thought about her in 20 years.

In high school, I wasn't one of the cool kids, or one of the pretty girls, or among the group of rich kids who hung together. I was the horse girl. That seemed to make me "cool" enough to float among them and escape their judgment. Nobody seemed to notice or care when I hung out with the outcast of the class. When this young woman erupted in rage and curse words, they looked to me to deal with it. And I did.

What my fellow high schoolers didn't know is that I could have erupted with my own rage at any moment. My family was dysfunctional. My childhood was marred by family secrets and difficult truths. But I was raised a proper Southern girl. I painted a veneer of mascara and lipstick on my face, flashed a toothy smile, and put one stylish shoe in front of the other pretending that everything was just fine. And of course, I never spoke of my pain.

I simply dealt with it, like so many of us who face down demons. I did so without hurting anyone. Thank God, so did my troubled high school friend. She is an artist now, a singer, who performs on Broadway. She has a new name, and a new life. She wrote to me, "I love myself finally. Thank you for loving the tortured me all those years ago. You really made a difference in my life."

I share these ramblings because of the horror that occured in that Connecticut school, and in so many others we know of from recent years. If someone had intervened at some point in the lives of the perpetrators of these attacks, maybe it would have made a difference. No, we don't know for certain. But what do we, as people, have to lose by trying?

Let's be the example for our children and show them how to reach out to those in our society who are different, or backward, or quietly and sometimes openly tortured. Every human being deserves kindness and care. Period. Let's look for those among us who are challenged. In the middle of our busy lives, let's train ourselves to notice a child who seems different or alone or angry. Let's show our babies how to stop for a moment and reach out to those who are different. 

None of us knows how powerful a simple act of kindness can be -- unless we've been the recipient. Let's make the world a better, safer, happier place -- one child at a time.

May God bless and inspire our hearts to open and our eyes to see.