So I've given up on getting therapy for the moment...but DOING therapy, now that's a whole other cookie.

(Cookie? I didn't want to say "ball game," cause I don't know enough about baseball to use it as a metaphor. And I like cookies.)

This weekend I indulged in a newly discovered slightly embarrassing pleasure: O Magazine. That thing is addictive. After several articles about believing in your passions and doing what's important instead of what's urgent, I emerged with wild ideas about taking cello lessons and saying things to myself like, "Yes, my career DOES make my heart sing!"

(Then glancing around to see if anyone heard me.)

Doing therapy is just plain FUN. Perhaps we are having a honeymoon period, therapy and I. Fine with me--I'll take all of those I can get. The things that can happen during an hour of supportive interaction are infinitely interesting to me. An adolescent girl can go from withdrawn to tearful. Someone telling me her history can move from rigid to relaxed. Shadows of mood come and go. A relationship builds. I get to devote myself to being with someone else, as much as I am able. Right now it's as close as I get to the sacred, I think.

Whatever that beast was that my supervisor called vicarious trauma, it has left me for now. It left a few sprains and bruises, and it is now my task to turn those into lessons and meaning. But that's my favorite thing to do. In the mean time, my commitment to social work is renewed. And I find myself in prayer that I will be as effective as I can be.