Sharon Galambos Bio

My Autobiography is “just another write-up” (only a longer trip!)

Little did I fully realize till this point how such different events and experiences of my life became woven together, thread by thread, preparing and forming the tapestry that is my life now.

It all began (even though for many years I didn’t realize it) with my heritage of faith. My parents faithfully taught me the basics: Love for God and loving consideration for others, along with the accompanying moral and ethical code. Even more than that however, they lived their creed. That actually made the biggest impact on me because, like many, I’m a “visual learner”.

When I went off to the University of California at Berkeley (1966), I started off in pre-med but because of a lack of persistence and resilience, I got scared off with the first “boo!” that came my way about women doctors. So I settle for working toward a degree in Physiology.  The whole Berkeley scene at times was like finding myself adrift in a hurricane at sea.  My best friend was beaten into a vegetable state right beside me, during one of the many protests. Levels of frustration, even hatred, began to suck me into a black vortex. I began reading the Bible and it struck me just how much the words of Jesus made sense, as far as a prescription for fulfillment and happiness, as well as a solution to all this “madness”. However, I could also see the stark discrepancies and hypocrisy in this “Christian world” in which my character was being formed. The words were still there but they seemed empty of substance.

With racial discrimination, violence, seemingly unjust wars causing meaningless death and destruction (including my brother’s death in Vietnam), and power-plays in “high places”; my struggle morphed into an existential crisis, seeking to engulf me. I ended up having to literally “live” in the university library (along with the foreign students) until school finished.

Then in desperation I fled the west coast to try studying theology at Valparaiso University (a Christian university in a more conservative, Christian part of the country). In 1970 I left with a degree in Theology – and more existential questions than ever! Theoretical Theology just didn’t “jive” with the flesh and blood every day survival battles which human beings must constantly face; it seemed to fit better with monks in isolated monasteries, or theologians writing from the comfort of their sheltered church offices. Neither did it fit in with my personal, very practical sense of idealism, so I decided that “the baby must go out with its dirty bath water”….and off I went to run a Neighborhood Youth Core Program in the Franklin St. african-american community of New Orleans. Whew! Was that a learning experience!

However, I couldn’t throw out that gnawing feeling that there must be some kind of ‘game plan’  for my life. There just had to be some difference between me and a crab scurrying back and forth across the beach of time. There had to be some  difference between “mere existing” and “purposeful living”…..and I decided that I had to find the answer!

So I went back to the west coast. In 1971 I worked in the government “Head Start” program with migrant farm workers’ children near Modesto, CA. That certainly gave me firsthand insight into the plight of the migrant farm workers in the rich CA agricultural belt in the 1970’s!

In 1972 I received the marvelous opportunity to be an “understudy” in a psycho-pedagogical practice with Dr. Doris Hobbs in Berkeley, CA. She was an amazing woman and I admired her love for the children she worked with, as well as being captivated at her ingenious techniques for getting through to disturbed children in order to assist them. That same year she helped get me into graduate courses in psycho-pedagogy at San Francisco State College in San Francisco.

In the course of my work, however, I again came up against another wall, as I began to realize just how much children were the victims of dysfunctional parents. I found my psycho-therapeutic services being used as just “band aids” to cover up deep, painful, wounds.

It was time to continue my search for solutions to life’s “unfair pain and suffering”, as well as my role in it all, a bit more towards “the ends of the earth” which led me high into the Andes Mts. of Ecuador in 1973 to a Peace Corp stint of 4 yrs., living with and studying the Saraguran Indian tribe. I then spent another year doing an ethnographic study of the Saragurans for the Central Bank of Ecuador’s, ethnographic museum in Guayaquil. I must admit I really came to love those people! It was quite a millennial type of living experience for me. I ended up learning much from them that helped me in my personal life.

My quest then continued on through: Peru, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay – teaching in universities, schools, language institutes, and private classes; running my own business with a group of friends, getting married, having children, learning to navigate through life in different cultures.

I saw a lot of pain and sadness (unfortunately along the way I also contributed to it, without meaning to). I came to see that corruption is an ever present adversary, taunting temptations through many diverse tentacles, and offering a wide variety of justifications to numb the conscience. I learned that happiness is not just another commodity to be bought or sold. …in fact the correlation between the amount of money one has and the amount of happiness is usually an inverse ratio even though it is advertized the other way around.

I had to keep going through the experiences, the bumps, the bruises, the painful falls, etc. until I finally found the answers I was searching for in a beautiful and very personal love relationship with Jesus Christ. In fact it’s such an amazing thing that it’s made everything I’ve had to go through to get there totally worthwhile; and I’m thankful for it all!  I realize now that somehow I had missed the “Jesus connection”.  It was always okay to talk about God, even pray to God; but mentioning Jesus drew up subtle stereotypes of “intolerance” and“religious fanaticism” in people’s minds. In fact it wasn’t until I met the TFI Missionary Fellowship that I was able to break through those stereo types and discover a “passionate” faith that “jives” with the words and actions of Jesus recorded in the Bible.

Over time, I even came to the conclusion that I just wanted to serve Jesus with my whole life…to be able to stay as close to Him as possible.

So, I joined the missionary fellowship, and it became a vehicle for me to “work full-time for Jesus” through Christian volunteer projects and many personal heart to heart spiritual counseling opportunities. It came with the perk of being able to “go with a definite mission and purpose” to some “far out” places like: Alaska, India, Eastern Europe, Italy and Baja California. In most of those places I still continued to teach in international schools on different academic levels in order to continue to support my volunteer missionary work.

The slogan for my life became and continues to be: “The Love of Christ is the answer to every need, and my reason for living!”

About five years ago, I returned to Chile and was happily teaching at a small Christian bilingual school….when the earthquake and tsunami of 2010 occurred. It changed my life! A group of us began making trips to the devastated areas.

On those trips, a good friend, who happens to be child psychologist and I began to wonder what was going on inside the children, since for the most part they only silently observed the tears and anguish of their parents over the immense loss of  loved ones,  property, employment, even the “decencies” of life (crowded into unsanitary camp situations).

When we began meeting with the children, we quickly realized that they indeed felt things very deeply. They were plagued by confusion, fears, and trauma. One step led to another and 2011-2012 found me on an 11 month trip along the coast of the 3 regions most devastated by the earthquake and tsunami. I visited schools with a questionnaire to investigate the levels of trauma. Along the way I also offered seminars in which I shared inspirational and therapeutic teaching materials with teachers, psychologists, and social workers.

Margaret came on weekends and we gave workshops to children in various communities. In each community I also talked to a wide variety of people from community leaders, to municipal authorities, to school authorities, to concerned citizens in order to get a balanced view of the overall situation.

At this point, Margaret and I feel that the best use of our experience lies in the preparation of a resilience training course for children, which could be offered through the schools, in order to be able to help the largest number of children who are affected by trauma from whatever source; based on the fact that trauma can be treated. However trauma which is not treated remains in the psyche and affects the mental health and decision making processes of later life.

Consequently, right now I’m devoting my time, and energy (along with Margaret) in the preparation of a resilience training course for children which is called: “Building My Future”. We plan to run the course in “pilot projects” in the 3 regions, starting in the coming school year.