It seems that the New Year is approaching...again. I am not sure why we make such a big deal out of this day. The years come and go so quickly regardless of what sparkly top I wear or what sort of silly hats are conjured up. But we do make a big deal of it. Is it just an excuse to celebrate? Do we need a specific day to decide to do things to make ourselves better? This particular year has been different for me. It has a significance in relation to the work I write about. This year I celebrated ten years of working with these kids. Ten years of therapy, tantrums, long days, meetings, friendships, challenges and successes. Most times the challenges seem greater than the successes. People make comments like, "I don't know how you do it" or "I could never do that". I understand that these statements are meant to be compliments. However, whether or not anyone else could do this work is irrelevant. There are lots of jobs I could not do. But I can do this. For ten years I have been able to do this work. And yet I still find myself asking: what is it I actually do?
My tenth year seems like as good a time as any to define the work a little. Not the specifics. The tasks are never what it is about. I could never quantify the number of therapy sessions I have done, supervisions I have had with staff, meetings I have been a part of, or notes I have entered. And those things, while they are responsibilities I have, are not the work. They are not the point. What I do, at the core of it all, is hold hope. That can get lost in all of those meetings and notes. But if I am doing the job right, it is always there. Wikipedia describes hope as "an optimistic attitude of mind based on an expectation of positive outcomes related to events and circumstances in one's life or the world at large". I often find it a little silly. How can I be in the hope business? I read unspeakable things about how adults treat children and I see the impact of those actions play out as children express pain through aggression and avoiding relationships because they don't feel safe. I further see how these continual behaviors take their toll on the staff I supervise and how they have to leave much earlier than anyone would like. So, where is hope? It's hiding out most of the time. But it sneaks up on me in the most wonderful ways, often when I least expect it.
There are plenty of details from the last ten years at work that I cannot remember and might not want to. But I can remember several flashes of hope, regardless of how long ago they happened, like it was yesterday. They have existed all ten years. And they build on each other. When people ask how I can continue to do this work, these moments are the answer. They don't happen everyday and sometimes they are so faint that you really have to pay attention to catch them. They come from the kids. So in the end, the kids are both how and why I do this work. They give me hope unintentionally and I hold onto it so I can give it back with intention. It is an amazing and symbiotic process, just like all things in nature. Maybe that is why it seems so natural to me.
Now, there are surely moments of hope that have vanished for me. I can't remember them all. But the ones I hold onto don't just provide me with the hope I need to keep working. They also teach me how to do the work better. How to be better. I make meaning with them. I have one particular moment in mind. I think it is from sometime in my first year or so. I worked with a sad, angry boy who rarely wanted to meet with me. Not so uncommon, but this one stuck with me. He was young, maybe 8 or 9 and pretending to be so tough. I always saw right through him and I think for a long time he hated that. Maybe he always did. But there was one time we were in my office. I don't remember what we were talking about. What I remember is that I had music on at the time. A song was in the middle of playing when he came in and it ended while he was still there. When the song finished, this sad, angry little boy asked, "Can we listen to that one again?". And I played it again. What was the song, you ask? Wildflowers by Tom Petty. I remember being so surprised at the time that this boy, the one who was always acting so tough, wanted to hear Wildflowers again. And I can still hear his voice when he asked. It was gentle, like the song. I have no idea what happened after that. Like I said before, these things are sparks. They come and they go. It is my job to keep them handy for a time when they are needed.
This one is strong enough that I have both held it in my memory and called upon it many times to remind me of how hope exists even in times when it seems an unlikely presence. Something I notice about this spark, and is true of so many of these hopeful flashes, is that it was not an end moment.
It is not like these hopeful times are the sendoff of our kids. They are random moments in the middle. That is, in part, because we are always in the middle in my work. We don't really see the end result very often. These are kids. They will continue to face obstacles, have successes, and live life long after we are done working with them. That is why I chose this moment to represent the meaning-making of my first ten years in this work. Though these kids are not exactly like anything else, they are kind of like wildflowers. They are colorful, they are sometimes unexpected, there is not one that is the same as another. And most importantly, they grow when and where they want to. At the end of the day (or the end of ten years), they do the real work. And I hold onto the hope that they can do it, that they will grow. It is that simple.
I don't really need this upcoming New Year from a meaning-making perspective. I am fortunate enough to be able to find meaning in life everyday. The kids hold that hope for me. We are all a bit like wildflowers and I grow each day even as the challenges seem to outnumber the successes. In moments like this one when that sad, angry little boy asked, "Can we listen to that one again?".
If I could talk to him today I think I would simply tell him, "you belong among the wildflowers...far away from your trouble and worries. You belong somewhere you feel free".
Then again, don't we all?
