Dr Grace Kelly – Tests, trials, triumphs

IT is often said that if life hands you lemons, you ought to make lemonade, but if Dr Grace Kelly had followed this advice literally, she could have easily become the proprietor of her personal juice factory, since life has granted her many sour moments.

Her 47-year journey from birth in Maroon Town, St James, to her current position as a counsellor, author and noted educator, has been fraught with many challenges. While she did come upon some smooth surfaces along the way, most of her odyssey saw her trying to negotiate stumbling blocks and navigating some winding roads. Sometimes she found herself precariously close to the edge of a cliff, it would seem, like in 2010 when she received severe injuries in a car accident, but through divine intervention, she has always managed to find her way to a safe place.

As the seventh of eight children for her parents, Dr Kelly remembers having to learn from early to eke out a living for herself, since her father’s job as a woodworker and her mother’s seasonal job at the nearby banana plant could but barely provide for her and her siblings. While her father was the primary breadwinner, who spent weekdays travelling to various parishes in search of wood, her mother, like a true homemaker, nurtured and cared for them.

“We could expect a $1 bread and a good spanking, because he would spank us as if to say ‘just in case they sinned Lord’, and then by Monday he would be gone again. But he provided according to his ability then,” Dr Kelly said of her father who passed away last December.

From as early as five years old, Dr Kelly was taking on odd jobs such as drawing banana trash with her pushcart as well as washing people’s clothes and ironing to supplement her parents’ income in her teenage years. For those things she couldn’t afford, she got creative and made her own. She had to fashion her own shoes, for example, from her parents’ “old grip” (suitcase). She was mercilessly teased when after walking miles to school daily, her shoes gave way and the big gaping hole in the sole was put on display as she knelt to pray at church on Sabbath.

So as not to suffer additional teasing, Dr Kelly joined her church’s children, then junior, then senior choir just so she could wear the required white dress for ministry every Sabbath without drawing unwarranted attention to her measly wardrobe.

Dr Kelly excelled in primary school, although her dislike for the English Language and reading did not go unnoticed. Like most children, she looked forward to sitting the then Common Entrance Examination, but while in the fifth grade, she developed a mysterious sore on her leg which required her to visit the doctor for 21 consecutive days to prevent it from becoming infected.

This mild setback aside, she was once again getting herself into exam mode, when another tragedy occurred. As she slept one night, the kerosene lamp near the bed she shared with her three sisters fell on her side of the bed and caused severe burns to her back. Upon her return to school the next academic year, she was placed in a lower stream, and was subsequently denied the opportunity to take the exams.

Sensing her disappointment, her mother saved as much as possible to afford the tuition for a private high school. That plan fell through, however, as her mother got very ill around that time and had to use the funds for her medical bills instead. Her mother managed to pull through her sickness, but passed on shortly after Dr Kelly finished high school.

Although she was the product of an era when going to a traditional high school was the ideal, she enrolled at the Maldon Secondary School in the parish of her birth where she focused primarily on agricultural science.

“At that time, I didn’t think that there was anything else that I wanted to do or could do and I was extremely close to my mom and I wanted to be near her. I didn’t even conceptualise the careers that one could get out of agricultural science; I just wanted to do something that could keep me occupied,” she said.

Despite excelling in this field, Dr Kelly was unable to do her General Certificate Exams because she lacked the wherewithal to pay for them. Her teacher had recommended her for an agricultural school in St Elizabeth, but this plan also fell through since upon applying, she was informed she was a few months too old. On account of how good she was at agriculture, the principal of her secondary school allowed her to teach agricultural science there though, while she operated her own farm at home to supplement her income.

