Category Archive

I don’t know how many times I heard today that I can change my mind, or go back if I want to. I so appreciate that sentiment. And I know that I can.

I wonder if I will. I know that life takes us in all kinds of crazy and wild directions that we never plan on. I know that we can make plans that turn out perfectly, and we can make plans that never come to fruition, because something different crosses our path in life.

I know that when I left my agency the first time, I never planned to go back. One of the hardest things for me today is remembering the day my current supervisor called and asked if I was interested in a position. I was miserable at the job I had at that time, and couldn’t wait to leave. Nary a tear was shed leaving that job. I felt like on some level she saved me. I began growing as a clinician, therapist, social worker, and person again. I learned and changed. I loved what I was doing again.

I wish I wasn’t so tired, I wish I hadn’t had the year I had. But life does that to you, we don’t get to control it, and you have to do what you have to do (another phrase I’ve heard many times in the last month). But it’s true. I needed to make the choice that was ultimately right for me, for my family, for my future.

Right now? I hope I go back. I already miss my coworkers and families desperately. More than that, I feel like I cut off my arm, or some critical piece of my identity. I loved being a social worker in the foster care system, loved supporting families and working with children who needed more, loved doing therapy and eventually supervising other clinicians. Loved, loved, loved it. But I already know that even if I went back tomorrow, things would have shifted. Something would have shifted and it would not be the same. If I went back in six months, in a year, in two, it would not be the same. That doesn’t mean I won’t go “back”, but it means I cannot go backwards.

And so I feel sad for some moments, and try to focus on moving forward. I welcome the sad, I don’t want to push it away too vehemently, because I want to be able to walk through it and move to the other side, looking forward and moving on.

Embracing the future, and moving on.

Questions Again!

Meredith asks: I’m here. Here’s a question, and maybe it is too personal. Knowing what you know about the social services system, would you ever personally adopt a “waiting child” to be part of your family? Adoption is on my mind a lot these days.

We would absolutely adopt, and will absolutely adopt. I feel very strongly, for us, that it is important to adopt from foster care and from the US. I do not mean that is the best choice for everyone. There are a few reasons I feel strongly about that. The first one is in regards to private adoption. I feel that there are couples waiting in line to adopt privately. If you go on any private adoption website, there are hundreds of couples with “letters to the birth mom”  up on the site. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting for a child. Waiting to be matched. Waiting to be chosen. Don’t get me wrong- there is always some kind of wait involved in adoption. However, these couples are knee deep. I think it’s great on so many levels. It gives moms who feel that adoption is the best choice for them the opportunity to carefully choose the couple that she feels fits best. I don’t think it’s right for us. As far as international adoption- clearly there are more babies, toddlers, and children then there are families waiting, although you wouldn’t think that given, again, the wait times. But there are clearly children in the world that need families and homes. I am somewhat uncomfortable with two aspects of international adoption. The first is that if we went through with international adoption, we would be taking a child out of their own culture and history. Now, I don’t think this in and of itself is inherently evil. Again, those children need families and homes. I just wish all the money we spent on international adoption could go towards fortifying those countries to adopt their own children. Which brings me to my second point, and probably the most potent of all my reasons to adopt through the US foster care system. I do not feel comfortable adopting a child from another country when I know there are children here, in my own backyard, that desperately need loving homes. There are babies, toddlers, children and teens here. They all need homes and families that love them. I feel some kind of responsibility to extend our home and family to one or more of those children, when we are able.

However. We are young, and have never parented. We will likely not start with teenagers. Both of us would like to parent an infant. If we do not have our own biological children, or decide to adopt before doing IVF, we will get approved as pre-adoptive foster parents and wait until an infant who is legally freed is available. This is of course a wait. But those babies still need loving homes. (as do they all.)

After that? Who knows. Like I said, we are young and have never parented. I hope that we will continue on that path and foster and adopt more children, perhaps not all infants. But we need to take that step by step, and it’s obviously not all my decision, either. We need to see how things go and what life throws at us. We need to evaluate, each step of the way, where we are in life and as potential parents to children with special needs.

You asked about the social services system. It is so clearly broken it’s not even funny. I’ve had intimate encounters with just how broken our child welfare system is. I watch TV about children in abusive homes and the heroes wanting to put them in foster homes- and I cringe, thinking- what if the foster homes are no better? It’s a crap shoot at best. We try our best to make it better, and to provide children in foster care with loving, safe homes. But the truth is the system is broken and needs alot of work. And we are placing children with complex and unique needs into homes that often do not have enough support, and those folks are human too. The needs of the child welfare system, and it’s brokenness, are not going to determine whether or not we foster and adopt. Regardless of the system, those kids still need homes.

