My Own Critic

He sounded so excited when he left me the message. "A poem you submitted is being published in some book," he said. "Call me back as SOON as you get this." I waited a few minutes, trying to figure out what poem I wrote that could possibly be being published. Besides some poems I drove myself crazy over in college writing courses, most of my poetry was written for personal reasons and weren't shared beyond family and some friends. Then I remembered, one slow Sunday afternoon--in one of my fits of futility and "life's getting nowhere" mentalities--I submitted one of my college poems to a free online contest. I called my husband back.

Apparently, not only had my poem made it into a new poetry compilation that was to come out this year, but it also made me eligible as a semi-finalist for a contest with a hefty prize. I was in--and I was giddy with excitement. The more I read though, the more I felt like I was simply being prodded to buy this "book" my poem was to be published in. After reaffirming my suspicions on several sites online, I shredded the letter. My husband stared. I just shook my head.

A scam, a trap, a pretty lie to lure in people who are so obsessed with their own self-realized 'talent' that they can't see--that according to this company--everyone is really a poet just like them. Everyone's poem makes it into the book. Everyone is a semi-finalist. Everyone is equal. Isn't that how we want the world to be?

Crushing the shredded pieces with my foot into the bottom of the trash can, I couldn't help being a little disappointed. I wanted someone to like what I wrote. I wanted someone to approve of my worth as a writer without having to face them in person. I wanted my poem to be the one entry they couldn't stop reading. But a fake approval was worse than a rejection. I felt mocked--like I was being dumped into a cell full of people who spit out lines murdered by incessant rhyming.

More than ever, I want to be different. I want to be a semi-finalist, but not in a contest where everyone wins. I've never been big into winning--probably because I haven't been known to win at much, but I do want to know that I can excel at something. And in this world, we have to be told we excel--us telling ourselves just isn't good enough. I'm not sure it even always matters to us who tells us, as long as we consider them to be a good source. Just today, a mother of one of my students stopped me in the lobby and told me that we were doing something right because her son's language had improved more in a few weeks at our school than in two years in public school. I walked away feeling great. Another "A." Another good note. Another award. I was doing my job and I was doing it well. I had to be because a parent told me her child was doing better. Then I started thinking about how much the parent works with her son, how much the child was improving just by socializing with our other students. I was one factor in his improvement, but I didn't deserve an award--not by a long shot. I had snatched up the comment just like I had snatched the envelope off the kitchen counter. I had been sniffing around for approval all day--and there it was.

We can't all get the approval we need from others. Sometimes we may not even deserve it and other times, we may just need to realize that our own approval is just as good--or better. Nothing feels worse than fake commendation--especially if at first, you genuinely believed it.

I need to be the writer and teacher I know I can be and be proud of myself for always putting the best parts of myself into everything I do. It's dangerous to depend on what others say, especially when it stops mattering who's saying it, and only matters that something good is being said. If I can keep an ongoing contest with myself, constantly making myself work harder to rise above the writer and teacher I was the day before, at least I'll know that I'm always getting an honest critique. I'll know who I'm being measured up against and most of all, I'll know my reasons for signing myself up. I don't want to be in a shabby contest everyone wins and I don't need to sit around waiting for someone to recognize that I may need the boost of a little recognition. Our own lives can be contests, daily entries that sometimes feel like wins, sometimes like losses, but always like a lesson worth listening to.

Constructive Writer's Block

I've finally started taking the advice of countless writers--and everyone else--"If you want to be a writer, you probably need to write." I've somehow tricked myself into believing, for quite some time, that getting a book published just happens. Unlike most jobs, I can't go to school, get a degree, get some training, and apply to be a published author.

I know the process will be long, arduous, and outright painful at times, but I now know I can keep at it. The fact that the "itch" to write something, to expose some piece of the world to readers in a way they haven't heard before, never subsides, pushes me to keep working.

I can't help thinking of a writer's relationship with one's characters when I observe the way some of the children at the Autism Learning Center (where I work) play. Although often finding it extremely difficult to talk to other children, I've witnessed some children find it remarkably easy to talk through dolls, action figures, puppets, etc. It's almost as if, by disguising their voices or identities, communication is suddenly less frightening. I work with one boy with Aspergers who will barely sing along with music. However, hand him something inanimate to "sing to" and he suddenly belts out a nearly perfect tune. Oddly, writing makes me feel the same way. I can hide behind characters, words, and symbolism as I find ways to communicate with others. I may find it hard to stare the world in the face and belt out my own tune, but give me a pen and my voice will come.

