Dear Emily:

I haven’t heard from you in a long time and I’m getting worried about you. I know this job you have now is very demanding and not as fulfilling as the kind of work you used to do. I also know the traveling you’re required to do, adds to the load and keeps you in a very busy schedule, but I get worried when I don’t hear from you for a long time.

My marks are in for the last course, Suicide & Crisis Intervention. That’s the one I found difficult because I did a lot of personal work as I chose to write my research paper about “crisis of old age”, meaning such things as Alzheimer’s, Dementia, etc. and how it affects the caregivers. I might not have understood it as well before living it myself, but believe me, it can create major crises in families.

I always feel guilty when I say that because it makes it sound like I regret the decision we made of taking care of my Mom. It’s not at all what I’m saying. What I’m saying is I recognize the demands and the challenges and how it can very easily lead to crisis. Anyway, yes, it was a difficult paper to write, and I did do some learning and healing from writing it, and . . . .I got an A+. I’m pretty proud of that one. I feel like I worked hard to get it.

Yesterday we were doing role plays about Mood Disorders. It was kind of cool. Half the class presented as clients with a specific mood disorder and the other half of the class were clinicians on a panel and they had to come up with the correct diagnosis of the mood disorder they were portraying. It was a fun way to make what could be a dry subject interesting. I was on the panel yesterday. Today I will be a client and today we are going to be doing Anxiety Disorders.

I read about these Anxiety Disorders last night and although we’re not required to read the whole text as it’s more like an encyclopedia then anything else, I found myself reading more than required. One of my daughters had an Anxiety Disorder and I was pulled in by what I read. It brought me back to the difficult times she went through, the pain she felt, the limitations it created for her, and how she struggled with this.

It reminded me of how painful it was to witness my own child hurt and not always knowing how to support her in what she was going through. I wish I would have known then what I know now. But, as we all do as parents, I did the best I could with what I had and I supported her through her difficult times as much as I possibly could. One of the things I did was to encourage her self expression through drawing, painting and writing. At least I knew the importance of that and passed this on to her.

She has worked wonders to get herself where she is today. She continues to write in a journal and is now completely off the medication which she needed to help her navigate through the toughest parts. She is doing things she would have never dreamed possible of doing and surprising even herself when she looks back and sees what she has accomplished.

There are still some challenges as I’m sure there will always be, but I think the difference is she knows now that they are challenges and that challenges can be worked through and that one day she’ll be able to look back and say, “I did that!”

Well, I got carried away as usual. I just get so exciting when I start talking about how I see people moving forward in their growth and in their life. There’s nothing more rewarding to me.

Writefully Yours
Annette