I Know, That You Know, That I Know, That You Know and Vice Versa

I have been blessed with a plethora of friends that I would literally give my right arm to protect without batting one of my eyes. Some of them I have had for 48 of the 55 years that I have been on Earth. They are my tribe, part of my village and I consider every one of them, my family. That is just how it is.  I never doubt their worth and time has not lesson our connection, if anything it has made it stronger. These are souls that I can never image my life without, and I dread the day when it might become a reality.  

Yet, my job is the one aspect of my life I can never truly share with them.  I mean, yes I have often given them a description of what my job entails, but it was impossible to capture a vivid, authentic snapshot of the interior by looking in from the outside.  This is a piece of my journey that can only be fathomed by my friends with me in the “corps”. I refuse to call them work friends because it sounds so insignificant and compartmentalized.  The comradery that I have experienced with my child welfare circle is anything but shallow and not a tad bit trivial. These people are my people.  My ride or die, got my back, voice of reason, my posse, my band, my roll dawgs, my brew crew, my peeps, my speed dial, my shrinks, ok, so you get the point. They are the only people who understand what I do, and the reason why I do it. There are not many things in life I know for sure, but one thing I know with certainty is that my coterie of DCFS friends got me through every single day of the last 30 years.

The reason being that like me they are the only ones who really know how the fear of missing something in a case hounds you, day in and day out. What the voice in your head sounds like at 3am saying “Did I make the right call?  What it is like to go home and attempt to shut off, but instead stay constantly aware that the children in your caseload are out there living their reality, and that it can all fall apart at any time. They too, get calls at midnight, take long drives across the state and back all in a day’s work and experience the constant emotional encounters that make it impossible to really ever clock out. Like me, they never get to relax for long because their job doesn’t end when the typical 40-hour work week is over. The true nature of the work requires us to be available at a moment’s notice, 24/7, 365 days a year.

Because we all truly understand that what it takes to survive child welfare, we interchangeably tap into one another’s emotional, intellectual, or spiritual reservoirs to help make sense of it all, to find a sort of balance, to feel aligned and be understood. We mutually use inappropriate humor in the presence of each other as a coping mechanism, unapologetically and without having to feel guilty about it. And we help one another find solace in knowing that we are not going to win them all and that’s okay, but at least we planted a seed in someone’s life.

So years later as the end of my journey is nearing, I realize I could have never made it without them and no matter how much time goes by, I will never forget what they meant to me.  Once that door closes for the last time, it will be understood without ever having to be acknowledged, that for the rest of our lives, 365 days a year, night or day, no question’s asked and without hesitation, we will continue to be  there for one another. Because what we know that was not visible to those looking in from the exterior, is that in those vivid, authentic snapshots  of our years together on the inside, more often than not, we were carrying one another.

Question to myself:  If I could invite 4 people(not including family) dead or alive to dinner, who would they be? Saint Theresa of Calcutta, Ronnie Van Zant, Ruby Bridges and JFK.