E11. Welfare Visit and Jr High

We follow Sadie from a staged welfare visit to the crowded halls of junior high, where shame and silence meet people who finally notice. School staff and a young social worker push past appearances and help move her toward safety. 

This is about the power of everyday professionals—counselors, nurses, and teachers—to change outcomes for kids trying to disappear, and of therapists who move us toward self-compassion. Feel free to share

Special Thanks to our supporters, who have made this podcast possible.

• Lucy Mathews Heegaard: Audio Engineer 
  • with music via Epidemic Sound
• Terry Gydesen: Photographer

• Polly Kellogg
• Kate Tillotson
• Dawn Charbonneau
• Jacob Wyatt
• Molly Tillotson
• Julian Bowers
• Wendy Horowitz
• Pat Farrell
• Lynette Tabert
• Laura Jensen
• People's Farm Collective
• Deborah Copperud of "Spock Talk" podcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Welcome to the Sadie Green Story about an older adult looking back on her abusive childhood. It's a conversation between Sadie and myself, Pam Colby, her longtime friend. We are exploring how early trauma can affect a lifetime. Thanks for joining us. Hey, Sadie.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Good day, Pam.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Alright, and it is a good day here on the podcast because things are starting to change a little in your life.

The Welfare Visit Performance

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Yeah, at least the things that made the change. We're gonna talk about the welfare visit and going from the one-room schoolhouse to junior high where other people got involved. Alright, let's go. Eventually, the welfare department sent someone out to visit us. Politely they called, arranged a time that was convenient for Ma and Pa, and then they came, stepping cautiously, through a farmyard strewn with clutter, chickens, ducks, and dog. They came in their city clothes, with purses over one arm, and notebooks in the other. Ma had the coffee on, and some kind of baked goodie on a plate. The house was clean, the kids were in their school clothes. There was no sign of the hours leading up to this, no sign of tension from the night before, the crying or the threats, the pulling on and off of clothes, the name calling. Nothing showed except what looked to be a hardworking rural family sitting around the table before company arrived, like it is odd that they should be here on this otherwise most regular of days. At these politely arranged meetings, the social worker smiled sweetly before asking me the questions. Ma smiled back and told them funny unrelated stories. They complimented the baked goods and were careful not to say anything offensive. I sat there cautiously, hands gripping my knees under the table. I answered all the questions in the way I knew I needed to, and finally they collected the notebooks and said they know how hard it is to manage a big family. They extended their hands to Ma and Pa, smiled in my direction, and safely drove away in their small sized city cars. I didn't know how much they really noticed or how much was a routine job to them. They gave no clue that they had any idea of what went on behind the scene. Of course I hoped I'd done well enough to convince them I was fine. I hoped they believed me when I told them I was just a quiet kid who liked to be alone. I didn't want to be so difficult. I just couldn't help myself. I dutifully told them, yes, I did like my parents, and I thought everything would be just fine when I got past this awkward stage. Desperately I hoped that I'd done well. Ma and Pa were sitting there the whole time hearing every word I said, and we all knew it was my fault that the welfare had to come out anyway. Mine and grandma's who didn't know how to mind their own damn business.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

So when you read that now, what memories come back of that time and that little girl trying to answer those big questions?

Contacting The Social Worker Years Later

SPEAKER_01 3:44

I just remember being very scared and knowing what I needed to say. It was all a performance. What's interesting, that social worker is still living. And I contacted her recently and I made some comment about the small cars and the cautiously stepping through the chicken poop and so on. And she was taken back by that. I grew up rural, I know. And that's true. It was just in my head.

SPEAKER_02 4:17

It's how how you saw her such an outsider coming because your world was so small. Yeah, so anybody with a even different-looking car and a purse over her shoulder and dressed up paperwork, notebook.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

And do you think at that time now, looking back, that they were noticing because as we go, we're gonna find out how thin you were because you weren't getting food. And we'll talk about that later, but do you think they noticed that there was something I do.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

I still have lots of records from the hospital. And included in those records are letters that this particular social worker sent back and forth, and she really helped me. She really did her job.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

And so she knew you were just doing a performance.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

I don't know what went on behind the scenes. I only remember the visit in my head, and of course it went on forever.

