Vachon Imagined

When I first moved to Northern Virginia, I missed my grandparents terribly. I wanted to be around them more, talk to them, reminisce, and tell them everything about my life. But that simply wasn’t possible anymore with me being so far away.

So instead, I began volunteering with the elderly.

I met the most amazing women. Let’s face it—there weren’t many men in the places I volunteered. Maybe one or two. We called them the Romeos because they were the hot ticket among all those blue-haired women who may not have been having sex anymore, but they certainly thought about it. They talked about it too. Constantly. It was hilarious.

As a woman carrying my own struggles and memories, I also volunteered with children whose parents were living with AIDS. These parents were sick, but they were doing everything they could to protect their children from harm—the physical harm of illness and the emotional harm of ridicule, judgment, and cruelty from others.

Knowing about suffering and shame is very different from talking about it.

Anyone can talk about their feelings. Living with them is another matter entirely.

Being with shame is a lot like sitting across from a handcuffed criminal. As long as they’re restrained, you feel safe enough discussing what happened. But you know what they’re capable of. You know what exists beneath the surface. It’s easy to talk about pain. It is another thing entirely to remain present with it. That is why so few people do.

And perhaps that is why so few people bring real justice into the world.

Even in law enforcement, I learned something important: pinning blame on someone rarely brings a family closure. It may bring answers, but those answers often carry a pain so profound that words struggle to describe it.

There has to be more to justice than blame.

Justice must also be the willingness to find life in the desert and wholeness in the middle of calamity.

That kind of transformation doesn’t come from anything the world can offer. It comes from people who know.

People who know pain as intimately as their own breath.

People who know assault, violence, grief, betrayal, addiction, abandonment, or loss so deeply that it once became part of their identity.

And then, somehow, they do something beautiful with it.

A veteran who is now disabled speaks to high school students about healing and perseverance. Still courageous. Still the man in uniform. Just wearing a different one now.

Life is always doing this.

Taking on different forms.

Asking us the same question over and over:

Will you accept me now?

Will you accept me in this form?

And more than that, will you bring justice to a world that has handed you a raw deal?

Will you become the personification of transformation?

The personification of renewal itself?

Because perhaps the greatest act of justice is not what we do to those who wounded us.

Perhaps it is what we choose to become afterward.