With publication as my ultimate goal, that fear of communicating face-to-face creeps back into the picture. Sitting in my self-created writer's cove, I can say whatever I want without anyone actually hearing. I can say the words are meant for others to hear without actually having to deal with what readers really think about them. Once I make that leap into the publication process, I offer my writing up as a sacrifice to be torn apart, ravaged, and hopefully salvaged.

I have a lot of maturing to do first before I even consider offering my work up to that level of scrutiny. By writing as much as I can, I hope to continue learning how to become comfortable in my own skin--how to use my pen and my characters to expose parts of myself and my experiences that I am desperate for the world to hear.

Here's to a life-long commitment.

I Am Not My Resume

Recently, I've really been re-evaluating what I should be doing with my life. I've gotten no clear answers, no revelations pointing to one dream job. Since my first steady tax-free babysitting gig when I was 11, I have always worked with kids. As I've gotten older, the jobs have continued to become more professional and the goals surrounding each job far surpass a parent's expectations for a babysitter. For almost two years, my experiences have primarily been with children on the autism spectrum. Both of my jobs working with Autistic children have been challenging and frustrating at times, but also rewarding in a way that I've never felt before. At Walden, success sometimes came in the form of first words, an autistic child socializing with their typical peers, or a child learning how to drink from a cup and eat a variety of solid foods. At the ALC, I've seen success come in the form of a 13 year old boy toilet training, a 6-year old finally looking at and occasionally talking to peers over adults, and children picking up language bit by bit and beginning to piece it together into conversation. Successful moments may feel few and far between sometimes, but seeing children accomplish things that people thought couldn't be expected of them, is truly amazing. I don't know that everyone is meant to have one particular calling in life (career-wise), although I know many people say that they do. But I do know that with every life experience, we are meant to learn something. Every thing we choose to do in life adds to who we are choosing to become.

By working with children, I have learned that no one is the same. For this reason, no one should be treated the same. Our whole lives we are told that everyone should be treated equally; everyone deserves the same things in life. I whole-heartedly agree with the latter part of this statement, but the first part doesn't seem to make sense to me anymore. I do think that every individual deserves to be happy, deserves to have opportunities, deserves to have freedom to make their own choices. However, when it comes to children and adults with disabilities or disadvantages, I believe we need to rethink how we help these individuals reach the equal opportunities that we promise them. We throw special needs children into "equal education" with their typical peers, not giving them enough specialized attention to help them actually receive an equal chance at receiving a good education. We tend to view the word equal as simply meaning the "same." Society may try to treat them the same, not wanting them to stand out or feel different, when we really need to learn how to embrace their different ways of thinking and learning and develop successful methods of teaching and communicating with them. Many schools like Walden and the Autism Learning Center are of course already doing this, but these schools are still rare and costly. Public education still seems to be lagging far behind.

Stepping out of a college setting and into jobs with special needs children has really proven to me how much I still have to learn. In college it's easy to be drawn into the world of "academia," a sort of academic bubble, separate and undisturbed by the outside world. Berry tried to keep us connected to our community, stressing the importance of community service and helping others, but we were still sheltered. I thought that when I graduated, my adult life would begin. I would magically get into a professional career of some sort. I was a college graduate; I had been sitting in classrooms learning about literature and writing for four years. Surely I was educated and ready to contribute something to my community. Now I realize what people mean when they say that learning never stops. I may have been finished learning in a classroom setting, but I would never be finished learning. Working with autistic children means constantly learning how to reach them, how to alter one method, add to another method, or scrap all proven methods all together and just try something you made up. No child on the spectrum is the same, no child in the entire world is the same. All children learn differently; some typical children are just capable of jumping on the bandwagon and soaking up information no matter what way they are taught. Other children take more time, more commitment, more patience, and more one on one attention. No children should receive the same treatment. They all deserve individualized attention so that they can reach their ultimate potential. Like with typical individuals, special needs children and adults will continue to learn their entire lives as well. We can't give up on them just because we may see their success come in smaller steps than we are used to.

Who knows what job I'll be doing in the years to come. I've realized that I don't need to fill my life with so much stress about the "perfect career." Every job is a life experience, another tool to teach us different ways we can contribute while we are here. As long as I am learning and developing more as an educated, helpful, member of society, than my job title doesn't define who I am or what I plan to accomplish in my life. My job simply serves as another way for me to learn more from others, pin-point personal strengths, develop those strengths, and learn how to use them to have a positive impact on society.

