Curricula Vitae
About Jim Mahoney
I am the oldest of six children, born in 1952, in Butte, Montana
to an Irish father and German-English mother. My second to the last sibling, Colleen, died after being delivered as a seven-month preemie in Moses Lake, Washington, something you very seldom hear of now. When we were kids and even now, when we prayed we figured we had a short cut to God's ear by sending our prayers in care of Colleen.When I was eight years old, my parents began providing foster care. Sometimes we had as many as five foster kids along with us five bio kids in a two-story, three-bedroom one bathroom farmhouse on Spokane's Southside. In the 60's we provided care for infants, sibling groups, and teens.
My values took a leap forward when we had an African-American foster sister for four years. My family was racially taunted and threatened, and my mother was harassed, this resulted in my foster sister being placed for adoption in another family. A compelling read along the lines of social justice is "How The Irish Became White" by Noel Ignatiev, 1995. This book focuses on how the Irish were assimilated as "whites" in America.
I had an undistinguished elementary and high school career.
My first epiphany in Social Work occurred during a drowsy May afternoon when we were discussing the Community Context of Practice. My reveries took me back to the eighth grade when I heard that the Viet Cong were sending cadres to South Vietnam, to win hearts and minds, by living with villagers and digging wells.
Having participated in digging my grandfather's well, at age eight, on the banks of the St. Marie's river in Fernwood, Idaho, I knew something of the village nature of well-digging. It was a family and a community event. After the dynamite went off, it took the chickens several days to come down from the trees.
In class, I got it! We were being trained as cadres to enter all kinds of communities to create change for social justice.I began my career as a therapist at the Community Mental Health Center in Spokane, Washington in 1977. In 1985 I was a CHAP Case Manager (Children's Hospitalization Alternative Program.
My second career related insight occurred when I was working with Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpatrick, who had been providing foster care for more years than I had been alive. As I was earnestly exhorting them in how to best work with kids,
I was struck by their kindly nodding heads, and bemused smiles that seemed to say, "Jim's a nice boy; he'll get it one of these days." I realized, when seeing their Zen like smiles, that I would never talk to my parents that way, so how could I justify talking this way to Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpatrick? That's when I realized that parents are the best healers and teachers. And that I should listen more than speak when working with caregivers of special-needs children; parents are still my best teachers.My wife Gail and our two children are the true center of my life. Family is what is sustaining, important, whole, and meaningful. I am lucky in my circumstances, this realization motivates me to work with other people to find doors and paths that are useful to them, ways to their own luck and empowered living.
As you can see in the photographs, there is a sense of humor in our family. Each of us knows that we are loved... all children and parents can enjoy and love each other; this is the goal that I put in front of me every day.
        
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Jim Mahoney Spokane, WA 99202 509.838.2256 |
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All original graphics and text are copyrighted © 2004 by Jim Mahoney.
Last Updated August, 2004