The Power to Heal: Sister Mary Agnes Dombroski at TEDxPiscataquaRiver

thank you in the early 1980s when I was a young teenager I used to ask myself two questions I used to like to go for long hikes and think probably not a normal teenage activity but I did and the first question was what is the purpose of my life and the second question was am I going to make a difference now the answer to the first question over the years of my teenage years I came to in kind of a logical way and I would think about okay my origin is God he created me and my goal is God because I want to be with him forever in heaven and so that kind of led to my following a call to become a sister as you can see so that was that actually was the easier for me of the two questions the second question am I going to make a difference I found that one much harder and I didn't have any answer by the time I was a young adult entering the convent and what I really discovered was really it's a question that's answered every single day based on how I respond to what's going on around me to the person in front of me that's how that's how I make a difference in very small little ways every single day now fast-forward 10 years early 90s now I am sent by my religious community to st. Charles Children's Home in Rochester to become a childcare worker it was really really difficult for me partially because I had absolutely no experience working with children and in fact when I was a teenager I didn't even babysit I just it just it wasn't I mean I would came from a small town there just weren't people available and I was enough not something I felt drawn to so no experience with children and not only that but the children I was taken care of had very severe behavioral issues and I was really lost at st. Charles we work with children with really really severe behavioral issues and those issues come from a number of reasons and I just was overwhelmed and if I if you would have asked me in the early 90s am I making a difference okay I would have said no because the best I can do on an any given day is just get through the day and if at the end of the day none of these girls have killed or hurt or injured one another then it's a miracle it's definitely not me so I really was feeling like wow I was discouraged very profoundly discouraged now but that was until this child came and now we're now we're in the mid mid 90s and the first day she arrived she was off the Richter scale with her behavior I would say she was the most behaviorally disturbed child that I ever worked with on the very first day she many times went into these frenzies of screaming and shouting all kinds of vulgar words and hitting and kicking and spitting and hair pulling and she was just out of control no one wanted to get near her and by the end of that day I was exhausted and I was thinking how on earth am I going to survive taking care of this child so we by bedtime we brought my partner and I brought the children to bed I brought her over to her bed showed her where it was I helped her get in I tucked her in just like we do with the children every single night I made a little cross on her forehead and I said I'm asking Jesus to give you a blessing we talked the way that's all that's just what I did when I would talk in the children and then I got a rocking chair and I sat down next to her bed now I was sitting there so that she wouldn't get out of it and start running around hitting people but I sat there and my partner was reading a story and after couple of moments she said to me something that really was to change my life she said sister Mary Agnes this is my first safe night now that was the first moment that I was ever in this work able to see past behavior and see the person and it blew me away I said wow I had been very occupied with her behaviors all day I was like wow here's a person here she's hurting she has a past history she has families now the next day I got a call from her guidance counselor at school and she had been requiring or needing counseling every single morning from the beginning of that school year I don't remember what month it was but every single day and the pattern was always the same she'd come into the counseling room go straight for the doll on the shelf take the doll and she would start hitting it and beating it against the table and beating it against the wall and she put it on the ground and she'd kick it and she would stomp on it and then the session always ended where she would take the doll and put it on a chair and the guidance counselor had a happen to have some string or some rope or something in that room and she would tie it up really really tight to the chair and once she got all that out of her system every single day then she would be ready to go back to the classroom and this was a pattern now the guidance counselor called me that morning and said today was different I want to tell you what happened she came into the room and she said can we play something different today and the guidance counselor of course said yes she said you're gonna be me and I'm gonna be sister Mary Agnes so she made the counselor get up on the table there was an activities table there found something in the room to serve as a pillow okay what God made her lay down on the table the the doll a blanket on the shelf so she took the blanket put it over her tucked her in took a chair sat down next to her by that table and she looked at the counselor and said this is the way sister Mary Agnes tucks me in at night now that was the beginning of a daily little routine that she would go to go through in the counseling sometimes it was me talking her and sometimes it was something else but from that day forward it was a sister Mary Agnes game every every every morning at school now I share it because most of the time we don't know if we're making a difference why because most people are not gonna tell us well they'll tell us if we're making them miserable but they're not generally they're not gonna tell us if we're really making a difference most of the time and a lot of the times we don't necessarily see any change in their behavior that indicates any kind of a difference we're making this child taught me that Wow even if someone because she never told me that I made her a difference but see I had this little window in and it was very very powerful for me now one of the things at st. Charles that we we do a big part of our philosophy is we really try to look past the behavior to the person and we highly highly value every single person has infinite value in our eyes and we really try to