Heather Coulehan
Anchorage, AK
I grew up in a middle class family with both of my parents and a younger brother and sister. I took AP classes and hung out with a group of friends that didn’t use alcohol or drugs. My best friend and I hosted theme parties throughout the year that we all looked forward to. We had a Hawaiian luau, a black and white party (complete with Casablanca and Psycho), make your own pizza parties (complete with chef hats), Trivial Pursuit party, and other themes that I can’t remember unless I looked at our photo album. At one party, my best friend and I heard a rumor that one of the guys had brought a flask to the party. We immediately went to our mothers who hauled the boys into the kitchen. It turned out that they had just brought the flask to look cool – there wasn’t actually anything in it!
My big fear at age 15 was not fitting in. I wanted to fit in with my friends and with the popular kids as much as I could. I also remember wanting to be unique though. I always felt like a square peg in the round hole of life, but at 15 I didn’t quite have the confidence yet to really be myself and not worry what others thought about me. One time I wore a pair of faded jeans, an oversized button down shirt, a huge pair of feather earrings, and moccasins to school. I loved how it looked, but when Susan Henderson, the original preppy, stared at me as she passed me in the hall, looking me up and down from the moccasins to the feather earrings, I’m not so sure I wore that outfit again.
One of the adults that made a big difference in my life at that time was Ed Coll, a man in his sixties who had trained swat teams, but now was running a Girl Scout camp called High Adventure. Over three summers, I went rock climbing and rappelling with him in West Virginia, parasailing in upstate New York, and bicycling on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. The experience I remember most with him was a caving trip. I got to be the first one to crawl through a small, dark tunnel on my stomach with my flashlight. Ed had been in the cave many times before so he knew it was safe in the cavern where I popped out. I remember as I crawled along on my stomach being scared, but proud that I was going first into the unknown. Ed set up safe risks for us to take, and then gave us both the independence and support we needed to challenge ourselves. I think part of my love of the outdoors comes from Ed.
Today I work for the Anchorage School District Safe & Drug Free Schools program as the Peer Education Specialist. I train middle school and high school students as peer educators so they can teach their peers and younger kids about health and personal safety topics, like drug and alcohol prevention, highway safety or media literacy skills. I’d like to think I’m doing the same thing that Ed did for me – setting up safe risks and then giving kids both the independence and support they need to take the risk.
I have to confess that, even as an adult, it is difficult for me to take risks in my life. Putting myself in situations where I’m outside my comfort zone still makes me feel like a square peg in the round hole of life. At least today, at 37, I’m more comfortable with myself and can think back to that experience in the cave. I know that, even if I’m scared, I can make it through the dark into the unknown and come out safely, maybe even having fun along the way.
