One of the most complex kids I worked with at the Center was a young lady by the name of Cassandra, a.k.a. Bambi. Her street name was Bambi because of her soft, brown, expressive doe eyes. Those eyes could be as soft and innocent as a new born puppy or as angry and defiant as a trapped mountain lion.

I'm sure that when Cassandra planned her life, she found the biggest plate possible and piled on the challenges as high as she could.

Cassandra would often come into the Center with large bruises all over her body; bruises that she said were caused by her stepfather. Because she was over 18, there was little I could do other than encourage her to file charges or at the least stay away from him. But she would always just smile at me and tell me she'd be all right. A normal life had a much different definition to Cassandra than most other people.

Cassandra's natural father died of a drug overdose when she was three. She spent much of her life following her mother from one addicted, abusive boyfriend to another. Cassandra would often go for days locked in her room, "so as not to disturb the adults." Her childhood nutrition was the remaining junk food she scavenged after her mother and boyfriend had finished eating, whatever she could scrounge from friends and neighbors and all the beer and other booze she wanted from the many half empty bottles and glasses laying around the house.

Cassandra couldn't recall the first time she was abused. I was too young to remember, she stated flatly. Her mother's boyfriends climbing into bed with her had become a way of life. Because the abuse started at such a young age and because she was often under the influence of alcohol or drugs, Cassandra never questioned the sanity of it. To her, it was "just life."

By the time Cassandra found the Center, she had a long history with Child Protective Services. Several charges of physical abuse had been substantiated against her step dad. She had been bounced around from foster home to foster home, and consequently, many of the case managers and most of the juvenile court judges knew her by sight. Her wounds were many and they went deep. Cassandra was as foreign to a functional healthy lifestyle as she was to life in an Amish community. Cassandra could have been the poster child for child abuse or a vivid illustration definition in the medical dictionary for 'emotional displacement'.

I could count on one hand the number of visits she made to the Center when she was clean and sober. She was constantly either drunk or stoned, or both. Her behavior was rarely severe enough to prevent her from coming into the Center, but she was almost always under the influence of some self-medication.

Late one afternoon, Cassandra came in with a large, swollen abrasion covering the left side of her face.

"Bambi!" I exclaimed, "What happened to you?"

"Oh, nothin' much," she shrugged, " just got into a beef with my stepdad."

I brought her into my office and examined her bruise more closely. It was a deep, ugly, angry purple. She was lucky her stepdad¹s blow hadn¹t caved in the whole side of her face.

"What happened, Bambi?" I asked, my mind racing. I was amazed that she wasn't in a coma, and saddened that she could feel this lifestyle was "normal." I could only feel rage at the monster who would do such a thing to a woman, especially one so tiny and vulnerable, and it was especially offensive that he would do this to his own stepdaughter.

"Oh well," she laughed, "my stepdad says I'm a druggie and a slut." She laughed again, as if she had been called a 'silly goose'.

"Oh Bambi," I replied quietly, shaking my head, "how did that make you feel?"

"Oh hell," she laughed again, "he calls me shit like that all the time!"

"Doesn¹t he give you a lot of hassles for doing drugs?" I asked.

"No! Hell no," she roared, "He’s my source." (drug supplier)

"Are you serious?" I asked incredulously. "Does your mom know that he sells to you?"

"Oh shit, yes," she seemed to find amusement in the ignorance of my questions. "The three of us party all the time."

"He sells you drugs, then caves in your head for doing them?" I asked incredulously.

"Ah, he was just pissed because I bought from another source," she said lightly.

Such was the reason and sense of her world. A world that few would understand, but she seemed to accept without complaint or question.

Several months later, Cassandra came into the Center and informed us she was pregnant again. This was her fourth pregnancy. The others had been lost; three by miscarriage, one by abortion.

But this one, Cassandra informed me, she was going to keep. This one belonged to her fiancé, and they had decided they wanted to keep it.

We didn't see much of Bambi for the next several months. She reported to me that she and her fiancé had rented an apartment and were "trying to settle down."

Several months later, some of the youth at the Center told us that Bambi had given birth to twin daughters. Born seven weeks premature, both girls were in ICU. One daughter seemed to be doing pretty well, while the other was battling tremendous odds for survival.
A few months went by until Bambi showed up at the Center.

It was a bitter cold and wet day in the teeth of winter when Bambi came strolling up, one tiny frail baby in her stroller with a light blanket for protection against the bitter weather.

Vennette, the Center Coordinator rushed over to the door and held it open for her in greeting.

"Hey Bambi, what brings you downtown on such a freezing cold day?" she asked.

"Oh, I got my baby out of the hospital yesterday, so I thought we'd come downtown and see who was here," she said, either not hearing or choosing to ignore the reference to the cold weather.

"Is the other twin still in the hospital?" Vennette asked.

"Oh no, she died." Bambi reported as if stating that a houseplant had died.

Vennette and I exchanged shocked glances. "What happened, Bambi?" we simultaneously asked.

