Transcription of Wellness from Within #224
Dr. Lisa: Today, it is my great pleasure to have back in the studio an individual who has written books that I really love. It’s just so thrilling to be able to hang out with her again. This is author Kate Braestrup who is a community minister, chaplain to the Maine Game Wardens Service and the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Here if You Need Me. Her other works include Marriage and Other Acts of Charity and Beginner’s Grace: Bringing Prayer to Life. Her latest book is Anchor and Flares: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hope, and Service. Thanks so much for being back with us again.
Kate: Thanks for having me.
Dr. Lisa: Now, Anchor and Flares. Tell me a little bit about that title.
Kate: The title comes from the instructions for what you’re supposed to take with you if you’re heading out on a voyage. The minimum safety requirements. You’re supposed to have an anchor so you can stop and you’re supposed to have a flare so you can attract attention. This actually wasn’t my original idea for a title. There was a lot of discussion about it. I was routing for the title 10-8, the number 10-8, because in Maine, law enforcement numerical code 10-8 means available for service. One of the themes of the book that I wrote my way to was how I defined an adult. What does it mean to be an adult in the world? I decided an adult is 10-8. An adult is available for service.
Dr. Lisa: Specifically, a parent of adults.
Kate: Yeah, parents are definitely 10-8 but at some point and for those listeners with young children, I can tell you this does happen but eventually your children become adults and because I have six, counting my stepchildren, four of them are mine, two of them are my stepchildren, and they all line up like stair steps in terms of age. One after another starting with my oldest son, Zach, they cross that threshold and became adults, and I think of it as each of them has gone 10-8. Each of them has become available for service in the world. The youngest has now done it too which is pretty neat though.
Dr. Lisa: My two oldest children are 22 and almost 20.
Kate: There you go. They’re still right down the edge.
Dr. Lisa: They’re right on that edge, right.
Kate: Exactly.
Dr. Lisa: Then, I have a 14-year-old. She’s just gotten out of the kids’ stage. It does seem as if the way that one parent really shifts over time, and yet you never stop actually parenting.
Kate: No. In fact, not too long ago, I was crossing the street with my youngest child, Willy, who is my little baby, and we’re crossing, and we were stepping out into the road in Rockland. There was a line of parked cars, and there’s the crosswalk. Naturally, we’re crossing at the crosswalk where it’s safe, and I stepped forward, and I put my hand back to hold my daughter back until I could make sure no cars were coming. She was 22 years old. She was a police officer in uniform. She was carrying a gun. Yeah, there’s some things that just they’re reflexes. They don’t change.
Dr. Lisa: Yeah, I’m laughing because I feel exactly the same way about my own 22-year-old who has been out in the world and has traveled to South America and Europe, but still feel protective. It’s just a thing.
Kate: You can’t stop. It’s okay.
Dr. Lisa: It makes me think about my own parents and how they must feel about me, and of course, I feel like I’m such a big old lady now, legs, heavy …
Kate: Right, exactly. We’re the grownups.
Dr. Lisa: Exactly. Some of the conflicts that I found interesting in your book specifically included Willy becoming a police officer, for one, because your first husband and Willy’s father died in 1996 in the line of duty as a state trooper. Also, the conflict of your son joining the US Marines.
Kate: Yes, in 2004 which is not a good moment.
Dr. Lisa: Right, and I believe you consider yourself to be a pacifist.
Kate: Relatively. I certainly …
Dr. Lisa: That’s probably evolved, of course.
Kate: Yeah, it was certainly very challenging. I’d like to think actually that I had a more principled objection really than just when Zach first approached me about it, it had never occurred to me. Given that there were two wars going on, wars that I had opinions about, given that my father had been a marine, my husband obviously had been a state trooper which is not military but it’s paramilitary in a way, and given that I work in uniform with uniformed police officers who carry guns and all of that sort of thing, you would think that I would have evolved a better, more coherent view of my own children’s responsibilities and vulnerabilities to violence in the world, as well as just violence in our community, let’s say, but I hadn’t. It really had not occurred to me that one of my children would want to do this.
