Recovery Post Workplace Abuse: The Place of Thankfulness

I am thankful for friends who are stepping up to fill the gap left by the loss of my volunteer work petting cats at the Humane Society.

*****

Years ago after Workplace Abuse Situation #1, someone came into my life to walk with me and encourage me as much as she could.

One thing she tried to encourage me to do was to be thankful.

At that point, I couldn't be thankful for anything.  I was sunk in depression and despair.  Anger.  Trauma.  PTSD.  These three were my constant companions.  There was no joy in my life.  No room for thankfulness.  What was I supposed to be thankful for?  That I was walked out of the office on a contract end and left outside the back door like yesterday's garbage?  That I wasn't allowed to say goodbye to those I'd worked with for more than two years?  That was the way I thought and felt at that time.

My friend persisted.  And persisted.  And persisted.  She refused to be daunted and discouraged.

She has a tradition of passing around an ear of dried corn after her Thanksgiving Day meal for each person seated around the table to say what they are thankful for.

I was one of the guests seated around the table that Thanksgiving.  When the ear of corn was passed around, I had nothing to say.  Nothing to be thankful for.

Except ....

I had just learned that the 2Up who had engineered my demise from the first workplace bullying situation had been fired.  She'd made a lot of changes in the workplace.  Most of which turned out to be disastrous.  I read later, much later, that sometimes supervisors will bully un underling to cause chaos in the department so that the superiors are focussed on the chaos not on what she's doing.  It seems to fit here.  She was in the process of making several changes in our office at the time of my demise, most of which turned out disastrously and for that she was eventually dismissed herself.

At that time at that table holding that ear of corn in my hand knowing that I was expected to come up with something to be thankful for, her firing was all I could think to be thankful for.

So that is what I said.

I could tell from my friend's face that that is not what she wanted to hear.  She didn't really approve.

BUT ...

It turned out that that was the cork firmly planted in the top of the bottle of thankfulness stopping the flow of thankfulness.  Once released, thankfulness began to flow ... and flow ... and flow.

Now years later, it's still flowing. Even in this current situation of being dismisssed from my volunteer assignment which was important to me and has had a lot to do with my current state of recovery, I have many things to be thankful for.  One of which is that I was able to pet the kitties in the first place and that it lasted as long as it did.

*****

I am thankful, very thankful, for a friend who never gave up.