When I started working for myself, I hit the social media ground hard. I had a schedule around it that I did not break. And, it yielded some great interest quickly. I was booking speaking engagements sooner than I anticipated, and more of them than I had accounted for in my business plan. I was getting requests for trainings I did not yet have listed on my site, and I was contracted to make them for clients specifically. I was teaching a lot of yoga, at random one-off community events, subbing for teacher friends as needed, and secured two regular teaching jobs, one at a university and one at my home studio. It felt good, and I shared that highlight reel via seek&summon's social media channels. But during the autumn of 2018, I realized a few things about my work process, and how it made me feel, and how it impacted my health, and I'm here to share it in my first blog post back in a while.

Much digital ink has been spilled across the Internet about the impact social media is having on our social connections, our mental health, and our perception of the world at large. I won't attempt to recreate that dialogue here, but suffice to say, if you ever find yourself scrolling listlessly through Instagram and believing everyone else has it figured out besides you, everyone else is doing the same scroll. Even those people who project their unbelievable having-it-all-togetherness. You are seeing the greatest hits version. And while I know this to be true, I found myself as I was trying to prove myself and make connections, doing the same thing.

The Highlight Reel
I got to travel a lot this year. I even wrote it into a couple consulting contracts that part of the work would be done remotely while I was away. I negotiated a training contract from my father-in-law's childhood bedroom, grateful for the ability to work while also visiting with my partner's 94 year old grandmother. I took one of the best dang calls I've ever taken from an Airbnb in New Jersey, the night before an epic reconnection with my father's side of the family. I finished building a training module in the evening hours after sampling coffee all day in Seattle (and to be fair, I had a lot of sleepless hours to fill after drinking caffeine for ten hours straight. No regrets, coffee in the city known for coffee ruled). Many days, I worked in short bursts then went to run an errand or start dinner, and a big part of my self-care became trying new recipes. I was able to create the exact work I wanted to create, without a boss or a grant funding my salary dictating it. I found myself in the best shape of my life, having the time to devote to my yoga practice like never before. I engaged with important changemakers to address issues I experienced for years in my non-profit career.


As improvisational actors say:
"Yes, and..." Yes, all of those highlight reel moments are real. And, this has been an incredibly challenging endeavor. Yes, I traveled a lot, and most of that travel I did was booked when I still had a full-time, salaried job so it was already paid for, and not by what I was making the first few months out on my own. Because I wasn't making anything, when you factor in the costs of starting a business. Yes, I worked all over, and the ability to work from anywhere also means you end up working everywhere and most of the time, turning vacation into work and feeling guilty about it, because the trip is costing money that you are not technically making yet. Yes, I had extreme flexibility, and the ability to dictate my schedule most days was almost overwhelmingly challenging for someone with major depressive disorder, and I had to put a lot of practices in place, and even enlist friends, to help ensure I stuck to a schedule at all. Yes, I cooked and ate a lot, and the delicious and beautiful recipes I tried and posted to my Instagram were also made because we cut our restaurant and bar budget to almost nothing. Yes, I had almost unfettered creative license, and a lot of my work never saw the light of day because you have to have products to offer, but you cannot guarantee that people will pay you for them. Yes, I feel better physically, and the physical shape I am in came because my chronic back injury returned with gusto, and I put a lot of physical therapy sessions on my credit card because while I pay the most I ever have for health insurance, it is the worst coverage I've ever had too. Yes, I got to speak freely about the problematic patterns in non-profit work, and I lost friends over my insistent to speak the truth about the ethics in my field, and I was disappointed by people calling themselves advocates while also willing to look the other way.

