I’ve addressed this topic in a cursory way on another post. I want to take a harder more personal look at why I volunteer at Crisis Text Line and what I learned.
In the CTL Crisis Counselor Network there are many many people sharing why they became volunteers: “Why I’m Here". I should put this in the CTL Community Platform. Except:
I am a broken, old, widowed, isolated, lonely geezer. Ergo I tend to end up being TL:DR kind of writer. I don’t think posting something this self absorbed and maudlin is appropriate. Also, I think what I’m writing is more about the entire widowed, loss, grief, and life's purpose exploration. Not sure it is fair to subject colleagues, coaches, and supervisors who I hold in the upmost regard and respect to my blah blah blah. Besides, you don’t show your soft pink underbelly to those you are working hard to earn their respect.
Why
Why resides on a continuum. I started my why when I applied to volunteer at CTL. My why began at one place in my heart and mind and that remains my baseline why. As I progressed through training and shifts there appeared new why’s that I never saw. Maybe it's more that what I am learning, doing, and seeing is expanding my self-knowledge. Why you do something is different from what you may learn.
As stated in the previous post. I heard Nancy Lublin interviewed and was struck by her energy, brains, the data CTL collects, and uses for good. How strange see the words data and good used together. Take that FB. Bangz. So those interviews were the spurs stabbing at the side of my horse hair shirt that moved me toward volunteering with CTL.
While Donna was being treated for Stage IV cancer my natural self as a caregiver blossomed. Horrible to use a flower to describe watching your wife of 28 years die. It was not that being a caregiver was absent all along, it was just not as acute. I’ve stated a billion times, caregiving gave me meaning and purpose. When Donna died I was served up a big heaping plate of grief without a side of meaning and purpose.
I did find purpose after her death. I wrote Donna, A Photo Memoir of Love and Loss and I wrote a shit load on grief and memories. I can say some purpose was restored after her death. Days of writing, personal stuff, cooking, gym, bike etc. And many friends were purposes. So no pity party here. No meaning either. Now there's a word to wrestle with, meaning. A word that is meant to live. To have place in our lives. To give use hope and drive. Reading it or saying it is vapid. Living it is life.
I was not living with any meaning. Add the entire ideation thing I embrace. Living without meaning was just a barefoot walk on barbed wire.
I did try to find work for months after Donna was cremated. I did try and start a couple of businesses/ideas half-heartedly. I did want to find purpose and in that purpose have meaning. Truth, I was looking back thinking, oh I had it then so why not resurrect it again? That’s an exercise of getting lost in your memories.
In my defense I began to and still volunteer at the hospice where Donna died. Let me say paying back is not as meaningful as paying it forward. I had purpose. No meaning. I also am a guide at the 9/11 Tribute Museum which is a brilliant loving and supportive community. Go me.
Failing to find meaning (i.e. job, work, etc.) may be an inditement of me not working hard enough or doing better or being lazy? Perhaps I wasn’t ready to find meaning. Sad to say the grief quilt was for a long time a place to have serious purpose as the grief ambassador.
Over time my grief shtick was getting stale. It was one trick pony I rode into the ground and turned into dog food. But never ever forget, my grief then and now is the wound that has let in light and with it knowledge. I love my pony called grief. Others are not crazy about my grief journey/work and have stopped giving it carrots and sugar cubes. But to me it is my trusty steed I call Rocinante.
Crisis Text Line
My first thought about CTL after hearing Lublin’s interviews (I saw her TEDTalk after I graduated) was: “Okay I am old broken and have time maybe I can volunteer there". I want to help others. I need some more purpose. That is where my why I joined began.
I went to the site and needed to take a nap. CTL is no walk in the park volunteer thing. Thirty hours of training, a cost to them to train me, and 200 hours of service in one year as your commitment. More naps for me. Here is a link for volunteering. Just do it. If I can you can. Helping others in crisis takes commitment and later I learned empathy.
The Three Stages Of Why
To be perfectly honest I signed up thinking they don’t want some broken old boomer. I filled out the application, got references, and had a background check. Color me surprised, they wanted me. I can self-loath why they let me join but, they did. And it was off to the races.
Training
I did not take training lightly though I began training thinking I went though training at hospice and 9/11 Tribute. I got this. Nope I didn’t got nothing. This was different and suddenly very real. Real as in my own doubts about me being able to rub two brain cells came rushing into my amygdala.
Here I was learning an entire new language of mental health. Reading in detail how to do a ladder up assessment for people considering suicide. Learning about self-harm. Role-play and being tested on what I learned. It was intense. Add to that I screwed up a test. Was called out for it. Argued evidence. They gave me a passing grade. I ain’t one to take no sympathy fuck. I studied and took it again. I scored a 94.
