A Heart as Big as the Mon Valley

March 17, 2021

She stood on the corner of the Boulevard of the Allies and Smithfield Street flapping her arms like a wild goose trying to get airborne. She stood just over five foot tall and was a bit overweight. Her round face was red with the cold and every now and then she shivered each time the wind blew up the wide street. 

There are few places this side of the Arctic Circle that can make a body feel colder than downtown Pittsburgh. The wind whips across the three ice-covered rivers and roars through the city streets, flash-freezing everything in its path. Stepping from a Downtown building into the street feels like plunging into a vat of ice water and she wasn’t wearing a coat. All that stood between her and the icy wind was a colorful sweater and a thin pair of slacks.

Just as it appeared the young woman was about to turn into a human popsicle, a big Buick Park Avenue pulled to the curb. She threw her overstuffed backpack and voluminous purse into the backseat and jumped in reaching over and turning the car’s heater and fan to their top limit. I know this story because the frozen young woman was my daughter, Rachael, and the woman driving the Buick was my wife, Glenda.

Rachael was working as a licensed professional counselor at a non-profit organization in the city. Her car was in the shop, so my wife drove to the city to pick her up after work. When Glenda arrived at the pre-arranged pick-up spot, the corner of Smithfield Street and the Boulevard of the Allies, she saw Rachael standing on the corner.

As Rachael rubbed her hands in front of the car’s heater vent, my wife turned to her frozen child and said, “Where’s your coat, Baby Girl?” and — with a note of motherly concern — added, “You’re going to catch your death!”

“I had to give it away.”

My wife gave her a look that was part quizzical and — thinking someone had robbed her daughter — part Mama Bear rage. Rachael realized she had to explain what she had done.

“One of my clients doesn’t have the money to buy a coat,” she said. “He was freezing when he got to the office for his session. I knew he would have to wait for the bus and had a long walk from the bus stop to his apartment. I didn’t want him to get sick, so I gave him my coat. I have lots of coats and jackets, so it seemed to be the right thing to do.”

“Typical Rachael,” I said when Glenda got home and related the story to me.

“She forgot that she had borrowed one of my coats this morning!” Glenda added, and we both laughed.

Rachael said she wanted to be a counselor since she was just ten years old, when she noticed that different friends had to deal with tough situations such as their parents’ divorces, an abusive alcoholic father, or the expectation to be perfect. “For as long as I can remember, I was always drawn, not to the popular kids, but to the kids who were troubled,” she said. “Something inside of me made me want to help them, to try to stop them from hurting.

Rachael said she believes she was born to be a counselor since she’s always been a good listener, hearing people’s stories and finding out how they are handling them. “I think they liked the way I stood up for them, I’m a fighter and never gave a damn about peer pressure,” she said. “When someone was being bullied or picked on, I just couldn’t help myself, I had to get involved.

“Once they got to know me, they always wanted to spend time at my house. Kids that had a rough time at home saw our house as a refuge. Many of them knew my mother and grandmother because they were Girl Scout leaders. These kids liked the harmony and stability of my family. When they came to our house instead of people fighting, they found my grandmother baking cookies and people laughing and having a good time. Some of my friends still remember you teaching them to sing old-time folk songs like Davey Crockett and The Hobo’s Lullaby.”

“I think I learned compassion at an early age from my mother and grandmother. They always went out of their way to help others. My grandmother was constantly bringing home stray cats and finding them homes. I remember once when some tiny ants built a nest between the bricks in our sidewalk, my Gram didn’t want anyone to step on them, so she put a lawn chair in the walkway to protect them.”

Rachael even gave me some credit for her compassionate approach to life, “I saw how you were always bringing something home for the people you worked with or for their kids; books and toys or something else you thought they would like. My grandfather was always taking his tools and helping somebody fix up their house. In our house, helping people was as natural as breathing.”

Like many people in her field, Rachael has struggled with mental illness, which led her to become a counselor in order to better understand the bipolar disorder and clinical depression that she was diagnosed with herself. “Every day is a struggle,” she said. “It turns out that helping others is one of the best therapies. It is too easy to convince yourself that you are the only one in the world who feels this way. It helps to help others.”

Most of the people who encounter Rachael would be surprised to learn that she suffers from depression. She always seems to have a smile on her face and is a good conversationalist. She wears colorful clothing, and her office is filled with toys and motivational posters. She hides her own problems well and only opens up to her own counselor, but she has long felt anxious about life.  

“When I was about seven, I had a sleep over at a friend’s house. The next morning after church, their family stopped at a cemetery to visit a relative’s grave. I saw an old stone with a carved lamb on its top. Confused, I thought maybe someone had buried their pet in the cemetery. They explained that a lamb on a tombstone meant that it was the grave of a child. That hit me hard. It was the first time that I realized little kids, like me, could die, not just old sick people. I was constantly afraid of dying after that.”

Despite her own challenges, Rachael has no regrets about her choice of careers. “Sometimes when I’m up to my elbows in paperwork, I fantasize about becoming a photographer but on the whole, I like what I’m doing. Working with people’s problems can be frustrating, successes can be few and far between. But every once and a while, I feel like I’m making a difference in one of my client’s lives.

“It’s hard to break through to many of my clients. I work for a community mental health service. Many of my clients are there because of a court order or to get access to their medications. Many of them don’t want to be there so it’s hard to get them to open up about their problems. Recently, I was working with a teenage boy who suffers from ADHD and is struggling with his sexuality. His parents were not happy to have a gay son. After several sessions, the walls finally came down and we were able to discuss his real issues. It was very satisfying. One good session like this makes me feel like what I do is making a difference.”

Rachael is popular with her clients and is well-respected by her peers and supervisors. She mused about what it takes to be a good counselor, to set aside your own problems and take on the pain of others.

“Obviously, a good counselor has to be a good listener but also they can’t judge their clients. We hear a lot of sad, and some very scary, stories. I’ve earned a reputation as ‘Rachael the unshockable” because nothing a client tells me ever throws me off my game. I have worked with people who have long histories of drug use, who have sold their bodies to buy drugs or have been to jail. One of my favorite clients spent thirty years behind bars for murder. He was involved in a drug deal gone bad as a young man. He woke up next to his dealer’s dead body, now all he wants to do is become a barber. Who am I to judge what they had to do to survive, my job is to help set them on a better path.

“I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life. Someday, I would like to have my own private practice. I am a natural empath, I can sense what people are feeling. Even when they try to hide their pain, I can try to help them overcome their problems. It is a God-given gift and it would be wrong not to put it to use. For me, being a counselor is not a job, or even a career, it is a calling.”

- Jim Busch