Year #8

As time moves forward and I grow older, life seems to have hit the accelerator. It is another year of recovery to celebrate and another year of lessons learned. I have been able to learn everything from asking for help, humility, coping with stress and dealing with changes. In the past few months, changes has definitely been in the forefront the most. Changes at home and changes at work. Some of the change has been very excited and some of this change is harder than I anticipated. 

I was offered a new position at my place of employment. I have been excited about this opportunity. Many things about the position are brand new. I would like to think that I thrive in those types of situation. It's been a while since I really created a position. The last being the night LPN transplant job I still work today at 9 years later, only now on a casual basis. I enjoyed that excitement and the autonomy to be creative and make things work. I wasn't sober when I started working on that position. In fact, I thought I was going to lose the position because of my drinking. That transplant position was one of the catalyst that started my journey into recovery. I wanted to be good at it and I wanted it to work. Doing that kind of work while drinking is so difficult. As I got sober, I was able to do so much more. After about 4 years, though, I became restless and started another journey with this whole substance abuse counseling thing. I never would have dreamed all these years later that I would be developing something new where I am at now. My, my, life has really taken a turn in a totally new direction.

I knew that I would be transitioning to this position since last fall. There were hopes/expectations that my transition would have happened this past spring. Well, not everything happens as smoothly as we would like. A lot of mitigating factors presented and there was nothing our team could do but wait. When spring rolled around, I was still under the assumption that we would be making the transition and there were pieces of my current position that I would have to let go of. Most of me felt ready to move on to new things. I had started to check out of my current duties and started looking at what was up next. When the changes actually started taking place a few months later, I was shocked at how I was feeling. I was checked out and ready to go? Why am I sad?

First - Drug Court. I started on the Drug Court team as a treatment representative in the fall of 2015. I was so intimidated by being in court and sitting at a table with lawyers, law enforcement and judges. After months of work, we really started to be a great team. We disagreed about somethings and we agreed about a lot. We were trying our best to what was in the best interest of our participants. We celebrated the highs (no pun intended) and mourned together when we had to make tough decisions to terminate participants and hear of them going to prison. Most of all, these folks on the team became my friends. We traveled a lot together (California, Missouri, the Dells, LaCrosse). We talked to each other frequently outside of our weekly staffings when things would go south. We got to know each other on a personal level and I felt everyone had a genuine desire to support each other through hard times that weren't related to our team work. 

My transition was swift. We knew it was coming but not exactly when. Then one day, it was "this will be my last day" without much notice. I felt sad that day. I saw these folks weekly for almost 3 years. Suddenly it was gone. I try to console myself a little by telling myself it would be so great to not have to get up at 6:00am to get to court on time. That helps at times. However, I had learned so much. I watched the team grow in their understanding of addiction and how to motivate the participants based on their strengths. I saw our team members help get restraining orders  put in place when our participants were in trouble with those from their past lives, I watched judges try to help to resolve issues within the complex judicial system and throw their weight behind the belief in the inherent goodness of the person in front of them. I watched our attorneys offer guidance in often complex situations including everything from child support, to custody, to property issues and setting up payment plans for fines. It will be something that I will dearly miss. One good thing is that I left them in the very capable hands of KT. She will take good care of them! Most of all, I miss seeing my friends regularly.

Last night was the other big change. If anyone talks to me for more than 15 minutes, I will start rattling off stories about my experience in the county jail providing services for the incarcerated women. When I was first given this assignment in April of 2015, I freaked out. How would I ever connect with these women? Are they going to fight? Are they mean? What the heck am I doing? I went to my initial training and heard things like "no keys, no pens, this can be used as a weapon, that could be used for tattooing, watch out for manipulation, etc. etc." At that point, I was really thinking, what the heck did I get myself into. Over the past 3 and half years of providing services down there, I can't even begin to tell you what I learned. I learned that I can be tough and sympathetic at the same time. I learned that these women are complex, often traumatized in more than one way and find it hard to be honest. I have seen people who are institutionalized and will likely never survive more than a few months out of custody. I have heard people tell me "I will never be back!", only to see them a month or two later. I have watched women come to terms with being sent to prison. I have seen many hit the lowest point of their lives in my group - losing children, family, marriages, jobs and worse of all, losing hope. I have seen others uninterested in changing anything and will continue to lose more and sometimes their lives.

