As we grow and change, so does our sense of purpose

How My Purpose Evolved From Helping Disabled People to Creative Self-Expression

Crow’s Feet Prompt #50: Purpose

A nine-year-old girl with braces supporting her legs walks toward me with jerky steps, face tight in concentration. When she gets to the end of the parallel bars, a huge smile lights up her face.

And a huge smile lights up mine.

This was it!

This was what I wanted to do with my life. Help people like this.

I didn’t have big words for it at the time.

My mom volunteered at a rehabilitation program near Dyess Air Force Base where we lived. Every week she got to witness that effort and those smiles. Her face lit up when she talked about it. As did mine the day I got to see what she was up to.

At our next base, Mom got involved in bridge and bowling. And that earlier vision faded a bit.

Then it came back.

When I was in the tenth grade, we’d just moved to a big city, Cleveland Heights, with a big, impersonal high school. It took me a long time to make friends.

So I spent my free time volunteering. First at a settlement house in Little Italy. and then at the Jewish Community Center pre-school where my aunt was the principal. In both locations, I did artsy-craftsy things with the kids. And loved it.

Somewhere in there, I learned about a group of teens who volunteered with developmentally disabled kids. Youth Associaton for Retarded Children it was called. YARC for short.

Sign me up!

This was a double blessing. Not only was there a ready-made structure to plug into, but there were girls my age to do it with. Suddenly I had three new friends with this in common.

Now, finally, I also had my life purpose.

I was going to be a special education teacher. We all were.

I even got a summer job at Orient State Institute near Columbus where severely disabled people were what we called at the time, put away. I worked as an activity therapy aide providing recreational activities for children and teens who were incarcerated there.

I use that word because this facility was like a backup solution in a dysfunctional foster care program that warehoused unplaceable inner-city youth. These kids weren’t my clients. They were my age and became my friends. I even got in trouble for being too friendly with a few of them. Boys, of course.

Summer ended and college loomed.

My friends and I looked up which state college had the best training program for special ed — Ohio University — and two of us went there.

I wish I could say we buckled down in our studies, graduated with or without honors, and went on to become dedicated teachers.

That’s not what happened.

We got involved with men. In her case, fellow students. In my case, an anthropology professor. A married anthropology professor.

Losing my virginity and trying pot trumped serving those in need.

Until Nixon mined Vietnam’s Hai Phong harbor.

Then stopping the war in Vietnam trumped everything.

Including going to classes. But it wasn’t just us students. Our professors joined us at the marches and sit-ins, though they didn’t get arrested with us.

College was where I learned Marxism. In fact, a college professor taught me that the proletariat was the place to be if you wanted to change the world. He was a do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do kinda guy.

It made sense at the time.

So I dropped out and joined the working class.

Worked as a nurse’s aide in the pediatric unit of Doctor’s Hospital in Columbus. Lots of kids came in with pneumonia and whooping cough. Little ones in icy cold oxygen tents, chests heaving painfully with every breath.

One day a three-month-old baby came in with a cast from his toes up to his groin on both legs. A wooden bar connected the casts, keeping his legs separated and immobile.

How could a baby break so many bones?

He didn’t do it himself. He had help.

If it wasn’t for poverty and addiction, that unit would’ve had to close.

Being with these children stirred my heart and fueled my passion to change the world.

It also gave me a foot in the door to the medical world.

After a year in Brooklyn where I worked again as an aide in a state institution, this time in physical therapy, I moved to the Bay Area.

I got a clerical job at Highland Hospital so I could join the Service Employees Union and be a part of the labor movement.

One day we were negotiating a contract on the Fairmont Hospital campus where the Rehab Department was located. I got to tour the physical therapy clinic.

This time adults with leg braces made their way along those familiar parallel bars.

Again a light bulb went off. This is it! I want to work here.

And sure enough, a position opened up and I got hired as an occupational therapy aide.

This job fed my heart and my mind as well as my wallet.

One of the therapists and I started a support group for patients whose stroke or head injury was caused by drugs and/or alcohol abuse, and that feeding expanded exponentially.

Not only that. Two stroke patients who attended our group stopped making, selling, and using meth, They turned their lives around and came back as volunteers. Daily volunteers who I got to share an office with. We three became close friends. Watching Henry and Jim connect to and encourage other patients fed not only my heart but also my soul.

So did I have a sense of purpose through all of this?

You betcha!

My sense of purpose didn’t stop with retirement.

Now the coda to this story would be me still volunteering. If not there, at a similar program.

But my curvy spine and weak neck make that hard, even though it would be good for me to do.

I didn’t factor all this into my retirement planning process. I had no idea what a challenge having gobs of unstructured time would prove to be. Not having to set an alarm for 6 am was just the icing on that amorphous cake.

It took a bit to figure out that I needed to update my sense of purpose and make some new plans.

Over time, my interests expanded to include spirituality and writing — spin-offs from being in recovery — as well as improv. So my sense of purpose expanded to include expressing my spirituality and my creativity.

Now that I wasn’t working, I could finally edit my novel and start another one. When I met Shaunta Grimes and joined Ninja Writers, that possibility became a reality.

Now that I wasn’t working, I could also take classes at Stagebridge, a performing arts school for adults 50 and over. I got to try my hand at improv, clowning, and puppetry. I’ve been in shows and showcases, live and on Zoom.

One thing I haven’t done that would connect some of my life threads is medical clowning. You know, like Patch Adams, putting on big shoes and a red nose and playing with and for children in cancer wards.

But now that we’re coming out of COVID, and I’m coming out of my cocoon, why not?

It would be so good for my body, my heart, and, especially, my soul.

Thank you, Robin James, for this purposeful prompt!

Marilyn Flower is a sacred fool who writes fiction, poetry, and blogs, inspired by the practice of SoulCollage®. Her books: Developing Characters: Fun Ways to Cast Your Fiction, Creative Blogging, Bucket Listers. Follow her Sacred Foolishness or SoulCollage® for Writers, and Stay in touch!