TAKING CARE

It's Sunday night and I'm sitting here sipping chamomile tea with added drops of passion flower and trying to feel ok before I start another work week. Trying to avoid taking a prescription drug to help me cope with the anxiety I feel. I have been working front-line for over a decade and in that time I have shared space with hundreds of people. I have, along with my fellow co workers been support to so many people who struggle to live in this system we are forced to live under. And I have supported people in their transitions to death, helped organize their funerals, supported people who have been assaulted, experienced horrible sexual violence, and violence and then just tried to be a good support around people's mental health and substance use, getting ID, writing a letter of support, writing letters to people in prison and supporting people with their health and so on.

And I too have this deep lived experience that brought me to the work I do but that I also struggle to fully heal from. And there are many of us working in harm reduction and being support for people who are struggling through this work. As we bare witness to countless overdose deaths, countless deaths of people who never made it past 50, the ever crushing broken systems and more.

How do we take care of ourselves?

I became an advocate for people living with Hep C when I began working with a man who was aboriginal, co infected and used drugs more than anyone I ever met. He was an avid user, he loved them and was also part of the 60's scoop. He was funny and loved music and we bonded a great deal. I learned an incredible amount from him. So when he died of AIDS after being one of his support workers for 5 years I felt an intense amount of grief.  He was the the first person I worked with.

I felt so much grief when Heather died, she was the second person I started working with. 7 years she was homeless and the first two weeks of moving in to her new place she was found dead in the shared house she had just moved in to. I helped to plan her funeral and her family still hadn't been informed that she was dead despite the fact that I had given the police all the information they needed to contact her sisters and her kids, and her extended family with. The night before the funeral I looked up her last name in the phone book and took a guess and picked a name and sure enough it was her sister and I had to give them the news that their sister had passed away and the funeral was the next day. I have countless stories like these of people I have known and worked with. That hold deep in my heart, in my memories and also keep my flame burning.

I work at a job where the lobby is fully of memories of people connected to what often feels like a small town. The cuts to programs, the lack of housing, the discrimination people face in the health care system, living in poverty, prison, drug prohibition, colonization, racism, homophobia, transphobia, chronic conditions, and so on are killing people and I go to work every week and I am witness and holding space with people and I feel traumatized. I hate to use vicarious trauma because what we're experiencing is trauma. I have never had clinical supervision in my job, not formally. I speak informally with my co-workers. We process everything and have a tight working relationship. But at the end of the day I often go home tired, sad and depressed. I feel the weight of this system and I feel waves of different emotions.

There isn't a lot of space for us, as workers to come together and talk about the impacts. We have barely any space between the last death or the last incident to breathe and heal and process. I feel so selfish even writing about this. But even in our own personal lives we experience loss and struggle and violence and the crushing weight of the system. And in between all of this, we have to reorganize ourselves in the system we are working in, to collect more data, see more people, advocate constantly and watch layers of new bureaucracy form to shift and cut and redirect what should be direct services and/or housing and/or an increase in social assistance etc. 

And so I am writing this thinking about how do we keep going as we work towards changing the system we live in? How do we or how do I maintain the ability to do good work and be present and supportive when it feels endless? How do we support each other and the communities we work in and stay healthy long enough to keep doing it? What is our longevity? Can we come together and hold space with each other and talk about what is happening honestly? What solutions and ideas do we have that we never share or have space to talk about that could shift the dominant systems and discourse we are working in? How are we less reactive?

And so this is what I am thinking about as I take my lasts sips of tea and hope that I will sleep soundly through the night before I start the next work week. I hope that I can maintain strength and presence in it. And I'm hoping to engage in more dialogue and to feel more optimistic and hopeful and well as we keep going.

In Solidarity and Love,
Zoë