Contemplations of a Social Worker LEOW

“He who sweats more in peace, bleeds less in war.” –Proverb

Every morning I try to read something inspirational to set the tone for my day. After all, dealing with being an LEOW especially the schedule changes and the overtime can make even the most stable person feels off-balance. When I focus on staying balanced, by doing my early morning study, practicing good self care like exercise and meditation and journaling, I don’t feel as overwhelmed when the inevitability of change hits our family. Currently, I am reading Less is More: Meditations on Simplicity, Balance, and Real Abundance by Mina Parker. Today’s meditation began with the quote above. In her text, Parker asked, “What if we took the hard work of peace as seriously as the tasks of war?” Most people would read this and contemplate how to make a more peaceful society and I’m like most people. But, I took it a bit further by thinking about my profession of peace and my husband’s profession of war.

My husband proclaims he is a peace maker. In fact many of his personal identifiers like email and license plates tell this to the world. If he thought about it though, I doubt he would identify his profession as one of peace. After all, he identifies as a warrior. His work now is really not much different than the work he did as a US Marine, especially as the people get more hostile and the community more unstable. His profession is one of war. He is more a peace keeper than a peace maker. Granted there is an overlap. I asked my husband what percentage of the emergency calls he took would he consider mental illness based versus criminal mindset based. So much of the current discussions of police policy are overlooking this very important distinction. Yes, de-escalation, empathy and compassion go a long way with the mental illness based individual. The criminal mindset, aka bad guy-not so much. My husband figured his calls were 70/30 which sounded about right to me. When I focus on the war, I’m looking at that 30% where he needs to be a warrior to stop injury, death and destruction and restore peace.

On the other hand, I am a social worker. Although my profession aims to find solutions to systemic issues, most of us working in the trenches are dealing with helping individuals connect with their inner peace and bring that peace into the larger community. We work so that people can live peacefully. We attempt to break down barriers, identify and facilitate solutions to problems that push people in the direction of establishing a criminal mindset. After all, becoming a bad guy is a choice. Yes, I recognize the disparities in opportunity, the role of parenting and environment and the traumatic effects of poverty, abuse and neglect. I also know that people have overcome mountains, especially with strong social support. I’ve been in public safety for decades and I don’t view the world through ivory tower, Pollyanna lenses. I do however believe that it is my professional role to identify and build opportunities for people to overcome adversity and thrive.

So, my LEO and I have symbiotic jobs. Actually, we have symbiotic callings as we both believe our professions exemplify our personal life missions. If I do my job well, there will be more peace in society. He will have less criminal mindset to control and he will not have to fight as big of a war. If he does his job well, he will control those who decide to make our communities a war zone. He will remove the threats that prevent others from living peaceful lives. These are both huge responsibilities. But when I signed on, under a beautiful, blue summer sky surrounded by roses, I vowed to have my LEOs six. So in returning to the proverb-I need to sweat more in peace so he bleeds less in war.