So, what's next?
As my partner will tell you, much to his dismay, I have never liked fantasy stories. He's hunkered down with Harry Potter and I'm re-reading Angela's Ashes. I like reality, in all of it's mess and muck. In fact, to look at my bookshelf, the messier the better. I have made seek&summon scarce on social media these last few months because I became aware that it was not telling the full story of self-employment, or at least my lived experience of it. When I thought about making a post, I would ask myself “Will this post actually garner you more work, or are you doing it to prove to someone, even if that someone is yourself, that you are succeeding?” It became clear that the time I was spending sharing online was not necessarily yielding more work, even if it was yielding likes. And, worse, I realized it may be yielding the false narrative that so bothers me. And because one of my flagship trainings and consultation topics is self-care, I stopped taking speaking and training engagements for a couple of months to focus on healing my injury. Without paid sick leave, I had to refigure my financial life again, but I am glad now that I put my (lack of) money where my mouth is.

I spent the time and energy that had gone to managing my online presence and doing the actual work further honing my skills, taking more coffee meetings with people who may hire me or help me learn, and investing in continuing education. Most importantly, I have taken the space to really sit with what I want this work to be, when it isn't reinforced by likes and follows. I've filled pages and conversations with friends and colleagues about the difference between “social work” and social change, and “human services” and being of service to humans. I've worked on my branding, my mission statement, and values to align closer with this work, and continue to refine as time moves forward.

2019 has some big things in store for me, Mary-Margaret, separate from and alongside seek&summon. I intend to return to blogging, at least, and look forward to sharing with you via this medium as it serves the work, and I look forward to cultivating even more awareness in myself to that end. 

This past Tuesday I was happy to be invited to speak at The Marion County Conference on Re-Entry, an event of the Marion County Re-Entry Coalition. Our topic was "Is Your Helping Hurting? Trauma-Sensitive Service Provision." It has been my observation that as we talk more and more about trauma-informed care, we may not be doing the critical work on evaluating what intentions and spirit we bring to that work. So, we started, seemingly, simply. I asked the attendees to just quickly jot down their agency's mission statement. Predictably to me, and surprisingly to my attendees, many of them could not recall their agency's mission statement. Nervous laughter filled the room. “Even just some of the buzzwords or key concepts,” I said. “It doesn't need to be word-for-word.” Still, nervous faces peered down at tables, tapped pens, guzzled water. Two people event left. I'm not joking. 

This was planned on my part--well, not scaring two people out of the session entirely! But I know most people can't rattle off the mission statement of their organization. And yet, organizations pay consultants like me for many hours of our time to help craft them. There are surveys, focus groups, and lunch ordered in. Why spend all of that time, energy, and money to create something you never revisit? Is your team upholding the mission if they can't even tell you what it is? Maybe they are, indirectly. But what would the work look like if your mission statement was a living, breathing thing?

Mantra
In addition to my non-profit work, I am a yoga and meditation teacher. During many yoga and meditation practices, participants recite, aloud or silently, a phrase or word to help ground them and re-orient them. Some I have offered classes in the past week are “I am safe,” “I am enough,”  and “I am capable.” And I gave this example to my conference attendees. What if our mission statement worked like a mantra? A centering call, a grounding reminder, and a call to action. A guidepost when the work gets tough and we need to remember just what the heck it is we're doing here. A way to prioritize our work. And, maybe in the best case scenario, an inspiration.

Walking the Talk
When I talk mission statements with folks, I challenge those in the room who are leaders in their organizations to model the mission for the teams they lead. Can their management decisions even fall in line with the mission, creating a healthier and more affirming workplace? Leaders have the opportunity to show their teams that the mission does not just matter in client-facing work, but amongst colleagues as well. As I've written about before, there are too many examples of hypocrisy in our field, and many reasons for it. Your agency's mission statement can be a good place to start when checking in about the environment of your team.

