I recently restarted volunteering at a juvenile faciilty which is essentially a medium-low security kiddie prison called Echo Glen by attending a weekly 12-step meeting on Saturday night. For several years a decade ago, I would go twice a week. My plan now is to go once or twice a month.
In theory, I am going there to help the kids. In reality, it helps me at least as much as it helps them. My teenage years were troubled times lacking a solid & secure foundation for healthy emotional growth. Listening and talking with the troubled teens at Echo Glen takes me back bringing up repressed feelings that I am know able to process in a much healthier way.
It is a win-win situation for me and the kids when I volunteer at Echo Glen. It gets me out of myself and my apartment while providing a good adult role model for the kids to talk to and be with. Many of them have NEVER had that in their young lives.
It is a pleasant 30 minute drive to Echo Glen up a mountain pass freeway and a cute winding foliage covered side road. Tonight on the way home, I stopped at an upscale steakhouse, Jak’s, in Issaquah for a wonderful dinner by myself. Between courses, I was reading Seligman’s Flourish, a great book on well-being and gratitude. It was a delicious pleasant dinnner by myself in a crowded restaurant with an inspirational.
I am grateful for the easy opportunities I have to help others that cause me to feel better about myself and my life.
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