INDIANAPOLIS — It only takes seconds for a traumatic situation to change a person's life, and a local organization is getting parents and teenagers together in hopes their healing-centered retreat will ease people's pain.
Teenagers at Voices have goals, but it will take healing to reach their dreams. Amarie Pierce, 17, lives on the east side and said he has lost friends to gun violence.
"I lost two this summer. On the same day, they were shot. I've known them them I was 11 or 12," Pierce said.
Kewaun Cloud, also 17, knows where choosing a certain life can lead a person.
"In the streets, you're going to be in jail or dead if you don't get out," he said.
These two teenagers want to live. In fact, they want to live their best lives as thriving entrepreneurs and business, so they have some things they need to address using a method they are not used to doing.
"I don't talk to anyone," Pierce said. "I don't talk to anyone. I don't talk to my parents about my problems or nothing. You know how people say I can talk to my mom about anything? It's not like that with me."
This weekend, Voices will help parents and teenagers face their traumas head on.
"A lot of them have experienced a lot of hurt and harm from family, from their environment," Brandon Randall, with Voices, said. "And when they are asked if their parents went through the same, they say yes."
From morning to afternoon on Saturday, Chaplain Lora Henderson will work with families on letting go and learning from the past so it doesn't hold them back.
"If we don't heal or acknowledge it, it'll come back up," Randall said.
The teenagers said what they want more than anything is to be able to move past their past.
"My mom is proud of me," Cloud said. "She's proud that I am coming here every day. Doing better."
