SUCCESS STORIES - RAQUEL KLINE

Raquel Kline’s experiences and character reveal themselves best by her own analysis of them. (Please see “Butterfly,” a brief speech that Raquel wrote and shared at the Fourth Annual Challenge Learning Center Fundraising Breakfast). Depression, loneliness, and fear controlled her life during middle school and early high school. “I was really depressed,” she confides. “I was so afraid of this peer group. I would be wandering around at lunch or sitting in a classroom, going through the motions but not really experiencing anything that validated me. I would avoid things because I was scared of them.” This avoidance included her schoolwork, and soon it began to pile up, she says, like a snowball that crushed her.

At the alternative high school she attended, she shares, “Everybody else was moving full speed ahead and I was trotting along; the pressure of that was so immense.” Having her parents as her only support group, Raquel says that she felt like she did not have needed acceptance from her peers at school. “Academically I wasn’t ready, and socially I was not ready,” she says, explaining part of her decision to leave high school for a time after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/bipolar.cfm).

While in high school, Raquel encountered a CLC Challenge Day program, connected with a staff member, and joined LEAD the next year. Key adult and peer relationships kept Raquel coming back to the program every week. That same CLC staff member helped Raquel problem-solve doing her homework, and change negative statements into positive ones. Conversations with CLC staff and peers during the first overnight gave Raquel this assurance: “I was a positive, good, healthy person, and I could not use it [bipolar disorder] as an excuse to mess up my life.” After that, Raquel shares that she was sure that she wanted to stay in LEAD, “It was important for me to stay in contact and have that constant support, and to be able to give support.”

It was not just the community, but also the leadership development that kept Raquel committed to LEAD. The idea of being a leader thrilled Raquel. She defines leadership in the following way: “Being a leader is being a good communicator, and a good person. A good leader is able to take advice, but also knows how to take charge and make a plan. A good leader has follow through, and is proactive. The good thing about the program [LEAD] is that everyone’s a leader. LEAD really broadens what it is to be a leader.”

Raquel found herself leading in the middle school program as a volunteer who offered ideas to help groups make positive change. In the weekly meetings Raquel asserts her suggestions without hesitating to make the group processes smoother. “I am in a good spot now,” she states. “If I would’ve had more support; if I had been in a program like LEAD frosh year, I think I would have graduated on time,” she concludes. Raquel currently studies with the Mountain View-Los Altos Adult Education program to earn her high school diploma. Afterward, Raquel desires to attend college and progress with her life. She says: “I realize that I still have my dreams and hopes. Moving more forward than backward is one of them.”