Farewell 2017. It has been a year of ups and downs. A year I am struggling to find a reason to ever want to traverse through again. There were hard lessons and the end brings forth preparation for resolutions more reliant on self-preservation to protect from losing the part of myself I hold most dear. The end brings graceful acceptance and gratitude that I am still standing.
I am here. Stuck between a belief that is the very core of the person, (the vet as they are one in the same) I am, standing beside what I believe in, and facing the reality that at some point I may have to chose to just get out alive if I cannot convince myself that I am strong enough to keep going. At some point you have to put up armor, stop beating yourself up, and care a whole lot less about what other humans think about you, while trying to not become as uncaring as these same people have become to you.
At some point you walk away older, wiser, and stronger. Or, you give up. You learn hard lessons and become grateful for them. They build you into a stronger, more resilient, gritty soul.
At some point you seek more credible sources for judging your own self worth and trust the puppies, kittens, your own kids, and your own patients, who love you unconditionally. If you can trust them perhaps you can even grow so much as to try to reciprocate it to all others across all species lines? I have to learn this. It isn't easy. I'm not having an easy time with much of it.
How many of my colleagues hope I give up? How many will celebrate in their successful destruction of another? Is their gain, my loss? Or, is it the concession to the chips I am willing to throw on the table? This profession of mine. Where death is so rampant, is trying to become the death of one of me. It is the sole source of the pain I am burying with 2017's departure.
The problem of killing each other, our companions, and our own soul is as pervasive as the hateful judgmental vitriol that spreads like cancer we cannot put into remission long enough to reflect on the gifts of gratitude and beauty we all know lies in the ripples of each struggle. Economic euthanasia, the indifference we hold with it, and the abandonment of serving all of those less fortunate then ourselves are my enemies. I bring these old enemies with me into 2018. But I do so with a resolve to search for healthier ways to do it, and more resolve to cure them. I HAVE to bring them with a clearer firmer steadfast course forward. 2018 holds new challenges, old struggles and back up plans I never thought I would have to consider. But as with each new beginning there will be an end. I just have to get out alive, and still care about the person I carry through every journey. My patients need the exact same commitment from me.
To every vet reading an obit to some soul who fell along this journey I hope that you remember compassion matters most while we are still trudging away from fates indifference.
I am grateful to be challenged. I am grateful to know who I am. To be able to walk away because there is a problem I can tackle better from the outside without fear of alienation, castigation, and recourse. You can be stripped and beaten but you decide if you walk away to hide, or to be who you were born to be. I'm here exchanging exoskeletons on the dawn of a new year ripe with possibilities, burgeoning on the eruption of the rebirth of humanity or demise of trust in loves endless hopeful potential.
At the end I am going to try to be grateful that life wasn't easy. I am most grateful that I am not hoping or expecting that it will get easier. To fear that wishing for easier is going to cost me more than I can die with. I can at least leave without feeling pushed out of the nest. I can leave for another quest, a higher purpose, a better resolve to a problem that fear prohibits my peers in facing. I am not going to read one more obit for one more vet that says "I never knew she struggled so much". This profession of excuses to protect us from feeling responsible eats us away.
I hear you. Each person out there struggling silently.
Gratitude for the really difficult times of 2017 lies within my family too. This family extends from those who have known me through every year and decade to those who share their family with our Jarrettsville Vet family every day. If I have to carry a torch to find more compassion whilst feeling alone and damned I can only do so because I have them to remind me that I am not alone. Alone is a terribly heartbreaking place to be. Courage, determination, and conviction cannot offset crushing despair from loneliness.
Farewell 2017. I have few parting words to leave you with, therefore, I will greet 2018 with optimism, eagerness, and gratitude. I don't have to sum you up to want to leave you behind. I can just march forward less inclined to slow down to answer the demands of the angered mob, and more determined to build something worth preserving.
Here's my To-Do list for 2018;
1. "Get Out Alive" series. A blog, a plan, a schematic for the most common conditions that cause economic euthanasia to be chosen.
2. Storylines. We share, you learn, pets win.
3. Veterinary Patients Bill Of Rights.
4. Build a grassroots network unlike any before, more powerful than corporate controlled greed allowing the chasm between available and affordable pet care to grow wider and deeper. (This might be more than I can accomplish in one year).
Be who you are. Be not ashamed to be different, and always be kind.
For more information on me, and my vet clinic, Jarrettsville Veterinary Center, please see;
Here is our complete Jarrettsville Veterinary Center Price Guide for 2017
If you would like to follow our Facebook page you can learn more about us. If you have a pet question you can ask it for free at Pawbly.com. You can also find interesting pet facts, cases and stories at my YouTube channel and @FreePetAdvice.
There are lessons in struggles. It is my belief that if you don't stop, dissect them, understand the cause to the pain, suffering, and disease, you are likely to be back here again. Medicine is the same. Every disease/illness/affliction has a cause; a sequence of events that allowed it to happen, a host response that saw some benefit to permit it to perpetuate and flourish, and there has to be a conscious effort to provide a cure or your host self will succumb, or, lie in wait to become the victim once again. Who wants to relive, revisit, and get stuck in the same merry-go-round of pain and struggle? You can throw in the towel to be replaced by a headstone and a memory, OR, you can learn to live and walk on stronger. Parvo puppies who survive never get parvo again.
