My sister the doctor (of education): Part two.
The second installment of three? in a special series on my sister, Dr. Juliana Hazlett-Nichols EdD.
From some time in the mid 70s that I was too young to remember until 1983, my family was a foster family. From the time that she was born until she was five years old, Juliana share her home with strangers. Several children over the years shared her room, shared her toys, and the attention of her parents and natural brother. Some for weeks or months, and some for years. Juliana always rolled with this and never complained or thought it unfair. While I sometimes bristled at having other kids in the house, she never did.
Look at her sweet smile. I would 100% wear this shirt today. Not sure about the bowl cut.
My parents have faults like anyone, but making our foster children feel like second class citizens was not one of them. They loved and treated them as if they were their birth children. Juliana and I were taught to treat them as family, that they were not bad kids or less than us, but that they were simply going through a rough time and needed some help until they could be with their own family, or adopted into a new one. I’ll save my thoughts on the intricacies, merits and demerits of the American foster care/adoption industrial complex for another time, but I do think that spending her early childhood living with children in need and sometimes with special needs is a large part of why my sister has devoted her educational life to children with intellectual disabilities and other special needs and to children who are affected by trauma. Or, as is often the case, children with traumatic backgrounds who also receive special education instruction.
I know intellectually that the two are often combined, but the reality is soul crushing.
Juliana originally went to college to become a musical therapist. She has an incredible singing voice, and she won many awards and solos in high school choir. She continued to sing in a less formal manner in college where with here beautiful singing voice she cursed herself into a decade of singing in friend’s weddings. Of course she never thought of that as a curse; only as a way to serve her friends. Music was a gift to give and she has always parted with gifts gladly—except for the time when she threw a howling fit as a toddler when expected to tithe the fifty cents that Mom had given her for the collection plate. “No, it’s mine! It’s mine!” in a voice that shook the rafters of Airport Freeway Church of Christ. I am pretty sure that I probably got into trouble for laughing that day—nervous laughter in awkward situations being a hardwired defense mechanism of my family.
Tell me about it, Blanche.
Musical therapy seemed like it would be a natural way to use her gifts and to help people, especially children. I’m sure that I made fun of her pointless major, because I was an unreconstructed edgelord, know-it-all, mansplainer jagoff back then in my twenties—and for most of my thirties. After a couple of semesters she decided that she wanted to change majors and become a school teacher. I asked her what kind, and she said special ed. At which point—piece of shit that I was back then, I mocked her for choosing this, mocked the future children that she would be teaching, mocked people with special needs in general. I said that it was even more pointless than musical therapy and used all of the ugly words about people with special needs. In short, I was a piece of shit. I cringe to the very core of my being when I think back to what a vector of unhappiness and venom I was back then. But I am not the important part. Her reaction was the important part. Juliana stood up and looked me in the eye and told me in no uncertain terms that I was a wrongheaded bigot, and that if I ever knew someone more than casually with special needs I would see what bright people that they really are once I stopped being so blinded by prejudice, and that the only pointless loser in the room was me. I jumped back like I had been hit by 1000V of electricity. I am not saying that I had a complete change of heart and became a person without prejudice against folks with intellectual disabilities, but I did start to change that day, and I have spent the last twenty-seven years or so rooting out what evil bigotry I did have toward them. More importantly, I saw the absolute lioness that she would become in the service of children with special needs. I get chills just thinking about the fierce love she has for them. I am truly in awe of her passion for justice and the compassion she has for these beautiful kids.
You need to back right on up!
My two part piece on my sister the doctor (of education) looks more like it’s going to become three parts. Join me tomorrow (or Friday) for the next, and probable end of this special series.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
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