Sharon Eubank: Her message of Small Acts with Big Impact

Welcome to Why Not Me? Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide?
Hosted by Tony Mantor, broadcasting from the heart of Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee.
Join us as our guests share their raw, powerful stories.
Some will spark laughter, others will move you to tears.
These real life journeys inspire, connect and remind you that
you're never alone. We're igniting a global movement to empower
everyone to make a lasting difference by fostering deep awareness
on wavering acceptance, and profound understanding of autism and mental health.
Tune in, be inspired, and join us in transforming the
world one story at a time. Hi, I'm Tony Mantour.
Welcome to Why Not Me? Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide.
Joining us today is Sharon Eubank, a renowned humanitarian and
director of humanitarian services for the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter day Saints. She's a passionate advocate for unity
and kindness and has written a book entitled Doing Small
Things with Great Love. In this book, her mission is clear,
you do not have to travel to make a difference.
You can be powerful where you live by understanding local
issues and acting with great love. We are truly honored
to have her share her transformative insights with us here today.
So before we dive into our episode, we'll be back
with an uninterrupted show right after a word from our sponsors.
Thanks for joining us, No.
I'm happy to come on. I've listened to three or
four year shows and it's fun to hear how you
really draw out good things out people.
Thanks so much. I really appreciate that, the.
Story based work that you're doing, that's why people remember.
You can listen to a podcast, but you know, the
next day people say, what is it about? They only
remember the stories and the way Tony made them feel
about the issue.
Well, again, I really appreciate that. So let's get into
what you do. Can you give us a little background
on what you do.
My day job, I'm the director of humanitarian services for
the Church of Jesus Christ the Latter day Saints, but
a lot of what we do is based on volunteerism.
A lot of research is starting to show when people
volunteer in this very polarized, you know community where we
live right now, it affects their mental health. I have
some specific examples about people specifically with autism, that their
autism is actually the benefit. They're working in situations they've
been given assignments where they actually excel because of their autism.
It's fun to see that. And I think we live
in times so much stress, there's so much conflict, people
don't agree politically. We're looking for mechanisms to pull things together.
So that's really what I do for my day job.
Last year I wrote a book called Doing Small Things
with Great Love, so from mother Teresa's quote, but it's
just encouraging people. Here are twelve principles to follow and
don't make the mistakes that I've learned over thirty years.
When you're trying to do the right thing, but you
know it advertently, do cross a line. So that's what
i'd love to talk about.
Okay, I do not have a problem with that whatsoever.
Before we dive into it, let's get a little bit
of a backstory about it. People write books about various things. Ultimately,
something has to create that passion to write it. So
what was the passion that created you to write this book.
I've worked in the humanitarian sector for thirty years. I've
worked internationally. I was the regional director for the Middle East.
I've seen a lot of difficult kinds of things. Most
of the time, people's hearts are good. They want to help,
they see something on the news, they're aware of something
in their community, and they feel something. I want to
do something about that. I feel passionate. But sometimes the
things that we do are the wrong things. We don't
ever ask somebody what they wanted, or we collect a
bunch of things that we're going to ship over there.
They're the wrong things at the wrong time. And so
see seeing those inadvertent mistakes, or having somebody call me
up and say I really want to do this, I thought,
rather than me talking to people one on one, let
me write a book and just tell the stories of
what has happened. So there's ninety two stories in the book.
And that's my passion. My passion is to enable people
to where they live be powerful. You don't have to
go to Peru, you don't have to go far away.
You can be powerful where you live if you know
the issues.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Now you've got
ninety two stories. Is that ninety two different spots around
the world.
I don't know, maybe seventy I don't like several of
them are from the United States, but yeah, they're from
all around the world.
Okay, so you've got ninety two different stories. What's the
common thread? Needless to say, they're all different, but there
must be something common that ties them all together.
The common thread is you are most powerful where you live,
and you are because you speak the language, you understand
the culture, you're there all the time, and so you
don't need to figure out you know, I can go
somewhere else. You have the most power to change things
in the place where you live all the time.
Yeah, that makes so much common sense. So if you
would give me something that just stands out to you,
it stands out because it really reflects what you're talking about.
I can tell you a story about how I learned this.
