Plain Jane?

One of the many reasons why I am so happy to have a daughter is because my family is full of amazing women. I love the fact that there is another wonderful female in our family, and she’s only 9 months old! The women in my family are intelligent, strong, creative, they hold tightly to their faith, and they love to laugh. We’re not the bra-burning sort of ‘strong’ women. These women love to teach others how amazing the world is and how every person can make the world even more beautiful in their own particular way. So I am inspired to write a brief blog post about my cousin Jane.

I don’t have any sisters. Just a really cool younger brother. So growing up two of my geographically close girl cousins (I have over 40 cousins) became like my sisters. Anne is the younger (an amazing women whom I’m sure I’ll write about in another post), and the elder is Jane Ellen Louise Beal. And I’m just a little older than the two of them. I think all in all, they have about 15 full-blooded and half brothers and sisters. Growing up, life was both blissfully happy and tragically sad for them, and I witnessed much of it. Together Jane, Anne and I would build forts, play on the piano, dance, listen to Peter Gabriel, and of course, laugh. However, many times when the rest of us were playing, Jane was reading, or telling stories to us, or she was writing, or wandering around open fields, thinking. Not your typical 10-year old behavior.

Jane is compassionate and fights for justice on behalf of those who are oppressed around the world. Last year she started JSASSN or Jane’s Sexual Assault Survivor Support Network. This isn’t a whim. She’s always helped people who’ve been beaten down by life (both literally and figuratively) since we were kids. She had friends that lived in the worst of situations, and she was always there for them. Now she’s doing all she can to stop sex trafficking and help those who’ve experienced sexual assault. (You can read more about why she started JSASSN at her website.)

Jane is intelligent. When we were kids, she wrote several books that were so incredibly detailed (maps and all!). She was engrossed in Tolkien’s or “Tolkienesque” literature and she would always tell me the stories of the latest fantasy adventure books she had just read. Yeah, she was smart. She did high school in two years, her undergrad in a year or two, her master’s in about a year or so, and her PhD shortly after all of that. Today she’s a professor at Wheaton and does research is in the fields of medieval literature, classical mythology, and the literature of the Bible. She truly enjoys her students and loves to teach and write poetry. I just love that she pursued her passion in her career.

Jane is creative. Her family was always singing and playing music. They really should have started a family band when that was cool. She was always playing the flute for us all. And of course there was and is her creative writing. I think because she writes she has become a woman of depth and sincerity.

How can you summarize a person in one blog post? One simply cannot. Jane is so much more than what I’ve just written. Like I forgot to mention how outgoing and fun she is. Or how she just recently visited Israel and has amazing stories to share from her experience there. And she’s just recently had a book of poetry published called Sanctuary. Anyway, I just wanted to write a little about her because I love her and she’s one of those influential people in my life. I hope you can find someone, if you haven’t already, who influences you and challenges you as Jane has for me! 

I’ll leave you with an excerpt from Jane’s poem called 1154 Hillside Drive (a home she grew up in, which I vividly remember):

I avoided the witch’s house
since she never liked children
and sailed on cardboard instead
down into an apple-tree shade.

I ate what tasted good to me;
the summer fruit was sweet;
I clambered on the wooden box
that covered a rain-water well.

What is down inside of you?
I wondered as I peeked in;
I coud see the grassy bottom,
but I knew I couldn’t reach it.

(Excerpt of the poem 1154 Hillside Drive by Jane Beal)

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