Work hard, party harder

Lately, I've been getting up at, what feels like to me, the ass crack of dawn (pardon my French). Yesterday I had class (on a Saturday! my BFF made a joke about it, "What, do social workers consider all days equal or something?"). Today I have training for my part-time, terrible, depressing, seasonal retail job.

I've also been spending my weekend evenings out with friends, being social, and even imbibing a bit. This makes waking up at a decent hour like 7am today or 8am yesterday seem like a huge effort. And admittedly, I probably shouldn't be out so late (5am on Friday night, 2:30am last night). It's just difficult to find the right balance--I don't get a straight up 9 to 5 schedule (or even a straight up 2 to 11 schedule). Things are unpredictable and it's hard to plan for a good time out if I want to conserve sleep. 

And I know how important sleep is. In fact, I am struggling getting these very words out this morning, and I'm sure someone is going to read this and assume I am drunk, because I am questioning that possibility myself right now. It's just something I've felt okay about sacrificing the past couple of days in exchange for fun. I can't wait for the days when I don't have to choose. Those days do eventually show up, right? Right?

This is just one example of how crappy my notes from class were yesterday. Pretty sure I was falling asleep as I was trying to write them. I tried to pull the whole "face-away-from-professor-and-pretend-you're-looking-down-at-your-notes-when-your-eyes-are-closed-but-then-your-whole-body-jolts-when-you-actually-fall-asleep-making-it-obvious-that-you-were-sleeping" thing. If you actually know what hypoprolacti...mema? means, please advise.

New beginnings

So I've returned from my unplanned, longer than expected hiatus. Self-care right? I have this thing, and I think it's common amongst us social workers, where I make way more work for myself than there minimally has to be. In addition to graduate school and a 21 hour a week placement, I am working part time and also doing some heavy duty community organizing around fat issues. My middle name should be burn out.

Here's a small run down on things that I am working on that I hope to keep on a regular schedule of sharing with the blog-o-sphere:

•  I've started a new club at NYU Silver, called Body Positive Silver. I've been connected to so many awesome students at Silver who are interested in changing body culture and tackling weight bias. I feel blessed, and honored to know these amazing ladies. 
• We are working on SO MANY awesome campaigns. We hope to develop curriculum for both faculty and students on body politics, fat and social work.
• The New School, where one of my colleagues Sarah Lewin is doing her placement this year, is doing some seriously radical work through a group called Changing Body Culture. I attended a Body Positive two day workshop which BLEW MY MIND and changed my life and completely shifted how I look at myself and food. I am not even exaggerating. As someone who suffers from depression, I have seen a marked changed in how I react to situations after this workshop. The Body Positive is one of my most favorite organizations, and I want to be Connie and Elizabeth when I grow up. 
• For those of you in NYC, there will be a Body Positive four hour training Saturday, November 19 for free. Contact changingbodyculture (at) gmail.com for more details and to RSVP. 

Ugh, there's so much I'm missing, but so much is going on. I've been busy presenting workshops for NYU students and I also presented at the amazing RISE Conference this year which was a huge honor (pics of that coming soon). I wish I were independently wealthy so I could just travel around the country and do this stuff full time! I love it. 

More entries coming soon. I definitely want to comment on Occupy Wall Street and the Penn State happenings.

Also! It recently came to my attention that social-work.org named me their top blog about social work! I am so giddy and grateful. Check out their article to find other awesome blogs about social work.

Social-Work.org

I am a graduate student. I must be because I am so very lonely.

Well, I'm finishing up my first semester, so things on this blog are certainly slow. If you miss me that much, check out my interview with Persephone Magazine.

In the meantime, tap into your empathy by watching these Xtranormal vids about social work school.

This one points out a lot of the major flaws of social work education. I have to say though, I don't really think the job market is all THAT bad for MSWs. Is it? Maybe I am just showin' my NYU privilege here.

This is the greatest thing I've ever seen.

"Communities are organized groups that have been dynamically grouped into group-oriented communities."

"...You seem to be under a lot of stress. Should I be worried about you?"

"Systems theory."

Lessons in loss

The pretty much new blog has been kind of quiet. That's to be expected, considering I'm a grad student who has a penchant for biting off more than I can chew :D

It's also been a rough month for me, both personally and professionally. My placement has to be one of the most difficult internships imaginable (besides perhaps working in a hospice). I'm placed in a domestic violence shelter. It's a short term, emergency shelter. Clients have about 135 days to stay there before they're sent back to the homeless processing center in NYC to be placed in yet another shelter. My first batch of clients are beginning to terminate right now, and I'm feeling all kinds of conflicted about that.

