Called to Listen and Learn

When I began my volunteer time in Chillán, Chile in 2008, I believed I was there to serve with the local people and that I was not there to do anything for them. I intended to honor the abilities and leadership in this community where I was but a temporary guest and helper, and I saw this as one of the many meanings of humility in being an HM volunteer. I also believed that getting outside of my home country and culture would be one of the best ways to better understand my self and my home. Lately, I have been reflecting on how my understanding of service and justice work has continued to grow since then.

I love what Jennifer wrote in her post here a few weeks ago, “Service is yearning to understand the experience of others in the hope that we can all be made better by that understanding.” True to this, some of my most treasured memories from Chile are the times when people opened up to me with trust and honesty, telling stories about their fear, pain and losses living under the dictatorship in the 1970s and 80s. And the times I was invited into family gatherings around the fire where multiple generations played guitar and sang traditional folk songs and current pop hits. And the times we went to festivals with musicians and artists expressing a vision of a better world. These were all sacred opportunities to listen, witness and learn from the experiences of people with lives, histories and identities different from my own.

Me in front of Casa Ursulina, the women's
community center where I served in Chillán, Chile.  

When I first came home to Canton, Ohio from Chile in 2010, I remember seeing my home community through new eyes. I remember the reverse culture shock: how hard it was to feel comfortable again in a place that had once seemed familiar but now seemed strange. I went looking  for and found like-minded community in new pockets of my home town that I had not been connected to before: a Unitarian Universalist church, a yoga and dance studio, meditation groups, artists, gardeners, local food activists. I also had the chance to work for nonprofits and to continue to travel frequently for a few more years, and then to try out working in the public and for-profit sectors.

For the past two years I have been grappling with how to serve the wider world while caring for my daughter as a stay-at-home parent. In this chapter of life, I often feel frustrated with how to take meaningful action in response to the many justice and peace issues that I hear about every day in local and national news. Lately, my approach has been to return to listening and learning. One of the biggest influences in my journey lately has been a friend who is a fellow mom I met at an exercise class. She is a Black activist, social justice educator, and the founder of her own grassroots organization. Conversations with her and other friends who have different identities and lived experiences than I do have challenged me in new ways and pushed me to continue reflecting honestly and deeply when I am shocked, confused or made uncomfortable by someone else’s truth. I have also been seeking out podcasts, audiobooks, reputable news sources and scholarly articles. My own understanding has widened and deepened so much regarding the complexity of social justice issues, intersectionality, and the pervasiveness of racial injustice.

Like being a guest volunteer in Chile, being an ally to people who are marginalized in the U.S. requires me to be respectful, humble, and attentive to the experiences, stories, and leadership of the people with whom I wish to serve. By continuing to listen to and learn from diverse voices within my own home community and country, I am finally starting to understand what it means to be a member of the dominant culture as a white cis woman and how my own identity affects how I should become involved, when I should speak and when I should listen. More than anything, I have been reminded that I will always have more to learn about service, justice, and my role in our shared pursuit of a more equitable and peaceful world.

I was blessed to serve in Immokalee, FL, for most of 2001-02, and finished my year with two months at Villa Maria, working on the organic farm. 

I learned two valuable life lessons during my volunteer year with the HMs (well, more than two, but there are two I'll talk about here).  The first was about not being afraid to ask for help when you need it, and the second was about being open to what God has in his plan for you (even if it seems wildly different than what you have in mind).

During my year in Immokalee, though I loved the work I was doing at the after-school program, with the domestic violence shelter, and with Habitat, I was struggling.  I felt overly emotional, exhausted, and cranky - all the time.  It was hard to complete daily tasks, and I was not the roommate I wanted to be for my community members.  Eventually I realized that I needed to leave Immokalee and come home to Ohio - and figure out what was going on.  It was a hard decision - I felt embarrassed about how difficult I had been to live with, and felt like I'd somehow failed by not making it through the year in Florida.  But asking for help was the best thing I could have done - it turned out that I needed to begin taking medication for anxiety and depression. Sixteen years later, I still take medication, and I am willing to share this experience with others who might be hesitant to address their own mental health issues.

And asking for help led me to spending the last two months of my volunteer year working on the organic farm at Villa Maria.   The Villa is just 20 minutes from my parents' home outside Youngstown, so it was perfect - I could be at home with the support of my family, and still complete a full year of volunteer work.  To be honest, I don't remember being really excited about the idea of working on the organic farm.  But that's what God had in mind - and, as usual, he was right.  Spending my days planting pumpkins, weeding vegetable beds, braiding garlic, and soaking in the chance to be outside all day long was just what I needed.  And I was lucky enough to develop close relationships with other farm volunteers, and with Frank Romeo, who is one of the world's sweetest and gentlest humans. God knew exactly what he was doing.

After that year, my path took me to Denver, then to St. Louis for graduate school, and back to Ohio, to Cleveland, where I started my career as a Licensed Social Worker.  In December of 2016, I became the Director of Clinical Services for the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center.  We serve survivors of all ages with individual and group therapy, court and hospital advocacy, outreach in the community, and prevention programming for middle and high school students. I am certain that my HM year has greatly influenced the decisions I've made in the time since, and will continue to do so long into the future.  And I continue to remember to ask for help when I need it, and to trust God's plan for my life.