Success and Failure in Changing Lives Through Literature
By Jean Trounstine (profile)

Kim was a student who came to Changing Lives Through Literature with a long record. She had done prison time. She had been strung out on drugs for longer than she wanted to remember. She could hold down a job, but she was often secretive, got high at work, was engulfed in her own life and impervious to others, and she couldn't hold onto a good relationship. Most of the men she was attracted to were abusive or abrasive or just not interested in much outside of drinking and drugging. Kim had grown up in Lowell, had a tough demeanor, and from the things she said during the CLTL classes, it was clear that her childhood had been rough, with a divorce and court involvement beginning in her teens.

After 14 weeks (7 sessions of CLTL) and another 10 weeks of what, at the time, we called Aftercare in the days when funding was not a problem for our unseasoned program, Kim wrote about how she had changed through the sessions:

"I've been able (to allow myself) to share my feelings - to be able to express them as they come up...I've changed my personal attitude about expressing myself. I feel comfortable. I feel sincere. I feel and see myself changing. A lot of self awareness - how opinionated, how extreme, how vulnerable."

After CLTL, Kim went on to Middlesex Community College and she graduated, continued in a B.A. Psychology program at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, kept up with Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, met a man and fell in love, got married, bought a house, became a stepmother, and had her own children. None of these steps were easy for Kim. She struggled every inch of the way to stay off drugs and alcohol, to keep perspective, to handle her emotions. She took some important steps in CLTL on her road to a better life.

First off, she allowed herself to learn and to be open to the process of reading and reflecting during the sessions. This is no easy feat for many of our clients. Some come into the program ready to fight, and others believe that everything they have to say is worthless. It is not easy to allow oneself to feel the small successes: a book read, an idea praised, or another class attended. Kim, like many of the women in CLTL, was a few months clean and sober at her inception, and she had an earnest desire to stay that way. As she says, she allowed herself to share. I remember how surprised she was when Judge Dever, a man she never imagined would give her the time of day, actually listened to her discuss her reactions to Anne Tyler's Pearl in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, a woman Kim said she understood and admired in spite of her seeming coldness. It was clear by her demeanor that she felt acknowledged. Another success.

Kim used CLTL in the best possible way and added me to the support group she was gathering around her. She already had found a counselor she turned to when she needed emotional support and a program administrator she had met at Framingham Prison. Now I became her educational consultant. When she finished the CLTL program, she asked me to be her advisor at Middlesex, took a few of my courses the first two years in order to stay connected, and always stayed in touch after that, keeping it clear to herself that she was headed towards a healthy life. Part of Kim's success in CLTL was in understanding that she was part of a community and that she had the power to build that community.

Kim took the initiative to stay in contact with me, and she invited me to her wedding, getting married in a place where she had frequently been stoned years ago. This reenactment was similar to the way we rewrite the story for each CLTL graduate at the graduation ceremony. Kim wanted to have a positive overtake a negative. After completing the program, women come into Judge Dever's courtroom, a place where they once failed and were sentenced to probation and CLTL, and through the ritual of graduation before a teeming courtroom, they begin anew. Kim's success was recognizing her former failures. She did not want to erase them but to recast them in a context that allowed her a new perspective on failure. And so, at the posh Andover Inn, where she had worked as a waitress, this "poor girl from Lowell," had an alcohol-free wedding, a ceremony outside on the lawn, and a hundred people who celebrated her success.

Success in CLTL is not always as obvious as it is with Kim, who to this day, writes an occasional letter or makes a phone call to keep in touch, to share news of a new baby or a new move. It is often in the smallest moments that someone realizes that reading begins with a paragraph and continues with a page and then five pages. It is coming to class with notes taken, the pride of taking another book by the same author out of the library, the willingness to listen to someone else's perspective on a character. Success is admitting that you hated the book but finished it anyway despite having to push yourself. Success is completing something you never believed you could complete: a book, a session, a shared piece of yourself.

Failure is not necessarily a bad thing for the CLTL student who, like Kim, does not give up. Failures often come amidst the successes. One of the women fails to make a class and knows she could have come if only she'd pushed herself, but today, she just can't get herself to leave the house. Is that a failure? Maybe she needed that day to recover from a loss or a child's illness. Certainly, if it is a pattern, it will keep her from completing CLTL. But maybe for this woman, the missed class is an anomaly. If she had come to class, she might have gone out and gotten high afterwards.

Learning doesn't always come in a rush - success after success after success. It is populated with ups and downs. Understanding that process can enable true success. There are times when failure can lead to a positive new awareness or a sense of recommitment. Failure in CLTL can also mean that someone is not ready to do the reflection required of students who stay in the program.

Kim is my success story. She has enabled me to feel that what I do helps people move towards what they want in life. I could easily point out failures as well, usually failure occurs with those women I don't have enough empathy for. Those of us who participate in this program have seen all gradations of success and all gradations of failure, and it seems fair to say that the story of one person is never over. We carry on our parents' stories and our grandparents' stories and we hand our stories down to our children. We all have a chance, like Kim, to rewrite our lives, adding a new chapter to whatever came before.