Pure Bliss---Swinging All By Yourself

Lynda is swinging by herself.  She has learned to hold on to the chains with her hands.  She has learned how to pump the swing with her legs and feet.  She could do it for a long time.  You can see bliss written on her face.  Eyes are closed.  She is savoring the way the wind hits her face.

To look at Lynda in the picture, she looks like any other little girl on a swing.  No one would know just by looking at the picture how long it had taken her to learn to swing all by herself.  She was nine years old in this picture.  During the summer prior to this picture she had been physically abused by the teaching assistant at the child development center in Batesville, Mississippi.  The assistant had bitten her on her shoulders and arms.  Her teacher had not stopped the abuse and in fact had actually tied Lynda in a chair the day that I had invited the school board to tour the center (and the staff knew they were coming).  The director had his own problems in this whole mess.  At the end of it all, the director resigned, the teacher was moved and the teaching assistant was fired. We had been forced to involve the Children's Defense Fund and Rims Barbour to finally get the abuse stopped and the center restaffed.  Although Lynda looks perfectly happy in this picture (she was) she had become equally as aggressive as her abusers.  She now bit her little brother who was just two.  She pushed him down and she exhibited all of the behaviors that one would expect an abused child to have.  Keep in mind also this was not Lynda's first experience with abuse.  She had been abused by her biological family before she came to live with us.  So in her short life by age nine, Lynda had been physically abused on multiple times by two different groups of people.  We were absolutely heartsick.

This is the picture that I look at and see years of hard work on all of the teachers, occupational therapists, her parents, our friends and see Lynda's potential.  She had a perfect little body.  So strong and beautiful.  She had worked over and over to learn to swing all by herself.  After the abuse in Batesville she could still swing.  She could still ride her tricycle.  We had a new staff at Batesville.  Lynda's teacher from the Oxford Child Development Center became the director of the Batesville Child Development Center and I went to OCDC to teach the multiple disabilities classroom that was left open by the teacher's move to Batesville.

I wish I could tell you that this was the last time that Lynda was abused.  I wish I could tell you that we all lived happily ever after but I can't.  Neither can I tell you right now about the third incident of abuse that led to Lynda's stroke and took away her ability to swing.  For right now, I just look at this picture and see a happy little girl swinging and I hold this image in my mind.