First Interview with Helen Brown McIntosh,
Conducted at PetSmart in Marietta, Georgia.
March 25, 2006
Mara Robbins: So, what is your full name?
Helen Brown McIntosh: Helen Brown McIntosh. I guess, when I entered Hollins, it was Helen Virginia Brown, so I don’t know how you want to do that…
MR: So you have a middle name?
HBM: Yes, I think when you marry, you, I dropped it. The Virginia is (not sure what she said here) sanctioned (?) straight out…
MR: OK.
HBM: So my legal name is Helen Brown McIntosh.
MR: So, Helen, could you tell me a little bit about your childhood?
HBM: Oh my, okay. Born in Montgomery, let’s see, when I was in the 4th grade, my father was recalled into, let’s see, I skipped a whole lot. Gee, my childhood, whooa…(laughs a little)…it was fun.
MR: (laughs) That’s a good answer.
HBM: You know, in my car are some cowboy boots, that my grandfather wore in my early childhood. He was the president of the Dr Pepper Company out in Dallas Texas. And, uh, my favorite photograph in the whole world, (puts hand on her heart) of my childhood, was my grandfather sitting on a ranch in Dallas Texas in these wonderful boots, they were
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red kinda tops and brown leather bottoms, you know what I’m saying, the two toned cowboy boots, and I’m sitting on the fence behind him, holding him, and then, he’s got my brother in one arm and a cousin, he‘s holding, and I’ve loved that picture for so long. He died right after I married, in ’67. But I’ve loved those boots, and I found them. In the Montgomery house. But anyway…
MR: Just today?
HBM: Yes, isn’t that fun? They’re in the car…(excited, higher voice) So, when I was small, I was born in Montgomery, and lived there, but we traveled a lot to Dallas, because my grandparents lived in this wonderful hotel in Dallas called the Aldolphus hotel, and I was always at the plaza, I went up and down in the elevator, in fact, the first thing I ever said was Neiman Marcus, those were the first words I ever said, because of this hotel in Dallas where my grandparents lived was near Neiman’s, and my grandmother would take us to Neiman’s for lunch every day. That was, that was wild. But Montgomery was home plate. But then in the 4th grade, my father was recalled into the Air Force, so we moved to Germany, so I lived in Germany for the 4th and the 6th grades, and then moved to Ohio and then New York, and then Warner Robbins, Georgia. I’d just gone to two years of school in Warner Robbins Georgia when I applied to Hollins. My roommate that I had for all 4 years was wonderful, she was from Virginia. She was so great, she said, ‘Helen, when you came to Hollins you had a ponytail, and crinolines,’ that means petticoats (laughs), anyway, I was from middle Georgia at that point, and I was thinking, I was thinking of that girl today, I was thinking, wow, I felt very much behind, I’d led such a different life than most of the people that were at Hollins, we’ll probably get into these kinds of questions later, but most of these girls were from prep schools, and here I come from middle Georgia, and public high school, and now my parents, in the years I was at Hollins, they got stationed again, in France, instead of Germany this time, and they were very far away, so Helen felt very, alone.
MR: I bet! (pause) Well, you say you moved to Germany in the 4th grade? So how long exactly were you there?
HBM: Three years.
MR: Three years. Did you learn any German as a child?
HBM: Yes. I could sing you a song, or give you the alphabet, it was so fun. (Some of the conversation garbled due to ambient noise)…my dad…had to like…fill the space. He was the first commander, and he had to prepare it for this…airwick (?) So we lived in a hotel, in this little town with cobblestone streets, on this little Mosel River, it was charming, it was so sweet. We taught the children in the village how to play baseball; the village blacksmith carved us a bat (makes the shape of the bat in the air) so we could show them how to play. It was very fun. It was just a great time in my life to be there. And then eventually we moved to the base. But I did travel for a while to go to school.
MR: So what were relationships like in your family?
HBM: Good. Let’s see, a military father, my mom, had a lot of interests; she was a stay at home mom. Those were good years. We had some more difficult ones later on in life. I don’t know if this is the place to talk about that. Do you want me to go with that?
MR: That’s completely up to you. Since we’re talking about your childhood, if you’d like to go back to it later, that’s fine, or…
HBM: Let’s stick to the childhood. But she…yes, that was a sweet time.
MR: So, you say your mom was a stay at home mom. Was anyone in your family involved in any work that had to do with social change?
HBM: You know, I’ve though about that a lot. Mother was, yes, at that time in Montgomery, the Junior League was probably the band of dangerous women, so I remember that she was a very fun person, and very outgoing, a very social person. She also, when she saw things that needed to happen, she was very proactive. But she later ended up being a model for, about the time I was 24, I realized she was an alcoholic, and so we had 9 really bad years, of drinking, and then she went into a recovery program, and for the next 20 years she was really involved in AA. And so I got to see her be real strong there.
MR: Excellent.
HBM: And my dad, he was such a leader. He encouraged me, as a young woman, as a little girl and as a young woman, to be independent. You know, I did, I felt a real freedom to (pause) enter an adventuresome world.
MR: That’s wonderful…what a great…real freedom to enter an adventuresome world. I want to make sure I got that. Well, um…I’m curious as to how those family values have affected your social change work, ‘cause that’s one of the reasons I’m interviewing you, you’re talking about your father encouraging you to be independent, how do you think those values have affected your work in social change?
HBM: Thank you. You know, I was drawn to trying to understand behavior. I think the years I was at Hollins I really longed to make a difference. I think that’s always been an implied attitude there, um, atmosphere, is a better word. Umm, really preparing you to always think, well how am I going to make a difference? I remember thinking that what excited me was helping people (we were interrupted here by someone asking Helen about her teacup poodle. They had a brief conversation before we picked back up) so I remember being drawn to psychology and sociology was my minor. And so I remember just thinking that that was how I would make a difference, that’s how I would help the world, is by helping them understand their questions about life, and their behavior, and that’s the path I’ve stayed on, but there’s been a big shift. When I was at Hollins, I was like president of the religious life association…
MR: President of what?
HBM: The religious life association, or the RLA, I don’t even know if they still have it, but I was really involved with the chapel, but Mara, I would say that our family, our faith system was religious, but I wasn’t a Christian. (Smiles really big) I didn’t know I wasn’t a Christian, until I was 27, April of 1970, and I attended a bible study in Dalton. There was someone from campus crusade for Christ, a non-denominational group that serves campuses, most college campuses at least. As a matter of fact, for a long time I supplied Hollins, the chapel, with these books, they’re called…I was…(handed me one of her booklets: “Have you heard of the 4 spiritual laws?”) I just love it so much! So this lady, that day, shared this life changing event in her life, and I was just like, oh my gosh, um, I didn’t know this. That, the one thing, the one thing that it takes to become a Christian is a personal invitation. That at some point in your life, you personally invite, through prayer, you invite him into your life, and accept that he is your salvation, and believe. I just thought that becoming a Christian was a set of things, like if you’d asked me if I was a Christian I would have said sure, why can’t you tell? Like I was wearing it. And I would say, that I had tried to do my good in that, that I had a real heart for god, especially those years at Hollins. I remember being so profoundly lonely because my parents were in France and my brother was in France with them because he is three years younger and so I would even say that um, I’d had some emotional experiences. But I wasn’t a Christian, because I never knew to have that moment in my life, when I personally accepted that gift, so, so fusion is a very popular word now, there’s food, and, (laughs) so that fusion, becoming a Christian and all of my training in psychology, and then, um, from that time on, it was just like, oh my gosh, I began to understand even more ways to reach people and this book, that I’m working on now and that some publishers seem to be very interested in, this “Extreme Makeover: From the Inside Out” is, um, counseling, is for people to recover completely from anxiety and depression, but it’s spiritual. Now I can teach it in a secular way, because the 12 years I was a school counselor I was in a public school, and I wanted to honor their ethical code, that you are not to share spiritual things. Now if someone asks you, you are to tell them, actually, who you are and what you are…
MR: Sure.
HBM: …that is the ethical code for practice, and um, so I was never to proactively share a faith answer, but I can share the special way to reframe and I can share it in a secular way too. So I just feel so connected now, I feel like I have a much better understanding of what I was studying in the sixties, but it’s been made richer. So you asked about faith values, my family was a very churchgoing family, religiously, but they were not believers either. After I became a Christian in 1970 I began to share with them how to make that step, how to take that personal step and inviting Christ into their lives, and they have a, it’s just been great.
MR: So it sounds like your spirituality has had a great impact on your social change work.
HBM: You said it much better then I did! (Laughs, pats my knee). Thank you! That is a very good summery. Yes. My eyes have been opened, it has given me much richer compassion, um, a greater love for people, a greater sense of extending grace, to others.
MR: Well, since we’re talking about Hollins, why don’t we move on to education, and I’m curious, you say you were involved in this club, the…
HBM: Religious life association, yes.
MR: The RLA, so, I’m curious as to whether it’s still there.
HBM: I wonder if they still have it.
MR: So what made you decide to go to Hollins?
HBM: Um, well, even though I was from Montgomery, we’d begun to travel so much, from the 4th grade on, I didn’t really identify with that state. Sao many of my childhood friends were going to go to Auburn or Alabama, but I didn’t really feel a connection to them at that point. You know, I just thought, well, Virginia…just stuck somewhere in the middle of the United States, on the east coast, and, um, a lot of women from Montgomery either attended Sweetbriar or Hollins, and so I applied to both, and decided on Hollins.
MR: Well, I’m glad you made it to Hollins.
HBM: (Laughs) Well thank you! I am too. I wouldn’t have enjoyed Sweetbriar, it’s much more (takes both hands and tosses hair back from either side of face), it’s not as real. You don’t have to put that in the interview.
MR: I really like this gesture, though…(laughs, imitates her gesture)
HBM: I appreciated Hollins; I think I would not have been as comfortable at Sweetbriar. So I became a Hollins girl. And my father, (excited, happier voice) the second year I was at Hollins he flew in from Europe, he had some, um, business in Washington or something, anyway, and flew from France to surprise me, and it was Tinker Day. He was the only parent who has ever come to Tinker day, that I know of…
MR: Oh, wow!
HBM: It was so amazing! I mean, he got to the campus and was watching what was a totally alternative behavior, in fact, bless his heart, he couldn’t even find me, they said ‘Oh, she’s already gone up Tinker Mountain!’ So he, I think actually the chaplain and some other people drove him up to Tinker Mountain, and so, we still, all these years, he just died in, this past June, and one of his favorite memories was Tinker Day. (Tears in her eyes) It was really special.
