There are many different paths in life that we can choose to follow.There are also circumstances where life imposes the only seemingly restorative choice of acceptance. Rubies in the Rubble is a story of one woman’s courage and commitment to accept her lot in life and bloom where she is planted.
For most of her existence, Jill Speering led a life of reacting to the trauma of abuse, shame, helplessness, and betrayal. As a small child, she and her family endured mental and physical violence from her father, a WWII veteran with issues of PTSD, a disorder in which a person has difficulty recovering after experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event. At home, Speering was a fighter and defended her mother who endured constant verbal and physical attacks from her dad.
As a young student, Jill was imprinted with the belief that she was stupid and unable to learn. As a result, she felt inadequate and struggled to succeed. Failures continued to mount as her perseverance for achievement escalated
Speering finds her way through Catholicism to discover a deep spirituality rooted in her belief in a forgiving and loving God. Although the family’s conversion offered a reprieve from the patriarch’s alcohol abuse and demeaning behavior, it is not a complete cure for the demons that haunt him. In one lapse of piety, her dad strikes his daughter across the face with his rosary beads. Jill continues to recite the rosary, praying he could die.
Speering finds her way out of a marriage that too closely mirrors what she witnessed as a child, one in which the wife succumbs to the will of the husband at every turn. With her second marriage, she finds herself the most important person in another’s life, and the persistent trauma she experienced as a child is slowly healed.
Speering finds her way back from a triple bypass, open-heart surgery to her seat on the board of education to take on an epic fight, and face down the biggest bully of her decades long career in education. A mere two months after undergoing the life-saving surgery, she returns to her work as Vice Chair of the school board only to face the deliberate attempts to misconstrue her words and intentions in order to detract from her work to right what is going very wrong in the school system she deeply loves.
Upon retirement, the author reflects on her efforts and conflicts as she attempts to extrapolate meaning and insight from the story of her life to make decisions about her future. Her excavation of the unexplored miracles in her life magically leads her on a journey, which transmutes her hatred into understanding and compassion.
