Meet Mary Anne Mercer

We were lucky to catch up with Mary Anne Mercer recently and have shared our conversation below.

Mary Anne, thank you so much for making time for us. We’ve always admired your ability to take risks and so maybe we can kick things off with a discussion around how you developed your ability to take and bear risk?

What a great question. As a young person I didn’t see myself as a risk-taker, though I dreamed of one day seeing a different world from the one I knew. I decided on a conventional profession as a nurse, and during college had conventional friends and social life.

My first big risk was marrying someone with very different values and background from my own, a charismatic, free-thinking dreamer who insisted that we were meant to be together. But even “true love” didn’t conquer our differences, and the marriage ended in divorce.

Had I learned my lesson about the danger of risk-taking? For a time I settled back into a more conventional lifestyle, with advanced training as a nurse practitioner, assuming a responsible job directing a community clinic. But the “I have to see the world, do something different” urge struck me.

This time it came in the form of a visiting friend who had just spent time in Nepal. I barely knew where that country was on the planet, but her descriptions of the place won me over. Within a month I was taking on a health position in a rural area of that country–a stranger in a strange land, living in a tent, a foreigner in a rural area where many had never seen anyone unlike themselves. With few English-speakers in the district, I had to communicate in the local language, eat only the local food, and spend long days trekking up and down the mountainsides to small hamlets to provide care and immunizations.

Risks involve danger, and my first few months in rural Nepal were challenging. The physical conditions were difficult, the trekking arduous, and the isolation from others “like me” led to a kind of loneliness. I considered resigning. But after a few months of a stumbling adjustment, the light dawned, and I was able to embrace this new reality. Each day meant discovering something unexpected and fascinating about the people and their culture. I grew confident in my skills as the sole provider of western health care available to most of the villagers, and reveled in arriving at each new mountain village. The staff became valued and loved friends. By the time my year of service was over, I felt a deep sadness at the prospect of losing touch with all that I’d learned and valued.

Nepal taught me to be open to whatever might come my way. After grad school I ventured to adopt a daughter as a single woman, and that was probably my best decision ever. I married a man I’d not known for very long, and that marriage has been a happy one for nearly 30 years. I’ve learned that when taking a risk means exploring the unknown, the result can be the best part of life.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I’ve worked in global health ever since my time living in Nepal several decades ago, which I spent traveling to villages with a health team in a rural district, By the time I had left Nepal, I knew that I had found my calling.

It wasn’t the arduous trekking that attracted me–although spending hours every day going up and down the mountainsides just to get to our work sites was eventually an enjoyable part of the job. No, it was seeing how much could be accomplished by the incredibly energetic and innovative village folks I lived with. They were an inspiration in how to juggle a massive range of problems with relatively few resources. Many of them, particularly their young children, suffered from debilitating health conditions, such as infections and malnutrition. When a child was sick and modern medicines weren’t available, families would try local cures such as herbs or, more often, turn to a spiritual remedy. It was a perfectly logical choice within the systems available to them. So when I was called on to help with infections or other simple ailments, I was often able to provide useful treatment, such as antibiotics that were not otherwise available.

Seeing how much could be done with simple care spurred me to learn more, so I went back to the U.S. and studied public health. Most of my professional life since then has involved supporting communities and countries to provide effective services for mothers and children. But that journey has also involved a growing recognition of all the other forces that are really critical in affecting people’s ability to lead “normal,” happy lives. People who live in countries and societies that are vastly unequal suffer from more illness and shorter lives than those in more equitable settings. It’s a simple formula, one that seems to apply similarly to rich countries as well as the poor ones. That reality has given me a deep regard for how politics affect health, and how political change is needed for genuine success.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

I’ve been privileged to have a satisfying life, both personal and professional. Though it’s difficult to carve out the most impactful elements of my history, here are three that have stayed with me over time.

