I worked full time in college and most of graduate school, a work ethic I would have a hard time relinquishing even to this day. I appreciated having no time for anything else and the grading system for me was validating. Maybe after all, I could be great at something and surely a 4.0 GPA was something my parents could brag about. Yet, I had no idea about the real world, in fact I was street smart and completely clueless. 

A ball of anxiety, I found comfort in comforting others. A seemingly natural pivot from my initial school endeavors in the performing arts, I enrolled in social work school. By hope and faith, I was accepted to a competitive program, feeling like a complete imposter. A feeling I couldn’t shake even after I graduated. On my first day of classes the well-meaning professor in her quintessential social work clogs pulled her glasses off her face and stared. “If you think you will ever make money in this field, this is not the place for you,” she said with such seriousness, I expected at least the one male present in class to walk out. I was baffled. Why was I there? Was I expected to just love serving people so much I was not to be compensated for? Was I not worth it? 

While still studying, I took a job for a well-known social services agency. We were still in an era where asking salary was tawdry, and we compulsively checked our answering machines for word of an interview from a classified ad you saw in your local newspaper. The 12 dollars an hour might as well have been 200. I had it made, and with paid time off. I quickly made an impression on my supervisors and was given additional responsibilities well beyond my counseling job descriptions. I will never know if it was because I was more capable, or if it was because I was gullible enough to take on extra. Either way, for the first time I felt needed. I was worth it.  

Staff of the residential program were required to take a weeklong crisis intervention and restraint training course. We had a great trainer, and for the first time, I felt inspired and maybe one of the first if not only places I belonged. This was it. I had found some purpose. 

During restraint training, we were all asked to wear sweat clothing for the physical training portion. All staff and supervisors alike were engaged in learning the current safety of having to restrain an aggressive client in crisis. Later in the day, I was asked into supervision and was told that I should not be allowed to wear sweatpants, as my large backside was distracting to the staff and was accentuated by my grey champion pants. A requirement insisted upon by a male director and carried out by my female supervisor; a request that I realize now should have never been verbalized to me. 

All my hard work, all my efforts were taken from me in a moment of poor supervision. An old narrative of the expectation of women to react and feel shame. I did nothing wrong. My body did nothing wrong. I’d be paid lesser, expected more from, and now had to be responsible for men’s inability to tolerate the distraction of my oversized derriere too. I was humiliated. 

Throughout my career, these kinds of stories would play out over and over; along with the idea that women, that mental health providers, deserve less. It’s an idea that many of us have bought into again and again not questioning and never advocating for more. We’d suffer through converted broom closets without windows, insufficient health insurance, and wages so low it couldn’t make a dent in any college tuition high interest loan. Things we’d never settle for when it came to defending someone else. 

I often think about the first day of grad school. I often think about how that professor had a platform to have not scared us off by a life of debt and servitude. I think about my former supervisors and how they had the opportunity to change the course, change the narrative, tell a different story for a young impressionable social worker to buy into. Today, I am writing my own narrative; one that will empower others to follow. A story in which, success is defined by integrity and character. A story where, we as helpers set our standards and not be influenced by the expectations of others behaving badly. 

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