Poinsettias, Packing, & Layers

Posted on December 13, 2016 by Heloise Jones

What I feared was the immensity of it all . . .
~ from The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
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I’m back in Florida. I went from 14* that day I flew out of Santa Fe to 79*. Snow on the mountain & Southwest vistas to sweat & flat lands, palm trees, green grass and water. The shock of so much pavement, weed-whackers and the roaring hum of traffic & a/c’s. It took a day to acclimate. This is Home, I told myself. My stuff’s all around. But that first night, I startled awake, kicked with fear thinking something in the bed! when my husband touched me. Truth is, home for me is the high desert of NM. So, in 5 weeks, I’m moving back.

Last year we packed over the holidays, too. A poinsettia and wreath on the door to say Christmas is here. I surprised myself by writing a different kind of holiday letter. One that reflected something good inside, amidst the angst.

Last week I bought this year’s decorations – a 6” potted poinsettia, a tiny norfolk island pine with a red glittered star on a spike & 4 little gold glittered balls on the baby branches, and a wreath for the door that smells divine. Made me happy, getting those. But today I realize Christmas is 12 days off. I wonder what holiday letter I’ll write this time.

Christmas used to be so Big for me. Tree, wreaths, presents, cookies and special foods. I felt it all with full-blown Joy. I loved the lights. Loved giving presents, starting with the hunt for the right one, just for that person. And Christmas Eve. . .the many years with my son. How we shared the kitchen when he got older. Music of the season. The year he gave me Vince Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown Christmas music and I couldn’t get enough, had it on loop. The year he flew to Santa Fe, the other three years there he didn’t fly out and I hosted friends for a grand sit-down Christmas Eve dinner. The 8 of us at the core expanding for new boyfriends, new friends, others alone, grown children in for the holidays. Portuguese fisherman’s stew. I was a pescaterian then. On Christmas day, always Handal’s Messiah. Me in the middle of the room, singing the Hallelujah Chorus with the recording at the top of my lungs, the second soprano part still remembered from junior high. Tears streaming down my face as I sing. Then, in 2007 the lights went out from grief over my son 180* across the globe. I’ve not gotten the magic back, tho I’ve tried. Tho last year, one predawn dark morning, I walked down the middle of the street of the historic neighborhood where I lived singing ‘Angels we have heard on high, sweetly singing o’re the plains. . ‘, .my voice rising on Gloo-ooooo-oooria.

One year I packed with a sprained wrist. One year with a sprained foot. This year I’m packing injured, again. Smashed fingers. A bruised thumb and a middle finger split open top & bottom after getting caught in sliding glass door. The middle finger so traumatized my other uninjured fingers throbbed in pain, too. Both on my right hand. (darn) I quickly learned body memory of the keyboard over-rides intention to use diff fingers. Those last new-learned details will definitely go into a novel.

The fourth downsize in five years, I’m seeing thru a new lens. Seeing details of my other lifetimes I hadn’t noticed before. Such as the tattered plastic bag that holds cards.

In the early 80s I helped a friend drive across country from Durham to Denver. It was a time of hand-written letters and notes. I was always on the hunt for a good card to add to my cache. (still am). Anyway, there was a store in Denver strictly devoted to cards. I bought a number, and tho it now sports a tear halfway down one side, the black plastic bag I walked out with has been my keeper for everyday cards ever since. The store was named avant-card (all lower case). Today, 30+ yrs. later, I notice for the first time the address was Writer Square. Writer. Me!

And for years I’ve kept all things Cards (capital C) in a perfectly sized cardboard box. Postcards, Original Art cards, individual specialty cards, keepsake cards, cards I collected of fav ‘local’ artists’ work that I display, and my black plastic bag filled with everyday cards. A glance and I know where cards are by the box, and I just noticed the label on its side. It reads our first Santa Fe address, circa 1993.

I could tape the bag. I’ve thought about it often. I could cover this perfectly sized box with pretty or sentimental images, as a friend suggests. But I like their evolved state. The shabbiness somehow doesn’t bother me. It feels right. Like comfortable history.

