Work

I have a lot to say about women and education. I think there is such pushes to—I don’t even know how to put this. I think that my biggest challenge from kindergarten to defending my PhD thesis. Why don’t you talk more? Why don’t you smile more? Right, I think there’s such—it’s hard to crack past that. It’s hard to yell over the guy who’s saying nothing, but saying a lot of it and getting all the attention. I think that’s really tough. And I found that and some of it is personality and some of it is gender.  There’s plenty of women who are falling off their chairs answering questions, but I found that the professors I worked with, it wasn’t really male culture it was either patronizing or it was diminishing. I could not wait till when I came here. And Mark got his job and he was teaching, and I was finishing up, I couldn’t wait to get out of Princeton. Smith was fine [laughs]. Smith should have prepared me for the rest of it.

I belonged to the Women's Alliance which was a feminist group that I wanted to see what that was like.  So we would end up talking about what we were studying a lot and that always—I learned about myself.  That was always beneficial for me because I learned about myself. Even in my current jobs I still see this.  It’s sort of the abstract ideas that give me energy again.  Like what I do in my job to a great extent is supervise a whole bunch of volunteers and supervise employees and write grants and do budgets and write fundraising letters and all these things. But when I want to sort of get energized again about doing it, and I love doing all that stuff, and I'm not really a scholar, but if I go and I read in the field, like if I go and do some research to present a talk, if I do some historical research, or when I was working running an art center, I would go to the college art association and just hear art history [laughs].  That gave me a bunch of energy and so for me that was a big part of the mentoring groups there. 

So I have many anthropologist friends that could never work with the families. One of the—I think one of the reasons people are attracted to archeology and anthropology is because you don’t actually have to talk to people. And you’re sort of behind the scenes. And I never minded, as an anthropologist, getting along with people is an important thing, but also understanding them. And so I have dealt with people from all different walks of life under the most horrific circumstances. And that was extremely important to me. And then to transfer that to this job, being director of the Molly Bish Center, it's extremely important that I understand the perspective of the victim, of the survivors that are left behind because they in fact are victims themselves, they’re just not deceased. And, you know, they’re the walking wounded. And when I was at the medical examiner’s office I couldn’t believe how many people had been impacted by that that you would never know just walking down the street. And so it became a very important part of who I am and what I did, but being able to translate that because I can get up in front of a professional audience at the American Academy of Forensic Science meetings and I can talk about skeletonized remains that are traumatized. I’ve done all sorts of trauma and had to explain that, on the stand as well as at professional meetings, intellectually. But viscerally, what happens when you’re in a courtroom, and you’re describing that.  Like when I was in a courtroom for the Bulger testimony.  Really, really hard to see the expressions of the families and to see their loved ones.  They didn’t know where their loved ones were for sixteen to twenty years. And to be able to translate what I do into to telling that victim’s story and also doing it in a way that is respectful so that I’m keeping all of that in mind as the families are looking at me and some of them had to get up and leave, which I totally understand. And to be able to be a voice for those has been something that’s just—people say, “How can you do what you do?” and a lot of people don’t understand it. And that’s, that’s physical, that’s manual, you know, the nasty part of the decomposition. Yes, but that’s physical. It’s the emotional stuff and being humane and human and being professional is really important to me. And that we’re bringing these kids, these families—most important is bringing them home. And then telling their story.

I feel good about this work. I feel I am supporting young people in Worcester and being able to kind of see Worcester in a different light than through school, but also get to know themselves so they can go down a successful path.  This new position that I am doing, which is youth employment coordinator, has been a great experience to connect with youth from ages 16 to 24 and just supporting them in the time they are out of school or in school and thinking what is their next steps, and what the career is going to look like, or what jobs do they want to get to reach that career. So it kind of is what I just went through so it’s so prevalent in my mind so I’m thinking about how getting them to know themselves to be successful and it’s been a really good experience so far.  

Find out what your potential is and build on it, and always have a secondary skill that you can fall back on, and go to conferences, get out, make connections, network. I can’t express the importance of networking, especially in women's groups.  I try to do that. Once you get out of your environment and go into a different, a whole different—a national conference, and you get so excited and people come back so elevated.  And so what if you’re energetic? If you a win a few, lose a few, you know?  At least you made a start and you’re a changed individual.

Try to be happy you know? And work hard. I mean I look at Hillary Clinton and the position that she’s in now where she gets so much criticism. But she said something the other day, I think it was on Humans of New York, about how when she started law school and everyone was like, “You're taking a spot from a man who could be here and you shouldn't be here,” and stuff like that and,  “Now some man’s going to have to go to war and die because you're here.” And our generation is so much more lucky [that] we don't face that as much. It’s still out there of course, but not as much as it used to be.  So I think it’s really important to take advantage of all the opportunities that we have and whether for you that means being the best stay at home mom that you can ever be or the best scientist or a teacher or whatever it is just take advantage of the opportunities that we have because they weren't always available and so we should definitely revel in them. We were talking about how my definition of success changed.  I mean I never saw myself as that mom who was going to be on the PTO.  I didn't see that as success, but as I’m seeing my son grow and seeing the impact it has on him now I see that as something that makes me feel successful and so you know taking advantage of all aspects of what it means to be a woman and the opportunities that are available to us is really important.

I think to have a full life, just to have people around you that love you and care about you.  Work is great and I could get all these accolades and my title could change and I can have these initials after my name and get awards and I can do all that, and that’s wonderful, But my friendships and my family and those connections, that’s the most important thing I think.

Anyway, we did change our name to True North Holistic Center and that suited us well for how the work had sort of evolved over the years and the “true north” coming from the fact that years ago, when sailors were out at sea, they didn’t have all these instruments or anything. The only way they knew where they were is by the north star and as long as they could keep that in mind and in view, then they couldn’t get too far lost. They might veer off the course a little bit, but as long as they could follow that true north, then they stayed the course and they were safe and they didn’t get lost.  And my sense is that every woman—every person—but because I was particularly focusing on women—has that true north within herself.  What are the things that guide your life that aren’t moveable?  There are some things that are going to change as you grow, as you age and have different experiences, but there’s some things that just aren’t moveable for you. Maybe it’s that you feel very honor bound to always speak your truth or family is so important to you or service to others is so important to you. Whatever those things are that make you who you are, the things that make your truly inner core being, those things don’t change in your life. Your circumstances change, the people may come and go in and out of your life, but those things don’t change. If you can stay with that true north of your own personal being you’re not going to get too far lost.

I sort of feel what happened in my poems, I write about hurt, and I wonder maybe—and sadness, especially hurt in my poems—because other people in my family couldn’t.  I think that’s why I write or why I have things to write about because I’m feeling [what] other people are not able to express, but also I’m expressing things for them.

I did work with goats with Heifer Project so I got familiar with that animal when I worked on the farm in Rutland. So that was my initial exposure. I was born and raised with dairy cows, worked with cows all through college. We milked cows here for years and years. What got me into goats as my current profession is that I wanted to make cheese. I didn’t want to work off the farm, I wanted to work on the farm and we were milking cows at the time so I was actually looking into making cow cheese. So I went around to the few cheese makers that were around here at that point in time, and one person that I knew, she was milking goats and making goat cheese. So I went and visited her just to see that aspect. And as fate would have it she wanted to sell her business, she had about 30-35 goats and the cheese-making equipment and a small business set up. So, it was, in many ways, it was more attractive to buy her business and bring everything here and sort of just go from there. And so that’s what I did and that is how I landed into goats.