care Archives - StoryHook

Carly Woythaler-Runestad

By Asha Timperley

She wasn’t sure she wanted to share her story. Actually, she felt like she didn’t really have one. She says the people she works with, they have the “real” story.

As the executive director of the Mourning Hope Grief Center, Carly Woythaler-Runestad has seen and heard a lot of stories. She’s not a grief group facilitator and she doesn’t lead any of the sessions, but she is the one who’s responsible for keeping the lights on and the programs running at Mourning Hope.

It’s a job that she ‘fell’ into in many senses, but it’s become her greatest passion and something that’s helped her define her own story.

Carly grew up in a rural town in central Iowa. It was a small, community-focused place where she was surrounded by strong parents, impactful mentors and experienced a nurturing upbringing. This environment seemed to set the tone for Carly’s life.

She attended the University of Iowa and received her undergraduate degree before going on to work as a music therapist and then the director of a long-term care facility. Carly decided to return to school to earn her Master’s degree in health care administration and then put her degree to work as a lobbyist for the Nebraska Hospital Association.

Carly had several jobs after she graduated that she liked and was good at, but each one seemed more like stepping stones rather than a place to settle down and dig in. She felt like she was constantly searching for the right fit, and started to think maybe it didn’t exist.

She and her husband moved to Nebraska in 2004 and a few years later Carly’s life was shifted by major changes and transitions. Her mother was battling cancer, her grandparents died and she experienced a miscarriage – all of which happened in a relatively short period of time.

The sudden losses and change caused Carly to re-evaluate her story, to start thinking about who she was, what she wanted to do and who she wanted to be. She realized she wanted a job that she was excited to go to every day, a place where she could see the impact of her work and was more than just a way to utilize her skills and take home a paycheck.

It was during this period of transition that Carly came across the Mourning Hope Grief Center.

She started out as a part time employee who was interested in the center’s mission of helping kids and their caregivers navigate seasons of loss. Carly watched broken, unsure and scared kids and caregivers walk through the front door of Mourning Hope, only to see them leave with hope and excitement.

It’s work that’s nearly addictive because of the noticeable impact it has on families, and Carly said it didn’t take long before she stopped seeing Mourning Hope as a stepping stone to something bigger… it became her landing place.

The work got under her skin in the best way possible and opened her eyes to a population of the city and state that she hadn’t seen before. Mourning Hope’s mission became her mission as she dug in and found her place.

It’s heavy work, but Carly wouldn’t have it any other way. The stories of the kids and families from Mourning Hope seem to play on a continuous loop in her mind, motivating her to work harder, do more and send emails at nearly all hours of the day.

They are the reason she loves waking up and going to work.

They are the reason she’s worked to join local and national organizations to advocate for grieving children and families.

And they are the reason she’s an engaged wife and mother who values every minute with her family.

People often ask Carly if she experienced a significant loss that kick-started her passion, but that’s not why she joined the team at Mourning Hope. She joined because she discovered a deep desire to help others.

As she looks back on her educational and career path, Carly can see that caring well for others has been a theme in her jobs and her story. It’s part of who she is, and something she’s always valued, but working at Mourning Hope brought that to the surface.

Carly said that for so long it felt like she was searching for her story, for what was next and where she wanted to invest her energy and time. Now, ‘what’s next’ looks like staying put, raising her family and being diligent in her work.

She referenced the quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson that says: “To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

That’s what she wants in life, to live her story well by helping shoulder the burdens of others. For the first time in a long time Carly isn’t looking for what’s next, it’s right in front of her, and her story has never seemed so clear.

August 23, 2017

Love3

Jill Morstad

By Asha Timperley

Walking into her house, you wouldn’t know that Jill Morstad is the owner of two large Belgian Shepherds.

There was no barking, no jumping, no licking and the dogs were nowhere to be seen. It’s not that Jill doesn’t love her dogs or is compelled to keep her house in a perpetually manicured state, actually it’s the opposite – her dogs have boundaries, because she loves them.

This is a distinction that she’s careful to make, and it comes from her more than 30 years of teaching people to train their dogs. Offering classes at dog clubs, in private homes, animal shelters and vet clinics, Jill has a broad understanding of the communication between dogs and owners. But really, she said, her job is about listening to stories.

“Everybody’s pet is a story,” she said.

And while it might sound a little strange to talk about dog training in terms of stories, Jill said people have so many preconceptions about training and even owning a dog based on their personal experiences. Things like their childhood pet, a recently deceased animal or even a neighbor’s dog can color a story very quickly, she said, and that’s natural.

But her job is to hear those stories, understand their origin and articulate their impact. She does this with her clients, and she’s done this since she was an 8-year-old who owned her first dog.

Like a lot of kids, Jill started asking for a dog as soon as she could find the words. She was fascinated by the dog books at the school library, checking them out one by one and reading them cover to cover. These books brought the dog-owning experience to life for her until her family was given a dog by a family member who couldn’t care for it any more.

Little 8-year-old Jill and her dad took the dog to a local training class where the instructor was an AKC judge. It didn’t take long before Jill was immersed in the dog training world – connecting with local trainers, reading any training book she could get her hands on and researching local dog shows to attend. It suddenly became her whole world.

As she got older, Jill said she realized why she loved training so much. It was more than just shaping an animal or making it do what she wanted, it was about communication, about understanding the void between humans and dogs and figuring out how to bridge that gap. There was something highly natural, yet philosophical about the process and Jill loved that.

When she went off to college, she studied journalism because of her fascination with communication and went on to work at a small publishing company shortly after graduation. Within a year of graduating, Jill owned a dog and started training it for competitions. In her free time she traveled around the Midwest taking her dog to obedience competitions and connecting with other area trainers.

Eventually Jill moved to Missouri to pursue her graduate degree in folklore and language and then came to Lincoln in the early 90s to work on her PhD. She taught at UNL and is now an English and writing professor at Union College.

She often asks her students, “What would you read about or think about if it was left entirely up to you?”

For Jill, the answer to that question is dog training. It’s where her passion and purpose collide and it’s a way that she feels like she can train people in Lincoln to care well for their dogs to better individual homes, neighborhoods and the community as a whole.

Jill’s days are spent vacillating between teaching English, training dog owners, hosting a weekly radio show about dog ownership, preparing for dog shows and keeping up with her own dogs during her morning run.

Communication has been a consistent part of her story.

Her two jobs are centered on using communication to relay a message and create order. For dogs, this happens through verbal commands and non-verbal signals, and with her students, she’s realized that even with the perfectly chosen words, not even the English language can be articulated 100 percent accurately.

Whether it’s the way she’s introducing a concept to her college students or how she’s working with a dog and its owner, there’s a high level of intentionality in all of Jill’s work.

Her entire story has been one of learning and sharing. It’s been about more than just a love of animals or a love of words, but a union between these two seemingly separate disciplines.

December 21, 2016

Love4