MR: What a wonderful story.
HBM: He died at 83, so, that was along time.
MR: That’s one for the history books. Definitely. (Pause) I have yet to make it up Tinker Mountain.
HBM: Really? Oh it is so cool. It was so fun.
MR: Oh, believe me, I’ll get up there. Ok, so anyway…could you tell me a little more about your involvement in the religious life association? You say you were the president?
HBM: I was, isn’t that funny? I mean, I was just as lost as a goose in the snow, but, I was. (Laughs loudly) But I guess I was drawn to the serenity of those Wed nights. I remember putting on my little heels. It just felt very, I did have a heart for god then, but it was not the walk, it was an emotional experience. I loved what it felt like to connect there. I think it was just early seed, they refer to becoming a Christian like, um, an earthly burden, so I think it was that I had a long gestation period (laughs). The birth was complete in April of 1970. But I would say that my Hollins experience and being involved, just, going to chapel every Wed night, just making that heart connection with God, did prepare me for that decision.
MR: Was the Religious Life Association involved in any social change or activism work while you were at Hollins?
HBM: You know, I think our goal was simply to, hmm, well (laughs a little nervously) chapel was compulsory at that time, on Wed, but we had other activities that we, yeah. I don’t know if it still is or not, I would guess not.
MR: Hmm mmm. (Shakes head no)
HBM: But we became a part of the chapel program. It’s like I said; now I look back and think ‘Well, I was a fake.’ (Laughs) Because I was not a Christian. I thought I was. But I can just say that it was probably one of my most heartfelt connections. While I was there. And it was about transforming lives. I mean, I remember the…(Dog barked loudly)
MR: It was about transforming lives…I’m afraid the dog drowned you out there.
HBM: I look into the hills, from whence cometh my help…I think that was even, I mean, even the little logo that’s on the ring, I was, that was what was going on in my head. In my heart. And I did know that was where my help…I mean, I couldn’t access it, I didn’t know how to access it, but I did know it was drawing me. I felt like that was how people were going to be transformed, and on that level, I did…I mean, living in this real world, I do think you can connect with people whether or not you ever share spiritually with them. My 12 years as a school counselor, daily, made a difference. But I have really loved, on a different level, sharing spiritually, like the end of January, I spoke at a retreat, and I can get you a set of those tapes, if you’re interested. But that was a real high for me, to take people beyond just information to a different place spiritually. That to me is a deeper transformation. But, um, wherever I’m sent is what I’ll do. Those children…I loved fighting for them. It was an inner city school, it still is, and I had quit, to help take care of my dad, and then he died. I don’t know why I said 83, he’s 86…he was 86 when he died, I don’t know where that 83 came from, um, I do too, somebody today was telling me they were 83, but those children were the poorest in the city, they were the most abused and neglected. I had the highest number of DOFACS referrals…I don’t know what they call it, in Roanoke, but the department of family and children services…we were real tight (laughs). We’d have many referrals every week. I did a lot of parent workshops. Worked with the police. I did all the drug programs.
MR: This is recently?
HBM: Over the last 12 years.
MR: Over the last 12 years, ok. You mentioned Roanoke, I wasn’t sure…
HBM: Oh, thank you, I wasn’t clear, I wasn’t sure how the dept of family and children services worked, sometimes it’s called something different, some places it’s just called social services, some places…
MR: I think we have both, I know we have social services but I believe we also have a dept of children’s and family services cause I did a resource booklet last year. There are a lot of different programs; I think social services are an umbrella.
HBM: Well I don’t know where this is going to fit in, but I’m thinking about it now…
MR: Go ahead.
HBM: I love that Hollins gave me a love for education. I mean obviously, I was still getting my doctorate at 60. (Laughs) that was the first…well, let’s see, that would be the first serious job I had after I got married was on a college campus. So I was just drawn to education then. Actually, when I left Hollins, this is an aside, I worked…let’s do that one later.
MR: Okay.
HBM: But then, I raised my children, but I worked on social change in their schools, was in leadership in their schools for all those years. When my children were in, were, they’re just a year apart, and when my son was a senior, about to graduate, my daughter was a junior, I began a job to help pay for their college in the years to come. I was the first elementary drug programmer basically for 18 schools. (Her poodle Millie had a drink out of a water bottle lid) I would develop all the elementary drug programs, and then do them. I would travel around. I did that for 5 years, and then I did, while I was working on my masters, as an older women, I did my masters in guidance and counseling. And then I got my specialist…you’ve seen all that I’m sure on my CV, but…did I give you the CV, yet?
MR: I don’t think so. But I’ve seen your web page…
HBM: The curriculum vitalis…it’s got all the names of the degrees and all that, but anyway, so after I finished my masters, I was than eligible to apply for a job as a counselor, and that’s what I did for 12 years. Right off the bat I did go back and get a specialist’s degree, again, I waited a couple of years because my mom was battling cancer, and then I went for another degree. Daddy went to a golf school in Sarasota while I went to my doctorate school. I went to the University of Sarasota and it was like you do stuff for a whole month before you have a class, then you only sit in class for a week, it’s sort of non-traditional, and then you do stuff for the next month, to acclimate, and that’s for each course, and, um, but what’s so fun is that we did that twice. He went with me.
MR: So you guys got to spend some time together in Sarasota.
HBM: Yeah we did.
MR: That’s wonderful.
HBM: And you can see, just how profoundly I was drawn to education, and I know that schooling, for lack of a better word, was important to me, that I knew that that was, that would help me to be, to have some expertise. In the field that I was pursuing, still… and what happened back after I left Hollins, was that I was supposed to get my doctorate in Boston, I was to go to Boston University and get my doctorate in clinical psych. My Hollins roommate and I were going to live together. She was a chem major, and she was going to work for the American Cancer Society, and do research for them. And over than summer, my parents found out that they were moving back from France, back to Montgomery, and they wanted me so much to spend the year there making my debut, it was like oh, gosh, I just knew, I just had this feeling that if I abandoned graduate school I’d never get back. And I almost didn’t. And our letters crossed, I was writing to my Hollins roommate to say, well, I haven’t seem much of my parents over the last three years and now they’re back, and I feel like I really need to see them, to be with them, and our letters crossed and she was writing to me, there was obviously no emails (laughs) in ’64, telling me she had decided to get married, that she couldn’t go to Boston either. So we both gave up Boston. And so I worked, even though I was making my debut, I had to do some important work, I mean, that was just drilled into me from Hollins, to be an advocate, to do something important. So by day, I worked at the family guidance center, I mean, it’s a hoot now that I think about it; here I was single, being a marriage counselor. But then again I always argue, that issues are issues, and it’s true, and I was fine with it, but it was the most bi-polar life, because here I’d be, it was a, it was in a, I was working with people who didn’t have pay, you know, and then I’d be going to sherry parties in the afternoon! Or luncheons, you know, the debutante life… and it was very hard, I mean, after awhile, and see, I didn’t have, I wasn’t a Christian so I couldn’t make sense of it, but I thought, I thought, I just can’t do this anymore. So I moved to Atlanta, and I met Jim. On the very first day I was in Atlanta, through some Hollins friends!
MR: Really.
HBM: He was working at Robinson Humphrey, and three…all right, there were five Hollins girls that I knew, that graduated the year before me. One of them worked where I had gone for an interview, at Riches, downtown. That was a big department store. I had gone to go into personnel, I thought I’d use my psychology degree that way, you see, I didn’t have my masters yet, or a doctorate, so just having a BA in psychology, it is not, it is not a good thing. So I thought, I’ll just try personnel, and go to the big city. I knew that MJ Nolen, that was her name, I knew that I could stay with her while I was going for my interview, so I went and stayed with these five girls. Went through my interview, came home, I was sitting on the floor playing scrabble and Jim came home with the three…they had gone from Robinson Humphrey to a James Bond movie, and then they invited him to come to the apartment. So anyway, he told the girls, if she comes back, if she gets the job and comes back, just let me know. And then we married two years later.
And so then I worked in this department store doing training. I ended up doing training, which is sort of education, um, isn’t that fun, so…
MR: Now I’m going to interrupt you here, because…
HBM: Please.
MR: ‘Cause this, I’m really curious…when you keep saying, making your debut, leading the debutante life, sherry parties…this is something that is pretty foreign to me, and probably to some of the other women at Hollins. Could you tell me a little more about what that involved? Cause if it was such a sharp contrast, I’m curious as to what that was like.
HBM: In the deep south, of which Montgomery is a part, actually, Montgomery, not Birmingham but Montgomery, Mobile, and New Orleans, have Mardi Gras, from fall until…they have Mardi Gras balls, masked balls, from fall until spring. (Barking drowned out a little here) I had all these evening gowns, and there were these balls, these masked balls, about 14 of them. And I was queen of one of them, the Vasker’s ball on Valentine’s Day. And it was so… just so not connected with real life, and yet these people were sweet. These people were my grandparent’s age, and my parent’s ages, pretty much, and it was just a genteel, um, they didn’t mean to be, what is the word I’m looking for, they didn’t mean to be pretentious, it was just a tradition, it was a southern thing. And it was, it was part of their social life. It was just how they lived. But I did not feel connected with this. I really, that year, in deference to my parents, I went through the motions, of going to all the parties, and there were luncheons, there were only three of us, that were debutantes that year, you see, every year there’re debutantes, but in the sixties, you had to have completed four years of college, and this is your introduction to society. You are selected by these (unintelligible) and you become Montgomery’s debutantes of this year, you see. So three of us were the debutantes of the 64-65 season. And there were just…we were invited to luncheons, there were brunches for us, and sherry parties, and the masked balls, and it was like being Cinderella. But it was so surreal. It was just like, you know, I wasn’t, again, I wasn’t a Christian, I didn’t have a relationship with god, and so, I didn’t have a conversation going. But I was doing a lot of wondering what life was all about. By day, I was at the family guidance center, and it was two completely different worlds.
MR: Sounds like quite a sharp contrast.
