What do you do to take care of you?

The training that I am attending this week is on trust based relational intervention. In a nutshell, it’s training on working with children who have experienced trauma, or, in the words of its founder, children from hard places. 

Because of the nature of the training, there are a number of therapists attending. I met one from St. Louis yesterday during one of the break out sessions in which she was the tail to my tiger. This was during the same session a lady who was the head of another tiger whose tail I was trying to steal fell down in her rush to get away from me. Oops. 

Anyway, Kathleen, the therapist, not the clumsy tiger, sat next to me on the bus on the way back to the hotel after a documentary screening last night. The documentary was about a CPS drug court in Tyler, Texas that operates based on TBRI principles, recognizing that most CPS parents have their own history of trauma, largely untreated. 

Kathleen was asking me my thoughts on the court and was telling me about her own family experience with her son and his custody struggles and commented that while she dealt wit trauma in her work, she hadn’t realized how stressful it must be to work in the court system. I told her it often had its frustrations and sometimes it’s heartbreak. And I told her about my heartbreak of this past week. 

She expressed her shock and her sympathy and then she asked me a question. She asked, what do you do to take care of you? Cue the blank stare. I really had to think. And then I answered something about talking to my friends or my pastor or something along those lines. We arrived at the hotel shortly afterwards so the conversation with her ended but it continued in my head. 

What do you do to take care of you?

As I told Kathleen, I talk to friends. Or to my pastor. I spend time with friends having lunch, or dinner, or doing things that have nothing to do with trauma or pain or loss. I work out. I listen to music. I read books. I pray. I sit on the couch with Clayton scratching his neck, or rubbing his head, and just being with him. I write blog posts and share them with all of you. 

I realized that what all these things have in common is connection. Connection to other people. Physical connection. Connection through proximity and sharing conversation and laughter. Or in the case of listening to music, reading books, praying, or writing, a connection of the mind or of the heart. 

We are in a new season of life with Aaron away at college. Clayton is far more interested most days in talking to his friends than he is talking to his parents so time with him is less than what it once was. Both these things have been an adjustment. It’s marching band season and while I don’t miss the early mornings, the late Friday nights followed by early Saturdays which seem to never end, I miss the experience far more than I expected. I miss hanging out with the other band parents. I miss going to dinner together, cheering on our kids together, just spending time together. I miss the connection. 

So I’ve started to make new connections and to keep myself busy. With disciple Bible studies, women’s Bible Study, small groups, time with friends. Again, all about connection. And I’ve started to blog. Which is a connection on an incredibly deep level for me. 

Connection to others is what I do to take care of me. What do you do to take care of you? Where are your connections?