First, my family legacy! I grew up in a large family next door to my grandfather on a 5000-acre ranch in Montana. Since I was a quite young, I was interested in my family history. I was curious about my grandfather’s early days as a cowboy and later as a rancher in the early days of the 20th century. And I was surrounded by our history: my grandfather’s ranch house and storerooms held a wealth of documents and items from nearly a century ago. When my grandmother Florrie died in 1915, shortly after the birth of my father, Grandpa stored all her belongings, including her diary, in a trunk. Those and other mementos from the past helped me to document the legacy my grandparents left for the family that followed.

The desire to share the family story with others took me on the journey of my book: “Crossing the Yellowstone: The Saga of a Montana Ranch Family.” As a family we celebrate our legacy in many ways, including a large family reunion every several years. Our last one had over 50 of getting us together on the ranch—one of many opportunities to celebrate our legacy.

The second important impactful area for me was gaining an appreciation of culture. The Nepal experience of trekking to rural villages providing simple health care was for me earth-shattering. It set the stage for how I’ve spent my professional life since then, and also in many ways for how I see the world. The importance of respect for other cultures comes in high on my list of lessons learned from that time, which I wrote about in my book “Beyond the Next Village: A Year of Magic and Medicine in Nepal.”

I’m not sure I even truly understood what “culture” meant before that time or appreciated the vast range of world-views it can represent. After several months living and interacting with villagers in a rural district. I was proficient enough in the Nepali language to communicate directly. At that point, every day seemed to bring a new awareness of how they saw the world, including their ideas about health and illness. For example: the father of a little girl who came for immunizations described what I recognized as a seizure that she had the day before. But he was clear: no, it wasn’t a medical problem: she had been taken over by a bad spirit, and an animal sacrifice would ensure it didn’t happen again. Another time I was told that a badly malnourished baby would get better because the jhakri or traditional healer had removed the offending cause from her mouth. After hearing many of these kinds of stories, I slowly began to understand all that I didn’t understand…and how much I needed to listen.

I’d learned to appreciate culture in the most direct and meaningful way possible: experiencing it. I can’t imagine a more effective approach.

Finally, a key part of my life has been maintaining an attitude that respects differences. I grew up in a mostly rural “red state” and have lived most of my life since then in “blue” states. As a result, I have close family members whom I love and respect who are on the radical right politically and others like me who swing to the left. Yet the discussion of politics with my relatives is rarely a divisive issue for me. Why? Because we keep our discussions of “politics” primarily about areas where we agree—and there is no shortage of those issues. Whether it’s concern about our massive military budget, or the overblown power of the pharmaceutical industry, or the decline in U.S. educational levels, we often speak in full agreement.

The recent election brings on new challenges in identifying our common perspectives. We could of course have serious debates on a vast range of topics, but I will continue to focus on areas of agreement—appreciating our right to have differences. I aim for the same approach with friends and others with whom I disagree: respect is the key.

Who has been most helpful in helping you overcome challenges or build and develop the essential skills, qualities or knowledge you needed to be successful?

My parents were, beyond doubt, the post powerful and positive elements in guiding the person I am today. I was extremely fortunate to be raised with positive role models, emotional support when it was needed, and an ethos that valued integrity and a sense of responsibility for others.

Growing up in a small, well-defined rural Montana community of a dozen or so households also provided a solid base in seeing my place in the rest of the world. We were connected by geography, history, and simple social connections. During my childhood, we all came together regularly at our one-room schoolhouse for Christmas programs, graduations, square dances, and other celebrations. When neighbors had difficulties—other families stepped in. For my own family, that came out most starkly one year when my brother, who ran the ranch, was hospitalized during harvest season. Neighbors, although very occupied with their own farm work, stepped in to harvest the wheat crop—saving a significant proportion of our family income for that year.

I’ve lived in cities most of my adult life. where that same connection with those living around me is harder to sense, I go back regularly to Montana for reminders of where I began.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://maryannemercer.com/
• Instagram: @Mary_Anne_Mercer
• Facebook: Mary Anne Mercer
• Linkedin: Mary Anne Mercer
• Twitter: @mamercer44

Image Credits

Rick Dahms (for the first picture only)