By Nancy Sherman, Director of Marketing and Communications, Caroline Center
Caroline Center Career Coordinator Debbie Liesen, SSND, knows instinctively just what it takes to raise every person she meets to the next level, the next rung on life’s sometimes unsteady ladder to becoming one’s best self.
A true gift to Caroline Center from Sisters Academy, where she served as school principal, Sr. Debbie coaches hundreds of career trainees each year as they endeavor to find their “best employment fit” – the best place to practice their new professions as certified nursing/geriatric nursing assistants and certified pharmacy technicians. The challenges and expectations of negotiating such a significant part of one’s educational and career journey could be fraught with stress and disappointment. It is Sr. Debbie’s patient, skillful, nurturing, and positive approach with each woman – her innate ability to raise women up and out of the hard places from where they have come – that help make their journeys possible, their employment searches so empowering, and the outcomes so rewarding.
Mother Caroline reminds us to “dedicate [our] hearts to love and patience.” In this, and in so many other ways, Sr. Debbie follows Mother Caroline truly. The integrity of her work is its centeredness in love and patience, as well as in each of the spiritual tenets of self-esteem. The beauty of her work is in her unique and creative approach – in how she expresses the virtues of love and patience as well as in the ways she creates opportunities for trainees to connect with the self-love they will need to be able to accept and cherish themselves for who they are and for all they can become.
Even if we tried very hard, it would be impossible to enumerate the countless positive affirmations in Sr. Debbie’s teaching, counseling, and conversations with trainees and soon-to-be graduates, which are intentionally directed to instilling self-esteem. Sr. Debbie was heartfelt in sharing honestly with our trainees at a recent conference on dementia what it is like for her to love parents who are living with the many challenges that the progressive disease brings. We love her special touch with creative windowsill vignettes throughout the building on Somerset Street, which say to the women in such subtle and beautiful ways that they are valued. So much of Sr. Debbie’s energy is in strengthening the rungs on life’s unsteady ladder by instilling and nurturing a strong, positive sense of self in everyone she meets.
In all that Sr. Debbie says and does – all accomplished with humility, without the slightest fanfare, and always with a fetching style – Caroline Center trainees and everyone who works with Sr. Debbie hear, see, and experience important and healthy messages for the spirit and soul:
You are loved.
You are connected.
You are worthwhile.
You are unique.
You are comfortable in your own body.
You have power.
You have role models.
In becoming one’s best version of oneself, there may not be a better guide or more skillful shepherd than Sr. Debbie Liesen. Thank you for your considerable gifts, Sr. Debbie. We are all better, stronger people for knowing you.