SPEAKER_02 5:17

I And when you say went on forever, you mean just that you stayed in the home and nothing happened after the social worker contacted your parents.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

They went to court and and uh my parents were taken to court by the junior high. And that's a whole nother story. But this particular social worker, I have all those these documents now from correspondence with the psychiatrist and the social worker and my what my mother told the psychiatrist, and the social worker really went to bat for me.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Something more than what your mother wanted her to see.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

I'm I'm so grateful that I was able to thank her for what she had done when she was a pretty new social worker.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

All right.

Entering Junior High’s Wider World

Mr. Wood’s Story And Panic

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Shout out to social workers. Yeah. Okay. I have another story about what happened before I was removed, about a year before grandma made that trip to town to see someone in the welfare office. I began riding the yellow school bus into town, to Brainerd Junior High. Six years in the one room schoolhouse were behind me. I was entering a wider, different world, and though I did not know it then, this different world would rearrange my life completely. But change came slowly, threading through the next two years of intense shame, this time among strangers. The one room schoolhouse in the midst of half a dozen rural families was safe in its familiarity, but the same familiarity maintained my isolation. The fear of making waves, the privacy and individualism in a rural people's culture served to insulate the spiral of abuse. But Brainerd was a big place, full of teachers, guidance counselors, school nurses, and others not invested in protecting parents they didn't know. They saw me every day. They saw me in a crowd of strangers, standing out in my excruciating awkwardness, my silence, my shabby coats, my two big shoes, sitting by myself at lunchtime. They saw me terror stricken when attention turned toward me, saw my shaky fingers drop things, heard me stammer to respond, if I could respond at all. Mr Wood was my seventh grade science teacher. On the first day of class, he sat casually on his desk in front of the room and told a long story, a fable of sorts that took most of the hour. It was the story of a young man in wartime who winds up in a prisoner of war camp and is subjected to unrelenting tortures, the water torture, having his fingernails pulled out slowly, and so on. The young man eventually escapes, but then goes through a harrowing period of survival in enemy territory with no food, no directions, depending only on his own resources. After lengthy trials and tribulations, this man finally comes out on the other side. He is free, free to move where he wants and free to eat what he wishes. The first thing he wants to eat is a huge steak. But after just three or four bites of it, he must push his plate away. His body cannot tolerate the richness, the quantity of the steak, after prolonged starvation. This is the end of the story. I didn't understand exactly what this was supposed to mean to the class, but Mr. Wood was totally endeared to me. However, Mr. Wood proved to be ruthless when it came to discipline. His favorite consequence for bad behavior, like not finishing homework, was to have the errant pupil stand at the back of the room after class and hold a popsicle stick against the wall with their nose. It was early in the quarter when Mr. Wood, not well acquainted with new students yet, called on me in class. An innocent request. A routine calling on of students, seeking out participation from the quiet ones, perhaps. Sitting on the edge of my chair, I slowly realized what was happening. Unprepared for the request, and petrified by the need to say something, my chest and throat immediately clenched inward, as if held inside a fist. Nervous fingers started my pencil rolling off the desk. Shame flared up both sides of my face. I felt all eyes on me. The attention was intolerable. I bent over jerkily to grab the pencil. Then the whole desk tipped. And I went crashing to the floor. In my head, I saw myself in shambles and thought, I might black out or crawl beneath the floorboards. Mr. Wood's voice sounded far away. You will please stay after class when the bell rings. I cringed back into my seat and did not see a thing except my pencil. How could I get out of here? How dare he do this to me? I hated him then. He did not assign the popsicle routine. He asked if I was okay. If there was something he should know about. I stood in front of the closed door, books, clutched tightly to my chest, and stared at the floor. I could not look at him. Why can't you stop? The voices screamed inside my head. But I said nothing. He asked me other things, simple things, anything for a response. I stood frozen, head down, knuckles white from clenching onto the books. I hate you, I hate you rang through my head. But I could not speak of anything out loud. He gave up finally and let me go.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

That what you remember is that here's this teacher telling a long story about somebody starving when you are actively starving. Do you think that had some kind of a reason why that stuck in your brain?

SPEAKER_01 12:02

Do you think that there was some way that I certainly identified with the story? Starving. I I did manage to eat. I was underweight. I did I was hungry a lot. I don't think of it as starving. Isn't that interesting?

