the gentle fears that rock my soul

summer yet in the air

   confidence and immortal thoughts
    soon to be shattered to the ground
      pounced
   crushed
mortality arises

chaos and fear

incessant fear
ignorance is bliss
indeed
and the leaves fall gently to the ground
and i crumble like an old leaf
on the pavement…
                                   again

 the days blend into night

death becomes me
dastardly death
where was it all along
this thing called death
again i crumble and fail
did I say fail?
                  fall i meant

 winter rages

wintery sleepless nights
of snow and insanity
dragging my feet I arrive resigned
of the deaths that come my way
i say little and comprehend less
did i say ignorance is bliss…
no longer
illuminated on all signifiers this death word means?

 

i channel avoidance and complaisance

i won’t let it touch me
until it does and i crumble yet again

 how long this winter is

this dreadful cold frozen winter
i’m underground
there, in the place we all go to
i’m dead and deaf, mostly numb and cold

 

a slap in the face and i awake again
out of shock and into life and learning
i learn with life and i learn with death
out of a soporific stupor
winter persists

                        i’m no more and yet present

bodies and life surround my shed self

provide a warmth long absent
deep cognizance in hollowed grounds
death is no more and yet persists
with me with all

spring arrives brooding

pregnant with life and rain
could it be me crying?
of loss, of longing, fear again
no more a slave
i grew inches feet
all inside my soul

the thunder reminds me that i have a voice

the rain tells me it’s ok to cry
the losses whisper long after they’re gone
i have inside each of my cells a little
of all of who touched me
i’m whole, full of memories and gifts
and learning
                       i will do

the therapeutic alliance, part I

Social workers have passion. We struggle with hard issues, with life and death, sadness and depression, with people telling us every day that they don't want to get out of bed, not, that they cannot get out of bed, that the voices coming into their ears tell them that they are dreadful people, monstrous, that they are not worth the soil they walk on. We listen and we watch the screams of desperation of visualized trauma, rapes and abuse and beatings, imprinted on their brains and stuck as if with glue that resists any chemical or verbal attempt at coming lose.

We struggle with violence and rage and insult hurled at us from the angel faced woman whose worse curse was to be born beautiful. We sustain the invective of the exploited and abused. We take on our metaphorical laps the child within the person, and reconstruct with them another vision, another possibility. We watch in fear and wonder, as the layers peel away, and beauty and possibility reveal themselves to us.

I did not learn to be a social worker in school. But as one of my mentors said to me once, “after listening to maybe 50 people over a stretch of time, you might just start to understand what depression is”. Our patients teach us everything. We come ill prepared, with a few theories, some life experience and much trepidation. Little by little, patterns develop. As humans we are hardwired to see patterns, so we must be careful, mindful, lest we get lazy and hazy. We make foolish mistakes, embarrassing mistakes. We are called on them. By those whom we seek for advice, by supervisors, by the patients. The patients know us as well as we know them. The veneer of the profession when two people are sitting facing each other can be monumentally thin. Yet we learn that our fragilities must be borne out elsewhere. After all they seek us out. Occasionally, no word of solace or comfort is enough. Sporadically, we are left wordless by the depth of the pain or image or experience. If we are too insecure we turn the cheerfulness dial a bit. I, however, sense that it is preferable to let what was just lobbed at us sink in, in silence. We embrace, in that moment, not only their pain, but respect for their courage to expose it, we let it seep out, and slowly we de-construct to re-construct. With empathy, always with empathy. With kindness, always with kindness. Above all, with respect!

