Compassion Is Key With Plants For Patients

Culture | May 18th, 2016

By Ben Haugmo

A little kindness can go a long way, especially when shown to those facing life-altering decisions.

Plants for Patients aims to take an impartial approach to providing comfort to women under the care of the Red River Women’s Clinic.

The organization is holding an upcoming event for community members to pot plants for patients, and to write notes of encouragement to include with those plants. As a special treat, the first 15 participants to sign up for a free ticket on the Facebook event page will get to engage in making pots for the clinic.

Plants for Patients is a predominantly pro-choice organization, though they also advocate pro-life. Neither stance is heavily emphasized, however. Rather than being mainly pro-choice or pro-life, Plants for Patients instead strives to promote a message of pro-compassion, providing unbiased understanding to patients at the clinic.

Meg Roberts founded Plants for Patients with the goal of using her skills in ceramics, combined with her interest in ecotherapy and reproductive health care, to actively engage with the community.

“I wanted to lend my design skills to supporting women and families choosing abortion care,” said Roberts, “and wondered if there was a space outside the hurtful vitriol surrounding our national abortion conversation to simply reach out as a neighbor to another neighbor to say, with art, ‘I care about you and want to make this day a little bit brighter for you.’”

Roberts stepped down from Plants for Patients to expand her horizons abroad, but she is confident that the project is in good hands.

“Shortly before I embarked,” said Roberts, “we gathered as the P4P Core (Heart) Team for a backyard dinner and succession planning session. To witness more than a dozen truly admirable folks -- who have dedicated their time, attention, and energies to co-author the mission and vision of Plants for Patients -- share about why they were each involved was as humbling as it was educational.”

Monica Gelinske became plant coordinator in 2014. Her responsibility is seeing to it that the plants are well taken care of before they’re potted and sent to patients.

“We started with less than 30 plants,” said Gelinske, “and I have had up to 900 plants at my home, but through plant sales and other events, we now sit comfortably with about five hundred. They’re all in different stages of growth, meaning I’ve got just the tiniest babies to full-grown plants, and they’re all different kinds of plants. We like to focus on succulents because they’re really easy to take care of, but we like to use unique houseplants as well.”

Amber Parsons, ceramic engineer, is another member of Plants for Patients who took up the call when help was needed.

“I was at a point in my life where I was like, ‘This should be me,’” said Parsons. “I’ve done stuff with community-supported arts, so making a large quantity of things is something I’m good at, and that’s where I felt I could lend those talents to Plants for Patients.”

The project has grown from Roberts’ initial vision to include not only the main Plants for Patients volunteers, but community members as well.

“We’ve taken it to a different level,” said Parsons, “where we’re reaching out to the community, and the community is actually making the planters, and showing real compassion that way. They also get to enjoy the learning experience of working with clay.”

Roberts has seen the connection with the community herself and is, needless to say, pleased with the results.

“At one of the first big community planting and note-writing workshops which we organized autonomously, someone walked me around on an iPad so I could say hello to everyone and inevitably ricochet around the spectrum of emotions. Now, I feel immense gratitude, pride, and contentment praising and trumpeting the work the Plants for Patients community does so consistently and humbly.”

Plants for Patients continues to expand its engagement with the community, with plans to have the Plains Art Museum’s resident artist, Melissa Kossick, hold pot-making classes in each month of her three-month residency.

The event this Sunday is open to the community and family-friendly. All are invited to come and have fun while helping to contribute comfort to someone in need.

IF YOU GO

Plants for Patients Pro-Compassion Community Event

Prairie Den, 122 1/2 N Broadway, Fargo, ND

Sunday, May 22 at 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm

https://www.facebook.com/plantsforpatients/?fref=t...