Tracy Dudzinski
What do you do when you get a call from the executive director of the DCA asking you to go to Washington, D.C. to tell the people at an Institute of Medicine symposium what it’s like to be a direct care worker?
You panic for a second. You think: “Why me? What would I say?”
Then you take a deep breath to calm your nerves and think: “Why not me? I am the expert in direct care, and people need to hear the voice of the worker if we are ever going to change things.”
I told Leonila I would be happy to speak to the group. Then I panicked again and waited for a call from Elise, the DCA’s communications director. After our conversation, I felt much better. I went home that evening and wrote out my testimony. (PDF) I worked with Elise and she helped me make it as powerful as I could.
Then we had a call with the people from the Institute of Medicine and I found out that I had to cut parts of my testimony, since it was 20 minutes long and it needed to be closer to 10. (And here I’d thought I wouldn’t have enough to say.)
Cutting the testimony was really hard for me to do because I felt it was all important, but we finally figured it out. Once I came up with my final version, I practiced, practiced, practiced.
The next nervewracking challenge I conquered was traveling alone. I have flown before, but never alone. But I did fine. When we got into DC, I could see the white capitol dome in the distance. It kept getting closer until we pulled up to the hotel and I was within walking distance of the capitol. WOW!
Thursday morning I was nervous, but everyone tells me a little nerves are okay. Everyone was very nice and was happy that I was there. As the time drew near for my testimony, I started to have an “I am just a CNA” moment. The moderator for my session asked what was wrong. When I told her, she reassured me that these people wanted and needed to hear what I had to say. That helped calm my nerves.
The funny thing is, I felt okay once I started speaking. As I looked out to the audience I could see that they were really listening to what I had to say. That made it even easier.
After I was done, I had many people come up and tell me they were close to tears and I gave a very powerful testimony.
If we want to make a difference, we need more direct care workers to step forward and become advocates for themselves. Any time one of us can tell our own story, it is much more powerful than having someone else talk about us. Look at me, a direct care worker from Wisconsin. I was able to tell people who can change things what I think needs to be changed. If you are asked to speak up, please step out of your comfort zone and take the chance.
This has been a great learning and growing experience, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
I hope I made a difference.
Tracy Dudzinski
Board Member,
Direct Care Alliance
Tracy is a fellow VOICES Institute graduate. It is so nice to see her evolving, pushing her strengths, and taking a stand by doing this. While at VOICES, Tracy worked really hard on an exercise at speech writing and delivery. I remember her being really worried that she could not give her speech in front of people. Well, look at her now! Go Tracy!
VOICES is a great opportunity for Direct Care Workers to learn skills to do things just like what Tracy is doing. VOICES is a great chance to learn leadership skills.
Tracy hits the nail right on the head when she says that if direct care workers want to see change in their working conditions, then "people need to hear the voice of the worker if we are ever going to change things." "If we want to make a difference, we need more direct care workers to step forward and become advocates for themselves. . .if you are asked to speak up, please step out of your comfort zone and take the chance."
Tracy is so right! If we want to make change, we need to be the ones advocating for ourselves. The policy makers, sitting at the State House, may think they know about direct care work, and what it is like, but they really don't. They need to hear about it from us.
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