We recently connected with Barbara Lee VanHorssen and have shared our conversation below.

Barbara Lee, appreciate you joining us today. Have you ever had an amazing boss, mentor or leader leading you? Can you us a story or anecdote that helps illustrate why this person was such a great leader and the impact they had on you or their team?

So just how do you change the world?

I believe it begins with a dream. A great big bold idea. A vision of what could be.

I have a lot of ideas for changing the world. A lot of thoughts about addressing our challenges. I can tell you with a good degree of certainty what could and should be done. And I am happy to share with anyone who cares to listen. In my mind, every one of my suggestions would lead to more health, more happiness, more wholeness, more humanness.

There is just one small problem with that. I’m not always right.

Now, to be clear, I don’t let the possibility of being wrong stop me from trying.

Having an impact begins with having a dream, a vision, a goal that is worth pursuing. If we can’t imagine it, we can’t manifest it.

If you aren’t making an impact, why are you doing it? Too much work to not be accomplishing anything.

But does it work?

Brian knew that I was interested in moving from being a Business Manager to becoming a Healthcare Administrator. So, he did what a good boss does. He supported my efforts as I continued my education, and he gave me opportunities to take on more responsibility. But he also went the extra mile. He reached out to Sandy Bruce, the president of our healthcare system, and suggested she mentor me. Because of Brian I had the opportunity to consult with the highest level of healthcare administrator in our county. And because of my relationship with her, I was even given the opportunity to share my model for healthcare reform with Governor John Engler.

Now, nothing actually happened in healthcare reform for many more years to come. And I wasn’t even working in healthcare anymore when it did. In fact, it wasn’t too many years after my interactions with Sandy that I found myself pursuing a whole different direction as my career aspirations turned to nonprofit work and the impact I hoped to make in the area of social change. But none of that is the point.

The point is that Brian will always hold a special place in my heart and I will never forget his actions. Why? Because he did more than was expected of him. He did everything he should have done – and then he chose to do more. Not only that, he expected more of me. He believed in me. He gave me a model for living a life of high expectations.

In this world, we can choose to do the bare minimum. It’s really all any of us need to do to get by. Or we can set high expectations – and then meet them. The most memorable interactions of my life have not been those situations when I got what I expected, but those times that exceeded my expectations. Because when someone went that extra mile for me it told me something very significant. It told me that I was important. I mattered. I was more than a box that needed to be checked off or a paper that needed to be filed. Someone saw me, understood my request as legitimate, and then made me the hero of my own story.

When I think about it – Brian really didn’t have to do all that much on his end to have a huge impact on me. Brian saw Sandy at meetings all the time. It didn’t take a lot of energy for him to mention my name and suggest a meeting. What little extra can we do that will light up someone else’s face – maybe their whole day? Maybe impact their entire life?

If the first challenge is to have high expectations of ourselves, the second challenge goes hand in hand with the first. It is to have high expectations of others.

Can we see the potential in others? Can we believe in the best of everyone around us? People will live up to or down to our expectations of them. If we anticipate getting little, we will almost always get exactly what we expect. But if we expect more, if we hold each other to a higher standard, we will also usually get what we expect. And when we expect more of our self and more of the people around us, we will undoubtedly continue to raise the bar. Creating an atmosphere where everyone has the ability to reach their highest potential.

The Momentum Center has high expectations. And because of our efforts, the people around us feel seen and heard. Valued. Important.

I do not believe we are meant as human beings to become idle and unmoving. We are called to grow, to hone our skills, to sharpen our tools, to become ever more our truest self. But to get there, we need to expect that we will. We have to refuse to give up on ourselves or the people around us. We need to set our expectations high (not too high – not perfection – none of us need to fall into that trap) but high enough to stretch our muscles, our hearts, our imaginations.

Our expectations at the Momentum Center are so high that we actually believe it is possible to create a stigma-free community. And because we believe it, we are making it come true.

It really is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Give the best of yourself, expect the best of others, and confidence automatically follows. Confidence in ourselves, confidence in others, confidence in our ability to meet high expectations…even the expectation of creating a community where every person is fully visible and connected!

Barbara Lee, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

The Momentum Center is creating a community where every person is fully visible and connected. We offer positive community space and social and recreational activities for people with mental illness, addictions and disabilities. There is an adult and teen program. The adult program focuses on mental health, disabilities and addictions. The teen program focuses on positive relationships, mental health, success in school, and overall well-being. No referral or clinical diagnosis is necessary. It costs $1/year to be a member and no clinical diagnosis or referral is required.

We also address the social determinants of mental health through community conversations and cultural immersion experiences. Community Conversations are important opportunities to bring together people who have different feelings and beliefs to engage in conversation. Ground rules establish a safe environment where people are free to share their own thoughts and experiences and hear from others. The objective is not to prove someone right or wrong but to create and nurture relationships. Likewise, our work in cultural immersion is meant to build bridges of understanding and relationship.

We are having a statistically significant impact on member depression, anxiety, loneliness, social connectedness, and feelings of stigma. We are giving people hope, meaning, and purpose. We are literally saving lives. Family of our members tell us they are gaining confidence, learning skills, and becoming participative in the community at large – including finding meaningful employment. For every dollar we receive, we create a $4 return in community investment. We are also normalizing the conversation about mental health and decreasing stigma in the community. We are also an agent of social change, breaking down barriers of stereotypes and stigma, welcoming the marginalized into full community, and building genuine relationships.

Have you ever had to pivot?

My professional life moved from medical administration to nonprofit administration to ministry back to nonprofit administration and then an existential crisis. My world had blown up. I lost my job, my marriage, my best friend to suicide, and my sense of direction and purpose. I decided, finally, to launch a speaking career and to use what I had learned to help others with the intent of reaching a larger audience than ever. My career speaking in colleges was just taking off when my youngest son became very ill with schizophrenia. We spent 5 months in and out of the hospital and residential care before he was stabilized and it became clear I could not have a job that kept me away from home so much of the time.

I also knew that I wasn’t as good at working for other people as I was working for the greater good. So I started a nonprofit with the hope of connecting people who wanted to make a difference with opportunities to do so. Along the way, I would look for gaps in the system and see if I might bring some synergy to filling them. What I didn’t expect was to hear my struggles getting my son mental health care echoed throughout the community. Mental health was the top concern on almost everyone’s mind. Those community conversations turned into Town Hall Meetings on Mental Illness and the convening of the Mental Illness Task Force. That task force put together the plan that would become the Momentum Center and point me firmly in the direction I would go.

If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?

If I could go back, I would complete my doctorate studies, possibly in Sociology. I am very curious about the human condition and appreciate the lens of the sociologist. And I would build more relationships across the country and internationally to help me scale and expand the scope and impact of my work.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.momentumcentergh.org
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MomentumCenter
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbaralee13/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@momentumcenter
• Other: [email protected]

Image Credits
Some photos courtesy of Kim Street