In my defense, he was only 16 maybe, going on 17 when it came up. We hadn’t really gotten that far. We were only just beginning to think about college and those sort of things. The college was definitely my plan. When he joined the marines, it was a real struggle partly because he joined and I always want to call it the early admission, but it’s delayed entry, the delayed entry program which meant you join, you sign up while you’re still too young to do it, and they prepare you for boot camp. Your recruiter works with you getting you ready for boot camp which is actually a good thing but it meant that I had to sign the paperwork, and that was a real struggle. I have never had such a hard time signing my name ever or taken so long to do it.
Dr. Lisa: That is the interesting thing that happens and that he ranged. Whether it is having some influence over where your child goes to college perhaps because you’re footing the bill or whether you’re signing your name to something that says it’s okay for him to fight for his country, that’s always the challenge is they have their own responsibility, and their own free will, and their determinations.
Kate: Their own trajectory in life which is one of the things it was strange, and one of the reasons I wrote the book really is that I felt as though I had not really anticipated that that transition from child to adult was going to be as difficult for them, as complex a task for them, and as difficult for me as a mother or me and my husband as parents. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me but maybe because childcare books tend to go up to a certain point, and they stop.
The assumption was always take care of the kid until they’re 18, you send them off to college, and then you’re done or they go to work and you’re done, but whatever, you’re done. They have to cross the threshold. You can’t do it for them. In a lot of ways, you can’t even help all that much. That’s really what’s tricky is realizing that this is something they have to pick up, and carry, and go on with. In fact, that’s the glory of it is seeing them do it but it’s hard. It’s definitely hard, and I definitely learned with kid number one as it turned out really what that looks like.
One of the big lessons was that our children aren’t safe, and we’ve spent so much time and energy trying to keep them safe and they’re not safe. They weren’t completely safe before they became adults and went off into the world but once they’re out in the world, they’re subject to all of the harms, and hurts, and heartbreaks that have happened to us as adults. As my son had to point out to me often, “But you do this, you managed this, you handled this. Why do you think that I can’t or shouldn’t?
Dr. Lisa: I was really struck by the story you told about the way that the citizens of Denmark dealt with the Jewish population during World War II, and that ultimately only 60 Jews ended up losing their lives.
Kate: Danish Jews.
Dr. Lisa: Danish Jews. You compared the people of Denmark to game wardens because there was some element of, I guess, the personality is that we’re generated in this culture that cause them to believe that in some way, everybody is worthy of being cared for. Everybody is worthy of having a life.
Kate: Yeah, and being protected, and being rescued if necessary. Yeah, I grew up with that story because my father’s family emigrated from Denmark and we had relatives who actually participated in the resistance and the rescue. It was always a point of pride to me when I was little that I was half Danish and I think I almost thought that it meant genetically. I was immune from cowardice, or moral turpitude, or something. That I had this genetic advantage which of course is untrue.
If you’re talking genetics, Denmark and Germany are virtually identical. They are identical. We have to say virtually because the Danes like to think that we’re a distinct people but the reality is it’s all one gene pool. Really, it had to do with the culture, and the decisions that were made, and the attitude that had been cultivated about the worth of human beings regardless of the things that were, at the time, dividing human beings all over the place, including in the United States and everywhere else.
This was, for me, a touch stone story in my life. Of course, I raised my children with it. Low and behold, it turned out they listened to me because the willingness to risk yourself in the name of human solidarity and love was part of what made Zach joined the marines too, that service, especially in extreme circumstances but really, service period always risk the self. There’s no way to serve without risking yourself. It was one of the many moments in my motherhood where I realized, “Shoot, my kids listened to me. Dang.”
Dr. Lisa: One of the stories that I found particularly interesting was about a man who lost his son which, of course, happens unfortunately all the time with the work that you do. You see people who lose their children but this person was not necessarily the easiest individual to love. He, in fact, had been violent towards people around him and at the same time, he still lost his son. What you’re describing as far as service, I think it is that next level. It is not just willing to take care of the people that we like. It’s being willing to take care of really anybody. Some people, we may not like at all.
