This Tuesday marks the start of a huge life change for me, I will officially start school. Actually, I am already in school, as this semester I am both a student at Idaho State University and at Lewis and Clark State College. Because nothing is more Kat like that multi-tasking.
So in true me fashion I am baking twice the knowledge into my mind!
Honestly, the origin to that story is while I was convalescing with my autoimmune plague for the last twelve weeks, I found myself wandering the web and spending a lot of time pondering what the heck I was going to do. Pivoting is a thing and I definitely have to pivot, I can't keep being so hard on my carcass.
That said, I need to have purpose and meaning and do that which I feel called to do, so after more than a bit of meditating on the subject, I realized that I needed to get back into the mental health counseling saddle.
Then I found the ISU Community Health Worker training program.
Through a grant through the HHS the program was offered tuition-free and after perusing the course syllabus I thought it would be a great dive back into the school realm. As a rural librarian I had already worn a bit of a community health worker hat, so I thought becoming certified in that area would be pretty cool.
So I signed up.
Then I got to looking at programs and found LCSC's social worker BSW. I already have a AA degree in lay ministry, and LCSC's transfer program accepted all of my credits. A few short weeks later I was all signed up and ready to go. Okay, there were a few steps in there, but honestly, everything has just flowed.
By my math, in five years time I will be a licensed in WA and ID clinical mental health counselor. But holy wow there is more than a lot of work in between this date and that end date.
You know what though, I am going to eat that elephant one bite at a time.
I started my CHW training last week, and more than anything it showed me that I am on the right path. 1/2 of my class are refugees who are trying to be bridges between their communities and their new host country's medical system. As I sat in my first three hour Zoom session learning about the class we were about to embark on together for the next thirteen weeks, I was struck by the enormity of what we are all facing in just the health care sector alone. We got a lot of shoveling ahead of us all for sure.
But here's the thing, I absolutely adore learning, and over the past couple of years of trying all the things trying to figure out where the heck my place was in this simulation, I got a bit, well, down. I thought that age and the trials of life had wrecked my capacity to absorb a bit.
A bunch of aced tests and quizzes later I realized that wasn't the case, I just needed to let go of things, rest, and focus.
My attention has been fractured and demanded all over the place for the last two decades, a very normal thing for parents. I birthed, raised, and homeschooled my children, I finished one college degree on the front end of that, I bought and built a homestead from scratch, arriving to it with nothing but two dogs and pickup with a blown up engine. I have been a librarian, a feed store clerk, a grocery store clerk, a Veteran's service rep, you a name it, and through it all I still absorbed knowledge like a sponge.
But, I got tired. Too much stimuli combined with the realities of aging eventually burn out the brightest bulb. (Not that I am too bright, if anything I would be slightly off color😁). It took two years of illness for me to get it through my thick skull that I don't have to be all or do all the things, I just need to focus on what I feel led and called to and the rest will work itself out.
So, with that said, I still intend to keep up on my blogging here in between homework and tests, because more than anything this place has helped me have the confidence that I needed to leap into change. I am looking forward to seeing where I will grow and end up, just as I enjoy taking in all of your journeys.
And on that note, I think I might go bake another pie before I get started on next phase!
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's still amazed it didn't fall into the hands of Sasquatch whilst being toted around the wilderness iPhone.