This is why.
To get why RAW is so important to me, you probably have to know Hannah beyond a superficial level as she is in so many ways hugely gregarious and socially confident. She is also a person who endures vast and often negative emotions. Like her father, she is prone to pessimism. Their glass *was* half empty but then someone came and *deliberately* kicked it over. (I daresay they find me with my periennial Tiggerish optimism and joie de vivre just as exasperating as I find their Eeyorish gloom.) Watching her at her riding lessons is often extremely uncomfortable for me; she always looks as though she is being led to her own execution! I offer her to stop any time she wants to but she insists she enjoys it...and I suppose she does, after her own perverse fashion. It is hard to see her slender frame weighed down by this expectation of misery and doom. I want her to find joy wherever possible, to exult in her own existence. She just doesn't.
Except for the day she accidentally went for a trial session at RAW. She wasn't meant to, although I'd always thought drama would be a good activity for her because she does like an audience! I just wasn't looking for it right then. We tried a trial at Perform when she first came out of school but it was way too soon and I am so glad now that that experiment failed. But her best friend was going for a trial and Hannah ended up going to "watch" and got drawn in.
When I came to collect her 2 hours later, she danced out, her eyes shining and declaring loudly that it was the best thing she had ever done (although it was not a huge surprise and very amusing to discover a year later that she had been invited to join in with the dancing and responded with "I don't dance!", then, on being told not to worry it was only a few minutes till singing started, "I don't sing!")
A year on and she still radiates enthusiasm in a way I have never seen before. She practices songs and dances constantly; she works so so hard to improve. This morning she told me that going to drama is like Christmas or birthdays. Every week she feels like that.
She has had so much to deal with over the past few years (the debacle of school, her dad's injury and long recovery) and she *worries* so much and takes everything to heart, so it is priceless to have found something that brings her this much happiness.
So that is why, collectively and as individuals, I love the people who make up RAW so very very much. I love how tolerant Jac and Dan are of her clingy affection, I love how she has great role models in the older students she admires, like Rosie. I love how much they appreciate her as the quirky individual that she is. I love how affectionate Sam is and how well she knows all the children as people. I love that they value effort and hard work as much as talent and I really admire the fact the Nicola has actually enabled her to sing. I love that they facilitate Hannah's friend's emotional needs because Hannah was like that only a short while ago and so many many people and organisations do NOT understand.
I'm sorry if sometimes this love manifests itself in a ridiculous sappiness that makes me look like an over-enthusiastic puppy slobbering on your trousers and I apologise to your waistlines that I so often express it in cake. But I love RAW and this is why!
