Graduating next month =)

Hello any readers still out there in cyberspace.  The end of net neutrality means that the rich will soon control your access to the thoughts and words of little people like me, so I thought I'd make a final post while I still could.  And to think I once believed in trickle-down economics, silly child that I was.

So, here's the scoop on my marriage, career and family.  I am still married, even though my husband occasionally endulges in abusive behavior.  It happens far less frequently, and ends far more quickly, because I am so close to complete financial self-sufficiency that it is as good as done.  Nothing like seriously working on your exit plan to get a man to take you seriously. ;-)

I graduate in May and I have assurance of a well-paying job with "all the hours I want" to quote my potential new supervisor. I am one of the top five graduates in my community college.  I have already passed the national registry exam in my field which means I will graduate as a credentialed professional.  Can I get an "Amen"?

Our whole family stopped going to church two years ago.  My husband has been sleeping in church for years, or going in the back room with his laptop because he was on call.  Yes, sometimes it really was work, but other times, Sudoku or Minesweeper were what was calling to him.  So when my pastor called me and chewed me out, yelling and calling me insulting names over a facebook post that a) he admitted was true and rational but b) did not admit was hurting his "brand" and might have a potential negative impact on his income if read by reactionary small-minded people who can't understand basic English (his target audience =), my husband had no problem just not going anymore.

My son, great-hearted guy that he is, kept going for awhile, since he doesn't carry other people's grudges.  He still loved God and loved being part of the worship band, so continuing to go was the right thing to do.  Unfortunately, the pastor was not as emotionally mature as my teenage son.  He transferred his hatred towards me over to my son and started treating my son like an enemy instead of a friend.  Eventually my son stopped going as well.  Thank you, Pastor Todd for freeing us from the confines of the cultish business empire that is today's American evangelical Christianity.  Go now, you are forgiven. 

My daughter is out of the Air Force and wants no part of the war machine.  She saw through it quicker than I did, smart girl that she is.  She lives with her boyfriend, a man who clearly dotes on her.  He was also raised to go to church every Sunday and be a good American Christian.  So much for parents doubling down on religion, eh?   Why he won't marry her I don't know (she asked but he turned her down), but this I do know: he seems to truly love my daughter, I know she truly loves him, and they are by all accounts very happy with things the way they are.  So, I am happy for them.

My son is a wandering spirit at this point, his heart captured by poetry and art.  Where he will end up vocation-wise I do not know, but that is not my journey.  He is free to follow his own path, and I will love and accept him wherever that path leads.  I want nothing less than for him to follow his conscience and be good to all people to the best of his ability, and nothing more for him than self-sufficiency with generosity.  I am confident he will live up to my expectations, such as they are.

So, thank you faithful readers. And thanks to all in the evangelical community who shunned us, condemned us and turned your backs on us.  Here outside the wall, with all the other lovers of God and lovers of humanity, the "bleeding hearts and artists", life is truly worth living.  My prayer for you is that you too will also eventually escape "the mask of life they had placed upon the face of death"*, i.e. current American evangelical Christianity and all it encompasses.

*Damascus Road by Rich Mullins

Just Checking In

My first semester is over, and one thing I have learned: life is not going to get any easier for the next 20 months.  The school is not hard except in the most critical area: actual hands on learning of technique. We are given brief verbal instructions, once (sometimes not everyone gets them even) and then expected to perform like professionals. I kept waiting for the written instructions, checklists, visual aides, videos and helpful hints to be offered, in any format.  I finally found out (after flunking the hands on portion of the test) that they never will be offered.  It is expected that everyone who is not finding their own way to learn these skills (i.e. developing their own curriculum) and/or is not in the group who is lucky enough to hear the brief instructions in the first place, they will all be eliminated at the end of the next semester.

That, at this point, looks like it will include me.  BUT, I am now aware that I am waiting in vain for real teaching, and so I will spend my three weeks between semesters doing my best to develop my own curriculum for this skill.  Also, I know better now the level of expertise expected, though it is possible that starting out slow I will always lag behind the curve.  If that turns out to be the case, no worries. I will do my best to transfer to a different medical training school for a similar job.  The other option relies more on academics and scientific acumen, which are my strengths.  But I will have wasted a year and a lot of time and money.  :\

So, I am hoping that my home education skills at putting together my own curriculum will pay off in a big way.  Wish me well and pray for my success, all who read here.  I will need the cooperation of others so pray that I will have favor with the right people for this to work out.

On another note, my husband is happier and healthier than he has ever been.  He is working on his shame issues with his therapist, and that seems to be the foundation of all his depression and repressed anger.  Life with him is really good.

Also, I started doing thirty minutes of gentle yoga most mornings and evenings.  I got my first yoga lessons as a Christmas present.  I am now twenty pounds lighter, way more limber, and also happier.  Did you know the "Ohm" sound is really the first and last letter of the Sanskrit alphabet (Alpha and Omega, anyone?) followed by the MMMM sound because it is made with mouth closed reminding one of the presence of God within (...the kingdom of God is within you).  Why are Christians so scared by yoga?  Crazy.

I have thought about taking the blog off line, but I still get regular visitors reading for how Bill Gothard negatively affected my life.  So, though I will rarely post, I am going to leave the blog up for now.  I wish more evangelical women in crappy home school marriages would read here.  They would find the bread crumbs I left, and maybe be able to follow them out to freedom for their own family.  That's my wish.

