Randi Gottlieb
Special Events Chair, LA-CAMFT

Life-Long Journey of Giving

When I was asked to write a piece on volunteerism and my motivation to be on the LA-CAMFT board, I immediately reflected on a journey that started in childhood.  

I first learned the concept of volunteer work, Seva or selfless services, as a young child from my father who challenged me to understand the words of the famous Jewish sage, Hillel “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And If not now, when?”

Raised in an atmosphere of social justice, I was taught that it is not enough for a person to be concerned about the injustice that affects her personally; to be a person of worth she must address the injustice to her brothers and sisters in the broader world. I am ever grateful to my father for instilling this guiding principle in me, though to be honest, it has been a challenge to learn how to live those sage words in a balanced way.

Halloweens were spent trick or treating for UNICEF. Summers were spent teaching disabled children to swim. In 1968, my dad ran for congress on an anti‐war platform and I walked precincts after school and on weekends. I was fifteen. That summer, as the city’s youth representative to the United Nations I organized the first Long Beach Walk Against Hunger and raised over $50,000. The following year I lived in Uruguay as an AFS foreign exchange student. I got my bachelor’s degree in Cultural Anthropology at UCSB and spent my junior year abroad in Mexico City. The larger my world became, the more injustice I encountered and the more difficult it became to maintain being that person of worth I was striving to be. My experience in Latin America was formative in my development but overwhelming for me as an emerging adult with a dictate to make a difference in the world.

Perhaps a need to make a difference guided me towards my career as a psychotherapist. Over the next thirty years through my volunteer work, I sought to make a difference for battered women and for children and teens in the child welfare system. I was the founding director of the Shasta County Women’s Refuge, founding board president of the Shasta County Child Abuse Prevention Council, and lead therapist in the design and implementation of the Shasta County Child Sexual Abuse Treatment Program. I served on numerous boards and represented the ten north state counties in several state level reform efforts to improve policy and practice for the California Child Welfare System. I performed these work efforts as a volunteer and truly never questioned doing so. Rather, I felt enriched and alive and genuinely grateful to be able to be involved in such efforts.

That said, over the years I have struggled through some very challenging experiences on boards and with volunteer efforts that were poorly designed or plagued by dysfunctional leadership. I have learned to distinguish between the kind of board and service effort that is ultimately productive and sustaining from the kind that is not and I have learned to be more discriminating about where and with whom to engage.

I began coming to the LA‐CAMFT Networking Events in 2012 and was immediately drawn to the warmth and positive energy of the membership. I took a first small step to become involved as a table host and with each event I felt more and more engaged. It became apparent, however, that the chapter was undergoing a major transition and that my skill‐set and experience might be of benefit to that effort.

I began attending the full board and executive board meetings to get a better feel for the organization. I became Table Host Coordinator, joined the Somatic Therapies SIG leadership team and helped to put on its first three workshops, facilitated the LA‐CAMFT Leadership Retreat, and was appointed to fill the vacant position of chapter secretary. (Editor’s note: Randi went on to become LA-CAMFT President, Past President, and Special Events Chair)

So really, why am I writing this? How can I convey that this is not about me? It really is not. I am sharing my story as a way of sharing one person’s reasons for getting involved, for volunteering, for doing Seva. It is simply one way to journey this crazy and often alienating life: on a path of service. It is a way to connect, to feel part of something bigger than oneself, and to contribute to the building of community. I cannot think of a better way to travel and truly hope you will think about coming along!

Randi Gottlieb, LMFT, is in private practice in Los Angeles and Santa Monica. Her primary areas of specialization include treatment for children, birth through teen years, life transitions, trauma recovery, and existential therapy. Randi’s clinical work is rooted in Gestalt, with EMDR and Trauma Resiliency as complimentary body/mind approaches and she frames her therapeutic work within a post-modern, real-life lens.

This article originally appeared in the LA-CAMFT newsletter, the LA Therapist Update, in 2014 and has been updated for this issue of Voices.