Your brand
We hear all the time these days about our “personal brand,” managing our social media and image online, especially how it relates to our work. Whether or not we have an Instagram following, we can think of our professional life as having it's own brand, and it's own mission statement. If the mission of your current agency doesn't speak to the work you do there, or it feels dead, or others at that agency do not seem to do their work in it's spirit, can you find a personal mission statement through which to serve? Through which to approach not only your clients but you neighbor, the barista, and the parking garage attendant? When I started my training and consulting practice, I chose three words that spoke to what work I wanted to do, and how I wanted to do it. Those words stay with me, guiding me when I debate whether or not to take a contract, apply for a conference, or develop a new curriculum. If it doesn't fit into my word list, it's a no. It keeps me focused, honest, and from straying from my intention.

The work we are called to do each day can be heavy. For some of us in the non-profit sector, our work is to sit with a person on the worst day of their life--and we do it each and every working day. It is easy to stray, letting our minds and hearts wander for self-protection from that vicarious trauma. But then we remember that word or phrase, that dim light in the back of our mind that grows brighter as we summon it forth. It is our "why." Our reason for coming back each day, for getting up this morning, for showing up to this work. It is our mission. 

Could your organization use some training or consultation on this topic? Email Mary-Margaret, or check out the ways she is working with organizations to build more informed and more sustainable service providers!

This week in some of my yoga classes we are focusing on brahmacharya (bra-ma-char-ee-uh). The word itself, in Sanskrit, breaks down to

Brahma= ultimate reality and charya= to move.

So the practice of brahmacharya moves us closer to the ultimate reality. The highest truth. And it also has to do with sexuality. Fun!

In Hindu practice, brahmacharya is the first life stage (or ashrama in Sanskrit) and spans birth to 25 years of age. It is the time one is a student, devoted to their studies, both formal and the general education of how to be a person in the world. After that time in life, it refers to celibacy for monks and other unmarried folks, and practicing sexual fidelity in marriage. It is a form of self-restraint and, when practiced, can open up space in our lives for deeper understanding and self-work. The practice of yoga, really, is to gain control of the thoughts and to cultivate a life lived with intention. Brahmacharya is a piece of that work. Author and yogi Deborah Adele also explains this principle to mean restraint in pleasurable activities. Her example involves food. What happens when we eat our favorite food? We savor it, enjoy it, and feel satisfied. But what if we have a second helping, and a third? What was once pleasurable becomes too much, making us feel unfulfilled. If we turn to food, or sex, or any other pleasure too often, it can morph from self-care to self-sabotage. 

As I worked on my lesson plans for the week concerning this topic (and preparing for an early 2019 lecture in the Indianapolis yoga community on the same topic), I started where I usually do. Strengths. Empowering language. So one of the first sentences I jotted down to offer my classes was “Sexuality is powerful. That's why most religious traditions and societies have so many rules about it. It speaks to a great energy. But we can decide how to use that energy.”

I stopped writing as I imagined my students before me. Most yoga classes are full of women, with a few men here and there. Statistically, 1 in 6 of the women in my class will have had a sexual encounter in which they had no choice. For men, it's lower but still present and unacceptable—1 in 33. For our transgender students, the rate is as high as 47%. I realized that even though I've spent a bulk of my career in sexual violence prevention and education, and even though I myself am a survivor, my initial language erased that experience. An experience that can already make us feel alone and erased. 
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I think I began with this language because in an ideal world, what I originally wrote would be the case. It's the world I'm working so hard toward, after all, as a sexual health and healthy relationship educator. For some people, it is already the case. They have always been able to choose when to use their sexual energy, and with whom, and how. In the world I am working toward, our sexuality would be a place of safety, expression, and growth--rather than doubt, fear, and unease. And I find yet again an intersection of my seemingly separate spheres of work. Yoga calls us to work toward bringing together our mind, body, and spirit (however the practitioner defines that). We do this by noticing our bodies in space and time. Through intentional movement, we observe the ways our bodies respond, what they want, and how the external impacts our internal experiences. Through focusing on movement and breath, we calm the constant chatter of the mind, opening us up to new revelations and insights. We many work through a mental block and literally also feel a physical space open within us, a release of muscle tension, and relaxation of the fascia.