Kate: With good reason.
Dr. Lisa: Right.
Kate: That is one of the things that I find so compelling about working with Maine’s game wardens is that the way they respond and the intensity and energy they put into trying to help people isn’t conditioned by who the victim is, that it really is essentially unconditional. You don’t have to deserve it. It is a kind of grace that the wardens give and really, they’re giving it on behalf of all of us. We are fielding them. We’re funding this project that’s really directed at anybody who needs help which is a pretty extraordinary thing and it’s something that whenever we discuss … as a society, we discuss privatizing law enforcement, locking ourselves into gated communities so that not hiring our own armed guards to protect us or whatever. I really think about how basic a publicly funded law enforcement agency really is, how basic that is to all of our freedom and all of our human dignity.
Dr. Lisa: I think that’s true. I don’t believe the answer has ever been lock yourself away because the more that you build walls around yourself, the more that the threats will change. Especially in today’s world, the things that have brought our country to its knees really were, at least to most of us, completely unforeseen. You can deal with one visible threat but there’s another one that comes that you can’t really prevent. There is always going to be a need for someone on the front lines who is willing to engage.
Kate: That willingness to put yourself in harm’s way on behalf of other people is really pretty impressive. We get to take it for granted. We really do. I get to walk around thinking of myself as a nonviolent person because there are people willing to use violence on my behalf. I get to call 911, and someone will show up, and try to fix it, and try to help. There are moments in the book that I described realizing that again and again.
One is going to the firearms training with new game wardens. These game wardens, by and large, are drawn from a population that’s already familiar with firearms. They hunt. Several of them had been in the military. They have a comfort level with guns that I, even after 15 years in this job, I just don’t have. I try. I really try to feel affectionate towards guns and I just can’t. They always just seem loud and dangerous especially if I am holding them but I did try. I fire off a few rounds, and make a mess of a paper target, and try to feel much so, but the end result, what I realized was when I was with them was that they’re practicing because people will try to shoot them. They’re practicing so that they can go into situations on our behalf where people will be targeting them. This year especially, that was extremely clear.
I realized my impulse when I’m with them is when the firearms instructors yells “Threat,” which is what they do to have them respond, my immediate impulse was to jump in front of them just like trying to hold Willy back from walking into the road. They’re about my children’s age, and I react to them like a mother, and my physical sensation was I wanted to leap in front of these young armed men so that nobody could hurt them, and having to step back and realize “No. Actually, they have to go out in front of me.” That’s true of my son too and true of all my children really, and in the sense that I am getting old, and it’s now true of my little baby daughter that’s he stands between me and the threat now.
Dr. Lisa: Yeah, that’s a tough one because it’s not even just that you can’t protect them because things are dangerous but they are putting themselves in places where they’re almost … I don’t know that they’re seeking danger but they’re engaging in a much bigger way.
Kate: Right, they’ve made it their task. I don’t even just mean bullets. There’s that. Fortunately, those are still relatively rare but even there’s the psychological danger of being exposed to suffering and to being exposed to evil. My daughter, at the moment, is working for the computer crime scene which means she investigates child pornography, which means she has to look at child pornography. She has to be exposed to evil on that level. I don’t know how she does it. I made her a little icon for her birthday of Ceres, the Greek goddess who goes into the underworld to rescue Persephone. I told her that’s what she’s doing. She’s going into the underworld to rescue, and that’s very impressive to me.
I don’t know what you call that, spiritual danger, psychological danger, and then there’s moral danger. They’re risking doing something wrong. When a police officer screws up, people can die like a doctor or my stepdaughter who is an intensive care unit nurse. If she makes a mistake, someone could die, and that’s not true of me. That’s not true of most of us. It’s a moral danger that they expose themselves to in order to serve.
