It's pretty brutal, this season of self reflection. I feel a bit bi-polar. One minute I'm carrying along in my life minding my own business when I suddenly realize that I'm out of touch with myself. I'm not as happy as I know I should be, I'm not taking in the world around me. And so I take a deep breath and try to dig past the walls that I've set up to protect myself and allow a hint of authenticity to filter out.

And you know what happens then? I start to cry. It takes a while for it to build up and I don't always shed tears but I get this overwhelming feeling of deep sorrow. I feel like I'm mourning, I feel raked across the coals. I imagine myself like small child walking through tall golden grass on the side of a mountain with tears streaming down my face. I feel like I've experienced the death of someone close but I don't know who it is. I don't know why they died, or when, or how... only that they're gone.

I've come across something recently called secondary traumatic stress. STS. It happens to individuals who work or live with people who have experienced direct trauma, whether physical, emotional or psychological. It's common among counselors, emergency doctors, nurses, social workers and inner-city teachers. And I've just decided that it's common for abolitionists, for slaver-fighters like me who expose themselves to the whole spectrum of anti-trafficking stories, survivors, perpetrators and scenarios.

....I don't know what to write from here... do I talk about my frequent sky-rocketing levels of anxiety? Do I discuss why I stopped writing a blog and how people with STS stop pursuing their hobbies? Do I reflect on burn-out and the lack of excitement I have for anti-trafficking work? Do I get all emotional and poetic and begin the slow laborious work of tearing down my protective wall? Do I begin to deal with this massive sense of loss?

I'm not superhuman. I'm actually quite broken. And I need to be okay with that and not try to keep it all together.