Continuing a purpose-driven pivot

Harriet Turner’s volunteer work at the Ballas Boutique includes regular reminders of a big change she’s glad she made.

Long before the 76-year-old nurse retired from Missouri Baptist Medical Center, she worked in the health insurance field. While she was successful in that job, it didn’t satisfy her soul. She felt pulled to do something drastically different—enroll in nursing school.

“Why do I go to work every morning?” Harriet remembers asking herself back then. “There has to be more to life. I just wanted to do something that made a difference, something that I could feel good about.”

Switching gears was hard, but worth it.

In 2013, Harriet retired after 25 years as a night-shift nurse at MoBap.

“It was the best thing I ever did,” she said. “It was my calling. I just came to it late.”

And less than a year after her retirement from nursing, she returned to MoBap, this time as a Ballas Boutique volunteer.

“Nursing was stressful, but there was a lot that I missed,” she said. “As a volunteer, it’s just the fun part—no stress. Missouri Baptist was a great place to work. Why not go back and volunteer where I was treated properly and had a good career?”

One of Harriet’s fellow Ballas Boutique volunteers happens to be the director of nursing who hired Harriet in 1988. And now Harriet, who spent the final eight years of her nursing career as an assistant nurse manager, gets to see some of the nurses she hired visit the gift shop as their own careers ascend.

It stirs memories of Harriet’s own journey, one born from her bold change.

“Volunteering absolutely makes me feel good,” she said. “Because you are outside of yourself. You are doing something for someone else. It’s human nature. It makes you feel good to help other people.”

If you have questions about volunteering at the Ballas Boutique, please contact store manager Laurie Childers by phone 314-996-5144 or email. If you are interested in volunteering at the Ballas Boutique, please start by completing a volunteer application here.