Dr. Lisa: This idea of having a frontline is an interesting one because it is easy to decide that you don’t want to be in military yourself, but then somebody is going to be in the military. I remember a patient coming in to tell me that just the psychological of being in the draft during the Vietnam War, just the psychological impact of possibly having your number up every single day was so formative for his young adult years that it makes me really grateful for the people who sign up so that we don’t …
Kate: Who volunteer.
Dr. Lisa: Who volunteer so that we don’t have to have an entire nation of, in this country, young men who end up needing to possibly go into war.
Kate: Virtually, all countries, it’s young men. There are very few countries that women serve in combat in any real sense, and there’s a reason for that. I think one of the many ways that we don’t see and take for granted the service of others is that I think we are encouraged now not to notice the service of men. We’re encouraged not even to notice the service of our husbands, brothers, sons. If there’s a weird noise downstairs in the middle of the night, it’s my husband’s job to check it out. It just is.
Once I was walking down the street with my husband before we were married here in Portland, and a guy was coming towards us, and I don’t know what his problem was but he was in a cowering rage, so he was flailing around, and screeching, and kicking garbage cans, and whatever. He was walking down the sidewalk toward us, and we were just going to walk by him, and the whole thing took maybe three seconds but as we pass by him, my husband without even consciously doing this, turned his body so that he was between me and this man. The man went by, and he went around the corner, and that was the end of it.
My husband didn’t even realize that he’d done it. I realized afterwards, I told him, I recognized that he’d done it because one thing about losing a husband is you tend to notice husband stuff when you see it, I noticed it, and I said thank you to him, but I also realized had he turned his body so that I was between him and the threat, the relationship would not have lasted very long. The reality is the expectation is still there, and those of us who count ourselves feminist should not let that blind us to that. We do expect young men to put their bodies in harm’s way, young men, old men, all men for us. That isn’t because it doesn’t hurt when they get hit and it doesn’t mean that they’re any less likely to die than we are. It’s that they’re stronger and historically, they’ve been considered expendable.
Dr. Lisa: I am thinking about my son, my 22-year-old.
Kate: I know.
Dr. Lisa: I was, in my family, the oldest of ten, and the first four of us were girls. My relationship with my five brothers is very different than my relationship eventually did become with my son. I think it has come to not only as if the men are asked to protect in many cases but also provide. These are roles that despite the fact that women are in the workplace, and women are in the military, and women are also protecting and providing, this is still something that is deeply enculturated. I think that women were, when we were, I don’t know, I guess released out into the world more avidly, this never went away.
Kate: No. What did go away may be … I don’t know. I am always suspicious of attempts to hearken back to some better day because when you go back, it never really looks that great close up. I would say going forward, one of the things that women could do is be more appreciative of what we, in fact, still ask men to do for us. We could be a little more appreciative of it. If nothing else, we could stop making those eye rolling remarks about men that are considered okay and polite company, and ought not to be.
Dr. Lisa: Yeah, that’s true. I think it’s far less likely that one could get away with making an eye rolling remark about women.
Kate: Oh my gosh. You think?
Dr. Lisa: No. Doesn’t it come back to, again, this thing that you described about the nation of Denmark? Just that we all have intrinsic value as human beings, and perhaps some of us will choose one role, some of us would choose a different role, some of us have roles that have been modified based on our genders, but there is a value that each of us has.
Kate: Yeah, and actually, each of us has multiple capabilities. If I’m the only person in the house with the children, let’s say, when they were young, and there’s a weird noise downstairs, then it’s my job. In fact, when I’m in a room full of women, if something happens that seems threatening, I am usually the one that takes on the protective role. I don’t know why. Probably because I hang around law enforcements. I am channeling them somehow. It isn’t that we don’t have it, or that women can’t be protective, or in fact aren’t expected to be and have to be protective, including self-protective. It’s not that.
All of it really is about seeing. It’s about the willingness to see, and our ideas and theories of how things can get in the way of seeing. We can shift the lens that lets us see one thing really clearly but it tends to blur out other things. It’s important, I think, to shift the lens periodically and make sure you’re not missing anything that really matters or anyone that really matters.
