CHELMSFORD, MA — Jeanne Marie Engels, the mother of a lifelong friend, sits in a Starbuck’s in Chelmsford, Massachusetts and explains how, many years ago, she found herself thinking about going back to school.

At the age of 37, her marriage had ended. She and her four children left Germany where they had lived on a US military base and, after spending a few weeks living with her sister, settled in the leafy Boston suburb of Winchester.

Winchester, Massachusetts is a quiet, picturesque little town that is known as a home for the well-to-do who worked in Beantown. Engels and her children moved into an apartment on Cross Street, just near the Winchester/Woburn line. Her kids attended Winchester public schools and the local Catholic church. Catholicism and its theology would play a major role in Jeanne’s career choices. First though, it was time for Jeanne to get a job to support her family.

Jeanne had plenty of experience working in blood banks. So she walked up to Winchester Hospital and inquired about working in their blood bank. Despite her experience, Jeanne was told she didn’t have the required medical technician credentials. She said that, with her current education level, the only work she would be allowed to do would be unskilled, such as labeling blood bags and sterilizing equipment.

“I couldn’t do that,” she said. “Not because I was too good for that, but because it wouldn’t satisfy me.”

So, Jeanne began to take stock of what would satisfy her. She said that while living in Germany, she was the vice-president of her church’s parish council. A lifelong Catholic, Jeanne turned her attention to something in the Catholic church that always troubled her.

“I decided I wanted to revolutionize CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine),” Jeanne said. “I didn’t like what they were teaching, I wanted to change it all.”

Trying A New Path

CCD, sometimes called “Catechism” is the youth religious education program within the church. It is now called “Faith Formation” and its primary purpose is to instruct children in the faith who do not attend Catholic school. This wasn’t the first time she had this idea. While living in Germany she had discussed her feelings about CCD with the base’s military chaplain who encouraged her to pursue her ideas about religious education. After she and her family settled in Winchester, she enrolled at Emmanuel College in Boston.

“And I fell in love, absolutely in love,” she said, “with theology.”

Theology is the study of the nature of God and the development of religious beliefs. Engels would also take a course in psychology another subject she would fall in love with. She learned that Emmanuel offered a Master’s Degree in Pastoral Counseling.

“Well, that’s perfect,” Jeanne said. “That’s a good combination of both.”

So, Engels signed on to the Master’s program, staying an extra year at Emmanuel. In five years she would graduate Magna Cum Laude, with her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees.

After Graduation

“But when I graduated, I couldn’t get a job in pastoral counseling,” she said. Only churches hired pastoral counselors and a church’s pay wasn’t enough to raise four kids. She thought about going back to get her PhD, but a job was advertised in the paper at New England Memorial Hospital for a counselor in their psychiatric unit.

“And I was there until they closed,” Jeanne said. “I was there for 12 years.”

New England Memorial Hospital closed in 1999. At that time, she was a senior counselor. “(There was) Nothing like it,” she said.

Jeanne said her day at New England Memorial would begin with “physical stuff” — vital signs, safety checks, etc — and then then she and her fellow counselors and patients would move on to therapy in both individual and group settings.

“The most important part of my job, if there was one, was our one-to-one,” she said.

Jeanne said that “One-to-one” referred to the time when counselors met with their primary patients for 50 minutes, one-on-one. She and the other counselors would then write up their session notes for the doctors.

But she said, “as the insurance companies took over, all that therapy, one-to-one, we couldn’t do it.”

Insurance companies, she said, were now, no longer covering patient stays unless they were such a danger to themselves and others that they needed to be in a “locked” unit. Before long, she her unit, which had been “open”, became a “locked” one. Those patients who did not need to be in such a facility were considered “not dangerous.”

“It was a huge loss,” Jeanne said.

She said she remembered many a patient who didn’t pose enough danger to be in a locked unit but still needed help. For example, she said, one woman, she said, would come in regularly for help in dealing with her severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

“She had been physically and sexually abused by family,” Jeanne said, “and just was dysfunctional. She came in frequently.”

Frequently enough to know the staff, which helped her feel safe, which was a great help.

“She knew I was there and she could talk to me,” she said. “But a big part of her was somewhere else.”

Another woman who suffered from psychosis was admitted and Jeanne went to sit with her. The patient, Jeanne said, could not look at her. Still, Jeanne said, they would talk. The patient would talk, Jeanne would respond. After a while the patient would talk again and Jeanne would respond again, and so on.

“Before she left, she came to find me and she said: ‘I want to thank you,’ She said: ‘I was at my worst and you came and you sat with me, and talked with me, and I will never forget that.’”

School and Family Balance

Most of her schooling was paid for with loans, Jeanne said, “and I think I had a few scholarships along the way.”

When asked about the balancing act between school and family, Jeanne said it just seemed to “come naturally” to her.

“I mean it just felt so normal, I don’t want to say easy but it almost felt easy,” she said. However, she said that if she were to do it over again, she would have waited until her children were older.

“I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone with a lot of kids,” Engels said.

She said that getting her degree helped her in “numerous ways” and after her marriage her “self-esteem was only enough self-esteem that I could build on.”

“And to know that I could still get good grades was amazing,” she said. “You know; it was all mine. My brain. I could do it.”

After New England Memorial closed, Jeanne turned to retail instead of returning to counseling in locked units. She accepted a job at “Linens N Things” which she said was relaxing. However, when she worked the cash register she met some people dealing with the frustrations of their day.

“There were all sorts of people who would come in,” she said. “You just knew they were struggling,”

So, she said she would use her counselor’s training with customers. Sometimes, she said, she would help with a kind word or some extra attention. One time, she even helped a customer who was lost and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease to find a family member.

“And you just relate to people that way. So everything I learned…I incorporated at Emmanuel,” she said, “it just stayed and grew.”

End of Part II: In the final part, David’s Teachers reflect on the difficulties faced by students returning to school when they have families and other responsibilities.