The importance of being where you are. The moment.

Being a social work student has taught me plenty.  What interventions to use with specific clients. How to evaluate them. How to research. How to be unconditionally present.  How to meet clients where they are, instead of where I (as a clinician) may want them to be.

But this semester? In a class around the topic of grief and loss? I learned how to sit with my own feelings.  To be ok (or begin to be ok) with them.

Because it is not just being able to be ok sitting with clients and their feelings, it's important to be able to as an individual, be able to sit with our own.

It is so often that I think that because I have been trained in specific skills that I should have all the answers.  That I should be able to handle every situation thrown in my direction with perfection and the "right" ways.  It's a lie.

Learning to be ok with where I am as an individual, social worker or not, has been a great new way to be able to look at my life, and look at the decisions that I am very quickly going to be needing to make.

It's ok to be sad.  It's ok to grieve the end of something that I thought I was ready for.  It's ok to be happy, to continue living.  To continue growing.  To continue to make choices and decisions because without them, you are stagnant. Unchanging. Because without making a decision, you are, in fact, choosing.

And what fun is a world in which you are unable to change?

It is the lesson I am most thankful for.  Learning to be OK with where I am.  To accept it.  And to keep plugging along, whether the days are smooth like a lake in the morning, or challenging and scary... a day in which your footing just isn't always sure.

It's life.  And if I can't accept and be OK with where I am, how can I expect others to be just as OK with where I am?  Being where you are. In the present. In the moment.  Living.

Starbucks Gratitude

So, as I am sitting here at Starbucks (it must be the end of the semester) writing papers, sipping quietly out of my holiday red cup, listening to my Pandora stations, I am struck by how the holidays change people.

People aren't angry to be standing in line, waiting for their caffeine jolt. They are smiling. They are talking to the ones around them. There are kids bringing their baristas presents.

And they are happy.

And that, my friends, is what the holidays are all about. Smiling at those around you. Trying to make someone elses' day just a little bit better, because well.... you can. Paying for someone elses' coffee because it's the holiday spirit. Slowing down just a bit during this ever so hectic season to look up and see what's going on around you.

And being thankful for it.

Sap post. Get over it. :)

((This last paper is due tomorrow. Which means there will be plenty of new blogs in the next couple of weeks. But seriously? I can only write so much.))

Do something nice for someone today. Smile. Hold the door.

It's the holidays.