Walking through the green hills of Tennessee Valley bordered by the brash jubilant display of purple lupines and sweet shy hellos of delicate yellow wildflowers while connecting with Melinda, the founder of Women’s Earth Alliance and Amira her right hand assistant I circled back to that place of insight that – yes- service does make one feel good.
I recall a time when I decided at the end of an enviable position at a prestigious bank, commuting to the financial district in Manhattan for 2 years in the process of obtaining an MBA in finance that I was indeed NOT headed in the direction of my soul’s desire. The chords of becoming a medical physician were pulling at my heart strings and in making the decision I moved back in with my mother in Ohio to pursue that next phase in my life. Coming home to Ohio and to my mother’s home after living in New York City right out of college was humbling and somewhat humiliating. At some level it represented to me a failure of the post college launch into the world of being self-responsible, and financially independent. Alas, it was at the time my only option in my world of how to make it all work.
Broken up with my first big love, who remained pursuing his M.D. /PhD in New York City and far from my high school girlfriends who were all having babies I was in the doldrums. What pulled me out was service work. I began working as a home health aide for a meager $2.16 an hour. I went to the homes of the elderly and feeble who needed support cooking , bathing and taking care of themselves, unsupported by their biological families and not yet in a nursing home they were forgotten and in need. I found myself in the homes of little old ladies who were dying of cancer or too feeble to get out of bed.
One woman, a retired successful attorney who had traveled the world, been on exciting adventures, owned prize real estate, and decided not to have children, was my favorite. I took her socks off – dry skin flakes filled the room and her toe nails long and curly, untended to. I bathed her feet, massaged them and as the sun came in her bedroom – the place she spent most of her time, at the age of 92 she said to me – “no one has ever touched me like that before, your hands are golden”. In that moment a healing occurred for me and for her that service work can do.
My service work shifted from being one on one to getting involved with Women’s Earth Alliance. Women’s Earth Alliance asked me to lecture regarding the effects of environmental toxins on health. I remember the day I spent 3 hours on the tail of a previous unpaid 24 hours of research pulling together my 30 minute talk. Something magical was happening inside me. Educating and donating my own expertise for the pure purpose of seeing there was something I had to say that could have an impact on stopping the spray of the light brown apple moth in the San Francisco Bay Area was empowering. The day after I spoke, with several environmental attorneys in the room on the case, the spray was stopped. I experienced the exhilaration of contributing to a larger audience.
On the horizon is a trip in September to an orphanage in the Ukraine to treat children with head deformities with my osteopathic cranial skills. Will this cost me a week with no salary and an airline ticket to the Ukraine –YES – yet my heart strings are pulling and they will be fed deeply in a very different way.
What can you do to bring service into part of your health regime? The Bay area is laden with organizations that are for the good of women and the environment. Maybe you have administrative skills you can volunteer, help a new company get off the ground, networking skills, or as I did more one-on-one contact with a dying patient as in hospice care. Below is a list of possibilities:
- Women’s Earth Alliance
- Global Fund for Women
- Hand in Hand Parenting
- Cause Alliance Marketing – Accelerating Women Entrepreneurs
- Working for Good
- American Cancer Society
- Nancy’s List (also for cancer survivors)
- The Humane Society
Service work is the perfect medicine for the doldrums.
By Jacqueline S. Chan, D.O.
Clear Center of Health, Mill Valley, CA
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