What I had intended with this blog was to get in writing all the magical, wonderful, miraculous things that have happened in this journey around Heal Trauma Fast. I have to start from the more recent, after the training that was just a month ago...
The training itself was extraordinary. I was, without a doubt, "in the flow". For the first time EVER, I had no sense of time. In fact, every time I looked at a clock or at the schedule we'd developed for the training, it simply wasn't registering. I couldn't read the numbers on the clock face nor on the schedule. If Amy hadn't said (repeatedly mind you, because it was starting to bother me), "You're right on time, don't worry!" I WOULD have really been anxious.
The feedback from the training was lovely, too. Almost everyone in the room had some kind of healing experience. While I was intending for everyone to LEARN about the impact of tapping/EFT, guided imagery and dream work, I didn't even think that there would be the level of healing happening during the training itself for practitioners. It's made me re-think the research study on the training itself.
Because the training was so easy, developing the manual was so EASY and the whole process was magical, I also started to re-think where I want (and need to be). The training ended on Sunday, Nov. 11. Amy stayed through Tuesday morning, Nov.13 and by the time she'd left, I had made a clear decision that I will be leaving my current position sometime next spring or summer.
I NEED time to work on the training, to bring it into the world more fully. Working as a full-time faculty member in the position I'm in with so much administrative responsibility, I just don't see doing both. Although being a faculty member has advantages in terms of credibility, at this point, I want the time in order to be able to travel. Almost right away, I "saw" doing the trainings once a month, in different locations; twice a year in Virginia Beach.
That Tuesday morning, Nov. 13, as I was driving from the airport to ODU, I called Marilyn, one of my HTF team members to ask her what she would recommend as a reasonable lead-time to let my ODU colleagues know I would be leaving. She told me that about 2 months would be a good amount of time. And then she said something like, "Oh, by the way, Walden (an on-line counseling program where she works) just opened 30 new faculty positions, some of them core, but most are contributing (their term for adjunct)." Then, she added that contributing faculty can make around $65,000. Later I found out that benefits are also offered to those part time faculty -- unheard of in traditional university settings.
I counted Marily's news as a major "sign" that I had made the right decision.
So, when I went to our last program faculty meeting for the semester, I felt solid in the decision. I didn't expect that the faculty in my program would give me a second "sign", though. Unfortunately, it was a painful prod, rather than a positive push.
In this faculty meeting, we were using a new system for assigning/selecting classes we would teach for the summer session. It's as fair as I think it can be. It honors the faculty member who has been there longest by allowing them to be the first to pick their first class. The order descends from longest there to least-tenured. But I'm not in a tenured position, so I will ALWAYS be last. Even if I've been at ODU for 20 years, I'll always be last. That's the bad news. The good news is that I get to choose a second time before anyone else and the classes I LIKE to teach are generally ones that others don't want to.
For the summer session, in addition to classes offered, we also had slots for 4 faculty to provide supervision of supervision, so these were also choices that people could make. I've provided "sup-of-sup" for 7 of the 8 years I've been in my position now. I love supervision. I'm good at it and students see that, too. Not all of my colleagues know, though, but I've been ok with that.
And what happened during the choosing turned out to be that additional "proof" that ODU is no longer a place for me to stay. I noticed that as folks were choosing classes, they generally were kind about making sure it was ok for them to chose a class when it was one that someone else might want to teach. Or they joked about "stealing" a class, but were really being kind to each other. Except all 4 of the supervision slots were taken and NO ONE checked with me. Not one of them asked me.
Not one of them even considered that I've been supervising since I started and that I might want to supervise in the summer. So when it came time for me to choose, I got to have my first choice of a skills class. And then I got to choose again, but now there wasn't a slot open for supervision. And I just didn't want to teach any other class on the remaining list for the summer. I teared up and said, "Well, I wonder what's going to happen with Practicum and Internship this summer, then," and no one said a thing.
I took a deep breath and that's when I realized that they were simply doing their part to allow me to leave! How much easier they made it and on a conscious level, they have no idea! (Well, Tim does because I talked to him 2 days later.)
That was the miracle for that day. More to come -- it's late and time for sleep.
Suzan
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