Daneen: I have been working in the healthcare environment for 35 plus years. Started out more from an operational perspective and that's kind of where that's stayed for me. Worked for Mary Free Bed Hospital in Grand Rapids for 10 years.
Nancy: Wow Daneen, I feel like we have a lot in common because I retired from Mary Free Bed. I was a care manager there and that was sort of at the end of my career, but I worked on spinal cord and cancer rehabilitation. So, we probably know a lot of the same people. You know, it's good to talk to you because I feel like especially people in healthcare, you know, they have a unique experience, you know, in terms of seeing what people need and what's out there and what's available. So that's super cool that you're doing that. I'm interested to hear too about who's been one of those influential people in your life.
Daneen: A physician who was in the medical group with me, he was the one that really saw things in me, helped me to gain my position as the Chief Operating Officer for the medical group. But one of the things that he really helped me with was finding out as a valuable thing in my life was I learned that I needed to seek to understand first, listen, and then try to identify common grounds where we could start a conversation. And that is where I'm in my journey where I'm like, okay, I need to understand why do people feel the way they do so I can understand it. Was it an exposure to something? Was it how they were brought up? Was it something that was something more personal to them on that? That's where I feel like I want to continue my journey because I feel like the environment right now is very toxic, the political environment, and it doesn't need to be. It really doesn't. I just feel like there's so many things in common, but we don't talk about those. We only talk about our differences. And so that's really where I want to keep learning more about myself, but then also being exposed to others that do have those differences so that I can maybe have a conversation with them.
Nancy: Probably one of the most influential people in my life when I was growing up was my minister, Pastor Paul Radloff. I grew up in the Lutheran church. I remember my mother; she met a group of ministers when we moved to the area in Northeast Ohio. And she said one of the reasons she liked Pastor Paul was she liked how good looking he was, which I thought was so funny, but he was very involved in the civil rights movement. And one of the questions he asked us when we were young, and I still remember this, was he said, what's the opposite of love? And I remember, you know, we were kids, I was confirmed, and we were like, well, it's hate. And he said, no, it's fear and its fear of the unknown. And that always stuck with me. And my parents weren't super religious. I would consider them Republicans, the old Republicans, like the Ronald Reagan, George Bush. But I think socially they were pretty progressive. And they taught me that I could do whatever I wanted to do, that I had a right to choose of what happens to my body, those kinds of issues. So, I don't ever remember having sort of this definitive thing like Republican versus Democrat. It was more about be a good person. I don't know about you, but I always knew from the time I was young that I wanted to do something to help people. I can remember in third grade feeling sort of this little girl that was overweight, and people were making fun of her. And it was like something in my heart, like a gift. And I don't mean that like snobby-like, but my mom used to say to me, oh Nancy, you just want to save the world. But it was kind of like, you know, after I got a degree in English, I'm like, I don't really want to do this. You know, I really want to work with people. And it's exhausting, you know, to feel like that. But I think it all kind of stemmed from my early childhood and my parents and Pastor Paul. We have a lot in common, I feel like.
Daneen: We do, we do.
Nancy: We really do.
Daneen: Background for both of us.
Nancy: Yeah.
Daneen: Allow to see people at the most vulnerable states and really try to see them as a person versus just somebody in the emergency room. And I think that speaks to, I think, to both of us, is to be invited into their most vulnerable state, that we could become a trusted person, that they could give us that opportunity. Let's go a little deeper.
Nancy: Okay.
Daneen: Describe in your own words, your personal political beliefs and issues that you are passionate about.
Nancy: Wow, I mean, that's, I've always been left leaning in terms of my beliefs. I remember early on feeling very strongly about the right to choose for women. For me, the personal is political, and I was involved in the women's movement in college. It kind of saved me, I think, in terms of, I grew up, I didn't feel really good about myself. I always felt different. And I'm not quite sure why. I always had terrible body image, and I remember looking back and thinking, oh my gosh, your body was fine. I think as I got more into social work and healthcare, I realized that people have the right to have healthcare. They have the right to choose over what they want to do with their bodies. Who they want to love. I had a severely disabled daughter and that was a terrible strain on my marriage. She was my first born, she was severely impaired. After that, I had numerous miscarriages. I finally had my son who was premature, but he's an adult. He's healthy now and married. After that, I ended up getting pregnant and my doctor said, you cannot have this baby because I'd lost babies at like 20 weeks. I had to terminate that pregnancy. I didn't have any guilt about that. I remember thinking to myself, if somebody wanted to talk to me about abortion, I wanted to say, you know, I wanted that baby more than anything. And they have no right to tell me what I can do with my body because my doctor literally was saying to me, you need to terminate this pregnancy. I had a safe and legal abortion at six weeks. My insurance paid for it at the time. You know, so when I hear people talk about that issue, I think you have no idea what's gone on in people's lives. No idea. Consequently, my husband and I went on and we adopted a little boy after that and he's in the Navy now. But that's always been a really personal thing for me and that's where I am. Tell me about you, go.
Daneen: Oh, well, you know being raised in a pretty Republican family, both parents actually, but my strong political views I have learned over the past, I would say, six to eight years. Well, first of all, I was Republican, and I married a Democrat, and we always talked about our different points of view. And we recognize that we probably just canceled each other's votes out because we had some differences of opinion. But as things have happened over the last six to eight years, it really forced me to look at both parties and try to re-identify where I land in those and where I've really kind of landed is that I'm an independent thinker and issues do matter to me and there are ways that we can work through some of these issues. And I truly have strong opinions about women's rights. I see reproductive rights as kind of underneath those women's rights. I feel like the equality of women in the workplace, I felt that inequality because I was a woman and so that's always been something that spoke to me about women's rights. As I look at some of the values of both Republicans and of the Democrats, I can sit pretty close into the middle because there will be some that actually are the same in both parties.
Nancy: Sure.
Daneen: But how they actually go about addressing it has a very different feel to it. And so, I end up sitting in the center and really I will vote my voice by individuals, not by a party.
Nancy: Do you and your siblings, do you have arguments about anything?
Daneen: We definitely have difference of opinions. Now, most of the time, if there's an issue that comes up, everybody will kind of share, well, this is my point of view on this. And we don't have anger or anything like that. And some of those conversations are, we decide we're going to agree to disagree, but we respect each other's points of view. And especially because I am pro-choice, there was obviously in the 2020 election, there was a Prop 3 on the Michigan (ballot) for supporting of the overturn of Roe v. Wade to create that within our own constitution, state and Michigan constitution. And that was an issue that I felt strongly about and did some organizational, relational organizing. And that really opened up a lot of my conversations with my friends and my family, because obviously we had differing points of view. Each of them had a different experience, and that was what I enjoyed understanding is not just you have that view, but where did it come from? What are your thoughts around the topic? So, I really enjoyed doing that work.
Nancy: We sound very similar in many ways. I don't have those people to bounce things off with, family. I do have friends that have large families, and they've cut people off because…
Daneen: I know.
Nancy: And I said, Oh my gosh, they're your brother. You know, can't you just agree to disagree, and life is so short. I know here to say you lost a sibling and I did too and they're not going to be here forever.