Project Diary: deep impact

Marilyn Washington Harris and Nicky MacCallum

Long, wide-ranging interview with Nicky MacCallum last week. Nicky was one of the leaders at Youth Alive (YA) during my eight years there. If YA’s incredibly innovative and effective counseling services program for people affected by violence in Oakland started as the vision of Associate Director John Torres and others, it was Nicky who built the program, healing-piece-by-healing-piece, person-by-person.

 It was Nicky who found and supervised counselors like Samuel Martinez and Angelina Gutierrez, therapists who were open to a different way of doing things. YA Counselors have to be willing to meet for sessions wherever a client feels safe and comfortable, to take their therapeutic services into the field, sometimes putting themselves at risk for violence. Their healing role sometimes meant simply to be present with someone who was deeply shocked, deeply grieving, or deeply afraid.

The Khadafy Washington Project (KWP) named for Marilyn's son, had come to Youth Alive shortly before Nicky started there herself back in 2012, and so she has known Marilyn for many years. She remembered their first encounter.

“I knew that KWP had preexisted Youth Alive, that it was because of a mom who had lost her child. Then Marilyn was in a meeting with me. And she’s a force of nature, she’s just, she doesn’t need to be loud, she doesn’t need to take up space, just her presence is so powerful. And hearing her talk about what it was like for her to not have anybody in her corner when her son was killed, and her commitment to making sure another family wasn’t in that position, just moved me so deeply. Marilyn at her core has been consistent in her message and who she is, throughout all of the time that I’ve known her. She puts the families first. She’s incredibly creative in finding ways to help them, and she’s forceful when she needs to be, in a really good way.”

All true. But it was something else Nicky said -- when I asked her how Marilyn does her work and yet seems to avoid being re-traumatized by it -- that has resonated with me the most:

“I wish people didn’t call her strong all the time," said Nicky. "Because that’s a burden. I think that she’s done everything that she’s done regardless of strength or no strength. I don’t think it’s the right word to define her, because it implies that it’s not impacting her, and it is, it deeply impacts her.”

So, for Marilyn, helping families of homicide victims may be a way to cope with her grief, a way for her to move forward in a life with grief, but from now on, when I think about how strong she can be, and when I write about her work and her kindness, I need to remember that no matter how well she seems, “it all deeply impacts her,” even after many years of doing the work.

March 3rd would have been Khadafy's 43rd birthday. He was 18 the day he died. For me, Nicky’s reminder serves to make Marilyn’s years of ministering to families and survivors of homicide victims all the more monumental.