the goodness in my life

I think a little while back I may have written something about searching for this very thing, the goodness in my life. I may just have thought it and not written, but it's been twirling around up there in my cerebrum.

I got an answer to that rhetorical question over the last week. I had been pouring all of the goodness I had inside me into my work. And my work gave back in a big way. My colleagues went over the top in showing how much they cared about me. They threw me a party, got me flowers, wrote me heartfelt cards, and told me that it just won't be the same without me. The principal of the school attached to our residential program even got me a certificate of merit, which he gives to the kids leaving the program. It moved me very much.

A gift from a beloved colleague

It was hardest to say goodbye to our team psychiatrist who is a beloved clinician at the facility, and has been a benefactor to me. When he heard I was looking for a job last summer, he wrote me a glowing unsolicited reference letter. It meant so much to me, and I re-read the letter at times when I feel my self-confidence waver.

It was also very hard to say goodbye to my friend Violet. She is a clinician on my team who I told about the pregnancy a few days before the ill-fated u/s that told us it was all over. Turns out she is an expert in grief, having lost several siblings in her family and gone through other losses over the last decade. She is the one who sent me home after the biopsy. She is the one who would make me laugh, and also let me cry. She is the one person at work who really understood the state I was in and how much I was holding while performing my duties at work. I will miss her.

And now it's time to pack my suitcase and head to Cuba. I will have drinks in your honour, dear women. I will be thinking of Jennifer who very recently had yet another tragic loss. I will thinking of CGD as she continues to navigate the dark, awful waters of marital strain. I will be thinking of Jess and hoping that an adoption placement materializes in the next week.  I will be thinking of Misfit and Ocho, as they continue together. I will hope that My New Normal experiences a very positive first ultrasound.

I will write when I return, with a picture of my freshly painted toenails in the white sand (you will remember my toenails from Pumpkin's picture of our feet in the Metro in Montréal).