Neat story

A "work story" I've kept close to my heart...


Farina was 17 when she first came to Covenant House. She was a heavy girl, loud, dressed like a guy, and had a fierce “you-can’t-tell-me-what-to-do” attitude. Her anger was explosive and she was in and out of our program numerous times for fighting. Still, there was something about her I liked.
She was a smart girl and we’d have deep, often feverish debates over societal problems and religion. She would argue her point into the ground and never relent on her position on any topic. We were total opposites in our views which made talking with her both fun and exhausting.
I, along with the rest of the staff, began to suspect she had some gender identity issues early on, and although she dropped a few hints, the more comfortable she became with us, she never once made any declarative statement about her sexual preferences.
One day she informed me she had something to tell me but she wasn’t sure how. I was about to leave to pick up medications at the pharmacy and invited her along so we could talk. She wasn’t comfortable enough to come right out and tell me what was on her mind, so I suggested we make a game out of it and she agreed. So for the next hour we played “What One Celebrity Couple’s Kid and I Have in Common”. I’m a great guesser and we both enjoyed this less direct investigative method of me trying to find out what was eating at her. I gathered a few clues; the “kid” had the initials CB, the celebrity couple wasn’t together anymore, they had been a singing couple, etc. Finally, I started randomly naming celebrity couples I knew who sang together and hit on Sonny and Cher who I then realized had a daughter named Chastity Bono (CB) who was gay. I stopped in my tracks and said, “Oh…yeah?” Farina started to run away from me and refused to look at me, half laughing, embarrassed that I had guessed her confession. I followed her back to Covenant House and asked her to come into an office. She sat down on the couch, took off her hat, and covered her face, saying, “I can’t look at you”. I asked her what the problem was. She said, “Because I know you’re religious and that you don’t approve of this”. Her statement stabbed me right in the heart. I said, “We may not agree on everything but I still love you”. With that, she took her hat away and began to talk openly about her choice of lifestyle.
Farina would often “run away” when things got tough, when she didn’t want to face a stressful situation or when she didn’t trust someone. I named her Runaway Bunny after the children’s book and reminded her that no matter how often she left, I would be here waiting for her.
The day Farina moved out of Covenant House, I bought her a copy of The Runaway Bunny as a reminder of her time with us and how we would always be here for her. Years later, she returned for a visit, was in college, and working at a drop-in center in New York City that catered to GLTBQ youth. She was referring to herself as “Fairy” and had created a whole new life for herself…and even though she was no longer a “Runaway Bunny”, she still considered Covenant House a touchstone of sorts, a place where she was always welcomes, always loved, and would always be there. AND she still had the copy of the Runaway Bunny that I had given her :)