Careers

When Passion Meets Vocation

Stories Careers When Passion Meets Vocation

Ashley loves her job. In fact, she loves it so much, she says she’d do it for free.

“I basically get paid to be a cheerleader,” she says with a smile.

Ashley’s actual job title is Community Mental Health Worker. She has been with Communitas Supportive Care Society for a year, supporting people who live with mental health challenges as they work towards their goals in life so that they can be independent in community. It is work that Ashley finds deeply rewarding.

“My favourite part of my job is watching people overcome things, seeing them change right before my eyes,” Ashley says. “It’s so cool.”

Ashley (right), with Kendra who manages the service program where Ashley works. Kendra loves the way Ashley advocates for the people she serves and celebrates their wins. “She is an incredible person,” Kendra says.

Ashley comes to this work with a unique perspective. While she has never had a formal mental health diagnosis, she knows herself well enough to understand that she deals with challenges. Her self-awareness enabled her to find help when she needed it and she’s grateful for the way therapy has given her tools to live life fully.

The Canadian Mental Health Association indicates that 1 in 5 Canadians live with a mental illness. As people age, those statistics increase; by the age of 40, 1 in 3 indicate living with a mental health challenge.

Ashley says her dog Panzer has been a faithful, healing companion. “I love his unconditional love,” she says.

Ashley’s life bears this out. Members of her immediate family have struggled with severe depression. In the midst of the pandemic, both her mother and her partner died by suicide as a result of mental health challenges. These experiences have impacted her deeply.

“It was brutal to lose them both,” she says as she wipes tears from her eyes. “But honestly, my kid, my dog, and my schooling were the the things that kept me going.”

Ashley’s daughter has been a grounding force in Ashley’s life.

Education is one of Ashley’s passions. It was her partner who encouraged her to leave her job in trucking and go back to school. So, at 38 years of age, she did just that and discovered that she loves learning.

“My schooling experience has helped me learn what my own values are,” she says. “It’s one of the reasons I came to Communitas, because the organization’s values align so strongly with my own.”

Ashley is nearly finished a double major in Psychology and Criminal Justice, an accomplishment of which she is very proud, and rightly so. When she began her return to school, she really struggled but a professor steered her towards the Academic Learning Centre where she found help. Today, Ashley tutors other students. Her long-term goal is to be a judge but she has other dreams along the way.

“I’d love to tutor in a prison setting,” she says. “I’d love to be a lawyer.”

Ashley spent many years working in the trucking industry. It’s a place where she learned to advocate for herself.

She is also passionate about serving others and has found that her education and vocation compliment each other perfectly. So much of what Ashley learns in her courses is directly applicable to her own life and to how she sees the people she serves.

“Through my classes I’ve learned how to ask good questions, how to be an active listener, how to build respectful boundaries,” Ashley says. “I’m learning how to help people understand that there are going to be good days and bad days. I’ve also learned that gratitude goes a long way and that there is real power in community.”

She’s also learned the value of self-discovery, allowing the people she serves to learn from their own experience, by helping them discover the tools they need to accomplish their goals.

“When I hear a person I serve say, ‘I’m so much more confident now, I believe in myself’, that’s just the best,” Ashley says. “I want to ensure their autonomy and try to make sure that my passion for helping doesn’t interfere with that.”

As she reflects on her life experiences and how far she has come, Ashley is simply grateful: for her daughter, for the opportunities to learn, and for work that is deeply satisfying.

“I am so fortunate,” she says. “I don’t take that for granted.”