It was time to renew my social work license, five years after earning it, five years during which I haven’t been working in the field at all, and I felt torn. I mostly thought I should renew it, even if it cost money and took time, in case I wanted to work as a social worker again one day, but part of me wanted to burn that bridge, so I would have no choice but to focus on teaching and writing, without the option of an escape hatch.
I received the renewal notice by email a few weeks ago, and kept looking at it, wishing it would go away. Partly, I was afraid that the process of renewing my license would be complicated or stressful, asking embarrassing questions about why I wasn’t actually working as a social worker. And I was afraid that renewing my license would cost a lot of money, or require me to reach out to former bosses, or current bosses, for documentation, or that I’d find out that I need to do a lot more expensive and time consuming trainings in order to qualify for license renewal in the first place. But I was also afraid of finally giving up on the idea of being a therapist.
The thing is, my decision not to seek a job as a social worker was not simple. It came after six months of applying for jobs and getting nowhere, even with personal contacts or recommendations. The biggest problem seemed to be that, despite being a beginning social worker, I could only work part time, or less, because of my health issues, and, at least at that time, the jobs that allowed for flexibility and limited hours were not available to beginners. But I was also not sure I was actually ready to be a social worker/therapist.
Towards the end of my time in graduate school I had been telling my teachers and bosses and advisors that I didn’t feel prepared and that what I really wanted was a third internship to help me figure out where in the field I belonged, but they all said that I shouldn’t need such a thing and it wasn’t possible anyway, so just get off your ass and get a job. And I couldn’t.
I liked the idea of myself as someone who could help people heal. And I liked the image of myself as a respectable and responsible adult who goes to an office and actually makes enough money to buy nice clothes and go on vacations. And I wanted to fight for better insurance coverage for mental health, and to argue against the ubiquitous manualized, supposedly evidence-based short term therapy that only actually helps if you have a short term problem. But the reality of social work, eh, I didn’t love it. I hated the phone calls, and the office politics, and the paperwork, and the long hours, and the clothes I had to wear, and the constant criticism from bosses and clients and client’s families, and I hated the staff meetings and the family drama and on and on.
Oy.
When I was first offered the job teaching after school synagogue school, five years ago, I accepted with relief, thinking that it would be a good first step, and allow me to accumulate experience working with children while I continued to pursue every available avenue to improve my health and eventually get to work as a therapist, and I kept taking one or two trainings each year to keep up my skills, just in case. But five years later, my health is worse, not better, and more importantly, when I think about adding more hours to my work week I tend to think about more teaching and more writing, not social work.
And then the renewal notice came, and it took me five read-throughs to realize that it wasn’t even due for another five months (when I’m anxious I tend to skim things and miss important information), but I still felt like I had to hurry up and get it done. So after a lot of handwringing, I went to the website and opened the renewal form, and one of the first things they asked if I’d like to go on “inactive” status, which would be free, and could be reversed at any time. And I thought, “Oh! I didn’t know that was an option!” It sounded perfect and I felt much better, for a second, especially about the money I would not have to spend, but then the relief went away and the nagging worries returned, because it’s hard to let go of something that once seemed like the answer to everything, even when it didn’t seem like the answer to anything anymore.
And yet, I couldn’t convince myself to close the door on social work, given all of the time and money and hope I’d invested in that goal for so many years. So, I filled out the renewal form, which mostly consisted of checking a few boxes and paying the fee, and then I set to work planning more training classes, because, I don’t know, I guess I’m kind of stubborn.
If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my Young Adult novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.
Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?
rachelmankowitz 