The Bad Thing About Fighting The Good Fight

“And you have to let yourself mourn the loss, feel the pain, but not let it consume you or your life.

Know that life is beautiful in spite of loss because where there is loss, there is growth.” 

This is an excerpt from my journal in 1999 after a parent that I was working with died from an overdose leaving behind two small children. I read this today while boxing up some old stuff from my desk. What really struck me was the fact that my journal was the only therapeutic tool I had back then to deal with the secondary trauma I had experienced that day. A type of trauma that that child welfare staff deal with on a consistent basis. By the time this happened I had already been broken and in many ways I have been ever since. For most of us, if you are lucky to get through the first five years without shattering to pieces, the brokenness becomes the reason you stay. Because deep down we know what being fractured feels like and we began to think on some level that we need rescue others because we could not rescue ourselves. Self-reflection and cognizance does not come until years later. Wisdom even longer. 

I speak to this not to disparage or criticize the child welfare profession. Child welfare has been a gift to me in more ways than I could have ever imagined. I believe and will always believe the child welfare system is vital in the fight to assure children’s safety and help them and their families become stronger and more successful. Is it a perfect system? Of course not. Like most substantial public government funded agencies, there are not enough resources to fund them and secondly, with an infrastructure of that size, there is not much room for flexibility. These things compounded with the complex nature of our society and the system's inability to adequately response to it, just adds to its convolutedness. I sincerely don’t believe that when child welfare was created in 1935, it was intended to provide the comprehensive range of social services that are demanded of it today. 

With that being said, that excerpt is a factual depiction of the reality that frontline staff experience repeatedly on some level. Many times we are left alone to deal with the aftereffects of our secondary trauma. Ultimately forcing us to figure out ways to self-medicate and move on. We are left to our own devices, some of which only exacerbate the duress. But that’s a story for a different day. So we just do what we must in order to wake up the next morning, strap on our boots and keep fighting the good fight. 

 My question of the day to myself: 

What are the most important instructions in the handbook of life? Seek the things that bring YOU happiness, live and love unapologetically, be kind without expectations, take chances without or in spite of reservations and admit mistakes to yourself and others.