bonsai

i've been hidden. hiding because i'm so disappointed with myself and my failed expectations. like a teenager who lets her hair grow too long and in her face. it has been very hard going through the process of applying to the bay area child welfare agencies. struggling to find a job, feeling inferior to my employed peers, and reluctant to put so much effort into a obtaining job that i have so many personal objections with. and that horrible feeling that i'm not good enough because i could not get this job the first time around. so, that is why i've told myself i'm too busy to update this blog. avoidance really, of having to admit that i am still struggling and uncertain and unhappy. i think i am more ok with this now. more ok anyway than i was before. and it has made me think more about child welfare. how i really feel about this profession of social work and if it really does meet what I want out of a career. The more I think about it, I don’t think I see myself doing cps for long after my 2 year commitment is complete. So many of these sad stories I am reading about in my current job as a case aid in an adoptions unit seem to have received no ameliorating benefit by being involved in child welfare. The drugs are still there. The poverty. The domestic violence. And another emotionally disturbed child goes to the home of an adoptive family. Ai. I may be in a very cynical place right now, but case managing, shuffling a family from one service to another only to break up a destructive family just doesn’t strike me as doing anything for making lives better for children. So there. I’m very mixed about the next two years of my life.

This past Sunday I took a stroll in the garden park on Lake Merrit. There is a lovely bonsai garden there with its many mini trees. Dwarf redwood and maple trees. Crazy trunk formations and roots crawling over rocks. I finally got to see what a juniper bonsai should look like. I have a starter bonsai that my sis gave me a few months back and it has since been growing into a fro-like bush that I wasn’t sure how to tame. With some advice of the bonsai park docent, I came home to my juniper and trimmed away. All the growth that hangs down will only die from lack of light. I cleared and cleared and now have something that looks more like a little tree with only slightly mangled branches. I think I’ll give it some time to recover from the shock. It really was a lovely tree all along, just a little overgrown from neglect. It will be beautiful with some more growth and care. It will be ok. I will be ok.