HBM: Absolutely. But you know, I come to the people, my social life, the debutante life, as I look back, I remember trying to make it real. Meaning that I wanted to have meaningful conversations with people, and it would bother me, when I would hear people taking on a very social level, or a very superficial level. I remember trying to…make a difference. Even then, um, and I did grow to love those people, I saw their hearts, you know, and so I brought some meaning to it, but I just thought, I’ve got to leave this city, because I’ve said everything I’ve ever had to say! (Laughs) And I was seeing that my world was small. I was seeing the same people day and night, and I just felt… I felt old. I just felt like I was dying. And so I went to the big city! I went to the big city of Atlanta, that’s just all I needed to do, but I kept wanting to make a difference.
MR: So after you graduated, and you went through the debutante years, yes, making your debut, I was trying to get the language right…
HBM: Yes, that’s right, it’s your introduction to society for a southern girl.
MR: That’s an interesting part of your culture, it seems, and so after that, you…
HBM: It’s like dog training, you know, you learn to curtsey, and do all that…let’s make connection to PetSmart… (Laughs…and I laugh even louder) It’s like dog training, for girls…for a year. (Still laughing)
MR: (laughing, and sort of trying not to) Okay…okay. Mara stops for a moment to regain her composure. So how did you decide on your former occupation? You told me before that you thought that your experience in psychology might help you in personnel? Was there something else that drew you to the job you started at? Back then?
HBM: I found this volunteer job in Montgomery, just because it was in my field, and I think that was in the back of my mind once I got to Atlanta, was that I knew that I had this Hollins friend, that was working at Riches, and I knew they had a training department, and I knew they had a personnel department, and I thought, you know, this would be a good change of pace for me, cause I was in…I also knew that I couldn’t have any serious jobs in my field until I got my masters, so I was really, mentally into that direction.
MR: Right.
HBM: And actually when I married…I did that job for two years and then I married…I moved to Dalton GA, and that was their first year to have Dalton College. It was a junior college then, now it’s a 4-year. You’ll see it; actually, it’s actually across I-75 from me, from where I live. So actually when you turn on exit 333, you will not see the college, but it’s about a quarter mile up on your left. I could have taught on their faculty if I’d had my masters but I didn’t have my masters yet. I was the faculty assistant, and I did their main office, um, did all their tests for them, did the equipment, did the mail, was just sort of their girl Friday. But I remember feeling so wanting at that point, like, oh, man, oh, I want my masters degree! And aren’t I greedy. But when I got my masters, decades later, that still wasn’t enough. I just…I love learning, I really do, and I know that Hollins cultivated that. And you know, information changes people. It really is, I think I’ve seen myself as an educator, even though, I would say, slash, counselor, (clears throat) but my posture is that of giving information because information is what changes people, it’s not advice, because people recoil at anything that feels like advice and so I’m real careful as a language coach to help people not give advice or be controlling. You’ll hear that on the CDs, that…
MR: That’s excellent…advice, although, (laughs) it is, it’s good information. You know, you were saying that Hollins really cultivates that love of learning. I’m curious as to whether there were any professors or classes at Hollins that you remember in particular from your time there?
HBM: Yes. As I referred to somewhat early on, I don’t know that I was as prepared to come to Hollins as some of the girls. I was very naïve, a little girl in ponytails and crinolines. And I was a year younger than my classmates, I started school early.
MR: Oh you started early, okay.
HBM: So I really had not dated, much, and so social mixers with W&L or VA Tech were all just very new. Beer was new, cigarettes were new, it was just this whole new world and it was dizzying. And academically…I had been in the top of my class in High School, at Warner Robbins. (Hard to hear her)
MR: What was your high school again?
HBM: Warner Robbins high school. It’s a suburb of Macon. Really, probably about 20-30 minutes away from Macon, but anyway, it’s a suburb of Macon GA. So I was used to A’s, but Mara, I did NOT get A’s, I mean, I was on suspension or whatever the first year, I just did not get the grades. No, suspension is not…they let me know, in a letter, that I needed to get with the program. But you know, when I hit my field, when I started hitting my psych classes in my junior and senior years, there were the A’s again. And I got solid A’s, you know, in graduate school, and getting my doctorate. But, um, so, you know, when you, when we find that special place, that special something, I just felt a deep connection. I took a course, and I don’t even know what it was called, a lab of sorts, and we went out to the VA hospital and I loved going there, and the whole…being a counselor. I mean, that was just a deep connection. And that’s what I kept coming back to for years, I know that that worked for me, it was… something happened inside me. I was counseling there, and I loved it, and as I said, I loved the psych classes, I wish I could tell you what the gentleman’s name was who taught it, he was such an encourager to me.
MR: So this was, the counseling at the VA hospital was something you did through Hollins?
HBM: Yes. It was a counseling course.
MR: And it was a counseling course.
HBM: It was a psych course. And I don’t know if they still go out to the VA hospital or not, I mean, it was probably like, assessment, or…I have no idea what it was called, but boy I loved that lab.
MR: I may look that up and ask you. Because I looked at a course…there was a course catalog from, I think, 63? Because I looked it up, and we were saying oh, I wish they offered that now.
HBM: It probably would have been 63!
MR: I may look at that again, cause I’m curious, maybe we could find out…but it sounds like that particular class was something that had a great influence on you.
HBM: It did. And I loved my art history courses, that was just happy happy, that just filled the soul part of me too. And then Orchesis—I was in the modern dance group.
MR: Oh, wow! I love that…what was it called again?
HBM: Orchesis. O-R-C-H-E-S-I-S. I would guess they still have orchesis…
MR: I’ve never heard of orchesis, but they have an excellent modern dance program.
HBM: Paula Levine? Is she still part of it?
MR: No, um, the woman…Hmm, I’m trying to remember, Jeffrey and…I can’t remember her name now because…I tried to. I’m sure it’ll come to me halfway home. Anyway, so you did modern dance, as well as your other studies.
HBM: Yes, you know that was a real…I would say, those systems that happen for you that help you feel supported, the young women who were in orchesis, we bonded well, and those of us in art history, we were in studio for four hours at a time, and so those were like my subgroups, and then the RLA, of course, and so those were like my activities that I enjoyed. The art, and the dance, and I have used a lot of the art in my therapy, along with my little Millie-poo…and that was not her barking.
MR: No, that was a black lab behind us, a very cute lab.
HBM: Yes, in the grocery cart.
MR: I have a real thing for labs, we have one.
HBM: Did you know there is a treatment center, in Arkansas, that uses labs? It’s a treatment center for young men that are on meth, from ages 17-24, and it’s called the cliff? The cove? I don’t know. But when the young man gets there, he gets to select the lab he wants, and he can pick red, or yellow, or black, male or female, and they cuddle for two days, and then for the next 9 months you take care of that lab, you take care of it’s cage, train it, cuddle time, every day, and then you get to take your dog with you when you leave (voice goes higher, very emotional). And it is a visual of your progress.
Isn’t that phenomenal?
MR: And this is a recovery program?
HBM: Yes it is. I was just thinking, as a lab lover, you’d enjoy hearing about it.
MR: I love it…it makes sense. It seems like a sustainable way to be treated. You’re such a wealth of knowledge, Helen. I’m going to go back to my questions here…
HBM: Harness me!
MR: Since we were talking about Hollins, let me go back to a question I didn’t get to before. How do you think your education at a women’s university affected your life and your community, and work. Because it’s different, being at an all women’s school.
HBM: I think I would not have done well at a co-ed university. I think I am more serious minded than not, as far as my studies, and I was always thankful that I didn’t have distractions. Now the weekends became a distraction (laughs). And it was just a whole new world for me. So that was just an education in itself, the socialization there. But at least it had some boundaries there. You know, you signed in, signed out…you only dated these few times, so…I was glad to have that limitation on my social life, looking back, cause it was hard enough be young and not have had the prep school education…I didn’t even hardly know how to study. I mean, my high school studies had come so easily, I didn’t even hardly know how to study. I made myself go to the library, and made myself do…um, I had to really teach myself how to do this. And so I think being at a women’s university, it just allowed me to seize on that, and there were so many people there, to show me the way, it was just where I needed to be. I felt…not distracted. I mean, I was distracted by some things, obviously, the whole college experience is a distraction, it was good for me, because I needed someone to say here, watch this, look at all these women studying, and this is…it’s okay to be serious, with your thoughts and your studies, cause I was, I was…a bookworm, I was always…I loved paper and pen, I loved…that’s were I felt at home. So it was a good fit for me, even though I didn’t do too well at the start, they were very graceful to help me to get on the path.
MR: Well, yeah…and you found where you needed to be, so…
HBM: It was just an adjustment.
MR: An adjustment, I’m sure. Well, I’m curious your graduate school experience, now you’ve told me some about this, but I want to try and narrow this down. Let’s see, you graduated in ‘64, when did you start going back to graduate school? Did you take any classes over the years?
HBM: Well, let me give you the exact dates on Monday, or, or, yes.
MR: Okay. That’s fine.
HBM: I’ll give you a copy of the CV, and it will have the exact dates. But it was in the early 90’s, when I was working in the drug job. The elementary coordinator for the drug programs? And I worked by day and went to school in the afternoon and the evening. I had to drive, I had to commute two hours, to Carrolton GA, there’s a college there, a university there, it’s called…it was called West GA College, but now it’s called a university, I’m not sure of the exact name now. It’s in Carrolton GA, it was two hours away, and I would leave, I got permission to leave from my school job at 2:30, instead of 3 or 3:30, twice a week, with a ride group, and we would go to Carrolton, drive over for two hours, do a five hour class, and drive back two hours. I would get home late. And I…I just…it only took me six quarters to get my masters, I took two courses, and I look back, and I think, wow. How in the world. It was nuts. My kids were both in college. It was a great way for me to fill that empty nest. It was something that I had always wanted to do, and I was loving the material, I was loving it. What Carrolton had was this masters in guidance counseling, cause I knew that I wanted to be a guidance counselor. I said now look, look where I have spent my children’s whole career, helping at the schools. I want to, that’s what I know I want to do. And they had a wonderful program in it. So then when I finished, ‘91, ’92…’90, that may have been when I finished. So then when I finished, it took me 3 years to do a specialist program. I only took one course. Up there, so instead of a year and a half it took me three years. And that, a specialist is the same as a six year degree, and it’s still a MED, or a EDD. So my first degree was a masters, or an MED, and my second was in education, in guidance and counseling. The specialist was an EDS, in guidance and counseling. I got that in ’93, the spring of 93, and then the job opening with this school-counseling job came up, as I graduated. And then I began in the fall of ’93 for those 12 years as a guidance counselor. In this little, um, it began as a K-2 school, and it’s now K-5, but it was K-3, pre-K through 3, for most of the years I was there.