Dr. Lisa: How can people find out about the work that you’re doing including Anchor and Flares, and Memoir of Motherhood, Hope, and Service?
Kate: They can go to my website which is just katebraestrup.com. It would probably be the easiest way.
Dr. Lisa: I appreciate the time that you’ve taken to consider what you’ve seen in your life not only as a mother but as a community minister chaplain to the Maine game warden service author. I think that considering one’s life and taking the time to write it down and sharing this with other people, I think it’s important. I very much enjoy your works, and every time one comes out, I think, “Okay, this would be my morning read for the next few weeks.”
Kate: Thank you. Good, I’m glad.
Dr. Lisa: We’ve been speaking with Kate Braestrup who does many things, but is most recently the author of Anchor and Flares. I encourage those of you who are listening to go out and give it a read. Go to Kate’s website to learn more about the other work that she’s doing. Thanks so much for coming in.
Kate: Thanks.
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Dr. Lisa: At the age of 18 Vivian Franck left her home to become a nun in a French Canadian order. After 30 years of living as a nun, she realized it was time for her journey to being in the larger world and left the convent. She hasn’t regretted her decision once. Her book Forever Becoming is about her life long search for spiritual meaning, truth, and freedom. I love the fact that you have butterflies on the cover of your book. Thank you so much for coming in.
Vivian: You’re very welcome and thank you for having me.
Dr. Lisa: You were raised during an interesting time, and you’re from Northern Maine.
Vivian: Way up there.
Dr. Lisa: Way up there from a relatively small town.
Vivian: Yes, very small. I think not quite 5,000 people.
Dr. Lisa: From reading your book, it struck me that during the time that you became a nun, this was expected in French Canadian Catholic families.
Vivian: This was hope. People hoped that they would have either a priest or nun in the family, especially large families such as mine. My mother was really sold on that, and made me promise to become a nun when I was eight years old, but although I never said a verbal promise, I just smiled because you didn’t say no to my mother, and she took that for a yes. Then, she never let me forget. She would always introduce me as the one who is going to become a nun. That stayed with me.
Dr. Lisa: That seems a lot pressure on an eight year old?
Vivian: Yeah. I didn’t put too much attention to it. She would introduce me that way. Then, I’d go and do my stuff, and play, and all of that, but in my teen years, I started reading lives of saints, and I was very moved by the life of St. Therese of the Child Jesus, and I wanted to be like her. She was so loving and had so much confidence in God. She was a great influence in my life. I read her life, the l’Histoire d’une Âme every year for many, many years, and she was very, very helpful.
Dr. Lisa: You’re describing in your book a scene where you’re walking down the street with one of your sisters. It was a difficult conversation because she had a lot of frustration and anger about her life, and you wanted to be loving and supportive toward her because in part because of this whole idea that you should be loving and supportive toward everyone.
Vivian: Yes. I learned that art of loving very early on, and I think it was part of my nature too. When I had a sister who was pretty mean to me during the fifth and sixth grade, and the second year that I was there, I just did an act of kindness out of, and she turned around completely. Every time I’d see her, she had tears in her eyes. All I did was say a few words of kindness or she needed help, I could see, and we were in church, and I had seen her sit down, and her face was just as white as a sheet. Nobody else noticed so I went to one of the nuns and I said, “She is evil. Mother Maria Louise, Chanel.” That changed her. Isn’t’ that amazing? Just a little act like that. That encouraged me to be as loving as I could.
Dr. Lisa: That’s an interesting turn around. If you’re seeing someone that is one of the sisters that’s educating you, and you realize that nobody else is seeing what you’re seeing, and you’re a young child, this created a bridge between you and this sister which previously hadn’t existed.
Vivian: Yeah. When I become a nun later on, and I’d meet her occasionally because we didn’t live in the same house, she would always tear up, and I knew it’s just from that. That lasted the rest of her life. Isn’t that great?
