HOW I GOT MY FIRST JOB
I have no idea what I said that got the hospital director to call me or how many others had turned it down before me, but I finally got the job!
I was an honor student at a good school and had every indication of a promising career ahead. But when I graduated, the economy was depressed and nobody seemed to be hiring. I had so many rejection letters—that was back when employers still sent them—that I joked I could wallpaper my bathroom wall with them. Today as job applications seem to veer off into outer space via the world wide web, the silence can be just as deafening.
I graduated in August and by November the funds were running low—very low—in my student accounts. There were days when I decided whether to eat or take the quarters and buy the Sunday papers for the classified job ads. I had studied public policy, specifically manpower policy, and I knew about job search skills. When I interviewed for a job to help others find work, the job coach interviewing me asked why I hadn’t yet found a job. I could have answered the question in a million savvy ways, but that day, I burst into tears. I was so despondent. Needless to say, although the job coach was sympathetic, I didn’t get that job!
Oh, and then there was the interview with the state director in volunteer services. I was thrilled with the job and the interview. Everything went smashingly well and I fully anticipated a job offer. But the director called a day or so later and told me he “liked me too much and he was concerned about working in such close proximity.” Ever the professional, I said, “I’m sure we can work around that.” But he wouldn’t budge. Thanks to sexual harassment and civil rights laws, this type of thing is less frequent or at least more hidden these days.
Then there was the opportunity to work in Detroit’s inner city with x-offenders. I was game, even when a six foot, 250 pound female client towered above me, pounding her fists yelling, “What does a small town white girl from the middle class have to teach me?” I actually was offered this job and I seriously considered it until the director told me he made several overnight trips and I’d be expected to accompany him in the same hotel room for budgetary reasons! You’ve got to be kidding. I figure he had somebody else in mind and this was his way of getting me to refuse the offer so he could hire the person he preferred.
And finally there was one last interview before the BIG OFFER at a well known private psychiatric center. I was escorted to lunch through a dreary, green institutional hallway and left to dine alone after being seated across from a client. The staff shared that the client’s arms were tied to his wheel chair because he likes to throw his food. I gave him a cheery hello and he glared back at me. I attempted a few other polite, mindless-chatter comments, hoping to make contact and allay his discomfort. But instead I watched him take aim. Again and again, he lifted his spoon full of mashed potatoes as high as he could, and all through lunch, he flung them at me. He never took his glowering eyes off me and he stayed completely silent—just glare-load-aim-fire. Fortunately, his potato shots fell like duds on his plate. When I finished eating, in what seemed like eternity, I thanked him for dining with me and fled. Later when another lock down client asked me why I wanted to work there, my “I like people” reply sounded hollow even to me.
At long last, I did get a job, not even the best job, but one that kept me afloat and provided the next step forward: I became a training coordinator in a small rural hospital. With only a few bucks left in my pocket, I was called, interviewed and hired on the spot. I’m clueless. As far as I can see it didn’t have much to do with me and most everything to do with the needs of the hospital at that particular time. The director just thought we would be a good fit. And indeed we were.
I only stayed there for a couple of years. But the people in the community were wonderful to me. One morning I awoke to find four Mennonite women from the local community planting my garden. As a single working woman, at my first job, getting groceries into the house was a feat. To see them in my garden, loving me, caring for me and easing my way, brought me to tears again. But this time the tears were tears of gratitude for all I had been given.
Through my experience I grew in appreciation for the ways that people retain their dignity, sometimes through the worst of circumstances. I watched how others posed challenges to me and my own sense of worthiness. I learned to keep going and not give up, even when everything seemed dire. And mostly, I grew in compassion for myself and others. As the old Joan Baez song reminds me, ‘but for grace, there go I.” I awake now to an ever deepening sense of thanksgiving and gratitude.
You Will Be Healed!
First published in Unity Magazine, July 2000
When my sister Debra called that July 1997, I cried. She had found a cancerous lump in her left breast and was coming to Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for care. We hadn’t spoken meaningfully to each other in over twenty years. I’d argued with my parents back then and she had taken their side. She was right, but I felt she had deserted me when I needed her most. I had never really forgiven her, even though we had patched things up over the years. The “dead moose” in our corner was simply ignored. But, with both parents now gone, her call brought me back to what’s truly important in a family: We are there for one another. We have an opportunity to “rub rough stones smooth” and be for one another a healing of our deepest wounds. I was living in Maine at the time but immediately offered to meet her in Boston and stay with her through her arduous six-month recovery regimen.
I remember meeting her at the airport upon her arrival. It was as if God had wiped out all the years of hurt and all the lost love between us and had replaced us with our vulnerable and loving true Selves. We cried. But mostly we were filled with joy that God had—in this most peculiar way—brought us back to each other.
