Lindsay Clark Hepworth is a Texas girl at heart but is happy to make her home in Utah Valley with her husband until their next great adventure. She loves water-coloring, long books, barbecue fare, and writing with fountain pens to feel fancy. Lindsay has just begun her unforged path out of college, but she finds that living each moment with music makes each step surer than the last.

When I arrive on campus, the girls are not happy to see me. The lights flip on and no one stirs at first. It’s just past dawn and the crisp mountain wind whips fiercely through the trees and against the walls, chilling me while I pull the blankets off the girls who refuse to rise.

“Don’t grab me. Never grab me again,” says one as I shake her shoulder. She’s usually grouchy in the morning and I know she doesn’t mean it. Another girl is resolute and softly moans that she is not strong enough today. We’re going to be late for our medication pass and the other girls, dressed and ready, are antsy. I radio for an intervention specialist who will coax her out of bed and off the home. I’m tired and ready to go back to bed after coming back to work so soon after a fourteen-hour shift the previous day. It’s tough to get a good night’s sleep on such hours, but I hide the drowsiness and smile for these girls who need so much love. There can never be too much of it in a residential treatment center.
When I first found the Youth Counselor job opening online, I felt a strong attachment to it even though I had no experience in behavioral science or psychology. I had just earned my bachelor’s degree in Theatre almost a year before and hoped find a good job in that field. But when the Spirit whispered, I listened; I knew where I was needed.

My campus houses teenaged boys and girls with various ailments: mood disorders, PTSD, autism spectrum, reactive-attachment disorder, etc. Most arrive on campus escorted by foster parents or single moms and dads. The kids are shy at first, scared of the future and embarrassed to be labelled as one of the “treatment teens;” kids so messed up that not even their parents want them around. I look at my girls and I feel so grateful for my history–a family built firmly on the principles of faith and love. My mother nurtured me with her daily encouragement; my father guided me with his firm testimony. For these girls who lack this nourishment, I must be both mother and father. I’m the one who holds them when they cry, who puts them in a “time out” if they need to redirect their thoughts and actions. I tell them to get their feet off the couch, to go change if their shorts aren’t long enough, to close their mouth when they chew. I could go on. It’s a little like learning how to be a parent before I’ve even considered having children of my own.

Yesterday, one of my girls called me Mom. It was a weird feeling – how can I, barely into my mid-twenties, be accepted as a mother-figure to a bunch of troubled teenage girls? I think about my mom and how she’s always able to make me feel better and I don’t feel good enough for that role, not by a long shot. Yesterday, one of my new girls finally broke under the reality that she was sent away by her parents to be in treatment. She attacked a staff member keeping a watchful eye on her and was immediately put into a safety hold on the grass of the field in the midst of the other students. I saw everything as it unfolded, but as that counselor asked, “Can I get a little help here?” from the ground as he restrained her, I hesitated. That night, I could only sit next to her on the floor as she sobbed and say, “I’m sorry. I can’t know how you’re feeling, but I know that it must suck.”

It’s at those times that I feel the closest to God, when I’m there with them as they suffer. My sweet girls feel like they have been forgotten by any kind of God who would allow such hurt and evil to happen to these children. They are not forgotten. I felt so strongly that I needed to take this job six months ago, and now I am here to be the proxy mother whom they want so much. I’m not the real thing, but I want to be as much of mother as I can.
I drop the girls off at school, fighting through the wind and light smattering of rain. It will storm later today, but I will catch up on my sleep and miss most of it. The girls are worried about getting wet, but I look up at the sky and say (true to my Texan roots) that it’s only spittin’. One girl says that angels wouldn’t spit on us and I reply, “Well, sometimes even angels have to hock a loogie.”

The girl behind me giggles and offhandedly remarks that she loves me. The girl who snapped at me this morning squeezes me tightly and tells me I am her favorite before she runs into the school building. The girl who broke down yesterday smiles and laughs with me.

My girls.

When have you acted as a parent to someone ele’s kids? Has someone been there for you?