Meaningful Work

My family and I went to a fundraiser for a local school that serves children with psychiatric diagnoses.  The benefit was fun and the food was great.  Watching the presentation about the school, however, made me feel nostalgic about teaching special education.  As I've mentioned before, I no longer teach.  I am currently on Social Security Disability.  My teaching licenses are still valid though and sometimes I miss teaching.  Being that special teacher that can reach tough to teach kids.  My specialty, over the years, was working with the toughest of the tough.  Severe emotionally and behaviorally challenged youth.  I've worked in juvenile corrections, locked psych wards, and treatment centers for adjudicated teens.  Anyway, part of me misses it.

One of the facets of working with teens that was so rewarding is that it was always clear that I was doing Meaningful Work.  What I did mattered.  What I did made a difference.

Since I've left teaching, I haven't had the same sense that what I am doing is somehow of service to my society and to my community.  I still need that connection to meaningful work though.  I've had to re-think what it means to be meaningfully engaged in the lives of those around me.

On one level there is my family and my farm.  I am a husband and a father.  I am raising four boys, homeschooling them, and mentoring them.  That is certainly meaningful work.  I also care for my animals.  That involves meaningful work.  Feeding, milking, and caring for the animals.  As part of the "feeding" of the animals we moved 16+ tons of hay this summer.  That was most certainly a lot of work.  It's been three weeks since we finished and my arms still hurt.

But how can I make that connection to being meaningfully engaged in my community if I am no longer playing super-hero as a special education teacher?  The answer to that, for me, lies in something I mentioned in last nights blog post.  I carry a message of recovery from active addiction and from bipolar disorder into the wider community.  A message of hope and a promise of freedom.  Lord knows I'm no super-hero at that either, but it is through the service of carrying the message that I am able to be of service to my community.  Today that is my meaningful work.  Whether I am volunteering to share on an informational panel at a local treatment center, participating in a local Narcotics Anonymous meeting, answering the phone when someone calls for help, or writing this blog, I am engaged in meaningful work in my community.

Tonight's presentation on the therapeutic day school made me nostalgic about teaching, but I don't think I'm going to jump into contracted teaching again just yet.  I think I might seek out a volunteer opportunity though.  Maybe I could be a volunteer tutor in a local literacy program.  I could probably manage a couple hours a week doing that.

Volunteerism/Feeding Your Soul

I went to a new psychiatrist today.  She seemed very competent.  Aside from the usual conversation about the "med-go-round" we talked about getting involved in something off the farm to "feed my soul".  We discussed possibly working or volunteering as a special education tutor.  That sounds cool, although as soon as I start making commitments like that the stress level goes up as I worry about actually showing up.  Part of the reason I'm on disability in the first place.

The other idea we discussed is a place called "Clover Haven" near my house that provides "Equine Therapy" to special needs young people in our area.  Equine Therapy is the use of horses in a variety of ways to reach cognitively or emotionally disabled young people.  Anything from grooming to riding. 

I don't know much about horses, but  I am used to large animals, and, of course, I am trained and experienced with special needs students.  I think it sounds really cool.  I think I'll make a phone call tomorrow.  It might be something off the farm that "feeds my soul".

Disability

I've talked with a number of people who are disabled either physically or mentally.  Part of a definition of being disabled is that you can't do the things that others are "able" to do.  In my case, I slowly lost the ability to do the things I used to be able to do.  Part of accepting my  mental illness has been accepting that I am not able to do everything I'd like to do.  In some cases, I am not able to do things I used to love to do.

The most obvious example in my life is the end of my career as a teacher. I taught for almost twenty years.  I have a Masters degree in teaching and am still certified to teach.  I loved teaching.  I feel an incredible sense of loss that I am no longer able to teach.  At least not in a public school classroom.  It's really been a number of years since I was really consistently excellent as a classroom teacher.  I continued to try to teach, but I had become less and less able to show up to work on a consistent basis.  I was still a pretty good teacher when I was there, but I was taking more and more medical leaves of absence until it finally became clear that I couldn't do a good job.

