Mother Contemplating Listening
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Opioid Op Ed, Herald Leader, March 17, 2024
The Lexington Opioid Commission has been meeting since October, 2023. Chairwoman Stephanie M. Raglin and Vice-Chair Tara Stanfield, met with Mayor Gorton. Gorton made it clear she does not want a recommendation from the Opioid Abatement Commission at this time. She wants them to do the important work of listening. It never hurts to review the purpose of any project and its current strategy at any given point.
At the most recent meeting on Feb. 9, Stanfield talked about Gorton’s expectations and the art of listening. Stanfield related her own past of not listening, of bringing “expertise” that did not fit with her clientele.
“I keep thinking about being a young therapist getting started and out of school, on fire and ready to change the world. . . I had all the answers,” Stanfield said. “I went into practice and I realized that none of my answers were working and the patients didn’t like my answers. . . . I would tell people what to do and they wouldn’t do it. I would feel frustrated. I could only imagine how frustrated they felt.
At the time, Stanfield was working in Eastern Kentucky in a town already ravaged by opioids.
“We talk about the opioid epidemic{being} for the last 5 to 10 years but it’s been way longer,” she said. “Back then I was struggling. I would come in every day with all the answers. Tell people what to do; they wouldn’t do it. Sometimes they felt like they needed to tell me they were doing it, when they weren’t.”
As an impacted mother, I, too, have felt I had answers gleaned from my personal experience and I wanted action. I would listen, but only with the intention of giving advice which was not always accurate. At times I was losing hope that anything would ever change.
Stanfield had the same experience, but then something happened. She was invited to do a training in an evidence-based practice.
“It changed my career, it changed my life, it changed the way that I talk to patients; honestly, it changed the way I talked to people in general,” she said. “The number one thing that it did was take me out of any expectation, it took me deep into my soul that I was not an expert on somebody else’s life.
“You can’t be. You don’t know where people have been, what they've been through. And I’m not the expert of exactly what it’s going to take for them to make a change and find their way out of the path that who knows how they got into to start with. I’m never going to know all those things. My job is to be there with them, support them, and work with them directly to find the way, whatever that way is going to be for them. The reason that this relates is when we think about substance use in a community, as bad as the problem has become, it is so complicated, just the same as it is when you think about a single patient.”
The more OAC meetings I attended the more I learned how large this crisis was, that it was a community disease. And how important it is to hear everyone’s story. Stanfield makes the point that it needs to be treated the same way an individual is treated. We need to take the time to do it right. Listening and assessment come first.
“When I met with Mayor Gorton it was so nice to hear that the only thing that she expects from us right now is to bring her suggestions and she doesn’t want one tomorrow because she knows it’s a big complicated topic and we’ve got 18 years of these abatement funds,” Stanfield explained. “She really wants something that will work in the community, be sustained in the community and have a shot at matching the complexity that addiction is on an individual level and on the big macro level of an actual city.
“All of us have our expertise that we’re going to bring to the table. We’re really just in the phase now of assessing the patient. All we’re doing now is to put it out there to the community to hear from our community partners, to hear from people who have experienced tragedy, because of addiction, and to really get a feel of what’s out there. Talk about expertise, that’s where a lot of it will come from.”
The next Opioid Abatement Commission meeting is Friday, April 12 at 10 a.m. in the council chambers. In the form of your stories, bring your expertise to the table. You can sign up to speak during the public comment time. Or you can email the commissioners at opioidabatement@lexingtonky.gov.
