People We Know & Stories We Don’t Know: Shoshana Leah Greenberg
Shoshana Leah Greenberg aims to listen to the needs of her clients and figure out how to reach them.
Shoshana Leah Greenberg, originally from Brooklyn, NY, moved to Michigan to be where her family and her heart were. Greenberg works with people with “special gifts,” as she calls them, because she believes that people with special needs bring spiritual gifts to the world. She works to help people understand them.
Her job as a direct support professional, for her, is to be a private teacher and a friend to the people she works with.
Greenberg aims to listen to the needs of its customers and figure out how to reach them. For example, a client needed to learn to wash netilat yadayim – a ritual of washing hands before eating bread – and she used a song by the Jewish group Uncle Moishy and the Mitzvah Men to teach it in a fun way.
Her other main goal is to integrate her customers into the community with activities like shopping – something she lacks.
Greenberg did not go to school to work with people with special gifts. While working as a cashier, a friend told her that she thought she would be good at this job because she was very good with people. With little knowledge of the field, she hesitated. A coworker helped her get comfortable in the field by reminding her that people with special needs are just people with feelings who want to speak up and be heard. They, like all of us, are normal and different at the same time.
In the first household where she worked, some women functioned better and others needed more attention and care. The work included travel, washing dishes and chatting, arts and crafts, laundry, yoga and even drumming. Prior to that, however, Greenberg had planned to study music therapy; however, she fell in love with the day program and changed courses in college.
Greenberg said that what she likes most is that “they live with their hearts, they always shine, they are always in their light, they always feel their neshamah, they are always focused on Hashem”.
See beyond
Greenberg is also an intuitive healer and counselor. “I feel beyond what is seen on the outside in people, under the circumstances. I can see right behind the curtain, ”she said. When someone comes to her with a specific problem, the information gets to Greenberg based on the soul. She opens her clients’ eyes to who they are as souls. Its goal is to “help people feel good and better in this world and themselves, thereby transforming their lives,” she said.
Greenberg is in the process of returning to New York where she will continue to work in the field. Her dream is to create a house for men and women with special gifts.