The Truth Is Always Worth the Wait
- Karla Lee
- 23 minutes ago
- 3 min read
The word “accident” is a conclusion, not a fact. And you don’t have to accept it before anyone has looked.
The phone rings in the middle of your day. It’s the school. On the other side of the phone thhey tell you that there has been an accident.
Before you’ve even sat down, before you know a single fact, the narrative has been chosen for you. Accident.
Your stomach drops. And somewhere underneath the fear, if you’re listening, is a second, quieter response. Wait.
Wait. Because you haven’t heard your child yet.
Wait. Because You haven’t seen a report or asked a single question.
Wait. Because the story already has a name, a name that seeks to direct you away from accountability.
I've gotten those calls. I didn't always know to wait. I do now.
We are handed the ending before anyone does the work of the middle
A young man named Nolan Wells went missing on a July 4th boat trip and was found dead days later. The circumstances were unexplained. The autopsy was still pending. And the sheriff’s office was already saying there was no reason to suspect foul play. A conclusion was offered before any evidence was even in.
That same reflex that instinctively declared that there was no reason to suspect foul play, is likely the one waiting for you on the other end of the phone call from the school.
When that call comes, you owe it to your child and to yourself to wait. You are allowed to say, out loud and without apology, don’t call it an accident yet. Not until every fact is known and evaluated. Not until someone has actually looked.
Because here is the truth the word “accident” is built to skip past:
There is no accident in negligence. There is no accident in a lack of supervision. There is no accident in a failure to follow the protocols that existed precisely to prevent this.
Those aren’t accidents. They’re outcomes. And outcomes have causes, and causes have names. Outcomes deserve accountability.
The pause is taught, not born
That quiet voice you feel, the one whispering wait, this doesn’t add up, isn’t paranoia. It isn’t you being a difficult parent. It’s simply asking for you to wait before you sign your name to someone else’s version of events.
And here’s the part that matters most, because I’m raising three people who will spend their lives in rooms that move fast and prefer the quiet answer. Schools. Offices. High pressure situations. The pause is not instinct. Nobody is born knowing how to hold a “wait” against an institution’s certainty. Safety and advocacy are built on thousands of these tiny moments, and not one of them is automatic.
They are trained. They are modeled. They are taught.
So my kids watch me do it. They watch me ask the second question. They watch me say, “I’m not agreeing to that word until I understand what happened.” They are learning that waiting isn’t disrespect. It’s how you refuse to let someone else write the story before you’ve had the opportunity to read it.
The pause isn’t instinct. It’s trained, modeled, and taught, usually by watching someone they love refuse to be rushed.
Warning: You will feel like the difficult one. The mother who wouldn’t just take their version of events and move on. Be her anyway. Somewhere, your child is learning that their version counts, that the truth is worth waiting for, and that “accident” is never the end of a story no one has actually told yet.
This is the work I’m pouring into Back to School Basics for Parents. The scripts and the spine for the calls you hope you never get. My Truly Yours readers will be the first to know but in the meantime, the weekly note is free. And it’s, well, truly yours.