What if our sexualities were like that? What if the ways we moved in our erotic life mirrored the yoga practice, were also done in pursuit of wholeness, integrity of self, and peace? What if our sexual experiences were mindful, bringing us to presence in our bodies, in our minds, and in our spirits? When we engage in sexual experiences we have chosen to engage in, can we begin to see them as healing and integrative? I often say that no one comes into their sexuality without some hang-ups. How could we? We all grow up in a culture of over-sexualized media content, but a startling lack of sexual health education in our homes and schools. We begin from a young age to compare our bodies to computer-enhanced models. If sex is discussed with our youth, it is often only to point out the danger in it ("good touch/bad touch"). How can we expect to thrive when the foundation is one of shame, fear, and misinformation?

Yet like the lotus flower in yogic philosophy, beauty can grow from mud and muck. 
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As our nation watches testimony from a Supreme Court nominee accused of sexual violence, and the testimony of one of his accuser's, we see the power that sexuality holds. Regardless of our feelings on this example playing out in front of us, we can agree that at the root of sex can be joy and pain, pleasure and fear, indifference or intention. I join you all in the work of eliminating this violence, and bringing us all closer to a sexuality that is chosen, peace-making, and integrated. We do this work through training and learning best practices together in a classroom, or via the work on our mats, dialing in to our inner teacher so that we may show up in the world less afraid and more whole. 

Have you ever met someone who you could not wait to stop talking to, only to find out they were a social worker, or in the helping professions in some way? Have you worked in or with a non-profit and observed behavior that could be classified as snarky at best and downright bullying or harassing at worse? What about a victim advocate who engages in victim blaming? A sex educator who shames certain sexual practices?

If these sound weirdly specific it's because they are all real. I've seen them myself, and each time I walk away feeling confused and incredulous. Years ago as a brand new social worker, I entered the profession pumped full of pride and faith in the discipline I had chosen—and chosen to spend quite a bit of money and time to enter, mind you, so I really wanted to love this! I had held a string of corporate roles before coming to graduate school. Perhaps it was knowing the benefits and pay I was leaving behind that made me think everyone in my new field would show up with best intentions. If you want to treat people poorly or just show up to collect a paycheck, I thought, go do it somewhere where you'll get paid double while do it.

In short: why would someone who works for considerably less money, and fewer benefits, and in much less shiny office buildings, do so if they do not love it and are fully committed to it as their life's work and calling?

Trauma When I facilitate any training on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) with social service providers, many in the room share that they have a high ACE score. They may even verbalize that it is why they chose their work. They want to “give back.” And my anecdotal and scholarly research supports this. I have worked in HIV/AIDS, refugee resettlement, and domestic violence/sexual assault services. A close family friend died of HIV, my father was raised in an immigrant family, and I have experienced abuse in a relationship. Sigmund Freud believed in recapitulation of trauma as an attempt to resolve it; meaning that the reason many of us find ourselves in the same situation over and over again is that we are trying to master it. While there is no evidence that mastery every occurs, no matter how long we torture ourselves, we do it. I could not save my friend from HIV, but I hope my education on safe sex saves someone else.

Unless we have done a whole lot of self-work to address our own trauma, we will never be fully present for the trauma of another. In fact, we will likely practice unethically with our clients facing similar life circumstances, and not even see it coming. We may judge a client harshly because we see them making the same mistakes we did. Maybe we judge them because, in our eyes, at least WE didn't do it that way, at least WE were smart enough to only go back three times and not a fourth, and so we feel righteous and judgmental. I hope I don't have to tell you that this is not a healing situation. For anyone.

Stress of the job Even if we have no prior experience with our field of work, it is taxing to face crisis every single day. This burnout may cause us to behave unkindly to clients and coworkers, family and friends, alienating those who could help us center and refocus our energy. Self-care practices are important for everyone, but they become absolutely critical when the work we do has us facing the darkest depths of the human experience.

