I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no more hurt, only more love. Mother Theresa
I’ve seen things during my time that there are no words for, and now, at the age of 50, when the amount of loss and trauma in my life is staggering and seems too heavy to bear, guess what makes it lighter? Guess what takes away the sting of betrayal, the stunning pain, the sad and heavy heart?
Serving children.
I just completed my training to become a Wish Fairy for the Make-A-Wish Foundation and I’m over the moon excited to begin granting wishes! Anyone who knows me knows I love children and fairies, and granting wishes, so this is a perfect fit for me!
And I’ve found over and over again in my life, nothing soothes the soul and heals the heart like service work.
Humility, compassion, care–throughout my life, my volunteer work has always been my form of “church’.
Holding a child with AIDS was my sacred work. When I touched their faces, I felt like I was touching the face of god, or grace, or whatever you want to call that boundless unconditional expansive love.
Through my work, I found that surrounding a soul with love and care had the unknown side effect of surrounding my own soul with boundless love .
How tricky is that?
You would think it would be draining or depleting to go to a shelter to work with sick or homeless children but the secret is– it’s actually fulfilling beyond your wildest dreams to hold those children in your arms.
Plus, it’s a weekly slap in the face that puts your own life into perspective really fast.
So when it seems like “the shit is hitting the fan”, as they say, and it seems my life is falling apart with loss and deep soul trauma, it is time to ramp up the compassion and service, and let the sacred moments work their magic.
As a teenager, some of my most memorable moments were my volunteer experiences working with the Special Olympics or delivering gifts to the State mental hospital children’s wing where they let us play with the kids until two of them became violent and were dragged out of the room.
When I turned eighteen, I wanted to be a movie star, a pirate, a princess, a lawyer, or a nun.
I studied Mother Theresa and worked at the Food and Shelter Coalition in Provo, Utah and inquired about what it would take to join the Sisters of Calcutta. The scratchy underwear and no-hot-water thing made me turn elsewhere to fulfill my need to serve.
Back in those days, it wasn’t the click of a few buttons to find a way to serve. After I moved to Hollywood, I went to the United Way’s offices and walked up the dark dank stairway with the smell of mildew wafting through the air, and into an office where a small man in glasses thumbed through dog-eared index cards to find me a position. He sent me to Daybreak, a shelter for mentally ill homeless women, but when one of the volunteers had her hair lit on fire by a resident, and the place closed down, I went back to the office and told the man I wanted to work with children. He then called CBA.
CBA, Caring for Babies with AIDS, was a residential shelter in LA where I volunteered weekly for ten years. I did everything from reading stories to washing dishes to playing tag to rocking newborns to sleep. Some kids stayed there for years. Others were in and out in a couple of weeks. When I arrived, CBA had two little houses side by side with a yard between them. Disney animators had volunteered to come in and paint murals over the walls. We initially had children 0–6, but as protease inhibitors came out and the survival rate went up, our kids grew into teenagers. I created a Creative Dance Therapy for the kids and it was incredible to watch their transformation. We re-enacted the Wizard of Oz. They LOVED pretending to be whirled around in a tornado and then we’d pretend to wake up in a magical land. We danced to everything from Barney to Beyonce and the kids loved it, even the teens.
Of course there were children that were immobile or too sick to dance. For one eight-year-old who was blind and very very sick from the disease, I would go into his room, caress his head or hold his hand and sing softly to him. For four-year-old Raven, who couldn’t move below her neck, she would sit propped up by pillows and I’d sing “Miss Polly had a Dolly” or “What if All the Raindrops were Lemon Drops and Gumdrops?”, and she would smile and laugh and watch me with big brown eyes and gorgeous long lashes.
Music and dance time were their time to be kids again–to forget about hospital visits and endless meds, drug addict parents and siblings who didn’t survive.
Raven was at the shelter for a few years, and on so many meds, that finally they decided to take her off them. I showed up and no one was in the room with her. They made me wear a gown and a mask and I went in to stand next to her crib, put my hand on her heart, just like I’d seen Mother Theresa do in pictures, and sang softly to her, all her favorite songs. She couldn’t see my face because of the mask, but she could see my eyes, and there was so much love in that room. She looked terrified, but seemed comforted a little bit by my presence and the songs… It was hard as hell to not fall on the floor sobbing, but I stayed with her as her lungs filled with fluid and she took her last breaths.
My mother cried when I told her about Raven. She shook her head and said, “I’m too sensitive. I could never do that job. How can you do it?”
A better question for me is, “How can you not?”
I went to too many funerals during those years with tiny caskets and balloons, and every time I thought, “This is too much, I need a break,” another child would show up, like Gloria.
Gloria showed up with patches of missing hair and eyes that could barely able to open. She was 4, but couldn’t walk and when I held her it was like holding a feather. I circled my fingers around her tiny tiny wrist, and sang softly and to her. She vomited on my shoes, and I gently cleaned her up and knew I was not going to take a break.
That’s how I ended up there for ten years.
Over the last several years, while raising my own children, I have volunteered all over the place, with teenagers with cancer in the New Orleans hospital, (I still have Kung Fu Fighter ringing in my head all these years later after competing with the teens, playing it over and over again on guitar–video game style–they always beat me.) I have volunteered at schools and museums and spent the last five years at Horizons for Homeless Children at shelters around Boston.
Through it all, I’ve been endlessly inspired by another unknown side effect of service work–the other volunteers. There are armies of people out there quietly doing volunteer work, unsung heroes from every walk of life who show up and help, who raise their hand when someone says they need help. I love these people. I am inspired and amazed by these people.
And another thing I learned, that I have found so very very important as I go through my own staggering heartbreaks and loss: I learned to let go. The children showed up at CBA, and I didn’t know if I would be loving them for a few hours or a few years, or many many years. I had to be okay with that, just love them for this eternal moment, “a handprint on my heart” as the song says. I will love and love and love over and over, knowing it may only last a day, or an hour, or a hundred years, but I’ll still love just the same.
More tricks–the more I love, the more I am filled with love. How does that happen? I don’t know, it’s mystical, and I’m okay with the mystery.
I’ll just keep loving.
And over and over again, I so deeply resonate with Mother Theresa’s quote: “I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, than there is no more hurt, only more love.”