My Day

As a social worker, I spend a lot of time with people; hopefully helping them. Some days my job is just hard. I watch as families struggle to find a way to feed their children and put warm clothes on their backs. I listen as people tell me their life stories...of childhoods spent without loving parents and growing up in foster care. How do you grow up to be loving, caring, protective parents if you never saw how that's done? How do you heal that sort of hurt?

My day is spent juggling compassion, while scrambling to find resources. My day is sometimes being social worker/taxi driver--helping families get to those resources. My day is spent showing parents how to be the type of parents they wished for as a kid. Sometimes before you get to that place you have to deal with all the bad stuff that came first.

I believe in the resilency of kids and adults. I believe in the power to heal from all that hurt and be a better person. I have to or I could never do my job.

But sometimes at the end of the day, I come home tired, discouraged, and for a moment hopeless. I'm tired from being with people and just want time to myself. I don't necessarily want to hear on tv about politics or how the economy is failing. You don't have to tell me how hard a time families are having--I see it every day. I don't need to hear any more doom and gloom. And I don't want to hear a bunch of promises either.

So my evening may be spent escaping in a baseball game or even better, doing something creative.

And then the next day, I'm ready to do it all again.