Inflated ego of do-gooders It is easy to feel important as a social worker. Sure, we may make less money than our finance friends—a friend of mine once told me they were disappointed by the size of their annual bonus that year and the sum was the same as my entire salary--but the cultural capital is enormous. Most every time I have told people that I am a social worker by training, I am praised for it. I am thanked. A cocktail party introduction turns into a conversation around how I should make more money than I do, that they can't imagine the work I do, and there are often “awwws” and sighs involved. It's all very dramatic! And you know what? If I arrive at that party after working a 60 hour week, and I keep imagining the vibration of my emergency phone that isn't even on me tonight, that drama feels good. It makes me feel justified and important. There is an oft-shared Muhammad Ali quote: Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth. If it feels as if you're paying for a penthouse condo but you're living in a shady studio, it is incredibly easy to resent those who you assume aren't paying their share. This self-righteousness may be good to get us through a busy spell at work, but it can also begin to make us feel indignant and intolerant of anyone outside of the social service field. What our business card says does not define us, though. Our actions do. And if our title leads us to defensive, egomaniacal, or unkind behavior, it negates our do-gooder status.

We are all just people Perhaps most disappointing of all to a young social worker was this notion: we are all just human beings trying to figure this thing out. While the education and career experiences of many social workers can turn them into some of the most empathetic people on the planet, just as many are people you wouldn't want to spend time with, even if they paid you for it. And I maintain plenty of friendships with folks in the for-profit world who are humble, loving, genuine people. It is hard being a person.

The more research I've done around the impact of primary and vicarious trauma, the more grace I've been able to cultivate for those who have experienced it and how that influences the ways in which they interact with others. But if we are choosing to show up in the world as helpers and keepers of safe spaces and publicly claim that as our work, we cannot actively contribute to toxic work environments, hostile work environments, or breed ill will in our personal life. It is our responsibility to confront ourselves and do the work to adjust how we meet the world and those who make it up. This isn't easy work, as the scores of self-help books and seminars, therapists and yoga studios, places of worship and rehab, all attest to. It is the essential human task. And if we do agree with Ali that there is rent to be paid for our time here, let us begin by renovating ourselves.

There are few things more disheartening—and common—than hearing people bemoan training when I have built my career around that very thing. But because I am a trainer, I also completely understand why others feel this way. I spend a lot of time in trainings. You don't hate trainings because you aren't “in the know”; a good trainer hates bad trainings too. 

So what are the pitfalls of training? While they vary depending on the topic, the audience, the location, and about one million other factors, I've distilled it down to a list that I will explore this week and next.
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Checkbox Approach These are trainings that have to get done because the higher-ups say so. Often, that's the only explanation given. Too frequently, even the trainer says something like “I know, I know, but we gotta do it...” That doesn't exactly motiavate the masses. While there are trainings that are required in certain work places, if that is how anyone involved approaches them, they are almost guaranteed to fail. After two very high profile Supreme Court cases in 1998, sexual harassment training has become ubiquitous in the work place. Not necessarily good sexual harassment training, mind you. But training none the less. And around a topic like that, you want buy-in. But you cannot expect those receiving the training to buy-in if the trainer and those hosting the trainer are not buying in. This means that even if you are not training, but hiring a trainer to work with your people, you have a critical job:
Prepping the audience for best outcomes When I taught sexual health education to middle schoolers, I would often arrive on my first day hearing the teacher from the classroom door as I approached. “Now I know this is going to be awkward, but we have to do it.” “I know you don't want to do it, but get over it.” Inspiring, huh? This sets me up for failure. A skilled trainer can work to recover, and I have definitely done that many times over the years. But starting in the red with people is not ideal. If you are bringing a trainer in for your organization, your work is to motivate the group to get something out of the training you paid for. Tell them why it is important. Tell them why it will be beneficial. Believe in the training you are providing to them. And of course, that is easier to do when...
You hire a solid trainer We have all sat through bad training. It happens. But it can happen less if you take the time to vet your trainer when you're hiring them. I know this takes more work, and I know you may not know what to look for in a trainer (and that will be a separate blog post, coming soon!). But probably the trainer you're engaging calls him or herself an expert. But are they? A lot of independent consulting trainers, non-profits with a training arm, and for-profit consulting training firms like to throw that word around, but when you dig deep, their trainers are anything but. I have seen “expert” trainers in the domestic violence field who have never worked a domestic violence case, from any angle. I've seen “expert” trainers hired to help teachers who have never had their own classroom. Anyone can learn facts and statistics and read them from a slide—including you, and your team. Hire someone who has more. Sure, the trainer knows 1 in 3 women experience intimate partner violence, but can they answer a specific question about the process of obtaining a protective order or how the local shelter system operates? You are the client. You can ask them what they know, how they know it, and how they educate. The “how” of their work is called
...their pedagogical approach, and it super matters! A good trainer will have a lens through which they approach their work, other trainers/facilitators/educators they admire and follow, and can describe their approach to you and why they choose that one. Ask them about it! Why did they put that activity in that part of the training? Why do they use PowerPoint? Why not? How do they go about arriving at their curriculum? How do they evaluate their efficacy? We will delve more into how to hire a trainer in a later post, but start with these. A trainer who will be enthusiastic and engaged with your organization will be excited to talk about their work.

