From a small farm in Woodhall, Illinois, SueAnn Bickle (originally Weidner) lived with her 2 sisters and her parents. After High School, she began Nursing School at an all-girls Catholic college. Once she received her degree, she began working on the medical floor in Geneseo at Hammond Henry Hospital, where she then became the House Supervisor, and eventually the manager of the Dialysis center in the same hospital. At the age of 33, she married Shawn Bickle, and 4 years later had her first daughter (me) Grace after being told she couldn’t have children just a few years prior. A year later, she had my sister Ella. After some personal experiences, she began raising her daughters on her own. 19 years later, I was able to travel home to interview this amazing woman just in time for Women’s History Month.
One of the first questions I asked her was how her mom shaped her as a woman as well as a mother. She replied, “my mom didn’t give me everything, and I had to learn on my own, which I passed down to my girls.” She also said that when she was struggling with taking care of everything, someone told her “don’t work for perfection, because when you blink an eye your kids are all grown up and on their own. The dirty dishes or the messy bedrooms don’t mean anything at the end of the day.” Growing up, I remember we struggled a lot, but my mom never let us see how it affected her. I brought this up during our conversation, and I asked her what obstacles she faced as a single mother raising 2 daughters. “Finances were a big factor. Everything was dependent on me and making sure there was food on the table and bills were paid didn’t fall on anyone else. Emotionally, I wondered often if I was enough. Watching my kids see their friends with their fathers and seeing them upset broke my heart. A lot of the time I was so drained. Knowing I had to get up the next day and do it all again was so tiring, but I never showed my girls that.”
We also entered the topic of how special motherhood was to her despite the challenges faced, as she was told for years that she couldn’t have children. “Watching my daughters grow up and be able to make good choices, as well as hearing other people compliment my daughters for the goodness of their hearts makes me feel so proud.” I asked her how she balanced being a single mother and taking care of herself at the same time. She replied, “I didn’t have the time when you were little, because everything was up to me to get done. Now that my kids are grown up, I have the time now. My favorite thing to do when I’m not working is to take a nap, but I’ve also begun reading again and taking care of all my plants.”
The discussion of how different our generations arose as well, especially because she was already 37 when I was born. She replied, “there are a lot more job opportunities for you guys. Women were nurses or teachers, and it was very hard for women to explore fields like law firms or doctors. I can also go the other direction and say that you wouldn’t even think of being a male nurse, so the equality now is amazing to see.” “Women are far more independent than when I was growing up. We don’t have to ask permission from a man to do something, we can just do it. There’s no assumption that women were to settle down and take care of their families either. It used to be that if you didn’t have kids, you were either gay or there was something medically wrong with you. Nowadays, women can advance in their own lives without even thinking about when they need to plan for a family if they don’t want to.”In the spirit of Women’s History Month, I asked my mom what this month means to her. “It’s finally time that women get acknowledged for being the backbone of the country. Without women, all these men would struggle to keep up with all the behind-the-scenes things that go on. There are so many wonderful and intelligent women that have been walked over or put on the back burner, and it’s nice to know that there’s a month that these women can finally be validated and credited for their accomplishments.”