Birthday Flowers

These are the beautiful flowers my best friend, Kathy Steinman sent me on my birthday in June. They lasted for almost two weeks! Kathy and I met when we were both going to our Community College, Glen Oaks, in Centreville, Michigan. It was 1986. Kathy was a Business Major and I was an Elementary Education Major. We soon became great friends.

Boy could I tell you the stories.... Well, Kathy and I graduated from Glen Oaks, transferred to Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan to finish up our Bachelor of Social Work degree.

We started out in completely different classes but soon felt that Social Work was the field for us.

We wanted to be Out-Patient Therapists. To do that we had to get a Master Degree; we chose Social Work. After graduating with our bachelor degree in Social Work in 1991 we took the summer off and headed right back to Western in the Fall. Two years later, we graduated with our MSW degree. Both of us became Out-Patient Therapist. Kathy worked with Children and I worked with families. Over the years we worked with a variety of clients. We saw people in the Homeless Shelter in South Bend Indiana as well as carrying a full case load in the office. We also saw children in the South Bend schools. We did group work with homeless women who were staying at the homeless shelter. We taught parenting classes. We held group therapy for girls who were survivors of sexual and Physical abuse; did couples therapy, family therapy and individual therapy. We learned Play Therapy; finding that children learned the best through play. Kathy and I are best friends to this day, she lives about 3 hours away from me now but we talk almost every day. Getting flowers is wonderful, but having a friend like Kathy is priceless!