Do you want a *truly* expert training for your team? Visit our training page to find seek&summon's areas of expertise.

Have you ever accepted a job knowing before you even got to orientation day that you wouldn't be there very long? It can be an unsettling feeling, and certainly diverges from the way past generations did their work. My partner's grandfather worked at the same oil company from high school graduation to his retirement party. Of course, not many of us are offered pensions and post-retirement health care coverage anymore, so the incentives have changed regarding company loyalty. And in the non-profit field, there are unique structural situations that may have us planning our exit strategy before our current job even gets our direct deposit information. There are some strategies to ensure the only turnover your agency faces are the ones on the pastry tray at the staff meeting.

Opportunity for Growth A lot of non-profits are tiny. When there are few layers between you and the top, it may foster a nice relationship with leadership where an entry level employee has daily face-time with the CEO, but it also means there is not much room for promotion. Turnover is a problem for these organizations because people want to be rewarded for the efforts, and often with added titles and promotions. They want their hard work and increased knowledge to add up to something.

Professional Development If an organization cannot offer endless ascending spheres of promotion like some larger employers, an employee may be just as happy knowing they are learning and growing in their knowledge, if not changing titles. According to AdWeek, 87% of Millennial workers say that professional development opportunities are a top reason they stay at a job. 69% of other working age groups agreed. Providing this doesn't have to mean big ticket items like paying for a degree or certification, but access to regular, best practice skill-building in the field. If you are in a field where employees have licenses to maintain, helping foot the bill for their continuing education is a huge perk that may keep a person invested in their job with you for quite some time. Licensed social workers, for example, require about 30 hours of continuing education over a two year licensing period, depending on the state. As an employer, you can offer to pay for credits that relate specifically to the work they do for you so it also benefits your organization. Need to really keep things low-cost? I have a consulting client that just did not have the budget to offer much training, so we instituted a book club around topics the staff wanted to learn more about, and brought in a local topic expert to facilitate the discussion.

Lack of HR/Protocols and Processes Large organizations and many for-profit corporations of any size typically have an HR department and a clear protocol for dealing with grievances and problems. In a small non-profit, it is common for there to be no HR department, leaving employees without a clear chain of command regarding complaints and issues. Many employee handbooks I've seen cite the CEO or executive director as this person—but what if that is the person about whom you need to file a complaint? Going to their “boss,” the President of the Board, is sure to be awkward. Even with policies in place about protecting “whistle blowers,” you can understand why someone on a staff of four people would still not feel comfortable raising concerns about their CEO to the Board. That employee usually quits, and elects not to share their concerns even as they exit, for fear of “burning bridges” in a field where everyone seemingly knows one another.

