UNITED STATES
The Good Men Project
Peter Pollard
In my 15 years as a child-protection social worker, what ultimately impressed me even more than the unimaginable trauma and loss I became privy to, was the remarkable survival instinct that enabled the boys and girls I worked with to move forward with their lives (though admittedly using what I frequently viewed as less-than-perfect coping strategies.)
Then I remembered that healing is a personal, life-long process and that we each use the tools that fit our lives.
I’ve often said, “what’s really extraordinary, given what I’ve learned about people’s lives, is not that so many are doing so poorly, but that so many are actually able to get up in the morning, put one foot in front of another and function at all.”
Resilience is a remarkable characteristic we humans possess.
It’s always easy to identify others’ problems. And in assessments, reports and service plans, I certainly regularly referenced substance abuse, dysfunctional relationship choices, issues with anger- management and violence as “problems” that the adults and adolescents with whom I worked needed to address. I’m pretty certain that my observations were generally accurate, over time I realized that even those behaviors that seemed to me to be solely self-destructive (or in some instances damaging to others), often also served a self-preserving purpose for them.
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