Me?

Me, an activist?  An advocate?  ME?  

Nah – that’s my sister, who in the glory days of the mid-‘60s took a summer theater workshop in Greenwich Village’s Circle in the Square, who took an evening math course at Penn in the white hot days of the late ‘60s, who attended a mountain college in the backwoods of Georgia, who traveled Ireland for a month by herself, who was formally recognized by the state legislature of New Jersey for her work with autistic children.  Mim – yes, I could see her as activist & advocate.  

But me?  Surely, you jest!

This time last week, I would have totally scoffed at such an idea.  But that was before Judy Wicks’ Saturday book-signing at the Doylestown Bookshop. 

I have not been reading her book, Good Morning, Beautiful Business, so much as devouring it.  It has been a revelation. 

For decades, I've known about Judy Wicks, the proprietor of  the unintentionally trend-setting White Dog Café (& its sister store, The Black Cat) and as a social activist.  But I always saw my sister as an embodiment of the values & energies that personify Judy, not me, never me.  For years, I saw myself - at best – as merely Mim’s acolyte.

In reading Judy’s remarkable book, am realizing more & more how often I projected my best qualities away from myself & onto my sister.  Not that my sister isn’t  remarkable – she is.  But it’s also true that I projected every best quality of my own onto her.  Strange, very strange.

It’s like I’m discovering myself in reading Good Morning, Beautiful Business.  How bizarre that I never saw myself as an activist, an advocate.  My gosh – just look at my business card, which reads Deev Murphy ~ legacy coach, grannie listener, community builder, aging-in-place advocate.  What does each of those things describe, if not an activist, an advocate?

It never dawned on me that what I hold to be my greatest professional accomplishments were all tied to some form of advocacy or activism.

Professionally, it started in my first year in my first job, teaching in the local elementary school.  The powers-that-be planned on holding back two of my students.  Not knowing the power I had, I strongly expressed my disagreement with the plan, explaining that they could hold back students in any other years, but not in 6^th grade (which I taught), when the rest of their classmates would move to a different campus (Benade Hall, now the ANC Boys School), and not in 8^th, when the class went onto high school.  

Will never forget the principal saying, to my drop-jaw surprise,  “Well, we can’t hold them back without the classroom teacher’s approval.”  

“Well,” I responded, “You don’t have it.”  

The room went silent.  He calmly looked me in the eye & said, “We have to accept your decision.  But know that whatever happens with these two students, it’s on your head.”  

What the principal & the head teacher & others missed was that the two students were quite bright (one was brilliant),  they just learned differently than most.  When they moved on with the class, they were blessed to have teachers who built on the progress I’d made boosting their confidence, going way beyond what I’d accomplished. 

Both turned out fine – no, make that fabulous! But I never saw what I did as being an advocate – I just stood up for two children who faced not only being labeled as deficit in some way, but in losing the friends who helped make school bearable.  Wouldn’t anyone?