The cost of turnover is huge to an organization. A Center for American Progress report found that for a mid-range salaried employee (~$40,000) the cost to search, interview, hire, and train a vacant position can cost $20,000 to $30,000. Read that again. If you have a program manager making $40,000 annually and you only keep them for a year, you've spent $70,000 on that role. And if you have to replace it twice in a year?

Surely the above tips are cheaper than that. As many non-profit workers agree and often espouse when fighting for money to serve their clients, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” That goes for our organizations, too.  

Interested in booking some continuing education for your team? Click here to see what seek&summon offers.
Ready for an expert consult around the professional development your organization offers? seek&summon happens to do that, too. 

Earning my Maser of Social Work prepared me to do an alarming list of things, including but not limited to:
-working as a resource broker between client and community resources
-managing and applying for grants
-writing mission statements and establishing a board of directors
-skillfully working alongside someone as a therapist
-diagnosing mental health disorders, which can alter the course of a person's life by allowing them disability benefits, or barring them from owning firearms or adopting a child, as just a few examples.

It's a heady time, graduating with your MSW. You feel like you can do it all, but also you have no experience doing any of it. But I would stare at my bookshelf and remind myself that I spent two years learning something, didn't I? I had this.

And I did have it. I had a few things. All of those skills, the student debt to prove it, letters after my name and the promise of more as my career marched forward, and a bookshelf literally bowing under the weight of what I had read. What I didn't have was a self-care practice.

Self-care wasn't really the buzzword it is today when I was in graduate school. Certain professors would tell us we should all have a therapist if we were going to be therapists. They would add perhaps as an afterthought or addendum, “Oh, and you really need to take care of yourselves too.” But there wasn't a class about it, or even a day-long seminar, and for those of us who focused more on the policy, fundraising, or community organizing realm of the profession? Forget it. A lot of graduate school was cheerleading the profession, amping us up for a long and meaningful career. And it worked. I had so many moments of feeling like I had found my people, and my place in the world, and that it was the end of some Cinderella story where the prince was actually a career.

But Walt Disney often leaves us at the wedding scene, the search over, the swell of music leading us to believe it only goes up from here. But just like a marriage, a career takes work to make the long haul. And for those of us in the trenches with others, a little “premarital counseling” would go a long way.

When I started my training and consulting business, I thought my most requested training would be Sex Ed 101. That's my expertise, what I've been doing the longest, and the thing that gets attention at cocktail parties. But my most requested trainings have been around self-care. As little as we know about healthy sexuality in our culture—and the CDC recently felt compelled to release a statement letting people know they should not reuse condoms--it seems we may know even less about functioning healthily in the world each day. That is scary. And yet, here we are. Anti-depressant and anti-anxiety meds are prescribed at an alarming rate, the self-help industry flourishes, people in the helping professions turn to the same self-medicating substances our clients use. When a term like “self-care” comes along, we are so divorced from the concept that we co-opt it to mean anything but. Search #selfcare and you will find a lot of alcohol. Baked goods. Expensive spa days. Grand vacations. Netflix binging. Call off work for repeated "mental health days." And while all of these things have their time and place, we need to have a conversation about self-care versus self-indulgence and, really, self-sabotage.

Starting the Self-Care Conversation
Just like any practice, we need to start with the fundamentals. 

