CAN YOU PINPOINT THE EXACT MOMENT YOUR LIFE CHANGED FOREVER?

I can.

And no, this isn’t the story of the first time I laid eyes on my soulmate or the first time I heard about Dunkin Doughnuts Happy Hour.

This is the story of how I stumbled upon the very first glimpse of my future career.

PICTURE IT: Finals week of my second semester at UNF. I hadn’t slept, washed my hair, or consumed anything other than Redbull and granola bars in days. To say I was stressed was an understatement. You see, unlike most college freshmen, I was already well into my major-related classes. So instead of my finals week consisting of exams, it consisted of ten page long research papers on topics of my choice. For. Every. Single. One. Of. My. Classes. Read that again. Cry for me. So, there I was, checking out books on PTSD (at this time I thought I wanted to treat veterans suffering with PTSD) to bring back to my dorm and cry over. After picking up more books than I could carry, something caught my eye. Right next to the books on PTSD, were books on the treatment of sex offenders. This intrigued me because I had never even thought about who got to treat that population, only the treatment of the victims. I added one more book to the heavy load already filling my arms. Would you believe me if I told you that I read the entire book as soon as I got home? By page three I knew I wanted to treat criminals with sexual pathologies.

Now, fast forward about a year. A year filled with researching my field on top of studying for my classes. After sending what felt like a million emails to doctors treating sex offenders all over the United States, a doctor in Jacksonville responded to me. He asked me to go to his office to meet with him and discuss my plans. He ended up giving me some great advice and putting me in touch with a woman who ran weekly group therapy sessions for sex offenders. This woman was BAD ASS. She was brilliant and funny and extremely intimidating. She was no taller than 5’4” but she stopped all of the grown men attending her sessions in their tracks. I learned a lot from her. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a couple of the sessions to shadow her, and I am not exaggerating when I tell you that the first session I attended changed my life (again). I will not lie to you and tell you I wasn’t nervous to be a young pretty girl in a room full of men who society deemed as “monsters”. It was kind of scary. There I was in a room full of men who had completely ruined so many people’s lives and were probably only there because court had made them. It was in this first session that I realized that not all rapists are malicious, narcissistic, unemphatic assholes (though trust me, there were some like that in attendance) but instead some of these men were just lost and hurting and they made a horrible mistake that they now had to live with for the rest of their lives. These men were there to heal. They were there to make right of their wrongs.

The goal of group was to make these men “normal, functioning members of society” and to prevent reoffending. All of the men were in different stages of their recovery. There was no exact time when they would graduate from treatment. She told me that she would know when they were ready to graduate by their eyes. I didn’t know what that meant until I saw it happen right in front of me. There was this one man that was a one-time offender. I could tell from his attitude when he walked in that he didn’t care about anyone and anything. His assignment for the week was to write a letter pretending to be his victim during the attack. He was to write about what he thought she was thinking and how he thought she was feeling, from her point of view. He completely missed the point. His letter was just words on a page with no feeling attached. Unsatisfied, the woman asked him to close his eyes and relive the attack out loud and pretend he was his victim. This exercise sent chills up my spine. When this man opened his eyes, I finally realized what she had meant. He finally got it. No longer was this man sorry for getting caught… he was sorry for doing it. I will never forget the look of pain and remorse on his face. I will never forget the first look of true change I ever saw in an offender.

I know what I chose to do for the rest of my life is not everyone’s cup of tea. But this career isn’t my cup of tea, either. It is my shot of whiskey. These people are not monsters. They were not born evil. These are lost people who are hurting and spiraling out of control. Everyone deserves a second chance, regardless of what you (or me) may think about the things they have done. I have always been the kind of girl who wants to save seemingly lost causes (look at my ex-boyfriends). There are thousands of people who dedicate their lives to treating the victims of sexual abuse, and there is nothing wrong with that. But they are trying to stop the cycle from continuing… I am trying to stop the cycle that has already started.

We are in no position to deem anyone around us a monster.

Nobody is a lost cause.

Life is never just black or white... there is a lot of grey area.

Your Searching Soul,

Angelena