Shayla trudged into my small office and dropped into a chair. The space gave a living room feel, the two of us in soft chairs facing each other, but there was no warmth in this setup; Shayla brought a cold front with her, and I wished I had worn a cozier sweater.
I asked the usual work questions as an employment consultant, my job all about helping people get jobs. Shayla offered clipped responses to my questions. She said no employers had responded to her calls or follow-ups. She said people had stolen her resumé more times than she could count. She said she had applied for sixty jobs in the past week with zero results.
A person needed a mental health diagnosis to qualify for my services, and I already knew about Shayla’s struggles from the diagnostic assessment that came with the referral. I recalled my initial meeting with her months earlier. That day, I hoped to learn about her life as I clicked through the intake. Instead, she dozed in the chair in front of me, and I needed to rouse her to ask each question. She mumbled a yes or no, then snoozed again.
Later, I checked in with her social worker who she had visited that morning. No, Shayla had been fine then, but maybe she had taken cold meds? I brushed away my immediate concerns; I would believe the best about this new client on my caseload. I could find a way in, I thought, even though the door appeared to be shut.
But month after month, the door stayed shut. Missed meetings, no responses. Then one meeting but more silence.
Today, though, Shayla was there, awake, and glowering at me in our faux living room. “What’s the point of you anyway? I can find my own job.”
I told her specific ways I’d helped her and named other ways I could support her. “I’m on your side, Shayla,” I said. “We can do this thing together.”
“I take online classes at SNHU,” she said out of nowhere, and I caught a flicker of light inside her statement.
I asked about the courses she was taking, and something chipped away at the frost in the air.
“Can I read you a poem from one of my classes?” She was already rummaging through her bag.
“Of course,” I said.
She pulled a dog-eared photocopy from a green folder. “‘Ulysses’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson,” she said.
The classic poem, inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, told of Ulysses’ voyage to the Trojan War and his return to Ithaca, and Shayla delivered it with an intensity of feeling and sense of peace that soothed my world too—right there in the office.
“‘Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’” One beat of silence, and she replaced the paper in the folder.
My next breath brought me back to the office. “Wow. I loved that.”
Shayla smiled.
“What does the poem mean to you?”
“Ulysses fought battles and suffered,” she said, “No one really knew him or understood him. I feel that.”
“Hm,” I said and sat a moment too long, soaking it in. Shayla didn’t seem to mind.
Up until then, her goals were straightforward for someone seeking work, and my part in it was clear too. But an invisible page turned that day, revealing to me new methods for Shayla—a fresh approach. Maybe poetry and a different timeline were needed. No, of course they were. She and Ulysses first shared the desire to be heard, seen, and known.
I had never written up an employment plan for someone that included steps for both locating a future job and tending to a heroic heart, but I’d find the words somehow.
And Ulysses said, “Come, my friends, ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.”
(Note: The names I use in my blog are always changed to protect the people in my stories.)
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