Dr Kelly would have been content to be a farmer, had praedial thieves not continued to prey on her, making it impossible to make a living from her business and forcing her to seek another job. She found one as a sales clerk at a banana boxing company and moved up the ranks until she became the manager’s understudy. But as she was slowly beginning to understand, every good thing that came her way lasted but for a time. Her position was eventually made redundant after the banana industry took a hit. Desperate for a job, Dr Kelly took up the opportunity to become a live-in helper, but that brought on a fresh round of challenges, the primary one being that the man of the house started making sexual advances at her. She left that job and went to another job working at a guest house in Ironshore, but then a group of young men working there also started to make sexual advances towards her.

Not knowing where to go, she called the West Indies College, now Northern Caribbean University in Mandeville one day and asked how she could become a student. She was told they could accept her and she packed her bags and relocated to Mandeville.

“It became a place of escape for me, and that is where life really began,” she said of the Seventh-day Adventist-operated university.

“I went there as a student worker, so I worked there cleaning the dormitories and after the first year started school,” she said.

While studying, she managed to secure a job as a student representative, selling books. This job afforded her the opportunity to travel to other parishes and later on to countries such as The Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Belize and the US Virgin Islands. It took her seven years in total to complete her first degree partly because she had to work full time, but then too because she really wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her life. She gained a sense of purpose, however, when she connected with the lecturer for her counselling course and since that day she became certain of the career she would pursue.

After completing her degree in 1993, Dr Kelly went on to pursue a master’s at Andrews University, Michigan, USA on a donated plane ticket. She was psyched about going on to do her doctorate, and had in fact been interviewed and selected pending the submission of her GRE scores to be a Fulbright scholar when another stumbling block presented itself.

It turned out that she failed the GRE terribly. However, the failure helped to unlock the mystery as to why she struggled throughout school with the English language to the point where, at times, she struggled to spell her own name correctly.

“When I had finished the GRE test, the baseline amount that you would have gotten if you had only written your name, I got maybe only two per cent higher than that. That was what pushed me to find out what was really happening,” she said.

Dr Kelly consulted an educational psychologist who after various testings, diagnosed her with dyslexia.

“The person that did the testing, they looked at me in amazement and wondered how I ever passed primary school with the level of dyslexia and other issues that they found,” said the educator who pointed out that throughout her academic life, she was forced to be creative during class using presentations and drama to get her points across.

Upon completing her master’s, Dr Kelly returned to Jamaica determined to train and empower guidance counsellors in the island. She joined the staff at NCU as the chair of the Department of Behavioural Sciences. Since then, she has served as president of the Jamaica Association of Guidance Counsellors in Education on two occasions and chairs the National Board of Certified Counsellors Licensure and Certification Committee.

Utilising her creative streak, Dr Kelly was able to read for her doctorate in curriculum and instruction, specialising in guidance education and counselling. She managed to pursue this degree while still carrying out her duties at NCU until she completed her programme in 2003.

In addition to the other positions she holds, Dr Kelly is also the associate chaplain for the Jamaica Police Force and is a member of the National Curriculum Committee and the Behaviour Modification Task Force.

Still grieving the hurt and loss suffered since childhood, she now encourages persons going through difficult periods to embrace rather than reject grief. In fact, her first book which was launched last year is entitled, Grieve if you Must.

“When you talk about grief, grief is to pain as breathing is to life. If you are hurt, you are going to grieve and if you don’t go through the process, it is going to inhibit you,” she said.

Although she has achieved so much, there are still more things the counsellor desires; one is to find a partner who can appreciate her struggles.

“I have never been married, but I am going to be married, I don’t know to whom or when or where and how, but I am going to be married. I cannot have so much sorrows and not share it with somebody — and my joys too,” she said.

She is still recuperating from her accident in 2010 even though she was hospitalised for a long time and along with all that she has to grieve, has still not gotten over the passing of her mother. Still, Dr Kelly said she would never want to trade her life for another.

“When I look back in my adult years, it seems as if those were the things that propelled me to continue and to have this focused vision to make sure that I could at least start to overcome. But essentially, most of the times when I succeeded or when opportunities came my way, it was either I was running away from a situation or just bumped into something else,” she said.