When I finished sorting office supplies, saw the small to-go pile, I thought I must be down to love levels. Because I love office supplies. I played office as a kid. Still love wandering office supply stores. I love having the right color & weight of paper when I want it. Love sheet protectors and notebooks and folders right there when I need them. Love having envelopes any size for anything. (I’ve saved all the left-overs from cards, so no shortage!) And yet, I dislike admin. Really dislike it. The dichotomy of this struck me. The shabby bag & box which seems so not Me, too. Me is wearing socks the color that coordinate with my outfit, and no wrinkles except in linen.

Perhaps I’m reaching that place of Being where all of me finally co-exists in peace. Where some things simply don’t matter if what’s there feels right.

Every year Pantone chooses a color of the year. They call it a symbolic snapshot of what they see taking place in ‘our global culture that serves as an expression of a mood and an attitude.’ The color for 2017 is Greenery:
Greenery is nature’s neutral. The more submerged people are in modern life, the greater their innate craving to immerse themselves in the physical beauty and inherent unity of the natural world. . .A constant on the periphery, Greenery is now being pulled to the forefront. . .A life-affirming shade, Greenery is also emblematic of the pursuit of personal passions and vitality.

I find their choice so interesting. I would’ve chosen Red, for burning down the house. But then, that isn’t very hopeful, is it? Hope inspires, which is what we, what I, surely need. An nature has indeed saved me these past few years.

A friend shared her pleasure wearing layers in Oregon vs. the shorts & tees she’d be wearing in Phoenix. I love wearing layers, too. I love jackets & scarves, textures & shapes. When I lived in Asheville, I’d buy my year’s wardrobe in Santa Fe each fall. Pick up sweaters in travels to cold climes. But five years wearing shorts and little skirts in Florida, same-same winter clothes in two short months a year in cold climes, rarely layering beyond a linen shirt, I’ve added few cold weather clothes. I’m ready for new winter duds. 2017 will be new home, new book, new face to the world, new clothes. It’s scary, as in can I do it all? And something to look forward to. Showing up with all of me. And layers.

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.

Tell me. . . what does this season hold for you?
I’ll tell you a secret. . .Trust is my guiding light right now.

Different Kind of Week

Posted on November 15, 2016 by Heloise Jones

“I didn’t want to compromise the anthemic, hymn-like quality.
I didn’t want it to get too punchy. I didn’t want to start a fight in the song.
I wanted a revelation in the heart
rather than a confrontation or a call-to-arms or a defense.”
-Leonard Cohen, from Paul Zorro’s book Songwriters On Songwriting
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Nov. 14, 6 days after the election. Last Tuesday seems a million years ago. When you hurt a second feels like an hour. And I’ve grown a pudge about my middle from carbs, my comfort food when stressed. Not endless consumption of Trader Joe’s cheddar rockets and British muffins like earlier this year, but pizza slices, toast slathered with butter, chocolate croissants. I shared this on Facebook, learned many of us have grown new pudges.

I vowed to write and be productive, not to watch election returns, but I found a chart online that updated every 30 seconds. Five hours later I got in bed, a sharp pain in my chest. I knew it’d be close. Knew it could happen. But I guess I didn’t think it would, and my mind tried hard to hold on, not race off into implications for me, mine, the planet, everyone and everything on it. I could fill pages with it, and I’m not a catastrophe thinker. But I learned when my husband was run down by a car & we didn’t know if he’d walk, again or how we’d pay the mortgage, if he’d even have a job when he recovered, and I lost the ideal writer’s life that took seven months to create, that there is only one thing to do: Acknowledge capital F Fear and de-escalate it. Get to work. I rose after little sleep determined. These entries I made on fb say it best:

Nov. 9, day after the election
My father didn’t have formal education past 5th grade, couldn’t spell worth a lick. He didn’t have a full mouth of teeth until he was in his 60s. Most of his back teeth pulled before he was 22. But he was a motivated, self-educated man who cared about people and believed in rehabilitation over punishment.

