Today is my last day working with Child Protective Services. This is my last day living on the Eastside of Washington. My last day living in Cheney, WA. The joy and anguish I feel is overwhelming. I am sad to leave.
Those who are close to me would remember how angry I was to move to Cheney, WA. I thought the east side of Washington was a barren desert, ugly, boring, and full of frigid snow in the winter and smoky heat in the summer. I recall the bitter feelings in my first few months here, I was unhappy and ungrateful. My goal was to get in and out as fast as possible.
I was determined not to put down roots, but I failed.
This time here in the desert of Washington, it has been my greatest adventure yet. In particular, the work I did as a social worker in the child welfare system, foster care system in Washington state. I could tell you a lot of crazy stories, I’ve seen, heard, and experienced some of the most bizarre situations. None of which I can go into detail about due to the confidential nature of the work. But I have removed children from their parents, sometimes with the cops and firefighters involved. I’ve been in brutal legal battles. I’ve seen people using meth. And heroin. And other drugs. I’ve been in the hospital with sick kids, infants withdrawing from drug exposure in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), and kids with life-altering injuries. I’ve heard kids describe abuse they’ve experience in horrific detail. I’ve had kids tell me they are tired of being a foster kid and they want to go home. I have testified in termination proceedings which removed a parents’ rights to their child. I’ve had some of my foster kids be adopted. I’ve got to help people get off drugs, change generation patterns of neglect and abuse, escape from sex trafficking, leave domestic violence situations. I’ve held kids when they are sobbing when their parents didn’t show up to an appointment. I’ve been spit at. I’ve been hit and kicked. I carried a baby once out of a hospital after it was born and drove them to their foster home. I felt like a parent, at times.
The two biggest lessons I learned were about love, and about fear. In the child welfare system, everything was about either fear or love.
On fear, I learned not give in to it. The temptation to be anxious was ever-present in this job. The child welfare system is run on fear. We fear kids will die if we don’t act. We fear “what could happen” if we don’t take kids out of tittering situations. Additionally, I was constantly terrified if I was “doing the right thing.” The self-doubt often impaired my senses. There has been a lot of hard parts of this job, as noted by my long list above. But the hardest part was the ambiguity, the complexity, and the unknown. The situations which landed in my lap, they were often so traumatic and bizarre, truly the only way I could navigate them was through humility and trust in God. I really had no other option but to trust God, literally. I had people’s lives in my hands. The duty to make sure kids are safe, this was serious. I was afraid a lot they could be getting hurt, abused, neglected and I was missing the signs. I was afraid if I didn’t do everything I could to help, families would be permanently torn apart, causing irreversible emotional damage to the parents and to their kids. I chronically feared I was not smart enough, kind of enough, sophisticated enough, brave enough to help the families I worked with. While I had many parents get their kids back and reunify, some didn’t. I feared I didn’t do enough. I wondered if there was something I could have done, said, or figured out to have changed the outcome. Each time it happened, I cried for you, I felt sad for your family and for the brokenness which didn’t find its way to repair during our time working together. I feared and stressed over the mistakes I made, and I made lots. And I learned from those mistakes. When it was all said and done, I learned to push through the fear, so the greater task at hand could be done unhindered.
But while I saw so much pain while working in the foster care system, the love I saw was still greater. I saw parents drudge up every resource they had to make it to visits and bring a meal and a toy for their kids. I saw relatives take in kid after kid from their relatives who couldn’t get off drugs but kept having babies. I saw foster moms and dad hug and love foster kids like they were their own, reassuring them even though none of us knew what the future held. I’ve seen people give up their parental rights so their child could have a better life. I’ve seen parents fight harder than they’ve ever known to change and reunify.
The reason for the work is love. And I have learned to give myself over to this work and love it more deeply than I knew was possible. For the past few months I was getting concerned I was taking this job too personally. I really was “passionate,” as word I often use to positively describe being ‘angry.’ I have been frustrated and impatient with the system a lot, and a little burnt out. I have been taking this work personally for a while. But I don’t care. I loved this work, I’ve loved these people. This work is about people, it’s about love and connection between parents and their kids, kids and their families. Of course it’s personal, it must be. I have learned to embrace how deep this job affected me, and I came out on the other side feeling the full weight of it’s meaning. As I often said, i learned to have “a full range of emotions” joy, anger, pain, sadness, love.
I learned my job was not about managing people, it was about empowering them. My boss always told me, to weave a thread so sophisticated through a situation that no one else, not the judge, not the parents, no one would even realize what I was doing. He always fiercely pushed me to reunify families, to help people change. I am thankful for everyday I had doing this work. I hope someday to return to it.
Leaving this job today has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I’ve worked on an excellent team of colleagues, social workers, lawyers, a commissioner, foster parents, relatives, providers. We have changed lives. In my departure, I know this team will go on to continue to do amazing work.
I have made close friends while here on the Eastside. I put down roots. And that is why it’s tearing me up to leave. I love you all. I leave my heart with you and this place. You have forever altered who I am, and I have known great love. I hope you know how much I loved you in return. And as I go forward into this next adventure, this work I’ve been apart of, this season on the Eastside working for CPS, it has been my springboard into great unknown.