MR: So you were working with little kids.
HBM: Little ones, that’s right. And it’s harder, it really was profoundly harder, but I loved it. I loved the challenge. I loved it.
MR: Well, I’m going to make a jump here, because I’d like to ask you about your definition of activism. What do you consider activism to be? How would you define it?
HBM: Proactively making a difference. (Hands crossed over heart) In a life or some lives. (Her cell phone rings) Let me see if that was Jim. (Her husband)
MR: Go right ahead.
HBM: It’s not Jim.
MR: Ok, well, I’ll know that ring is you next time.
HBM: Thank you. So, to me activism is actively seeking a way to make a difference. It’s a proactive effort on your part to stay on the course. And when I let go of that job last spring, to take care of my dad, my last day was May 31st and he died June 6th. I had this profound grief. So much loss, so much change, yes, I lost the job I loved and more grievous was the loss of my pal, my dad. But I began to ask God what he would have me to do. Because I must have purpose. So this activism, issue, and I began to ask myself, what have you always wanted to volunteer to do? And I knew there was a little school that did not have a counselor and I asked them for their hardest cases and I began to go out one day a week, seeing five children, just as a volunteer, and then every Tuesday, at my church, here in Dalton, I think, I would say that our community has never had free counseling. So, yes, there was very expensive counseling, or public health type of counseling. And so I thought, as a minister of my church, and for my community, I would offer free counseling. Every Tuesday I take hour appointments. Pro-bono. So I’ve been doing that since the fall, and just loving it. And Millie (her teacup poodle) goes too and spends the whole day with me. It’s just fun! It’s so great, and then on Wednesdays and Thursdays there’s some children from some alternative schools that need some relationships with some safe people in their lives, and so Millie and I do that, and that’s kind of what we’ve been doing. And because I’m free, now that my husband has retired, I’ll be traveling some. My daughter lives in Colorado, and that was my son (on the cell phone) he lives in Dalton, and has the grandchildren. But when and if I need to take myself off the calendar, then I can do that, you know. I’m not tied down, like I would be for a paying job. So it’s going to suit my…I need to be flexible right now. And if my material is published, this ‘Extreme Makeover’ material, ‘from the inside out,’ then, if it is published, then I’ll be needing, probably, to do some traveling. But I love, I love speaking to Women’s groups, I love helping them to…with life principles that…my mission, my greatest mission, would be to help people, especially women, to be okay no matter what. I mean, that’s my goal, my life goal, is to help people to be okay no matter what. That they are not in bondage to people, places, things, events and circumstances. Because we do look to people, places, things, events and circumstances for our love, joy and peace. We just do….I mean, that’s how it works. But I love challenging women to do it a different way, look at it in a new way. So, I’m on a path, I guess now, to… I don’t know what it’s going to look like, I really don’t, I feel like I’m about to jump off into this abyss, actually, I don’t know what my immediate future is going to look like. I really don’t. I’m praying about it and I just know that my heart longs to set women free. There’s verse in Isaiah 61 that talks about binding up the broken hearted, and setting captives free (tears in her eyes). That is my heart. (Hand on heart)
MR: That sounds like some very sustainable activism. It sounds like activism that’s going to keep on going.
HBM: So that’s Isaiah 61 verse 1-3. (Laughs) And it is my diving board, it is my mission statement. It is what I long to do, what I have a passion in life to do. To help people to be free, from the things that hold them, from their brokenness, from their damaged places, from the hurt, from the painful things that happen, to all of us. The tsunamis, the Katrinas, on the inside of them. And that’s what I want to do most of all.
MR: Have you engaged in any other work you would consider activism or social change besides your counseling work?
HBM: I’m on the board of two things, the Boy Scouts, in my town, and then I’m on the board of the Boy’s and Girl’s club, it’s a national group also. I’m the chairman of the program committee, bringing some proactive change to their lives, in other words, there’s this wonderful creative art’s guild in Dalton that gives these art lessons, just bringing them there to help these children, so many of them need our, and bringing in proactive information to help them make abstinence decisions, and so especially the pre-teens, we’ve got the pregnancy center that’s coming to give wonderful information, and so, in other words, it’s need’s based, but I’m real involved with the programs.
MR: Now, the Boy’s and Girl’s clubs, is that part of the Big Brother Big Sister organization?
HBM: No, no but I’ve been involved with that for all of my years as, the twelve years I was counselor at, this was the first school that had the school based buddy program, in other words, Big Brother’s Big Sister’s, they have two distinct programs, they have the Big Brother Big Sister program, and then they have the buddy program, that is just, you see your buddy in school for one hour a week, and you don’t ever go to their home, you’re not allowed to call them, in other words, it’s just a different boundary.
MR: Yeah.
HBM: But we had the buddy program and I matched folks for 12 years.
MR: That sounds like the kind of work that you would do, that’s why I was guessing…
HBM: Connecting, yes, I love connecting people, I do.
MR: Well, you have answered a lot of this already, but I’m going to ask you this question anyway. How is this work meaningful to you on a personal level?
HBM: I know what it is to hurt. My mom gave me a lot of difficult messages. Out of her own pain. As a counselor, as a professional counselor, if I had to diagnose her I would say she had a dual diagnosis. Alcoholism and social anxiety. And she had a lot of anger. Out of fear…the fear and the anger were connected. And she spewed on me…mostly when I was an adult, but it was very extremely painful, and I could tell myself that I was her safe person, but it still was very hurtful. (She sat on her hands nearly the whole time she spoke about her mother) The messages were: Can’t you do anything right, you are such a zero, blah blah blah blah blah…and, you know, it connected with every other failure I’d ever had, maybe even not doing well academically the first year at Hollins, you know, just every other failure, and I guess the implied message she gave me was that unless you say or do the right thing, then you’re a zero. That is not the correct message. It is not ok for people to think that. But I would say that I was verbally abused and emotionally abused, and as I said it didn’t pop out until I was a young adult. But for many years, until she died, which was 19…98, she died in ’98, it was difficult, over those 20 years of recovery, she was still very hurtful to me. And I learned a lot, it drove me, continually, to make a difference. And I think I love rescuing, helping people, it’s not like rescuing people to not hurt, because that’s not in the real world, but it’s helping them, giving them coping skills, to move out of that painful place, and these are on the CD, I’ll send you some of the CDs, it’ll be two out of the seven-five, it’ll be the heart of it. It is, that’s just probably my greatest life’s desire, is to help, I mean, if I had to cull it all down, is to help. And that’s what I’ve taught these children all these years, is ‘I’m going to be okay no matter what.’ How to make good choices, how to be responsible for your behavior, how to move away from difficult people. This is why I invented the peace rug, five years ago, was because it hurt me. I connected with these children who were being bullied at school, because I was being bullied by my mom. This was right after her death that I started processing this. I developed it right after she died. I started thinking about it, and I started thinking what, can I do, every day, in this school to reframe, re-pattern this victim/bully thing? Because I knew from my counseling studies that when you are a victim of violence, when you watch violence, even, that you will soon do that violence. It’s just called patterning. In fact, we’re in a dog place, one of the most famous stories about patterning, involves a dog…(pauses)
MR: Pavlov?
HBM: No, no, good guess, but no, there was this mother dog, who had only three legs, and even though she had a normal litter of like three dogs, they walked like this (demonstrates a sideways walk, as if you were missing one leg). Because they watched her, and they repeated the pattern. And so, I was realizing, I was having this conversation with myself, and realizing that unless I did some different interventions, in my own life, and of course I’d been doing this for 10-15 years, that I was going to be just like my mom, because I focused on her. And then I was noticing that these children who were in my school who were the victims of bullying, were going to become the bullies themselves, because they kept focusing. They stuffed their rage, they were silent, they focused on their bullies, and they became, like them. And so I was thinking I had to find a different pattern, I had to re-pattern these children, and what can I do every day, every day in every classroom, to help these children to not stuff their rage, and not focus on their bullies, but what is a strong intervention? And god didn’t answer until that fall, it was the fall of ’99, and so Mother died December of ’98, and I started thinking about it in January, and it was the weirdest thing…was…Columbine. The spring of ’99. And that’s when all the studies started coming out, that confirmed what I had been saying, because people would mention the other school shooter profiles, and then when I went to graduate school and did the peace rug as my study, I continued to dive deeply into the studies about school, shooters, and what that profile looked like. And they had once been victims of bullying themselves. Now, the Columbine boys, no wonder they hated the cafeteria, they’d been rubbed with mustard, mayonnaise, catsup… all those days, and so, I felt like the answer then, for school shooters, well, let me back up. I realized, I have 750 children in this school who are at risk to be school shooters. Because they see violence every day in their neighborhoods, in their homes, on TV, I mean, I had the poorest of the inner city children, so my children saw true violence. But even if they just saw it on TV, they’re seeing it every day, it’s being perpetuated. It’s in their head. And I thought, you know, the only way I’m going to break this, is if I can actually give a script to the victim and the bully, and they could meet in this special place, and the victim will invite the bully to come there, and then together they’ll say some things, and make an agreement, and then they’ll be okay with each other. They will dialogue, we will talk, they will persevere through this, they will move through this pain, and they will feel okay, and that is what the Peace Rug is all about! It is an actual 3 by 5 rug, and then it has this script with it, and the bully loves it too because they need a connection place. They are hurting. The victim is hurting, the bully is hurting, and I wanted…here’s the activism… I wanted to help them be ok, to find a connecting place, so they don’t have to feel pain anymore.
MR: I just have to say what a beautiful idea this is.
HBM: Thank you so much. (Heartfelt) Thank you.
MR: It is so sorely needed, I know I told you that in one of our first emails, but it really….it really seems to have worked. Have you seen that in your studies, in your experiences?
HBM: Yes! Oh yes, that’s in my research, and then, every school that’s tried it, I mean if every classroom had a peace rug, or even every school, if it were taught to children on a consistent basis, and these children had the language, if you will, the language, to stand up, at the slightest sign of being disrespected, for them to approach their bully with language that’s inviting, and do a boundary, and know that that was not ok, and what they need to do differently, etc, and come to some agreements, and do a handshake, high five, do some closure, then they would be fine, then they would know what it felt like to resolve conflicts for the rest of their school days. You see kids, they don’t like peer counseling, because that’s an elite system, and the implied message is: ‘Well, you can’t do it yourself, so you need me to help you. You need these peer counselors to help you.’ No. Kids want to do it themselves. The victim needs to find his voice with his bully. If he doesn’t, he’ll keep being a victim of bullying. He’s got to find his voice. So the Peace Rug is to help people find their voice, and of course it was about my mom, but I was connecting the dots with where I was. The children that I loved at that school, those thousands of children.
