Bilingual Case Manager Talía Viggers Listens for Opportunities
Listen for the opportunities.
Every person encounters moments in their life that force them to face big questions. At times these questions are asked to you.
Other times they are the kind of questions you might find yourself blurting out loud unconsciously due to their sheer force but for which the answers most easily reveal themselves in the quiet spaces between exchanges and daily living. If you’re lucky, you may be able to point to several of these moments throughout your life. And if you’re luckier still you’ll learn every day offers them to you - both the questions and the answers. They are lurking in a familiar relationship, a conversation with a stranger, a problem at work, an illness, the death of a loved one, the loss of something you valued, the birth of a child, job offers, a new hobby ... anything and everything. Amidst stillness and chaos. The questions and answers are all there.
There was one of these moments waiting for me at the end of 2019. It would have been an autumn day in the US, but I couldn’t tell you what the weather was like that day in Atlanta for I was more than 4,000 miles away somewhere in the middle of Brazil enjoying an extraordinary summer day. I’d started my morning going on a long drive, from a little town to a smaller town, and later hitched a ride from the smaller town, up the side of a mountain with a group of mostly strangers - all of us bouncing around excitedly in a rickety buggy. It was a perfect escape, and I was ready to get lost in the mist and fog of high elevations.
The year before this trip had unfolded spontaneously with little structure or plan. I’d spent the first 7 months of the year almost exclusively practicing yoga, meeting new people, re-evaluating my place in the world, living off savings from my most productive year ever in the for-profit world, and taking on work at will. In the second half of the year, I’d discovered I enjoyed and was not terrible at, long-ish distance running. As my lungs expanded so did my community and connection to it. None of it was a coincidence - it was all intentional and joyous.
Now here, moving, breathing, and taking in all the new of this foreign land, I felt equally excited for the journey ahead and ready to hike a steep trail of waterfalls. At the top of that mountain, bathing with strangers in the crystalline waters, I was reminded for the millionth time in my life how connected we all are. And when we arrived at the final and most beautiful of the falls, like bees performing a waggle - we each instinctively took turns exploring the site - swimming, treading the rocky periphery, and climbing into the crevice beneath the cascading waterfall.
When it was my turn, I did as the others did. I sat. I took in the sounds, the reverberating feeling, and listened to the people shouting to one another in Portuguese, “Can you feel the energy?” I then observed a woman, perhaps my mother’s age, pressed worriedly by the rocks near me but outside of the cascade. I slowly crept back and guided her to sit with me. Our languages were assuredly different, but it was irrelevant whether we fully understood or even heard each other’s words while the cold water crashed and thundered around us. We knew what we knew, as we looked in each other’s faces, full of joy and glee. We sat. We watched. We felt the whooshing sounds. We said nothing and anything. To ourselves. To each other. Maybe a prayer, maybe a gratitude. The seconds passed... maybe they were minutes. Eventually, the moment came where we exited the waterfall. And then the moment when we climbed back down the mountain. And somewhere in there, I remember a statement deep within. One without doubt. One of certainty in the opportunity. The words were: When I get home, I will do something new.
At the base of the mountain, as I turned my phone back on I heard the buzz of a message. It was a question. Was I interested in a part-time work project?
It was Giving Kitchen.
With gratitude,
Talía Viggers
Bilingual Case Manager
Giving Kitchen
P.S. When this question came, I knew virtually nothing about GK despite having donated to it, and food service workers aren’t my specific passion. People are. Community is. The fact we’re all on this planet together at this very specific moment. I figure it must be to encourage one another — to expand - directly and indirectly. To learn from each other. I went from making double my salary - to a PT non-profit position after a year of reflection and exploration. Why? Because of something within. Because a friend asked. Because GK needed help. Because I am on my own exploration. Trying to understand the reason through the daily exercise of collaboration with this GK family - staff and clients. That’s really it.