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Webmaster's Bio
Meet Traute Klein, biogardener.

Related Articles

Deliverance from Depression
The long road back to health after a disabling car accident which robbed me of my life's vocation

To Hug or Not to Hug, That Is the Question
Even though the accusations of child abuse by the parish priest were proven unfounded, the put an end to my ability ever to teach children again. They also destroyed a thriving Sunday school, youth group, church. And the priest has been given a larger church to shepherd. No apology has been received so far.

Postscript

The article on the right was written in 1999. Since then, Suite101 has undergone many changes. When all the original staff at the site got fired, work became increasingly more difficult and therefore stressful. On October 31, 2005, all writers also got fired with only a ten days warning rather than the 30 days which our contract guaranteed us. We were voluntters anyway, so it was not a matter of finances.

The firing came as a relief to me. I was getting 2000 hits a day by this time and had hung on under difficult circumstances out of a sense of duty to my readers. I am now able to devote more time to my domain Biogardener.com.

And good news. My health has improved sufficiently for me to lead the occasional workshops in natural health and in art. Those workshops are so popular that we have to turn people away. I love it. There is nothing as satisfying to me as passing on to a large class the life principles which I believe in.

The Internet Turned My Nightmare into a Dream

by Traute Klein, biogardener

When my life's dream of teaching was shattered by a traumatic car accident, I found a new cyber-classroom at Suite101 and new cyber-friends all over the Internet.

My Shattered Dream

I had a dream. It was shattered in one moment when a speeding drunken driver slammed his vehicle into the rear of my stationary little Japanese car. The world as I knew it collapsed under me and left me dangling in black emptiness. See story "Deliverance from Depression" linked in the left column.

I had been a teacher all my life. My childhood friends insist that I was a teacher even as a child. I was born to be a teacher. Teaching was my passion. Not even outside the classroom can I curb that passion. My husband nicknamed me "Teach," because I never quite manage to lay down the role of the instructor. Other teachers sometimes regarded me as strange, because I loved large classes. An enrolment of forty-five in elementary school didn't bother me.

At one time or other, I taught every age groupd from 2 years to 86 years. I enjoyed them all. No exception. Even thirteen-year-olds! Especially thirteen-year-olds! They were the most fun. Kept me laughing all day long with their off-beat sense of humor.

For one year I replaced a professor on leave at the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba. That was my calling. I knew it. From that day on, I prepared for teaching teachers. That was my dream.

That dream turned into a nightmare when I was not able to teach any more. I tried desperately to keep some connection to the teaching profession, waiting for the day when I would be well again. There was nothing else in life I ever wanted to do. I still don't. I wasn't meant to do anything but teach. No matter how hard I tried, I was never able to do anything else with the same excellence, and I have never been satisfied performing task which someone else can do better.

Attempts at Reviving the Dream

I tried to stay in touch with other teachers by attending seminars. It did not work. The strain of concentration caused me to blank out and fall asleep. The other participants were too considerate to talk about my problem, but I was embarrassed. I tried teaching volunteer German classes. Again my mind would go blank and I would be unable to translate simple everyday words from German to English. I was embarrassed again.

Teaching had become a nightmare. Nightmares end when you wake up. This nightmare continues in broad daylight.

I tried teaching little children in Sunday school, one or two at a time with one adult helping me at all times. I know my Bible stories. My mind is not going blank on them. And once a week, I am able to concentrate long enough to share the stories with the little ones. That, however, is hardly the fulfillment of my dream. Teaching one child may be an important endeavor, it is, however, a far cry from my dream. But even that small window of usefulness ended when I was accused of child abuse by the minister of the church who could not cope with my popularity in church. See story "To Hug or Not to Hug, That Is the Question."

Living in Internet Reality

One day, when nothing seemed to work out for me, my husband introduced me to the Internet. I had been reluctant to try it, because I did not seem to be able to cope with anything else. What made him think that the Internet would not be just as disappointing for me?

I was wrong. For the first time since the accident, I was able to cope. I soon found a forum where people shared my interest in gardening and made friends there. I could talk to them without making a fool of myself. If I could not concentrate, I was able to come back later and continue the discussion. If I fell asleep in front of the computer, no one knew. I was no longer embarrassed. When people annoyed me, I did not have to look them in the face. I simply ignored them and skipped their postings.

People on the forum soon recognized my two areas of expertise, natural remedies and organic gardening. Those who shared my interest and those who wanted to learn soon became my cyber-friends. I had lost all my former friends, because no one was able to deal with my changed personality. Cyber-friends were much easier for me to deal with. They were always on their best behavior, and they did not have to worry about my depression and lack of concentration.

Dealing with incompetent technical support staff was the only difficult part. After changing servers half a dozen times, however, I finally ended up with excellent technical support.

Webpage Classroom

I seemed to be sharing certain gardening hints over and over again and figured that it was time to collect the most popular ones on a webpage, "Traute the BioGardener", adding one hint a week. Webpaging was easy and fun when I was able to work at it at my own speed. By and by I created other pages and collected them on "My Index Page."

No stress involved with any of these activities. People who did not like my ideas did not have to read my pages, and people whom I would have found irritating in my present condition were hidden somewhere in cyber-space where I was not aware of their presence. And what was next?

Suite101 to the Rescue

One of my GardenWeb forum friends gave me an idea. She had joined Suite101 to write a regular column on "Kids Gardening." I was not yet ready to take on a regular duty, because my emotional state was subject to too many changes. I could not have coped with a regular schedule, even if it only meant writing one article a month.

A year later, another GardenWeb forum friend started a column on "Garden Design." He thought that I might like to share my knowledge on organic gardening on a regular basis. This time I was ready. My ideas of what I wanted to tell people had by this time crystallized, and I needed a platform from which I could share my experience on holistic living, and that is how I came to write on "Natural Health" at Suite101.com. That topic has a wide enough scope that I will never run out of ideas. It is also a topic in which I can draw on the rich experiences of my life. That is the only type of topic which I can handle, because I am still not able to muster up the concentration required to research new topics.

Suite101 became my salvation. It has drawn me out of the despondency of an unfulfilled dream. It has given me something to do which hopefully is of value to my fellow human beings without being too taxing on my emotional state. It has given me new cyber-friends who stand by me, supporting me when I am down, offering help and encouragement.

Suite101 has given me a new classroom. It is not the classroom of my dream, a classroom of teachers and prospective teachers. It is, however, a classroom which I can handle. It is free of stress. Just what the doctor ordered.

Thank you, Suite101! Thank you, www!