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| Profile: Mary Fransen, retreat owner and therapist |
By: MAGGIE LEE, Staff Writer
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Posted: Tuesday, December 30, 2008 10:16 pm
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Mary Fransen, owner of Jasper Retreat Center in Northfield, hasn’t likely shuddered at the thought of oncoming winter. She grew up on a farm in central North Dakota, she worked for several years in an Eskimo village in Alaska and she has resided in Minnesota in recent years. She admits to being fascinated by outdoor adventure.
Fransen is a graduate of Concordia College in Moorhead. She did graduate work in social work at the University of Michigan. Employment as a social worker in North Dakota followed for five years.
But Bethel, Alaska, came next. She signed up for a year to start with, but liked the place so much that she signed for another year. She had worked there for eight years when she decided to begin something new.
Bethel is located on the Kuskokwim River, 400 miles west of Anchorage. When she was there, there were no roads going into Bethel except in the winter when a road was plowed on the frozen river.
“One of the most exciting days of the year was when the river broke up in May,” Fransen recalls.
There were 36 villages in the area. The villages, with populations ranging from 100 to 800, were the home of Yup’ik Eskimos.
Working as a social worker in behavioral health for the Yukon-Kuskokwin Health Corporation, She trained Eskimo para-professionals in the villages, led groups for teens in Bethel (there being much stress on teenagers because of their living with one foot in each culture), established circles of support especially related to grief, worked with village leaders on prevention of suicide, worked with people in crisis. Fransen explained that March and April were especially challenging months because the days were longer, giving people more energy, but the river was still frozen so there was a sense of being unable to move.
She said that she learned lessons from the Eskimos that she has put to work in her life and career.
“One of the greatest contrasts between our culture and the Yup’ik culture is that they listen and seek guidance from their elders,” Fransen said. “In contrast, our culture has an idea of how we want the future to be, so we live in the present according to our idea of the future. There is less emphasis on how we as a people lived in the past, and we miss the value of listening to our elders.
“There is value in searching for the inner rhythm of one’s own life,” Fransen said she learned among the Eskimos. She also came to honor the thought that “no matter what the day brings, the sun will rise tomorrow.”
After returning to the lower 48 states for work, Fransen devoted the next three years to social work in West Virginia, then did school social work for eight years in Eden Prairie.
During that time she and her husband, Jim Johnson, established their home in Northfield. Both commuted, she to Eden Prairie, he to Cannon Falls where he practiced law. Eventually he wanted to practice in Northfield also and the two bought the Lyceum Building, the historic structure just west of the Grand. He is fascinated with astronomy and also builds electric guitars.
Fransen named her business — dedicated to personal growth and development — Jasper Retreat Center. She said that she chose jasper, the mineral, because it symbolizes new strategies, freshness of ideas, “and is a reminder that we are in this life to have an impact on the world.”
One of the first things she organized, along with a friend, was a retreat on Lake Superior, an inward journey and outdoor adventure. The three-day retreat is for women ages 18 through 70. Included is kayaking, which Fransen describes as “a metaphor for the courage we need for the transitions in our own lives.”
She organizes “dreams and blueprints” groups, personal development groups for women. There is also creative self-discovery mentoring which she describes as “living life based on the wisdom of one’s own heart instead of living a life that everyone else thinks you should live.” She added, “There is value in reassessing our heart’s wisdom in each new stage of life.”
At the center there is work available on forgiveness, a step-by-step process that takes a person through forgiveness for life’s unfairness. It is designed to set a person free from past pains and resentments.
There is a women’s retreat collaborative, a group of five women having developed a one-day retreat for groups sized 8 to 88.
Fransen also works two days a week as a therapist at Mental Health Professionals in Owatonna.
The couple has a 20-year-old daughter who is a receptionist for a massage therapist at Rochester.
— Reach Maggie Lee at 645-1119. |
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