The Preventative Work

One of the main reasons I left the day job as a Social Worker where I worked in the area of Mental Health and Children’s Services for many years was because we were mainly only treating symptoms and rarely had the resources to truly get to the source of people’s difficulties. Medication and short-term counselling only touches the surface when people have made contact with a mental health system. By then the problems are deep and often generational. 

So I left that world with the intention to engage in work with people that was preventative. Building people’s capacities so they never had to engage with a system that would only ever manage their symptoms. Over the past six years of engaging in this type of work here is what I have learned. 

Preventative work starts with each individual taking radical accountability for their own healing journey. No one person or even system can save anyone and at the same time we cannot do this alone. We need a massive amount of support. We need professional help, we need community, sisterhood and brotherhood and circles and ceremonies yet this takes commitment and deep devotion that can only be decided upon by the person to show up for themselves again and again. As they say we can bring the horse to the water but we can’t make them drink the water. When all is stripped back can you truly show up for yourself and can we show up to create alternative systems and structures that will help us build the world we want to raise our children in. Trust me as a social worker I spent long enough trying to fight the system. In my honest truth it doesn’t work. We might sometimes get an inch here and there but this generation of children needs a lot more than an inch. It needs a complete transfiguration of how we raise and parent children.  This is not about staying silent however it is about creating a quite rebellion in the our homes and in our hearts to prevent what has happened to us and the earth so it doesn’t continue.

Being the change I want to see in the world in my protest and rebellion. 

Where does the preventative work begin? 

  I remember on our intake form for parents whose Child/Teenager presented to the Emergency Department with suicidal ideation one of the first questions we would ask was how was the pregnancy, how was the birth, how was the postpartum. Why did we ask this? Well of course these pivotal times in the child’s life even pre-birth are absolutely tightly linked to their over all well-being and mental health all the way into their adulthood. (Please note there are many many factors that contribute to a person having mental health difficulties and in the scope of this post I will not be going into depth to all of these).

So as I engaged in this more preventative work I was soon seeing that it begins before the mother even conceives but let’s not focus all the responsibility on the woman here if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a country to look after a mother and are we living in a world that truly supports woman to deeply look after herself… before conceiving, to conceive, to be fully supported during pregnancy, birth and postpartum. No we are absolutely not. Ireland of course more than many countries has better structures in place including a decent amount of maternity leave but we have along way to go before women and families are deeply deeply nourished.

Interestingly when I worked in Child & Adolescent Mental heath the children who presented were of mainly middle class backgrounds where both parents were out working which has dire effects on children’s well-being. Unfortunately we have been coerced into busy lifestyles where other people now raise our children. I can’t tell you the amount of times Children have said to me ‘I wish my parents didn’t work as much so they could spend time with me like this’. The very simple preventive work of simply being with your child seems to be so rare nowadays. And of course I think in many situations many children are best off spending some time away from parents who are in a place of survival, addiction and trauma. For we must heal ourselves and re-parent ourselves as much as we can before we bring another soul into this world or at least when they are here with us.

Parenting is one of the most important, sacred roles we have as humans and honestly as a whole we have completely obliterated this vital task and we can sit here and blame the systems and the government and the agendas or even our families or we can stop handing over our power and free will and choose something different for ourselves, our children and our families.

That saying ‘well thats just the way it is’ is simply not true. There is always always an alternative away but it takes deep deep trust and surrender and commitment to building sustainable, supportive and nourished lives, families and communities.

 And here is the positive, there is an absolute revolution happening not just here in Ireland but all over the world where many people are devoting themselves to creating a better world for the children to be raised in. Where mother and child are truly nourished and supported in the most divine way.

Every single man and woman has come from the womb then surely the path to healing humanity has to be centred around mother, around union between man and woman and around supported families. This is no small undertaking for it is a complete dismantling of old systems and ways of living. This is saying goodbye to extreme materialism and over working and prioritising presence at home. This is about the man having the freedom to also be there to raise his child in union with the mother. This is about a woman resting when she is pregnant, having adequate support to have the birth she needs and having a community around her during post-partum. 

This is about stepping out of addictions and healing trauma’s and being the best version of yourself possible, because I have seen time and time again those with the most adverse traumas and difficulties during childhood hold immense power to turn this pain into wisdom and power. 

This way of living takes times. This is not the instant results that this generation are so used to. If we want to ‘fix’ ourselves and bring deep healing to the next generation it is slow devotional work that takes a community and nation to establish. And I think this is perhaps why there is many people my age in the community still single because the ground work and foundations for the life we are here to live and raise children in is still being laid. And I have buckets and buckets of patience and trust for this beautiful path we are all walking together.

And the question I ask my clients are you here to do things as they have always been done or are here you to pave a new way for the next generation and if the answer is Yes then you need to buckle up and call in your tribe because this is the hardest, deepest and most rewarding work you will ever do.

This is the preventative work we are to do for the next generation.

Le Grá

Elaine xx