Heal my Heart

Chapter 35 - Support

Lots of people later came to see Grizz at Allie's place to apologize for their behavior. He always took the time they needed to discuss things quietly and tried to understand their reasons. Most of them just went with the mood, without really having any bad intentions. In the end, they were all grateful for the open-mindedness that had gained town after the last meeting. People were more open about their feelings, their past, and even asked Grizz to start a support group for victims of harassment and abuse. Even if he was really surprised by all the requests to open such a club, Becca and him organized the sessions.

At the first meeting, they were impressed to welcome so many young women.

"Hello everyone! First, welcome. I'm glad you all decided to seek help on this hard matter and I'll try my best to make you feel better. I'm sorry to see so many faces here because of the nature of this meeting but I'm also grateful that you all took the initiative to speak up about it." Grizz started.

"And thank you Grizz for taking this other job in addition to all your other duties." Becca added.

"You're very welcome." he answered, smiling.

"Before we begin, I just wanna clear some things. First of all, this group's goal is tolerance, sharing and support. You have to be extra aware that nobody will ever judge you here and I will personally get rid of anyone who's here to discriminate or mock the others. Secondly, you have to understand that I'm no expert or therapist. I'm still struggling with this on my own, so you have to understand that I won't have all the answers you're looking for and that I may need this group just as much as you do." he gave a sad smile.

"I'm here as a member of the support club but I'm also in charge of all the administrative and organizational part so that Grizz doesn't have to do everything alone. If you have any question regarding the meetings, come to me and we'll find solutions. We can give you documents of participation if the sessions take place at the same time as your job for example." Becca added.

"Thanks, Bec." he addressed the future mom.

"If everything's clear for you, then we'll begin todays session. First I want you all to introduce yourself. I know that we're all here for similar reasons and that we have to talk about it, but just for now, I don't want you to introduce yourself by telling us what happened to you in the past. Abuse and harassment don't define you as a person, they maybe made you who you are now, but they don't determine the person you want to be." Grizz looked at every single participant to be sure they all got the message.

"I'll go first. My name's Grizz, well, Gareth, but we'll talk about that another time, and my hobbys are singing, playing the violin and learning ASL for my amazing boyfriend. I also danced and played football before but I can't anymore because of my heart condition. My job in this town is making sure you're all safe and unharmed with the Guard and I'm also head medic at the clinic." he smiled cheerfully at the shy participants.

"Who wants to go now?" he asked.

"I will. Hello, I'm Maddison and I really like drawing. That's something I never told anyone but I guess that I can share that with you here. I help Will at the kitchen with my heat power and I try to grow more vegetables with Gwen." she smiled to the assembly.

"I'm next! Hey there, I'm Becca and as you can see, I'm the first future mother of New Ham. Right now, I don't really have any fix job cause I get tired easily with the baby but I guess we can say that I'm Grizz's assistant in a way." she laughed with the others.

"I help him whenever he needs me cause this idiot is too kind to say no every time someone asks him to do something. Oh and I'm his second ASL teacher." she winked at the boy.