Cascade School Project

The Cascade School Project was born out of a combination of Covid-19 lockdowns, a criss-cross of friendships, and each of us trying to make sense of ourselves and the world. The ideas for the project unfolded as 6 former Cascadians re-connected and sought out ways to better understand our experiences at the school and in our lives since.

Although some of us had stayed in touch since graduation, many of us had not spoken for 30 years! What we discovered as we started having weekly calls together, was not only had time sweetened our love and appreciation for each other, but it also magnified our understanding of what we individually experienced and collectively shared.

For some of us, it was the first time we had consciously and intentionally examined this part of our lives and how it has impacted us over the years. For others, our time at the school was something that we had packed up and left behind many years ago, not really sure of the benefit of looking back or re-examining our time there. Although we were all at different places in life, in the way we felt about our experience, and in our healing, one thing we collectively agreed on, was that it could be very beneficial for Cascade folks to talk to other Cascade folks in a respectful dialogue to learn from each other and better process our time both during and after Cascade.

From our own experience of open, compassionate and curious exploration, we decided to try expanding these conversations beyond our small group to the entire Cascade community and began having monthly Zoom calls for all survivors. We realized, as we listened to former students both in and out of the group calls, that connection and support, participation in TTI advocacy, and having access to information and resources that can be helpful in better understanding the school and its impacts on each of us was essential to our healing and growth. So we committed ourselves to creating more pathways for healing, advocacy, and education for ourselves and our peers and we have created a Non-Profit Organization to best achieve this goal. We believe a path forward is created by us coming together to become the community we have always deserved. We believe we are better together than we were apart.

Please come back and VISIT THIS SITE again soon! We are currently surveying and assessing our community’s needs and developing programs, resources lists, projects and teams that you may be interested in. We launched this website in Q3 2021 and will continually adding to it for the remainder of the year (and beyond)!

Please share your positive and/or constructively critical thoughts and ideas with us. Let us know if you want to learn more about the Cascade School Project. Hell, just write to say hello and let us know you are out there somewhere! We love hearing from fellow former students and we hope to speak soon. Please be patient with us as we are all doing this in our “spare” time....
(TO GET IN TOUCH - click here) 

We appreciate you! - Beth, Sally, Monique, Tess and Deas

We understand everyone had a different experience at Cascade. Different staff, different decades, different friends. We all came in as individuals and left as individuals - but we left Whitmore, California having some unique things in common. For some, our time in those mountains seems to impact us to this day. For better and worse, we seek to understand and support each other as we look back and move forward. Regardless of how you perceive The Cascade School, we welcome you to join us in becoming the community we all deserve.

Whether you “drank the kool-aid” or you were “dirty” and “out of agreement” the whole time, we don’t care. We respect everyone’s right to have their own memories, views, and feelings. Noone's experience is right or wrong. An experience for you may have been great - yet traumatic or abusive for another. We believe that both experiences can be true and real simultaneously - and both deserve validation. Our philosophy is that through curiosity, compassion, and care for one another, we can be there to support one another as we strive to move forward in our lives.

This project is an experiment. We don't have all the answers, we don't need you to see things our way, we just need you to believe that we want to help ourselves and each other. Some of us need help, some of us can give help, the Cascade School Project is the way we can try to help make sure that everyone has what they need.