I honestly never thought I'd be here.

I'm an artist.  A singer.  A fiction writer.  A stay-at-home mom.  Once upon a time I was a teacher.  But a "social worker"?  I never would have guessed it.  

I say that in quotes because I still don't really see what I do as social work.  Or work, really.  And that has taught me the most about the roles we play in life and those feelings of being unqualified or less-than.  

Earlier this month I was sitting with two friends at the Redwood kitchen table, and one of them was crying.  She'd had a hard time recently and, afraid to reach out, she had gone through it alone.  Without help and emotional support, her situation had spiralled, and ended up being more frustrating than necessary.  In hindsight, she'd admitted that it would have been better to reach out for help.  

Why is it that we isolate when we're in trouble?  Why do we close ourselves off and ignore the open hands around us?

Ever notice how hard things are easier with support?  How impossible things become possible with a team?  

This will be my third consecutive year as a member of the Redwood Paddlers Dragon Boat team.  Now competition is not really my thing, but this is something that's more my speed.  And it's the other paddlers in the boat that make all the difference.

Everyone wears glasses.

These aren't reading glasses, or bifocals, or Ray Bans that I'm talking about.  I mean the glasses through which we view the world.  Sometimes they're rose coloured.  Sometimes bleak and grey.  Sometimes they even keep us from seeing parts of the world at all.  

We're all good at using those blinders, aren't we?  

Have you ever heard of the broken window effect?  

​There's this theoretical neighbourhood--it's clean and pretty and everyone's friendly.  But then, through some accident, a window gets broken.  It's just a little crack, and the homeowners can't afford to fix it, so they leave it be.  What harm can it do?  But then the next door neighbour sees it and lets his grass get a little too long--after all, it doesn't look so bad next to the broken window.  Then the neighbour on the other side doesn't bother to fix her cracked driveway, because what does it matter if her neighbours haven't cut their grass or fixed their windows?  Pretty soon the whole neighbourhood spirals out of control.  We've seen it happen.
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But did you know that the broken window effect also works in reverse?