by KIM HILSENBECK
The first in a three part series, “Big sisterly love” will share the stories of CJ Legare, a “big sister”, Samantha, her “little sister”, and Rolanda, Sam’s single mother, twice divorced, as they joined forces to help Sam, a now 17-year old who was going down the wrong path.
Four years ago, Legare signed up to be a big sister through Big Brothers/Big Sisters, a nonprofit that finds mentors for troubled youth. Samantha rejected her at first, thinking Legare was just another person in her life who would leave. Rolanda sought out the program, knowing she needed some help.
Legare said the BBBS matches are most successful when everybody is game, the parent, the kid and the big, and even the match support specialist at the organization’s headquarters.
“It doesn’t work if one of those parties doesn’t support the relationship. We are committed to keeping the family intact. This is what’s best for Sammy – staying committed to the relationship,” she said.
Part I, CJ’s Story
With her infectious smile, bright blue eyes and curly red hair, Samantha (“Sam”) looks like any other teenager. She goes to high school, has a boyfriend, wears braces and is thinking about college.
Flashback to four years ago, Sam was sullen and withdrawn – angry at the world. She had few friends, wore a lot of black and let her schoolwork slide. Sam’s grades suffered, as did her relationship with her mom, Rolanda, who was doing the best she could as a single mother raising two children. Sam’s brother, Steve, was 14 at the time. Rolanda divorced their dad in 2001.
It was a rough time, according to Sam and Rolanda, who talked with the Hays Free Press recently. Sam’s shoulders peaked out from the edges of her wide-necked green shirt.
“Back then,” Sam said, referring to several years ago, “I used to wear black sweaters in 103 degree weather.”
She also didn’t have many friends and lacked self-confidence.
What changed?
Sitting on Sam’s left in the booth of a restaurant was the answer. Sam’s turnaround is largely attributed to her big sister, CJ Legare, of Kyle. Sam said she often forgets to add the clarification that Legare is her big sister through Big Brothers/Big Sisters – an organization that aims to help get kids on the right path before it’s too late. For Sam, it was almost just that.
They met four years ago when Rolanda signed Sam up for the program. Her son, Steve, was already with a big brother at the time and she said it really helped him. She wanted the same thing for her daughter.
The first three “bigs” didn’t pan out – due to scheduling or other conflicts, none of them stuck around long enough to make that connection Rolanda knew Sam needed. Working a lot of hours – sometimes two jobs over the years – she was a good provider but didn’t always have a lot of time to give her children.
Enter Legare. Sam calls her Courtney, or “Court,” though most people outside the Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization call her CJ.
The relationship, clearly warm and genuine now, started off frosty. Legare explained some of the family background before Sam and Rolanda arrived.
“You need to know there’s someone in your corner,” Legare said. “She didn’t feel connected with her mom because she was coming into her teenage years and they were just ‘Clash of the Titans’ butting heads.”
Legare demonstrated by pushing her fists together.
She continued, “She didn’t feel connected to anyone and that’s where kids start to get in trouble and that’s the road she was going down. She just felt like she was completely alone. When she finally learned to trust – and it took about a year, literally. She’d blow me off, stand me up. She didn’t think it was worth investing because she knew that I was just going to leave. Because everybody else leaves.”
Sam’s dad, the man Rolanda married several years later, and three previous “bigs” all left. Legare said Sam started to think that she wasn’t worth anything.
“She knew I was going to figure out she’s a bad kid and not worth investing in and just bail on her. It took about a year for her to figure out that I wasn’t going anywhere,” Legare said.
Four years later, she still hasn’t gone anywhere. The pair spends several hours a week together and often have weekend sleepovers.
What prompted Legare to sign up for a little sister? She became a “big” as a way of helping a young woman who was going down the wrong road. It was a road she was familiar with from her own past.
“Sam and I always say we were meant to be matched because I was that same 15-year-old girl who needed someone to stand in her corner even when I didn’t exhibit behavior that was worthy of love,” she said.
Legare recalled her own teenage angst.
“I was so angry and I was so messed up. I really didn’t trust anybody and there people who were willing to hold on to me even when I was fighting them every step of the way until I finally said, ‘OK, I’m willing to let someone love me’ and that’s what [Sam] needed and I knew that’s what she needed,” she said.
Legare said that first year was rough for her and Sam.
“That child tried me so hard,” she said with a smile.
Was it like looking in a mirror?
