September
It has been so long since I've written, I hardly know where to start. S is back to full days at school, and she's doing incredibly well. She is also doing a better job of getting chores around the house done. With the exception of a couple days last week, she has been calm and focused (well, for her), and has been, basically, happy.
J, her college friend, is back from Germany, and two other college women are helping out now, working with her just a few hours a week. They will take over J's hours next semester, so I thought it was important to get them started now to ease the transition. We're in as much of a routine as we could possibly have given how much of my job involves evening and weekend work--and different hours each week.
Strangely, after a summer of dreading coming back full-time, I am loving my job this year. Part of that is a first-year seminar course called community engagement: from volunteerism to social justice. I have really great, thoughtful, enthusiastic students in that class, and it's a pretty diverse group. The class has really given me a chance to synthesize my thinking about the field I have accidentally found myself working in over the last ten years, and I'm feeling passionate about that work again. I'm also co-teaching a disability studies course with a friend, and it's nice to be doing this a second time, when the material is not so new to me, and during a semester when I am really grounded in this place.
Grounded. It's strange--I think for the last two years, because my father was dying and S was having so many troubles, my life felt fragile and disjointed. Sometimes when I would write here or in my journal, I would see the coherence, but mostly I was just struggling to get through each day. I also was so unhappy about all the changes at work, and I think it simply took two years to get adjusted first to the idea of a new appointment and new coworkers and then to a full year of being in that appointment. Now that I'm in year two, I feel more settled and confident and less frantic.
I got my teaching evaluations back from last year, and they were very high again. It was such a relief to realize that I haven't become a terrible teacher, but that terrible things happening in my life made me a worse teacher for a little while. I'm starting to finally forgive myself for the year and 1/2 when I was so frantic and frustrated with my life that I took it out on my students.
All in all, I feel like I could stay here for awhile longer without feeling terrible about myself and my life. "Here" is this town, this house, this job--but I feel like it's more than that, though I can't put my finger (or words) on exactly what I mean. I have started to be in the present more, instead of dreaming about and then worrying about the future. At the same time, I'm still thinking and dreaming about the idea of Healing Ranch, and I feel as if, if it's meant to be, it will happen eventually. I just need to work right now on being grounded here, and paying off debt, and getting S through high school.
I did a better job at S's IEP meeting of advocating for her. This summer, I went to a conference and learned more about what the schools are supposed to offer students like her during high school to help them with the post-high school transition. The school had done none of these things, but I realized that rather than becoming bitter at the school, or at myself for not advocating for her, I needed to give myself a break. It's been a rough two years, and now is an opportunity to really focus on the transition in healthy ways. I did a lot of research and wrote the goals I wanted to see in her IEP, and I effectively advocated for them and for a post-high school transition program.
In other news, for awhile we were housing a young mother and newborn while she made some big decisions about her future. We got attached to the baby, and then she began to stay in other places, places I don't necessarily think are the healthiest for her. Her things are still here, but she and the baby are not. I somehow have found a way to let this go--to decide that she has to make her own decisions about her life. This has been incredibly hard, but I think it's good practice in case I ever do end up running a place like our dreamed-about Healing Ranch. I'll have to figure out what the boundaries are, what will allow someone to have space there and not, when I will intervene and when I must let go. In this case, the baby is not in danger, so I have decided to let go. I have been able to help S through the process of accepting what is up in the air, not fully clear.
In the meantime, I've had some other opportunities to discover some synergy between my past and my present. Over Labor Day weekend, we went to Detroit to a convention for everyone from the island where my father and my mother's parents grew up. It was wonderful to see our extended family in a happier setting (the last time we'd seen most of them was at my father's funeral). It was the first time I'd taken S. We wandered around Greektown, danced, spent quality time with family. It felt good to be there.