MR: That is a unique form of activism. I think, like I said before, it seems to me to be very sustainable, as opposed to maybe some of the stereotypical images that we have. This is something that starts at the beginning.
HBM: It’s activism of the heart. They knew that I loved them, and they would come plowing through, I mean every day, I was just surrounded by love.
MR: I can see that in your eyes, (we both laugh, her eyes are teary) how much you loved them.
HBM: They were special weren’t they Millie? (higher tone, to her dog) Those were special days.
MR: Well, I know that you have been out of town all week and are anxious to get home, so let me ask you one more question and then we will wrap this up for today. What made you decide to take part in this life history project? And how do you feel about participating?
HBM: Thank you for asking that, Mara. I’ve just been so busy all these years, since Hollins, running around just busy busy! And I felt like I have not given back to Hollins, I’ve not really, I mean, I write every now and then to the school reporter or the class reporter. And I’ve only been back once; it’s only worked out once for me to go back for a reunion. But it matters. Hollins matters to me. It was just a small way that I could let Hollins know, in some way, that they mattered. That they had given me a great start.
MR: Well it’s certainly inspiring to me, because it’s a very different Hollins now, then it was back then, but a lot of people still have those same feelings, like you said earlier in the interview, that information is…power…
HBM: It is.
MR: …and that you’re given that opportunity to learn. It really travels with you through your life. And…so let’s go ahead and wrap this up for today, and continue on Monday, because I’m sure there’s a lot of questions I’ll want to go back to. Thank you so much!
HBM: You’re welcome. And thank you, Mara.
Second Interview With Helen Brown McIntosh,
Conducted at her home in Dalton, Georgia.
March 27, 2006.
Mara Robbins: Okay, Helen, thank you so much for meeting with me again.
Helen Brown McIntosh: It is a pleasure.
MR: And, um, I wanted to go back to our first interview, a couple of things from there, especially regarding your family. We didn’t talk much about your brother, or your children, and I wondered if you could tell me a little about your relationship with them.
HBM: My brother is almost three years younger, and was a delight. I used to kiss his little tow-head, his hair, and he was just my delight. I just had a big time with him over the years, and we’re still so close. It’s a great relationship. What might have been difficult in between, just as an aside, is that mom was real supportive of him, in the difficult years, it was my father and myself that got the tongue lashing, not my brother, but that was painful for him too. Because it was hard for him to watch me be so victimized. So he was happy for my development of my own recovery, and my own response to her, and he has always been real compassionate. He’s a wonderful brother.
MR: Good.
HBM: He’s an architect in Montgomery. He has a wife and three children, two girls and a boy. His three children were just slightly younger than my two children, Bryan and Blythe, so the five cousins played well together all the years that they grew up, so it was a sweet time. It was good.
MR: And your children are named?
HBM: Bryan, B-R-Y-A-N, that was my mother’s maiden name, so we weren’t trying to be fancy with the y, it just really was a last name, in other words my grandfather that you saw with the cowboy boots, his name was Don C. Bryan, B-R-Y-A-N, so Bryan, he’s 36, and my daughter, Blythe, B-L-Y-T-H-E, she is 35. And they are wonderful. My son, and his wife, and his two little girls, my grandchildren, they are, actually, I used to say, a week ago, eight and four, and now the four year old has turned five and the eight year old will turn nine very soon, so we’re about to make some changes. And so, they live here in Dalton, and so that’s been wonderful. And he’s a doctor; he has a PhD in biblical studies. So he had gotten a M (something- unclear) at Columbia, and then he got his PhD in Louisville. At the seminary there. So we were going through doctor school at the same time. He had heard me talk about that I guess for years. We both decided to tackle it together. It was great. Then my daughter Blythe used to live in Nashville, she worked for Thomas Nelson Publishers for years and years, and then she met her prince in the castle. (we had a conversation about this earlier—before we were recording, and looked at some of the photos.) In Glen Aerie there in Colorado Springs. And they fell in love in August and married in July of ’04. They met in August of ‘03 and married in ’04 and they are so happy but she lives in Colorado Springs (last part of this sentence higher and strained, drawn out voice). So I had to develop my (laughs) writing skills. I have to just email her a lot, and we talk, on the phone of course, a lot. But that’s been hard. She and I are very very close.
MR: Well, it sounds like you have a close relationship with your entire family.
HBM: Mmm-hmm. It’s good. It was good. Even the difficult times with mom, I think, brought us closer together. Kept us real. We learned to do grace. It was a gift, not in wrapping, that we would have welcomed, but it was a sweet gift to our family. We learned a lot. We learned so much. And I taught abundantly that all the mistakes I made with Bryan and Blythe had been used for good. I mean, I learned so much through the mistakes I made with them. It was great. I remember having to constantly apologize, or choosing (strongly emphasized) to apologize (slight laugh), when they were young, but you know in a very short period of time I saw them learn to take responsibility, and to apologize to each other, it was phenomenal. It was like…YAY!!! (higher pitched, louder, drawn out, heartfelt) If I had not made so many mistakes and had to—chosen to—humble myself, they might not have learned how to assume responsibility and they would not have learned how to—so readily—to ask forgiveness. They had a sweet (emphasized) relationship. They really did. All of their days and even now. It’s been great.
MR: Well, that factors into a question I was going to ask you about your peace rugs. I’d like you to tell me more about the peace rug during this interview, but since you were talking about your kids being an inspiration, do you feel like you used any of those concepts that you developed with the peace rugs with your own children?
HBM: Yes and no. (clears throat) I remember loving what it felt like when they were doing well, having a good relationship. I remember feeling that…pit of the stomach feeling, you know, when they were…having a problem. But for the most part they really did do well. It was more having to do with my mom, that I developed the peace rug, instead of my own children. Because they really resolved their conflicts very rapidly. They just took responsibility for their actions when they did something that wasn’t right, they just knew to take responsibility. Because of my mistakes. I had modeled that to them, and did a three step apology that was really cool, and that is not in the peace rug script, but this is something that I have since taught to a lot of families, and that was, ‘I was wrong to do blank, I’m sorry, will you forgive me.’ And it’s more than, ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ (laughs) because that’s not naming the real problem, and taking ownership. And then it’s not involving the other person, whereas if you say, ‘I was wrong to blank,’ then that’s taking responsibility and naming the root problem. It’s like lack of love, lack of consideration, lack of respect, not especially just the events that happened, but the real underlying principles. And then saying ‘I’m sorry’, and then saying ‘Will you forgive me,’ so…it was special. That’s just how they did it. And I loved what it felt like when they’d talk about things and agree on a plan, so maybe that was a seed. But I would say that the main thing was just all the years of my mom’s verbal abuse. I just remember the trapped feeling of not knowing how to find my voice. Just being totally intimidated by her. And I tried various responses—the joke one, the ignoring one—but I knew that those were just temporary solutions. At some point I needed to find a way to stand up to her and to do a boundary, and so, actually in the study of psychology you learn those “I” statements, that when you ‘I feel.’ And that part of it—it’s out there in the public domain, so I’ve not been able to give credit to that, it’s in the public domain, but that’s not the only part of the peace rug script, there’s things on both sides of it, and I’d be happy to share that with you, in fact, it’s in my dissertation paper, and it’s in the chapter of ‘Extreme Makeover: From the Inside Out,’ it’s in two places, you’ll find the script. But the ‘I’ statements helped me to let mom know at times, when you say that, when you say ‘I feel this certain way.’ And I was having to be clear about my agenda, that my agenda was to speak up, it was not to change her. And it wasn’t to fix her, but it was to protect Helen. And to stand up for me. And that it was time for me not to be a door mat any longer, that it was not healthy for me to keep taking it from her, because it wasn’t healthy for me and it wasn’t helping her. Because it was enabling her to be even further abusive. So those were some pieces. And it was after she died, in December of ’98, that I started making a real connection with the children at my school. Just…I think…I’m sure… that ever since I had been there in ‘93, from ’93 to ’98, I loved (strong, heartfelt emphasis) those children. So much. (tears in her eyes) Those wounded children, those inner city children, they were me. (clears throat, obviously deeply emotional issue). I just…I had such instant compassion for them. It was so easy to love them, and to work for them and to teach parents. So I did a lot of proactive work with the children and with their parents. Because…their…because of my mom, and the hurt I had experienced with her. (clears throat) For instance, I had the, um, I had a great deal of (unclear), up until I left in the spring of 2005, I had the most abuse referrals, I think I mentioned that Saturday, physical abuse, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, and a great concern was trying to teach parents how to not leave marks. Even this morning, the child who I was seeing this morning (at her pro-bono volunteer position), you know, I just asked that key question: ‘When you do something wrong, what happens?’ and ‘When they spank you, do they ever leave marks?’ And he said ‘Yes. They do.’ And I said, ‘You know, that’s not okay.’ And he didn’t have any on him today so I didn’t do a DEFACS referral, but I will be contacting the parent and steering things a different way. I’ve got to make an intervention. I can’t ignore it. There is a legal and ethical mandate. But picture 750 of these children, and for the most part because it was a poverty situation, lots of stress, lots of violence, most of my parents did leave marks. And so a proactive effort, for instance, was to give them a bookmark, and also have a lot of parent classes and explain, but I had the children to become my teachers, because I didn’t have access to the grownups. And so, by way of teaching, this is an example I’m giving you of how I love to help children find their voices, during the personal safety violence lessons, you teach them to say no to drugs, get away, tell, say no, get away, tell, so that’s the drug lesson, and then the stranger danger lesson is the same thing, and you develop that, and then it’s the, um, anger one, the rage, um, the discipline, and how to that, and then the personal touch, if someone touches you in a way that is not comfortable, what to say. Again: say no, get away, tell. But the one involving their parents, we role played this, in class, many times, and I’d have everybody stand up and say ‘it’s not okay’ and I’d say a line and they’d say a line, ‘Mommy and Poppy, I’ve been learning in school that it’s not okay for you to hit me anywhere on my body except on my pompe,’ most of my children were Latino, so pompe means bottom, ‘but you cannot leave any marks or bruises.’ And then they would explain that Dr. McIntosh would have to do a referral. And I would explain to parents, I would say ‘Please, I don’t want to make trouble for your family, but I will contact the authorities if your children have marks from discipline, I will, and I don’t want to, so please just don’t.’ Let’s talk about time-outs, let’s talk about contracts, I taught them how to do family meetings, where they can do the rules and the routines, where they can do a contract. And then the RT, the reality therapy, I would teach them that, which is sort of…well, it can be used a thousand ways but that’s what we use for time out at our school, and they could use it at home, for time outs, but also for an aside conversation. It is meant to help a child to move from a place where they have not made a good choice to a redeeming place, where they make a plan to make things better. And I mean, we could use it, as adults, with our friends. It’s not like, just for children, at all. But reality therapy is just 4 main questions, and it is awesome. And so I would teach this to parents as a way to give the children dialogue, but I taught the children how to find a voice with their parents. So, back to the peace rug. I just saw more and more of a problem with bullying. And making that connection with school shooters. And I thought, I’ve got 750 potential school shooters here because all it takes is to watch violence and to be victimized by bullies, and if that is true, then I’ve got to do something. Lord, help me to find an intervention that every classroom could use every day in their room and every school could do this thing and have this special place where a victim would stand up to their bully and would invite their bully to come, and it would be a zero tolerance of any form of disrespecting, from eye-rolling to any form of shunning, so it could be totally non-verbal disrespecting on up to pushing, shoving, whatever…knifing, raping…(laughs slightly) those are the real big guys, but it starts small. And so, that was my target, was to help teachers to let children mediate completely every form of disrespect. Just one incident. And what I would teach them to say, if someone disrespects you, you put up your hand like a policeman and you say: ‘Please stop.’ But if they disregard that, and if they go further, then the peace rug is the next step. So it’s not always the first step. The very first step is the ‘Please stop.’ But if they choose to disregard that, then you say, ‘Would you go with me to the peace rug.’ And how it happened, the way I tell the story, you’ve probably seen it on the website, I started knowing the pieces of it in the spring,’99, but it wasn’t until September, in the middle of the night, I’d just been praying, and I feel like god, he just gave it to me, in a flash, in September of ’99, you know, just…this is what you say, this is what the kids say, this is what the rug should look like, this is the size, and so I just flew to school the next morning and I just couldn’t wait to discuss it with my principal, and she was just like, so excited. And all the teachers were, because they were so tired of handling that daily discipline, that ‘nyyah nyyah nyyah nyyah nyyah’ that the children have with each other. It’s just not okay for those children to be able to disrespect each other. But children don’t want…that old model of the teacher correcting them, it doesn’t work. It’s not working or it would have stopped. It’s not working to have those peer mediators because it’s an elite system and the kids feel so bad and the point is for every child, on the planet, to find their voice. Because if you don’t than you will always be a victim of bullying. If you don’t know how to stand up and take care of yourself, if there is any implication that the teacher has to handle it, or that another kid needs to handle it, then the implied message is ‘You can’t do it.’ ‘You don’t have any right,’ and ‘You don’t have anything to say.’ And that’s so sad to me. So sad.
