NEW YORK—She saw him every day in front of her D.C. apartment building as she left for work. He was a middle-aged, mentally ill black man who sometimes recognized her, sometimes not, but he was always there.
Every time Helena Bala, a 27-year-old former lobbyist turned full-time listener, walked past Joe, a voice inside told her that she wasn’t doing what she was supposed to be doing, that she was not listening to her own heart.
She started out giving him ginger ale (which he loved), or a bag of chips, then a loaf of Wonder bread, something she knew would last him for a while.
“He was always there, cold weather too, always standing, always with a cup,” said Bala, about the man she would come to identify as the symbol of her inner voice.
She had been living a lie since graduating from law school, taking a job she didn’t like just so she could pay her bills. But inside, she was aching to help people like Joe, people who were struggling and didn’t have anyone to talk to. The voice echoed in her head until one day she decided she would do it. She would listen to people tell their stories, with no strings attached.
Humble Beginnings
As a child growing up first in communist Albania and then as an immigrant in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Bala knows how it feels to live without.
