February 2006                                                                                      Carol Adrienne, Ph.D.

Mary Jo Schneider, fifty-five, shows us that no matter what challenges we might have in life, we can almost certainly turn those experiences into a skill for helping others.  I met Mary Jo by e-mail when she wrote to ask me if she could use some of my exercises from The Purpose of Your Life with classes she teaches for dual-diagnosed adults and inmates in the county jail.  We found that we had a mutual friend, and that we had also both studied with Arnold Patent, a former attorney turned metaphysical teacher.  As we corresponded, I intuitively felt that Mary Jo must have a story to tell.

A part-time Program Director for a mentoring scholarship program for high school-aged teens called Invest in Kids; she is also a credentialed adult education teacher as well as a substitute teacher for inmates in a local county jail.  She is joyful about how life has given her many ways to serve.

Difficulties In the Beginning

‘My life truly seemed hopeless for the first thirty-three years,” says Mary Jo, “but I believe we can either stew in our problems or turn them into something delectable.”
Between 1970 and 1982 Mary Jo says her weight fluctuated from about 200 to 300 pounds (at her highest weight).  In 1969, at age nineteen, she got pregnant.  She married her daughter’s father, despite the fact that he was a heroin addict.  She recalls, “I became deeply codependent--trying to keep the peace and, if it became necessary, to go so far as to endanger myself by getting him drugs so he wouldn’t be sick and make life more difficult for me and my daughter.  I was trying desperately to control my environment.  I used to clean my house every single day.  It was the only control I had over my life.  You could say that I was living completely blind to my own purpose, utterly taken up with him and his disease.  I felt tied up in that and hopeless.”

“I kept trying to just raise my daughter and keep going.  Every week, my husband would spend most of the money we had on drugs, and I’d be lucky to get three or four dollars every couple of days for food.  I wasn’t aware of it then, but not having enough money for food set up a whole depravation dynamic in me that set me to trying to get more and more food.  My hunger was insatiable, while I was completely tuned out to my body, its needs, and what I was feeling.  I think I’m fairly smart, but during those years, I did not think I had anything to offer.” 

Staying with the Familiar or Facing the Unknown

    Mary Jo lacked the courage to venture forth and leave the marriage.  As many of us do after years of being in the midst of incredible stress and lack of self-esteem, she was terrified of the unknown.  She had no confidence that she could raise her daughter alone, even though that’s exactly what she had been doing during her troubled marriage.  Finally, her husband left her after he’d had an affair with one of her best friends.

After their break up, she spent several years on welfare, hiding in her house and eating.  She reflects back over the misery of her life; “I didn’t even learn to drive until I was thirty-six because I didn’t want to draw any attention to my cumbersome body by putting myself behind a steering wheel.  After being on welfare for eight years, I eventually got a minimum wage job doing bookkeeping. Not only was it difficult to get hired as a welfare mom with no job history, but because of my size, I had no wardrobe nor did I have the financial ability to get one.  I sewed one large dress to go on a job interview, and I just remember being so uncomfortable trying to sit for over an hour trying to keep my legs together.  At my weight, it was nearly impossible to sit that way.  I was shocked that I actually got the job!”

It took another four years for her to finally hit bottom with her weight and joined Weight Watchers.  It took nearly three years and 170 lbs. to change how she thought about herself.  “When I lost my weight,’ she says, “my life began to change radically.  My appearance was so drastic, hardly anyone recognized me, and I became kind of like a sensation in my circle of friends.  It seemed natural to try becoming a Weight Watcher leader, which required a lot of public speaking—but what was I thinking?  I must say, if there were two words that were wholly emblematic of who I was at that time they would be, I can’t!  Every time I was asked to speak, I would cry all the way to the site; I was terrified and so convinced I couldn’t do it.  But oddly enough, once I started speaking in front of a group, it was so much fun.
Unfortunately, patterns don’t change overnight.  After Mary Jo lost her first seventy-five pounds, she met another man who was an alcoholic, and she was shocked to find he dabbled in substances like heroin; being with him was like going back ten years to life with her husband.  Still a codependent, she lived with him for five years until she finally found the courage to finally ask him to move out. 

