I had a letter from a fourteen-year-old the other day who was in a juvenile detention center. She wrote, ‘My life was a mess and I was on drugs, and … - Jane Goodall

" "

I had a letter from a fourteen-year-old the other day who was in a juvenile detention center. She wrote, ‘My life was a mess and I was on drugs, and I came here and I hated it. And then in the library I found a copy of My Life with the Chimpanzees. I never had a supportive mother, but when I read that book, I thought Jane can be my mother.’
“Her mother had never told her she could succeed. But when she read how my mother had supported me, and the difference that had made, she started to realize that she, too, could follow her dreams. I would be her role model — that’s what she meant by saying I could be her mother. She started behaving well, working hard — she turned her life around.”
I thought about this young woman, about the power of books and stories and role models to change a child’s life. And I thought about what Jane had said about how important our environment is and that our human nature is adaptable enough to fit into the world in which we must survive. How we can nurture our children is so very dependent on the larger community in which we live. There can be little doubt that the poverty, addiction, and hopelessness surrounding Robert White Mountain’s son contributed to his dying by suicide at sixteen.