There's one client in particular that is difficult. She's in her early-40s, with an adorable daughter. She's relentlessly positive when most others would be breaking down, and she's a devoted mother, always putting her precocious 3 year old above all else. She's discharging today. And she's not really sure where she's going. She's undocumented. That means she can't get documented employment, and thus is not qualified for the only housing program worth pursing. She gets something like $18 in public assistance. She's in the middle of a custody battle with a man who threw her down two flights of stairs, with a man who brought her here from her home country where she had a rewarding career, with a degree that is no good here, when she didn't speak a word of English (oh, did I mention she's amazingly intelligent? Taught herself English in only a few years, and she speaks beautifully).

To say there's a lot of counter-transference going on in this case would be a gross understatement. During my time as her counselor, she has transformed into a mother figure. For someone like her, I think this was very beneficial because she is a nurturer and her self-esteem is rooted in feeling like she is a good nurturer. Her daughter also reminds me a lot of myself at that age. The dynamic of our relationship, however, brings up a lot of my issues with my mother. She reminds me of what could have been if x, y and z didn't happen. It's shown me that I haven't grieved over the loss of my mother-daughter relationship. My mother isn't dead, or anything. I don't mean to give that impression. She's just unable to provide guidance and comfort for me, because she can't even provide it for herself. I haven't come to terms with this, and I think this client made me feel comforted.

I was a very parentified child. My mother was in an abusive relationship. She was always so fragile, and I was her protector. The client's daughter feels the same way about her mother. She once drew a picture of two people: a really tall person and a really short person. She identified the really tall person as herself. The short person was her mother. When asked why, she said it's because she needs to protect her mommy from the monster. I can't say I didn't feel the same way about the client during our relationship. We once spent an extraordinarily long day together in court, and I remember looking over at her. She had her head between her hands, and she looked so worn, so exhausted. Underneath her strong exterior, she really was struggling with everything. I recognized immediately how I felt at that moment, and it was exactly how I would feel when I would find my mom crying over the stove, in her room, where ever. I wanted to save her.

I think this termination has been harder on me than on her. I want to keep in touch, but I can't. I want to help her after she leaves, but I can't. I want to hand her a green card, but, yeah, I can't.

Losing this client and the few others who will be gone by the week's end hurts. I am queen of abandonment issues, plus I have a 1 o'clock appointment to euthanize my sick cat today. I'm ready for 2012 already.

Introductions

I would be lying if I said this was my first attempt at blogging. I've started many blogs, mostly personal blogs, that have absolutely no focus. I end up writing obnoxiously emotional complaints about how I want to go shopping or how I'm mad at my boyfriend; in other words, blogging usually makes me feel absolutely vapid.

I think this is because I've had no focus. It's also been a long time since I've felt passionate about anything except how I'm broke/someone I love--and these two things have both contributed to the fact that I've experienced a loss of identity throughout the years. But, I think I've rekindled a part of myself that I lost when I started social work school in September.

When I was 15 years old, I knew I was going to change the world. But uh, every American 15 year old feels that way. I was different though. I was precocious. If I met 15 year old me now, I'd be in love. I was a hardcore, radical feminist. I was unabashedly open about my thoughts, feeling, sexual preferences, etc. I didn't know how to pick my battles; I fought them all. I don't know when I lost this. I think it's when my battles started having real-world implications.

Social work school, 10 years later, has reminded me of all of those feelings. Fortunately I now have the judgment to reserve my energy for when the battles are truly necessary. I am sort of learning the idea of self-care. I am actually helping people, and I figured out how to do this being a feminist thing, and get paid for it.

While social work school has thus far been truly transformative for me, it is not all gumdrops and rainbows. I've been interested in fat acceptance for a long while. Getting fat helped me along with that interest. ;) I noticed though that social work school has all of these courses and articles we're supposed to read about cultural competence. We learned about how to understand our bias in order to prevent negative counter-transference. We talk about race, immigration status, gender, sexuality, (dis)ability, ethnicity, omg I know I'm forgetting something. But, so far, my social work education has consisted of a total of 30 minutes of talk on fat issues. 20 minutes of those I had to advocate to make happen. I had to get really fucking angry actually, and I ended up raising my voice toward my favorite professor.

Basically, she pulled what almost everyone in the world pulls when the topic of teh death fatz comes up: But what about their health? That's not healthy. And my question is, "How is this relevant to our work?" Crickets. I asked again, louder (I guess she identified a trigger, huh?). She didn't understand the question. I went home and began digging through my links and saved papers and books to find the best information I could to represent the fat acceptance/fat studies movements. I sent them out to the class.

When we came back, the professor wanted to retouch the topic. She openly admitted she was a fatist. It was kind of amazing.

And I realize, you know, all it takes is a conversation. Conversations that social work schools aren't having. Progressive people are not talking about body size. It's irrelevant, because it's gross and unhealthy. Fat people are not worthy of equal rights, even from social workers, because it's unhealthy, and they eat too much, and no one likes sitting next to them on airplanes.

So this blog is my place to do some processing. It's a place for me to focus my thoughts on social work in general, and to hopefully reach out to other fat social workers. And to get started on what I hope to be a long foray into social justice. Thanks for stopping by :)