The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Social worker there for support at Mercy
Shelley Yavornitzky is used to helping people who are in a scary situation in her job as a clinical social worker at the Mercy Cancer Center, 41201 Schadden Road in Elyria.
“It is recognized that it’s important to have a lot of emotional support for people when they’re going through an illness,” she said. “We provide a lot of emotional support for people.”
Yavornitzky meets with patients and their families and attempts to help them through the challenges that a cancer diagnosis commonly brings. She said she tries to help people foster resiliency, to positively cope or enhance their current coping style and to get people in such situations to talk about them.
Yavornitzky has been a social worker for 25 years. She’s worked more in psychiatric settings and mental health. She said that she was drawn to social work because of her interest in human behavior.
“I love the idea of why people do what they do,” she said. “I studied psychology and really enjoyed that, and even in high school I had interviewed a social worker
that had seen people therapeutically and thought, ‘That actually seems really cool.’”
As part of her duties at the center, Yavornitzky runs a narrative autobiography group and a book club.
She said that the narrative autobiography group helps patients to share the stories in their lives that they might not have found important at the time.
“People write their life
stories,” she said. “You just start with certain points.”
Yavornitzky asks each of the members to read parts of their stories to the group. She said that sometimes puts people off from the group, but it’s important so other members are able to benefit from them.
“It’s kind of a way for you to see that some of the stuff that you thought was odd or unusual is actually sayable and even how much it’s shared
with other people sometimes,” she said. “It’s getting an understanding of the meaning of your life, a little bit. Making sense of how you’ve always through your life done things and coped.”
The book club is less of a social work endeavor, according to Yavornitzky.
“It’s a positive emotional experience,” she said. “Honest to goodness, we laugh a lot talking about the stories, but that’s good because sometimes you forget to do that.
“Even just looking at ways even through fiction and nonfiction that other people have coped and dealt with things is very good,” she said.
Yavornitzky has also run support groups for people suffering from cancer. She is trying to start a new support group for women.
“On Oct. 13, Dr. Christa Nagel, of University Hospitals is going to speak about women’s cancers and concerns,” she said. “Hopefully people come and there’s a turnout for that.”
But her even bigger hope is “to get a women’s support group going that’s not just necessarily just one specific cancer, but where women can come together and talk about their concerns.”
According to Yavornitzky, even if one isn’t touched by cancer, they can find meaning in her work at the center.
“Life can be hard and it can be difficult but there is that idea that really people can get through even the toughest times,” she said. “Sometimes you do it with family, sometimes you do it with friends. But no matter what the situation, there is always hope, and whenever it feels like you’re losing that; that’s when you want to reach out for whatever is going on.”