Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 9, 1994 TAG: 9411090026
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
That was October.
"In November, Kit was born. I moved to Roanoke before the New Year," said the former Charlotte resident.
And that week, something occurred that Welsh attributes to providence. She picked up a Hollins College catalog at her sister's home, where she then lived, read the introduction to a Women's Center seminar called Life Planning, and thought to herself, "That'll get me through 'til spring."
It got her through a lot more than that. And while not all women who go to the center's seminars, classes and talks have stories as dramatic as that told by Welsh, the women's center can toast many women it's helped as it turns 10 this fall.
"It really has blossomed," said Jeri Suarez, the center's director. "We're hoping to increase undergraduate involvement. We're really looking at helping women make life choices."
What struck Welsh about the class was that for every different reason her 11 classmates had signed up, each went through very similar self-study as the course went on.
There was her friend, Wendy Andree, for instance.
"I was there to celebrate my 40th birthday," Andree, mother of three, said.
"My strong faith was already carrying me," Welsh said. "My friend and I carpooled back and forth, and we'd find ourselves discussing class lessons. And where we would find ourselves taking the conversation and furthering the lesson, the two of us would take it further into a spiritual realm."
Welsh pushed herself to take care of herself amid a difficult breakup. Besides Kit, her nearly year-old son, she had to care for Alice Ann, now almost 5.
The first day Walsh went to her life-planning seminar, counselor Tina Rolen handed her a questionnaire. The questions were relatively simple, asking about things like personal likes or dislikes.
"I literally did not know who I was," Walsh said. "I handed it to Tina and said, `I can't answer these questions.' It was hard for me to even get into discussions at the beginning of class. I was still shell-shocked.
"I was having to look at the world in a whole different way, having to reach down and find out who Barbara was again."
In class, she and her classmates took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test that helps examine personality traits and career fits. They talked about choices and change. It all helped Welsh focus.
"One of our common issues is divorce, or children growing up and leaving home," Rolen, the counselor, said. "I think the women's center is a safe place for women to come to raise questions about their lives and their goals.
"There's no judgment, and there's no attempt by the women's center to change [them]."
And, she said, "I am constantly amazed at the power of people to recover."
Besides the seminar, the inaugural women's center class a decade ago, everything from yoga to computers to writing to ethics in the workplace are taught. Nov. 12, a special, morning-long "Two Decades: Voices of Women Empowered" will be held to mark the center's first decade.
For Welsh, an interview for a great job came up part-way through the Life Planning Seminar. By the time the class was over, the job was hers.
She's now the executive assistant for sales and marketing for Valcom, a Roanoke-based manufacturer of paging and intercom systems.
"The class at Hollins, weekly, gave me the chance to focus on myself - to shake off the weight of what my responsibility was or was not. To try to understand myself better.
"Because, really, myself is all I have."
For information about the Saturday session, co-sponsored by the Center for Women's Health Education at Community Hospital, call 362-6269 by Thursday.
by CNB