Anna Part 2

[Priamo Gregory]

ThisNovember, we are sharing a special blog series written by Hospicare staff in honor of National Hospice and Palliative Care Month. Each post will feature a different member of our staff as they share why they love the work they do. In part four of this series, we feature Anna Osterhoudt, Hospicare Social Worker.

My name is Anna, and I am one of three social workers that are a part of the Hospicare team. My role as a hospice social worker is to assess the needs of our patients, their families, and support systems and provide any assistance I can. A few examples of things that I may assist with are providing emotional support to patients/caregivers, connecting them with community resources, assisting with end-of-life planning, or just being a friendly face during what can be a very difficult time.

I am so bold, however, to suggest that in one respect, Dostoyevsky and I do have something in common. A long-suffering, patient wife who appreciates the difficulties of writing and who does everything in her power to accommodate an often fractious and difficult writer-husband.

Judging by the fact that Dostoyevsky wrote this in his 12th year of marriage, with astonishment and admiration that he was still madly in love with his Anna, their life did indeed turn out to be very happy.

Anna Dostoyevskaya was born on August 30, 1846 in the family of an inconsequential official named Grigory Ivanovich Snitkin. Grigory Ivanovich and his family, along with his elderly mother and four brothers (one of whom was also married and had children) lived in a large apartment of 11 rooms.

Anna often recalled that a friendly atmosphere always reigned in their large family. In it, there was no room for quarreling or airing of grievances among the relatives. And so Anna assumed all families were like this.

Her mother (Anna Nikolaevna Snitkina Miltopeus) was a Swede of Finnish origin and a Lutheran by faith. When she met her future husband, she was faced with a difficult choice: either marry the one she loved or remain loyal to the Lutheran faith. She prayed incessantly for guidance in resolving this dilemma.

One day, she saw a dream. In it, she saw herself entering an Orthodox church, kneeling in front of the holy shroud and praying there. Anna Nikolaevna took this as a sign and agreed to accept Orthodoxy.

When Anna was a girl of 13 years old, during a vacation in Pskov, she decided to leave the world and go into a monastery. Her parents managed to get her back to St. Petersburg, but they had to trick her by lying that her father was gravely ill.

His father, Mikhail Andreevich, was a doctor in the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, so the fates of those whom the writer would later make the heroes of his famous novels unfolded before his eyes. The young Dostoevsky learned compassion from his earliest years, both from his environment and his father, even though the latter was a complicated character with a fiery temperament, an odd mix of generosity and gloominess.

RUTH WARINER is an internationally renowned speaker and author of the New York Times bestselling memoir THE SOUND OF GRAVEL. At the age of fifteen, Ruth escaped Colonia LeBaron, the polygamist Mormon colony where she grew up, and moved to California. She raised her three youngest sisters in California and Oregon. After earning her GED, she put herself through college and graduate school, eventually becoming a high school Spanish teacher. She remains close to her siblings and is happily married. The Sound of Gravel is her first book.

Ruth: It did say Anna LeBaron. When she tweeted me the first day, I was in New York City, which is why my publicist was tweeting about me because I was doing a media event and I was also recording my audio book. It was in October of 2015, and I was stuck in the studio for three days and she had reached out to me literally on the first day that I was in the studio.

So it was a delight. She was a delight and I was so excited that we were able to connect. And it was so interesting to meet too because even though our family had split, there was so many similarities in our stories which I thought was, you know, really speaks to that mentality, the mentality that we were raised with and how that affected our lives.

So Anna ended up visiting that December. So it was literally within three months. She was up here. I met two of her sisters that live here and it was an incredible experience. It was amazing and it was enlightening in the sense that it was familiar and I felt connected to family again, to the LeBaron side of my family. And so that part of it was very special for me.

Anna: Well, it was completely an emotional experience, like overwhelmingly emotional. I cried my way through it, and I had received the book the day before our scheduled conversation phone call. I started at that night, stayed up until probably 2:00. I could not put it down.