It was after the Southeast Asia tsunami, and I was
in Sri Lanka, and it was five months after the wave.
But that wave was so big, it was thirty feet high,
it went two miles in. It just caused so much destruction.
Three hundred thousand people died. I was there trying to
help people get their businesses back up and going. But
we stopped at a place where the daily train came
across and was on a big track. It's this heavy,
big metal train. But when people heard the alarm about
the wave, they took little children that would probably get
tumbled in the water, and they lifted them up into
the train. They put them in the windows, and people
accepted them in and they set them down inside. But
when the wave slammed into the train, it tumbled it
like five times, and everybody in the train died. Fifteen
hundred people. You know, people are touching my skin. They're saying,
you know, can you help me, help me? You're from America,
Please help me. I didn't have anything in my pockets.
I didn't have anything to give. The fact that we're
building houses over the rise it doesn't mean anything to them.
But the guy who was driving me is a guy
named Shanta. He's got a soccer ball. He starts kicking
it around. Kids come around. He starts talking to the
lady better breadmaking, and this lady about washing powder, and
I just dawns on me. Shanta is more powerful in
this situation. He doesn't have a fund, he doesn't have
a degree, but he's here all the time. He knows
these people. They trust him. He's the answer to the
needs that they have in a lot of ways, and
so that really got me thinking about what can I
do and how can I help other people galvanize to
work where they are. And the side effect is it
helps our mental health, all of us. You know, I
feel a reduction of the stress when we're doing things
that are meaningful in our own communities, especially when we
do it for strangers.
That's perfect.
You actually partially answered my next question is how do
you see this helping people's mental well being.
There's a lot of really great research coming out of
the University of British Columbia and Harvard that says it
was specifically about adolescence, but it says when you're eleven
to fourteen, if you help somebody who's not a friend
or a family member, somebody who's a stranger, there's something
about that. This says I'm going above and beyond my
family responsibilities and it gives them respect. They feel self
respect by doing that. And so there's this research that
connects doing something good for a stranger helps you develop
your own sense of self and confidence, and if you're
under stress, if you have suicidal ideations or other things,
it's even more critical because it gives you value that
pushes against some of those feelings of worthlessness that people feel.
Yes, that is so true. I had a person on
my podcast several months ago. He was bipolar. He tried
to commit suicide. Fortunate for everybody, he didn't. He tried,
it just didn't work, Thank goodness. It was a very
inspiring story, one that was very very real. Because of
the failure to commit suicide, it led him to start
a foundation. Now he helps people all over the country
with his foundation. Perfect example is after the hurricane hit
in North and South Carolina, he was right out there
helping everybody that needed help. So we can see that
you're trying to help people. You've written this book with
all kinds of stories that are inspirational. So where do
you see this going. What's your vision on how this
can help.
The back of the book, I give fifty prompts for
people to just start engaging their community. I think people
want to, but they don't know how to start. I'll
preview a little app called Just Serve. You type in
your zip code and upcome all the volunteer opportunities. It's free.
Anybody can use it, so it's just a way of
engaging go visit your mayor, go visit the school, ask him,
is there a student who needs some help? Do you
need something from me? As a community member? I care,
I live right in this neighborhood. What can I do
and get a couple things that you feel excited about?
And as I said earlier, if you feel that you're
different because of anxiety or mental health issues or a
diagnosis like autism, that's actually your superpower. That's actually where
you can do the most good. And I have lots
of examples about that.
It's amazing you use that word superpower. I have many
that are autistic that have come on this podcast. That's
how they describe themselves. They say that their autism is
their superpower.
Well, they use that word superpower.
All the time. I mean all the time. They say
autism is their superpower. They say that because they actually
do look at things differently than a neurotypical person.
That's right.
Many approach the world in a completely different way. So
with that said, what do you feel in your travels,
not only here in the US, but around the world
in how they can use this book that you've written
to help others.
One of the things that gives me the most joy
is to be able to look around in a community
or setting and see who's on the fringe, who's not
being included for whatever reason. They're a different tribe, they
are a different faith, they have different politics, they're neuroatypical,
But what's the reason. And then see if we can't
open up and invite them to come in and be
part of that. If I can create a situation where
people who have been on the fringe come in and
interact with each other, that's success to me.