My grandparents fled genocide in Armenia. Arrived here thru Aleppo with the help of Syrians. They learned English, established a successful shoe factory in MA. My mother was first generation with English as a first language. My grandson is Eurasian.

When I was 13 we lost our home and all our belongings. Our family split for months as my parents found a place for my sister, me, and them in a new state.

All this was my foundation for empathy, caring, understanding, and interest in psychology & sociology. It has sustained me my entire life, despite not having the business head of my grandfather and being far more weird & artistic than anyone in my family. It’s sustained me thru being flat broke on food stamps, to leaving an abusive marriage, to raising a son on my own, thru 5 tries to a college degree, to creating dreams. It is why I have friends of different faiths, colors of skin, countries of origin, and sexual orientation. . .and love them all.

And it is why I’ll never call the folks cheering in the streets today names, tho my heart has bled and bleeds. And why I understand the reasons others do. Why I decided to put good news out as reminders Kindness is not conditional. To remind us that this world is a both/and proposition, the good news with the bad. And despite what I see and understand as good, know in my heart of hearts is right, people see thru different lens and we are here now.

Yes, I am in tears off and on today. And feel fearful because the promised, stated consequences of this election affect me directly in scary ways, + I can see the consequences for our society. But I choose action. And one thing is true whether our definitions of what good is jives or not – I will not tolerate hate, bigotry, or bullying in my backyard. I will face it with respect, and face it down. I am joining others once more to see how we can turn the tide toward a better life for ALL of us. Where all living things can thrive.

Nov. 10, two days after the election
I wrote a blog in the small hours Tues. morning. Got in bed 4:28am after writing it. And somehow, I knew not to post here like I usually do. Knew it was not a day for what I’d experienced the prior week in my journey thru what’s up for me, and the Insights I got. Because it was about the days just passed, as they just were. As we were. As I was, locked away with work on the screen, knowing I was missing fall in NM. Finding luck and traces of beauty, anyway.

And yesterday morning I woke, set to what I do instead of getting locked into spins of fear and projections. Action. Assess what needs doing for me and mine to feel safe. Committing to how I’ll show up in the world as it wobbles. But today it’s tough. I’m responding to privileged bright eyes. And despite being grateful for their positive vibes and good intentions, it’s pushed me to be more open within my bleeding, make the world better for everyone heart as I consider right use of power, what getting things done means, what loving America means.

And I surprised myself. Because tho I align with and believe in the spiritually high vibration of love, the power of it, it’s the love that shows up on the ground I believe is what truly loving America is. In small or large ways. I know I’m privileged, and know this engagement of love on the ground is hard. Because anger spikes inside me. I scream in the car at what I see and hear while I’m driving. The actions of injustice, violence, hatred, disallowing. At what I call willful blindness and myopia. I would never voluntarily get on a plane piloted by someone who’s never flown a plane before, much less a would-be pilot with a documented track record of fraud and lies. Yep, confess. I knew better than to think it would never happen, and now, spinning anyway. Strapped into my seat, decided by those who would, and will fly with that pilot. And it’s brought me to see Love.on.the.ground is the truth of what loving America means to me. I’ve been living with a commitment to Kindness, and now, well, it’s at another level.
I’ll write my book, because I see now it’s actually an act of love. Because it’s a guide that says “I see you. You, the person, are Okay.”

Gads, a hard day today.

Nov. 11, three days after the election
I read a post yesterday about an African-American man who was blocked from leaving the train by two white dudes. They called him nasty racist names, threatened him, and spit on him. Others on the train stood up, offered a hankerchief and solace to the young man after the guys left. The account shot me deep, set me crying all over, again. This morning I woke with the vision of me standing beside that young black man. I saw my face, my stance, fierce. Felt spittle on my face, too. But we stood, together. Am I that brave? I’ve been speaking up for years, but have never had to face a threat to my physical person. Do I hope I never will? Yes. But I guess it may come to this for some of us white folks. And at some level I am that brave, as i saw it, felt it. Committed.

I am not neutral on this.

