Empowerment luncheon leaves attendees with hope
Hundreds of women and a few dozen men gathered in The Woodlands Friday to hear messages of hope and also raise funds for a local charity.
The Interfaith Community Clinic hosted the fifth annual Women Empowering Women luncheon on March 2. Attendees—the vast majority of whom were women—listened to inspirational speeches while raising money to support The Woodlands-based The Interfaith Community Clinic.
Missy Herndon, president and CEO of the clinic, gave a warm welcome speech, thanking the many sponsors during her opening remarks.
“I want to thank each one of you for your commitment to making our community the wonderful place that it is, where neighbors help neighbors,” Herndon said.
The clinic provides basic medical and dental care, counseling and patient services to qualified, uninsured individuals in need.
“The clinic serves men, women and children who would otherwise not have access to health care because they do not have insurance. It is important to note that more than 70 percent of our patients are women— women of all ages and all backgrounds,” Herndon said. “These are hardworking individuals who are doing their best and come here for basic medical and dental care, something that many of us take for granted,”
Herndon said as the local community continues to grow, these needs grow as well.
“We will continue to meet the needs by staying strong and steadfast to our mission, which is to improve the quality of life in our community by providing assistance and offering services that otherwise would not be accessible,” she added.
Author and guest speaker Jeannette Walls said she personally knows what it is like to not have access to health or dental care—or even basic necessities such as food and indoor plumbing. Walls wrote The Glass
Castle, which details her life growing up in extreme poverty and the tale of her emergence from her challenging childhood. Her novel is a New York Times best-selling memoir and was recently adapted into a highly acclaimed motion picture.
Walls described how her father had been fired from his job leaving the family had no income. Her family moved from one place to another, finding abandoned sheds or sleeping on the beach. When her father became an alcoholic, the family would often go hungry. When there was food, Walls said she and her siblings had to cook for themselves. When she turned 17, Walls ran away to New York and began a new life on her own.
Walls eventually became a reporter and her life returned to normal— including having indoor plumbing and being able to pay her utility bills. Walls had left her past in her home of West Virginia and transformed into a New Yorker, she said.
Then she heard from her mother and father: they had moved to New York.
“I thought I could be the woman without a past. The woman from nowhere. But the past has a way of catching up with you,” Walls said.
Walls described how she had grown up ashamed of where she came from and the poverty she lived in. But it finally became time to face the truth and share her story, a personal awakening she said that led her to write The Glass Castle.
In one anecdote, Walls told attendees about Christmas when she was 5 years old. Her father told her and her siblings to look at the stars and pick one. Walls chose the brightest, which happened to be the planet Venus.
“Dad explains that Venus wasn’t a star; it was a planet. I wanted it anyway and Dad said, ‘What the hell, it’s Christmas. You want a planet, you got a planet.’ And he gave me Venus,” she recalled.
The holiday moment was one of her fondest memories with her father, so Walls shared the story at his funeral. But her inspiration was tempered by her older sister who said that it was a meaningless gesture because their father was giving away something that didn’t belong to him in the first place.
“She is absolutely right. (It) was a meaningless gesture. It was (Dad’s) slick way of getting out of having to do something for us,” Walls said. “But I was right, too. It was a priceless treasure. It is whatever you choose to make of it.”
Walls told attendees that like the non-existent gift from her father, life is whatever people choose to make of it. Although her father never followed his dream of building a mansion one day—he encouraged Walls to face her fears and chase her dreams.
“I believe that’s the most valuable gift you can give to somebody, is the hope to believe in themselves and a vision for their life,” she said.
Another speaker at the event was Merle Collins, a patient at Interfaith Community Clinic, who said she was once at a point in her life where she had no hope.
Collins bravely told the crowd how she got married later in her life and had a baby who was diagnosed with autism. At that point, she said, her life began to change.
“Not only was I his mom, but I was also his caretaker,” Collins said.
She had left her job to take care of her son. But after an unexpected divorce, Collins said, she found herself unable to return to her profession and struggling to support herself and her child.
“Circumstances piled up and I found myself in an extremely stressful situation. I ended up in the emergency room being diagnosed with extremely high blood pressure—a very dangerous situation. I realized I was going to have to have ongoing medical care for a chronic condition, and I knew I couldn’t afford. So here I was. No income. No medical insurance. And in dire need of medical treatment. On top of that, I also found out—to my surprise—that I was a diabetic,” Collins said. “Dealing with life was difficult enough and then to find out I’m sick on top of it. And I thought, ‘If something were to happen to me, who was going to take care of my child?’ I was in what I felt to be a hopeless situation.”
The emergency room staff informed Collins about the Interfaith Community Clinic and she began to gain hope.
“It has truly been a Godsend to me and to my son. I have a medical home now. I was able to get control of my blood pressure and my diabetes. I took the education classes, which have taught me again to take care of myself first,” Collins said. “And I’ve learned ways to help myself stay well. The clinic has been a tremendous amount of help to me. You (who support the Interfaith Community Clinic) have given me the future. And by giving me that you gave it to my son.”
To learn more about the Interfaith Community Clinic or make a donation, visit http://interfaithcommunityclinic.org/.