SPEAKER_02 12:19

But you were very underweight.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

Yeah, I was. You were the size of a 10-year-old when you were 14. They did vote bone scans, and because I was small, they thought I had this Turner syndrome, which is delayed development. And I had bone whatever of a 10-year-old. And I was I think the average weight for a 14-year-old girl is 108, and I was 78 pounds. So that would have been 30 pounds under the average. But I was short too.

Hunger, Size, And Medical Records

SPEAKER_02 12:54

Yeah. But this was the time when you were s living in the woods a lot and stealing lunches, stealing lunch cards, anything to get food. Yeah. Getting food was the main thing on your mind. And shelter. And shelter. And here's this teacher telling a story about starving. That just strikes me as something that is not a coincidence that's stuck in your mind. And then the other thing that comes to my mind in in hearing you tell that is just how much you want to be invisible.

Bus Rides, Hiding, And Nurses’ Help

Counselors, Tests, And Missteps

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Yeah, I knew that telling anybody wasn't gonna do any good. In fact, it would just make things worse if I drew any attention to myself. Okay, let's continue with the story. It took almost an hour for the yellow school bus to carry its load of rural kids from Arya to the woods to Brainerd Junior High. We caught the bus down at the corner, walking the quarter mile from the gray farmhouse to the dirt road where the bus turned around and headed back to the highway. During the next two years, there were many mornings when I never finished that quarter mile. If I left the house in socks, but no shoes, or without a coat, or wearing one of Ma's work dresses, I did not get on that bus. Instead, I lagged behind the others, then dashed into the woods at the right moment. If my inappropriate school dress was not obvious from the outside, such as a coat and shoes, but nothing underneath, I did walk on the bus, passing through that sea of round pale faces. But I was not in class when the teacher called morning roll. I would be hiding in the girls' bathroom instead, inside a stall, with the door shut, so if someone came in, they saw only a pair of feet. When the bell rang for second class, the pair of feet were in a different stall, to avoid being seen in the same place, and by lunchtime, they would move again. Students were not allowed to be in hallways during class time without a written pass from their teacher. But sometimes, in desperation, I dared to move cautiously to other bathrooms. Sometimes I was caught. Then I'd be taken to the principal's office, and if I told him I was sick, escorted to the nurse's office, the nurse would have me lie down on a cot, ask me to remove my coat, and then see the real reason I was not in class. Being shamed before one nurse was better than before a classroom full of students. And both school nurses came to know me in the first three months of junior high. Joan would sit me in a chair, shut the door, and send someone to the nearest goodwill store. Soon after that someone would return with odd pieces of clothing that they guessed might fit this teenage girl in a ten-year-old sized body. If the clothing fit, it could be a long skirt, like girls my age didn't wear, at least those girls able to concern themselves with fashion. Then with the counselor at my side, we'd walk back to the classroom, interrupting lesson plans with my late entrance. After whisperings between him and the teacher, class went on almost as usual. If the nurse, the counselor, or the school principal managed to get through to my folks at home, Ma acted like she didn't know what they were talking about. She told them I had a thing with clothes, that I was difficult, that they bent over backwards for me, but I was selfish, that she felt I could change and be cooperative, but only when and if I wanted to. Please, you can talk to me, the counselor started, while my head dropped down between my shoulders, my hands clenched tightly to those armrests, and I said nothing. He tried to make me look at him. The screaming in my head said, Stop, stop, let me go, don't touch me. He persisted. He gave me inkblot tests, IQ tests, asked me to fill out simple worksheets, questionnaires. I did all these, wouldn't lee, in silence, while he paced around behind me or watched me from across the room. One day he leaned across to his desk, his thin tie falling on the papers in between us, and whispered, You know, all you have to do is wear a little pancake makeup, and nobody will know the difference. I didn't know what he meant or how that statement had anything to do with me. Finally he let me go. I wouldn't see him for a week or maybe two, but eventually we'd be there again. He, dashing in his dark suit and intensity, and me with all my shame and raging silence. My feet didn't touch the floor in that big chair. My legs grew cold from the knees down. His desk was cluttered with loose papers, coffee cups, a jar full of pointed pencils, and I wanted to throw the jar of pencils at him, knock him out, make him unseeable, for that might end his demanding curiosity. Meetings with Mr. Renshaw did have repercussions. He didn't tell Ma and Pa to my knowledge of our private talks and test taking. As far as I knew, they didn't communicate at all. But he did send an envelope through the mail with the IQ scores. He included a few friendly words. Isn't this nice about the numbers? Maybe he assumed they would be pleased to hear their odd, uncommunicative daughter was in fact bright. But June also went to Lincoln Jr. High, though by now she was embarrassed to claim Susan for a sister, and preferred to hang on to her own life separately. If Mr. Renshaw thought to include scores from both the sisters, it might have passed for routine school procedure. Instead, I was singled out again. I'd drawn attention to myself. Wouldn't your Mr. Renshaw like to see you now, Mom muffed? While Sue stood cringing and naked in front of her. Or when Sue curled on the floor in a fetal position. If you're so smart, I don't see why you can't even dress yourself, she taunted, as she forced me into yet another humiliating costume.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