MR: Tragic.
HBM: It is tragic! And so, again, the school shooters, if you go back a decade and a half, every school shooter was a victim of bullying. And the teasing…(strong emphasis) …the teasing was the biggest hurt of all. It really was. And I just stood astounded when I realized what a huge piece this was. And if I didn’t have any other mission, I just needed to help children resolve conflicts on a daily basis. So the teacher, the principal, going back to September of ’99, the principal said, ‘Helen, why don’t you meet with all of the teachers today and get their input,’ ‘cause that’s part of my style, I’m a lead manager not a boss manager, just as I always invite myself in with a counselee, I always invited myself in with the teachers. ‘May I show you a different way,’ or ‘May I…’ you know. So I met with them that afternoon, and I said ‘I’ve known how weary I think that you are, and I believe that you’re frustrated, just to watch these children constantly disrespect each other, may I show you a way, and let you decide if you think it will work for you.’ Well, they were just so excited. That there would be this place, this physical place, this 3 by 5 rug, in their classroom…and I said, now it’ll take me two weeks to explain this to the children, but I’ll even train the children. All you have to do is give me permission. Well, all 32 teachers, there were 32 classrooms, at that time, so 750 children, and they all bought in, they all said yes, come. So in my guidance lessons for the next two weeks was teaching the children how to say it. I would say to the children, ‘would you like, how would you like to learn a way to be better friends?’ Well, of course, they all just said ‘Yes, we will, we really would!’(higher pitched, childlike voice) and I said, ‘Well, let’s do this, if someone..’ I made up this little thing that said: ‘It’s not okay to hurt each other’s bodies, feelings, or property, (puts hand on arm, then heart, then mimes breaking a stick) and that’s going to be our ground rules, it’s not okay to hurt each other’s bodies, feelings or property. But if someone does hurt our bodies, feeling or property,’ and I explained, of course, what property was, ‘We’re going to practice saying stop.’ And so those little children put up their hands even in the hall, later that day, they wanted me to know that they remembered the lesson. They’d say: ‘Miss McIntosh, please stop!’ (childlike voice, laughs) They were just adorable. But I was teaching boundaries to small children. Pre-K through the second grade, at that point we didn’t have third grade now we do, actually now we have 5th grade at that school, but, umm, they loved learning those boundaries. And then I said, so, ‘But if somebody doesn’t stop, then this is what you say. You say: Will you go with me to the peace rug.’ Here’s the kindergarten version, and it was: ‘Would you go with me to the peace rug,’ But for the older children it was: ‘I want us to be okay with each other, but we have a problem. Would you go with me to the peace rug.’ And then, they’d come. And then, the dialogue was very simple, it is: ‘When you did…this certain thing…I felt…this certain way…I’d like you to stop…’ Here’s the boundary—‘I’d like you to stop. Will you?’ and give them that chance—will you. And then, they always, every bully, always, in all those years, said, yes.
MR: Really.
HBM: I mean, all they have to do, they just show up and say yes. The victim is the one who does all the talking, they’re the ones that say, ‘I’d like us to do better, I’d like us to have a better relationship, I’d want us to be friends, whatever, would you go with me to the peace rug.’ And then they’re the ones that say ‘When you do this certain thing, I felt this certain way, I’d like you to stop, can you?’ And then the bully says yes. And then they do a high five or a handshake (shook my hand) or a hug…the little ones love to hug…and then they’re fine! It’s called closure, and they go back to their seats and they’ve completely handled it themselves.
MR: And you’ve never had… a child say no? (incredulous)
HBM: Never.
MR: Never.
HBM: Never.
MR: That really…. surprises me, it would seem like…
HBM: But remember the heart of the bully. The bully was once a victim.
MR: Yeah…. (not entirely convinced of the never)
HBM: And their heart is broken, and they’re disconnected. They’re very disconnected. And so they long to be…connected. Now they’re doing bullying things, for power, and attention, and love, and so we’re giving them that time and attention, that place to reconnect. And they love what it feels like to make that connection, and to make things right. They just love it. And they did it themselves. What the teachers let the kids do, is that, when there’s a problem, like at recess, the minute they get back into the room, those two would be back there for like two minutes and then they’d get restored, they’d come back to their seats and be fine. They handle it at that moment. Or if there’s something that happens early that morning, or whatever period of time, the teacher will say ‘Would you all like to go to the peace rug and work things out?’ And they’re like, yes. Oh gosh, thank you, yes. And so, in the five years that the peace rug was there, that I was there, there was never an unresolved conflict. Every time there was a conflict, it was taken care of. And the children even, we painted a cloud outside, on the blacktop, for…( Mille walks into the room and Helen says ‘Hello, darling’ in her talking-to-Millie voice.) and so they even had a peace rug outside. But they knew what to do when things got out of control. And so they always worked it out. It’s a starting over place.
MR: So, tell me what the peace rug looks like, and if there’s a reason that it looks like it does.
HBM: Thank you. That message in Sept of ’99, God just said, I want it to be a cloud. And, um, that’s my piece. (or peace? I’m not sure) And so, I went on trip, soon after that, with my father and my sweet husband, we went on a cruise, the first cruise I’ve even been on, and I thought, ‘Oh, great! I’ll go to the top of the ship and take some photographs of some clouds.’ Cause what I did initially, living in a carpet town, was that I got some sample rugs, so from day one I had some samples, but I knew what they were supposed to look like. I mean, I just had this picture in my head, of exactly what the clouds were supposed to be. So I took five rolls of film on that cruise, from the top of the ship, and not one of them turned out. And I had the camera sitting on the front seat of my car, and I was coming down that stretch, when you first turn onto Wood Valley (the road she lives on), and I looked up, and there it was. It was like, ‘Lord, you are so funny Here I went all the way to the Caribbean and it was right here.’ Anyway so I got out and I started taking pictures, and my camera jammed, and I thought ‘Oh, no…’ but it was as if the Lord said ‘That’s enough. That’s the one, and it’s fine.’ We took it to the camera shop, and they developed them, and there was nothing wrong with the camera. It was just time to stop.
MR: So the rug is based on that photograph?
HBM: Yes. We took the photograph to Shaw Industries, and they loved the idea, and so they said ‘Yes, let’s computer screen print it,’ and it’s the largest carpet manufacturer in the world, and they wanted to print the peace rug, and put it in their collection. And so, they’re the ones, they do drop ship, so if somebody writes to the website, or calls us and wants a peace rug kit, for their school, then we give the order to Shaw and they send it out. It’s rolled up, it’s just this beautiful blue and white and gray, this beautiful…sky, and it’s rolled up in this clear plastic container with this sticker on there, and it’s shipped, to everybody, so…that’s how it’s changing the world!
MR: And so how do you go about the marketing of it? I know you have a website, but is it sold though a lot of different companies? How have you spearheaded that process?
HBM: I haven’t done a very good job of that. ‘Cause I’ve been so busy doing all these other things. But there’s a catalog company that…it’s the national center for youth issues…that is about to pick it up. It’ll be in a national catalog that’s aimed at school counselors. So that’ll help a great deal. It’s been by word of mouth, I go to a lot of different conferences, and I’ll speak, and people will want to order from that. But a lot of it has been Internet driven. But I haven’t done a real good job of the marketing. You know, when it first came up, we just knew that the world needed the peace rug. And I still believe it with all my heart. It’s just so hard to get it out there. So we are really thinking new things every few weeks to do to get it out there. To get it known. (pause) A lot of school catalogs develop their own materials. So it’s been hard. But this national center for youth issues is going to be picking us up, and that will be great.
