A Hands-On Presidency: An Interview with Janine Roberts<

By Linda Wark

I still love reading books for pre-adolescents and young adolescents.  The well-written ones are inspiring and hopeful.  Talking with Janine Roberts is like reading a book that has won the Newberry Medal for Children's Literature.  The book is about an adventurous girl who has some real life or metaphorical problem to solve.  Like any good book of fiction for children, the story involves an internal as well as an external struggle.  In the end, the heroine will figure out what it will take to make things work, overcome the obstacles, and be drawn toward what is good and right.

This article is based on an interview with the incoming AFTA president, Janine Roberts.  Typical of Janine, she finds a way to make every interaction and work effort as collaborative as possible, and she invites me to discuss my own experiences and perspectives as a newer member of AFTA while we talk.

Ironically, AFTA's president-elect says that she is not a big joiner.  "I am wary about whose agenda is promoted in organizations, about what gets ignored and left out."  Reluctant at first to get involved in professional groups, she did become a member of AFTA in the mid-eighties.  "What pulled me in," she says, "was the vibrancy of the organization and how many members reached out to me.  I also quickly saw it as a group that was open to looking hard at itself and making changes."

I ask Janine to tell me what life influences she will bring to her executive efforts. She quickly pinpoints her family.  "Growing up in rural Washington state on Lake Killarney, my parents were always involved with the PTA, leading the Brownie troop and Cub Scouts, starting a square dance group.  It was just part of what you did, being involved with the community.  And we did lots of hands-on projects at home, too.  We picked and canned the fruit from our pear, cherry, and apple trees.  When the peaches were blanched, the aroma of it was like the smell of the first spring sun lingering on your

face."

"All four of us kids helped dig out the basement bucket by bucket so my dad could have a workshop there, and we had a place to store the food we put up for the winter.  He built a desk with each of us, and helped us make tandem bikes and go-carts.  I still have the desk, and the memory of the lake air wafting off my face as I raced down the big hill in the backyard riding my own contraption."

"My mother was a puppeteer, a story teller, a story collector, and an artist.  I have some of the large puppets she made out of papier-mâché such as the hare in Alice in Wonderland with a 'diamond' in one of his front teeth and a ring inside of his head to twitch his ears.  She was extremely attentive to the power of listening and giving support to people, and getting their stories out there.  To this day, she is a mainstay in my life.  Growing up, I was steeped in the messages to dive in, connect with people, figure out what you can do, make things, be active."

A second strand of familial influence was more emotionally intense.  In 1952, when Janine was five, her father was hospitalized in a state institution because he was diagnosed as being suicidal.  He was in group therapy and subsequently had an affair with another group member.  Her parents almost put her younger brother up for adoption.  Later, her parents divorced.  Psychodynamic theory was the ideology of the institution and the day.  It wasn't until Janine was exposed to systems theory in the seventies that she

was able to meaningfully have a way to understand what had happened in her family.  A

systemic framework helped her to embrace and hold what happened and to connect with her immediate and extended family in new ways.

In the larger world, Janine grew up in the heart of the civil rights movement, the women's movement, and the anti-war movement.  "It was a jubilant time to be an adolescent.  I had so many models of people trying to make changes in our country.  That was one of the reasons why right out of high school I joined VISTA in one of the first groups of volunteers.  I asked to go to the East coast and worked and lived in the projects in central Newark.  The families I got to know there, their circumstances, their life stories, their resilience, etched deeply in my mind the social injustices in the US."

"My family moving to Kuwait when I was sixteen also had a big impact on my life.  It moved me out of a pretty isolated environment in Washington state and gave me the confidence to connect with people with very different backgrounds from myself.  As a teenager and young adult, I went on to live in Lebanon, Argentina, and Ghana and did a lot long overland trips like from Beirut to Glasgow, Scotland, and San Juan, Argentina to Mexico City."

When Janine's family therapy career began, an international perspective continued to influence her.   As an exchange professor in her position at the University of Massachusetts, she had the opportunity to go to China to see what they were doing with psychology there.  Her translator there became her colleague and friend and she is now the godmother to her translator's two children.  "Luckily, they now live close by and I get to be a grandmother!" 

Janine also traveled with her daughter, Natalya, when she was in elementary school, to St. Petersburg, Russia, to give a series of workshops there.  Natalya is Russian Jewish on her father's side and was somewhat cut off from that heritage because the paternal families in migrating here early in the twentieth century were ripped from contact with the family members left behind in the Ukraine.  During the trip, Natalya and Janine stayed in a Russian flat for two weeks with three Russian families.  The creativity it takes for people to live their lives and manage their families, even to be a family, took on a new meaning.  The experience continued to inform Janine about how inter-connected people are within countries and between countries, and the deep importance of our roots.

