184 Who Do You Think You Are?
Lisa Rohleder
“When you’re working for people who are really like you,
then you end up working with people who are really like you,
and that’s really empowering for everybody.”Lisa Rohleder, LAc, is one of the cofounders of Working Class
Acupuncture and of the Community Acupuncture Network. She is also
the author of The Remedy: Integrating Acupuncture into American
Healthcare.
Readers who are interested in social entrepreneurship and
community acupuncture can get more information from her book and by
visiting the Community Acupuncture Network.
Go to: http://www.communityacupuncturenetwork.org
Who do you think you are? What is the purpose of your life?
I can speak to the vocational purpose of my life; I can’t say with any
certainty that I know my purpose on a larger level. My vocational purpose
is to use acupuncture to educate and for social change in health care,
primarily on behalf of working class people.
What event or series of events led you to your discovery?
I was one of those kids who always wanted to be a doctor. I grew up in a
working class environment, though I didn’t figure that out until later. My
family was really into advancement through education so I went to a
very good college.
I felt really out of place, but I couldn’t pinpoint it as a class issue
until later. I probably didn’t end up being a doctor because I had an inner
dissonance about class. At one point I realized that if I became a doctor
I would be in a different class from where I came from, and everybody I
was connected to, so I chose acupuncture as a field hoping that it might
be different. It took me about 10 years to realize that it wasn’t.
The way health care works in this country, anything
complementary or alternative is really only available to people who have
a disposable income, and that really bothered me. I wanted to do