To Be an 'Elder' -- Seeking Wisdom; Sharing Wisdom

Susan Rona, back in Montreal

Susan Rona, a Canadian educator, dedicated her career to proving that children, especially minority children, can succeed if their teachers believe that they can. It was a mission that absorbed her entirely.  And she was at the top of her game, having been invited to present her work to the European Parliament.

Then suddenly, it was gone.

“When I found myself retired, I didn’t make a decision to retire,” explained Susan, whose native tongue, Hungarian, aided her advocacy for Roma (gypsy) children in Eastern Europe. “This large international organization and I came to a point where it was time for us to part. So I went from my professional life being in 30 countries and feeling like my job in the world was to save the world -- especially  the lives of disadvantaged minorities and create a better world for them -- to doing nothing.”

The void she faced “terrified” her.

“I remember going to parties and people saying to me, ‘What do you do?’ and I had to run out the door or burst out crying because I just couldn’t answer that question. Over time, I developed an answer, which was, “I’m in transition.”

It was a response, really. Not an answer. 

Back home in Montreal, she kept searching.

“I spent a year seeing a life coach because I realized I didn’t need a therapist. I wasn’t depressed for no reason. I was situationally depressed because I didn’t know what to do with my life.”

At one point, the coach told Susan “that he saw me in my previous life as the captain of a ship who was constantly in rough waters and negotiating rough seas but that now I was a landlocked sailor who was looking out to sea and couldn't get out there -- and didn't necessarily want to get out there -- but didn't know what to do with myself.”

“That really spoke to me.”

So Susan asked herself, as a “landlocked sailor who didn’t want to manage any more boats and didn’t want to manage any more people and didn’t want to navigate rough seas, what is it that I did want to do?”

The answer came to her on an assignment for the Canadian government in the Yukon. At a meeting of First Nations people, “I was observing this woman who was an elder in the community and she wasn’t educated. But she was incredibly wise, and all the young people were looking to her for her insight and her wisdom.

“It was at that moment that I discovered that really what I wanted to be was an elder.

She no longer wanted to manage those “rough seas” anymore, “but I did want to support other people to do it well. And I wanted to be an elder in life, helping people find their paths through some of the wisdom I had developed over time.”

For that reason, Susan went on to train to become a professional, certified life coach. (susanrona.coaching@gmail.com)

Susan had another wise role model. Her father. And it’s timely that I publish this story now, on the anniversary of his death, two years ago.

“Maybe watching and experiencing my wonderful father age with the grace that he had and seeing how he could lose his ability to walk, he could lose his ability to move, he could lose his independence and yet still remain such a powerful soul, who gave so much to everybody. The fact that I spent the last five years of my life before he died having him as the center, the core of my existence, I learned a lot. So I aspire to be a wise elder.”

No longer, says Susan, does she need to be famous or successful or make money.

“I don’t need any of that. All I want is to live in a way that I will have no regrets, giving to those whom I love and to those who I don’t necessarily love but can help. So I can support them through some of what I’ve learned.”

Huda's Story of a Lifetime

When Huda Shanawani left her homeland,  her school, and her family -- supposedly for only three years -- she carried with her a dream that has taken her four long decades to fulfill.

Huda Shanawani, college prof at last

So now, as many her age are looking back on careers or are packing them in, she feels as if she’s only just arrived.

I met Huda over a cup of coffee in a hotel lounge where both our husbands were attending a meeting. As often happens when you meet a stranger, her story came pouring out. It’s much richer than this – and she promised me she’ll start writing it for her children – but here are the Cliff Notes:

It starts when Huda was 16, a schoolgirl in Syria. A friend of the family -- a medical student studying in the U.S. -- comes home to visit. His parents tell him he cannot return to America without taking a wife.

“It was a semi-arranged marriage,” Huda explained. “I did have a choice.” Her husband-to-be asks her, “What are your dreams?”

She says, “I want to finish high school.”

Arriving in New Jersey as a newly married 16-year-old was not the life that Huda had envisioned. “As a kid, kids dream," she said. “This was not my dream. My dream was to have a home, have children, and if I could, get an education along the way."
In Syria.

She thought that after medical school, she and her husband would have to – would want to -- return home, but “in the 1970s Syria was no longer a good place to raise children," she said. "And in the ‘80s all hell broke loose in Syria and we couldn’t go back.”

Because of her husband’s profession the couple were able to get U.S. citizenship early on, “which made it easier to live the life we dreamed of,” Huda said.

"We wanted to give our children the freedom of education, of thought, and of speech -- everything we were denied in Syria -- and the chance for them to pursue their dreams."

As she raised their four children, Huda remained determined to fulfill her goal of getting an education.

Her husband said he had no problem with her quest,  as long as she also managed the home front.
“I graduated from college when my youngest went to college,” she said. “I took one course at a time. I stuck it out.”

By Huda Shanawani

Along the way, for 30 years, she translated and interpreted for the New Jersey courts. She also painted and made ceramics. Finally, in 2008, she received a masters degree in art education.

Today, Huda is a college teacher, teaching Arabic at Union County College in Cranford, N.J. She has no plans to stop.

Many of her students have never left the city. Huda says she loves introducing them “to a world they’ve never seen.”

For sure, she’s not doing it for the money. “My teaching has nothing to do with money. You’d be shocked at how little I make. It’s getting out of the house and creating something.”

Here, in a land where she never expected to live out her life, she has clearly created more than something.

Said Huda: “One of the things I’m proud of is how proud my children are of me.”

Her age? “I’m turning 60 next year. I never hide my age. I have a child who is 40.”