- April 25, 2024
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How Janine Chichersky, one face in the unemployment crowd in Palm Coast, is finding hope at nursing school.
For most of her life, Janine Chichersky, a 50-year-old mother of two, had a happy and fulfilling career.
In managerial work for 13 years, she then became an entertainer, creating with her husband “The Goose Family,” an educational and interactive theater show which they took across the country for 15 years, performing in elementary schools and theaters, publishing a book and producing a TV pilot which was nominated for a regional Emmy, in Miami.
“When you’re doing something you love,” she said, “it’s not really about the money.” Her work gave her a sense of identity, she said, made her feel as though she were giving back and affecting people — a feeling that quickly faded after she and her husband moved to Florida eight years ago to be more centrally located for touring, and the economy changed.
“If you’re not able to afford teachers,” she said, “you’re not able to afford a (theater) program.” “The Goose Family” went from doing 60 shows a year to one or two. Chichersky became unemployed, and stayed that way for three years.
“I realized all of my experience meant nothing,” she said. Her husband moved to Winter Park to find work in the art scene. She visited the Center for Business Excellence here, and then through a friend landed an entry-level job, which she hated but stayed at for a year and a half.
“I feel that when you’re facing unemployment and looking at what’s around you … you do tend to give up,” she said. “You feel like it’s hopeless.” She said she was grateful for the job, but her philosophy was, “There are other choices out there.”
She called the Flagler Technical Institute for information on the patient-care-assistance nursing program. “Making that first call and having someone talk to me who did not make me feel that I was stupid, or too old, encouraged me to take it seriously.”
Chichersky has been a full-time student in FTI’s two-month nursing program for only a week now, but she says she somehow feels new. After receiving her certification, she’s planning on advancing into the one-year, licensed-vocation nursing program.
“I had to educate myself on something else to get into a career,” she said. “When you’re 50 years old, sometimes you do have to go back and acquire a skill.”
After school, Chichersky hopes to work in either home health care or hospice, and maybe even develop a Mother Goose program for nursing homes one day.
She teared up. “Hope. I think for a while I kind of lost that. It’s hard … Especially when you’re older, you really feel like no one wants you.”
But now she sees opportunity. She has confidence. “If I’m giving 100%, then (FTI is) giving 100%,” she said. “I don’t see how (I) can fail.”
