I watched the Natalee Holloway Lifetime movie last night and it just broke my heart.  I think (I hope) it would do the same for any young woman who has been dumb enough (read: drunk enough) to go off with a strange guy, or to watch one of your friends do it.  It seems so harmless at the time until one of your friends doesn’t come home.

 Thinking back on my late teens and early 20’s, when the goal of the evening was to get as silly wasted as possible, I realize how very lucky we girls were.  I’m still friends with most of those girls and I’m happy to report that none of us have ever gone missing after going off with a guy.  We were a group that didn’t really let that happen, but no matter how much you plan or how many times you affirm that you wouldn’t let your friend go off with some strange guy, things happen.  You drink and start having fun and then say, “Hey, where’s Jen?”  And someone thinks she went with so and so, or saw her walking home, or God knows what. 

I cried for awhile after the movie because I couldn’t stop thinking about my own mother and how devastated she would be if something like that were to happen to me or my sister.  Luckily both us girls are way past the age of going out drinking till we drop. But that poor mother finally found out what happened to her daughter, and she was still never going to find her body.

It just made me realize how very lucky we all were growing up.  Ours was a partying group, and while there were a few tragedies, they were confined to people we didn’t know that well, maybe had partied with once or twice, but our group was fortunate enough to avoid such a tragedy.  (Our group eventually disbanded when one committed suicide, but that’s a whole other story.)

It was a pretty cheesy movie (What?  A cheesy Lifetime movie? No!), but it really touched me.  I hope it did the same for others.  I hope mothers watched it and will start a discussion with their own daughters.  Or some teenager will see it and it will open a dialogue between her and her friends about what they should do in a similar situation.  I hope it does something for at least one person, because no mother should have to go through that.