Peace and good will, SS

The Sisterhood of the Hidden Dagger

I have gotten so used to posting every day that it is going to be tough neglecting my blog again, but more pressing IRL concerns start back up again tomorrow.  I am excited, a little scared, but deep in my spirit I feel....

quiet confidence.

I hope this turns out to be the appropriate feeling.  I have some reservations about being in a trade school vs. regular college, and they are all social.  I will have the same nineteen classmates for the whole 2 1/2 years, and the same two instructors.  In most situations, if someone annoys you (classmate or teacher) you can just clam up and get through the class/semester.  Not this time.  There's not even a day to cool off between classes.  Here's to Buddha and detachment! My plan is to be as Zen as possible while in class.

This will be all new to me.  I am by nature enthusiastic, outspoken, and (not bragging, it is what it is) smart.  I love learning.  I really get a thrill out of understanding new concepts.  It's not a chore to learn, it's a treat.  Here's hoping I can keep myself out of the limelight most of the time.  Even as I type those words out, I know I will have very limited success.  But hopefully, I will be better at it than in the past, with my newly begun practice of yoga to guide me.

Eighteen of my fellow students are women.  Most of them are close to my age.  I don't know if this will be a plus or a minus.  Growing up, I generally got along better with guys than gals.  I didn't understand why then, but I'm pretty sure I do now. 

I am no threat to guys. Men still have a distinct advantage over women in all fields, and fields traditionally held by women are no exception.  A guest  instructor for the shadowing course I had to take this summer was very open and free with her opinions on everything.  One of those opinions she candidly shared was that male nurses are better nurses than female nurses.  She is, of course, a Southern Baptist, so no surprise that she would defer to men in all things.  Still, it was very unnerving to see her be open about her own misogyny.

I am a threat to the other women in the class.  That has been my experience throughout my life.  It has been my daughter's experience.  It is probably the experience of smart and decent-looking women everywhere.  I briefly fantasized that there might be a sense of sisterhood in the career world that was missing in the realm of the stay at home mom, home schooling or otherwise.  

Well, there is: the Sisterhood of the Hidden Dagger.  It's not going to be any different than public school was, I'm sure. The only women who will befriend me are those who don't feel threatened by me.  All others will be ready to believe any gossip about me, any ugly rumor, and may even start some of their own.  I am not a pessimist by nature, but I know this is a very real danger in this social setting.

If I were very overweight, or were less than average attractive (not that I'm "smoking hot" or anything, far from it, but my face doesn't scare children), then no doubt some if not most of these women would befriend me.  If I were a B student, or even a C student, no doubt those in the same GPA area would befriend me.  Of course, if I were a conservative religious person like I was for so many years, that would probably help in this particular school.  But I'm not.

I'm smart, ambitious, fit, and while I won't be attending any functions that the Romneys would attend, my husband makes just enough money to keep us in the less affluent end of an affluent neighborhood.  I plan on using all this to my benefit, but I also plan on being as quiet about my advantages as I can.  Jealousy and spite lead to gossip, and ugly gossip has torpedoed many a woman, including myself. 

This sort of behind the scenes back-stabbing is oft practiced in Christian circles, so in this rural trade school in the South, I can expect  that my peers are well-versed in it.  I have been a victim too many times to count, and while in the past the "prize" women were vying for wasn't worth enough for me to stand my ground, this time it is.  Enjoy your positions in church and so-called "Christian" home school circles, back-stabbing gossips.  You won your little patch of ground.  I am moving on to bigger things.

And this time, I will not be marginalized or deterred from my goal.  I already know it's going to be hard to keep from being outed as a threat.  Even keeping your mouth shut is seen as a threat to someone spouting off opinions left and right.  By not agreeing openly, they know you are disagreeing privately.  I am just praying that enough of the job sites will be here in the city that I won't have to worry about it much.  

At the rural hospitals, I know there will be whole departments filled with anti-abortion, elitist, homophobic white Southern women.  Not my favorite, as you might have guessed.  My secret weapon here will be daily prayer and morning yoga before I leave for work.  My next strategy: proclaim at every opportunity that I am looking forward to taking a travelling job when I graduate.  This will calm people that I will not be competing with them for local jobs.  It has the advantage of not being completely false, because I will follow the money so I may very well take a travelling job.

Another strategy is to talk up moving to Florida when my husband retires, and pointing out that he is older than me so I'll still be working.  Also true and not true.   He is older than me and I will still be working after he retires, but he's not THAT much older than me.  

The final strategy, and the one on which all the rest hinges, is to not friend anyone from school on facebook.  In fact, I may even have to shut down my facebook account.  It's already private, and I go back and hide past posts pretty regularly.  I know that one of the two instructors stalks her students on facebook; she already lectured us that if we put on anything negative about her she would find out and have it on the overhead projector when we got to class the next day.  

I am not sure exactly how to handle this facebook situation.  It's possible I may rub the instructor the wrong way by not adding anyone from class as a friend.  I plan to say something like: I prefer to keep my private and professional life separate.  Or I could create a new account for school only using my intials instead of my name, but my name is so unique people would probably still try to friend me on both.  Not happening.  Not. Happening.

Suggestion are welcome, if any of you have some for me.  Otherwise, I probably won't post again for awhile.  Wish me luck and happiness, and know I wish  the same for you.  Peace and good will to all who read here, SS