Joyce Cappiello, Director of the Reproductive Options Education Consortium, has recently been honored as the New Hampshire Nurse Practitioner of the Year, recognized for her significant contributions to the field of nursing and her mentorship as an Assistant Clinical Professor of Nursing at the University of New Hampshire. Congratulations to Joyce!

The power of sharing stories has always been clear to me in my work around abortion care. Having spent equal amounts of time staffing clinics and rallying Maine movers and shakers, there is more in common between these efforts than one might think.

I came into this work while toiling away on a master’s degree in public policy and reproductive health. Sitting in a classroom just wasn’t enough for me, so I went to work in an abortion and family planning clinic, spending two days a week with patients. It added so much depth to all the theory I was studying and gave me an important realization: I never want to be so far away from the actual business of providing reproductive healthcare that I don’t have to wear latex gloves.

 More than any medical task, what struck me at the clinic was my role as a purveyor of women’s stories. Counseling sometimes seven women a day before and during their abortion, I noticed patterns, observable trends, in how women came to make this decision, how they felt about their decision, and their hopes and fears moving forward. By sharing these stories with new patients, I was able to convey to women that they were not alone: another patient before them always had a similar story.  Beyond normalizing each woman’s experience, I could share approaches or thoughts her predecessors had uncovered, offering the patient the support of those who came before.

Sharing stories again surface in my organizing work with the Abortion Access Project. The audience is different – a collection of doctors, nurses, medical staff, and advocates instead of patients. But in many ways, my role is the same. I bring the stories, or, in organizing speak, strategies and models, to the people who can ensure training opportunities for abortion care exist in Maine. I bring the knowledge of both my fellow AAP organizers and other reproductive health leaders in Maine to the table. I remind clinicians and advocates that this work has been done before and should be done here in Maine. And I offer the lessons learned and resources discovered by those who came before. The successes of this strategy have stuck: ongoing training partnerships between residency programs and clinics and a strong Medical Students for Choice chapter.

My counseling and organizing work both call me to catalyze and support my audience. The stigma of abortion care can make the concerns of a patient or a future provider strikingly similar at times. And both need to hear about the experience of others in their position in order to make the connections that create change.

My new challenge? Engaging rural clinicians in reproductive health. With a strong network of providers in urban areas, women in Northern and Eastern Maine are still slipping through the cracks. Getting the training, resources, and support to rural healthcare providers relies on sharing successes in other rural areas, in addition to taking in providers’ stories about reproductive health in their communities. Starting these conversations is the cornerstone of organizing, and certainly of my work as a story-teller and activist.

For more information on Nancy Foss, AAP's Maine Field Consultant, click here .