Absolutely, When you can do something like that is truly
a success for sure. Now you mentioned this earlier, We're
in a strange world. People have different opinions on everything, politics,
whatever the subject might be. So can you think of
an instance where things really didn't look all that good?
Everybody seemed to have different opinions, they weren't on the
same page, but then the light went on and they
realized that they were here for the greater good. Anything
like that come to mind for you?
I bet you there's thousands of examples, But the one
that I'm thinking about is you probably know how Rotary started.
It was four guys in Chicago. They were different faiths,
different professions, and they decided to just meet and talk
and then do some kind of service together. And they
rotated in each other's offices, so there was like a tailor.
I can't remember what their professions were, but they rotated.
That's all. They call it Rotary. It was just a
couple of years ago. The head of Rotary now, his
name is John Huco. He was giving a speech in
Australia and he said, he's talking about service. We need
to wage peace as aggressively as nations wage war. And
he's just saying that same thing for all of us.
We're so different. We have different causes that we support,
different politics. But if we can find something like service
that bonds us and we agree on we can be
peacemakers and we can wage it as aggressively as other
people are waging war. That meant something to me.
Yeah, I definitely agree on that.
I've had people that I've worked with, We've had different
thoughts on different things, but we was looking at the
common good.
So because of that we were able to make it work.
What was the one thing, Well, it was in a
situation of helping others. I think that's exactly what you're
bringing up and putting out there is by helping others,
you put away all your differences and focused on what's
most important. Now, with this book you've written, you're looking
to create that tsunami of hope of goodwill. Have you
seen that wave starting to grow where it is touching
on people's lives, not only here in the US, but worldwide.
I met a woman from Nampa, Idaho, and she was
just telling me about when she was young she was.
She told me that suicide was just a multi generational
scourge in her family and she was already feeling that.
When she was eleven years old, she was isolating, she
was cutting, and her family thought, what are we going
to do to help Megan? They got on that app
and they started finding service activities and she said every
time I didn't want to go, I'm telling my mom
I'm not doing this. I'm not going. But she said
once they went and her mom calmed her down and
they went and did it, she said it was that
feeling afterward, it was almost like a drug high, that
it felt so good of having conquered anxiety and gone
to do it. And she finally said, if I could
help other people feel like they were worth something, then
maybe I was worth something too, she said. I was
so glad I pushed through it because I wouldn't be
here today if I hadn't done that otherwise. And I
think with the rise of social media, whatever the issues
are that create the levels of stress and anxiety in
our current culture, if we can fight back against that
and we can unlock the goodness in people, then we should.
I just interviewed the millionth user of that just Serve
app and guy in Oshawa, Canada. Pretty great that there's
a million users that are just saying I'm going to
regularly commit to doing something it helps me, helps my community,
and everybody benefits.
Yeah, there's nothing better than a win win scenario. So
what's your plans? Where do you see this going? I
always ask everyone for their five year plan, because that's
what mine was. So where do you see yourself five
years from now?
In my professional life, you know, working with the app
and working with humanitarian products and things. I'd like to
see ten million people regularly using that kind of service app.
It exists in seventeen countries and will continue to expand it.
More than that, I'd like to see people engage in
with those twelve principles so that they help in the
right way. And the very first right way is to
ask the people that you're trying to help, what is
it you really want? Don't let me assume what I
should do for you. Tell me what it is that
we could do together, and I'll organize whatever I'm trying
to do according to what you ask for. And as
simple as that thing sounds, we violate that over and
over again every day, and we assume and we do
things for people what they didn't really want.
That totally makes sense.
Now you've got ninety two stories we mentioned about the
common threads. Can you give us a little insights on
some of those things that are uncommon and unique to themselves. Yet,
because they're uncommon and they fit in with these ninety
two stories, even with the differences, they do blend together
to create the common thread to your stories.
