when worlds collide
A funny thing happens when worlds collide. You stop and notice yourself and wonder how others see you. Do you know what I mean?
Like when blog world meets real world
College world meets high school world
Work world meets…
I think you get it.
Last week, I noticed something interesting in my sitemeter. I began to see a couple of similar incoming links that I didn't recognize that were repeated quite a few times from various different locations. Locations of colleges that kind of rang a bell from this time three years ago. Through some detective work, I deduced that I have been discovered. At least that is what it feels like. Because the truth is: discover my blog, discover me.
Before Jon and I moved to Tacoma, we both worked at a boarding school back in Indiana. It is the boarding high school I attended actually. I was a counselor for one of the girls' dorms there. I don't think I have ever talked about that job here. To be honest, I have needed a long break away from it. I needed to remember why I loved going to school there and how it felt like home to me when I was a teenager and why that was. Working there was not quite that same feeling, not quite home.
A few months after we moved out here and I was in the midst of my two-year yoga teaching training program, we spent a weekend on the chakras. I had two pretty significant experiences that weekend. One had to do with my second chakra, the other with my fifth. After I described what had happened to me internally during the group exercise we did around the fifth chakra, the woman leading the weekend asked me what I did for a living. At the time, I hadn't really started editing much, so I said, "well, I used to be a high school dorm counselor who was kind of in charge of all the emotional, academic, and other needs of 50 teenage girls." She paused. Looked straight at me and said, "I never want you to do that again."
Now, here is the part where I tell you how much I did love parts of my job. Specifically, I enjoyed working with the girls. I loved hearing their laughter in the hallways and the moments when they would come and sit in my office and tell me how their day went. I loved seeing them grow from frightened freshmen to incredibly confident seniors.
But, what this woman meant was that I didn't have the boundaries in place to keep myself emotionally safe while trying to help others. I took it all on. I wanted to be better at a job that had set up a no-win situation for us as counselors in that we had to discipline yet we hoped to be the students' safe person. Pretty hard to be a "safe" person for kids when they are afraid to tell you anything because you have to "turn them in." I beat myself up constantly for not being able to balance who I was inside with who I was expected to be. There were students who had been through a lot in their lives and needed a level of attention that was difficult to give when trying to help 49 other students. There were challenges that I cannot go into here, but they were the kind that the students wouldn't have known about. The kind that forever change a person. Being a part of those challenges forever changed me.
And, I needed to take a big break from that world. To remember the reasons why that place had been like home to me at one time.
So back to being discovered. Yes. It seems that a group of girls I had the honor of watching grow from those overwhelmed freshmen to amazing self-assured seniors have discovered my blog.
And, this has caused me to think about how they might see me. I wrote my blog for several months before I shared the link with my family and close friends. That was pretty weird, but I got used to it. I have come to a place where a few people do know about my blog, but mostly, I think that my blog readers are other bloggers. Though, I discovered recently that if you google my full name you are led right here. But, I mean really, who knows me? Who googles me?
I thought about how I looked at my high school teachers and how it would feel to discover a blog by one of them. I think about how some of them are frozen in time for me and how I never really thought about what books they might read and what kind of hobbies they have.
It is interesting when worlds collide isn't it? When you get a glimpse into another side of someone, and in that way, you get a glimpse into yourself as well.
Girls, I imagine it might be hard to believe that this woman who wears her hair in pigtails and dances to Tina Turner and writes poetry and paints and sews and laughs and writes the truth of her life is me.
Welcome to my world.
(Hope you will say hi sometime.)
this is me
Reader Comments (15)
oh babes
we have *s o* much in common...
i went to boarding school too...
i was the school captain and the dorm headgirl and the looker-afterer of 20 thirteen year old girls.
and it was challenging and beautiful and challenging. did i mention challenging?
it was too much for me, i took a lot of energy crap on and was pretty greyed-out by the end of it.
they were miracle times and not miracle times too.
and... funnily enough...
a lot of those girls have found my website and sent me emails...
two of them have even had babies. BABIES!
worlds colliding, fusing, joining, integrating.
today i organised a lunch gathering of pancake frippery... with a bunch of work friends/life friends/art friends/womens circle friends, most haven't met each other yet.
a fusion of friendships and connections invited in :)
(wanna come?)
love,
leonie
I was contacted to have one of my photos in a magazine (me, i'm still pinching myself) and when asked to link back to my blog, I felt like I shouted NO! I like to believe I'm largely anonymous to anyone but bloggers and this possible world collision made me not want to print my photo....luckily no blog linkage is necessary so for now, I'm safe. But I wonder, if people from the real world read my blog how would I be perceived?
