Work

One of the places where I think women—or where I had challenges -- was the law profession is not equalized between men and women and that’s also one of the reasons why I’m in my own business.  Men still dominate the legal profession within larger firms in particular.  I would say they, as a whole, make a lot more money, they have wives—they have wives to do their housekeeping, take care of their children and so forth so it’s very different working in an environment where you’re expected to work 70 hours a week.  When it’s the mother who has the children to go home to, it’s very different.  It’s what the expectations are, and especially if you’re a new lawyer, you’re expected to just be there as long as necessary, sometimes 11 o’clock at night.  If the client’s needs demanded it, you just had to do the work: weekends, Sunday mornings, and so during the time that I was working at that rate, even though I was so-called part-time because I was only working 45 hours, I would go home, sometimes eight o’clock at night and I had not seen my children since seven o’clock that morning.  So you do feel that your—the balance is out of balance when that occurs.  It’s always a constant rebalancing act. 

Well, my mother was a teacher so I wanted to be a teacher and that was acceptable to my family. But when I was young I also thought I wanted to be a nurse, but I was just discouraged from doing that. Nursing is a very, very hard occupation and it’s a very dirty occupation. You deal with a lot of terrible stuff in nursing and so they discouraged me, so I went to become a teacher. But afterwards, after I had my children I just became very interested in being a nurse so I, I have the idea that things that you want to do in your childhood are really deep rooted and eventually you’ll do them, even if you don’t do them right away.

See that was the tough thing.  Here I had this job that I absolutely adored, but I couldn’t travel.  Had a baby, you know, and, and that was when, you know, women were trying to have it all, and it’s really hard, and I desperately wanted to keep my job, and I also – but I also wanted to stay home so Tom McAn said well let’s see if we can make this work, and you can just be a consultant.  So for a year I tried working, and then I, you know, juggling the two, and to be honest, I just couldn’t do it.  Because the travel – I couldn’t travel, and I really wanted to be home, and I felt like I was doing neither job as well as I wanted to.  So I left Tom McAn, and stayed home for 13 years, which, which turned out to be great, you know what I mean?  That was exactly what I needed to do, and it was fabulous, but it was a wonderful job and I hated to leave it.  So – and now the job that I’m in now is part-time, and when I went back to work that is the perfect way to juggle family, and, and work.

there was an intellectual challenge always to being able to deal with large families and put the pieces together to see what would be the intervention that would help them begin to think of things in a new way. In other words, therapy is a way to help people find a new road map, so that they walk out of the office feeling a little bit differently about their issues. So I like the noise, and I like the challenge, and I love being with all sorts of different people, and I liked hearing their voices and trying to rearrange the voices so that they could hear each other. And most of the time when people come in to therapy …  not listening to each other, not knowing how to understand one another …  that becomes a challenge to find a way to make everybody’s voice count.

We do nursing home shows and local things and community things, senior residences and we still do....so you get to practice your dance but dance is a performing art and if you don’t perform you don’t get the experience and the confidence developing it. I call it old dolls and new dolls and it’s one of the greatest joys of all. Teaching and being able to bring – I have students right through adult students who dance with me, little ones and their parents of the little ones. Oh they love it and this is great because to see the human interaction that goes on, the happiness, that’s just key so it’s really great. People that can’t move and then they’re watching other people that can, particularly the small ones that are so fresh and live.

I would say to women it’s never too late to go to college, never too late to think you can’t change a career, no matter what your age is, there’s always some network or something that you can find either by volunteering or by connecting to work in a job or in education to bring you to another level. I just think you can never ever think no matter how old you are that ... you’re stuck in a rut and you can’t do anything else. I think you can always find an avenue to go, and it might take you lots of different jobs and lots of different places, but it’s where you end up that’s really, really important. So, never give up.

I think every woman should be prepared to do what they want to do.  Don’t listen to anybody else and to also sorta feel out different opportunities.  When I was young my father would say, "Why don’t you be a dental hygienist?" He never said, "Why don’t you be a dentist?"  My brother was gonna be a doctor but I would be the dental hygienist.  Women aren’t there anymore, thank God. But there weren’t many role models when I grew up of women doing that.  I mean I do remember an orthodontist who was a woman who was one of my father’s friends.  But he never said, "Gee why don’t you do that?" The thing is, I think women need to be exposed. I like that program where women go to work with their fathers. I think the exposure and somehow I think in high school if there’s a way that kids can get exposed to different type of things at that time -- of fields and interests that they know what they want and go from there. 

I started going to Haiti with students to have experiences working with the poor and that was over twenty years ago. When the [2010 Haiti ] earthquake happened -- to the beauty of Facebook, which I think is a support -- many of my students came back to me and said, "We know you still have to be in Haiti and what's going on? What can we do?" And so last January, my former stduents and I formed an organization called Spirit of Hope and we fund people to go and work in Haiti.

I have very high expectations of myself and I am not sure I have been successful yet.  I think that’s because when my mother was dying. [Pause]  She said to my aunt…she said to my aunt, “You’ll have to take care of Sandra, but you’ll never have to worry about Edla Anne; she will take care of herself.”  And that’s what drives me. So that’s quite a compliment, but it’s also a curse, so it goes both ways.  But, that’s what keeps me going.