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【英文原文】
Julie was eight when I first came across her as a psychotherapist. She was silent, refusing to disclose anything about her life at home. I had a sense of her profound hunger as she touched every toy and pressed the dolls into her face in intense embrace. Then she disappeared.
Four years later, when I founded Kids Company, a children's charity, I heard a child screaming at the gate. It was Julie. She was now the carer of her three younger siblings. Her mum and dad did drugs and crime. The children looked hungry, gaunt, dishevelled, and yet Julie was glowing beneath the dirt.
They hadn't been in school since she'd disappeared. Within a month of being with us, her father was imprisoned, leaving her mum without the drugs she needed. She forced Julie into prostitution, pimping her to facilitate her addiction. Julie hid food so she could feed her younger siblings. At night, Julie would shelter her siblings in her bed, while drug-dealers squirted blood on to the walls. One day the police raided the house. Her favourite dog jumped to protect her, and they blew his brains out in front of the kids.
After a year and a half of Kids Company's relentless advocacy, the three siblings were taken into care. Julie was left, negotiating the traumas of her childhood. But here's the rub: 10 years later, she is inspirational. She looks out for the vulnerable children on her estate. She fights for them with breath-taking thoughtfulness. Born into such moral corruption, how did she get to be so ethically extraordinary? And what did Julie know from such a young age that all of us could learn from?
I think Julie discovered something very precious. She understood, early on, that she needed to diminish her own sense of importance so the needs of her younger siblings could be met. The kinder she became, the more energy she accessed. The reward of seeing how potent her compassion was enabled Julie to rise above the victim-position her abusers endeavoured to trap her in. As much as she was harmed, physically and emotionally, they could never corrupt her, because she operated through higher principles of humanity.
I don't want to romanticise her story. Lack of maternal love and the blows from her parents' fists have left Julie with challenges. She is often hyper-agitated. When the bank clerk tells her she has no money she sobs, like a child who's been hurled back into the catastrophic burden of having no food to feed her siblings. Sometimes her sleep is invaded by memories of the sexual assaults she has tolerated.
She could have said: "Life's not worth living, what's the point?" She could have been cruel in revenge for the harm she had experienced. She could have run away . She could have taken her own life. Instead, she aspired towards life. Something made it worth living. It gave her courage, afforded her resilience, channelled her rage and helped her more than "survive".
I believe the capacity to be ethical becomes accessible to human beings when they shed their consumerist skin, when they peel away the layers of defensive achievement, hurrying to get degrees, promotions, money. When you shed this, you become at one with the intuitive laws through which all things alive are organised. At this point of fusion with the greatness beyond "I", people get a glimpse of the essence of all important things. Jung called them "archetypes", the peeled-away fundamentals of life.
Traumatised children often have a unique access into this spiritual dimension. They know intrinsically the fragility of being a person. Julie certainly knew how catastrophic her smallness was. However, she also discovered the space where the rottenness of abuse could not reach her. The space she discovered was a byproduct of her ability to express compassion. Her sense of agency, and her power to fight, came from knowing she could access the unrelenting love that came from just being kind. It's not a bargain or an exchange. It's embodying an expression of the spiritual. I think that's why Julie glowed beneath the dirt. And despite it.
The government has to have the courage to care for the vulnerable without agenda – just for the love of accessing good. This will begin the process of healing, helping the nation rebalance its "emotional economy". The human condition is only meaningful in the expression of love and care for another. Julie knew how to get out of her hell. There is so much we could all learn from her.