Wow... This truly makes me want to go and investigate who all comes and looks at my blog. I guess I don't really care that much but I think there are a few people that I would feel a bit odd about them seeing such a raw side of me. I find that it is ironic how safe we can feel with strangers - other bloggers whom we have never met in person - with such intimate thoughts and writings. But, it is a good feeling all the same. Thank you, for my part, for being a safe haven for me.
I'm sure the girls who are reading your blog will delight in what they learn about you, just as we all do.
Namaste.
Your girls, though finding a place that you may not have thought they would ever find, have come to a place where they can meet an incredible woman full of love, emotion, poetry, creativity, beauty, and so many other things. Their lives will be touched by reading your words, of that I have no doubt.
That being said, yes it is indeed weird and sometimes disconcerting when the two worlds collide, because our blogs are our safe havens, or so we would like to think. The idea that the safety is being compromised does make me nervous from time to time.
Really though, we share our stories and ourselves in the best way we know how, and at the end of the day, these spaces are for us, so I suppose we can only continue to do what we do.
Your girls are surely smiling about how ariculate, fun and beautiful their counselor is.
xoxoxo
this issue really makes me wonder too. so far only 3 of my 'real life friends' have been made privy to my blog (and none of them are family). whenever i think about how it would make me feel if someone from my 'real life' found me unexpectedly, I just stop and think, um, eeeek, NO!... or I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
i love your blog and i love your attitude to this. i bet your girls are feeling all giddy now that they know that not only did they find you but you found them... almost... too :)
Vx
Your world is a true one - anyone who visits here can feel that.
hmmmm .. so interesting because i recently found out that a friend of my son's reads my blog and copies down some of my poetry in her journals. it gave me pause to realize that 13 year old girls were reading me as it just hadn't occured to me. i briefly taught both junior and senior high school english and the teacher in me worried suddenly about my words and thoughts and influence ... but i realize that it is all good ...
i have no doubt that 'your girls' gain wonderful beauty, inspiration and wonder from reading your lovely words and thoughts ... :)
You have been discovered! these are lucky girls to learn and be inspired by you, Liz, and to see all the many facets that make up your wonderful, wonderful self! I miss yoU! We need to have sake again very soon! Come to Portland this weekend!
xoxo And say hello to Jon from me too!
First time visiting, I just wanted to say hello. You are right, it's weird to know how others might read your blog, but I agree that most are probably other bloggers. Also, to see what old teachers are up to... I never knew teachers left the schools! I thought they lived there!
Oh darling I can imkagine the excitement of seeing the ins and outs of you-a mentor to them. It must be wonderful.
I understand-having been a high school biology teacher. I wonder if any of my students have happened on my blog.
I have also thought of deleting the whole thing if I ever try to go back to teaching.
It would be lovely if some of them left comments.
Hugs to you.
hi, sweetie. :)
i just wanted to quickly speak to what you said about the yoga teacher telling you "never to do that again"...it reminded me of when i was a rape crisis counsellor, doing counselling from my bedroom. i burned out pretty quickly. i think it's AMAZING that you helped all those girls, esp. from an environment where YOU grew up (i'm very associative...i'd probably have liked a 'new start' somewhere else) and i just KNOW that you would have inspired nothing but peace, confidence, and beauty in their lives...but yet, i get the little "catch" in one or many of them stumbling on to "be present be here" by accident.
it's funny...i know blogs are public domain, yadda yadda, but i remember when i first started, not knowing how to introduce myself to writers i really admired. it felt (and obviously is) like someone's private journal and i wanted, sort of, to be INVITED to read it - i didn't take the fact of its existence as an implicit invitation. (i'm probably being very naive.) :)
i had to delete my first major blog - "the language of eyes and tongues" - last year because a family member came across it "accidentally" and kicked up a fuss about my honesty.
all of that said...i think i would love to get the chance to know one of my favourite teachers, mentors, or "big sisters" better, through their vulnerability on a place like this. no matter what you're going through, you have such determination to be gentle and true to your experience that it is always inspiring and loving to be here.
xo ((hugs))
bee
I was an RA in the dorms at Oregon State for 2.5 years and I know what you mean about being the responsible one who has to counsel kids and maybe get them in trouble. I was one of 10 kids, though, and was used to being a part-time mom's helper/babysitter/boss-of-them already. It actually really helped me be a good RA. And now a good mom. I did like this post about seeing oneself through others' eyes, too.
Hi Liz,
I love this blog entry.
Honest, open and very real.
Alma
liz... what you wrote at the end:
Welcome to my world.
(Hope you will say hi sometime.) ....
what a kind, tender way to invite them in.
Your job at the boarding school sounds amazing. I was thinking about doing something like that when I get out of college. Also, that was a really wonderful entry.