From Teen Motherhood to Saving Lives with Nurse Family Partnership’s Maria Rush 

Kate Tucker:  I'm Kate Tucker, and this is Hope Is My Middle Name, a podcast from Consensus Digital Media. Today, I'm talking with Maria Rush, and I am so excited for you to hear her story. Maria has been a registered nurse in Cleveland, Ohio for the past 26 years, and she's a supervisor for the Nurse-Family Partnership, a nonprofit organization that pairs first-time moms and nurses. It's a relationship that starts soon after a woman learns she's pregnant, and it lasts until her child is two years old. Nurse-Family Partnership is a free program available across the country. And while its mission is simple, it is profound. To positively transform the lives of vulnerable babies, mothers, and families.

Now, I've never had a baby, but as an artist, I've often thought the most creative thing a human can do is bring another human into the world. I got to be there with my sister this year when she had her baby. And it was seriously the most incredible, miraculous experience.

If you're listening to this podcast, you've had a birth experience of your own. Of course, we don't remember that, but we survived. We made it here. And that is no small feat. With all our healthcare and technology, we have one of the highest mortality rates for mothers and babies among developed nations. In America, the infant mortality rate more than doubles for Black babies, and Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than White women.

Now, according to the CDC, 80% of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. That's why the work of Maria and the Nurse-Family Partnership is so important. It is the definition of life work. And that's why Maria became a nurse. Because if it wasn't for another nurse stepping in to save her, she wouldn't be here to tell about it. And that's how Maria became an advocate.

Kate Tucker: Hello, Maria. I am so excited to talk with you today.

Maria Rush: Hi, Kate. I am excited to be here with you.

Kate Tucker: Let's jump right in. I want to know everything about what led you to this work. So let's start at the beginning for you. Where did you grow up and what was your childhood like?

Maria Rush: So I grew up in Cleveland. So a lot of our clients that we work with, I grew up right in the neighborhoods that they grew up in. I'm the only girl of five brothers and a single mother who she did the best she can do with the tools that she had. But I grew up in a home of alcoholism. There was abuse, emotional, sexual abuse. I grew up in a home where there was a lot of trauma and witnessed physical abuse towards my mother, not to mention the things that happened to me. I grew up wishing that someone would step in to help. And that is why I do the work that I do, why I won't turn away from someone who may need help or support or someone just to listen to them.

I ended up myself having a baby at 15 and my second child at 18. And when I was pregnant, I was constantly told from everyone that I knew that you messed up. You messed your life up. Now you're going to be nothing. That is what I heard, which then made me fearful to ask questions.

So at 15 years old, having a baby in a cold OR room and the doctor is standing there. And I remember him very vividly shaking his head and saying to the people in the room, she's not going to make it. I'm scared out of my mind because now I thought I'm going to die. Everyone told me I messed up. And now here I am, I'm really, really messed up now. And the doctor left. He took the team and he left and just left me and the nurse in the room.

And I remember the nurse saying to me, has anyone ever told you how to push? I'm like, no, no, no one's told me how to push. And so when she gave me instruction on that, Chantel, that's my oldest daughter's name, she was out in two pushes later. The doctor barely made it there. So what that nurse did for me in a very non-judgmental way, giving me those instructions, just treating me as a person, really looking at me to see, okay, what's really going on here, you know, is what made me think about nursing, that was the first impact from a nurse.

But the second one happened, I was sitting in the room after I had Chantel. I was holding her and I was crying because I did not know what I was supposed to do next. I had no clue. So I remember the nurse coming in the room and she just looked at me and she said to me, I don't know what you're thinking. I don't know what people have told you. I don't know what this is going to do to you. She said, but I know that when that baby looks at you, all she sees is mom. That's what she told me. And I never, ever will forget that.

And from that point on, that's when I said, I want to be a nurse because I want to do what those two nurses did for me for somebody else. So that was my journey into nursing. I had always been a good student. So I graduated from high school on time with those two children and went to Tri-C, Cuyahoga Community College and got my first nursing degree. It took about four or five years, but I got there and I've been nursing ever since.

So I heard about Nurse-Family Partnership and I'm like, wow, Nurse-Family Partnership what is this you know never heard of this! I could have used a nurse a nurse family partnership, someone to partner with me, to advise me, to provide me education, point me towards resources, I really could have used this because I had no support. Yes I had a mother living in the house, but she had issues. So in my work that I do with Nurse-Family Partnership, if I am able to help one mother, I have done my mission and I have helped more than one mother. My team has helped more than one mother.

