In an ideal world where youth and innocence are mutually inclusive, middle schoolers should have no need to hear about sexual abuse, suicide and all of the gravity of society. But, Dean Sikes, Founder of You Matter, an organization formed to help teens cope with traumatic events, spoke from experience to students at Coleman Middle School on Tuesday. “When I was 14, I was sexually abused and when I was 17, I failed PE because I wasn’t going to change clothes in front of strangers,” he recalled. “When I was 21 I got a call from my mother at my office and she was attempting suicide. She lived but I could see the life leaving her from the inside out. And with teenagers, it’s possibly the same way. Looks like you have it all together from the outside in but on the inside out, there may be issues that need immediate attention.”
Sikes formed You Matter in 1993 and has spoken at more than 3900 events all over the world. Developing the organization was also part of his own personal healing process where he had to learn to forgive his abuser. “About 22 years after I was sexually abused, I came face to face with my abuser in a Home Depot,” Sikes said. “And my whole world got turned upside down. A young lady who I had spoken to who was a victim of a shooting at her high school asked me, ‘Are you going to ever forgive your abuser/’”
When Sikes shared this portion of his half-hour presentation, an anonymous student close to the front of the audience blurted out, “No.” Sikes replied, “That’s exactly what I said. I said, ‘It’s not fair. I didn’t do anything wrong.But when I learned to forgive, it made me free in my heart and it doesn’t give the person who hurt us the right to continue hurting us.”
Sikes said that during his work with teens that he encountered a high school star quarterback with a 3.8 GPA in Kentucky. The quarterback seemingly had it all together as he prepared to play for a state championship. “He took a shell casing out of his pocket and handed it to me and said, ‘I was going to walk out to the 50-yard line after the game and take my own life. But I’m going to give this life another chance,” Sikes recalled. “The motto of our organization is ‘You Matter Because You’re breathing.”
The students in attendance were asked to raise their hand if one of Sike’s parting questions related to them. He asked them to close their eyes and raise their hands if they were ready to forgive someone who had abused them, had ever felt rejected or if suicide was “a real option” for their lives.” Hands went skyward on every question. “Suicide is the number one issue facing teenagers today as about 56 young people a day attempt to take their own lives,”Sikes said. “Every young person that I’ve talked to says that it’s like a cloud starting to fill up inside them and having these evil thoughts that the world would be better off without them. But, if we don’t get a hold of our emotions, they will definitely get a hold of us in a very negative way.”
At the end of his presentation, Sikes asked the students to sign a card pledging the choice to live. Coleman Middle School was one of a half dozen or schools, where Sikes was asked to speak during the week. “We face issues like this frequently,” said Coleman Middle School principal Dr. Alicia Shaw. “Students have talked about taking pills and other ways they wanted to harm themselves with our counselors. Middle school students are undergoing a lot of changes at this stage in life and I think it doesn’t become real for them unless it happens to someone close to them. Then it becomes eye opening.”
