my graduation speech

ok… so I graduated on Sat. Jan 17, 2009. Both my faculty advisors introduced me and they said such nice things about me – I was incredibly touched and grateful (and incredibly embarrassed!)

My dissertation defense was on Jan 15 – and it went well. The main question was when would I publish and which tack should I take… but honestly, I have to finish the edits and officially graduate first!!!

They told all of us who were graduating that we had 2 minutes to give our acknowledgments and I am such a good doobie, I only took 2 minutes – but I wanted to say just a bit more. So here is my 3.5-minute speech!

* * *

I would like to begin by sharing a poem:

The Moment
by Margaret Atwood

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

_ _ _
I am so grateful for having been found – again and again, by family and friends, by poems and stories, by ideas and theories, by clients and supervisors, by teachers and peers, by students and colleagues. I have been found and brought home time after time and for that I am so grateful.

Anyone who knows me well knows I love children’s literature. I have read several book series many times. Pullman’s series, His Dark Materials, Madeleine L’Engle’s series, A wrinkle in time, Lemony Sniket’s Series of Unfortunate Events, and of course, JK Rowling’s Potter series. I love a good story!

I love the catch in my breath, when I realize I am being swept away – when I recognize a truth that only exists in fiction (as it does in all art) – when I recognize myself and those I love in the beauty of the never-quite-wholly-true, the glimmer of recognition, the glimpse of the known, the sweet bitter tension of the impossible.

This is what has found me at Fielding.

I have been lucky to have three lives at Fielding. The first was my life in the Alonso cluster. There I learned the power of the group, the maxim that homicide is better than suicide – that is, not to be afraid of my anger, my power, and my ability to survive – and the beauty of postmodern psychoanalytic relational ideas – namely, the idea of being able to bear the constant tension between recognizing the other and asserting the self. There I learned the importance of giving generously to the group, because we can always have more-of-the-whole in the group.

My second life at Fielding was in the Cramer cluster. That is where I learned how to be a Puerto Rican frizzy haired mother, suburban professor, who was also a solid clinician and clinical supervisor. Marge, your ability to bear and name the projections of your students and clients was inspiring – I learned so much from you. Your ability to make a space where I could share not only my growth as a clinician, but also my anxieties about becoming a “suit” in the process was essential. Your encouragement to pursue my interest in class dynamics and your enthusiasm for my project from the beginning was so important for me. I hovered for a long time before landing on a topic and you held the space for me to do that with humor, poking, and love. Thank you.

My third life in Fielding has been as a researcher. I have loved my dissertation project from beginning to end. This project gave me the opportunity to contain many contradictions and multiple identities in a way I wouldn’t have been able to without the daring ideas of other researchers in the field, without the love and support of my dissertation support group and closest friends, and without the stories that my participants shared. Ruthellen, your work as a leader in the field of narrative research has not only been an inspiration, but has given me the courage to be bold in my thinking and writing. Your edits and suggestions made the work much stronger. I hope that you’ll encourage me to continue to be bold. Thank you for being my scholarly role model.

Lastly, I can’t go without thanking my family and friends. While I know that you have often had to sacrifice an available wife, a cooking mom, a happy friend, a devoted daughter and niece, for a stressed out, sleep-deprived, preoccupied one – you have also supported me and allowed me to pursue a passion that has let me not only love ideas, but also become all the me I can be to love all the you you can be. Words are not enough. Thank you!

lost to myself

The past year has been crazy

three days ago I submitted the second draft of the dissertation - it is really MUCH better. And yet, the cost of making it better has drained me of nearly all my life energy. I am seriously wounded in my soul - depleted. I decided about 10 weeks ago that all I could do was try to finish this draft - no music, no exercise, no friends - nothing but finishing. I had hoped it wouldn't take so long, and that I would have time to re-plenish, to re-member myself, to re-vitalize my already depleted self/soul. But it took me much longer than I expected and cost me much more than I expected.

I can barely feel my insides... barely feel my capacity for love, my aimless loving heart that wants to be captured.

I don't know what I'm doing with myself - am I totally deceiving myself?

I am committed to a totally dysfunctional job - it drains me. There are several people who do such a piss-poor job there that it makes the work for all the rest of us soooo much more difficult.

But I can't bring myself to leave... I think I am meant to be there - to teach what I teach... I think I do it well EVEN THOUGH it makes me crazy sick to my stomach with anxiety.