Kate Tucker: I want to go back, if you would be willing, and kind of try and understand where you were at in those early teen years, you know, you said you were wishing you had some support. What went through your mind when you found out you were pregnant and who did you go to if anyone, who did you tell?

Maria Rush: I remember my boyfriend, my kid's father, at the time his mother had called my mother to ask her, can I go to prom with him? And my mom said, after I find out if she's pregnant! I said, what? What is she talking about? Am I pregnant? What she noticed is that I did not have my cycle. And from that point, who did I talk to? I had an aunt, my mom's sister, unfortunately she passed away from breast cancer at 38 years old, but I could talk to her, but my aunt was raising her own two kids. So how much real support that I had, someone to listen to me and to work out all the questions I had in my head, I really did not have anyone, which is why I tell my team now, they tell me all the time, well, the teenagers don't talk to us. They're immature. They don't have any questions. No, they have questions. I had questions. I just didn't know how to ask some.

Kate Tucker: Yeah. I mean, it's so confusing being a teenager anyway, like to even understand what's happening to your body if you're not pregnant, let alone, you know, in that circumstance. Where you discover that, I mean, did you panic? What do you think it was about you that allowed you to endure that period without support and then ultimately make the decision you made to go out and help other people?

Maria Rush: It just was...it just was God, the love of God. That's the only thing that I can think of. It was the love of God. And now I realize that I had to go through some things in order to do the best of the work that I do now, in order to give that hope to someone else, to let them know, no, it's not all over. No, you did not mess up that bad. Yes, your life is going to be a little bit more difficult, but it is not over. You can still accomplish.

I was fortunate. God just had a calling on my life the way that I see it, and this is my ministry. I better understand what I do because of what I went through. At the time that I was going through it, no, I did not understand. I cried a lot of tears. But the Lord constantly put people in my life along that journey. And when I say people in my life, teachers, I've always wanted to do well in school. When you grow up like that, sometimes you just want to be a people pleaser and make everybody happy. So I've never wanted to disappoint my teachers.

And then by 15, you have a baby. I'm thinking I did not want for my daughter and son, I did not want them to go through what I went through. So I had to be better. I had to break some cycles, which to this day, I'm still breaking them. But I had to do it for them. I did not want them to know that life that I had to live through. Was it hard? Yeah, it was hard. I remember I joined this church and me and my daughter was going to get baptized together. And I remember one of the mothers in the church, she passed me a note and said, can I be your church mother? I said, what's a church mother? I don't even know what this is. But I agreed to it. Hey, it can't hurt. But when I tell you, that woman taught me so much. She listened, for one. She taught me how to advocate for my children. She showed me a different way in life. She showed me you don't have to live in poverty. She was a partner for me. You know, she wasn't coming in telling me you're doing this wrong and that wrong and this wrong. No, she was an example. She showed me and she was one of the most giving people that I know, and she would come get me and my kids and pack a little brown bag lunch, and we would go to the art museum. I hadn't been to art museums before then. I had not seen much of the world outside of living in poverty in the community that I grew up in.

Another thing that I know helped me is I am an avid reader. I love to read. My mother and my brothers used to call my room the dungeon. I would stay in my room. Because I was the only girl, I got a room for myself. So Saturday morning, I would get up, I would read. But what reading did for me is it takes you into another world. You can travel the world in a library. You can go anywhere and have a library.

Kate Tucker: It's so cool.

Maria Rush: Yeah. So it was my way of escape. Escape right out of my world. I would get into a book.

Kate Tucker: So you were pregnant, you find out you're pregnant. Did you go to the prom?

Maria Rush: I did. I did go to the prom.

Kate Tucker: Yeah. How did it go? Like that year, the nine months leading up, what was it like?

Maria Rush: So no one knew I was pregnant unless I told them. I was very small back then. Even if I look at that prom picture right now, you couldn't tell I was pregnant on it.

Kate Tucker: Wow. What was your dress like? I want to imagine the picture.