I cried off and on for days. So much I read on Facebook set tears steaming, I avoided it. But I’ve not stepped away. I am keeping up. Can feel the vibration. And yes, it’s true, part of that vibration is my own vulnerability.

I missed the Super Moon’s big showing last night. But I know, unlike many of us, the moon’s not thrown off its axis. I get another chance tonight.

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.

Tell me. . .your comfort foods, or if you’re celebrating, your happy foods.

I’ll tell you a secret. . .I’ve had that shot of sunflowers for months. It fascinated me when I first saw it, because it looked like people with their backs turned. It still does. Or maybe, they’re looking to the horizon. I still believe in miracles.

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I’m writing a book for people living in the real world.
The Writer’s Block Myth
A Guide to Get Past Stuck & Experience Lasting Creative Freedom

Full Circle

Posted on October 11, 2016 by Heloise Jones

“Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning.”
~ Katherine Anne Porter, author
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This is my 19th trip to Santa Fe since we moved back east 18 yrs. ago. Some time back I noticed themes in these sojourns that coincided with what I needed or where I was in life. I don’t know how long it’d been happening, but I could trace it thru a few visits. All my friends calling immediately upon my arrival, filling my calendar the year I needed community. Reconnecting with former healing practitioners the year I needed clearing and clarity. This year it’s about coming full circle. And the layers of them are freaky cool.

For the next week I’m settled in a super nice place nestled in a pine & piñon forest 20 min. outside Santa Fe. On top of a ridge above the tiny village of Cañada (pronounced Caun-YA-da). Population 439. I have no cell service. Internet works best on the kitchen counter at my back, facing the opposite direction from where I work. To get here I drive up a slightly washboarded dirt road. A good friend got me in. She lives across the driveway here on the property. I love that. I’ve always wanted a best friend for a neighbor.

At first I kinda freaked about the lack of contact with the world. My web designer. My friends. How will I do it?! But I learned the landline in the house works. Something I didn’t guess since the house is a second home. And it dawned on me I’m saved from email distractions, because I have to move the computer while I’m writing if I want them. Noooo worries. But here’s the kicker. I’m writing my book in the exact spot I did the <first> final draft of my novel with an editor years ago. In the same chair, at the same table, looking out the same window in this house that this very same friend got me in back then. Full circle.

And in two weeks I’m hosting a private retreat for a writer who’s completing her memoir. A Writer’s Dream Retreat because it’s designed specifically for the individual, and includes lots of coaching from me. The gal who’s coming started her memoir in a retreat I co-facilitated 5 years ago. I started with you, she said. I feel drawn to complete this with you. Another full circle.

And the big full circle, after 18 yrs. I’m moving back to Santa Fe when our lease expires the end of January. A move I’m excited about, and one I’ve fretted over finding a place. I know this town well. Know how I live in it. Where I go. What I do. Know the essentials of what I want in a home and rhythm in life. I’ve tried shifting my head. It’ll all work out fine, has every move, I tell myself. But this move is different, and I know it. We’re setting up two households. Have no fall-back. The thought’s not been far from my mind.

In Whole Foods a woman approached me as I read the label on a small bottle of rose oil moisturizer, started talking. It felt easy. I learn that, like me, she’s moving to someplace she loves where she feels expansive. Like me, growing a business. And then she says, ‘You oughta move into our house since we’re leaving. Our landlord’s great.’ And tho I knew I couldn’t budget her rent, I thought. . .can it really be this easy?

The first morning, as I rounded the bend halfway up the near 1/2 block long driveway, intent to try for cell at the road, before I found out the landline worked, two huge mule deer stood in profile at the top of the drive. Their heads turned, big dark eyes focused on me. Ears larger than their gorgeous black & white faces erect, like gigantic seed pods. I stopped. We watched each other for minutes. Over and over I told them how beautiful they were. Not until I reached for my phone, looked down to set the camera, did they walk on. I knew it was some sort of blessing.

The Native Americans think deer are shaman. Some think them messengers from Gods. Perhaps so. Those deer and I met before the woman in Whole Foods. Before I connected all these full circles. I have a feeling there’s more to come.

