MEET AN ASSOCIATE
Meet Susan Hendricks, cjsa
Co-Director, Peterborough Associate Community
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Susan Hendricks has been a member of the Medaille Associate Community
in Newcastle since its inception in 1987. She has lived in the Newcastle
area since 1984 with her husband, Vince and a menagerie of cows, cats
and dogs! Their son, Jonathon, aged 30, is a television reporter with
CTV in Winnipeg. Susan is a member of St. Francis of Assisi Parish in
Newcastle where she is a reader at Saturday evening mass. In the past,
she has been a member of the Parish Folk Choir, her Parish Council and
President of the C.W.L.
She counts Ottawa, where she spent her teenage years, as "home" but
lived overseas in Scotland, Geneva and Vienna for many of her childhood
and teenage years. These cross-cultural experiences had a life-long
impact on Susan's appreciation of the unity of all peoples in our world.
A former Presbyterian who converted to Catholicism upon marriage to
her South American husband, Vince, Susan has a firm belief in the importance
of living our spirituality within each life encounter.
Susan became involved with the Sisters of St. Joseph when she began
attending retreats and workshops at the Peterborough Congregation's
retreat center in Cobourg, ON. Her thirst for a deeper connection with
God and the universal mysteries of life coincided with an invitation
to join the newly forming Medaille Community. The congregation's charism
of unity and reconciliation seemed to call Susan "home" to herself and
she willingly made her commitment as a csja within the first year of
her association with the Congregation.
A turning point in Susan's life came on Easter Sunday, 1991 when she
experienced the death of Kristina, her 15-year old daughter. This incomprehensible
loss on such a significant day in the Christian community initiated
a time of intense spiritual confusion as she struggled with the nature
of God and her fractured sense of self and family. Finding it too difficult
to continue with her Associate commitment, she eventually left the Medaille
community for several years. She continued searching and eventually,
through identifying with the mysteries of the cross, Susan came to know
in a deeply felt way Christ's presence among us. As she emerged on the
other side of pain and looked back on her personal experience of unity
and reconciliation, Susan realized she could not leave, nor had she
ever actually left the Associate community in a spiritual way, because
the charism and mission of the Sisters of St. Joseph is a part of WHO
SHE IS, in her God-created Self. She was welcomed back into her community
with loving and open arms, in keeping with our community's charism of
active and inclusive love.
Since then, Susan has become involved in grief and bereavement ministry
to bereaved parents through the self-help organization, Bereaved Families
of Ontario. She has also completed a degree in counseling psychology
and recently established a private grief counselling practice. For the
past several years, she has facilitated retreats for bereaved mothers
at the Villa St. Joseph in Cobourg, where her association with the congregation
first began. This ministry has given her a way to live her mission of
active and inclusive love by bringing hope, unity and reconciliation
to the dear neighbour who like herself, may not be able to feel God's
love in the midst of pain. It feels good, she says, to have come "full
circle" into the oneness of life.
Susan's lived experience of the possibilities of growth and life in
and through loss and change also provide her with insight and focus
into the issues facing our congregation and community today. With her
daughter's memory in her heart, she humbly and tearfully accepted her
Associate Community's nomination as Associate Co-Director in the Fall
of 2002.
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