Maria Rush: We had went and rented a dress from, like, some type of prom store out in Strongsville. They had a dress rental. His aunt did my hair. Honestly, I avoided talking about being pregnant because I did not know what to do with all of this. I avoided it so much that the day I went into labor at 15 -- And the prom went well. I don't remember nothing negative about it, so it went well. -- But the day that I had my oldest child, one of my older brothers was going to the military. So we always remember it was October 25th. And I remember him waking me up five o'clock in the morning. Well, I was woke because I was actually starting labor. But I was so scared. that I never told anyone. He was leaving. He said, bye, I love you. And I got ready for school.

My mom had put me in a school for pregnant girls. I caught two buses and went to school. When I got to school, I told one of my girlfriends, I'm having contractions, you know, but I was scared to have the baby. Yes. It was fine with her inside of me, I guess. And so I was having the contractions and she went and told one of the teachers on me that I was uncomfortable and in pain. So the teacher called me in her office and said, Maria, are you okay? Yeah. And she said, you sure you're not having any pain or anything? And then I had a contraction in the office, right in front of her. So she called my mom and said, I think Maria is going to need to be picked up. She's in labor.

Now, my mom doesn't drive. She called one of her friends to come and get me. They got me and actually took me back home to my mom. They were drinking, you know, they were drinking alcohol at the time. I remember my mother wound up leaving and telling my younger brother to watch me. And so I went through laboring all day, never went to the hospital till I had to. And now I'm upset because I'm really, really scared. So the last thing I want to hear from a doctor is she's not going to make it. That's the last thing on earth I want to hear. So I'm just freaked out. You know, was the labor painful? Yes. But I was so scared that I didn't even want to talk. I felt like I deserved every piece of pain that I got that day. So I never asked for anything for pain.

Kate Tucker: Why did that doctor say that? You know, what was going on with your situation? And I mean, why did he say it in front of you is the bigger question. But what was happening to your body that made him think that and kind of give up and walk away?

Maria Rush: Well, what happened was I wasn't pushing correctly. I was kind of pushing in my stomach. And when you deliver a child, you have to push like you're having a bowel movement. You have to bear down. No one ever told me, I don't know what body parts I'm using here or should be using, so he got frustrated that's what it was. It was the nurse in both incidents. I didn't tell that nurse what people were saying to me and how I messed up my life but she knew somehow what might have been said to me. She looked at the whole picture. And that's what nurses do. We try to look at the whole picture. We provide holistic care. I'm not saying that medical providers or doctors are not good and that they all don't listen. That would be the furthest thing from the truth. But that was this situation. And I know through my nursing journey in nursing school, what I was taught the whole time was about providing holistic care to people, looking at the whole picture, what is going on. The first nurse looked at the fact that she's 15 years old, she might not know how to push. You know, she asked the right question. The question might've been inside of me, but I didn't know how to get it out. And the other nurse, I imagine she thought about what is it like for her growing up in her community? You know, she knew what was going on. And so she said, I know that people have said things about you that they probably shouldn't have said. I know you're sitting there with a lot. But you are her mother, and that is the only thing she's gonna know, is that you are her mother. That is what got me on my journey.

I've been doing nursing for 26 years, and that's my mission, to empower, fight for women, specifically Black women in the healthcare system, in our community, because they are the women that, they go unheard. I don't want to get into what I call a political fight about it. I just want to do the most sensible thing. The easiest thing to do. Take a pause. Listen. How do we help? I've learned in Nurse Family Partnership, and I teach my team, you cannot go into a person's home and think you have all the answers for their life when you don't know what is even going on with their life. My teachers at school knew pregnant and all, straight A student. But what was going on in that household, they would have had no idea. So when you go into people's household offering your solutions, that is you not listening, you're going to come off as judgmental. You don't understand what their problem is. Hear what actually is the problem before you go off to fix it. And nurses, we guilty of being fixers. We want to fix everybody. But you have to seek out what people's solutions are, what in their community, in their household, what is it that they have control over that they can maybe push their life forward in a positive way? Everybody don't have the same tools.

I saw this saying, I don't know who wrote it. I had it hanging in my office. We're all in the same storm, but we all have different boats.

Kate Tucker: That's so true. So when that nurse said to you, all she sees is mom and you're sitting there with this baby, I mean, what did you do next? I have so many questions just as an aunt for my sister. Like I got to be there during her labor this year and it was like the most miraculous thing I've ever experienced in my life. You know, she had so many questions. We asked all of the nurses all of the questions. I had so many questions. I can't even imagine doing that when you're 15 and being in that room alone. Like, how did it start to unfold for you?

