The power of kindness: Remembering SuEllen Fried
The depth of SuEllen Fried’s impact in the world can be measured many ways — in the volume of her wisdom, her books on beating bullying, by the lives of incarcerated men and women that were made more meaningful, and the children and adults she inspired to their better selves.
But she leaves behind simple moments of love as well.
Like teaching people she met the best way to hug: stepping together, face-to-face but a little off-center to the right, she said, so that when your arms pull you close you are heart-to-heart.
SuEllen Fried’s portrait on the website Bully Safe USA.
And then, in parting, she’d put into your hand one of her green buttons to pass on, inscribed with her lasting message:
The “Power of Kindness.”
Fried, who died Oct. 3 at the age of 92, believed in the goodness of all people. It showed in her work, first as a dance therapist, bringing hope and a message of peace to men and women trying to reorder their lives in prison.
It showed in the ways she brought new understanding to the vulnerabilities of children — not just the child who is the victim of bullying, but the child who behaves as the bully, and all children as witnesses.
She created the organization and website Bully Safe USA. She authored several books, some in collaboration with her daughter, Paula Fried.
And she was critical to the origin and the resulting success of LINC, the non-profit organization in Kansas City, Mo., that revolutionized the way communities share government resources through the creation of Caring Communities that make Stronger Families Together.
LINC founder Bert Berkley credited Fried as providing the original inspiration for LINC. Berkley was part of a business leaders roundtable convened by the Missouri Department of Social Services in the early 1990s. As Berkley was searching for ways to reform state services, Fried shared with him an idea of putting state decisions in the hands of local providers and communities.
“SuEllen,” Berkley said, “you just opened the doors!”
Fried joined the LINC Commission as one of its founding members in 1992, helping guide LINC as it worked with local communities to identify needs, build partnerships and expand the ability of citizens and their government agencies to improve the welfare of children, families and neighborhoods.
In the past year, LINC developed a curriculum for its staff in public schools to instill the empathy and wisdom drawn from Fried’s decades of work saving children from being bullied and bullying.
LINC’s staff, who care for more than 8,000 children in before- and after-school programs in five Missouri school districts in the Kansas City area, learned Fried’s strategies to help adults and children to build empathy and strength — and pass it on.
Fried joined LINC’s team for part of the training, and she shared some of her thoughts for a video.
We all can understand each other if we try, she says. She invites everyone to ask questions. She implores LINC’s teachers to ask their children about their lives, and to listen.
In her years of visiting schools and speaking in auditoriums, she has reached some 100,000 children and adults. And many of those times she asked all the youth in her audience and the adults to close their eyes and “think of someone in this room who you know is hurting, who’s been bullied, who’s been tormented,.”
She appeals to their conscience. She opens the opportunity for apologies, for redemption, for change and for healing. And every time, apologies come. Many times with tears.
It is an appeal for children and adults for grace that has saved lives.
And, like the buttons and their appeal to kindness, she wants us to pass it on.
By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer