Good morning ladies! Recent events and Jesus beating me over the head this morning has made me return to a thought I had months ago about learning more about racial justice.
Would y’all be interested in Zooming once a week, or every other week, to talk about racial justice? We can read a book together, listen to a podcast or Emmanuel Acho’s YouTube videos, etc.
I tense up every time race comes up. And I want to be able to speak. And I feel comfortable with both of you. I want to have an open, honest, respectful, and “educational” conversation about these issues and I believe I can do that with y’all.
So what do you say? Interested?
I am so grateful to have strong, supportive, loving people in my life. I guess also this person is more than a friend, they are my cousin 😁😁 One of the ones I talked about in the "Family Bonding Time". She texted her sister and me this and I am truly blessed. Blessed to have people like them in my life, to have people who hold me accountable, to have people who love Jesus and see that loving Jesus means recognizing our white privilege and advocate for our black friends. We get it wrong, we mess up, we learn, we try. And none of us are known for our advocacy or would consider ourselves advocates. But we all have learned that racial injustice is real and that part of our power includes standing up.
The word investment has been rolling around in my head for quite some time. Investing in people; investing time, energy, talents, skills, knowledge, abilities. Even be willing to invest in hypotheticals.
Within my first year of working as a therapist, I wrote: "It is literally my job to hear people’s stories, create a safe place for them, be a safe person. It’s my job to invest in people and work with them as they identify that they are worthy, as are others.” Investment is embedded into all areas of my life, even when it's hard.
The official definition is "a devoting, using, or giving of time, talent, emotional energy, etc. for a purpose or to achieve something."
For this year's "Word of the Year", it seems to be much more integrated between work and life outside of work than previous years. I think that's for a lot of reasons, both good and bad. Good--Alignment between work and life and bad because I've kind of started having work take over life again...we'll cross that bridge another day.
I started doing what's now dubbed as a "State of the Union" for my team and I shared with them what I believe investment looks like for our team, our program, for them as individuals, and what each of our roles is in that. I was brutally honest with them about where we were, where we are, and where I want us to be. And it's going to take some friggin hard work and some deep investment. The gist is that it felt like our department was in complete shambles for a while. Our morale was abysmal, we were losing people constantly not due to growth opportunities but due to burning out; our caseloads were beyond comprehension; our reputation had started to weaken throughout the agency and the community. We were not in a good place. And it was brutal. Beyond brutal. I never want to experience what I experienced during that time ever again in my lifetime. No one ever should. It was for all kinds of reasons, not one person or system to blame, but I never want to be back in that place again. It was truly horrendous.
So I created and committed to three primary goals when I became the Director of the program. Though we have gone through A LOT this year (who anticipated a global ongoing pandemic and immediately stopping all community in-home services?!). I have continuously reflected on these goals and am so proud of where we are now. Our morale is lightyears ahead of where it was. Our reputation has gotten incredibly strong. We are known throughout the agency as being a strong team, committed to team building, and outside of the agency as one of the best programs to entrust high acuity cases. I cannot even begin to express how much those sentiments mean to me and those views did not come without investment, hard work, and a strong vision. 2020 is the word that I designated for this program was "vision" and no matter how difficult the year became, I committed to not losing sight of the vision.
One of the first things I realized that we needed for the vision to come to fruition was to create values. In my first week of being a Director, I started to outline my goals, plans, and vision for the department. We did a values exercise and throughout the year we connected our actions to our values. For this year, I created pillars based off of the words I wanted us to be defined as and the words the team valued and this is the current result.
Investment is hard and grueling, and short-term way harder and doesn't always seem worth it. That's the most difficult part about investment--you have to believe that the short-term hardships are going to be worth it. I've discussed before how much I struggle with hypotheticals--I like assurance, I like definites, I like promises that can be kept. Deciding on a word such as investment was really hard because it means I have to be willing to invest in a possibility. I'm not a risk-taker, I don't take chances (but I love that song by Celine Dion--added for fun), and I really struggle when something isn't definitive. Part of that is having to be a leader and stepping up and saying, "Let's try. Let's invest. Let's dig deep. Let's make things happen."
All of this was written about investment in the workplace, and that's mainly because of my "State of the Union" presentation so I had it all ready to go! There's a lot of investment I have to do in my own life that isn't work-related. Investing in relationships and investing in people is huge. Probably literally investing money, but I don't understand stocks so perhaps not on that one :) Investing in myself and actually working on my dissertation, sleeping again, resting, and relaxing. Invest. Take chances.
