My Journey as a Social Worker

My journey as a social worker can best be described as being “swept off” to where I needed to be. I never saw social work as a valid career option.  Rather, I found social work as a means of addressing systemic issues I was seeing while teaching overseas. When I reflected back on my path to social work, as well as my career in social work, I came to the realization that each position I held was fundamentally and irrevocably impacted by trauma. I worked as a school teacher abroad and found that my students could not focus on school because their home lives were so chaotic, they were constantly in a fight-or-flight mentality. Many of the parents of the children I worked with were military veterans and struggled with undiagnosed mental health related to service. Upon graduating from my Bachelor of Social Work, I became a Children’s Services Worker and I would meet families with complex levels of trauma that were barely able to function. I then worked non-for profit, where many of the mothers I interacted with had been impacted by the trauma of sexual or physical abuse and these experiences had shaped their lives and relationships. My final transition was into a position working with military, veteran and RCMP members who had experienced traumatic events on the job. Reflecting back on my journey, I now see how trauma, in any form, often stays with a person far after the initial incident. I may not have planned to become a Clinical Social Worker with a Specialization in Trauma Informed Practice, but I have landed in an area of social work that is well suited to my identity.