One of my most memorable nights, we started talking about depression. I spoke about depression as something to watch for in recovery as a relapse trigger. Who the heck wants to be sober when you feel so miserable? A woman candidly told me "you can talk about that all day long, the problem is, I feel bad now and I hate it. I am afraid to tell you that I don't want to live because the psych police will be all over me. But there it is. I hate myself and I hate my life." I saw 5 other group members well up with tears and nod their heads silently as they colored motivation sayings I allowed them to color during group sessions. I responded "Can I try to summarize?"... "If you want."  .... (mind you, everyone got a suicide screen that night, all was OK there). "Does it feel like 'I don't want to die, but I really don't want to live either?'"...... "Yeah. I won't hurt myself, I don't really want that, I just don't want to live. There is nothing left." No hope. My  heart breaks when I hear someone lose hope. I have been there. It is such a deep black hole. There are few words that can really capture this feeling: lonely, dark, scary. When I think about the years that I lived in this place in my mind, the memories to me are always at night, always in the dark. I try to describe it as "that whole period of my life is black". The sadness and the hopelessness were too much to bear at times.

As the ladies were fighting back their tears, I talked about being in that dark place myself. "Wait, what? You felt that way? How? You're fine." When push comes to shove, the women on the other side of the table were never all that different from me in terms of the addiction experience. Their lives took a different turn, a more desperate turn than my life ever did. However, I do know that when addiction is active and in control, there is little hope of anything changing. I often used the phrase "if nothing changes, then nothing changes." We continued to discuss what they were capable of doing and what they could potentially change if they were so inclined. They have skills for sure, just skills that are liable to land them in jail. What they have survived through and what they are capable of is surely an amazing foundation to start the recovery journey if they are truly desiring that change. It's a big leap though, to go from making $3,000 a week slinging dope to working at Taco Bell for $11/hr and not being able to afford much. I felt that my calling and my job down there was to let them know there was still worth to them and they really could change if they wanted to. I loved being able to challenge them, push them and make them find at least one good thing about themselves.

As I said, last night was my last night. I have been kinda teary today. I think of all that they have taught me throughout the years. One of my first groups, I had an argument with the group members about whether or not stealing from the Goodwill is really a victimless crime. The justification being...."It's all donated shit, Julie. I am poor, I needed it. The CEO of Goodwill makes like a million dollars a year." I was taken aback by this justification and started researching criminal thinking patterns. I tried hard to understand their perspective. I didn't often agree with their thoughts, but it always made for an interesting conversation to see how and why they think the way they do. Criminal thinking and addictive thinking are pretty close in a lot of ways. If they are willing to look at one or the other (ideally both), challenge that thinking and change it, many of them could do so much. I spoke to them with respect and in return received a lot of respect in return. Only once in 3 years did I have a fight break out. The 5 group members attempted to keep me safe which speaks volumes about the connection we had made when one woman launched herself across the table at another inmate. Some sought me out after release to continue our work in outpatient. I saw some amazing changes and saw others who were never ready to make a change. Either way, I do believe I made an impact on their lives. They have made a huge impact on my life as well.

So, it surprised me that I was feeling this level of emotion afterall, I was feeling really ready to be done with the jail back in the spring. Even feeling the way I do right now, I do not feel that I should stay either. Sustaining that level of intensity for years on end is exhausting and overwhelming. I am still sad though. We had a great group and I decided to bring up the whole Goodwill conversation last night so I could feel that I had come full circle. It was about as awesome as I expected the conversation to be. Many spirited opinions and it's still "donated shit" and "ok for me to have". Sometimes the work is never done! 

Now that I am nearly complete with the transition out of my old stuff, I am starting to work on the new stuff. It is a challenge for sure. It's three different positions in one. There are a lot of different teams I will be a part of with many different personalities and approaches. I consider myself to be a strong enough personality to hold my own. I am working to navigate it all. What I have noticed is that my ability to play both sides of the fence is coming back in full force. While I am extremely good at it, it's not one of my favorite character traits. I am a pretty open-minded individual and enjoy hearing opinions about various things. It took me 8 years of this recovery process to get to a point where I am feel confident about my own opinions and values enough to defend them in a constructive way. In a highly political environment, allegiance is key to wading through the mud to get things done. Again, I am good at it, I just kinda forgot about how exhausting it can be. More to come. 

Since this has become a long blog entry already, I will save the home changes for another day. These changes (mainly, I bought a house and many new things came with that) are a little lighter in nature. Many of the changes have been positive. 

I have a little self-care planned for myself which will include furniture shopping, going back to Crossroads, hanging at my old home group to get my 8 year medallion, hang out with my favorite niece and nephew and get in some good old quality family time. I would like to get really aggressive with my home renovations since I will be having guests this year in for the State Fair. 

The month of August remains my favorite month of the year because there is so much to be celebrated and the annual State Fair extravaganza is always something I look forward to every year and treasure every memory that we create. 

Peace!
Julie