Tomorrow my wife will kiss me and leave for the office one last time. Of course, since I am a retired night owl, she will do that while I am blurry-eyed and still in bed. After decades of devoting her life to saving children from circumstances beyond their control, Sally is retiring as an educator at CARES NW. Not everyone gets to say that their career left the world a better place. My Sal does.

I met Sally at Standard Insurance. Napping on the couch of the breakroom, I opened my eyes to see the most remarkable pair of white, laced socks. Looking up, I saw a small woman with short curly black hair and a dead serious look. I soon discovered that behind that intensity was a woman who could be utterly goofy and willing to manifest her joy with her entire being. And the rest, as they say, is history.

From the first moments with Sally, she was on a mission. Working full time, she was also in a graduate program in counseling at Lewis and Clark. She worked around the clock to get her degree. We were together for me to see her hooding ceremony. I am not sure if I completely understood her path. Her practicum was at an inpatient facility for troubled children. She came home with stories about how she could reach little boys by embracing their love of the Power Rangers. She came up with the idea to call the boys “Healing Warriors.” There it was, Sally’s ability to use joy to connect with some of the most vulnerable little humans.

Sally is very good at smoothing over the answer to the question: what do you do for work? I, of course, enjoyed watching the questioner’s faces when I said it clearly. “My wife is a counsellor specializing in child sexual abuse and trauma.” Faces froze. Conversations stopped. When she was a clinician, I sometimes added, “Oh, she does groups with the non-offending parents. Think about that.” When they recovered, people would say something like “you are doing god’s work.” I wanted people to know that my wife had one of the toughest jobs on the planet. She faces, with compassion and determination, the things most normies don’t want to hear about. Telling the truth to others about her job was my expressing great pride. However, even now when I say that Sal is likely to give me an eye-roll.

One oddity of Sally’s work was her tools. She would gleefully come home from yard sales with children’s toys to use in her sand tray with the kids. In her off hours, she would craft signs, buttons and tags with messages to encourage clients. Intellect, compassion, and creativity: Sally used all she had to help kids recover their lives. But there was one hard and fast rule in our home. I could not listen to the details of her workday. I made the mistake of joining her for a happy hour with her peers, where they were telling war stories. Mostly women, they were all far tougher than me. I had to beg off and leave early.

My wife has always been groundbreaking in her profession. In the 90s, she devised a new way to work with teenaged girls. The punk rock world was full of ‘zines, handmade magazines using found pictures and cutout text wrapped around stories. The copier pages were then stapled together into magazines and passed around scenes across the country. She made her sample, then taught the girls how to make their own ‘zines. It was a remarkable way to have the victims regain their power and tell their story their way. I recall it was the first of several times Sally got noticed in her profession for a treatment approach.

But Sally wasn’t only saving the lives of her kids. She saved me. Some things are meant to be. I had a mental health crisis of my own around the turn of the century. One night, I fell into a state that was terrifying, what I found out is called a dissociative event. My professional wife immediately recognized what was happening and intervened with all her skill. She challenged me to think out of my narrow view of therapy and pursue a path that was eclectic then, more accepted now. They diagnosed me with PTSD from my childhood. Sally’s expertise that night, and her compassion ever since, gave me my life back. What a thing.

Eventually, even the toughest nut cracks under the weight of so many unbearable stories. Sally left frontline clinical work. But her next path, the one she is retiring from, may be the most mind-bending. She decided that the best way to help victims of trauma was to move upstream and prevent the events. And, when there are isolated, traumatized kids out there alone, train other professionals to see the signs and get the right help. Sally became a prevention educator.

But here’s the deal. While there are state and national organizations dedicated to prevention, the programs are sometimes a mess. As a former clinician, Sally had a special view of how to approach getting the right tools for the right people. She made the rounds, doing countless presentations to children in classrooms around the state. I once got to see her do her presentation. I was stunned. My mostly introvert wife is a powerhouse with a PowerPoint. She reads and owns rooms, adapting on the fly to get the messages across. Silly Sal disappears and intense, commanding Sal appears.

In the last phase of her career, Sally moved the program from teaching the kids to training the teachers and professionals. She devised a curriculum that has made her a national authority on child abuse prevention, taking her show on the road to national conferences. Sal served on the Oregon Governor’s task force on the issue and was a sought-after speaker. She has moved from saving lives one on one, and in groups, to training an army of people who can help kids. Even in retirement, they have asked her to consult statewide.

In the last weeks, as she announced her retirement, Sally has gotten the praise of her peers that she so deserves. I have had the privilege of being her support for all these years. Sometimes, my one job was to pull her into the shallow waters before she got too deep. I am busting with pride and love for Sally. And now, we get to figure out what our new life together is going to be. Damn, imagine my luck having this amazing woman as my partner to do that.