"Only after many years have I come to realize that the challenge of work is in daring to use my whole self in the struggle for growth. Without that growth, I would be living an ‘unlived life.’" Celia Gilbert

With simplicity, grace and style, Merle Updike Davis, in her moving and informative memoir, traces for us her struggle for growth and connection. Providing context in the political, social, and economic realms, she seamlessly weaves together the personal and professional strands of her life. The consummate social worker, she understands the mutual influence of the outer and inner, the environment, and the person.

As she takes us through the epochs of her life, we become acquainted with her hardworking, socially responsible, yet fun-loving parents. Based on some of her early experiences, we get a foreshadowing of the woman the young Merle is to become. We accompany her from her earliest days on her family’s farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, through her many ever-widening geographic and developmental moves, as her personal journey evokes the tenor of the times.

She tells us how she found her calling in social work and describes her early job experiences with the poor, in child welfare and adoptions, and her graduate education with some of the greats in Social Work. We travel with her to Richmond, Virginia; Washington, D.C.; New York City; San Francisco and Berkeley. We track her evolution as a psychiatric social worker who eventually takes a leadership role in the early community mental health movement during turbulent times in Berkeley, where she opens a private practice, ultimately specializing in work with the elderly. From the inception of her work life through to her final retirement, Ms. Davis presents vignettes of clients she worked with, bringing their personalities and situations to life, indicating how alive they remain in Ms. Davis’ being.

Ms. Davis captures the very nature of clinical work and how our very souls are touched by the people we work with. In her fluid text, Ms. Davis demonstrates the nature of work and how it embodies the very stuff of life, replete with its requisite challenges, demands and crises, potential for growth or stagnation and despair. On the personal front, we learn about Ms. Davis’ friendships, the men she dates, the man she marries, the family she has and doesn’t have, her finances, health problems, even her taste in clothes. We gain a broader sense of her many talents, from painting to gardening, and, as she grows older, her attempts to balance all aspects of her life. We appreciate the impact her psychoanalysis had on her, and how it helped to hone her natural ability to contemplate and look within.

Using her impressive capacity for self-observation, Ms. Davis grapples with some of her central organizing conflicts in the areas of intimacy, depression, loss, and need for connection. We watch Ms. Davis as she continues to develop throughout the stages of her life. This honest chronicle of her life is yet another indication of her continued development.

It’s a privilege to witness Ms Davis’ ongoing personal and professional development and to share in the various permutations of her vital involvements in the arenas of love, work and play. She serves as a model and inspiration. At the end of her narrative, she returns to the area in which she grew up. Coming upon a stream, she tells us, "As I looked into the dark mirror of the stream, reflecting my life back to me, the chronological form disappeared. . . .In the swirl of time, past, present and future became one. I saw a dynamic mix of light and shadow, of the oscillations of the inside and outside, conscious and unconscious self and other, individual and society."

Gilbert, Celia. (1977). The Sacred Fire. In S. Ruddick, and P. Daniels, (Eds.), Working It Out (pp.306-322). New York: Pantheon.

Ties across Time: A Woman’s Life in Social Work by Merle Updike Davis is published by Creative Arts Book Company, Berkeley, CA.

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Samoan Barish, M.S.W., D.S.W., former Dean of CICSW, is currently a faculty member. She is in private practice in Southern California.

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