Aviva Fried

For a while we are thinking about the need to document seniority occupational therapist, those who influenced in meaningful way about the profession. I feel responsible to do so. How can it be that an occupational therapist won't meet with Dalia Sachs and get excited or get a bit confused with Aviva Fried.

After all, we are here thanks to so many..

The journey starts.

The first meeting is with Aviva Fried. For me Aviva is an unclear figure who I met in a course at the master degree in Tel Aviv. I remember thinking in the class thinking Aviva is talking about something high and important. Remember the feeling of not understanding the idea she is talking about and in the same time it is clear to me that there is something I should understand. Something is telling me, loud and clear – one day you will understand.

A phone call and coffee, coffee at Aviva.

There is a sign in the entrance that gives us the notion of the occasion. This is the house where Prime Minister Rabin lived. Already a story, piece of history.

The mailbox marked as 1 but after it the number is 11. What does it mean? Is it 10 with dropped number? Another enigma…

The sign that tells it used to be Yitzhak Rabin house

We found the apartment and get into Aviva's privet space. A smell of lavender welcomes us, biscuits and coffee. 

Same as I imagined carpets and leather couches, books, coffee table. We sit on the couches, from the first moment the stories start. The friendship with Rabin and Leah and the unmediated encounter with their security men.  I find myself concern with the thought that I should have turned the record in the stairway… every moment worth recording.

Aviva immediately start telling, even any question was asked about Yael Halevi, the one to influence Aviva's perception and her professional development. I stop and ask for permission to record, feel that any interruption stop a story that could be told. Decide not to interrupt more. We both set up the record and dig into a conversation about the essence, the profession, intuition and its meaning and about being. A philosophic conversation that can be possible only with her. During two hours that pass without notice she hand out a picture of Yael Halevi with awed, a pile of papers written with an old font why it is important to create a proper academic root to the occupational therapy profession.

We look at those pages, stop on a list of reasons why this process is not necessary. First reason – if it likes physiotherapy there is no need. The similarity to our nowadays reality hits me. Is it possible that so little has changed? There are moments in the conversation that I find myself observing the almost sorialist situation. Me, Sivan and Aviva drink coffee and talk about the togetherness, the same and the different.  

I'm excited.

We copy the papers with awe; feel as if a fortune of professional history found her way to us, while we expose Aviva to the technology that made it possible to us to do so without taking the papers out of her house.

I'm excited again.

Last question, if you could build a community of occupational therapists, that you are part of it, who will you invite to be in it?

The name rise without any other thought.

It came naturally and meets me with great pleasure.

The next link in the chain.

We leave with feeling of euphoria and elation. Smile on my face for the days to come, rare one, saved for special occasions. We are out for the journey, and I have this feeling it takes us to great places.

Love being an Occupational Therapist.

Naama

In a blue folder that moves with me to every apartment gathered together Brill, Leibowitz and Hegel, tempting me once in a while to peep at the anthology Aviva Fried made us, first year students in the occupational therapy program. In the reading list I give my students there is an article from the book published upon her lectures in the Broadcast University. What I learned from Aviva and from many other Occupational therapists I want to pass on to others, to my students who soon become my colleagues, and to my community which I feel deep feeling of belonging.

In the phone call she try hard to remember me from all the students she had, and open the door widely, it feels as if she is on her way to join us. With a sense of mission she asks me questions that get deep into the goal of what we want to do in this meeting, the first, that would direct us to all the others. When she raise Yael Halevi's name I feel that she do for me what I want to do for others, telling me about someone I didn't have the chance to know and made a main difference for Aviva helping her find her professional way.

I was glad that she invited us to her home, telling us more about herself, if to use her words – entering us to her own space, to a discussion which is our safe space. We came to hear about the beginning, about her being a young, 22 year old woman, placing in this high position because there was anybody else. Hear about the people who influenced her, and how things rolled. Little stories about her patients, about teaching, inserted to the big story as jewels. Describing us, with the tune of one who explain it so many times and never get tired of it, how by experience, and philosophy, one learns how to get the courage to care for another, to enter his life and take part in them. How from all these you build your intuition and how this intuition is a tool, so important tool in our daily work.

Time pass and the conversation was no more just an interview but a talk made by three occupational therapist about the past present and future, about the professional identity, the special and unique. A meaningful conversation of our profession which let and demand us to be humanistic and to consider the other own space, to identify, always be the one to identify the key point. For me it was an amazing opportunity to put in words what I do every day in my workplace with the people.

In the days after the meeting every second sentence started with "Aviva said…" and the energies were so high. The thoughts, about the content as well as the meeting itself, accompanied me in all other human interactions. Suddenly to think – Who is my Yael Halevi? What move me in my professional way? What are the thing I won't give up for? I am quite pleased that I have answers to these questions, and moreover of the fact that they change all the time.

From all the knowledge and the deep experience of walking together the same path I take with me what Aviva said when we asked her what have changed. She took some quite moment before she answered. "What changed is that there are educated occupational therapists like you, who come and ask the questions". The best way greeting to a wonderful journey.

Sivan