Act As If

I was dismayed to find my (then) four-year-old daughter’s lovely dresses piled in a heap on the floor of her closet.  This was not the result of carelessness but a pointed demonstration of where her priorities lay. Just a few feet above the dresses, she had carefully hung her assortment of swimming suits, evenly spaced to fully occupy the prime real estate of her closet. 

Had she been left to her own resources, I can guess how she would have preferred to spend her Sunday afternoons.  Down came the swimsuits and back went the dresses. Thanks to our family culture of weekly church attendance and the welcoming friends and teachers we meet there, now there’s nowhere else she’d rather be.  My daughter came to love going to church so much that when she happens to feel sick on Saturday nights, she prays hard to feel well enough to go to church the next day.  It seems her prayers are always answered.

Our relationships and environment have a huge influence on how we live our lives.  Our success in reaching our goals has everything to do with how effectively we arrange our environment and recruit people to support us in our efforts.

I am very inspired by a woman I learned about while reading Influencer:  The Power to Change Anything by Kerry Patterson et al.  Her story follows:

Mimi Silbert

(1942 –      )

“My job is to be the chief believer, to believe in them when they don’t believe in themselves,” says Mimi Silbert about the 1,500 ex-convicts who currently reside at one of her Delancey Street communities.  Over the past forty years, she has transformed 18,000 felons into upstanding contributors to society.

There are only two requirements for becoming a resident (slash-employee-in-training) of Mimi’s Delancey Street Foundation: to have hit bottom and to be willing to change. 

Mimi sees the people (commonly labeled as thieves, addicts, even murderers) she brings to her Delancey Street Foundation not as a “menace to society” but people who only need an opportunity to learn how to care about something besides themselves.  She teaches them to care by giving them real responsibilities, not only for themselves but for the success of other people.

Mimi creates a highly structured environment that holds people accountable for their actions.  As soon as her residents learn personal accountability, they are given responsibility to train someone else.  They become “team players” and build something bigger than themselves.

Delancey Street accepts no government funding and seeks no philanthropic aid.  Mimi has no staff other than her residents.   Though almost none of them had previously held a skilled job for longer than three months, they learn to be self-supporting and live off the profits of the businesses operated by the Delancey Street Foundation.

Half the people who dine at the Delancey Street Restaurant don’t realize it is fully staffed by ex-convicts until they read the back of their menu.  By then they’ve been so favorably impressed by the dignified maitre d’ and their gracious waiter, that they are sure their servers are exceptions. 

They aren’t. 

Mimi’s environment and the coaching relationships it fosters create a place where people who have been labeled “human garbage” can find their talents and soul.

We’re lucky in the fact that our people have hit bottom.

We ‘act as if’ we are all the things we want to become.

We ‘act as if’ we’re decent and caring and bright and talented.

And we eventually become those thing.

Mimi Silbert

Her story can influence everyone’s story when we learn to ‘act as if’ and build environments and relationships that help us find the “Gem in the Geode” of our lives.

Sources:

"The Mimi Silbert Story:  Re-cycling ex-cons, addicts and prostitutes,"  by Jerr Boschee & Syl Jones (http://www.socialent.org/pdfs/MimiSilbertStory.pdf)
See also http://www.delanceystreetfoundation.org/president.php to find several more links to televised spotlights and articles about Mimi Silbert.

Mothers

When my daughter was 6-years-old, she shoved four stuffed animals inside her shirt and proudly announced, “I’m having four triplets!”  I explained to her that four babies would be quadruplets—triplets are “only” three babies.  When I began to expound upon quintuplets and sextuplets, she interrupted my impromptu lesson, wailing, “I’m uncomfortable!”  Like any mother expecting quads, she was very anxious for them to be delivered.

Motherhood brings with it a wide range of emotions:  joy, sorrow, excitement and  exasperation to name a few.  I was alarmed to learn that mothering can bring out the worst (as well as the best) in you.  It grieved me to discover that I had so much yet to learn in life.  My sister then welcomed me to the “motherhood club” by stating, “When I became a mom I realized, ‘Ahhh, I get it!  Mom and Dad only started the work of raising me—it will be my kids who finish the job.’”

My own mother had this magical ability while I was growing up:  no matter how broken life felt, she was able to help me fix it.  I knew I could always count on her.  What is more, she passed on her belief in me that I could accomplish whatever I set out to do.

The sacrifices involved with mothering help us grow through both the delightful and the tearful times.  One of the lessons I treasure most that I learned from my kids is to step outside my stress and laugh with them.

"A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary."
-- Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Mother Bickerdyke
(1817 - 1901)

She was a liability to the establishment—nosing around where she had no business, taking supplies she was not entitled to.  She was outspoken and defiantly skirted the mandated procedures.  The general in charge exclaimed in exasperation, “I can’t do a thing in the world” about her.

But her “boys in blue” called her Mother.

When her infant daughter died, Mary Ann Bickerdyke took the first steps down the road that would become her life mission.  She studied medicine to learn how to help others from dying needlessly.  She later put her medical knowledge to work as a volunteer nurse in the Civil War.

When she learned of the deplorable condition of the medical unit at the Union camp, she led a fund drive to buy much-needed supplies.  Once she delivered them to the Union base, she was appalled at the lack of sanitation so she refused to leave.  She ignored the army regulations forbidding her presence in camp and she cooked, cleaned and washed with a confidence, care and comfort that charmed her way into the soldiers’ hearts.  And their recovery rates increased.

But she pushed it too far when she insisted on roaming around the battlefields looking for the wounded.  When a surgeon asked her, “Under whose authority are you working?” she affirmed, “I have received my authority from the Lord God Almighty.  Have you anything that ranks higher than that?”

Apparently General Sherman agreed because he conceded, “She outranks me.”

She spent four years traveling from one battlefield to the next with the Union Army.  She was appointed to serve on the sanitation commission.  At first she was offended when they offered to pay her for something she was determined to do anyway.  But when she realized her wages could provide her with the means of buying extras for her boys in blue, she finally accepted her wages.

At the end of the war, Sherman asked her to participate in the Grand Review of the nation’s capital.  She led a corps of soldiers in the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue.  When Sherman offered her a seat on the review stand she refused, preferring to pass out water to the soldiers.

After the war, she continued serving her veterans and fellow nurses.  She helped hundreds work through the legal issues so they could secure their pensions.  She, however, did not receive a pension for over 20 years. 

Her greatest honor was engraved upon her tombstone:  “Mother to the boys in Blue.”

Resources:

Baker, Nina Brown, Cyclone in Calico: The Story of Mary Ann Bickerdyke. Boston: Little, Brown, 1952.

DeLeeuw, Adele, Civil War Nurse, Mary Ann Bickerdyke. New York: J. Messner, 1973

Greenbie, Marjorie Barstow, Lincoln’s Daughters of Mercy. New York: G. P. Putnam, 1944.

McKown, Robin, Heroic Nurses. New York: G.P. Putnam, 1966.

See also: Livermore, Mary (1888). "XXIV". My Story of the War. http://www.ourstory.info/library/1-roots/Livermore/story09.html