Dear “Fragile” Girl, This Is What You Need to Know

As I was cleaning up from my teen ministry, picking up the paper plates filled with pizza crust and cookie crumbs, I gathered the papers on clipboards that the kids filled out during the writing exercises we worked on together. Piling them in my hands, one by one I glanced at their words, their doodles, their identity.

I’ve worked with teens for 30 years in group homes and psychiatric hospitals, in ministries at church and in my home and my mission is always the same:

To help these kids unde...