Airing

It's frustrating to see people repeatedly make decisions that we all know aren't going to be healthy.

I suppose that's what I expected when I chose my career path, but what I didn't expect is that my peers would be the ones I'd watch making harmful decisions repeatedly. We're one semester into the program, but we're more than halfway done with our first degree. This isn't good.

I'll tell you a lot of people who choose this path might do so because we've experienced a trauma or multiple traumas and we're fed up with the pain and we want to make it better for the next person. We're healing and we want to make the healing better for broken people who come our way. Trauma theory is a relatively new concept and the research is progressive, recent, and far from extensive. But it's there. Some of the literature indicates that the behaviours that are often pathologised can be the very things that help someone survive a trauma. What we perceive as harmful might be the only way a trauma survivor can make it through (Tseris 2013).

But we're going to be placed in agencies next semester. So why are these behaviours, indicative of trauma, or what would quickly be pathologised by some, rampant amongst my peers?

It scares the crap out of me. We believe people are dynamic. You can overcome all the shit the world throws at you. That's what the strengths-based perspective is about. But I don't believe it's licence to step into disaster.

Tseris, E. J. (2013). Trauma theory without feminism? Evaluating contemporary 
understandings of traumatized women. Affilia: Journal of Women and Social 
Work, 28, 153-164. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0886109913485707

Puzzled

Less than a month until school starts.

It's exciting and scary, and everything just seems so big to me but I feel empowered.

I feel empowered because although I lack a specific focus and I haven't the foggiest as to what my direct goals are, I have committed myself to a plan, and the details will fall into place. It feels like completing a puzzle without the box. I'm starting with the edges-what I do know. And everything else will work out as I keep moving forward.

So I've got two years of school left. As I have choices in classes, those will help me make a career focus. So will the people I meet. So will the volunteer opportunities. And the jobs after I graduate. That gives me time to decide on my graduate degree, where again I decide specific classes. Specific research topics. More people to meet. More volunteer opportunities. And finally, another graduation. And by then, I might just have all but the last few pieces of the puzzle called "career focus"  and a pretty good idea of what it looks like. That's why I'm not worried about having a plan. There's excitement. I know I have the pieces. I don't know what they'll look like.

But I know I've got a plan to love people.

Squeak

I didn't notice until an hour and a half into work today that my shoes didn't match. It was THAT kind of day. The kind when one shoe squeaks and is too tight, and the other is an inch higher and makes my gait wacky. The kind when the lunch break to go change into matching shoes is missed because the day got too busy and instead work went almost an hour late, with no breakfast, lunch, or water. But a good headache to last all night. All year maybe. At least work was picking up. Staring at a screen is not my style. Busy is better, I swear it is. As long as my shoes match.

Life Goes On

Each day it seems there's another tick against me. Another box checked. Another harm, another fail. But still the earth completes its spin, hurtling through space and time. The days grow painfully longer. More daylight to avoid people. I do prefer the night. And that's all each day is. Looking forward to darkness. And night is just hoping for the ungodly hours to come when I can't be awake another minute because finally my eyes have given up. And still life goes on.

Out of my Reach

Selfie. Last year's word of the year, as picked by Oxford dictionary. Because we are so obsessed with taking pictures of ourselves for the world to see, filtered, and posted online for likes, comments, and the praise we so desperately crave

There's even an anthem for our narcissism.


And there is an app called Facefeed, also centred around the selfie. Users snap photos of themselves and can chat with other users whom they find visually appealing. Be careful not to use if you have a fragile ego and subpar appearance--Because you will also be ranked according to popularity. So remember, good lighting, tilt your chin up slightly, smile, hold the camera above you, blah blah blah.

But a selfie is so incomplete. There's so much missing from an arm's length away. Beside the fact that it is impossible to get the whole picture, literally, there are things we miss after that extra coat of lip gloss, loose hairs pinned back, teeth checked for remnants of the latest fad diet.

We can get so wrapped up in what image is being seen by our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google, Tumblr and other followers and completely forget about the other picture. They might know what our faces look like (only with makeup/filters/in good lighting/with a smile) but would the people who know us online even know a thing about us by the things we do? Could we dare to be known for our deeds and not our appearance?

President Obama takes a selfie with Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt and British PM David Cameron at Nelson Mandela's funeral

Could we be something for the history books and not the best-dressed in the yearbooks? Because the next generation won't give a hoot. . . They'll learn instead how many people were exploited to make the cell phones with the fancy cameras for your bathroom photoshoots--and that you did nothing. Unless of course, you change that. Leave a mark on this world that is something beyond a web page devoted to yourself. Leave something that can't--and won't be deleted with one click. Leave one for the history books. Enrich your life with something bigger than yourself, dream bigger goals than gaining the admiration of the internet, and let the pictures of you be the ones taken from beyond your reach. Whether they're photographs or not. Let your story be written by the people whose lives you change.