MR: I think you answered part of this question already, but I’m curious as to how the technique changes when the rug is used in different contexts? You mentioned that it was different for different ages, but are there different contexts that the rug can be used in, and how does it change?
HBM: Thank you. You know, whether it is used in the classroom, or outside, the script doesn’t change. And in fact, we say that the script is for life. It’s simple enough that a 4-year-old can get it, cause all they say is ‘Will you come to the peace rug with me.’ When you did this and this, when you hurt me, I felt bad, actually, I’ll just go ahead and fill in the blanks for you, ‘When you hurt me, I felt bad, will you stop.’ That’s all they have to remember. Besides the invitation, and here’s the closure piece. So it’s almost like a bookend. It’s this part, with the bookends. And only two of these four are the ‘I’ statements. But I tell children, you know, if you’re on the bus, and someone bullies you, you can say the peace rug script right there. You don’t have to have the physical rug. It’s better to have that safe place, the marked off spot where you know that you are being respectful with each other, but you don’t have to. And in homes—a lot of parents have bought them for their homes. To just be the place where the siblings make peace. Or the siblings when their friends come over and there’s a problem. But all the children…high school children have used the peace rug. Because they especially don’t like peer mediation, they don’t want others to do it for them, they love what it feels like to create their own peace with someone else. They lack the language. They know that it could happen. But to be given the opportunity, and the language, I guess that’s why I call myself a language coach, because it’s equipping them with the language to do what their heart is telling them they want to do. And so it’s really been so special to watch older children, middle schoolers and older children, respond to the peace rug. So, you know, I don’t want to be controlling in the way that I ask people to use it. I hope that my instructions that come with the peace rug are…you know, when somebody gets a peace rug they get this beautiful brochure and some materials…and so I hope that I am very clear about giving them a menu of language for them to use, and a lot of role playing ideas to teach it, so the children get used to doing it. But from that time on, it’s up to them. They need to own it, and take it, and do with it what they can, and so (Millie walks back into the room. Helen pauses, says, ‘You want this, baby, don’t you…’ and gives Millie a little dog treat) And so we invite questions to the website, if you have any questions about how this works, so it’s probably adapted by many different people in many ways, and I am not a purist, and certainly not a purist police person, and I’m not going to check on anybody to make sure that they are using it the way…now I’m very clear with teachers, please don’t be coercive, about the peace rug, don’t make children go, invite them to go, it is to be a place that they are made to feel very happy, it needs to be their choice to be there. So there’s that caution…but I don’t know if it’s being used well, in that way, or not. So I just have to…to let go.
MR: Well, on your website, it talks about you being a certified reality therapist. I’m wondering of you could tell me what reality therapy is, and what it was that drew you to that particular branch of therapy?
HBM: Right. I think it was my favorite when I studied counseling at Hollins. I’ve gone back into my textbooks and I’ve looked, and it was fun to…in fact when I got home Saturday night I had a voice mail from Dr. Bill Glasser, the founder of reality therapy.
MR: Really.
HBM: And I had seen him the week before, well, let’s see…early in March, at a conference, and we went out to dinner. My husband and his wife, and we are good friends. I met him probably 10 or 12 years ago, at a quality schools conference, when the quality schools movement first began…that’s Bill Glasser also, William Glasser. He has developed what’s called choice theory, which is basically that behavior is for a reason, and our best effort to have our needs met, and he talks about these five certain needs. And then, reality therapy is based upon the conversation you have with people, the actual therapy piece, based on choice theory. And so the door I entered, to get to know better what reality therapy was, was the quality schools movement. There’s the book, ‘The Quality School’ by Bill Glasser, then he has written so many books since that time, the whole quality schools movement was just huge, so I went to those conferences, and was asked to teach a lot of workshops over the years, you’ll see that in the CV. And so I would develop applications. He’s mostly just a general theorist, and if he had any examples it was more towards older children, and so a buddy and I, a fellow counselor there in Dalton, who also was a counselor at an elementary school, and we just kept brainstorming to make application to elementary students, to bring that information to a very practical level. For instance, for choice theory, I bought some work gloves, and put those, you know, wooden pieces on the end, glued them, like a little ball, and a butterfly, in other words, one of the needs was freedom, so I painted a butterfly, you know, those little carved out things you get at craft stores…(gestures with her hands the shape)…and for the need for fun, I did a soccer ball, and the need for power was a star, and for love and belonging was a heart, and then safety, or the physiological needs, was a little house, because you body is like a house and you want to make it safe. So, that’s how I kind of got interested. But the piece that I still tend to use the most are the reality therapy questions, and here they are. (She had made me a copy of a self evaluation sheet of reality therapy questions, arranged in a circle with ‘Building the Relationship’ in the center. We looked at this sheet while she explained it to me.) Now the classic, if you went to a textbook, the textbook reality therapy questions would start with ‘What are you doing,’ first. But I tend to reverse these two. I have found in my work with children that if you, that they could become very defensive if your first question is ‘What are you doing,’ so I start with this second one, as the first one, and that is “What do you need or want?’ Now there is this picture with me, a teacher having brought me a child who is in a wad and saying, ‘Here. Fix him.’ I love to ask this first question, and say, ‘Sweetie, what is it that you want or need,’ and their little shoulders completely drop, and they’re like, ‘Oh! Thank you!’ (higher pitched, child’s voice) In other words, it is such a compassionate question. Well, the truth is, it is a shortcut to helping them, because if our behavior is for a reason, if it is our best effort to get our needs met, then just ask them what they needed. It was because of a need they had, so we just ask them what they wanted. And they tell us. It just comes out right away. You’ve just got all this information. And then the second question is, and again you must be very careful how you say it, and in fact this is why there’s so much training involved. I went to countless weeks and weeks and weeks of training over a period of time to do reality therapy. Certified. It’s just this long process, through the William Glasser Institute, you can go to that website, I’m not sure what it is, but I’ve got it in my favorites, anyway, and see there’s a process, that you have to go through, and then…but anyway, it’s weeks and weeks and weeks. And then you do a lot of role playing and they just want to make really sure that you know the material. And so, in the most inviting way, the most non-critical way, you say ‘ Well, can you tell me what it was that you were doing,’ or ‘What is the event that brought you here?’ What happened. And you have them tell you, even though you’re sitting there knowing exactly what happened, you want them to say it, because that’s part of the process, is taking responsibility for what happened. And then the third question is what’s called the comparing place, or the ‘Ah-ha’ moment. This is where they see that they have sabotaged themselves. So you say, “Tell me, is what you were doing, did that help you, or not help you, did that help you or hurt you to get what it was that you wanted?’ In other words, you’re helping them compare those first two questions. And they kind of go, ‘Oh. It didn’t help.’ Or, “My throwing the ball at somebody did not help me to get be their friend, what I wanted was to be their friend, but what I did was throw the ball,’ or with an adult friend, ‘If you want to be thin, what you did was to eat chocolate, did that help or hurt.’ But hear the posture? You’re just sitting there knowing what the answers need to be, but you’re asking the powerful questions. RT is, again, just asking very self-evaluative questions. So after this third one when they realize that no, this didn’t help, this didn’t help me to get what it was that I wanted, then you say, um, the plan. And that is: ‘Well, what do you think needs to happen to make things better,’ or ‘What do we need to do to make things better? What is your plan to make things better?’ but you’re putting the responsibility on them. As lead manager, you’re sitting there knowing what you’d like to have happen, but it’s so fun to let them take responsibility and come up with a plan! So I did this countless times, this is what we did in the time-out room in school. But eventually it faded out because the children didn’t need it anymore, they learned how to self evaluate and they learned how to do these four questions, and so, a teacher could just say, ‘You know, you need to think about what you need to do to make things better,’ or they would ask the four questions, I trained the staff to at least ask these four questions, and it’s just wonderful. It helps you to be the person that you want to be. It helps the teacher to not be unglued, it helps the child to not be unglued, because this is just a place for them to evaluate their present behavior, connect it with their needs, let them see that they’re self-defeating, and what is a plan to make things better. It was great.
MR: And this here, these four questions, that is the heart of reality therapy?
HBM: That is reality therapy.
MR: Okay.
HBM: And the thing that holds it all together is the building of the relationship. It is implied and understood that you have an inviting relationship with these children, or with a peer, or a friend, or your spouse, in other words, there needs to be a relationship. If not, and there were some children that I had never really met before, that came to my office, and before I would ask them what they wanted, even, I would just ask them, if they had a chance to eat some breakfast, you know, that’s a very kind question, but it was also important, because sometimes children are just in a wad because they have not eaten, and many of my children had not eaten, they had not slept, or had breakfast, so, we’d go and get some milk, or crackers, or I’d say, ‘Have you slept,’ or, ‘Let me hold you.’ (sighs) You have to set up that counseling environment. So you do something to connect with the children. Ah. I miss them. (voice softer, tears in her eyes) They were so sweet. So you do that, and then you say…’Sweetie, what is it that you wanted? What is it that you need?’ And then they would tell you. And you would say, ‘So what were you doing?’ And they would say what they were doing, and then you’d ask them this comparative question, and then they’re so ready to do the plan! And then sometimes they’re much harder on themselves than you are, and it’s just phenomenal. It’s just exciting. It’s just so fun. And then if there’s a role play that’s needed, like if they had to go face a student or a teacher, then we’d role play that plan. But that’s RT.
MR: Thank you. That was a very thorough answer, and I appreciate that. Now I was thinking, that we discussed your definition of activism, in our first interview. And I believe you said that your definition was ‘Proactively making a difference?’
HBM: Mmm-hmm. (nods)
MR: Do you consider yourself an activist? In the work that you do?
HBM: (laughs) Yes. Do you know that I didn’t know that until recently? I was writing my book, Extreme Makeover, and I realized that I had thought of myself as vanilla, always, and (laughs), and then, about a year or so ago, when I asked God what was my name, what name did he have for me, I heard him distinctly say: ‘Warrior Princess.’ And I thought, well, no, I’m not… And then I was like, well, yes I am. Yes I am. I used to think I was vanilla, but you know what? I remembered the little girl who’d loved a cap-gun, in other words, in the shadows of that fence, where my grandfather’s standing in those boots, I used to play cowboys and Indians with my cousins. It was my brother and I, and then my mother’s sister had a boy and girl, and my mother had a boy and a girl. So the two boys and the two girls would play cowboys and Indians on this ranch farm place north of Dallas, and crawl over the boulders, and I loved that. And I was like, you know, I teach children how to stand up and fight, and how to do boundaries with their parents, stop hitting me, stop hurting me, and then the peace rug, and so, yes, I would say yes, I am a warrior, I am an activist. I am teaching people to take a stand, and fight. Fight peaceably, but yes, to stand.