Home Sweet Home

I wasn't always a homebody. As a teenager, I often wanted to erase the world around me and create an entirely new narrative for my life. I wanted new scenery, new plot, and some new characters. At times, I wouldn't have minded tweaking my own personality a bit. I wasn't happy in my own skin and assumed, as teenagers seem to do, that many of the adults close to me contributed to that unhappiness. So I applied to college with the intention of pursuing a popular dream for a high school senior from Decatur, GA: to go somewhere where I wouldn't have to be who people had decided I was in elementary school. I wanted to go to a place where I wouldn't just be my infamous brother's sister, or that nice, quiet "Kate Brown" from an oddly religious family that doesn't celebrate holidays. But my parents played the money card, deciding that it was their money, their decision. Marking out any out-of-state schools, I was down to two feasible options. Although part of me wanted to taste the life of a big university, the narrow walls of my comfort zone longed for a small, easily navigable campus. By my birthday I had signed my college career over to a tiny liberal arts school in North Georgia. Only an hour and a half from Decatur "Where It's Greater, " I still felt myself embedded in the same assumptions, the same stereotypes. I was still perceived as a nice, shy girl, now assumed to be religious because at Berry, excitable bible students far outnumbered wild party goers. Nearly everyone I went to school with was from Georgia and many of them new someone, who knew someone, who knew someone I knew from home. I kept my close friends from high school, who remain my closest friends today, and together we could be ourselves. We had our college lives, but when we got together were some of the only times I truly felt like I was being myself. Just like in high school, I felt like I was walking among a group of people that had already decided who I was before I even got there. The shyness everyone always assumed to be true has in fact always been my biggest fault, and I just didn't have the courage to break other assumptions for fear of standing out. So why stick around and keep trying? My junior year, I left for England to study abroad. At first, I didn't care where I went or what I studied while I was there. I just wanted to breathe some fresh air.

For the first time in my entire life, I entered a setting in which I knew absolutely no one but where I immediately felt like I was home. I didn't have a childhood friend as my constant in case I didn't make any new friends. I was alone and I was scared to death, but something about the whole experience felt natural and normal. By the end, I had made some of the quickest and closest friends I have ever made on my own. I had to search deep within myself to remember what qualities I had that people might like and what qualities I liked in other people. But most of all, I finally got my chance to start over and make friends on my own while still holding onto my roots. I starting missing home for the first time since high school and when three months was over, I was ready for the nine hour flight. I knew I could keep more than one place and more than one person close to me. And most of all, I realized that part of what "home" is can simply be the people that you can't wait to run back to every time. I wanted to cut the strings at such a young age only to realize that there were times when I wanted to tie them back together.

After finishing college, becoming a first-time Aunt, and marrying a fellow "Decaturite" (Jason), home was finally becoming a place where I belonged. Then Jason got a job that uprooted us from Georgia and plopped us in Monroe, Louisiana. I bawled for the first hour after leaving family at the airport, especially after seeing my big sister cry, which was a very rare occasion. She knew, like I did, that we would have to work hard for my niece, two months old at the time, to really know who Jason and I were now that we weren't living close by. It took me until the Louisiana border to finally stir up some excitement for our first big move. I loved our apartment and got lost for a while in wedding gifts and job searching, but thoughts of what I was missing still weasled their way into my idle moments. I didn't want to miss all of my niece's firsts. I didn't want to miss out on time with my parents and siblings, now that I had real relationships with them. I didn't want to see distance separate friends who hadn't been apart for any substantial amount of time for the past seven or so years. Especially since after college, we all had finally accepted that something about that unique small city life was part of what made us so inseparable. And much to my disbelief, I didn't want to leave the place I wanted so badly to leave as a teenager. It was my home. I could do it for a few months at a time, but not for this long. I wouldn't know who to be without it.

Six months later, I'm finally starting to get used to the fact that time doesn't stand still. No matter how much I try to keep things a certain way, everyone else around me keeps moving. The only person that remains constant is myself. So once again, I've had to really do some soul searching to figure out what I feel I can contribute here and what kind of people I want to surround myself with. After reading a Maya Angelou quote a friend recently showed me, I came across another that keeps poking its way back into my subconscious. Maya said, "I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself." I am finally starting to realize the importance of first feeling at home in my own skin. As long as I know what I stand for as an individual and remember the people and places that are a part of me, I can then feel at home wherever I may be living. I have grown tired of feeling like a stranger in a place I have made my home. This is my home and I will find my place in it.