Perspective Tells the Weight

By Emily Sterling

I sat in comfortable silence, just me and my dogs beside. No fire in the hearth, no music on the radio, just a quiet evening pause.

            It had been a long time and I had struggled in the interim to keep perspective.

            Cases piled up. Emergencies walked in. Frustration followed frustration on some where we couldn’t seem to catch a break. But my team showed up.

            My team showed up on the Monday when the mother walked in, scared to death for her son.  We showed up on Tuesday and Wednesday for the woman with the concussion, for the kids with too much precocious knowledge, and the frazzled caseworker who brought them all in.  Thursday, we went to court, fought, won; Friday, we returned to do it all over again.

            Week after week, month after month, some semblance of that repeated. Law enforcement, advocates, counselors, and attorneys all answered the call; none did their work alone. 

A thorny, prickly heart, but a heart nonetheless.

            Burn out, compassion fatigue, secondary trauma kept pace beside us, a threat and a cautionary tale of some who had gone before us.  “How do you do it?” asked one friend, after showing me a highly publicized article on a particularly brutal sexual assault case.  “You must see cases like these.”

            “How does she do it?” I wondered, staring at the picture of the victim. “Moving forward, how does she show this world that she is more than this assault?”

            “God willing,” I answered the friend finally. “And one step at a time.”  I tapped the photo gently. “Hers is the hardest, most important job though—that of healing and building a life in the aftermath.”

            Stories like hers keep us fighting, keep us showing up, keep us offering that hand to guide or shoulder to support.  Stories like hers recall our “why,” our purpose in choosing this work.

            So we comfort the screaming toddler at the hospital. So we lend our strength to the struggling single parent, until that parent may find his or her own strength renewed. We let the teenager weep and rage; we sit in patient silence until the survivor with the sixty-year-old secret finds the words to share.

            We also lift up each other.  We check in regularly; we share and are honest with each other. “This was a hard case.” “I need a moment.” “That struck too close.” We take breaks. Silly books, cheesy movies, long hikes, and dinners with friends provide balance.  Back at work, I watch my team, growing, learning, accomplishing—and I find another source of inspiration.

            Because though this work is hard and nigh endless, I see them: how they care, how they love, how they try to make this world just a little better, one life at a time.  Ours can be heavy work, but so much matters in how we choose to carry it.  We decide whether to carry the weight of the world or the lightness of hope and a future for someone who may not otherwise see it. The heaviness of life depends on how we choose to carry the weight: lifting with just our backs or using our legs and every other body part to better distribute it.  One way leads to an early strain and break; the other allows a person to lift and lift again for far longer than he or she otherwise could.

            That evening, despite the workload and headlines, I chose to focus on the light.