There's More To This Brave Adventure

I'm going to be honest here, I haven't felt much like blogging the past couple days. I've been fairly overwhelmed with work and general feelings of apathy. If there's one thing I feel sometimes as a therapist it is isolated, or alone. Home health has its perks but the constant time to oneself can get old.

Yesterday I had 10 sessions planned for which I came up with 2-3 activities I could use for the majority of them. I decided to go with an early "summer" theme consisting of these adorable Articulation/Language Sandcastles from Crazy Speech World and Summer Pronouns card game, which is a freebie download over at Speech is Sweet. Thanks ladies for the great ideas!

Articulation Sandcastles

Summer Pronouns

I also brought my "Under the Sea" lacing cards for some integrated fine motor and language work. The kids loved all the activities tied together. Here's a picture of one of my kiddos showing off his activities:) My phone camera quality clearly leaves much to be desired.














In the afternoon I had to make a notably long drive to and from a particular session. As I mentioned earlier, the time you have with yourself as a home health therapist is great for introspection but can get you bummed out from time to time. No matter what people say, interacting with people via text and over the Internet is just not the same as face-to-face interaction. And while I appreciate being invited to activities after work, not many people understand that if will take me more than ten minutes to get there, I just won't go. I've been in the car all day! So catch-22.

Anyways, I had my iPod linked up to my car speakers and just as I was starting to let myself get down about things, a certain song popped up. A song that I listened to my first day of grad school. I remember putting on my cutest outfit for orientation, binders in hand, and pulling out of my parent's driveway while packing the goofiest smile, thinking, "I'm going to be a speech pathologist. It's actually happening." I was nervous but damn, was I excited.

May 2011 - Prepping for week 1 of SLP grad school 

In fact, here's me looking a little too excited. I'm one of those girls who gets excited about school supplies.

Anyways, I remember starting my first practicum with a fun, amazing group of girls and feeling those exact same feelings as we all stood there, waiting to see our clients for the first time, armed with bubbles and a visual schedule, which never really worked, but it made us feel prepared. We chased those kiddos around, analyzed our own behaviors, and by the time we got to closing circle time looked at each other with exhausted "omg" faces and smirking eyes that said, "Whew. Thank goodness that's over!" But we loved every single second.

As I listened to this song I was reminded of the passion I started this journey with, and that's something I never want to lose. I formed relationships back in grad school without knowing that eventually I would choose the home health setting and that these relationships would be invaluable. I have continued to form new relationships since grad school but the point is- I didn't go through all of that to be alone. I don't have to be. And I didn't go through all of that to let myself become preoccupied with things that aren't of primary importance, even this blog, for example.

I remember posting a Facebook status one day in the midst of my first year of grad school chaos that said, "At the end of the day, I just want to be a good speech language-pathologist."

And that's still true. Sometimes you just have to remind yourself to forget all the B.S., and remember why you started this journey.

"To The Sky" - Owl City

And here's the song that reminds me. So what if it's from an animated movie about owls. :)