Maria Rush: I remember after she said that to me, the first thing I did was I prayed, right? And I said, God, I don't know what to do. And the Lord, I feel like the Lord was giving me what I need. And at the time, what the Lord put into my head was education. That was the word that came to me next after I prayed. It was the word education. And everybody can be different, okay? It is what popped in my head. Every step that I made after that, I had to make sure that my education was prioritized. When I left high school, I had a full scholarship to Cuyahoga Community College. There was trials. I'm not going to say there's not. My mom and the alcoholism, the jealousy, the sabotage that happens within our community. And what I mean by sabotage is in our community, sometimes you have parents that say I did it. I had six kids and did it and you can do it. So get away from me, no support. It's one of the biggest things that my nurses struggle with. And we are always so heartbroken when we see that type of sabotage.

But I had my baby October 25th. I was 15 years old. My birthday was December 11th. I had to move out of my mother's house. So I have been living on my own since I was 15. How it worked out for me, I do not know. My children's father's mother helped me get a place. I was on the welfare system and there just was people who was placed in front of me that helped. But what I learned about people helping is that I had to always put myself in the position of doing what I was supposed to do. I couldn't expect for people to help if I was not going to go to school and do the best that I can do. I did what, you know, what they advised me to do. When I went to Tri-C, I didn't know about financial aid. If I grew up in a household with alcoholism and abuse going on, who do you think sat down and had a conversation about financial aid or school, period? Those conversations are not being had.

When you see a 15-year-old pregnant, there is probably, not 100% of the time, probably a break in that primary family somewhere. There is something else going on. So people would just be placed in front of me that did offer a helping hand at that time, even the case worker in the welfare system. I always came to my appointments. I did exactly what he told me. I bought him my report cards. And I will never forget, I missed appointment. I fell asleep. I had clinicals. I missed the appointment. And that caseworker called me and said, Maria, what's going on? Because it's not like you. It was important to me to carry myself in a certain way as a reliable person, you know, that I could do this. He wouldn't have made that phone call out to me if I wasn't reliable. And he helped. He did what he had to do over the fall and made sure my daycare was in place so that I could continue going to school.

The system is not designed for you to get ahead. You have to understand this is a stepping stone. There's some work you have to do, too. So I learned those things very early. One reason why I learned it, though, is when you grow up in a household and you can't depend on your mother, you very quickly learn that no one else has to do anything for you if your mom not going to do it. I learned that very early. So I always wanted to put myself in a position where I did what I needed to do in case someone wanted to help.

Kate Tucker: Yeah. I mean, my heart breaks for you at that age having to know that already and to be able to stand on your own two feet like that. And I think it's incredible that you did that. And I wonder, how did it feel being a mother and knowing that you had this ambition and this huge goal and you had to show up in all of these ways. And in some sense, it was like everything was working against you, but you were determined to prove otherwise. And at the same time, you had no sense of what a mother in the household might be, maybe a mother who was available with resources and, you know, in a place of stability to offer love. I mean, how did you feel about mothering in those first few years?

Maria Rush: Wow. Those first few years, I just… I just wanted to keep my babies safe. Whatever I had to do to keep them safe, and that they had a peaceful home that I can lay them down at night and they did not have all these worries and that they would have a routine. I feel like my kids saved me because had I not had them, I never was thinking about what to do for myself. What was I going to do for my life and which direction was it going to go? I would escape in books. But having them, I wanted to just keep them safe. And it made me look at my life, what I'm going to do about this. I had to do something.

Nursing school also helped me. Because in nursing school, you learn, right? You're learning about taking care of other people, their physical health, their emotional health. So it was like during my psych rotation, it's like, OK, people are heartbroken. They lack support. And you got to tell your kids you love them, right? And that's what I learned in nursing school. My mother never told me that. I never heard that. My birthday was forgotten. And I said, no, we won't forget birthdays. Maria, tell your kids you love them. This was conscious efforts. I had to talk myself into it. And you wouldn't believe how hard that is to do when it never was given to you. And so nursing school taught me that. So learning to take care of others helped me to take care of them.

