Michele Norris, the National Public Radio journalist and news anchor, clearly relishes the opportunity to discuss her mother's grace in handling two bouts of breast cancer, 27 years apart. "My mother, thankfully, is still with us," Norris told members of the new Women Enlightened Better Health Program (WE) at USC Aiken on Saturday. "So much had changed between those two (occurrences). The first time Mom had cancer, there were no support groups, no way to Google or pick up a phone to find organizations to help people."
Norris served as keynote speaker for the event, sponsored by Aiken Regional Medical Centers, which rolled out the WE initiative in December. The program is intended to empower women with the kinds of services Norris has described - making health education, care navigation and support more accessible.
When her husband accepted a position with President Barack Obama's re-election campaign last fall, Norris took a leave of absence from NPR. She has remained busy with a variety of other projects, including women's health care. It's worth noting, Norris said, that airline flight attendants give one piece of crucial advice in the event of an emergency landing.
"The attendants say to put the oxygen mask on yourself first, so you can then help others," Norris said. "Look at your own to-do lists; it's hard to figure out how to take care of all your needs. It's about not adding things, but removing things and keeping those that are important and about taking care of ourselves."
The advice may sound basic - managing a workload to spent more time with one's kids, learning to say yes to the important requests for one's time and saying no to others. But out in the world, that's not always the case, Norris said.
Early in her career, she would never turn down an assignment, fearing that she would lose others if she refused. During one 12-month period, she was on the road for 184 days - a schedule that was impairing her health. She didn't have children then, but Norris realized she didn't have time to give to her husband, her professional community, her friends and her church. Still, it took one of those friends - journalist Cokie Roberts - to intervene, urging Norris to say no but in a way that doesn't offend others.
"It's important, too, to have female companionship," said Norris. "Cultivating a friendship is cultivating joy. Find those things and people that bring you comfort."Social media can connect people all over the world, yet Norris said the contacts through media devices cannot ever replace the value of eye-to-eye contact. Nothing can replace giving a piece of yourself to someone, she said.
In the late 1960s and early '70s, Norris grew up in the first black family on the block in her Minnesota neighborhood. Her parents didn't discuss their lives before that in any long narrative with their children. The older couple didn't want to burden them at the time. During the 2008 presidential campaign that resulted in Obama's election, they began to open up on their family history and the issues of race and integration that they experienced.
"At the end of that journey, we learned about who we are as a family," Norris said. "Talking has given us (children) a chance to see what made our parents strong. We try to have more honest conversations."
Erika Wisdom, a nuclear safety engineer at the Savannah River Site, said she and her husband listen to NPR news every day while commuting to and from work. "She is special," Wisdom said. "Part of my background is in pharmaceutical science, and I've seen the ways these issues affect women. Having such a role model to speak and bring attention to these issues is great."
Norris readily admits she would love to be covering the 2012 presidential campaign. "It's not easy to leave something that you love," she said. "But if it were easy to leave the chair, I shouldn't be there in the first place."Senior writer Rob Novit, a journalist for the past 41 years, joined the Aiken Standard staff in 2001. He covers education issues and general assignments.