June 12, 2010

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I married Gregory Philip Rekas 6/12/10.

#6 This is a memorial tattoo. It's really a piece of crap. I don't remember the name of the young man who did it. I was really "cheating" on Omar. My bad. But he later fixed it.

Repost from turtle_dove
Monday, December 20, 2004


Well, it was 1990 when I went to graduate school (at the age of 24) to start getting my Master's in Social Work. I interned the first year at a Teen Pregnancy program, to learn some of the basics of casemanagement. And the second year, I interned at an outpatient mental health agency, doing child and family therapy. After I graduated, I went to work for a similiar agency in the part of Portland that has a high percentage of low income and African-American families. I learned the ropes there about what it really meant to be a child and family therapist. I was there about 3 years. After that, I went to work for a similiar agency in the suburbs. Big change in ethnicity, but still serving families on medicaid primarily. There another 3 years. Then I took a job in Vancouver, WA, for better pay. It was a bit more modern agency, with computerized documentation and state of the art approach, etc. I was there also for about 3 years.

It was at that last job that I became a foster parent. My mother was a foster parent first, for a program for teens in drug/alcohol treatment. She wanted me to become a respite care provider, so I could take her girl(s) on the weekend. I was roped into taking a girl of my own on the first phone call I made to inquire about the program. Within a few months, I was roped into a second girl. It didn't end well. I was way overloaded. When I finally quit that program, I decided I was totally burnt on social work. That was 5 years ago.

I moved to The Dalles with the plan of switching careers. I actually worked for a season on a factory fishing boat in Alaska. That was a truly character building experience. But it also taught me to be thankful I get to work in social services. And I decided to return to doing what I do. Unfortunately, with the geographic move, my options for jobs were limited.

So I finally got hired with Head Start, first as an Early Head Start home visitor, and quickly I was promoted to Family Services Coordinator, and eventually Mental Health Specialist. The whole 5 years I was underemployed though. And I was bored. And stressed. And frustrated. It was a highly administrative series of positions, influenced in large part by the program being Federally funded.

So my new job* is like a rejuvenation. I am finally back on track. I am doing direct service with families and children. I can leave the administrative piece to others. I get to actually work with people. Phew! Plus, at Head Start I was the one mental health professional on staff. It was isolating and lonely. Now I'm one of almost 100. Yay! I have a community again. It's so cool.

*My job [was] Child Mental Health Specialist for the System of Care at Mid-Columbia (Children's Council. oops) Center for Living. This is a wraparound program. I will be doing child and family therapy for children to young adults in Hood River county. I will be part of team that also provides a variety of other services besides therapy. It's going to be pretty exciting, although the agency I'm working for is going through a lot of transitions and growing pains.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

[Today] I work[ed] as the Children's Clinical Supervisor and Child mental health specialist for the same mental health agency in the Columbia River Gorge area. Before that I was a Child & Family Therapist (LCSW=Licensed Clinical Social Worker) for over 10 years in the Portland/Beaverton/Vancouver area. In my current position, I provide mental health services to children receiving wraparound services. I have a B.A. '87 in psychology from Reed College, and a Master's in Social Work '92 from Portland State University.


Saturday, January 13, 2007

Now I've been back on the regular mental health team for several [years]. I took a voluntary demotion. I am much, much happier.

August 3, 2010

JANE REKAS, LCSW

I started a part-time private practice in 2008 http://janerekas.blogspot.com/ a collection of resources now... You can choose a topic from the index

my beautiful Radha, by Omar Edmison, All American Tattoo when it was fresh

This is one of my faves, me in the acorn, two larger leaves are mother and father, spinners are half-sibs, ankh is symbol my mom used to wear on a necklace and spiral is a symbol dad had on his shoulders

While I have some pictures of my 40th birthday here, I have no record of my 30th. (At right is me at 33*). What I can remember about it, and why I wanted to include a mention of it, is it was a big deal to me. I am sort of sentimental about numbers, the birthdays with zeros and fives on the end. At the time, my husband (who was 15 years my senior, with the birthday of 10/22 to my 10/27) had his 45th birthday just before me. As I recall, we each had a birthday with friends over. I could be wrong, we might have combined it. I vaguely remember sitting around the table in the house we got married in. We got married on the Solstice, June 21st, but I can never remember which year.

But the other thing about turning 30 is I finally felt like an adult. I've always had a baby face and I finally wasn't being asked by clients, are you 18?

*Note on picture: This was when I got my first of many digital cameras. I can remember the day that I took that picture, setting the timer and discovering that if I placed the camera in a window, it was a great lighting source.

christianity 2.0

New Year's of 2006/7, an AA friend of mine named Jill and I went to the Coast for an AA convention. After that I started a love/hate relationship with a certain Christian church called The Vineyard. The development of my spirituality has been heavily influenced by the experience at this church and Jill's support.


The Vineyard and Vineyard Music

Wikipedia:

"Historically, the Vineyard Movement has been rooted in both renewal and church planting. Instead of the mainstream charismatic label, Vineyard leaders and members over the years have preferred the term Empowered Evangelicals – a term coined by Rich Nathan and Ken Wilson in their book of the same name – to reflect their roots in traditional Evangelicalism, as opposed to historic Pentecostalism.

