Upside: The New Science of Post-Traumatic Growth by Jim Rendon

Author:Jim Rendon [Rendon, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 2015-08-03T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

* * *

Finding Meaning in Faith

The Religious Path to Growth

LOUIS D. BROWN WAS THE KIND of fifteen-year-old who felt like he had to hide his intellect. Brown loved to read so much that he amassed a large collection of books and comics and spent hours in his room lost in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He played Nintendo and would blow off homework from time to time like any fifteen-year-old. But Brown, unlike most his age, had already mapped out his future. He planned to go to college and then graduate school for an advanced degree in aerospace engineering. Then he planned to become the nation’s first black president (that was long before the election of President Barack Obama). These are grand ambitions for any child, but in his Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, they were the kind of goals that got you beat up more often than they made you friends, and so Brown tried to downplay his ambition and smarts.

The early 1990s were a violent time in Brown’s neighborhood. Gangs were a fact of life. Dealers openly sold drugs on the street. And shootings were not uncommon. Because of the violence around him, Brown led a sheltered life. He rarely rode the train or walked through the neighborhood on his own. When he went out he usually got a ride from his parents.

Brown wanted to do something to change that. “Adults blamed children for the violence in the community, and whenever things changed or went right, the adults took the credit,” Brown told his mother, Clementina Chery. Brown got involved with a group called Teens Against Gang Violence, which gave him an outlet for his feelings and a way to do something positive for his community. “He found his platform, a group of young people with the same goals and determination to do something positive and to take the myth away about young black males with hoodies,” says Chery.

On a December afternoon in 1993, Brown left his house to go to a Christmas party for his antiviolence group. At the same time a group of young men were gathering a few blocks away. Someone fired a shot at the group. They scattered, running for safety. One or more of them fired back. Brown, who was walking to the train on an adjacent street, was hit in the back of the head by a stray bullet. He never regained consciousness. Doctors removed him from life support and he died later that day.

When doctors told Chery the news, she could barely understand what they were telling her. Her son was dead? “It’s like a trance; you are hypnotized and moving. I remember driving. I was really upset. Cars and busses were honking. Life was still going on. I remember thinking, How dare they, don’t they know what just happened?” she says. “Shock, denial, anger, and rage came over me. The world should stop. My world stopped. Why is the world still going?”

Her friend Patricia Zamor was on her way to buy a Christmas tree with her family when she heard about Brown’s death.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.