I am soooooo neurotic, always full of fear and worry. There is a video portrait of Doris Lessing on the Nobel site (she won the Nobel prize for literature in 2007) and she reads a short section of The Golden Notebook ... "with the tiredness comes guilt. I know all the forms and variations of this guilt so well they even bore me. But I have to fight them nevertheless" - that's how I feel about worry.

today my best friend in town will leave and drive 3,000 miles away from me - on a quest to find herself, her "space" - her place where her own soul, her own and necessary place, where her voices may speak to her, her alone, where she can dream - again Doris Lessing's words...

I want that for her, but mostly I worry about myself - and how I will survive such a loss.

waiting to be swept away

so I'm back to writing the dissertation! I am completely overwhelmed by the prospect of finishing the draft by Aug 10, but I have to!!!!!

I've got the interviews transcribed and cleaned up! I've gone through them for themes (well almost... I still have one more to do!) and I keep reading the proposal in the hopes of trying to send myself in the right direction - I know you can't step into the same river twice, but I keep hoping that if I can stand there with my feet in the water that I can at least get a feel for the flow of the water and then start trying to move myself along with the current. I am hoping to be swept away!

I know I am going to have to just pick up my feet at some point and let myself be carried by the water, but I'm trying to both orient myself and brace myself for the bumps and fear that comes along the way... but meanwhile, I'm spooking myself.

WRITE! Finish the last interview, and get to the writing.

I know I'm working on things below the surface...

I hope that I can turn my personal stance piece into the prologue! We'll see.

what's up with that!

so it's been months since I wrote because I really can't handle the juggle of work and my own creativity. It just doesn't seem like there is enough of me to extend this far.

I have been playing on-line scrabble with a friend and this was a note I sent to her recently - it will give you a small taste of how I am...

Sunday I drove down to NYC to visit my grandma.

The drive down to NYC was easy, of course coming home I was tired... but I'm glad I went. My grandmother seemed in good spirits on Sunday, and my aunt says that the new woman who comes on the weekends is good - my aunt's worried about the woman who comes T-F because my grandmother told her that the woman said to her "I don't get paid overnight so don't even call me, I won't get up!" My grandmother has a terrible bruise on one of her hands from hitting the wall trying to call the ladies' attention - she doesn't like to sit in urine overnight and if she needs to pee she wants to get up but can't by herself... anyway, it's that kind of thing and my aunt is very stressed and upset, and it was really sad to see. I just wish there was more I could do!


Only one more week of classes - which means that this week is all about reading papers!!!! Of course, there are a few other projects that really need attention as well, so i end up feeling torn and wasting energy on that, but overall I am really enjoying the weather and the budding trees.

two poems

The first is a poem I wrote on the last day of our trip after a visit to Avila -

The storks of Avila

In real life
they are regal
austere overseers
tall and elegant
the white of their bodies
in stark contrast
to the black tips
of their wings
and the deep coral
of their beaks

not at all
like the fairy-tale deliverers
we're used to

so much is not how we imagine

Along the walled city
we stand, ten women
modern and yearning
watching old men
in berets and blue jackets
walking arm in arm
with the sun on their faces
through the gates
to the plaza
for a mid-morning coffee

And our coffee
brings talk of mystics and martyrs
of a woman who also yearned
of conquest, expulsion, submission, domination
of complicity and resistance

Later, at the train station
we watch
as one, then two, take flight
stunned by the effort
it appears to take
and by the incongruity
of our lives with this place

What birth within us
have they heralded?
What purge?
With whom shall we walk
arm in arm?

The second poem is for my son, written after his baptism yesterday:

Baptism

It wasn't until after
we had sat back down
literally, became one of the crowd
that he wiped the last drop off his chin

I love
that he was
willing
to let it stay
that long
on his face

Several days before
I had been told that a good Muslim
washes his mouth, his nose, inside his ears,
even wets the top of his head
before entering the mosque
to pray

The first thought we all have
is that we need to cleanse ourselves
that these acts provide us a purifying ritual
and surely they do

But the young man
with the bright, warm eyes
and the gentle, soft voice
and the open, welcoming hands
told us the ritual was to
wake up our senses
to alert all of our body
to prepare to hear
the voice of God

wake up
my son
you are becoming a man
you belong
you are loved
in you we are well pleased

sitting in an internet cafe in Seville, Spain

Well, no surprise... it is my free day in Seville, and I feel an intense need to be on the internet. So here I have been, at the internet cafe, for an hour and 20 minutes. The past few months of basically hanging out on the net while on my sabbatical have totally trained (poisoned?) me to need and want this. I read and send emails to my family - who I miss tremendously. I even get a pleasure out of the familiarity of checking work email. And now here I am at my blog... there aren´t really any stories I can tell without needing time to write and rewrite.

There are orange trees everywhere... the streets are filled with them. Ripe oranges hanging from them, reminding me that juicy, fruity, living is just within my grasp.

