I'm Where I'm Suppose To Be

“The best test, and the most difficult to administer is: Do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?” – Robert Greenleaf, Servant Leadership


Through my experiences at my internship - yes, I definitely see how people served grow and become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous and more likely to become servants. However, I also see some of the women with deferred prosecutions who do not care to take responsibility for their actions and work towards staying off the streets and out of jail. The beautiful part about my internship is that my coworkers and I work very hard to always put the women (clients) first. Any staff member will drop whatever it is that they are doing if one of the women comes in need of help. This is also a frustrating part of my job. We bend over backwards to constantly check up on them and help them get what they need, but a lot of them don’t seem to care about the effort we put in. As my boss says, if they just meet us a third of the way – we will go the other two thirds to help them. Unfortunately, lately it seems like a lot of women do not care to make that kind of effort. Yesterday we met with the District Attorney and the Public Defender’s office to discuss some of these non-compliant women so they do not fall through the cracks. They will get one last chance…otherwise many of them will get bench warrants issued. It ends up being a case of tough love – which is often difficult to accept. But as I start to teach a class on Mondays, I begin to understand on a level I didn’t even think possible what these women go through. And as I get to know them on a deeper level, the success stories (while sometimes few and far between) completely outweigh the non-successful stories. The truly amazing part for me in all of this is that while I am trying to help these women to the best of my ability, I have found myself again. Working every day and having that consistent contact with the women and my coworkers has given me a new sense of what I want to go to graduate school for and what I am ultimately meant to do with my life. I have finally come back to the same dream I had when I first came to college: working in a clinical setting with women. Many of psychology’s fascinating topics has diverted my attention away from that and allowed me to learn things that I probably wouldn’t have ever known otherwise. But as I start my last semester this fall, I feel confident that this internship was meant to be in so many different ways. And there is nothing more reassuring than learning that your original dream is exactly where you are supposed to be.

Just A Small Town Girl

I grew up in a town of about 25,000 people.  Descent sized but not too big.  It's the perfect size.  Well almost.  There are still the drawbacks... Like how everytime I go home and walk into Walmart, I am always destined to see someone from high school.  Or how my parents know who the Cheif of Police is.  And I can always count on smelling cow manure.  But there is never anything like going home. 

It got me thinking though.  Why do people go home?  To fall back into the arms of a loved one, to visit those who have passed away, to relive memories.  Possibly.  But for me its none of those reasons.  I know my family would come visit me at school.  None of my family is buried here.  And reliving high school memories?  Probably not on my top 5 list of things to do this summer.  And as most people grow older, they go home less and less.  We start to build our own lives and new places to call home.

I found my own answer while I was home this weekend.  At heart, I'm still a small town girl who just loves the excitement and opportunities of the big city.  But truly, I need the time away from that every once and a while.  I like to have the option of both and I hope to keep it that way for a while.

Love Is Blind

Not long after signing up for this blog two years ago, I stopped writing after only a few months.  You know how it is.  Life gets in the way sometimes.  Well for me, it wasn't just life.  This time it was a guy.  See, I fell in love.  And this wasn't just your typical relationship where you grow to care for someone.  This time I was head over heels, stars in my eyes, madly in love with a guy named Chris.  However, notice I said "was." 

See, Chris wasn't just an average joe kind of guy.  He was about 5 foot 10 inches and only weighed 140 pounds.  He had too many tattoos to count and added several more in the time we dated.  He liked to change his hair color every month or so and was the lead singer of a Christian rock band.  Chris worked as a youth leader at my church, which is how we met.  The day we met was the same day I buried my grandmother who passed away from breast cancer.  He was asked by the church pastor to play a couple choice songs at the service.  Even on a sad day such as that, he still managed to catch my eye.  I must have done the same for him because we soon became friends on Facebook and not even a month later we started talking.  For the next three months, we dated very happily and I fell madly in love with him.  He was everything I thought I was looking for in a guy.  From early on, he shared with me that he had Ocular Melenoma (a rare type of cancer) but that he was receiving treatment and that it would hopefully go in remission soon.  We both lived life accordingly, not taking it for granted but not living it like it was his last either.  That is until that one fateful day in May.  He told me that the doctor said his cancer had spread and that he maybe had six months to live.  Needless to say, our relationship went through hell for the next two months. 

Now you are probably expecting me to tell you that he passed away.  Well, he didnt.  He is still alive today - cancer free I might add.  How?  I still dont know.  My guess: he never had cancer.  But we broke up late in the summer due to his indecision and the hell he put me through with his lies.  As a psychology major, I would love to be able to tell you why I believed him about his cancer and all of the other lies he told me.  But my answer is not psychological.  I simply believed him because LOVE IS BLIND.  It has taken me about this long to get over it, but I will probably always love him in some way.  It hadn't dawned on me until more recently how interesting this experience has been from the psychological perspective.  What is it about love that makes us blind?  Is love a necessary and sought out part of our existance?  And how do we choose who love and why?  These are questions I have been asking myself lately and, through research, found that psychologists are also looking for these answers.  It is quite the mystery!