The Power of Women

It's not uncommon for me to post about both of my grandfathers' WWII experiences, my dad's time in Vietnam or my husband's time in Lebanon when the Marine Corps barracks were bombed and his significant hearing loss in his right ear (I think? I swear to God he changes which ear it is based on how interested he is in what I'm talking about and whether I'm on his right side or his left). But I usually don't write about the amazing women in my family.
This is pertinent today because I dreamt last night that my Grandma Krause died and I was in London driving my first car, a 1986 two-tone maroon Chevy Citation even though it was present-day, and I had no time to shop for something to wear. I woke up crying. I rarely wake up crying from dreams, more realistically, nightmares, so when I do I know something's going on in my subconscious. My unfinished business, as it were. I've studied (ok, been exposed to) Freud's theory of dreams, and the theories of Jung and Perls as well. That's not what this is about. It's for me to reflect on the strong and influential women in my family. I need to untangle it in my brain by writing it down, which brings me to this moment.
A few weekends ago we celebrated my Grandma Krause's 89th birthday and my great-aunt Shirley's 87th birthday. They are sisters. Auds (my grandma) lives at a nursing home in Shawano and Shirley lives at a nursing home on the Oneida reservation. Their youngest sister, my great-aunt Kootchie (given name Margaret which no one ever called her) would be 82, but she died in 2010 at age 74.

My great-aunt Shirley, 87, and my Grandma Krause, 89

Also at this party were my great-aunt Delores and her two daughters, my second cousins Vicki and Ginny. Delores married my great-aunt Victor Ziemer, who died in 2013 at age 86.

My second cousins Vicki & Ginny with their mom, my great-aunt Delores

My great-aunt Shirley, 87, with her daughters, my second cousins, Stacy & Mary Beth

Auds with all her granddaughters; L-R: my sister Jan; cousin Danette; cousin Ann; me; cousin Sara (Ann & Sara are sisters)

So that's enough Ancestry.com information. I hope you get the idea: there are many of us and we are strong. My great-grandmother, Auds & Shirley's mother, Margaret and her siblings were forced to attend a catholic school in Keshena; snatched off the rez where their native dress, food, language and history were not respected or taught to them. 

My grandma grew up during the Great Depression and my 8th grade US History class had an assignment to ask our older relatives what life was like during those years. Auds answered, "We were poor. Everyone was poor. No one knew the difference." I have seen the land my great-grandparents farmed on the banks of the Red River. It is supernaturally green in the summer, lush and fertile.  I have also seen the land my paternal great-grandparents farmed, and it is shady in the summer, but the cows continue to roam the fields and corn continues to flourish.
Auds, Shirley and Kootchie all worked their entire lives. Even after they left the family farm. Shirley worked in Marion in the office of some sort of auction business (I think), I could be totally off base here, but the point is she worked outside the home at a time when many women didn't. As did my grandma. She worked for 40+ years at Shawano Memorial Hospital, more often than not walking to and from the hospital at least five days a week for over 40 years. There were times early in their marriage when my grandpa did not treat her well, and there were times when she did not treat him well either. Grandpa's poor behavior often involved other women and liquor, where as grandma's behavior was made up of shouting insults. Once my Grandpa Krause was permanently living at a nursing home in Shawano, they treated each other much more gently. She would call him and he would ask how things were at the "Little house on the prairie" and she would ask him about how things were at "the plantation" i.e., the big house.
Shortly after my grandpa's funeral in 2012, Grandma asked how she was going to deal with living all alone. I told her that Grandpa had given her the gift of five years of practice, as that was the amount of time he spent at the nursing home before his passing. She thought about that for a long moment and said, "Yes. I guess he has."
Kootchie and her husband, my uncle Norton, never had children, but they were the absolute best great-aunt and uncle a kid could ask for. My parents lived with them in Oshkosh when I was a toddler. I have no idea why. I've never asked because I think my parents wouldn't tell me. Despite all of the kick ass aspects of my family, my nuclear family continues to function on the "avoidance principle": if you ignore it, it will just go away. A story my mom has shared with me is that she was making spaghetti for supper when we lived at Dave and Kootch's and shouted to Norton who was taking his routine post-work shower, where the colander was. He yelled back that it was behind the kitchen door. He heard calendar when my mom wanted a colander. This tete-a-tete went back and forth for some time before she realized he had  no idea what a colander was and proceeded to rummage around their kitchen cabinets to find one.
Kootch and Dave spend every holiday at my grandparents' house in Shawano. Norton was the type of uncle who let me, at age six, sit on his lap and drive their 1977 Thunderbird back to Grandma and Grandpa's after running a quick errand to the grocery store at Thanksgiving. He also corralled all of us grandkids to play Bingo at the dining room table after Christmas dinner. Christmas 1985 I wore a hat as part of my ensemble. When we sat down to eat dinner, my dad told me to remove my hat for the prayer. Kootchie immediately stepped in and said, "Rog, women don't remove their hats. It's considered part of a woman's entire wardrobe." I looked at my dad and gave him "the smug look" of raising both my eyebrows, thinking, Well, well big shot. How about that? I swear my dad could read my mind, yet he said nothing more about it.