Selfies aren't evil. It's ok to take them. At least I think so. In my humble opinion, I the lowly blogger say go for it. But don't be consumed. Don't give a shit if you don't get enough likes or plusses or comments. Don't spend so much time in the bathroom snapping photos that your family starts wondering if you are having medical problems.

Smile, not just for the camera, but for the strangers on the street. Tilt your chin up, but also walk with your head held high because you know that you are living your life to the fullest. Stand in the light, let it shine in your eyes, and be light to other people who are having a dark day. 

Yorba Linda slaying: Final days of stabbing victim puzzle family

(not my work, click title for a link to original article at OC Register)

BY SALVADOR HERNANDEZ, DOUG IRVING AND GREG HARDESTY / STAFF WRITERS

Published: Feb. 6, 2014 Updated: Feb. 7, 2014 10:03 p.m.

YORBA LINDA – This was not the way the life of Aubreyanna Sade Parks was supposed to end.
The 17-year-old found stabbed to death in Yorba Linda this week was set to start college at Northern Arizona University in the fall.
A former cheerleader at Peary Middle School in Gardena with a love for softball, Parks was taking college-prep classes at Middle College High School in Los Angeles and, according to her godmother, aspired to be a lawyer.
But Tuesday morning, authorities found Parks more than 30 miles away from home, lying partially on a grassy curb of a Yorba Linda street lined with multimillion-dollar homes.
Fully clothed and without ID, she had been stabbed multiple times in the upper torso.
A suspect, Larry Soo Shin, 35, is being held without bail in county jail on suspicion of murder while lying in wait. Thursday, a judge carried over his arraignment to Feb. 28.
The portrait beginning to emerge of a girl taking steps toward higher education clashes sharply with the life Parks apparently was living in the days leading up to her death.
A week before the early-morning attack, she had been reported missing.
And Thursday, law enforcement officials said she had been taken into custody in Santa Ana on Jan. 24 during a prostitution sting.
While details of what led to the fatal confrontation that has shaken a Yorba Linda neighborhood remain unclear, loved ones of Parks said they were trying to piece together the teenager's last days – and square their image of her with her recent run-in with Santa Ana police.
“My baby wasn't a prostitute,” Mantonette McKinney, Park's mother, said. “It's not what we instilled in her.”
Parks and two women were taken into custody by members of the Santa Ana police vice unit during a regular crackdown, Cpl. Anthony Bertagna said.
Parks, Bertagna said, was detained while walking in the area of Harbor Boulevard. She was not arrested or charged with prostitution. Following an investigation, police arrested Marsalis Joseph Smith, 26, from the Los Angeles area, on suspicion of human trafficking.
Because Parks is a minor, she was taken to a shelter in Orange County after being detained Jan. 24. Sometime between Jan. 24 and Jan. 28, however, she walked out of the shelter, law enforcement officials said.
McKinney said she had been in contact with her daughter after Santa Ana police detained her, but said the teenager was afraid to come home.
“There's something that occurred that she was afraid to tell us,” McKinney said in an interview.
The circumstances of Parks' death may touch on a recent debate in Orange County about how minors suspected of prostitution should be treated by the criminal justice process. Are they victims of abuse or juvenile delinquents, and should they be locked up for their own protection?
Minors involved in prostitution are often runaways, and walk-outs from shelters are routine. Officials worry simply releasing them puts them back on the streets or in the hands of pimps.
And the other option, locking them up at Juvenile Hall, doesn't seem to fit a growing view of prostitutes as victims of abuse who require counseling.
In recent years, a commission organized by Orange County's Juvenile Court has discussed a locked facility staffed by trained counselors to keep minors off the street while still treating them like victims.
Meanwhile, McKinney and other loved ones are consumed with trying to understand what led to her daughter's death.
“She was a normal 17-year-old,” said Georgia Smith, Parks' godmother. “She's a baby. There's really nothing else I can say. She was a child growing into a woman. That's what she was.”
“Aubrey,” as she was known to loved ones and friends, would have been the first in her family to attend college. “Her major goal in life was to excel and be better, every single day,” Smith said.
According to prosecutors, Shin had been communicating with Parks, asking her to meet him in Yorba Linda.
“After (Parks) arrived, Shin is accused of stabbing and murdering her and leaving her body on a greenbelt,” a statement from the District Attorney's Office read.
On Thursday, officials with the Sheriff's Department declined to release details of what led to the stabbing on Mirkwood Run and Live Oak Lane.
Neither Parks nor Shin lived in the area, officials said. How she first came into contact with Shin also was unclear.
Asked whether Shin and Parks had any prior contact before that day, Lt. Jeff Hallock of the Orange County Sheriff's Department said that, too, was under investigation.
According to public records, Shin is a resident of Yorba Linda but lived with his mother in a townhome more than a mile away from where the attack occurred.
Smith declined to speak in detail about why Parks may have been in Yorba Linda. She said only that Parks had been “trying to come home” in recent weeks and had been calling her mother.
“My friend's not supposed to bury her child,” she said.
Staff writers Keegan Kyle, Amy Wilson, Claudia Koerner, Eric Hartley and Scott Schwebke contributed to this report.