Members also sometimes describe themselves as the "radical middle" between Evangelicals and Pentecostals, which is a reference to the book The Quest for the Radical Middle, a historical survey of the Vineyard by Bill Jackson. Vineyard philosophy has also played a key role in the development of the transformationalism school of Christian thought.

John Wimber is considered a leading founder and evangelist of the movement, although the first Vineyard churches already existed before his Calvary Chapel church in Yorba Linda, CA, joined the movement in 1982. The first Vineyard Church is claimed by many to have started as a bible study in the living room of singer/songwriter Larry Norman's house and have been attended by many popular actors/actresses and musicians including Bob Dylan."

Buddhism
Well, it wasn't until after my divorce (at age 32?) that I became Buddhist. It was a lot of nice, distant concepts when I was married to my husband. It wasn't until I sort of had a new round in recovery and needed yet again to find some kind of spirituality to call my own that I saught out a dharma center. Actually first I took an Intro. to Buddhism class with Michael Conklin, who happens to be the Lama at KCC. It was that class that led me to his dharma center. It was Tibetan rather than Zen, which appealed to my monkey mind better.

I have a Buddhist name "Karma Sherab Pelmo" which means Glorious Wisdom.

I was a pretty intense student of Buddhism formally for about 2 years, but informally ever since. I took refuge and received a Buddhist name: Karma Sherab Pelmo. I don't know that that has any lasting meaning, but it was very significant at the time. (Looked up the meaning: Radiant Woman of Higher Knowledge). I went on a rather special meditation retreat on the practice of Tonglen at the time as well.

One of the best things about that dharma center was they did Green Tara puja [prayer time]. I was able to find a deity that was female. That's why I eventually got my Green Tara tattoo.

christianity
My spirituality took another turn after I had a relapse for about a year and a half. My relapse happened in a relationship with someone who didn't support my being in 12 step recovery, or any spirituality really. During that time, I relocated from Portland OR to the Columbia Gorge in The Dalles. (I only moved to Hood River last year). When I got out of that relationship and wanted to get back into AA, I did so in the little, very conservative, very Christian town of The Dalles. So many AA members went to one church or another. Eventually, I dated a man (m) who was, as they say, "on fire for the Lord." I attended his Bible study and was "given the gospels" and shortly thereafter baptised (on Ground Hog Day).
I have taken the liberty to explore many denominations. I even found this cool test which is a christian denomination selector. Probably U.C.C. church fits me the best. But I like modern christian music, with worship teams and powerpoint words, etc., too. I've attended charismatic churches with some ambivalence. I also like Unity churches. I currently go to a christian coffee house, called Soul Cafe.

What I believe and where it came from....
As I was leaving college, I had absolutely no spirituality (that I can recall now). I was raised an atheist, with only the free-love spirituality of hippies. (Actually my mother had some influence of Buddhism even back then). The only church I'd ever attended was Unitarian, and only a few times, with my grandmother.

I think I was more political, as much as my little naive mind and spirit could handle, and influenced by going to a very political school, Reed College, and having a very political grandmother. I had read the Bible and other materials as literature, I had taken cross-cultural religion courses. I was educated, but empty.

But there must have been seeds, because after college, I worked in a bookstore. I was open. I saw many, many titles on spirituality (Starhawk and Joseph Campbell stand out). I was identifying mainly as lesbian at least politically (though having no luck with that romantically) at the time. So my very first spiritual leanings were towards paganism and wicca. This religion fit with my long time study of astrology, since age 15.


I guess I need to have God be female. My father's absence made it very difficult to see God as male. My counter-culture childhood made Christianity impossible for me. I always felt like an outsider.
I started my journey into 12 step recovery in about 1989. It wasn't until I did that I even really thought about needing to find my own personal higher power. So for a long time, I didn't say God in meetings. I said Goddess. I even changed the pronouns if I was asked to read any literature in a meeting. I spent a lot of time reading books like Many Roads One Journey and A Woman's Way Through the Twelve Steps, which encouraged tailoring recovery material to fit women's needs and experience.
During my marriage, I was exposed to my husband's spirituality. He was raised reformed Jewish and he was also a Buddhist -- affectionately known as a Jew Bu. He was the first person who prayed at holidays in my life. The first person who saw the world through the lens of Buddhism, which has become so trendy in our popular culture, actually.
to be continued...

The Catbird Seat Bookstore
First Practicum 90-91: Insights Teen Parent Program Gosh, I was so young, but those mommies were younger!
Second Practicum 91-92: Parry Center for Children Talk about OJT!
First Real Job: Center for Community Mental Health 92-94 - Northeast Portland, lots of great kids, lots of learning, hard stuff, no pay!
Next Job 94-97: Lutheran Family Services, Beaverton, growing up, figuring things out!
Next Job 97-99: Children's Center, Vancouver, WA - really started to get burnt out, even though I was totally gaining in competence.
Next Job 2000-2004 - Head Start Mental Health Specialist
Next 2004-2010 - Center for Living Mental Health Specialist

Portland State University, 1990-1992, Master's Degree in Social Work (MSW)
Anyone who has gone to graduate school knows that it sucks. It was so very stressful. I was trying to work 32 hours while going to school the first year. By the end of the second year, I was only able to work 8 hours a week. I was so incredibly stressed, mainly due to undiagnosed social phobia. I ended up returning to my food dependence and putting on some weight.

