Politics/Community Involvement

I think one of the things is a lot of the time when people go do volunteer work or feeding the poor or hungry, it’s like you go through and cook the food and it’s like they think they are a servant and that’s what people think they’re job is and that’s wonderful. But what I think is, what I’ve come to learn from my mom and dad is that it’s not about feeding them. It’s like sit down and have a conversation because these people are just down on their luck and in a blink of an eye that can happen to anyone.  So my favorite thing was always talking with the people I got to serve it was like, “Okay here’s your food, but more importantly tell me about your life.   Tell me about your family.” I think that goes back to the background that my mom and dad instilled in me. But it’s also has to do with probably my time at Holy Cross and that whole question of who am I to others and  how can I help serve?

Especially working at Abby’s House. We have a shelter for homeless women, with or without children and then we have SRO’s [Single Room Occupancies]–58 for women and then 17 bedroom apartments for women with children. We do have a lot of women that come in broken, they come in domestic violence, mental health or anything like that there and there’s a lot of great resources for women here. This is a place where they feel safe. They feel comfortable. Just getting people to believe in them, and with that support we have a lot of women who are back at school. A lot of people are doing volunteering, a lot of people doing self-help groups and stuff like that there. I have to say, the community’s very good as well. We have the education part too, and we’re in partnership with a lot of different agencies to help women grow and feel good about themselves. We have a lot of women volunteers who have been very successful in business, encouraging these women and also giving them the skills they need for the outside world. We have a lady that comes in and does computers with the women. Another one that does resumes; we have a woman that does financial planning with them. All these skills, that before these women never had, give them more confidence in themselves.

You have to be able to stand on your own two feet and I think you need to encourage your kids to do the same thing. So for me, I think that probably the best advice is to really just take control of your life, control the things you can control, and leave your kids with good lessons.

I guess I don’t want anyone else to feel as though they aren't worthy and that somebody has their back. So I want everyone—I want all the young girls that you get to work with to realize that they have a lot of value and that someone really cares about what they are doing.

To me you're a life learner and that’s what I want for my daughter and anybody else.

I honestly couldn’t be happier right now. Growing up, I never thought I would be in the Worcester area. I never thought I would be a lawyer. I never thought I’d be working with my father. But I feel like my days are magic. I get to go to work, get paid, feel proud to be a professional, and then make a difference in the community, and work with amazing women while doing it.

When I was working for the medical society, a lot of the community outreach I did, over and above working with the clinics directly, was with what I called, ‘shadow communities.’  Those are people you wouldn’t even know exist in this city, but there are thousands of them.  You know, all the people who work in the kitchen of a restaurant, that kind of thing.  And I’m sure—I never asked, I never asked—but some are illegal, most are not, just trying to seek out a living on the first generation level so the kids can do a little bit better later.  So those are the people I worked with.

There's actually a quote that I love and I never get it quite right, but it’s something along the lines of,  "Life is the constant act of juggling balls. You just have to know which ones are glass." I think that is so beautifully said because my family is always that one I can't drop. But the other ones, sometimes it might be that I don’t get to pay attention to the Republican debate or I don’t get to go listen to this. It doesn’t mean that it’s not important, but it just, it didn’t rise to the top quickly enough.

I would say that women have made a tremendous amount of progress.  Some things haven’t changed, the way we love our families, and the sisterhood that happens among all of us is--that hasn’t changed over the years and generations.  All of that still remains.  When you educate a woman, you educate a family.