Want to Feel Like a Volcano About to Erupt? Be a Social Worker!

I doodled a smiley face on the breakfast tracker sheet half an hour before life gave me a reason to google the biological processes of death. I wanted to know how long he’d been there like that before I found him. 

I’m now in a vicious staring contest with grief;

the pulsing risk of my vocation, 

more of a guarantee than a risk, really, 

a loaded double barrel cocked and ready to explode at any moment. 

Or maybe I’m the gun at risk of implosion. 

Actually, scrap that, I prefer nature metaphors. 

No to guns, yes to volcanoes. 

I’m a volcano. 

“When a volcano releases, either explosively, or gradually, they contribute to the continual evolution and restructuring of the planet”

Dr. Steven D. Farmer 

Pallor Mortis

I paid $90,000 + interest in student loans to earn a career that breaks my heart multiple times a day and exposes me to consistent trauma, outrage, and shitty politics while wealth disparity widens, and healthcare, education, and social safety nets are maddeningly mangled by a government I’m disgusted by but need to be nice to because they fund the agency I work for. I sit at a table with them just days after finding a beloved community member deceased and listen to the same, tired, unremarkable rhetoric by everyone in charge. Meanwhile, I’m the only one at this table who has pinched the ankle of a dead guy this week desperate for a reaction to tell me he's alive. People are dying, I want to yell. We aren't fixing the cracks that are killing people, I want to lament, fists furiously pressed into the table. Blessed be the courageous act of dismantling ego and restructuring this system with love, I want to pray. But instead, because I'm there to represent my employer, I sit quietly, smile and nod at the appropriate times, and make sure I’m not chewing my free lunch when the inevitable photo to prove to social media that we're doing good work is taken. We have ways of going about these things you know. I’m a professional, after all.

Which is part of my dilemma. 

I am an active participant in a system I despise. How do I resolve the need to pay my bills with my deep yearning to disrupt the system and the purpose I feel to support the most vulnerable in our community. I chose this vocation because I have lived experience, desired a pathway to create

meaning for my pain, wanted to pay my recovery opportunities forward, and felt this heart on my sleeve's purpose was to pour love into a societal framework that is desperate for collective healing and obsessed with it's ego. While I do believe that uprooting systems is easier from the inside, the experience of finding my sweet pal has turned it all upside down. I can't keep up with work. I feel dread everywhere. All experiences are drowning in sorrow. My executive functioning can't keep up with constant swelling demand. I have pivoted so many times, I'm caught in a spiral. And then there's my sparkling emergence as an eldest daughter in a deeply dysfunctional family making it feel I'm responsible for all the devastation. My nervous system is consistent lightning. I can't work myself out of this one.

I've lost the plot. 

I used to support adults with disabilities for work, and moved on because ultimately, I felt like I was intended for something bigger. I was reminded of this when I went swimming on Day 1 of my leave. I ran into a colleague who was there on shift, and reflected quite incredulously that I used to take adults swimming for work. I used to earn (not near as much) money supporting people to have fun. And I left for something more serious, and now the more serious has me spinning in a sorrow spiral.

I know I've arrived at a need for a break when I daydream about working at wedding boutiques or branching off into the creative writing sphere. I certainly admire those who throw caution to the wind and chase the wildest whimsy they can dream of. I wonder what it would be like to work in a field not focused on the most challenging parts of society. I also possess the problem of my purpose, (and my recently obtained mortgage.) My intimacy with poverty, relational cruelty, and addiction is partly why I'm so good at my job. I can relate to suffering, and I’m pouring over with empathy. I know too much, and care too deeply to work in a job that would allow me ignorance. I guess someone else will have to flit about in white satin and lace. I have a gig in the mud to return to.

Chrysalis

I sobbed to my therapist the other day about how grievously tired I am with having been broken-hearted my entire life, and then yesterday told a beloved friend, while we sat on a dock with our legs in a river, that I feel like the goo in the transformation between caterpillar and butterfly. I will return to work a version of me I don’t know yet. My girlfriend prays my wings emerge colorful. I'm convinced they'll be forged from scar tissue and drip blood over all I fly above.

“One day soon, you will bless the thing that broke you down and cracked you open because the world needs you open. You are going somewhere sacred. It will be worth it.”

Rebecca Campbell

Mary Magdalene's Feast Day is July 22

Many of my closest pals have offered comfort in this recent swell of complicated emotions by reminding me that I’m human. It’s okay to feel all this, they say. Exasperated with my emotions, I recall a meaningful verse in The Gospel of Mary that applauds being human. In 5:3, she teaches, “Do not weep and be pained, nor doubt, for all His grace will be with you and shelter you. But rather, let us praise His greatness. For He has prepared us and made us Human.”

Well then:

For the People who Die and Don’t Have Obituaries Written,

Blessed are you. 

I’m sorry for all the pain & the insurmountable circumstances. 

May you know now, if you didn’t before, that you were loved. 

May your spirit be granted opportunities to offer healing to anyone you may have hurt as a result of being hurt. May those who have hurt you experience the same opportunities to heal. 

May we all align with Love. 

If justice is warranted regarding your passing, bless the living with the responsibility to enact that be inspired. I pray the circumstances in this next phase of your journey are infused with redemption. 

Bless those that cared for you through your messy humanity. May there be support groups, and recovery programs, memorials, and leaves of absences in your honor, however public or private each living soul needs them to be to move forward in their journey. If the world needs them brokenhearted to keep pouring love into the collective, may your passing be the holy portal. 

May the story of your bravery be told;

those cheeky jokes in spite of perpetual suffering, 

your battle with pain relief,

your determination to try again,

and again,

always trying again,

your tenacity, 

maybe this time something will shift,

your intimacy with the elements, 

those shimmering moments of clarity, 

the humility you exercised when asking for help,

the quiet, yet fierce gratitude you expressed when you thought no one could hear.

May you be remembered with fondness. May those that loved you in your humanity be brave enough to continue creating a world that is kinder and serves your vulnerable brothers and sisters whether that be through education, art, relationship, advocacy, or public expressions of grief.

We thank you for being a mirror dedicated to highlighting societal flaws, and commend a job well done. If reincarnation is real, we pray you come back as something that contributes to radical joy as an act of resistance. 

We love you. 

You were loved. 

Blessed be your beautiful soul.

A Prayer For The Living

Wherever we are, my friends,

May we be utilized by Love in a way that delights our mind, body, and soul. 

May our lives be one big moving prayer.

Amen.

With wings forged from scar tissue,

E

Farmer, Steven D. Dr., Messages from the Spirits of Nature Oracle, 2022. Hay House. Campbell, Rebecca. Work Your Light Oracle. 2018. Hay House.