Well, it might be the creativity. One of the stories
that I tell in the book is about a kid
named Dennis Estamon. He's from Haiti and he was going
to school in Boca Raton, Florida, and his family had
come as immigrants. He integrated pretty well and he became
an athlete, and so he's a high school student, and
he notices there's a lot of kids who sit alone,
or they don't go into the cafeteria and they just
do something by themselves. And any of us who have
been in a kind of a stratified lunch room, you're
going to remember how that feels. Dents took a couple
of his buddies from the team and a couple of
other people he knew. They formed a little club called
We Dine Together. So all they do is the forty
five minutes of school lunch, they walk around and if
somebody's sitting by themselves, they'll just sit down and talk
to them. And these aren't the most popular kids in school,
but they're pretty well accepted. And he said, I didn't
realize what it meant for somebody in my little group
to sit down next to somebody and just chat with them.
Doesn't cost any money. It hardly took any time, but
they started this club called We Dine Together. It's now
all over the world. All kinds of high schools do
this kind of thing, and I like an example. It's
completely low tech, really creative. But he took that application
and he said, I can do something just right here
in my high school. So to me, that's a good example.
That's a great example.
If you talk with anyone that is going through mental illness,
if you talk with anyone this autistic, most will tell
you that the team years through high school is the
most challenging because they get bullied because they're a little
different from all the others. They don't fit in. Some
will mask because they don't fit in, ultimately resulting in
not fitting in because they're masking. So in your travels,
I'm sure you've come across those that have the empathy
to reach out and help those that need the help.
I'm going to give you two examples, and one of
them is a guy named Eric Olson. He lived in Myriata, California,
and he so wanted to do some volunteer service, but
he couldn't find anybody who would accept him because of
his autism. Finally, his parents helped him connect with a
it's like a food pantry and it was called the
Bishop's Storehouse. And he would go in there and his
job was he'd put on a coat, he'd go into
the walking refrigerator and he'd pull out all the dairy,
all the milk, and he would stock it on the
shelves I've seen video of him. You know, he puts
on the coat and he flips up the hood and
he opens the doors, these automatic doors like Moses, you know.
But he was showing a little his humor and the
people working with him in the pantry started to really
enjoy him. He loved legos, he loved Star Wars, and
he started to feel confident enough to bring that in.
He was great with stalking the shelves because he was
so detail oriented. As he was leaving one day, he
kind of put his arm around one of those elderly
women that were in the pantry with him, and he
kind of gave her a side hug. And his mother
she just said, he's never given me a hug. I've
never seen him do that, And so she recognized that
he was developing and blossoming because of his connection. Everybody
who came into that pantry wanted to talk to Eric.
He was the connector among everybody, which was just unexpected
for somebody who had autism. He brought a great richness
to that because of who he was, and then it responded.
So he grew and other people grew, and I think
that turned out to be a good example.
Yeah, that's a great example. Unfortunately, autism has this stigma.
I don't like the words, so I use perception. So basically,
a lot of people have this perception of those that
are autistic, thinking they can't do anything, they can't fit in,
and their perception is not reality. Reality is they can
do many great things and do many great things. Now,
what about the mental health side, those with ADHD, anxiety, bipolar, schizophrenia,
anything that falls under that mental health umbrella. Have you
seen those that have accomplished great things like the one
that you just mentioned that was autistic.
You know, in Florence, Italy, there's a whole bunch of
people who have come from their seeking asylum. So they
come from Africa or the Middle East. They've been on
a torturous journey. It's been very dangerous. They've gotten there
and now they've applied for their asylum and they have
to wait. They can't work, they can't do anything while
their political asylum application is processed. It was just a
lot of stress going on in those places where they
were waiting. There was anxiety and tension and fights were
breaking out and families were upset. So the local Catholic bishop,
who is the head of Cottitas in Florence. He said, look,
people need something to do. He said, let's form a
football league and let's have these guys come and do
some sport with us. Everyone's like, it's a terrible idea.
They're going to fight with each other, they don't trust
each other. It's not going to work. But they got
them uniforms and they started practicing on the football hitch
and they started recognizing, Okay, you're from Algeria and I'm
from Pakistan, but you have serious football skills. I can
see what you're doing. And they started a bond as
a team. And then when they put them into the
regular rotation with the Italian clubs, they weren't just migrants,
they weren't asylum seekers. They were football and they had
serious skills, and so it was really fun for them
to be able to process some of the anxiety they
felt through their journey and what had happened to them
by something constructive like sports, where they learned to trust
each other as a team, and they had a great
time doing some other things. And I think in a
lot of ways Nelson Mandela was very good at using
sport as a unifier for people to take down the
anxiety in his own country, and when he became a
rugby fan against all the tereotypes of black leaders in
his country and cheered for the team of his white oppressors.