That said, there is a big caveat. I work in what we call “therapeutic” of “specialized” foster care. The kids in my program come with a history of many placements, dangerous behaviors, difficult behaviors, mental health histories, psychiatric medications, etc. They come with a variety of letters attached to their names: RAD, PTSD, ODD, ADHD. There is no telling what any child will grow up to be, and any child Khalil and I take into our home we will be committed to. At this point in our life, we aren’t ready to parent a child with those kinds of needs. Again- in ten or twenty years? Who knows. But now? We’re not there. So we probably wouldn’t parent through the specialized foster care programs.

There that is. My long and possibly very disjointed answer. The one thing I want to make clear: This is where Khalil and I are now, always subject to change, and our choices are not everyone’s choices. I very clearly feel that each person/ couple/ family tries the very best to make the choices that are right for them, whether it’s foster to adopt, private adoption, international adoption, or nothing of the sort. These choices are personal and private, and I would never dare to criticize another person’s choice.

Well, am still working on the website. Maybe it will be up by this time next year? After the WYSIWYG nightmare that I am in over trying to make a real website, WordPress feels like a breath of fresh air.

Otherwise it was a quiet day.

I love quiet weekends. Even though I’m usually bored by the end of the weekend, they recharge my batteries.

Baggage asks:

ok..why did you choose your job? Do you like sushi? If you had a million dollars what would you buy? Do you like abstract art? What is a fear you have overcome?

*****************************

I’m only answering two today.

Why did you choose your job?

The long and short of it is that when I was in high school, and heading to college, I really felt like there was nothing else that fit, other than social work. I had a dream one day to run a home for babies infected with HIV/AIDS. I went into social work to somehow try and achieve that goal, and ended up doing what I do.

I still feel that way, most days. What I do in social work fits my personality. I love advocating for people, and I love the mental health field. I like fighting for the underdog. It makes me sad that I’m burnt out and needing a break from doing what I do best. I can only hope that taking a break will help me come back stronger and more passionate in a few years.

Do you like sushi?

No. I really don’t.

Annie  asks:

Me! Me! I have a question!!

Want to come write a paper for me???

*****************

No. In fact, my friend, I do not. Especially not a paper on Communication Theory, which I suspect is the paper you are writing. I’m all set.

I wonder if folks who have been to grad school think that as much of it was total and complete BS as I did. I used to joke that when you get a degree in Social Work you are actually also majoring in the Art of Bull Shit. (don’t get me wrong. There is serious value to going to school for social work. You learn alot. Especially about things like how to diagnose yourself and everyone you know with some kind of disorder.) However, alot of social work school was just alot of making this up that sounded good.

Don’t you feel confident in my abilities now??

So no, I’m all set. I do want, one day, to head back for my PhD in The Art of Bull Shit, but that day is not today. Or tomorrow. Or anytime soon.

In case you were wondering…

The weight loss thing is not happening right now. As in, officially. After work yesterday I bought a bag of Cheetos and took them home with me. (Call me Britney.)

I just don’t care. I don’t know. I want to be skinnier, and not hate myself quite so much when I look in the mirror. But right now, how I look, what I wear, my health- none of them are motivating me enough to make good food choices or get off my ass and exercise.

Rather than make myself miserable by half-assing it, I’m just going to do what I’m going to do. I’m going to make some effort to not go bananas (i.e.: I didn’t buy the tube of cookie dough yesterday to sit and eat raw with a spoon. Go me with the willpower!), but I am not going to make myself nuts pretending that I care about weight loss when in all honesty, right now I just do not.

So there it is. I’m fully disclosed. I just don’t care right now.

Today is one of those days that if I was not doing NaBloPoMo, I wouldn’t be writing. I don’t write when I feel off like this, and when there are long stretches of me saying nothing, often that means long stretches of me feeling off. (sometimes, though, I’m just busy).

It’s one of those days where nothing feels right, everything feels off. The fun stuff has a smudge of crankiness around it. No one else does things right and that includes me. Where I want to snip and snap and crank but there’s no one that deserves it around, so I stuff it as much as I can and it just leaks out around the edges. One of those nights where Khalil starts feeling edgey because I’ve bitten his head off twelve too many times in the last twelve minutes.