    Despite her success as a leader and motivational speaker for Weight Watchers, Mary Jo began to gain the weight back.  “I recognize today that I’m powerless over food, and I also know I cannot keep my weight off by myself; I need the support of a program of recovery,” she says. “Can you imagine? I gained back 125 pounds after losing 175!  I would not have believed it could happen, but it did.  Around the same time I began gaining my weight back, I found a Unity church and began a metaphysical journey.  That’s when I studied with Arnold Patent, and it was then that I came to realize I was not a victim; I was in fact creating my life frame by frame.  I was choosing my way into all those situations!  In the beginning, hearing this language of Universal Principle was almost like having someone speak Japanese to me.  I could not understand what it meant.  I created my experience by my thoughts?  What a revelation!

    “It was then I also began to realize there was something under the weight.  I recognized how my body was a mirror of my consciousness and that the weight was there for a reason; it truly forced me to search deeper.  My weight has become a part of my spiritual path, and today I’m actually grateful for this part of my experience, and I no longer need to insulate myself against living.”

Stepping Up and On to the Path

    One of the first steps toward Mary Jo’s transformation was to go back to school. 
Applying to the University of California at Berkeley in the writing department, she was accepted but lacked the tuition to start the program.  A friend took up her cause and collected donations from her wide circle of friends, and Mary Jo was on her way. She says, “It was so touching and one of those examples of how the Universe supports you when you step onto your path.” She went on to get her Bachelor’s degree in English and later a Master’s in Liberal Arts with an emphasis on Sacred Cinema.  As an adult education teacher, she teaches workplace communication skills, drug and alcohol education, and writing.  She has her students write their own stories, and Mary Jo has seen the power of people’s own stories as a way to heal.

Passing On What We Know

    Teaching at the county jail brings rich rewards for her and the students in the classroom.  Mary Jo says, “Teaching at the jail is like being in a roomful of men like my ex-husband!  I talk straight with them, but they seem to accept it from me because I share honestly from my personal experience.  One of the inmates once told me that when I come it’s kind of like going to his grandma’s house to get a hug and a kiss.  It is so amazing to hear this, because I’m not necessarily telling them things they want to hear!  I do try to encourage them, but I’m still telling the truth.  Sometimes, when I’m sharing a story or a spiritual moment, the room is totally silent and they are leaning forward in their seats, hanging on the words—it’s like a sacred energy is in the room.  I can’t explain it, but I especially love working with the male inmates.  One of them once said, ‘You just like bad boys!’ I answered, ‘Maybe so, but at least I get to go home and leave you here!  I don’t live with you anymore!’  They liked that one.”

Mary Jo brings real life experience, wisdom and compassion to her work.  One day she brought in a friend’s Christmas letter he’d written to say goodbye to his daughter, Jenny, who had passed away right before Christmas and her thirty-fourth birthday.  “I asked how many of them were fathers, and almost everyone—even those as young as twenty-years old—raised their hands.  I gave the letter to one of the men, a father of two daughters, and asked him to read it aloud.  I told them this father no longer had a choice about spending time with his daughter, and that I thought some of them were taking their privileges for granted.  As he read, the room was still, and I could tell they were deeply moved by this father’s pain.  They all wanted to see Jenny’s picture and passed it around the room.  Amazingly, about two minutes after the inmate, Robert, finished reading the letter, a deputy came and told him he had to leave as he was being transferred out to San Quentin [a federal prison].  He turned to me and said, ‘I’ll never forget Jenny,’ and in that moment, I believe he was forever changed.”

 “I know I was called to teach,” Mary Jo says, “even though I still get nervous like I used to in those early Weight Watcher days, but when I begin to teach, I am so in the flow.  Things come that I don’t expect, and it’s clear I’m fulfilling my purpose.”

Mary Jo can be contacted at jo@investinkids.net.
Happy Valentine’s Day to You!
Carol Adrienne