I think there's something very healthy in that for people,
and I think those are good examples from sports.
Yeah, I love sports. Sometimes it can bring people together,
and that's a perfect example of it. Now, what about
something that you thought would never work. In the back
of your mind, you said this will never work. Somehow
after it all came together and it worked in a
way that no one thought possible.
When Isis took over the main city of Mosul in Iraq.
You know, it's the second largest city in Iraq. It's
a very modern city and that's full of professional people.
When they pulled out after they were forced out, they
smashed all the fixtures and things, They cut all the wires.
They didn't want to leave infrastructure as part of their thing.
And so as the school started to open again, there's
absolutely everything's been destroyed. The plumbing doesn't work, the electricity
doesn't work, none of it worked. We did a little
project with a Christian church up in Mosul, and that
Christian leader was trying to get kids into school again.
That was one of the ways people could come. We
said to them, we really want their parents to be
involved in that. They've been through this horrific experience. Is
there something they can do, And they said, well, I
guess they could try and build the desk. These aren't carpenters,
these are dentists there, accountants. You know, it's not going
to work. We said, let's try, and then I regretted
that afterwards, because I thought, if it doesn't work out,
it's going to be so bad. But we bought supplies,
you know, we sent some technicians in there to teach
them and help them, and they were awful. The desks
were uneven, there were splinters. You know, it just wasn't
working out. But they kept persisting and in the end,
you know, they created I don't know two hundred three
hundred of these bent metal desks with a varnished wooden
top and these chairs to match. As painful as it
was to get through that with unskilled people, and so
many times I thought, why are we doing this? Why
did we choose to do this? When their kids sat
on the chairs and we went to take a photo
of the kids in the new school and their parents,
their mothers and fathers were standing behind them, beming with
the pride of having done something to help their kids' education.
It wasn't a handout, it wasn't even what they were
good at, but they all participated and kind of flought
through the difficulty of it, and they were so proud.
It did so much to feel kind of what they
had gone through. And so I remind myself of that story.
I don't want to go back and pull out of
things too soon. If you can get to that feeling
that those parents had of we did this. We've been
through something horrific, we felt we let our kids down,
and now we've done something that helped the other way.
Yeah, that's a great story. Now, what do you feel
that you need to tell the listener about what you're
doing about your book that you think they need to
hear so they can get a better understanding of what
it is that you're trying to accomplish.
I titled the book doing Small Things with Great Love.
As I said earlier, it comes from a mother Teresa quote.
And if you're going to talk about service and humanitarian work,
mother Teresa's always going to come up. The great thing
about Mother Teresa and anybody else like her is she
didn't ever have money, and she didn't ever go anywhere
except India, and she helped people in their worst moments
because she was there. And she couldn't even really change
the fact that this person was dying, but she could
hold their hand while they were. So there's some things
that you can't fix, but you can soften. There are
other things that if we band together with other people
in our community, we absolutely can change and fix. We
all belong to these networks PTSA, HOA Town Council. I
don't know that there is I don't want to say
this out loud, but my HOA can be one of
the most contentious organizations that I've ever paid been involved with.
You know, we're all next to our neighbors, we all
live by each other. But we can learn to function
in those settings and find the skills of people that
we thought were different because of a disability or a
cultural thing or some other choice. If we can learn
to bond over things, even if it's as simple as service,
that makes a successful life and it helps our mental health.
Yeah, that's so true. Now where do they find your book?
It's out on Amazon you can order it from Shadow
Mountain Publishing. It's anywhere books are sold.
Okay, now, how do they contact you?
Right there on my Instagram, it's right there. I'll put
it in the notes for the podcast.
Great, so you're on all the social media platforms, correct,
I'm all everywhere. That's good for everyone to know.
Oh.
Now we talked about things that we didn't think would
go well that did go well. Have you had anything
that you thought was going to go really good and
then all of a sudden all the dominoes just fell
in place and it just astounded you how well it
went well.
Sure, that's true. I'm trying to think if I have
an example about that.