Kate Tucker: You went on to do a lot of learning beyond Cuyahoga Community College. Give me kind of the recap of the career that you've been on, the path, and the degrees that's brought you to Nurse-Family Partnership today.

Maria Rush: Yes, yes. I started off at Cuyahoga Community College. Then I kind of got burnt out in labor and delivery, and I wasn't spending time with people like I wanted to. Labor and delivery, you help them deliver the baby, and then you move them off the unit. That's what happens. So you don't get to really talk to them. So when my two older kids were in high school, I said, well, let me go get my bachelor's degree because it's the only way that I was going to move up. So I went to Indiana Wesleyan University. So after I had went and got my bachelor's, it was a few years after that, that I even heard about Nurse-Family Partnership. By that time, I was doing case management. And then Nurse-Family Partnership was brought to Cuyahoga County in 2016. And I was the first nurse hired in the program. And then a year later, I became a supervisor in the program.

Kate Tucker: So as a supervisor, what do you do?

Maria Rush: So specifically right now, what I do is I work with first time mothers. I start working with them when they are pregnant up until the child reached two years of age. And what me and my team do is provide education, resources, advocate for our clients, and just helping them meet the goals that they want to meet for their lives and their child's life. We are a part of the Nurse-Family Partnership Program, which is a nationally evidence-based program that provides nurses to first-time mothers in order to break generational cycles, to put them at a point where they can be the best parents, moms that they can be. We will work with the dad that's there. We will work with the family, anyone that is offering that mother support so that they can eventually be the advocate for their family, the loving mother that they desire to be, leaders in their community, and just self-sufficiency for themselves, economic self-sufficiency. So that is what we do.

Kate Tucker: What are some of the challenges that you see these mothers coming in with, aside from just having no idea, like we all do, of what it means to have a baby the first time?

Maria Rush: The biggest challenge that I see and me and my team see is the lack of support, not the lack of financial support. Yes, they have economical issues. Yes. But the biggest issue is the lack of social support being a woman. A lot of the women that we see are still teenagers. So they go from a girl to a mother, then to a woman, instead of a girl to a woman to a mother. So sometimes they come into our program and haven't even been taught the basic skills of hygiene. They are dealing with a lot of traumas. So we do what we can to mentor them, partner with them, to actually hear them, listen to them. To some of our moms, they have went through all their life till they met us, someone not even listening, feeling unheard, not advocated for. So that is one of our best tools that we have, is we want to make sure that we listen.

Kate Tucker: For the Nurse-Family Partnership, what is the ultimate goal?

Maria Rush: We have three ultimate goals. And the first one is better pregnancy outcomes. Number two is better health and development for the child. And then number three is improving economic self-sufficiency.

Kate Tucker: So in the program, help me understand what it's like from start to finish when you first connect with a first-time mother who's pregnant and then all the way through to when the baby is two years old?

Maria Rush: Oh yeah, yes, yes, yes. So we enroll them before they are 29 weeks. Why we want to get in so early is because we want to start building that relationship with them, that therapeutic relationship with them, and try to get an understanding of what their wishes are. What type of mother do they want to be? What type of background did they come from? We look at what resources, is there a food insecurity here? You know, is there trauma that they're dealing with? Is there a lack of transportation? That's why it's so important that a nurse is doing this work because the nurse is doing this assessment of this whole person. Everyone on our team has a maternal child health background. So we're able to talk to them about labor, pain medicine in labor, what to expect in labor.

So when you're doing all this, guess what you're doing? You're building trust with them. They're letting you in their homes. You're able to see what is going on in the community. You're able to bring that work back to the boards in the community, the boards in the hospital and say, hey, this is what's going on out there. You know, we can be like a direct link. from the community into the health care system.

After they have the baby, you know, we follow up with them. So we're seeing these clients every one to two weeks, depending on what stage they are in in the program. We support them in breastfeeding afterwards. We do developmental assessments on their children. We help them speak up for themselves if they need to get to the doctor or advocate for their child. I've sent and done resumes with people. I got on the phone with people and advocating for them to get the child care voucher, you know, whatever they need. We partner with them up until that child is two years old.

Kate Tucker: Tell me, are there any stories you're able to share, anonymously of course, that just kind of make you realize why you're doing the work you're doing, you know, or get you through the harder times?

