Work

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.

At the end of the day, although I don’t touch a patient directly, I know my job here is to support people and those that work with the patient. For me, obviously, they are my customers. It’s doing what I can to help them do the best thing for the patient. Right? So, there is that indirect link back to the patient, and that’s what we are in this business for. It’s very interesting and gratifying at the end of the day.

I would say that you should surround yourself with a great support system, and not be afraid to pursue what you feel passionate about.  I kind of like laugh to myself when I say that because,  every day I sort of struggle with that, too, because there’s a lot that I’m passionate about and,  it’s hard to just stay focused and go in this one direction. You also have a lot of things to think about, like supporting a family and—but I think that you can find a balance between being secure financially and supporting your family, but also being able to do what you really love. And I would encourage anybody to—women, men, anybody who just feels passionate about something to pursue that even if it means that you might have to do that in addition to something else, which is kind of what I’m doing right now. So [laughs] working in two different places, but I feel really passionate about what I’m doing so I’m just trying to find the balance there. 

I had this one gentleman come in, he was homeless, came into the courthouse. He wore overalls. He had something in every pocket. He had a jean jacket with pockets—everything had pockets. Everything he owned was on him. He had a beard down to here, a walking stick. No hygiene, you know, he lived on the street. It was raining; it was wet. He smelled. You know, it was just horrible.  And the people I work with, some of the people were just like, “Oh, I can’t take this. I can’t do it.” Like, right in front of the person. And this is a human being. First of all, it’s embarrassing, and I remember I took the wand, and I was like, “Sir, come over here,” and I said, “Let me see your jacket.” I was going through his jacket. I’m going through all this stuff, and this is what he owned. It’s nothing to us, but this is what he owned—his possessions—and it meant stuff to him. So, I took it, and I put it in a little box, and I told him, “I’m putting everything in here. Here is a ticket for it.I promise you will get this back.” And I didn’t make a big deal out of it. He goes and does his whatever he had to do in court and about an hour later, he leaves. I give him his box and things. He comes back the next day.  Here’s this homeless guy, was living on the street, like not near the courthouse, I don’t know where it was in Worcester. He walked all the way back that day just to thank me for treating him like a human being. And I was like, "Why wouldn’t I?"

Probably the most amazing experience I can think of was when I was at Children's [Hospital] and I was in when a CI [cochlear implant] got activated. It was a little kid. I think he was 26 months, and his CI got activated and his mom started talking and everyone in the room was crying and it was pretty amazing. 

I would probably tell them to not be afraid to speak up whether it’s for yourself or someone else about an issue no matter what. And then also not to be afraid to take risks because I think a lot of—at least I feel like a lot of women are—we’re not risk takers. And I don’t know what it is, whether we are afraid to fail or we are afraid that we are not good enough. I’m not sure. But I don’t think you should be afraid to take a risk because even if you don’t succeed you’re learning something from it. And again, speaking up because I think that unless you can give yourself a voice, nobody else is going to give you one.

I would say don’t try to do everything.  Do what you know you can do well and do it to the best of your ability. You don’t need to be the women who has a job, and raises children, and plays sports on the weekends, and cooks gourmet meals, can fix her own car, and you know fixes the toilet when its clogged [laughs] and do all these things. You don’t need to have to do everything. If you can do one thing well and find out how you can use that skill to help others, to help your family, to help people who don’t have access to that, then I think you’re successful. It’s all about how you feel about it and how you can use that skill to help others feel just as proud as you are. That’s how I raise my kids and think of success.

Again, nothing is permanent and you are responsible for your own happiness. So I have to focus on that and I can’t wallow in misery when I have two other people that I am responsible for, and I don’t want to be a poor role model for them. I don’t want them to see work is stressing my mom out, “Oh my god, I don’t want to get a job when I’m older.” Because I don’t want them to think that life is tough. I don’t want them to think I’m weak either. So that’s my biggest—it’s not the best thing in the world, but I try not to be emotionally upset around them, and they’re always around.

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.