My hat that was allowed at the dinner table, Christmas 1985, with my great-aunt Kootchie

So I guess it's time to bottom line this rant. 1) I come from a maternal family of strong, opinionated, hard-working, tell-you-how-it-is women; 2) Each generation of women have wanted better lives than they experienced for the next generation; 3)  There is nothing more powerful, encouraging or exhilarating than unconditional love which the younger of us have been blessed with from our older relatives; 4) Whether we know it or not, all of us have made each other proud to say, "Yup. She's my grandma/great-aunt/great grandma/cousin/second cousin/third cousin/sister/mother/aunt"; 5) We love each other unconditionally and will always know that.

Amen.

...and so 45 approaches

Man, the older I get, the more I dislike the weeks before my birthday. It's not because I have issues with aging, it's because I have issues with remembering. It only makes sense that with each passing year, I have another 365 days of memories to ponder: good, bad or indifferent. Parts of my past slip just a bit further away. Sometimes I'm happy to have memories fade into a whiter shade of pale, sometimes I'm sad that milestones of my life are even further away from my present, like watching a boat cross the horizon that is that much harder to moor back at shore.
When I graduated with my Master's degree 5 years ago, I had developed a "five year plan" for the first time in my life. That plan was to apply to PhD programs when I turned 44 and starting a Forensic Psychology PhD program the fall semester of 2016, just months after my 45th birthday. Well, let me tell you: Shit happens and five year plans fall by the wayside. Priorities change, career opportunities present themselves (or not), your grandmother becomes a full time nursing home resident, the home where the absolute best of your childhood memories gets sold and you feel as if the planks that make up your life begin to separate and float away so you cling to whatever you find  just to prevent yourself from drowning in life on life's terms-not your own terms.
Which brings me to today: four days from my 45th birthday.
Some spectacular things have happened to me professionally this year: I got a promotion to be LSS's School Based Mental Health Coordinator. I spoke at a WAFCA (Wisconsin Association of Family & Children's Agencies) training about what it's like to be a licensed professional counselor in recovery. Today I received news that I am going to be a key-note speaker at the state convention for speech therapists and pathologists in February 2017 about trauma informed care-I'll be presenting for 1 1/2 hours to approximately 200 people. I've been interviewed by a local reporter about state government support for school based mental health. A colleague I worked with as an Older Adult Counselor published a book which includes my interview about depression and older adults. I've never felt more satisfied in my career as I do now. This is significant for two reasons:
1) I really thought that working with psychopathology in the state prison system was one of my "dream jobs" and working there would fulfill me intellectually so I tried that for six months in 2013 and discovered that it was not the place for me, for a number of reasons I've outlined in previous blog posts; 2) When I was in grad school, I completed a paper on the population I'd least like to work with, which was teens and adolescents and here I am, five years later absolutely in love with the students I counsel two days a week at a local high school and working to develop and expand school based mental health services at schools across the state.
Personally I've faced challenges this year, as everyone does. The two most significant being the only income provider at home due to my husband's depression and anxiety which has prevented him from working since January 2015. He's in the process of applying for SSDI due to PTSD. The second may sound somewhat trivial, but rocked my world when I checked my Linked In account in early February and discovered that "Paul G, MD from Montana" had recently viewed my profile. Sometimes I view him as a bad penny that won't go away and leave me the fuck alone and other times I long to re-establish any type of contact with him, "knowing" that we'd somehow reconcile, despite the fact that we're both married to other people. In therapy I refer to these thoughts as "Julia Roberts movie moments" which are completely unrealistic, but drag my heart into believing it's possible. These thoughts fuck with my mind in a major way despite the amount of time that's passed since we've spoken, much less were in a romantic relationship with each other. It's the nagging thoughts of "what if" that I'm finally processing in therapy. I've danced around it for decades (I know, it's a crazily long amount of time) but my counselor kicks ass and keeps me on task to finally deal with whatever I need to do to come to terms with this relationship.
So as my 45th birthday approaches, here I am: focusing on all of the achievements I've made this year and acknowledging what I need to work on to live a more balanced life. I know there will be more achievements and more challenges during the 365 days between 45 and 46, but for the first time in a long time, I feel prepared to welcome them both.

