State and County Connection – Part 2

Tweet

Mary Wouldn't Have Wanted a Social Worker in Her Life

The fact that Mary would seek out a social worker at this time in her life is extremely difficult for me to believe. Of all the people in the world, she would be the last person I would expect would want a social worker in her life, or, as in her case, back in her life. This was a time when she would have wanted anything but this — when she was trying to exert her independence and show the world she had grown up. For years the only thing Mary had wanted was to prove to others she didn't need these people in her life anymore, and she was proud of her achievements primarily because she had accomplished them without social workers. These were the people she had wanted to get away from more than anything else. 

State and County Connection – Part 1

Tweet

I think Trish Reedstrom, the Blue Earth County social work supervisor, planned to take Mary from me ever since the day I scoffed at her threat to make up child abuse charges against me if I didn't sign a form letting her place Mary in a foster home in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. Instead of giving in to her threat that day, I took Mary home, raised her by myself, and gave her the kind of life the County was never able to give her. And while Mary was busy putting together her life and living with me, Trish was putting together a plan on how she could finally take Mary away from me.

I Lose My Job and I Lose Mary - August 2010

     At first it was autumn; there were red and yellow leaves for Betsy and Tacy to scuffle underfoot. Then the leaves were brown, then they were blown away; that was in the gray time named November. Then came the exciting first snow, and this was followed by more snow and more. At last the drifts rising beside the sidewalk were higher than their heads.

— From Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace    

The State Threatens Me

It was getting closer and closer to the day I was going to be fired from my job. I had been a security counselor at the Regional Treatment Center in St. Peter for over five years and I knew this was coming to an end. I was being targeted by my boss. I was being fired. And just in case I didn't know this, my co-workers made sure I did. They had seen this too many times at the State Hospital to not know what it looked like. And in my case, I don't even think my boss was trying to hide it.

Do You Still Love Me?

I was working nights at the St. Peter Regional Treatment Center and my job was becoming more and more stressful each day. My job duties hadn't changed, and how I performed them hadn't changed. What had changed was the day-by-day difficulty I was having just keeping my job. I was being targeted — something that had started about two years earlier, about the time Mary was in Forest Ridge — and it was only getting worse. Every few months I would get one more crazy reprimand or unpaid suspension for either being a few minutes late to work, not bringing a doctors note back from the emergency room (where Mary had been taken), or for whatever reason my supervisor could think of.

The Tornado in Our Lives

Too much was going on — too much too fast. A tornado had swept through our lives not unlike a real Midwestern tornado taking with it our home, our car, my job, my children — even my mother. I had to wonder why all these things had happened at the same time, or if any of them were connected. It was hard to believe I had lost both my daughter and my job and harder yet to believe I had lost them both at the same time. I was pretty sure my girls were being manipulated or threatened, and I had a feeling my supervisor, my union, and even the girls' mother was as well.

I Lose My Job

I was 56 years old at the time, and divorced with three daughters: Josie, who was 20 years-old was living in Oregon; Mary, at 17, was living with me; and Grace, who was 15, was living with me and her mother according to our parenting schedule. Most of my adult life I had worked with children in one capacity or another. I'd been a child protection social worker, a junior high and high school teacher, a counselor with at-risk kids, and a consultant for children and adults with disabilities. I had undergraduate degrees in English and psychology, and I had taught freshman writing classes as a graduate student prior to getting married. For the past five years I had worked as a behavioral analyst and security counselor at a state-run treatment center for the mentally ill.

PART 1: MADMAN DAYS

I'm not going to tell you my…whole autobiography or anything. I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy. 

 

— Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

In early 2011 I found myself once again sitting in a therapist's office trying to explain all the crazy stuff that had happened to me and my family during the previous four months. From August of 2010 to Christmas of that year I had lost my job, my 17-year old daughter, and my mother, all for reasons I still don't fully understand. I was wrongfully fired from my job, my daughter suddenly started hating me, and my mother was beaten to death in a nursing home in Florida.