I am here. Stuck between a belief that is the very core of the person, (the vet as they are one in the same) I am, standing beside what I believe in, and facing the reality that at some point I may have to chose to just get out alive if I cannot convince myself that I am strong enough to keep going. At some point you have to put up armor, stop beating yourself up, and care a whole lot less about what other humans think about you, while trying to not become as uncaring as these same people have become to you.
At some point you walk away older, wiser, and stronger. Or, you give up. You learn hard lessons and become grateful for them. They build you into a stronger, more resilient, gritty soul.
At some point you seek more credible sources for judging your own self worth and trust the puppies, kittens, your own kids, and your own patients, who love you unconditionally. If you can trust them perhaps you can even grow so much as to try to reciprocate it to all others across all species lines? I have to learn this. It isn't easy. I'm not having an easy time with much of it.
How many of my colleagues hope I give up? How many will celebrate in their successful destruction of another? Is their gain, my loss? Or, is it the concession to the chips I am willing to throw on the table? This profession of mine. Where death is so rampant, is trying to become the death of one of me. It is the sole source of the pain I am burying with 2017's departure.
The problem of killing each other, our companions, and our own soul is as pervasive as the hateful judgmental vitriol that spreads like cancer we cannot put into remission long enough to reflect on the gifts of gratitude and beauty we all know lies in the ripples of each struggle. Economic euthanasia, the indifference we hold with it, and the abandonment of serving all of those less fortunate then ourselves are my enemies. I bring these old enemies with me into 2018. But I do so with a resolve to search for healthier ways to do it, and more resolve to cure them. I HAVE to bring them with a clearer firmer steadfast course forward. 2018 holds new challenges, old struggles and back up plans I never thought I would have to consider. But as with each new beginning there will be an end. I just have to get out alive, and still care about the person I carry through every journey. My patients need the exact same commitment from me.
To every vet reading an obit to some soul who fell along this journey I hope that you remember compassion matters most while we are still trudging away from fates indifference.
I am grateful to be challenged. I am grateful to know who I am. To be able to walk away because there is a problem I can tackle better from the outside without fear of alienation, castigation, and recourse. You can be stripped and beaten but you decide if you walk away to hide, or to be who you were born to be. I'm here exchanging exoskeletons on the dawn of a new year ripe with possibilities, burgeoning on the eruption of the rebirth of humanity or demise of trust in loves endless hopeful potential.
At the end I am going to try to be grateful that life wasn't easy. I am most grateful that I am not hoping or expecting that it will get easier. To fear that wishing for easier is going to cost me more than I can die with. I can at least leave without feeling pushed out of the nest. I can leave for another quest, a higher purpose, a better resolve to a problem that fear prohibits my peers in facing. I am not going to read one more obit for one more vet that says "I never knew she struggled so much". This profession of excuses to protect us from feeling responsible eats us away.
I hear you. Each person out there struggling silently.
I would much rather stand with the masses I serve, the patients I hope to help than the hateful crowd whose infighting, neglect and sheer indifference marks time by obits to each other. Never in my life have I been treated so hatefully by strangers. I am not denying my contribution in the passion that emotional ties to our pets elicits, but, the problem of our societies hate and misery lies within our ranks as much as it lies outside of them.
Gratitude for the really difficult times of 2017 lies within my family too. This family extends from those who have known me through every year and decade to those who share their family with our Jarrettsville Vet family every day. If I have to carry a torch to find more compassion whilst feeling alone and damned I can only do so because I have them to remind me that I am not alone. Alone is a terribly heartbreaking place to be. Courage, determination, and conviction cannot offset crushing despair from loneliness.
Farewell 2017. I have few parting words to leave you with, therefore, I will greet 2018 with optimism, eagerness, and gratitude. I don't have to sum you up to want to leave you behind. I can just march forward less inclined to slow down to answer the demands of the angered mob, and more determined to build something worth preserving.
Here's my To-Do list for 2018;
1. "Get Out Alive" series. A blog, a plan, a schematic for the most common conditions that cause economic euthanasia to be chosen.
2. Storylines. We share, you learn, pets win.
3. Veterinary Patients Bill Of Rights.
4. Build a grassroots network unlike any before, more powerful than corporate controlled greed allowing the chasm between available and affordable pet care to grow wider and deeper. (This might be more than I can accomplish in one year).
For more information on me, and my vet clinic, Jarrettsville Veterinary Center, please see;
Here is our complete Jarrettsville Veterinary Center Price Guide for 2017
If you would like to follow our Facebook page you can learn more about us. If you have a pet question you can ask it for free at Pawbly.com. You can also find interesting pet facts, cases and stories at my YouTube channel and @FreePetAdvice.
Christa, you are one of those souls who feels everything you do, or potentially could do to help anyone, human, animal, usually both, so deeply. You feel responsible for the best outcome possible in every situation, and strive to do that for everyone who has ever walked through the doors at Jarrettsville Vet. My husband and I and especially our pets, have been the recipients of the compassionate care that is the hallmark of your practice. We need a practice like yours, and need you to continue to do the good that you do, even though not all outcomes are good, not your fault. Try to ignore those in your profession who don't even give the days events a second thought. Those who would criticize are probably the least compassionate in your trade, and most certainly don't want $$$$ things questioned. My Dad was a class of 44 Kings pointer, very different era, but I find the motto "Acta non verba", actions, not words, to be the most revealing thing about you and those you have gathered about you in your practice. Celebrate the many successes, victories, amazing attempts, and compassionate endings that are the reason your practice thrives and will continue to do so. Happy New Year, and thank you and your associates for the many ways that they have ministered to our family!
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