A new old death..where yet another black life should have mattered...but did not

Discombobulated, always, discombobulated at the continuous murder of black people, women, men, children. Angry that mental health or disease are ill gotten justifications for crimes committed with too much power differential. The lone white hate murderer was a lone wolf with mental issues, Sandra Bland posted a video talking about depression and PTSD, saying that hey, you know, not feeling right, it's more common than you think, and I postulate, she is scared because a new stage in her life is beginning, she is going to be back in perhaps not too friendly Texas, but wow, it's not just a job, it's a good job and one she excelled at and she gets stopped and she questions and says what I or any other female or human being could have said.
I was once stopped in New Paltz, on my last day of classes, last day of my Master's in Social Work. I was riding  the MTA home from NYC, got off the train, got in my car, and started to complete the last 15 miles that would put me in my bed. I had done a previous night shift, probably a few hours at my internship...no longer remember, but I was ecstatic and above all exhausted. On that long stretch of road that I had maneuvered a thousand times before, I heard a siren. I knew that if I drove another 500 feet I would take a left, stop at the gas station from where I could see my house.
So I did.
I turn off the car, hand over the papers and wait. and wait. and wait. Another car, police car approaches and stops. By now, I'm starting to get nervous. I am European, but of the Southern brand and look more Latina than sophisticated French intellectual!
One police man comes over and asks why I took a left on a red and I tell him that that is what we all do, not quite on red but turning on red as we do not want to take a left on oncoming traffic. It's 11 PM. Are you sober, he asks. Yes sir, I might be exhausted but I am indeed sober. I am coming home from my last class of a long two years and I am exhausted and I don't know why there are two police cars but no I was not going to stop in the darkness of the forest 500 feet behind us. From here I can see my house and I can see people. I feel safer.
Another comes over and asks what exactly are you doing at this hour?
Going home, sir, going home, and you can see I'm close to it. I'm so exhausted that I just want to put my head on my pillow and "sleep for a thousand years" as Lou Reed who have aptly put it.
I take out my NASW card and finally tell them, this was my last day of my last class and I am now an almost social worker. I work with people with disabilities at a well known institution and I am just exhausted. I have no idea why you stopped me and at this point it makes no difference. I don't even understand why a woman alone in a car, in the country with the car lights turned on would warrant 2 police cars with 4 men.
The cop, did not have much to say, not much at all. He did finalize with, pointing to my house, a nice clapboard with a great garden and front porch, go home and get some sleep. No apologies for being rude, for making me sit there for half an hour without explanation, nothing.
And thus I did and lived to tell the tale.
No such luck for Sandra Blanc. Maybe we will, probably we will not, ever know what really did transpire.
I do know, that if I were to be somewhere in the South, after being treated as she was, after three days of isolation, I would question what was coming and I would think back on what had been the end game with all the other blacks who died in jails, in isolation, with no care, no legal recourse and nobody to reach out to.
What would you do?

why this

I am a Social Worker, a sometimes writer, a frustrated one at that and I am in need of sharpening my skills and losing my fears. A blog, yet another, as I have been keeping one from time to time since 2005. They are generally uninspired, somewhat flaky experiments in ideas and projects that I have little time for. Reading and working, as well as sleep, take up much of my time and I find that after those tasks little of it is left for perambulations about what I spend 10 hours a day doing.
However, I find it important to reflect on this thing that I do, vague and yet so present, concrete and yet ethereal.
Much has been written about the role of the social worker and I believe much more will be. I find my input is or can be as valid as the next one and as such, a little discipline and some creativity will help me bring to life a nice little project where I clarify my work, I talk politics and question what must be questioned.
My role in my current job is one of clarification, empathy and co-searching for the whole within the broken.
Clichés are of little use and broken vases break my heart. Nonetheless I find solace in the Japanese art form of kintsugi, where gold is artfully used as a glue to hold the broken shards. Gold is also used to bind relationships as wedding bands all over can attest. Gold is malleable, shiny and a very useful metal. I will eventually explore the politic of dirty gold, but for now, it is of bonds we write.
So I do a little kintsugi, knowing that nobody wants to be broken, and nobody wants to be glued or stapled and much less soldered.
But people are broken and I must glue and solder and staple and do it all with words. I have no fine surgical scalp, nor do I have a metal worker's torch. Not even carpenter's glue.
Yet, I have words that bind and solder and that is my profession. I solder broken souls and spirits and hearts with words, affect and empathy.