“It was very cathartic because I knew I was paying it forward,” she said. “The kindness and love that was shown to me when I was trying to change my life, when I was trying to grow as a person and just tripping up every step of the way, when I was trying to figure out how to have healthy relationships with people because I never had that behavior modeled for me – I knew that I was paying the kindness and compassion shown to me forward.”
Making that initial connection and establishing a bond presented Legare with challenges.
“We would go for months without seeing each other because she would just cancel every time. And I’d say, OK, I’ll see you next week. It was maddening,” she said. “And I knew I was growing and becoming a more humble – a more patient person. I saw who she really was and I was so excited about that and then she would blow me off.”
Legare saw a lot of herself in Sam.
“Sam was a 13-year-old girl who desperately needed someone to stand firm. I took the commitment that I made to be her mentor, to be her big sister, seriously. I wanted to do it for a long time – since my early twenties. But I waited until I knew I could do it the right way. And I haven’t been perfect and I’ve made missteps but I’ve been committed to doing right by her from day 1. And I’ve grown so much,” she said.
What missteps did she make?
“It’s usually when I let my ego and my hurt feelings get in the way. We sometimes forget we’re not biological sisters and it’s during the middle of a petty fight over something that’s happened. All of our problems stem from when we stop communicating, when we stop checking in with each other,” Legare said. “She’s really emotional and I’m really emotional and it’s easy to hurt our feelings. We literally will just trip up on each other for no reason. Instead of removing myself so I can speak to her calmly, I’ll get into it with her.”
Legare recalled how they once had a two-hour text fight.
“Sometimes I forget I’m supposed to be a mentor or a role model because all I can think about is my hurt feelings. You learn as you go.”
But despite the bumps in the road, Legare knows she and Sam were meant to be matched.
“We couldn’t be closer if we were biological sisters,” she said.
Legare’s real sister, five years younger, lives in the Pacific northwest.
“We were pitted against each other,” she said. “I was not very thin and my little sister Sarah was,” although Legare said she didn’t really start struggling with her weight until adulthood.
They’re on good terms now, but it was a rocky relationship when they were young. In fact, Legare’s own family history is a big part of why she wanted to become a big sister.
“My childhood was a really strange mixed bag. It certainly wasn’t the worst childhood anyone has ever had. I was afforded the opportunity to travel because my dad was in the military. I never wanted for anything, other than love,” she said.
She continued, “My dad was just a miserable human being and he made everyone else around him miserable. He was really verbally and emotionally abusive. Not so much physically. He tortured me about my weight, my body and in public, in private. Just cruel things you would never think to say to your child and he wouldn’t think twice about saying those things to me. Waitresses at our favorite Thai restaurant would find me crying in the bathroom because he would have said something terrible because he thought I’d eaten too much or he didn’t like what I ordered.”
Legare’s father is still alive though she said she has no relationship with him at this point. She left home at age 15. She hasn’t spoken to him since the day before she turned 25 – she’s turning 34 in November. She wrote him an “end all, be all” letter after he had a heart attack because she didn’t want him to die without telling him how she felt.
Her relationship with her mom today is better than it was, Legare said.
“My mom and I can go months without talking and it doesn’t bother either of us. But we’re tight and we’re groovy and we love each other,” she said.
Her parents, who were married at ages 19 and 21, didn’t divorce. Legare speaks of her mom with a wistfulness in her voice.
“My mom is just really broken. [My dad] broke her first. After the wedding he changed completely. He was a brilliant, brilliant military man. Fiercely intelligent, smart, charismatic and funny, but he’s just miserable. Something is just eating him alive and he won’t deal with it and it poisons all of his relationships,” she said.
Legare resented her mom for a long time until she realized that “She couldn’t protect me because she couldn’t protect herself. The only reason I was able to stand up for myself was because I’m half him.”
Legare said she finds many of her father’s traits in herself but it’s a catch 22; “my talent in writing, speaking, talent in music and theater – that’s him. And then my ferocious temper, my habit of being dismissive if I make a decision and have no interest in hearing anything else. I worked really hard to get control of the negative qualities I inherited from him. But I’m tough as nails because I’m his daughter.”
Becoming a big sister has been part of the healing process for Legare, as was finally admitting she needed help dealing with her own tangled past.
“It was a really long, slow, painful process. I didn’t think I could admit I needed any help,” she said.
Legare started seeing a therapist about a year ago.
“Crazy people are the ones who don’t ask for help,” she said.
Read Part II, Sam’s story, in next week’s Hays Free Press.
