As time went on, my husband and I were cut off from my family as I was disinherited. Unfortunately, he did not see marriage as his responsibility to take care of his family and support them. I went to work in the 50s to support my three children. A woman stopped me and asked how I dared to work with three children. I asked her if she wanted to support my family or would prefer to pay for me on welfare? She left me, looking puzzled. Again, I felt the outsider because I really wanted to be like other women who were able to be around their children as they grew up and share in their 'firsts'. Our marriage ended in divorce before the country followed me statistically. Once again, I was an outsider. Married couples were uncomfortable, the women jealous that I might be after their husbands and the men all to happy to make up the physical lack in my life. The few couples who remained my friends were few.
Once again, with my graduate degree and general need, like a sponge, to absorb knowledge from the world around me, I felt alone and misfit, I did not fit with the line of ladies at the console with me who were satisfied with little intellectual stimulation, working as a telephone operator from 11 PM to 7 AM so I could care for my children while they were awake.
The result was I took the first social work job that found me, literally. A few months later.I worked for a residential treatment center for teen age girls,working up to clinical director. The school was located in a town outside Chicago, where the area was so ritzy, we were not allowed to hang clothing outside to dry. Everyone had to have a dryer. Once again, I felt part of the school but a total outsider to the community.
My next job was in a mental hospital where there were rarely professional of Greek descent. The in group were the psychiatrists with the byword, "Think Yiddish; look British" I recognized another group that felt 'outside' but I was even more outside than they. A few years later I traveled to Greece with the hope that among my parents' roots I would feel that I belonged. I learned that I was as much an outsider in Greece as I was in America. At lunch with one of the psychiatrists with whom I worked, we talked about how he, too, went to Israel hoping for the same thing as I in going to Greece. We were both disappointed and concluded feeling accepted is something that happens within yourself. When you are comfortable with who you are, it doesn't matter if those around you accept you or invite you into their inner circles. By then I was in my early forties. Was I on an evolutionary schedule in which I would naturally mature into these insights? I'll never know. I learned to be comfortable in my own head and skin as my version of living happily ever after. I love the Kazantzakis quote on his gravestone in Crete. I want nothing; I fear no one; I am free. (even if there are few places in which I belong).
Once again, with my graduate degree and general need, like a sponge, to absorb knowledge from the world around me, I felt alone and misfit, I did not fit with the line of ladies at the console with me who were satisfied with little intellectual stimulation, working as a telephone operator from 11 PM to 7 AM so I could care for my children while they were awake.
The result was I took the first social work job that found me, literally. A few months later.I worked for a residential treatment center for teen age girls,working up to clinical director. The school was located in a town outside Chicago, where the area was so ritzy, we were not allowed to hang clothing outside to dry. Everyone had to have a dryer. Once again, I felt part of the school but a total outsider to the community.
My next job was in a mental hospital where there were rarely professional of Greek descent. The in group were the psychiatrists with the byword, "Think Yiddish; look British" I recognized another group that felt 'outside' but I was even more outside than they. A few years later I traveled to Greece with the hope that among my parents' roots I would feel that I belonged. I learned that I was as much an outsider in Greece as I was in America. At lunch with one of the psychiatrists with whom I worked, we talked about how he, too, went to Israel hoping for the same thing as I in going to Greece. We were both disappointed and concluded feeling accepted is something that happens within yourself. When you are comfortable with who you are, it doesn't matter if those around you accept you or invite you into their inner circles. By then I was in my early forties. Was I on an evolutionary schedule in which I would naturally mature into these insights? I'll never know. I learned to be comfortable in my own head and skin as my version of living happily ever after. I love the Kazantzakis quote on his gravestone in Crete. I want nothing; I fear no one; I am free. (even if there are few places in which I belong).
2 comments:
I just added your web page to my bookmarks. I enjoy reading your posts. Thank you!
No, thank you! There is gratification in knowing that all I learned as a psychotherapist and in the many decades I have lived might be of some use to others.
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