-Identify activities that you enjoy and make time for them. Hold that time on your calendar like you would any other important meeting.
-Realize that you are the instrument of your work. I read a book about professional sommeliers once and those folks give up so many other tasty and olfactory experiences in order to keep their pallets pristine for wine tasting. Professional athletes adhere to strict diets and exercise plans so their body can perform. How can you take care of your instrument?
-Practice saying no to demands that don't serve you. And if you're introverted like me, you may have the opposite problem. Our assignment then is to...
-Practice saying yes. To your friend who invites you to yoga, to the free movie in the park, to walking the dog when it is easier to hit snooze.
-If you manage people, make sure your staff knows self-care is a priority, and model that for them. You can say it on a loop but if they get emails from you when you have the flu or hours after giving birth (true story from my professional life!), they won't feel empowered to claim it.
-Self-care is a practice. Like a therapists practice, or a physicians practice, or a religious practice. We show up to it over and over again. Sometimes we fail. But we come back the next day.
-Check out seek&summon's self-care workshop, It Is Hard Being a Person.
​ Developed as a two hour workshop, it can be expanded to a half day, full day, and coupled with a self-care assessment for your organization. We discuss the differences between self-care, -indulgence, -avoidance, and -sabotage.We develop a plan to help us differentiate, and identify what real care looks like, and how to capitalize on it. Feeling like you really want to go for it? Add a yoga class for your team. And check out this upcoming community event, It Is Hard Being A Person: Self-Care and Journaling.

When I was in the second grade, my mother and I moved from an older, established neighborhood to a dusty suburban development of new constructions. We chose the model home we wanted, and were able to choose the finishes. I selected a window seat for my bedroom. The house, of course, was immaculate for our move-in. We were the only people to have ever lived in it. It smelled new for years. Yet when I perched on my window seat and looks out onto our cul de sac of shiny new homes, I also noticed a dearth of greenery. For at least a year, no grass was planted as it would just become trampled by the ongoing construction. The trees that did go in were tiny, spindly things with few leaves. It was my first lesson in the psychological effects of nature. I missed it.

That was 1995. More than twenty years later, I have moved back to my hometown and I often drive past old haunts. One of my first stops after moving back to this city was the home I left for college, the home that had been so shiny and new. I had lived there ten years by the time college came around. There was grass by 2005, but the trees were still pretty pathetic. But now, another thirteen years have passed. And now, there are trees.
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My mother told me in 1995 that one day, the trees in our neighborhood would be as tall as the ones we left at the first home I had ever known. I couldn't imagine those dusty streets edged in green grass, or the bright new homes shaded by leaves. And yet.
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For much of my professional life, I have worked with my clients briefly and at the beginning of a journey. In my first job out of graduate school, I worked in refugee resettlement. Together, my clients and I navigated the immigration process. We did seemingly rote but hugely important tasks together like applying for Social Security cards, enrolling children in school, applying for SNAP and Medicaid benefits. My last “official” interaction with them occurred on their 90th day upon which I complete a home visit where I ensured that their apartments are still safe, that they have been referred to the appropriate next steps, and we sign some papers. As you might imagine, most refugees are not completely self-sufficient after three months in a new country. And a lot of times, it feels like the past three months of intensive case management and frantic late night phone calls and endlessly trying to pin down interpreters did not amount to much.  

But then I would look around.

At the resettlement office, half of our staff was made up of people who came to the US as refugees. Five, ten, twenty years later they were fluent in English, held degrees, and do important work for their communities. Their children do not know the same terror and deprivation that they fled. And I remember those new little trees and how discouraging they sometimes looked. And how, twenty years later, they are lush. They've made it through blazing hot summers and blistering cold winters. And now, they anchor everything around them.

I didn't plant any of those trees in 1995.  And the clients I have been honored to work with in my career could have been assigned to any other case manager and been just fine. They overcame trauma to grow in ways that I'm not sure I could. I watched them begin to lay down their roots and start over. And because of the refugees I knew as friends and coworkers who were further along in their journeys, I knew that great things were coming.

Often, social workers do not get the opportunity to take that scenic drive twenty years down the road. Im fact, our Code of Ethics forbids it in most cases. We lay awake at night worrying about what more we could have done for our clients, and at some point, usually too soon, we have to say goodbye, and hope for the best. We hope that if we haven't helped, dear God, that at least we didn't hurt. We take solace in knowing that we are all like those trees, if only just a couple people prop us up and give us extra water when we're new.