This is me in May 1999, attending my graduation from the master’s of human services program at St. Edward’s University. For this event my mother came to Austin from Syracuse, and my brother and sister-in-law (fellow Austinites) also attended. I was ecstatic to have achieved this goal. I entered the program in January 1997, having quit my full-time job to devote myself to studying full-time. I borrowed a lot in student loans (this was a private school, we’re talking $45K over two years and a half years). In January 1998 I returned to working full-time while attending school full-time, and toward the end of my training had two semesters of practicum to work into the schedule as well.

Graduate school was difficult — not in course content, since that felt natural to me. It was a very lonely, vulnerable time in my life. I recognized my depression early into the program and sought help. I began dealing with the long-stifled reverberations of being sexually assaulted in 1994. I left a church community in which I’d immersed myself following the attack, because I recognized I no longer fit in and never really had. In breaking away, I lost my entire social network. My beloved cat died in April 1998, and I entered into an unwise romantic relationship shortly after that became a torment. Yet I prevailed. I had many dark nights, frequent bouts of fear, much temptation to quit, but I continued to act out of faith in myself and the universe. So this day was a brilliant one for me. I threw myself a huge party attended by family, a few professors, and friends I’d made in the program and at work. I cherish the memory of that day. And it’s well that I did, because I still had a post-graduate 2000-hour internship and exam ahead of me! I finished that in June 2002.

Credit goes to my sister-in-law Lynn for snapping the original photo. I don’t have a scanner, so I took a photo (hence the fuzzy quality).