We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nicole Matlus. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nicole below.
Nicole , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s go back in time to when you were an intern or apprentice – what’s an interesting story you can share from that stage of your career?
While attending the University of Akron, completing my Bachelor of Social Work degree, I took an internship position at The Community Assessment Treatment Center, also known as CATS. My department was working with men who were struggling with substance abuse, mental health, and criminal thinking. Most of the male clients were also learning and coping with prison transition back into society . What my clients did not understand was that as their counselor and social worker, they taught me so much more empathy and understanding. Perspective has been my biggest takeaway from the job that I do. You learn so much in this particular field. I am grateful for all the lives I have touched and the ones who have touched mine.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am 38 years old. I am a mother of 2 beautiful girls. I got into the field by wanting to make a difference in the community by helping others who were struggling or may have just needed a hand or an ear to listen. I graduated from Cuyahoga Community College with an associates degree and Akron University with a bachelor’s in social work. Getting into the social work field made me realize that we need to offer so many more resources for people from a financial aspect and a mental health aspect. I grew up in a poverty-stricken neighborhood and attended inner city schools where drugs and alcohol had a huge impact on our childhoods. I have lost so many childhood friends to drug overdoses at such young ages. I decided to set up and create a non-profit called Operation Lean on Me to try to help others during their struggles and hardships. We are a public charity and our goal is to develop effective resource centers that are highly visible in a community that provide the public with easy access to understandable information counseling or assistance direct support for those who may be living with terminal illness living in poverty incarceration homelessness and drug and alcohol Addiction. We try to help clients become independent. That way, they are able to gain the confidence to make things possible on their own. For example, if it’s getting housing a job or going to meetings to keep their sobriety. I think the most proud moment for me is to look back and see where I came from. I could have easily become a statistic when it came to drugs and alcohol. Instead, I chose to become a voice for those who have been deeply impacted by the disease not as a user, but as someone who is directly affected by the addiction behavior. As I stand here today, I am able to help others especially in their stages of sobriety. I am proud of all that I accomplished even through my own mental health struggle because deep down, we all struggle with something. If I’m gonna be honest about what sets me apart I would say that I have the most giving caring passionate soul and I would give the shirt off of my back to anyone who needed that even to those who have wronged me. I always try to reach out in many communities with other non profits and businesses to come together because I feel like each individual program can help in their own way and when we become a team we are able to establish a lot more. I am not only in the State of Ohio, but I am also established in the state of Pennsylvania. My goal is to go to a few other states. My brand is very important to keep my name going with all of the projects I do in the community.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Learning is the easy part unlearning is the most difficult challenge you probably will have to go through. I had to Unlearn not to be a people pleaser and I didn’t realize how much of an impact it had on my mental health. I had to unlearn the vicious cycles that were seen in childhood that way I don’t pass those on to my children. The hardest part Is knowing that struggle will forever be internal, but have to get up and fight through it everyday.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Contact Info:
- Website: Operationleanonme.org
- Facebook: Operation Lean On Me