The Green Social Worker

“If you must look back, do so forgivingly. If you must look forward, do so prayerfully. However, the wisest thing you can do is be present in the present... gratefully.” Maya Angelou

I knew a few weeks ago that this would be the craziest week of the semester, between assignments for school, job-work, internship responsibilities, and the first Alliance for Anti-Racist Social Work Practitioners meeting on Friday (SGA group I'm running). But I didn't think when I walked into my internship on Monday that it would be this bad. My task supervisor beckoned me into her office and without any frills told me that one of our clients had been shot and killed over the weekend. I couldn't believe. This young man had been walking, breathing, laughing, smiling, and planning for his future. Last Wednesday we had texted about him coming to see me to work on a new job application. He said he didn't feel well, but I caught up with him later in the hallway and he said he would come see me Monday. He is dead. He couldn't come see me. He won't ever walk into his apartment building again. He won't come smilingly slopingly into my office, asking about jobs a...

A few weeks ago, a plate shattered in my room. It was a plate I had painted, as part of a friend's Master's degree project exploring the connections between food and community. It had hung up for four years on my bedroom wall. I walked in one day and only after being in my bedroom for some time did I notice that it was in pieces all over the hardwood floor.  It was on the heels of a few very difficult weeks. Inner struggles, outer strugges, graduate school stress, personal stress, and some interpersonal tension had me super down. All the random self-care I did wasn't cutting it - walks, yoga, a hot bath, time with friends and family, a few journal entries, some good books, more sleep. It all felt like another duty squeezed in between endless hours writing papers, doing research, answering emails, and going to my job, internship, and classes. I really kept asking myself when I would reach the end of my tether and start to feel better. Then I took my online midterm. G...

Lately I've been thinking a few weird thoughts about being an elder. I have a lot of elders in my life. So does my fiance. We're very lucky. I think this thought got started in February when my godmother came to visit. I realized how weird random chance had brought this woman into my life who is surrogate-mom, friend, care-giver, and a huge piece of stability. Even when I don't talk to her for a few weeks I know she's there and thank God for that. I couldn't live without her. Maybe, I suddenly thought sometime back in February, I will be that for someone else one day. A surrogate-mama-friend. I have a few of those, actually, my godmother being my primary one (hence, godmother). Shantonu also has lots of family friends whom he calls auntie and uncles. And of course we have lots of "official" relatives - blood- or marriage-related people in our lives. I guess the weirdness of the thought has come from realizing one day none of these people will be a...