Compassion Fatigue Solutions

This poem was written by a therapist colleague of mine who has worked in this field for many years. She is someone who reflects deeply on the cost of doing this work, on the rewards and the pain that we can experience when our clients suffer terrible losses. She also made some very important changes to her schedule and her work/life balance in a way that now allows her to do this challenging work without being damaged by it. Those changes took an incredible amount of courage and humility, and I think that she will reap the benefits tenfold. If anyone "walks the walk" it's her. She has asked whether she could share this poem with our CF community, but wishes to remain anonymous.

this work

my ten year old heart imagined
mothering a tidy orphanage
full of grateful kids
with names beginning with J,
carefully cleaned ears,
and brand new matching bedspreads.

thirty odd years later, I would cry out,
why do I do this work, this work
so beyond lists, Q-tips and the Sears catalogue
that I quake
when I open the door to yet another babe
swaddled in such unspeakables,
abandoned with such artifacts:
the chased painting still at last
beside the Barbie shoes below the school bus,
the truck at the bottom of the icy lake
cleared for the grandkids' hockey games,
the bullet through the crimson pillow
where escape plans had tossed and turned,
the sticks and vegetables that had heard
such pleadings as no plant could imagine,
the seven year old Chapstick tasted
and set back by the ever empty baseball glove,
and today, just today, the cap and gown
to be donned the day after the funeral.

and I buckle and stagger once more
under the weight of this work, this work,
all but forgetting the shared breath,
the symphonic bouquet,
the tender arms of just last week,
wondering why, why
I cannot simply know the rose and the fire
in their exquisite words,
and the importance of keepsakes
in the light of our teal glass inukshuks,
marking the way for us and our followers,
lost and found in snow’s infinite textures
melted and sheening on our souls’ skin
and in our soft open eyes.