Conversation Starters

I am a social worker but not the kind that you think.  Raise your hand if what you think a social worker does is take kids out of homes.  Keep 'em up if you think that's   all  a social worker does.  Yeah, that's what I thought.  Just today, my new boss at the community nonprofit where I work asked me why I went and got a Master's in Social Work and then chose not to become a social worker. Boy oh boy, we all have a lot to learn. I am a community-based social worker.  I work in advocacy, connection, policy, strategy, and more.  I am a teacher -- and I am a student.  I collaborate with residents, with elected officials, with city officials, with other organizations.   I am a listener. I pull this one out of the lineup and spotlight it because what I'm also is a  talker .  I'm a Gemini, so that means I have the gift of gab.  I can write it or I can speak it and I am quite comfortable in the art of verbal expression....

  I have a social work confession to make:  I   cringe  at the term "self-care."  There is almost nothing that makes my entire body clench than when I see some social media post with a soft-focus photo of an extremely thin woman (probably a white woman, let's be extra-real) doing a yoga pose by a waterfall accompanied by a flowery caption about loving who you are on the inside and taking the time to uplift your inner queenhood or whatever nonsense.  My face, you should see my face. I'm making such a   face.   Even the thought of this makes my entire being cringe. White women can honestly be so embarrassing. There are a host of reasons why these kinds of social media posts bug the hell out of me -- they're likely obvious, but I'll outline a couple just so we're all on the same page.  First of all, these posts almost always feature a body-type that isn't anything close to the "average" body-type.  The person depicted almost always exc...

So there's this episode of  Lovett or Leave It , a podcast hosted by comedian/political pundit/former Obama speech writer, Jon Lovett, where  Lovett's first guest is a string theorist physicist.  As they settle into their banter in front of a live Portland, Maine audience, Lovett asks a question about dark matter and ghosts.  The physicist immediately scoffs, declaring that ghosts aren't real.  Ohhhhkay.  Moments later, Lovett made some kind of comment related to astrology and the physicist bristles once more.  "Please tell me we're not going to talk about astrology," she condescends.  "I thought this was a crowd that believed in  science ." I can't express how much that made me want to discount everything else she was going to say. And here's why:  I believe in science.  And I also know ghosts are real and that astrology is worthy of consideration.  Anyone who so blatantly discounts supernatural or metaphysical possibilities ...

I am terrible at math. You might (wrongly) assume that I'm being hyperbolic about this -- but when I tell you my addition-subtraction-multiplication-and-division skills are lost in a box in a subbasement of brain power somewhere -- I really mean it.  This morning I was watching an old episode of The Wire  where Bubbles, a heroin-addicted street hustler, presses his new teenage business partner (business partner?) to do the quick math of 5x4 plus 6x7 and shakes his head in disgust when the kid can't immediately spit out an answer. And it made me feel a certain way -- for I, too, couldn't do the math that fast. Bubbles would never want me working his cart with him. Say la vee. And while part of this is simply by virtue of being, oh, twenty-something years out of my last math class, part of it is how I've always been.  Math was always a challenging subject for me in school.  I struggled to see how the quadratic equation applied to my everyday life.  And I thought t...

I had a dream that I was in a doctor's office where one of my male friends was giving medically safe abortions.  For some reason, he had invited me to come hang out while was working and so I was in the room with these women as they came in for their procedures.  I have a very squeamish empathy that kicks in with anything that could be even remotely painful but in the dream, I did my best to put on a brave face and stay there to help ease these women through their procedures being administered by my friend.  He is not a medical profession IRL but he was more than competent in this dream-space and did an excellent job making these women feel comfortable, clearly explaining what he was doing while also idly chit-chatting with me. I woke up thinking  what a weird dream . That was the morning of Friday, June 24, 2022.  Roe vs Wade was overturned mere hours after my waking. Friday, June 24, 2022 is a frightening and grotesque day in the United States of America. I le...

Recently, I met up with a friend of mine from MSASS and had an incredible four hour lunch where we caught up on our lives and talked about what's teaching us these days.  Near the end of our time together, my friend was talking about how she sometimes falls into this "therapist" role with people to help them "solve their problems."  And I smiled at her and said, "Let me throw this at you and see how it sticks: what if, instead of the problem-solution model, you used Asset Based Community Development?  What if instead of deficits, you thought about strengths?" My friend grinned at me because she knows my affinity for ABCD, so she indulged me as I explained: "I think in my own life, I've struggled a lot with this idea that I should 'get over stuff.'  That there's a pressure to 'get over' a relationship or a traumatic event or really anything.  What does that even mean, 'get over it'?  Who does that language benefit?  ...

Y'all. Taking the LSW was a real challenge for me.  And I mean that literally sitting in that chair for three straight hours, staring at some Helvetica font while my stomach tried to scramble up into my throat, was hard .  I had studied as much as I could and felt decently prepared, but when that first question flashed on the screen and it was formatted a little differently than any of the practice tests I took and didn't have answers that seemed like the "best" option I was supposed to determine, I thought my ship was sunk. But I took a breath.  Answered the best I could.  And advanced to the next question.  Then the next and the next and the next.  To be honest, I never fully relaxed.  Typically in situations like this, I self-regulate quickly and my anxiety dissipates.  But not today.  Maybe somewhere around Question 95 I surrendered to the god of "it is what it is" but as the questions neared the final one -- 170 -- I started to feel almo...