I graduated. Ready to be a baby chick and take on some conversations with texters (aka convo’s). Idealizing Lublin and CTL data remained my baseline why. Two new why’s were creeping in. All that studying to learn new things felt a little less purpose with a little more meaning was added to my why. And seeing what it takes to help someone in crisis is the other why but that brought some very new meaning to my life. Meaning there is that word.
First and Ten
Once you graduate you are marked at a baby chick. The header on your text box shows a little baby chick breaking out of an egg. Your profile on the platform says baby chick.
Once you log onto the platform to begin a shift and take texters your convo’s are monitored by a supervisor. Let me just say here they got your back even when you are no longer a baby chick. The most supportive and smartest mental health pro’s I’ve met. Ask them anything. My reality with supervisors is that I feel needy but, I am assured, they are there to help. I guess what I call needy is more about me being widowed and earning a Ph.D in isolation and lonely three weeks after Donna’s cremation. Having a captive audience that has to listen is well, lovely.
My first convo on my first shift and the first text was, let me say I wanted to vomit. From there it took an hour and half to create a cool calm for the texter. My supervisor was brilliant and supportive. The texter was in safe hands when I closed the conversation. When convo#1 ended I went out to grab some dinner and found I was shaking and could hardly walk. I also learned I need to wear my mouth guard. I don’t I will grind my teeth to pulp.
CTL has debriefing areas to share our emotional state. Everyone who debriefs and shares in the community space receives unconditional support and new knowledge. This added another meaning brick back into my life, a supportive community of compassionate, empathic, and smart people that I was now a part of. I was one of them. Even if I wasn’t a level billion on CTL I found meaning to being part of CTL.
The next eight Convo’s didn’t emotionally rip me open like convo#1 but all them had emotional content. My compassion for these texters ran full bore and that's exhausting. Personally my fear of failure on the platform is a part of the entire emotional content of each convo . Failing to help a texter, failing to be valuable to CTL, failure to my supervisor, failure to my why I joined, and failure to harvest meaning. Those fears are there each shift but they are what I convert to empathy.
By the time I was ready to complete my baby chick rotation with convo #10 there was a little ‘I got this going on.’ Not a lot but there.
I went on ready for #10 and my supervisor was, I believe, the same one with me for #1. She was great texted me how well I am doing and you got this. Sure. Note to self: Never believe your own PR fuck head. First text from #10 was crushing and heart breaking. A trifecta of WTF do I do first. I applied my training. Kept my Vulcan Nerve Pinch on my keyboard and track pad. The supervisor was there guiding me all the while letting me know that I was doing great with my texts and working with this texter. She offered up big doses of try this or do that. An hour and twenty five minutes later I/we/CTL got the texter to a cool calm. As I was closing the conversation the texter said ‘Thank you so much for helping me I will surely try to do my best you really helped’.
The tears flowed. My supervisor didn’t help stem the damp cheeks she let me how well I did. More tears. Still not believing my own PR here. Just glad I can learn and perform.
Why Huh Oh That
In the final analysis the continuum of why unfolded to revel bright new plumage I had not seen for years. I discovered meaning absent in my life for so long can be acquired again and nurtured.
Bereavement prunes meaning from our lives. We prune branches from apple trees in the late winter in order to produce bigger fruit and encourage new growth of existing buds. Meaning I learned will return with surprising clarity not only for the feeling it gives us but for what it gives outwardly.
Meaning will not happen because we wish it. It happens with careful tending, watering, and fertilizing. It took me years to find meaning, new or otherwise. CTL offered it up but not without me having to grind to harvest it. And that is a take away. Meaning does not just happen you have to keep grinding. Keep looking and trying. Meaning may never happen but it's the journey that counts most. Even if you ship is not christened “Voyager Meaning”.
Final word. Brene Brown has a short video on empathy. Brown notes that empathy is a choice you make to be vulnerable when connect with someone. To open yourself to vulnerabilities connecting with someone is hard and difficult. And that is what makes you better and gives you meaning it is connection.
I connected with the CTL community and the texters. I allowed myself to be vulnerable. That gave me meaning. I remain forever connected to Donna. She loved me into being. We were vulnerable to each other. We had meaning together and separately.
CTL is doing the same. My grief after Donna’s death was my purpose. CTL offered me meaning because my vulnerabilities of my grief. And it’s making me a little more hopeful and a little more at peace with myself. (We’ll see how long that lasts.)