I'm really feeling today, Sadie, like you really embodying the story, like you're back there. You're in it? Do you feel that a little more than I do.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

But it might be in part. I had a very intense therapy appointment yesterday. Uh-huh. Where what happened with the I'm trying to well, not to go into the weeds too much. I've never really spent a lot of time with I haven't had a very emotional life, at least internally, about my own pain. And that is what I am really doing in therapy. And my therapist wants me to envision that self, that younger self, and talk to her, visualize her, and talk to her and embrace her and love her, actually, as a part of loving myself. And a lot of my hurt and anger, if I lash out, is this child who is protective. I'm acting very protective, distrustful. It isn't the adult self in those instances. So anyway, it was a really intense appointment because I did visualize myself at about the age of 10 or 11. And I did talk to myself. And I thanked myself for being as resilient as I was and helping me get through that.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

And I also apologized to her for ignoring her. So I just feel close to that self. Probably tonight.

SPEAKER_02 21:47

And what I noticed is that you were changing into first person instead of just it being told from third person.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

That's interesting. In the manuscript, that is I start out in third person.

SPEAKER_02 22:02

Uh huh.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

And then I eventually start saying me and I.

SPEAKER_02 22:07

Oh yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

That's interesting that you would notice that tonight.

SPEAKER_02 22:10

And I also noticed the intensity when you talked about your mother, uh Mr. Renshaw, and you are Mr. Renshaw. That was just I could see on your face the pain in remembering that.

IQ, Maternal Cruelty, And Court

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Yeah, he is the one that took uh my parents to court. Oh and he was in the courtroom. Wow. I'll remember him. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

Another shout out to teachers.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Yes. Yeah, people really did help. The last episode when I talk about or a couple back where people don't want to intervene. My relatives actually helped. It took a long time. That's how it felt at the time.

SPEAKER_02 22:51

It took till you were almost dead, really. She almost killed you.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

So that did seem like a long time.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Yeah. But people really did help.

SPEAKER_02 23:01

And now when I And it took a lot it uh back in those days to intervene.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

Yeah, back in 69, 68, child abuse was just not on the radar. City people didn't know what to do with the rural kids. Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing I did today is I read through a hundred pages of court of those documents that I have from the hospital. And it really did remind me that, wow, people saved me.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

Yeah, and and we're gonna save some of those for a future episode where you're gonna read them, which I'm really excited to hear. Um, one thing I really want to bring up is the fact that you that IQ, you don't tell us what your IQ was, but it was really high, is that my understanding?

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

It was.

SPEAKER_02 23:51

How high?

SPEAKER_01 23:53

136.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

I just want to acknowledge that there is has been a lot of controversy about the value of that standard IQ test. But these were from when I had an uh test done before I left home through this Mr. Rensha. Uh-huh. And then after I was in the psych ward, they did it again.

Therapy, Inner Child, And Gratitude

SPEAKER_02 24:17

That was And this was these were I mean, you missed a lot of school. Yeah. Nobody was homeschooling you. Just that was just your I think your wits and your intelligence really saved you in the world.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

I do. And I think being able to survive and to be resilient and to figure things out at a young age. It maybe wasn't in a classroom, but it was certainly a lived experience that used needed my brain.

SPEAKER_02 24:49

Yes, and grew your brain.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

Yeah, I was lucky.

SPEAKER_02 24:54

And we're lucky to hear your story, Sadie. Thank you for sharing.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Oh, I hope it has some value. Thank you for listening. That will end our episode today, and we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Bye-bye. Bye-bye.