Dr. Lisa: It is great and it’s also interesting. In your book, you called it Forever Becoming: The Ever Deepening Realization of Presence in my Life. What this says to me is that all of us are always in a state of becoming. We’re only wherever we are for whatever millisecond that is. Then, we move on. Whoever were interacting with similarly, they are just exactly where they are at that moment. All of us are constantly in a state of flux or forever becoming, but yours started when you were younger. It was more external. It was more what you are being told by the church you should believe in.
Vivian: Yes. It was mostly written stuff, and a lot of stuff didn’t make any sense to me, but there was nobody that I could talk to. That was the big thing in growing up. None of my teachers would have listened, none of the family. I would have really been hardly put down. That would have been the end of it. I kept everything to myself.
After being influenced by St. Therese’s book, then at some point, I realized that the best way for me to get out of that environment was to enter a convent. That’s the way God worked with me. I didn’t realize it until much later on but that’s the way I had to go because if had opted to marry, none of what happened would have happened because I had every opportunity to grow spirituality. There was some hard times especially at the beginning until I had this experience with Christ which pulled me right out of where I was.
Dr. Lisa: Describe to me what was going on in Northern Maine as you were growing up. Just the culture and the history, what was the time period and what was going on around you?
Vivian: It was the time of the depression. I was born in ’31, but we didn’t feel it too much in my family because my father had a grocery store. We never lacked of food, but I saw the kindheartedness of my father because he never refused anybody who couldn’t pay. Then, my older brother joined the marines, and there were no more young men in town. My father gathered the children together, and he said, “Which one of you would like to work with me at the store?” I raised my hand right away because I had a good relationship with him.
It was pleasant but it was very, very hard. Those days, nobody knew how to bend to lift up things and all this, I developed some physical problems which I found out later on probably stemmed from there. All in all, I had a pretty normal adolescence because there were boys. We had the boys’ school, high school, and the girls, and the priest were teaching at the boys’ school, but they had a dance one a month. That was good. Then, we were a group of boys and girls that played together so I never had a boyfriend but I had fun. It was fun. It was relaxed. It was a nice place to live. A nice place to grow up. It was easy in some ways. I had restrictions from both the church, and the school, and the home, and the neighbors who kept a strict eye on the children. If they saw you talking to a boy, your mother would know about it. That’s the way it was.
Dr. Lisa: The time that you were growing up, is it true that generally the way that if you were a girl, you could get married or you could go on and become a teacher or a nurse …
Vivian: Yes, that was about it.
Dr. Lisa: … or a nun?
Vivian: That’s it. That was about it, yes.
Dr. Lisa: You decided to become a nun in part because you had this early realization that you were connected spiritually to some higher, to God.
Vivian: Yes. At 14, I made up my mind. I had to make a decision. Was I going to go through with this? It’s what my mother wanted, and I said yes. I intended to join the same community that St. Therese was in but thankfully they said no because it would not have my type really.
Dr. Lisa: I was really interested to read about this because part of your journey was seeking the right community, the right spiritual community.
Vivian: Yes, it took me a while. Yes.
Dr. Lisa: You went actually between the United States and also Canada, and you were working with different orders along the way. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?
Vivian: I was very, very grateful to my original community who allowed me to search. I think they realized, at some point, that I was searching, and that I needed to find something else, and they had no answer for me, but they let me go to these different types of community like the one in Gloucester, Massachusetts which was a five-week period of nuns from different communities living together, seeing how they could live a deep, contented life together. All of these experiences was so beautiful, and the one in Canada and Ontario has opened my eyes to a lot of things, and I realized there that even though the head of the community there, they were not nuns, but boy, she was strict, and I said “No I don’t need that.”
Then, came the time when in my search I realized that I had to leave the convent, and they were open to that. I think they were relieved in a way because I was searching, and I hadn’t found what I needed. I went to a stricter community, contemplative monastery, and that’s where I walk up one night and I knew, I just knew it was time for me to move on, and to move out. During those whole 30 years, every once in a while, I would get the strong feeling that I didn’t belong there, but I had to wait for the right time. I just didn’t know it would take 30 years.
Dr. Lisa: Why do you think that it was that night that you woke up and that was the time?