Maria Rush: Oh wow. Yeah, I had this one client, I will never forget her baby had the worst colic. But this client, though, when I met her, she was dealing with an addicted mother. Her mother was addicted and her mother would try to take over our visits. She would interfere. Slowly but surely, I watched her find her voice. And she started standing up to her mother and told her mother, if you're going to be in this child's life, you're going to have to do something about your addiction. And she stood firm with that. And me and her talked constantly about what her next move would be and where she was going to live at and what to do with this colicky baby. I remember the first two visits after she had the baby, both times she come to the door in tears, just needing a break, but not really having anybody to depend on to get this break. So sometimes I would just go, okay, let me just hold the baby. Okay, you take a nap. And today that baby is on her way to kindergarten and the most happiest baby. And that grandmother is involved. They were able to work it out. And that grandmother got sober.

Watching our clients grow, it keeps you going. I tell my team, we are seed planters, okay? They may not blossom right then and there, but if you put it there, you water it a little bit, and you let them know. You give them the affirmations just for you sticking in this program with us, we can see your dedication to your child already. Giving them little ideas in how to navigate through the education system or the health care system. And to see them start watering them seeds theirselves and start speaking up and advocating for themselves. Oh, my gosh. It makes you want to do the work all the time.

Kate Tucker: I wonder, as you're working with these individuals, how often do you find a bit of yourself in them? Or do you resonate with their experience and maybe even find a path towards healing for yourself?

Maria Rush: Oh wow. Yeah, I see myself in them often. And I share with them, not all of them, just who need it. I will share my story with them, you know, to give them some hope that they know that it's not all the way over. But they teach me stuff, too. They teach me to keep going. They teach me, well, I can do it this way. OK, I'm not a reader, but I do this. You know, and I'm like, okay, cool. And I'm always open and willing. I just want to offer to them, and what I try to give them is an open space to be themselves. And I'm not going to be judgmental. You know, they helped me to be a better mom. Now I have adult children. Okay. It's way different than little children. And so I was so used to taking care of my children that when they became adults, it became a little bit hard for me to back off. They're grown now. I had to back off a little bit. And they're like, mom, we got this. You know, I'm like, are you sure? You know?

Kate Tucker: Yeah. You spoke a bit about this, but I mean, what do your kids think about the work that you do?

Maria Rush: My kids are so proud of me. They tell me, Mom, just where you came from. And they love the way I grandparent. I have two grandchildren. I tell them I am the baby's advocate. I am the child's advocate. I'm Grammy advocate. Okay. Advocate going to be their first word.

Kate Tucker: That's amazing. You know, I mean, how do you think in a sort of broad view, does society benefit from having advocates like yourself out in the field? Why is this so important?

Maria Rush: When I think back to when I was a teenager, and I think about what is going on and what the health care system or people who are in power what they think is important and what resources they put into the community, they don't understand. And then they wonder why the programs fail. That is why I feel it is important to have that advocate who's actually seeing what is there, who's actually talking to the people to bring the community voice into that boardroom so that we can put the most appropriate resources out there. So it is essential that you have these grassroots people in the community that can translate what is going on into the boardrooms, into the healthcare system, into the educational system, into the social networking system. If you have that, then you can have a better understanding of how to take care of people and what they might need.

Kate Tucker: Just to understand how we might do this at scale, which I know you are nationwide, but I mean, how many mothers are you working with?

Maria Rush: You have one supervisor to eight nurses. And each nurse can carry a caseload of 25 to 30 clients.

Kate Tucker: Are you going to doctor's appointments with them? Do you go with them into labor?

Maria Rush: We do go to doctor's appointments. It depends on what that client needs. So we do business with them every one to two weeks. It's a voluntary program, so moms can start the program, they can drop out the program, but they can also always enroll back into the program. So we'll be there for them till that child reaches two years old through our work, no matter what. These clients call us all the time. You know, when they graduate from the program, hey, I'm having this issue. Is there anybody? And we will try to help. We're always going to try to help or point them in the right direction.

Kate Tucker: What's something that maybe people wouldn't imagine or something that people might find surprising about the work that you're doing with Nurse Family Partnership?

