20/11/2025
Feeling all kinds of sentimental today. The 14-year-olds I met in my very first year of social work are turning 18 now (today in fact!!!), graduating (today as well!!), growing up, and stepping into whole new worlds.
If someone had told me back then that I’d still be in their lives four years later, I probably would’ve shrieked and fallen over. In this biomedical driven model of doing things, you’re taught that ten sessions is the norm, that our time with folks is brief and contained.
But life had other plans. These young people followed me from job to job, program to program, and showed me that community isnt something you check in and out of like a standard 9-5.
The only thing that’s really changed is how we cross paths now. They’re far sweeter to me, far less clingy 😅, and often just passing ships—running into each other at a café, at their jobs, or through the occasional DM like, “school turned less q***r when you left.” And somehow those tiny moments hit just as hard, if not harder!
It all folds into my evolving relational social work theory: I’m just a lighthouse. I stand steady and grounded on the shore while they navigate the wild waters. Sometimes docking at bay for a chat, sometimes drifting by in passing, sometimes calling me in a panic like, “how do I do my tax and why did no one teach this at school?” And I’ve realised that this is the work. Being there. Being constant. Being a point of orientation when the waves get confusing.
Watching them step into adulthood feels surreal and tender and a little overwhelming. I’m so grateful they let me walk alongside them for this chapter of their story. It also scares me. Does that mean I'm going to have to go through allllll the emotions when all my current 14 year olds graduate, turn 18 and actually start communicating in a way that isn't passive aggressive moody teenager pretending they don't give a f**k about anything or anyone? 😅