I have not yet processed what it means to be here... privilege?

Our trip has mostly been about the many, multiple layers of quest, conquest, and reconquest - that and religious war! There are no women in this history (Only Isabelle... and I haven´t heard much about her yet?) ... only men and the cities which have a feminine feeling - the gemstones, the prizes, the vessels of churches, mosques and synagogues which are raped over and over again!

it´s kind of hard to come to peace with... but there is always food... and we´ve been eating 5 meals a day.
8 am - breakfast - a croissant with jam, coffee with milk
11 am - elevenses - a small snack - a slice of potatoe omelette, another coffee
2 pm - the large meal of the day - olives begin!!! fish, garlic, potatoes
7pm - tapas - beer, more olives, more garlic, more potatoe omelette
9:30 pm - a light dinner - beer, more olives, more garlic, artichoke hearts, spinach and chick peas

I´m eating lots of olives. they make me very happy.

I miss home.

dizzy, I'm so dizzy, my head is spinning...

I love that song...ok, not really, it's annoying, but I really am ditzy. I mean dizzy with Xmas and trying to prepare for the spring semester and with generally feeling really anxious about going back to work.

Meanwhile, I'm going to try to send out Christmas cards - and instead of a little "brag" letter this year (although honestly, I've tried not to make them too boastful), I am including this poem. It's not meant to be cryptic, just sufficiently devoid of details so as not to embarrass the little people/teens. If you have the patience, I'm putting the brag letter I won't be sending out below the poem.

Growing up

in our cozy home
things still
appear
grow
change

not plants
but people
and ideas
and convictions

learning geometry proofs
and world capitals
also
how to
read the map of each others’ hearts

we learn scales
and f-stops
remembering the map
is not the same as the terrain

remembering that now
is not then

On the horizon
empty nests appear to take shape

Vision becomes blurred
and sharpened

as some reach forward
while others reach back

as love binds what time steals

- Christmas 2006

Christmas letter version #1:

December 19, 2006

Well, we added two more stadiums to our baseball stadium quest this year. In early June, we drove to Cleveland, OH and Pittsburgh, PA. While there, we not only enjoyed the baseball, but the Andy Warhol Museum, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

S has done a great job of transitioning to B High this year. He spends even more time than ever with friends, still sings in the choir and is preparing for a chorus trip to Spain in April 07.

K was on sabbatical this fall – and although she didn’t complete her dissertation, she did “advance to candidacy.” Basically this means her proposal was approved and now she can officially collect her data. It also means, that she’ll spend one more summer (07) working on the dissertation, but then by Christmas next year she should be done! Say a prayer! Sabbatical also meant starting cello, joining the Daughters of Abraham, and going to the art therapy conference in New Orleans in Nov.

M has officially decided that bassoon was only a phase, and that next year she will NOT be playing it! While it lasted she was able to earn several bassoon awards and did Music on the Hill this past summer. She continues to be a big SIMS fan, and is wondering if architecture or interior design is the career for her.

P continues to do full-time solo practice in B. He’s still sailing, has invested a bit more in photography, and has been running consistently all year.

It’s been a full year, and we continue to look for ways to live out a sense of social conscience despite all our privileges. We don't have babies or dogs to keep us honest, but as we all try-on "adulthood" we know that there is more to life than accumulating more.

...anyway, that's when I starting thinking there was no way I could really pull it off.

Here's Christmas letter version #2 which let's just say was a tad angry...

December 19, 2006

Our year hasn’t seen much of a change in our social consciousness – I can honestly say that despite the intensity of our trip to El Salvador last year, no significant changes have been made by our family to become part of the global solution. If anything we’ve become even more consumerist and driven to own and numb ourselves from awareness of a larger consciousness.

S started at B High this year. He spends even more time than ever with friends, still sings in the choir and is preparing for a chorus trip to Spain in April 07.

K was on sabbatical this fall – and although she didn’t complete her dissertation, she did “advance to candidacy.” Basically this means her proposal was approved and now she can officially collect her data. It also means, that she’ll spend one more summer (07) working on the dissertation, but then by Christmas next year she should be done! Sabbatical also meant starting cello, joining the Daughters of Abraham, and going to the art therapy conference in New Orleans in Nov.

M has officially decided that bassoon was only a phase, and that next year she will NOT be playing it! She’s also not sure that C Middle School is in the cards for next year, and has decided to apply to private schools.

P continues to do full-time solo practice in B. He’s still sailing, has invested a bit more in photography, and has been running consistently all year.

anyway... expect to see the poem in your cards instead of the letter... only you know why!