my job and protesters and ministers, oh my!

today was the end of my second week at the women's clinic and i fucking adore it there. the team i work with is great, the patients are utterly amazing women (for the most part, ha...working with public always means you come across a douchebag or two), and i adore every aspect of my job so far, even the boring stuff like charting, filing, scheduling, etc. i'm so grateful for this opportunity, and i feel so good waking up every morning and being *excited* about my job. for the first time in my life i'm not just working *A* job, any job...i'm working THE job, the one that i WANT!

one interesting aspect of the job that i think i've adjusted to well is the constant stream of protesters at our location because we perform surgical and pharmaceutical abortions. they've been out in full force lately, part of their 40 Days of Life lent protest. a few days ago i parked in the patient lot and they started yelling "we can help you with your baby! hey, let us help you with your baby!" and then yesterday when i parked in the employee lot they aimed pictures of jesus at me and glared/looked tragically sad as i walked in the employee entrance. i just did what i've done since i started, smile and keep walking. they don't scare me, and from what i hear that's why they don't harass me or get nasty. some of the women i work with are fearful and nervous around them (not that i blame them) and the protesters can SMELL it on them; they step up their game, yelling and chanting and flashing pictures of dismembered fetuses. "why do you kill babies?! you look like such a nice person, why would you want to do such a thing?!" their point, obviously, is to make our employees feel shitty enough that they'll stop coming to work. fat chance, people. i watch them on the security cameras soemtimes from inside our little bunker of locked doors and safety windows, they pace back and forth back and forth back and forth because they know it's not legal for them to "loiter". they'll stop momentarily to yell at a patient or employee and then they keep pacing, like those little wind-up toy monkeys that trudge around blankly and bang on cymbols. we have volunteer escorts that sit in the lobby and and meet patients outside when they arrive, which all the patients rave about. they're very comforted to have an escort who simply smiles and puts their arm around them, gives them something to focus on besides the harrassment. i was surprised to see that many of the escorts are men; one of them is in his sixties and told me that volunteering as an escort there is his lent commitment for this year. i wanted to hug him but we were talking through safety glass.

the funny thing is that 95% of the patients we see aren't even pregnant, let alone there for an abortion; we do birth control, paps, std testing, the whole range of women's health care, but from the way the protesters speak they clearly either don't realize this or just don't care. i respect their right to object to something they feel is wrong, but i resent their intrusion into a place that should feel safe for the women that come there. i know they'll always be there, it's inevitable, but i already feel very protective of our space.

we had a wonderful meeting today with an outreach minister from a protestant seminary school about the relationship and/or rift between our organization and spirituality. he gave us all a chance to speak about our feelings on theology as it relates to our job and he talked about how the campus he works for is super active in pro-choice support and how part of their mission is to let the world know that strong belief in god doesn't necessarily add up to anti-choice sentiment. it was wonderful to hear the minister give examples of people in his community who have reached out to support women and abortion providers, and how they see our pregnancy counselling work as an extension of what they do as clergy. he sees the work we do with women as very spiritual and his church wants us to know that they acknowledges that, which was oddly moving for me. he offered his services as a counselor for women having a hard time reconciling their beliefs with their reproductive choices, and also talked to us alot about the stresses of our jobs and how working in a field with such vehemently strong reactions-- disgust OR hero worship-- requires alot of effort to keep from getting emotionally burnt out. i havent worked there long enough to feel the same stresses that my co-workers voiced during the meeting but i see how the job takes its toll sometimes. the positivity our team constantly maintains is inspiring to me; even when they're rock-bottom wiped out from the frenetic energy exchange of their jobs they always remain as loving, nurturing, supportive, understanding, and accepting as they always are.

anyway, i just wanted to share the experience of that awesome meeting we had today and let you guys all know how much i'm fucking lurving my job so far. i've been juggling babysitters because we can't get any child care assistance (looong story, but the state has amazingly RUN OUT of money to fund childcare for working poor families) but DD is happy now because *I'M* happy. hopefully in a few weeks when i have a little money i can enroll her in preschool a couple days a week to offset the demands of begging for sitters all the time, but in the meantime we're both not even phased by the current arrangement.

every day when i pick her up after work she says "you helped the sick people at the doctor's office again today, mama?" and i smile and tell her "i did. i think i made them feel better."