The Wilderness of Adolescence...

Sara Sapadin graduated from high school in the last century (1996), but it seems like just yesterday we were sitting in Dorm 1 with Karin Rinderknecht working on The Legend (see photo below). The dorms have long since been torn down and The Legend has become The Scribe -- but the memories of those times still live on.

That’s what Sara writes about here. As she prepares to send her oldest son off to high school, she relives her own journey through the wilderness of adolescence and comes out the other side to offer up some good advice.

Sara has been busy since left Parker! She went to college (Harvard), moved to New York City, moved back to San Diego, and followed that up with Rabbinical School at HUC-JIR (Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion), where she studied in Cincinnati, New York, and Jerusalem. She now works as an Associate Rabbi at Temple Emanu-El in New York City. She is married to Dan Sapadin and they have four children, ages 12, 9, 7, and 5.

Rather than write a letter to her “high school self,” Sara writes directly to her son, who is just about to become a teenager. “This blog is a letter to my son, in advance of his matriculation in high school,” she said. “It is about navigating the rough emotional waters that most students inevitably face. I hope he, and all students, will find some relief in knowing they are not alone in this experience, and that there is a path (through the hard feelings) to the other side.”

- C.H.

To My Eldest Boy, In Loving Anticipation of Your Oncoming and Rapidly Approaching Future (and For Whom High School Looms Large on the Horizon),

I have to cock my head and squint my eyes to remember the year I started high school. When I say it aloud—it was 1992—you nearly suffer whiplash: “That was sooooo long ago!” you exclaim.

I certainly don’t remember every moment of those years; in fact, my memory has grown somewhat jumbled over time, occupying a disorganized heap in my head, a messy, unwieldy mountain filled with all kinds of treasures, and a little turmoil too. So much has changed since I was in high school, but the emotional upheaval of the experience, the thrilling ups and the agonizing downs, remain the same, even now.

So while the details of that era may be fuzzy, the feelings are most certainly not; my days were colored with sweeping waves of giddy happiness and sharp plunges of sorrow; hot swells of embarrassment and mad rushes of teenage infatuation; fierce bouts of jealousy, followed by impassioned and steely detachment.

I would be lying if I told you I never had my heart broken. I most certainly did; too many times to count, in fact. I remember one boy in particular, whom I admired from afar for months, and whose gaze I tried to meet every time I passed him in the quad. I wanted so badly for him to acknowledge me and see me and just, smile at me. It never happened, and I was crushed.

But, to be honest, the times I felt most heartsick, wasn’t from boys I crushed on. What I didn’t anticipate was the pain of broken friendships. I learned, as we grow and change, so too do our friendships. Moreover, as we figure out who we are and what we stand for, we sometimes gain or lose friends in the process. Having to let go of a dear friendship in high school nearly devastated me, and I still can summon the feelings of loneliness and rejection I experienced when another friend decided to end her association with me.

I share these remembrances with you not to overwhelm or worry you, but to let you know they happened to me, and I will understand if (when) they happen to you. As you can see, I’m still here; I made it through that wilderness and came out the other side. I did take some leaps- of love and friendship, and fell, hard, but I got up, brushed myself off, and kept going. My face might have been tear-stained and my heart might have been bruised, but I discovered so much about myself in the process.

I promise you, my child, even with the heartache and tribulation that may come your way in high school, there will also be so much rapture and wonderment. There will be new and remarkable friendships, connections so extraordinary you may be in touch years, even decades down the road. You will discover, or uncover, passions you never knew existed, for art or drama or journalism or table tennis; one can’t predict, and why should we even try? And you will, undoubtedly, find love, love for academic rigor and learning for learning’s sake, love for dear friends who hold your hand through the narrow places of life; and love for teachers who guide you through challenging intellectual waters and churning emotional storms.

A story is told of a man who, traveling on the eve of Yom Kippur, gets lost in the forest. Realizing he has no prayer book, he offers the only prayer his soul can muster, the alphabet, figuring the letters could ultimately be combined into prayers.

My dear child, as you forge this path through the high school wasteland, know that you may get a little lost along the way. You may stumble and fall. You may wander and ramble and roam. You may not always know what the next step should be, or how you should proceed. But know that everything you need, to survive and thrive and blossom, is there, already inside you. If nothing else, go back to the basics, those abc’s and 123’s and the heart that sings inside you.

All My Love Now and Always,
Mommy