How Maya Angelou Encouraged Me By Asking, ‘Who Do You Want To Help?’

Today would have been the 95th birthday of one of the most influential voices in my life, Dr. Maya Angelou. Although she died nine years ago, she remains the epitome of authenticity undergirded by resilience and sealed with compassion in America’s collective memory.

As I have written before, she and I grew up in the same house in Stamps, Arkansas. She lived there in the 1930s with her grandmother. Years later, my family rented the house. And in the very rooms where young Margeurite Johnson refused to utter a word for years because trauma had silenced her, my voice began to take shape. But she gave me so much more than a good story about the two of us having lived in the same house during our childhoods, she nudged me into my career as a psychiatrist during a chance meeting when I was a little girl.

She was in Stamps with a camera crew working on a project. And I will never forget how she folded her tall frame down to my eye level and asked, “Who do you want to help?” I thought, at that time, I wanted to become a teacher. After meeting her, my aspiration mirrored one of the highlights on a resume, a doctorate bestowed on her as an honor from Spelman College and many other colleges. Once I heard, “doctor,” my preteen ears assumed physician, and off I went in search of medical school. One of my happiest mixups.

I like to think she would appreciate my choice to help others find ways to fortify their emotional and mental resilience. After all, isn’t “Still I Rise” about steadying yourself to overcome obstacles? The classic “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” is a Master Class in navigating childhood trauma. And she penned the kinds of powerful quotes people save and tuck in their purses for hard times.

“I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it,” wrote the beloved author and poet.

What she did for me the day we met so many years ago is what I strive to do each day in my work: Remind my patients that I see them. It’s what all of us do when our families and friends are teetering on the ledge of self-doubt. “I see You” is the subtext of the phone call, the card and the long lunch.

How I wish she could see herself on the quarters released last year by the U.S. Mint. There she is. My courageous, resilient and accomplished homegirl – the first woman ever placed on American currency and maybe the only one who could make each of us believe we can be phenomenal.

Dr. Rhonda Mattox is a board-certified psychiatrist. She is also the president of the Arkansas Medical, Dental and Pharmaceutical Association. Dr. Mattox also hosts a podcast and speaks around the country about mental health.