I'm sure the sense of loss that I feel is the same for anyone who loses the ability to do something the love to do.  I used to be a great teacher...twenty years ago.  I continued to be a great teacher for quite a few years.  I loved teaching.  I loved working with kids.  Making a difference in their lives.  Helping them learn to read and write the English language.  I loved writing and literature.

Later I became a special education teacher and was great at that too.  I found special education to be an extremely rewarding field.  Helping kids achieve things they never thought they'd succeed at.  Helping kids overcome their own disabilities.  I guess I had an inkling that I would someday become too disabled to continue as a teacher.  I knew I had occasional depressions.  I knew I had an abnormal relationship with alcohol.  But I didn't then know that manic depression and alcoholism would turn on me like a boomerang and cut me to ribbons.  I didn't want my teaching career to end this way.

I'm sure we all have things that we love that we can no longer do.  After all, we all are getting a little bit older every year and can't physically do the things we used to do when were in our twenties.   I have lost so much as a result of bi-polar disorder and alcoholism.  I feel robbed.  I didn't ask to be this way.  It just happened. 

On the other hand, I have been blessed in so many ways by my experiences with mental illness and addiction.  Having learned to live with both conditions and come out the other side, I have a lot of healing experience to share with others.  I don't know if the rumors are true about the creative energies of those with bipolar. (See "Touched With Fire" by Kay Jamison)  But I know that in my case I have experienced times when I felt incredible bursts of creativity.  My life and lifestyle have been marked by times of spontaneity and daring.  Hypomania can be exhilarating, until it turns on me and I inevitably crash and burn.

Would I trade my life for one that was not marred (or blessed) by mental illness and addiction?  Not a chance.  It is a part of who I am.  And I'm pretty happy with who I am.

stigma

The word stigma comes from a Greek word meaning a mark or tatoo.  These marks were of the sort used to brand an animal or slave.  People with mental illness are stigmatized in our society in many different ways.  A person with mental illness is looked on with distrust or fear.  Taking medication for mental illness is considered a sign of weakness.  Collecting Social  Security Disability pay is thought of as "freeloading."  The mentally ill are considered unfit for certain types of jobs.  I've been stigmatized nearly my entire adult life for being mentally ill.  For most of that time I tried to hide my mental illness.  This  only served to make the symptoms of the illness worse.  It delayed appropriate treatment for years.

I am a teacher by trade.  I taught English and Special education for almost twenty years.  I  have a Master's degree in Education. In the beginning, I  was able to teach while hiding my mental illness from my employers and friends.  Later, as my symptoms became more pronounced I may have said to my employers that I "just don't handle stress well", or "I'm having a little trouble with depression right now."  In the end, I was taking regular medical leaves of absence.  Eventually it became clear that I was no longer able to fulfill my duties as a teacher. 

I loved teaching.  I would still love to teach.  It is just no longer an option.  Finally I decided to leave teaching and apply for Social Security.  I had, after all, paid my hard earned pay into the system for twenty years.  It seemed like it would be a simple matter.  Right.  After another two more years of humiliation at the hands of the Social Security Administration, after being driven into poverty and bankruptcy waiting for my benefits, I  was finally awarded disability insurance.  As one final insult, however, the judge ordered that my benefits be paid to a "payee" because, he reasoned, my mental illness rendered me incapable of managing my  own finances.  Just one more example of the stigma and misunderstanding that exists surrounding mental illness.

So, how can I fight the stigma associated with mental illness?  I can "come out of the closet." Not just to friends.  Not just when it feels convenient to be out. But out in all of my affairs.  Out whenever the illness comes up.  It means having hard conversations with family members, father-in-laws, church acquaintances, and whoever else comes into my  life on either a casual or intimate level.

So, I'll get into how the  whole farming concept plays into my recovery as a person with mental illness soon. 

Blessings.