Page 8 - 31-3 Connections August 2022

Everything is a Prayer -

Women Centered,

Interfaith Spiritual

Counseling

By Rev. Nancy Dominique Dessables, LMSW

As a recent graduate of the One Spirit Learning found joy in simple everyday pleasures such as
Alliance Interfaith Seminary in New York City, I the coolness of a Caribbean Ocean breeze and
often reflect on how fortunate I am to have studied the sweetness of newly ripened mango. Hers was
with a diverse, compassionate, and knowledgeable a life of material poverty and spiritual wealth. My
group of scholars, deans, supervisors, and fellow mother taught me to listen to my instincts, trust
students. I call everyone I met at the One Spirit my heart, and never give up on my dreams.
Learning Alliance – “teacher.” But my first and
most significant spiritual teacher is my mother, My biggest dream was to become a social worker.
Yola Edith Edouard Dessables. Yola was my biggest cheerleader and the person
who ushered me into the social work profession.
No matter who we are and what our current I fondly recall the day she accompanied me on a
connection is to a biological mother, we all New York City Number 1 subway train to my first
emerged into this world from the warm, billowy, social work open house.
aqueous cocoon of a womb. Remarkably, I have
a cellular memory of being inside my mother’s My dream came true in 1988 when I graduated
womb, where I first experienced the sacredness of from Columbia University with my master’s degree
simply being alive. Everything I have experienced in social work. In the years that followed, social work
in that first molecular memory to my present-day became my greatest passion. I emersed myself in
circumstances has been a sacred journey birthed, the noble profession that instantly provided me
nurtured, and reared from the woman I call mother. with a conduit for serving others, and today I still
proudly call myself a social worker.
My mother, who is the inspiration for my spiritual
counseling practice known as Yola’s Child, was the As a devout practicing Roman Catholic, my mother
epitome of feminine divine power, fearlessness, adored the image of the virgin mother and child
gratitude, and surrender. Born in Petit Goave, known as Our Lady of Czestochowa or The Black
Haiti in 1928, she lived a humble life where she Madonna. “Images of this famous Byzantine icon
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