There is something perfectly right with our world. Thousands of Vineyarders and friends from beyond our shores, some living, some gone, have come together to create it. When I arrived at work last week, I found myself, my teammates, and my patients smiling all day. I had the urge to hug just about everyone I met, and I sensed the feeling was mutual.
What’s behind all this joy — the new Martha’s Vineyard Community Services building — is no mere inanimate thing. What makes people smile when they walk through its doors is that it feels very much alive.
Winston Churchill said, “We shape our buildings and they shape us.” I have been thinking about those words all week.
From my new office window I can see the old building. It was cramped and dilapidated. It was too hot in summer, too cold in winter, and it flooded in heavy rains. Offices were carved out of former closets, and sound machines hummed on hallway floors by thin walls to mask private conversations. Even so, for decades, people who walked through its doors told their stories, shed tears, shared hugs, and, in many cases, turned their lives around. It was an imperfect building that served as a place of healing for thousands. Last week, about 30 employees and former employees gathered there, burned sage, and said an emotional goodbye to an old friend that had served us loyally. Now it is gone.
Why does a building matter so much? We are a community with more than our share of highs and lows. On the plus side, we are surrounded by awe-inspiring natural beauty and blessed with extraordinary resources for connection: senior centers, the YMCA, our hospital, two hospices, conservation land, places of prayer and meditation, theaters and playing fields, and well over a hundred nonprofits — more than three times the national average per capita is spent on these organizations. And yet, this same Island struggles with high rates of depression, substance use, and tick-borne illness. Our year swings from a summer of nonstop work and socializing to a winter that brings many of us isolation, underemployment, and loneliness. One in four year-round Islanders, and many seasonal residents, come to Community Services each year for help.
The new building is breathtakingly beautiful, and its beauty is a boost to the healing that happens inside it. There are views of nature from every window, light streaming through windows and skylights, the colors of the Island in the walls and furniture, artwork by Vineyarders, and easy access to private spaces and gathering spaces indoors and out.
Last week, when I went out to the waiting room to bring my patients into my office, each one greeted me with a smile: “This is amazing.” “I knew it would be nice, but I had no idea.” “Wow.” One said, “I feel like I’ve left the Vineyard, and yet the Vineyard is everywhere.” Churchill was right. The building is already having an impact on us.
This space tells people that they matter and are valued. Working in a beautiful setting increases job satisfaction, and results in better patient care. Patients who feel welcomed and comforted by a positive environment heal faster — hospital patients with a view of nature have been shown to recover sooner, and need less pain medication. Dignity can be built into the walls.
The children who will grow up knowing that this building is here, and the Islanders who will walk through its doors decades from now were our inspiration. They gave all of us the reason to build something both aesthetically pleasing and meant to last. And in the building, I can also feel the spirits of those who came before: generations of dreamers, donors, clinicians, board members, architects, builders and neighbors. Perhaps that is why it feels so good to be there. It doesn’t belong only to the organization and its board, but rather to all of us: patients and counselors, administrators and maintenance staff, the people who designed it and the people who built it. And it is in that shared sense of ownership, all of us growing and learning together, that the deepest healing happens.
I have avoided naming names instrumental to the building’s construction, because once such a list began, it would never end. But there is one person whose spirit I felt there countless times on my first day, and whom I will think of every day I return. My office was built in his honor, and his name is beside my door: my friend and mentor, Dr. Milton Mazer.
Milton came to the Island in 1961 as its first resident psychiatrist. He started the Island Counseling Center, which grew into what Community Services is today. He was ahead of his time: Two years after he created ICC, the national community mental health movement took hold based on the idea he was already practicing here: that people heal best not in distant institutions, but in their own communities, supported by family, neighbors, schools, and work. Milton’s book, “People and Predicaments,” named the stresses of year-round Island life, and many of them are among those that we still see. It was Milton who encouraged me to come to the Vineyard when he was winding down his practice. He died in 2007 at 95, but his spirit — and those of countless others — lives on in this new building. I think he would be proud of it. Come by and see it. There is something perfectly right with our world, and its doors are open.
Charles Silberstein, MD, is the medical director of Island Counseling Center at Martha’s Vineyard Community Services. His wife, Laura Roosevelt, is a writer, poet, photographer, and editor.
