Engaging Sincerely With The World
Cody Nance serves as residential supervisor on the day shift. Whether he’s having a long conversation with a resident or cuddling one of the resident farm animals, Cody brings a connected presence that adds genuine warmth to the Mountain Valley environment. Cody has worked at Mountain Valley for four years but originally lived a long way from New Hampshire. Fortunately, he found his way to New England for a job that he calls “the best thing I’ve ever done.”
Tell us about your background?
“I’m from Fort Worth, Texas. I started college hoping to get a degree in journalism so I could be a movie critic, but that didn’t quite pan out. I ended up getting a degree in general studies and bounced around after that doing a lot of things.
I was access services supervisor for a college library in Florida. I was a security guard for a zoo and two hospitals. I’ve trained dogs, and I guess the most pertinent job experience was working as a CPS case worker. It gave me a lot of experience prioritizing what matters when you deal with a person. I had done a lot of very public facing customer service type stuff that allowed me to interact with strangers. Working in child protective services allowed me to fine tune those skills. I always endeavor to help people feel if they’ve been engaged with sincerely.
We moved to New England when my wife ended up getting a job at Dartmouth in human resources at the library. I was looking for a job on Indeed and Mountain Valley popped up. I saw I could work with animals and young people and I was sold—it’s been four years since then.”
What does a typical day look like for you?
“I come in and touch base with the rest of the day shift staff. I’ve generally already made the schedule for the day, but I fine tune it with what I see on the calendar that day and run it by clinicians. I help stewardship get underway and sometimes I am in stewardship. If we have an intake coming, I will help prepare the materials necessary, or if a resident’s graduating, I help get the materials for them to leave.
After stewardship I feel like I can be anywhere doing anything. I try to be kind of a glue person and bridge gapes wherever I can and whenever I’m able.”
What’s the most challenging and most rewarding part of your work?
“Most challenging is knowing when to step back. Anyone here could tell you that I struggle to tell the difference between reassurance and general sharing of positive information. I tend to be a little too helpful in that regard.
The most rewarding is getting to play any part in the journeys of the residents here and help them in any way I can. It’s enormously rewarding to be a stable and consistent part of their lives. Just getting to know them, spend time with them, and be of assistance to them. It’s one of my favorite things that I’ve ever done.”
Do you have a specific memory of working with a resident?
“Not so long ago we had a resident who tended to get stuck and would spend a lot of time in their bathroom. This came at a time when I was able to step away from things that I was usually doing and embrace other responsibilities. I wound up with more time than I’d had in the past.
I found myself in their room very frequently, lying on the ground, kind of speaking into the crack under the bathroom door so they could hear me. We’d talk for long periods of time and try to go through their process. In that very delicate and private setting, they trusted me enough to really let me in. They did end up graduating, and I definitely lost it on their grad day.
That is very much the kind of experience that makes Mountain Valley the only place I have ever enjoyed working. It’s easily the best thing I’ve ever done.”
You’re a big animal lover and frequently interacting with the farm animals. What draws you to animals specifically?
“The relationship I have with animals is the foundation for the positive relationship I have with myself. The love that I have had for animals, spending time nurturing them, that has allowed me to extend myself to others. I’ve had dogs all my life and even had a pet pig at one point. I’m only able to show up for residents the way that I am because I have spent so long with animals.
I think there’s so much connective tissue between the oxen, for example, and the residents. I feel we have so much more in common than we have different. I’m not really a spiritual person, but I feel we are all kind of one.”
You originally wanted to be a movie critic. What’s your favorite movie?
“It would have to be the third Exorcist movie. I’ve gone through so much of my life not knowing what I wanted to do with myself, feeling listless and useless. The Exorcist movies are really about the value and blessing of clarity of purpose—knowing what is valuable and what is worth your time and efforts. It has meant increasingly more to me as the years have gone by.”