[Helen Owhonda] My name is Helen Owhonda. I'm standing in beautiful Hanlon Park in Baltimore, Maryland. One of my favorite spots to come and decompress. It's something about the magic of just watching water, it kind of calms me down and kind of puts me in a happy place. My journey to becoming a community health worker actually started when I was 23, 24 years old. I was living in York, Pennsylvania, and my dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer. That was the beginning of learning how to advocate, to gather information and find community resources. I wasn't aware then that it was a job that I could get paid for. I just began looking for resources. My mother was shy around people she didn't know. And of course, there's the racism thing and the feeling that you can't challenge whatever the doctor in the white coat is saying. Everything was happening so fast. The doctor kept saying, "Well, I would do this, but your dad's just so lethargic." And I didn't even know what that word meant. It sounded like a foreign word to me. So I took it upon myself as my dad's condition started worsening to advocate for him, asking questions and trying to figure out what was happening. Finally, I asked the oncologist, "What's a timeline for his life? Is he going to come out of this?" He said, point blank, "No, he's not. The only reason we did chemotherapy and radiation was to give him some time, but he needs to get his house in order." This was back in the '80s. I didn't have a home computer. I went through newspapers looking things up, looking into the yellow pages, trying to figure it all out. He was to the point where he couldn't do much, couldn't eat. I hated to hear and see him in pain and going downhill so fast. That's when I found out that we had to get a power of attorney. We needed to get him to sign so many papers and make as many decisions as quickly as he could because nobody was telling us what to do. When we figured out what needed to happen I was able to call hospice. I was able to get counseling for myself through them. My dad was able to pick out the suit he wanted to be buried in, and he even picked out his casket. He paid for most of the funeral arrangements. We did all of that stuff in the last year and a half of his life. I did what I had to do. I didn't realize all of that was in me, that I like helping people in crisis. A few years later, I came to Baltimore and had my own crisis. I promised the people at the House of Ruth who helped me when I couldn't help myself as a survivor of domestic violence, that I would pay it forward. What I went through was horrendous. When you're in a situation of domestic violence, you don't say too much. You just hold it all in and stuff it down, and one day I thought, "Oh God, this is the worst thing that has ever happened to me in my whole entire life." I finally looked up resources and I came across the House of Ruth. At the House of Ruth there were case managers, social workers, counselors, and just good people that I could talk to and confide in. They would give me gas money. They hid me and my children when it really started hitting the fan. They just held my hand through the whole entire thing. I wish I had a million dollars to give to the House of Ruth because they go beyond what anybody else would ever say or do. Just being there for people, especially women, and a lot of people don't realize that men can get caught in domestic violence as well. Just for them to have been there on that day when I figured out that I had to pack up whatever little things I had, pick my kids up from school and just go somewhere and hide. So it did get better. I got a job as a family advocate, which is also a different name for CHW (community health worker) and I realized that this is a job I liked. That's when I knew helping people is meaningful work, and I found a job with purpose. Just listening, giving needed community resources and walking people out of a crisis, that takes time, energy, patience, focus, compassion and determination. It was all the things that were there inside of me that I didn't know I was able to do based on what I went through. But not just that, it was also part of who I am.