6 MINUTE READ
Today’s first journal prompt: List as many past jobs that you’ve held as you can think of.
I’ve been a babysitter. I owned my own lawn care business. I worked at Rite Aid for several years and in a concession stand at a little league ball field. During the Summers in high school and college, I worked in the K-8th grade school building doing whatever they needed to have done – collating, cleaning, and things like that. I was a nude model for painting, sculpture, and drawing for many years. I’ve worked with children in a preschool. After that, I worked in an art supply store. For seven or more years, I worked in group homes for developmentally disabled adults. I started as a “floater,” meaning I went to whatever group home was short of staff. Next, I became an assistant psychologist. And when I left that job, I traveled all over New York City helping nearly independent developmentally disabled adults in their apartments. I was a social worker for survivors of domestic violence, and at the same time, I was the only Family of Homicide Social Worker in all of Brooklyn, New York. My job responsibilities included offering ongoing counseling to survivors of domestic violence and providing all kinds of assistance to people whose loved ones had been murdered. Fortunately, I never had to go to the morgue, but that was in my job responsibilities, as well as continued counseling and helping to secure funds for the burial/funeral. I had a Public Access TV show where I held all the roles: writer-producer, lighting camera, and talent. I’ve been a professional psychic medium for over a decade. I officially opened my business in January 2009. After having my business for a few years, I started to offer coaching to help people trust their intuition. And then, in 2013, I started teaching my signature course, Trust Yourself: INtuition School.
Second journal prompt: Are there any amusing, horrifying, or heartwarming moments you strongly remember from any (or all) of them? Jot some of your favorites down.
I have three stories I call “The Greatest Hits” from working with developmentally disabled adults. The truth is that I was good at that job and enjoyed working with the clients but was frustrated with the reality encapsulated in the saying, “The job is 50% clients, 50% staff.” Going into the job, you would think it would be challenging to work with clients. Still, it’s equally as challenging to work with the other staff members. You can see how frustrating that could be. I credit much of my success as an award-winning, accurate, and detailed New York City psychic to my ten years as a social worker in New York City. It taught me so much about professionalism, effective communication, relationships, kindness, and people and how they deserve to be treated. While serving as an assistant psychologist, I honed my leadership skills and dealt with quite a bit of difficult situations. But the question on hand is about my greatest hits moments. I’ll offer one here:
When I was working as a floater, I worked in a group home in New Rochelle. At the time, I had fluorescent yellow hair. In the New Rochelle group home, there was an elderly client I’ll call Lori. Lori was super cute as far as older people go (generally, I like the elderly, even if they’re crabby). Lori could be charming, funny, and fun, but she could also be super sharp at nasty. Lori was developmentally disabled but also started to suffer from dementia. A common occurrence with someone with dementia is not knowing where they are, being confused, misremembering where things are, and trying to escape or run away from where they live to go back to their (old or childhood) home, even though that home may have been gone for decades. I once experienced this with Lori when we were out for a walk. The seemingly old and brittle but cute old woman nearly knocked me over with her strength as she tried to Barrel past me to go “home” when her real home was in the opposite direction. But that’s not the story I’m here to tell.
As I said, I was a floater, so I was not there every day and had fluorescent yellow hair. Most of the staff had regular hours, so if you worked in the a.m., you were always there in the a.m. if you worked in the p.m., you were always there in the p.m. One day, my coworker Joe was there from the 9-5 shift, which is unusual because he was usually 2-10. He was giving Lori her lunchtime meds. Sitting in her chair by the medication desk, she looked outside the window and said to Joe, “Betsy’s out there. She’s too early. Tell her to go home and come back later.” When Joe looked outside the window, he didn’t see me. Instead, he saw a yellow string mop propped upside down on the railing outside to dry. He responded to Lori, thinking she was simply confused. “Lori, that is not Betsy. That’s a yellow string mop.” As I said, Lori was developmentally disabled and had dementia, so we couldn’t tell when she was delusional. After hearing what Joe had to say, Lori said with more conviction, “Betsy’s out there! She’s too early! Tell her to go home and come back later!” To which Joe replied similarly to the first time, telling her that, indeed, I was not out there. It was just a yellow string mop. Well, this prompted Lori to say a 3rd time, seemingly agitated, “Joe, Betsy’s out there. You need to go out there and tell her that she is too early. She needs to go home and come back later!”
Joe knew if the delusion was not harming anyone, it was just best to go with the flow when someone like Lori was delusional. This would prevent further agitation. So, upon seeing that Lori was not giving up and getting agitated, Joe threw up his arms and went outside. She could see and hear Joe through the window as he went up to the string mop and said, shaking his finger, “Betsy, you’re too early. You need to go home and come back later!” When Joe turned to come back inside, he spotted Lori laughing with tears in her eyes, for she had pulled the number on Joe. When he came back in, Lori said, “Joe, that’s not Betsy! That’s a yellow string mop!” I am laughing out loud now as I write this. It’s one of my favorite heartwarming stories from my ten years as a social worker. When I came to work that day, and Joe told me about it, I laughed hard. She pulled one over on him, and all these years later, it’s still hilarious!
