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Excellent, Excellent, Excellent

You are here: Home / Trauma-Healing / Excellent, Excellent, Excellent

February 23, 2012 By Janneke

“Excellent, excellent, excellent”

I scrawled on my second grade self-report, in Spanish Fork, Utah.

Mama went to school for the whole report card and progress report.

“She is right,” said my teacher. “Her work and ability is excellent, excellent, excellent.” By the time of this exchange, my excellent, excellent, excellent seven year old self  had already lost two beloved countries (the Netherlands and Iran), many family and friends. My encouraging second-grade teacher was at the fifth elementary school of my young life.

Today this memory and report of my teacher’s words fill me with warmth, and yet I wonder,

Second-Grade Family Easter

where did that little girl who knew she was

“Excellent, excellent, excellent,” go?

Where did your “Excellent, excellent, excellent,” self go?

Read on, and then tell me.

I just finished the San Francisco Writer’s Conference. Enough of the brave little seven year-old lingered to help me there. But ohhhh, aargh, at least half the time I saw a prominent person, an excellent, excellent, excellent  person, I did not approach. The war at home had me. I rooted to the spot like a leaden little statue of a foreign girl, looking for the dark magic to run and escape.

What happened when I did approach? Enough of wishing for magic-Faith instead. Moments. Heather Lazare of Simon and Schuster’s Touchstone imprint; Linda Lee our volunteer coordinator, writer and web designer; Georgia Hughes of New World Library; poet Joan Gelfand, agents Michael Larsen/Elizabeth Pomada; and  memoir author Linda Joy Myers  were just a gracious few I connected with. They were happy to share their excellent, excellent, excellent. Most people are.

I had to say to myself inside, excellent, excellent, excellent. I had  to think of others as simple/complex human beings like myself, alongside me in God’s excellent, excellent, excellent world . As always when we treat others as excellent, excellent, excellent, it all works out.

What happens when we approach each other? Moments.

Tell me how your keep excellent, excellent, excellent going. Tell me your moments.

I leave you with one of my favorite photos of m parents, in Utah. One year into the adjustment of having immigrated to America, and previously having  survived Nazi occupied The Netherlands for my mother, and Japanese Concentration Camps in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia, my father).

 

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Filed Under: Trauma-Healing, War's Family Tagged With: Dutch East Indies, Dutch-American, faith meaning and World War II, Heahter Lazare, Japanese Concentration Camps, Jappen Kampen, Joan Gelfand, LInda Joy Myers, Linda Lee web design, Michael Larsen-Elizabeth Pomada Literary Agents, Nazi occupation of The Netherlands, Psychological trauma, San Francisco Writers Conference, SFWC, Simon & Schuster, Touchstone, World War II

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Comments

  1. Janneke says

    February 26, 2012 at 1:23 am

    I squirm inside (in a healing way I hope) when I see how the intro to this post appears on line. It starts with the words,(from above) “She is right,” said my teacher. “Her work and ability is excellent, excellent, excellent.”

    Its as if I think its okay to write of the security, but not okay to have the first words my readers see to be “She is right,” said my teacher. “Her work and ability is excellent, excellent, excellent.”

    So I get to squirm into, its okay to celebrate those times that people in God’s world affirm us. How have you been affirmed? Let me know.

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Meet Janneke

Janneke Jobsis Brown
Following Shadows is inspired by my own story. As a survivor of an international childhood with parents who were World War II survivors, I know the generational after-effects of starvation and slave labor in Japanese concentration camps for my father, and the terror of Nazi occupation for my mother. I know the challenges of struggling to feel at home across three countries: The Netherlands, Iran and America.

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