Simply Return

This morning we slept in before heading to breakfast at the “Ladybird Dinner” in downtown Lawrence. My reason for choosing this stop was because not only did it serve as a convenient layover between Colby and Springfield, MO but because there is a tourist hotspot located just about 10 miles from this small city. Kansas is known as the sunflower state and Grinter Farms is a local favorite to see sunflower fields.

According to their website, it hasn’t been the best year for sunflowers, but they did plant a late crop that was too bloom in October. Unfortunately, the sunflowers were pretty sad but in my imagination I can assure you they were beautiful.

Massachusetts Street in Lawrence is a trendy downtown that features a variety of stores with items from local artists and other unique gifts. I was able to cross a handful of people off my Christmas list and of course snagged a few things for myself too.

During lunch at an Asian restaurant named “Encore Café,” April asked me if I was ready to come home. My answer was an emphatic, “no.” I know my family is ready for me to return. My mom told me all about it in the comment section of my recent Facebook post. Of course, I’m ready to see my family and friends, sleep in my own bed, eat a home cooked meal, and pull clothes out of a closet instead of backpack but still, I don’t want the adventure to end.

I also know that in about ten days I must return to work. Being a therapist is hard. I know there are harder jobs in the world, but I also know there are easier jobs too and being a therapist falls somewhere in the middle. I’ve been in the field for a decade now and have poured my blood, sweat, and tears (all literally) into this profession. God bless my clients for the first two years, when I was new to the field and hadn’t the slightest clue what I was doing. I would spend hours scouring internet articles and resources trying to educate myself on all the things graduate didn’t teach me. As with most jobs, I’m sure, you learn how to be therapist best by experience, and I made a lot of missteps in those early years. I spent a lot of time finding ways to be a better and more effective clinician.

Eventually, I started to crave challenges and difficult clients. I spent the longest stint of my career working with oppositional and conduct disordered male teenagers. It was at that point I learned my hardest lessons. I learned about the impact years of untreated trauma can have on children. I learned about what happens to those children when they become teenagers, and no one wants them anymore. I learned what happens when you take an abused and neglected child and put them in a caring, stable environment and I’ve witnessed firsthand how they reject it. I learned about how an adult who puts their own needs before their child’s can leave that child broken, untrusting, and angry at the rest of the world. I learned what happens to a teenager when they realize their childhood was stripped away from them and they had no ability to control it. I’ve seen these children love and hate their parents all at the same time. I’ve seen them be both grateful and resentful of being removed from their homes. And they, just like I did, struggled to wrap their minds around the atrocities committed against them and then struggled some more when no answers could be found.

In recent years, I’ve moved away from the therapy room and into more administrative roles. I’m working to train the next generation of clinicians and while there is now an added layer of distance between me and the raw emotions of victims of childhood trauma, I’m still never too far from it. I see it through the eyes of the clinicians who sit where I once did, trying to make sense of it all. We do our best to carry the burdens together so that no one has to do it alone but still, it is hard.

Ten years into this field and I still don’t know how I do it. My boss always says, “You have to live to do this job another day.” I guess, for me that means setting boundaries and knowing my limitations and always working to do the right thing. It means to always keep improving and learning to accept what I cannot control. It means knowing I’m not perfect and that some days my best is all I can do. It means having a sense of humor and being open minded and admitting when I’m wrong. It means knowing that I still have a long way to go to becoming a person who can admit they are wrong. It means having insight into what makes me tick, how I handle stress, and why that one thing that one person does drives me nuts. But most importantly, I think living to do my job another day means I live my life as wonderfully and passionately and wildly as I can and when the adventure is over, I just simply return.

The countdown is on and in less than 48 hours I will be back in Clay County. Tomorrow we make our way to Missouri where we will see yet another set of familiar faces and then homeward on Friday.