Don’t you know? The days when you feel on the verge of tears all day long for no good reason? The days where you are stressed worried and upset about everything and nothing at all, all at the same time? The days when you vascillate wildly between falling off the edge of a cliff and being in the middle of a calm lake?

It’s when he asks what’s wrong, and I answer with both nothing and I don’t know. Usually one right after the other. Nothing. I don’t know. Because the truth is nothing is often my way of saying I don’t know when something is wrong. But I truly don’t know what it is. If I’ve finally figured it out it doesn’t take me long to come out with it.

Often it’s the collection of small but overwhelming stuff. The apartment is a mess (really, I am dreading going to work tomorrow). I don’t want to  unpack (really, I’m worrying about them, missing them. Feeling badly that I left them). I have to pay the bills (really, I’m worried about a job. I hate mine and I want a new one). And then maybe some more that are yet unnamed. I don’t know.

It’s one of those days, and there’s a reason I don’t write about them. Ellie is at the age where she whines (I don’t know if there’s actually an age for that, or if you just have to be a girl, because I remember getting in trouble for whining when I was graduating from high school at 17). All weekend long Shannon and I told her not to whine. And posts like this sound like one. big. whiny. whine.

Would you like some cheese with my whine??

I don’t want to say I’m burnt out. Because I’m not. But all last week, it felt like I was dangerously close.

And not just at work.

I got home at 9:30 east coast time, which was 6:30 am west coast time. (I live on the east coast.) Besides for a few hours sleep on the plane, I had been up since 9:30 east coast time- close to 24 hours. I came home, showered, rested, and went to work.

I never recovered, until Friday.

Work was a nightmare. As I described to my supervisor, after you have to hear people not want the kids you work with anymore, and convince them that they do want them, and spend hours keeping families together and hours putting kids together after the families fall apart… you start to feel like you’re carrying around a huge weight. The weight of all those little lives. I’m not the one who destroyed them, but I’m one of the grown-ups charged with trying to piece them back together.

I didn’t have the words for the week, nor the energy to write them. I didn’t have the time.

I took Friday off, and spent the weekend regrouping. Not talking to many people, totally and completely zoning out. There was an ANTM marathon on Friday, and a SYTYCD marathon the rest of the weekend. Khalil is very sick of models and dancers. My brain has appreciated the break, as have my emotions.

And so I totally bombed at Blog September.

But alas, I feel like myself again, rather than a very tired, fizzling out version of me. I’m hoping to start the week off on the right foot- either swimming or doing the Firm. Wish me luck!

It’s weird when you go to therapy. And you think that, if handed a question, you’d say one thing. Then out of your mouth pops this whole other thing that was totally unexpected.

Like, for instance. You are supposed to say something to your dad. You think that you’d probably tell him you miss him.

Instead you tell him how sorry you are.

Huh. If nothing else, therapy sure is food for thought.

It’s amazing what a day will do for you. Yesterday it took me almost two hours to get out of bed. I knew I needed… just, a day. So I took today off of work. I crawled out of bed at 9am. It felt like heaven to not have to get out of bed. I watched a movie, ate breakfast, and sat around for the morning. I didn’t clean, or pay bills, or run errands in the car. I did walk to the bank, but I took my camera. It was the most peaceful hour I remember having in well over six months. I took pictures. I narrated my pictures for my photo blog, but don’t think that I will narrate them there. I let myself be creative, and calm. I found the beauty in my surroundings, hoping to let that beauty carry over into the rest of my life and my perspective on things.

Between the work that I do and the things that have happened in my life lately, everything has felt ugly. Grey, brown, depressing and ugly. I have had trouble getting out of bed. I have not wanted to do anything. I want to lay in bed and just.. sleep. Today I let myself wander. I let myself do whatever I wanted to do. I didn’t press to meet a to-do list. I didn’t have anyone demanding or asking anything of me. I was able to just be. Something I’m not sure I’ve done in a very long time.

I think this is one small baby step towards beginning to take care of myself again.

Those were the three numbers that showed up on my scale on Monday. In that order. Last time I stepped on a scale, it was a bit closer to… 18something. 3? 5? I have gained at least fifteen pounds. In approximately two months. That’s by far the fastest I’ve ever gained, I think at least. I certainly don’t question that I gained it. I am the Queen of Eating Crap and Not Exercising.