MR: One of the other things you suggested in our first interview was that your greatest mission was to help people, especially women, to be okay no matter what. And I was wondering of you could share some of the ways that you might achieve this mission. ‘Cause it certainly is an admirable one.
HBM: Thank you. Listening is just an important piece, no matter if it’s friendship or a more formal setting as a community counselor, now I’m doing the volunteer community counseling and I meet hurting women all the time. Purposefully, I mean, they have made an intentional appointment, because they are hurting in some respect or their children are hurting. And so a part of the plan is to listen well, to listen for their hurt. And then to teach them…you know, we talked about how education does bring change, I don’t know, we might call it enlightenment, or…just a menu of thoughts. I think I see myself; my posture again, is not to be coercive and controlling like my mom, but to offer a menu of some language. Offer a menu of thoughts, of possibilities, of what could be going on, and maybe to show them, hopefully, that there are some root problems going on. Whether I’m teaching secularly or teaching spiritually does affect the language that I would use, actually. But in both cases it’s a stronghold, in other words a worn place, a hurt that connects with other hurts. In other words, I have been intimidated all my life, really, by my mom, so that’s why I felt vanilla. And that’s a little stronghold place. If I feel like I haven’t done well at something, I have these thoughts that say, well, you’re a zero. And I think a mission, maybe not the mission, but a mission, is to maybe help women to think about their thinking. That word meta-cognition that I used, are you familiar with that? Meta-cognition is to think about our thinking, and I’d say that’s what I really feel like I am doing a lot of right now, is helping people to lessen their thinking and to really hear their strongholds, and to hear their deceptive thinking. So a lot of my book, Extreme Makeover From the Inside Out, is to help people reframe their thinking, and to look at it from a whole different direction.
MR: Yes, actually that was another question I have. You speak a lot about re-patterning and reframing. How exactly does that work? Is it similar to the reality therapy?
HBM: Not reality therapy. I would say the re-patterning is…I knew I needed to come up with a new intervention, if you will, a new model for the way the children at my school handled violence, because if I didn’t, then they were going to go by their old model, which was, if you see violence then you do it. (clears throat) Whereas, reframing has to do with your mind, what’s going on in your head. And actually, so we could say almost that reframing is a re-patterning of sorts. But that’s their main connection. Re-patterning is just that general posture of wanting to change the rut that you’re in. Wanting to go a different way. Whereas reframing is completely more about what’s going on in your head. What are your thoughts. And capturing those. The most renowned psychologist/social psychologist who has done work, successful work in psychology and social psychology is Beck, B-E-C-K. He is a secular researcher. And he is the most profound as far as finding success for anxiety and depression. And his main thing is to dispute—and this is what he would call reframing—to dispute irrational thinking. Basically just to say, that’s irrational, what you’re thinking, that’s just irrational. I mean, there’s really no treatment. But you know, that is the most successful…so if you saw three positions, here is Beck’s disputing irrational thinking, here is Beck’s disputing irrational thinking plus pharmacology, and this one just pharmacology, the research shows that this first one is the one that is the strongest. The cognitive behavioral therapy is what it’s called, cognitive behavioral therapy, is making a connection between what you think and your behavior. Which, of course, the reality therapy is based on. That behavior is for a reason, and it’s our best effort to meet our needs. I loved finding Beck’s study because it’s what god had shown me 20 years ago. In a spiritual sense, and that was, um, that, um…I just was struggling so much with failure, and, um, I was realizing that I was thinking I’m a zero, I can never do anything right, and realizing that those were my mother’s messages. But I had connected then to all of my present failures too. And that was another one of those in the night sort of things, and god just instructed me and said, you must reframe that, you must look at this from my point of view. What I have done lately is to give women these two columns, (she takes my notepad and draws this for me as she tells me about it) and this one, on the left, is our thinking, and this one, what I call the truth column, on the right. And help them to write down what they feel or think, here. (writes down: Thinking. Writes under that: I feel________) And then I start my truth column, with, but the truth is. (Writes down: Truth. Writes under that: But the truth is_________) In other words, I feel like a failure, I feel like a complete zero, but the truth is, I didn’t do well in this certain thing, but this is just a chapter, it’s not the whole story. I can begin again, I can learn from this mistake, in other words do a whole paragraph of grace, it’s not just a stick on band-aid, and it’s not a quick fix, it’s not masking, it’s truth. Truth is what liberates. And then for my spiritual, if I’m talking to my retreats, there are some fabulous verses that speak to these things. And I’ll do that very quickly. (writes 2 Cor 10:3-5 on the left hand column, and Jn 8:31-32 on the right) There is a verse in 2nd Corinthians, 10, 3 through 5 that says: ‘Though we walk around in the flesh we are to not war according to the flesh, it is to be divinely spiritual.’ In other words we are to do spiritual warfare by the pulling down of strongholds, those worn paths, you know, that horrible sense of inadequacy that you have is a stronghold, because it keeps itself just there, you know, it hasn’t gone away, just keeps being a problem. And then it goes on to say, ‘I want you to destroy speculations in every lofty thing that raises itself up against the knowledge of god and bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.’ And so, in other words, we are to destroy those things that don’t line up with him. And the second column is, um, the truth column. There’s a wonderful verse in John 8, 31, 32, that says: ‘If you abide in my word and my word abides in you then you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.’ Well, just even on a secular level we know that truth brings freedom. And so, a way of helping woman to be more free, is to help them do meta-cognition, to do reframing in their thinking, to realize when they’re thinking…and I don’t tell them, don’t feel that way, I say, journal it. Journal it, vertically. And journal it in such a way that you don’t lose those thoughts, I’m not telling you not to feel that way. But we’re going to do something with it. We’re going to go to a freedom path. And take it over to the right hand side and we’re going to do a whole paragraph of grace. And it’s going to be truthful For instance, if a child, or a young friend has lost a spouse, and they’re saying, I feel so sad, the right hand column, the truth is, it is sad. It is a devastating event. With the help of some counseling and some friendships and fresh air and flowers, I will be okay one day. But right now I hurt, but it’s okay to hurt. There are people I can talk to, that I feel safe with, I will be okay. But you…it is a way of just taking yourself to a place of perspective. And how I did this with small children at school obviously I would not do this the spiritual piece with them because I wanted to respect that it was a public school and I respect, you know, to not do that, but I…many of my children could not read or write, even at first grade level, even non-Latino children could not do journaling. But there was an outbreak of panic attacks last year, so there was this little boy, and he just knew that he was not going to get home that day, he did not think the bus was going to get him home. And so, we did the left hand column, and it was his left hand. And I just said, use your left hand, and we’ll say this together, so he used his left hand to say: ‘I’m so scared, I don’t think I’m going to get home.’ And I said, okay, I know you feel that way and that is real for you, but let’s use your right hand and let’s talk about the truth. And I had him to say these words: ‘But the truth is…there are two people on the bus, there are two adults, my name tag has my address on it, they have a walkie talkie, they,’ you know, ‘they have not lost a child yet.’ And so I gave him the tools, basically, to continue to think through these situations. I didn’t lecture him, I didn’t tell him to stop thinking that way, we took the trauma, and then we put the truth on it. That is what freed him up. So, this is a practical way that I am trying to help children and adults to reframe thinking that does hinder our mental health. In other words, it matters what we think. It matters. Because what we think affects our behavior, our choices, our decisions—our internal mental health, because if those strongholds stay, we’ll have ongoing paramount depression and anxiety and anger and despair—and that’s what leads to suicide, so it has a direct affect. Our messages, our internal message, have a direct affect on our mental health. And then, it affects our relationships with others because when we are having sick thinking we project that onto others and so our relationships with others are difficult. And then, for those who are interested, it affects our spiritual life with god. So it affects everything from the inside out. It just is huge. It just matters what we think. So that’s…I’m just helping people with their thinking, and what they say is part of that, because that’s the external piece. And so the CD’s, when I can send them to you, you must leave me your address, and then I can send you this set of CDs where I helped some folks with a reframing message, and then the other was some relationship things. Well, it’s in the book. Just…better ways to say things for the relationship. So this is talking to yourself, the reframing is talking to yourself, and then, I guess another mission of mine is to help people learn how to talk to others. More effectively.
MR: Now, do I remember correctly, that this is called the truth chart? In your book? (gesturing at the chart she made for me while explaining it)
HBM: Mmm-hmm. The truth chart, yes.
MR: Okay. I wanted to make sure I made a note of that. Well, it seems like you have really acted as an advocate for a lot of people throughout your career, either volunteering or working. You suggested in our first interview that you felt like Hollins had an impact on your desire to be an advocate. Could you tell me a little more about that, and how you feel like that seed was planted?
HBM: I just…I saw serious work being done there. It was just…a real heart connection for me, and my…I mean, as long as I can remember, I wanted to help people. As a small child, if my pie tasted good, I wanted you to have a bite. I just have a longing to help people, and so in those early years of Hollins I was trying to figure out who I was, what my life was supposed to look like, how was I to study, (laughs) because that was a real weak area for me as I shared, I’d just never been taught how to study. I began to, I think, even though I knew I wasn’t doing well, scholastically at first, it felt like important work. I knew that I wanted to learn more, I had a zest, a zeal for learning. And they gave that to me. They gave me the carrot at the end of the stick, even though I wasn’t doing as well as my peers, probably, I saw the impact of learning. And as I’ve shared earlier, information does change people. And of course there were a lot of things that I studied that I disagreed with, but they taught you how to fight, they taught you how to think…well. And so, I can’t point to anything specific, but just that whole…aroma, just that watching people do academic work, just made a difference. I’d never really seen that before. I was probably like the most studious in my class, at Warner-Robbins high school, (laughs) I mean, I remember being the more serious type. And serious about my studies, I remember wanting to take great pride in that. I loved what it felt like to learn. And so that was massaged at Hollins. I’m afraid I didn’t really