Vivian: It was very clear. Some psychic said, somebody came to you, I was not aware. It was just so profoundly deep that this was the time to do it. When I went to the prioress the next morning in order that I wouldn’t back down, I went to her to let her know it was like this was meant to be, and it was fine with her and with the other sisters, and it was just I was being led, and I followed through, and everything fell into place.
Dr. Lisa: You also experienced some interesting church history as you were spending 30 years as a nun because during the time that you were doing this, the Vatican too came along, and really changed the landscape of the church.
Vivian: Yes. We were very hopeful. It happened, I think, probably in my late 30s, early 40s. The community had decided on a few changes. We were given $25 a month so we could buy our toiletries and stuff like that. The habit was modified so that it went only down to the cads, and the headdress was much lighter, but there was not much more that was done after that. They were reluctant to give too much freedom to the nuns. Most of the nuns accepted that, I did not.
Dr. Lisa: You also commented that one of the things that was challenging for you as a nun was that the priests, that the men were typically the ones that actually created the rules and the structure for the women, for the nuns, and that didn’t really work that well for you?
Vivian: No. That had always been the case through the centuries. The priests, the men were always the ones who regulated the nuns’ lives. The nuns had nothing to say with it about the book of rules and so on. It just added to my resolve that this was not right. It was not the way I wanted to live the rest of my life.
Dr. Lisa: Even as a nun, there weren’t that many different choices for you. You could be a teacher which is what you did become, you became a teacher, or you could be a nurse, or you could be a contemplative and beyond that.
Vivian: I did work with the children, the emotionally disturbed children which I loved. To be with children was so wonderful for me. Then, I did get involved with the charismatic movement with a nun from another community where we started an after-school for kids, and through store, and all that. That didn’t pan out. It fell through. Then, when that fell through, they didn’t have a job for me in the community so I had to look for a job which was the first time I’d ever done that, and found something up north in my home territory, and I had a wonderful two years there. It’s from there that I met one of the sisters from the Daughters of Wisdom which I went to. They were in New York, and talked with her, and my community was very open. They weren’t just accepting. That was good.
Dr. Lisa: I was struck by that that you spent all of these decades as a nun and when it came time for you to leave, they gave you their blessing.
Vivian: Because I think they sensed that I was not content. There was some dissatisfaction in that life for me, and I needed more freedom, I needed to look elsewhere, and that’s why they allowed me to. When it came time, it was after Vatican too. The rules had relaxed. All I had to do when they asked me to write, I had to get in contact with Rome and all of this while I was leaving the convent, and I started by saying, “When I was eight years old, my mother had me promised to become a nun.” That’s all I needed to say. That was enough. I didn’t go into too many details.
They were good to me. They were supportive. I was very, very pleased. When the work that I was led to after I left which I had no idea this was how things were going to happen because I had no money, I had no idea where I was going, what I was going to do, and I knew my family was not going to support me. I told the Lord, “You better take care of me.” That’s it and he has.
Dr. Lisa: You end up in Portland initially. Now, you live in South Portland.
Vivian: Yeah, right. I went to school to take the massage course, met people from Portland, they loved my work, and they helped me here. I always had a lot of help from the late people. They just were motherly, and lovely, and caring for me because I was so green, oh my God.
Dr. Lisa: That must have been interesting that you are a fully grown adult when you came out into the world, but you really didn’t know anything of the real world at all.
Vivian: It was like starting life again at 18, and I was 50, and in a big city. Van Buren was a very small town. The first year, I remember thinking, I can’t wait for this year to be over so it’s not going to be completely new, I’ll have some, but people were very supportive. Even though it was difficult, even to open a checking account, I didn’t have any idea. One of the people at the center, the holistic center where I was working from, came to the bank with me, and spoke up for me so I was able to open a checking account. This is bizarre. I can’t even open a checking account. It was so very different.
Dr. Lisa: You were able to take some course work because even though you left with nothing or not much money, they eventually did give you something.
