Raggedy Anne 

Adventures in Caring is a service organization that formed the basis of my approach to all of my other volunteer work.  The goal of Adventures in Caring is to provide company to patients in hospitals.  We dressed up as Raggedy Anne or Andy dolls to provide a figure that represented love and acceptance.  People often asked me if I was visiting the children.  However, while I did visit children, I found it was often the adults that needed the company the most.  

Dissociated from my identity, I could focus on listening to the patients.  There was a specific protocol for working in the hospital.  You would knock gently on the entrance and ask them once if they wanted company.  Each patient’s needs were different.  Some people wanted to listen and some wanted to talk.  There is so much pressure to act one way or another for your family when you are in a hospital that we could provide an outlet.  Each conversation had a natural ending.  Sometimes they lasted only five minutes and sometimes they lasted an hour.  I heard stories of how people fell in love, or what had brought them to the hospital.  I look on those volunteer experiences as a privilege.  People have inner and outer lives.  Volunteering in the hospital taught me to respect how little you might understand that inner life, but how much it can impact the way someone interacts with you.