Maria Rush: I've heard clients say to me before, they're shocked that someone is willing to keep showing up for them. That's why I think that surprises them the most. No, well, we're going to just keep coming. Sometimes they think that we're social workers. No, we're not here to be a social worker. I'm not here to tell you what to do. I am here to listen and support you in whatever way you feel like you need to be supported. Not in a way that I feel like you need to be supported. I might see you're in an abusive relationship. We see that all the time. You know, I might see that your mother is not really supportive of you. I mean, I might see that you is 15 years old and you just got to live in your environment. What can they do? They can't get a job to sustain them or a house to live in. You know, they can't get that. They just got to take it. So how do we support them in this bedroom, this dungeon that my mother and brothers call my room, this dungeon that they gotta live in until they can get of age to do better. So I think that our moms, they are shocked that it's somebody that is just for them. I'm just coming here to listen to you, to support you.

Kate Tucker: And the work you've done, just with everything you just shared, it sounds like you know you're exactly where you're meant to be. You're doing what you were meant to do. I wonder if you ever feel overwhelmed by that sense of purpose.

Maria Rush: Oh, yes. Mm-hmm. I've always been taking care of people and not taking care of myself. Who is Maria? From the time of 15, I've been raising kids, right? And so my last child now is about to go off to college. Now I have to really dig in into who is Maria outside of being a nurse. and taking care of other people. That is what I am learning now, you know. So while I know that this work, it was what I meant to do, but is nursing all the way? Is there another step to here? So I am figuring that out now, I feel that I have a story to tell. It would do a lot of people a lot of good to hear that story. And what's the best way to deliver that message? So that is something that's been on my mind quite often now.

Kate Tucker: Yeah. Oh, there's so much, so much there. And I just love thinking about the freedom to finally have the space to ask that question and how, in my own experience, that's a relatively terrifying question if you've spent your entire life taking care of everybody else. I wonder about, you said you didn't know the names of those nurses. They came in and out that day, but had such a deep impact on your life and the lives of many others through you. You know, what would you say to them if you could see them today?

Maria Rush: Oh, my. I would tell them, thank you for seeing me. Thank you for seeing a 15-year-old girl having a baby and even thinking about what could be going on with her. They could have stuck to their tasks. Let me get her vital signs. Let me do this. You know, they took a moment and actually looked at me and thought about it and said something that did change my life. So I would tell them, thank you for seeing me. Thank you for just taking a moment. That's all it takes sometimes. They took a moment and spoke something that no one else had spoken to me, had even considered. It was just that easy, that easy step to unlock the box a little bit.

Kate Tucker: What's giving you hope these days, Maria?

Maria Rush: My children give me hope. Because it's a lot going on in this world right now. It really is in this country. What gives me hope is that I know I made it through what I felt like was a hopeless situation. I know that it don't have to be like that. If a few people step forward and use their power, get out the political agenda, and let's just be loving people. And there are some people that's willing to do it. I've seen them.

Kate Tucker: I've seen them too now. Thank you so, so much. I'm overjoyed that we got to spend this time together. Thank you for sharing your story.

Maria Rush: Oh, yes. You are so welcome. Thank you for giving me this platform to share my story. Thank you.

Kate Tucker: Thank you so, so much to Maria Rush for sharing your powerful story and for the transformative work you do to help families and ultimately entire communities come alive. Find links to Maria and the Nurse-Family Partnership in the show notes at hopeismymiddlename.com. We won't be releasing an episode next Tuesday because it's Election Day and hopefully we'll all be busy voting or helping others get to the polls. We'll be back with a brand new episode in two weeks.

Hope Is My Middle Name is hosted and executive produced by me, Kate Tucker. You can find me on YouTube and on Instagram at katetuckermusic. And if there's someone you know who belongs on this show, I would love to hear about it. Send me a message.

Hope is My Middle Name can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen. It would mean so, so much to me if you would leave a rating and a review. We love hearing from you. And if you're still listening, please copy the link to this episode and text it to a friend. That makes a huge difference in helping us reach more people with more hope.

Hope Is My Middle Name is a podcast produced by Consensus Digital Media in association with Reasonable Volume. This podcast was produced by Christine Fennessy with editing from Rachel Swaby. Our production coordinator is Percia Verlin. Sound design and engineering by Mark Bush. Music by the fantastic artists at Epidemic Sound, Soundstripe, and me. Big thanks to Conor Gaughan, our publisher and fearless leader at Consensus Digital Media. And thank you so, so much for listening. See you next time.