Ruth: Well, I had never known my father. I was three months when he was killed. And when I was a child, I had always been told that it was Ervil LeBaron that had my father assassinated. And so, you know, later on we found out that definitely it was true and it was a scary childhood because Ervil had been like literally this very real threat and shadowy ghost that haunted our community. There were threats.

I mean, it helped me be more compassionate for myself too, understanding that other people had gone through similar stories. Again, like I never imagined in spite of how scary the idea of Ervil was growing up, I never imagined that he might be inflicting that kind of horror unto his own family in different ways.

Andrea: So Anna were you nervous? I mean, it sounded like you were nervous when you realized who Ruth was. Were you nervous to break that ice? Were you nervous about what she would think of you?

He was 49 when he was killed. He had 42 children and seven wives at that time, and you can imagine the whole in our community and how that affected so many of us. And for me, my dad was more like that mythical Christ-like figure in my life. He was one of the founders of our church and a spokesperson for God, I mean that was I was always taught.

Ruth: They were huge steps and it was awesome too that it kind of fell in line with the publication of my book. I mean the timing of it that way. I met her in December and it came out in January, and it was time for me to heal and it was time for me to let go a lot of those things, yeah.

Andrea: So, Anna, I can only imagine that there were a number of things that this has brought about healing in you, what for you have you noticed in particular this interaction with Ruth? How does has impacted your healing process?

Anna: That has been one of the biggest realizations that has come about in the past two years. Is that I can be myself and engage with the world and make an impact and that is enough.

Anna: One of the things that I have read about that I love the idea of is holding space for someone. And I think Ruth and I have done that for each other very well. We hold space for each other to kind of navigate.

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Something in my eye again; funny, it worked its way up from my heart. And the poem is one that grabbed me from the first time I read it, now years ago. Thank you, Anna, for taking me deeper than I knew it was possible to go.

River is one of those horses that I have never met but I thought of her just recently. They all leave us but I am so happy that she had her time with you. That she got to know a human like you. Bless River on her way and bless you for your humanity.

Such a beautiful post, Anna. I have lost two beloved horses within this past year. My Am. Saddlebred mare, Peaches and I were together for almost eighteen years. I have a hole in my heart that she left behind. It is so very heartbreaking losing our beloved horses.

Below, I share a small selection of these posts and compare my situation in the first half of 2014 to how things are now. Apologies for the self-indulgent nature of this blog post, but today has found me in a nostalgic mood.

We moved from Anna wearing scratchsleeves every night to sometimes wearing white cotton or silk gloves during the day, including trips outside the house. Luckily, she has never been a particularly self-conscious child.

Aside from learning that we were living in an undesirable part of town, filled with abandoned buildings and 24-hour liquor stores, the first week spent in Sofia was a pleasant daydream. Days involved devouring fresh berries, exploring the open-air book market, and catching up on sleep. Walking away from three months of refugee camp work had left me weary, needing a space to reconcile everything that had happened. This was the perfect retreat.

In the right light, Sofia is gorgeous. Sun-drenched boulevards looking out to Mount Vitosha, and antique markets peddling old war medals and violins in front of grand basilicas. I was enamoured by the spring tulips and strawberry vendors. Pleased with the cheap markets laden with fish, meats, cheeses, and produce, and the few local people I met along the way were kind, friendly, and helpful.

My friend left Sofia after a week to pursue adventures in Thailand. Going with her was tempting, but I was pulled more to lay low in rural Eastern Europe and get back on top of my writing. I daydreamed of grassy hills, yoga and fresh cherries off the trees. A quiet spot to complete my book over the coming weeks. Dissolving into northern Bulgaria for a few months, coming up refreshed, revived. Emerging from my retreat speaking Bulgarian with that attractive Eastern European accent. So, I opted to stay on, try my hand at learning the language, and explore further this country that piqued my curiosities.

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