Whitney Ball had a lot going for her in the summer of 2018. She had an “amazing group of friends,” she says, former fellow athletes with her at Indiana University, and had experienced “phenomenal” opportunities to travel the world as a vendor for Eli Lilly and Company. After two years with her beloved partner, Vernon, she had given birth to a daughter.

That’s when everything fell apart. Just six months into motherhood, Vernon died tragically. “It was devastating,” Ball says. “Still is.”

She lost him in August. By fall, she says, “I was really struggling.” Ball moved back in with her parents. “It was humbling,” she says. A friend sent her a text about therapy offerings for those who had undergone the kind of life upheaval she had. Ball recalls thinking she wanted that counseling “immediately.”

“I met with my therapist the first time,” she says, “and I felt like a whole different person.” Her counselor was often accompanied by a dog, which felt like a sign. Ball’s partner had loved animals. The dog’s presence reassured Ball, as if it were “a physical representative of Vernon.”

“That therapy, I remember framing my day around it,” Ball adds. Her father would provide childcare for the two to three hours before or after it, time she used working out or getting coffee or doing anything “that really gave me some roots to grow into being a better person,” she says.

Her therapy helped Ball move on and become a strong support to her daughter, Genevieve. “I really got out a lot of what I needed to do,” she explains, “and some tools to make it through and be successful …. I’m so thankful for the time I had. The start of my healing journey,” she says.

Ball had moved into nonprofit work after her time as a vendor for Lilly. She is now the director of events at 16 Tech Community Corporation, where she started in 2022. Ball says a friend recognized that she was focused on “building people up, especially people who don’t have the same opportunities as others” and recommended she join Eskenazi Health Center’s board of directors. After researching the organization’s work, particularly their efforts to combat social issues interfering with patient access to care, Ball was convinced. “They do all this,” she says. “This is incredible. Yes, it wasn’t even a thought.”

One of the goals of the board, she explains, is to get patients to the point where the “anxiety of going to the doctor” becomes the primary health care worry.

Right now, many patients are more concerned about whether they can pay, will be understood by providers or can even access transportation to get to an appointment, she says. Helping to lessen these types of obstacles, she says, “just makes me so proud.”

Now in her third year, she serves as the board’s vice chair. Dawn Haut, M.D., CEO of Eskenazi Health Center, invited Ball to join her in Washington, D.C., to do advocacy work last winter. “It just charged me up,” Ball shares. “Still to this day I feel the energy from that weekend, just advocating for yourself, for other people.”

Her commitment to this advocacy is personal as well. A year into her tenure on the board, Ball was in a meeting when she noticed a flyer describing some of Eskenazi Health Center’s mental health programming. She realized that the months of therapy that had done so much to jumpstart her recovery had been provided by the organization whose board she had joined.

“I just got chills all around me,” she says. “This is something I literally benefited from in my greatest time of need, so that just ties me even more to what we do at Eskenazi [Health].”

Ball hopes other board members will share “why we’re doing what we’re doing and why the work is important and how impactful Eskenazi [Health] has been for us.” “I’m incredibly proud to sit on this board,” she adds.

Counseling appointments are available through Sandra Eskenazi Mental Health Care at Eskenazi Health Center (317.880.7666) and through Sandra Eskenazi Mental Health Center (317.880.8491). Anyone experiencing a mental health emergency can call 317.880.8485 or 988.