I was asked to read a poem I'd written in college at the conference banquet. Someone had dug it out of a desk drawer--I remembered writing it but no longer had a copy myself. This poem about the traditional dance from my family's island took on new meaning now. I am more connected to the island now than I ever was, and also more disconnected at the same time, because of the life I've chosen--I have an adopted daughter that doesn't exactly fit into the Greek life timeline, and I'm not married--but I also go back regularly to do the service project at the nursing home there, so I'm also not a stranger. I wrote of the dance as a way of climbing out of our collective grief, being present in the moment--words that have more meaning now that my father is dead and I have a daughter. It was poignant and important for me to do this.
Similarly, the mother of one of my favorite students, who is now a doctor, contacted me out of the blue and asked if I would do a sermon for her church in a town about an hour away. Writing that sermon was a good chance to reflect on my work life--on what has happened in the ten years since N was in one of my first classes, on how my commitment to deep engagement with the community has shifted, deepened, changed. I ended the sermon with a poem that N had recorded, spoken by one of the elders in our project. It is still one of my favorites, speaking to what it is like to lose a friend and find her again. I wept while reading it--it was too much to think of how I was reconnecting with a family who I hadn't seen in years, how lucky I feel to have such a wide web of connections, even if at times I want more deep connections here, in my immediate life.
This is a completely disconnected entry--but I will end by saying that yesterday, S and I received a letter saying that the police investigation into the statement she made back in March is complete and has been forwarded to the county attorney, who will now decide whether to press charges. We have been assigned a victim advocate in case the case goes forward. S is both scared and excited. She called her previous foster family to tell them--she contacts them only occasionally these days to share big news (though for awhile, her foster father was seriously ill, and she was calling daily during that time). Her foster mother said, "I thought you wouldn't have to think about that stuff anymore." The family had done nothing to help her heal, and when I heard those words, I felt an old anger creeping up.
"Well," S said, very strongly and deliberately, "I think it's important to try to get justice, and I am finally strong enough to do that."
And all of my frustration at them was gone as soon as she said those words. S's words reminded me that I don't need to keep looking back, frustrated by all the things others could and should have done for my daughter, or for me. I just need to be present, and to look forward, too.
We've come a long way.
J, her college friend, is back from Germany, and two other college women are helping out now, working with her just a few hours a week. They will take over J's hours next semester, so I thought it was important to get them started now to ease the transition. We're in as much of a routine as we could possibly have given how much of my job involves evening and weekend work--and different hours each week.
Strangely, after a summer of dreading coming back full-time, I am loving my job this year. Part of that is a first-year seminar course called community engagement: from volunteerism to social justice. I have really great, thoughtful, enthusiastic students in that class, and it's a pretty diverse group. The class has really given me a chance to synthesize my thinking about the field I have accidentally found myself working in over the last ten years, and I'm feeling passionate about that work again. I'm also co-teaching a disability studies course with a friend, and it's nice to be doing this a second time, when the material is not so new to me, and during a semester when I am really grounded in this place.
Grounded. It's strange--I think for the last two years, because my father was dying and S was having so many troubles, my life felt fragile and disjointed. Sometimes when I would write here or in my journal, I would see the coherence, but mostly I was just struggling to get through each day. I also was so unhappy about all the changes at work, and I think it simply took two years to get adjusted first to the idea of a new appointment and new coworkers and then to a full year of being in that appointment. Now that I'm in year two, I feel more settled and confident and less frantic.
I got my teaching evaluations back from last year, and they were very high again. It was such a relief to realize that I haven't become a terrible teacher, but that terrible things happening in my life made me a worse teacher for a little while. I'm starting to finally forgive myself for the year and 1/2 when I was so frantic and frustrated with my life that I took it out on my students.
All in all, I feel like I could stay here for awhile longer without feeling terrible about myself and my life. "Here" is this town, this house, this job--but I feel like it's more than that, though I can't put my finger (or words) on exactly what I mean. I have started to be in the present more, instead of dreaming about and then worrying about the future. At the same time, I'm still thinking and dreaming about the idea of Healing Ranch, and I feel as if, if it's meant to be, it will happen eventually. I just need to work right now on being grounded here, and paying off debt, and getting S through high school.
