Read full story at link, well worth the read. POWDERMAN.
http://paid.outbrain.com/network/redir?key=ddea040aca70a889a24a78ca452a80ff&rdid=461123451&type=RPM_AL/RF_ch&in-site=false&idx=1&pc_id=12394548&req_id=4d53510f99736cdbbc725e5841ebbb91&agent=blog_JS_rec&recMode=7&reqType=1&wid=107&adsCats=1609,2005,2100&refPub=296&prs=false&scp=false&fcapElementId=2842"Blood was everywhere," says Hill. "She had to drag him in the house—that's like a combat zone. She's too young to have to do that." And as Mama Hill sees it, her job isn't just to help Ronell, it's also to help his shooters. "I thought about those people who shot him point blank and I thought, 'Who hurt them?' Who made them so hard and so cold that they thought that was okay when they didn't even know him? And I see little bitty kids who are going to be the same way if we don't get to them because they're already being taught that."
"Hurt people hurt other people," is Mama Hill's mantra. She claims that if you watch a person closely, you can see what age they were wounded. Pain stunts people. If you were abandoned by your mother at nine, then until you heal that feeling of helplessness, you'll revert to being nine years old every time you're angry.
The first thing she asks a new child when they sit down for their initial one-on-one conversation is, "Who hurt you?" They might not want to answer at first, but eventually they always do. If they don't, they're just not ready to be healed, like the Crip member Mama Hill describes who once cut his interview short by hastily picking up his cellphone and pretending his aunt needed him back at home.
Hill's family doted on her, but she knows loss. After her marriage broke up, she wrote three books of poetry trying to make sense of the hurt. It's clear that her mission to break the cycle of anger has to involve both the kids and their parents. A single mother herself—and a "Mama" ever since her students started calling her that at Crenshaw High—she understands the competing stresses to make enough money to support children, while logging in the hours to raise those children to be solid, confident and happy.
"She taught me to be a better parent," says local mother Alvina Chaney. "A lot of the parents that come here come from dysfunctional families and we don't know how to parent. When I was little, we didn't kiss. My parents didn't embrace me. And it's not just my family—most families that are raised in certain communities are raised with a lot of bitterness and animosity. Mothers are mad at their children because the dads left, dads are mad at the children because their mother filed for child support."
"What I love about her is even though I was grown when I met her, she impacted my life and taught me how to love differently," adds Chaney. "I thought I loved well, but she showed me that there was more love that I had to give—whether people accepted it or not." Hill's parenting lessons aren't just about love and affection; they're also practical how-to guides. "She teaches us, 'Hey, you don't have to talk to them like that. What you could say is, why don't you just pray about it and we'll talk in a couple of days.' And it works—I had been fighting with my oldest daughter three or four times a week."
Mama Hill has heard every story. Her current batch of kids includes one who tried to take a suicidal jump off his school's roof, one with severe birth defects, and one whose mother illegally pulled her out of school at 14 to help take care of her siblings. And then there are the kids with no parents at all. There's the one whose dad was shot in their front yard, the one whose mom died of cancer, the one who's been kicked around a circle of irritated aunts. For them, whenever she can, she gets on the phone to find foster homes—and in some cases, she has to go hunting across town. She talks about one bouncy 15-year-old who is one such lucky kid. After he was beaten by the neighborhood's Grape Street Gang, she helped him find a safe living situation across town.
Hill isn't afraid of the gangs, but they affect her choices. Because of them, Rahman drives the kids home when it gets dark. She shakes her head when one of the 15-year-old's godparents gives him a lavender sweater for Christmas because he can't be seen wearing Grape Street purple. The gangs made it impossible for Mama Hill's Help to decide on a color for the matching T-shirts for a trip to the beach. Every color had an association: red, blue, pink, orange, yellow, black, gray, green. In the end, they settled on chartreuse.
Watts might never be a safe place for Mama Hill's kids. At least she can record the little changes she's seen: her kids make eye contact, speak clearly, hug more, and pout less. They do their homework and they think about their futures.
But it's exhausting to raise a neighborhood in your living room. In the early mornings, Mama Hill has a ritual that prepares her for another day of challenges: a kid who needs a transcript, another who must unearth a birth certificate, squabbles in the front yard and her never-ending stack of bills. Then, there's the impossible problems that bracket her life's work in Watts: poverty, abandonment, apathy. But at 6 a.m., those struggles can wait. Mama Hill rolls over in her at-home hospital bed and turns on cartoons. "It's calm and peaceful," she says, "because at the end, there's always a solution."