Vivian: The nuns gave me a $1000, and they said, “Don’t touch it.” That’s what I did. I just put it in savings. Then, I don’t remember if it was mutual funds first or I forget. Then, four years after I left, I changed too. Somebody spoke to me about AL Williams who is a mutual fund company, and he advised me to change, and go with them, and it was 15 or 18% interest in those days. Wasn’t that great? By the time it came to buy my house, I had grown to $10,000. I saw the guy after I took it out and that was 1987, and he said, “If you have not taken it out, you would have lost everything.” God was really taking care of me, Lisa, really every step of the way.
Dr. Lisa: Where did you get the money for the massage course that you took?
Vivian: Before taking the course, I wrote to the provincial in my original community, and just mentioned how much it costs, and I didn’t ask for it. Then, I had a dream that night that I was getting that amount in a check, and it arrived the next day. They were very, very good to me. It’s interesting because some of the nuns around have read my book, and they just know. Nobody knew what I experienced because there was just no way I could talk about it, and I only talked about my spiritual experiences when I left, when I met some people at the holistic center who were very open. It was easier for me to talk to them. It was interesting because people accepted it. It was like, “No big deal. You had this beautiful, wonderful, mystical experience, and that’s fine.”
Dr. Lisa: I like the fact that you didn’t have to be within the religious order to have a spiritual experience. In fact, your whole life was filled in very practical ways with spiritual experiences.
Vivian: Yes, they were. Yes, it was.
Dr. Lisa: You spent time within the church in a very structured way and outside of the church in a very different and not as structured way, but either way, you still have felt this presence in your life?
Vivian: Yes. More and more so too which is I’m always learning, I’m always becoming. If you go to my website, I feel like I shouldn’t have finished writing the book because I’m getting all these insights and these new revelations. I can put them on my blog and some people read them.
Dr. Lisa: Maybe you have a second book in you.
Vivian: I don’t know if I’ll go for that. It was a wonderful experience, but right now I don’t think I’ll ever come out of how much money it took, and I don’t think it will ever come back. I’m not ready to. I think I can sell the books. I’m going to be doing some readings eventually but the company is always after me to buy 100 books. No more. I’ve done it. I got about 275 and I still have about 75 left. That’s pretty good.
Dr. Lisa: I am guessing that there are people who are listening who want to read your book, and to learn more about your experiences. You said you have a website. Can you tell us what that is?
Vivian: Yes. www.vivianfranck.com.
Dr. Lisa: People should read this book because I enjoyed reading it, and I enjoyed how honest you were about the struggle that this was to go through because it was something. You’ve made a series of somewhat difficult decisions over the course of your life to get to this happy place that you are now or you continued to become, and to know that there is this presence in your life, but this didn’t come easily.
Vivian: No, it didn’t. No because I have four planets in Virgo. That’s pretty hard. It’s not easy. Then, I have a cancer moon. That’s the deep feelings and everything, and the Leo rising. This is quite a combination. It’s been fun.
Dr. Lisa: I love that you are former nun and also a fan of the stars.
Vivian: Could be exposed to east and mysticism. I didn’t know what was happening with me when some of these experiences I had even as a nun. What does this mean? This is not part of my Catholic faith at all. What do I do with it? That was the big thing always. Then, it became very clear. It’s like, “Yeah, there’s a melding of both, and both are right, and both are from God.” Somehow, sometimes, I feel that the mystical part I’m understanding better because it’s become more common for people to look at what the Buddhists are doing, and they were anyway. I don’t know how they are now because they get stuck also just like any other religion, but the idea that this is all illusion.
Therefore, yes. It’s your feelings, your experiences, your perceptions, they all pass away. Isn’t it great to know that you can look at that from here or from consciousness, and say, “Yeah, that’s not me. I don’t need that.” It’s a great way to live. I’m very thankful.
Dr. Lisa: We’ve been speaking with Vivian Franck who is the author of Forever Becoming. I really give you so much credit, and I thank you for the work that you have done to bring your book and this kind of knowledge into the world.
Vivian: Thank you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity, Lisa. I’m very grateful.