By Larry Ullian
I used to volunteer at the Cancer Community center in South Portland. I co-facilitated a support group once a month. It was both exhilarating and enervating. Some of the participants were long-time survivors; others weren’t. Some continued on as survivors; others didn’t.
What was common to all of the participants, despite their emotional ups and downs, their anger and their hope, their acceptance and their despair – was their equanimity: an “evenness of mind under stress” according to Merriam-Webster. Despite each participant’s own problems, they each listened to the other’s news – both the good and the bad and offered support, examples, and a strong emotional “ray” that someone else might call love. You could feel it in the room; an intensity, an envelope of caring, an urgency of compassion that I have rarely felt anywhere else.
You can imagine that even on a monthly basis, that sort of experience is emotionally exhausting and needs a place to go. When I first started there the co-facilitators would “de-brief” with a staff member who recognized that there was a need to review, process, and learn from whatever successes or failures we had during the course of the group. That stopped when the staff person left. I didn’t think that would bother me but it did. I began to resent the lack of support I had gotten used to getting. Eventually both of us left because we felt burned out and less responsive and less patient with the groups we were supposed to be facilitating. Maybe I’d still be there if there was someone still there as a mentor, a counselor, a guide, or just a listener.
All of this is to say, that this is not the reason, that this is my last blog. I’m finding that my job, all soft money supported, requires more and more of my attention. Even the relatively easy blog schedule appears to be more than I can do. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do when a volunteer wants to move on. That’s one advantage of volunteering – you can create your own experiences of helping.
Larry Ullian is the Director of Program Development at USM’s Muskie School of Public Service and a featured blogger.
Larry,
I’ve very much appreciated your expertise and insights over the past year. As you have time, please continue to contribute as a guest blogger– you bring a unique, practical perspective to volunteer management that I will truly miss. Thank you for your contributions!