I did a better job at S's IEP meeting of advocating for her. This summer, I went to a conference and learned more about what the schools are supposed to offer students like her during high school to help them with the post-high school transition. The school had done none of these things, but I realized that rather than becoming bitter at the school, or at myself for not advocating for her, I needed to give myself a break. It's been a rough two years, and now is an opportunity to really focus on the transition in healthy ways. I did a lot of research and wrote the goals I wanted to see in her IEP, and I effectively advocated for them and for a post-high school transition program.
In other news, for awhile we were housing a young mother and newborn while she made some big decisions about her future. We got attached to the baby, and then she began to stay in other places, places I don't necessarily think are the healthiest for her. Her things are still here, but she and the baby are not. I somehow have found a way to let this go--to decide that she has to make her own decisions about her life. This has been incredibly hard, but I think it's good practice in case I ever do end up running a place like our dreamed-about Healing Ranch. I'll have to figure out what the boundaries are, what will allow someone to have space there and not, when I will intervene and when I must let go. In this case, the baby is not in danger, so I have decided to let go. I have been able to help S through the process of accepting what is up in the air, not fully clear.
In the meantime, I've had some other opportunities to discover some synergy between my past and my present. Over Labor Day weekend, we went to Detroit to a convention for everyone from the island where my father and my mother's parents grew up. It was wonderful to see our extended family in a happier setting (the last time we'd seen most of them was at my father's funeral). It was the first time I'd taken S. We wandered around Greektown, danced, spent quality time with family. It felt good to be there.
I was asked to read a poem I'd written in college at the conference banquet. Someone had dug it out of a desk drawer--I remembered writing it but no longer had a copy myself. This poem about the traditional dance from my family's island took on new meaning now. I am more connected to the island now than I ever was, and also more disconnected at the same time, because of the life I've chosen--I have an adopted daughter that doesn't exactly fit into the Greek life timeline, and I'm not married--but I also go back regularly to do the service project at the nursing home there, so I'm also not a stranger. I wrote of the dance as a way of climbing out of our collective grief, being present in the moment--words that have more meaning now that my father is dead and I have a daughter. It was poignant and important for me to do this.
Similarly, the mother of one of my favorite students, who is now a doctor, contacted me out of the blue and asked if I would do a sermon for her church in a town about an hour away. Writing that sermon was a good chance to reflect on my work life--on what has happened in the ten years since N was in one of my first classes, on how my commitment to deep engagement with the community has shifted, deepened, changed. I ended the sermon with a poem that N had recorded, spoken by one of the elders in our project. It is still one of my favorites, speaking to what it is like to lose a friend and find her again. I wept while reading it--it was too much to think of how I was reconnecting with a family who I hadn't seen in years, how lucky I feel to have such a wide web of connections, even if at times I want more deep connections here, in my immediate life.
This is a completely disconnected entry--but I will end by saying that yesterday, S and I received a letter saying that the police investigation into the statement she made back in March is complete and has been forwarded to the county attorney, who will now decide whether to press charges. We have been assigned a victim advocate in case the case goes forward. S is both scared and excited. She called her previous foster family to tell them--she contacts them only occasionally these days to share big news (though for awhile, her foster father was seriously ill, and she was calling daily during that time). Her foster mother said, "I thought you wouldn't have to think about that stuff anymore." The family had done nothing to help her heal, and when I heard those words, I felt an old anger creeping up.
"Well," S said, very strongly and deliberately, "I think it's important to try to get justice, and I am finally strong enough to do that."
And all of my frustration at them was gone as soon as she said those words. S's words reminded me that I don't need to keep looking back, frustrated by all the things others could and should have done for my daughter, or for me. I just need to be present, and to look forward, too.
We've come a long way.
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