My "official" LSS website photo.

All Your Life, You Were Only Waiting for This Moment to Arise

Monday, May 18th will begin my final two weeks during this school year when I will be seeing PATH clients (the in-school mental health counseling program). The week that starts on Monday, June 1st is scheduled for final exams, turning in Chrome Books, and completing final projects which means that both of the high schools where I see students in Appleton will have funky class schedules, so I won't see students that week: they've got enough to worry about and it would impact them greatly in a negative way if I pulled anyone from a class that's reviewing course material or administering a final exam. Plus, Thursday, June 4th is graduation day and seniors don't have to "report" on Friday, June 5th as underclassmen do.
Last year at graduation time, I had been working in two high schools for the spring semester, one in Appleton and one in Menasha. Now I've been working with some students from two Appleton high schools for a year and a half; that's a significant amount of time to spend with a kid week after week, watching them grow through loss and success, bearing witness to their pain, walking with them through the wretched path that adolescence can sometimes be. I have also had the privilege of encouraging them week after week to make positive decisions for their futures and celebrated with them when they've been accepted to the college they really want to attend, get the scholarship they doubted they'd receive but did, and decide who they want to be and how they want to present themselves as college freshmen.
It's been a process I have trouble putting words to. The resiliency of "my kids" (which is how I refer to them) is astounding. I would challenge anyone who thinks of him- or herself as an adult who can bounce back from any setback. Really? So you would be able to change your gender identity from female to male in high school and tolerate the name-calling, bullying and uncertainty that goes with that decision?  You would be able to have a baby at the start of second semester, create a support network for yourself and your infant child which allows you to complete the school year by attending online school without losing any credits? You would be able to learn emotional regulation and acceptable and unacceptable behavior with technology, all while learning how to communicate effectively with others using sign language, which your own parents don't know or understand?
If you are willing to take on the challenge to live the life of one of my kids for one school semester, a relatively short period of time in one's life, message me on Facebook because I guarantee that you will fail. I know I would and I've been working with these kids for roughly 17 months. I know their secrets, their dreams, their fears, their goals, and who they want to become...and I would fail at "successfully" living any of their lives. Their lives are so much more complicated than mine was as I graduated from high school on June 8, 1989. Good grief, gossip, "rating notes", and sitting with the "cool kids" at lunch was hard enough to navigate 26 years ago without the influence of Snap Chat, Facebook, askfm and Instagram.
When I was in junior high and high school, my parents told me how much "easier" it was for me compared to what they had to endure in the late 1960s while in middle school and high school. I will be the first person to get in line to say that kids in junior high (ok, middle school) and high school now have it MUCH tougher than I or most of my classmates could ever imagine the world would become. In my generation you could tear up a note written on notebook paper. This generation has to live knowing their entire lives are available to anyone willing to search hard enough to find "nude" photos, intimidating comments and bold face lies posted about other people one may have made in a moment of impulsivity or plain bad judgement. An applicant's online presence can be searched by the potential college he or she wishes to attend. Potential employers have the ability to discover what someone may wish was undiscoverable, but is easily found by someone with the required computer skills. Would any of us have changed our behavior if we knew that documentation of our stupidity, immaturity or impulsivity was "unerasable"? I think so. I know I would; but I come at this issue with the knowledge and hindsight of a 44 year old adult, not a 17 year old teen ager.
As this school year comes to a close and as I watch some of my kids walk across that stage to accept their high school diplomas, I will wish them all the best the world can offer them. I will tell them to grab every opportunity presented to them. I will tell them to believe that their best is enough, whether other people acknowledge that or not.
I will tell them to spread their wings and fly.