"Oh, she developed pneumonia and her lungs filled with fluid." Again, the lack of emotion in her voice was more chilling than the weather outside.

Vennette, a recent mother herself, cringed with the news. Most parents respond similarly to the loss of a child, any child.

"I'm sorry Bambi."

I watched her closely, expecting to see her crumble, ready to assist her into the privacy of my office and a chair to sit in. But it wouldn't be necessary.

"Oh, it's okay," she reasoned calmly. "I still have this one."

Vennette and I stood there, silently stunned as we listened to this mother, so deeply wounded from her own childhood, referring to the loss of her daughter as if it were the report on one of her cat's litter. One survived, one did not.

It didn't take long for Child Protective Services to get involved. Bambi was confused and frustrated that she was in trouble for giving better parenting that she received as a child. And who can blame her? Don't we all, to some degree parent our children the same way we were raised? Those of us who escaped without too many wounds can look back at our life with the help of a therapist and start to heal some of those wounds, eventually parenting ourselves into relatively healthy individuals.

But Bambi's life was so dysfunctional that it carried little resemblance to any healthy childhood. Her struggles to comprehend the dynamics of a healthy, functional lifestyle were just too far beyond her scope to comprehend. It seemed to her that life had suddenly changed all the rules and she was trying desperately to understand.

Shortly thereafter, Bambi was approached by a homeless woman to "borrow" her baby for a couple hours. The woman was spanging (asking passers-by for spare change) and was able to significantly increase the number and size of donations by holding Bambi's newborn in one arm and a crudely made sign in the other, asking for help for her and the baby. The woman offered to pay Bambi $15 an hour to hold her baby.

Now, most of us would cringe at the idea of "renting out" our baby. But Bambi had come from a childhood where her mother had rented her out sexually to her boyfriends in exchange for drugs or money. Here was a woman who was offering to baby sit for her, and pays her to do it. There wasn't any sex, any drugs, or any abuse. From her wounded perspective, there didn't seem to be anything wrong with it.

The final straw came when Bambi left her young infant under the supervision of a 14 year old friend. The 14 year old sexually abused the baby and soon word got to CPS, and the baby was removed.

Bambi went to court a number of times, and eventually she lost all parental rights to her baby. That was the only time I ever saw Bambi cry.

As much as I hurt for Bambi, I felt relieved that hopefully the cycle of child abuse had ended with that sweet little baby.

I'm not sure what lessons Bambi came into this world to learn. I'm not sure what service she is here to provide. I do know that she has taught me and many others many important lessons. And under that wounded, dysfunctional and addicted personality lies a sweet soul, a strong porcupine kid and an Arnold. For who else but an Arnold would have chosen the life she took on? Who of us would have stepped forward to volunteer for that kind of challenge?

I can just imagine a group of souls gathered to choose and accept their upcoming lives and challenges. Imagine how many would jump at the opportunity when shown that one of the "highlighted" lives included

• a drug addicted mother
• no identified father
• numerous maternal boyfriends
• numerous instances of sexual abuse and rape by maternal boyfriends
• numerous instances of physical abuse and neglect by mother and maternal boyfriends
• severe emotional neglect and abuse by various offenders
• childhood alcoholism and drug addiction
• forced to live on the streets by age 14
• Teen pregnancy
• Loss of one child shortly after birth by death
• Loss of the other child by state removal

And the list goes on and on. There are many challenges not listed here because they are too personal and there are probably many more that I am not even aware of.

I am not saying that Cassandra is a helpless victim and thus not responsible for her actions and choices. I recognize that there are many difficulties that Cassandra brought on herself. Isn't that true for all of us?

But whether we slice our own finger open, or someone else does, the pain is still the same. And no matter whether these challenges are brought on by ourselves or not, we are still left to deal with the consequences of those choices.

My love and respect for Cassandra is for the courage to keep trying, to keep struggling. Life has dealt her an incredibly difficult hand, and her own actions have amplified those hardships, but she keeps trying, she hasn't given up.

She is still trying to desperately understand a life that has none of the boundaries and safeguards that the rest of us have had to guide us along the way.

Looking down that partial list of challenges that Bambi has faced so far in her life, you might want to ask yourself, "Could I have handled them any better? Do I have the internal strength and will power necessary to withstand all that she has had to endure?"

I certainly don't have all the answers, and I'm okay with that. But I do feel that none of us know the reasons why others are faced with the challenges they have. So, when we walk through the spiritual weight room of life and we see some with little weight on their bars while others have shouldered tremendous weights on theirs, perhaps we might have more compassion for those souls with the more vigorous workout, whether they have created it or not.

Is it wise for us to condemn those whose challenges bear an extreme weight we might not see or understand?

It's important to note, Bambi's life is still in progress. I often pray for her, pray that she will somehow discover the gift she holds inside of her. She has been dealt a difficult hand, and with the grace of God, she will find some meaning in her life.

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