I am very excited to have had a Guest Post featured on the blog: The Chocolate Lady’s Book Reviews. I am told that writing guest posts is important, so here is a little about the post and a mention of what I think of the blog.
I totally love the name of her blog. I love chocolates too! But before I go off on a tangent, let’s get back to the Guest Post. The post outlined the story behind how I came to write my book: “Healing Your Life Through Activity – An Occupational Therapist’s Story.” In the post I shared what brought me to write the book to begin with and how I came to dedicate it to my beloved Grandfather. I also mentioned that the manuscript was shelved for a few years before I discovered self-publishing.
In this post, I would like to share why I came to re-visit the manuscript and prepare it to self-publish. Like I said, I had shelved the book and was going to leave it there. However, I began to realize that there really is a very great need for the book. Prior to my making Aliyah, I had begun to work towards developing my dream centre. When I made Aliyah, I brought my business plan with me. I had this wonderful idea that I would do my ulpan and medical ulpan to learn Hebrew well enough to begin working in my profession, complete what was necessary to obtain my license to work in Israel and then.
The next step was part-time work in a facility or two and part-time developing a private practice. This was part of my plan towards developing a client base necessary to start my dream centre. I thought my plan was wonderful. I had all the right steps in place, or so I thought. It might take a little time but I knew I had an incredible profession. I knew there was a need for occupational therapists so I was sure I would find work relatively easily. I had found work in South Africa, UK and USA. If OT is a needed profession, surely I would find work in Israel too?
Here comes the hard reality. In Israel, there is an issue with age and let’s face it you do not get 12 or more years experience, like I had when I came, if you are still just 18. Yes, I found work, but the work had a problem paying. I do not understand how facilities can hire staff and then refuse to pay them, but such is the life in Israel.
I had several offers for work at ₪23-25 an hour. No I am not talking about working as a receptionist, I am talking about working as an OT, with experience. I am not in a position to work for minimum wage, so I had to strive to get better pay. To be honest, I believe that anyone who has a degree and has worked at least 5 years, let alone 12, should receive respectable pay, not minimum wage.
Alongside my challenge in finding salaried work came the challenge of these facilities respecting one’s time outside of work. The extremely high demands on one’s personal time, all unpaid of course, impacted on my time to develop a private practice which was my ultimate goal.
So there were challenges in the work front and as I began to network my frustration came to be tested in so many ways. One of my pet peeves was being told to give up my profession and just clean houses. Sadly they all told me I would earn better cleaning houses than I would working as an OT. I did not put myself through university to clean houses, neither did I obtain qualification in an incredible profession to just shelve my skills.
I tried networking with the small business development centre only to discover they have no idea what occupational therapy is and hence did not believe that my dream centre was OT. When trying to obtain referrals to work privately I kept coming up against arrogant statements that what I do and what I am building is not OT.
Gradually, the penny dropped so loud and so hard that I could no longer ignore it. If I could somehow help others to understand just exactly how incredible occupational therapy is, surely they would no longer tell me it is not needed. I would no longer hear what you do is not OT, for now they would understand what OT is. Surely with some education they would come to agree that OT is a very needed profession, globally. Maybe there will even be more respect of the profession. With respect should come better salaries. Surely someone with a worthwhile degree deserves more than someone doing menial labour such as house cleaning.
I set to work and I worked at it for days, weeks, months and more. As I often say, the book went through a total transformation, but I am very excited to finally have the book available in print. In addition to the book now being available for sale, I have begun a YouTube Channel with videos about what occupational therapy is and a range of other topics.