I think I got the right degree for me, but I sometimes wish I'd received more clinical direction. That's the trade off for not having gotten an MS in counseling psych, but oh well.

Catbird Seat: The bookstore years 1987-1990 My first real job was working as a teacher's assistant at a Montessori preschool, but..... I hated it. So I didn't last long.  I don't think I hated Montessori, it was the teacher I was assisting; we didn't get along.  Also I was more interested in the children's mental health than intellectual development.  Interestingly, I found out much later that my great grandfather was a very early Waldorf educator in Switzerland (which is very similar).

The next job I got was working at a bookstore, called The Catbird Seat, in Portland. I loved it. I was the data entry clerk. The owner would see book reps and mark orders in catalogs, which she would pass on to me, and I would create the orders. It's where I learned to 10 key by touch. It's also where my love of and addiction to books blossomed! That 40% discount was hard to pass up and I acquired many books and expanded my intellectual horizons the four years I was there almost as much as the previous 4 years at college. It was also the budding of my spirituality, due to discovering great books on astrology, tarot, psychology (esp. Jungian) and Goddess spirituality. It was also where I met my later (first) husband, Brian.

Brian: 1990-1997

Brian became the bookkeeper at The Catbird Seat the last year I worked there. Our desks faced each other. He was awesome. It was as if we were the same person in (very) different bodies. At the time, I honestly thought he was gay and vice versa. Eventually, when I started to go to school to get my MSW, he was the one person at work that I missed the most, so we started going out. It was not dating in my mind at all, until finally he admitted he was interested in me. We were together for seven years. We never argued that I can remember. We were extremely accepting of each other, perhaps to a fault. We indulged in overeating like I never have. Eventually, I got depressed and then wanted relief and starting changing to lose weight and feel better. This self-preservation growth spurt eventually led to the end of our marriage (long story very short). We are still friends. He is awesome. He went to live in New York at a Jewish renewal center and later moved to Philadelphia. He became a Gestalt therapist.


Lessons Learned: Brian and I had "overlapping T-squares" which means that we share incredibly similiar karmic lessons in this life. We were truly psychic twins, despite occupping such different bodies. I learned what it was to be known deeply, to trust a human, to commit long term (7 years). I also learned that safety can be less than empowering and ultimately that indulgence is not always helpful. We are still friends.

This is me after I got my first sleeve tattoo, so it's 1990. I was 24. I got those shoes in Switzerland. I loved them. I'd still have them if a roommate hadn't thrown them out when I moved one time.

This particular visit was terribly painful because I was no longer drinking and using, so I had to view my father with clear eyes and nothing to medicate the pain that he was never going to be the father I might have dreamt of.

My Third Visit to Switzerland (Age 24):

My brother paid for my third visit to Switzerland because the whole family was attending a tattoo convention in Amsterdam. I guess it was like a family reunion.

Look at the difference in my appearance in less than 2 years. I got rid of that silly perm somewhere in my freshman college year. And then I started dying right above my ears blonde. Not sure why... though it was cool. Sometimes I died my hair black. I was goth before it was cool to be goth.

This is my oldest tattoo, from when I was 19. That would be 1984. Some of Filip's oldest work. I still want some work around her.

Second Visit to see My Father (Age 19): When I was a sophomore in college, I spent winter break in Switzerland with my father and his family. It was a 5 week visit, the longest I ever made. I only visited him 4 times in my life. I am going to post about those visits, out of sequence, because they are such odd interruptions in my life, with very little connection to the exterior of my normal life. During this visit, my mother became clean and sober. She discusses this in her own blog and autobiography, so I won't go into it here in much detail. Suffice it to say, that I had to leave the continent and stop enabling her for her to get into recovery. I say this half jokingly, because I know that I didn't have that much power either way. When I first met my father at age 17, I was very straight laced, at least with regard to outward appearance. I also had done no drugs, alcohol or dating. By the time I visited again at 19, I had changed all that in college. And I wanted to fit in with what my dad expected of his children, which was to participate in his "drugs, sex, rock n roll" lifestyle. A lifestyle which I'd been sort of avoiding my whole life, out of fear. Again, I need to find a picture of me at the age of this visit.
Sometime after this visit, my brother and sister came to visit me at college in Oregon. At that time, Filip gave me my first tattoo, which is on my right shin, now 20 years old... I can't believe it.

Look at the difference in my appearance in less than 2 years. I got rid of that silly perm somewhere in my freshman college year. And then I started dying right above my ears blonde. Not sure why... though it was cool. Sometimes I died my hair black. I was goth before it was cool to be goth.