‘We carry that hope for them’: Nashville team members share approach to care
11/21/24 01:00:pm
In heavy work, connecting with others can not only lighten the burden, but it can also lift you up.
“There’s just so much weight on my shoulders sometimes,” says Virginia Grecco, therapist in Nashville.
She says her passion for mental health care came at a turning point in her life when a high school classmate of hers died by suicide.
“I don’t want anyone else to go through that alone,” Virginia says.
She says a sense of connection is critical for both her patients and her teammates.
“There’s just something about Nashville,” Virginia says. “I have worked at a lot of different places, and I've never once felt like this much connection to a team before. I can look over at my right-hand woman over here, and I’m like, ‘yeah, we’re fine. We got this.’ It’s a team effort.”
Seated next to Virginia, Heather Ray, behavioral specialist, echoes her coworker’s sentiments.
“We're just really close. We’re a family,” Heather says. “We are blessed to have an incredible boss, Ryan Mueller, who has worked his way up from the bottom to the top, and his empathy is out of this world.”
In Nashville, the two say there’s plenty of camaraderie and jokes. You can see that clearly in photos of Halloween and a spirit day when everyone dressed up as Ryan!
The team has fun while always focusing on what matters most. Virginia says she and her team discussed their values, and it boiled down to a theme of hope.
“Our team approach is carrying the hope for folks until they can carry it themselves,” she says. “We know that people at this level of care are not going to come in with a lot of hope. They're in the thick of it with their depression and anxiety and everything. But we carry that hope for them until they can start to see it and hang on to it themselves.”
Hope lifts Virginia and Heather, too, in daily interactions, big and small.
“I always look for progress,” Virginia says. “Even if you felt super defeated, the smallest wins can be your take-away for the day, like if a kiddo cracked a smile.”
“When a kid or a family member reaches out after treatment to let us know all the progress they’re making – I don’t know how to put words to it,” Heather says. “At the end of the day, when our life is said and done, our connections with other people and the love that we gave while we were here, that’s our legacy.”
