Before I introduce this episode’s podcast guest, I want to take a few minutes to honor my dear friend Meredith Gelfand, who left this world too soon and unexpectedly at the age of 55. Meredith dedicated her life to helping others.
I met Meredith over 20 years ago at the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging; my first real job after college. PCA is Philadelphia’s Area Agency on Aging, part of a national network of nonprofit organizations that help older Americans get services they need to stay in their homes. While at PCA, Meredith went back to school for her master’s degree in social work, then continued on to a variety of social work roles.
I love the way she described her mission on LinkedIn: “to advocate for the dignity, rights, and well-being of my clients, and to support them in coping with the emotional, social, and practical aspects of their health conditions.”
Social work is not necessarily activism, but it can be. This episode’s podcast guest, Susie Bash, described social work as “helping others to take an active role in their health and wellness and in the betterment of society as whole.” It helps people get through life’s challenges: mental or physical health challenges, food insecurity, homelessness, abuse, adoption, bullying. Social workers provide access to resources like community legal services, food pantries, meal delivery, mental health services, home health services, and more.
In order to do that in a non-judgmental way, social workers gain an education in how societal structures impact individual experiences. Students of social work learn about the -isms that disempower individuals like racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, and ethnocentrism. These programs even offer a track for social policy in many cases.
It’s easy to idealize social workers, because they are often tasked with supporting the most vulnerable members of our society, but in some ways social work is like any other job. You show up, do the work, and get paid. You don’t have to pass a compassion test to be a social worker (in most cases). But Meredith would have been in the top percentiles of such a test. She was passionate about helping others, whether in her professional or personal life.
I wish I had interviewed Meredith about how she used her experiences and perspective to empower her clients, but maybe how they showed up in her personal life is just as important. Meredith amplified information that was pro-justice. If she saw injustices, she drew attention to them, whether it was related to health insurance coverage, the decreasing affordability of home ownership, or free lunches for school children. She generously gifted the Life of Libby book to multiple friends, not only because she was proud of me for writing it but also because of its focus on peace and justice. She had friends from a variety of different backgrounds and perspectives, but she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind.
Meredith touched so many lives with her support and encouragement, including mine. I’m sure she would have touched many more if she had lived longer.
Coincidentally, this episode’s podcast guest is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, but the main reason I invited Susie Bash to the podcast was because of her perspective on the power of community and listening.
At the beginning of our conversation Susie describes the diverse range of clients she works with and some of the resources that she frequently recommends, like GriefShare and Art-Reach. But we move pretty quickly into how Susie empowers her clients. Susie describes how our culture can teach people not to trust themselves and instead rely on experts to lead the way. When clients ask her what she thinks about something, she’ll often encourage them to reflect on what their gut tells them. I love her line, “You’re the expert on you.”
This is an empowering belief, especially in the medical arena where “experts” might explain away physical sensations that don’t match their expectations. Susie also encourages her clients to “take stock of how you’re living and how you want to live,” helping people step out of feeling like a victim and step into where they can make choices about how their life goes.
So often, when we experience ourselves as a victim, we look for a “savior” who we believe will make our life better. From my perspective, this is how politics can start to feel more like a religion than a process for shaping our government. When we are empowered to be the expert on our own lives, to make choices that change how we experience life, then we do not need to fully invest ourselves in an external savior, whether a political or even religious leader. We can be more objective about the leaders who seek our support, and we can be more open to other perspectives.
That’s not to say we need to go it alone. I love the way Susie balances self-empowerment with community connections. A great example is the listening circle she organized a couple of weeks after the 2024 election. It was a space where attendees could share what was in their hearts and connect with others. This is the kind of listening and connection that Susie also seeks to provide to her clients. It’s easy to get discouraged, but when we experience being part of a community, we feel stronger and better able to cope. Not surprisingly, the power of community was an important theme in Libby’s experiences working for peace & justice.
At the same time, we need to interact with people who are different from us. How we handle those situations can make a big difference in how we experience the world. Susie shares an example of working with a client who was having trouble with her son. He recently came out as gay. And he was liberal, while her client was not. But this mother didn’t want to lose her son. Susie encouraged her to be an intentional listener and provided resources to develop that skill based on the work of Harville Hendrix.
A variety of forces try to undermine our ability to listen to each other. “Divide and conquer” is as present today as it has been through the ages. Imagine if everyone took non-defensive, intentional listening to heart. Imagine if we refused to allow differences to get in the way of our relationships with friends and family; if we undermined “divide and conquer.” This kind of listening could be one of the most powerful tools of a healthy democracy.
I found Susie’s final thoughts inspiring and I’ve included a few of them below:
Do what inspires and supports you.
Focus on the helpers—and being a helper.
Don’t lose hope.
You are here for a reason.
You matter.
Your life has meaning and significance.
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