A Veterinarian’s Memoir of Trauma and Healing

IN THE COMPANY OF GRACE

A Veterinarian’s Memoir of Trauma and Healing

By Jody Lulich

Mental health awareness is a topic that has gained more attention in recent years on all levels. That wasn’t the case decades ago, especially in the African American community. Such matters weren’t discussed; as a result, those secrets did more harm than good, manifesting into what is commonly known as generational curses. However, despite the dysfunction, there is healing, as Dr. Jody Lulich shares his story in In the Company of Grace: A Veterinarian’s Memoir of Trauma and Healing.

He begins his story in 2012, when he is about to receive the Morris Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in veterinary medicine. He is conflicted about the acceptance speech he is to deliver—does he give the accepted reason for his path to becoming a veterinarian, or the true reason, which is a source of guilt and shame for him?

Lulich then takes us back in time to his childhood in southside Chicago. Born in 1957, he is the son of an African American mother and a white first-generation Croatian American father. The early years of his childhood have fond memories of his parents. However, those memories deteriorate as time goes on into intimate partner violence, alcoholism, and mental health issues. In 1967, he and his older brother Gary lose their mother to suicide when she drinks a glass of antifreeze, a memory which lingers with him throughout his adult life.

Despite the subsequent parental neglect of his father, Lulich wanted his love and approval, which was withheld and kept their relationship strained. However, he was not without the compassion of neighbors like the Galvins, who became part of his found family. His career path takes him to the Tuskegee School of Veterinary Medicine, where he meets Grace Hooks, the woman who becomes the mother figure he lost upon his own mother’s death.

Grace shares her stories about her own experiences with racism and Jim Crow, such as Cornell University’s policies prohibiting African Americans from living on campus during the 1930s, and her home serves as an example of what she overcame in her life as well as her successes.

His road to tenure at the University of Minnesota was not without its challenges when it came to disparities, but he had allies such as Dr. Carl Osborne. And added to the secrets of the family life he kept under wraps was his own fears of coming out as a gay man.

Lulich’s memoir is raw, introspective, and honest. Though he dealt with the tough issues and how they impacted his life as an adult, there are those lights of healing, especially with Grace (Miss G) Hooks. His description of certain procedures with his patients, and his compassion for them, speaks for itself when it comes to the reason he received his awards. He reminds us that healing is an ongoing process, which starts by letting go of the secrets that keep us in bondage, thus taking our power back.

He is currently a professor of veterinary clinical services and internal medicine at the University of Minnesota, holding the Osborne/Hills Chair in Nephrology/Urology, and is the director of the Minnesota Urolith Center. In the Company of Grace will be available through the University of Minnesota in April 2023.

Thank you, Jody, for sharing your story and your strength, and for sharing Grace’s story. If we don’t share our stories, who will?