I’m feeling humbled tonight. This soapbox rant is not about connection, but disconnection. Disconnection from the disease of alcoholism and addiction, and disconnection from one level of society and another. Today, someone asked why we do the work we do in detox. Working with a marginalized society - a ‘demographic’. Those words take the humanity out of the people that we care for. The folks that get well and those that pass away from this life. Why do we do the work we do? For someone’s brother or sister, mother or father, friend or relation......someone loved and cared deeply for. Some would call it 'cleaning up the trash', sweeping the streets, keeping the dirtier side of life away from view. I call it giving life a chance. Giving one life a chance when chances seem to have run out. For the two individuals of our little ‘demographic’ that have just left this world, not in an alley or park, but in a home and in a hospital bed - please forgive this little rant of mine. I know that at least one of you would grimace at me and then quietly smile when you didn’t think I was watching. To you both.....rest in peace.
“In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance.”
~ Jeanette Winterson, The World and Other Places: Stories
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