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It’s
Easy To Help...
CALL 720.565.3898
Teens
Inc.
P. O. Box 1070
Nederland, CO 80466
303.258.3821
kaslan@teensinc.org
www.TeensInc.org
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THEN.
Then was a long time ago, she says, her dark brown eyes nearly as
piercing as the tiny, crystal blue stud she wears on the left side
of her nose.
Then
was a confusing time.
There wasn’t much to do in the tiny foothills town overlooking
a crystal blue body of water.
Had she been able to pile them, end to end starting at the
depths of the lake, her thoughts and feelings may not even
have broken the surface.
She knows now, at 20, that you start by talking. But, then? |
Click on image for larger picture |
You
start by finding a place where you are offered conversation.
Where you aren’t judged.
Where you can talk about things you hate.
Where the mere mention of drugs or alcohol doesn’t shut things
down.
Where, when you run screaming from your house because you can’t
take being there anymore, you can wear baggy jeans with ragged cuffs.
Where black shirts, black stockings, black skirts, and maybe a temporarily
black attitude, mix nicely with White Sox caps and more energy than
Red Bull ever provided.
Where smiles develop over time, as you grow.
So you come here. To Boyfriend Central, if that’s
what you need to talk about today. Or maybe the topic is that summer
job in the outdoors that keeps you grounded – and funded –
for another year at school. Or even a summer field trip to a hot
amusement park in a city that must feel a million miles away in
the dead of a small town winter.
Then she was 13 and trying to make her own fun. You know the kind.
The kind of fun that makes "people think ‘unsightly things’
about teenagers."
So you come here. Along with about 550 of your closest friends and
enemies. To Teens Inc., in Nederland, where you run the show. Imagine
that? A place where the adults turn the keys over to you, and that
party of five hundred, and say, "Make it your own."
Here you get a lot of room to process. Where you meet your life
lessons, and yourself. Where you set policy. Where you can act if
that’s your thing. Or paint the walls if it makes you feel
better. Or take a class on anger management. Or move and dance or
chill and contemplate.
A place where the community can gather for an espresso, but the
only place where it will be served by the skinny teenager who wrote
the grant as well as ground the beans – because he had always
wanted to work at a coffee shop.
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