Janine and I return to the energy and focus of AFTA.  How will Janine's work as president help to maintain AFTA's vibrancy? What activities will nurture what is unique and strong about the organization? Janine notes that other than the incredible work done in the central office by Barbro Miles, Administrative Director, and Kim Cox, Executive Assistant, and the phenomenal work done by Diane Campbell for the annual conference,

everything else is done on a volunteer basis by the members.  The members are the heart of AFTA.  Thus, continuing the links to members, between members, by members will be an essential thrust of Janine's agenda.  Janine reviews all the various initiatives that have been put into place by the current officers and Board to address inclusion of members as well as opening up the organization to others.  "I am deeply appreciative of all that has done and think that the Miami meeting in June of this year will be a wonderful place to see the fruition of much of this work."

One flow of energy into AFTA will come from new members, making invitation and inclusion a multi-generational issue.  Janine wants to continue to help break down the mystique of what it means to become a member.  She wants to continue to encourage membership that will draw clinicians, researchers, and teachers from different disciplines and backgrounds.  "This is key to what makes us lively.  We are also looking closely at governance structures in the Board to see if we need to make any changes there.  And we have just secured a conference site for June 5—9, 2002, at Asilomar in Pacific Grove,

California, that will continue our move towards more affordable conferences.  Rates

start at $78 per person a day including all meals, room, and conference space.

Asilomar means 'refuge by the sea' and is nestled along the shoreline of the Monterey Marine Sanctuary.  I think that with its combination of dunes, forest, and range of conference meeting space, along with its proximity to Monterey and Carmel that we have a great site."

Janine offers a list of things that each member can do to contribute to AFTA.

1.  Each member can identify and talk to potential new members.  Think of this as a small task involving just one or two other people.  Call the central office at 202—994—2776 and ask them to mail you an application packet to give to the potential new member. Or e-mail them at afta@afta.org. Help the potential new member through the application process.  Mentor them into the organization.

I recall to Janine that when I thought about joining AFTA, I called the central office for an application.  I was dismayed when I learned that AFTA members must write letters of recommendation.  The only AFTA members that I knew were ones who didn't know me or didn't know me well enough to write a letter for me.  Understandably, the central office could not provide me with a membership directory so that I would become aware of possible members to approach.  After being accepted for membership, I received my membership directory, and I discovered the names of several people who would have written a letter for me if only I'd known that they were members.   I wonder aloud to Janine whether this particular circumstance in the application process could be made less difficult.  Perhaps members would be willing to be "on call" to identify members who could write letters of reference for the applicant.  The central office could contact these on-call members when an applicant made a request for help.

2. In the interest of linking and connecting, each member could make an effort to reach out to someone they have been out of contact with, or to reach out to someone whose work or ideas they have admired and want to know more about, or to someone they don't know at all.  Again, think small and doable, an hour of your time.  These interchanges are central to who we are as an organization.

I wonder aloud again.  It's unlikely that all new members sign up to meet with a Program Partner at the conference.  Could Program Partners also reach out to new members at conferences by stopping those with new member stickers on their name badges and inquiring whether or not they have a program partner for the conference?  This face-to-face contact could yield even more program partnerships with new members.  I also recall how during my first conference, one member approached me to say that he had attended a workshop that I had given at another conference, and we chatted for a while.  At the next conference, someone that I had met the year before made a special effort to greet me.  Their inclusive behavior worked well with my transition as a new member.

3.  People who have not been on committees for AFTA or involved in other ways are always needed and sought.  AFTA really needs a mix of people for the range of activities we do as an organization.  Volunteer yourself, let it be known what you might do (e.g. write for the newsletter, be a Program Partner at the conference, work on one of the program committees for future conferences, run for the Board or an office, help the Connectivity Committee with ideas, be on the Family Policy committee, help to start a new interest group, get involved in the Forums at the conference, help to get materials on

the AFTA web site, be on the Membership Committee, etc.).

I tell Janine that when I joined AFTA, I wouldn't have dreamed that I could become involved so quickly on committees or other activities.  I enjoy professional activities.  When I attended my first conference as a member in 1999, I approached Volker Thomas only because of having established a professional relationship with him outside of AFTA, and I made a pitch to provide assistance with the newsletter.  I left the conference as Book Review Editor for the AFTA newsletter.

Janine concludes by saying that she wants to talk with as many people as she can to fulfill some of her initial goals of taking the pulse of the organization.  "AFTA should be about making a difference in the world, both personally and professionally.  I will do everything that I can to provide leadership toward that end.  I'll be in there with the help of everyone in AFTA with hands-on projects — putting up the food to sustain us, collecting the stories that keep us connected, and building the go-carts to move us

forward."

I finish our interview feeling generous and passionate.  Janine will succeed the previous presidents of AFTA with her own unique, refreshing contributions.  I look forward to working with her.  The adventurous girl in the book?  It turns out well for her.

Author's note to ALL MEMBERS:  Janine Roberts is very approachable.  She can be contacted regarding a desire to volunteer for the organization in any way and/or to give feedback and ideas about any aspect of AFTA at her e-mail address:  janine@educ.umass.edu, or via snail mail at P.O. Box 277, Leverett, MA  01054.

Linda Wark, Ph.D., LMFT, is the Executive Director of The Theraplay® Institute, Chicago, Illinois.  She is the Book Review Editor for the AFTA Newsletter.  She can be contacted at Theraplay@aol.com or 3330 Old Glenview Road, Suite 8, Wilmette, IL, 60091.