I nodded. I would just learn to listen, then.
Those first few weeks slowly turned into months as I learned to shut my mouth and open my ears to the stories of the lives of real people inside case studies, and then those months turned into finished semesters and then years went on, and finally after nearly six years of being in college, I graduated with my Master's in Social Work. My life was finished, over, done... everything from then on out was supposed to be a downhill race.
I started my first real, big girl job at the beginning of November, last year. Whenever someone asks me about how long I've been with Children's Division, I pull out my fingers and count, "November, December, January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August... 10 months." I've been adulting now in a real job for 10 months, two whole hands worth of time, where the things I say and the things I do have an actual impact on real people and their lives. I don't know if I somehow skipped over this reality of social work while I was in school, however, lately the weight of truly messing up someone's life has left me feeling overwhelmed and unprepared and anxious.
What if I say the wrong thing? What if I make a choice and a child gets hurt or a family is destroyed... or what if in 10 years, some kid sits in front of his therapist saying, "Well... it all started when this lady came and took me away from my parents," or what if I just simply fall on my face and fail? What if I become the person a child hates or a family begins to see as an enemy? What if what I am asking a family to complete would be impossible for me to do myself? What if the very thing I studied for my entire adult life turns out to be just something else I'm not good at?
These are the thoughts that run through my mind every single day. Every single day. I know for a fact, that while I never truly understood "burnout" prior to working at Children's Division, these are the thoughts and these are the feelings that are more emotionally exhausting and mentally draining than anything else about my job. It's the feeling, the contest nagging thought, that every decision I make could forever impact someone else. For me, that's almost debilitating and more days than not, it sends me wanting to run out the door and never come back.
In the last 10 months, I have met some of the most courageous people, which despite everything going wrong in their lives, continue to still show up and put a smile on their face and attempt to do what is best for their children. I have seen drug addicts become sober, children become stronger, and grandparents start all over and choose to raise children that they shouldn't have to. I have seen families make sacrifices, parents give up addictions, pride set aside, and in the toughest of all situations, I have seen parents choose to be selfless to willingly allow their child to be adopted in a home with a family that can love and support and parent in ways they just aren't able to. I've seen it. I've watched as a system, a completely broken system, work together to reunite families and to make the lives of children better.
I sat on the floor with a kiddo the other day in her foster home and talked with her about the good things that she was doing and focused all my energy on making sure she knew how much progress she had made. However, about 10 to 15 minutes in, she looked at me and said, "Okay... you can tell me the bad now." When you grow up in the foster care system, you realize that it's a roller coaster. It's 15 minutes of good things and then as always, the bad follows. In that moment, I hated that I had to tell her that her family had to continue to be separated and the thing that she wanted more than anything, for her family to be back together again, would likely never happen. I had to hold her as she cried for her mother who is fighting an addiction that is much stronger than the will of a seven year old to go home... and every day, even though I do see a lot of good, I see a lot of heartbreak.
If I have learned anything since last November, it is that social work is hard. Plain and simple. My job is hard. However, when I take a step back and look at the lives of those I work with, I realize that the job of the person sitting across from me, who I am trying to help, is harder. My job is nothing compared to that of a child fighting to go home or a mother fighting demons or a father fighting to keep a job and provide for his kids. My job is hard, but most days, it doesn't compare to the job the families I work with have to do every second of every single day.
A couple days ago, I listened to a little girl yell at me for over 20 minutes. Brutally yell. I saw anger come out of her that I didn't ever know was inside. She yelled, she kicked, she screamed, and when she was calm enough to sit down, she soaked my shirt in her tears. Where does a caseworker even begin to pick up pieces that have fallen from the broken life of a child and work like hell to make pieces fit together that never should have been broken? This child, this little girl, who is no bigger than a cricket, who I always thought liked me well enough, yelled through tears that she hated me. She hated me. She meant it, too. She did hate me. When her foster dad pulled her onto his lap and told her that she couldn't talk to adults that way, I instantly felt overwhelmed with this need to protect her and to advocate for her and in that moment, I didn't see a kid who was being defiant or who was acting out, I saw a child who had really big feelings and had no where for them to go.
So I just listened.
My job as a caseworker is to reunify families. My job is to alleviate safety concerns and to send kids back home. When that fails, my job is to find a place, a permanent place, for that child to thrive in. My job is to put families back together. It's to keep kids safe. My job entails a lot of different hats, it means sitting in court and telling the judge everything going wrong. It means asking a parent to do drug tests, to provide proof of employment, find housing, make efforts to become better parents, and so forth. My job is to place kids in good homes, to schedule therapy, and arrange visitation. I have a professional job, where I interact with people who I don't always agree with or even support, but my job is to help.... and some days, my job means I sit on the floor with a screaming 7 year old and allow her to hate the only person she can. Me.
Some days, I am hated. I am the easy one to hate because I am there. I am the physical reminder of everything going wrong. When you can't hate the drugs, you hate me. When you can't hate your mother, because she's your mom and she's not around, you hate me. When you can't hate the choices of all the other adults in your life, you hate me. When you can't hate yourself anymore, because therapy has taught you that you're not to blame, you hate me.
My job, by nature, makes me hated.
I was overly annoyed tonight, about circumstances in my personal life and about the inability for me to turn my job off. Some days are just hard. I was already in a rush and running behind, but as I stood in the check out lane tonight at the grocery store, I felt little hands grab my arm and a little familiar voice yell, "Look! It's my caseworker." I couldn't help but smile at the tiny little human staring back at me, who was the angriest that she has ever been not even a couple days ago as I sat in her living room. I chatted with her foster family for a few minutes and this little girl asked a lot of questions like "why are you buying pizza rolls?" and "where's your vegetables, you have to buy at least some?" She also told me about how for the first time today, how for the first time in her entire life, how she was brave enough to get in the water and swim without crying. I told her how proud I was of her and as sweet as can be, she put her little arms around me and buried her face into my shirt and whispered, "I love you, Miss Tedi," before running off towards the candy aisle.
In that moment with her, it all came back full circle. Just like my advisor said way back when, "social work is more of a listening job," It absolutely is. But in the silence of your listening, when you're really able to listen and just be, you realize the reason for it. When someone is given an outlet, even the tiniest of people, can grow and heal. That's what social work is all about.
There's a lot of responsibility when it comes to my job, so naturally, there are days when I am overwhelmed. Some days I want to throw my hands up and yell and scream and hate everyone around me. But some days, when everything is going right and you're able to overcome these huge obstacles, and everything starts to turn around, I'm not the enemy.
That's what keeps me going.
