I first met Mary when I started working at APW in 1999. Despite how she may have been perceived by others, she is perhaps the one person who has touched my life the most during the work I’ve done here throughout the years.

 Mary represented what society would label as filth, worthless or a deviant because she did not fit the norm, she was a prostitute, a drug user, and was HIV positive.  She was not pretty – in her own words – she had missing teeth, gray skin, and it was rare when her hair was clean and combed. The only way she felt she could be validated as a woman was through sex, and drugs. But you know what I’ve asked myself time and time again?  How can you not have passion for what we do? With all their problems, and issues, and challenges, every time our clients walk through that door or call us on the phone, their humanity calls out to each of us, looking for validation through us, asking us to recognize their humanity when no one else will or does.

On our first meeting Mary came in wearing her famous cowboy hat and leather jacket.  She accessed mental health and case management services at the agency.  I  remember the countless times  after that first time when the mental health provider and I sat with her many nights after hours and talked with her,  listening  to her rhetorical cries, because no one other than us seemed to care.

The holiday seasons were extremely difficult for Mary, and the year 2000 was no different, she came in crying hysterically because she wanted to see her daughters. However, her family had shunned her because of her HIV status and the way she lived her life. That Christmas The only way she could see her children was through a window in her mother’s house while her children played in her sister’s house next door.

Every year she would plead with her family that she wanted to spend time with her daughters. “I won’t infect them. I just want to hold them and tell them I love them.” But that opportunity was never given to her by her family.

By the next holiday season rather than sitting across from Mary, and helping her through her pain, I would be standing in front of her casket. You see Mary was murdered that Christmas day, her voice still recorded in my voicemail cancelling our appointment for Christmas Eve, and the call to reschedule never came in.

Mary died that weekend, killed at the hands of her boyfriend for $170 that her pimp had told him she had stolen from him, she was left to die with a crushed her skull, under a dirty blanket with her mouth, hands, and feet bound.

We attended Mary’s funeral.  It was amazing to see her lying there in a beautiful cashmere sweater, with her hair and make-up done professionally. There was no sight of her trademark cowboy hat or leather jacket. There were pictures of her surrounding her casket – pictures of her smiling with beautiful white teeth and clean skin, pictures of her before the disease and drugs and hard life. Those pretty pictures were her family view of her. But you know what? They didn’t know her.  They didn’t know about her pain, what she wanted or needed.

As a provider, my heart was filled with sadness because I knew this was just one of many Marys I would encounter through my work. I had to learn how not to personalize the pain I felt at her death. While I only knew her in instances of crises – those instances showed me so much of what love and humanity should be and how it is represented in a person.

She taught me to look beyond the external aspect and appreciate the person – what every person - has to offer. She offered me the true meaning of humanity. That despite her imperfections as she called them she had a genuine need to give love even if it was in the wrong manner. She deserved acknowledgement as a human and to give that back to other people.

Her family came from wealth and status, they drove new trucks and vehicles, but nothing of that world mattered to her, because they couldn’t accept her as she was. Had she been given the opportunity, she would probably be alive today. All she wanted was a chance to feel human and have that worth acknowledged and appreciated.

The message I want to convey to providers is that we will encounter many clients like Mary, and we should never lose sight of what brought us to do the work we do, because it is the driving force behind our ability to help these individuals that society looks upon as worthless. We give them value, a voice; we give them the status they are so desperately seeking. We become many things to them that society as a whole refuses to give them.  Society has too many norms and standards that they feel they can’t measure up to.

As a provider, it’s important to be able to have a support system in place when you lose a client – no matter how that loss occurs. And each of us has to identify what our limits are – how much we can handle and what we have to let go of in order to continue to be effective. 

The best journeys in life provide us with a new way of seeing the world.  My work at AIDS Project Worcester has been part of that journey which has taught me to be thankful for the life that I have, and the life of others. 

Priscila