help the children recognize that they have tremendous Worth and value but we can't ignore behavior of course were behavior specialists we wouldn't have a job so we don't we don't ignore the behavior however we recognize every behavior has a reason people behave in certain ways for reasons a lot of times the reason has to do with their feelings and emotions okay so what do we try to do we try to really be present to the children and their and try to reach them at the level of feeling and emotion and this is where we get into the running program so that's not me that sister Mary Rose the reason one of the reasons we found running to be so powerful with working with these kids is two reasons actually first of all if you're thinking okay first we want it to be about the person okay so if I'm you can't send a seven-year-old though out and say okay go run for miles it'll be good for you you can't do it that it's not safe so we do the activity with them all right so we're running with them and what does that say to the person to the child you're so important to me then I'm gonna spend the next hour just doing this activity with you and nothing else so running right they're very powerful and then a lot of conversation happens and emotions come up because what does it do you know it's a physical outlet you're getting energy out and a lots of times with emotions there's a lot of energy around that and I want you to think about something you know it's much easier to be present to someone and in a sense feel like you're being helpful to someone when they're sad okay then when they're angry now think of a child okay they're playing they fall down they scrape their knee they come they're crying you got the big tears coming down their cheeks it's like oh honey I'm so sorry and let's go get a band-aid let's go clean it up and that compassion it's easy what about when they're angry we got angry kids these are kids that throw chairs across across classrooms and assault teachers and hurt other children what do you do with the anger what does anger do it pushes pushes you away push it you know I don't want anyone to get near me when I'm angry so this is the the running what it has provided for us is a way to be present and allow them to express their anger but see they're not going to hit anybody because they're trying to keep up see so it's it's turned out to be very very powerful tool in terms of helping them to heal now it's not the only tool that we use but it is a very powerful one I just want to share another example of another way we try to be present to children and this is a story from sister maximilian i mean much in pretty recent actually she was driving with one of our kids and he started using some vulgar language i just said a few things and so she ignored it and he upped the ante a little and said more vulgar words we have had some really choice ones which probably wouldn't be appropriate for me to repeat here at least so i won't repeat him but anyway so so he she still ignored him so then he was really wanting a reaction okay lots of times kid do kids do this so he really upped the ante and he got himself worked up so he was betrayed he was just really yelling oh these vulgar words and he just didn't you know he just kept going finally he stopped for breath and at that point sister maximilian pulled over the car turned it off and turned around and looked at him and she said i just want you to know the sisters will never speak to you that way and he got it and from there she was able to launch into a discussion with him okay let's talk about how you're feeling right now he had not lived with us very long he was checking the place out wanted to see how he would react he was scared he had lots of feelings there so that's just one example of how you know we really try to look past the behavior of course there's consequences to behavior we don't ignore behavior all times this was an example where it was appropriate to do that for a reason but but no matter what they're doing the person behind that behavior is very very valuable okay and that's that's really the core of our work and we really have this sense of okay if we can create an environment where a person really feels safe enough to be who they are and to feel what they are feeling then that is the place we're healing can begin we're not therapists okay we're in a we have students during the school day we're teaching we've we've done residential so we're in a kind of a parent/teacher role okay but we ourselves have to be comfortable with who we are okay and be present to them and that really is the power I like to think about the fact going back to the story of this of this girl and that the very first girl who was who made it such an impact on my life you know it was little things I did that she would reflect the next day and I like to think of that if you think of a lake like when it's really really calm you know how sometimes the water is like a mirror and you take a rock and you throw it I can't throw it very hard because I'm just not you know I don't do as much baseball as the other sisters but you throw it and that that it lands okay and there's these ripples and the ripple effect goes out and there's an impact okay now the problem with today oh I think just life in general we usually don't have a clear lake that we're throwing our activities into usually the water is pretty choppy and rough and there's a lot going on but we throw that rock okay through the little things that we do the little faithful activities little acts of kindness then we are making an impact even if we don't know it so if I ask myself right now am I making a difference well the answer really depends on how am I going to respond to the next person I meet when I go back home how am I going to respond to the children am I gonna stoop down and tie the shoe of someone whose shoe needs to be tied am I gonna stop and listen when they're sharing to me something that happened at school that day and I've got other things to do am I going to give them my attention those are ways that I can make a difference thank you very much you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 485,850

Rating: 4.8365207 out of 5

Keywords: USA, Education, New Hampshire (US State), ted x, Activism, Sister, ted, Nun, Inspiring, tedx talks, Community, \Making A Difference\, Portsmouth, TEDx, English, tedx talk, US, Children, ted talk, \Portsmouth NH\, NH, \Social Change\, ted talks, TEDxPiscataquaRiver, Running, tedx

Id: beNIT5qXxvo

Length: 15min 25sec (925 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 03 2013