How to begin the story about the impact this woman has had on my life at its most critical points?
Go back, go back.
It is 198? and my then-husband Lowell and I are trying to work our way through some serious relationship issues. I had already left him once only to return (whole other story in THAT).
We find out that the Refuge, a Domestic Violence Program, will soon be training their first batch of volunteers and we sign up, him telling me that since we've successfully resolved our own issues it would be good to share that success with others.
As the training progresses, we realize that we've barely touched the tip of our personal iceberg; we aren't qualified to try to help anyone else when our own situation is an explosion waiting to happen. He opts out of the training; I remain, learning and absorbing knowledge and information like a sponge, applying every last bit to my own life.
And Lona is there.
She knows before we do that there's something seriously amiss in this couple who has shown up in her training program; and she allows us to remain.
Her choice provides us with the chance to figure out for ourselves the deeper issues beneath what we thought we had successfully addressed, namely the physical abuse that had infected our relationship like a virus.
Lowell, unwilling or unable to go deeper, opts out of not only the training but our home as well.
And Lona is there.
When it becomes clear that Lowell has no interest in taking the steps required to save our relationship, Lona provides me with the tools I need to carry on alone.
She is there for me. Somehow she understands the complicated position I am in and guides me gently but quite very firmly along the way.
Because I am both one of the first victims served by the Refuge and one of the first volunteers, my path is sometimes murky to me.
Lona seems to have no murk to deal with, not when it comes to me anyway.
She puts me on the hotline. She encourages my participation in support groups, both as survivor and advocate. She sends me to court with someone who needs desperately to know that she is not all alone. She sends to my home women and children who need safety. At times I have to wonder if I'm up to it; Lona says I am and so ... I am up to it.
I leave to return to UND, to finish at long last my Bachelor's degree in Psychology. I meet Steve and we are awesome. We have a daughter and move to the mountains to make a dream happen.
Returning to Cambridge with nothing except ourselves, our animals, and what we can fit into the International Travelall we are driving, it is to Lona I turn.
Lona is there.
She sees to it that the house we rent gets furnished with needful things. She brings me up to date on what's been happening; she includes me in current events; she smiles when those with whom we meet chide me for loading my food with salt (and me pregnant as a house, a risky pregnancy from the get-go and the reason for our leaving the mountains in the first place).
Such a long time ago it all was. That time will be ever hazy for me, but one thing remains strong and clear to me.
Lona was there.
Strong and able, perfectly willing to challenge me to BE, to BECOME. to BELIEVE.
More than twenty years have passed.
Walking toward the restaurant where we are to meet, my nephew asks, 'Will you even recognize her?'
'Yes.'
And my step quickens almost to a run across the parking lot.
Yes. Oh yes, I recognize her.
Lona is there.
And all is right in my world.
This time, for the first time, I have something to give to her. It is perhaps not the way she sees it, but for the first time I feel as though finally I am a woman grown, as opposed to the needy child she has only ever known me as.
Yes, of course I realize that has been my own perception - one I hadn't even fully realized until I saw Lona this time. This time, this one time, for the first time, I was coming to her knowing that I am the strong woman she has always told me I am.
And, to me, this moment is maybe the most valuable of the gifts this woman has brought to my life.
Lona is there.
This time she sees not a broken young wife and mother; she sees not a frightened woman struggling to cope.
This time she sees a woman who knows that she is strong.
It is the woman that Lona has seen all along, I think.
And that, my friend, is the gift she has given to me - the smile of recognition and respect that she has always greeted me with is somehow different this time.
It takes a bit for it to sink in but at last I realize what the difference is.
The difference is in me.
Lona is no doubt seeing the same woman she has known for many years; but she is also seeing in me something she hasn't seen before.
What she recognizes is that now I know my own strength. That's the difference. It is a gift I can give to her, one she has worked for and looked for since the get-go I think, one that doesn't always happen among us. The realization that she sees it - that is her gift to me.
The books I hand to her are but a little token of thanks for so very much.
I feel as though in some way I have come home.
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