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life
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Tell me. . .what theme might be running thru your life this season?
I’ll tell you a secret. . .days seem to be melting away, even tho I’m present to the moments.

Special Thanks to Lindy Teresi for my home in the woods these 10 days.

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Rose Petals Under Our Feet

Posted on September 20, 2016 by Heloise Jones

“It’s the absence of all the bodies, she thinks, that allows us to forget.
It’s that the sod seals them over.”
~ Anthony Doerr (from All the Light We Cannot See)
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rose-petal-stage

I don’t take pics during a performance. This is before Deva Premel & Miten came out.
What wonderful heart energy, I thought. Those rose petals beneath their feet.
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I just read two novels back-to-back set in France during WWII German occupation. It wasn’t intentional to do that. Each showed up as the best option when I was looking for a story to settle into. One in a very small library at the beach, the other in an airport bookstore. I’d heard they were good reads. And how the author showed the characters beyond the dramatic backdrop interested me.

The first is about two French sisters with completely opposite personalities. Their motivations and actions defined and driven by their character. The book’s sympathies center strictly in the French experience of the war. The second is about two young people with very different backgrounds, from opposite sides of the conflict, coming of age in war. Both books were heavily researched. Both were page turners. But my experience as a reader with each was like night and day.

In the sisters’ story, I was pulled in close, viscerally thrust bone-to-bone into the deprivations and cruelty. Ground so hard I skimmed over concentration camp scenes. Something I rarely do. I finished still wondering, as I have for decades, at what appears to be blind inhumanity. A wondering that’s niggled me despite many essays read that explore and explain the psychology and sociological influences. A wondering that prompted me to answer ‘I don’t know’ when someone recently asked if I believed in Evil, because my head knows the reasons such disassociation happens inside people, and how fear & character allow willful blindness, but Evil seems beyond reason. What I read in the novel seemed in the realm of beyond.

The language in the second book was so beautifully poetic, and some of the scenes so full of perfectly constructed lists placing me there, that I felt distanced from the horror. Strung out in a beautiful dream that wasn’t right. As I read, I understood on a new level how the rise and fall of the German Reich happened. A sympathetic human level, if you can believe that. The author showed me incrementally, in small details, in very short chapters that switched effortlessly between the people on each side. Every awful thing, each decision made that we think we’d never make, digested as I was carried forward. Held in a tight line of cognitive dissonance the entire time, with me not fully realizing it.

Until a simple line about a boy stepping on a land mine and ‘disappearing in a fountain of earth.’ I paused after that line, reread it several times. I could see the dirt rise high, arch and fall. Hear the cascading sound of granules showering the ground. My mind knew it was awful, and yet, the way he said it held a terrible beauty. He didn’t have to describe a thing. Not even the soft pink mist of blood.

That line, the boy disappearing in a fountain of dirt, was where I’d stopped the day I drove an hour to Sarasota for an evening of sacred chant with Deva Premel and Miten. I felt lucky to get tickets. I heard they only booked a few US engagements this year. I sat on the 8th row in the Performing Arts Center that sat only a thousand. No one in front of me. Only 2 phones glared before being snuffed. I felt extra lucky.

Toward the end Deva & Miten invited us on stage with them. Perhaps 200 of us went up. Miten led the men in a two line song about being the ocean. The women sang one word over and over with Deva – Hallelujah. When Miten said, sing to yourselves, I put my hands over my heart and sang with abandon as I swayed side to side. I felt my blood rise, run fast and strong. Felt my heart beat under my palms. Heard it pound it in my ears. And then my head lifted right off my body. When we stopped singing, I had to leave the stage. Everyone else stayed put. Miten was speaking. I was in an altered state I didn’t want.

I’m not sure how to convey the spectrum of experience after I left the building that night. Driving home in a sort of no-worry hyper-presence. Completely ungrounded the next morning. Unable to focus with care on anything. But I didn’t want to give a day to coming back to earth. ‘I have work to do, the clock ticks’ bobbed inside my floaty brain, and I wanted to meet that commitment. At 2:30pm, knowing beef would bring me back down, I drove out for hamburger.

