Gratitude Friday 08 16 24 Stewards of Healing

“The master of the garden is the one who waters it, trims the branches, plants the seeds, and pulls the weeds. If you merely stroll through the garden, you are but an acolyte.” ― Vera Nazarian

Recently I had the opportunity to cofacilitate an intense training for Drug and Alcohol Treatment Supervisors here in Pennsylvania. It is so necessary for the development of our state’s drug and alcohol supervisors. As I am closer to four decades in the field than three, I can say with some certainty that training and mentoring of our supervisors is vital to sustaining a viable substance use care system into the future in as many ways as possible.

I could write a whole post on the challenges facing the substance use care workforce. That is not my purpose here. This is a weekly gratitude post, which I have kept running for nearly five years now. In a professional post, I noted that We’re at a Tipping Point in the Treatment Workforce Crisis, a view I continue to hold as things tip even further towards care system collapse. Many of these difficulties are decades old and worsening. Challenges that have been permitted to fester and worsen as a field of underpaid, overworked and overburdened yet dedicated workers struggle against nearly all odds to help people like me heal from substance use conditions.

Given the scope of the challenges and how little has been done to correct these challenges, it would not be unfair to reach the determination that negative perceptions against people with substance use conditions and those who try to help them are so profound, as a society we don’t really want to help. If we did, we would not make it so hard. As a mentor said to me a decade ago as the current iteration of the addiction epidemic unfolded, society would blame people for not getting better despite the system deficits and punish those who attempted to help them do so in the face of those challenges. There was truth in those words.

At some level as a society, we want to punish people for becoming addicted and by extension those who help them heal. It is why we have such an overregulated, underpaid care system providing less than what people need to heal and then being called to the carpet when people don’t heal in five minutes from a lifelong condition. They do the best they can to help against all the odds stacked against them. But still, people help others heal each and every day, and this is what this post is really about.

People who show up and help in a system designed to fail and they do give it their all anyway. It is a glimmer of hope that we are investing in our SUD care system supervisors, as these are the people who hold everything together despite all the forces attempting to pull it apart. Both times I have helped facilitate this training I have encountered dedicated and passionate supervisors eager to become better at what they do and to provide more effective supervision in the places they work. I walk away from the weeklong training with renewed hope, in no small part as a result of spending a week with these dedicated professionals.

I am simply not going to write about any of the particulars from the weeklong training. I will however reflect on why I have stayed doing this work over the course of my entire career. It is because I had great mentors who did not sugarcoat the challenges but helped prepare me for what I was going to face at every step of my career. Mentors who had worked against the odds to help people heal and assisted me along this same path.

I have had wise teachers out in the world who knew what I was going to face and prepared me to meet the challenges. Mentors who stood up and told truth to power when an honest accounting for what was happening had to be articulated. Mentors who got out of bed to a long grueling day because they knew how what they were doing was a matter of life and death for the people we served. Mentors who showed others how to do the same and do so with love.

When I reflect back on my time working with supervisors, I see that there are people who intend to do this very thing that I received for the next generation, either because someone did it for them or in some cases because there was no one around to help them in this way and they want to provide someone better than what they received.

When our care system fails, we far too often look at the helpers when the seeds of failure are often rooted elsewhere in our system. They know this and they show up anyway. Supervisors are keystones. They show up to nurture those they supervise, to plant seeds and to pull weeds when they need to be removed to support the growth of those we serve.

If you are reading this and you are one of the people who work in the substance use care system and you keep showing up despite all the formidable challenges you face, I see you. I am grateful to you.

What are you grateful for today?