In 1993 I was diagnosed with ADD, which was used to account for my incredibly disruptive and impulsive behavior both in and outside of school, but in my opinion it was a waste basket diagnosis. As my behavior became more and more self-destructive my siblings began to resent the fact that the focus was always on me. There achievements were barely noticed, as well as their failures, because I was in constant need of supervision. I spent years in therapy thinking that if I could find out the one thing that I was freaked out about and deal with that one issue, then I would be okay. The real answer to my problems wouldn’t come until many years later.
My father, who was an alcoholic and drug addict, became more of a friend than a parental figure of authority and often times our relationship exploded in violence and emotional abuse towards one another. By the time I was 12 I was drinking and smoking pot; in fact it was the summer between 5th and 6th grade that I became a regular pot smoker. Unable to cope with my father’s drug abuse and dishonesty my mother asked for a divorce furthering the inevitable destruction of our family. By the time 8th grade had ended I had logged hundreds of hours of suspension and had been arrested twice; my parents knew that returning to a public school was not an option and began looking for alternatives. Through word-of-mouth they came into contact with a small boarding school in Maine called the Hyde School.
I was accepted to the Hyde school in the spring of 1996 and would attend the Summer Challenge Program, which is a prerequisite to acceptance in the fall, a sort of trial period if you will. To say the least, the summer was a disaster. In many ways it was a continuation of the problems that I had in public school; however the level of accountability had been raised. 12 years old, I felt like my mother and father had abandoned me, but in reality it was my first real opportunity to do something different in an environment that truly supported me. I use the words “reality” and “felt” a lot because I learned from a very early age that I rarely deal with reality, but the feelings that are associated with the way I perceive reality. I also learned, partially from my father, that if I wasn’t enjoying the way I felt that it was okay to take something to alleviate that feeling. My family was falling apart and I felt like I was the reason.
On July 5, 1996 at approximately 11 AM, I was called into the Dean of Students office. When I was called in I immediately noticed that my mother and older brother were sitting there crying. I was on 2-4, which was Hyde’ form of correction, and I figured that I had been successful in being kicked out and that’s why everyone was so upset. The truth was far worse and something that no kid ever expects. My mother sat me down and said, “Your father died yesterday; he took his own life.” Never in my life had I felt so much pain, so much anger. I blamed my mother for divorcing him and I blamed myself for not measuring up to what I thought he wanted for me. Years later I would learn that my father was suffering from untreated alcoholism and was therefore really sick and in the grips of progressive illness.
I coped with the loss of my father, the distance between my mother and I, and the anger my brothers felt towards me with drugs and alcohol. Far from being readily available on the Hyde campus, I turned to less conventional methods like huffing and snorting household chemicals. Drinking Listerine or huffing Dust Off or Glade worked really well, although at the time I was completely unaware of how dangerous it was. I suppose that even if I had known how dangerous it was it wouldn’t have made a difference. I am certain, more now than ever, that if Hyde hadn’t have had a family proponent to its curriculum that my family would be in shambles today. However, that is not the case and today I am closer with my family than ever before. The notion that Hyde was different than anything I had ever experienced began during my initial interview with three simple questions – Who am I? Where am I going with my life? And most importantly, how do I get there? It should be obvious that these questions are basic and logical to ask, but never the less were absolutely essential in establishing the dynamics and issues to my family. These would be questions that I would carry through the rest of my life, constantly reevaluating, and learning to improve upon.
The Hyde School was founded by Joseph Gauld under the tenet that “Every individual is gifted with a unique potential that defines a destiny,” and is guided by five words – Courage, Integrity, Leadership, Curiosity and Concern. For the first time in my life I was surrounded by a group of peers and faculty that focused on my strengths and potential rather than my deficits and disorders. This annoyed me to no end! I had grown accustomed to keeping everyone’s expectations of me in the dirt, so that when I failed at life, no one was surprised. In other words, keep them disappointed. It was the framework for a life built to fail, which through the Hyde program I was able to successfully dismantle, although some of that work happened after graduating from Hyde in 2000.
Built into the educational philosophy and reflected in the required family commitment at Hyde is the concept that the family is a system, a completely foreign notion to my family. We learned that each member of the family creates and is impacted by the systems dynamics. As Don MacMillan, faculty and Harvard graduate put it:
Further, the family system, as it pertains to the Hyde philosophy, is multigenerational. Parents will likely need to examine their own relationship with their own parents to effect change in their current family dynamics. While recognizing that the student and parent(s) are members of a family, the primary emphasis at Hyde is for each individual to strive to understand his or her position in that system, and then to pursue growth by altering his or her unproductive behaviors , attitudes, roles, or beliefs. Experience has demonstrated over the years that a student’s success and growth is linked to that parent’s growth.
This became the absolute truth in my family. When I realized that my mother was also working on herself in terms of the aforementioned areas, I began to look at my role in the family. Slowly I stopped acting out and began pursuing the question that had piqued my curiosity two years earlier, “Who am I??” The rampant drug and alcohol abuse began to diminish as my mother addressed her own problems with alcohol. Both my older and younger brothers came to Hyde and we each graduated two years apart. I often relate my experience at Hyde like this – My family was like a vase that had been dropped off a second story building. Nothing was going to stop the vase from hitting the ground and shattering into a million pieces. However, just when all hope was lost of ever putting it back together, the Hyde School led us to see that the original vase was shot through with pain, suffering, and anger and was essentially useless to begin with. We took the pieces that seemed best fit for our family dynamic and over the years, began putting it back together, one carefully chosen piece at a time.
My brothers and I all went on to college and learned to live life not as we would have it, but as it is delivered to us. I work for the Hyde school as an admissions consultant to prospective families in the southwest and I often ask a parent one question, “Has anything you’ve done, up to this point in your life any easier?” For the teens that I work with it is much simpler, “Are they happy about there existence and where there life is headed?” The answer I often get is, “No, but…” Every change I have ever made began with the notion that something could be different. I didn’t have to know what it would feel like or what the change would look like, but just the idea that it could be different was more than sufficient for me to make a beginning.
I wish to dedicate my life to families that could be restored if only they had someone who has been there to guide them. I am not a scholar. I am not what I would consider to be an intellectual. I am a democrat, but have no real political agenda. I am a recovered alcoholic, in fact I come from an alcoholic family; the disease that claimed my father’s life. I am a Christian, but don’t know nearly enough about the Bible. I am far from perfect and make just enough mistakes to be human. I would consider myself your typical, everyday, normal guy. All I offer is the truth that is filtered through my experience as a husband, father, brother, and son. Hyde neatly laid a tool kit at my feet that I have carried throughout my life and despite all the difficulties that my family and I have faced since leaving Hyde, we have been able to walk through them with grace and dignity.
