I have the passion, I know what it's like, I can do this. And I'm like, “I can do that!” You know, I was homeless. I went on in my career, graduated, and was doing very well, and got an opportunity to work at a foster family agency where I was the administrator, and they asked me to open a stabilization home for kids that transition from a foster home into a higher level of care to stabilize them. I was looking through a nursing journal and thought, “I will be a social worker.” At the end of the journal, it said “nurse social work practitioner,” where they were recruiting registered nurses to become a social worker, and I'm like, “This is it. I had strong inclinations, and I told my husband I would change careers. ![]() And I don't know why I really had an opinion about that particular teenager, she was too young to make that decision, but I did make a connection with my own life. So, she took her last breath.īut what stuck out to me is that I felt a strong feeling that it was the social worker's responsibility to give the mom resources, and she didn't do that. In the capacity that I was in, I felt that if this is what we were about, then I don't want any part of it, because I had to hold this baby as she gasped her last breath and looked at me, you know, for dear life, and there was nothing I could do other than give her palliative care and medication that was ordered by the doctor. I decided in that moment that I didn't want to be a nurse anymore. It took four and a half hours for this baby to take her last breath. I didn't think that she should have that responsibility to make a life decision for her child, because she didn't really understand the full complexity of it. And I felt that it wasn't the right decision. And then I met a 17 year old girl who had twins, and she was faced with a decision to preserve life on the little girl who was considered floppy, in medical terms, or not normal. And I had begun my career working with kids with disabilities in this facility, so it made a full circle. And that's why she ended up in a facility. I now have a full understanding of my mother's process with choosing to preserve life for my sister, but then the task of caring for her proved to be more difficult. You either graduate, or you could have these severe conditions, like cerebral palsy and other disabilities. You know, the kid could grow and mature and develop healthy, even after being in the NICU. So, I got an understanding of the decision-making phase of when a parent had a child that was premature and it's a split second decision to preserve life. We called it the big house because it was a level three trauma unit, and it had 70 beds for these micro preemies. ![]() And I often wondered, but I was too young to really understand.Īs I continued my career in nursing, I got an opportunity to work for the NICU, the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. I knew that she was not able to verbally communicate the way that we could communicate, and she would just cry. And I was wondering, why does she cry so much? I knew that she was in a wheelchair. My mother had placed my sister in a facility when I was younger. I got into some sub-acute care for children with disabilities… but I think it was really more so about my sister, who had cerebral palsy. My professional career started off as a nurse, and I've been a nurse for the past twenty-seven years. I didn't initially know that my life would take this turn. What drew me to that work was really my connection to this population, and personal and lived experience. From nursing to social work, to stabilization home and teen advocacy Q: Tell me about your work and what drew you into this particular field. ![]() ![]() Overcoming Intergenerational Trauma to Promote Healing: Moving Through Grief, Loss, and Love A Catalyst Conversation with Dretona Maddox, RN, PHN, LCSW Founder and Executive Director, Purposely Chosen, Inc.Ĭatalyst Center held a series of conversations with diverse providers and trauma survivors from varied sectors to discuss how to address Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), human-centered approaches to healing, and cross-sector collaboration to mitigate the toxic stress response and curb the cycle of intergenerational trauma.
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