Yeah, I'm looking for something that you didn't think big enough.
You thought it was going to be good, but it
just went huge, so good.
There's so many examples that I could choose from, but
one of them is during the pandemic, I saw a
picture of the New York Times where because kids weren't
in school, they weren't drinking school milk. You know, all
that milk goes to school. You have to store milk somewhere,
has to be refrigerated, and they didn't know what to
do with it. So because of the glut, they were
just dumping it in farm fields. They were just using
it as fertilizer, just dumping it, and that just looked
like the nineteen thirties to me. I was just so
sad to see that. So we called up the Milk
Association and said, what's the situation and could we do anything,
not really thinking that anything would come out of this.
As a result, our organization was able to to buy
some of that milk. We thought, what do we do
with it? Because it's fresh milk, you have to be careful.
So we contacted a cheese making organization they made Swiss
cheese up in a northern state, and we said, you know,
this is our situation. Would you be interested in helping
us process it into Swiss cheese? And I was surprised
at how interested they were in doing something that was
for a humanitarian cause. So they took all of that
milk that we got off the market and they turned
it into Swiss cheese and then they donated it back
to us that we could send out to food banks.
During that time when supply chains were breaking in different
things like that. So a disaster that was in the
New York Times. You know about the milk because of
the decisions that different people made, the milk Association, the
Gostar Cheese that made the cheese, and then the food banks,
it all lined up. That was a good thing out
of something that was difficult.
Yeah, that's an awesome story and I'm glad it worked
out that way. What do you tell people they're trying
to do something good, They're working really diligently on it,
working every day. It's just not going the way they
hoped it would, even though it is progressing. How do
you get it across to them that they don't realize it,
but they're doing something really good every day just by trying.
So how do you get that point across to them
to give them hope because of what they're trying to
do even though they may be struggling at times.
Just before the October seventh attack in Israel, I was
in there in July and as part of my visit,
I crossed over to Bethlehem from Jerusalem. There was a
site there that I wanted to see, and in twelve
different locations around the world, this Catholic organization has set
up a place where an order of nuns praise for
peace and relief twenty four to seven. So they just
rotate through there. This was one of them at a
place called the Milk Grotto, and I wanted to see
that very quietly and reverently. You can walk past the
place where she was kneeling and praying, and the people
behind me were sort of, what good is this? You
know all the situation that's happened between Palestinians and Israelis
and all around the world, and you know you've got
a nun that's just praying twenty four to seven for
a woman of faith like me. There's that scripture in
James that says the fervent prayer of a man or
a woman affects much. And I have to believe in that.
When I'm doing the best I can and it's slow
and it looks like it's going backwards and it doesn't work,
but I can draw on my faith to ask a
power greater than me, will you please bless this will
use piece of open doors. I know it may not
be in the way that I'm thinking of, but I
believe that you help good hearted people who are trying
to do what's the best and trying to help other
people in the same spirit that that nun was praying.
I want to draw on the powers that I believe
in to help this move forward bigger than my power.
And I've seen that happen over and over again, mostly
in ways that I never expected. But with a little hindsight,
you look back and think, Okay, I would say, draw
on the power of your faith. Don't get discouraged that
you've got this all on your own shoulders. God, who
cares for every one of us, will help it move forward.
Yeah, that's a great way to look at it. Now,
one last time, the name of the book and where
they can find it.
The name of the book is called Doing Small Things
with Great Love. My name is Sharon you Bay. Can
order it on Amazon or through Shadow Mountain Publishing, and
you can find me on Instagram at Sharon you Bank. Underscore.
Well, this has been great, great information, great conversation. I
really appreciate you taking the time to join us today.
I would only say that I'm so grateful to you,
Tony for expanding the topic of the podcast, of opening
up this forum for people who want to discuss these things,
and bringing real concrete ideas to people who listen to
the podcast every day. I've enjoyed the podcast and it
was a privilege for me to be on it. Thank
you very much.
Oh It's been my pleasure. Thanks again.
Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to
listen to our show today. We hope you enjoyed it
as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If
you know someone who has a story to share, tell
them to contact us at why notm dot world. One
last thing, spread the word about why Not Me. Our
conversations are inspiring guests that show you are not alone
in this world.