Something has changed inside me. As weird as it sounds, my molecules spread so far apart they rearranged themselves when they came back together. I know it. And not believing in coincidence, that night as I picked up my novel I thought for the twelfth time there must be a reason I’m reading these two particular books back-to-back.

The last chapters of the book are an extended epilogue. We get a final wrap of each character and the connections between them. As I read I felt those chapters unnecessary. A device. Thought his editor was too much in love with his writing because there was no other reason they weren’t edited out. They steal something from the reader, I thought. But then, tears started. I saw they were like the fabled diamond in the story holding water and fire, immortality and death both. Illuminating a truth.

We are all connected. The possibility of the best and worst of humanity inside most of us. The choice how that’s played out not necessarily easy. But it’s a choice, whatever the motivation. And whatever happens, life moves on. We move on. Everything that’s happened in our lives becomes part of who we are. The past can either seal us under sod, or we can soften to all that remembering in our hearts, stand helpless to empathy for others. That’s what I got.

I still have to coax myself to trust I’ll be okay, come out upright on the other side of big changes in my life. Fear still sits in the corner, waiting to win. But I don’t think about resigning or quitting, any more. Don’t doubt I’ll get where I intend to be, do what I committed to do. That’s what I carry.

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.
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Tell me. . .what do you carry from the remembering in your heart?
I’ll tell you a secret. . .I’ve only just begun to tell you all I’ve seen.

I’m writing a book – The Writer’s Block Myth.
About getting past stuck, living and loving your best creative life.

What Happens when a Vision Grabs You

Posted on September 6, 2016 by Heloise Jones

Open your eyes and see what you can with them
before they close forever.
~ Anthony Doerr (from All the Light We Cannot See)
* Stamp

This first issue Susan B. Anthony stamp was given me by a college professor in 1990.
I wrapped it with lots of padding, paper, and tape. Enclosed archives from my time at NC State University. Then unwrapped it, took a picture.
Because it went in the mail today.
This is the story why.
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In 1989 I returned to school for the fifth time to complete my BA. Until now I felt those previous four attempts were failures in my character. I should’ve worked harder to rise above emotions and circumstances. Been more mature, got my priorities straight. Looking back, I understand the bigger plan of the Universe had nothing to do with failure. Because when I walked away Summa Cum Laude in 1991, final proof to myself I was ‘smart enough,’ I left a legacy. And that never could’ve happened earlier. Because I never would’ve had the activist’s passion or vision that drove me to rise at 4:30am after crawling in bed at 11pm, do the work.

I underline – I was an unintentional activist. My stated mission of a Women’s Center on campus by the time I graduated 2 years later came from new awarenesses. And it was something even those who worked toward it called impossible. North Carolina State University was large (22,000 students). Conservative. Centered on the sciences and agriculture. Women students on campus was only a 20 year, or so, phenomena. It was a time state budget cuts for education were first deeply felt. Full professors held a Bake Sale in symbolic protest. Campus real estate grew more precious. I loved college life, felt so happy and lucky to be there, but I also felt the pain of isolation.

Here’s the letter I sent with the stamp. The last paragraph the reason why I do the work I do now, and still hold hope in a world awash in bad stuff:

Dear Ms. Zugay –

You and I spoke a number of weeks ago regarding my donation of two framed items that were inspirational to me when I was at NC State, dedicated to securing a women’s center on campus. Enclosed is one of the framed items I mentioned – a Susan B. Anthony first issue stamp released on the 50th anniversary of the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote in 1920. I hope you have a place on your walls for it. With the upcoming elections, it’s a good reminder privileges we take for granted were not always here. And often came about only after years of dedication and focus by others before us. I think it’s especially hard for young people to imagine. Call it too many hours on Facebook or whatever, but I think we’re at a crossroads as a society, which makes this an incredibly important reminder.

