Wendy Scott: Healing From Personal Loss Through Volunteering
A short walk down a serene hallway for grief counseling at Pathways of HopeSM in Dayton was life-changing for Wendy Scott.
While mourning the unexpected death of her husband, Jim, she was having a hard time coping.
“Well, it threw me for a loop,” Wendy said. “I didn’t really function for a year. I was just comatose pretty much, and I cried continuously.”
At the suggestion of a friend, Wendy sought counseling with Ohio’s Hospice. As she was being escorted by a volunteer for the much-needed session she had an epiphany of sorts.
“Whistles went off in my head,” Wendy said. “I thought, ‘This is exactly what I need to do. Exactly.’ ”
Wendy went through the classes and started volunteering. It was a transformative decision that gave her a sense of purpose.
“To tell you the truth, [volunteering] helped heal me more than anything else and also the counseling that I had there,” Wendy said. “I think I went for almost 13 months, and my counselor was wonderful. I mean, I didn’t go every week, but every three weeks. She was fantastic. I started volunteering and it honestly helped me heal. It did. It really made me back into a human being.”
For the last couple of years, Wendy has been a Sunday afternoon fixture at the front desk, compassionately greeting and helping family and friends visiting their loved ones.
“I just found a sense of purpose again, and I don’t know, but it just healed me,” she said. “It did more than anything could ever do. Any counselor, any anything. And my friends even noticed, they go, ‘You’re just different.’ And I go, ‘I know, I just am healing from volunteering at hospice’, and I really enjoy it.”
Wendy’s parents were hospice patients in the early 2000s, so she understands what it’s like to be a visitor. Through that experience, she provides superior care and superior services in her own way. Whether through small gestures or grand moments, Wendy focused on helping herself and others
“I know just how people feel when they walk by me and the look on their face. I just understand how they feel,” Wendy said. “And they must know I do, because they’ll come over and hug me, and I’ll get up and hug them or squeeze their shoulder and tell them how I give them my sympathy. And I don’t tell them, of course, of my experience, but I just can understand how they feel. I really do. It’s almost like telepathy or something. I just get how they feel. And it breaks my heart. But yet, if I can be of any comfort to them, I will be. I really will.”
These meaningful moments help Wendy exemplify Ohio’s Hospice passion for Celebrating Life’s Stories®.