We were scared. But her courage and spirit were more alive than I had seen them in her since childhood. Where we were kids, she had been the neighborhood leader in all our games. Three years older than I am, she climbed trees higher, ran faster, fought harder than any of us in our neighborhood. I idolized her and mimicked many of her attributes. However, years of hard work, a broken marriage, and the deaths of our parents and many of her dearest friends had taken a toll on her. Now, for the first time in many years, I saw her transform herself as God worked a miracle through her.
After getting over the “sticker shock” of rental housing prices, we embraced the excitement of being in Boston, a historical gold mine of our nation’s earliest birthing battles. We delighted in its cobblestone walks, its Freedom Trail and Commons. We traveled to nearby sites in Concord and Lexington. We visited the Salem Witch Museum and the mansions in Newport, Rhode Island.
We frequently stayed in touch with our older sister who was maintaining the family businesses on Mackinac Island in Michigan. Coming from the Midwest, where it’s a day’s journey to get out of the state, we laughed to think that we had traveled through Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island—all in the space of a few hours. It seemed as if every day held a special delight—God’s blessing—and we intended to receive it all. Because it appeared that we may have just a short time left together, we became very present and alive. We learned that every moment is precious. It’s funny how God calls us to our faith, recalls us or challenges us to deepen it. We are so valuable to God that nothing is spared to call us to our perfection.
Along with my other sister, Debra attended Unity Church in Naples, Florida, during their winter season. So when she came to Boston, her first insistence was that we find the Unity Church. Being geographically challenged by Boston’s winding “cow paths,” one-way roads, and often-unmarked streets, I put off her request and took her instead to a church I knew. After about three weeks, my guilt overcame me, and I finally pulled out the Yellow Pages and telephoned Christ Church Unity of Brookline. God’s magic is so complete. The church was a short block from our apartment! We could literally see it when we were looking out our window!
On the first day we attended, Reverend Thomas Newman (Reverend Tom) was speaking. The sermon was about healing. As if God had acted to deepen our belief and to help us grow in courage and experience true reconciliation, at one point Reverend Tom looked directly at my sister and me. We were sitting several rows back from the pulpit. He said, “You will be healed.” We cried. But we already knew it was true. God had brought us back together, and the love that surpasses all understanding was ours. This time we both knew it.
It’s been (ten) years since that time, and my sister’s “clear” reports continue. She has made a number of major life changes. She has sold her business. She dabbles in drawing and other creative expressions. (She took several adult-education art classes in Boston when she was undergoing chemotherapy!) She sees the richness of every day—indeed, God is alive in her.
A continuing legacy of her choice to come to Boston for care is that twice a year she travels here, often with our older sister, for checkups. We have found a treasure in the “three of us.” Although laced with some underlying tension we feel while we are awaiting test results, every trip is an opportunity to be together, to laugh, to remember, to celebrate, to be present to the God within one another. I can never again forget the truth of those magnificent words “For nothing will be impossible with God.” (Lk.1:37).
In my role as executive coach, I’ve worked with several men in transition, both up the corporate ladder and off the ladder. I have consistently found men who are interested in healthy, happy lives, and are quite willing to do what it takes to realize their full potential.
I am intrigued by David Zinczenko’s research in Men, Love and Sex, the Complete User’s Guide for Women and very happy to see his results. His research shows that 35% of men in his survey say that a 50% raise beats out ‘losing 20 pounds’ (29%) and working less to spend more time with family (11%). He suggests that men “risk being considered ‘success objects’—to others and themselves.”
I acknowledge his point that external, social culture emphasizes the ‘success’ push. At Intrepreneur Coaching (IC), we are advocates for men envisioning their own personal, ‘unique value proposition’ (UVP)—what each is here to do on Earth planet. Sometimes this can be as simple as ‘changing your job description.’ Instead of ‘XXX Manager’ a truer job description might be ‘guru, mentoring others in reaching their full self expression.’
Each person has a ‘UVP,’ and when expressed, it takes the look and feel of the ‘Who in Whosville’ in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Remember the Who? They sang without any presents at all. Imagine life like that!
At IC, we work with the hypothesis that the greater number of people in an organization working out of their own unique UVP, the greater their impact on corporate bottom line. This calls for new corporate structures, mentoring the whole person through an entire life cycle.
The possibility before us is what Tom Malone in The Future of Work sees as the ‘convergence of technological and economic factors—particularly the rapidly falling cost of communication” that enables a change in business organization to realize both “the scale efficiencies of large organization and the human benefits of small ones: freedom, motivation and flexibility.”
I agree that our social inventions are evolving to meet the demands of our technological inventions and as new ‘freedoms’ allow us space for visioning and actualizing who we truly are, I suspect the culturally based ‘differences’ between men and women will also evolve.
Aren’t we the luckiest people on the face of the earth at this time to actually frame how we want our work life to look and what we see as the possibilities of a global workplace, right from the comfort of our own homes.
