Reconnecting With A Community Of Women

By Kaaren Valenta

When Ginger Humeston took a job as an office manager in 1990, she found that one of her biggest challenges was getting the staff to work as a team.

“The staff was a diverse group of women ages 21 to 60 and it was a challenge because they weren’t working together,” she said. “I did a lot of team-building; they identified problems, found solutions that worked, and we had such a good time!”

The idea of bringing women together to empower them and build a sense of community is a thread that is woven through the fabric of Ginger Humeston’s life. During the past year this focus became the impetus for a successful program, Creative Wellspring, which was offered at the Cyrenius H. Booth Library.

“I had an idea for a series based on Ann Morrow Lindberg’s Gift From the Sea,” she explained. “Ann Morrow Lindberg asked the question that all women ask: How do I get the time to do what I want while still taking care of so many others?”

“I wanted to get an artist, a poet, a dream therapist, and a yoga-meditation teacher together with other women to share their creative voice,” Ms Humeston said. “I called Kim Weber [the library’s program director] to suggest it. We thought it might get only six [women to sign up], but 43 women signed up and we only had room for 30. To accommodate more, we also did an evening series.”

The series also was extended by an additional three weeks.

“We had such a good time. We were excited to do it and the enthusiasm was contagious,” she said.

Ginger Humeston believes that people should express their creativity in all walks of life. Trusting others, taking risks, exploring talents, and most of all, celebrating ourselves enables us to develop positive contributions to the community within family and friends, workplace, town, and out to a larger circle, she explained.

The series was so successful that the Newtown Business and Professional Women (BPW) has invited Ginger Humeston to share her message at the organization’s first meeting of the 2001-2002 club year. The dinner meeting will be held at the Inn at Newtown on Monday, September 10.

“The BPW mission statement this year is ‘Women in Community,’” Ms Humeston explained. “I’ve seen how BPW has changed over the years. So many women now have their own businesses – often small businesses, or they work from home – which brings a sense of isolation. But the human condition longs for community.”

Like many women of her generation, Ginger Humeston said she spent much of her young married life as a homemaker with other women in organizations like the PTA at their children’s schools.

“We were always involved in community,” she said. “But when I later managed an office with [a staff of] young women, I discovered that they don’t have the time to make that connection with other women; they don’t have the support. That kind of isolation can bring sadness and depression.”

“One of the strengths of women is to multi-task,” she said. “They get rewarded in business with praise, salary increases, and promotions. But multi-tasking kept me from finding my creative voice. Creative Wellspring literally sprung out of my own need to gather with women and find a time to listen, and a creative expression of what we heard within. Twenty years ago I coordinated a very similar program for the Diocese of Bridgeport, calling it Women’s Ministry, but it was really the same thing. Life goes in circles.”

“A priest reminded me that really we do everything out of our own need; it is not for others, they just happen to be the benefactors,” she said. “I found that freeing and a way to know myself better and [to know] truly what I valued. Over and over again my same patterns emerged – to gather and build community, sometimes successful, sometimes not.”

Eleven years ago she married Joseph Humeston, an executive officer of Newtown Savings Bank, creating a blended family with six children. The Humestons now have four grandchildren.

Two years ago she left her full time job, intent on finally making time for herself. But when one of her children became seriously ill, the bottom of her world nearly dropped out.

“I was beside myself,” she said. “I retreated to yoga with Rose Bergen and just sat and breathed my way through.” Nine months later, she was able to begin again, and recruited Ms Bergen, artist Judy Corrigan, poet Liz Arneth, and dream therapist Anita Hall for the Creative Wellspring series.

“I think we all have a wellspring in us,” Ms Humeston explained. “It is bubbling up here and there. But we have to have time to see it, focus on it, tap into it. It’s a gift to be able to take the time to listen to oneself. I’ve been in places where I didn’t have the time to do this.”

A former co-president of Newtown BPW, Ms Humeston said she sees the organization not as a networking group but rather a “fabulous resource list.”

“If I have a question there is always someone I can call,” she said. “What I like is that when I don’t know what my question is, someone can formulate the question from my confusion and give me an answer!”

“That’s what I like about BPW; it is community. It answers the eternal question: How do you find the tribe where you belong?”

The BPW meeting will begin at 6 pm with a social time followed by dinner. Reservations, $20, can be made by calling Shelley Kappauf at 426-6362. Dinner choices are pasta with sausage, seafood salad, or vegetarian.