When I mentioned to Khalil how much weight I’ve gained, he said, “Hon?” and I said, “What?” He said, “It’s ok”. And I have to believe him. Am I sad? Yes. Am I frustrated? Yes. Do I have to let all of that go and focus on what I have to do? Yes.

I’m frustrated with myself. I hate the way my body looks. I’m still trying to squeeze my 1 9 9 body into my 1 8 3 clothes. The result is not cute. I do not recommend it. I had to pull out the big tub and pull out some of my 1 9 9 clothes. That was sad, frustrating, and a wee bit… humiliating? I didn’t do it in front of anyone, but still feel humiliated. I put those clothes away with the plans to never pull them out again unless I was losing baby weight. Instead I’m losing stress and baby weight. Which royally sucks.

I hate the way my body feels. I have a distinct recollection of not having all of this extra fat on my body. I remember when I had more energy. I remember not feeling this way. I remember not cringing when I looked in the mirror. Those feelings aren’t far away because time wise, it was only about a month and a half to two months ago when I felt that way. I remember being frustrated about gaining a little weight over Christmas. About not being able to get under 181. Now I’m back at almost 200.

Here’s the thing. In order to not feel my feelings, I’m still eating them. Also, I’m doing this in part because I just don’t yet feel like I have the energy to make the good food choices. So I’m still making the crappy food choices. Go me. Every time I’m presented with the option, I make a crappy choice. Choice A: (somewhat less crappy) sausage and peppers and onions, on a small roll, two slices of cheese. Apple. Small bag of chips. Choice B: (seriously more crappy) Quarter pounder with cheese, fries, diet coke, chocolate shake. What do you think I chose yesterday? B. Why? For the simple reason that I felt like it. And I couldn’t bear to deny myself food. Not yet. I feel so sad, so overwhelmed, so frustrated with everything else that I cannot. deny. myself. food.

On the upswing, I have been exercising. I have worked out the last three days in a row. I’m tired, and having a hard time getting through the workouts. But I’m pushing through. Making this positive choice, the choice to do something really and truly good for me feels oh-so-good. It feels right. It makes me happy. Then I enter the rest of my day. And that feeling fades away into the stress, sadness, and being overwhelmed.

I know that I will get there. I have no doubt that I will be back to the place where I can make positive choices about food. Where I can deny myself the negative choices and remind myself that I’m worth the better choices. And that what feels like self-denial is really self-praise, because it means that I’m loving myself enough to make the positive choices. In the meantime, I shall cross my fingers that the exercise helps, and I’ll give myself a little extra room and forgiveness. I will know that I will get there, and that time will be soon. It’s coming.

I can tell when I’m starting to get anxious. Or be overwhelmed. Or be overwhelmed by anxiety.

The first thing that happens is I start snapping at people. I do this both in my head and out loud. My road rage, which is typically… not pretty, gets a wee bit out of control. The person at the check out line where I buy my lunch looks at me wrong and I think hateful things about her outfit. Like she had any choice in it. I get crazy judgemental about everyone I see. Things that don’t typically annoy me make me want to jump off buildings. I guess you could say my fuse gets a wee bit short. I work on controlling it, so most of the stuff stays inside.

Another weird thing happens. And this may peg me in the crazy category. I start counting letters in my head. It’s this weird thing I do with vowels and consonants and I can’t really explain it. But when I get overwhelmed, anxious, and anxiously overwhelmed, my brain just starts going on auto pilot. I think I start doing it when there are things I want to keep my mind off. Things that, if I dwell on them, may just do me in. So my brain works double time to keep me distracted. And then it starts to get on my nerves.

There are a very limited number of things I can do to keep my brain clear of letters. The things I do have to be all consuming. Watching TV, if it’s good, sometimes can help. Talking to Khalil sometimes helps. Eating almost always helps. A few other things.

I want to turn it off. But if I do, the things I am working so hard to avoid will crowd in. I might have to deal with what is going on with my father. I might have to face the fact that I will be saying goodbye to my grandmother this weekend, for quite possibly the last time. I will deal with the fact that I will be leaving my father this week. I will have to process all of this information, which means more than just typing it out in a cold, hard fashion.

The thing is, I just can’t process it. My brain has no idea what to do with all of this information. I’ve started to cry a few times in the last few weeks, and I always have to shut it off. I can not let go and cry. There’s never the right time, the right place, the right state of mind. There’s really no letting go. Where do you start? And once I start, where can I stop? When can I stop?

So I just hold on. For dear life.