Debrief lunch

February 9, 2012
I love my job. I love my coworkers. But some days I don't love what we do. We deal with a lot of tragedy and death. And not just your typical run-of-the-mill-stuff either. We can be crass, disturbed, irreverent, and way too desensitized at times. I'm fairly certain we'd horrify most of you if you happened to walk in on one of our staff meetings or debrief lunches with the stuff we talk about. Suicides, drug overdoses, child abuse, murders, domestic violence, traumatic brain injuries, rape, drownings, car crashes... you name it, dream it, can't believe it, we deal with it. We've seen it all. And most of the time, we hold ourselves together pretty well. But not this week.

The high-profile murders of two innocent boys by their father, Joshua Powell, pushed us the breaking point. Sadly, we've seen this before, sometimes worse, but most of the time we don't have to see or hear about it on the news every single day. Reminding us of all the horrible, sickening details over and over again. It's weird to me how some cases can be so tragic and yet, we're able to distance ourselves from them and then others we can't get out of our heads. We were all grateful we weren't going to have to do death reviews this time, because they died out-of-state, but the fear that someday, when her body is found, we'll review the death of Susan Powell still lingers.

So we had an impromptu debrief lunch today. We have regular debrief lunches every month to get out any lingering emotions about cases we've dealt with but today, we needed something more. People often ask me how I deal with the things my program does. I tell them you learn to distance yourself from stuff like this... it's your job... but sometimes, you just can't. That's when it's hard. But even then, knowing that the work we do might save even one life makes all the emotions and difficulties worth it.