I’m also enclosing copies of archives from the ‘early days,’ before the Women’s Center. Honestly, I have not looked at these materials in over 20 years. Am not even sure why they remain in my files, except the fact seeing a Women’s Center on campus was a singular guiding light once I decided that’s what had to happen. And that intent infiltrated everything I did as a student. I even still have the research materials for my proposal! Go figure, right.

Before writing this letter, I perused your website again. Looked up other resources on campus. I am so heartened to see all the services the Women’s Center provides. And to see the long list of people on NC State’s Council on the Status of Women advising the provost. Understanding the huge evolution since my time there, I want to share a bit about myself, too. Because it may be inspiration for others who feel an urge to do something greater than themselves in response to a spark inside (should you choose to share).

In fall 1989 I entered school for the fifth time with the intent to earn a BA. I had a son in college. Just left my first ‘real’ job as a corporate advertising account manager. Before marrying my second husband in 1986, I’d been a single parent for nine years after walking away from a years-long physically and psychologically abusive marriage. I had never heard the word patriarchy, but I’d experienced gender discrimination when I couldn’t get a loan for a washing machine without a husband’s signature. And once worked in a fine dining restaurant that didn’t allow women to wait tables at night. A month into classes, I heard young women talk about the risk of date-rape as something they accepted. And I was shocked.

My greatest challenges my first semester, though, were as a non-traditionally aged woman student. My intent was to earn a Certificate in Training and Development as part of my degree, so I would eventually enroll in a number of graduate courses with my undergraduate free electives. But that was down the road, and they all met after 5pm. I sought out Evelyn Reiman, then Director of Student Development, who sent me to Jan Rogers, the Coordinator of Women Student Concerns (Dept. of Student Development). Jan shared a tiny office with a student assistant on an upper floor of the student center. At Jan’s encouragement, I secured a classroom for a support group meeting, put up flyers across campus inviting others to come. That endeavor did not last long, but something else happened. I grew determined we needed a women’s center on campus, with resources to address the challenges women students faced so no one else would feel unmoored and isolated the way I did. I committed to seeing it established before I gradated in 1991.

I banded with a small core of like-minded faculty and students, became a tireless activist. I recruited, educated, and organized students, faculty and university administration on women’s issues every chance I could. Was one of two student representatives on NC State Council on Status of Women. I announced my intention for the women’s center at the Student Leader’s Retreat after becoming president of the newly formed Women’s Resource Coalition. Spoke at Panhellenic meetings. Founded the first campus-wide newsletter distributed to 16,000 women students and faculty with another student. Centered every class paper on gender when allowed. Researched and developed a proposal for a woman’s center as an independent study that ultimately became the core of the final proposal.

On November 1, 1990 associate professor Dr. Sarah A. Rajala and I were scheduled to discuss development of a Women’s Resource Center with Interim Provost Dr. Franklin D. Hart. Dr. Rajala was ill that morning, so I met with Dr. Hart alone for nearly an hour. I knew the School of Engineering set a fine example in the way gender equity in the classroom and program was addressed and championed. So, I spoke to him from that place, what we shared in our understanding. At the opening ceremony of the Women’s Center, Dr. Hart said his meeting with me was what convinced him to put his full support behind it. At that time I could only think of the miracle I stood in this space I was told was impossible. I told him we all did it.

Because that’s how change happens. Change comes when something opens inside a person that leads to actions never intended. Takes him/her past stuck. When a vision forms that is impossible to let go. It is not a quantum leap until after a series of shifts in mind and heart. I call these shifts triumphs. And say, celebrate all triumphs.

Thank you for doing the good work.
Sincerely,
Heloise Jones

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My Thanks to those who championed me – Evelyn Reiman, Dean Robert Williams (College of Education), Dr. Edgar Farmer (College of Education) – and all those who do the good work.
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Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.

Tell me. . .what vision for a better world do you hold?
I’ll tell you a secret. . .tho the magnitude of the Women’s Center presence on campus didn’t hit me until I stood in it, I never once doubted there’d be one before I graduated.

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I’m writing a book, The Writer’s Block Myth – A Guide to Lasting Creative Freedom.
The creative life for people living in the real world.